skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
For people who aren't already using a BlackBerry, the Bold just doesn't even seem like a competitor. I'll be a first-time smartphone buyer shortly, and it's difficult to see why I'd want to buy a handheld computer with such a tiny screen. I'm far more likely to want to browse the web and watch video on my smartphone than type a novel, so a separate keyboard is pretty unimportant, but the screen is one of the most visible and important parts of a first impression, and the iPhone seems to have a bigger screen than anything competing with it. Even with the problems I'm hearing it has, it's hard to justify dropping money on something with a significantly smaller viewing area.
18 months later he sued his own company for the remainder of their cash reserves.

Philip Greenspun, Founders at Work, pg. 343:

People focus a lot on the bust-up phase. It upsets me that they remember the wrong things like, "This Greenspun guy sued the venture capitalists." This is not true, first of all, since I was a defendant, not a plaintiff.

So, do you have evidence that Greenspun is lying or confused, which I'd be very curious to see? Or are you just spreading malicious rumors with no basis in fact?
Hmmm... Am I blind or this link was not present at that time? Anyway, thanks for your help!
Get proactive, find other hackers. If you can't find other hackers, it's because you aren't looking.

Physical location isn't necessarily important. I got into my first open source project remotely and that work actually led to a bunch of other jobs that got me pretty much smack dab into the SanFran startup scene.

The key to getting other people to work with you is to wear your passion for a project on your sleeves. People of a like mind will be drawn to that.

P.S. Why would you have to go back to school to learn a new programming language?
What's wrong with a text message saying, "running late". That's usually even one of the templates included with cheap phones. No app necessary and it will almost surely be faster.
Well, it looks like the answer to your question is no. A lot of different opinions though. I think it and the many similar books are a good read though. It doesn't hurt to manage your time better. It definitely doesn't hurt to make a foray into outsourcing on your own, if only for the learning experience. And I honestly believe you should spend the bulk of your time on something your passionate about, and if it's not your day job, then it's a great idea to cut down on those hours.
What is your goal? Do you want to save lives?

Accidents involving those aged 18-20 dropped by 13% when most states upped the drinking age to 21:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-03-20-drinkingage_N...

OTOH if your goal is to reduce global warming then we should lower the drinking age as much as possible. And also start more wars, spread more diseases, &etc.
Sociable Design - Introduction
Hey Max,

Great suggestion. We have some ideas for how we can aggregate photos based on location and category. For example, if a bunch of photos from San Diego Comic-con came in we could somehow group those together into a public event. The iPhone camera quality is not super great so I'm not sure how many people would be interested in paying for a collage of photos with strangers in it. Maybe we can create personal prints of people's photos with the location of each photo on some sort of map...
Read the proposal and critique carefully. Note the part about how the app is useless if you're the only person you know who owns a copy. Then note the part about the Android platform, the one platform on Earth that (for the moment) is guaranteed not to be owned by a single one of your friends. Finally, note that PG's critique is quite carefully phrased.

It's frustrating enough to develop an app that depends on the adoption rate of a vaporware platform, but it really is kind of crazy to develop an app that depends on the square of the adoption rate of a vaporware platform.
In terms of strict legality, in the U.S. you can vote, run for office, and serve in the military at the age of 18. Though rare, we actually have elected officials that can hold office but not drink. I detest the idea of different rules for different groups of people, especially when they are largely mandated by public opinion and much less on scientific data.
hypothetically I've worked with them before and know all of them. and hypothetically they didn't go belly up as a group, they belonged to different parts of a large company that died because of... stuff that happened in japan... :-)
Great idea. A theater chain here in Toronto offers VIP theaters which are basically 20 person theaters with smaller screens and much nicer chairs. They offer tables to put your stuff on, space between seats, and also servers that deliver you drinks and popcorn or whatever you want (prior to the movie starting).

I could definitely see blockbuster going that route. Setup a couple private screening rooms and let people book them for their friends/family/co-workers. Then as you say, make a point of showing them how reasonable it would be to make that kind of experience a reality in their own home, but only before and after the film.
If you can vote and go to war you should be able to drink.

In fact, I'd be curious as to how people age 18-21 were constitutionally able to be disenfranchised for so long. What would people say if we decided, for instance, to prohibit driving after the age of 75?

People would be pretty dang angry. And for good reason. Public safety arguments be damned, freedom means nothing if it doesn't allow you to take risks. As long as you don't have a reasonable chance of hurting others, we should respect your freedoms once you have suffrage.
On a related thought: Why are there no black Olympic swimmers?
I'm not sure about in general, but I think they presented good supporting evidence in this case.
It just annoys me that the age where you're "an adult" is completely subjective. It used to be you're an adult at 18, which should imply you're done with age restrictions, but no, you can't drink for three more years. But if you go to the movie theater or a fair and they charge more for adult tickets vs. kids tickets, suddenly you're an adult at age 12 in their eyes
How to start a company, for programmers
Everything's negotiable, and IP is definitely something you should negotiate, but often there's a process for this that legal has approved and changing it is a dealbreaker.

A typical process is that you "disclaim" up front all the IP you take into the company, and they own everything after that.

A typical exception to that process that might be accepted is that they own everything related to their business that you come up with after you join the company.

An exception that can be pretty hard to get is that you own everything you come up with off-hours. This is reasonable, (though obviously you can disagree and turn the job down): if the company is providing you access to knowledge and domain exposure, you shouldn't be exploiting it to start your own business on the side. Also, it can be hard for them to pinpoint exactly when you came up with something, which creates legal headaches down the road.
Thanks for the tip. I was going to replace it with wrestling a terrorist or something like that... let it get embellished over time.

What an embarrassing way to go...
"Go back to school and learn a new programming language."

Semi off-topic, but if you're in school to learn programming languages you're doing it wrong...
You need to re-read Shannon. The information content of a 128 bit random integer encoded in 32 alphanumeric characters is 128 bits. You cannot feasibly brute-force a 128 bit random number: if you could guess 1000 times per second, it would take you 323708492124180425669115874649 years.

[edit: i got ((((((2^128)/1000)/60)/24)/365)/2) wrong the first time]
That's not related. Why are there no World Class Kungfu Masters from Zimbabwe?
"'It's very clear the 21-year-old drinking age will not be enforced at those campuses,' said Laura Dean-Mooney, national president of MADD."

Wait, do they seriously not know? Somebody please tell MADD that underage drinking occurs on every college campus in existence, and will continue to forever
To allow marriage without being able to drink is just cruel. Also in the UK the whole point of going to university is to get drunk and meet people... surely.
I remember Paul saying something like "rather build something inappropriate now" on some Rails Conference Talk video.
In regards to MADD, I think they really go overboard.

In fact, I've thought many times about forming a counter group, Drunks Against Mad Mothers (DAMM) but never really had the guts. After all, who wants to go up against a bunch of angry/sad mommies? It'd be like throwing a piece of fresh-baked apple pie at your mom or something.
if the company is providing you access to knowledge and
domain exposure, you shouldn't be exploiting it to start
your own business on the side

Actually, why not? Is it so bad that employee will benefit in ways more diverse than getting the paycheck?

This is the line of reasoning that breeds contempt down the road - company says "you can't have your own ideas", employee says "Fine, then I'm working here 9-to-5". Everybody loses.
I disagree. A turd in hand is worth less than 1000 in the bush.
I wouldn't be unhappy if that happened. I don't wish the founders any ill will. But no, they won't.
rakesucks.com and thestarsexchange.com. Please note that I didn't do the design for either. As embarrassing as they look, they make pretty good money.
Online poker.
++ "move to Silicon Valley." The vibe here is really amazing.
Two years ago we made the move to Silicon Valley and I haven't regretted it for a minute. Startups are in the air and water here. I've met a number of people that I'd consider co-Founder material. Networking opportunities abound. In the last 6 months I've gone to startup school, started the Hackers and Founders Meetup that Isaac linked to above, and I'm going to DjangoCon in 3 weeks.

If you look in Meetup.com, there's dozens of meetups that happen for different technologies, entrepreneurship groups, startup groups, etc... It's actually hard to avoid programmers in this town.

Isaac's right. Get a job at Yahoo/Google/Facebook/YC Startup and work for a year or two, make friends, save up some money and then make the leap with your new friends into the startup world. At least that's what a lot of other people are doing around here.
It might be if you are creating a breeding ground for competitors. There's nothing immoral about asking to own all your personal time IP, but I can see both sides to the argument.
Well, perhaps that came off differently than I meant it. His article came across as rambling and incoherent, and I was saying that may be due to English not being his primary language rather than a poor thought process. It's very hard to argue in a second tongue. Much harder than simply conversing.

Nonetheless, I'm appalled that someone can cut my sentence in half, argue with an entirely different statement than the one I made, and get voted up that far.
I'll preface with saying that I am 18 and I support lowering the drinking age, but there is a fallacy that needs to be pointed out. A common argument is that if you are old enough for the army then you should be able to drink. This is an illogical argument. The reason why 18-21 year olds make good soldiers is why they make bad drinkers-- their decision making ability is not fully developed and they have not matured completely. There are great arguments for lowering the drinking age, but the fact that 18 year olds can join the army or be drafted is not one of them.
The make your own pizza restaurant wasn't too far off the mark. I've heard of it succeeding as a format for parties at least.
Thanks. Can't argue with data.
Walrus Magazine: Math Phobia
That second one took a couple tries to parse. For a second I thought you were in the sex change business.
Yes that's true.

But it still plays in the phone league. It replaces a purchase of another phone. If hadn't bought an iphone, you probably would have bought a nokia.
Apparently, people perceive different numbers differently with respect to their value. I'm not sure how to say this, but the point is that something that costs 99 cents appears cheaper than 1 dollar. The number for which the difference is greatest and most beneficial for the seller is 77, according to Chicago Business School.
sure is easy to make someone look dumb from the past, it would be different if this post was made within weeks or months.
The point isn't how great their decision-making capability is (or not). The point is that we've regarded them with enough decision-making capability to do lots more harmful things than have a few beers on Friday night.

And it's not just the army. Being able to vote is one of the most powerful choices we allow citizens (I'd vote firearm ownership as #2) It wouldn't make sense to trust people to elect leaders and not with alcohol.

The problem with your comment is that you don't really grow up until around 35 or so. I don't see anybody making the case to raise the drinking, driving, and voting age to that age. The goal isn't to wait until you reach some level of decision-making ability, it's to be consistent between various freedoms that are available to you.

And the young have always fought wars. As it should be. When you get older, it's not that you somehow get too smart to have duty or honor, it's that direct war-fighting is a very boring activity punctuated with extreme athletic moments. 45-year-olds simply wouldn't survive long enough to be worth the training you'd give them.
I disagree. If I had three great hacker friends, I'd brainstorm to find an awesome problem to work on. It's hard to find talent; especially hard to find talent in people I like to work with.

Anyway, I can't think of any good ideas. Good luck.
Cullen Jones won gold as a member of the US 4x100 Free relay. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cullen_Jones
No. It should not exist.
I agree with your sarcasm; this actually applies to me.
You have to handle the turd to find the diamonds in it.
Shhhhhhh. Please allow them their delusions, as it keeps them quiet(er).
Wow. You nailed the culture right on the head.

I spent a number of formative years in Minnesota, and being a 4th generation Scandinavian immigrant, I couldn't agree more with your assessment of the area.

I'd also add that conformity is a very strong value in the upper Midwest. It's really hard to break out of the box because there are such strong cultural morays against doing anything different from what the people in your community are doing.

Finally I'd like to add as a data point that most of the smart CS/Tech guys that I went to college with in Minnesota spent the majority of their spare time playing Dungeons and Dragons and participating in the Society for Creative Anachronism.
Ok, obviously whoever downmodded me has never had a friend or loved one killed by an under age drunk driver. To give 18 year-olds more access to alcohol in a society where "being accepted" and "being cool" is at the forefront of their minds is very irresponsible unless it can be controlled.

If you think you were as responsible at 18 as you are now, then you're still very irresponsible...
no, but they will say that when the drinking ban was added, and their "don't drink and drive" campain started in the late 80s, alcohol related deaths were reduced.

Yet, they fail to explain how in Canada there was similiar drop in alocohol deaths, yet madd was not active there.

Could it be just that cars are getting better, and improving the chances of surviavility?
There is a lot of stats out there, and you can cherry pick certain stats, in order to prove your claims, and get away with it, as few people will actually look into them.
Interestingly enough, I believe the talent pool in S. Florida is starting to froth up. We've got some neat startups coming out of Florida (Myxer, Affinity, Verio, Batanga, Scrapblog, MOLI, PsyStar, Closed First, Lead log).

Although I will not dispute the SF(San Fran) comment, I hope to see South Florida become "the other SF".

I'd say South Florida is one of the top 10-12 places in the world in terms of number of startups at least according to:
http://www.startupwarrior.com/
So you MIGHT be breeding competitors, therefore you have to ask for any and all IP? A bit over-reaching it seems. There is really no need for it in most cases, the only reason they always ask for it is because nobody ever questions the practice.
The problem with Mozilla's policy is that their UI is horrendous and gives off the wrong impression. It throws a bunch of information that will look like technobabble at the user without a clear definition of what any of it actually means.

//edit: Did a quick mockup for what i think would be a better SSL error page, http://tinyurl.com/6qn24p (compared to the current SSL error page, http://tinyurl.com/6j6ymx )

"Until you sit down with my grandma for 2 hours painfully explaining how to use some feature in Microsoft Word, you don’t get to preach to the world about how Mozilla trying to keep my grandma safe is somehow against the freedom of the web."

Shame. He seems to be the only person in existence with technological illiterate relatives. Right?!?! Wait. No. I'd be willing to bet that everyone in here has had a similar experience of having to explain how to do something that we consider simple to someone else.

Technical people understand technical things because they know about other technical things to relate things to. Non-technical people don't understand things as well because its harder to relate things to them. Try explaining things in a way they (the person you're explaining something to) understands. Maybe it wont take you two hours next time.

If I had to explain SSL certificates to my grandmother (who travels a lot), I would compare them to airline tickets. First class is a SSL Certificate from Verisign (or some other company). It's the best you can buy (trust + encryption), but it's the most expensive as well. Coach seats would be the certificate created by a non-profit. It's not a first class ticket, but you're still on the plane (you still have encryption). Not having a certificate would be missing the flight after buying a non-refundable ticket. You wasted your money (no trust/encryption, its likely someone's trying to scam you).
Agreed.

We tend to be a socially awkward bunch, so it can be intimidating to approach someone who seems like they've got their shit together. Just send an email and tell them you want to know them. What's the worst that can happen, they say no?

Building a good nerdery is key.
It's all troll and linkbait anyways.
No, you're right. He deserves most of the criticism aimed his way and he knows it. However, factual inaccuracy crosses a line and I apologize. There's more to the story than what Greenspun claims but I don't want to make any more public comments about it. I really just wanted to get the "be cautious of old lisp programmers" meme out there.
So you know for a fact that Tony Fadell, Scott Forstall, Sina Tamaddon, Bob Mansfield, and Ron Johnson have this problem?
The better alternative is to jailbreak your iphone and install ssh, a shell, python and many other free unix utilities you may want. I don't know why people are even voting this up.
He said "most" not "all". It's the perfect out when a specific is pushed!
Many states have limits on what bits of IP agreements can be enforced.

Regardless of the IP agreement, the important thing is to be at least a little careful. If you have a new, world changing piece of software you're writing, do it on your own time with your own resources. Avoid doing anything at all with it on company time, and don't use your company owned laptop to do development.
You know 3 or 4 doesn't seem that bad. Should be manageable. It's not, that's unfortunate.
In lots of cases 3 - 4 players can virtually act as one.

Look at the RIAA. A model of cooperation.
The article is about IP that is created outside the job. Obviously a company should own its own IP.
I remember their article about how free software will never be usable because usability requires a visionary like Steve Jobs(although it was really Jef Raskin that did most of the work)
Yes, they go overboard. Mothers are like that. You can't be a parent and stay totally rational about everything.
The short answer is yes -- you're missing profit. Doesn't matter how big a market is if you can't make money.

The long answer:

Let's both start businesses selling Miracle Fruit. Assume they cost $1 to produce no matter how many we buy, and the market will support a price of no more than $3.

I start a Netfruits.com mail-order company, sell 500,000 berries/year and absorb $1 each shipping/handling. Total size of this "online/mail market for Miracle Fruit": $1.5 million. My profit: $500,000 (I make $1 per sale).

You open up 200 retail stores and sell 15 million berries per year, but must absorb $2.10 each for retail overhead. Thanks to the fact that you exist, the total size of this "retail market for Miracle Fruit" has become $45 million (who knows, maybe with enough retail stores the market could be this big). Your loss: $4.5 million (You lose $.10 per sale).

For your investor report, you create a fancy chart about how you are the biggest retail game in town, and I'm just a tiny blip on your radar.

But you'll still lose money.

So, you'll probably do what the Blockbuster CEO is doing -- change your retail model. Sell something else, because obviously Miracle Fruit alone can't support the costs of your retail network.

That's why he's planning on flooding Blockbuster stores with TV's and blu-ray players. Because the existing business model doesn't work anymore. There's no profit.

But if he can figure out how to leverage the one thing Blockbuster has that others would find hard to beat -- physical coverage -- then maybe he can turn the business around.
After reading his previous entry, "Linus is Darth Vader, and IBM stole Linux", it's hard to assign credibililty to this one.
Someone could do a port of the Dasher text input system utilizing the motion sensor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasher

To see it in action, a Google Tech Talk:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5078334075080674416
What do you think of this idea:

http://www.justhackit.com
New SSL policy in Firefox hurting tens of thousands of sites
The cardinal programming jokes
As aristus makes clear, the problem is mostly for people outside the Valley(like myself, for another few weeks).

What do people think of this:

http://www.justhackit.com
MADD is fairly active in Canada, and they've been influential in getting the legal blood-alcohol level lowered. Most provinces now have penalties (not criminal) if you're over .05 to go with the preexisting criminal penalties for over .08. I think that the penalties for drunk driving are harsher and more enforced than in the past too. And they also have graduated driver's licenses for young people now, which (I think) include zero tolerance or something.

But overall probably more sane to try to stop drunk driving by young people rather than drinking by young people.
Learn how Linux manages memory: Anatomy of the Linux slab allocator
Interval sequences in Common Lisp
It’s certainly not completely subjective. These standards derive from completely differing causes:

Get drafted at 18: needs to be old enough to not enlist child soldiers, but young enough to have a reasonable pool of eligible men.

Vote at 18: pissed-off drafted soldiers got tired of being sent to war without any political power of their own.

Drink at 21: whether or not it’s empirically better, this is for public health and safety reasons.

Pay more for fair tickets at 13: this is up to the fair, and is based on profit maximization.
Lower it, you shouldn't be able to kill (join the Army) before you are legally allowed a beer. It just seems to me like a law from god knows when, which the US government don't want to change just in case the majority don't like it. Same with legalizing cannabis (Marijuana) to an extent.

Its not like the age limit works, teens drink anyway - it just means bouncers have to turn away ADULTS from bars.