skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
One of the strange consequences of writing about several mostly unrelated topics is that you pick up readers with quite different interests. Then whatever you write next, the ones not interested in that topic complain that you've jumped the shark. I doubt I've written a single essay since about 2002 when someone didn't say something of the form "pg was ok when he was writing about x, but I wish he would stop writing about y."

And incidentally, it's not the making money aspect of startups that interests me the most. I'm mostly interested in startups as agents of change. We could right now be in the middle of a shift on the scale of the Industrial Revolution. Or not; always hard to tell from so close. But there is certainly something interesting happening.
That's a shame. I wonder why there is no innovation in the education system like there is in other industries? I mean, montessori is considered innovative and it's like 60 years old? Perhaps a chance for a hacker or two :)

Given how fast I have seen young people excel when given the right tuition, I suspect we haven't even begun to optimise human learning.
"googling my name gives me someone else for the number one result, and that dude isn't even in the software industry."

You say this like it's a bad thing. I would say it was great news. The likelihood that people searching for you being confused is significantly reduced.
Thanks! Great resources, both.
I expect so. And every local authority. (In the same way that local authorities currently use "anti-terrorist" legislation to snoop on people to make sure they are sorting their rubbish correctly).
Yes, but they're not very beginner-friendly and not that user friendly.

I'm sure I'll use them extensively later when I get more into this.
We had one explode in someone's back yard here in Vienna (Austria) a couple of weeks ago, it felt like an earthquake to people within a certain area. Luckily, no one was hurt, it just left a huge crater. They also come across them frequently when doing construction work for roads - you hear it on the radio that the motorway is closed until the bomb squad arrives. Scary stuff.
Thanks! The courses look really good.
Agreed 100%. I have an idea that I want to build with Erlang.
Video is always good. Thanks!
Cloud Computing and Infrastructure 2.0
What do top rated diet pills have in common?
Are you combating with weight related problems? Are you in search of a solution that is permanent? You can find thousands of diet pills online. All the diet pills that we find online invariably claim to be the best and promise to work wonders, some of them even promise to reduce our weight in 14-day time or 7-day time. How realistic are these promises and do they deliver on their promises?
Better for the world? Probably.

I wasn't making a request though.
Because a person at college age learns different from a child.
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Short summary:
"Time to talk up the market. I have already placed the money I wanted to place while it was down." :)
try 99 designs.com for a logo design. There seems to be some good talent there.
Not merely nasty, but false as well. He says explicitly that he hasn't finished buying.
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I think 1960 called, and asked for its programming revelations back. Code as data is cool? Lambda is powerful? Well... indeed.
Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful

Excellent advice.

Buffett walks in great footsteps here. Wasn't it J.P. Getty that came out during the depression and said something like "Buy stocks. We're buying as much as we possibly can." ( I paraphrase from memory here)
It's good to be skeptical when reading commentaries, but it's better, when you're skeptical, to make more of a case than simply a slogan.

As I recall, Buffett went heavily into precious metals and bonds over the past few years. Now he's puling that money out and going to the market. Everybody else is buying precious metals because they're scared and selling their stocks. Looks damn smart to me.
I bet he's gettin something on the side to basically step into the ring of fear here and fire the flare of "now's the time". I don't think people really dispute that now is the time. The problem is the view point.

You basically have to put money in and swear not to look at it again until 2013. Because the day by day view of that investment is heart attack unfolding as the bad news isn't going away, the affects of the 700 billion dollar crisis, job losses, sub prime this, abused and reckless that, and so on is going to be on the fear radar for a bit.

You whacked the consumer with $140 oil a few months back saying hard times are ahead, and then you backed it up with current credit crisis, and then you watched wallstreet get bought by the government as everyone in their money proceeded to get to cash as fast as they could. You've told the consumer to stop spending get back to basics and thats happening.

Folks in lots of cash, aka Buffet are in hog heaven right now. He can throw a bunch of money in, go back in cryogenic freeze with Elvis and pop back out in 2013 or so and bathe himself in cristal. Day traders hanging out with cash are making by the minute deals only to cash out and get back in on the highs and lows of the game, cautiously as they are, they are doing that.

If you have funds to play, play, or throw it in there and rent out buffets cryo chamber, probably a good bet really.
To cut a long story short: ignorance.

Most people just don't have a security mindset. They are happy when it works the way it is supposed to.
I am serious and I already discussed this with PG.
The best explanation I've heard for the three states of consciousness (NREM, REM and wakefulness), and one that the evidence in this article seems to support, is the default theory of sleep. This theory states (counterintuitively) that NREM is the default state of consciousness. However, for whatever reason an animal can't remain in NREM sleep forever (in humans, only 3-4 hours a day), so at that time it will switch to REM sleep. When it has some need (hunger, thirst, sex), it will wake up. When that need is satisfied, it returns to either NREM sleep or, failing that, REM sleep. REM sleep acts as a "holding state" that conserves energy and keeps the animal out of trouble.

I'm not sure if it's the accepted theory for sleep. I couldn't find references to it by name in journal articles, but perhaps it has another name. I learnt it from Biopsychology by Pinel.
Number 1 would almost certainly cause some kind of war.
What happened there was a failure to learn from history. It's like the Irish Potato Famine. Conspiracy nuts like to think it was deliberate but the truth is that it was hugely embarassing for the British Empire to have a disaster like that in their own back yard. What sort of imperials think they can rule the world when they can't even deal with a local crisis? The far-flung reaches of empires are glamorous and exciting, but what matters really is the bread-and-butter stuff at home.
I agree completely. I have done startups before during recessions, and never had any problems because of them. Cofounders are a little harder to find, at least those who listen to the gloomy news and are scared because of it. However, good cofounders are easier to spot during recessions.
Apple's strategy from day 1 can be summarized in two words: just works. Given the choice between something that just works but doesn't suit the needs of all users, and something that only a minority will use that opens the risk of something not working, they will always choose the safe option. Which is fine, everyone knows upfront what they're getting.

Apple won't stop you running Linux in VirtualBox say, but they won't take responsibility for it at al.
Making transistors on paper
Spinning a good tale - Labs on a Chip
In 1930 Congress passed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawley-Smoot Tarriff Act

Did it work?

Anyone?
Anyone?

No, it did not work, and US sled deeper into Great Depression.
Because colleges select applicants by aptitude, and elementary schools by proximity.
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Michael Koziarsky (rails core team) interview
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I mostly agree. You have two choices with buying American stocks now: 1 - play the day trade game and squeeze out margins as the market is wild from day to day 2 - play long, buy great deals and hold for years.

The only people that can play option 1 well are serious traders that have tons of time, cash, and really know what they're doing (or just have dumb luck, but applies to anything you might do with money).

The only people that can play option 2 well are serious investors that have people that work for them to analyze which are best long term buys and mange them, oh yeah, and also have lots of cash on hand; cash you don't need to use a for a long time.

So although I do try to pay attention to when people like Buffet dish out advice, I also understand that few can play at his game.
Buffett is managing Berkshire Hathaway, which manages other people's investments. If you believe in his strategy, buy into his fund, don't try to imitate him.
I don't know, I was guessing that in case of liquidation, investors only get a fraction of their investment back.
The Belgians have the same problem with a lot of the shells from the first war lying in the forests - only most of them are actually gas shells, slowly rusting.
There are athletes who are great into their late 30s too, but it's still a young man's game. The article doesn't support the title.
Not necessarily. Berkshire's stock price is based on how well other people think Buffett manages money. And his reputation is pretty darn good right now.

There've been times - like 1998 - when Berkshire stock was very much overvalued, and you'd be better off imitating Buffett than buying him. Hell, back then, Buffett thought Berkshire stock was overvalued, and got rid of $20B of it in buying General Re. If Berkshire is selling Berkshire stock, it's probably a good sign that you should be imitating and not buying in.

...however, I don't think now is one of those times.
A word of caution: Don't invest if you can't sleep soundly at night. Buffet can probably afford to lose a few billions here and there, but you probably can't.
I would consider Great Britain to be the originator of western democracy. The earliest roots of this are in the English Bill of Rights in 1689. Admittedly it wasn't initially what we would expect from a democracy but access improved over time. When America was founded the version of democracy was undoubtedly a significant improvement but it would have been influenced by the British model.

Over time other nations have created arguably better versions (proportional representation for example) and of course the US and Britain have improved their system as well by allowing more people to vote.

Have a look at The Economist 'Democracy Index' you'll see that the US currently ranks 17th of all countries http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index.

I personally believe the Parliamentary system originated in the UK is more robust than the US's presidential system. In a parlimentary system the prime minister is immediately accountable to the parliment. Their party (or a majority of parliament) can chose to dump them at any time which means that you are less likely to be stuck with some wack job in power for 4 years.

I alse believe the lack of preferential voting makes it virtually impossible for any other party to gain significant traction or become president. The only choice is Rep, Dem or waste your vote. This effectively denies genuine representation to people who's views are different from those a both parties. The preferential voting system is resonable for this but in my view proportional representation is the curent 'state of the art' in democracy.
Because colleges actually involve the students in their education.... if only to a small extent.
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Unfortunately you can't imitate him with high accuracy the way you could with an ETF since they have a number of wholly-owned subsidiaries. That's also what allows their stock to get out of alignment with market value of their holdings.
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I have a huge amount of respect for Buffet and this article has some sound advice. But, I still don't understand if it applies only to stocks or to anything US. This sentence (2nd paragraph) "I've been buying American stocks. This is my personal account I'm talking about [...]" sounds like, I've done my share in helping out by buying equity and [I imply] you see how you do yours with buying whatever US. Correct me if I'm wrong.
You can get a good idea of whether Buffett thinks Berkshire is undervalued or overvalued by whether he uses cash or stock for acquisitions, though. When the stock is overvalued, he'll trade overvalued Berkshire stock for undervalued other stocks. When the stock is undervalued or fairly-valued, he'll use cash for the purchase.

Everything recent has been done with cash, AFAIK.
Ireland was never a british colony (apart from northern ireland)
Rivals’ Visions Differ on Unleashing Innovation
Stock markets oscillate between Facts, Hope and Hype.
We already have an n-tiered society, partly because not everybody has the same abilities and habits. Even if we were to redistribute all wealth equitably now, soon the same old inequality would reemerge.

The only real solution would be to hit every smart or talented person on the head with a hammer until they were equal with the dumbest person. Crippling the educational opportunities of smart kids is just a half-measure.
It's sort-of funny that the URL you've provided for an article about RISD is the printable version with no images.

For anyone interested, remove 'print' from the end of the URL to see the version with images (and yes, with ads).

Of course the formatting is screwed-up on my version of Safari, but still. :-)
Do I Look Like a CEO?
Yes, and I have no idea. We should see in 3-5 years whether that statement is true or not. I'd guess not, although I'm not sure to what degree.
I really can't see the similarity... rock bands are definitly more fun. I love what I do but this is definitly not a rockband.
I've always found that large competitors tighten up and don't release progressive new products during downturns. At the same time, new/small competitors are reluctant to start. That means there's no better time from a competitive stand-point. Now, investors will be reluctant, but if you are in a position to not need investors (self-financed), then I think it's an optimum time. Once up and running, with products released, the inevitable rising tide of the new economy will float all boats. Continue keeping expenses low and other disciplines ingrained during the downturn, and ride the new tide up.
Don't stop writing about anything. Write more on more diverse topics.
The anchoring effect is about the brain's inability to dismiss irrelevant information.
Having a quick glance at the website, I found it hard to grasp what wyUpdate is really about.

"wyUpdate Express is the free limited version of wyUpdate"

"wyUpdate Professional includes all the features of wyUpdate Express, plus the license to use the wyUpdate Professional Designer commercially"

Yeah, but what is wyUpdate about? Maybe you should include a 2-sentence explanation at the top, along with a more descriptive tagline.
The paper is largely about situations where parameterized queries aren't practical. See the section "Definition of dynamic SQL syntax template".
Nobody is attempting to create an equal society. The goal is to create a society where the less talented are not living in ghettos and robbing you when you drive by in your BMW.

Everybody should be helped to reach a certain level, otherwise you create a crime ridden society where some people live behind gated communities.

Wealth should never be distributed equally, and your attempting to say that I support that is a distortion of my words. Everyone has to have an equal opportunity, and a minimum of wealth so that he does not starve to death.

And I don't mean 'technically' an equal opportunity, but a real equal opportunity. You know, if I did not live in a country with a free education system, I'd probably be a mechanic or electrician right now. You can't take away my opportunity to be educated, and then say you are better off because you are smarter or more talented.

And speaking of talented - is beauty a talent? Is singing a talent? Is programming skill a talent? Who gets to decide who deserves to have this talent? Some random fluke of nature?

I'm talented in programming, but that sure as hell does not mean that I deserve a better life than some guy who is talented at nothing, but works and struggles every single day. Talent is the lottery, I got my share of this lottery, and some people just did not. I'm not going to spit on them and concentrate only on myself. I believe that every single person should have the opportunity to get further in life.
I'm not saying that I don't like the idea of web 3.0 but where's the reality? While its nice to believe that we'll all create APIs that will "talk" to each others APIs - currently we can't even agree on which programming language is the "best" much less the which data format should be used. I guess if we could get a standard set like the appliance industry does with electricity (120 Volts, 60 Hz, 3, 2-3 prong plug) then it might happen. I'm not even going to touch on the invasion of privacy...
As Buffet has mentioned himself, Berkshire has a serious disadvantage compared to a small investor: tons of cash, meaning it only makes sense to make huge bets thus limiting its choices.
I see where you guys are coming from, after doing a little research on my own I came across this post:

http://www.caffeinatedcoder.com/programming-language-trends/

That states that Ruby is not even in the top 10 programming languages.

So you guys definitely have a strong argument against using the popularity of Ruby on Rails.

But I just feel that there is an undeniable buzz and almost evangelical devotion to the Rails framework from its users. That energy could have been harvested by Google App Engine if they adapted their software to work around Ruby. I'd contend that while C# and Java are still really big for enterprise websites, in my personal little closed world, it seems that those programmers that are in GAE's target user base (amateur hackers that want to pump out quick web applications) are more prone to be Ruby on Rails or PHP guys. But I do not have any hard evidence to back this up, and you guys are definitely entitled to your own opinions.
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I wouldn't buy equity or debt at this point. There are companies with massive equity holdings who have bought credit default swaps to hedge against various losses. The CDS market is worth around 800 trillion at this point. Most of these contracts will work out without causing problems.

That being said, the last plunge came a day after the settlement of Fannie & Freddie for roughly 90 cents on the dollar. We do not know how much of a factor this was because we do not know whether the parties selling stock were cashing out to cover CDS liabilities. We do know that the contracts covering debt held by Lehman Bros are due to be settled later this month for about 10 cents on the dollar. Someone somewhere is going to eat major losses. It will be a good sign if we get to November without another plunge.

When this debt gets settled though, someone somewhere will have to sell assets to cover their debts. Assuming everyone is properly and responsibly hedged we shouldn't have major issues. But... uh.... 800 trillion is a pretty big number, and the incentive for CDS providers was clearly to gamble: take short-term payments in exchange for bearing risk and hoping you never have to pay up.

Frankly, if I had any US assets at this point I'd convert them into Australian holdings. The exchange rate phenomenal at this point and the shift will insulate against the coming crash of the US dollar. Things are worse than people imagine.
I recently quite my day job to be a consultant/freelancer in order to do similar things to what you describe.

I spend the majority of my time working for clients, still, but I get to charge a lot more than as an employee, which means if I keep the same lifestyle, I can support weeks without any work - or in this case, working on my own startup ideas. It's not technically a 'startup', because I don't want to take the plunge and go all-or-nothing, but being freelance definitely gives me a -lot- more flexibility to work on my own project.

This might be a good solution for you in the interim until you can jump straight into another full-time business venture?
Really? Read about the New York Police "Class of '39". It was the tail end of the depression, and the New York Police had 30,000 applicants for 300 positions. They decided to choose them based on an intelligence test. As a body, the 300 people chosen attained far higher status than average police officers. Four became police chiefs, four deputy commissioners, two chiefs of personnel, one chief inspector, and one commissioner of the New York Police Department. They had far few disciplinary penalties than average.

But you are no doubt right, had NYC chosen them on the basis of "diversity" instead, things would have been much better.
You'll need to consult some of the exercise posts for that. Take your pick.
My experience with App Engine is that you have to think pretty hard about sharding and partitioning - the hierarchy part of the App Engine data store controls which bits of your data live in the same place, and hence what can be modified in a single transaction.
The real genius in bittorrent does not lie in it's technological superiority, but in it's bravery and simplicity.

The idea that people will continue to upload the file after they have downloaded it seemed silly before someone actually did it. Using a http tracker was going against the trend that all the other protocol designers were following at the time.

Then someone made it, and it became a big hit. Just like YouTube - it sounds technologically silly before it is done. NOW it's easy to see how obvious it is, but before it was done, it was not the same way.

Bram Cohen is the polar opposite of Ian Clarke, and that's why his project is so much more successful.
Very true. On the web, it's not uncommon for free vs paid users to be 1,000,000 to 1. For desktop apps it may be different, but online, way over-hyped.
Exactly. Wake up every day without using an alarm clock, and take a nap when you feel the need to.

Unless you have problems with your sleep, this will ensure you are in your best mental shape, when awake.