skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Seeking entrepreneurial graphic designer in Chicago
We are two University of Chicago graduates looking for a Chicago-based graphic designer to be a co-founder at our site, langolab.com. We need someone who is a real graphic design ninja. If you have a deep and uncanny connection with branding, usability, and web graphic design, if you have an entrepreneurial spirit, and if you would like to conspire with us to make the site a success then this might be the perfect opportunity for you. Please contact me off-list if this sounds interesting: join("adam", "@", "8planes", ".com").

For more information about langolab.com, please check out our blog, http://blog.langolab.com. You might want to see in particular these two posts: http://blog.langolab.com/2008/11/things-foreign-language-teachers-can.html and http://blog.langolab.com/2008/11/picture-game.html . We have at this point a relatively clear idea of the audience/market we're dealing with, and we think there's a clear path to making the project profitable.

Please only reply if you're located in Chicago.
Hey, what is with the black backgrounds? Maybe my eyes are unusually weak but I just can't read pages with black backgrounds. I mean, it's not a preference -- I just can't. (Which is also a tip to designers out there.)

Anyway, here's what I use on those pages: http://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/zap.html (there's one called zap colors)
More than you think. I know of at least three. Counter-argument is, how many single founder companies do you know that are successful?
Look, it's like this. Nobody knows what's the right thing to be working on.

Yes, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs both betted on the personal computer. And those were the right decisions, and they knew it. But how many times have they created stupid, failed products? Microsoft Bob? The Apple Cube? These guys appear like they know everything they should always be working on, but they've gone through years of trial and error with various approaches. They have been around the block.

I would say both of these guys are so dedicated that they may not necessarily have the "right" idea, but they constantly tweak their ideas. Jobs successfully launched Pixar. Doesn't that make you wonder that having the types of traits that he does would make you successful in virtually anything you do in life? By the way, he has a very specific set of traits about him that allow him to see such consistent success. I recommend picking up "Inside Steve's Brain."

You don't know what's right. Zuckerberg launched failed businesses before Facebook. I know a lot of millionaire entrepreneurs who failed at 6 or 7 startups before they got it right. How does the saying go on the bicycle? You can't move forward if you're standing still, and you can't change directions until you're moving forward.
Fields Medal
It doesn't seem like FPGA reprogramming time will be an issue. Presumably, they will work on one problem at a time. They will have a custom instruction to calculate Pi and let the machine run for a few months and then switch to crunching data from seismic oil well probes.

Modern FPGAs can be reprogrammed in a few milliseconds, which seems like a long time in the computer world. In essence megabytes of SRAM need to be written to in order to configure an FPGA.

Also, FPGAs have the ability to do partial reconfiguration, but the support is spotty. In the ideal world, parts of an FPGA would be reconfigured while the other parts were still in operation.
Israeli Candidate Borrows a (Web) Page From Obama
Yeah, I was surprised by the author's confidence in dismissing M:N threading. Does anyone know if there's a consensus on this point among implementers of threading packages?
Many FPGAs come equipped with multiple processor cores on chip. Some models of the Xilinx Virtex 5 (yes, they spelled it wrong) include 2 PowerPC cores. Some FPGAs might have as much as 4.

I wonder if anyone has taken these existing FPGAs and tried to do something similar to what you are suggesting. I know these FPGAs are typically used to implement DSP logic, but it would be interesting to see if anyone has tightly coupled the FPGA fabric with the on-board processors for more general processing applications.
My Tinfoil Hat
Buy low, sell high, right? If you're going to spend money on ads, the best time might be when they're cheap. You may not get a lot of customers, but you might get a lot of traction.
Thu hút du khách bằng tiệc khỏa thân
Live Framework (LiveFX), Is it Microsoft's GData or Something More?
Portraits in grass (the mowing kind)
Ejacs: a JavaScript interpreter for Emacs
Despite only being 24 and having a life nothing like that, I felt suddenly motivated to do more than I already am after reading that...
I wonder if watching someone else play makes you feel queasy too, ala Cloverfield:

http://www.webmd.com/news/20080122/whats-behind-cloverfield-...
Send New Year Gifts to India, Happy New Year Gifts 2009
Send New Year Gifts to India, Happy New Year Gifts 2009, Flowers, Cakes, Chocolates Delivery in India on New Year from Giftstoindians.com
From what I can tell happened to past and present clients of mine, there are plenty of bad programmers all over the place local and worldwide, and throwing more people at the job never fixed anything. If said company is having a hard time hiring a programmer but you have at least one available now meeting the exact same criteria they want, then that company really needs to rethink what they're doing. But having a 4-person team when a single one can do is overkill.

Also on another personal note, my startup has one person who lives across the country (the US, so it's a big country ;) ) and I'm not sure how well that will work out. We've yet to even meet up in person for a drink or anything, and we can't hang out together to code, and I can't easily go over there to kick his ass (figuratively speaking) or he mine when necessary.

In comparison, I pair program with my boyfriend occasionally when stuck on something or working on a project euler problem, and we both do our individual work near each other quite often and the interaction can be pretty useful. It's not entirely the same as IRC or videochatting, which I've done on one project where I worked with people halfway across the world. But again, this is my personal preference. I'd like to hang out with the people I work with, because strictly work can get sort of dull.
I found the article useful in two ways, neither of which rely on the accuracy of the prediction.

One, if you've already made the decision to start a company, then it doesn't matter whether this is a good time or not. However, it could be motivating to think of this as a great time. When I think that way, that there are enormous opportunities for me to solve, I behave more confidently and spend more time doing rather than fretting. I think I'm not the only person who recognizes the role that emotion plays in their own success.

Two, I thought it was an interesting thought experiment to think about whether the rules have changed, what the changed rules are, what forces are driving them, and what are some of the repercussions? She doesn't get into them, but that doesn't mean we couldn't.

Off the top of my head:

1) Tighter credit. People who are bad situations will eventually work themselves out, but we could be in a situation where people and companies keep a more sustainable level of debt. What would the effect be?

2) Baby boomers get old. Supposedly they're going to retire, but their savings just went kaput. Are they going to keep working? Are they going to make the younger generation pay for their retirement and healthcare?

3) Energy covering climate and demand. Environmentalists are pushing for conservation but Vinod Khosla thinks we're going to solve it in a way that makes today's energy look expensive. What does a world of extremely expensive energy look like? What does a world of extremely cheap energy look like?

4) Internet related, dropping costs. This isn't as big as the first three but effects me personally. Where are the big plays? What about small plays that add up (37signals)?
same as with him i cant type in text. same issue. ffox 3.0.4, osx.
The miraculous power of scale
For most hacker founders though -- $500k is a much better sum to raise than $5 million. Do you really want to have to hire marketing people, give up board seats, give up more of your company than you should, and significantly reduce the % probability of success?

For many founders, raising $5 million is like pouring gasoline all over yourself when you're on fire.

Syndicating a bunch of smart angels who have been there and want to help you may be harder to do, it's probably the right call for most startups.
No kidding.

But I'd bet if you spend a few hours on Fox News, you'll be your genius self again in no time.
Processing monsters
> Some background: we're launching a number of built-from-scratch systems on a LAMP stack, that use a number of web APIs. Whoever gets the job will have CLOSE TO carte blanche to build the system however they like, usign whatever frameworks or code base they are comfortable with.

You've already settled on PHP, however. So you're longer giving anybody a "CARTE" blanche and it's no longer "built from scratch". False advertising?

If you're looking for "PHP coders", you're in for a disappointment. You should hire great programmers who can also code PHP - and you would have to convince them why your idea is so fascinating/unique that it would be okay to write in a more or less boring language which has a kiddie/toy reputation.

Yahoo did this by not specifically listing PHP in their ads and bringing in strong Java/C/C++ programmers and then teaching them PHP on the job (or at least that's what they used to do for the non-UX centric parts).

You can find great web-developers and designers who are primarily PHP people, but afaik smarter coders tend to shun it.
There's nothing wrong with PHP as a tool and if a developer wants to make the judgement call to use it (for whatever reason), they should. The parent, however, is up-front stating that they will have to use PHP which is an unhealthy approach when you're looking for somebody to build something from scratch.

And this may be totally wrong (and I very seriously hope it is, as I see too many of these) - but this again sounds like a case of business/web-design people hoping they can hire hackers to execute on their 'wonderful and unique' idea. These don't work not because there's anything wrong with being a business person or a web-designer (quite the opposite, they're crucial) but because you can't tell how good or bad a certain idea is unless you begin executing on it yourself.

[Edit: looks you've got a fairly interesting idea and an established business. Don't kill it through turning away of enthusiastic/skilled hackers - since you mention APIs, why should you be a one language shop? The beauty of web service is that they're fairly language/technology agnostic]
Ask HN: Review my app - Cell phone analytics for Android with Phonalyzr
This is the first version of my first Android app, which goes through your call history and displays some neat graphs. It is still basic, but I hope it'll eventually evolve into something kickass :)

You can find it in the Android Market under the name "Phonalyzr" or you can visit the website here: http://www.phonalyzr.com/
My startup was recently looking at platforms to target windows effectively. We just spent a lot of wasted time looking at .NET. Perhaps because it was because we are very cheap, but we couldn't find decent (well written) documentation. Also, visual studio is a bit confusing after working for a while in a linux development environment.

I then remembered that I was already familiar with Java syntax, and that if we needed speed, we could always code subroutines in C/C++ and link them through JNI. The thing that is nice about Java is the amount of documentation and tutorials (and source!) lying around. Of course, working with a big IDE like Eclipse will be a big change as well, but we are going to go with Java.

By the way,does anyone here know if it is possible to create a salable client side application using something like Python? It is my impression that it is a bit too easy to disassemble without including some sort of heavy duty DRM scheme that wouldn't be worth the effort. If it isn't, does Java suffer from the same problem since you compile to bytecode?
Patent trolls serve no useful function. There already is a secondary market for innovation. Companies buy and sell patents all the time, and the buyers often use those patents to create innovative products. The problem is the patent trolls, which I define as a company that owns and litigates patents without actually using the patents for anything. You should have to be using the patent or at least show a clear intent to use the patent to be able sue people for infringing it. This part is probably more complicated than I'm making it out to be, but that is clearly the intent of patent law, so it should be changed to reflect that intent.
pg also says that many ycom startups have changed businesses completely as they go along - and for applications, the initial idea isn't really evaluated as itself, but as a measure of your ability to formulate/recognize good ideas.
Surely having an award "for women" sponsored by a cosmetics company is counterproductive? Why can't there be an award "for science", regardless of gender, on merit alone?
Heh, this is nothing new. I remember playing Descent 15 years ago, standing up from the PC and promptly falling over. Never actually threw up tho'!
I take your bet.
Finding Joy in Combinators
Ajax Rich Internet Application
Thanks for reporting this. I'll write you an email.
Certainly the trolls go too far sometimes, but on the whole it’s a respectable business model, and one that I think encourages, rather than stifles, technological progress.

I think this is sort of missing the point. Proper trolls make their money by stopping the application of that invention or by significantly raising the cost of applying it.

If the patent is owned by a troll it is more likely that anyone applying it will get sued, rightly or wrongly. In fact, it is almost always wrongly in a sense because if the patent troll didn't exist, noone would be sueing.

So with one hand they provide some cash to inventors. With the other they take more off the application developers. The difference is probably huge & is split between profits & legal bills on both sides.

It's like a tax on innovation.
Once greeted warmly, Google wears out welcome
Well, the examples of Rockfeller, JP Morgan etc. only show the "tip of the iceberg". What, in my opinion, is underlying is a probability distribution of people wealth.

In times of big changes there is more uncertainty, which increases the variance of the distribution. It is true that these times bring out people that make enormous wealth, but also many people remained poor.

And those who orient better in the situation(or get lucky) end up being better off at the end.
Surely he could have picked a better name. "Yegge ejacs in your browser."
Any particular reason you prefer Konqueror to Firefox? Do you feel it's faster?
Goldman Sachs CEO will not pay himself or other top execs a bonus this year
http://www.draftmix.com
It is, but only YouTube would have realistically bought Omnisio, so they essentially locked themselves in a single-client market. Same goes for Xobni.
I don't buy this - When someone who wants to use me as a reference starts interviewing - they call me and say "I'd like to use you as a reference, is that OK? Can you give me a call if anyone contacts you"

That's about it. When I get a call, it's usually because a job offer is about to be made, and both myself and the individual I'm providing a reference for are happy to have that call go out.

Re: Filling out application forms - the first one is a pain as you try and figure out who your emergency contact is, what your home phone number and mailing address is, the dates/names of your last 5 years of jobs, and what the contact information for your references is. Once that's done, it is fairly straightforward, as the information typically doesn't change for the 4-6 months you'll be looking for a job.

Also, If you've made it to the point at which we are interviewing you, you probably have a > 33% chance of being hired. You've been phone screened at least twice, and your resume has been reviewed carefully a few times. You are filling in that application letter because there is a good chance we want to hire you, and we need the information you are filling in.

Just to be clear - I haven't personally ever had an applicant not fill in the section on references on the application form, so it's a non-issue for me. I bring it up only because we did have a candidate in another department indicate they wouldn't provide references unless a job offer was going to be made - not the end of the world, but it would be important that that was the only "No, I won't cooperate" moment in the interview process.
But what if you can centralize modeling? If all restaurants pooled their resoruces and hired someone to do it? Like opentable, for example, already handles reservations over internet - somethin no individual restaurant could afford.
I think patent holders should only be able to sue for lost revenue. That is, damages should be limited to what they would have been able to earn from the invention if nobody else had been using it.
Just pay craigslist their fee, and put up an ad. Problem solved. I'm disappointed that your spam made it through to HN, but am glad to see the very on-target comments it has generated.

Also making a snap judgment that someone under the pressure of an interview situation is "boring" is probably a mistake. Sounds like there is something else going on. The fact that you call developers "coders" is pretty damning of your attitude, imho.
Sounds like they're "fighting" traffic jams as much as most meteorologists "fight" the weather. They're making a more automated, cheaper way to compete with traffic reports on radio and TV. They even share the same way to monetize it: ads on the "feed". I don't even know if they'll end up providing more accurate, timely, or precise data than the current staff monitoring CCTV feeds and watching from helicopters.

I kept wanting to hear that they were trying to attack traffic jams via some means of automated coordination of the cars. It's a tough problem, especially because many people think of their car as a means to personal freedom, and you have to make it useful even without most cars participating.

Attacking traffic jams would be a big win for society and drivers though.. Reduce road rage, improve gas mileage, improve workforce productivity, lower emissions, etc. It's so big, perhaps you could even monetize it by directly rewarding drivers that do attack the problem.. either by directly paying them $ or favoring their speed through jams when requested.
Free Sony Vaio Laptop - Free Laptop Computer review at Kaboodle
For students! This is a perfect for school - win a free laptop! But you must first check if it's available in your area by entering your zip code. Can't complain. It's free.
Strange Maps: Did you realize Africa is this big?
They missed 3jam, which is for group-texting rather than microblogging, but seems to deserve a place in that list
Not new http://zikzak.net/~zik/thesis/thesis.html but not bad.
Xkcd - A Bunch of Rocks
Look. I'm not particularly experienced in this. Honestly, I probably would provide whatever was asked & not make a big deal & be cooperative.

I'm just trying to rationalise the undertone all over this thread which I naturally sympathise with. As an applicant, you are expected to meet whatever terms are presented. This leads to a convention favouring employers that feels belittling to employees. You are to provide whatever information is asked. You are to take whatever information is given. Otherwise, it is a strike against you. Maybe one point (providing salary info) is strategically important to take a stand & take the hit. As you say, they can get away with one. But you start on the back foot.

I have experienced & have heard from friends & family of many many situations where the employer did not reveal the salary level until the point where they were really looking for a yes/no. In many cases, I've known people to take jobs without knowing (but having a good guess). This is probably out of their timidity & new graduates workforce returnees etc. are more prone to it then technical employees that find it easier to find jobs. But it's not uncommon & it is abusive to an extent.

It's not uncommon not to hear back for months or ever. It's not uncommon to be told you're being considered, & being left to stew for weeks.

I imagine that asking for reference equivalents (can i speak to some recent recruits?) would be seen similarly to asking to provide references at a later date: uncooperative. Asking about previous salaries is just another point. But (whether this is true or not) will seem like it puts you at a disadvantage in negotiating where you would not be able to gain the same. (how much do your last three hires earn?)

Many employers try hard to maintain their names as good employers. But it seems that the marketing stops once you have put in an application.

Look at it this way. Most potential employees are very intentional in the questions they ask. They are not intended to evaluate the employer. They are intended to make an impression by showing you care about the right things. It doesn't seem that employers try to sell themselves at all during the interview process. That is not a pleasant situations. Reality says you deal with it(& blog in defiance). But Noone likes it.
Also writes some of the most wittiest comments on HN. But for some reason, most of them get downvoted. :-)
MythBusting — We Agree Ruby Is Awesome
Adobe answers cries for 64-bit Flash on Linux
It would be a genuine step toward Openness if they would put download links on those pages. If bandwidth is the problem, they could be torrents.
I was pretty surprised at how completely inaccurate my perception of Africa's size was. This map really helped put it in perspective.

It also made me think about the potential wealth of Africa. It will be interesting to see how it continues to transform with technology and micro-entrepreneurship.
Yes. OCLC is a 501(c)(3) public charity. You can view their 990 returns in a variety of places online like guidestar.org.

A "non-profit" mostly can't sell shares nor link pay to profits. Many can do a lot of things that doesn't fit within the normal thinking about what a charity should do though. OCLC looks like a sad demonstration of that.. buying up competitors, screwing people on licensing, etc.
He's the Kim Kardashian of YCombinator - you are not really sure why he's famous, but for some reason everyone seems to be paying attention to him.
"it could of been" is written "it could have been", and "which effects me more" is written "which affects me more". Do you also say those words the same way?
Descent used to scare me, like no scary game ever did. I guess it was the sense of 360-degree immersion.

My sister tapped me on the shoulder once when I was playing and I literally jumped out of the chair (with the headphones still on, which wasn't comfortable).
It looks cool, but only for a particular small market. Have you figured out how to reach the relevant market yet?
Flush with money, eager Chinese students flock U.S.
I went looking. The article I found is interesting in its own right:

"Engineers Rule: At American auto companies, finance guys and marketers rise to the top. Not at Honda."

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=366709

From the article:

"Honda doesn't disclose executive pay in detail, but the sum of salaries and bonuses that Fukui shares with 36 board members, $13 million, is just about enough for the boss at a big American company."

also:

"Honda has never had an unprofitable year. It has never had to lay off employees."
Engineers Rule: Honda and its culture of engineering
This looks like an awesome resource, thanks for posting. Is it WMV only though?