skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I may not totally agree with Certifications replacing Higher education but education is changing for sure, people who are not seeing it are either closing their eyes or are refusing to accept reality(Colleges i am talking to you).

Today's generation is certainly more rebellious than previous generation, they are questioning everything that is not right and ready to change it. Colleges are suddenly becoming obstructions( I am not talking about all the colleges here but most of them). This generations wants everything on-demand be it entertainment or education. Now if you are telling them, Rebel against RIAA but not against colleges(apples and oranges). To them, both are obstructions in the path of what they want. They want knowledge which can give them practical results and they have just found a medium(internet) where they can obtain it. What colleges are telling them now is learn Quantum Physics or Organic Chemistry, you might use it in the future. It is like telling, Learn how to use a Gun, your country might be invaded sometime(that should be taught in Middle Eastern colleges though).

We all know the purpose of colleges, They prepare you to face real world and secure your future, they are unable to do that currently. I have hardly met any Hackers, who got their hacking skills from college(Everyone has self taught himself with the help of a new medium). So if currently people are becoming successful, it is in spite of higher education not because of it. We have seem lot of successful people as example too, who have done really well without higher education( Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Michael Dell). The phenomena of more successful people without higher education will only be more common now.

Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself. - Bill Gates
It's more impressive when they make music with something that was not intended for it...

Printers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHcV8vZ96OM

Floppy disks:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4SCSGRVAQE
I think that is what most people in comments try to do too, but they hardly get any attention. Attention is given to the people who deserve it. Someone can hardly get any attention if he is disagreeing with someone for no reason(Zed Shaw is funny though).
One of our heaviest users and occasional buyer scolded me for supporting Ron Paul on my personal blog. pg also couldn't resist a couple of jabs on primary day when I wore my Ron Paul shirt to a YC event that evening.

I find it amusing that people think Ron Paul supporters are mindless automatons who'll buy anything their cult-leader is selling. Your comment seems reflective of that belief. I'll just point out that herding libertarians is not an easy task, and the coalition that is the Ron Paul revolution is already mostly fallen apart. I wish it would stick around...but libertarians just aren't very strong on the collective effort front. It was a pretty fragile coalition to start with...many of Ron Paul's supporters had one or more serious concerns about his positions (some touchy subjects: abortion, immigration, gold standard, church/state separation).
An Article About Startups That Wasn't Written By A Pretentious Asshole
Damn straight. Supporting OSX look or iPhone look only helps Apple sell more stuff; it doesn't directly help the internet fully realize itself, and a fully realized internet must be the future of computing.
If you aren't blizzard, the subscription, big budget, PC MMO is a very difficult business to succeed in. It's basically impossible - there's such a huge time investment that most players are unlikely to play more than one game at a time. Plus, to compete with WoW head on you have to spend their kind of budgets, which is an arms race you would be very likely to lose. Like competing with google, it's best to take an indirect approach.
As the previous version of the Suck Less philosophy said, "Deleted code is debugged code."

http://www.suckless.org/common/index.html
But they had enough leverage, which most of the early start-ups wont have. So they will pretty much get in a situation where it will be a win-win situation for VC's.
I tend to agree with DHH on this one. Raising VC money shouldn't be use to justify your idea. That's a dangerous game to play. Validation by the market is much more realistic than by an investor.
Seems like the high-budget model is the broken one.
For the edge detection, try sobel or laplacian:

http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~weg22/can_tut.html

For uniform segments, perhaps quadtree decomposition:
http://matlab.izmiran.ru/help/toolbox/images/enhanc12.html
It's been a while since my multimedia class (and I was never that good at it :D) but the effect is reminiscent of JPEG compression. Might be worth looking into that algorithm.
Interesting point, although I don't think following Apple's interface design paradigm is a bad thing. They know how to create beautiful and easy interfaces, and that is part of the reason The iPod and iPhone are so wildly popular.

Obviously, copying the Mac OS X design style might not be the best solution in the far future, but for now, as we evolve a new interface lnguage for web apps, it works well enough.

Also, I agree that SproutCore may not be the best solution for creating these apps. Cappuccino, by the 280 north guys looks really promising (although I haven't seen much of it).
It's more like the MMORPG game model itself is broken. It's based on imagery and art direction, social dynamics, and variable schedule of reward. The most similar thing in the real world are casino resorts. Second Life is showing us the way, as is Spore. There is a whole lot more scope for emergent, user generated content.
A startup that is able to generate enough revenue to cover its operation and living costs before outside funding, is more likely to succeed than one that received a 2M dollars check without generating one dime from customer and want to focus on growth.

Growing what?

Most startups focus on consumer products knowing that it is super hard to extract money from these. If you glance at most VCs portfolio you will see that their enterprise focused companies do better than the consumer focused startups.

Most entrepreneurs want to create cool products for consumers. If you are doing your first startup I would advise creating something you can sell and make money. On your second startup, do something cool and fun as you are not worried about deciding between peanut butter/jelly sandwich and ramen for diner.
Yeah to really get attention you need to come up with a Top X list of whatever and submit to Digg.
If their customers pay well, please name those employers so I can go into business and compete against them.
I try to sell math but in a more literal sense - as something my software runs on. And yes, I have to "focus on communication with laypeople of the deeper parts of math" (nothing artistic though). Very different from when I did pure math. And it is tough. But not as tough as teaching calculus to undergraduates...
You missed the point. After you've agreed on XML, you still have to agree on how to represent a list.

No I didn't. Because that's exactly what the guy in the OP said. Agree on a XML schema for the data. After you've done that, writing some simple Xpath to get your data is done in minutes.

The only times my XML code is 100% DOM is when I need to make things from scratch or do XML data manipulation.
“Embracing open source development, crowd-sourcing content, targeting different platforms such as the Web or mobile phones, all of these are valid,”

Danger, buzzword level approaching critical. Core meltdown imminent.
JPEG compression is producing pixelation type effects... I think it is bigger than this.
http://ideamonk.blogspot.com/2008/08/dazzle-hard.html
Not Found

The requested URL /2008/08/an-article-about-startups-that.html was not found on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

If you're gonna vote-bomb something to the top of YCNews, you might want to check the URL works first!.....
Ask YC: Hacker News has got POINTS... I smell some game theory here?
Is it true that Hacker News is based on a game theory... where users play a game to get points... and this game keeps HN alive? same goes for Reddit.
What views you have ?
Also, without having read the article, since it's not found, any article with that title can only have been written by a pretentious asshole. :-)
The genesis of the Daleks.
"As an entrepreneur, probably 2 days out of 3 are better than they would be if I had a real job. That's probably the best reason I can come up with." [ for why he became one ]

That about sums up the content of the article.
A serious gamer might buy 10 traditional games per year, but only one MMO. If you create the 5th-best game of the year you can make significant money, but if you create the 5th-best MMO, you fail.
you didn't miss much.
I think those low-budget MMOs are not subscription-based; they have a freemium model where most people play for free and some people pay to pimp out their character. So the article is saying that non-subscription MMOs are more profitable than subscription MMOs. It's basically Web 2.0 for games.
Using CouchDB For Storing Google Geocoded JSON Data
Which book are you referring to? Googling brought me right back to this very comment.
Not as very low quality settings:

http://cobweb.ecn.purdue.edu/~ace/jpeg-tut/pix/imagec3.jpg
I thought he had read...

http://blog.dougpetkanics.com/the-404-test-wildly-brilliant

(http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=275168)
No. Point system is broken and encourages groupthink. This place is still the best forum for hackers because most people are not here for points.
It's a reply to another article that was posted here on HN a few hours ago, that I thought is worth "debunking". Thanks.
Ask YC: Do I need full credit card processing ready by launch?
I'm in the process of developing a website that will target small to midsize restaurants. Is it worth the expense to setup credit card processing from the outset for monthly recurring billing or is it better to just get things running faster with annual invoicing via Freshbooks and accept checks via mail and credit cards via PayPal?
I either don't get it or I didn't read carefully enough. Does this article give us a reason for why MMORPG subscription business model is broken?
The whole summer was full of surprises...
"Anger is a cowardly way to express Sadness"

The article was funny, but he should not have insulted anyone. I think he is angry at the world.

EDIT: Mostly mad at bloggers because his application did not get the best reviews which is ironic because his blog uncov trashed most web application development teams.
It worked the first time. I read it. He took it down because the content was insulting.
There was a recent article in Phrack on this topic: http://www.phrack.org/issues.html?issue=65&id=13#article
Seems like Ted deleted the article...
Having been an avid gamer ever since the first time I got my hands on a Commodore 64, let me weigh in.

The subscription model does have its flaws, yes, but it is far from broken. One reason that gives rise to it is the sheer quality of 'free' MMOs. The games themselves always end up with very little depth, very poor art and style and come across as a game you once played. Five years ago.

Now I am not saying that high-budget MMOs (World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, City of Heroes/Villains, etcetera) are the best. But they can and DO use this money to build incredible depth into things.

Another thing that always causes strife in free MMOs, is the payoff. Advertising always tends to cause your players to run off, as seeing an ad for "Degree Men! The latest in protection!" or whatever in your medieval hack'n'slash really ruins the atmosphere. So you end up with 'Freemium', in which you give players bonuses for having paid. Which means that you end up having a small group of paying customers, a large group of free ones and a game that is barely worth playing.

Now, I'm not saying this model does't work. Far from it. But until the quality of these games gets to where people can't pick huge holes in the weft of their fabric, the traditional models will still win.
Yes, the end part of what you say is really true!
New UK startup - Invoicing, Time Tracking, Reporting
Add http://teddziuba.com/atom.xml to google reader and you'll find it there if you're curious.
My wireless digital frame (reviewed at the link below) draws only 9 watts:

http://ourdoings.com/2008-03-01
Yes, the market is smaller. That's almost self-evident, since subscription MMOs are a subset of overall gaming.

The numbers are different. It's a lot easier to create the 5th best MMO than to create the 5th best game of the year. If you spend $100K on your MMO and it ends up 5th best, you're happy. If you spend $50 million, you're not. None of this implies that the subscription-based model itself is broken.
"Point system is broken and encourages groupthink."

Is that so different from how society works? There may be no numbers displayed, but a lot of society works through affirmations of one kind of another.
Make your own music site in 10 minutes
I'm always glad when I hear thepiratebay isn't #1. Hate the owners and their "we are invincible" attitudes.

Am I the only person? It always seems like they are seen as a modern day Jesuses by a lot of people...
Hmmm. What are the core differences between the "Freemium" model and the subscription model? I'm most familiar with Club Penguin, which does allow non-paying a limited subset of the functionality, but I've always thought of it as a "subscription model" (as that is what I pay for my children....)
Your particular product is something that SERIOUSLY needs paying users. Paying users will remould your path into one that can become seriously profitable.
I think the Ron Paul movement can be explained simpler than that. There are two subconscious factors:

0. People want to complain about the status quo (to feel smart)
1. People want to support the esoteric underdog (to feel non-mainstream)

Simply, supporting a Republican who is against the war and for drug legalization is totally hip and unexpected.
A Random Analysis
Or you can just get a free DV cert from startssl.com and not have to do anything else.
I can't say I'm entirely convinced. Why should people invest serious amounts of time or take a big risk on something they have a rational reason for rejecting?

You don't have to be a heroin addict to make a compelling case against its use.
I'm thinking most detractors don't even want to try "it", whatever "it" is.
Now, I don't believe in capital either, but David sometimes speaks as if his situation is typical. It's not, it's very atypical, and not because of some clever strategy, but because he kind of drifted into it. And now he just seems to be preaching all the time without giving real information.
How about using garbage collection?
Nice idea, but the implementation is pretty limited. I'll still bookmark it, and hope that a future release is more full-featured.
Dude, what YC business were you involved in? I never did find that out...
Poll: should submitting new articles require non-trivial karma ?
Just to counter this sort of misuse of HN - http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=blogzilla

Perhaps, allow one submission per 5 karma points until karma grows over 100. This ensures that people are actively contributing to the discussion and not just dumping links on a front page.
Apple Stores Running On Windows Mobile Devices
draftmix.com
Looks like the link is back. I enjoy Dziuba's writing, but it's not cool to personally call out PG.

My only reaction to this article: Don't feed the trolls.
PG - a bug with /newpoll
Line breaks in a "text" are replaced with "<p>" when the submission is rejected and I am brought back to the New Poll page. To generate the rejection enter poll choices, but don't separate them with blank lines and then hit Submit.
You know we're already profitable right?
I'm curious, why aren't you trying to use the GIMP to do this? It can be scripted with Scheme/Script-Fu and Python, it seems that would be easier than using C++ and Allegro.

Cool stuff in any case :D
The Next Great Roll-Up…Entrepreneur Start-up Schools
Another article missing the basic point that university is not supposed to be a preparation for the workplace (as much as employers might wish it to be), it's a preparation for life.

If you train for a job, you're not doing a degree, you're doing an apprenticeship.

An MCSE is useful for a couple of years. A degree is useful for your whole life.
Stopped reading at "cocksteaks."
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=196390 , society is using subjective reputation system so it is less affected by groupthink.
Also I am confused as to how you both seem to think a single quad-core x86 can replace 8 quad-core x86s.
> As far as we know, the world's getting warmer

Temperature peaked in 1998.
The decision is up to you, but it's pretty straightforward to set up credit card processing these days if you have time. Plus, you can even use PayPal for merchant services.

Think about who your customers are. If they are restaurant owners, are they more comfortable with paying through PayPal, giving you their credit card number directly (in person or telephone), or sending you a check?

Let me know if you have any other questions.
I don't have a startup, but I use Gmail for domains on my personal page. I just use postfix and some really basic scripts. Also, you might find these posts helpful:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=63836

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=92022
David may have drifted into it, but much of what he says is espoused by the 37 Signals founder, Jason Fried. Jason has some interesting podcasts out there, which you may also find preachy. If your criticism is that David drifting into 37 Signals detracts from his credibility, you can hear the same ideas from Jason, who founded rather than drifted into 37 Signals.
Any way you slice it, you need to have money for a product business.

You can use VC money if you can bootstrap yourself to a little bit of traction without giving up control of your company. VC gives you valuable validation and connections if your business is a big opportunity.

Or you can consult, which saddles you with distraction (less of a big deal if your v1 product is simple enough). This gives you a bit more control and all of the equity.

Each path is great for different businesses, depending on factors like the size of the opportunity, the cost of getting to a v1, whether there's an opportunity for early/scaling revenue, and (OF COURSE!) the goals of the founder(s) etc.

There are stupid VC paths (getting vast piles of money too early, giving up board control, etc) and there are stupid bootstrapping paths (letting the project drag along, letting consulting take over, not giving enough love to the idea).

I think the best entrepreneurs don't sit down and say, "Gosh, should I go with lifestyle biz or a shoot-for-the-moon biz?" They have something they want to build and (if they are smart) ask the question: "Does this idea NEED financing to pull off effectively?"
Will my startup make it? Who knows, but at least it was more fun than a colonoscopy.

Too bad we can't say the same about your writing.
You might wanna read this:
http://pablotron.org/?cid=1556
and this:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-9878693-16.html
I've often wished that the "x for" could be optional, but yes.

It's like bar charts and tables. Tables communicate more information, but we're visual creatures and thus prefer bar charts.
Sprint Extends Yet Another Contract Without Permission
The validation a VC provides isn't around whether people want the product. It's about whether (theoretically) smart folks think it's a big opportunity with likely liquidity... Which is helpful and encouraging validation if liquidity is your goal.
In short, and quoting from the article itself, - some dick writes about startups or entrepreneurship on his "Random Musings of an X Programmer" blog

:)
How I became a soldier in the Georgia-Russia cyberwar - Evgeny Morozov
The amusing thing about Shoes is that it is something that existed (with more capability) in the Tcl/Tk community 10 years ago, and it's only gotten better since then. If people wanted to develop the short of applications that Shoes enables then they could have been, and indeed, would already be.
If you're salary-for-everyone profitable, then that's excellent and hats off to you on that. If you're just above-expenditure profitable, that's easy to do and does not count as profitable.
Hehe. $100K to create the 5th-best MMO?

Nothing about MMO creation is 'easy'.
Frozen Perl (Perl's community is just awesome)
I have no idea where the lottery analogy is going. Winning the lottery is entirely luck, so it seems to imply that building a successful startup is luck too, but since he doesn't actually argue that point anywhere I'm inclined to think he's just spouting analogies at random hoping nobody will notice they're baseless
http://brl.codesimply.net/brl_4.html#SEC26
http://teddziuba.com/2008/08/an-article-about-startups-that.... works for me
Is that really a noble goal to change people from rational thinkers to 'belivers'.
This has been asked and answered many times before:

http://searchyc.com/sending+mail

But, I'll answer anyway...

I wrote a script in Perl to query our db and send out messages to every active account (those that have verified addresses). Took about ten minutes, including testing on a small dummy data set. Since the task is so trivial, I've written similar scripts (in many languages...bash, Python, PHP, and probably others) dozens of times in the past ten years.

Protip: Use a properly configured actual mail server (Postfix, Sendmail, exim, etc.), and use your script to inject into the queue (using library bindings or simply the 'sendmail' command or equivalent). Many standalone SMTP libs are crap, and will lead directly to the bitbucket. Strict RFC compliance is more important with mail than any other protocol.

Also, don't sort by destination domain. Many mail providers will filter or rate limit (or worse) your deliveries if you send many messages all at once. This was once the Right Way to deliver, since there are optimized methods of sending many messages to the same SMTP host, but spammers have killed that enhancement. You may also want to sleep for a second or two between each message or batch of messages, for the same reason. Our list of 5000, or so, users took a few hours to send...but most of them made it to their destination, and very few bounced (almost entirely just those that were actually invalid email addresses).
It's pretty amazing. A few years ago, entrepreneurs wouldn't have even tipped into this guy's radar.

We've hit the big time. People are dripping with hate, envy, and disparagement. It seems as if entrepreneur hackers -- people who try to make something new, are now officially a subculture. Hurrah?