skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I guess it's hard for those literate on the subject of the depression to realize anybody out there still fails to understand it was a direct product of Hoover and FDR's economic interventionism. Hoover's strong policy reaction to the crash and then the New Deal caused the Depression. It ended after the war because the government was forced to roll back much of the New Deal in order to win the war.

Countries that did not much intervene after the initial financial crash recovered in the space of a few years. The decade long depression was more of an American phenomenon caused by FDR.
The comparison with programming languages is extremely misleading, because, unlike natural languages, programming languages do differ in the expressive power. An algorithm coded in Haskell or Lisp may well be 5x less code than an equivalent thing in C or Java. On the other hand, when a text is translated from one natural language to another the result is typically of the same length and typically there's even an almost one-to-one mapping between individual sentences.

To anyone interested in the relations between the language and thinking, I recommend an excellent book "The Stuff of Thought" by Steven Pinker. One chapter is devoted to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, more specifically, to debunking it.
Auditorium: Gaming via the process of discovery and play
Really cool concept. I donated.
The title is taken from this quote in the article and feels like a legitimate summary of the tone of the article, which is upbeat.

"Carl Schramm, the head of the Kauffman Foundation, a non-profit organization that promotes entrepreneurial activity, points out that start-ups tend to flourish in the year that follows a sharp downturn."

I think flourish in this context means "many are started" not "many are doing well three to five years later." I am a committed entrepreneur but I think too many blog posts and articles are encouraging folks who are not fundamentally entrepreneurs to try something that will likely fail and leave them worse off, not better. The penalty for this in your forties and fifties is much higher than in your twenties. Many of these laid off folks might be much better served to wait out this worldwide recession over the next year to 18 months by frugal living and part time work, not by spending any funds trying to start a business.

I blogged about this in "We Don't Encourage Individuals to Form a Start-up" http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2008/12/04/we-dont-encourage-in...
Although if the niche isn't "people who read Hacker News", then giving out beta accounts isn't going to get you much feedback from your target market.

I think the OP is asking for general advice re. running a subscription-based web app, which Hacker Newsians are very well p[laced to do. Since he's light on specifics, I'll throw out some questions here which have occurred to me:

- How do you determine your feature/price plan(s). And if using multiple price plans, do you release all plans at the start? the most basic plan first? the middle plan first so you can introduce a higher or lower one?

- How do you manage subscriptions? Which provider? Is Paypal as good as place as anywhere to start? Can any of them handle voucher codes (e.g. 50% off for first 6 months subscription, etc)

- Do you offer a 30 day free trial? If so, do you require credit cards at signup for the trial? If you don't require credit cards, do you just lock the account until they upgrade? I guess the conversion rates have been discussed to death but you're probably looking at <5% conversion from free trial to subscription. Right?

- How do you handle cancellations? Pro-rate the monthly charge or not?

These are just a few thing off the top of my head which would be useful/interesting for others to share
We Don't Encourage Individuals to Form a Startup
G1 is a T-Mobile trademark. These phones are from Google and HTC, so they can't use the G1 name.
> what solution this article is proposing.

If it's on reason.com, you don't even have to look at the article. The answer will always be "less government, more free market". They're boringly and religiously predictable, just like some people on the left always call for "the government" to step in and (magically?) fix everything. I think neither one is particularly intellectually stimulating and the ensuing debates have been acted out a million times on the internet.
Certain libraries (both standard and 3rd party) perform significantly better - in part because there appear to be some performance improvements in 2.6 which 3.0 also benefits from.

Standard ElementTree (pure python) is roughly 40% faster in Python 3 than in 2.5. cElementTree is likewise about 40% faster. A templating package I use runs 3 times slower on 2.5 than on 2.6 and 3.0 (similar performance on 2.6 and 3.0).

Bearing in mind that optimization work will follow on, I believe being "fast enough" is a good achievement for Python 3 and I'm personally pleased that performance will not be a roadblock for my own adoption. Where I can live on the bleeding edge I plan to.
Yes, if you are a beginner. I have seen many folks who start learning Java with IDEs struggle with issues like classpath. So, at least as a beginner of any new language, i would work with just a good editor (emacs/textmate) instead of an IDE.
I'm not trying to be rude, but some of tension in this situation seems to be caused by a clash of egos as much as by any technical deficiency.

In my current employment, there are many procedural deficiencies as well as technical weaknesses. But one thing that really is done right is that every piece of code that is merged into the source base is peer reviewed before it is committed. I'm a strong technical member of the team, and when I started I thought quite a bit of myself. Even so, I wrote things which were potentially confusing to my teammates. Not confusing because they are incapable of understanding, but just not having the sort of clarity which would make later maintenance easier for whoever would be tasked with it.

When I got some hard questions in code reviews I felt a bit defensive at first, but once I swallowed my pride (tastes like crow!) and realized that I really am working with talented teammates who want us all to succeed, something clicked. I was teaching others new techniques and idioms, and they were teaching me about teamwork and the importance of writing for other humans as well as myself and the computer. I do sometimes end up doing major structural refactoring of existing code, but there's always both a good business and technical reason for it. I will say that I put in my own taste and style, but there's nothing wrong with that so long as everyone can understand it.

In your situation, try hard to focus on the human element here instead of just the technical element. Have some respect for the people you work with - you should all be bringing a variety of experiences and knowledge to the table. I find it hard to believe that your boss is just trapped in the past and can't understand modern web programming. The fact that he chose Ruby and Rails for this effort indicates to me that he really is open to new ideas and opportunities. Hey, it's not CGI! You certainly have an opportunity to teach here, but you also might have an opportunity to learn something. Try to sit down and have an ego-free conversation about what's going on and see if you can find a deeper reason. Especially in a small startup, resentment and defensiveness can only undermine your collective ability to succeed. You need every strength that you can call upon in such an environment.
Are they mistaken in this case?
Microsoft launching retro t-shirt line
There is one and only one such mechanism that exists, reverse-billed SMS. Even then, the fees payable will often amount to some 25% of the total. What are you going to be selling? If its something you are expecting lots of repeat custom, then you could do as all the music vendors do and aggregate bills over some period of time. Or, if that is a bit too risky sounding for you, have customers charge their accounts up with credit first before shopping.
Ask YC: Review my webapp (crm/notebook/toy)
This is a very lightweight CRM/Notebook.

http://www.mucrm.com

A couple of weekends ago I built this (~20 hrs). It was at first for myself (just a notebook really) and it evolved into a bit more.

It now has some import features (gmail contacts via most recently updates, and plaxo contact widget, which will work with anything) twitter integration, and OpenID, which I think makes it very useful as a tool.

I plan on charging $1.50/mo, but I'm going to open it up to HN users this week to signup forever for free. (thanks for being beta users!)

I know some things that you're going to say, so I'm going to address them already:

-Yes, you can signup with openID.

-Yes, you have to signup before you can use it.

-Yes, it's going to get a complete makeover by a pro designer before anybody pays to use it.

-If you want to use OpenID, it will take you to the buy page, once you're there, e-mail me (mucrm@mucrm.com) and I'll activate your account manually.

If you want a regular un/pw account, just use the buy code 'hackernews' to by-pass the paypal stuff.

Thanks in advance
Do you think it will be successful?
Anyone who says they know exactly what went wrong with the current crisis and exactly how it should have been done is full of it, IMO. I think it will be years before all the facts have been digested enough to get a good idea of what really happened.

The best thing I've seen so far is this:

http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/10...

One inconvenient discussion the article leaves out is anything related to this:

"8. The critical deregulatory mistake was allowing excess leverage. Many deregulations get blamed but in fact contributed little to the problem."

They mention it with fannie and freddy, but don't mention it at all with regards to the big investment banks, which got an ok from the SEC to increase their leverage.

I don't doubt that bad regulations played a role in the problems, but attributing all the problems to the government strikes me as being simplistic, and an argument based more on faith than facts. Which was my original point about reason.com.
Gaming via the process play you say!? Wow.
I hope it does earn you a few bucks, but one piece of small advice--there's not enough contrast and that makes it hard to read. I like the design though other than that. Good luck!
I agree with cperciva's point.

There have been times I've been tempted to refactor something at Justin.TV, but most of the time it would be wasted effort:

- Sometimes you refactor a feature only to discover people aren't using it very much, and you should just scrap it.

- Other times you arrive at beautiful code and then find it needs to be discarded and completely rewritten in order to scale. If your traffic is growing exponentially, you'll find this happening a lot, no matter how hard you try to avoid it. Figuring out in advance what bottlenecks you're going to hit is often very difficult.

I think the right approach is to just write the best code you can up-front, and live with the mistakes you make. They're minor in comparison to all the other challenges a startup faces.
Sounds great. I'm in Prague and can't make this one, but let me know the next one and I'll do my best. david927 at gmail
> Anyone who says they know exactly what went wrong with the current crisis

The primary cause boils down to monetary policy. Financial panics are not new. There have been many, and they were all caused by credit bubbles. Regulatory details and the exact nature of the scams run during the bubble are quite secondary.
UK ISPs censoring Wikipedia
Entrepreneurship & public infrastructure investment
Need something 
I need something and don't know what kind of chat room this is. Am very new at this-1st timer. Can someone please help me and tell me what to do? Is this pro or con here?
What if EA has planted "kid's mocking video"?
Absolutely.

When I say that they take off in the presence of multiple people, I'm not just referring to multiple decision-makers or coders. Sometimes just hearing "Wow, I'd like to use that, when will it be ready?" is enough to push something over the brink from "forgotten idea" to "working prototype".
1) Time is money.
All the time a start-up invest in pleasing and answering VC's, it is time that they could have spending on developing or marketing their product or solution.

2) Maybe VC's will now have to approach start-ups and ask if they can help to grow the company.

3) Currently there are many small companies running out of money. Larger companies will buy them up at prices below the investments VC's have made. In many cases VC's never going to get their $33mio back on companies that hardly have a revenue of $10mio in a limited market.

(We're self funded: Engago Technologies Ltd.)
I have heard this a lot, and I'd like the other side to chime in: have there been any bubbles that happened while interest rates and the money supply were generally decreasing? Lots of people dismiss your view, but such a bubble would be strong evidence that they're actually right.
Technical Co-founder Hunting: We help small biz with SOCIAL WEB PRESENCE
This is a very interesting process…I have passion coming out of my ass to start a great business helping small and medium sized business take advantage of the social web, but it takes more than just a service. I currently am doing outsourced community management as a contracted service. It’s fun. Honestly, I love helping connect people with people and products with people but there needs to be more.

The problem: I don’t scale.

So, in order to help more businesses, to make more money, and to take SocialDreamium to the next level this is what I’m looking for:

A motivated developer…so simple. I don’t need uber hacker USA, but I do need someone who will be motivated to learn something if they don’t already know it. I don’t want to partner with someone who is stuck if they don’t know something. We need to have an attitude of resolve and growth and someone who keeps things simple.

This also will not be a project in complexity. Lets figure out the easiest way to build something simple. If it’s difficult for us to build it’s more likely it will be hard for them to use, us to fix, and others to build off of. If you’re interested email me at ryan@socialdreamium.com, on twitter @ryangraves, check out http://socialdreamium.com, or the blog called “Get audience, get going” at http://socialdreamium.com/blog and lets chat.

I’m pumped to get things going faster and further than they are now and I’m excited to find the right person to help SocialDreamium create meaning and solutions for small to medium sized businesses on the increasingly powerful social web. I can’t wait to hear from you!
But is it the same phone?
I really do pay myself first... I remove a large chunk of my paycheck each month and place it directly into savings.
All Faith Is Not the Same
We always wondered what brings a VC besides money and pressure?
VC's require time too (5% of your time).

If a VC can bring leads, customers or users, then he brings additional value.
If not the added value of a VC is just money.
I think retail medic clinics like those increasingly found in Wal-mart will be a hugely beneficial development.

There is no reason to pay a doctor $175 to tell one of his assistants to swab your throat for strep and stick it in a machine to analyze when you can pay a technician at Wal-mart $25 to do the same thing.

These services make sense for the same reason you don't take your car to an Automotive Engineer to change the oil or fix a flat tire.
First, you need to be nicer. Calling him "stuck in the past" and saying he doesn't get "basic principles" or "basic OOP" is needlessly insulting.

Second, stop blaming him. You're working for him, so obviously he has done some things right and deserves some respect. If you understand something he doesn't, it's your responsibility to explain and educate. If he is "very defensive" then perhaps you are bringing issues up in too confrontational a way.

Finally, be patient. Find some code that could be improved with better adherence to Ruby style, work up a changelist that cleans it up, and politely send it to your boss suggesting that you think this style has advantages, would he mind if you fixed it up? Show him how your style has advantages, point by point, and over time you will earn respect.
The Metasploit Framework - Security Tool Development Framework
How Your Company Can Build A Community on Twitter
the main page leads to "The page you are looking for cannot be found". So, not a good start, but these things happen.

Then i tried logging in with openid, and that failed too.

So, i can't try it. and I can't say your description of 'CRM/Notebook' really gives me a good idea of how you are differentiating.

A demo video would be great, and is pretty much a must have for anything that a user doesn't understand in two seconds.

I think you spend more on managing a $1.50/mo charge than it is worth. I think you need to take a closer look at your business model and pricing.
You should be able to figure out a way to provide a service and a way to monetize it where it is either free, or the user finds enough value that they would pay more than $1.50 for it. To me, $1.50 says that you aren't really valuing the app much.

Don't think about how much time you put into the app, or how much you'll make if you got 50,000 users. Think about it as how much value you are adding to your users and charge accordingly.

Are you the next SalesForce.com? I did a quick google search on CRM licensing and it seems companies are charging $10-40/month. So why are you so cheap?
?? You haven't stated what you actually want at all.

You can see what Hacker News is by looking at the front page and checking out some of the stories and comment threads. If what you want to offer or talk about somewhat matches what you see there, then you're in the right place. If not, you're probably not.
Yes its like Ruby's Hpricot and also Perl's pQuery. This jQuery way of accessing XML/HTML is certainly catchy!
Make sure to scroll right down to the bottom. For most of the page it feels like it's just some transparent proxying - which sucks but is fair enough.. but at the bottom an actual example of censorship is shown - specifically for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Killer (probably because someone complained about the non-pornographic but contentious image on that page)
I find that I use English for everything except 2 major classes of thoughts:

1. Art. Specifically, if I'm trying to compare some work of art (music/movie/art), I have a virtual "media player/audiovisual search engine" in my mind that quickly lets me locate other works that are similar, related, or otherwise relevant. This similarity is often on the basis of the emotional content of the work, but I find that I don't need to put the concept into words to locate it. To use your example, if I'm looking at something that provokes empathy, I'll think of other works that provoke the same emotion, but without ever thinking of the word 'empathy' (or any synonyms/etc.).

2. Science. If I'm trying to understand some scientific concept or if I'm working on something new (I'm a researcher), I find that I make almost no progress unless I can form a mental picture of the problem. Only after creating this picture can I do anything. Then most frequently I'll imagine myself "flying" through this mental model, tweaking it as I take into account various other factors, sometimes destroying parts and rebuilding, etc. Usually, I will come back to this same model over and over until finally I understand the concept or come up with some new realization.
"'Google is the only company we've seen that does this,'" Vizzacarro says. Google employees not using the secret OS are employing various versions of Unix, such as Linux or Ubuntu, and some older operating systems, like X11, he says."

X11? Linux and Ubuntu versions of Unix? Wtf? This shit is embarrassing.
"Cleanliness" [of code] is highly overrated.

Joel's article isn't about clean code, it's about rewriting entire codebases from scratch, which is not the same thing.

"Clean code" in general is hard to discuss because the costs and benefits of it are hard to measure or even make visible. I think in the end most people go by intuition. My intuition is that the costs of crappy code are higher than nearly anyone believes, so I'm fanatical about writing the best code I can. That doesn't mean I would go about rewriting an older module just for the sake of cleaning it up, though.
This article has no insight and says little. Just a warning if you're strapped for time.
He put himself in a state where the only options were more difficult than printf. Therefore he exceeded his own standard for real manliness, and remains a real man.

It seems like a simple transitive relation to me; are you saying his logic neglects transitivity?
Wow, was not expecting their office to be so lively and fun. Also very cool that the CEO of a company with $1 billion worth of sales works in a cubicle like his employees. Looks like a great place to work!
At my last startup we used PayPal exclusively. Why? Because we're in the UK and all our customers were in the US. This was less than ideal but worked surprisingly well - the money certainly came in and we only had a handful of "we won't use PayPal" comments from customers.

More generally, I've seen startups using authorize.net a lot recently - for example: http://letsfreckle.com/ - so they must have options for fresh startups.

I'd be interested to see any recommendations for the UK though. I'm planning to launch something in 2009 and will be using PayPal again unless I can find a better option. I'd rather have a more slick sales process, but the alternatives I've seen that can get me up and running fast in the UK for selling to US customers haven't been that great :-(
Visualizing Radiohead's House of Cards data
Important point: "Since the devices can be configured with system software not provided by or supported by Google or any other company, end users operate these devices at their own risk."
Forgive me...17th pic: http://blogs.openforum.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/zappos...

Granted, it's low-res, but "Damn."
The title is taken from this quote in the article and feels like a legitimate summary of the tone of the article, which is upbeat.

There are 8 paragraphs in the article. The concept of startups or starting a company is not introduced until the fifth paragraph. Since the focus of the article is not startups, the title of this HN post is a poor summary to me - it feels worded just to get modded up.
Is there a more coherent definition of "pornographic" in UK law than there is in US law, or is it approximately the same "I know it when I see it" as we have?
True of all games, I suppose, but did you play it? It's pretty fun.
Great inside view of a hyper-successful company. You know what impresses me more than all the shiny/fun stuff? The abundance of natural light.
"Without a lot of brand advertising"? How many ads do you think Tom Cruise buys to promote his personal "brand"? I think the relevant thing is the reputation, not the advertising that might or might not create a better reputation. The reputation is why Tom Cruise makes 50 000× as much as the actor in the community-theater play down the street from you. (Assuming they're even getting paid.)

When a producer is negotiating a contract with Tom Cruise, I don't think it enters his mind how much unknown actors in community theater make. I think he's thinking about how many people bought tickets to see the last Tom Cruise movie and his estimate of how many of them went because of Tom Cruise.

I don't know enough about hairdressers to know whether the same thing applies to them. It does apply to fashion designers, and in some cases it seems to apply to programmers.