skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Acquiring expertise in a field in order to start a startup?
I started Physics grad school this Fall, but I have recently considered dropping out in order to find a job in industry (I'd like to work at a startup). I know this could look really bad to employers, but I just have no motivation to continue my studies

Recently I've been working on a programming project on my own (a sort of video game), as a way to improve my programming skills, and I've been working on it with alot more motivation than studying for my Physics classes. I'm still fairly new to programming so I can't say I'm committed to programming over Physics yet

Anyways, the semester is almost over and I have to make a decision soon as to whether to move back home (Los Angeles) or stay in Austin to find a job. After reading Paul Graham's essays, I think I'm willing to take the risks involved in running my own business, or at least joining someone else's startup.

But my programming skills aren't that great. Most startups do not interest me (I'm not interested in Iphone apps, social networking, etc). But analytics seems pretty interesting.

Startups are usually done by people who are already very talented in a field of expertise. The problem is that I would like to get that expertise in some business area so I can then start my own business. That is why I would like to get some kind of programming job in a business that I think I would like enough that I can become an expert in it (ie Analytics). Therefore, I see myself as wasting time by staying in grad school.

The question I'm dealing with is whether it really is worth it to stay in Austin to try to find an Analytics startup (however, I haven't seen many job listings online for analytics startups), or just go back to LA and work for an analytics non-startup?
Source?

edit: did some googling and it's from the biography. This is what I hate about tumblr. It's all completely random stuff with no context, no sourcing and no discussion, just those pointless reblog "notes"

edit2: of course, biography not autobiography, dunno what I was thinking
I did this for about a year while bootstrapping a project and it was extremely tiring. Also, I had a one year old at the time. I recently abandoned the project for other reasons, but even had I continued, I'm pretty sure the pace would have burned me out sooner or later.

Now I've got the itch to pursue another idea, but I've got a 2 year old and a 4 month old at home so I'm a lot more wary.

I think if I was to have another go at it, I'd find a co-founder who has a similar family situation so we can help each other through the rough patches. Going solo with this kind of schedule and having a family life is a little maddening.
anyone watch this yet? worth the 50 minutes? is there a transcript?
Liposuction Cost
if you want to look more beautiful on the Internet is a great and safe place for cosmetic surgery with a good catalog of services
You think it's rhetoric to claim America is on the decline? Hard times are even being felt on Sesame Street [1]!

[1] http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/things-are-so-bad-...
I've come to realize that I'm an average programmer in the world of programming.

I'm not a rock star that knows how to optimize every slice of code.

However, when I go to other industries and bring my programming skills to improve their processes, I am basically a wizard in their eyes.
Updating a spreadsheet with quantities of desk lamps and keyboards sounds painfully familiar.

I would target businesses. Here's something to consider. With a home user, you first have to convince the potential customer of the benefits of keeping an inventory. Then you have to persuade them to use your service over a competing one, or a spreadsheet, or pen and paper. Then you have to convince them to pay you for your service, presumably, at some point in the future.

Keeping an inventory is already an established practice for businesses, so that first home user hurdle is cleared. You just have the remaining two: explaining why iKeepm is better than struggling with a spreadsheet (photos and reports are two features that spring to mind for me straight away) and getting people to pay. My hunch is that businesses, already persuaded of the need to keep an inventory, would be more ready to pay than home users.
It's not about time... in fact having less time helped me a lot to bootstrap my company, we have a few signups right now. And yes, this sounds 37signalsish.

I'd say it's more important to have co-founders that like the bootstraping idea too than having more time.

My startup, btw, is something like Punchd but not requiring everyone to have an iPhone, I built the web application (Python, Django... I even have some tests (integration and unit tests)), a mobile web app (JQuery UI), an iPhone app, web admin dashboard (stats, pretty graphs), etc etc.

All this in like 4 months of bootstraping, putting 1-3 hr a day (sometimes a lot more) and a saturday or sunday here and then. Seriously I think we have most of the features that Punchd or Five Star Card have and all this with my own money we own 100% of the company.

By far we're not profitable, but as soon as one client starts paying (next month, crossing fingers)... boom profit.

I don't know, maybe we have a very good work ethic, but we do fuck around a lot! (Hacker News, parties yay!)
Just tried to find a Snap HTTP header on ladygaga.com. Couldn't find it. Definitely curious, do you have any more detail about what they used it for?
sometimes the project needs to use existing php libraries or code, sometimes it needs to be portable and php is easier to host and maintain, and sometimes i just don't want to deal with setting up and maintaining another rails site.
I'm increasingly finding that using everyday metaphors is the best way to explain technical concepts to the technically challenged.

Only this morning the VPS platform at our host suffered problems, and the best way that i could find to describe the cause of the downtime was to explain to my client that it was like having a washing machine that was malfunctioning due to problems with the power grid i.e. an engineer had no hope of fixing it even though its the machine in itself that is malfunctioning.

His response was as follows (Edited for confidentiality)...

"...Ok thanks. So I guess we wait for them to diagnose and fix…?

Just out of interest, in the meantime (given your analogy), does the Host expect us to continue wearing our dirty panties (etc) because we couldn’t wash them or do they pay for us to get them washed elsewhere ie do they compensate us (financially or otherwise) for this disruption / additional time being spent? ..."
But there's no video output.
I suppose this will require an expansion board.
Style News Network Reads
The problem I see is this: How can anyone prove anything? Will they be entering exact factory numbers etc? I ask because one could easily include a bunch of very expensive laptops with stock photos / photos taken from a friend and then get "robbed" and provide this evidence. This might be the only trouble with attacking the insurance providers (although I could be wrong if there is a way to insure they actually own it).

In any case I wish you the best of luck!
Absolutely. I’ve expressed my idea a few times while trying not to spam HN. I, for one, would be most interested in paying to be able to see how an experienced coder gets a typical project up and running from scratch. Now, I gather most professionals have highly-customized templates, which may involve scripts, special setups and what not, so this may be a pedagogical challenge, but seeing a knowledgeable coder at work, preferably on bite-sized objectives and full of informal comments, would be an absolute plus for me. (I’m sure I’m not alone.)
Zuck laments leaving Boston for Silicon Valley
http://www.itworld.com/software/218009/mark-zuckerberg-really-doesnt-care-all-much-silicon-valley
Oh yes, sorry. I always get the two mixed up.
Vollara Scam Review? Do You Want To Build This Business Online?
The parent post has been edited since I made my comment.
Cool Photo Forum images
Why isn't it my right as a user to choose the closed software?

It's your right as the user - there's nothing to stop you from doing that. They simply won't help you with it, and any distro that does is deemed non-really-free (like Debian).

Don't confuse "right to do" with "right to being easy to do".
The new pages look good but I wonder how they chose the new featured extensions...

I created a fantasy sport extension https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cnnckoodldcbgegkml...
It was featured in the old webstore in the sports category

In the new webstore, it is buried behind random team-based themes (university of Texas, Philadelphia Flyers...) and non sports related extensions (geo chaching, body mass index...
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/ext/13-sports

Did they pick the extensions with the best looking banners ???
Good books for hackers interested in quant finance?
What are some good books/papers to read for someone who knows little about quantitative finance but would like to know more. More specifically, what are good books for those who have a solid math and cs background.
So true. This term seems to be abused more than ever now a days. I've seen too many people who are just starting a company (literally), throw this term around. It's not something to be proud of unless you have something to be proud of.
28c3 is the 28th Chaos Communications Conference.
Without wanting to burst anyone's bubble, I'm guessing that the words actually refer to a dose of serious palliative care grade painkillers.

I don't like the emphasis on "last words" anyway. When I'm dying (and probably not especially lucid), I don't want to have to cope with the pressure that any set of words could be my last and hence I'd better make 'em good. I think we should let everyone record their official last words ahead of time, just so there's one less thing to worry about when you're actually dying.
All Halloween Google Doodles From 1999 - 2011
For anyone else who found this completely opaque, it's about tickets to the annual Chaos Computer Club conference in two months in Berlin: http://events.ccc.de/2011/09/09/cfp-for-28th-chaos-communica...
You might want to edit the title and prefix an "Ask HN:" so that more people can respond to your question.
I'm glad to hear he made some time for family.
You do if you're expecting to push the person out of that name space due to better SEO, buzz, etc. (Burn karma burn)
Show HN: Quando.me - Never lose a contact again
This isn't hosted on Tumblr, it's Wordpress. And Tumblr's done lots of great work around attribution: http://staff.tumblr.com/post/1059624418/content-attribution
Building an app is EASY. Selling it is HARD.
Interesting that you say that... I've often though exactly the opposite on what I want to see.

In my experience, a project set up is such an un-common occurrence (it only happens once per project, after all) that there is really nothing special or customized about doing it. When I set up a project, I download and install everything as if I had never done it before. I don't use any special tools or scripts. I just use whatever the framework and plugin system I choose comes with.

My intention with this screencast was specifically not to show project setup, but to show the later stages of a project. I find most of the breakdown and slog through code happens after something has been in place for a while, and now needs to change - hence the need for refactoring.

... but, I do have some ideas that would play well in to what you're wanting. I'll definitely keep this in mind as I'm looking at what I'm going to work on next.
Free Computer Science University Lectures
Everything about Paypal must die. For a B2B customer experience I don't think they could perform more badly.
Yes, we do plan to allow style customization for the iframe content fairly soon. What kind of styling would you want to apply to the iframe content?
Yes, we do this right now. Three of our web properties sell effectively the same collection of products, but with different branding, somewhat different pricing, and different target demographics. Most of our efforts target just a few main properties, so the marginal resources allocated to the "lesser" properties don't negatively impact our focus to a notable degree.
I wonder what the rationale is behind letting the same link be resubmitted (especially after it's been frontpaged once)
Why Buy Red Hat Enterprise Linux?
Too foolish to fear failure
When it's below freezing in Chicago, I wear a wool baselayer, a long-sleeve fleece-lined running shirt, and a very light windbreaker. When it's 45, I wear a t-shirt and shorts :)
> I didn't say I didn't see a security issue

Yeah, you did: There is no "security exposure" that this plugs

> I said that security is not the reason for this "fix" - the effort required for secure boot is completely out of balance with the potential exposure this plugs.

The potential risk is massive. Malware that injects a hypervisor beneath the OS could be undetectable without external scanning and nearly unfixable for the typical user. Imagine botnets built like this. The OS is healthy, anti-malware says everything's great. Meanwhile the machine is being remotely controlled and no one knows it except the guy who's using it to hammer away as part of a DDoS attack, or using it to host child pornography, or whatever.

The effort required for secure boot actually seems quite small. The real effort is in making secure boot work for 3rd parties as well. That's a difficult problem because "I want to run some random crap in my bootloader" is in direct conflict with the "don't allow random crap to run in the bootloader" design goal.

> And if Microsoft is indeed pressuring vendors not to include an option to turn secure boot off, this is an ominous turn of events that would indeed force buyers to chooses carefully.

I seriously doubt that's happening.

> But as I said, I believe that those people who ask their tech buddies which computer to buy will be steered towards computers that give the option, or have no secure boot at all. This will ultimately force the vendors to discontinue models that lock down secure boot.

I agree. I think any vendor who sells a locked-down secure boot will see public backlash, and fix it in either future models or a firmware reflash.
I guess Coca-Cola is an evil company but China is okay.
Making Sense of 7 Billion People
I admit I haven't read all the comments here so I apologize if someone else has made the following comment. This story is nonsense.

Install Process Explorer (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653), launch Process Explorer, install Origin, launch Origin, log in with your username/password. Let Process Explorer run for an hour or so and filter out any results where the Origin directory is being read.

What are you going to find? Nothing.

Most of this outrage is based on a photoshopped screenshot in a BF3 forum, the rest is speculation, not based on fact.

Try the Process Manger experiment for yourself.
Gocardless could be a Paypal killer?
This is no tutorial or even an article on responsive design. It is a small collection of links, that seems to confuse HTML5 or iPad magazines with responsive design.

I think this is a fluff piece, with a catchy title, build around a buzzword, not around expertise or original research. We designers get a few links to the basics of HTML or irrelevant frameworks, could you even imagine the same happening for a serious programming article?
I agree with landing page optimization but a few more questions to consider: What are you doing to up-sell post-signup? Are you holding webinars, doing newsletter campaigns? The sign up process should also be so simple. The problem I see so often is trying to get too much info about the customer upfront. Are you sending emails to free users incentivizing them to upgrade? Are you giving away too much in the free version that there is no incentive to upgrade? Understand how your customers are using the free version and let them know how much more they can do in the paid. I agree that less than 1% converting to paid compared to the 18% is too large.
We do accept international credit cards, but unfortunately the person accepting money has to be in the United States. We're working hard to expand internationally though!
If you're interested in Haskell then yes it is a good presentation. In my opinion, Bryan is one of the more thoughtful speakers around.

Slides are here: http://bos.github.com/strange-loop-2011/talk/talk.html#%281%...

Navigation uses keyboard arrows.

He had a similar/same talk about a month prior and here is the video on Vimeo if you're not a fan of InfoQ's format:

http://vimeo.com/27192476 (Bryan O'Sullivan - Building Solid Distributed Applications with Haskell and Riak)
This is one of the Google Maps new features I suggested during my phone interview for a job in Google almost two years ago... their choice to reject my application didn't make much sense to me back at the time, but right now it makes no sense at all!!
I should have clarified: since he died. At Apple, his complexities were largely well understood; I can't speak for those who reported to him directly.
Which autobiography?
I always thought of him as a sociopath.

From your other comments we know you're not a troll and that you worked at Apple. So I find it regrettable that you can't say this here. Two forces prevent it: the taboo against speaking ill (i.e. objectively) of the dead, and the cult of personality. That's not to say that SJ isn't a fascinating character and the OP moving -- I feel both those things too -- but there's a lot of myth-making going on here. The author is a novelist. That's what novelists do.

Edit: not to share your description, necessarily. He seems too emotional to have been a normal sociopath, if there is such a thing. That's one thing I like about the OP - it dwells on the emotional side.
>There is no free or cheap with government, just a different distribution of payers.

Government can most certainly be cheap: If it runs all the schools, they don't spend money competing. It has economy of scale for things that matter that way, etc.

It's not always the right OR wrong way. Just sometimes.
"Launch a company and cash in" is what YC owes its existence to, for another point of view... From PG's description, it doesn't seem like it was exactly easy.
The crazy thing is that you hear people talking about how they've "started a company" when they haven't figured out how to make their new operation do the primary thing a company does, which is MAKE MONEY.

If you're not making money, you're not a company. You're a collection of people that might be a company, someday.
Fukushima nuclear plant could take 30 years to clean up
Are the Patent Wars killing innovation?
Paxos Made Simple
This is why Apple needs China
At the risk of making meta-noise, why, oh why, have five different people replied to this thing in a single hour? Does anyone think that some kind of lovely discussion is going to bloom by "refuting" this comment? Half the page is now about whether Richard Stallman is anti-American and anti-freedom for buying a Chinese-manufactured laptop. Is this a good outcome?

Seriously, just downvote (or if it's bad enough, flag) and move on.
re: number 4: the difference in reaction to coders vs. entrepreneurs looking for coders at local Ruby events has been amazing. I got much better reactions as a beginning but committed Ruby coder than the guys that were there looking for a technical cofounder to do that part of the work for them. Showing a willingness and real interest in the technology really helps establish a rapport, in ways that I wouldn't have even guessed at before I started learning to code six months ago.

I now think it's totally worth the experience to make the effort to learn, regardless of whether you plan to be a 'biz guy' or 'code guy' in the long run.

Also, re: point 3: no kidding. learned that the hard way in my previous life as a writer/photographer. I'm still trying to figure out how to get better at giving that kind of feedback.
For all their bullshit, EA has a point about Steam. I hope they get them to change their mind about in-app purchases.
VP Engineering Vs CTO
So what?

I don't know what qualifies as 'cashing in', but there's more to life than just running a company. Just because you've decided not to stick around for 20-30 years doesn't mean everything you did up until then wasn't hard work.
Story behind the Google Pumpkin Doodle
Yep, I absolutely expect that. Especially on the example page.
> This case in particular is a firmware load into a 3rd party chip, which isn't usually as bad a a binary driver

I'd argue that it's an entirely different kettle of fish. Once the firmware blob is loaded into the chip, the hardware widget works exactly like it would otherwise. If the firmware just lived on a ROM inside the widget, you'd never know it existed.

Protesting closed source drivers I'm all behind for the reasons you mention, but closed source firmware just simply can't aggravate me.
Perhaps this is nitpicking, in this day and age. But that's his biography (as opposed to autobiography).

BTW, how would you do things differently than reblog "notes"?
The Parallel Entrepreneur
I like it, I've done it... but you've really got to take Sunday off. Working seven days a week can only last a month or two before you start dying.
perhaps a ?! would be more appropriate. :)
What you're talking about are _much_ higher level books. They'll make you a better programmer for sure.

This book (probably) won't do that, but it will give you a more intuitive sense of how the machine actually _works_ at its core. This is not meant to be hands on stuff for someone who's programming at your level of abstraction.

Compared to those books you could clear this one out in a few days, and the benefit/effort ratio is probably actually better, although much less directly applicable.
This is really ground breaking stuff. You mean to tell me that instead of enjoying my friends and family and experiencing all that life has to offer, I can simply work on my Web app? Whoa.

Seriously though, why sacrifice so much for a mere 'side-project'? Either get a better/bigger idea and make IT your full-time work, or find a 40hr./week job that is fulfilling to you.

There is no other side project that will be as rewarding in the end as living your life freely with your family and friends. This is the last thing you should be sacrificing.
It really depends on where you are. If you've done a CS undergrad program you probably already know everything in CODE. But for a bright high school student or self-taught programmer interested in CS the only book I'd rank higher would be SICP.
You are flat out wrong. Not every tech product/company/idea comes together in a weekend, a month or even a year. Companies doing new science can go for years, and even decades, without even having a product, let alone clients or revenue.
How to get a Knuth cheque
The acronym itself explains it just fine. Quit trying to muddy the waters.

Much clearer: "We are trying to make it easier for Google to find your website."
Finding a Reputable Mailing List Company
The article is a repost of this Tumblr post: http://daslee.tumblr.com/post/12161787609/steve-jobs-on-star... (look at the "via" link at the bottom), which is apparently taken from the biography.
It displays link URLs when printing or converting to PDF.

"kit called Foundation" changed to
"kit called Foundation (http://foundation.zurb.com/)

See also: http://davidwalsh.name/optimize-your-links-for-print-using-c...
Also just come across this blog post by kentaro (PrePan author) from last week (was on hols so i missed it till now!): http://blogs.perl.org/users/kentaro/2011/10/introducing-to-p...
Beyond Arrington: Real Issues of Race