skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> "They receive unconditional love, acceptance, and attention from a charismatic..." You should have been at my team's first meeting; it was like this, but the opposite. Informal founder feedback sessions have been similar. The carebear environment the author described wouldn't work anyway - the VCs would destroy us.

Actually most accounts of actual cult experiences describe a never-ending cycle of harsh criticism intended to break down the followers sense of self, followed by love from the charismatic leader.

So, to an extent you're validating what Daniel is saying.

Any elite group is going to have some cultlike qualities. The real hard part comes when you are attempting to determine if you are benefiting from the emotional programming you are receiving, and if not when you should leave.

I really doubt that YCombinator is a cult, if it were you'd see the leadership ordering founders to give up their own projects and work on projects the leadership favours and ratcheting up the share of equity demanded, and generally see people getting taken advantage of. And if it were seriously going wrong you'd see ostracism and megalomania.
Unfortunately there's a pretty nasty bug in that library - it creates a massive number of unnecessary global variables. I reported it a couple of months ago but I don't think the project is under active development: http://code.google.com/p/js-hotkeys/issues/detail?id=17
>People think google's ranking algorithm is some secret magic, but it's not, it's page rank, it's well known and public.

A lot of good that does you: it's patented.
This reminds me a bit of the time thieves in the book "Momo". On the one hand he has a point, on the other hand, having no idle time is probably bad, too.
Wow, How Did Cuil Get So Much Publicity on Day 1?
But think about it. It would be such an incredibly stupid move for google to slay their golden goose just to prop up one of many new projects.

And I am actually unable to consistently reproduce evidence for preferencial ranking. If you search google for "Knee Surgery" knol is #109 and wikipedia is #11. The same search on yahoo gives you knol on #78 and wikipedia on #3
If you can't come up with any good ideas, lower your standards for what you consider "good". The #1 reason people can't come up with good ideas is that they're afraid to try.
+1 for GEB. I'm reading it right now, it's mind blowing.
You know, one of the common characteristics of people who have been brainwashed (by a cult or otherwise) is that they absolutely do not believe that they have been brainwashed, and will fight that suggestion with all their strength, coming up with never-ending explanations for why they haven't been brainwashed at all!

</tongue-in-cheek>
Isn't that what VCs do?
My name gets 2,290 hits on Google and 0 on Cuil, and many of those 2,290 are on some of the biggest domains on the Web. I'm having trouble believing Cuil's claim of indexing more pages.
My Dad has this expression that he repeated to me over and over when I was younger and I was wasting my time playing games, watching dumb shows on TV, etc.

He called it the "brain-hours", and said you only have a limited number of those in your life, and what you choose to spend them on determines your life.
Ha yeah I was just using hyperbole to prove a point. The truth of the matter is it's been somewhere in between.
Why do you think starting a company is less demanding than being a member of the Manhattan Project or Apollo teams?

"Scale" is exactly the right word -- Apollo didn't happen because one person worked more insanely hard than anyone else had worked in the history of the universe. It was a large project with a lot of people (and a lot of science). Yes, a lot of them worked hard. But please, measure effort on a human scale. It doesn't matter whether you're starting a company or developing a new technology for space travel -- if you're pouring your whole life into it, the same psychological conditions can apply.
I think, to be remembered for long time it's not about the field or occupation with which a personality is associated but it depends on the quantum of fundamental shift that he/she brings in the evolution of civilizations.
eg: Newton and Einstein will be remembered for the centuries to come though other brilliant physicists will not. Humanity will respect Wright brothers for many ages to come, though the case may not be same for the person who invented jet engine.

May be their original work is not in much use these days but they opened a new domains for future generations to work on and that created the shift.
Crushpad raises $9 million from its own wine-making customers
I have been called many things in my time, but more-or-less productive is not one of them. I challenge anyone to out procrastinate me.
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Four parts ridiculous, one part true.

1. Young and inexperienced? That's the point. This is how you gain experience. Impressionable? Another word for "quick learners".

2. Sacrificing happiness? Not if it feels good to work on something you believe in.

3. Sacrificing creativity? Since when is it not creative to create a new business?

4. "18 hour days for two straight months" -- from the point of view of "hard work," big deal. Good stress makes you stronger. You're alive all 18 hours anyway -- if you believe in what you are doing, and you take care of yourself along the way, then all that effort can actually add to your energy levels.

5. But the key line is "if you take care of yourself." The effects of sleep deprivation (and eating shit for food) are real. If think and act as though you're invincible, you really can burn out, and that is <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=69097">a hellish experience</a>.
I, for one, welcome our new YC overlords
Dealing with excessive sweating
Life can get really difficult to manage if we have excessive sweating problems. I know how difficult it can get as I was suffering from hyperhidrosis and I tried everything possible to deal with the problem but to no avail. I became a very self-conscious person and I was afraid of entering into closed spaces not because I was claustrophobic but I was very conscious of my body odor and the embarrassment that I had to undergo. Deodorants
Do you have many links from google ? ... besides the Wikipedia Frontpage it's possibly the only other PR infinite Domain
Good Architecture &gt; Hitler &gt; Web Architecture
Monitor110 Learnings: The Good, The Bad, and The Really Bad
Knol is unnecessary. The single differentiating thing about Wikipedia is that everybody edits the same page about a certain topic. With Knol, everybody creates their own, which is just like... the Internet. As in, I can put up a homepage on my server about anything I like. So basically Google wants to have "the Internet" on their servers, with all the pages displaying their ads.

Also, in terms of quantity and quality, Knol (unlike Wikipedia) is competing with all the rest of the Internet. With Wikipedia, the small fraction of ppl willing to work on it together create pages (that are worthwhile). With Knol, everyone will create their own page, hence there's no difference between them and the rest of the independent Internet.

I think Knol will die off within a year.
I just finished Cryptonomicon. I know I'm almost a decade late, but boy that's a must-read.
The article mentions 'Note that we are assuming that mathematical ability is normally distributed - we know the data fit this distribution around the mean but we don't know much about what happens at the very top.'

Which is precisely the thing being talked about. Why is this being voted up? The post isn't a relevant part of the discussion, and has little to no bearing on the articles it links to...
The Power of a Programming Portfolio
I believe you can ask them to remove ads on particular terms, if you hold a trademark on them. I recall reading about a lawsuit that covered that issue several years ago, and I think Google lost. But I could be imagining legal precedents again.
If there were a way I could change my behavior, I would. But, like an addict, I am stuck in my ways despite the best of intentions. These articles never help. I know the problem. I just wish I had a solution.
Its OK to fail here.It gives people the courage to innovate and take chances.
I have a family member who was one of the top 10 important people on the Human Genome Project during its heyday and am curious as to what part of that project you think fits those criteria.
Go live somewhere else, far away. I learned a lot, and grew a great deal.
I would take one year with my daughter and travel with her around the world.
their Google deal pretty much indicates they've packed their bags.

I don't see how it means that at all. They're making more on the google ads in that location than they were on their own ads. And, of course, there's plenty of rumors out there that the board and Jerry had to come up with a better alternative than MSFT's bid to buy their search product. Sounds like they're doing everything possible to keep their search business and monetize it by any means necessary.

If the bags were packed, they'd've sold.
i've always thought this would be useful for reading books using an iPod nano screen or cellphone etc. i'm sure that if your commute was long enough, you'd find a pleasant rather than arduous speed for reading after a couple hours practice. The earliest reference i can think of for this idea was a Heinlein novel where he basically described web/hypertext (not sure where he picked it up, he was pretty upfront about only needing to be 6 months ahead of the pack to appear to be a predictive genius! ;-)
Cuil does have some things going for it though. They have a great privacy policy and the category function seems to be working quite well.

Hopefully the search results will improve over time. I'd love to see a Google competitor.
Yeah, the 18 hour days reference was simply to imply that starting a startup is a full-time, front-of-mind undertaking.

I think it's safe to say that this guy took it a bit out of context.
> "Sounds like they're doing everything possible to keep their search business"

Search isn't a business without the ads. The Google deal basically lets Google place ads on Yahoo search results, if they can get a higher price. As a result of its market leadership position, Google commands higher rates for ads. Now that they're deploying ads in Yahoo results, they will get even better at selling ads, pushing rates up further. Since Yahoo is selling less ads, they will get more dependent on Google to monetize their search. The eventual case is that Yahoo outsources search advertising to Google, and Google has a virtual monopoly on search ads. Advertisers will hate this.
Summers tried to change a group of people that was extremely resistant to change. They tried to crucify him several times, and were finally successful.
I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to build into the system some of the same logic that obviously makes it clear to everyone that there is a problem with these votes.

A computer might not be able to appreciate the goodness of The Godfather, but it can be taught that a movie that has consistently been voted great for decades, does not suddenly fall out of favor in a month.
I start snoring the moment I see how to write "Hello World" in Java!
The process doesn't have to be conscious. People who are competent in areas one doesn't understand can come across as vaguely intimidating, while being weak in areas where one is stong might be interpreted as stupidity.

it's important to remember this not just in a business setting but in a social one as well.
Maybe Microsoft would have been let off if their web browser and media player weren't such terrible products.
When Apple uses standard technology they leave themselves open to competition from clones. I think this is a strategic move to avoid that possibility.
"... I still don't get it though - how come this startup got blanket coverage from tech news heavyweights, some of whom should know better than to buy into the hype? ..."

with USD$33m VC money, that buys a lot of PR ~ http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
Or -- just playing devil's advocate here -- perhaps it's a matter of PR... e.g., Edison vs. Tesla.
That's what I did as well. I think it's the best thing to do when you are depressed and bored with your life: try another one! You can't start from scratch, but if you switch country, friends, job, etc. the result can be interesting.
This post is sloppy, but the core message is good: to be productive, make something. Preparing to make something doesn't make anything.
A "this will make you productive" article with a disclaimer that it doesn't actually apply to everyone because we all have different requirements? Seems a tad pointless to me.

What do I know though; I'm a Windows/Firefox/Adblock user who listens to last.fm while answering emails and chatting on IRC.
YouOS (winter 07) shutting down?
:(

Correction: That's Winter 06.
I don't think this works:

def increment(key):
value = None

def do_incr(key):
value = self.counter_table.get(key)
if not value:
self.counter_table.add(key, 1)
value = 1

with_lock(self.lock, do_incr, key)

Several reasons:

1) It refers to 'self' yet isn't a method.

2) In python you can't rebind variables outside of your scope. The change to value within do_incr won't work. You can operate on objects in the enclosing scope but you can't rebind them. This used to be a source of constant annoyance to me, but I've now got into the habit of just creating small objects in place for situations where I need to do that.

Also, this java example can be improved.
buf = StringBuffer()
buf.append("I don't recognize the command \"");
buf.append(s);
buf.append("Sorry.");
message = buf.toString();

The code certainly hasn't been tested - it's missing a 'new' and the resulting string has unbalanced quotes. Regardless - don't use StringBuffer unless you need the synchronization.

Do this instead:

StringBuilder buf = new StringBuilder(); {
buf.append("I don't recognize the command ");
buf.append('"').append(s).append('". ');
buf.append("Sorry.");
}
message = buf.toString();

This tactic of creating scopes to hide away detail while you build up objects works particularly well for situations where you're instantiating streams because your file input streams and the like can be hidden away in a mini scope and this makes it far less likely to run into a situation where you can't call a second file input stream 'fis' because you used that name higher in the method.

Also, it allows readers of your code to focus on the objects that are significant to the flow of code rather than the code used for building them up.
> I can write a small program to stream 512byte messages from one machine to another on a 10G network and get 2.5 million messages across too.

Hey, common, do you really believe you can pass the networking stack up and down 2.5 million times in a second?
I was wondering the same thing you are.

I think connections may have helped, too. Ex-googlers n' all.
> The only result was a tremendous drop in income tax

Looks like Romania enjoys pretty good growth and low unemployment compared to the rest of Europe http://www.heritage.org/index/country.cfm?id=Romania are you sure low taxes haven't helped?
Portable Social Networks, The Building Blocks Of A Social Web
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Delicious is about to lose a bunch of users
Delicious is switching to a new system, and put on a tutorial for its users to maintain their account, my guess is that a large part of its users won’t return after the switch and will turn out to be ’sleeping’ users.
Mailinator family now includes talkinator
o if there is no sign-up, what name will I have when I enter a room?
One will be generated for you. You can change it with the "name change" button or just type "/nick yourNewName".

How can I tell if someone in a talkinator room is a noob?
Their nick will be "yourNewName".
Thought experiment: Why not just go all the way and eliminate taxes altogether?

Let the government send you an itemised bill each year with a suggested amount based on your income. Then you choose whether to pay for each part or not.

Don't like the war in Iraq - don't pay for it. Like public schools - pay double.
from the FAQ:
o if there is no sign-up, what name will I have when I enter a room?
One will be generated for you. You can change it with the "name change" button or just type "/nick yourNewName".

How can I tell if someone in a talkinator room is a noob?
Their nick will be "yourNewName".

classic.
These criteria fit almost anything that requires dedication.

Anything from starting a family to funding a company to joining a professional sports team.

(except maybe "They are subject to entrapment (isolation from friends, relatives, and the mainstream culture) and their access to information is severely controlled." but I don't see how startups are isolated and have their access to information controlled.)
should have included 'wear a yellow tracksuit' - worked wonders for him in Enter the Dragon and was successfully ported by Uma Thurman thus allowing her to Kill Bill. Whenever i've got a big business deal that just absolutely has to go down - i wear my yellow tracksuit.
Olympians put in 18 hours a day - so they're cults too?

http://www.magazine.utoronto.ca/08summer/olympics.asp

"...Talk of "magic" swimsuits obscures the incredibly hard work swimmers such as Russell, a second-year pharmacology major, actually put in. Before I went to university it would be 20 hours a week, weights and swimming. When I went to Indiana [his first school] my training stepped up to 30 hours of weights, swimming and dry land, though that is really excessive for me. Now it’s about 18 hours..."
Didn't they move on to thesixtyone.com?
I dunno. But I keep seeing this http://www.projectwedding.com/ link around their pages.
I think a lot of people are eager to see someone encroach Google the way Google-circa-1998 threatened the then giants of its time. The fact they are ex-Google search employees implies they know what they are doing, so out of all the possible search engines Cuil seems the most promising.

But of course, the only real reason they all wrote about it was because the other guy was doing a story on them. How silly would they look in 5 years if they didn't cover the next Google?
So, in summary, don't talk to people or look at things you don't have to and focus on the task at hand?
This is great so far.

It would benefit from phone integration too. I do a lot of selling/appointment booking over the phone and it's a pain to have to manually feed that back in to our CRM.

Even better if you went to a meeting, being able to update the CRM using an iphone.
Apple did buy PA Semi chip designer just a few months ago. My guess is that they are using it to add custom functionality to their hardware (both in terms of features and lower power consumption).

http://www.forbes.com/technology/2008/04/23/apple-buys-pasem...
Looks like these guys are using Twisted:

http://www.python.org/about/success/projectpipe/
I use tadalists all the time for making one-line notes and putting down ideas. Like, I have a tada list called "Ideas" for startup ideas and another one "Articles" for stuff to write about. 99% of the stuff I want to write down fits this idiom well.

Very rarely I want to take multi-line notes, in these cases I use Google Docs, since I use all the G apps anyways.

Where does your stuff fit in? The ability to link to other entries seems pretty useless, or at least rarely useful.

After trying out the demo, it's better than G Docs because the interface is simpler. G Docs opens docs in new tabs/windows which is pretty annoying for smaller docs. If you add some kind of check-off bullet point capability to your lists (e.g. gray them out), then I could ditch tadalist and G docs and unite my stuff here. That would make sense.

You call it a "personal wiki" which seems like marketing speak for nothing, since the idea of a wiki is that everybody can edit it, but if it's personal, then it's really just a specialized HTML editor (?). Maybe you should just call it a "Notebook that just works".

UI bug report: when I click an entry on the left side, you flash it (in yellow) and then you scroll to it. But if it takes long to scroll there then the flash in unseen by the user. Scrolling then flashing may work better.
How To Patch BIND9 Against DNS Cache Poisoning On Debian Etch
How Yahoo killed MyBlogLog
MyBlogLog never took their service to the next level. Where is better user aggregation, Live chatting and follow ups on comments? To bad, it was a nice service
Definitely yes. I started doing some stuff few weeks ago - no rss, (almost) no im, email twice a day only. And it really helps! Much more than reading 'productivity' blogs ;)
Well saying that Windows kill productivity is too much I think.

Most of your points refer to someone who can't focus. So the problem is not Firefox nor Windows nor any music player.
I agree with this guy on the 'int' type. My OCaml code has often produced the wrong result because of it rather than merely run slowly.

I also agree with the type zoo. While it is rather cool to have simple types to appease Hindley-Milner inference, nobody makes it impossible for you to add extra types. In that respect types becomes a way to give a representation of what is in a variable. A 8x8 boolean matrix has a pretty interesting representation in 64 bit for instance which you want if speed matters.

But I would still choose Ocaml over Common Lisp or Scheme for any kind of problem where single-cpu performance matters.
It's responses like these that at the very least do very little to disprove the author's point.

Of course YC is not a cult and PG is not a cult leader, but some people here do seem to treat them as such. Some of the questions asked here (like the "Is 40 years too old to start a startup" one alluded to in the original article) and some of the material posted here (like the ramblings of the poor college kid who thought being glued to a computer for 80 hours a week was a fulfilling existence) indicate that PG's message "running a startup is one of the most rewarding things you can do in your life" gets distorted in some people's minds to "running a startup is the only thing in your life that's worthwhile to do".

The irony, of course, is that PG himself, in his writings, demonstrates an interest in a lot of other things besides web start ups. It's not only PG who seems to have an unusually broad world view, however. The same holds true for a large number of the people who post here.

Unfortunately, a small number of people such as yourself seem to overlook that and reduce the message (if there is such a thing, which I doubt) to something ridiculous. The author definitely has a point there.
I'm (slowly) working on the summary here:

http://www.squeezedbooks.com/book/show/23/the-wisdom-of-crow...

Contributions welcome!
Indeed. Good luck finding out information for the common shell <<END feature if you don't know that's called a "here document".
Its interesting that projectwedding.com has © 2006-2008 eHarmony, Inc. at the bottom.