skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think cheating is the tip of the iceberg, the root problem being that the system over-emphasizes marks. Students who genuinely care about learning the material have no incentive to cheat. Cheating is just the symptom; the cause is the prevailing attitude that high marks are the ultimate goal of school.

If marks and learning were perfectly correlated it wouldn't be a problem, but trying to quantify something as abstract as knowledge is bound to have a large margin of error which students will exploit (by cheating or otherwise) if the incentives encourage it.
15 people for 100k/month would mean you are paying an average of 74k/year. Who would willingly work for a startup for that, without lots and lots of equity (answer: the exact people that you would never actually want to hire)? And you can't give lots of equity to 15 people, and even if you give them 8% each you would be left with nothing yourself.

$12k per month on rent? You would have to be retarded to pay that as a startup. Rent an old house and get lots of card tables.

Servers/bandwidth at 20k/month? What kind of site is this? That's $240k per year of bandwidth. If you are serving up that much content and aren't making a profit already, you are either going to get bought out in a few months or go under in a few months after that.

My hypothetical startup budget:

Salary: Pay myself enough to pay bills and live on, as well as 2 or 3 talented confederates (if I happen to have 2 or 3 talented people, with skills I need, on tap. Otherwise, wait until some are located before hiring anyone. Nobody is getting my equity unless they totally rock.) Estimate: 6k-25k per month.

Rent: $0, I happen to have an office large enough for 4 people to comfortably work in at my home. If I didn't, I would charge a one time expense of $2000 to put some carpet in the garage, install an AC out there, and run some wiring and so on.

Furniture, equipment, etc: $500. Find your nearest very large public university. They probably have a depot that just sells old furniture and equipment. You can drive up with a truck and get enough furniture to outfit a small army for under $500 (one time fee). http://www.purchase.umd.edu/ttrader/items/showroom/index.htm...

Servers/bandwidth: This obviously depends on what site you are making. A Youtube needs way way more bandwidth/servers/rackspace than a yelp for the same size audience. Using EC2 as a guide, a small instance is $70 per month if used constantly. If you used say 100 instances constantly, and transfered 1TB a day, you would be paying around $12000 per month. That is a metric assload of servers and bandwidth, so the $20k number is probably retarded also.

PR/Advertising: I'm not sure. 10k per month buys a fuckload of adwords. At a CPC of .40, you are talking 40k * 2.5 = 100k impressions a month with that advertising budget. In reality you can get clicks for .20, and lately even less, unless you are selling asbestos litigation.

So my point is you can get a hell of a site out there for like $300k per year or way way way less, unless you are an idiot.
Work has nothing to do with pain or physical discomfort.

Thinking is hard.
When I keep thinking which other, more efficient ways of achieving financial freedom you might have had in mind, I cannot help the word fraud popping up. I'm sure that's not what you meant, but I have no idea what you did mean. :) Investment banking? Consulting?
A trend I think we'll see in the next year: blogs starting to only allow comments that come through Facebook Connect or similar identification services. In my opinion, that would be a change for the better. People actually think about what they say when their name is attached to it.
I'm surprised Michael Dell had anything nice to say to Putin in the first place, let alone an offer of assistance.

Putin is a war criminal and a thug, comfortable with murder and intimidation as normal tools of his trade.
Is Hackerne.ws Opensource?
http://www.newmogul.com/ seems to be the same platform. Are there others?

If it's opensource, where can one snarf a copy?
This is good advice. I learned Transcendental Meditation a while ago and found that it did relieve stress. I also found that when I was tired I would fall asleep instead of meditating since that's what my body needed. I try and do it when I first wake up in the morning for 20 minutes and again sometime before dinner. Sleep and exercise are also good at reducing stress, but I have definitely found that meditation helps me to relax and reframe my perceptions.
I wish people would stop thinking this is new just because this time, it's on the internet.

Tales of loss and tragedy inspire more interest than tales of gain and happy occurances. This has always been so.

Anonymity inspires hatred, violence, and depersonalization. Being around other people who are hating, being violent, and depersonalizing others confirms this behavior. Countless -- old, pre-internet -- psychology studies and case studies show this.

It doesn't have to be online.

Intentionally overcoming it is good for everyone. But. It's just the nature of the human beast.

And this Paul Carr dude is trolling - again - with this article, because he knows negativity sells.

And maybe he feels guilty about everyone thinking he's an asshole, but it's A) clearly his own fault and B) a habit he can't kick, because even this article has the same tone to it.
I love the "advice" you get from mainstream media. Your life is wrecked up by a mix of bad decisions and bad luck, and the solution is to:

• Don't panic;
• Find a support group, even if it's just an informal group of friends;
• Seek employment counseling when available;
• Be professional in your job hunt;
• Network with other professionals;
• Take time to exercise during hard times;
• Spend valuable time with your family.

Ah, good! I was about to panic, become a hermit, be unprofessional in my job hunt, and avoid my family.

Okay, some of that advice is mildly valuable, but without additional detail, "Don't panic" is totally vacuous. Yeah, you're not going to be wrong, but it's not insightful either. It's why I typically avoid mainstream TV/newspapers - lots of unqualified "Don't panic" and "remember to exercise" type advice.
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(note: my other account posts stuff marked [DEAD], no doubt because I called one of PG's articles retarded. It was the one where he said the history of unions could completely understood by looking at web startups. It was retarded.)

15 people for 100k/month would mean you are paying an average of 74k/year. Who would willingly work for a startup for that, without lots and lots of equity (answer: the exact people that you would never actually want to hire)? And you can't give lots of equity to 15 people, and even if you give them 8% each you would be left with nothing yourself.

$12k per month on rent? You would have to be retarded to pay that as a startup. Rent an old house and get lots of card tables.

Servers/bandwidth at 20k/month? What kind of site is this? That's $240k per year of bandwidth. If you are serving up that much content and aren't making a profit already, you are either going to get bought out in a few months or go under in a few months after that.

My hypothetical startup budget:

Salary: Pay myself enough to pay bills and live on, as well as 2 or 3 talented confederates (if I happen to have 2 or 3 talented people, with skills I need, on tap. Otherwise, wait until some are located before hiring anyone. Nobody is getting my equity unless they totally rock.) Estimate: 6k-25k per month.

Rent: $0, I happen to have an office large enough for 4 people to comfortably work in at my home. If I didn't, I would charge a one time expense of $2000 to put some carpet in the garage, install an AC out there, and run some wiring and so on.

Furniture, equipment, etc: $500. Find your nearest very large public university. They probably have a depot that just sells old furniture and equipment. You can drive up with a truck and get enough furniture to outfit a small army for under $500 (one time fee). http://www.purchase.umd.edu/ttrader/items/showroom/index.htm....

Servers/bandwidth: This obviously depends on what site you are making. A Youtube needs way way more bandwidth/servers/rackspace than a yelp for the same size audience. Using EC2 as a guide, a small instance is $70 per month if used constantly. If you used say 100 instances constantly, and transfered 1TB a day, you would be paying around $12000 per month. That is a metric assload of servers and bandwidth, so the $20k number is probably retarded also.

PR/Advertising: I'm not sure. 10k per month buys a fuckload of adwords. At a CPC of .40, you are talking 40k * 2.5 = 100k impressions a month with that advertising budget. In reality you can get clicks for .20, and lately even less, unless you are selling asbestos litigation.

So my point is you can get a hell of a site out there for like $300k per year or way way way less, unless you are an idiot.
Casual sex is misogynist?

You should take a good look in the mirror, mister.
The only part of Android that is "not robust" (thus far and in my opinion) is the hardware. The Android OS itself feels about as solid and responsive as the iPhone OS (does that have a name, btw?) or pre-cellphone-era-Palm-OS. I have had very little experience with WinCE, Symbian or whatever the Blackberry uses, so I cannot compare there.

Android has real multi-tasking. I can't even begin to tell you how nice it is to be able to SSH into a server from my G1, switch to email or the web to check something, and then come back and my SSH session is still active. I couldn't do that on the Treo (no multitasking) and it annoyed me to no end.
"Well for tests, let students have a formula sheet. I don't understand why in this day and age we need to learn everything by heart, when in the real world everything is 1 search query away."

I think this is exactly the problem. When formula sheets are allowed it is reinforced that you need not learn the material, but instead just know that you'll be able to plug and chug. Sure, you may be able to look it up later, but in class students should truly understand the material not simply know where to plug in which numbers. However, if you truly know the material intuition and the ability to derive the formulas will give evidence that you truly understand the material.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=430795
haven't heard many stories about celebrities being spat on lately..
You're the one who is interpreting the snark and the attack. It was a statement of fact with no judgment at all.
How Amazon.com could screw up eBooks
You mean socialism? Yes, that has been a threat for a long time. I have not given up hope yet.

As far as your question is concerned, if things are bad enough to justify over throwing the government- of course the government isn't going to go peacefully. But some things are worth dying for.

America is a land of hope and opportunity, we have been through a lot of challenges (like the Civil War) and survived, and I believe we can survive the onslaught of socialism. The Principles of the Constitution will survive (eventually), even if our Representatives fail us, even if, for a season, the People fail.
The most serious form of cheating I ever experienced was Junior year in high school. It was a Spanish 3 class taught by an eldarly women, who reportedly had a stroke over the summer (which I attribute the entire incident to as I can only hope no sane person would do what she did.)

Anyway, she was not teaching the class. I would go in there and sit and she would mumble on in English about nothing in particular. After about three weeks of this, I got a bunch of students together and we all complained to the head of the Spanish Language department (large school, many spanish classes). He said okay, and he told the teacher he was going to observe the class.

Well, the day he observed was the first day she taught the class anything. Of course, it was the material we should of known after a month of Spanish 3 so everybody had trouble following.

This went on three or four times until midterm exams. For the midterm, we had a standardized spanish test. Since he hadn't taught us anything, except when being observed, students knew nothing. I studied my butt off but that didn't matter. She stood in front of the class and read all the answers from the test.

I complained to the school and they had a huge investigation, and basically thought I lied about the whole thing. Why would a teacher give the entire class the answers? The real part that gets me is that nobody had the integrity to come forward and complain. They had to discretely question students.

Long story short, truth came to light and she found out I was the one who reported her. She was not fired, but kept "teaching". For some insane reason, she started changing the answers on my tests and quizes so I started out scoring everybody by huge margins.

In the end, everybody who had her as a teacher failed the final for the class, but the school system changed all our grades to As in some weird sort of cover up.

She still teaches to this day, at a different school, however.
I'm confused. The links and text in the page you link to all say that Phone support is still available, just you have to login to a support page and enter some pin and then you get the number. Is this not true?
These are just different stages and kinds of companies. There are many angel or self-funded companies that operate exactly as you describe. There's nothing novel about it. The question from the submission was how startups typically spend VC money.
This is somewhat like an idea I've been considering. So I think it's a great concept... and have strong opinions on possible directions.

If your primary model is a ranked listing of 'facts' by a major 'term' key, it will be hard to outperform Wikipedia (or even Mahalo). When those sites' single-topic articles/pages are well-written, they already lead with the core facts, and then proceed through the rest in a well-organized fashion. Even the Google 'snippets' in natural search hits then turn out to be pretty strong for anwering people's questions/queries. So I think to differentiate you need to break out of that linear model somehow.

The multiple licenses situation is confusing and may prevent you getting proper credit for openness.

You may hope voting and reputation will be mechanisms for gradual quality improvements, but they often backfire. Any benefit from people seeking to 'climb' for the right reasons can be offset by gaming.

It's unavoidable you'd need to use some bulk automated processes (like scraping Wikipedia or hired contributors) to bootstrap, but that may then undermine the organic growth of 'community spirit' and norms that will be essential for the long term. The right balance will be hard to find.

Good luck!
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If you read the article in question, and think it isn't retarded, then you are probably some kind of Down's Syndrome sufferer and I don't respect your opinion anyway.
I don't understand how this would work. If you had a form of currency that was continuously losing value, wouldn't you simply exchange it for something equally liquid that wouldn't lose its value? Such as gold or silver?
Don't bother doing a start-up.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=1016179405&play=1 (At 13:00)

This about sums up what why. Congresswoman Maxine Waters (House Committee on Financial Services Chairwoman) declared on CNBC tonight small businesses (who employ over 55% of American workers, and generates more than 78% of new jobs in the US) can forget about any simplification of taxes, regulation or laws... its just the cost of doing business and overhead she said.

Work for someone... less aggravation then starting a business and employing people. I wish it weren't true.
Exactly... startups aren't aiming to maximize profits (where marginal cost is equal to marginal revenue).

When marginal cost is greater than marginal revenue a startup can either
a) find more vc funding to raise marginal revenue, or
b) cut expenses to lower marginal cost.

Startups will press a) until the button breaks leaving b) the only option.
http://arclanguage.org/install
You said 'spend' when I think you meant 'squander and waste'.
Other: To make a better place to work. Not just for myself, but for everyone that works for me. We're programmers - we know how to write software. I've done my time working for people who don't. I'd like to never have to do it again. Almost any kind of software can be an interesting challenge to write in a good environment.
What you just said means absolutely nothing: "backed by the taxing power of the US government". First and far most, when everybody comes running to the US government to cash in on their dollars, there is no taxing power between heaven and earth powerful enough to satisfy all the creditors. And what do you imagine the government paying them with?

For regular folks your statement is even more airy; when they start to figure out that their precious greenback has nowhere to go but down; are they gonna call their local representatives and ask them to change the dollars into gold (oops, no can't do, no more gold standard!) or euros/yen/whatever?

Face it; the dollar is backed by NOTHING! And thank god most people don't realize this because we would be in a much deeper hole then we are now.
Occasionally bitter and angry is justifiable (don't I know). Assault is not. There's lots of better strategies for revenge.
That outlay is fine if you're a year into trading and are showing signs of being top 1% successful. However, many of these huge sums that are raised pre-launch or pre-build just seem like madness and I can't see it continuing.

The yc vision seems more sustainable: $5k+$5kpf = you build something. If it's good you get to raise a couple hundred k to turn it into a company. If at that point it looks like you might be google, then raise the millions that you need.
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Well I doubt the enterprise service is available with ofline quite yet.
Many people pay for law school with student loans. This could easily be $150k+, depending on the law school. Unfortunately, this can spell trouble if you do not finish law school and thus can't get a high paying job. Still more unfortunate, even if you do finish law school, you may end up with long hours and doing uninteresting work simply to pay off the loans. The interesting legal work that many people go to law school to do (eg at non-profits or with the government) rarely pays enough to allow one to support themselves and pay off significant loans.
I'm currently in a Masters program for Information Systems and one of my peers had the joy of having the professor of the class ask him why his answers and another student's were so astoundingly similar. Having worked with this gentleman a lot on the homework, this particular assignment even, I knew that he wasn't the one cheating. Apparently one of our classmates had asked to see his work to "verify" and instead had copied it. Granted, allowing someone to see your answers could be considered cheating, but one assumes that the other person isn't a complete imbecile and has actually done the work. I think that level of trust is even more likely at the graduate level when your peers are all well into adulthood and should know better.

We were both pretty ticked to find this out. I was mostly ticked because I had worked with the one for several hours trying to help him understand the questions and how to get to the answers (without ever giving him the answers) and so knew how hard he had worked to get that lab done. Having someone weasel his work off of him was just rather foul.

We both didn't understand his motivation either. Why pay close to $800/credit just to risk losing it as well as not getting anything except a piece of paper at the end. I know that paper can get you in the door, but it is also really obvious when you don't actually know your stuff.

This was on of the more technical of the classes. It dealt with web services.
I took an economics class at school and while I don't give much merit to theory vs practice, one lesson that was taught was that if MR < MC you close the business /right away/ because with every passing day you are losing money.

Now when investing it's a different matter, but the point stands, and so the after b) the only real option is actually c) liquidation
"But the platform isn't at the stage where it's really robust" is the actual quote.
7 man years per million, all costs considered.
More generally, you can/have to use dollars for any transaction with the government. E.g. buying oil leases, grazing rights, etc.
Last semester someone in my signals class started an exam before we were told to begin. The prof took the test and that student got an F.

I loved it.
Adventure.

Although it isn't commonly ascribed to people now days, throughout history it's been quite common for a young man's life choices to be driven by their desire for adventure. Be it running away to sea, joining the army, becoming an explorer, etc.

I think the current startup scene, with it's fast pace, constant reinvention, and unknown future is certainly able to fulfill that desire.
Even the "real" Lt. Barclay has better social skills than you :-)
Before closing, you would want to first look at short run vs. long run.
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Have you acted on these convictions you seem to feel so strongly? Have you e.g. bought options to buy gold in the future at a price much higher than the present one?
In my engineering classes, almost all the tests were open book and open notes. The hardest classes only had two problems per exam and the teacher wrote those questions the day of the exam - so cheating wasn't really an option, which would explain the 30% pass rate in some of the classes... We also had to walk through six feet of snow, uphill, both ways.
The fact is, fellow hackers, as much as we'd all hate to admit it, hardly anyone here knows squat about hard work.

Are you saying that only physical labor fits in the definition of hard work?
Who decides what is useless? If I compare the enjoyment that I receive from having an iPod and being able to listen to any song I own at pretty much any time I feel like it against the amount of labor that I performed in order to acquire it, I feel like I came away with a pretty good deal. I expect that there is an item or an experience that you value which could only be purchased with labor via money that I would consider useless. That is the whole point of having markets, so that people can make their own decisions about what is and isn't useful to them.
If there is no other solution, than what you suggest is ok...but a rather boring and provably unsustainable "ok".

but, there most likely is a better solution...there are many problems to solve in the world that would keep the majority "employed": clean water...disease...racism...housing... Is it possible to build an economy around solving these problems? Since we have never really given a serious attempt at doing so, I guess the answer is yes. Most likely, concepts of "employed", "debt", "education" all have to be redefined to fit this new economy.
The "real" Murdock had better social skills than me..
get lonely and need more interaction: join a sports team (the fun leagues, eg indoor soccer or intramural ice hockey), join a pickup game, go to weekly yoga or art classes, form a trivia group, hang out with friends, live in a coop.

there are many hobbies i wouldn't necessarily roll into a career. friendship and human contact is one of them. work for me is about loading my weekly design ideas and code changes into the "RAM" of my brain and getting into the flow. there is plenty of time around that to schedule meaningful human interaction, which is usually meaningful precisely because it isn't professional work interactions. i never try to code while interacting with others, though i do like to work in RAM while doing solitary things like swimming or falling asleep.
if you do not make any money, your tax is zero. therefore, no jail time and no need for dollars.
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