skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
that's just not a fair comparison. despite how you may feel about angel investors as a whole, working part time is not equal to working full time. you can accomplish a lot working nights and weekends, but it's generally difficult work, not nearly as productive, and does not have the same urgency -- it's very easy to take a few weeks off from a part-time endeavor, or just to stop working on it altogether.

we've also been very happy working with angels, but it might just be that we've been lucky enough to have great investors.

based on my experiences, i would highly recommend finding a way to work on your business full time as soon as you can.
See: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=378852

As an understatement: most of us will not have our demoing skills celebrated on the front page of the NYT on the day we die.
I agree with many of the points you're making, and I suspect that we don't actually disagree on much. However, I still think that a significant proportion of hackers will find a small quiz like this interesting and entertaining.

In making the submission I was using the guidlelines:

What to Submit

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find
interesting. That includes more than hacking and
startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence,
the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's
intellectual curiosity.

You have disagreed, others have agreed with you, I'm taking that on board and will use this new information when I consider future submissions. I do, however, think it's more relevant to hackers than an article on tinnitus

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=462454

or one on Nancy Pelosi (whoever she may be) RickRolling YouTube Viewers as reported here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=434046

Being a hacker, and not being an american, I found that completely irrelevant and uninteresting. But that's me.

I flagged neither. Perhaps I should.
Above average, sure, but still misinformed and one-sided.

It is correct that some layouts are easier created using tables rather than CSS. However, there is also many types of layouts which cannot be created with tables, but require CSS.

A serious article (rather than a rant) would explain the limitations of both approaches, given the limitations of current browsers.
Could I suggest an alternative to the maxtime/minaway method?

I was thinking have a set time when you know you are at work, (e.g. 9-5, Monday to Friday (or Saturday you poor soul)) and just have it disabled between that time. Perhaps even have an 'allowance period' that gives you X minutes per day for your break usage.
You can find the same story from dozens of different outlets. The BBC says the same thing:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7866705.stm
Either it's news or it isn't.

This is news.

Give it a rest already.
Branson’s Galactic eyes new income streams
When the reasons you originally believe the project could (not necessarily would or even probably would) succeed become invalid, you should stop investing in it.

To answer your question someone would have to know what those original reasons were. As some say, what's your "secret sauce".

It looks to me like a twitter for geeks. The problem is that being twitter is already for geeks, and I don't see any benefit in being in a more exclusive communication channel.

When you say "fair chance" to me it sounds as though you think there's a community of intelligent people who give websites scrutiny proportional to the effort the authors have put in. This kind of attitude is almost always going to lead to disappointment.

The internet is more like a herd of lazy, selfish people looking for ways to do less boring stuff and more fun stuff.

You might do better optimizing for that scenario.

edit: I originally had a critique of your site here but it wasn't strictly relevant and this post is too long.
Tagline to noobindex:

"Noobindex is a hangout for noobs, nerds, dorks, and gamers.

Register your handle and make your own page »"

Doesn't tell me what the value is, or why stay. 18 or 19 words, 25 syllables, and I don't know what's going on here. I click on the first profile I see (Juicebox). I see a picture of Mr. T flexing wearing gold chains, some messages (latest: Juicebox is like omgsh pwnin noobs), and a Bio page with generic contact info.

At this point, I've investigated the site, and seen no reason to stick around.

Now, if the tagline were:

"Noobindex: l33t gamers only, for celebrating games and laughing at n00bs", then a search box below that with "Enter your favorite game and see who is playing right now" then... maybe that'd work better some? This is all just quick and dirty in my mind, but you need to get people's attention with something that makes them say, "Yeah, I'd dig that!" and then get them to interact with your site somehow.
I'm assuming you have a FreeBSD box handy. If not then you should :-)

If you're just getting started with unix and C I'd say start with /usr/src/bin and /usr/src/usr.bin since there are plenty of easy things there like cat, date, etc.

Next I'd head over to /usr/src/lib/libc, do a grep for "Chris Torek". Everything he writes is good. Learning low level details about how libc works on whatever platform you're on is always a good thing if you're doing any real C programming.

After that it's a matter of taste. Find something that interests you and read that (e.g. if you like kernel stuff head over to /usr/src/sys).
Tables for layout, CSS for styling and PHP for includes is a winning formula for me, and has been for years now. I can design almost the entire page/site offline and do minimal browser testing because of it.
A Company Prospers by Saving Poor People’s Lives
i'm a personal trainer, and that is the most succinct and accurate description of the fundamentals of strength training that i have ever read, all the way down to the comment about gym staffers who often don't know what they're talking about. +1. now get back in the gym!
You've already done what so many others fail: complete a site and launch it. There's no reason to call it a failure. You spend what, probably $10 a month in hosting? I wouldn't close it down because it hasn't received a lot of traffic yet.

However, as the other posters say, it sounds like you'll attract a bunch of 13 year olds. May want to steer the site in a more professional direction.
Like, uh, gay marriages.
new satellite launcher will bring in the bangers, as will selling the spaceships themselves, developing cheaper fuel, and of course the space tourism bit.
I'm not a coder (pro designer for 9 years) and usually back most arguments made for Tables. Sure CSS is slightly more evolved but sometimes using older tech makes much more sense for other reasons (besides content vs layout). Also support for Table layouts is still strong and there's no compelling reason to upgrade for most webmasters.

However I'll agree with your assessment about coders being too lazy to learn proper HTML. ducks
Rob - I upvoted you because you had some great insights, but I disagree some on "making a budget of time or money until reaching a win scenario" - in my experience, success is totally nonlinear. You slave away, and then make major breakthroughs. In business, any sort of milestones that correlate to anything won't match the real world.

It's key you get some proof of concept (is this valuable to anyone? who is going to pay me? why?). Once you've got proof of concept and you're behind your idea, you then hustle like a motherfucker until you win. If your general concept is a winner, and you hustle like a motherfucker, you win eventually.
There are a lot of people who do great work who are complete assholes in person. They didn't get to be great at what they do by being polite or tolerant of crappy work. If they think that you are mediocre or are doing low-quality work they won't hesitate to let you know this. At first, this left me humiliated and angry. Other people lost their motivation and quit. Now I actually respect not having every criticism sugar-coated in a thick shell of polite double-talk. I'm so used to asshole behavior it doesn't really bother me anymore. I regard this to be a strength. If it doesn't kill you... I just hope it hasn't made me into too much of an asshole.

As for haggling over payment? Well in the real world you're going to have to be tough in negotiations demand what you want and follow-up to get it. This is probably the least excusable asshole behaviour of those mentioned.
No login required:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/health/research/03prof.htm...
7-keto is not very effective imo, never noticed a thing from it.
Dieting is still the easiest way to drop weight.

The pros just go all out and use the hardcore stuff... like GH, DNP, clenbuterol
CSS layouts are a fascinating and sometime beautiful execution of technology, but it's not (at least this version) the next step in evolution of layout.
It was the strangest thing. I was walking by union square a few years ago when I saw him going into his pitch. It really was a site to see. His booming voice drew me and about 20+ other people in, where we stood around watching him peel carrots for at least 5 minutes. Not sure why, but I felt like I had to buy one. It was a dance really. The way he used the peeler was mesmerizing.

I still have my peeler.
Ask HN: how can Obama use a BlackBerry without going to Canada?
Hi gents,

From what I understand, Blackberry Enterprise Server sends email via Blackberry's datacenter (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry).

I keep reading about how the US President is using a BlackBerry, but surely this is without sending the mail (even encrypted) to a third party, particularly one from outside the US? Yet what other options are they?
Nice piece, great sentiment, except the very dangerous: "Nine times out of ten, the first impression someone gives you is exactly who they are."

Not true! Had a partner embezzle money from my company who seemed like a really nice guy. Most people can be charismatic and polite for even a year at a time before their true colors come out. To get a real idea about someone, you need to get to know their character. The more important someone is to your future success, the more you need to really investigate their past relationships and see how they acted after the infatuation was over.
The Coolest Guy On The Internet
SEO Contest to see who the coolest guy on the internet is.
I call cultural bias on 5 and 6 (aka the two I got wrong).
No login required:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/health/research/03behavior...
See the guy in action at http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=HCUct4NlxE0

A really fantastic pitchman, great to watch and made an absolute craft out of his work.
Then maybe you should have called him a NY Times salesmanship hero - if you think that the NY Times, as an aggregate organisation, thinks he's a salesmanship hero.

I'm not saying that there wasn't some discussion of his salesmanship, but it's a long way, imho, from being a "salesman who's been discussed" (an achievement in and of itself) to being a "salesmanship hero".

I think a more appropriate headline for this article would have been "Peeler man, previously discussed on HN, passes"
I'm not sure if I should flag this or vote this up for trying to harness the hackernews effect to win an seo contest.

On the one hand it's evil, but on the cooler hand it's really clever.
I dont want to speak for everyone at least but I dont particularly agree with thin divide between programmers and designers, the lack of gap is one of the reasons that the web is so popular.

While I havent seen that many programmers who can produce aesthetically brilliant design, I have seen far less designers that know nearly as much about the technical limitations of css layouts as the typical web programmer.

There are solid situations where css (as much as I love it) just isnt capable and isnt the best solution, it isnt just down to lack of knowledge.
I flagged neither. Perhaps I should.

I would have in your place, if you felt that the content was not worthy. I can make inappropriate submissions too, it's not like I have some sort of sacrosanct halo of perfection that stops me from submitting stupid things occasionally.

In defense of the Pelosi article, I thought it was interesting to see a very geeky meme breaking out of the geek circles, hence why I posted it. I didn't expect it to gather too many points, and it didn't.
Sad, I just saw him in Union Square on Saturday.
Absolutely. And number 1 is knowledge, not mathematics.

There's an interesting discussion to have here over what is, and is not, mathematics (versus, say, arithmetic), and just how much "real mathematics" hackers should know.
+1 for the second one. That made me laugh (and made me think that if I had something like this for all areas of my life I'd be single, have a 7th grade education and hoping the manager at Burger King returns my call...)
oriented independently, doh.

Thanks.
Flew's book "There is a God" may or may not be written really intelligently, but it doesn't appear to have been written by Flew. His comment on this: "My name is on the book and it represents exactly my opinions. I would not have a book issued in my name that I do not 100 per cent agree with. I needed someone to do the actual writing because I’m 84 and that was Roy Varghese’s role. The idea that someone manipulated me because I’m old is exactly wrong. I may be old but it is hard to manipulate me. That is my book and it represents my thinking." I don't see any credible way to interpret that other than as admitting that he didn't actually write the book.

You may define "science" in such a way as to make every philosopher a "scientist" if you wish. For that matter, you may define it so as to make every banana a "scientist". However, if you want to communicate with other people then I recommend that you use words in something like the same sense as others do. Antony Flew is not a scientist.
Well, is there anything you have to say on the substance of this debate? The good thing about Ron Garret's article is that he said specifically why he thinks that CSS is unsuitable for doing layouts. You're free to come up with a counter argument.

Instead what you do is talk in general terms about the competence of people whose CSS competence you know nothing about. That's just not very convincing.

And by the way, you're "argument" reminds me of what C++ advocates keep going on about. Templates are turing complete, etc, you just need know how to use them. But even if competent CSS experts can make most things work, that doesn't mean they wouldn't be much more productive using something better suited to layout.
Ask HN:  Do you use online accounting software?
I absolutely hate quickbooks, but it's mostly my own fault as I just don't put forth the effort of doing my books on a monthly basis. I think it would be less painful for me if, I didn't have to fire up my PC and use the horrible UI either, and rather just imported my bank statements and do everything online.

So I'm curious what others use. I have looked at IAC-EZ which seems like a good solution, however if I've learned anything its that there's usually something better that I just haven't heard before.

The only features that I would want beyond QB is to sync with bank account and have online access...and to suck less.

The business I'd use this for is a very simple consulting side business.

Thanks in advance!
It was an accident..
Article states that they're both doing great
"Free domain"?

His own data shows people are searching for "free domain" and "free domain name" far more often than his declared winner of "available domain".. right?

Maybe he overlooked it because his mind only translated "free" to mean "no money"?
Nice article. Mild tangent: Salesmanship is great, but I get kind of sick of it in a hurry. I went to a new gym (Equinox in Los Angeles) for the first time last night, worked out on a guest pass with my friend, and then went into a sales office and said, "We've got a dinner reservation for steak really soon, can you give me your rate card and best specials?" I then took notes on the ratecard about what he offered. So now, I've got their baseline rates which almost any gym will come off of/throw some freebies along with, and I didn't have to hear, "Well, yes, our joining fee is $500, but please remember that our gym is... clean... has whirlpools... the finest equipment, blah blah blah." Hooray for being in a hurry so as to get numbers instead of pitch.
Roofing on the building Register
Looking for roofing? You can find over 350,000 roofing companies on the Building Register.
IMAP & SMTP
> 1. You believe that it is better to layout pages in tables.

Or, you wish to lay things out as in a table, and would like to use CSS to do this, ie:

#box { display: table }

http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/visuren.html#propdef-display

but in practice you must support legacy browsers (IE6/IE7), so you choose to use actual table tags instead.
Ma.gnolia's downfall and how to backup the cloud
Sounds like something these guys might have dev'd: http://www.vaporstream.com/
If your taking more than a 30% pay cut your probably better off in the US. Housing is cheaper but buying a new car, computer, etc is about the same price. And you need to massively increase your retirement savings rate. You also miss out on SS, Medicare etc.

Retiring to India can be a great Idea and doing so in your late 40's is vary possible, but working there seems like a bad idea.
I've been using freshbooks.com and I'm loving it
It might have changed, but last time I had a BB (9 months ago), it was a BlackBerry server that logged into MY mail server via IMAP, retrieved the messages and then pushed them to my device.

I never gave it much thought about where the BB back-end servers are located, but if they're in Canada, then my email would have all been routing through Canada.
RTSP: Streaming Video Control Protocol
It is. I was looking forward to seeing him and the crowds around him in the Spring when it got warmer out.
I looked at this and think I'll use this for timetracking/invoicing, but from everything I've read it doesn't handle accounting tasks. One of the reasons I'd like a full accounting application is to have it estimate my quarterly taxes (so I wouldn't have to pay my accountant).
Gmail Tasks: Paper vs. iPhone
What’s Twitter Doing With its Dough?
Russian rides Phantom to OS immortality
Top 3 iPhone Wireless Printing Applications
The Apple iPhone; the perfect 3G mobile phone which combines top of the line mobile communications technology, an integrated iPod and fast internet connectivity - well almost perfect.
Record Your Core Animation Animation
Do you use the different browsers to test functionality or because different sites you visit function better with each browser? Just curious, as I pretty much only use FF3, but I will test my sites on FF3, Safari, Chrome, Opera, IE6 and IE7...in which case I would assume they wouldn't get counted as I'm doing internal testing.
A little background, as I can relate: I built a poker calculator called ALL IN Expert, which I thought would be a big hit but wasn't. When it launched, it received very little coverage or attention and I quickly despaired and took the site down, though I did keep a copy on my blog where people could go and download it.

A few months later I do a Google search to see if anyone had said anything about it and lo and behold, one of the notable poker training sites had done a full hour long video on how to use ALL IN Expert to improve your game. They had found out about the software, either because of my initial marketing or just randomly through Google, and wouldn't you know it: they found it useful. Now its downloaded a dozen or more times/day. Not much, but who knows what would have happened if I had kept promoting it.

It can be hard to tell when to give up and when you should push just a little bit harder. When I stopped working on it, I started working on a new project, Domain Pigeon, which will likely prove to have been a good decision.

My 2c: Leave your site up, make a few changes every now and then, keep promoting it even if only an email or forum post every few days, and re-evaluate in a few months. There's not really a good reason to take it down, even if you do choose to devote your time to something else.
Training muscle more often will not hurt you, in fact I have had some of my best results training more frequently then "3 times every 2 weeks"

Studies have shown protein biosynthesis drops to about 0 approx 48 hours (or less) following the workout. Muscle development cannot occur without protein synthesis (it is muscle development). Commonly you see pro bodybuilder and the such claiming to only exercise muscle groups once per week... which is fine, when you are on anabolics you are in a constant state of protein synthesis.

see:

http://ajpendo.physiology.org/cgi/content/abstract/273/1/E99

http://ajpendo.physiology.org/cgi/content/abstract/284/1/E76

On a side note, NSAI drugs like Tylenol, asprin, naprox... Will all impede protein synthesis as well, making it almost impossible.

I agree, most gym staff doesn't know what they are talking about... In fact when it comes to exercise very few people seem to have a clue. Most people simply believe the same junk put in magazines and websites with no scientific basis.
I changed my lifestyle by introducing fitness and health about 2 years ago. I suffered from really bad migraines at least once a month. Now I get them about once a year if at all.

I'm a programmer too and here is my story. Blog a bit out of date. :(
http://www.hackersinshape.net/
Brazil (Brasil) is an amazing country. The people of Brazil are, from my experience, the best people in the world to live with. I spent 22 months in Brazil during 1995 and 1996.

If you can't find a job where you are, sometimes you just have to move. Even if moving is hard, you have to work. Move to another state or if you are lucky Brazil! Portuguese is a beautiful language and not that hard to learn.
Doculicious: On-line Form Designer with PDF Output
Love that definition of sophistry. One of my good mates is big into running intellectual circles around lesser trained people in oratory, which is apparently quite satisfying to him, but doesn't get down to truth/wisdom/epiphany quite so well.

As for God, despite it not being in vogue intellectually, after some research into theology and philosophy, some cursory touchings on science, and some discussions with some very smart people, I became a monotheist. I'll worship in any house of worship and don't belong to a religion.

There are some very compelling arguments for atheism, and answering the question, "If there was no God and no afterlife, how would I live my life differently?" is very important to do. It might be scary, especially if you're very religious, but take a crack at it. There's a middleground where you can live more for the present and this life without giving up on any duty you ascribe to yourself, and you'll grow stronger as a person for thinking down that road. The question, "How would I live my life if there's no afterlife and humanity will eventually go permanently extinct?" is an even scarier one, and I can't bring myself to seriously consider that one yet, but I'd like to eventually confront it.

As for, "You can’t disprove God", I can give some compelling arguments for at least agnosticism and explain my beliefs in more than just desire for God, desire for purpose, Pascal's Wager, or utility of God positions, which are what most take. The easiest way around it? Use that circular reasoning thing - "All theologians are full of it, because theology is BS."
I agree that users don't care how your site's markup looks like, but there's a second important factor when it comes to finances: developer time.

Maintaining table based layouts for sufficiently complex sites can be quite a time drain. In that sense, I agree with gigawatt that CSS is much easier to deal with.
So how about choosing a new ID every time you update your card?