skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"... shows that for a long time Western writers have been overestimating the number of inhabitants of China who are actually conversant in Mandarin. The lower than expected percentage of Chinese persons who can understand one another in Mandarin illustrates how little provision of primary education, broadcasting, or telephony has reached the hinterlands of China. The comparable percentage in Taiwan, which a generation ago had a much lower percentage of families with any family heritage of speaking Mandarin, is much higher, a sign of Taiwan's greater success in providing education and mass communications to all inhabitants."

I think the more interesting question is how the Chinese were able to hold together a culture as diverse as having many separate, unintelligable dialects, yet still live with the popular myth that they "speak Chinese".

Personally, having these ideograms isn't a bad thing. It makes it harder for me to type in Chinese. However, the way the language is setup has allowed me to think along different lines I would not have had, if I only knew English.

A different line of thought: our decendents may look back and say that the Internet had changed things profoundly, but not for the reasons we think of it now. The legacy may well end up being the ubiquitous use of the Unicode standard.
The Secrets of Consulting by Gerald Weinberg is also an excellent resource for consulting nuggets like those presented in the article.
Do You Miss the AT&T Monopoly?
Will It Blend? for iPhone and iPod touch
You're allowed to redistribute the JRE with an application if you do it for the reason that we're doing it:

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/jre/README
Bush Data Threatens to Overload Archives
The kind of killing that Hewlett and Packard made in the marketplace was predicated on fair dealing and a commitment to their employees and their community. What entrepreneurs would you like to see HN readers emulate?
> that doesn't mean that programmers should be eternally complacent and unquestioning minions of code

Yes, but it would do many of us good to consider the options from time to time. It's not just digging ditches - you rarely get anything like the compensation and freedom that many software gigs offer even in fields like architecture or medicine, where you need years of training and education just to get to the starting line.

It's definitely not all roses, but as someone who got into software relatively late in life (28) I'm still surprised at times how easy we have it.

(I suppose it's like growing up in a Western country - life don't seem that great to you, until you compare it with how most of the world lives)
Thanks, but my High School stoichiometry and organic chemistry knowledge aren't that rusty yet. I found your answer wanting.

Here's why -- looking up carbon sequestration on wiki, I see no mention of CH4.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage

And BTW, I'm not a CSM, but I work with hundreds of them. I'll be sure to let you know if your explanation leaves any of them muddled.
Not all geeks are shy (even though the author seems to think so). Still, these tips can be useful for everybody who wants to improve his/her networking skills.
Emo boys whine more than emo girls.
>You have a problem with any random transaction, you call them up, they apologize, and they go fix it.

I have absolutely the same experience with my bank's Visa.
It's always best to quote yourself. ;)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=323829

Totally kidding. :)

But I'm leaving Apple with my next laptop. For coding, Linux is better (same dev/deployment environment, and better repos / package managers), and for gaming, windows is better. Also, the hardware is much cheaper (about $500-1000 less for an MBP equivalent non-Apple laptop). Most OS X apps are too mouse driven for my taste anyway. The only apps I'll miss are Textmate, Smultron, Dictionary. The only OS feature I'll miss is painless plug and play.

PS: Written on a 2 year old macbook whose screen flickers after sleep and which is constantly in danger of overheating due to fan failures.
What's the biggest conflict you've had over a Visa transaction? My biggest Amex conflict: I was forced to buy a walk-up fare one way ticket from Prague because CSA screwed up my booking; Amex fixed that in 4 minutes over the phone when I got home.

I'm not arguing with you; it's just my perception that Amex has been better than the various Visas and MCs I've held.
There is something strange about the notion that programmer's ability declines with age. I am a bit over 30 now and I've only become better, as long as I'm motivated (it was easier to stay motivated when I was younger). It seems to me that as long as you don't stop learning, you will only get better, and the experience of people like Steve Yegge seems to confirm it.

I don't understand the whining about the workplaces either. At the end of the day, what makes Google a great place to work: the free soda and perks or the options to work on interesting things? If you choose the former, probably you are not really wired to enjoy programming as much as some of us are.
I'm starting to wonder if, in this day and age, there really is such a thing as a "career job." The system which predominated in the 50's of spending your entire career working for a big corporation and then living off of a retirement pension seems to be faltering. The auto industry is just one example...

To me, programming offers a challenging, generally fun activity with more potential for innovation than nearly any other "job." I didn't get into software to be the modern day equivalent of an assembly line worker. Though I can sympathize to some extent with the position of the "rank and file" engineers (i.e. that many software engineering jobs are a means of putting food on the table), I'm also optimistic that the opportunity to build great things finds those who have a desire to do so.
^ Another fellow CS student at UF :-)
Suck? Maybe they suck, but working as a programmer is better than not working. Believe me, I'm being laid off at a mortage company (that was once a thriving internet startup -- don't ask), and watching these loan people deal with the fact that they may not work for years is harsh.

Tedious grind? You can create your own opportunities, but in software you're more likely to find a job in rough times than most other industries. Don't spit that fortune in the eye.
Web developers and Tools Programmers
Bad karma is bad karma. I care about people in the industry being dickheads because it decreases the quality of life.
Please, don't try to tell me that KR didn't take it to new heights (and new levels of cynicism).
American Express Plum Card. http://www.plumcard.com/
With early pay I get 2% cash back. If you need to push payments off you can pay 10% by the due date and pay the balance 2 months later without interest charges.

I try to use this card for every expense I can, it can really help you manage your cash flow.
BookSprouts, A Social Network For Book Worms And Clubs
Debunking Daniel Tammet
"if you build it they will come" doesn't mean you don't also market or cut costs. its about focus, not exclusivity. product comes first.

i get the feeling that "lack of spine" in the OP is implying that the focus isn't on the bottom dollar or self promotion, is all. focus on the product doesn't garner the direct results like the other two will.
This question doesn't make any sense. YC is open to older entrepreneurs. Who knows whether they're ruthless, or ruthless enough? And why accept your premise that what's needed to win is ruthlessness?
Really I think the "game" so to speak is to move from being a programmer or development engineer into things like project management or solution modeling. Sure, the point is valid that hiring is "biased" towards kids in their early twenties who are really good programmers. But the idea I would think is to progress up the ladder so that when one is in mid-career, one is not doing the day-to-day programming so much as more management type of tasks. Myself, right now I do test automation, and so spend my days mostly writing test suites using the silktest language and the like. But I don't plan to be still doing that years from now. Hopefully I can sort of move up the ladder a bit into being like a test lead or something. So instead of leaving the industry, I recommend people look to see about ways of climbing the proverbial ladder.
When you say: "it's actually fairly rare a startup is unable to license some sort of deal and survive", I assume you mean "it's actually fairly rare a startup is able to survive without licensing sort of deal" rather than: "it's actually fairly rare a startup is unable to survive by licensing some sort of deal"

Whoa, my head is spinning.

In other words, usually a startup will be able to make a deal with the content owners which will allow the startup to survive. But I agree it's a risky ballpark to play in. One potentially big advantage, though, is if you're an unknown, this can raise your profile. So, even if this venture is unprofitable because of the legal costs and eventual revenue sharing with the content owners, by working on something that gains traction, you can leverage this reputation and experience on a future venture, which may put you in a more advantageous position than someone starting out from zero.

Or the energy sucked out of you from the lawsuit might make you want to leave the field entirely.
In the past 3 1/2 years (since I started buying Apple products), I've had a 60% defect rate by computer (5 computers - though each defective computer had multiple issues), and a 66% defect rate for other products (iPod 3G, iPhone 1G, Time Capsule)
a lot more companies succeed from not listening to pg's advice than vice versa

Got any hard data to support your claims?
Why is this better than GoodReads?
topping off your analytical refutation with an anecdotal quip about climate kinda defeats the theme of your post.
This was nice, pretty much straight to the point. At Dropbox we've noticed disproportionately more Mac/Linux users (relative to the "worldwide norm" or whatever that means, which is pretty standard). More importantly, we've definitely noticed disproportionately more vocal Mac/Linux users. We started as Mac and Windows but "investing" in a Linux (ok, Ubuntu/Nautilus to be specific, but it tends to work in most distributions and can work without Nautilus) client has certainly been worthwhile.
I can't imagine why Joel felt the question merited that kind of response.

This isn't exactly the first time the question has been asked over there. Once you've read it for the 100,000th time I'm sure your patience tends to wear thin.

Meanwhile, though it's conventional wisdom that "programming is a questionable long-term career choice": compared to what? Banking?

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/200...

A nice construction job?

http://paper-money.blogspot.com/2008/12/new-residential-cons...

Middle management at Circuit City?

http://money.cnn.com/2008/11/10/news/companies/circuit_city/...
That argument is shaky when you consider the opportunity cost associated with the inevitable increase in the cost of energy from non-renewable sources caused by both increasing demand and decreasing supply. The redistribution of capital to renewable sources is just a matter of when.
The original of this story was in Adam Cohen's book The Perfect Store.
The S&P 500
moral of the story: buy applecare.
Broadcast.com, Dallas Mavericks, HD Net, MicroSolutions, a hedge fund, a movie distributor, a movie production business, angel investments...and they all weren't done after Broadcast.com either.
Might be thinkcomp whining about how Zuckerberg stole Facebook from him... Only guy on here who seems to actively bring up his grudge.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=328235
Ask YC: Community Sponsored Programming
Derek Punsalan has introduced a very interesting method of releasing his next theme/s.

http://5thirtyone.com/archives/1607

Contributions in exchange for theme releases. Given the recent decision by Automattic to exclude premium themes from the directory, this is a pretty interesting way for theme developers to still get recognition and a nice return from the community for their hard work.

In this particular instance, personally I think $2000 is a pretty high price to ask unless (a) he plans on releasing a whole slew of themes or (b) he's developed a theme that just completely takes WordPress and turns it on its head in a stunning spectacle of presentation, functionality and utility. But that's my own opinion on the matter.

I think community supported programming is a rather unique, and interesting idea and wanted to get your opinions on the idea.

Go.
The post is from 2002, and he's saying that if you really need to work with large data you can afford to write your own tools like Google does.
Agreed. BeautifulSoup can be quite slow(unless I'm doing it wrong, which I probably am).

It accounts for 98% of the time of a current job I'm running. If anyone can provide some tips it'd be much appreciated.
Yep, you're right.

To turn anecdotes into data, you need good answers to these two questions:

- Are the samples very similar? (ie, same models, same usage patterns)

- Do they vary in a predictable way from a control group?

The only things which are the same between the samples are the owner, and the brand. We don't know any specifics about internal product testing and development, so it is a stretch to say that those details are the same across all samples.

The control group is non-existent: it is assumed to be a group of computers identical in every way to those being tested, except they never fail. That is: the control group is imagined to be just what is needed to prove the desired conclusions.

Having said all that, I have had repair-under-warranty problems with all the Macs that I have owned too.
haha thats the way it was done at yahoo. go ask HRC now, they'll probably tell you that you are being migrated to a VM-based platform. i'm not speaking derisively, its long time yahoo and other web companies backed off of the ridiculous policies of acquiring servers on a daily basis. the $40mln spend on hardware for panama won't be repeated
Have you ever had a job outside of software development? Most office workers are in the same boat that we are. A great deal of the population is worse off. As a software developer you have ample opportunity to better yourself and improve your situation.
HelpSpot is in a crowded market with viable open source solutions as well as established competitors at the same price point. With that in mind I offer the following as a constructive criticism.

HelpSpot prospects need more help determining if it's an appropriate solution: what are three symptoms or specific bug tracking needs that would indicate HelpSpot is the right choice compared to alternatives? The case studies don't have to badmouth competitive alternatives, but they should explain how customers determined it was a better choice.

HelpSpot clearly has satisfied customers, but they don't offer a meaningful differentiation or help prospects with a specific needs analysis. It's not surprising more articles are not written about them: it's not clear why they are remarkable.
This is great. I was running threads on a current crawl job but the real bottleneck is BeautifulSoup and not the network. So splitting the project into threads(while it helped about 10%) wasn't really necessary and Twisted probably would have done the trick.
name one yahoo property that bought completely new hardware for a new version rollout
"Cultural Agoraphobia" and Technology
Compared to the blundering idiocy that's rampant in the traditional media -- including attempting to sue people for linking to their stories! -- the NYTimes crew are operating at genius-level. It's really refreshing to see someone get it, especially considering how vital print newsrooms are.
for the last time, delicious does not run on erlang. erlang was used to in part of the migration of data
Interview with chair of panel overseeing the $700 billion
Greenshot.sourceforge.net
Despite the headline containing the word "Obama," this piece is almost entirely apolitical. Worth a read, IMHO.
If you haven't seen how wildly Chicago weather can swing from day to day, you haven't spent enough time in Chicago. There's really no such thing as "non-typical weather" for any specific day in the Windy City.
I think cross-colo is a size thing. BCP is good for all business, but most start ups can't afford to pay for hosting in several data centers.

I image cheap way to fake multiple colos now is to use visualization, amazon style. Heck you could do exactly what Seldo was suggesting every time on EC2.
I doubt it pays to be ruthless when you have nothing to back it up. If you can't dominate, you have to cooperate.
Most of the parts in Apple computers are the same parts used in PCs. A majority of the PC laptops are built by one of a few companies in China. As a former sys admin I've dealt with my share of PC hardware failure and in the last several years I've seen my share of Mac failures.

Hard drives are probably the component most likely to die in either and they all use the same group of vendors. Display failures are also more common in laptops and again, they all use the same group of vendors.
The post Joel answered posed a good question even if Joel is tired of hearing it. He does ask:

"What is a good industry to get into where your programming skills would put you at an advantage?"

How about IT work (maybe less programming), but for one of the green energy companies that will see easy access to cash over the next few years.

And Joel, I don't care if entry level jobs for you in NYC do start at $75k a year. Its still a tough job in an expensive city with an uncertain career path.
I've had my card copied and used to purchase thousands in gas and electronics. I called up Visa after seeing the charges when I logged in - and within minutes it was sorted with all charges waived.

Also, all purchases made with the card have their warranty doubled. So when my dell died right out of 2 yr warranty, I contacted them and was told to send it in. I then received a comparable unit from Dell the week after.
Yes, if central planners know the optimal way to spend each marginal dollar, then there is no broken window fallacy. I haven't heard any such case made for the popular green schemes.
Ff this is a ref to the "Facebook was my idea" drama, well, the screw you approach created Facebook. And the "nice-guy" approach? In this case, I think this proves the OP's statement well.

What is truly wrong of the OP is the age factor. Zuckerburg and Gates have both been accused of being ruthless thieves at an early age.
I once saw a newspaper website ask readers to email in examples of global warming in their neighborhood. As you can imagine, "I didn't see many squirrels around this year as usual" and other such intelligent commentary topped the list. Way to "educate" the population, mainstream media!
This appears to only run on Windows operating systems. I wish single platform software would mention that somewhere on the front page.

The website is pretty and appealing. I usually expect a monstrosity when I see a sourceforge.net URL.
"Girl" is an insult?
Ask HN: Where to find a designer for a cheap startup
I am looking for a designer to create the site and ui elements for my startup. I am a student with extremely limited funds although I have saved up some money to invest in a design. Does anyone have any recommendations as to a good designer with experience in startup work?
You're quite right. I guess we could also say every thing we've ever owned, seen or ever known about has failed. Except the things that are going to fail shortly.
Exactly. There might be room for this site, just as there's room for Digg, Reddit, and plenty of other social news aggregators, but this appears to be in no way ground breaking. It barely enhances one's ability to use, learn from, and enjoy books, in basically the same way as several other sites with similar functionality (LibraryThing, Shelfari, Goodreads, etc.).
Note: International warranty only valid on 'business model' laptops - mostly Latitudes.

Also, you often have to be a PITA to Dell to make sure that international service happens.

That's my experience, as a former Dell business tech support dude.
In short: Gdium is offering a free Gdium netbook and USB storage key to select people who will develop interesting applications for their education oriented product.

Gdium is an economical MIPS based netbook running Linux. A user's world appears to be stored on a "G-key" (usb key) making the machines interchangeable. It is aimed at the education market and is part of a larger web-based ecosystem of some sort.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gdium
Possibly, and understand that when is a very important question. Notice how if you place money in a bank, it gains interest. Similarly, the private capital system is very effective at deciding where and when to allocate resources. Allocating resources in an industry too early often means that all that money is lost or that it was not invested in another industry which could have had a significantly higher payoff. If history has anything to say about this matter, private markets are much better at allocation of resources (see famines of USSR and the "great leap forward" in maoist communist china).
I don't know what "popular green schemes" you're referring to, but a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade scheme are very nearly equivalent and require no central planning at all (save that required to enact, collect and enforce the tax of course) yet both bring externalities under market purview quite nicely.
Incoming anecdote...

The only computer I have had that hasn't eventually failed was my old Dell laptop - which funnily enough was dropped more times than I care to imagine.

The worst of which was when it slipped off the hood of my car, slid down the hill (upside down) that the car was parked on top of for about 35 metres, before coming to a rest after it collided with the curb.

Strange.
And what happens to all that extra cash collected in the name of climate change? Oh the federal govt. centrally plans on how to waste it on congressional pork.
I think he meant it along the lines of how many successful (however you define that) 50 year old programmers do you run into? Most people who start out their careers doing code eventually migrate into management or something more lucrative by that point.
>I doubt it pays to be ruthless when you have nothing to back it up.

Did the market cap of Microsoft suddenly drop while I wasn't looking or something?
What business instincts are you talking about? Is this from the Brazen Careerist or something? It just seems like you're making generalizations driven by anecdotes.

If you're more specific and backup your claims with data (or even concrete examples) I think you'll get better answers.
s/from/while/
- Get bloggers/writers to discover your svc serendipitously or through a friend or social media contact

- Definitely small time bloggers need to focused on. You never know who reads what!

- Submit your company to conference/contests like TechCrunch40/50. Go even if not selected or semi-finalist!

- Once at these conferences make yourself standout in a sea of nobodies. Be different and get people talking
Downturn will slow Mozilla's growth
99designs: http://99designs.com
Windows 7 Beta 1 - Review
Check back in a few years. We're only three years into observing the YC experiment. The average exit in the valley takes seven years. Over the next five years, we'll have pretty solid data about whether the YC model, and its companies, can "really make a killing in the marketplace".