skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It seems to me rather romantic to be considered a hacker in all senses, turning mushy concepts into cold hard code with criminal efficiency.
Don't complain until -5. It's just one random guy didn't like it. Doesn't mean anything! At least 10% of the lurkers here must be dumb -- it's just the averages.
I would suspect if things are this bad early on, AND the relationship results in the product not moving forward at all, then maybe this is dead.

Furthermore, you don't seem to be that interested in the software you are developing (though I could be misunderstanding). Am I correct that you don't feel that your product will change the world?

I would say that you don't have the passion to keep this idea/company going. Maybe this isn't the right idea for you (or both of you). Clearly you got involved for a reason, what was that? How did you end up with this partner. I've worked on project where people didn't get along, but we were all so focused on the result that it didn't REALLY matter. The end result wasn't as good as it would be had we all gotten along, but that didn't happen.

There are no shortage of great things to do in this life. If this is not one of those things, and it is making you unhappy, i'd suggest figuring out what would be better.

That doesn't mean you have to walk away from this right away, but it sounds like you're already there.
Contact the credit card company and ask to speak to the fraud department. they should be able to advise you on how to proceed.
Right, that's part of what I'm trying to implement. They're well-covered in THiH.

Typeclasses have some pitfalls though: in particular, they are not types, so you can't have a typeclass as a field in a data structure. (You can have them as part of the context of an explicit forall, eg. existential types, but those are more complicated than the average programmer can understand.)

Bruno Oliveira and Martin Sulzmann have recently done some interesting work with unifying typeclasses and ordinary algebraic data types:

http://www.comlab.ox.ac.uk/people/Bruno.Oliveira/objects.pdf

But currently type inference for this is "left to a future paper", so it's not all that useful for my purposes. I suspect it may be undecidable, given the known undecidability results for System F-omega and other type systems with subtyping.
A great example of listening to their customers to find the opportunity to re-define their business strategy in line with the overall lifestyle goals they wanted.
MacTelnet is a joke right? It is worse then iTerm.
I was working on a CAD program in OCaml a year ago. It was an interesting exercise on what exactly is state, and what needs state and what state isn't (I'll post the program once I salvage my svn repo off the old HDD).

In short, I found that the most useful definition of state is a set of data that is interrelated or correlated in some way, shape or form, but in actual usage, those pieces of data interact weakly.

In terms of graph theory, if you were to say that we live in a purely functional world, and all functions are bipartite graphs from one set of points to another set of points, then "state" could be defined as those points where the functions involved are sparse. Sparse can be defined as:

-most of the vertices involved are untouched in any given function
-all of the vertices are involved in one function or another
-all of the vertices are related in that you can reach one vertex from another by following the edges of the graph.

Using that definition of state, I found that it was easy to program everything in a purely functional, no-side-effects paradigm, in OCaml, without using the object system.

Furthermore, I found that the stateful bits tended to grow in an annoyingly stateful manner, that is that they added edges to the graph at random (i.e. it was hard to tell ahead of time what depended on what).

The difficulty in using named tuples to store state as such is that then all the bits that need to modify state need to pass it around continuation style, and it can be hard to know ahead of time when you want to be in the stateful context or not.

Haskell beginners (like me) will understand this to be the "do I need to be in the IO monad" problem. Indeed, the problem seems to manifest itself differently in Haskell, but I am not sure of this yet because I'm still learning Haskell.

Some hunches:
- I concluded that statefulness seems to be a function of what you are building for. UI is stateful, but the backend work that supports it is not.

-> Since the web's architecture enforces a client-server model, I argue that the whole statefulness debate is going to become moot for the backend supporting those services. Hybrid languages will be nice, but not really necessary.

- Cellphones, with their need for a self-contained platform that can operate somewhat independently of whether the connection is operating or not, may benefit from hybrid languages.
> In part it seems like she would be replaceable (or at least - another could havew been picked) with probably no detriment to the result.

Disney doesn't think so - she turned the role down and Disney put the show on hold for over a year while they tried to convince her to do it.

While there's no doubt that that show wouldn't have been nearly as popular without Disney pushing it, it doesn't follow that any cute kid would have been as successful given the Disney push. Disney is constantly pushing kids and only a few make it big.

If you're better than Disney at picking child stars, big bucks await.
FBI issues code cracking challenge
Cloth Physics
I don't understand why this is so contentious to so many people. It's a very simple idea: the iPhone platform excels at many of the things people buy netbooks for. The things it doesn't excel at are done better by a real laptop or desktop than a netbook anyway. Ergo, Apple--who already produces both--doesn't see a market in between.
Where to Find a $99 iPhone
This is a really cool map. It seems fairly accurate from my experience.

What I'd like to see now is a map of global network inter-connectivity and reliability super-imposed on this map.

[edit for typo]
Heh, you just won't let go of that "beholden to outside investor" thing, will you?

Are you suggesting that investors keep startups from getting ludicrous office space? From my experience with well-funded dotcom startups, they all tend to spend staggering amounts on sexy office space. We're lightly funded, so we sure as hell didn't.

In any case, Joel isn't spending a shit ton-- he's spending ~4-6% of revenue, as he said. Decent investors would only involve themselves if you were spending an unreasonable amount of money. Joel could be up to his armpits in Series D financing and not have an investor blink at this expenditure.

(if it isn't obvious, I think it's a dumb expenditure for an unprofitable startup, and a fine expenditure for Joel)
Disagreeing in itself isn't necessarily bad, as it's sometimes the only way to find true faults in an idea or implementation.

You have to decide if the things you're disagreeing about, are fundamental things. If it's just difference of opinion (just like no two developers seem to have the same coding style), you have to move forward. But if it's something related to how the company itself will be managed, then you probably will have real difficulties.

If you think the management of the company will suffer from this, your options are to quit or hire someone to do your job (and probably retain a stake in the outcome yourself, e.g. remain part owner, or have an agreement to be given some IPO shares).
[video] HD Vid from Hubble of Ganymede going behind Jupiter
True 'nuff. I ran a software dev shop with a pretty big team for about 7 years. I think this is a GREAT product for consultants, who would happily trade a little focus/productivity for easier/more accurate time entry.
No...it does what I need it to do.

Anything specific to back that up?
Prosŏdy, a new XMPP server written in Lua
I was interested. But all this stuff between us has really taken it out of me. I have admittedly seen the quality of the things I have done lately suffer from an attitude of "oh, thats good enough for now."

Although it was probably rhetorical: How did we end up together? We worked in the same company for a little while and we both wanted to start a company. He was having problems finding a partner, and I was too. Unfortunately, there are not many people interested in starting companies around here, so we thought we should give it a go together. There were pretty major disagreements from the start, but I thought it was normal.
"You have to remember that there are actually a lot of companies out there that are doing contracting work and working on the hour for various clients. For those clients you need to show what you're billing them for."

This was a real win for us with JotBot. HCS has some clients who, while generally pretty easy-going about invoice details, sometimes want to know just how time was spent for this or that bill. So we can now go back and see not just the time spent on a project, and the specific project categories, but read the various notes added to flesh out those time records.

Often I want to know just why something took me so long, so it's nice to have notes written at the time of the activity. The reporting features really help there.
Thanks for the tip. I plan on incorporating after I've finished the app and am ready to sell it.
Thanks for your nomination?

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startup_company

Regardless of your apparent misunderstanding of what qualifies as a startup, Twitter, in fact, does have a dollar in revenue. Their Japanese version, which also launched this year, serves advertisements. :D

“It’s like the stupidest question in the world: How’s Twitter going to make money?," said Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson, another investor. "It’s like 'How was Google going to make money?'
http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/10/twitter-to-get.html
Christmas Lights, Controlled by Processing
And Texas would start invading everybody. :-)
There's an old joke about economists predicting 11 of the last 3 recessions... Should we do it now for nations failing?
People do many things in desperation.
Nice, I wondered how long it would be until other JVM languages started getting ported to Android's Dalvik.
I bought one of the refurbished 16G phones for $199 the other night. From what I read in the terms, the warranty on refurbished iPhones is 1 year - X, where X is some value less than or equal to 30 days.

The AT&T website says that the warranty is at least 90 days (i.e. 90 days for most phones), but that the iPhone warranty is dependent on the serial number of the phone that you actually receive.
How to Feel Like the Incredible Hulk in 2009
It's not so much that they have no revenue it's that they have no plan for revenue. While they may turn into a great business at some point, they aren't one now. Google's creation of AdWords is not an excuse to fund other ventures who have no idea how to make money. There's not an AdWords for every business.

Again, Twitter may become the next Google but that does not mean they are currently one of the most successful start ups. SpaceX inks a multi-billion dollar contract and we're busy talking about how successful Twitter is.
Apple has held off producing a mid-range tower for years despite the howls of critics, since it would cannibalize Mac Pro sales. It shouldn't surprise anyone that they aren't leaping into a category with razor-sharp margins that directly competes against their core laptop products.
Why do the UI designers have to... wait a minute, there aren't any!

If he spent half the amount of money he spent on this amazing office for a kick ass UI team, he would increase sales by an enormous amount for Fogbugz. I know so many people who would switch if it wasn't so damn ugly and difficult to use. I don't think people use Lighthouse because it has better features.

Joel's priorities seem very odd to me.
It's true. I have an Eee and an iPod Touch, and I use both for idle browsing, checking email, and Twitter. Guess which I use more?

The Touch. It's always on, ready to go, and the apps are _made_ for the device. Doing things on the Eee feels far too clumsy next to the Touch, so I hardly ever use it. It turns out I don't really _need_ a netbook for the things I'd use it for - it's much more enjoyable using my ipod.

Although, I've thought a couple of times that netbooks could use an "app store" to promote development and use of apps designed for that tiny resolution. That might make me reconsider.
karma: 2

Maybe if you had posted more on HN you would have had a more successful business career ;) Also, if this is serious and you are going to give up and play the lottery, this irrational decision making may be why you never found your success.

Regardless, success isn't measured in dollars. Once you see that, you'll likely make more money and be more successful.
For me it's not the upfront cost of the phone that prevents me from getting it, its the minimum $70/mo in ongoing charges you are forced to buy along with it - ouch!
"I hope you don't take offense."

Not at all. I greatly appreciate you taking the time to comment, and the feedback is valuable.

" I like the idea (if you ever meet Paul Buccheit, ask him about TimePie!)... But my crash course in productivity studies over the past year tell me that most productivity academics would run screaming from the idea. 'Course, academics are wrong all the time."

Here's the catch: I can be as productive as all hell, but if I can't accurately bill for my time, I'm screwed. And it's not just knowing home nay minutes I spent on this or that project, it's being able to look at notes attached to specific times that tell a larger story.

Plus, the "pull" approach serves a secondary value: if I'm getting distracted and not staying on my tasks (say, reading HN instead of fixing JotBot bugs :)), the periodic "What did you do?" prompt gets me to realize this. It's an awareness tool as well. And that awareness comes then, at the time when I can get myself on back on track. So, while I have no real data on this, the routine reminder may be making me more productive. I agree that this is quite subjective; all I can say was I wasn't happy with the options I found, and find myself better off having built JotBot.

I'll have to see about giving RescueTime another shot. Last time I tried, there was a problem because I use Linux.
This article was written in 2005.
axod, you set yourself up with the 10 to 1 comment. I work every day in C# and we are currently moving all development to Java, at home I code in ruby. I will tell you from experience that your language plays a very small part in how fast your web app works. I will say without a doubt that programmer competence is the real factor. How the code is written will determine more how it runs. But for the sake of argument I can guarantee that if you wrote a web app the exact same way in Java and then ruby, or basically any modern language, one would not consume 10 times the resources of the other. Other factors will start to bottleneck you long before that, bandwidth, memory, cpu, etc.
> I'd be interested to see a good framework for measuring success in startups that could be used by VCs and the media alike.

Breaking even seems like a good starting point to me.

Of course, this is not good from the VC viewpoint. VCs hate it when you break even early and they don't have a controlling interest, because it means they can't grab more shares (in exchange for new funding which you would then need and they can and will leverage that need) because you don't need them for growth.

Also, success is a relative thing. A small firm that doesn't take VC and never reaches the multi-billion dollar heights of Google, but has happy customers, happy employees and founders that enjoy their work is successful in my book.

A company that takes millions in VC money, lets the VC dictate company policy and has the whole thing run into the ground is a failure.

Measuring success does not happen across a single axis.

Unless you define success in the context of what VCs want from your company, the definition becomes blurry very fast.

A framework that will satisfy both VCs and the media isn't that hard to formulate. The media will simply copy the VC parameters, most of which is number games.

But this is neither a media nor a VC board, so the question is - would you want to work for or start a company that is run by VC/media rules?
Not to be petty, but West Virginia isn't really a southern state. It, along with portions of Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Tennessee, is part of what we call Appalachia, a mostly rural rust-belt region.
I see what you mean. I am measuring startup success in potential revenue. I think a startup ceases to be a startup when it becomes a profitable business.

Also, I wouldn't consider SpaceX to be in the same boat as Twitter, and I assumed we were talking web startups since the Cuil controversy started this. If we were talking tech in general, I agree, something like SpaceX would be preferable over Twitter any day.
I love my iPhone whole heartedly, but I still have a netbook on the way (mini 9 as a matter of fact). A few things you can't do on the iPhone.

1. Run Background Tasks (IM anyone?)
2. Edit MS Office Documents
3. Edit Code
4. Power Point
5. Run Windows Apps (this is important to me because my other main PC is a Mac - so having a small cheap windows machine comes in handy)
MERCOSUR and the EU predictably come to mind. The US, I think, treats Canada and Mexico very differently from other nations (being a neighbor); North America is fairly unified. The US doesn't hold up its non-interventionist/isolationist end of the Monroe Doctrine, but the loose North/South American protectorate set out by that diplomatic philosophy certainly holds true today. MERCOSUR is a good example of nations asserting their sovereignty with a trade bloc rather than via national posturing, weakening this protectorate.

I can't provide links (books are of greater help when synthesizing theories for me) to prove this, but I do recommend reading up on the aforementioned trading blocs, as well as this excellent book: http://www.amazon.com/End-Nation-State-Regional-Economies/dp...
Um...yeah. I think the biggest draw of any office is the pussy. That's what I care about.

But I don't think you'd want female developers. Female sales staff, female secretaries, etc.

Nice office, but without nice pussy, what's the point?
I look at it and almost weep - but I feel like its TOO good. I've grown accustomed to the start-up feel of making do with what you have, spending big on a few items (chair, monitor) and having everything else made of cardboard..
"Nah, it's not yellow journalism -- it's from the WSJ's middle column, a place for quirky character profiles (which this story is) and human-interest stories. Previous topics have included truck-driving competitions and the wild-boar infestation of Berlin."

Good point. CONTEXT, CONTEXT, CONTEXT. The article was published to start interesting conversations like the one in this thread.
Hm. You're right. I'm wrong.

(Although I'm unlikely to "let go" of the outside investor thing; I help run a bootstrapped company, and had a bad VC experience).
Him. Thank you.
Could you quantify "ugly" and "difficult to use"? I use FogBugz, and while it's not the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, it's far from ugly. But then beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so it's said. I don't find it hard to use at all. I just use it for bug tracking and to-do reminder. I don't use any advanced features. What exactly do you find difficult to do?
Having my back to glass would drive me insane, and evidently all of the offices are like that:

http://picasaweb.google.com/spolsky/FogCreekSNewOffice#52853...

Check out all of the famous series 7 chairs:

http://picasaweb.google.com/spolsky/FogCreekSNewOffice#52853...

It's got that not-quite-a-prison institutional look to it. That's great if you're running a high school in the poorest district in Mississippi, but given his budget [1] you'd think it would look nice.

I've got a private office, and the landlord charged my company nothing to throw up walls and doors in the empty space we rented. Maybe it's impossible to avoid Veblen goods in NYC, though.

[1] http://www.gibraltarfurniture.com/malik-mc-c-2201.html That's right. It's 300 dollars.
The New York Times on the Russian natural gas monopoly, Gazprom:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/30/business/worldbusiness/30g...

"That Russia’s largest state-run energy company needs a bailout so soon after oil hit record highs last summer is a telling postscript to a turbulent period. Once the emblem of the pride and the menace of a resurgent Russia, Gazprom has become a symbol of this oil state’s rapid economic decline."
Facebook Balks at the Bosom
Wow, talk about a catchy title. I don't think you can come up with a better gift to give your son, as it will always be with him, and certainly his own kids.

Not sure if it's of any use for this, but we launched a family sharing app on HN the other day- Ramamia.com. If it is/you have any questions, drop an email to j@ramamia.com.

I hope this post sparks a lot of other parents to do the same with their kids. I'm glad to see more posts like this, supporting the positive things technology is enabling, rather than more "Madoff Posts".

-jlb
I was hoping that this was a map of time travel to various cities, possibly with details on the modifications to history that resulted.
Surprised there is no mention of JavaScript :-P I suppose that's a good thing :)
" If you're going to sell the concept to productivity nuts, it'd be a great thing to study/prove down the road."

The goals of RescueTime and JotBot may not be quite the same, and so the approach one takes isn't so well suited for the other.

"What's the goal? Less overall time dorking around with time entry? More time spent on "good" stuff? More accurate time entry?"

While JotBot may make you more productive, productivity per se was not the issue that lead us to write it. We needed to make accurate records of time spent on multiple projects in a simple but effective way. Of course, having records of time spent does make you aware of potentially wasted time, so it can make you more productive, but the real win is in the level of detail and how much easier it makes doing invoicing.
I didn't mean it rhetorically. I personally don't think that finding a partner should be focused on 'somebody who wanted to start a business' as much as both of you being passionate about what you are doing.

You'll hear it a million times. If you aren't passionate about what you are doing, then you're going to find it exceedingly difficult to make it a success.
If you were/are both passionate about the idea, than the disagreements could/should enable you to make a better product. If you aren't passionate about what you are building, then why do it?

I think that is the most important question you need to decide for yourself.
I have beta tested it and it is a nice program. I even LIKE the "disruptive" way it goes about tracking time.

However, I've found a free one that does much the same. Personal Time Manager (look for it on sourceforge). It's kinda-sorta not as slick, but it's free.

Also, as I was beta testing, the support email address kept bouncing mails back to me.
Ask HN: Can Google aggregate everything you've ever posted anonymously online based on writing style?
I'm just asking about Google because they're in such a good position to do it.

Is any private company doing it? It'd be neat if there was a web site that you could submit some writing samples (emails or whatever) and then see everything else that person has posted online (regardless of whether it was anonymous or not).

I'm sure there's no way to do it with total accuracy, but with enough input shouldn't it be possible to be highly accurate?

Anyone know of any software that can take a large number of writing samples and determine who wrote which ones?

If not, how would you go about creating it?
Reddit is that way ---->