skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Saying we should be afraid of the unpredictable is like saying we should be afraid of a meteor crashing into earth.

(1) We have no idea how likely it is to happen
(2) There's nothing we can do to stop something unpredictable
(3) If something unpredictable does happen, deal with it then

Despite the fact that I disagree with your level of alarmism in general, I won't even argue the unlikelihood of these profound cultural and social impacts you suggest. I will just continue to stick with my original argument that there's nothing to gain by fear or panic and continue to be right.
Learn new skills.

Additionally, sales skills are very transferable. I don't know off hand, but I'd look up the fastest growing industries and try to land a sales job in one of those. Obviously, read everything you can about the industry before applying to the jobs you really want. Informational interviews would be a solid path to pursue as well.
Excellent post, interesting to here the issues another startup has gone through... I get the complaints other have, but still thought this was an interesting read.
Of course, and I emphatically reject the premise of the question. It'd be impossible for any great company to exist without this possibility. Besides that, the best businesses are usually actually many ideas from many people that result in a great series of products. Read Built to Last. The whole point of a company, rather than a sole proprietorship, is for many people to work together for common goals.
Not always. There are times to put your head down and build (depending on team composition and what your business is doing, of course)

It totally depends on the product, but from the YC PoV, you have 3 months to build something that dazzles investors. Generally, YC discourages hunting for networking/bizdev/funding deals because you have EXACTLY ONE SHOT to impress a room full of the most important early stage investors on the planet.
Fighting Alcohol Bootleggers in Alaska
Notice the hat on the first picture.
Nokia 6100, 3100, 7210, 7250 and 6610 Lcd Connector Ways
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Do you mean Blank's emphatic appeal to unconditionally fire or everybody in "bizdev" in distressed startups?

Or his emphatic appeal to iteratively build a market for your evolving product rather than over-invest in engineering, miss your sales estimate, and fail to service negative cash flow in a "Noh play" of blame and catastrophe?
You may not be ready to be a CEO-- you CERTAINLY aren't ready to be someone's co-founder and partner.
Agreed. Adonomics eh? That's awesome, I was a huge fan. Are you in the Bay Area?
bans on alcohol but allowed to import it?
Why not just put a tax on it? Seems like it would have the same affect. Unless someones cousin works flying the alcohol in.
Defining Social Media Marketing
Dude, Where’s My Ad?
Neither actually sounds like a good fit, to me, but maybe I don't understand your definition of "site". Are you talking about something like Weebly, Blogger, Wikia, what?

The sub-domains stuff is actually pretty hard in every CMS I've ever used, so I suspect it's a challenge in Drupal, too. Besides that, I don't know that a community-style CMS like Drupal brings you any benefits, does it? By this, I mean, are users connecting in some way? It seems like you're just looking for a way to make scaling out to multiple machines a nightmare. RoR, also, is a CRUD building tool. It's really good for building CRUD apps. I'm not sure what you're building is a CRUD app...but, then, I don't know what you're building.

If you're thinking straight up, "build a website" in the Weebly, Synthasite vein, then you probably don't want a framework or CMS at all, except perhaps for the management layer (which doesn't have to scale much at all). Perhaps relevant: I helped a free website hosting operation scale up several years ago, and he achieved his 1.5 million websites scale from a handful of off-the-shelf machines (in 2001, or so) by deploying to static pages. He also could add new machines and re-hash without any trouble at all--no database was involved, except for the creation and management of pages. I believe Weebly does the same (and they're kicking ass with nearly a million websites now, and scaling up without even having to think hard about it, because they designed it appropriately for scaling).

I think maybe you need to spend a bit more time thinking through your problem domain before deciding what the solution looks like.
RWW Predictions Double: Facebook, Microsoft, & Pandora
>This is not to be confused with being unable to step aside for someone who is more suited for the position.

How was the other person not more suited for the position? The company couldn't survive under you, it might have under him. Do you care more about being in charge or having a successful business? Can you picture yourself working in a successful startup where you are not the CEO?
"Twitter isn't a hot new drinking game... It's a site that lets users post short text messages"
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The End of the RSS Full Text Free Ride
So...what's the joke?
Nanite: Self Assembling Cluster of Ruby Daemons
why are you asking a bunch of rookie programmers???
Online Backup: Encryption
His lifestyle is nothing extravagant. When I said that he's unable to support his lifestyle, I suppose I should have said that he's soon going to be unable to support living at all, without being on welfare, if he doesn't change professions.
i'm not sure how much more narcissistic the web2 crowd could get, but we'll take the post under advice!!
Similar to Aardvark, a Firefox extension
yes provided the person has an actual interest in the niche that you are trying to get into.
"Those kinds of activities (networking, sales, marketing) do not mandate exceptional intelligence, from what I have seen those mostly require innate skill and experience. Many people can network, sell, and market. Not many can code."

I still think this is arguable, you describe what separates star marketers from the rest is "innate skill" in this case innate marketing/sales/networking skill. However, I think I can equally make the case for star marketers. I'll discuss you're argument from the marketing perspective because its the area I'm most familiar with and feel most qualified to speak for.

Marketing isn't just a game of follow these rules and you will be successful, its not just a matter of experience either. If it were, marketing agencies wouldn't be differentiable and campaigns like Absolut wouldn't have cult-like status. Just as there is an so described "innate skill" for programmers I would argue that there is a similar type of "innate skill" that separates the best marketers from the rest. To say that intelligence on the same level as programming isn't mandated for marketing is demeaning to that profession as a whole and represents a misunderstanding of what really goes into a well defined marketing strategy. Admittedly, it may not be as quantitatively measured as programming, but that does not mean it requires less intelligence or is less demanding.

I do agree with your point that creating value is conducive to attracting attention, but by no means is it a limiting factor. There are plenty of historical examples where things of little to no value, when marketed well, rose to great success. (The pet rock, among other things)

I've done a fair amount of both programming and marketing, and while I don't claim to be a "star" at either, I still cringe when people dismiss one or the other categorically as being of little added value. It happens from both sides and most of the time just represents a lack of understanding of the efforts that go into either.
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Give yourself more credit. You have admirers.
Jerry Seinfeld's Keys to Success
If he has a good track record, he can probably sell his experience; he just needs to get out there and start networking in whatever field he's aiming for.

This advice is made on the assumption that he's in a major metropolitan area with the kinds of conferences and informal gatherings to allow a new start.
As an interesting side note, this sort of thing (selling off assets to pay employees prior to liquidation) is illegal in most circumstances in the UK and Australia (and likely in other Common Law jurisdictions) thanks to a Chancery case Parke v Daily News Ltd [1962] Ch 927.

In the case, all of the company's assets were sold and the balance paid to workers made redundant by the closure of the company's plant. The court found in favor of the plaintiff, a minor shareholder.

Put simply, Directors must act in the best interests of the company, even if doing so is to the detriment of employees.

Can't speak for California or other US jurisdictions, but it's certainly illegal here in Australia.
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Maybe I missed it, but what was the startup?
hah, the 2nd one.

I think the "death spiral" scenario Blank describes in the book (using WebVan) happens less often now, but still, people don't talk to their target market enough. Maybe this is why people who are making things for themselves tend to do well, they can skip this step and still come out OK.
It's also interesting that printwhatyoulike.com runs on Google's App Engine.
(See http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/2008/10/app-engine-commu...)
I personally tried to do this very thing and could not. I had a great opportunity to work with a friend on a startup. I did it for a while, but the fire was just not there. I eventually parted ways (on good terms) and pursued my own idea. I am much more on fire for my own idea. Selfish? Maybe.
This is a backhanded attempt at rationing. Unfortunately, its actually even more dangerous than the outright rationing of electricity. There are some applications where a CF simply won't do and a halogen is the best for the job.

If they must ration power, tell me how much power I can use and let me decide whether I'd like 5 CFL's or 1 traditional bulb on at any given time.

Governments are super-lousy at picking technology.
I'm sort of confused as well it was kind of cool and amusing but I don't really understand why it has had so many votes all day...
Which companies might prosper in an ad recession?
Stats for Rails?
Unicode specifies a "character", which is somewhat an abstract entity and is different from "glyph", which is a visual representation of the character. One character can be mapped to different glyphs. Usually glyphs are determined by fontset. In your case I assume glyphs of the snowman character in the fontset for the text entry and in the fontset for the text display are different.

It is a common experience for East Asians; the same CJK kanji character sometimes has different glyphs for Chinese and Japanese. It is still quite a hassle to fix all fontset to show them right (I gave up.)
I think it can use be adapted to use infra-red.
I agree with what's been said. You need a "..."

Can you truly get behind an idea that's not your own... if you have another reason for being there?

Yes.

I want to start my own company (based on my own idea) some day, but I'm learning hell of a lot (and saving up cash) working at another company, on someone else's idea. Getting behind that idea, even if I'm not necessarily passionate about it, is important, because that's the only way I'll do a good job and actually learn what it's like.

So yeah. I think it's important to gain some experience before setting out on your own. It's a safer route if you don't have people to fall back on if your first (or second or third) attempt fails
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Hopefully they will make the production as cheap as that of glass, thereby destroying the despicable diamond trade forever.
If you're doing the >40 hours a week purely for the money, then chances are you're doing it wrong.
George Soros: "Officials 'behind the curve'"- "This is the crisis of my lifetime"
I voted each one up.
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As long is the idea is something you believe in and you can make meaningful contributions and help shape the product/service, then yes, I think anyone can get behind something they believe in.

Look at how many religious people they are - they all emphatically support an idea that was not their own.
Hey, that's Paddington Bear on the Google homepage.
Are startup review sites fading out?
Absolutely your fault. You just can't see it. You wasted money, wasted time and wasted people when given everything in the world. You need to personally change by becoming humble.

if I suggest this to you, what would your reaction be:

- Call up all the old team members and apologise honestly, blaming everything on yourself

If you instantly thought it is something you would never do, then you've not learned.
You should admire more the people who have to work with me. ;)
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Almost human
You think Gates invented OSes or interpreters, or that Brin/Page invented search,.or Jobs invented the Walkman, or that Ford invented Automobiles, etc etc etc etc ad nauseum. Get real.
In general, in bankruptcy or "winding up" the unpaid salaries of employees come first, then creditors, and shareholders last. In spite of this general principle, I am sure many of us know of cases where employees worked for months without pay, and vendors or even investors got paid first, from the last dot-com bust.

The post uses the phrase "And paid everyone full compensation plus some extra benefits (like health insurance)" which I interpreted to simply mean that the employees correctly got their salaries and at least some of their benefits (they should receive all salary and benefits before investors get anything), which is often (illegally) not the case.

I googled the case you cited, but it doesn't seem to apply to back pay, but instead applies to the proceeds of a winding up being given to laid-off employees as a "bonus" instead of to the shareholders.

In startups, the issue is often complecated, because the same people are often employees, investors, and company officers, and I think the courts have some sense that anyone working for a startup knew it was risky, and treat those people differently from an employee at a big, well-established corporation.
Right now the jewelery grade diamonds are about 1/4 the price of evil diamonds. They don't have much of an incentive to make the jewelry grade diamonds cheaper. I suspect that even if diamond production gets to be almost as cheap as glass the price of diamond jewelery will still be inflated.
When the Market Says No, Listen
Nervous About Link Journalism? Ignore Web’s ‘Cesspool’ And Tap Its ‘Natural Spring’
Recession is the Mother of Tech Invention
My existential dread prevents me from working more than 40 hours a week.

The weeks I do more than 40 are followed immediately by a week of 20, or less.
The Future of Pop Music -- from South Korea
Maybe I'm slow but it seems to me that the language is never the bottleneck for web applications. It seems to me that the bottleneck is in the db which is language agnostic for all general purposes.

And anything that is slow with just Ruby can be solved by throwing money at it.
lol this is so cool, i had no idea unicode was so "creative"
Truer words never spoken. The valley is an incredibly small place, and your actions as a CEO, even a decade ago, are remembered and spoken of today. One CEO (who shall remain nameless) of a classic startup that I worked for 6 months at (so I have no skin/bias - I didn't hit my cliff - went to work for the next startup before getting there) - ended up not getting traction quickly enough, and, near the end, sold out to Oracle for $90mm.

The Common Shareholders (all of the employees) had their options completely wiped out. Totally worthless.

The preferred shareholders got their money out (which is fine, that's they are called preferred shares) - but the CEO, and a few of the founders who were no longer with the company, received multi-million dollar handshakes, even though they were common share holders. This was a Kleiner Company.

Lessons learned from this:

The CEO, regardless of whether he is a Common Shareholder, is not in the same class as you, and will be given preferential treatment. This particular CEO will be remembered by roughly 120 employees who have spread through the valley 4 years later, as the asshole that he is.

If you are a founder, you still have leverage in a sale, even if you aren't with the company. Keep your lawyers close by if a deal takes place for a company that you helped found.

Worker-Bees - Remember where you are in the feeding chain, and don't trust Kleiner to recompense you when they are exiting.
it's very funny
Other failures can not ever earn a record in history.
lulz I get it now!!
"Next was comparing Merb against other ruby options. Returning directly from the Merb router kills everything, but there aren’t many scenarios you could use that. Sinatra is just slightly faster than returning from the Merb controller, which both outperform Rails by a 3-4x. Rails itself still kills CakePHP."
Watch the

formatting

It stretches the whole page.
I thought that shareholders were supposed to be the last to get paid.
3.0? That's doing a great disservice to Indifferent Snowman Wearing Fez! This is at least Web 42.0
Speech by Dutch Foreign Minister highlights adaptability: pragmatism trumps dogmatism.
I still think they should have shown the kid crashing his bike at the end.
Versioning REST Web Services
Something about this site jumping the shark.
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Until you treat the string as a list of characters instead of as a list of octets. Then you corrupt your data horribly.
I can see the value in that, but I prefer a quantity over quality approach. When learning a new topic, I read as many materials about it as I possibly can. I don't worry too much about grasping it fully right away. I'll just survey as much land as possible. In the end, I have a much broader appreciation for a topic and have crystalized a far more sophisticated view of it. I also find that when I return to the earlier materials I read, they are much easier to understand.

I don't have time to print things...
I can see it being problematic that he was the only one doing it full time. That creates a sense of imbalance.
Bill and Steve — and Jeff (Bezos)
Weigh that against the fact that other people put actual money in; it seems like everyone had skin in the game.
Maybe, but the point is she was making a very comfortable living, then she wasn't. I can see plenty of weak-as-water social networking sites, etc, going the same way.
diamonds are common but the monopoly (De Beers) control the supply and nobble the compertition.
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This is interesting, can you expand a bit on this? Scheme has an EVAL as well, but surely no-one would consider droping TCO there.
They showed a bandage. Probably hes successfully riding after a crash(it coincides with the words) :)
This would encourage the wrong behavior, namely doing accounting shenanigans to put off the recession until your successor takes office.
<pedantic>Récession is a feminine noun in French, hence it would be La Récession</pedantic>
Awesome article... just wonder how applicable lessons from the South Korean music industry are to the US, where the market is roughly 30x bigger (according to figures in the article).
Also: http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/news/2008/05/seaste... (Peter Thiel Makes Down Payment on Libertarian Ocean Colonies)
>Founders should always be networking.

I don't think Wozniak did much networking. I don't know what would have happened if Jobs got mad at him because he didn't.
I read on the project's mailing list that an application that embedded the browser was accepted:

http://groups.google.com/group/phonegap/browse_thread/thread...
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These games let you dress up your favorite teen celebrities such as Ashley Tisdale, Myley cyrus and many other.
This is freaking amazing. I found a tutorial that was this same concept (a UIWebView wrapper on some AJAX), but I wasn't able to get it to work.

Luckily, I don't need to get my app approved by Apple. It's just an personal thing, so I should be able to use ad-hoc. As far as I can tell, it's running properly in the simulator. Now I just need to figure out the dev license.

Thanks!
I think the answer to this is obviously yes. Do you use email? Sorting algorithms? Automobiles? Can you not get behind the Internet?

Would anyone really say no? Maybe you meant to ask a more specific question?
I think we should name the recessions after men and go back to naming hurricanes after women.
Translate please -

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/gp4/benchmark.php?test=all...
This is more irritating than inspiring to me. Take the life of any prodigy and you can cherry-pick context-free moments where they appear shitty. Jordan, for instance, was passed over his first high school tryout because he was too short [1]. He heroically grew taller over the summer and owned continuously for the rest of his life, except at baseball.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jordan#Early_years
I don't know if I trust someone who doesn't know the difference between its and it's...
Dziuba is pretty damn smart

I've never seen any sign of this. Can you give me an example of something especially insightful that he wrote?
The answer is pretty simple. Use the language you are most familiar with. It's tough enough building an innovative web site without also building new language skills.
Whoa. Someone who needs 8 hours of sleep a day has 16 hours left. Considering that just the basics of eating 3-4 somewhat healthy meals a day and some hygiene can easily eat up 1-2 hours a day, your daily average of 14.3 hours is almost unbeatable. I take it you don't allow for that much sleep to be able to sustain your 100 hours. Envy! :)
Some weeks 20, some weeks 80. Going with the flow.

For years I tried to force myself. Work longer hours, be more productive, get more done, yadda yadda. Don't know about others but when I'm being forced -- by myself or others -- I automagically go into "stale mode" and refuse to do anything other than the most menial motions. Haven't really found a 'fix' for this but accepted that I don't work under compulsion (even self-imposed) and now go with the flow. I found that's the only choice left for me, other than completely resign from self-dependent work. After a relaxed summer and too much freelancing before that for the last 1-2 years I'm now only carefully and slowly going back to building stuff, and only up to the level that I enjoy doing it. It's been going up steadily ever since. But still a far cry from 100 hours a week, to be honest.
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Is there even one person who's currently living this way?
Innovation, the future and why nothing is ever simple