skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The 10/120 rule is more about productivity and maximizing your efforts toward things that you are naturally good at.

This is good some of the time, but there are other times when you definitely want to try to learn something that takes more than 10 minutes to explain and understand. There are some things that just take longer because of the number of concepts involved.

Imagine trying to learn and understand recursion or continuations if you'd never heard of them before. From experience I've found that teaching people about these concepts requires allowing them time to digest their significance, and, therefore, if you're constantly limiting your learning time then there's no way you can effectively master and apply these concepts.
I'm not sure I agree. I've heard the sentiment that the network effect is unbeatable a few times. I think people are so hungry to take over CL's market that if you had a good product it shouldn't be so hard to get it well publicized. ESPECIALLY if you beat them in how housing is done.

There's no need to take on the rants and raves service CL provides.
I had some really egregious file IO performance when I first got a new computer with Vista on it, but that seems to have mysteriously cleared up. Winzip was especially bad taking minutes to open archives that took xp seconds to do on a much slower computer.
I didn't say that masturbating is necessarily a bad thing, I just don't like watching others do it.
I think all the people saying it's hard to take on craigslist are right.

My own spin on it is simply that craigslist has been around since the dawn of the popular web, it was founded in 1995, and started growing rapidly in 1999. The fact is, it takes time to build the network effect inherent in business models like craigslist (and ebay, also founded 1995).

The current startups trying to tackle these problems all seem stuck in the 'get big fast' mode of the 2000 bubble era companies, aiming for millions of users in a couple years. It ain't gonna happen (most likely). You are most likely going to be growing slowly, and if you really want success in this field, you need patience to whether the storm of not much activity (we're talking years here, I'd say minimum 4).

But most start ups usually aren't built for that, they are taking 1.5 million funding, burning through it promising big returns and large growth month over month, and investors get tired of that game real quick if a site is not delivering.

I think it's a good opportunity from someone in the hacker news mindset to build something simple NOW, work on it on the side for a few years (4+), and see what happens. Heck, I may do it myself.
Elastic Block Store (EBS) overview and tutorial
I feel so sad, because I got a physics degree with EE as minor and an M.Sc. in computer science. I can work in x86 Asm, C, Java, PHP/Python/Perl/Ruby,Scheme and circuits depends on problems at hand. I guess I will be kicked out immediately by your filter.

At the other hand. I feel so sad for you because the method that you are using is complete hindsight driven and you are correlating wrong causes and effects and misusing statistics. So please be careful of the happening of black swans.
For entrepreneurs:

Do guaranteed-safe data storage right and you will have a killer app. How do you really plan to last for 100 or 1,000 years? We all have lots of value tied up in our data. Think of long-term storage as time-shifting that value, just as files are a way of time-shifting data processing. I believe cperciva is working on this.
The Linux distro time line may be here: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ed/LinuxDist...
Lacy's original article refuted its own reservations, because it was, after all, about YC Demo Day startups.

There are countless other tiny hopeful startups very similar to those that appeared in YC Demo Day. But those others will not get coverage all the places the Demo Day startups did, including Lacy's blog. That single YC-sparked PR coup may have increased their chances of success, against identical non-YC competitors, by 5-10%.

And merely asking, in her public writings, if YC is a bad deal incrementally makes YC a better deal, by focusing more attention on YC companies. (This hall of mirrors makes my head hurt!)
Ugh. Ignite NYC was ... exactly as he describes. Full of wantrepeneurs, and small pockets of real geeks looking for something interesting.
She also defines YC's value by its "mentorship". I think that YC's connections to additional funding are at least as valuable. If you need more money, then they might save a lot of time that would be spent trying to acquire it.
yeah. I would use an Image instead of HTML. If you check 37 Signals all their big text are images cause they can just be made to look better.
I've actually been racking my brain trying to come up with excuses to try it out and use it for something. I haven't come up with too much yet, but it seems pretty cool.
Zoho compares their document sharing feature to YouTube 7 times in that press release. I suppose it's clever marketing to announce a Google property as your style inspiration. But 7 times in one blog post? Zoho Share doesn't even handle video.
Countless articles I've read about Craigslist say they could make a lot more money than they do if they were more business-like, more aggressive. They choose not to. As I understand, they only charge for job ads, nothing else.

Also, a small but important point about the identity of Craigslist as a community is that Craig Newmark has a purpose behind sticking with .org instead of .com.
Series AA Documents Back Online
And "cachet" rather than "cache." Lacy could use a blog copy editor.
Sorry for the delay. WSGR wanted to add some disclaimers to the documents, and then we ourselves were busy with Demo Day(s).

There's now a termsheet as well, which some people had asked for.
I'm stoked on your concept and loving the logo.

Vertical spacing overall should be a tidied and made consistent. Maybe push the second line of your logo up onto the first line to compress the header?

Also I'd suggest you put some more constraints on the design. Pick three colors max. Also maybe limit font choice. You have at least four fonts (two in the logo, and two more in the text of the page), shifting between serif and sans-serif with all sorts of colors and weights and sizes that all add up to looking like clutter. Similarly link colors seem to be very different (the light green on a light blue background looks a lot different than the light green on the dark blue bg).

Font sizes in the three boxes at the bottom are too small. Also, headers on those boxes should be clickable (since there are little arrows on those headers).

You could try looking at one of the many CSS frameworks (I personally enjoy Blueprint) to add some cross-platform consistency to line-heights and font sizes.

Regarding content: It seems there are two places on the page to learn what ScribbleWiki does. Once in the light blue box and once in the space right below it. Maybe put all this text into one place?

Hope my comments don't come off as too negative -- just trying to provide some constructive criticism.
"perhaps it's more like taking out an insurance policy, and most of the best entrepreneurs don't like insurance or safety nets. That's why they are entrepreneurs!"

Does she actually know any entrepreneurs? Despite all of the ideological fights on this site, the most consistent piece of advice I've run across here is: Make sure you have health insurance. Get high deductible policy with low premiums if you're poor, but get some freaking insurance.
Not to be harsh but I think you really need to work on that logo. your page design is pretty strong but the logo is the weakest thing on the page.

It's very hard to get a logo to look both freehand/scribly as well as professional. Either you need to do a mot more research in to how other have done good freehand script well or just stick with a typeface.

Perhaps the name could be all one typeface and you could have a more hand drawn icon to go with the logo.

either way the logo needs work.

good luck!
37signals on Github
Too many colors, and many of the color pairings wash-out against each other -- white on lightblue, lightblue on darkblue, white on lightorange. The scribbled 'Scribble' is almost unreadable.
downmodded why?
In Norway there's a service called Finn (www.finn.no), that translates to "Find"

They were backed by a large news corporation, so that probably helped. The corporation really didn't want to look too much at classifieds on the internet, since they had a paper business to protect. That's why they waited until 2000 before the site was released.

When it comes to real estate, I think they have close to 100% of the market. Only real estate agents are allowed to post ads, and I think they pay a lot to do so.

They are also huge in the motor market. You have to pay 76 USD to add your used car to the listing. There are numerous free alternatives, but people still use Finn because it is the place to go.

When free alternatives can't compete, what can?

But on the positive side, there's not a lot of spam :-)

Examples: http://www.finn.no/finn/car/used/result?CAR_MAKE=749

http://www.finn.no/finn/realestate/homes/result?areaId=20061
Dwelling in Possibilities
I wouldn't say he's selling out, though. If he scabbed during the screen writer strike, then yes, he'd be a scab, but as it is, he's selling something a lot of people in a different industry think is sub-optimal. It'd be like having ads on your startup endorsing American cars or German wine.

Plus, the Mac ads are so self-satisfied and sleazy. Fight fire with fire.
Seinfeld and Celebrity Computer Endorsements
Well, I thought the main point she was raising (perhaps muddled by her own writing) was simply that PG's assertion that YC does in fact improve your odds by X% might not be true, and even if it is true, you may have other means--that have no equity cost--to realize the same benefits that YC offers.

Totally agree about her book: the subject (the entrepreneurs) is quite interesting, but she gets in her own way with her poor writing ability (and where the hell was her editor, or don't those exist anymore?) She also seems to pretty much take her interviewees at face value.

It is a bit ironic that on her blog post she mentions she wouldn't be where she is today if she had gone to journalism school; um, yes, it's entirely possible she might have become an actual journalist.
An entertaining trip down memory lane.
There are plenty of motivational books that will get you fired up to go charging off in the right direction, though.
Dumb Little Man (.com), a very popular self-improvement blog.
No idea, your comment looks reasonable to me. +1 back to positivity.
- Online Collaboration Tool should be an anti-aliased image

- Don't sell a tool for experts to idiots

- Feedburner icon is messed up

- font size of 'here' is bigger than the text beside it

- Do not let .php show in the address above. You may change your technology in the future, you will lose all your google strength because all your pages will change location

- Create your own wiki now should be stronger and in the middle. It's the main action you want

- Support wiki sounds like you want people to support wiki. Like support africa, support tibet, support wiki

- Your ul under blog updates has a too large space at the top

- "Check out TicTakToe our support and information wiki". This sentence is too long

- those circular arrows on your triple feature could be mistaken for clickable items

Let me give you an idea:

Once you can get a person to start using your wiki, he is unlikely to ever change, because it's just too much hassle. So your PRIMARY goal is to get people to start using it and put their data in. My suggestion is to offer a special offer 3 Months for $5 offer, only available for the next 5 days. Use session tracking to customize it per user. Now, after the user has put some data in (BEFORE he gets tired), you POPUP a new special offer saying IF YOU register now, you get 6 Months for just half price!

Once they pay twice, they are yours, and will hardly change again.
APIs and Developer Platforms: A Discussion on the Pros and Cons
Facebook's marketplace failed cause it wasn't a core product and they didn't want to advertise it. I'll bet most members didn't even know it was there.
Venture capital flowing to China and India
Words placed in my mouth again. I don't think Craigslist is unbeatable. I just think that beating the network effect is going to be hard. Either have a lot of resources, or do a tactical concentration in one area. Apparently, there are lots of competitors to Craigslist overseas because they could avoid the network effect. There are also local market competitors.
In Norway there's a service called Finn (www.finn.no), that translates to "Find"

They were backed by a large news corporation, so that probably helped. The corporation really didn't want to look too much at classifieds on the internet, since they had a paper business to protect. That's why they waited until 2000 before the site was released.

When it comes to real estate, I think they have close to 100% of the market. Only real estate agents are allowed to post ads, and I think they pay a lot to do so.

They are also huge in the motor market. You have to pay 76 USD to add your used car to the listing. There are numerous free alternatives, but people still use Finn because it is the place to go.

When free alternatives can't compete, what can? When someone has a lot of market share, it is hard to compete.

But on the positive side, there's not a lot of spam :-)

Examples: http://www.finn.no/finn/car/used/result?CAR_MAKE=749

http://www.finn.no/finn/realestate/homes/result?areaId=20061
" It was C, but with a pleasing syntax for class encapsulation and virtual function dispatch. I still write most of my C++ in that language."

Then you aren't using the language -- you're using C with classes. Which is fine, but don't make comments as though your usage patterns reflect the mainstream. C++ has moved well beyond C, and it's a different language now.

IMO, the roots of C++ in C are both its biggest strength, and its greatest liability. Sure, this ensures compatibility with a ton of old code, but this compatibility also adds lots of ugly warts to the language syntax. Moreover, to this day, lots of C coders are fooled into thinking that they're dealing with a language that's "C plus a few features", and they're invariably shocked when it turns out to be a totally different (and more powerful) programming environment. They then tend to complain loudly on the internet that the language is a disaster, without ever really trying to understand it for what it is.
Pageflakes Founder Bails From LiveUniverse
i heard the file stuff was an issue with the initial vista, but it was cleared up by SP1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Windows_Vista#File...

that link also mentions that file operations on Vista may seem to take longer because the file transfer dialog stays up during the whole operation, whereas in XP it can be closed before the operation has actually completed
Don't Copy a Design — Steal It
Douglas Corckford on Programming Language Character Sets
REST with Rails "resources": mind the representation
Economics needs a divorce
"Summarising what we do, I'd say it is this: whereas before the objective was to create new dishes, now what we seek is to create techniques and concepts that will generate many dishes."
Identifying Senior Software Engineers: Six Critical Differences
I would certainly be interested in this sort of product if it was priced reasonably.
I think the point is that it's a completely hosted service and that's being done 90% from a UI -- with minimal CSS written, and no XHTML changes.
American culture's overemphasis on happiness misses an essential part of a full life
I thought the last point about "Know how to deal with secrecy, structure and control needs" was good. This is a point that is often missed with web startups who are trying to build social and web tools for enterprises.
> It is a bit ironic that on her blog post she mentions she wouldn't be where she is today if she had gone to journalism school;

A forum for entrepreneurs who largely bypassed college is hardly the place to get snarky about formal education.
You could also not waste time figuring out how to store the darkness using "analog circuitry" and just put a micro on the thing. Then you could have multiple sensors that would figure out what kind of bread was put in and then toast accordingly. It would a pretty fun problem to work on once the basic toaster was finished. You could play around with different kinds of sensors - heat, infrared LEDs+detectors, normal LEDs+detector, just light detector from ambient of the coils.

And the best part would be that you get to eat piles of yummy toast.
Yea, and maybe you are naturally good at something you have never tried to understand. Trying to get blocks in ruby and being a seasoned java programmer, it'll probably take you a few days, but when you have understood it, and the implications for programming, it'll rock your world. Learn more about diverse programming stuff and you'll probably start to understand things faster and better in general programming...
Thanks, for the ideas!
This could be leveraged into a much cheaper (albeit less reliable) version of simple queue service. You can have multiple EC2 instances feeding off of the same disk used as a central repository.

In general, EBS is making me think creatively about how to better architect distributed systems. SQS was both expensive and somewhat limited in scope. But now that I get disks in common, there's no restriction as to how I might partition work among EC2s.
I asked for comments, no need to worry about giving them to me. So something more like this http://janeknight.com/images/scribble.gif ?
Never really tested on the iPhone, know of any links for doing that?
How to record music with a computer
Thanks for the information, so all white text would work?
tsearch is not complicated for anyone who knows enough about a database to install tsearch. It has pretty straight forward documentation and I was able to get my install up and running with differently weighted columns (and stemming) in the ~20 minutes you took to briefly scan the literature.
In certain places, there might be enough people to have a Hacker (centric) Cafe, like super happy dev house, constantly. Imagine it -- coffee, high speed wifi, a library, talks, ramen, small meeting rooms, late hours, whiteboards.
Thankyou very much good sir!
Very well written article. It's nice to see the usage of EC2/EBS in a simple to follow, step by step tutorial.
Why even a photodetector? Just have something that is the same distance from the heating coils as the toast. I think many toasters just use a bimetal strip that trips a release mechanically. You could probably get a big increase in accuracy by putting some kind of measuring mechanism on that.
The following thread didn't wrap text properly. It ran past the right edge and required a horizontal scrollbar.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=282844

Curiously, I could not duplicate on other comment threads on today's (08/21/08) front page.

IE 7, Win XP Pro, 1024x768, Start Bar on left side of screen.

edit: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=282950 in the thread has a long blockquote.
I'm kind of glad surgeons don't subscribe to this philosophy...
20 Thoughts About a Microsoft Ad Campaign I Haven't Seen Yet
Could the website of the bigfoot hoax have turned millions in AdSense?
"Any tool with internet access and a rubber mask can now be a millionaire"
Angel Ramirez : Sk8prK - The Best Skateboarding Community
This is not a story about a computer scientist. It's a story about an enterprise IT consultant.
I took the initiative to forward this post to the author, Tim Ferriss. He provided me with the following quote:

"Hi Chris, thanks so much for the link. I won't jump into the fray here, but feel free to post this quote on the board. I'm a huge fan of Paul Graham and his blog is one of my top 10 when I speak to media. I also just attended the Y-Combinator demo day this week, where I met Paul. His philosophies and mine do not conflict, best I can tell. If anyone reads the book or even the latest Men's Journal profile, I always emphasize that inactivity ISN'T the goal. I work my ass off on things that are meaningful to me, but 1) they are not primarily financially-driven, and 2) I measure results vs. effort. I suspect Paul wouldn't have an issue with either of these. Keep up the good fight... -Tim"
> That 6% you don’t give up could wind up being a big chunk of your holdings-- maybe even the only thing you're left with.

I've not seen a YC termsheet but this seems really unlikely since YC basically gets founders stock and get diluted along with the founders. The 94:6 ratio should normally be maintained through funding rounds.

It follows that if the founders are left with nothing, they would have been 6.4% richer without YC. 1.064 * nothing = nothing.
Poll: How late do you stay up?
The stereotype of a hacker would be to stay up into the wee hours, perhaps with the only light being the glow of the monitor. But is this the case? Please round to the nearest 2-hour multiple. (Let me know if you need more options.)
02:00
04:00
Tips from a Top Sports Team Coach
there's nothing wrong with trying to make money off of it, either
IHollogram for iPhone - illusion of a 3d hologram jumping off the screen (vid)
4am on a good night; means I've got good momentum going. 2am if there is nothing special happening.
Ask HN:  How would you handle this design dilemma?
I'm having a dilemma where 2 of my cardinal design philosphies are at odds with each other.

Guideline #1. Anytime data is entered into a textbox, it should be acted upon immediately. If it's invalid, it should be rejected NOW. If it affects other data on the screen, that data should be changed NOW. If it causes navigation, that navigation should happen NOW. Note that this is not your standard "fill out a form hit Submit" logic.

Guideline #2. If the user wants to navigate somewhere, that should also happen NOW. If he clicks on a link, he should be taken there NOW. If he wants to change his view, that should happen NOW. If he wants to enter another field, he should just click there and his focus should move NOW.

What should I do if my user enters data that requires some action AND wants to navigate at the same time? Which is more urgent, dealing with the data entered or going where he wants to go?

For example, he enters invalid data in a textbox, but before hitting "Tab" or "Enter" he clicks on a link. Or he clicks on another field on the page. Should I make him deal with the invalid data now, then navigate? Or should I navigate and hold that data in suspense? Or should I navigate and discard the text box entry altogether?

I know this sounds trivial, but lately it's driving me nuts.

Any thoughts?
Russia: There is life after Peak Oil
If you just say blocks in ruby is a name for closures, or anonymous functions, a good programmer will understand it right away. Just b/c somebody codes mostly java, doesn't mean that they don't know these fundemental concepts.

No need to put java programmers in one basket. mkay.... (and java has anonymous classes, but they are heavy-weight and don't have proper closures you find in dynamic languages, still they are there, and a good programmer will know/have used at some point).
Weebly did this sort of thing with the website of one of the investors in the room on demo day in 07, and it had quite an impact (though they did it in about 6 minutes--I guess they did some prep work in advance).
Windows Search gets worse
What kind of license are they released under?