skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I agree. I am trying to find a dead simple digital camera for my parents (both on their 60s), that also takes some good quality pictures.

Imposible to find, and it seems that newer versions just cram more features into, things that my parents will never be able to figure out, or use them properly.
Ask YC: Feedback for programming code/info sharing site
We could really use some feedback on our site... we want to make it useful but we don't really know if we've succeeded or not :-/

The site is for sharing and finding code and programming knowledge... you can read about it at www.siafoo.net/help/about
Invite please, asolomo@gmail.com
"Linux, Shuttleworth said, must link up with Windows. He stressed his belief that 'Linux is the platform of the future. But I think it's essential that we learn how to work with Windows'."

I'm sure Linux developers would be more than willing to link up more with Windows if it didn't keep getting out of its way to prevent it.
There should be a word for the phenomenon whereby people try to make things sound more interesting than they really are by pretending they're disallowed, banned or censored. The phenomenon is common enough and annoying enough that it'd be great to say "Oh, that's just [insert new word here]".

In this case, these questions aren't really "questions you can't ask". It's true that people are a little over-touchy on a few of them, but most of them are just fairly dull questions which are rarely asked because either:

(a) They're dumb suggestions (active population control, abolishing corporations)

(b) They're based on false assumptions (e.g. people are "anti-sex", whatever that means), or

(c) We're sick of the question already

A couple of the others (rights of AI, why people make decisions subconciously and then make rationalizations) are questions which get asked all the time.
I've used Dr Scheme with arc (technically anarki-arc). It worked with no problem on Windows XP / Windows Vista / Ubuntu / Mac OS X (10.5). It's probably the single easiest way to demo it to someone that isn't familiar with lisp/scheme. (java heads, .net programmers, etc.)

Demoing it with a eclipse / visual studio like IDE really does make a difference. There a a surprising number of people who dislike VI/VIM and emacs.

When I'm actually doing arc development I use emacs and inferior-arc.

http://github.com/nex3/arc/tree/master/extras/inferior-arc.e...
It's not just Feynman -- there's a rumor that someone scored the whole Caltech physics faculty and they did mostly average. I think the flaw is that IQ tests look for people to find answers that correspond to the limited, simple mental models of the test makers (other people), very quickly and accurately, which is probably irrelevant, if not actively harmful, to the values that habits that make a good scientist.
Venture Financing With a Mission Beyond Profit
... What was this post about? (or: "Now what?")
Problem is, a lot of techies aren't "normal" (in the sense outlined in the article) and they've been following the scratch-your-own-itch advice.
Ask YC:What should I use for a persistence layer for an NB classifier?
I need to store a seperate NB classifier for each user (to tfc count). The operations will be read heavy, but I need to continue to do reads during a write (eventual consistency is perfectly acceptable). Eventually I might want to make it distributed. Is something like CouchDB the correct answer?
suggestions greatly appreciated
Issue dividends or do a stock buyback.

Still, you probably could sell your hypothetical company. Could even be easier, since you have actual cash flow to look at.
The government is like wikipedia. Some people focus on all the things it gets wrong, but personally I'm amazed that it works at all.

It makes glaring errors from time to time, and plenty of things it does non-optimally, but the fact is that almost every day I get up and find that the garbage gets collected, the streets get swept, the electricity is coming through the wires, the police aren't demanding bribes, foreign countries aren't invading, mobs aren't rampaging, and the little pieces of paper in my wallet can still be reliably exchanged for physical goods. How awesome is that?

I believe in small government, and I don't think the government should do many things, but you can't say that the government is incapable of doing anything.
Perhaps the authors, like many artists, are happy to have the perfect day jobs so that they can pursue interesting hobbies in their spare time. You know, hobbies like blogging, or writing open source software. [1]

There really is a limit to the amount of exciting original thinking that a person can do in a week. You need to sleep. You need to exercise. And you need downtime. If you've got an exciting, fast-moving, forward-looking hobby, it's kind of useful to have a pleasant, renumerative job to do in your off hours.

And it's hard to develop frameworks for building maintainable software if you never actually have to maintain any software. Practice makes perfect.

[1] I cannot believe that I just read a post suggesting that David Heinemeier Hansson might not be doing enough interesting things with his time. How much more code should the guy be giving away? I'm sure there's a non-empty set of people who wish he'd slow down.
Lisp Elitists
You're overstating things. Apple itself has a solid handful of different toolkits and UI paradigms, some of which are better than others and many of which are legacy.

Take a look at an actual linux distro, and you'll find it uses only one desktop and is quite consistent. Slamming Ubuntu because Mandriva exists (etc...) isn't really a meaningful argument. Hell, most of that "linux" GUI software runs great on OS X too. So by your own logic the Mac is "failing miserably" at consistency and has the "most appalllingly inconsistent interfaces" (more so even then Linux, which after all can't run Cocoa apps).

Basically, this kind of broad-brush argument is mostly just flaming. If you have an actual complaint about an actual product (and I'm sure you do -- I have quite a few of my own), let's hear it.
Out of curiosity, where can I view FriendFeed's interview problems? I'd like to see them and gauge my current state.
They're just replying to pg posts which all say the same thing :-)
Yahoo-Icahn-Microsoft Aftermath: Who Really Won?
Virtualmin. We'll be hiring for a couple of positions a little later this year (primarily related to our new cloud computing products, rather than what you see on our website today). Feel free to send over your resume.
Why?

1. Sometimes, issues require more interactivity, especially for an individual inexperienced with the product regardless of the technical aptitude in general.

This is more crucial in issues regarding offline apps, but let's consider an online app. You'll likely need the account name and browser edition. If it's repeatable, you should have the general idea. However, should I spend time reducing it to its essence? What exactly is support going to need for help? I may not even be able to tell if it's a simple or complex problem!

37 signals is lucky to have a well-informed customer base, though.
Code Visionary
Hide down-vote arrows and 'flag' links on Hacker News
The T Project
When I tried to use the storylinez site, it was taking a long time, around 1-6 seconds to completely respond to each hover. So it's hard for me to give more intelligent feedback than "it needs to be faster".

Especially with such a hover-centric navigation model, if reaction is not quick, users will have a hard time figuring out how to make things happen. I was reduced to hovering over random UI elements to see if anything happened.

I would recommend you take some of your non techy friends, sit them down at a computer, tell them "Hey, why don't you find some funny videos or something cool using this storylinez site", and see what they say.
but you'll never catch up to a guy who just walked away and sold his company for 10 mil

Bad Stats. Small sample size. Along with the return, you need to look at the probability of getting said return.

Look at your expected value. 10M with a 1:10,000 shot is different than 1M with a 1:100 shot.

So instead of comparing individual successes, you probably need to look at the EV of the group and then compare it like that.

And if you think you can get better odds than my completely made up ones, then let me know when you need a cofounder ;)
I'll look into what's required to make that work.
Pretty good listing.

I noticed that the posting following yours was looking for a 'Python Ninja and Sensei'. What's next? Python Sumo?
I'm thinking you could only allow someone to comment or vote after they've viewed the page by doing the :visited css trick
Maybe the key is that rather than just "sustain" you have to keep building and growing.
Here's an actual link http://www.siafoo.net/help/about

In general we want to know what wastes most of your time when writing code... and how Siafoo can reduce this wastage.
That list went downhill fast after 15.
yeah lets go bash microsoft more and be one sided again! yeah! hey, hold on, let me read that arrogant and unrealistic post by 37 signals in the meantime...brb...
An average programmer learns a variety of tools that lead him to a series of epiphanies.

With his eyes open, he no longer can cope with the lame blubiness of his career, but he finds him self pigeonholed by his old job description. He doesn't have the credentials to strike off into a job that would allow for more professional growth. But he had no idea that the many small development choices he'd been making over time would lead to this crisis. Now what?
So from your perspective the companies that use "rockstar" and similar terms are probably better for hackers than a standard job posting? Since they are at least looking for the right type of programmers... I can see that perspective.

It's always possible that some horrible HR person posted the job. I've talked to some horrible HR people at Microsoft and Google in the past (when they were "cool" places to work with super smart types).

I think the most obvious move is to interview and talk to the people you will be working for/with. In many cases the specific project or team is as important as the company.

The job ad is just to get that initial interest. To get you to commit to sending a resume or taking a phone call.
> Good list. Anyone have any opinions on the items?

Yep.

1. First of all calculus is not as important as author says. Actually calculus warps your mind as near any branch of mathematics does. Programming is tied with mathematics very closely and programmer should clearly understand what abstraction is, how to abstract, how to prove, how to create proper aims. And nothing would tell about it as much as mathematics.

2. math logic.

3. philosophy and rhetoric. At first sight it may seem boring, but actually it's not. Speech of a good programmer should be constructed well. When you work with guy, who even can't explain you what how his program works, it's not very good. Especially when that guy works in a big team.
Rhetoric can teach you how to speak well, philosophy may show you well-constructed speeches.

4. Foreign language. If you're not a native english speaker, english is first language you must to learn(at least to be able to read technical literature and some papers).
i completely agree that you should probably avoid these places... at that point the company is trying too hard to be cool and therefore they are inherently uncool (to me at least) - not to mention, this probably reflects on the project / product they're building and who wants part of something that isn't awesome??

the other thing about 'rock star' and 'code ninja' that particularly turns me off is that it reminds me of that guy from payperpost who is annoying... i would really hate working for that guy, and in the few times i've seen him he never fails to say something like that...

one last thing i'll add is that i saw a job posting a grockit the other day and thought it was pretty interesting...while i wasn't enamored with their 'agile development practices' the way they probably want developers to be, i really liked their openness about what they offer in terms of comfort, health, and fun. very straightforward and very honest, which is really what i'd be looking for.
Is lasting value diluted by blogs?
Taking your questions in reverse order, I would first recommend not borrowing money to start or grow your business. Get investors instead. If your business should happen not to work out the first time, you walk away free and clear and can easily start another business. If you've borrowed money and your business fails, you still have to pay back the loan. This is an amazing gift: if you fail the first time, your net worth may be zero, but at least it won't be negative. [http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html]

If you do decide to borrow money, you do not need to have built up your credit score. All you need to do is talk to a lender who has the intelligence to look at your actual situation. (As Dave Ramsey likes to put it, a credit score is lending for dummies). To get a mortgage for a house, for example, to qualify for the best rate, all you need is to have paid your rent for two years early or on time, to not to have bad debts, and to find a bank that does manual underwriting. You do not need to have borrowed a dollar before in your life.

A VISA debit card will give you exactly the same level of protection against theft and fraud as a credit card will. Look it up on their web site.

There are a few minor inconveniences to not having a credit score. For example, yes, I did have an insurance company initially want to charge me a higher insurance rate because I hadn't "established my credit". But all I had to do was call them up and explain that I didn't have a credit score because I didn't borrow money, and if they didn't give me a good rate I'd go to an insurance company who would look at my actual situation. And they gave me a reasonable rate. A five minute conversation. (If you want to be an entrepreneur, this kind of negotiation is trivial).

So if you don't need to "build your credit", why is everyone you know (and all the comments here on Hacker News) saying you should? Propaganda from the credit card industry is pervasive (their advertising budget, iirc, is second only to the auto industry). They have spent a great deal of money, time, and effort coming up with plausible sounding reasons why you should buy their product (credit), and ensuring that everyone has heard of them.

Your "credit score" is in fact a measure of how much profit you are making for the credit industry.

Maximizing your credit score isn't going to help you, making products or services that people want is what is going to make you successful. Don't spend your time optimizing the wrong thing.
As far as making life easier, here is how it helps me:
1. Spending statements at year-end for tax purposes.
2. Miles for travel, I get a few trips per year
3. Lower mortgage/car rates due to good credit

Unfortunately, this is the only way to prove it (that I know of) - have credit and know how to manage it.
I think "rock star" has, and is intended to have, a certain retro charm about it. A marker that those who use it are from a more civilized age (the 1980s) when songs were sung instead of spoken, when mistreating women was something you did in the privacy of your hotel room rather than the subject of your lyrics, and when writing songs about how awesome you personally are was considered a little gauche.
I like to use the term "famously good". Unfortunately, that sets the bar extremely high. Not as high as it seems, though, since I mean, "famous in our segment of the market or for working with our preferred technologies". e.g. They've written one or more books on the topic, they headed up a popular FOSS project in the area or in the language, they wrote the definitive implementation of a really interesting concept, they have code in our language implementation (where language for us is Perl and JavaScript--so patches in the Firefox JavaScript engine or Perl 5 or Perl 6 are interesting indicators), etc. We'd even consider blogging to be a "famous" trait...though we'd want to see some code.

So, by that definition there are at least 50 people on HN that I'd hire without hesitation. And by that definition, I've worked with and for at least a couple dozen famously good people in my ten years in the industry (and the longer I think about it, the longer the list gets).

Interestingly, when I read "Rock Star Developer", I think, "Will work your ass off, get no equity, and get salary on par with the industry average." And when I think, "famously good", I think, "Will expect salary that is commensurate with output, will expect to work on interesting projects, and has his/her pick of jobs." And yet, the latter is who I want to hire, because I know the difference it makes in quality and productivity. If I can hire a famously good hacker for about 1.5 times the industry average, I'd consider it a good deal.

But I use the term because I know what it means...I'm not sure if it'd be meaningful to folks reading our job ads. So I'd probably be more explicit about what we're looking for.
i agree, as many problems as it may have today, one only has to look at some 3rd world countries to see how radically good governance can change things and how important it is. i'm not saying that just because we have it better than somwhere in africa or the middle east, we shouldn't complain or try to improve, but government, especially at the local levels, does a decent job.
The term "rockstar engineer" always struck me as a comedic oxymoron. Guess I'm not the only one. Terms like "kick ass" and "rockstar" do imply youth, however, which is not a bad thing as far as I'm concerned.
I'm going to venture a guess that the statement under attack is most probably this one: The best case, for most people, would be if you could hire someone to manage the company for you once you'd grown it to a certain size.

startingup is making the assumption that the goal of hiring this manager is to maximize the startup's ROI with minimum attention from the founders. However, I believe pg's original point was not that anything can be maximized, but that things can more or less stay in check without the founder looking, which is a far weaker claim. This isn't about profit, but about giving the founders the opportunity to do something more interesting, if such a thing were to exist. The essay is cautions enough not to make any grandiose claims. Imho, you've got a straw man on your hands, startingup.
I completely lost interest when I understood that the only quotes about Bill Gates are those selected to make him look like a fool. How original another hit job on Bill by some computer cheerleaders, yeah! I didn't even continue to the Linus ones, there is no point.
I think his point is that someone of equal mental capacity who loves whatever it is you do would be better.
In 10 years the 37Signals crew might not enjoy the work as much as they do today.

My thought exactly. Taking free cooking/art classes is fun, but sooner or later, you start wanting to make something that'll last 100 years. That's what Arc is about. Ditto for Knuth's Art of Computer Programming.

Can you imagine Knuth writing them while running a business?
being a big fan of scrabble, id hate to see scrabulous go away (although admittedly i haven't tried out the official scrabble game yet). however, what i don't understand is why these guys didn't sell to hasbro when they had the opportunity a long time ago?? granted, they may very well be safe from indian courts, and have no u.s. assets, but from what i understand facebook will probably end up taking down the application and they will be left out in the cold.
Grad school.

I'm not normally found arguing in favor of the grad school option, but every tool has its use. If you're in a place where you can't imagine getting a job outside of the narrow boundaries of your resume, you need a different environment with different friends and colleagues. It's time to escape the resume-ruled world for a while and get a master's degree.

When you emerge from school it will be like being born again: Society will understand it when you declare that you no longer want to be known as a Blub guy -- you'll have moved to a higher plane, or at least a different one. Plus you'll have a lot of smart friends who might want to help start a company.

Other options include: start a company [1], downshift your career (find the job that you think you want, find the entry-level job that leads toward that, and get that job -- swallow your pride), build some independent projects (websites or open-source projects) and launch them... or all of the above.

[1] Here on news.yc I'm contractually obligated to include this advice somewhere in every post.
1 out of 2 ways to get on Digg's Top Page | My Philly Network
Customer Disservice Spotlight On: FedEx
aye. back when I was coding on a 9 inch B&W screen with bitmapped everything, it was a great font to use. damn crisp and non-ambiguous at 9pt.

now I use deja vu sans, which is a fork of bitstream vera sans with full unicode.
Actually, scaling twitter is a solved problem. There is a company in India called SMS GupShup that does the same thing as twitter, except they have 3 times the number of users and more SMS users. And they don't have downtime.

http://anand.typepad.com/datawocky/2008/06/indias-sms-gupshu...
have you tried iTerm on OSX? It's rad.

http://iterm.sourceforge.net/
-- BEGIN TRANSMISSION --

PERHAPS

-- END TRANSMISSION --
Here is the quote from your article:

David isn't mistaken in saying you should start a company to live off its revenues. The mistake is thinking this is somehow opposed to starting a company and selling it. <i>In fact, for most people the latter is merely the optimal case of the former.</i>
> They might be an excellent example for "just don't die"?

Have you used their products or researched the market? This is an excellent example of "do an amazing job, and charge people very little for it". Organizations make a lot more money from building web forms, they just pay it all off to sales staff to sell them.
Labels used to suppress ideas
Net is a single point labeled G connected to 10 billion destination pages.
Screw the credentials. Work on interesting things, publish them, repeat. The opportunities will come.
Writing business apps in Ruby on Rails is only going to seem cool for so long. Give them a couple of years for the coolness to wear off, and they'll sell without a second thought.
Did anyone else find this somewhat incoherent?
Good feedback. We do tweet for you when you post if you want, you can set that up in your settings. Friendfeed integration would be great as well.

Thanks for the encouragement!
That's an excellent point. We do need a word. How about "romples"? I think that's free.
Even most financial planning books/sites will tell you that it's "normal" to spend about 30% of your after-tax income on housing. WTF? Since when it's been "normal"?

30% of after-tax income doesn't sound unreasonable to me. Given that:

(a) in most areas there's more people than blocks of land in nice places, and

(b) living in a nice place makes a very significant difference to your quality of life

it makes sense that people are going to be willing to pay a significant fraction of their income in order to live in a nice place.

The only problem is the places where you can no longer buy a house on ~30% of the average local income. That's not sustainable.
I'd love an invite. my handle @ inzain.net
Let me try: "this post is pure romples".

Not bad, but I'd prefer a verb form -- to romple?

"Dude, you're rompling. Stop it."
what you're describing sounds more like a "rap star"