skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Have you tried working part-time?

I'm not sure this would help, because I don't really understand how you can love coding and hate working at the same time. Here is what I do:

I have an arrangement with my employer that I will not work full-time for more than 9 months straight. After 9 months I have a 6 months break. The arrangement is tacit, it's not in a contract, but it has been working for the last 3 years. It took me one year to find such a job. I turned down another job where I could have worked 3 days a week, because they wanted me to first work full-time for 1 year.

Work doesn't seem to turn me off as much as you, but then I only worked full-time for one year, the year my first IT employer trained me as a developer. I then worked 4 days a week and eventually quit because they wouldn't let me work 3 days.

It's not that I don't like work, it's just that my extremely time-consuming hobby is more important to me. One obvious downside is that I have less professional opportunities, so if I worked more, my job might be more interesting.

I am not sure I could afford this, or even have the courage to try it, if I hadn't also inherited some money. On the other hand I haven't tried the lifehack stuff.

I am in Switzerland, a country where unemployment tends to be low, but where working part-time as a developer is uncommon enough for lots of people to think it can't be done.
http://hotwitter.com/ ... not particularly work-safe, powered by Yonkly
Running ethernet cables is a great idea, but I don't think he was talking about the conferences.
Why would you want it? Can't you be happy without it?
I'm not even sure thinking too much about plot is a good idea. The "porn movie with a plot"-films I have seen were, although explorative and interesting, not very good at provoking a boner (or anything except curiosity, really). It's a good start. What I'm suggesting here is (at least in the form of execution) completely unexplored territory, the rules that we know from other genres may not apply in the same sense. We just have to explore to find out.

I don't think porn necessarily has to be low-brow. Exploitation films and other really violent stuff was pretty lowbrow at some point, but today the best films of these genres are as good art as anything. I'm not sure this analogy holds all the way, but at least it's a good argument that these things are worth exploring. It's surprising how culture and people can change.

I love to discuss this stuff with you guys. It's not really something you can talk about over dinner, or in any other 99% of social situations.

[Note that I'm using a liberal definition of art here - I prefer to use the word in its original sense, as "something really good" which provokes emotions, thoughts and daydreams.]
Wow, I've never heard that quote! I love it!
Most countries have progressive annually measured income tax for high wages (and not for high capital gains), so working your ass off for 5 years and idling another 5 will cost you a lot more than kinda working for 10.

To limit taxes you need to either earn and keep you money in a company, and take just enough dividend you need, or mix working and long holidays every year.
As multitouch screens becomes more common, users will want an experience more familiar with the real world because the interface becomes more concrete.

And 3D interfaces, even inside a 2D screen, could improve the illusion of that concreteness.
Sure he does:

...I believe that the Y Combinator model is dead. The idea that you can put something out there on the cheap, get traction and then raise a quick real round no longer seems to be valid. While there will always be exceptions to this rule, from what I can see the market for these companies to the VC’s is mostly dead.

He feels that way - how much more support do you need?

Btw, how many YC companies could you fund for the cost of buying a hotel in the Bay Area? 400? (assuming $6M for a hotel)
Huh. Somehow it had not occurred to me to try to make this cycle explicit. That's a really interesting idea, thank you.
We need a Flash Genius for a Music Software Startup
Our fully funded music software startup leverages complex actionscript techniques in audio sequencing; and we need a full-time contract-based actionscript all-star with a hardcore programming background. There is very little graphical work in this position. The ideal candidate will have spent time in large web / software projects in team settings and brings experience in a diverse selection of programming languages and models. A computer science degree or equivalent career experience is a plus. The existing application is written in flash 9 and needs to be transitioned to flash 10, taking advantage of new low-level access to the audio buffer. Experience with audio processing, encoding, and mixing is a plus.

Chicago candidates only; no staffing firms.

You may need to relocate to Chicago and buy a lot of music remixes.

Please send your resume and portfolio and optionally, small code samples.

Contact:

geoff@midventures.com
312-613-2735
I'll post here, what I posted there:

But the idea that you can put something out there on the cheap, get traction and become profitable is very much alive.

You can run a startup for two years for less than the cost of grad school. If anything, the YC model is more alive than ever. The labels should be worrying, not the talent.
PG is a joker.
The average reader here is at a mu intelligence level. You are too.
What'd you have to get funded (if anything)?
Look, I appreciate your candor and all but I can't help but think if I was your coworker then I'd be pissed at having to carry your sorry arse.

Shit or get off the pot.
What was easy for one exceptional person doesn't invalidate the research.
Maybe I read more into "cannot be beaten" than you intended. Thanks for sharing your experience!
Agreed. I thought only diggers fell for big, empty headlines. Angel investing is more likely to survive in the IT segment than standard VC investment due to the small barriers to entry. I just said more than that entire blog post.
think before you blog
Leptin. This article is long and is mostly talking about high-fructose corn syrup but, it mentions leptin by the way. Search for it in there ...

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/healthreport/stories/2007/1969924.h...
I found this amusing:

An example of freedom at Bell, one where it backfired, occurred with a Swedish linguist we wanted to hire in the mid-60s. His future department head, Peter Denes, who was to take him out for dinner, asked me what he should answer if the candidate enquired about "freedom" at the Labs. I told Denes to reassure the candidate that he had total freedom - he could do whatever he wanted to do. The next thing we knew his office and the corridor nearby were adorned with posters of Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara - just to test what we meant when we guaranteed him complete freedom. As you might imagine - this was the height of the Vietnam War - there was quite a commotion. People came to see me saying they couldn't continue with their classified, secret work. I had to reassure them that posters couldn't actually see. Then plant security got wind of the situation. They called me and I told them I would take charge, everything was "under control" - which of course it wasn't. But at least I got the security people off my back. Then I called my boss, John Pierce, and explained the whole thing to him. When I was through, he asked me what I was going to do and I said "Nothing, John". He replied with a single word: "Right". Of course, in less than 48 hours the whole thing had blown by.
Doesn't seem to have fixed the problem where your hard-drive keeps chugging along for as long as Chrome is open.. I hope they'll get to that soon, or at least, that it won't be a problem on the Mac version.
That's a neat abstract but the article itself is behind a pretty huge paywall. $31.50!
The fact that this account was created just now to advertise for this "all-star" position makes it seem like spam to me.
I am a little surprised that this got picked up, did not realize that my blog had the readership to even become link bait...

While the title might have been a little aggressive it was how I was feeling today. I have seen a lot of stuff recently which is what brought this post about.

Hope I did not piss off anyone at Ycombinator (or the companies that they funded) as this post (if you read it you will see) is much more about the VC market changing and in my mind hurting the scrappy entrepreneur's chances.
Sorry, bad wording on my part. I don't mean the reversed phrase should be meaningless, but that it should not mean something different than the unreversed phrase. However, it clearly does mean something different, therefore the implied relationship between smart and drunk is not bidirectional.

That being said, I missed the possibility of a 3rd underlying factor. The title is agnostic about this possibility.
I really don't think you can. .caf gives you a big increase in quality to size. Is there a reason you choose .caf over mp3?
Fair enough. For what it's worth, I've never received a negative performance review or been told I was underachieving. Maybe that sounds like a "Ooh, I'm a 10x rock star!" boast, but I think it more likely my work environments have been undemanding.
Headline has been revised from when the parent was posted, it used to talk about YC being "dead".
Buy one copy of Parallels Desktop, get one free
Ah, I follow your blog. Tried out TimeSvr after your review. I'm going to ponder my options for a few weeks. I may be in touch, but thanks for extending an invitation in any case.
Shortest Google "beta" period ever?

Now, OS X please :)
He doesn't sound very smart for someone who created such a company.
Everything I blog I am obviously willing to have put out in the open. I stand behind the post, the title I would probably slightly modify for the wide audience (this was intended for my normal readership of about 100 people) it seems to now be getting...

But if you read the post I think the point I am making is clear and the title does fit that as well.
If you want to know, you can buy my ebook for $79.
Dick Gabriel: Designed as Designer,
Scientists extract images directly from brain
Cue the "Ayn Rand can never fail us, it is we who failed her.", Chorus.
I'm certainly not upset - it just would have been nice to read more support for your argument as well as some elaboration.
How to stop creationism gaining a hold in Islam
Wow, how coincidental. I have the same name and went through a similar deal. In my case, it was gaining responsibility for my life that has helped break me out of the cycle. The social culture of high school and college is just in no way good.
Koza's genetic programming class at Stanford (pdfs, source, links)
Great post, keep them coming.
I've kind of had my doubts about YC myself (not the YC model) -- I was thinking this might be an intelligent piece addressing YC itself and the role of that sort of funding in startups.

But the hotel idea is cool too.
I thought this was an interesting post, you raised a point which I haven't seen anyone refute yet: wouldn't it be more cost-effective in the long-term to purchase a bankrupt hotel? I'm not the finance guru in the room, but I feel like it would be cheaper long-term.

I've done apartment hunting in the bay area, and it sucks. You have to look around, sign contracts, deposits, etc. It's a huge time and energy drainer.

I like your idea, I find it to be creative. Can someone please discuss the downsides to doing it this way? Let's put aside the whole "YC is dead" argument, that's obviously only going to degenerate this otherwise meaningful discussion.
I think it's unlikely you'll see increased parallelism usually. All but the newest browsers (IE8, Safari 4, FF 3.1) wait until they encounter script tags before they download them, rather than looking ahead to download multiple scripts in parallel.

http://stevesouders.com/ua/
The problem is your tense. You make a prediction that will affect investors like YC, yet declare the firm immediately dead.

I would recommend writing to the audience you want to have, and nurture your current readership into loyalty through respect. That means reasonable headlines and fleshed out arguments.

I must admit though, I've toyed with the idea of a "dev bunker". Really cheap housing + coworking + startup community = super cheap collaboration.

I think PG is right, that it wouldn't be cheaper than the open market. But the benefit is in the colocation, not just cost.

There are plenty of YC companies that don't fit the super scrappy model though. We at Tipjoy have a house, for example.
svk? Also BitKeeper was built on SCCS, and ClearCase MultiSite was built on ClearCase.
That's great. Just don't write blog posts trying to convince me that breakage is something that makes Python better than Java when in fact the opposite is true.
I would like to point out that Chile has less regulation than US and fewer bubbles.
This is a tip that I've also used to great effect, but I thought that I should point out (if it isn't obvious) that you must make sure the same image always points to the same subdomain (image 1 is always linked to images1.mysite.com) otherwise you'll shoot yourself in the foot by eliminating browser caching.

I usually write a quick function in $language to turn the first few letters of the filename into ASCII then modulus by the number of fake subdomains that I've set up to decide which server to link to. The overall distribution may be imperfect but file x will always be linked to server x across pages, so it's a nice quick solution, especially if you have multiple maintainers.
Why web hosting businesses work (vs doing a web startup)
Security is a high priority for us (2 people). We are careful to write secure code, and we discuss security specifically and do code reviews for any risky parts. This process isn't formalized, but we don't just trust ourselves -- we also expect each other to find any problems we've missed. This doesn't seem to fit into any of your responses.

(If you're going to make a poll, I would recommend choosing answers which don't presuppose so much)
Have you looked at living overseas? It looks possible to work for 5 years then not need to work indefinitely. Though, depending on your friends and family, this might not be what you want. Anyways, here's a little research I've done. If I don't get married in the next couple years, I plan on following my own advice.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=122341

I have a friend who is very well travelled, and he agrees with the viability of my take on financial independence. There is a lot more research I need to do, but the general concept seems alright.
Why do they need so much money?

I know they have a lot of employees. What do they all do?
Does someone know if there is a way to provide an alternate source for a script in case of failure of the main source ?
I was about to post a non-sequitur "well do this" reply, but honestly, I just haven't got a bulletproof answer, only one that reflects what I really want to do and probably won't work for everyone.

You will probably come to the answer more quickly now that you've actually seriously brought it up and posted it on a public forum.

In the meantime, I've found that at my company, work is much more bearable (and I get more done) if I (politely) get into other peoples' business without asking.
Your comment has me attempting to map web companies to rock bands.

I got as far as:

Google = Beatles

Myspace = Monsters of Metal

37Signals = Led Zeppelin

#silly I know.
You're only allowed to use .caf, .aif, or .wav files.
"IE8 in private browsing mode will block 3rd-party scripts that are referenced from more than 10 (by default) sites. This includes all this Google stuff and Google Analytics."

Is changing the URL slightly enough to circumvent this?
Cars will communicate to avoid collisions
We Americans do too. In high school my history teacher liked to ask the French students "how do you say I surrender in French?" We hold WWII over them the way you do Waterloo.

Some take it too far and start using the term "Freedom Fries".
I think you're quite accurate. A performance review isn't an objective measure of performance or aptitude, it is too limited and restricted to the context of one company.
I want to say that you have a larger calling in life to do something bigger than what you're doing now.
Sugarmomma FTW. I married a teacher though, so startup it is. At least I get free health insurance.
No problem. Someone else has contacted me after seeing my post here as well, and it's an open invitation to anyone reading - if you want to join Lazy Hackers, LLC, get in touch =)

sid@sidsavara.com (why not, have at it spammers, I have Google's spam filter =P)
Girlfriend (civil engineer in Fairfax), desire to move out of Orlando after growing up here and living here for 16 years (though that still includes four years of undergrad in NC), my company also conveniently has offices in and around Fairfax, too.
Here's what you do:

1. Work your ass off to have good savings if you don't already. This may take a few years.

2. Make sure that there are people in the US who would like to work with you as an independent contractor so that you know you can make a buck when necessary.

3. Move to a foreign country with an advantageous exchange rate (Argentina comes to mind).

4. Buy some property in a place you like and relax! Your money will go very far in such a place.

Living in the US and not working are fairly incompatible unless you're loaded.
I think we could learn a lot by interacting with people completely outside of our industry who you know are not doing the work for the money.
Not very different then how it was before.
has to be the scariest thing i've read all year
I've seen many late-night infomercials promising exactly the position you're looking for, with many exciting ground-floor sales opportunities.
Haha that's great though I think some beers would help your cause. You'd probably find this article interesting:

http://www.negativland.com/albini.html
Why did you change the title of the article to something entirely different, unrelated, and nonsensical? I wish there were a special type of flag for when people do that.
Woodstock of Washington?
Damn - This Account Has Exceeded Its CPU Quota

Can anyone summarize or is it basically what it sounds like? How accurate is it?
weve been using them for a few years, very reliable, they work with some big programs we get checks from, offerwise, person.com, more http://www.whopaidme.com/index.php?search=webmasterchecks...

we get charged around $1.49 a payment for our volume
Agree with your conclusion tho not with your argument. Grad school is free (and "profitable" with stipends) if you get fellow/TA/RAships.
Your right. Sorry about that.
That depends entirely on where you live.
I never said it did. If drinking excessively is gradually killing somebody, though, it might not be a bad idea for them to stop drinking, you know? Seems like the smart thing to do.

As far as I can tell from the summary (has anybody actually read it? I don't have a subscription...), the point the research makes is that people who have tested as having above-average IQs at the age of 10 also have a higher-than-average incidence of problems with alcohol as adults (meaning what, I'm not sure: arrests and/or medical problems, I assume). That could be read as, "smart people don't necessarily have smart coping behaviors".

I'm flabbergasted by the people in thread going, "Smart people have a statistically higher incidence of winding up dead in ditches due to alcohol poisoning! Go us!". But then again, the top level post was summarized as "smart people are drunks", so maybe I'm being naive in expecting people to respond to more than just a summary-of-a-summary in a post about alcohol.
Update on Google Chrome for Mac
I love the name, "Dev Bunker".

I think it would be a lot cheaper. Getting contracts for office, housing, etc., is very expensive (both from a cash perspective and a business energy perspective).
Alas the account is suspended.

Basically, they had this experiment where they showed the subjects 400 12x12 (I think) pixel images of letters and measured various things in their brain.

They used (most likely) neural nets and machine learning to draw conclusions about what was going on, and then they showed the subjects a series of NEW images that were not in the training set, measured the brain activity, and they were able to display a graphic that had white, grey and black pixels that closely resembled the white on black lettering that they had trained it on.

They were not exact pictures, but kind of like fuzzy images that you could see the whiter areas were were the letters were, and the darker areas in the images were aslo where the background was.

Interesting stuff, but I think a far cry from the reading people's dreams they believe is possible in the future.
"wouldn't it be more cost-effective in the long-term to purchase a bankrupt hotel?"

It would be the ultimate extension of the Google (and Microsoft before them) "keep them at work" model. Bed, board, work in one location. Every cost could be amortized over the number of people/companies you have living there. Incomparable face to face networking opportunities.

Certainly one of those brainstorming "this is way too crazy to work...or is it?" kind of ideas.
Traditional differential equations is not one of the more useful college math classes(star), but a few useful things can be extracted from it. One of the most interesting is that under certain circumstances, oscillation is inevitable, by the very nature of how the system reacts to its own changes.

A classic example is the well-known "simple harmonic oscillation", where the only solution that doesn't oscillate is to start right at 0.

The market is more complicated. If simple harmonic motion is caused by negative feedback (the further you get from the origin, the stronger the force pulling you back), market instability is caused by positive feedback and the fact that there is a cap in how far bubbles can inflate. Excitement engenders excitement, so bubbles inflate. Depression engenders depression, so contractions also tend to overshoot vs. the "true" state of the economy.

Stripping this effect out of the economy would take more than just making it "smarter", you'd have to rewrite the whole foundation of it.

Mitigating recessions (and depressions) may be possible. Trying to stop them just makes them hit harder.

((star): DiffieQs are of course themselves useful; it is the class itself that is considered a bit of a waste by professors. Closed form solutions to diffieqs are the exception, not the rule, and mathematicians in general are not very interested in further pursuing the problem.)
This might be the most exciting science news I've ever read. The implications are breathtaking.
So, if on average you were pushing an (hours worked/hours present) ratio of between 0.5-.15 how much of the money paid to you would the hours you were present but not engaged be worth to you?

I should mention that I too find the application of industrial age factory schedules to intellectual production to be equally ludicrous, but have so far found the transaction costs of alternative compensation structures to be too expensive and or risky.