skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This will ripple down to startups. Harvard's endowment, and the similarly invested portfolio of the Ivy League, Stanford, and a few other universities, are some of the major limited partners of venture capital firms. Harvard has already been pulling out of several firms that have not been performing, writing off any possible returns. And many endowment managers have historically followed Harvard's lead.
What problem are they trying to solve? A non-Applfied itunes-like app, that doesn't force you to install quicktime and iPodService.exe and other crapware.

What market are they after? Well, I might consider buying an iPod now that it isn't tethered to freakin iTunes.
> Perl 5 is obviously on the way out and Ruby/Python are coming in

Tossing aside this obviously flawed TIOBE thingy (Delphi, wtf?) I see no evidence of this. CPAN contributions are accelerating, not flat-lining. Perl's domination over Python and Ruby in the corporate environment continues.
I've been using Techmeme and other algorithmic editors for years, and I think TM is the best of the bunch. The Google Blog search competitor that was released a few months ago doesn't come close -- it's filled with spam and scraped content.

I'm curious to see how the human editor improves Techmeme.
it's painfully slow. Try indexing your database.
Just adding the math for those who might have missed my point.

If 3/4 of people avoid default the rest don't so .75 * 1.28 = .9675 which is less than 1, but the 25% that fail don't all fail on the first day so they are probably going to average ~6 months of payments so .25 * .5 * .29 + .9675 = 1.00375 which is larger than 1. Add in some fee's and whatever principle people payed back before defaulting and you are making money.

Next year some people that made it this year will fail but your adding some people to make up for those that defaulted last year. In the end you need people to average 4 years before defaulting which I suspect is normal.
Like WebEx but it's free
My submission is in there. It didn't have any specific stuff luckily and I'm sure that's why we didn't get funded. We didn't have a solid idea.

Now my company is rolling along really well with a solid business plan and plenty of apps coming out. I feel like I dodged a bullet by not getting funded.

I'm pretty pissed that my data is out there though. I keep getting emails and Twitter messages telling me about it.
I never realized that TechMeme was completely algorithmic. I assumed some of it was, but I thought editors were helping out as well. Color me very impressed!
I thought it would have been nice to use the full quote in the post title. It makes it sounds like a faux pas.

Twitter CEO: "It's amazing anyone uses Twitter today. It's hard". Which an extremely honest and candid answer in a discussion. It's cool that he is complementing the number of people doing things with twitter and wants to make it even for people to use the service.
Sure, but when you want to know what every other techhead is looking at, TechMeme is the only place to go.
Give me bullet points or give me death.
We used this at [unnamed YC startup I worked with this summer]. It was a little unreliable. When it worked, it worked great, but some of the people we were demoing to couldn't get in.
There is a "lite" version of Firebug that works in IE.

http://getfirebug.com/lite.html

Would that suffice? I haven't used it. At a quick look, it doesn't appear to enable the debugging features may be after, but I'll mention it just in case.

(I'm no expert in this.)
Analog to Digital Converter & Digital to Analog Converter - Overview
The real world, where we live day by day, is the realm of analogue signals. Read this overview about ADC (Analog to Digital Converter) and DAC (Digital to Analog Converter)
I think you have to be deluding yourself to not recognize this as true. Of course Perl is very far from dead, but the early adopters and influential people are moving away. Don't forget that C++/Java had the corporate environments back when Perl kicked their asses.
User Experience in the Identity Community
Anyone have a link to a copy?

We submitted and am interested in seeing if we are on that list?
It is very hard to build software like this which is both accurate and easy to use.
I would expect that a doctor that is used to dealing with the diagnosis process directly would be the best candidate to design one of this things. Although I'm sure there are quite a few challenges ahead.

though I expect they are ignorant of the challenges ahead.
He has a BS in Engineering and CS from a pretty good University, in addition to the MD. He should have at least some idea about what he is talking about, but this might just be wishful thinking on my part.
What do you think Python lacks relative to Perl?

I used to do Perl and now work in a Python shop, and the only Perl feature I really miss is closures (as opposed to Python's hobbled-by-design "lambda" construct).
By any purely empirical analysis Ruby practically doesn't exist.
Python 3000 is ready
There were no serious physics errors. Most corrections were typos and transcription errors (the original Lectures were a rush job, since there was no text for the course at the time). These are precisely the kind of errors that perplex beginners, though ("Hmm, where did that factor of 2 come from?"), so it was good to fix them.
Your little tool doesn't have to be doomed to obscurity:

http://tinyurl.com/6aybvs
What does Python lack, relative to Perl? Popularity. I know very little Perl and very much Python; my statements aren't intended to promote a particular language. The competition I referred to is based on popularity, not merit.
All you seem to be saying is you FEEL Perl is losing some sort of race.

I don't share that feeling and I don't see any hard evidence of it. By all reasonable metrics perl continues to grow.
We use GoToMeeting all the time; it's always been rock solid for us; and it is MUCH cheaper than webex.
nods

And until the card issuer officially writes down the debt, the principal that the borrower owes to the issuer is counted as an asset on the issuer's balance sheet.
Most of the files are fairly standard, the pics are mainly humour ones (google and you'll find them), a few games, a windows WGA hack. Some zip files which appear to be of other sites, and bizarely enough it appears to be hosting the images for the coin bras at http://www.judithshead.com.
And Google's recent introduction of voting on search results tells me that they might've reached a similar conclusion.
This only works when you pick and choose which metrics to count.
Yes that's it exactly. I've even known some people to use cash advances on their credit cards to pay their mortgages.

The problem goes much deeper than that though. Many people use credit cards for all purchases and have structured their lives around not having ready access to cash even for necessities like food. The credit cards have become vital time lag buffers for cyclic pay.

The real panic would occur when people realized that they were out of food, have no cash and payday is 3 weeks away.

The bank that issued the credit card has folded, so it no longer works. You are hungry, and there are 200 people standing next to you in the same predicament.

Many many people have no (zero) cash reserve and don't really understand why this might be a very bad thing.

So I am afraid.
You're right. Guido would have to completely fuck up the design of Python 3 for it to be anywhere near as ugly as Perl!
Removing Java and C from your list makes it much easier to see what's going on:
http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=python%2C+perl%2C+ruby%2C+...
Cash-strapped teacher sells ads on tests
There's not that much difference in popularity these days. Of projects listed by Freshmeat, Perl is used on 3784 and Python on 3286 ( http://freshmeat.net/browse/160/ ).

A few years ago, Perl had twice as many projects as Python; now it's almost even.
I'd love to get some real data on the who, what, when, and how much, although I'm not sure they'd want to share that. Without that, it's easy to speculate, but hard to say anything with any degree of certainty.
One of the new features that this App provides (above just the usual Amazon features) is the ability to take a photo of stuff you want to "remember". Seem like they Turk it in order to figure out what it is and then recommend products on Amazon.

I just took a photo of a can of mountain dew, I'll update when I hear back with "recommendations".
just curious, did 'j' in 'jj' stand four "journaller" in a naming scheme, or something else entirely?
Ask HN:  Chair advice for the short, and fused spines
I'm looking for a chair for someone who is around five feet tall, and weighs maybe one hundred pounds. This person also has a fused upper spine. Budget tops out at $1000. Of course, cheaper is better.

Being both much larger and having a normal spine, I don't know much about either of those things. I know HN likes the fancy chairs. any advice?
Another point in Twitter's column is their relatively small staff. How many employees does Facebook have?
Firefox - the green alternative?
IPod Video 60 GB SkinTight 3 Pack by Speck
SkinTight 60 GB rubberized skins for the 60 gig iPod video provide protection against dust, knocks, and scratches. Includes removable screen protectors to keep your video screen looking sharp! 3-PACKS with clear, black and blue! Also available for the 30 gig iPod video.
Yeah, the post is based on TIOBE stats. LangPop.com is way better:-) Well, honestly it's still far from perfect, but there's just no way to get really good, clean data for programming language usage throughout the world.
I'm intrigued.. do the efforts to scale Ruby and Perl differ significantly beyond their respective base-line performance?

Interpreter level threads and multi-process based techniques have tended to be common approaches in both various Perl and Ruby projects I've worked with.
My experience building http://esciencenews.com , which is automated news for science, tells me otherwise.

About the 'instantly obsolete' news - just put the latest of the cluster at the top. We see that a lot with shuttle missions to space : see http://esciencenews.com/sources/space.com/2008/11/12/space.s...

In the cluster ('More sources from other sites') you can see the mission`s coverage from start to finish.

As for bad grouping, just accept that you won't be able to find ALL stories belonging to a cluster and set your cutoff to accept the minimum of false positive while keeping the most stories belonging to a cluster.
You could try contacting Advance (www.advance.org).

I did it the hard way and just came on over. It's not bad as it allows you to network directly with people.

Contacting companies directly helps. Are you at uni, or at work? If at uni, usually there will be career fairs and the like which attract international companies. Google, Sun and IBM definitely came by looking for people specifically for their SV offices.
You're welcome to do the picking.
It's most likely possible. However, I am not aware of any OO compiler/runtime that can enforce it. So, while it's possible, it's not easy to implement. With functional programming it's there by design.
There's a partial (google cached) copy linked to from the TC article, I haven't seen anyone claim to have a full copy yet. Although it's may well be in the alexa archive for people who have access to that.
I guess when the user base starts resorting to childish name-calling, the end probably is near.
When I was forced to deal with Windows boxes (heh), the built-in RDP was rock-solid and worked great. If you own the server, I wouldn't pay for anything different.
How about total attendance count for all conferences between Python/Ruby/Perl. If Perl was still kicking ass on that (it has historically had some of the best conferences) I'd be surprised.
Out of curiousity, why did you submit your pitch if you knew it was so-so ? - aren't you worried it might damage your reputation (first impression, etc.) if you want to approach KP in the future for funding ?
Lorenzo Colitti: A Strategy for IPv6 Adoption
The $30 Billion Rebate: Why car buyers, not car companies, should get a bailout.
Time to ditch the 'tools' metaphor, IMO:

http://journal.dedasys.com/2007/12/12/programming-languages-...

Most programmers, realistically, don't use that many languages at any given time, and if they could use fewer, they probably would. The more territory a language covers, the better off it is... well, at least as long as it can do so relatively well.
"DH3. Contradiction.

In this stage we finally get responses to what was said, rather than how or by whom. The lowest form of response to an argument is simply to state the opposing case, with little or no supporting evidence.

This is often combined with DH2 statements, as in:

I can't believe the author dismisses intelligent design in such a cavalier fashion. Intelligent design is a legitimate scientific theory.

Contradiction can sometimes have some weight. Sometimes merely seeing the opposing case stated explicitly is enough to see that it's right. But usually evidence will help."

http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
If you connect the bad facts, you'll find that they had to go thru a bad patch too.

Site hacked in 3 hours of launch

Yahoo recommends not to use its hosting after 36 hours

Labeled 'the worst website ever' after 2 days
The FTC disallows deceptive advertising as well: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/policystmt/ad-decept.htm
article: when stuff that can easily be copied is worthless, only stuff that isn't easily copied can sell. Question: Well, what can't be copied?

Everything can be copied, always. The only difference is quality. My photocopied textbook looks crappy and may have pages missing, so it's in my interest to buy the actual book. My cheap knockoff made-in-china hammer is only partially embedded into the handle which could fall apart and hit my toes, so it's in my interest to buy a better made-in-china hammer. My fake italian designer glass coffee table is 2mm thinner than the real glass table, and my designer friends will pick up on that and make fun of me, so it's in my interest to buy the real thing.

It's also relative: how much do I value 1 missed assignment question, or a bruised toe, or pretentious artsy friends? If I don't value them very much, I will choose the copy.

To make things worse, manufacturers these days produce products that has equal or worse quality than their "competitors", and charge more for it. Gucci watches are pieces of crap whose quality is way worse than $10 watches you can get at the mall. Falling-apart jeans say falling apart is a 'feature' when Old Navy's fall apart just as well. Crappy software makes unreasonable demands when their much less annoying "competitors" offer a better product for "free".....you see the problem?

First and foremost, we are consumers. It is unreasonable and naive to believe that consumers will choose an inferior product for the same price or more. Simple as that.
Supersonic fighters could snuff out hurricanes
One could always set up a hot-or-not style site where people indicate if two news items are similar or not and have that input feed in somehow.
"There's no evidence that famously successful organizations like the Roman army or the British East India Company were any less afflicted by protocol and politics than organizations of the same size today. But they were competing against opponents who couldn't change the rules on the fly by discovering new technology."

the mongol empire was the game changer [adopting siege machine, biological weapon (throwing infected corpse thru enemy's wall -- the seed of black death), religion (islam, christian, budhism), trade (silk route, 'pony' express), and the rise of creative class]

it conquered the world with bow and arrow, lasted 3.5 centuries (longer than the nuclear powered usa)

barbar/dictator/despotic empire can't/won't last that long -- there's truly something about mongol
Where did you get that impression? The FTC has the authority to regulate advertising, and false or deceptive advertising is illegal in the US.
How To Be A 21st Century Capitalist
Cloud computing will significantly reduce usage of Linux among web developers.
I like your idea. My personal gut feeling is that there is still lots of room for innovation and money to be made in the local online market.

I think you need to find a way of getting people to come back to the site even before there are many(any) others using it. Some tool that is useful in its own right that will encourage people to sign up and keep visiting. From then on the community aspect will become a bonus as the site grows.

Also the design is quite unappealing - maybe paying a designer a few hundred dollars for a PSD would be a good idea.
Procedural separates procedures from state. OO combines state and functionality into objects. Also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_passing#OOP
I was going to post the same thing. Its kind of like naming a dog. What might sound cute and witty once can get silly fast.

Before naming your dog always say the intended name out loud 50 times in a row. It might help to tape yourself and listen to it.

Apply the same rule for made up names in your blog.
frankly, i'd ask them to help you out, not us. doubt many people here will have the specific experience you're looking for.

ask the person to help you out since you want to make sure they're comfortable and unsure if a standard chair will fit their needs/situation.
This is a great article, but it was just posted to HN yesterday from USNews as well

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=383723

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-12-01-test-ads_N...

I am voting it up though, because I wonder if this is a problem we could solve here with this group. I doubt that this was duplicate posted maliciously, and it is an interesting story

I wonder if it would be useful to have a feature where rather than just "bury" or "mark as duplicate" we could link TO the original duplicated story. Since I know it was posted recently, and made front page, I would go through the effort of tagging it as such and linking (as I have just done). Perhaps then this "new" post would appear as a comment in the original thread?

If this (what I'm doing) is an inappropriate use of comments and voting, I apologize - I didn't want to post a whole new "Ask HN" about it.
Maybe contact them directly and see if they'd be willing to set something up.
I saw on TC people posting a link to the google cache but it just lead to this page does not exist message on google.

YOu happen to have a better link? thnx if you do!
Stone Age site reveals 'extraordinary' artworks (21,000-22,000 years old)
Or how about just automation + up and down voting?
Emacs Tip #27: midnight-mode
I'm not worried it would damage my reputation. 9 out of 10 ideas are poor ideas to begin with but some evolve into good or great ideas eventually. Even the ones that get funded don't have great ideas, the best company they have funded is ng:moco. That company is just an iPhone game company. Not exactly an original idea.
Banned in Turkey, maybe that's a reason..
> Capital requirements for new companies.

Capital requirements for software companies might have gone down due to better tools and cheap hardware. However, it's gotten more expensive, and borderline impossible given the regulatory environment, to start any sort of operation that builds, grows, mines, or transports things. I'd bet it's more expensive to start a medical practice or an accountancy now than in the past, too.
I suspect it is wishful thinking.

"There is no product like this available. The technology isn't difficult, just a bunch of algorithms organized properly: cardiovascular, neurological, orthopedics, etc."

Actually, people with good qualifications and lots of funding have been working on those algorithms for more than two decades. Products have been on the market for more than two decades (e.g. http://www.lcs.mgh.harvard.edu/projects/dxplain.html, http://scienceline.org/2008/01/04/doctor’s-diagnosis-version...). Almost all of these are not ready for use. Additionally medical experience is usually quite broad: not so focused on a particular disease. Some of the biggest successes in diagnostic process come from people specializing in diagnostic processes doing computer analysis (For example, Brenden Reilly's work on heart attack diagnosis, as popularized by Malcolm Gladwell's book, Blink).
I realize this article is a little incendiary but please don't throw logs on the fire. Python isn't for everyone -- only for people who like it when a space has syntactic meaning. ;-)
I think a major reason for the high-res society as Pg so eloquently calls it, can be found in Ronald Coase's classic The theory of the firm from 1937.

In it he tries to describe firms and why they exist. His main finding is that the reason that firms exist as large entities instead of just individuals trading labour and services with each other is transaction costs. In an industrial society the transaction costs of many individuals coming together to create and sell a product would be prohibitive. By creating firms the transaction costs are lowered - it is cheaper to create and maintain the structure needed to uphold the firm than it is to locate and purchase services in the marketplace when you need them .

The transaction costs are coming down with the advent of the global information flow - it is much easier for me to locate and purchase the services of an individual coder than it would be to locate and purchase the services of a welder 20 years ago. The transaction costs are especially low in industries that sell immaterial services and goods that can easily be moved around the globe, such as web businesses.

This makes firms increasingly less competitive with individuals, it also explains why some sectors such as the auto and aero industries are dominated by big companies and probably will be in the future. The transaction costs of individuals building a Boeing 747 are just too prohibitive.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm
And perl6 was DOA. Long live Ruby.
As much as I like Guy, I don't think Truemors or Alltop would have received as much attention as they have if they were built/marketed by anyone that didn't already have Guy's stature.

In other words, I wouldn't rely too heavily on these sites when considering "best practices" scenarios.
Step 1: Be Guy Kawasaki

Step 2: Spend about $10,000 more than you need to because you're already independently wealthy through non-startup means (read: AAPL)

Step 3: Get much more attention for your startup than most people would because you're Guy Kawasaki

Step 4: Sell as soon as it's feasible

Step 5: Profit
Blogga please. No one knows how the next year will pan out. Can we have a moratorium on blanket statements?
I don't know, at least as far as profits go. They've got significant SMS expenses to overcome. Facebook's per user cost of delivering service has to be much cheaper.

I think Facebook has a pretty solid path to revenue (re-legitimize apps and they provide a dead simple payments platform) though they don't seem like they're going to take it.