skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
How do you know I down-voted anything? I actually haven't down-voted anything attached to this story.

I will downvote something I don't agree with if I think it's not well-reasoned, or too knee-jerky, or otherwise just dilutes the discussion.
How are you going to deal with scams?
I should think that an HN karma point would be worth a lot more than half a reddit karma point! If anything, I'd say a HN:Reddit ratio of 1:10 or more...
What determines that a script is long-running?
You don't have to be a full-blown singulatarian to see that technology still has a number of game-changing tricks up its sleeve. Robotics is getting to the point that I think we could see a fully robotic factory of some significance in the next five to ten years, where "significance" means something like a car factory or something, not just a demo product.

Computer AI doesn't seem to be on the verge of a breakthrough on the strong-AI front, but there really seems to have been a qualitative change in the past few years in computer vision, brought on by having more computer power available.

Nanotechnology is continuing to advance, primarily in materials science right now, but it will also continue to make progress in other areas. Even without full-on molecular nano-constructors (which there is no obvious physical reason we can't build, but let's leave that to the "full-on singulatarians"), we will continue to improve our abilities to manipulate matter on a fine scale in a large way (no contradiction), much like life does. Look for garbage dumps to go from a blight upon the environment to awesome materials resource sometime in the next 10 to 15 years. (Future investment opportunity! There will be a period of time when it becomes obvious that this will be true, but it is not generally recognized, and an interested individual will be able to pick up old dumps for a song, relative to what they will be worth.)

(As a side-note, any actually indefinitely-sustainable economy will require this technology, be it biologically derived or otherwise. Any proposal that involves freezing our current tech level in a mis-guided attempt to be "sustainable" is simply a death sentence.)

The primary reason we can't go strolling through space isn't material or technological, it's energy, and if any of the fusion proposals go through (ITER, Polywell, any of them at all), the energy problem is significantly mitigated. Especially if it's not ITER; I don't know if we could practically loft an ITER into space, but a Polywell fusion device certainly could be, and a fusion-powered space ship would be quite capable, unlike today's models. Even just growing a pair and getting into fission could significantly mitigate our energy problems for a very long time. (I wonder when the fear of nuclear will be exceeded by the fear of not having energy. My guess is one big blackout in the US and you can kiss anti-power-plant sentiment goodbye.)

And there's more stuff coming up.

Yes. We're in a recession. We may even be in a depression. Fucking stop crying about it. Sheesh. It is not the end of humanity just because you're not as rich as you think you should be. (What a selfish model of the future!)
Remember How TechCrunch is Being Sued?
ponzi had better insight into nature than malthus.
Return of the Mobile Style Sheet
Chris, one of the founders, is colorblind and so we're able to always get some initial testing and feedback from him.
And money is not the critical constraint: the groups $35 million per year budget

I think you may have gotten your numbers confused. They get $35m for a group of 260 people to write the software, not half a billion.
He's wrong, there is no Ponzi scheme at all. Let me explain...

First of all, we have limited resources. The resources we absolutely need, for example, food and water, however, exist in enough quantity for all the people that currently exist (otherwise they would die).

The second layer of resources, for example, metal to build cars, crude oil for energy, also exist in enough quantity for now.

The exchange between basic needs and not-so-basic needs is irrelevant of the price that we are actually paying for them, because there is enough for everyone.

So the economy is built on the most important part of all - human labour. When I program, I expend labour, and though nothing gets added or removed from the world, I can still exchange the time I spent for a basic need like food.

This debt he is talking about is debt of human labour, and even if you wipe it out completely, the worst that has happened is that people wasted their time, and they will not get paid for it. There is no real destruction of the most basic needs.

If for example, we were destroying farmland to produce in excess right now, and we know this will make the farmland completely useless in the future, then this is a scheme that will collapse. But we're not doing that in any significant quantity.

Furthemore, we don't need to conserve things that are not finished yet. For example, let's imagine that we are going to run out of iron in 100 years. Obviously, this will be problematic, but 10 years before it happens, the price of iron is going to skyrocket, because we know of the impending scarcity. And there are lots of materials we can use to replace iron. Same with oil.

There is no ponzi scheme. People are paying for an easier life, and they are paying other people to make life easier for them.
"It may well be that in some possible worlds, that could still be true, but it's increasingly looking like we're going to be stuck here with only one world's resources to draw on."

Umm, what? We're finally getting private space exploration.
I know nothing about you, but it's really hard to get an SBA line of credit at a young age even if you can show _revenue_.

Unless you have an established income history, or a profitable business or two under your belt, I'm not sure if it's worth your time.
Finally, the hiring process, as employed by most IT companies, are not exactly encouraging programmers to self-improve.

Probably the best insight from the article. It's saying what we already know, but it's comforting to see another person think that most programming job ads are completely bogus. A given language can be picked up fairly quickly compared to the amount of time required to get really good at programming itself. I am actually more intimidated by the ads that don't enumerate a bunch of techonologies; this means that they are probably going to be asking for a lot of sheer badassery on your part.
the problem is that its next to impossible to get a loan for a web based startup
That's one of the legal hurdles. Theoretically, being an accredited investor means that you have a lower probability of falling for a scam. Bernie Madoff sort of proves that wrong.

There would have to be some form of financial transparency, but much more simpler than what the current standards are for public offerings.

Also, scams do exist in the public markets. Throw a dart at any stock under 2 bucks and odds are you've found one.
Chinese aim for the Ivy League
companies can already sell part of their stake. i.e. craigslist has 25% owned by eBay, and its a private company
No. What's needed (at least around here in Palo Alto) is companies that actually make profits!

Also, Sarbanes-Oxley is not the reason companies aren't going public right now...
I don't really know the details, but he got fired after something like 1 week, so I doubt it was in regards to something complicated.
Yes. Lack of exit options discourages VC investment. I dont know if it's "needed" but it would be a good thing.
TV show based on MAKE magazine
please oh please tell me this is just a great level... otherwise... i guess now is a good time to read up on the following topics:

wikipedia, the onion, thick sarcasm, rick astley
Google wants feedback on the Android encryption and keystone services
I will post my experiences dealing with the SBA. For the record I have NOT secured an SBA loan in the past.

For starters, you're going to need a very refined and up-to-date business plan. This is a no-brainer to most, especially HN readers but my banker told me I would be surprised about how many people shuffle in for an SBA loan with no biz plan.

The way the SBA loan works is that you have to find a lender in your area that will agree to lend you the money after they do a financial screening and feel you are worth the risk of the loan.

After that, the only involvement the SBA has in the process is they guarantee the loan that you receive from the bank. They do not disperse any of the money.

After the bank approves you, and the SBA agrees to back your loan (which can take several months), then the money is released to you via the bank.

Sadly this process was too lengthly to me so I just resorted to using an Amex Business card to get me running in the time-frame I needed. :)

That's all I know from the process. I hope this might help some folks in the future
I liked the one where Ponzi jumped over the shark on his waterskis.
I guess everything old is new again - Here's a decent overview of some of the past newLisp drama:

http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2006/04/20/newlisp-an-intriguin...
I think the real question is: "What item on a shopping list could 'military-grade crypto' refer to?" The term conjures up a black-market, backroom deal for something smuggled out of an air force base, but the reality is that a lot of "military-grade crypto" software is available legally for free... and I'm guessing these guys are not above pirating anything non-free. So what were they buying? Staunch's rationales above are fairly convincing.
Pseudocode-to-realcode converter, or something vaguely like it.

Honestly, we are already on our way there thanks to the popularity of 'expressive' languages like Python, Ruby, etc. I don't think the transition will happen overnight or anything.

By 2050 we might end up just coding everything in a very powerful dialect of Lisp.
this is a startup? Its just a wordpress site...hardly something I would call a startup. Whats next Techcrunch covering a 10 year old's Myspace page?
Apple shows us how to compete with Microsoft
Any software historians out there? How much heads-up did we have for the whole Y2K thing?

It seemed like it didn't really come into prominence until 1997 or so to me, but that's purely anecdotal.
This one, the one about the ship full of Mazdas tipping over, etc. I'm a little suspicious of the magazine as a whole - if there a higher percentage of stories were excellent, wired would be on HN more.
Behavior Driven Database Development (BDDD)
When I researched SBA loans I found they are more willing to give you a loan for property or equipment than things like marketing costs.

Also, in the environment its much harder to get a loan. Instead I ended up getting an American Express plum card to help give me some extra time to pay for expenses. This really helps with cash flow.
Ugh, my bad. After a 16 hour day in the salt mines I was not doing math right.

I spent it, incidentally, supervising an outsourcing team which can't read the language the project is written in -- I kid you not, I actually had to say "Thank you for your inquiry about unknown red text under the login screen. The red text you have circled is not an error message. It is a weather report. The text is red because the forecast is potentially lethal. Closing as 'By Design'."
What give you the impression that Qt doesn't have many continued improvements? If anything I get the exact opposite. The Qt devs are improving the OS X support significantly.
I think that being blown away and wanting to see a show again is a result of a quality production, the byproduct of which is support from fans (especially in this particular case).
Engadget Live from the Macworld 2009 keynote
It's simply being used as a metaphor. Two words that get you to look at X from a particular angle.

The function of metaphors has never been to imply complete equivalence, obviously. Rather, some aspects of the concept used as a metaphor are shared with aspects of the concept it's being likened to. By invoking the metaphor, those aspects are made salient.

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=xpYZoVNzdykC&...

Notions like the "Ponzi economy", I think, are to actual Ponzi schemes what Searle's Chinese Room is to Chinese speakers. Or, to put it another way, the Ponzi economy is simply a grand Ponzi scheme, minus the scheming.
SOA ain’t dead but it certainly is transforming
> How do you know that journalspace wasn't being shady and screwing them in some kind of contract or negotiation gambit?

It's irrelevant. If you have a dispute with someone and you feel he is treating you unfairly, it's your right to leave and/or sue him, not to burn his house down. If you burn his house down you are a criminal, no matter what he did to you.
VOIPPACK is out VoIP Security tools for CANVAS
Agreeing with both replies to me, I think the secret of my success on the GRE verbal section (twice) was reading a lot for fun. And agreeing with them about correlations between GRE success and life success, I still pursue a lot of personal intellectual interests but have not become notably wealthy, although any middle-class American is wealthy in worldwide terms.
While I don't condone the piracy, the first of only two games I've spent money on at the AppStore was Lux DLX ($7.99). That was because I'd spent 3 months becoming hopelessly addicted to the free version.

While taking away your freedom of choice as a developer is lame, I still agree with some of his arguments. Not that it gives him the right to put his argument first by force.
Stickman, Buccaneer and the whole future of indie game development
MacWorld 09 Live Coverage Sources
It's true to an extent. However, most people aren't that adept with computers. My friends constantly ask me to fix things on their computers when there are perfectly available fixes out there. Likewise, if a treatment is over-the-counter, people can treat themselves. The prescription example is more an issue of legislating a business model - if the government legislated that people had to have an IT guy diagnose their computer and dispense the treatment, it would be the same. NOTE: Clearly there are good reasons for legislating that certain treatments be administered by a doctor and not the patient themselves. I'm not trying to argue that it's a maliciously legislated model, just that people often do treat themselves with OTC stuff.

People really often need help with their computers. Even simple things like installing drivers. They're available right from the manufacturer. You click a few things and then you're done. Yet, people in their 20s ask for help because they can't understand it.

Like medicine, software can always be better. So, even if you think that administration isn't an issue to be dealt with, there's still a lot to be done to make computers better and there always will be. Can my computer understand my voice? There's software, but it's not Star Trek-like. More to be done.
Pymc: implements Bayesian statistical models and ﬁtting algorithms
http://ri.ms but we didn't optimize the server as much as the algorithm for creating a url.

Depending on algorithm, some of these will sites vary their performance based on database size. So it might be that is.gd is just not as large as the others and/or has less traffic.

Edit: There're also others like:

http://tr.im/

http://metamark.net/
Silicon Valley has problems, but schools, parks, and infrastructure are not among them. In these it is among the best in the US.
I bet you are talking about the fast prototyping that danc (lostgarden.com) talks about. You probably don't want to use a buzzword that doesn't even give sensible results on a Google search.

Game programming is one field where "good enough" is not just a particular philosophy of coding, it is a law of the gaming universe. I would say that the "assurance" requirements of games are on the other end of the spectrum compared to NASA software.

On the other hand, NASA has recently proven with some of its probe projects that Soviet-style "shotgun" probes can be better than trying to make the perfect probe. Making 3 "good enough" probes and having only one or two actually accomplish the mission can cost less than making one perfect probe which even then may or may not be successful.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=420375
Gnome DVCS Survey
I'll be the bookie (or broker) for you two.
You guys should give the Netflix Prize a go!
Vaguely interesting article to me. It's basically a reality check for this: http://blog.jayfields.com/2009/01/cost-of-net-negative-produ...

In short the reasons why you a good programmer can't remove all the "bad programmers"

1. Working out who is good and bad is hard
2. It would involve too much politics that you may not be good at
3. You look like a jerk if you besmirch your co-workers
4. It's easiest for companies to hire based on "years of experience"
Same here. That's a newspaper worthy headline!
PowerShell ABC's - L is for Location
The explanation is actually more complex..
Funny, the last 3 jobs I've had have mostly revolved around cleaning up monstrous piles of poorly structured code.

Don't forget to throw away your prototype.
PHP, MySQL and SSH Tunneling (Port Forwarding)
I see some patterns in different tech areas.

SF, downtown Boston/Cambridge, and NYC all have pretty bad public schools, some nice parks, and at times annoyingly crowded but workable roads.

Palo Alto, Arlington and points north, and Long Island each have better schools, more open spaces, and less congestion.

This clearly has a lot less to do with startup centers and more a generally to do with population density in and around urban areas.
In my experience they're not related. Robert Morris and I both retained the ability to live like grad students till well into our thirties.

I think women may be a factor. Also exposure to living well. But above all, perhaps, fatigue.
Anyone use this? Is it any good? How fast?
I guess I'm a bit biased - I moved there the first time from Portland, Oregon, which at least in terms of parks and infrastructure, is definitely better. Where are you getting the school information from?
I'm all for making reading easier on us by condensing it.

But this article takes their (rediff.com) entire post, posts it in full and never gives them credit.

Why isn't this plagiarism?
Yes, of course you can target those companies that are geeky and cool, but I am sure those companies won't have enough space for all the good developers.

Duh, if there aren't enough companies for good programmers, there are surely enough programmers to start more companies. There's not a fixed limit to the number of corporate charters available...
It's less than a $1 an issue. I've been a subscriber from the beginning and my interest/satisfaction has ebbed and flowed but I've never thought about dropping my subscription.

1. It is very cheap.

2. I always find something worth reading in each issue.

3. I harbor the fantasy that a full set in very good condition will be worth something one day. ;-)
Making Highrise faster with memcached
We are sitting on a huge ball of matter orbiting around an even huger source of low-enough-entropy energy. We are not running out of stuff anytime soon.

(Oil and animal/plant species may become quite scarce, though.)
The IPO market should come back pretty strong, possibly as early as later this year - especially if interest rates remain low. With low savings rates there will be a lot of cash people will be looking to invest and traditionally people like to get a bit of it in to higher risk vehicles like start-ups.

Right now the issue is liquidity, all the funds have been sh---ing bricks for the last few months - this chaos and panic needs to subside, then there needs to be a few months stability, then there will be a trickle of new investors, then will come a mad dash as people don't want to miss the next bubble.

One thing to consider at the moment is getting exposure to overseas funding - look at setting up a joint operation in another country e.g. if you are America look at Europe or Asia - having a joint operation will give you 2 places to seek funding and, if you are making any revenue, revenue in different currencies - this way you hedge against your country being sluggish coming out of the recession.

So my advice for starting up now is #think Multilingual#
Are they still proud of their non-GC? It seems the answer is yes.

http://www.newlisp.org/MemoryManagement.html
I wouldn't be surprised if this was done back when things were coded on punch cards and submitted for overnight processing. Iteration then was very time expensive so it would have made sense to check and re-check as much up front as possible.
Global market prices for recylables have fallen by as much as 80%
Would you say the development process fit something like the waterfall model?

It sounds from the article like it's a very waterfally method, but they can get away with it because they don't have the same constraints and lack of clear specifications that most software does.
One of the reasons is.gd is fast is because it uses sequential URLs for each request, so it doesn't have to do multiple collision tests. tinyurl used to do this eons ago, but stopped because of abuses (actually somewhat NSFW):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TinyURL#Early_abuses
NewSpace as in:

SpaceX, XCOR Aerospace, Scaled Composites, Armadillo Aerospace, etc.

My comment was actually based on lurking in on discussion with rocketeers who have worked both inside and outside the government.

As someone who's only worked in relatively small, private-sector software companies, it's been very eye-opening to get an insight into how and why government managers make their decisions.
The cost of listing and compliance is a consideration - listing can add $1m+ to your yearly costs.

It's a big reason many companies are considering de-listing at the moment - with no liquidity in the market there are few reasons to stay on right now.
The best indicator? "This time it's different."

-1980's Leverage Buyout Craze (RJR Nabisco) coupled with junk bonds

-Dotcom Bust

-Day trading

-Too much leverage (Long Term Capital Management and repeated today)

-Mortgage back securities

-People making 50k per year buying 500k homes
This is an argument that I often hear and which I think is pretty much completely bogus.

Learning the syntax of a language can be achieved fairly quickly for most languages.

Learning the implications of that syntax takes a lot longer (C++ is a good example here, otherwise "Effective C++" and "More Effective C++" would have been unnecessary).

Learning the libraries and tools associated with a language can be an effectively unlimited task.

So I don't agree. It's better to hire a good programmer than a mediocre one, sure, but given two programmers of somewhat comparable quality the one with more experience often proves to be considerably more valuable than the other. This is doubly true if one of them has experience in the specific tools that you will be using on the project.

The closer fitting user will have been through a lot of the debugging/learning/understanding processes that the other has still to encounter. Even the finest programmer has to learn to work with the occasional WTFs of libraries.
My current job involves papering over poorly structured code.

I call it "design by accretion."
Just add colons, capitalize true and add parens to argumentless function invocation and you even have working Python code.
The last item mentions that the little toe is useless, which I don't think is true. I recall hearing about people who've lost that toe, and still needed physical therapy to learn how to walk properly without it. We can't do much with the toe itself, but we still depend on it for load balancing.
I wish I had more votes to give.
I would like to personally thank you, pagination for the sake of advertising numbs me..