skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
On a different note why? no, really... apart from enterprise development why would you want the headache...

(by the way, ive done java since 98 up until couple of years ago when i switched to python...)
When I was 15 I thought the idea of anyone over 20 doing it was disgusting. :-)

But that's not quite what you meant.
One thing I enjoy about Heroku is the option to export code and run a local Rails + Postgres instance if the need comes to fruition. The "escape hatch" is good for any system in which you intend to invest resources, even if you never need to escape. I think AppEngine is a little bit more proprietary, although with some work you could probably move to Python, Django, CouchDB or something similar in an emergency.
Daily examples of beautiful packaging
ive always wondered if the 3 fingers applied to feet as well.. ie 3 toes? so there is no pinkie??
Using the words PERL and productive without a not qualifier in the same sentence opens up some sort of alternate universe time warp that is so dangerous it should be avoided at all costs.
If there is no credit, is there any loans? If there are no loans, there's no income from "cash reserves" - how can you pay anything if you're unable to make money from the deposits people have given you?

I think you'll have a different argument and a different result if you wish credit CARDS to go away, rather than credit. If you had to go into somebody's office and sign forms, etc, then you'd think twice about charging the next latte...

As I recall, credit cards came from the revolving credit various stores started at some point in the past. They've grown a bit in use and scope since then :-).
and congrats to danw who built it
I enjoyed this article. However I find it important to note that buddhism and taoism are philosophies and not religions.
it feels like Apple is slowly gearing up for the time when Steve is no longer at the company
What happens to your brain at high altitudes?
This may well be the beachhead for the introduction of firefox into some hardcore IE-only businesses. Which can only be a good thing.
>Bdsm

And a little perverse.
Hey CBS, Hulu Much?
1. Shock yourself out of the inertia of the previous context by removing yourself from it quickly and decisively as soon as you realize it's time to get to work. Devote a few minutes to something as far removed as possible for the explicit purpose of clearing your head of what you've been doing. Do not delay. Leave things unfinished: if it is not as important as the task you're switching to, then by definition it can wait.

2. Start with the smallest, simplest, most self-evident and well-defined part of the larger task that you can think of. Reduce every task until you find something you can do right this minute without having to think more than a few minutes ahead, and repeat. Make reversible decisions by guesses or random selection if necessary to keep moving forward. Resist the urge to prematurely optimize by batching, list-making, or prioritizing until your attention is fully on the new task.
This really shows that Apple is changing as a company. Rather than waiting for an event to announce things, they just announce them when they're ready. Their product cycle gets dictated more by the technology available than what might give them a boost at an event.
Any industry where the capital costs are low

no, that thins margins even more and drives to even faster consolidation. i can make PCs in my garage, yet there are only three real players in this market - dell, hp, apple. the lower the barrier to entry, inevitably you will erode margins to the point that only a large player can stay solvent.
What were you expecting from a cartoonist?
Exploring the frontiers of happiness
It seems that for many programmers, Python-only is just another limitation in that list. Sure you can learn Python, just like there are ways to work around a lot of the other issues, but I would think that all of these limitations add up to discourage programmers from building small apps as an experiment. Learning Python just to use GAE seems dumb when you can just use EC2.
>but it's not true that the principal value of YC is the brand name

Yes, not to the customers of the app, but the interest the YC brand generates in "insider" circles, which helps bootstrap popularity I think you are underestimating.

> YC's principal value is the advice we (and the other YC startups) offer.

Yes but as before, the "brand impact" in the blogosphere (I feel dirty writing that) is still a huge thing. If that comes under the umbrella of advice, then that makes sense.
Because if we eliminated credit, how would the banks be able to charge ridiculous interest and enrich top ranking exectutives, who would then line the pockets of top ranking government officials, who used to be top ranking executives. The entire ponzi scheme err social order breaks down.
Careful or we'll never have another Einstein.
Deadlock isn't so bad - at least it is obvious when it occurs. The real problems in threading happen when you have race conditions that you can't debug because you can't replicate. In languages like C++ this can give you inexplicable seg faults in code far from the bug that don't even give you a place to start looking.
404 =/
Let me guess, you just watched Zeitgeist Movie? Great flick.
Let's hope he doesn't try doubling up at roulette to win it all back...
i liked what this guy had to say:
http://finance.google.com/group/google.finance.22144/browse_...
I don't know why you were downmodded--your first paragraph is spot-on. Your second paragraph/final sentence is a reasonable, if ill-phrased, speculation.
It's important to note that starting early does not necessarily make you a good programmer as an adult.

I do not remember ever not programming. My first programming memories were at 6 but I have no memories before then anyway. I have pictures and my parents say I started with simple BASIC programs at about age 4. I started 6502 assembler at about 7, and C at 9. I was pretty good at C by 11, then went to Pascal, and so on and so forth.

Now? I'm formally a mediocre programmer at best - despite doing it for some 23 years now on and off. In this sense, I think programming early is no different to "drawing" or "writing" early.. just because you start early doesn't mean you'll be a top artist or author one day. If drawing and writing are appropriate for a seven year old, then why not programming?
I fear this is a problem we have to either solve or live with.

Aren't they all? :-)
There's a simple easter egg in the HTML source.
In general I think all regulations should only apply to large companies. It sounds absurd at first glance, but starts to make sense once you think it over.
>I had to explain what "tag" was.

That's really scary. I can imagine the conversation. "It's a game that children play." "Chil...dren?"
Paul mentions small companies interacting directly with markets as the catalyst to shifting from credentials to performance.

Another potential catalyst is the growth of freelance/contract labour. Essentially, what is being created is a less secure labour environment where there is more incentive & ability to directly measure performance. The assumption is that you are fired at the end of the job. If you can get further work or a referral, it's a bonus.

There is something obscuring the effects of this though. The growth of freelance/contacting partly coincides with & partly is driven by the internationalisation of labour markets. That will obscure some aspects of it. A copywriter in a cushy job in a high wage country won't leave to pursue a $25/hr career as a elence copywriter. They stay away from competition with international labour markets.

I don't think that will go away any time soon. What would be interesting to study would be these kinds of markets in low wage countries where hiring freelancers on international labour markets is not a cost advantage to hiring local employees

In any case, if we are moving to a higher performance/credentials ratio, I think this is a big part of the equation, bigger then startups.
If there are no loans how to do you start the business to make the cash reserves? If there are no loans how do people get an education when they can't afford one? If there are no loans how do people get to work before they have a car to save up enough cash to buy a car?
I've read many analyses of languages: their pros and cons, how much better I would think if I used them, how much more efficient I would be if I used them, how much cooler I would be if I used them.

But nothing was enough to convince to change. Until this. Fundamentalist Christianity. Well, goddamn.

How can I distribute desktop apps in Lisp? :)
I started programming when I was 7 years old. I used this goofy thing called TrueBASIC, which was the result of the guys from Dartmouth who did the original BASIC trying to go back and modernize it. Then I moved onto HyperCard and a bunch of other languages like that.

It gave me a headstart in my field, but not proportional to the time spent.

What I did learn from these experiences making games and little apps with other kids online was that it's perfectly natural to put a ton of effort into something that no one else is expecting you to do. That you can actually have fun working and learning. That having real pride in your work is a motivator like no other.

This seems pretty common to us HN folks, but I know so many people who are afraid to do anything outside of school/work because the either the concept of intrinsic motivation is alien or because they're afraid to invest effort into something "unsanctioned" that they could fail at.
Traditionally processes were very expensive to start on windows, threads very cheap. On linux its much of a muchness (or was, probably still is).

Windows would be less then that per thread, probably more per process. But I am thinking back to 2003-ish data ! (really should try some experiments again).
And if your parents don't have enough money you are what? Fucked?

The majority of people can't handle credit? Where do you come up with that? Certaintly a good percentage can't handle credit, but some percentage of the people in college go on to be alcoholics and the rest don't binge drink that way.

The real solution is to just make it harder for irresponsible people to get a loan. You should have to put 20% down on a house, not 0. You should have to prove income, you should have to have a good credit score. You shouldn't punish me by saying no loans just because my parents couldn't pay for college when today I have my loans paid off and I'm almost to a 20% down payment and I have no credit card debt anymore, but all of that debt enabled me to get where I am today.
I think one thing similar to one of the things he said is to limit the amount of tax free equity one can hold in a 401K plan. Like say if you hold more than 50% of your 401K as equity, there will be a tax incurrance. That way, government is not "dictating" your portfolio, but it is "encouraging" you to have a well-balanced, more conservative portfolio. Dictation by the government on one's portfolio I don't think would work any better than prohibition worked, but small things here and there I think can be done to encourage people to have more conservative holdings, and therefore keep a lid on market "bubbles".

That said, I think I have concluded that capitalism will never go away, simply because we are the "gene machines", programmed towards the best interest of the "selfish gene", and therefore, we will always have a "greed is good" mindset. It is in our DNA. We can't escape it. A socialist society would never happen in the long run, because quite simply the competition of genes would not allow it. No political or economic theorist can beat natural selection. Survival of the fittest is universal, it created us, and our markets, and will continue to shape our lives, like it or not. My opinion anyway.
Make sure to include gibberish to bypass the spam filters.
I haven't looked into getting multiple asset hosts to work with S3 myself, but how much asset data do you have? Storing the same data in multiple buckets certainly sounds inelegant, but, on the other hand, storing 1MB in S3 only costs $0.00015 per month...!
What a wonderful idea. I logged in using pandora credentials and was served 6 pages. 4 of them weren't interesting to me, but the other two were. I dunno if that's enough for me to head back regularly but it was definitely impressive.

...where else could this magazine-on-the-fly model work?
Never watched the first one, but I saw the 'Addendum' a while ago and thought it was mild at best. They point out a lot of problems and the history, but their proposed "resource-based economy" solution is just more monolithic authoritarian gobbleygook.
there are dangers like adult pedophiles, but supposing those were avoided...

When trying to explain why the cultural taboo exists, I'm not sure you get to elide that problem. How do you "avoid" these dangers? Societies try to do so by inventing cultural taboos!

Sex is inappropriate for children because (society presumes) most of them are not equipped to say no and make it stick. They lack the emotional, financial, and legal resources to "break up" with abusive or manipulative lovers -- particularly if those lovers are adults, and most particularly if those adults are family members.

(Note that, by this logic, sex is also inappropriate for a lot of adults. And there might be some people who are legally "children" who are nonetheless responsible and wise enough for sex (I certainly wasn't one, and I can't say that I've ever seen any, but it is theoretically possible... :) Like many societies, American society tries to deal with this ambiguity by defining a magic calendar age at which children legally and morally become adults. Alhough nobody ever said that this was a particularly realistic model, it's the one we've got. We do tinker with it occasionally, on a case-by-case basis.)

Why sex and not, say, football? (It's a good question -- a lot of kids get hurt when they're pressured into playing football.) Probably because sex carries a particularly heavy set of practical, social, and emotional consequences that are difficult to separate from it. (Birth control helps a lot, but it is not enough, as many AIDS patients and stalking victims know.)
I didn't say the size of the initial user base is irrelevant, just that in practice the growth rate matters more.

And while growth rate is not in itself visible, what drives it is something that's usually even more visible than the size of the user base: the quality of the product.
A Brief YouTube History of Steve Jobs Macworld Expo Keynotes
Like preteens...
Toys 2.0: Barbie meets RSS
Yahoo Search BOSS API Limitations
document Yahoo Search BOSS API Limitations as observed from mailing list discussion
Hmmm it wasn't my intention to spam. But I guess HTML email is out of the question then.
In the UK it's commonly referred to as "it". Was he from the US?
P.S. You can use these for marketing your startup, guys.

Putting linkbait on its own dedicated domain makes it easier to spread, as you can give it a Zenlike purity of purpose. (I've used several of these -- like whattimeisit.com or whatismyip.com -- for years but the first one I ever said would go viral in a day was isbarackobamamuslim.com . Taps passion and has a built-in value proposition for anyone putting a link to it anywhere.)

Really, a domain name costs $10 these days and you can have a Wordpress blog up, themed, and filled with content in under an hour. If you have a good idea, that good idea probably rates buying a domain name for it. There are SEO-related reasons why I'd keep most of my good ideas on my main domain(s), but there are at least a few "pillar pieces" I'm strongly considering domainifying. Plus you can always built them out later if you own the domain.

I dipped my toes in the water for my business this year. Truth be known: hasn't been that successful as of today, but I learned from the experience. See write-up @ blog: http://kalzumeus.com/2008/12/13/learning-from-a-specific-exa...
Caltech admissions struck me as particularly clean. I think part of this is that they're very much into maths and sciences, fields in which SAT score do a great job of determining proficiency. You either know the answer or you don't. On top of that, they give back to their alumni in other ways; one couple that donated 200M to the university had their kid denied, but the university named a star system after them.
Canada. Which is like the US only less so :)
Interesting. Downvoted because someone thinks that TV is a net positive for the people addicted to it...
I meant only that Reddit's connection to YC was unique.

Awareness of Reddit did spread between users.
5 min screencast - http://emacsonrails.drozdov.net
Change Authorised=false.html to Authorised=true.html to read the article without signing up.
"This is all strictly re: undergrads of course. I've never seen a single retard get admitted to a top-tier PhD program in science or engineering."

That's not the case as I've witnessed it. I won't directly name names, but I am thinking about a school that is ranked number 4 for graduate engineering on U.S. News.
I agree that contracts need to be written in a way that allows anyone aged 14+ to 'get it' in 2 minutes.

But the problem here isn't information. People have that, one way or another. The problem is bad choices, starting with the choice to make an uninformed decision. My girlfriend once worked at a bank. They had a credit cards brochure with a comparison table. 4 or 5 cards had gimmicks: miniature cards, points, miles, gold card (virtually no actual benefit), personalised card, internet purchase insurance (for those that reckon themselves rational). 1 card was the right choice. Lower fees, lower rates, lower penalties. It was grey & ugly & had no fun stuff. No one ever picked the right choice.

Those too sophisticated (old) to be swayed by something as dumb as a miniature card or fun points would be swayed by something with a little more mature like exclusivity (gold) or miles. Those making a rational choice pick the extended no interest period or some obscure feature like online purchase insurance or travel insurance or something else they think saves them money.

Now these were all the good cards you get at a bank: 16%-19% interest rates. The low interest card was around 11%. Absolutely economical compared to what you get a furniture store.

The crucial info wasn't in the small print. It was in a big glossy table. There was a clear right choice for anyone that hasn't had a card & never paid interest or late fees in the last 5 years. It was the least popular option.

*prime interest at that point was 7.5%.

There is no problem making a decent credit card with no frills. People won't take it.
I can give an immediate example. The left wholeheartedly supports Teacher Unions who are fundamentally opposed to merit pay, prefering seniority and tenure.
I wonder if some of the uncertainty is because people don't know what Macworld is exactly. I've followed the goings on at Macworld (online) and watched many of the keynotes, but till today I didn't realize Macworld was an independent conference rather than an official Apple event. Canceling a significant official event is big news, but pulling out of an otherwise independent event not so much so.
How would you run a cram school for YC?

Say you were given 19 yr olds at the end of Year 1 of Uni. You have 2-3 years part time. How would you get them in? Activities? Interview coaching? Resume building? Portfolio building? Specialised learning?
Would certainly work well for the press. Every Apple store could just get a live feed (as well as test products) from the mothership for local press.
A question:

I'm in Stanford but I want to be in a start up when I'm done. Should I give up on good grades and a degree in favor of learning more (i.e. not let my schooling get in the way of my education)?
I've transitioned my resume to be more of a portfolio list and abilities description with a 2 liner for school graduated.

Any company that respects a traditional resume is a company I don't want to work for.
Perhaps your health insurance premiums would be based on your body mass index and whether or not you smoke.

You mean it's not already? I'm an ignorant Brit with state healthcare (mostly) in this regard, but doesn't insurance work this way in the US?

Our car insurance varies on gender, age, employment, and all sorts of factors - shouldn't health insurance be based on.. well.. your claim risk too?
Firefox Plugin for Amazon SimpleDB
Seems like there are more efficient ways of proving your intelligence than moving to country with a language that you don't speak natively. But if you do it for other reasons, I guess its worth using to your advantage.
I spent a large portion of my childhood sitting in a corner with a book called Make Your Own Videogames, which taught Basic. I had no computer -- family wasn't doing well back in those days -- but I had a notebook, a pencil, a whole lot of patience, and a cheerful disregard for the notion that the fun part of playing videogames was playing them.

Nobody believes me when I say I had three years programming experience before I first touched a computer...

(I can so relate to not knowing what tag is. In my case, it was Star Wars. There was an immigrant in my high school at Spanish class who asked me about it -- eff if I knew -- so we went to another kid and said "Hey, Li here has never heard of Star Wars and all I know is the name, can you fill him in?" "Wait, you've never seen Star Wars." "Something to do with a Death Star, I know." "What country do YOU come from?!")
Adwords Broad Matching: When a visit is not a visit
I didn't say either of these things.

I said that the left has to fall back on credentials (the wording of which implies they don't like them).

And while the right may not like estate taxes, I don't think anyone on the right (unless there are any ancien regime fans left) favors the use of that wealth to buy position. At most they'd probably concede the possibility is an unfortunate consequence of not taxing people twice.
I think people saying things like that are taken into account.
I wouldn't recommend it.
Agree on the accent point. I knew a Dutch girl who'd lived in the US from the ages from 5 to 11, so she spoke English with an American accent ... but with the vocabulary of an 11-year-old. If she'd garbled the language just a wee bit she'd have been impressively good; as it was, she just sounded dumb.

But I'll agree with David that being an American that speaks the local language can be quite a novelty in Europe. I'm in the same boat. :-)
plain text. I don't read HTML emails.
If credit were eliminated, you'd end up with a situation where the rich own significantly more of the world than they already do. It'd be like going back to medieval times. The rich would be even richer and the poor would end up having to rent from the rich.

What good has credit brought the individual? Inflated prices, slavery to debt.

I don't consider my mortgage to be "slavery." I'd consider having to live in rented accommodation with the crazy restrictions landlords have to be far worse.

Other people consider their auto payment not to be slavery compared to driving a battered old car. I'm not in that camp, but people have the right to feel that way.

Credit has only done good for me. I used it to work through a cashflow slump - if credit were outlawed, I'd have needed to file for bankruptcy as soon as my current account dipped below $0!
don't worry. it's hard to fend off one of those.
As long as you don't carry a balance on your credit card, one of the other cards may very well have been the right choice.

I personally chose an Amex card with better rewards, but higher interest, since I pay it off in full every month.

You, or your girlfriend, don't know what's best for a particular customer's usage pattern.