skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
As long as you can drink Coca-Cola instead of Pepsi while coding Atlanta is a great place for Silicon Valley 2.

Costs of living are likely far lower than Silicon Valley, so you could become "ramen profitable" sooner. I'm paying $550 a month in rent for a gated townhouse with a 2-car garage right outside the perimeter.

You could get plenty of hackers from Georgia Tech who unlike grads from a private school won't have too much debt in student loans. Go Jackets and What's the good Word?

Atlanta could certainly improve on its public transportation, but if you live in Midtown you can walk most places. If you are in Tech Square, you can use Georgia Tech's trolly and bus system.

Culturally it's hit or miss. At a coffee shop, most of which close too early for a late night caffeine fix, you are more likely to overhear conversations about the latest trend in hip-hop or fashion, but I have seen a few Linux running Eee PCs in the wild.
One big problem with starting businesses in the South is racism and intolerance of outsiders. A key part of Silicon Valley is attracting the best talent from anywhere in the world, and it's going to be hard to do that in Atlanta.

For example (from Wikipedia), Atlanta is 2% Asian. San Francisco is 33% Asian. In fact 36% of San Franciscans were born outside the US.

edit: I do not mean to say that southern == racist. Far from it. I don't know how to measure racism. But for something like attracting immigrants to a city, perception of racism can be even more important than reality. And I am sure there is at least a common perception that Georgia is unfriendly to Asian immigrants.
"simple mechanics creating rich dynamics"

great concept
RJ11 is for phone, RJ45 is ethernet. Connecting the telephone system to an Ethernet jack can supposedly break the phone system or short it out or something. You can often plug RJ11 into an RJ45 jack, it will fit and make some contacts, which is often done to save on in-wall wiring costs in mixed networking deployments where you're still using POTS and not VOIP.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RJ11,_RJ14,_RJ25

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8P8C
I heard that Atlantic Station condos are going for bargain basement prices right now (a friend is hoping to sell for a 60K loss) -- walk to movies, food, and groceries and bike to Tech Square. It's tempting to think of what living in Atlanta could be without its defining characteristic (godawful traffic).

Without going into all the other factors, Atlanta does have the necessary condition -- a concentration of smart people.
Interesting. Looks like Berkeley DB will be good enough for me to prove the concept then, and if, or seemingly when, it becomes the bottleneck I'll know it's possible to improve on it. Thanks again; it's great having first-hand access to those that have done it instead of just theorising about it, like me. :-)
Well, sort of. There are large Asian communities in the suburbs between Buford Highway and Duluth, and the Asian population of Georgia Tech (around which most startups are based) is not insignificant. While racism is a problem in the South, thats not going to be an issue for hackers in the city. Quite the opposite: Atlanta is a diverse, tolerant place.
Cellular providers want Nokia to drop Skype from cell phones
I tried going from this page directly, and get the same error message (that too seemingly immediately - doesn't even seem like it tries a DNS resolution, though I'm not sure): "Firefox can't find the server at www.%e2%9e%a1.ws."

I'm using Firefox 3.0.5 on Windows XP.

FYI, the other link you gave in http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=498246 too doesn't work for me: "Firefox can't find the server at www.%e0%b2%95%e0%b2%b0%e0%b3%8d%e0%b2%a8%e0%b2%be%e0%b2%9f%e0%b2%95.com."
rlslog.net? Didn't expect it appear here.
When PG said the next startup hub should be like San Francisco, I thought of New Orleans. Not for any objective reason but just because when I think of bizarre tolerant cities I think of those two. If you doubt New Orleans' tolerance you've never been to Bourbon Street. And they both have streetcars. Not that the Big Easy would be suited to a Tech Startup, it is the perfect place for musical startups. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musician%27s_village

I think that certain cities inspire or attract creativity and weirdness. It just doesn't have to be tech-related. Any other examples of weird city + creative pursuit?
don't go too gaga over this hash-on-the-db appraoch, or its non-rdbms based solutions at all the major web companies. you get lots of scaling, great performance, but you have zero features. you can't even really query.

these models have superficial appeal until you realize that all the querying you would do in the db model now has to be done out-of-band into some sort of materialized view...e.g. if you want to have a group of rows that meet some criteria, you need to store it somewhere else out of band...the database can't help you with realtime queries because there is nothing to query on

in general i would avoid this model unless you have a huge scaling issue
Are you speaking from experience, or your own prejudice?

How about this - many Asians settle in CA because it means they are only a plane trip away from relatives in Asia.

As an example: JFK to Manila means a travel time of 24 hours due to 1 or 2 stops; LAX or SFO to Manila if going direct is 12 hours.

Nothing to do whatsoever with "racism and intolerance".
But targeted content and user generated content are two different things. Digg's Gaming category is more targeted than a random Facebook page, but that still doesn't mean a company wants to attach their brand to any random topic a user might come up with (something like, say, "[advertised game on this page] sucks").

Getting big and targeted is a lot more expensive (and highly competitive, see gadgets, etc.) than getting big and general, since it usually means non-user generated content.
By the looks of the "ladies" in that photo, the concession
stands are recession proof too.

Is it just me, or are Americans more obese than ever? Not just overweight, but morbidly obese?
Earliest (proto)human footprints found in Kenya
given that you were at y, i'm wondering if you were proposing a udb fork plus some features....
So write that as any of:

return {ok:false};

return {
ok: false
};

return(
{
ok: false
});

The semicolon insertion feature isn't a "bad thing," just a matter of personal preference and something you have to be aware of.
Another typo: "bring in a thousands startups"
Google Geniuses at Work on Free Goodies
I think this is great. It's time we should shift from traditional ORM mapping to something less painful.
Atlanta is diverse and tolerant by the standards of Georgia, but it is a far cry from California or NYC. Just the perception of the entire South as an unfriendly place for non-white people will prevent many people from moving there. Plus, it is hard to attract immigrants - a lot of smart hacker immigrants would never move to a "red state".
> Most of the really successful ideas started without a "pricing" link

If you define "success" to mean "lots of traffic" and not "profitable and growing". Clearly this is the case, because half of the companies you listed aren't profitable.

There are -lots- of internet companies who charge and are very successful. I'm not talking 37 Signals and Fog Creek - literally drops in the bucket. I'm talking about Amazon, Salesforce, and Google AdWords. Oh and how does Craigslist make money? Charging users.

> not charging money has been a successful strategy for a good number of startups.

No offense, but you're blowing both the "successful" and "good number" part of this way out of proportion.
I am speaking from the experience of having lived in Ohio, North Carolina, and San Francisco. The proximity to Asia is definitely another factor, but there is definitely at least a perception of racism in the South that discourages Asian and foreigners from moving there.
From the article: "This should say to employers that insisting people work long hours is actually not good for your business"

Wrong! As a business, you should overwork you employees. When the dementia starts affecting performance you fire them. This way you can privatize the benefits (long hours) and socialize the losses (some else takes care of them). Anything else would not be good for profits.
You're absolutely correct, but in evite's case they are storing them permanently. That's actually the reason I posted this was that I forgot my password and requested a reset (~5 years after signup) and they sent it to me in plain text.
Doesn't seem to work in Firefox 3.0.6 on Linux, strangely enough. I get:

Firefox can't find the server at www.%e2%9e%a1.ws.
HN user fsav and I have created a site to connect hackers interesting in working on small projects together -- http://clusterify.com. Check out some of the projects posted, and let us know what you think of the site.
Right, but I don't think you've actually spent any time in Atlanta, because what you are saying is wrong.

I live here, and I've spent time in California, North Carolina, Ohio, all the places you mention and Atlanta is as tolerant as California. Midtown Atlanta is the most gay accepting place outside of West Hollywood or the Castro, and if you think there is a shortage of Asians here you've obviously never been here.

You're just projecting your own prejudices. You don't know anything about Atlanta.
dude if you added an elisp layer to yi, that would be killer. i want to try it out, but there's so much elisp packages keeping me on emacs (like gnus)
Why Your Belly Button Has Lint
Actually I think the more interesting suggestion in your post is being able to "sell back" karma points to move a submission up.
Is it possible to apply the service to already existing clients databases, maybe by sshing to their servers or providing them with special software?
10 Papers Every Software Architect Should Read (At Least Twice)
There's a bizarre concentration of supply chain management software companies in Alpharetta. Those guys could be the angel investor base I harp on.
Atlas: Under the Hood
If you look at her code (it's pretty short), her grid uses percentage widths for columns and her template defines either a fixed or a liquid layout.
And her point that styles should be context-independent (CSS modules like legos, she says somewhere) is useful regardless of what designs you use.
Even though you are wrong, and speak from inexperience and prejudice, your opinion does point out something important: people like you have a prejudice against Atlanta as 'backwards' because it is in a region with different social problems than you are used to.
I just ordered a Kindle. But now I need to learn where to find all those free books (I love classics, but where can I find all of Plato's dialogues? King James Bible? Also, I want to buy an ebook (Michener's The Source) which is not available for Kindle but can be purchased as an ebook. How will I get these on my Kindle. I need specific help and would be most grateful for any. I've been reading these discusions for several days and ordered the kindle on faith. Now I"m looking for books I really want and don't know where to find. THANKS!
Techy cocoon? It's really interesting that you say that, because the situation, for me at least, is the exact opposite! The only people I know who still buy music are the techies, and it's a grand total of four, including me.

Maybe it's a more nuanced appreciation of intellectual property rights, or more obscure musical tastes, or wealth, or insistence on the best possible bit rate - I don't know. But I'm telling the truth here.

It's the non techies who don't care about quality and just like the top 40 that do not buy music. All it takes is one person to teach them about BT or - for the real novices - iMeem. I know teenagers whose "music collection" is a collection of links to iMeem songs. I don't know how or why they put up with it, but they do.

This ideal music consumer, who dutifully pays $1/file from iTunes, is in the minority and I'm honestly surprised there are so many even now. You simply cannot stop people sharing 3-5MB files in the age of BT and broadband. It is only going to get easier. In my opinion, the whole model is utterly doomed.
I don't know how in the heck an article answering the questions that PG posed turned into a string of comments about racism and calling people meatheads.

But since someone opened the door and let the big elephant in the room, I am going to go ahead and admit that it's standing there. The sub-culture of technology startups is dominated by white males. Minorities are not represented at the same proportion of their general population percentages anywhere in the country. I am not saying its right and we should all work to correct the issue. But it is. Look at the YC companies. Look at the TechCunch50. Look at Demo. Saying that it's just Atlanta is unfounded stereotyping.

It would be much more beneficial to discuss Atlanta and other cities on the criteria that PG laid out. In my article I pointed out that Atlanta could be more tolerant. The city is not alone.
http://ejohn.org/blog/the-dom-is-a-mess/
I think the Bay Area has proven that godawful traffic and being a startup hub are far from mutually exclusive.
I lived in Atlanta for 10 years (went to school at Georgia Tech). I moved there when the population just hit 2MM; now its 5.5MM!!...back in the day when you would expect it to be _more_ racist.

I am now married to a Chinese lady. I've lived in Shanghai the last 9 years. I wouldn't worry at all abut moving my wife and 4-year-old "hybrid" son to Atlanta. Neither would I worry about moving them to my very small home town in south Georgia.
LightCloud: Distributed key-value database built on Tokyo Tyrant
Very good point, I have seen similar things with other startups. The good news is that the traffic jumps, but it is also true that if you do not have virality built into your system, you plateau after a jump like this.
The key is to jump on opportunities, but it cannot be a strategy because sometimes it works and sometimes (most times) is does not, not everybody wins the lottery.
Building virality into the system works though, so it can be a real strategy: figuring out the roadblock in the acquisition of new users, and then removing them, or even better find something that would really benefit your users within their own ecosystem that you can offer at no cost (you do not want a system that digs a hole in your finances as you get more customers, unless you are backed by a VC who thinks this is a great way to do business).
Demonoid is nothing compared to the former Oink. It's a disorganised mess. Ditto TPB.

The real Oink 2 will be a properly indexed distributed web of trust system using something like BT/freenet and DHT and some kind of reputation system. There are early implementations going in that direction, but nothing really working yet. It's absolutely possible, though. All of the components are right there, just waiting to be linked up.

It's ridiculous to think this isn't coming. It's hard, yes, but it's also inevitable. Any business model that depends on people not being able to easily find and download small files, like say audio or even video these days, is screwed in maybe 2 or 3 years.

I don't think I'm predicting the future here, I think I'm stating the obvious. Hell, I have a side project along these lines, and I'm very far from the only one. Everyone wants something like this. It's just a matter of time.
I don't think hacking the evite account is the problem. With many people using the same password across multiple accounts, getting their evite password may also be giving the password to countless other systems. So they are essentially sacrificing the security of their users, not just their own application.
I moved from NYC to Phoenix and and difference in water taste was striking. I can't drink it.

A trip back to New York last year was a real treat for the water alone.
Pittsburgh's Alphalab has a stuck in Pennsylvania provision because they are funded by the state of Pennsylvania and ultimately their goal is to create jobs in the state of PA. If you leave, you have to pay back the $25k.
Which one is more likely to get you "ramen" profitable, then allow you to figure how to get to 50M?

-$20/mo.
Time Travails
Yes, and the "these guys" are not the artists.
..having lived in both SFO for years and Atl for years, my view is that CA is much more racist if you're not white or Asian and that's just a fact...the "good ole boys" club is alive and growing in the Atl however...
Right, but I think for that to happen widely, there needs to be a better payment system for the web.

ISPs should have micropayment systems that add charges to your bill - just like when you SMS a shortcode, it gets added to your cellphone bill.

This would massively change things on the web.

At the moment though, the hurdle is just way too high for consumers. The effort required to get someone to pay you $10 isn't even in the same ballpark as the effort required to make $10 from advertising.
Blogging was possible before all the popular blogging platforms appeared; you just had to deal with all the headaches of maintaining a site. I don't think anyone has ever claimed that the technology behind Twitter is groundbreaking, it's just dead simple to post an update over it from any computer or cell phone. Because it's now so universally accessible, non-geeks can do it. Which has made it trendy. Which is making it grow.

I think one of the most important lessons that developers can take away from Twitter is to make cool or useful technology available to everyone -- lower the technical barrier to entry.
"Bonus: Comes with FREE fresh air inside!"
You lose the knowledge your workers acquired on the job; a new hire cannot offer you that.

So this only works if you are in a franchise business where everyone works to a script and does not innovate, develop long-term relationships, or perform an important leadership function.
It depends entirely on who you're trying to sell to. If you're selling to businesses, then it's an easier job getting them to pay you directly.

Personally though in my experience of consumer based websites, making money from advertising is 'easy'. Orders of magnitude easier than getting someone to reach for their wallet.
"Hopefully a model is found which lets people make money from sales. Otherwise, music's going to keep plummeting down."

Sorry to repeat myself but the core problem here is bigger than just "people not paying for music". There are many other sectors facing this, perhaps most notably quality journalism. Good news reporting is hard and requires a lot of effort and resources. And the number of people willing to pay for news shrinks daily. Sound familiar?

The core problem is the disconnect between the material and the information worlds in terms of scarcity. Simply put, scarcity exists in the former but not the latter. This leaves anyone relying on scarcity in the latter to generate leverage against the former in a bad position.

This trend is inevitable and, while it might not seem like it right now, good, I believe. Obviously, the best outcome is for popularity to be its own reward - you can see the seeds of this in the open source movement, but it exists elsewhere as well. Social standing is a genuine motivating factor. Absent material necessity, I believe it would be enough.

Still, here we are in a world where we still have to pay actual money for our rent and food. We need a stopgap measure. Elsewhere I've proposed that governments establish "patronage funds" for artists, distributed by popularity. Basically take 1% of revenue and distribute it to artists/authors according to (reliable) measures of how useful their population finds them. In the current economic climate, however, this kind of idea is kind of unlikely.

It's a problem that needs to be solved, though, and it will be solved, somehow.
Getting a check from an investor is always nice, but this is not a validation by the market that your idea is good. Meanwhile advertising your business on a blog, specially with all the conditions attached and no guarantee that you will get anything seems only useful for PR purposes, but in the end it does not really help unless you are in the first few who posted.
I think Mark Cuban's idea is a good one for his own PR, but I doubt that it will help much in the end.

Overall this is one issue I have with the concept of Open Funding, trying to make you believe that competitions are a good model, when what it is really is a waste of time and energy for entrepreneurs who do not need this type of distraction when starting a business.
Competitions are lotteries, with one winner taking it all, and playing the lottery is not a good business strategy. Worse, once you won the lottery, you still do not have market validation from real customers, just the blessing of a selection committee that has their own criteria (hype, cool, vision, or whatever).
How about competing for cash from customers? At least when you win, you know you have something and chances are there will be more customers after the first one.
That is correct.

Yet some companies surge every now and then to offer premium video conferencing services, or offer custom search services to companies with millions of documents across their network and they charge a nice fee for it.

You have companies such as Webex dominating web conference, yet you have startups such as MeetCast with a promising technology (although I have only seen a short screencast once) and I am confident they can make a good amount of money from this technology.
I'm not trying to say anything bad about Atlantans. I'm just saying that there are much fewer Asian-Americans and foreign-born people in Atlanta than in San Francisco, and that makes it hard to attract more to Atlanta. (And these groups are a signature of Silicon Valley.)

some census data from http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/13/1304000.html and http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/0667000.html :

Atlanta:
1.9% Asian
3.6% of companies are Asian-owned
6.6% foreign-born

San Francisco:
30.8% Asian
21.4% of companies are Asian-owned
36.8% foreign-born
As long as that's your stated preference, can I interest you in http://look.fo/hacker-news or http://str8.to/hacker-news

I built these a while back but they haven't seemed to pick up traction. str8.to uses google's "i'm feeling lucky" - vanity urls without having to go register them.
Sorry, no disrespect intended by the "meathead" phrase -- the edit link is gone now, but I meant whether a city council would rather invest in 1000 startups or a football stadium. Sports seem pretty popular in Chicago and ATL, less so in SF, with SD somewhere in the middle.

SF city apparently killed off its own music scene in cold blood during the last decade, but Atlanta's is alive and well right now.
I don't quite see this as "hacking" anything, but it's a useful thing to know.

Along similar lines, I was coding some Ruby and calling a method that took a flag argument. E.g.

save_something @something, true

and it bothered my that it was not obvious what that last value was for.

I figured that one approach might be to create a throwaway variable and use it in place of the literal:

overwrite_existing = true
save_something @something, overwrite_existing

... and then decided to just pass that first expression in as the argument itself to tighten things up:

save_something @something, overwrite_existing = true

Basically, a handy (hackish?) way to document any argument.
Ha. I know the feeling.

I have a HP box not 3 metres from me with an XP Professional install key on a fricking sticker on the case. I can't find the original media. The code doesn't work with any other disk I can find. I need Windows to play games (HL2, not available on my usual Macs).

What do I do? I "pirate" Windows XP, of course. Now I'm running a pirated Windows XP Pro on a machine with a Windows XP Pro key on a sticker on the case. It's surreal. The lack of respect it engenders for Microsoft and their WGA crap is palpable.
Perforce Continuous Integration and Software Release Management