skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
we didn't "start off with such good cards". we worked hard to build up a network and get those people on board, just like we worked hard to get into a good school.
Microsoft releases RC1 of IE 8 for XP and 32-bit and 64-bit Vista (but not Windows 7)
Introducing Cascading Semantic Descriptions
I think your code marries anyone who executes it.
Although not obviously related to startups or to hacking, I've found that all my hacker friends (yes - I have friends) love The Princess Bride.

"Never get involved in a land war in Asia"

"Inconceivable!"
Sadly, it's kind of hard for me to come up with good hacker movies, but I can at least try to make a recommendation of interest to (most) hackers: Paprika. It's an anime film (by the same team that brought us Perfect Blue and Millennium Actress) that explores the ramifications of a device that allows someone to interact with someone else's dreams. Like I said, not a hacker movie per se, but I think it's one that most hackers will probably like.
Example of a project: well the TODO list suggested in the other comment makes for a great example: it can be very small. But there could also be more original stuff, things which would not repeat anything out there. Another example would be a small iPhone arcade-like game. There are plenty such ideas, and that's the point :P Project Euler level of questions is precisely what I was thinking of (in terms of length), in fact, since working on some of its questions with a friend is a part of what made me think of the idea.

I really like your idea of Yahoo games style "programming room", but I think it'd be overkill in the beginning. I'm thinking of something more flexible, based on different (existing) technologies to coordinate the work, say simply IRC, SVN, some Wiki page, etc. It doesn't have to be a complex website: the functionality would be more at the level of getting people together and allowing them to comment on each other's work (ratings etc.). Where they go from there is suggested, but up to them.
As far as I remember it took me considerable amount of time to get along with C# alone, but after that playing around with ASP was much more easier. If you're planning to start asp.net or other microsoft stuff like .net, make sure your OOP fundas are thorough.
I think I'm going to start using that idea: "Imagine that this piece of paper with your password on it is a $100 bill. Treat it accordingly (w/ respect to not losing it)."

I wish they made US paper currency > $100. The €500 would be a better example.
"In what material dimension are we noteably worse off now than we were 20 years ago?"

My window was 10 years.

"Just because incomes have "stagnated" (which also seems to depend on how you slice and dice the numbers), doesn't mean standard of living has gone down."

No, it just means standard of living has stagnated, too.

"The constantly decreasing prices of material goods plays just as much of a factor."

We've had a lot of inflation, up until the economy cratered.
Thanks for the idea. It's indeed a good example of the scope I was thinking about (as long as you're not trying to write a full-fledged GTD app with all the bells and whistles).
That's the point, it's not a hash table -- it's an association list. People don't just use them because they're easier to write, they have nice functional characteristics.

(Yes, hash tables are better for many things. I liked the #{} hack, actually.)
Almost all of these are negative attributes & inefficiencies of the writer, not working from home.
'Rescued' Citigroup Buying $50M Jet
Reality TV Seen as Viable Career Path for 'The Hills' Generation
A suggestion for eliminating workplace discrimination completely.
Whenever possible, employees would work from home and would never actually meet their employer or fellow employees face to face.

Communication would be limited to text and fake names would be used.

Anything requiring the true identity of the employee would be done via a trusted third party.

If the employee's writing style reveals too much about his/her background, then he/she may request someone to help make his/her writing more generic.
Defense Department Mimics Google in Cloud Computing
The pic of Lisa http://backoffice.ajb.com.au/images/features/Applelisa.jpg

reminds me of my old cooler O_o
New Internet Explorer 8 accelerates browsing
The soundtrack is great.

They also did quite a lot of research in names and related "hacker stuff" (a Jolt Cola can in Plague's bedroom comes to mind)

And, of course, there is Angelina Jolie in her 18's. That more than compensates for any screenplay flaw.
I think that a lot of these points are good not just for press interview but for meeting a new client, keep a good relation with an old one or when negociating a contract.
As far as computer movies go, Antitrust wasn't too bad; It at least had real code whenever it was needed to be shown on screen.
PostRank.com Aims to Replace FeedBurner With Social Media Analytics
Another classic fallacy: trade is not zero-sum. Will we have a lot of new Americans? Probably.

Is that necessarily a bad thing? Probably not. More Americans means more workers to produce and thus, more to go around.

Also, adjusting the H1B quota downwards is a luaghable proposition. As it is, the quota runs out in less than 3 months. Your suggestion would just lead to more outsourcing (which is often not as efficient as immigration) and higher prices.
If you look at the left, one of the photographers have 2 heads :)

1. Where are the snipers? - look at the big buildings on the horizon. Some of them have people on the roofs.
Ask HN: Accelerate or slow down?
I have been tossing around a few ideas for a start-up, a couple of different angles on small-scale game development for download services, and getting good feedback from people around me.

So I'm faced with a dilemma: I have a family with small children. Not really the optimal situation for an time-consuming adventure like this. Is this the time to do this, or should I step down and postpone things, possibly losing the opportunities I see?

Try to put yourself in this situation and tell me how you'd reason. I won't really base my decision on answers here, but I'm hoping for a good discussion at least as I've been turning my head inside out thinking about this for a couple of months.
Sure, there's no text yet, but I have high hopes. Given that one of the aims of Python 3 was to remove more confusing and unnecessary features in lieu of better-designed alternatives, teaching Python 3 from the start seems like a really good idea.
Why are we continuing to have the same old conversations about these things?

So-called scripting languages were discussed a decade or so ago.
If I'd gone I would have definitely worn the striped outfit. Maybe even a hat so you could play WW from space!
e.g. compare censorship via china's internet firewall thing to "censorship" by America's total lack of internet firewall thing. isn't it pretty obvious the resulting internet communities are different?
Now this is a busy dashboard...
My own cheesy favorite, The First $20 Million is the Hardest. Plus I love Rosario Dawson, so that's probably a contributing factor.
If you mean "step down" as in leaving your current employ, the critical question is this: How many months savings do you have?

And if you have at least a year's saving, what is the revenue model and how quickly can you get to the point where you can ship product?

Oh, and don't listen to what people around you say about your ideas. They'll either think it's brilliant or say it's stupid, but rarely have anything critical or useful to say.

The genius is in your passion for the idea.
Internet Explorer 8 release candidate is live
Wow, I almost didn't read this because I expected fluff, but this was excellent. If you deal with the press in any capacity, check it out.
damn i forgot == somehow. i hadn't had my coffee for the day..
Certainly not the time to quit your day job and then try a start-up, but i don't see why you couldn't throw together your startup in your spare time. Is there a reason you need the 'time-consuming adventure' to actually consume so much time? It'll take longer to launch but on the whole, be less risky.
The best way to understand how a modern computer system works is to learn the ASM of that language, read the manuals for the CPU/motherboard. You need to learn about registers, memory addresses, L1 and L2 caches, interrupts, etc. I don't see how C forces you to learn about any of that aside from memory addresses which you don't really need to deal with much (aside from passing pointers around and using malloc/dealloc).
> rather than entering stuff directly into the wiki, people would upload word documents

This is precisely why both of my last two employers actively forbade real Wikis in favor of dumbed-down Word document repositories.
The Dish tells the story of the Australian downlink that provided communications support for the Apollo moon landing. True to life and truly funny picture of engineers collaborating on some hard problems against a deadline.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0205873/
start now.

Better to do a startup for 3 years @ 20 hours a week, than 2 years @ 80 hours a week

Growth isn't instant, it'll take time to get new users. And if you are taking the long view, you'll actually be more mentally prepared for when your startup isn't an instant success
Is discrimination an issue in that particular country that this would be a real cause for concern?

Are you asking if this it would be a viable business model if you were the trusted third party (e.g. identity escrow)?
Discrimination is an issue in all countries.
Incidentally, I wrote the same thing for a class recently in Common Lisp. See http://github.com/smanek/ga

The biggest portion of the code was the bitmap/image manipulation libraries. Excluding those, it was about the same size.
> So, Why would anyone go for asp.net?

Because they have an existing investment in C# and/or the microsoft stack, and a team of developers who know C#/visual studio. In that situation it's pretty hard to sell PHP.
Because sometimes you don't have a choice. Either by policy or by inheritance, you might be stuck with that environment.

In my day job, i use ASP.Net MVC framework because we're an all Microsoft shop. And although i recognize the danger of proprietary systems in the medical field, I am unable to change anything at this time.

Also i find that Microsoft products work best with other Microsoft products so SQL Server with Windows Server 2003 and ASP.Net along with Active Directory and so on...

But, echo'ing the other comments, using a limited metric such as number of lines to implement a feature is a bad idea. Try it out on some application and then you'd be better equipped to dismiss or recommend it.
Waking Life. Not so much a 'hacker' movie per say, but a great film for anyone who is interested in some heavy thinking and interesting cinematography.
But many people actually enjoy interacting with their cow-orkers.
Where does the music come from? Are they pulling from other music services, hosting it themselves without permission of the rights holder or do they have deals with these bands/labels?
BBS Documentary
But there's a price to be paid for that.
I don't think it would be anywhere near as funny without such over-the-top profanity. There is clearly plenty of tongue in cheek, and I found the whole thing hilarious. Don't evaluate it as a serious critique but rather as an amusing skit of Adobe's frustratingly clueless UI design.

My favourite one is "Nice bug you bunch of bellends".
In case you are wondering why something like this is useful beyond blocking advertising, here is why I use a Flash blocket:

When you are on a laptop and use a bazillion tabs, Flash is allowed to do whatever it wants, even in tabs you aren't using. So it can max out your CPU looking for aliens. (Adobe may or may not have good reason for allowing this, but 99% of the time, Flash should go to sleep when you aren't looking at the page.)

Ever since I've been running a CPU monitor on my MacBook Pro, I have found ways to keep it at a minimum to maximize battery power. Flash is one of the worse idle CPU eaters.

Using a flash blocker has been one of the best ways. It's an extra click to watch a YouTube video, but the upside is that I get more time on a charge and my machine stays cooler.
Agreed -- but to a much lesser extent in some over other countries.

If it was, then I'd have to agree with you that working remotely under the arrangement you proposed (akin to eLance.com) should work fine.

If this wasn't a primary concern for a new job, then I'm not sure I see the overall benefit.
YackTrack - A Cool Tool For Blog Commenting - Another Way To Get Traffic
If you are in to Blog Commenting this can be a great tool for you
Hey, wear whatever you want, sell whatever t-shirt you want, no sweat off my back. This kind of humor is cheap, and possibly hurtful. If you're cool with that, it's your business.

I've never heard that trolling had to be anonymous by definition, and I've been kicking around the internet for 15 years or so. Trolls aim to be deliberately disruptive, and if you're in public wearing a shirt with any of the slogans on TSH, then you are aiming to be disruptive. One reaps what one sows.

ps - I'm watching our points go up & down depending on who agrees with us. It's kind of amusing.
If you're suggesting that the price is always discrimination, then I'd have to disagree. If not, then could you expand on this a little more?
Google Visualization API interactive samples in the AJAX APIs Playground
"Sporting a 350MHz 604e processor, room for up to 1.5Gb of memory and six PCI slots, the 9600 was a big beige beast on par with any PC system at the time. "

Ha! "on par"?! What competition did it have? Pentium MMX-based screamers? Laughable. The 9600 ran rings around any PC you could buy or build.

And, BTW, the Lisa was no Alto rip-off. It could be a Star rip-off hadn't Apple perfected so many UI traits that later went into the Mac: files as icons, a menu bar with pull-down menus, floating dialog boxes...

And, BTW, the Lisa was never intended to be a home computer. It was also far less expensive than a comparable Xerox Star.

And they call themselves "authority"... pfff.
I think it would have to be mandated by law for certain companies in which it would work.

Otherwise, what is the incentive for an employer to provide such an arrangement?
... how long did you let it run? The results in the presentation did not turn out very well.
but that's probably because Emmanuel Goldstein was a consultant on the production of the movie.
All the best to you Paul, your wife, and your beautiful new baby!

show "Congratulations!"
Ugh, I feel so old.
Discrimination is ubiquitous. The only difference between people who discriminate and those who do not is that the latter group is better at hiding it. But even subtle/latent discrimination can produce unfair outcomes in the workplace.
If you are self-funded, or can self-fund, accelerate. I personally see this as my only chance.

Nothing has changed for me, in terms of revenue. I still have more consulting work than I can handle, at ridiculous rates. What is different now is that none of my competitors can get loans or venture capital, and I can hire really good people for quite a lot less than usual.

Marketing, too, seems easier than usual. Consumers care about price now, which unlike the intangibles people usually compete on, is an area where I can compete.

but then, I don't have kids.
I think this Rush Limbaugh quote does a good job summarizing modern day conservatism:

We believe in individual liberty, limited government, capitalism, the rule of law, faith, a color-blind society and national security. We support school choice, enterprise zones, tax cuts, welfare reform, faith-based initiatives, political speech, homeowner rights and the war on terrorism. And at our core we embrace and celebrate the most magnificent governing document ever ratified by any nation--the U.S. Constitution. Along with the Declaration of Independence, which recognizes our God-given natural right to be free, it is the foundation on which our government is built and has enabled us to flourish as a people.^

I think ideally that is what conservatives want to stand for, though in practice it may be quite different.

^ http://www.opinionjournal.com/ac/?id=110007417
You mentioned reverse engineering NYTime's tool 'Represent'; Have you heard of their 'Congress API'? http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/introducing-the-con...

Maybe you can use this data also.
...along with some amount of actual awesomeness.
23 (not the jim carrey one)

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0126765/

if you've ever read the cuckoo's egg, 23 is sort of the other side of the story, following karl koch and the germans (though stoll was mostly tracking markus hess in the cuckoo's egg, not koch).
The Soundtrack is the first thing I bought on eBay (it came from the US)

I also wanted the headset that Zero wears. Now all I need is a spinning Phonebooth.

Angelina hubba hubba
That looks like a great way to get a cinema experience from a laptop. Now, if only they changed the name, so I wouldn't have to say that my screen has an Emo on top of it.
If working space is not going to make money, but is useful to you, perhaps you should consider some type of co-operative arrangement.

If it were structured as a joint ownership, and all customers had to be members, you might also avoid certain licensing requirements aimed at a place open to the public. Think along the lines of the Gentlemen's Clubs of Victorian London, or a Freemason's lodge.

If I were to join, I'd like for a back room or upstairs attic or something to be designated the "Diogenes Club" were no talking or phone usage was allowed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes_Club
Agreed, Real Genius captures the insanenes (sic) of Caltech and the people who go there perfectly.
For people that subscriber to this black and white worldview, your suggestion is a temporary band-aid solution that should work well in the short-medium term (for as long as the employee and company can keep up the faceless and highly impersonal relationship).

I am not one that subscribes to this worldview. To each their own.
I'd love to know if there are any good completed online books about python. I'm oddly new at programming (being a mere IT consultant for about 6 years now and finally deciding to concentrate on something) and I'm loving it a lot. I've learned a fair amount of php, taught myself objects, mvc, a couple different sqls (tsql, mysql), and a few different php frameworks.

I keep trying out other languages (I liked python's intro) but when it comes time to making something I fall back into php because I know it very well. I feel almost stuck. Like a need a python project. =p
Jots that down If there's enough demand for voting data, we'll add it.
Indeed, Adleman, the A in RSA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Adleman) was a consultant on that movie.
i always remember the bit about trying to flip light switches in a dream to determine whether you're really dreaming or not.
thanks! will check it out.
The square peg/round hole sequence is of course the embodiment of the hacker spirit (not an original thought of mine, but I can't seem to find the original URL at the moment).

Another space/hackish movie would be "The Dish" about the Australian engineers in charge of one the (of course) dishes used to communicate with Apollo 11. Cliffhanger scene: the dish goes out of alignment for some reason and they need to scramble to regain contact in time to televise the moon landing.

And of course there's always "The Right Stuff".
Interview with Obama's Bulletproof Tailor
So, not http://www.diveintopython.org ?
Its strange why this article doesn't interfere with http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7720614.stm
At the other end of the hacker spectrum (the cry-yourself-to-sleep reality end not the fantasy end), there's Office Space.
Well my question still stands for 10 years. Of course, if the window gets too small it becomes meaningless. Progress is never constant and moderate, there are always bad times and good, as long as the long term trend is upward.
Web Stats: Clicky Vs Google Analytics
I usually work every Sunday on a sideproject with a team that lives in another city. Rest of the team(3people) gather together at same space and I just join them with Skype video.

I found using videochat very useful, since you can discuss about things and overhead other people discussing, get feedback in live, feel that you're working(since somebody might be watching you). You also need to take shower, dress up a little that you look somewhat sharp. It feels almost like going to work, except you don't need to commute.

(I have worked from home quite a lot as a freelancer and also had a job with regular telecommute, but never felt like I was actually "working".)
John Gruber on the Auteur Theory of Design
More than 200 kids virtual worlds in development
Bloody Monday job tally: More than 68,000 jobs lost
Skip to the bottom:
This site is optimized for Lynx just because fuck you.
I'm told it also looks nice in graphical browsers.
I love Fireworks, fucking hate CS4.

I've been using FW since version 4, from everything from wireframes to full polished design, and I have never seen this much bugginess on any production software. The worst part of it is that the most persistent bugginess is the text selection, which is half of what I do when designing.
Richard Stallman sells GNU to Microsoft for CAD$105
Evidently there is VHS / DVD out there. Didn't find anything streaming, but didn't look too hard. Mr Cringley was nice enough to point us in the right direction:

http://www.pbs.org/opb/nerds2.0.1/

http://www.amazon.com/Nerds-2-0-1-Brief-History-Internet/dp/...
As python is beautiful, lisp is parenthesis-y.

Has anyone thought about a Lisp dialect that uses white space, like Python, to get rid of the ()?
And there are a few other realistic bits:

PHREAK
(to Cereal)
D'you bring those Crayola books?

CEREAL
Oh yeah, technicolor rainbow.

Cereal brings a book out of his bag.

CEREAL
Green one.

JOEY
What is that, what is that? Lemmie see. What
are these?

DADE
International Unix Environments.

Cereal pulls out another book.

CEREAL
Luscious orange?

Cereal hands the orange book to Phreak.

DADE
Computer security criteria, DOD standards.

Another book comes out.

DADE
The Pink Shirt Book, Guide to IBM PCs. So
called due to the nasty pink shirt the guy
wears on the cover.

Another one.

CEREAL
What's that?

DADE
Devil book. The Unix Bible.

Another one.

CEREAL
What's that?

DADE
Dragon book. Compiler design.

Cereal brings out a large red book.

CEREAL
Oh yeah? What's that?

DADE
The Red Book. NSA Trusted Networks.
Otherwise known as the Ugly Red Book that
won't fit on a shelf.

By now Phreak has made a pile of the books, and the Red
Book looks wholly out of place on the top of the pile.
The Dam Busters (1955 - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046889/ ) is excellent. You can see real-world examples of the hacker problem-solving mindset right from the start of the movie and it continues on throughout.

(PC Warning: One of the main characters has an unfortunately named black dog, which I suspect is the reason this superb film is only rarely seen).
there are a few... https://bookmarks.sickos.org/tags/book+python
Pogue: Google's GrandCentral not dead, version 2.0 "imminent"
Ask HN: How would you launch a Yelp-like site?
Our application is kind of like Yelp, but it's an online suggestion box for small businesses called FeedbackJar.com.

Think of us as getsatisfaction.com and uservoice.com but for small business.

We're getting ready to launch soon, just wondering if anyone on HN have any good launch ideas?
A little more info - Traces the birth and failure of new media company govWorks.com

If you are or were part of a start-up company you will be entertained by this documentary. It makes your head spin to see some of the mistakes and money this company goes through. They hired literally hundreds of people for an idea that could now probably be run with a dozen people (most of them sales).
Some of us prefer the parens.