skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Is it working yet? What's with the map screenshot on the front page, is that supposed to be something? Also, don't repeat the menu in any screen shots, it confuses people into thinking they're clickable and do something. Remove the tabs from screenshots.

Your marketing on the front page needs a lot of work. I didn't know there was a tour until I clicked next. It also seems very small, why aren't you using your screen real estate? Is it supposed to be a mobile site?

I also clicked on "my transit" and got more tabs to show up, but then I couldn't get back to the homepage, I was stuck there no matter how many times I clicked on the home tab. .

You should have more descriptive text on the tour instead of repeating those two lines about public and private transit. I expected them to be descriptive and relevant to the picture being shown on the tour. Their graphical hierarchy made me expect that was where my eyes should look first, and instead it was just lines from the home page. I've read those two lines, no need to repeat them on every tour page.

I don't mean to be harsh, just asking a lot of questions.
"I was recently stopped by Homeland Security as I was returning from a trip to Syria"
so let's say the team actually wants to target developers rather than suits - what are the key things you'd change about the web site?

thanks in advance.
Swap "hackers" for "programmers" (or self-described "hackers" who haven't developed good habits yet, or what-have-you) and the points are spot on. Who hasn't worked with code which is needlessly verbose, needlessly hard to maintain, and seems to have been organized by pushing things in harder?

See also: http://www.laputan.org/mud/
Then you obviously are not up to date with your biology. How many generations does it take to breed a new race of dog? Machetes and big knives have been around in Africa for longer than that amount of Generations. Metalwork is very old in Africa.
There is a rumor that Apple is going to add something extra to the Montevina chipset, so it's possible that they will do the same by adding an Atom chip or whatever they are using to power the iPhone.
There are a number of folks who can't install plug-ins because their machine is locked down or won’t because whoever the family friend is who cleans up their PC messes has successfully drilled into their heads the "just say no" mantra for whenever a security prompt rears its ugly head.

I applaud Mozilla for doing something that will make Canvas more universal but I am afraid that for really horizontal applications using one of the compatibility layer libraries is the only sensible approach. Do you really want the first impression of your app to start off with a security prompt?
I read this book around 2 weeks, you need to take parts of it which make sense. For example, I think his "Low Information Diet" makes a lot of sense. (Essentially he says that, don't, don't partake any information, unless you need that to use it that day). Last week, I logged out of all IM, stopped coming to news.yc, and all social sites, and got done about twice of while I get done in a week. (But its hard, so here I am back on news.yc!)
> The "how" seemed to be left out of many of his examples.

If you purchased the book, the how should be self explanatory.
Thanks... No it isn't working yet. I'll clean those bugs up and post again when I ask for private beta folks.

Good points about the marketing and tour. I really want it to convey this is the solution to outrageous gas prices, global warming, dependence on foreign oil. It's also the right time with wireless laptops and mobile phones to give up driving. and that these web technologies are the right product.

What do you think of the idea?
Make your 404 pages more useful
Simplicity requires wisdom about what to omit.
I started the book but didn't finish. With that caveat, here's my take: Ferris's approach is great for side projects, but no so great for a main project. His ideal is not having to work hard, so he can travel the world and kickbox. Personally, my ideal is to build great things that people love, and have fun doing it. I want to work hard, not kickbox (though I think I could get used to a 4 day, not 4 hour, work week).

That said, the book made a lot of sense for side projects. I'd love to have a few sources of income trickling in that don't require much of my time. If nothing else, that would enable me to build the things I want during the rest of my time.
There are easily as many Mac users on HN as there are Linux users. If you're getting voted down it's because you say things like this: Windows generally treat the user like an idiot (you have unused icons on your desktop!!) Never mind the poor grammar and complete non-sequitur, it takes all of two seconds to remove those icons. Just delete them and find something more substantial to complain about.
It's the OS.
They cared in the case of AOL vs internet, because AOL completely sucked.
Similarly, a growing number care in the case of Windows vs Mac/Linux, because Windows is so awful.

Is the iPhone, or other smartphone for that matter broken enough to cause pain to users?

I don't know, you could be right, but I don't see the problem that gets solved by Android right now for the average user.
I don't know if I would call 4HWW the opposite of Paul Graham. Consider YC itself - they give you money, access to VCs, etc - your job is to make something that is cool. This isn't outsourcing everything, but it is very much a capitalist division of labor, which I see as the main message of the book. Focus on where you add value, outsource everything else. The cofounder versus soulmate debate I think is different - it's more of a morale thing than anything else, I think Tim's point is about productivity, not morale.

The title of the book similarly refers to the 4 hours of actual value adding work being done a week - in a startup, you're working 50-80 hours a week because you're adding value all those hours that couldn't come from someone else (or, that you don't want to necessarily for team morale purposes)
The stock File Open dialog is wrong
I think this question is fascinating, and it's one I've asked several people at various startups I know. Because you're comparing extremely different types of work to each other, it's very hard to answer.
This is a quick look at its syntax.
http://supertech.csail.mit.edu/cilk/intro.html

It seems to be a mutlithreaded language based on C, with actually sane and readable syntax.
----------
Ok nevermind. It just looks like C, with some mutlithreaded facilities (spawn and sync). You still have to use malloc, and all the little things that make C a slow to code language are still there.
Code Golf: solve coding problems with the fewest keystrokes
Make a list of things you have a mental block against. Then make opportunities to do them. Every failure that you learn and recover from makes you stronger. Practice your decision-making skills. Act on your decisions. And communicate decisively. Good luck!
To support this:

"Runners of West African descent—which includes Jamaicans as well as most African-Americans—seem to be built for speed: In 2004, they held all but five of the 500 best times in the 100-meter dash. (East Africans, such as Kenyans and Ethiopians, rule the long-distance field.) Several biological factors may be coming into play here. One study conducted in Quebec in the 1980s found that black West African students had significantly higher amounts of "fast-twitch" muscle fibers—the kind that are responsible for short, explosive bursts of action—than white French Canadians did. (So far, there is no evidence that even extensive training can turn slow-twitch muscles into fast-twitch ones, though moving in the other direction is possible.)"

http://www.slate.com/id/2197721/
It's sad that they removed source code from they website, some time ago I've downloaded it to play with but it's gone now. So much for licensing.
This book just rubbed me the wrong way. It was so soulless, that I found it hard to take it seriously.

The book itself was also clearly an instance of the theories he was proposing in the book. While clever in a recursive kind of way, this made me like it even less because I kept thinking, "You can't fool me with the slimeyness. I know what you're doing."
By shaving the 'y' and 'o' from every instance of 'you' it is possible to cut so much fat out of the working week that just 4 hours gives you time to build a fortune 500 company in a month.
When I pay for McDonalds what I'm paying for is the infrastructure that allows for a consistent burger/fry experience wherever I am in the world. I can walk in and describe my food according to the protocol and get it. I'm happy to do that but the food itself is just food.
Someone ought to write a script that scans every submission for the words "startup," "Paul Graham," and "Y Combinator" and posts some variation of "Not Hacker News!!!!!" whenever it doesn't find them. At least it would save you all some effort.
This UI seems to be solving problems I don't have, and in a way I don't want.

When I'm coding, I don't want mail. Mail -- unless I'm waiting for a specific mail message -- is a distraction. I don't want to see the source code control system. That's yet another a distraction. I just want my code.

I want to focus on the code.

That's a source code editor and a (good) debugger and an application dump analyzer that work in unison. I want to focus on the creation of the code, or on the run-time behavior of the program itself, or on the test suite. Not the tools.

If my tools can't help my focus, they're not helping me.

Now if the development suite can (upon request) analyze my source code and suggest a better way to code something or can find and point to questionable code, or can flag coding errors or to vulnerabilities, then I'm interested.
Sorry, being from the UK, pagers died out in the 1980s. It's all SMS here...

It'll certainly be interesting to see what android can bring.
CouchDB is one of the most interesting projects right now (in my opinion). Right now, it simply doesn't offer a huge number of advantages for my work (web development), but I'm hoping that it will in the future.

Specifically, I think that it has the potential for really good asynchronous replication and sharding. Those two things are just a pain right now - especially sharding. But it isn't hard to imagine CouchDB altered slightly so that you could have a cluster of shards that asynchronously fed a view.
I have a couple side businesses that do pretty well and run on auto pilot. I don't even spend 4 hours a month on them. I could work full time on them and double the profit probably, but it wouldn't be worth it.
Benford's Law Analysis
Palm had issues long before the iPhone came around.
Though the article was interesting, it's nothing that isn't said a lot: quality communication is necessary and also hard; quality communication between more people is commensurately harder.

On another note: the link to hitmeuplater.com was neat. I hadn't see it before and think it's a cool idea.
Carrier certification works differently outside the US and can be much less restrictive. In most of the world it isn't a Apple/Blackberry one point five horse race, but rather a much more diverse fight. I would certainly encourage anyone who is counting Nokia out to go and pick up a E71 and give it a go.

Don't let the local market distort your perspective unless you want to limit your reach.
Wow. Is anyone reading the article or just going on with Netflix fanboy'ism?

This chart explains it all: http://www.flickr.com/photos/13736953@N00/2762004788/

Netflix is one segment of Blockbuster's entire getting media to consumer's strategy. Looks like the B&M folks are here to stay, no matter how much we love digital delivery!

He's right, Netflix is a small blip on their radar!
I want to create without advertisements and better web applications. Thanks for message of greetings :)
I don't follow you. The question was "can we please collectively admit [that css is better than tables]". The answer is no, not everyone is willing to admit that.
Overheated iPod nano caused fires
The concept that smaller teams are more efficient is not new. I've been reading The Mythical Man-Month and it makes this admission right out of the gate. However, as the team gets smaller it also limits the size of the projects it can take on. To that end, what the rest of the book is more or less devoted to is how to do large projects with "small" teams by separating orthogonal tasks and more efficiently organizing the communication structure.

In other words, read the book if you haven't already. ;)
Palm OS is brutal. Also, having a touchscreen actually detracts from that phone. I switched from the 650 to a Moto Q and greatly prefer the Q. I don't find myself trying to tap at things that are way smaller than my finger, or worrying if I'm going to drop the stylus. But I still get the high call quality and the amazing keypad for tapping out emails.
Pagers died out long ago here too. The point is: there was once a trend among youth where alternative cheap communications was used in place of the cell phone.

If that can happen once, it can happen again. And SMS price structure is bloated. Things are ripe for a change.
I skimmed the book and it made no sense.

I read the book, and it did make sense. Amazing, that!
So true. I can relate pretty close, doing an internship and seeing these exact traits.
The long tail (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Tail).
Amazon’s Universal Wish List
If it's not updated in years then Google is smarter not to look at it daily.
Actually, his ideal is not having to work hard at earning a living so that you have more time to do the things that you love, whatever that is. If you are doing what you love and earning a living off it anyway, then fair enough, but his book is probably aimed more at people who dream about escaping the rat race, but don't think that's possible.
Consumer satisfaction is as much about marketing as it is about sustained product quality. Apple customers may just be happy to be part of the club, even while their iPhone drains in one hour or their Macbooks are in an out of the shop, because it's better than using Windows.

I'd be much more impressed with them leading something comparable to the IQS JD Power does for cars. It's kinda sad that nothing like that exists.
1) Where do you live? You probably want your cofounder to live in the same urban area.

2) You want a good hacker to be your cofounder. How to find a good hacker. Paul Graham gives some advice about this:

http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html

"What you should do in college is work on your own projects. Hackers should do this even if they don't plan to start startups, because it's the only real way to learn how to program. In some cases you may collaborate with other students, and this is the best way to get to know good hackers. The project may even grow into a startup. But once again, I wouldn't aim too directly at either target. Don't force things; just work on stuff you like with people you like."

What if you are not in school? I would welcome an article in HN about how to find a cofounder for a startup. You might want to go to startup events and take part in an open source project.
I never managed that for more than about a week either. Glad to know I'm not the only one :)
Yahoo Buzz now allows user submissions
Judge lifts MIT students' card-hacking gag order
TC is always full of animosity against Google, Yahoo and Apple.

Are they sponsored by microsoft?
Well, I think its an idea. I don't know too much about it because its not explained very well. You might want to look at how other web 2.0 companies are mixing selling and explaining on their homepages, because they do it really well. You want to make people want to start using it, but also explain what it is very quickly. there are some great websites out there that make great use of the available space and use color really well. So part of the problem is you need to work on that.

Even the stuff you just said in the comment above can be used to promote your app, you've just got to use it. "Want to save gas?" "Think more people should drive together?" "With Private Transit you can do both." "Just map out your route and see if it matches up with others. Organize a pool and you're on your way to saving money and the world. Your co-riders can chip in with cash or pay their share using PayPal through the website." "You can even keep track of miles, print out reports or get email updates to your mobile phone if someone can't make it."

I mention all this is that no matter how good the back-end coding might be, if people don't understand it or are encouraged to use it, it won't take off. Coding was the tough part, but now design and marketing is the next tough part. It really needs to be almost as important as all the work that you've put in already.
Solar System Mysteries
Ok, that doesn't make sense.
This is the kind of stuff I want to read about. Are your side businesses technology-oriented?
The speed and result quality are pretty comparable, actually.

What it lacks is a colorful row of o's.

Once you're past the point of "good enough", search is all about brand recognition. http://foohack.com/2008/06/hacking-the-google-favicon/
I honestly can't tell if you are serious or not.

This chart explains it all: http://finance.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chd...;
TC is probably trying to get attention, that's their business after all.
Leaked: Dell Inspiron 910 (Mini Note) Specs and Release Date
ZyXEL ZyWALL SSL 10 Security Appliance
ZyWALL SSL 10 integrates seamlessly into any network topology and can be easily deployed alongside almost any third-party firewall as a secure remote access solution. This enables you to leverage your existing network infrastructure.
Carbon Farming Being Tested As a Way to Store CO2 in Soil | Infopirate.org
Iterative Interface Design - Methods To Madness
The Agile YAGNI approach to design is a formula for failure and abrogates our fundamental responsibilities as designers and engineers.
I don't think it's the site design that's supposed to be interesting, but the idea that Google is getting signatures for a petition to the FCC regarding the usage of currently unused radio frequencies.
I'm just in this borderland. I'm born in 1978, and I notice lots of people around my age feel very little responsibility about the job they are doing. They try to get by doing minimal effort, and expect to get maximum compensation.

Unfortunately, this actually works in a job market with a major shortage in the work-force. Some of them gets paid more than I do ;)
And Daring Fireball is always full of animosity against anyone against Apple. Are they sponsored by Apple? Alas, fan boys need no corporate sponsorship to throw dirt from the trenches.
Continuing on that vein, the outcome Ferris's model is different from Paul Graham's. The Paul Graham model involves the growing of wealth in terms of stock value, with an exit strategy of selling those shares to an outside company or possibly an IPO. The main goal is increasing shareholder value and building net worth.

Tim Ferris, on the other hand, is talking about a business asset that generates income with the least amount of personal time in its day-to-day operation. You don't want to sell the asset because it is generating cash into your pocket. Instead the exit strategy involves leaving it running -- exactly like setting up a headless server with background daemons, instead of hooking up a keyboard, mouse, and monitor and babysitting it 24/7.

There's also a big misunderstanding about "working less". If you actually read the book, the initial setup still requires patience and effort, particularly if you're coming from a regular 9-5 job background. The other "track" in the book are for people who already own a small business, but they are doing the mom-and-pop thing and need to be owners of the business, and not merely self-employed. These people essentially own their own jobs, often work significantly more hours than regular corporate jobs, and don't have the upside of startup since these people want to keep their small business. This idea, by the way, is not new, and has been written about by other authors, such as Michael E. Gerber in his book, E-Myth.

By the way, once you created one income-generating asset, there's no reason not to go on and create another one. The time that is freed up from one such asset lets you go on to the next asset. The payoff isn't as large, but you only need to generate enough income to meet your expenses. At which point, you are free to pursue anything you want, including a proper startup -- just that you would not have to worry about mortgages and food at that point.

In short, Paul Graham writes about startups and Tim Ferris does not. One strategy is about net worth, the other is about income-generating assets. They are strategies should be used consciously, not blindly.
4HWW is a classic example of how something can be simple but not easy
He explains a lot of that stuff in detail in later chapters. I was kind of annoyed about that for the first half of the book, because he hints at it a lot... but if you stick with it, there's some very interesting and possibly useful information (depending on what you want to do). I was surprised by his very specific insights about running online ad campaigns, doing market research, managing manufacturing and shipping, etc. Some of the advice is so specific as to be a little bit unsettling (the stuff about how to appear to be an "expert" in something without actually being an expert in it), but overall I'm glad I stuck with it.
wtf? The board hires CEO's not the other way around - board members are voted on by shareholders.
IPhone Touch Events in JavaScript
It is refreshing that he bluntly admitted his confusion. Most CEOs know enough to BS so that it is not obvious that they are clueless. Give this guy some kind of pity award.
Ah yes, the old "they are all stupid sheep" explanation for results which do not support your particular worldview. The study in question is pretty open about its methodology, and includes everything from product quality to customer complaints and perceived value of the products. I guess the difference between real social scientists who build econometric models to rank consumer satisfaction values over tens of thousands of subject interviews and you is that the former can speak from authority and you speak only for your own biases and perceptions.
I highly recommend the LeechBlock add-on for Firefox (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4476). You can tell it to only let you read X minutes of HN (or any other site) in a day, and then it will block you.

This add-on has really helped me get through my current project. In fact I had better finish typing this quickly before my HN/Slashdot/gmail limit runs out.
I quit BlockBuster in 1998 after a dispute. I asked the clerk for scissors and cut up the card in front of him. Since then, I been very happy with Netflix, its convenience, and efficiency. Rarely it has problems and has responded well when they occurred. I am fascinated by the BB CEO being so out of touch.
IPhone SSH clients reviewed: iSSH, pTerm, and TouchTerm
Many EDA and FPGA software packages are Windows only.