skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Are you somehow saying that a band is in some way equivalent to a book?

A songwriter and a novelist are both instances of artists. Such is my point: there are more levels of entry for writers nowadays.

Songs are just emotional, they don't transfer any information.

Several bands I listen to weave complex narratives into their music. Similarly, several novelists I read transfer very little information through their novels. Your statement is not entirely accurate.

You can absorb ideas by reading that you cannot by watching movies.

Of course! But you must remember that the opposite is true as well. Movies can convey things that books can't possibly attempt to show. The same with music, for that matter.

Movies run at their own pace, books run at your pace.

Of course. But that's irrelevant to my argument, which is that the book is no longer the only place to which writers flock. If you're young and want to write, a novel isn't the only thing you can write anymore. Just as people with ideas for scenes sometimes write movie scripts now rather than plays. A friend of mine is like that: I write play scripts, he writes movie scripts. If movies didn't exist, he might have become a playwright instead. Similarly, somebody who would have been a blogger 5 years ago might subsist entirely on Twitter or even Facebook Notes now.

I would also mention the TV show as a counterpoint to what you said, wherein episodes become almost chapters. You can either watch slowly, once a week, or you can watch it in massive doses when the DVD comes out. I just watched Twin Peaks like that last week.

It's NOT easier to make a movie. A movie is a masive logistical effort

I never said it was easier, I said it was an option. And it's easier for movies to convey certain types of information.

Forming bands is just a trendy thing, but most bands I know produce silly music. They say banal things.

Look at Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields as a perfect example of somebody who uses the lyric to greatest advantage. But either way, that's not my point. People who want to write nowadays very often write lyrics. I'd say more write lyrics nowadays than write novels, or poetry. That means that the pool of poets and novelists is less, because people have more venues to follow through.

Writing is still the backbone of human thought. In whatever form it comes - the well thought out written word will always accompany human civilisation.

Of course. I never said it wasn't, or that it wouldn't. But words appear in multiple mediums. David Foster Wallace said in interviews that he thought the best-written thing of this last decade was The Wire. I think the best-written thing I've read was either Achewood, which is a comic, or House of Leaves, which borders on visual art. Things branch out, and that's the point I wanted to make.
Offline Wikipedia browser for iPhone now available in the App Store
Just like a multi-touch phone, you can hold the device with one hand, and gesture with the other. What's the big deal?
Yahoo firing 1,500 workers; 3Q profit falls 64%
Investigation of ONPRC Reveals Horrifying Abuse of Monkeys
Maybe it's just me but I would recommend that he start with a classic CS book and work back to python and the like. Something like "The C Programming Language". I learned more with a book like this than any modern ruby or python book. Plus the world will need C programmers for a long time. Knowing C is one of those skills that will be useful anywhere. If you know C you arguably can learn C++, C# or Java quickly and easily. And you'll have a respectable fundamental understanding of how computers work. Though I do agree that this is specific to this case. If it were a kid in high school in Northern California... it may be a different story.

The C Programming Language, Second Edition
by Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie

Turkish: C Programlama Dili, Sistem Yayincilik, ISBN 975322312-9.

http://netlib.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/cbook/
Lean startups find their moment
I am Brazilian, so I certainly empathize with your post. If I was you, I would actually try a different route: Why not teach him how to fix / troubleshoot computers first?

1) It does not require English proficiency nor a diploma

2) It's more fun for kids because it deals with hardware, parts, quick software troubleshooting (instant reward)

3) He can make money immediately by providing services to locals (the internet cafe, the local bakery, etc...)

4) It's a gateway job for customer support or even programming

You could be the sales guy for the local "IT kid", and help him to score his first "contracts" with local small businesses. Then you can coach him in simple troubleshooting, etc...
Interview with Google Policy Analyst Derek Slater
From TFA:

Up until this point we’ve been using either plain text, manual HTML, or Textile formatting. Depending on who you are it’s either fine or annoying.

Regardless of how awesome LaTeX may be, a tiny fraction of people even know what it is. You shouldn't have to learn LaTeX to use 37signal's products...
If you consider that, you have to consider the non-monetary benefits of being a football coach, which are probably huge.
yeah, but none of that conflicts with my 'sales subtracts value' theory, it just explains that people working at large corporations are more concerned with what decision looks right than what decision is right.

That aside, I've seen the same thing happen at small companies that just had a lot of money. In one example, the guy making the decision was as technical as I am, and owned a good chunk of the company. I wanted a cheaper homegrown solution. "Dude, that's your Porsche" I said.

I can understand why he went for the expensive solution instead (I was pretty young at the time, and prone to rash decisions and mistakes, and so was the rest of the technical team. The expensive product was expensive, but it worked.) Still, I felt he went with the vendor who looked good over the vendor that actually came out ahead in all our tests (and was cheaper, too... partially because they didn't take us out to lunch at fancy restaurants.)
Open applications on an open OS on an open laptop... now all we need is an open design of a high-tech factory.
I don't don't use Anywhere.FM for that. I use it to index all my music, and to send playlists to my friends. Lala doesn't do either.
Actually I think this is a real test. With phones Apple was in its zone. All the components needed, are their forte: Small electronics with appeal. Taking advantage of the availability of new hardware creatively. Simplifying user experience when & where it counts. Running an online outlet & making it some place people are willing to pay for 1s & 0s again. Creating a buzz that draws in the critical mass both for consumers & for developers. They have a massive advantage in these areas.

'Normal' mobile phone manufacturers (EG nokia), electronics manufacturers (eg sony), OS guys, all seem very disadvantaged here. I would have been very surprised if sony came out with a truly game changing product. Nokia & co. are (were) too into their paradigm with the 'partner' telcoms.Most likely they would have gotten bogged down into a situation were telcos operate the music/software shop side of things. I would have been surprised if Smartphone makers really focused on consumers.

All that put Apple in the ideal position to take this market to pieces. They're usually good at innovating this way. Less good when they need to deal with everyone else catching up. I think it comes bach to their software/hardware must go together. They don't need to wait for anyone to mke something that works. But complexes can make things that work eventually.

This is a good test. Personally, I think that the software/hardware combo is still an advantage in phones.
Interesting, but I wonder how helpful this advice is given the current market for raising money.
Freebase Hack Day, Nov. 8th. Learn How to Build a Semantic Web Application
Because the creator of Prototype works at 37 Signals.
This sounds a lot like what I experienced at the University of Florida.
The Engineering Managers Lament (Time/Quality/Cost paradox)
We're using the Freebase Platform for our startup, and we've been pleased with it. It's really easy to get started with MQL and the new application hosting environment (picture the Facebook platform, but for semantic apps...)

Help us represent the YC community! The Freebase office is at 2nd and New Montgomery in downtown SF, just a couple blocks from the BART.
I think your comment is a bit unfair, give him some time. It doesn't even have a version number on it yet.
Could be. If you tell it to translate to Spanish, it says "Inglés" (which is incorrect, btw, since it shouldn't be capitalized) or "francés", depending on whether you leave the period. But, if you tell it to translate into German, it says "französisch" either way.
typical middle managerial game in large companies where politics rule.

A lot of Managers want to add as much headcount as they can under them so they look more important, even though the aditional headcount is not really needed.
The Dumbest Generation Is Only The Second Dumbest Generation
"... WysiHat is around 1000 lines while TinyMCE is around 11000 (yikes) ..."

As @JoshPeek noted in the comments given the LOC is 1K making it easier to create a JQuery port.
Isn't that what reprap is supposed to evolve into?

Watching people try to enforce IP rules on physical fabrication ought to be entertaining.
Neat but I can't imagine what useful features would require me to wave my fingers around the phone instead of touching the screen.
8 Business + Technology Reasons to Vote for Barack Obama
Completely agree. My writing and thought process has improved a ton since I've been blogging. Even better, you get a chance to interact with people and discuss a deep thought more than a twitter message.
Apps for Democracy Launches - $20,000 in Prizes up for Grabs
iStrategy Labs in Partnership with the District of Columbia’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer are offering $20,000 in prize money for Apps that use the District of Columbia's live data feeds. I've been trying to think of some cool app ideas - there is a lot of data to work with. Maybe a social game that somehow incorporated city data to populate parts of it?
Maybe and maybe not. Prototype has some features built-in that jQuery implements as plugins. Personally I prefer jQuery + plugins.
It looks like a D20 at the end or something.
I'm sorry but I don't understand how a responsible bank, with no subprime holdings, can be "on the brink of bankruptcy" because their stock dropped 30%.
It's a lesson in the difference between translation and localization.

In this case, Google's approach confuses the latter for the former, because its corpus contains parallel texts that have not only been translated (into a different language), but also localized (into a different locale). For example, it may be extrapolating incorrectly from a French document and an English document with the following phrases in the same location:

FR Cliquez ici pour la version anglaise.
EN Click here for the French version.

This sign is another good example of how parallel texts are not always translations:

http://flickr.com/photos/jadelin/2205088201/

(the Japanese "おかえりなさい" here means "Welcome home")
Isn't about time the damn web browsers give us a native rich edit control already, the way Tim Bernes-Lee first imagined the web content editing would be like? Then can we have a file upload control that can be styled and select multiple files?
This is not a coincidence :P

I don't think UF is really very different than a lot of the other major football schools. Most of them are in pretty moderately sized cities, especially in comparison to cities with professional teams. Green Bay is the only NFL city that's college town sized.
What do you mean by national unity? Patriotism? A sense of community?
I read your post. I couldn't find any information on how much space this would take up on the iPhone. It most definitely is useful for me.
Agreed, though the to/from campus trips are worth keeping in mind.

Also, bikes need more maneuvering space than pedestrians. Not as much as rollerbladers, though. (Don't get me started...)
I think that's less and less true over time.

Watch the recent laptop intro and see Tim Cook explain how Apple now has 18% of retail unit sales and 32% of retail dollars. That's pretty impressive.
In your Japanese airport example I think they're intentionally not the same phrase. "Welcome back" to the Japanese people and "Welcome to Japan" to the foreigners.
You mean "great" from a design/usability perspective. Gates shipped products that were great in terms of fitting market need and expanding the utility of Windows. IE may have sucked to use, but it sure beat the hell out of paying for Netscape.
think he's saying that fully grasping the device as you would normally do would inhibit the sensors which appear to be lined down the sides of the device.
Yes, that is why it's not a translation, but a localization (you know, for the locals).
Exciting Commerce // Unlimited
I agree. What the majority of the mainstream media ignores is that they have the most popular sports site (yes, even bigger than espn), most popular mail service, most popular portal, top 3 fantasy sports site, and top 3 finance site.

So in short, they have a lot of good going for them. They just need to stop horsing around with bullshit social networks (3 failed tries to date) & the like and focus on what they're good at.
Jerry Yang Email To All Yahoos: 10% Of You Are Fired
Action Method: A Flexible and Intuitive Project Management System
Creative User Interfaces in Modern Web Design
There's more info at http://collison.ie/wikipedia-iphone, but to answer your question, it takes up 2GB of space.
Amazon Snaps Up Video Game Provider Reflexive
Online Video: Recession Proof?
What a linkbait title. Blogs aren't going anywhere, people are just figuring out what's appropriate on their blog versus Twitter/Facebook/[insert social network site of month here].

Personally, I see my blog and Twitter feed as two very different types of communication. Twitter, etc is great for quick little comments, sharing links, short updates of what's going on my life, questions to friends, etc, whereas my blog is good for more in depth posts like technical projects I'm working on, longer opinion pieces, tips and tricks, etc.

Similarly, I hate reading individual's blogs that simply talk about their boring day to day life, but 140 character chunks of that stuff is ok. On the flip side, there's no way to fit anything substantial (like my typical blog post) into 140 characters.

"A stand-alone commentator can't keep up with a team of pro writers cranking out up to 30 posts a day."

My approach is to not to subscribe to these kind of high volume "professional" blogs, but rather lots of little low traffic blogs.

I figure if there's something truly important posted on one of these mega-blogs my peers will inevitably post about it (on their blog, Twitter, or Facebook) and I'll find out about it anyway. Plus I'll see a huge variety of posts and little gems that never make it up to the big guys, rather than a zillion "xyz company released abc cell phone" posts on Engadget. I'm a gadget fiend but that shit gets old after awhile.

So don't let Wired and the mega-blogs discourage you from blogging. If you write something interesting the big guys will link to you anyway. My blog has been linked to from Slashdot, Daring Fireball, Ajaxian, TUAW, etc over the last year, and I only post about once a week when I have something I think is at least moderately interesting.

</rant>
There's a major incentive for the university that the article completely misses -- parking (spaces, security for lots, dealing with on-campus traffic jams, etc.) for the entire student body can be surprisingly expensive. I wonder how that compares over four years to the cost of one $480 bike. Also, if they're buying a bike for every student, they're probably paying quite a bit less than retail.
Disclaimer: TicketStumbler uses Twitter, Facebook and Blogging

What if you have people come to you instead of vice versa? For example, you never follow anyone on twitter you make people follow you. I agree that the spammers are a huge problem, but I think some of these tools can be used for good.

I raged about Comcast on Twitter yesterday and they haven't done anything. Bastards.
So, do you want to do more than half the things on the list, or not? Which ones do you want to do?
> Isn't about time the damn web browsers give us a native rich edit control already,

Modern WYSIWYG editors use an IFRAME with the property designMode="On". The problem that the actual editor solves is manipulating that. So browsers do have native rich edit already, it just needs to be summoned.

> Then can we have a file upload control that can be styled and select multiple files?

Agreed. Trying to create a usable file uploading interface is annoying, but there are some hacks to add Drag and Drop support and things. (Safari [Mac] supports D&D, not sure though about other platforms/browsers.)
Apple's Q4 conference call. They sold more phones in the quarter than RIM. Also, they've got more than 10M phones total in the market now.

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/081021/aqtu138.html?.v=47
He makes the mistake of thinking there's some limited number of blog readers and you have to compete against TechCrunch for them.

Also Calcanis may have quit blogging, but his posts now end up on top 10 blogs every time.
I remember reading about the troubles the 37signals guys were having with supporting textile in their products from this year-old thread: http://forum.37signals.com/highrise/forums/9/topics/802.

At the time I wondered if they might be considering developing a wysiwyg editor that integrated with their products better than what is out there.

I found the thread this summer while I burnt a fair amount of time looking at various lightweight markup languages and all the wysiwyg editors. I eventually just decided to put it to one side for now and maybe just code a few simple formatting helpers myself. I am very interested in seeing where this goes!
I've hired many a foreigner to work remotely, paying more than (USian) minimum wage. However, key here is comprehension of written English. (well, to work for me. And to work for me, you have to convince me that you are smarter than I am. I imagine those are different for other people.) I don't care about spoken English. Plenty of ways around that problem, I don't want to talk with you on the phone anyhow.

Of course, right now I have a huge number of options in my price range, so until more people catch on to this 'location doesn't matter' fact, he's got to get good before I will be interested. But there are many people willing to hire across borders.

Obviously, if he doesn't eat, that's his biggest problem. I don't have any good advice there. It sounds like you are up on the price/nutrition ratios of local foods. But to become a good nerd, he needs a computer. I remember my first computer. my dad gave me a giant book 'Upgrading and repairing PCs' by mark minasi. good book. he said read it, and he'd get me the parts for a computer. I did, I convinced him that I did, and a few weeks later the parts for a thoroughly obsolete (but completely loaded) 80286 were spread over my room when I got home from school one day. I mean, it was like '93 or '94, so even with the full megabyte of ram (it had a add-on ISA card) it was thoroughly obsolete. But it was mine, and I was able to get a shell account on a local BBS that had internet access. it was one of the formative events of my childhood.

Of course, I dono if it's possible to get 'free computers' in that part of the world. I mean, around here you spend some time looking in likely dumpsters and you will find some good stuff. (I have a friend who has a nice collection of obsolete RISC medium iron that he got out of dumpsters at the local university) I don't know how it is in Turkey.

I think learning how to be a support monkey is a very good first step (well, it's what I did first. And it was awesome. I remember I looked forward to getting out of school every day and going to work.) And it's usually an easy thing to get into, if you know a little bit and you are willing to work for menial wages. (my first job was fixing computers, but it paid maybe 80% of minimum wage.)

Of course, I don't know how much my experience applies. I grew up in America, and while my jeans came from the salvation army, and I've eaten my share of rice and beans, I've never had to worry about not having enough to eat. I do think that having a computer to take apart is important. Thinking of your computer as a 'black box' appliance is an expensive luxury.
Apple sells 6.9 million iPhones in Q4 of 2008
IGA Worldwide delivering in-game ads to 30 million users
clearly a flamebait ...
Upmodded for perfectly fitting an Office Space reference in to a conversation.
Let's say 'emerging market'.
Google Treasure Hunt winners abound
Yes. I used to get nearly all of my programming information from books or at least tutorials. Now I get nearly all of it just from resources scattered around the web.
if it's possible there, it's a great idea. It's how I got my start, though I grew up in the USA. I started by fixing computers for my parent's friends for a low fee.

the hard part for this kid will be acquiring the skills. he needs his own computer to practice on. If he can find 'junk' parts, those provide excellent practice (or, at least that is what I learned on.)

Long-term, something that can be done remotely might be a better idea, but after about three (paid) years of fixing PCs I was able to make the jump to Linux administration- it's a pretty common career upgrade path, and (at least in the USA) is commonly done by people with no formal education.
And you should be very careful not to create perverse incentives.
An Interview with Ryan Johnson
Where are you? I'm in Columbus and can't escape the Buckeyes.
There is actually a pretty detailed annual survey of VC-backed startup executive comp. The data covers the top 10-ish execs at hundreds of surveyed companies and reports it by revenue, headcount, capital raised, geography and more. If you want more info, check this out: http://www.altgate.com/blog/2008/01/2007-it-startup.html
Word count:

must 11
could 2
perhaps/maybe 0
fail 1

Doesn't it sound a bit too know-it-all? I would like to believe it because the idea looks good but the essay lacks evidence and observation. In particular, it seems to expect a very rational response from society as a whole. A very risky bet.
Unless the school is hiring them as consultants, etc it doesn't matter.
The email is refreshingly sincere, but I found the grammar amusing.
Every time I hear something like that it sounds like a good idea, then I remember: internet explorer 6.

It would work on half the browsers and need a dirty hack for the rest.
I lived in Turkey for some months, too. I can only confirm your observations.
NASA turns to the private sector as China flexes new space muscles
I mentioned this below, but I am at UF.

I remember when pg wrote his essay about what messages cities send, the only message I could I think of that Gainesville sends to me is something along the lines of "You should watch gator football." It was a harsh realization, because I do like it here, and now I really wonder if this the right place for me.
That is rather rude. This would be like getting the DEA to bust your 80-year-old neighbor to prove that the drug war is dumb -- you may be right, but it sure sucks to be whichever random bystander you picked.
Who said 'because'? I only see an 'and' in the original post.
Screenshots of Walmart’s New MP3-Only Store
Cybersquatters snap up Pasta Hut domain names
Google Tech Talk on Merb & Rubinius
JERRY, THE SHIFT KEY IS NEXT TO THE LETTER Z