skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
'I'm starting to wonder if, in this day and age, there really is such a thing as a "career job."'

Stop wondering. There is not.

In fact, arguably, there almost never was. I live in Michigan, and a lot of "career" people are currently staring down losing their retirement in the last 5 years of their expected productive life, or losing their pension after retirement, or similar things. Some "career", some "guarantee". Even many of those "careers" may turn out not to have been, post facto. (Yikes!)

In my opinion, anyone under 40 (conservatively) should be planning on there being no pension for them and no social security.
AD IV: Programming Newbie
i loved the simple goal of "two great conversations a day". it wasn't obvious to me.

and reminders of "obvious" advice are helpful to me, particularly when delivered at the right time. in regards to making me think, relevancy matters just as much as controversy.
I paraphrase a critique on google's "submit an idea to make the world a better place"...

If you have an idea that could change the world for the better, and implementing that idea takes time and effort, why don't you start a company, develop the idea, help the world, and make a living doing it.
You are incorrect, the distribution of wealth means less money spent on healthcare or drug research, or growing food. If it takes more effort, that effort has to come from somewhere.
But it has nothing to do with Haskell in particular... to most people, this just means greater than, lambda, equal to. This is doubly confusing, because >= usually means "greater than or equal to".

I agree that simplicity is very important, I like this one best: http://haskell.org/sitewiki/images/2/21/Haskell-apankrat.png
Dire Times Offer a Chance to Reconsider Choices
AT&T's iPhone Grinch
The top one looks like too many logos already:

http://www.labnol.org/internet/google-chrome-logo-design-ins...
Ask HN: Web site for lists that recently launched
Anybody knows this web site for lists that launched within the last 2-3 weeks?

I thought I saw it on Techcrunch or Mashable but I can´t find it on their archives.
I vote for lady Haskell-tan, who looks exactly like Haskell should:

http://gelbooru.com/index.php?page=post&s=view&id=74...
I'm disappointed. I hoped that the link went to an article about why there are no wildcatters in Norway.
I've read the website - I'm wondering what it was that actually happened to him. He was a character and although acerbic in the extreme made some interesting points.
Ah, pop culture.
> There's a reason the big five accounting firms were reduced to the big 4:

Judicial error and/or prosecutorial misconduct appears to be the reason. From the Arthur Anderson Wikipedia page. "[In the ruling vacating the conviction] The [Supreme] court found that the instructions were worded in such a way that Andersen could have been convicted without any proof that the firm knew it had broken the law or that there had been a link to any official proceeding that prohibited the destruction of documents."
Round One of the Credit Crunch is Over - But Inflation is Coming Back
How You Can Start A Business in 2009, With Passion
UK Wants to Rate Sites Like Movies
Did Microsoft become an early-stage YC startup when I wasn't looking or something?
How to Organize a Database Table’s Keys for Scalability
Ask HN: Alan Kay or DHH?
The quote I was looking for and still have not found is Kay referring to the problem that the best minds are absorbed by unimportant tasks that pay good money instead of solving meaningful problems.

While trying to find this quote today, google turned up this page: http://www.devtopics.com/101-more-great-computer-quotes/

See quote #53: “The best way to predict the future is to implement it.”
– David Heinemeier Hansson

Not sure if this was a mistaken quote or if DHH is delusional. That part doesn't matter much.
What is troubling is there are two comments at the bottom of this page. One reads:

"Hi Rob, Yes, when I was translating the article, I thought #53 was Alan Kay too. But apparently David Hannson is credited with saying it on many of the quote sites, so I’m not sure who was first."

Has it really come to this?

Bonus points for anyone that can come up the quote I was originally looking for ;)...

EDIT: not trying to bash DHH here. I was just adding some humor to my quest to find the original quote I was looking for. Still noone has been able to come up with any ideas.
It's not '>=' it's '>>=' the Haskell monad binding operator.

(I also agree, that logo is pure awesomeness)
More info is here, linked from the above article: http://www.uie.com/articles/death_of_relaunch/

Look under the title "eBay.com: Satisfying their Users with Gradual Evolution"
What’s Another $14 Billion Anyway?
Pretty much EVERY industry. What job can't be done faster, better and more efficiently when a computer is applied properly?
What you have come up with is a fuzzy case, not clear cut. Even with fair use, the way search engines use content can easily be considered infringement.

I still stand by my statement and the only reason search engines are allowed to copy petabytes of COPYRIGHTED material is because they are so darn useful. I don't know of any other service that sidesteps intellectual property rights (whether through fair use or not) and makes a good amount of money that has been allowed to exist and thrive.
Perhaps you are right that for most people the logo is meaningless. However, I find it looks like a fusion of >>= (Haskell's binding operator) and λ (the symbol of functional programming).
Triumph of Nerds: Steve Jobs & Bill Gates (1 of 3)
The thing that ticked me off about the guys post was that he was basically looking for a job where he could just go punch the clock until retirement.
The article wasn't about Obama. Stop being so defensive. It's about how people make decisions.

I posted it because it's a relevant start up topic. Some founders think they can make a logical argument for why their idea should be successful. It doesn't work that way.
I am not familiar with GoodReads. I posted this mainly because there was a discussion about having an HN bookclub here recently, which (predictably) quickly forked into a discussion about a bookclub start-up. To my knowledge none existed but I have noticed at least three now including the one you just mentioned.
and you can't actually pull the reviews - only a snippet, and then link to them. and their whole api is crippled by a non commercial use clause. looks great on paper, but the NYT has been very timid in their implementation.
I'm sure you're not alone, which is probably why the feature exists :)
I was referring to the practice of writing a bit of text rather than providing a link.
That fact the OP wrote such a post/question suggests to me that maybe he should leave the industry, since he's obviously not very passionate about programming.
The behavioural science of supermarkets
And do you think you know how to program them? If not, you're missing the premise of the syllogism.
Okay.

What does Matt Maroon do for a living?
Textually this is a classic troll. But at least it's not an account newly created for the purpose, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and play along.

Let's start by clarifying your question. Did Larry & Sergey, when they started, have these business instincts about making a killing in the marketplace that you're referring to? Because if they did they seem to have been well hidden. And if they didn't, these qualities don't seem to be worth much.

Also, can you tell me more about the youth and inexperience of the people who apply to YC? No one, as far as we know, sees the applications except us.

Your last question I can at least answer with certainty: no. It takes 4-5 years for a startup to achieve liquidity. No YC-funded startup is that old; the median is only about 18 months old. Our profitability now is therefore noise, which means no change in the applicants would have affected it significantly.
Wow. That just makes me amazingly sad--not simply because it's factually wrong, but because attributing it to DHH loses its impact. DHH is an amazingly egotistical man who made a couple of somewhat popular websites and an okay web framework. Alan Kay, working with Dan Ingalls and other luminaries at Xerox PARC, invented many of the concepts that define what a personal computer means today. I am profoundly sad to see such historical ignorance.
Wow does he need to fix his css. Making hovers shrink is just plain stupid. What's funny is if you hover and then move your cursor just far enough to the right, it flashes on and off in an infinite loop.
Semiconductor Lasers Generate Better Random Numbers
Blasphemy. Alan Kay first said "The best way to predict the future is to invent it" in 1971, before DHH was born.

If DHH decided to tweak Alan Kay's quote (changing "invent" to "implement") and attribute it to himself, well, that's bullshit.
The API metric is missing from this, otherwise excellent, chart:

http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/newspap...
Ask HN: What is a "toy" language?
I have heard the term "toy language" far too many times. To me, the term has zero validity but maybe someone else can convince me otherwise.

Is this a language that is too high-level? Too simple to pick up? Serves no purpose that other languages can't fill?

I have heard the term applied to everything from Java to PHP to Perl to Python- pretty much everything besides C[++] and Assembly.

This makes no sense for two reasons:

1) No language is suitable for every task and as a consequence some (traditionally) toy languages are better suited for some tasks than C.

2) Chances are if you have heard of a language then a decent number of people have found it useful for some task.

Can you code a web app entirely in C++? Sure. Would you ever want to do this as a start up? No. Too time consuming/prone to error/not agile. But you can come up with a list of things C++ is great for just like you can come up with a list of things "toy languages" are great for.

So why must decent languages be branded as toys?
It's from Alan Kay, in 1971.

Don't worry about what anybody else is going to do.
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

"The origin of the quote came from an early meeting in 1971 of PARC, Palo Alto Research Center, folks and the Xerox planners. In a fit of passion I uttered the quote!".
— Alan Kay, in an email on Sept 17, 1998 to Peter W. Lount

http://www.smalltalk.org/alankay.html
Naggum's argument is that if you're working with a large dataset, it must have taken you a lot of time/money to obtain it and so you should be able to afford custom hardware and software to deal with it.
Looks like Amtrak:
http://www.identityworks.com/reviews/2000/amtrak%20old.gif
Obsession with status isn't the only explanation for this. A problem that affects only you probably is one that you should worry more about. Whereas something that affects everyone is probably not something you can easily fix.
toy language is what you call a language that is incomplete or without a large enough featureset to be truly useful in solving problems or creating applications. or, a heavily pruned down version of a normal language.

you'll mostly see toy languages in academia. i had to learn one for my compiler class.

people referring to any widely used language as a toy languages are either trying to insult it, look down their nose at it, or are idiots. or, perhaps all 3.
If DHH decided to tweak Alan Kay's quote (changing "invent" to "implement") and attribute it to himself, well, that's bullshit.

You can safely assume he didn't.
This is a well-known statement by Kay:

http://www.ecotopia.com/webpress/futures.htm

I highly doubt that DHH claimed to have originated this. The problem here is the proliferation of adspam quote sites that attribute whatever to anybody. This same quote is even attributed to Lincoln on a few of them.
The Crunchies 2008: Vote
Where he draws the conclusion from?
I have this on VHS somewhere...
In some ways your comparison proves his point. As a developer with a degree and over 15 years of varied and international experience, I'd rather be regarded as a professional than just another office worker. Most of my friends are in professions where their experience is both respected and rewarded with steadily improving pay and conditions. Taking just 3 examples - how many skilled civil engineers, optometrists and hydrogeologists have to deal with new graduates or having their work outsourced to India?

The low barriers to entry in IT are both a blessing and a curse. It's great in your 20s, but by your 30s the gap with most other technical professions that require similar levels of intelligence and skill becomes obvious. That decade of experience doesn't count for as much as a lot of it is now outdated and irrelevant. For those of us who love the technical, creative side of developing and don't desire moving "up" into management, I can understand the sentiment.
i've had good luck with crowdspring http://crowdspring.com
I still haven't met a great programmer who doesn't have a job.

The fact that this would be relevant seems to assume that everybody reading (or at least the original poster) is a great programmer. What about those of us who are probably just average? Go away?
I think this is a case of WYSIWYG editing gone awry; there's also a mix of serif and sans serif.
Những điều bạn cần biết khi đi du lịch Nam Ninh (Trung Quốc)
Testers are cool at prime numbers
A software tester, a software developer, and a project manager are told: “All odd numbers are prime”. Result: sadness.
I’m going to defend this article. I do think the headline has too much hyperbole but the point he makes is a good one: Amazon’s PR department made a claim and papers just ran with that claim sight unseen.

What makes this a bigger issue than simple fact checking is that the claim is coming from Amazon’s PR department which has every reason to exaggerate and the claim is unverifiable by the media. So while a normal fact checking error involves the press not checking out what they believe to be true this situation involves the press publishing something that is very likely false and which we know they couldn’t check.

So while it seems like an attack on Amazon (which would be out of line since their PR is just doing what they’re supposed to) it’s really an attack on sloppy journalism.
Can anyone recall the quote I was looking for?
It had something to do with how the brightest minds are being wasted and aren't working on the most interesting problems.

I could even be wrong about it being a Kay quote, but I think so.

thanks HN, I figure if someone here doesn't know, maybe someone can call Kay and ask him ;)
Not to mention software is one of the rare industries where, if you're not happy taking orders from the MBA PHB, you can leave and start your own thing. No other industry requires less capital to start your own business. The amount you can accomplish with spare time and your personal laptop is insane compared to the kind of capital other industries demand for their startups.
As far as I can tell, this "interview" is where the "implement" version of the quote originated: http://www.stifflog.com/2006/10/16/stiff-asks-great-programm...

If it's legitimate then it seems DHH is guilty as charged.
ThinkPad + Ubuntu FTW
It's not something most people should do, but if you're in a pinch it might be a lot better than diluting & dealing with the hassles of bringing in more angels. I don't think you're giving enough credit (no pun intended) to credit card companies willing to give you 0% interest for 6 months to a year.

But to your point, it's very risky and NOT something most people should even consider. There's no way in hell I'd sell my soul to a credit card company at 20% APR either.

I have never bootstrapped a company on a CC. Fortunately this latest endeavor is all about micro-transactions so we're cash-flow positive very quickly. If I bootstrapped on a CC, I would never exceed a debt level more than the value of personal assets (car, equipment, etc..). Always plan an exit...
Either this is a troll (which I doubt) or you are seriously talking to the wrong crowd. Writing software is a profound discipline that is infinitely more creative and challenging than the "up-ladder" jobs you aspire to. That these shallower disciplines happen to enjoy higher status and compensation is purely an historical accident that will be washed away as the market gradually becomes efficient. This in fact is already happening, not because the deadweight are changing their minds or learning, but because creative people are increasingly realizing the value they can create on their own, without any of the "project management or solution modeling" that you think the "kids" should grow into.
That's true for all industries. That 50 year-old banker is not the guy who's running around on the trading floor all day - he's probably a manager of some sort as well.

Similarly, if you go into other engineering fields (electrical, mechanical, civil, etc) nearly all the 50 year-olds are managers also.
What's the point of having a logo in a programming language?
Is anyone out there using a Pylons stack for GIS? I'm starting a new geo-related project, and GeoDjango looks awesome, but I'm having trouble getting over the fact that Pylons is just more my style.
Surprised nobody has mentioned how Apple treats customers when they do have hardware failures. There are a lot of stories of hardware being swapped/upgraded in Apple Stores, even out of warranty.

Hardware failure is inevitable; the real question is, does Apple do a better job when that inevitability strikes?
I appreciate you treating the question in the good faith in which it was intended. While the topic may be provocative, I felt it was relevant, based on my observations of YC. However, because I can only provide anecdote as evidence of my case, I asked the question to discover whether my observations about YC are shared or whether I am suffering from a delusion. Textually this may seem like trollish behavior but some of the responses to the question seem to belie this suggestion.

As for your point about Google, some ideas are so powerful that they fall outside the conventional expectations of business practice. The fact that Google's founders have, until lately anyway, been unassertive in the manner of Microsoft, does not indicate that Bill Gates' approach "is not worth much". Absent some ground-shaking idea like Google's, I would argue the assertive approach of Microsoft is the norm for a successful company and a key ingredient missing in the YC environment.
Widgets, Profiles, YDN and Mobile, in the last 2 years. And those are just the ones that I know about because I worked on them. YAP was also new hardware but it was also a new product.
Congrats to our friends at BackType, Dropbox and Co2stats! YC has really been making an impact on the tech startup scene and it's great to see that being recognized here.

Vote Posterous for Best Mobile Startup. =)
Engaging Facebook Applications
In all frankness this thread is gossipy. Most programmers know that Alan Kay is the author of the original quote and a simple Google search would verify that. Just because a site or two quote David Heinemeier Hansson on a variation of said quote, it doesn't mean that he claimed it was his quote. Your message is an open invitation to bash him for no good reason. Quite frankly this is the sort of attitude I'd expect on Reddit not on Hacker News.
Part 1: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2part_triumph-of-nerds-ste...

Part 2: http://www.dailymotion.com/related/x2part_triumph-of-nerds-s...

Part 3: http://www.dailymotion.com/related/x2pb2a_triumph-of-nerds-s...
Life of a Star: 12 billion years in 6 minutes
seldo's right.

Also, the new Buzz site used all new hardware (and was a new product) and Games rolled out on new hardware when it was upgraded from HF2K to PHP. The old servers were reimaged and folded in with their PHP siblings once it was clear that the build was holding up properly.
or...

A lot of people:

http://www.google.com/search?q=predict+future+create+-kay

And a number of sites have Lincoln saying it,

http://www.ehow.com/how_4415898_predict-your-future.html

I'm sure there are earlier varieties.
Touchscreen Netbooks are all the buzz of CES 2009
What are you talking about? Seldo works at yahoo right now, and has been a part of several product roll-outs.
Wrestles alligators. There isn't much money in it, you do it for the love.
The number of servers you have to buy is totally property-dependent. It can be anywhere from 2 to several hundred, but is usually less than 20 in total for the median-sized Yahoo property.

Could you clarify what you mean by database inconsistencies between stacks?
Yeah, my wife's immediate reaction to that one was "so it will do as well as Amtrak?"
I am a big fan of Marc Andreessen's blog (Ning promotion notwithstanding). I'm not sure how interesting his writing would be for high school students, but you can look around and see if there's anything appropriate. Maybe this series:

http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/09/the-pmarca-gu-1.html
I've had problems with inter-distribution linux compatibility in tarsnap due to

* varying definitions of off_t (fortunately autoconf fixed this for me).

* the linux 2.4 kernel returning EINVAL for the interaction of TCP_NODELAY and TCP_CORK (fixed by avoiding the problematic interaction on all linuxes).

* the header files for openssl, zlib, and ext2fs/ext2_fs.h sometimes being installed and sometimes being part of packages with a wide variety of names (which I'm attempting to work around by providing a list of "the package you need should have a name something like this...").

I think there was a library version issue at one point too, but I can't remember what it was.

Yes, I could avoid problems with header files if I only provided binaries; but even leaving aside the question of security, this would mean that I'd have to deal with the problem of packaging binaries in N different ways.
What this document basically means is - You Don't Want To Be A Consulant.
Done (for all of them), but I'll be honest - I've never really thought of you as a mobile startup.
It's profoundly saddening to know that this, of all things, makes you profoundly sad.
Sorry, but if you're implying that I was impersonating someone else (in this case, the person whose username is madoff, who I don't know) just to revisit this topic, you'd be incorrect. (You'd also be kind of rude.) I bring up what happened with Facebook when it has some contextual relevance. There's a lot people here who could learn from that series of events, and I think I'm entitled to discuss it just like anyone else. As you'll note, however, I didn't even mention it until you did--and I only noticed that due to a traffic spike.

And for the record, I agree. By and large, YC startups do lack spines.
I wasn't trying to be too "gossipy". What I really wanted was for someone to help me find the quote I was looking for?
Not this quote that everyone knows.

I wasn't trying to bash DHH, I even said that it doesn't matter if its a mistake or not but that others do not know its a mis-reference is the more poignant issue.
Congrats to you, and all the other YC startups! Though some touch choices there (BackType and GitHub in the same category)
Facebook is in a lot of the nominations. Are they really still a startup?