skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Javascript would be some kind of new-agey pop religion.

It looks at first like Christianity or Judaism, but it somehow brings in funky zen concepts like lambdas and prototype chains. No one really took it seriously, then one day, it was just everywhere. No two implementations are quite the same, and most people do it horribly.
Not unreasonable at all. Operating sysstems are nothing without the progarms that run on them . I can see how textmate would be attractive ( I used to run Vim, now I run Carbon Emacs).
I'm sad to see it go, I was think of going for the first time this year but I just don't see the point. Macworld just doesn't matter anymore, the conference that matters for Apple is WWDC.
Except there is no way to inject funds to the idea. There's no way to pay Google for more cpu/bandwidth/storage. The system is also very propriety and there is no (easy) way move an appengine app to a new server.

I'd much rather get some cheap hosting somewhere else than develop for free on appengine. Its an interesting platform but there are still too many limitations for me to consider it for serious use.
Ask someone who works at Google if there was ever a time when in the company's history when a Stanford or Berkeley degree wasn't a major advantage in the hiring process. Even at a small startup, you're probably going to have more faith in an unknown from Stanford than an unknown from Western Kentucky U.

Paul's essay is interesting, but I don't think any of recent academic / sociological studies would confirm his conclusions. In general, the best indicator of one's success is (a) your parent's income and (b) your education. Academic connections open so many more doors and opportunities, even to those who don't have the intelligence and skills to match. An idiot who graduates from an unknown college will probably go nowhere, but one from Stanford may end up as CEO. (Personally, I've seen the latter occur.)
Repeat After Me: Revenue Generation
SecureCRT is fantastic if you're stuck in a Windows environment.

http://www.vandyke.com/products/securecrt/
Really? I thought knowledge of undersea gas hydrates was fairly common - just that retrieving them was cost-prohibitive.

That being said, is this really the solution to the fuel crisis? Acknowledging that we are running out of a fossil fuel should change behavior, not encourage more of the same.
I see "isbuxferdead.com" is available.
> [MA has] a "blue pencil" standard that allows judges to rewrite noncompetes instead of requiring the original agreement to be enforced verbatim,

If a judge is looking at your agreement, the non-compete has already cost you a lot of time and money, and possibly the job.
Weeks? More like decades.
Soon all your blog comments will belong to Facebook or Google
Pen based input research
I definitely don't want to give the impression that I am opposed to credentials in all instances. Actually, Medicine isn't that great an example, because you don't become licensed as a physician or surgeon until you've completed a residency - ie., you've proved you can "do it". Whereas in Law, you only need to obtain a degree and pass an exam. So in a way, you really are relying on reputation in law - which may be why "big firms" like to broadcast their connections with Ivies and so forth.

Anyway, the licensing process for MDs is so different from JDs that I shouldn't have mentioned them in the same sentence.

Here's my worry, though. If a truly bright person can learn much more quickly than the average, that person may eventually be discouraged from pursuing law (or even medicine) because they are essentially throttled by the system. Also, credentials may not matter as much to this person, because they seek out areas where they can prove themselves without worrying about the particular degree.

If this happens (and I'll admit it is unlikely in the near term), you could have a situation where professions that make heavy use of credentials are most appealing to those who are good at getting credentials, but not much good at anything else. For those folks, the payoff of a credential is highest. Whereas for someone who could do well with or without a credential, it's just a path with many irritating roadblocks.

The interesting thing will be to see if the professions adapt. Perhaps there are some creative ways to retain some of the valuable aspects of credentialing without forcing everyone to learn at the same pace? Perhaps a heavier focus on exams, rather than than hours or years logged in a program? Another approach might be to limit the most restrictive licensing to more specialized cases - ie, require a 3 year degree and full membership in the bar (and, I'd hope, even more than that) to try a death penalty case, but require a shorter and easier exam for more transactional work where a minor amount of money is on the line. Even in medicine, I suspect that nurses can handle many of the things that only MDs are currently allowed to do (in some states, nurse practitioners can do this - a two year MS followed by a one year apprenticeship and exam is sufficient to independently treat some cases, rather than a 4 year degree followed by a three year residency).

Hard to say if it can happen, or if it is even desirable. But I'd guess there will be pressure, and that's not necessarily a bad thing, depending on how it all goes down...
Why not just let the kids do what they want to do? Also, at 7 they already have maths at school. Why not throw in some LOGO exercises, too.
So, somebody was pissed off by Google's already spartan search UI and tried to create a slightly more spartan UI?
The emissions of burning methane have less of a green house effect than methane gas itself.

Why does it matter that it will run out?
I've heard that U.S. universities have similar "black books." It's too bad they don't publish their data, because that would be an interesting way to compare the performance of high schools.
where in the bay area? I'm in the south bay, and might be interested in something similar.
one day it could run out

One day the Sun will become a red giant and expand beyond the orbit of Mars.
Why is sex inappropriate for young people?

I'm not trying to troll. I've genuinely never heard a good, logical answer. It seems to be a feeling people have, and I'm curious if there is a reason behind it. Of course there are dangers like adult pedophiles, but supposing those were avoided... Perhaps it's better to consider just the case of seeing sex, not participating, and having play/pause/stop buttons in the child's control. People loathe that, but I'm not quite sure what harm is done besides the vague idea of "loss of innocence".
He is probably right in that the economic system needs to evolve to keep up with technological change, but he misses the most important reason for that (the increased importance of products with negligible marginal cost of production), and he has no reasonable idea of possible solutions.

He is not content to be a cartoonist and has so far tried to write about physics (the last part of, I think, the Dilbert Principle) and religion (God Debris, which is a free download - he manages to come up with crude versions of ideas that Hinduism got to millennia ago).
You can use http://www.google.com/ncr if you don't want localisation..
Credit applied properly is beneficial. An individual earns enough over several years to purchase a house; without credit, they would have to wait those years before buying it, whereas with credit they can use the house while they pay for it (at a modest premium).

The economy is more efficient if people are able to adjust the timing of when they consume an item versus when they pay for it; saving allows them to use it later, credit allows them to use it earlier.

If we didn't have credit, we'd simply develop less-efficient replacements. For instance, children would simply borrow from their parents instead of from a bank to get a house. This concentrates risk and doesn't allow for economies of scale.
Twelve questions about the Apple-Macworld Expo breakup
you can pay out arbitrary bonuses once they've answered.

so you could easily do single-round prisoner's dilemma, and have amazon pair up 2 (different) folks at a time, and when you get the results back, look to see what the folks in each pair did, and award bonuses appropriately.

i'm not sure if there is a way to do an iterated version.
Good Point. 'Renewables' are in vogue because they are 'clean,' not because they are renewable.
Pair programming. Teamwork, tolerance, communication, patience. Not bad for children.

What bothers me is that computers are a lot less accessible today than in the 80s. I almost feel jealous that I didn't have an 8bit computer when I was a preteen :-).

I used to spend a big chunk of my free time then reading books in the library along with a couple of girls. We would then discuss with the other kids what cool books we had found. Reading and discussing texts is extraordinarily fun and it sparked my interest in reading. Programming can also be popularized the same way.
Inevitably, though, your competitor will learn a lot when they hire someone experienced in the field.
I think it's appropriate, but you have to start small. Get him or her a set of Lego Mindstorm. That's a bit over the kids head, but I'm sure you won't mind having to spend time playing with Legos to help the kid understand.

Robotics is great for teaching programming. Alternatively, get the kid a copy of the board game "Robo Rally."
I worked with a guy who is a very good programmer, who told me that from about age 11, he would come home from school and program his TRS-80 until 1 AM or so every day. "And I did that," he said, "for about seven years." I was shocked: did your parents know? "Oh yes." And they didn't mind? "No, why would they?" Well, didn't they think you needed to go outside or something? "No, I guess not."

He's a very sweet, quiet and introverted guy whom some people think of as a little, uh, inaccessible. But as someone else commented, there's no way of determining cause and effect here. I'm inclined to believe he's just the way he is, and programming had little to do with it.

A story from the same project: we were designing something at a whiteboard and I said, about a sort of messaging sequence: It's like a game of frozen tag... when this thingy gets a message, it has to wait until another thingy comes along and starts it again. He said, "Frozen what?" Frozen tag. You know frozen tag? "No, what's that?" Well, you know what tag is, right? The kids' game called tag? "No. What's tag?"

I had to explain what "tag" was.
Are you controlling for those not admitted that went to similar caliber schools, or have an example of how that statistic compares to those schools with a similar quality applicant pool?
To beat Google, Microsoft will become Google
But when a child borrows from their parents, the burden is confined to that family and the object is already paid for. No outside burden is placed on the family.

It appears apparent to me that the typical American cannot handle credit properly. When they are given unlimited borrowing potential, they will not stop themselves when appropriate, especially when the lenders suggest they have the capacity to borrow more.

> The economy is more efficient if people are able to adjust the timing of when they consume an item versus when they pay for it...

Do you have a reference for this?
Rolling one's own is always a nice little project, but whether that's the right option for you will depend on whether you're prepared to take the time to do it, or if you have other priorities. Installing WordPress takes a couple of minutes if you want a decent amount of control over your software but without the hassle of writing your own, and there are plenty of decent themes and syntax highlighting plugins out there.
The library is a great place to try. Quiet, comfortable, and free :)
Idiomag Pushes the Envelope With Big New Music API
Not to mention he assumes that any interest in programming comes from the parent leading the kid to do it. I discovered programming on my own at 6, thanks.

Right. I have a nephew who is 8 or so and has been begging to learn how to program for at least a year. I almost got him an OLPC when they came out, but his father decided to hold off for a while.

I'm pretty sure that if I had run across computers at that age, instead of a few years later, I'd have felt the same way.
By using that, you wouldn't exactly be making a statement against all this bullshit localization and forced redirection to local sites, with results in local languages preferred to the stuff I'm actually searching for.

If I wanted to go to www.gooogle.MYCOUNTRYCODE I would have gone there, and not www.google.com. The fact that google seems to forget these settings between Firefox sessions as well pissed me off enough to just set this up.

I guess I'm a stubborn bastard that way, but I thought others might enjoy the service too. It comes neatly with a opensearch provider to replace google so that it's next to no work doing the switch.

On a privacy plus side, this is a google-proxy which sends out none of your confidential data and requires no cookies, and hence leaves your search anonymized, although that is more of a side-effect than any specifically desired feature on my part.
Was I the only one to think sex was disgusting and immoral when I was young? (like, 5 years old)
Is Google Reader Getting Themes Like Gmail? Or Just Hiding More Easter Eggs?
I cannot give you a video, but the 4 part series of blog posts I wrote sometime ago explain how to get it up and running along with the Emacs Code Browser - I used it successfully in a terminal window via Putty to a Linux box and in Aquamacs on OS X - http://sodonnell.wordpress.com/the-emacs-newbie-guide-for-ra...
I've been a happy user. The developer, Dan, is very responsive.

It's not cross platform, but it is open source. I wonder whether anyone's tried it under Wine.

BTW, task comments can be either plain text or rich text, in case you don't initially notice this.
"... There's no way to pay Google for more cpu/bandwidth/storage. ..."

Agreed, this will change in time. But I'd use this point to refine the idea as you suggest on cheap hosting.

"... The system is also very propriety and there is no (easy) way move an appengine app to a new server. ..."

Not convinced of that. The biggest problem is not the porting of an idea but replicating the scaling.
Yes, angels and VC's are still investing. I have some friends who have recently received an angel seed round. Surprisingly with only a demo. No product yet.

I've also heard about some VC's doing seed rounds, but in companies which already have revenue.
So, Astrology?
Writing threaded code is not all that difficult. It's finding the bugs that is. It's because the problems are not easily reproducible. The synchronization model in Java makes it all too easy to muck it up. Some simple ideas:

Threads are very handy if they don't talk to each other like java servlets.

If you have a shared variable, make it a monitor.

If you have a share resource resource, make it immutable.

If you have 45 shared variables, you are doing it wrong.

Use library objects like queues to communicate between threads.

Use a shared-nothing model like in erlang.
Open Emacs and type C-h t (ctrl and h together and then t) that will open the emacs built in tutorial. Start going through it, then download one of the many cheatsheets and print it out and stick it somewhere you can see it from your desk.

Its quite a long learning curve, and I am still no expert, but its my favorite editor now. I cannot say its any better or worse than any of its rivals, but I put the time into learning it better than the others!
They're probably afraid that publishing their data would result in lawsuits.
Microsoft issuing emergency browser fix
I think part of the reason is that Linux and Unix processes are less expensive to start, they are more memory efficient because shared libraries are loaded into memory only once (not once per process) and fork is copy on write.

I may be wrong about Windows. I recently tried a Tcl script that launched another Tcl script repeatedly and found additional memory consumption was about 100kb per process. It wold probably have been less if I used fork. It would be interesting to know how Windows compares.
"... It was not so easy 25 years ago for an ambitious person to choose to be judged directly by the market. You had to go through bosses, and they were influenced by where you'd been to college ..."

What was the hack Apple, MS and other tech companies used? Aligning themselves to rapidly improving technology where greater performance was really noticeable?

I still see the barriers described here occurring particularly in market bottle-necks (interfaces where technology collides with its ancestry) where old-world business has influence. The biggest one I can think of is access to capital. It seems the closer you get to capital, the greater the effect credentials can come into play balancing out performance.

"...
What cram schools are, in effect, is leaks in a seal. The use of credentials was an attempt to seal off the direct transmission of power between generations, and cram schools represent that power finding holes in the seal. Cram schools turn wealth in one generation into credentials in the next ..."

Is YC acting as an anti-cram school hack? Using YC credentials to gain leverage to gain capital to the next generation Startups to be measured by performance?
Windmill 1.0 set for release, promises dedicated support 
Windmill nearing 1.0 Release, offers lots of features and dedicated community.
How to Reprogram the Pentagon
Microsoft notified our company last Friday afternoon, and put a lot of hands on deck to address the issue with a couple big oil companies in downtown Calgary.

Our shop is officially Internet Explorer on the desktop, but this event has resulted in first-ever "Use Firefox" activity to be supported corporately. Websense was also turned up to limit web browsing beyond what we've ever done before.

What has surprised me is the gap between our learning of the problem, and the still (to my knowledge) unreleased patch for IE.

I am not surprised to see that it took 4 days for me to find word of this on Hacker News: I bet most of you are using Macs or Linux on the job as well as at home. Carry on.
I started programming when I was about 9.

I was at a friends place and he was showing me this new Vic20 his parents had bought him. I don't recall ever having anything to do with computers before, but he spent a while showing me how you can programme it. That was it. I was hooked.

I still have my Vic20 User Guide sitting on the bookshelf here. It's well worn, the back cover fell off years ago, but there's no way I'm getting rid of it.
Looks like they're also working on scalability @etherpad

http://etherpad.com/ep/blog/posts/beta-update-thanks-for-bei...
> Some kind of credit's required to get through the ups and downs of the normal business cycle

Isn't that what cash reserves are for?
Australian court OKs use of Facebook to serve legally binding documents
int a; //This is a number
char b; //This is a char.
void * c; //This is a pointer.
x=*((int*)a); //This is a void pointer cast to a number.
Yeah, well, if I enter into a contract with a landlord specifying that he'll change the rates as desired, TS for me. Get a personal loan at a bank and it won't vary.
I think that's common. Most young kids wouldn't want anything to do with sex. In all of those cases, the prohibition on them having anything to do with sex is kinda useless/redundant.
You can show fairly quickly that the success of Caltech alumni in sciences, as measured by awards, is comparable only to the École Normale Supérieure (and possibly Phystech in Russia depending on how you count). Check out http://www.arwu.org/rank2008/ARWU2008_A(EN).htm

The column 'Alumni' compares the number of Nobel prizes or Fields Medals won by Alumni to the number won by Harvard (in percent). Caltech scores 52.8 on this, and ENS 53.4. But Caltech and ENS are by far the smallest of the universities on the top 100 list (unless I am mistaken). Both Caltech and ENS enroll about 200 undergraduates a year, with ENS enrolling only about 100 of those in science and engineering. Caltech has a population of another 1200 graduate students.

One thing to note about Caltech, ENS, and Phystech, they are extremely small, extremely selective, have no legacy admissions, limited or no affirmative action, and pay heavy attention to competitive exams, in the case of ENS and Phystech, administrating them.
Ask YC: HTML emails or not? 
Hey guys my company plans to send emails marketing our app to our target audience. My question is do we use html emails or just plain text emails?

[edit]

Perhaps I should have been more specific. I just want a way to help push awareness of our product in addition to Google ads / internet forum advertising. It is not my intention to appear scammy/spammy, that is why I wanted to seek the advice of fellow YC'ers who have been in the trenches so to speak on how to effectively market their software.
Thanks a lot, this looks fantastic!
That is irrelevant really. You may think that the result is fair, but fair is not the reason that is the result.

The free market comes to a result based on a series of self interested decisions. At the core are the buy/sell decisions. I price in a way that maximises my profit, you buy in a way that maximises your utility.

Fair (I admit an ambiguous term) represents something external to this.
Facebook launches plugin directory for Connect
actually i am not quite so sure about "programming had very little to do with it"...

programming may have appealed to him given his personality, but that doesnt mean his personality is/was fixed and could not have changed... classic model is the TRD (Triadic Reciprocality Determinism) where the personality, behaviours and environment affect each other...

so in this case, he may have been mildly introverted, so the computer (the environment) offered temporary solace to his preference to introversion (personality) resulting in increasing usage (behaviors)...

now i am not saying there is anything wrong with introversion or doing what you enjoy, but you can always argue the benefits of such a choice on lifestyle and how it affects other parts of his life..

the worrying bit is the parents not thinking it was important to "go outside or something"...
That explains why they do it, not why it's fair.
Peepcode (http://www.peepcode.com/) is coming out with one but it will be about an hour long and will cost $9. I think that's a good deal. You can see the 5min preview here: http://getfireant.com/listings/episode?feed_item_id=2414972
actually thats a good idea, but it has to be complemented with balance (ie for other activities too)... kids (like anyone else) may get too comfortable with routine and what they find easy, if they are not put in an environment that challenges all aspects of their behaviours and/or psyche.
Credit is just the continuous version of slavery. There's little difference between a literal slave and someone deep in debt with creditors forcibly confiscating their income. Unfortunately the market rewards those who use credit, which encourages a society based on debt rather than one based on widespread assets.

However, this does not mean that credit should or can be prohibited via edict. What will happen is that over time communications technology/market efficiency will progress to the point that anonymous transactions will (once again) make economic sense.

When it once again becomes feasible to transact your life using money (instead of the current identity based "point" system), it will make sense for people to liquidate all sources of credit and laugh as the creditors are unable to collect. When this catches on, the credit system will crumble.

edit: cool - mass downmods for an idea that doesn't mesh with the groupthink du jour. didn't know one had to pay karma to hopefully start a discussion.
my company plans to send emails marketing our app to our target audience

Please send them in HTML. That way my email filters will discard them automatically and I'll never have to read your spam.