skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
In my experience, it's critical to hire a great "anchor team". Thereafter, the hires become a little less critical. The worst work situations I've seen or been involved with had a weak anchor team. There's an expression that "'A' players hire 'A' players and 'B' players hire 'C' players" and that's definitely true in small organizations. For larger organizations and the reason I think the anchor team is so crucial is that an 'A' anchor team can make 'B' players play like 'A-' players and 'C' players play like 'B' players. The infrastructure, thinking and processes put in place by 'A' players can make other less capable players much more comfortable and productive. Make sure your team is supportive of all members and everyone will be better as they play up to the high quality of the other members (when playing sports, I always play better when playing against people who're better than I am).

That said, it's certainly a matter of focusing the anchor team on putting in place excellent practices. Huge problems can still occur if you have a great anchor team but they focus only on solving their own particular problem. You wind up with the best authentication system ever and a broken payment system or with the most incredible sales pipeline ever and technology that doesn't match what was sold.

Clearly, "hire only the best" is impossible for every company and business model. Also, clearly, this discussion is mostly about capability, knowledge, etc; fit with the organization must always be superb.
Glnce is your universal Wishlist.
Glnce just launched today. A service that helps you aggregate that things you look at online and compile them into your ultimate wishlist. Founder and engineer Chris Olson is currently a USC student.
Could be against the sides of the tube..
I thought this was a settled question, but I guess it's never been tested... so it's just consensus opinion, not verified fact.

I am also surprised.
You are still in a better situation than many here. SF's coffee shops are littered w/ debt-laden (pseudo)-hackers who have half-baked ideas/projects, no gf's (or wives), zero connection to anyone of value and sleeping on a sofa of some friend's musty apartment.
we just haven't posted to jobvite

email me if you're interested: ivan@dropbox.com
America: Still Full of Ideas, But Not Making Jobs
If you're banned here, you aren't locked out of the site or prevented from posting. Your posts are just marked so that only you (and other users who have chosen "show dead comments" in their preferences) can see them, and there's no indication that you've been blacklisted. It's terrible.
I have a Corsair P128 I bought in October of 2009. It cost me $350 but after seeing the performance gains and reading about the almost change in lifestyle you get in using one I thought it would be worth it.

I was right. Everyone was right. It's still running now, without issue, and I enjoy 8 second boot times with Windows 7 and virtually instantaneous-launch applications. Well worth the price. I regularly backup my data but it's nice to know that if it failed today I could buy a replacement from NewEgg for nearly half the price and probably better performance.
You have (at least one) misspelling on your page: "unbelieveably" should be "unbelievably". Just jumped out at me (maybe since it's italicized!) so I thought I'd report it.

Also, though this one's just my opinion: "point of sales system" seems awkward to me compared to "point of sale system" and I note from a couple of Google searches that the latter seems to be used a lot more often.

Anyway, good luck!
Depends. All of my incoming email is encrypted with my public key as soon as it hits my mail server:

https://grepular.com/Automatically_Encrypting_all_Incoming_E...

So if my mail server or any of my imap clients are compromised, my mail isn't.
This displays a fundamental lack of understanding of how floating point works. In particular, we are concerned about the accuracy of the floating point representation, which is characterized by the machine precision. Typically, single-precision has 8 digit accuracy, while double-precision has 16-digit accuracy.

Furthermore, we don't use 128-bit representations because they are slow for numerical computation, because we need more trips through the smaller-sized bus.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_point
The outlays being tax-deductible is the same in both cases: you only pay tax on the gains between what you put in and got out, not on the total revenue. If you spend $100k on art supplies and sell $110k in paintings, you pay taxes on the $10k net profit. Same as if you bought a bond for $100k and sold it for $110k; you only pay taxes on the $10k net gain.

But in the second case, you're taxed at a lower rate, so the tax code appears to want to discourage you from investing your capital in your own work. If you ever find yourself in a situation where you could make a 10% return on capital by putting that capital to work yourself, or could make the same 10% by putting that capital into a passive investment, the tax code promotes the 2nd option.
I suppose twitter's involvement in real-time news isn't really news at this point? But I find the roles that these services are playing in affecting the way information moves pretty interesting, and completely relevant to HN. I'm also in the "Let major news events get voted up, if that's what happens" camp.

If there's one thing that I find most useful about HN it's that articles here are constantly making me think about how our world is changing, and what new tools and solutions might enable compelling needs that arise from those changes. Major news events are relevant, and I'm more interested in what HN'ers have to say about them than most other communities I'm a part of.
Interesting. In Germany, the law states that taxes can't be bound to a certain goal. Taxes all go to a big budget basket, which is then allocated by the year budget. It means that the oil tax can finance school, military, or anything.
Looks like WebKit has problems appending to a very long string. The less we can do that the better, so I came up with this solution:

var dest = 'apple';
while (dest.length < 100000) {
var out = '';
for (var i=dest.length-5, end=i+10; i<end; ++i)
out += dest[i];
dest += out;
}

That brought the time from about 4 seconds to a more respectable 90 msec.
True. It has worked well for NameCheap, only because the quality of the product is virtually identical among providers. Unfortunately it's not the case here.
No that was just me messing up the blog post.
managing remote folks is hard so we're not really focused on that right now.
The problem is that in the united states access to colleges and universities has shifted from those who are gifted to those who can pay it.

How long can a society afford it to let gifted people clean desks and wash cars instead of giving them the education they deserve to create benefits for the society?

Every educational system which expects people to pay tuitions gives a up long-term benefits for a short-term monetary gain.

Additionally it teaches young people that it is OK to have debts. It is not. Never. Don't buy what you can't pay.
Mail removed from the inbox (or most other "folders" on gmail) works as expected. However, they still remain in the "All Mail" folder, which doesn't appear to be accessible to POP/IMAP clients.
Taxing income higher than capital gains encourages investment over consumption.
I was under the understanding from the briefings that he was killed via action on the ground by US soldiers, with intelligence from drones. This does not corroralate with that account, it makes it seem like there was an airstrike from a drone. How do these fit together in the timeline of the raid?
What are the advantages of “server-grade” CPUs over “consumer” CPUs?
I suppose I may have to change the name at some point down the line. It is quite difficult to find good names.

In my search, I sat down with instantdomainsearch and said "ok, I'm going to come up with at least 100 acceptable domain names", this was the favorite out of everyone I polled.

I like the idea of implying "speed" instead.
but then a mob of noobs could outrank two wise elders.
I just came back from SF yesterday, and would certainly recommend dropping everything and going there. Better yet, relocate to Palo Alto. Every other office on University Avenue is a startup and the ones that aren't are either VC firms or gathering haunts like coffeeshops & restaurants. There is a certain electricity in the air. You have to be there to feel it. It is definitely quite surreal, like out of a parallel universe. 20 year olds in jeans & tees & sandals lugging their laptops & iphones, talking animatedly about monads and dependency injection and mock functions, while 60 year old asset managers in black suits and polished shoes walk around in reverence.
I remember thinking that I would have to be an absolute rank idiot if I can't get some bloke to fund me a half mil on a quick-flip consumer web play. On top of that, the guy who was escorting me, a 25 year old hotshot ceo of a stealth startup, pointed out various coffeehouses and said things like "i pitched here", " i raised 200k there" and so on and so forth until it was clear i was a dumb fuck wasting my time in the midwest.

So why am I back to the midwest ? Well, I'm not running a startup myself, atleast not yet :) And when it comes time to do so, I'll rush over there myself.

I guess this is what it was like in the 1960s in Greenwich village in NYC, or Berkeley CA or Woodstock or whereever else. Its just quite surreal & I still haven't gotten over it.
The 3 paragraphs starting with "Grow" on the Racket home page try to be a "why racket?" explanation. What more would you like to see?
Now that the 'target' has been neutralized, why should the US concern itself with US-Pakastani diplomatic relations?
Yandex divulges info on Russian anti-corruption crusader
The SSD I got from NewEgg had an extended warranty offer. The only time I've ever accepted one. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227...
مقتل اسامة بن لادن
مقتل اسامة بن لادن وفاة أسامة بن لادن زعيم تنظيم القاعدة في باكستان في غارة جوية في منزله يوتيوب ديليس
SSL is for end-point to end-point security. SSL does not attempt to solve the problem of either end being compromised. This means that SSL won't help you if your computer is infected with rogue software or if the server you're talking to is compromised.

SSL does, however, help to prevent eavesdropping between point A and point B.
Facebook can give away your information for any reason they want. A warrant exists to compel them to give it away. If they are willing to give it away without a warrant, then legally, that's fine.
How Osama Bin Laden was found?
Really impressive work! I'd suggest for your demo video, instead of showing all your features in action, to instead talk through a typical scenario (someone taking an order, closing the order, etc) and showing what it's like to use the app.
(1) I think that's it. You could get a cheap oscilloscope card for looking at the power grid quality. It seems it is really bad on there.

You could even make an script that analyzes if the wave shape is too bad, and if so store the surroundings of the power glitches. You can do that with a beagle board DSP, almost free.

Maybe you shut down or power on a lot of computers at the same time, start engines, whatever. It does not make sense your SSDs failure rate(15 days, come on!!).
I wonder if he would have been found had he used the Internet (TOR etc.) to stay connected with the world, instead of his courier. No idea.
By programming in iOS you are requiring companies to purchase expensive mac products to run your POS rather than inexpensive PC products.

You need to go to as many restaurants in person as possible and be able to explain why your product is worth "trying" at the risk of a night of business. The key to understanding your customer is that they need to train all their servers and cooks on the new system and risk a huge single night loss of sales in the event of an error.

This is big business and for large restaurants could be $20K in a single night.

What is the big feature that your product has, that current systems don't have?

*ALSO REALLY IMPORTANT: I would consider not offering it for free since the "cost" is not the product. The cost in your case is the potential loss a restaurant could take on a crashing system (and the cost and lost sales relating to server training). I would try charging MORE than current POS systems as your sticker price.

Pricing is a signal and you need to signal high quality to sell this risk to businesses.

A few quick things that are important to restaurants:
1) Margins (they are really low, anything to improve them is good).
2) Servers are unreliable and turnover is high (anything to help speed up training is a plus, but probably a minor one)
3) Risk (a single night of lost sales may bankrupt a restaurant. You are asking for big commitment.)
4) Costs (upfront costs are harder to swallow because cash flow is always important. Decide whether it is worth figuring out a way to subsidize the equipment and software and get paid back later maybe).

Additional advice: Work in a restaurant as a server, then as a cook. Knowing the business is very important for selling to it.
> Would you refer to someone like that as successful?

If that person does what it always wanted to do, this person is obviously successful.

Note to myself: The American definition of "success" is much more f*cked up than expected. No wonder that they have these problems recently...
Данон
Поканихме Маргита да участва във Форум Бизнес за да говори за социално отговорния бизнес и защо е преминала от екологичните организации към международна корпорация.
"The less you need money, the more people want to give it to you." - some advice I have heard about finances. Applies to businesses selling a product, startups looking for money, and, especially well, to scholarships.

The best indication that people should invest in you is that you don't need them to invest in you at all.
You could try Hushmail (http://www.hushmail.com/). They claim to encrypt your e-mail but off course you can never be sure with third parties.
Marketing in the Lean Startup
La Marina website beta version | Diigo
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a031700binlad...

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a091001rawalp...

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a070201renal#...

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=amid1201Osama...

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a011802Mushar...

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a092306osamad...

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=alate2007CIAO...

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a0309OsamaBin...

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a012304Muelle...

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a121301murkyv...

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a091601noinvo...

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a092801osamad...

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a122601ninete...
An open letter to Mike Arrington: Please stop investing in startups
Mmm, yes. I agree to a certain extent. I guess my belief is that there are ways to engage a child outside of a formal education system that would have the same effect while concentrating on something they want to do, since learning is not that thing. I haven't thought this entirely through, but it seems that the current paradigm isn't optimal. You're absolutely right that sports and arts programs provide outlets auxiliary to a standard education, but for students with no interest in traditional learning, maybe it would be better to focus on those things they do enjoy and leave off those that they won't engage in. It would be analogous to the perception that everyone should attend college because it leads to a better life, when in fact many students should be attending post-secondary technical schools. Why not start the split earlier for those who actively refuse to be educated?
I've been working on something like this, but from a different angle at http://lifetrckr.com/

It's all functional, even though it's extremely bare at this point, but the goal is to help people distill all these things they do online into a single readable format. For the initial pass for me, it seemed easiest to take all of that 'stuff' and turn it into a calendar subscription. It's a neat and simple way to visualize all of these things that are floating around out there.

So as not to highjack this post, the biggest problem I saw with The Locker Project is that it's very unfriendly to normal users. I'm sure eventually apps will be built on top of that people can run locally to view and manage their data, but in the mean time, it's very much a toy for geeks and not much more.
Someone offered me a job recently. One of the people who interviewed me knew I had a side project that could become a startup. His advice was exactly what jazzychad said: startups are hard. He had been in one, so his advice meant something.

I turned down the offer, but for reasons unrelated to my side project. Still I feel like my project/startup is floating in the Sargasso Sea. If you think getting funding in the Bay Area is hard, move to Atlanta. There's a reason Stammy is out there.

And you can't be too much of a Nobody if you can get into YC twice. I wish team Notifo (or whatever your next project is) all the best.
Ask HN: Resources for Physics self-study
I was reading the book "Quantum Man" on Richard Feynman recently, when I got the notion that I should like to take on Physics study as a hobby. I figured I would find a lot of people here on HN who belong to either or both groups: 1. knowledgeable on the subject and 2. eager to embark on a similar journey.

Would anyone like to share their reading lists or recommend some good starting points? My background is sophomore-level college physics, though that was over a decade ago now. Specific areas of interest would be particle physics and QED.
IPhone Case is a Polaroid Printer
See realmofracket.com and watch it for more news.
I think Pg is right for not adding a lot of features, or spending the limited time he has working on the UI

I believe HN's plain design is actually an intended feature, not a bug. From one of PG's essays:

So the most important thing a community site can do is attract the kind of people it wants. A site trying to be as big as possible wants to attract everyone. But a site aiming at a particular subset of users has to attract just those—and just as importantly, repel everyone else. I've made a conscious effort to do this on HN. The graphic design is as plain as possible, and the site rules discourage dramatic link titles.

http://paulgraham.com/hackernews.html
If he works with a team, he already has git as a backup.
In the event of a drive failure, the others won't have the changes he didn't push but Dropbox probably does.
The difference between scalability, performance, efficiency, and concurrency
So, you are asking people to learn sbt?

http://code.google.com/p/simple-build-tool/wiki/BuildConfigu...
What is antimatter?
Great post.

I've also had "Startup depression" where I didn't sleep for 1 week and was totally unproductive for a grand total of 2-3 weeks. Ever since then I stopped recommending doing startups to my friends.

We've also experienced the "You're Nobody until you're Somebody problem." The work-around we're trying right now is to bring a (non-technical) "Somebody" onboard as a partner/founder, who is also, unlike us, located in the US where our market is.

Location has also come up in this thread. Early on I thought that thanks to the Internet location matters "less". Not true. You have to be where your investors/customers are. Deals require massive face time.
You could implement a forward-compatible database function table like this:

local function accesscommand (t, key)
local f = function (...)
return redis(key, ...)
end
t[key] = f
return key
end
db = setmetatable({}, {__index = accesscommand})
function db.hmset (key, values)
local t = {}
for key, value in pairs(values) do
t[#t + 1] = key
t[#t + 1] = value
end
redis("hmset", unpack(t))
end

Any command without a function defined in the table would create a closure on the fly that calls that command like normal. (It also stores the closure in the table to speed up future calls.) Commands that could be implemented more elegantly using Lua semantics (like HMSET) have overrides defined in the db table directly, which prevents the closure-generating function from being called.
So startups the YC way are hard. The sacrifice is self-inflicted, and avoidable - just give up more of your company up front, or choose a more visible partner, or have a spouse that has a real income to start with, or work at BigCo then quit and create something they need and lease/contract it back to them, etc.

Its winning the lottery that is hard, and only because you make it hard on yourself for that big prize.
I had never heard of the Impostor Syndrome, was interested to learn about it via the link in the article. Thanks-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome
Some systems programming is writing applications. But they are applications that have intimate knowledge of the system. For example, the shell is a user-land application, but I clearly put implementing it under the "systems programming" label. Same with implementing a webserver.
It's not just for investors. It's much harder to exit to a US acquirer if your tax/legal structure is that of another country. Due diligence is longer and more expensive and I have heard of cases where UK companies have been skipped due to potential issues of integrating founders re immigration and IP laws.
Of course, regular old hydrogen "falls up", being lighter than air. :) I guess if gravity is truly reversed for antihydrogen, it would fall up even faster. But I highly doubt it's actually gravitationally repulsive.
Oh! I hadn't even thought of that.

So a coder says: "hey, I'm good at Python and..."

I'm having trouble filling in the blank there. Would they solicit questions and then get exclusivity? Would they just generally advertise? I'm not really sure how that would work.
In his defence he never asked if he should still apply, he simply asked if he was a loser for using an ascii table to figure it out instead of compiling :P

Which no, that doesn't make you a loser. I think if anything it makes you part of the average HN population, hackers. You were curious, you thought of a solution to the problem presented, and you went ahead and figured it out.
In that case I agree with you completely :-)
I've lived there for several years, and in no way do I identify with this post. Not even close.

It is good to be optimistic, but I'd hate for people to get this impression that the streets are paved with gold and make some really poor decisions.
Thai-trips.net Site Info
I know it's sad to say but as a rule of thumb I've always assumed that my mails are always read and/or stored by third parties.

For really important stuff my only solution is encryption.
My point was that few resume spammers are likely to be hanging out on HN in the first place, so posting the solution here would not be a problem.
Despite my worries that this is turning into offtopic, I'll note that I haven't noticed that this particular PHP feature gets bashed. I've seen the opposite, people remarking that one of the things that is pleasant in PHP is working with associative arrays.
Blackberry App for Hacker News
Most people have...
Yeah, you know the subset that people actually use.

XSLT and XPath are tools that really feel like they should be useful, but for small things, I feel like a streaming parser in <favorite scripting language> is faster and more readable, and for large things, deserializing it all into <favorite database> and querying it that way is better.
I think there are different degrees of Nobodiness and Somebodiness, but I also think there is a pretty big gap between the highest Nobody, and the lowest Somebody. Maybe I am moving up the Nobody scale :) I don't want to belabor the point or make it seem like I am self-deprecating, but you get the point.