skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I may have done a disservice using that metaphor, as it wasn't my intent to suggest that anyone who choses to work on/at a startup is up on a ledge.

What I was trying to convey, was that even someone like myself (pretty much without an entrepreneurial bone in my body) was so enraptured by the thought of it after reading the book that I almost did it. The book is powerful mojo.
Interesting. That isn't happening for me.
My failed bootstrapped startup: a retrospective.
This was posted a month ago already.
A neat visualization. Forgive me, but I had smirk on my face when I clicked the 'HN TreeMap' square and it loaded it again. It felt very recursive. :)
XML doesn't support hyperlinks, but I didn't say I use XML. I use xhtml, which is a specific content type that is both widely understood by existing programs and also has explicit and standardized support for hyperlinks.

I liked RDF for a while too. I even came close to designing and building an RDF database for my employer at the time. Too bad it didn't catch on.
It's not even another standard - it's an experimental implementation.
That's it. They end up hiring people who think they're ninjas and rock stars. If all you need to do is fill a seat (traditional HR or recruiters) then this ad is probably pay-dirt - after all, there are a lot of people who want to be special.

In looking for a place I'd like to work I look for ads that say they understand what I'd be doing.

Also, there are two ways of asking for everything under the sun. The first, which rockstar/ninja companies ask for, is "7+ years Java, 3+ using ANT, 5+ in etc". You can never satisfy the requirements of this kind so they only get scammers or the truly naive who qualify but only because they once did all that stuff 10+ years ago.

The second way, which hacker companies use, is to say "We use X, and do hard-thing-Y in it. If this is your speed, join us. Bonus points for things we don't know about." These are not only clear and precise to the people they want but easily lend themselves to entrance interviews.
Show HN: 30 Day Challenges - Feedback Wanted
Treemaps are fantastic for showing hierarchical + quantitative information in a single view (with at least another axis thrown in if you add coloring the boxes in).

This view, however, is about as useful as using a pie chart--perhaps the intent was to correlate the points with share of total attention?

On the other hand, I subscribe to the "piecharts are almost always evil and useless" school, and should in almost all cases be replaced with stacked bar charts (sideways preferably)--which the strip view is rather similar to.
This sounds bad to me. I was hoping they had something real, but this is disappointing. It won't work as JS is too big (I would love to see them try), but it doesn't seem to 'fix' anything; it's just more of the same.
Who cares how many posts are porn and how many post images that are copyrighted, right? That's the YouTube model that got them $1.6b :)
Google is clearly priming to do a Microsoft-style embrace-and-extend in a big way. Between Chrome, V8, NaCL, WebGL, Android, they have a wide range of technologies that they could begin steering away from standards.
Intel announced 3D transistors a few months ago (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2514363).
Double Wide Mobile Homes
I'm a typical HN reader (and a programmer) and I don't think I've changed any settings on my Macbook Pro other than the mouse tracking speed.
There’s no risk in leaving stable employment for a lifestyle that can ruin your finances and relationships, and leave you completely burnt out?

Startups can be huge successes personally and financially, but there’s definitely risk.
Reading this I am reminded of the great quote from Nassim Taleb who wrote the Black Swan.

“The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary."
Three weeks seems pretty unacceptable to me. I would be alright with four weeks and happy about five.
http://www.bigmapblog.com/
I think you've done a really cool thing here, but honestly it feels a bit gimmicky. I have maybe 25 domains, so not a huge player, but I can't imagine that saving the 2 minutes it takes me to register a domain would do anything for me. Maybe a browser extension or something, but the twitter aspect just makes me ask "why".

Not trying to take away from your design (very nice) or execution (congrats)... just skeptical if its really solving a "problem"

[don't take this as negative... maybe thinking about it would give you another feature or something :-) ]
I thought they could make films lose arbitrary amounts of money by charging whatever they want to their captive distribution arms.
Correct. And a big company saying you can take any number of days off as you want is a big earning sign for me. One of the reasons I don't even think about joining Netflix.
This was a great post. I found as I was reading it that many of the characteristics he possesses as a leader can be found in John Maxwell's leadership series. A small book I reffer to regularly is John Maxwell's delegating leadership. THis article was dead on with how as a CEO that becomes you main job. I recommend it to all CEO'S.

For others looking for good leadership books here are some others I like:

- 7 habits of highly affective people
- how to win friends and influence people
- Launching a leader revolution (great book my friend gave me this!)
- Wooden
- Anything from John Maxwell or Dale Carnegie
Agreed. I work for a UK University and get 30 days paid leave, plus public holidays, plus Christmas to New Year on top of that. Means I can take a couple of long holidays a year and still have plenty of long weekends and the odd day off here and there.

Even the staff on the lower "grades" get all of the above except for 25 instead of 30 days.
These kind of posts always leave me with a mix of inspiration and discouragement.

It is awesome to read about someone like you (local developer, similar learning style, beginner entrepreneur) who actually builds something. There is a lot to be proud of for just Doing Something - even if you fail. But at the same time, I feel like I would fall into the same pitfalls that you mentioned.

I am not looking forward to doing anything related to setting up an LLC, doing sales calls, etc. I like my job and don't want to quit. I know other developers but end up working on my own stuff alone in most cases.

Thanks for sharing Aaron - I'll have to try to make it out to the next Devs With Side Projects meetup.
The idea from the book that seems most obsolete to me is that a web startup founder could gain a competitive advantage by using Lisp. (Not that a Lisp might not be the best choice, but your competitors are more likely to be using it too, and if they're not they're using something much closer than they were in 2004.)
But...why? Google makes money selling ads. It doesn't make money selling you support contracts for software that you've been locked into.

From what I can tell, Android exists so that Google isn't at the whim of Apple. The big G's greatest fear is that iPhones become the defacto smartphone, and Apple has the power to cut them out of their platform (by banning Google's ad networks and by setting the default search engine to Bing). I doubt the Android platform will ever really make money for Google.
Not really the same thing. The IPS screen on the Lenovo is just better. They don't need to have the TN option at all. The higher resolution isn't necessarily better. It makes the text smaller. Like the anti-glare option, it's a preference option not a better/worse option.
Not all of Dart/Dash can compile to JS.
This demo supports IE9 and Firefox 2 which don't have support for the html5 history API.
Here's a request that's unlikely to be fulfilled but one I'll make anyway: assemble an essay collection aimed at high school / college students. In my ideal world, it would contain in about this order:

1) What You'll Wish You'd Known

2) What You Can't Say

3) Disconnecting Distraction

4) The Age of the Essay

5) Why Nerds are Unpopular

6) Writing, Briefly

7) Why Smart People Have Bad Ideas

8) Good and Bad Procrastination

9) How to Do What You Love

10) See Randomness

11) The Power of the Marginal

12) How Art Can Be Good

13) Taste for Makers

14) Two Kinds of Judgement

15) Stuff

There's obviously some overlap with this list and Hackers & Painters. But I think this grouping would be much more useful for the general population; most freshmen aren't as keen on programming language discussions.

I often use the first three essays listed above in the freshman comp classes I teach, and they often yield interesting reactions from students. Sometimes we venture into "The Age of the Essay" and "Stuff." Students who are especially interested in why high school is structured the way it is often get pointers to "Why Nerds Are Unpopular."

If you know anyone at O'Reilly, you can tell them they'd get about 50 copies a semester ordered. That's probably pretty small time, but I suppose something is better than nothing.
To be pedantic, it wouldn't be "application/csharp". By the time it's compiled to MSIL bytecode it doesn't matter if it was C#, VB, F# or whatever. "application/MSIL" is what I'd say.

I can imagine it, and I guess my browsers already have three VM/Runtimes in them (JavaScript, Flash, Silverlight) but it feels so inelegantly top-heavy to have lots more.
How did we learn that lesson when Microsoft did exactly what you're describing when they created XHR, and now almost every website uses it? It took 6 years for it to become standard, and I almost doubt it would have if it wasn't already in every browser by the time it did. My personal opinion is that this type of behavior boosts competition and helps innovation. If it's something clearly useful others will implement it or become obsolete. Waiting for a committee to standardize a feature before implementing it sounds like it would slow the web down to a halt. Mind you I already consider it to be painfully slow just looking at how many years it took to get 20-30 new functions into JS runtimes.
The point is that just as XHTML is a format built over XML, there can be (and are) standard formats built over JSON. You don't need URL support in JSON, just like you don't have it in XML and yet you can still identify links in a format based on it.

For example, the JSON Activity Streams[1] is a standard format, supported by plenty of 'big names' (Google, Opera, Gowalla, etc), which defines a schema under which certain keys ("url") are to be considered URLs/links.

[1]: http://activitystrea.ms/
I find it amazing that the geekiest of all books ever written gets put aside in the geek canon in favor or space robots shooting lasers...
Unfair title--the redditor himself says that while his hypothesis is scientific and has some cellular evidence, it is still a more or less unproven principle.
I know they're only computer generated graphics, but maybe it's a bit miss-leading as to how it will actually look. Particularly like this

http://thesupergoodlife.com/2011/09/08/light-touch-projector...

Assuming the projector is mounted in the shelf, there would be quite a large shadow under where she is touching the wall. I guess the implications of this on such a small screen would be you'd have to pretty much figure out what you were going to press before you put your hand in front of the beam.

We have Promethean IWB's and short throw projectors at school, trying to use them with your finger for precise menu operations is a nightmare. I think there used to be a keyboard that did something similar but it had terrible reviews
Just take the holidays between the jobs. :) I took 4 months off between my last job and my current job, even though I would have had the chance to start immediately.

In addition, some companies here also allow you to take unpaid holidays if justified. Even with an additional of two weeks of unpaid holidays I would earn more money here in the US than in Austria (and the available jobs are much more interesting).
"particularly disgusting set of sycophants"

Yes but it's typical.

sycophant seems to be the norm for the comments at avc.com On this particular post I wouldn't call them particularly disgusting though. I've seen much worse. And in general any disagreement with his thoughts are very nicely said. You rarely see anything snarky or mean spirited.

People are hoping to get some of the pixie dust. I don't think this is really different than the halo that surrounds any successful person.

In the movie "Born Rich" by Jamie Johnson, Ivana Trump was interviewed (it took place 2003). She was surprised by all the people that wanted to be friends with her and treated her nicely. She said something like "I mean I don't have any money my parents do". That's the halo.
I wonder this as well. Experimentally speaking, Lisp does not appear to have been a great success. I still prefer it, but that appears to be a perennially minority viewpoint, not necessarily one always just on the cusp of winning.
If this idea is true, people who appear/feel younger in their old age should be more prone to get cancer. A testable proposition.
Is there any of your recent essays that you would include now? Were there any of your old essays, that in hindsight now, that you would include?
The Microsoft Surface is 107cm x 56cm.
I haven't done it, but I'd say the experience of looking at at atlas on it, with multitouch zooming, and the ability to turn on and off layers, compares favorably to using a library atlas, like in the OP.

Is it compact and portable? No - but neither is a library atlas. How long before this sort of technology is common place? Or a wall projector and multitouch setup?

I don't know - but I strongly doubt it'll take decades. Decades is an awfully long time these days.
I'm not a huge fan of the "unlimited" time. I've never worked somewhere with that policy, but it seems an unintended result would be that nobody knows exactly how much time is considered "reasonable". The policy likely sounds way better than it ends up being.

I say pick a number that you think no productive employee should exceed. Make that the yearly number, and make sure everyone knows that they will be encouraged to take ALL their days. Make the days expire after a year, so people don't feel the need to "bank" days. Then, everyone knows where they stand in terms of how much vacation they "should' be taking.

For the record, If I were starting a company now, I would make the number of days in the aforementioned system start at 20, and then increase with seniority.
I agree with everything that has been said so far, with the exception of the conclusion. I don't have a problem with zhoutong taking money. People putting their money in Bitcoin are investing in a currency that is two years old. Said another way, a currency that is younger than a $15 bottle of wine. All players in such a market by definition lack reputation, lack experience in handling currency, and lack experience in running a financial institution. Yes, zhoutong doesn't understand security and yes he is hand-waving. Yes, he needs to do his best to secure his app. Yes, he should invest money in an audit when it can afford it (if only because a security audit maps directly to better business for a financial institution). But do I feel bad for users who are putting their money into Bitcoinica? Not really. Trading in a currency that is only two years old is the NFL. Dealing with young and inexperienced financial institutions is part of the game if you chose to enter such a risky market.
Spotify to land a deal with Ford? | Front Side Bus
Native Apps are here to stay because it is impossible to build a certain class of Apps in the web browser.

There is no way to upload files on Mobile Safari. I'm told this has finally been implemented in Android 2.2. It's 20-frackin-11 and an App like Instagram is not even possible as a Web App.

App developers use Push Notifications to increase engagement with their App and notify users when something interesting happens. Ditto, for Local Notifications and Background Location. That's not even possible with Web Apps.

The new hotness in 2012 will probably be NFC. Web Apps probably won't have access to hardware data exchange for years.

And the list will keep going on. There will be new functionality in mobile phones released each year. Native Apps will get access to this functionality right away. Web Apps will have to wait for years to get access to this functionality.
I guess that’s an alternative but what if I don’t want to switch jobs all that often?

I personally need regular breaks. Irregular and really long breaks do less for me than regular breaks.
XHTML is great for web pages, but it's a poor format if you want to transmit very structured data. There's no way in X(HTML) to say "this is a user", "this is user X's name", "this is user X's email address", etc.

Frankly, if I GET an URL from your API describing a certain user's profile, and I get a blob of unstructured text, I won't use your service for long.

XHTML + RDFa is a different case, but that's hardly well understood, especially the specific ontologies. It's really no better ATM than using a custom JSON based format.
That policy is crap.

Any time someone takes vacation their team is going to move a bit slower on the current project. Commitments should be built around vacation, not the other way around.
maybe I just want to see contour and topo information, and don't want to see political boundaries.

well that's the thing - very few if any digital maps allow you to do simple things like this.

possibilities of digital cartography are much greater than paper one for sure, it's just that very few of them have materialized and gained widespread use yet.
Does anyone actually use the messaging?
Except for being in Nashville that is...
IIRC it was called Livescript.
I'm afraid it's already too late to make suggestions, but I would be really excited if Dart supported facilities to make unit testing an integral part of the language, taking into consideration the interaction with the DOM. This is something that would really help IMHO.
> it's typical.

... of the "real id" effect, under democratic conditions. The people who earn their living elsewhere don't care to risk it telling the truth, so you get the sycophants showing up trying to lick brownie points ...

Which just goes to show the Vivek Gundrota (real name, not the spurious Vic he sports) Google+ policy is dumb. And why the whole 'social' Google should be taken out and shot.
> We are now well aware of the problem and have since submitted a version that fixes the problem for the vast majority of users.

Well, you either found the problem and fixed it or you fixed something and now hoping it was what was crashing your app. Or you have multiple crash points in the app. If it still crashes - fine, you have more work ahead of you. Just don't try and twist words to make things look better than they are.
Plus, if memory serve, there is a spot on the taxes form to enter out of state purchase so taxes can be paid if due.

It is not the responsibility of the out of state merchant because it is that of the person who makes the purchase.
Maker of Steve Jobs action figure introduces Obama/Osama playset
Most of the time, if your startup is a side-project (IE: you have a full-time job), it won't be successful. Not to say that this is impossible.

I've found that when you are working full-time on something, your mind is in a different place. You can also move much faster.
Yes, but they do it on paper?

I mean, even the static scan of paper maps with dynamically resizable labels will often times do better than what we have on screens right now.
Slightly off topic, but does anyone know what isometric js engine they're using?
How I got a hot job with Globacom - Part 1
Have you ever built a trading platform before?

What if somebody gains access to your database and changes the financial transactions records? Do you store them in a way they can't be modified? Do you have a cron that constantly checks the historical consistency of your transactions, and if there's a problem, shuts the system down? Do you have a mirror DB or a transaction log running on an independent server, so you have a chance to compare if your DB got hacked?
Given that it is also a server side language this is not surprising or worrying. It's no different than node.js specific code that doesn't work in the client. I think it's just inherent to heterogenous environments. If they can do better than gwt I think they'll be fine.
Java is to Javascript as car is to carpet.
The slippery slope of eugenics....
Which article was this?
So very true. I struggled with that decision a lot, but ultimately chose not to. Mostly because of the impact it would've had on our adoption.
There was several native apss written before thte SDK was released. The game Trism was one of them.

I still don't believe Apple "was pushed into it by the overwhelming strength of the jailbreak community". Apple must have had it planned, even before the SDK and the Appstore infrastructure was ready. The web app-only strategy was retarded; no one wanted that, and Apple knew it. Still, consumers would never accept the walled garden model if it was enforced after native apps were allowed. Web apps were only a surrogate until the Appstore was ready, but they couldn't market it like that, could they?
Sometimes, the best startups start when you are dissatisfied with your present job, have nothing else to lose, but are smart, and have a couple of ideas you think are really awesome and a game changer. Check out this TechCrunch article where one of the cofounders of DoubleClick, Kevin O'Connor talks about the attributes of an entrepreneur: http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/19/founder-stories-kevin-oconn...

He lists a few signs of a successful entrepreneur. A desire for control and the ability to challenge authority are near top of the list. A way to detect the second trait? "Have you told your boss to shove it?"
If that's what you were trying to demonstrate then you were pretty far off the mark. The two programs are far from equivalent, and your Go code is just bizarre.

I think this statement of yours is quite revealing: "Your example is not the same, this is just a C-style single method." It's not a "single method," it's a function. Not everything is or should be about object orientism. It's not always the right choice, and people who obsess over making everything an object (those who think functions are a special type of method) are doomed to overcomplicate their design. (For example, there is no reason you should need to construct new objects to write cat.)

I'm confused as to why someone who clearly doesn't know Go would try so hard to discredit it. What's your motivation?
Love javascript. My friends brother works with Brendan at firefox. The fact about him being a genius is true.
Haha, well said, but I had an "awwww" reaction. One of my corporate mentors once scolded me (in a helping way) for having bad shoes & a bad haircut, and told me to pay more for both.
That's not really true. For the most part (no, this isn't true everywhere, but for the most part), the tolerances are a lot looser in web development, in pretty much all areas. Unless you're getting pummeled on inadequate hardware, your performance choices in the backend of a web site or web app are probably going not going to harm anything.

If you make bad performance choices on an iOS application, you'll create a stuttery, ugly mess (smooth scrolling in an iOS application is surprisingly nontrivial) that will--unforgivably--sap a user's battery and ruin their experience.

People are a lot more forgiving of 2ms greater response time on a web page than a web app that drains 4% of battery in five minutes.