skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yes. Though there are some interesting aversions. For example people seem to discount future income by 1/t rather than by log t.
UN World Population predictions for 2300 (page 84):

http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/Wor...

Two out of three models predict decline of population after 2050.
> You just can't make enough money from startups to impress people in NYC.

How many people do startups to impress random other people? Is NYC different in this respect?
"But the just-do-it model does have advantages. It seems the clear winner for generating wealth and technical innovations (which are practically the same thing)."

Today, wealth and technical innovations have separated quite a lot. A great programming language will make less money than the programs built upon it. I don't think this is entirely valid in the world of today, where open-source software is often some of the most innovative.
That "I invented RSS" line is utter bullshit of the highest order. Ramanathan V. Guha and Dan Libby of Netscape created it back in 1999. Do not pass go, do not drink the Kool-aid.
The Summit opens till midnight on most nights, which is still not as late as I'd like. It's really surprising, to me anyways, that this town really doesn't have a late-night culture.
Here is a reddit link that collects a few quants (from nuclear phynance mostly) saying that the labour market, especially the junior labour market, is tight and not likely to expand any time soon:

http://www.reddit.com/r/quantfinance/comments/jl5ea/there_ar...

If there's a SE, discussions on HN, thousands of MFE's being minted, and so many books on quant finance topics, you really have to wonder if the quant labour market isn't saturated.
Dave is a good example for HN, where there's too much aversion to self-promotion. See also patio11's recent post touching on the value (or lack thereof) of modesty: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3170766

FYI, when you invoke "truth universally acknowledged", people familiar with that phrase's origin will expect it to be followed by a bad assumption. See http://www.paulgraham.com/iflisp.html
except when they are
Yeah I'll definitely look into more things to do with the site :)
This is a good point, but begs the question, why is it necessary to start a new company (and depart the previous one) to pursue these ventures?

I'm sure I'm just oblivious to some legal, financial, etc. benefit of building separate company "entities" for each project but personally I prefer the idea of starting the next General Electric than a string of noun-deprived orphan companies.

Keeping your name associated with the trail you leave behind keeps you honest; perhaps this is what Steve was getting at?
or "Hey, look at me, I got a Knuth cheque". In all seriousness, what is there to gain from this article?
There was some discussion on HN about the Snap Web framework benchmarks relative to some other frameworks: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1380405

No .Net in there, though.
NB: none of these books actually teaches you how to trade.
I definitely do NOT mean to imply that the .NET GC is inferior. The very fact that you have options of how to manage memory at all in C#/.NET makes it superior to the JVM in that regard.

Admission: I'm am reluctant to want to work on Windows, though. But since that is the Stack Exchange environment, C#.NET seems hands-down the best platform for it.
Interesting... haha I actually stripped out the tagging features lol I'll re-add them
Steve Jobs did not just get a job at Apple and go back to gruntwork or managing a subsidiary. No, he took back the company and reshaped it.

If he had been unable to direct Apple in the direction he wanted after the reverse takeover, I doubt he would have accepted it.
Extreme Architecting
Apple's Siri? No, a Hacker News Voice Browser Sample Using boilerpipe Over .NET
The pharmacology of zombies
I still think you're giving up too quickly. It doesn't so much matter if some users are deliberately careless enough to install boot loader malware by hand despite all the certificate signing steps and ugly warnings involved. It is also beneficial to protect a Linux system from the same kind of pre-boot malware.

It seems as though you're saying since we can't get it 100% perfect, we shouldn't do it at all. I'm saying don't let perfect be the enemy of the good. If secure boot is going to exist at all, I think we'd be far better off if both Linux and Windows can take advantage of it, with control of the hardware in the hands of the users (or their IT department).
Empresas de Criopreserva��o
This, in my opinion, is how one manages to do what they love.
Is Self-Knowledge Overrated?
This Guy Hacked Nike for $80,946.42
See this thread with the same question for reference: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1447438

also this one: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1238906 with a comment by pg there
Access your Event timelines and OAuth tokens through the API - GitHub
Very interesting to hear what ad industry people say. And that even now the agencies are short-handed. I'm sure traditionally skilled and trained people are still setting the technical values. We'll there lunch will be eaten.
After reading it, I'm making time to attend Ad:tech for at least a day to look for work (UX, product management) and just absorb.
Oh, there are truely creative "creatives". And they are crucial. But the third rate me-too creatives will be optimized out soon, I venture.
Who among us is in advertising? NYC?
We have been using MongoDB in a production environment for almost a year and half now. It's great but there are some serious issues that you should know about.

1. writing locks the database. By database I mean the ENTIRE mongodb instance.
2. a query can only use 1 index at a time. You can create multi key indexes though.
3. replication is more complicated than it seems. We still have issues with the replication not working correctly when an instance fails.
4. A limited number of indexes per collection. I think the current limit is 64.
Interleaving document.write and appendChild can lead to... [2010]
Make study more effective, the easy way
Hardly... you still need quants to model risk-free valuation strategies (e.g. arbitrage) which is the majority of profits for HFT.
Whats your contact information? If you will, shoot me an email at rogerdjin@gmail.com
By wealth I don't mean money. You don't have to get paid for creating wealth: http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html (search for "open source").
Walk into a coffee shop in Palo Alto (say…Coupa). Pull out your computer, open your gmail or git or twitter. Now leave and try another shop. And another. Go try that in NYC before researching exactly which shop has WiFi.

This is easier to do in Williamsburg, Brooklyn than Palo Alto

edit: to prove the point, here's the free wifi list from yelp for wburg and greenpoint just to show how common it is

http://bit.ly/uAEJhd
Single nodes can die in the system without issue. They often do! Since we use IP multicast the network failure is transparent as a replica takes up the primary role.

The one issue to be managed with this type of system is exceptions in the business logic thread. This can be handled via a number of prevention techniques. First, apply very strict validation on all input parameters. Second, take a test driven approach to development; at LMAX we have 10s of thousands of automated tests. Third, code so methods are either idempotent, or changes are only applied at the end when the business logic is complete using local variables. With this combination of approaches we have not seen a production outage due to business logic thread failure in over a year of live operation.
I wonder how hard it is to swap peripheral chips in embedded solutions like this? And more importantly, are there any WLAN chips with good blobless drivers? Somehow it seems that they always have been a pita for Linux
This is a low-quality submission. It's a two month old, three paragraph blog entry expressing a vague sentiment, with links to low-quality sources.
Of course, Netscape's initial version of RSS sucked and didn't get much traction until Winer got involved. The history of RSS isn't a simple thing.
I don't think the vast majority of corporations do what you suggest. On the whole, IMO most corporations (private and public) contribute to the economy and society without being scoundrels.
Is your code on Github by any chance?
bro =/= male

being male doesnt make you a bro, females can be bros

if you don't understand what bro means then you cannot possibly understand the word brogrammer. if you do not understand the word brogrammer, then you are not in the right culture to be hired by this company.
I think Austin is the next tech hub. The weather is better than NYC, vibrant food scene, large pool of talent/graduating students, readily available cheap/24hr food and coffee (especially near campus).
If this is true (and I agree with you somewhat) what are the new MFE graduates from Asia and here in the USA doing with their expensive degrees if they can't find a job as quant?
This is true. It becomes second nature.

I have been doing this for four years basically working two full time jobs. It is not easy. During this time I have even relearned to code (Wrote some Java apps ten years ago).

It is not the ideal situation. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone because it's very hard to do a great job at both. Unfortunately I go back and forth when I'm succeeding at one the other usually suffers. When I'm succeeding at both at the same time it's usually because I've been working on the rings that are currently succeeding in alternating patterns for a long time and it just happens that it's finishing around the same time.

I have learned a lot and wouldn't go back and change much but I still wouldn't recommend it to anyone. I don't know from first hand experience but it seems a lot like those stories about someone working a full time job and going to law school at the same time in their mid thirties. Your life disappears and I doubt they'd recommend the same path to anyone else, but it can work.
He's making a subtle distinction because he objects to the word "entrepreneur" in this context. I see this as a valid objection; perhaps we should consider retiring "serial entrepreneur" for someone who does this frequently. What they're actually doing is building a business that builds businesses. A term for meta-firms might be good.
Could someone more knowledgeable about internet community infighting explain what the hell Winer is talking about when he makes vague reference to being ostracized, persecuted, etc?

Was there some epic battle that is so well-known that Winer doesn't feel the need to explain or even give footnotes for?
The Jobsian fallacy
This one is tough and I would love to be able to learn more from a mix of reading + assignments as well.

There are several books I would recommend:

1) Database Design and Implementation by Edward Sciore:

http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-EHEP00071...

This book teaches RDBMS from conceptual perspective up to implementing your own RDBMS (using Java albeit).

2) OS Design XINU Approach (look for the PC edition)

http://www.amazon.com/Operating-System-Design-XINU-Approach/...

3) Bunch of UNIX/Linux books

- The Design of the UNIX Operating System (M. Bach)

- Design and Implementation of BSD 4.4/FreeBSD 5.2

Unfortunately I don't think jumping to the most recent Linux kernel books would be feasible.

4) Look for any books that teaches both concepts and provide simple implementation of the said concepts.

For example:

http://www.amazon.com/Definitive-Guide-SQLite-Experts-Source...

Find a book that teaches the concept of Graphics Pipeline and try to implement it yourself: http://www.viznet.ac.uk/files/d39pipeline.gif

5) Check out the Java SDK (the actual implementation, not how to use the library) and HotSpot VM guides

- Concurrent, NIO/IO, Networking, Threading

- Garbage Collection, optimization, Class Loading, etc

I think the more you learn, exercise, and understand many system designs out there could help you to build your own "intuition" in the future.
btw Guha prefers to be called Guha...
There is actually a case where Sears paid consumers for permission to spy on them and the FTC did not agree it was lawful: http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/06/sears.shtm

EA is run by idiots if they think they can get away with this.
I REALLY want to try mongo for a side project I am building, however the single server durability is an issue. My data could easily fit in mysql/postgres however I am storing data that fits better in a document store. I am inclined to just use postgres for now because it's sort of silly to set up/pay for multiple servers for such a small project.

UPDATE: Apparently my information is out of date. Hopefully my confusion (and the answers below) helps someone else. Thanks.
Thanks for the thorough critique! Obviously doing all of this is a ton of work, so it's not going to get done right away, but none of this is inconsistent with our existing long-term plans for Twisted's documentation. I hope that if you do get forced to work with Twisted again we will have made the learning experience considerably smoother :-).
An absolutely fantastic presentation, although some of the pages aren't loading for me. As a non-Chinese startup guy who has lived in China for about a decade, my only quibbles with the stuff that loaded:

(1) As much as I love Beijing, Shanghai is better for startups that are in branding or sourcing. Shanghai has a more established local angel and VC network too, but the investment community is not very sophisticated, and even with revenues you won't get a decent valuation. Investors feed copycats because they are cheap to build and the business model is taking them public.

(2) It is not worth raising money in China.

(3) There is no culture of acquisitions and once companies establish a decent business model, the Chinese government usually intervenes in some regulatory fashion. This tilts the field in favor of larger companies and organizations like Baidu or Tencent or Sina, who tend to build-their-own as opposed to partnering.
Seeing how they raised nearly $10M in venture capital and sold for under $4M, it's safe to guess they sold because they were running out of money. The alternative was going out of business - that's a pretty hard landing.
What about the job environments? Which one do you feel more comfortable working in?

Even if there were a right or wrong answer regarding which position will launch your "career to [the] next level", you could still flounder in one place if you are generally unhappy with your coworkers, your bosses, the company policies/structure, location, etc.
Seems the same to me.
About honesty - decrapifying by telling the truth
Actually, I'm kind of burned out on the "bullying" meme. But the point of my comment had nothing to do with RMS, it had to do with Dave's level of self-aggrandizement. That some people on HN buy the "I invented RSS" lie is visible upstream.
Yes and no. Certainly compared to the real world, San Francisco is a place where you need a lot of money to do anything (or rather, to have a place to live) but the psychological factors aren't there. I can easily go into the best restaurants in town, drink at the best bars, hang out at the best nightclubs, and I don't feel like I'm out of place or that I could be having a much better time if only I'd spent a lot more money. That's not a feeling I get in New York, Los Angeles or (worst of all) Las Vegas (even though I'm keenly aware that I probably am richer than all of the folks who are trying very hard to look rich in Las Vegas).
Writing does lock the database (or at least the shard), but if the page is in RAM, that means you're locked for the duration of a write to memory, which is inconsequential. The problem comes when you try to write to a page that's not resident. In that case, you can end up (worst case) having to write a dirty page to disk to free up a slot, load the page you want to write, and then write it.

This can be really time-consuming, so one "fix" is to retrieve a document before writing it (thus guaranteeing it will be resident in RAM). More recent versions of MongoDB (2.0 on IIRC) also try to yield the write lock before faulting on write to avoid this problem (though it doesn't work 100% of the time).

Oh, and one other thing to be aware of is that anything that uses the Javascript engine in MongoDB is going to use the spidermonkey global interpreter lock, so you probably want to avoid those things if performance is a concern ($where, .group(), .mapreduce(), etc.)
For me finding something to wind down every couple days at the end of the day to bring me back to reality and out of the world in my head helps a lot. I wouldn't have been able to do it for as long as I have without it.

I watch movies. Lots of movies. Probably two a week on iTunes. I end up getting a little less sleep usually because I don't start them until 11 or 11:30 but it seems to help me keep my sanity.
Finance is a big draw for sure, but financial companies have a really bad reputation as places to work. Every hacker in New York understands that finance pays well, but otherwise sucks compares to every other place you might work - hours, dress code, working environment, etc. are all worse.

I will agree that people are generally more greedy here than anywhere else on the planet. And there is a certain segment of the city that only respects people with lots of money, certainly to a degree you won't encounter elsewhere. But that doesn't describe everyone in New York.

It is true that in some contexts people dress very formally here compared to other cities, but my experience is that the startups in New York have a dress code that is just as informal as startups elsewhere. If you saw anyone wearing a tie in an office, I can pretty much guarantee that it wasn't the office of a startup, even in New York.
MongoDB has had single server durability since 1.8. It's now on 2.0 and enabled by default.
Military Robot
I'd like to hear more about your usage of MongoDB and ElasticSearch. I am building something where it makes sense to use both on the Play! framework, which has modules for both.
Tracking Transience v2.0
Their Series A was 8.14M, which is a HUGE, series A. If they are getting acquired for $3.5M, assuming they have a little in the bank, this is not a good exit.

I am sure the founders are seeing very little of this money. The liquidation preferences "prefer" the investors.
MongoDB has single server durability since 1.8 with the journal. If you put the journal on an SSD, you can even get it almost for free performance-wise.
Does it matter so much, when you can put your servers in a local co-lo facility which will have fiber terminations for the big ISPs? As long as your office has reliable connections, I don't see the problem.
Except I wasn't talking about traction or the simplicity of history, but the assertion that Winer "invented" RSS, which is patently false.
afaik single server durability was a problem in the past. Since 1.8 they've introduced journaling and it's now enabled by default in 2.0
More info here: http://blog.mongodb.org/post/381927266/what-about-durability and here: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Durability+and+Repair
Managing your own email server can be quite a task. If you're sending millions of emails per day you probably need a dedicated team just for this.

Some companies will prefer to outsource the sending of commercial emails and to keep the transactional emails in house. This is exactly what my employer is doing.

We're currently evaluating SendGrid as provider and I'm quite impressed with their services. If you don't want all the vendor locking then you can just use the SMTP server. You don't need to worry about any configuration, they will manage your server and all you have to do is to send plain emails.

If you want more services and are not afraid of vendor lockin then you can simple enable their "apps" and you get link tracking, event notifications, google analytics support, open tracking, etc.
I disagree. This comment supports Dave's argument about as well as any comment I could imagine reading.
From these slides, it looks like there is even more of gap between China's 99% and 1% than the US.
Since SimpleGeo has raised nearly $10 million in venture capital, it’s likely that all or nearly all of the acquisition price would go to the last round investors due to their liquidity preference.

Very unlikely, the team probably got a chunk.

Remember that the acquiring company is shelling out several million and they really don't give a rat's behind about the liquidity preference. They want the new team to be motivated.

It is standard for the VCs to waive the preference during the negotiations (after much wheedling and whining). If they don't, the deal doesn't go down.
Of course, Carthage was teeming with about half a million citizens when he wrote that, and was completely destroyed by Muslim invaders four hundred years later.

Minor point: Tertullian was an ethnic Roman born in Roman-rebuilt Carthage.
From another post of his: "About open source and whether I have the standing to discuss it, I've made a huge contribution to open source with the 2004 release of Frontier under the GPL. I was releasing code long before the terms free software or open source existed. Even so, as you'll see, I don't believe in the boundaries, I think ideas should freely cross the boundaries, and they do." http://scripting.com/stories/2008/08/10/howViralIsGpl.html#p...

I had no idea what substantial contribution this guy provided. Turns out his company, UserLand, eventually GPL'd a content management system called Frontier
http://frontierkernel.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UserLand_Software#Frontier

While I personally have not heard of it, the author believes quite strongly in its importance.
Also doesn't help in this case that reddit loves steam and hates ea and origin.

And the article is 2 months old, what's up with that? Is this the most sensational article that can be found when searching for 'origin spyware'?
trevelyan - These are some great insights. I'd love to hear more from you. Can you think of anything else to share with us about China?
I'm pretty sure donohoe was being sarcastic. Maybe someday we'll learn that sarcasm is rarely an insightful addition to a discussion.
The amount of hype these guys had measured against the ultimate outcome just underscores that it is really, really hard to build a real business... and much easier to get press. Kudos to them for trying. This is a downer.
XpPhone 2 Shortly to get Windows Phone 8
> 1) You need an IP address in good standing. If you don't have that (if you are on EC2), you might need to sign up for an SMTP service (or sendgrid, but my concerns of using a nonstandard JSON API over the SMTP standard still stand).

You only need the JSON API header if you want to use their "apps". If all you want is to send simple emails you can just use their SMTP server as a real SMTP server.
Mortgage Rates: Low Mortgage Rates Still Stable Today, Lower Pricing Possible
Kind of off topic, but can you recommend some services similar to simplegeo?
Before reading this book, I had what I thought was a fairly solid grasp of computing. I was 19 (20 now), largely self-taught from spending nights on Google instead of going to parties, and if I didn't know the details of something, I knew enough about the concept to get by. I could program well enough in a few languages, talk about hardware, security, and protocols for hours...

I still had no idea how 10010011000110101001010 etc etc allowed me to play World of Warcraft. There was a small part of me that hoped beyond hope that computers were magic and there was some grand conspiracy going on to cover that fact.

Then I read CODE.

My hopes were shattered, but they were replaced by something much more treasured: Understanding.
HTML5 draft spec drops time element
caliander