skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Should I quit college to pursue my dream?
-- Current situation --

* 23 years old

* no degree

* studying CS (first year in college)

* knowledge of C/C++, Python & Objective-C

* been repairing computers, cell phones (f.e. iPhone), ... since I was 18 (check my website)

* resentment against the way college teaches

-- My dream --

* building my own startup (eBay competitor)

-- Why can I succeed? --

* autodidact

* not afraid of working hard

* sense for UI/UX design

-- Why can i fail? --

* not being smart enough

* lacking experience

* being good, but nog good enough

* having no co-founder

* living in Belgium (the society in this country focuses on getting a good degree, not building a startup)

* finding no investor(s)

-- What keeps me from pursuing my dream? --

* fear of failure

* becoming poor if the startup fails

* not finding a job due to the lack of a college degree
It's simply a matter of education, access to knowledge. It's a slow process.

Organised religion fizzled away when faced with widespread access to the facts (though two world wars surely helped).
> If you stopped saying "everyone does it" then we could start punishing the dishonorable.

If you stopped putting words in my mouth, we might actually have a two sided discussion. I did not say "everyone is a liar" or anything that could remotely be interpreted to mean the same.

> Our entire legal system is based on the concept of honor.

What country is that? Is that the US system that a hundred years ago decided that corporations are people? Can you demonstrate what you mean by "based on the concept of honor".

> but at least back then people hid their skeletons in the closet.

People still try, by and large. They stay there for shorter, due to easier dissemination of information, but that doesn't change dynamics much.

> Now people just blatantly lie, openly engage in what would be called bribery at any other point in history, blatantly and proudly sell out the public good for personal profit, engage in the grossest type of war-profiteering, etc.

They always did, but these things were not as easy to track, as they are now. Can you point to a resource like opensecrets.org-like resource in 1900?

> Remember how war profiteering used to be a bad thing?

No. Do you? I mean, I think it's a bad thing, but I am not aware of any point in the US history where it was socially unacceptable. On the contrary - thanks to the "right to bear arms", weapons manufacturers were always "men of honor", and no one is more of a war profiteer than these guys.

> War-profiteers used to be hanged for treason!

Are we living on the same planet? Earth, 3rd rock from the sun? They would only be hanged by other war profiteers when falling out of favor with the politicians, who were often war profiteers themselves. And they still are, for a modern definition of "hanged". E.g. Rupert Morduch has recently been thrown under the bus after going a bit too far. And it wouldn't have been different at any other time in history.

> There was a time in America where if you committed fraud, no matter how "technically legal", you would be lynched. Until dead. And juries would acquit your murderer.

Do you have examples? Charles Ponzi, for example, was still admired when he went to jail, and wasn't lynched.

On the other hand, in the south they would acquit you for real undisputed murder, as long as the killer was white and the victim was black -- to the point that nowadays mentioning "jury nullification" in court would get you thrown in jail for contempt of court, because of how it was misused 100 years ago.

I'm not sure that how mobs treated people 100 years ago is how what you want to look up to.

forensic, you are incredibly naive, I think. You have an ideal of history, and you somehow assume it is an indisputable, to the point of being enraged that people disagree. Calm down, look around. The world is not dogmatic, and never was.
Should I meet a VC pre-traction?
At a certain level I agree with the OP, but only where "basic understanding" is something that can be decided between two people.

Characterizing whether or not my wife has an appreciation for the tools I use in my job as a measure of the strength of our relationship is, for us, completely invalid. My wife can barely explain what I do for a living. But she knows that I love what I do, and she's supportive within the context of what she understands.

This post really just speaks to how this particular person measures her relationship with her partner. Anyone else drawing out this singular aspect of a relationship as a gauge for matrimonial harmony is on a fool's errand.
Spent my xmas holiday playing Candypot so far. Very addictive game must try
Higgs Boson Born of Physicists’ Love of Metaphor
CFD Negotiation and Its Benefits
The emergence of CFD negotiation in trading business has opened the market in new ways of earning money. It opens door for people who are willing to engage in trading but do not have huge money to invest. Now people with huge and minimal money are almost of the same footing. But skills, strategies and experience will spell the difference.
CFD Negotiation and Its Benefits
This set up can be very enticing with the new investors because if they want to experience and test the market, they are open to choose short positions while the seller is not given such opportunity. This will allow the investors to have the upper hand and earn money regardless the situation. This set up is considered as the primary advantage of CFD negotiation because it is not entirely affected by the fluctuation in the market.
Are we bettering the human condition?
Why? I'm a native English speaker so maybe I don't get what you mean. This is a relevant point for all non US and it should be addressed.
Health Care IT Providers Need to Do More to Solicit User Feedback
Information technology (IT) companies need to bring in doctors and other health care stakeholders in order to ensure that new technologies and applications are actually useful to the health care system.
Hey, sorry I downvoted you when the post was just "O".

The lack of a socialised healthcare system is actually a boon in this case, since the state is basically getting rid of a large cost (funding the police work on the war on drugs) without creating another cost (since patients then have to pay for themselves). Isn't it?
Startups With More ‘Go-To People’ Lead the Pack
The original argument was against facile generations like "businesses ought to maximise shareholder value" and "businesses ought to aim to create more customers, which the author quite reasonably pointed out didn't apply to his own business ventures. If anything, it's a criticism of "sociopathic" maxims like Milton Friedman's infamous "there is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits": the implication is that other objectives like paying himself a higher salary, working less, giving his books away for free on the internet to help everyone learn Rails or aiming for abstract "socially responsible" goals need not be subordinate to supposedly universal business imperatives of growing profits or customer bases.

The ethical implications of limited liability laws (one ought not to take credit one has no expectation of repaying; one ought not to mislead investors) are a tangential issue; a list of things an owner ought not to do with their business (see also: sell crack to kids, sexually harass staff, murder competitors) can happily exist in the absence of some overriding objective business owners ought to follow.
> If they don't want customers (one, few or many), they shouldn't start a business.

Legally, there is no such a thing as a "business". A corporation or LLP exists to limit liability. That's it. "Business" is not well defined in the real world.

Is an HFT proprietary trading firm, trading its own money on an anonymous exchange, with no customers or clients, not a business?
Neuroethology of Parasitoid Wasps
Well it was more specifically that their service could not support the cost. Sounds like they would have paid if it had been less or their business was much more profitable. It is a big problem with this type of service where many uses are not directly revenue generating. The traditional model has been to try to get the sales team to price at what the customer will pay, rather than have list prices, but Google by the sound of this has not got a good sales team in place, they are not culturally a sales organization. They should perhaps try some sort of auction based pricing that works for this type of data service in the adwords model so it can become self service.

OSM is of course an excellent product for people who want to do more than the off the shelf google functionality.
I don't see it as a low quality comment.

If it's not very difficult to convince Monsanto of this, then please do it right away, if it has the benefit of ending the war on drugs. If you can't be bothered to do it yourself, then pray tell us the 5 easy steps to convincing Monsanto to start exploiting Marijuana and therefore decriminalise all drugs.

Unless you think, as I do, that the above is a fantasy and has no practical value as a line of action.
Montanans Launch Recall of Senators Who Approved NDAA Military Detention
Portugal is hardly the beacon of education and knowledge of the world, and yet they managed it. This is not a solution, it's giving up and saying "let's wait for it to happen by itself".
For those who don't know who "Sabu" is:
Sabu is an alleged leader of the hacking group LulzSec. He features prominently in the group's published IRC chats, and is a supporter of the "Free Topiary" campaign.

The Economist refers to Sabu as one of LulzSec's six core members and their "most expert" hacker.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabu_(hacktivist)
I definitely agree about the Google deficiency in sales/customer service. Their technical products and expertise are excellent, but have you ever tried to get anyone from google on the phone?

As they deploy more enterprise solutions, they will certainly need to provide better sales/support systems around those, or they risk losing market share like this.
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In the wake of Palm Beach County Black Foot Soldiers declaring Emmanuel Paul and David Slocum innocent of the rape of thirty six year old Switzerland race criminal Jenny Clark, sources with the National Network are declining to comment on whether they support alleged "Emmit Till Reparations Rapes" when brothers may be called by Allah to carry out "divine acts of vengeance against whites for their kind's failure to make restitution for their crimes against people of color all across the planet.
First I see that you are new here, so welcome.

That isn't much of an argument you are presenting though -- you could argue against a person being allowed to do anything based on that. The reason I can't drive a car the way I want is that it represents a clear and present danger to the health of third-parties. On the other hand running my business the way I want doesn't present a clear harm to others, so I can't.
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The idea has very much to do with different viewpoints.

Portugal wanted to remove punishments from drug users because they viewed it as a medical problem. However Portugal did not want to make a full legalization for then you end up with drug dens, the situation you try to avoid.

The only logical solution is to legalize usage and small possesion as a medical excuse. Then you ban larger possession and dealing.
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Transaction configuration and configuration with Spring 3.1 and JPA; focuses on the Java Spring configuration, in depth on transaction propagation and common JPA pitfalls.
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Thank you once again for detailed explanation. :) I am perl5 developer, but trying to keep an eye on all developments in perl6 :)
Guns/suicide.
How can the ideas of the open source movement help foster learning
Blogging for your business is worth it even if you get no traffic
Congress wants Twitter to block "propaganda" (political speech it doesn't like)
Why are scientists so dull? Because interesting people are selected against.
Link: http://www.mjt.org/exhibits/foundation_collections/stink_ant...
The US has so many problems - high gun ownership, no socialized health care, still has corporal punishment, etc etc. Not sure legalizing drugs would be a good idea until some of the other problems are addressed first.

How can we get Americans to put their guns away?
the fact that the US (and many other countries) still pursue a war on drugs is to me a display of a fundamental flaw in politics. even though every sane person has to acknowledge that legalizing drugs in part is more effective than enforcing more rigid controls, only very few politicians would support such a motion. mostly because they become victim to a more conservative rhetoric and thus will be less likely reelected.
There are also dividends.
I like these fluffy articles around the holidays because the odds are good that someone you like to chat with that's smart but not in the domain is still relaxed from the day before, sitting with a coffee and actually has the aperture wide enough to have a meaningful conversation before the kids get up.

Dad's sitting there reading Economic Weekly or some such, and I make an amused cough while reading this article. "Whatcha getting into over there?" he asks, taking the bait I didn't know I set.

I tell him that the article is saying how the next thing in this cloud stuff is to start using the data, to sort it, get some signal out of the noise. He suggests that work must all be done already, must be a pretty common problem. He says he does some batch jobs at the bank he works at that sound like this.

I tell him, "Dad, how come both our basements are filled to the brim with crap?" He was coming over with a refill for my coffee but now I get a noogie at 32 years old for the jab. "I'm serious, why do you suppose that is?" He supposes I have some reason already figured out.

I tell him that I figure our basements are full of crap because it's real easy to fill a container up with crap, but it's a real pain in the butt to go sort it. Just like it's a pain in the butt for his computer core to crunch all the transactions to get his customer data for the online banking.

You can see where this went, I'm sure. I pointed out that his data is tiny and it still takes a while to crunch and sort it. I wanted, badly, to discuss NP Complete with him, but I think that "why does organizing the garage generally suck" was my Christmas metaphor, to keep the coffee cup getting refilled this morning.
I'm not in Europe, but there was a very striking fact presented on the local newspapers:

80% of those receiving "emergency" unemployment benefits in Uruguay rejected a job offer

http://www.elobservador.com.uy/noticia/214462/el-80-de-la-po...
As far as I'm informed (read: I cannot back this up with legalese), this is the case in Germany as well, albeit limited to soft stuff/marijuana:

- You are not allowed to buy it

- You are not allowed to sell it

- You can have a small amount of it in your possession, "for personal use" (declared as a maximum amount per substance, so that 'users' aren't in the same category as 'dealers' here)
The bureaucratic issues aside, it does seem, on the surface, absurd that we can't just view the money spent fighting the War on Drugs as part of a big bucket that we could instead just pour all over medical treatment.

Tossing the bureaucratic issues aside seems the larger problem.
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I, too, agree... for me, at least, I don't care that my wife really understands what I do (although she gets it to a point). For me the important thing is that she isn't bored by me talking about it :)

That is to say, while she doesn't really understand it, she will let me talk/vent about it as much as I need to. Just as I don't really understand what she does, but I'm more than happy for her to talk about it.
A friend shared this link on Facebook, and I read through the article. I was very interested to note that Richard Branson bases much of his argument on the reduction in drug use in Portugal since the policy change decriminalizing possession of small amounts of drugs for personal use and referring users to medical treatment. Is this the societal consensus in other countries? Are most advocates of ending "the war on drugs" trying to achieve reduced use? Is the worldwide experience (Branson also refers to the Netherlands and to the European Union generally) that fewer criminal penalties for drug use results in consistently lower overall use in the general population? How many drug legalization campaigns around the world make this the major point of the campaign, to reduce use of the drugs that are now illegal?
Isn't it obvious that bottom line need cash (not options) to meet their needs?
I expect it to appear one day and be something people want. I don't expect it to be something which comes out of asking people what is it that they want.

No offense intended. Just being sincere.
Ignore politics and start in the media and academia. Then pour decades of propaganda down on the issue and eventually your opponents will give way.

This strategy takes a long time, but there's empirical evidence that it actually works.
This is literally copy-paste from Time magazine 2009.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.ht...

Excellent work, Dick.
I'm not sure. What I do know is that from reading many stories about the "War on Drugs" that many dubious laws and judgments were made to separate people from their property and/or their livelihood.

We would also have a sizable chunk of the DEA disbanded (we wouldn't need them). We can add that to reduction of police forces around the US.

Where I am unsure is how the dependency of money works within the state system of the drug trade. I have a sinking feeling that there is probably the same amount or money moving around in the "War on Drugs" as there is in the drug trade in the US. My question then is, "What happens if we try to manipulate or disband this system?"

ObAside: I've seen this specific iPod bug before. When I click on an edit window, it will flash the keyboard up then down. And any sort of button click on the page submits the form. The only way I've seen to 'fix' it is to close and open the offending tab.
20 Mind Melting Examples of Light Painting
>If you believe in free speech, except for the speech you don't agree with, you don't believe in free speech.

Except that's not what I was saying. You have an opinion that differs from mine? You are free to state it and I will gladly fight for your right to say that. I just don't believe that outright lies (propaganda) and mere hate are a valid opinion.

I also said we shouldn't explicitly forbid it. It's just not worthy of extended protection and respect. I don't see how this means I don't believe in free speech.
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No, finish your degree while working on your dream. You will gain valuable information along the way, and more importantly form relationships that will help you in your future endeavors.

To be clear, I am of the standpoint that degrees are largely symbolic, but at many times you will be judged on this (Potential Customers, Partners, VCs). It is also reassuring to know you have a fall back plan.

Take the time to get as much out of your education as possible, and along the way meet and build relationships with as many other driven individuals as you can, and I promise you will find your time well spent.
Arnon Kohavi nailed it in one sentence a handful of monopolistic families control the country, and won’t move.
I wouldn't use "Mapstraction" the amount of Javascript to see OSM through Mapstraction is about 20 greater than Google Maps. Visitors to your site will definitely experience longer loading times.
This story has been submitted to Hacker News before with other URLs. It is important to note that the author himself was so dull (stupid) at doing peer review that he was sacked from his former position as editor of a highly speculative "scientific" journal.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/is-there-a-rol...

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100318/full/news.2010.132.ht...

http://journalology.blogspot.com/2010/05/medical-hypotheses-...

http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/05/medical-hy...

Most of Charlton's critics are actually a lot more interesting and more willing to carefully investigate interesting ideas than he is. They just work harder at checking facts.
Gut reaction, no.

Your competitors are huge and massively respected companies, like Craigslist, eBay and Amazon, which have network effects on their side. Unless you can grow in a niche (ala AirBnB ... but a different niche), and get very lucky, you won't beat them before running out of money. I doubt you will get funding, if degrees are so respected in Belgium.

Unless there's something you're not telling about your plan, it's too likely to fail, leaving you 24 or 25 without a degree.

It seems your main issue is "resentment against the way college teaches". College is like school - it's badly run, and sucks, but the people who say it sucks are just being losers. Just accept the BS, do whatever it takes to pass (including cheating, if it's the norm) and enjoy learning new stuff.
Navicat is a good option, far better than PHPMyAdmin imo.

One thing to be aware of though - when dumping a database, it doesn't use extended inserts when creating a backup file. This can have a ridiculous impact on restore time. For example, a 500MB database I'm working with takes about 10 minutes to restore locally via extended inserts. It takes over an hour w/out them.
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Should a startup which uses so much of Google Maps that it needs to pay be complaining that about poor salesmanship when it can't afford to pay? It sounds to me that both companies have monetization issues.
20 times is an exaggeration.

Yes, using an abstraction layer will of course add some size, but once you gzip and have the client cache it, it's negligible.
Solid points on all fronts.
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Another thing that will at least take a very long time to finally happen. I don't take drugs, not even legal ones, but it's logical.

Most people seem to start taking drugs, because others do it and simply because it's cool or rebellious (in fact I smoked for a while in my childhood because of that). I think most people wouldn't start and get hooked, if it was legal. To most people it's ugly the first time anyways.

Hmm, when making things illegal leads to consumption then we should maybe make vegetables and stuff illegal. :D
'Jobs' could be misleading. Maybe there are new job opportunities, eh that have brought forth really popular articles.
It seems to me that prostitution is de facto largely treated this way in the U.S. In most cases, they don't arrest the johns or pimps but they do arrest the prostitutes. Technically, both are illegal but enforcement has a tendency to be one-sided. From what I gather, proving a pimp has committed a crime is much harder than proving a prostitute has and although the clients are also breaking the law in most U.S. states, they tend to get arrested a great deal less than the prostitutes. (Just what I've read over the years. No source to cite, no stats to back it up. Sorry.)