skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Would it be different if hackers had the prestige of, say, a celebrity?

From what I understand, most super successful people work horribly long hours, but I suspect the feeling of fulfillment is also based on the social prestige of what they do. Computing is so ubiquitous (and also the cause of lots of frustration for some people) that those who drive the field don't get the recognition they deserve. Maybe the whole startup culture will change this, since the risk and self determination gives it more of a romantic flair.

At any rate, quitting, or even moderation, may not truly solve things if a person has a very deep love for their work. I think this adds a morally noble element to being a hacker startup-founder: it helps the whole field realize their true sense of self worth.
1. academic study of computer science is an indicator of interest not ability

2. Computer Science programs vary widely in what they teach and at what level, ranging from 'All you need is Java' vocational programs to 'You might as well double major in Math' theory of computing. Two people with BSCS degrees from the same institution may have vastly different levels of ability and accomplishment.

3. There exists a spectrum from EECS majors who can write any program and build the computer to run it, down to BACS who can code a form in VB if someone sets up their IDE for them.

4. Because the demand for competent programmers is so strong, smart people who trained in many fields find employment as programmers and often do better than those trained.

5. If I have to explain version control to someone who graduated from college with a degree in computer science; I discount that person's ability, and my estimate of the program they graduated from.
Tapinko=same boat!
I can't think of any real hackers who honestly think that this is required to be good at the art of writing software. That being said, I'd imagine that a number of very highly skilled software people probably have an interest in NOT working somewhere that fosters such blatant snobbery.
I wonder how long until the trust chain is automated? As long as the results proceed along the lines of logical deduction and statistics, it can be machine understandable.
not at all. GNU screen requires changes to your server. Also you would need to change screen and run it as root unless you're really smart (in which case you wouldn't need support now would you?).

Screen requires you grant access to both users to the server (auth issues), that both users can connect to the server (firewall issues), and doesn't provide any protection or auditing for the "master user".

In short, if you want simple and secure server support, you absolutely do not want to use a hacked GNU Screen.

Your question is somewhat analogous to saying, "why would I want to use GoToMyPC, WebEx, or CrossLoop instead of just installing and configuring VNC for free?"

ShellShadow is the simple, secure-by-default way to do server support that does not require any changes to your server, does not require you to give out auth credentials to your server, and plays well with firewalls.

http://shellshadow.com ;)
I hope your investors didn't pay by tipping you, or you'll only get about $200k :)
I feel the same. But I started to change my ways so I don't become too isolated.
A lot of times i couldn't login because I just forgot my password. Send Password recovery email is a must!
If you like, you can use Portage from Gentoo on OS X. It's not up to date for Leopard (which is why I didn't mention it before), but the option is there: http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/gentoo-alt/prefix/bootstrap-ma... - Though it requires slightly more then basic knowledge of a Bash (or $insertYourPreferredShell) to set up. There's also way's to use rpm5's on OS X - And there's patches to get dpkg working on OS X if you fancy apt.

But, again: Mac OS X is not Linux. Setting Portage up is a huge hack to hold things together though. So if you have the time to set a .deb or .rpm-based system up, you should really just get a Linux box to use instead and then take the time you saved and do something productive. At least thats what my experience tells me.
if you want to try google app engine as CDN, visit www.digitalistic.com/2008/06/09/10-easy-steps-to-use-google-app-engine-as-your-own-cdn/
great trick
they don't update correctly from certain blogspot blogs. maybe it's something on my end.
Fake popup study: Users are idiots? I don't think so...
you're right. in the paper he is simply doing F2-F1 to give the thrust without any mention of the surface area of the cone walls. he mentions constructing the cone to give a "reflection free transmission" which is impossible.

i guess junk science is right. oh well.

from page 6:
Note that the reflection-free interface, with matched
wave impedances , will ensure no forces are produced at the interface. <-- that doesn't sound possible.
Congrats guys!

Remind me - who else in our round got funded?
I wish that all these CDNs would list their prices on the sites so you can actually compare them.
Relax! People are just regurgitating the same stuff over and over again. And it is easy to get worked up by reading (intentional and unintentional) inflammatory remarks. If you like the product and think it makes sense for you, buy it.
Adium has an IRC plugin that you can build. And iirc, the Adium devs are aiming for IRC in 1.4
cool idea hopefully it will get some smart people to boulder.
well done guys.
what is $1million going to be spent on?
You're kind of asking two questions in one:

PHP or Python? and Framework or homebrew?

If you switch from PHP to Python and things don't work out, you'll blame Python. I'd stick with PHP.

If you use a framework and it doesn't work out you can just code away from the framework. I'd go with Zend Framework. It takes some effort to learn the router stuff, but never seeing another url that ends with .php is worth it on it's own.

Good luck!
That doesn't mean anything. The statistics on successful businesses might easily show that businesses that took money succeeded far more often than ones that didn't. And the overall statistics clearly show them to be +EV.

Just because there is a high failure rate doesn't mean the funding is not worth it for both parties.
Nice simple idea, but I won't be using it because it won't be as efficient as browsing headlines/summaries from many sites as once. Still, this could find a decent little niche.
Big ups to the Kirigins.
The PuTTY code base is not structured for "add-ons". You can only take the source and modify and release something new.

I can say from my experience developing http://shellshadow.com that the PuTTY source is readable, lightwieght and well structured.
Many thanks to Simon Tatham for such a simple and long-lived tool!!!
In world where the only potential money you could make from a startup is the company's actual income, a lot of things would be different.

They would have 2 routes. Your route: be a $200k p/m. The other is trying to find some other way of profiting from being popular. One that pays better then adsense.

Google does. People look at Google & say: Online advertising is a goldmine, anyone with eyeballs to sell is gonna make a mint. But Google is doing something different.

Eyeballs are worth money. Sure. But the going price for raw eyeballs (eg adsense) is pretty low. Google don't sell eyeballs (on search). Not in that way. They sell a processed eyeballs (eyeball soup?).

You could look at it like manufacturing. There's raw input (oar, coal, etc) that's sitting under someone's field. That go through a value chain from mining to processing to assembling to retail. The market decides where 'value' is created & compensates accourdingly. Sometimes, it's counter intuitive. For example, many manufactured goods that only have a small part (maybe 10%) of their value created in a factory. Retail usually gets a bigger chunk then you'd expect (often %50+). Here's an ipod.

oil_well----plastics------components----assembly---retail-----ipod

You can look at the eyeball/marketing complex like that:

eyeballs-----eyeball soup-------ads--------yahoo stores--salesman--sale

A lot of value can be created between eyeballs & eyeball soup. Based on the success of many businesses that have adwords at the base of their processes, there's plenty more downstream.
We received a Phase I SBIR in 2005 and we just got our Phase II, from the NIH. I've written 3 proposals, so that puts my success at 33%.

The posters who suggest it is easy money to get are cocky and I feel mostly wrong. The typical success rate for Phase I's are in the 10-20% range, and Phase II is higher, but not 50%. The problem is that each government agency has its own policies and success rates, as well, the judging is based on who else is submitting during the current cycle (and even when in the fiscal year the cycle occurs). Each agency has a certain set-aside $, so it all depends on how much they have and the scores of those you're competing with.

I think the biggest problem is that large businesses rightfully recognize that the SBIR/STTR process can be a cash cow, so they set up dedicated panels and proposal writers to vet and sharpen proposals, and then find a small company that can qualify and go after the $.

It can be good money (it is helping us enormously), but it's an arduous process. My best advice is to get a grant writer or grant coach who really knows the agency you're going after, and has a good track record. You will pay a few thousand dollars for help in writing the grant, and perhaps 5% if you win the grant, but it is well worth it. I found that just our coach's experience with handling the budget and now the electronic filing was well worth the fee.
Not thought through, but an affiliate program (Amazon) might make sense.
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Don't drive iPhone developers away, Apple
Anyone know what the valuation was?
I'm sorry, good point. Replace "web page" with any of the following: Facebook, friendfeed, myspace etc
Don’t use IP geolocation to lock out users
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China doesn't seem to have very good science filters. They're also funding one of the most hopeless AI projects I know of.
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I am not sure that return path is a startup...
I use adium.. but I like being nostalgic over gaim.
Google hasn't built another business yet to rival its initial search franchise.

How dumb is that? No one has built another business on the web to equal Google's initial search franchise.

That is very true. I think Google has a go at a lot of tricky markets. So when it doesn't crack them (eg knol) its all fingers pointed. But I would guess they expect some to fail. They are experimental.

Anyway, Search/Adwords/Adsense are still growing. They're in sight of monetising Maps & Video. I think there's a lot of potential there. I don't think apps will ever be a golden goose, but maybe they'll pay for themselves & create a decent precedent for a "freemium" business model.
Lots of companies have pre-release NDAs. That part is normal.

The abnormal part is not lifting the NDA even after the launch of the second major version of your product.
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ha! The good thing about moving to general purpose payments is that you can incent people to pay by removing the content if they don't. Free content stays free. So to carry the analogy, investors would lose the shares if they didn't pay.
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Google Offers $10 Million Prize For World-Changing Ideas
I second ahpeeyam's point. "...as long as they are getting what they want..."

In my surrounding I meet a lot of people everyday who dont even know youtube. Why consider youtube, the address bar... They are clueless as to what to type in. All they know is www.google.com for info. When they search they are happy to find the info they need whether its the link on the right(ads) or left.

Most common search keywords have quality advertisers. Now that most ads are of quality the user wouldnt mind clicking on them. We shouldnt be forgetting the fact that these ad matches are displayed according to keywords. When you search for "xyz tv", you might get a CNET review for it in your search results and an ad reading "buy xyz tv at $250". Now the action is dependent on the user. He might either read the review or buy it from the ad link or might even buy it from a search result page that read "at 50% discount" which might be an even better price.
I hear you. I have done the same for a couple of months at a time, and the interesting thing was that it happened spontaneously - it wasn't a conscious decision.

I do think that isolation partly exists within a person's mind, as I have felt isolated when surrounded by a roomful of people.

It's a part of our condition, a challenge that we must deal with successfully in order to hack on . . .
We have PEOs here in North America:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_employer_organizat...

I worked for Administaff, a huge PEO, when I was at a startup video game company. They are your employer-in-name on behalf of your employer-in-fact. So all your payroll, benefits, etc. come from them. It enabled us to not have an HR person (or any other non-development personnel) in the company until we were acquired, which is a particular benefit in a small, product-focused company.
hey if you've seen it no need to leave a comment about seeing it. I've seen it and loled again.
I am assuming that there where no QA measures. Interesting to see the level of quality they got without it.
fuck you.

fuck you.

lulz
Well, this was the final straw for me . . . it wasn't just this, this is now a pattern on their part, and I am taking my business elsewhere because of it.
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The new Zune stuff is looking really good right now. Like better than iPod + iTunes good.
If you want to trivialize creating a successful blog platform, I suggest you try it, and let us know how it's doing in 6 months

That's a bit of a strawman argument. I am willing to bet hard cash that the majority of web startups that fail do not fail because their programmers don't know enough computer science, or don't know JavaScript well enough (and the two aren't even really related).
i dont have ur email.. but mine is arjungmenon at gmail dot com
thanx for the advice
Yeah. If you haven't seen it, the guy who made this also made NowDoThis(.com). It's the sort of stuff I call "zenware": stuff so simple you can't tinker with it. It's great.
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Nah, that was his old shtick. Now, he just collects royalties and allows god-awful Simpson's Comics to be published.
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all the more reason to stabilize the dollar at its current value. Its the inflation of the dollar that set all of this bad investment into motion.
Read 'Round Ireland with a Fridge'.
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I think this is interesting. I didn't notice any data in there about search engines, but I suspect that reading individual blog posts is wildly underrepresented, because many inexperienced people wouldn't be able to identify one in search results, but they'd happily consume the data therein when given in response to said search.

Depending on how the question was asked, I'd very definitely not answer yes to reading blogs -- I track zero RSS feeds regarding my trade, and don't visit any blogs at all in a direct fashion.
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You can be happy without being "normal". Normalcy is overrated. Balance, on the other hand, isn't. Go out and start meeting people. A good place to start is some sort of relatively geeky but non-computer oriented event. SCA, perhaps? Pick something on the internet, find a local group, and join.

Really, the thing is to frequently ask yourself "Is what I'm doing making me happy now? If not, is it somehow helping me be happier in the long term? If not, why the f--k am I doing it?"
Really? Wow, I respect this guy.
Has the iphone nda actually been enforced yet or even threatened to be enforced by apple?

Or is this an issue like the chrome license that says goog owns everything you type, but obviously they aren't going around taking my words?
My guess (and I'm a shareholder) -- down round, more opportunities for Kevin and Jay to extract value (personal service contracts, deals tied to the two spinoff companies, etc). Every employee and ex-employee loses.

The two of them have done a great job, at every turn, of hiding financial information from the minority shareholders. Meaning me most of all. The fact that it's a guess proves my point. I'm still fighting for 2006 financials.
You can only block technology progress from developers for so long before they find another platform.
The author touts the platform openness, but I'm not sure that we're going to see much come of it. Because hardware vendors are so selective about their platforms, it's entirely possible that we'll be obstructed from recompiling the OS for the phones. Another open source advantage is the ease of upgrading, or rolling improved (sub) sets of code onto computers. It's not unusual in the Windows Mobile world to get a single upgrade to your platform, but I await HTC's behavior with regard to upgrades, especially beyond the first one, as products age.

If Google is holding anything back, or the hacking experience on the individual devices is substandard, the community contributions will look less like Linux, and more like Apple's Darwin project: there may well be material contributions, but it will pale in comparison to its true potential.
I'll be more interested once they start building a possible one.
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I'm having exactly this experience, of a lack of feedback, with proofs. It also seems frustratingly ironic to me that you can never be sure that a "proof" of the truth of a theorem is actually true...

I'm learning COQ (proof assistant), to make some aspects of it automatically checkable.

The feedback of programming is also encouraging and satisfying, and this makes it more easily self-taught, like a (computer) game. Unit testing builds on this.

PS: My proofs are part of my compsci PhD, which began without any maths; so I choose a supervisor has some knowledge of proofs but isn't very experienced in them. Perhaps more guidance with proofs could really help...? Things are finally coming together for, but I keep stumbling on what I think are extremely elementary proof ideas (e.g. that f(AUB) = f(A) U f(B) ). My feeling is that rigorously understanding takes effort, no matter how good the guidance.
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He's a bit controversial - Gawker loathes him - but for me, all that matters is that he makes good apps. He's had his hand in some other big things, too: www.jakoblodwick.com has a partial list, and he was one of the CollegeHumor founders. (Talk about an increase in taste.)
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It has nothing to do with people rehashing the same details over and over. It's has everything to do with Apple's actions with the things people are talking about. I don't like their tactics, and I don't like Apple putting their foot in developer's mouths by saying "we're going to make the decision on whether or not someone gets confused by our application versus yours" and then trying to silence anyone who says "I disagree".
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You know, it's surprising that banks have never entered this arena seriously.
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Agreed. There are many things still not possible on the web.

Office/productivity apps? I'd say Google Docs is a far cry from the performance of MS Office or OpenOffice.

Likewise, 3d performance on the web is miserable at best. You might get a bit of help from Papervision or Java's 3d engine, but it's not suitable for large, interactive, 3d applications.

How about copying and pasting from one web app to another? :-)

I love web apps, don't get me wrong, but I'm agreeing that there are many times when they just won't work.
I am interested in Boulder....how is their college graduate program?
I'd second this. It takes a bit of work, but puts you nicely into a MVC framework and makes it easy enough to bring in developers/designers.
Developing in Django would be for a side-project, but if you write your app in a new framework, you'll find that you have to go back and fix most of what you initially write. It's not a bad thing necessarily, as long as you're not concerned with speed-to-market and (initial) code-quality.
As some others have said, do a small side-project (I'm sure you have dozens of ideas!) to get into the swing of python/django. Either decide what framework to use and start from there, or immediately begin work on your webapp while picking up the Django skills.

Good luck either way!
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It's because many people mistake learning a few programming languages as a computer science education. In fact, a degree in computer science education does not even include these things - they are assumed to be easily picked up in a students own time - just as they are in other degrees that require programming (math, physics, etc).
What a (good) computer science degree teaches is how to think, reason about a problem, and other theoretical tools useful in computation. It is more like a type of math than any thing else.
If gmail is still considered 'beta', the term has little significance anymore. I believe it persists mostly because of the PR bump derived from declaring the 'beta' is over.