skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The problem with these posts -- and I liked it -- is that it always simplifies the path to all of this. I think a lot of folks are always missing something. Either they're decent hackers, but don't have partners. Or they're bad hackers and can't find a hacker to work with the build what they're gonna sell. Or they have a team and don't have a good enough idea to sell something.

I just think there are a lot of barriers to entry for folks who didn't go to Top 25 schools (or drop out of one) and as a result, they read stuff like this, get excited and think "I can make it!" without realizing the folly of their poor pursuits.
He means "advertising".

If we define marketing as doing something that people want, it's harder for it to be evil.
Yes. The car industry in the early twentieth century. Car companies coming out of every moderately-well-off mechanic's garage.

Yes, it eventually consolidated. It will again. But we're not going to get from here to there without some competition that just isn't going to come from the established players, for a variety of reasons.
Review: Thumbs-up to FileMaker Pro 10
And it's a hell of a lot better than working for someone else and letting them take ALL of the credit, while maintaining the inefficient status quo of their existence.
It's even simpler:

Enterprise applications are a cost to the company, whereas commercial software applications are the product. All enterprise app development must be a give and take between functionality and cost. Businesses will differ in where they fall in that balance, but ultimately companies must reduce the cost as much as possible while maintaining required functionality.

Perfect enterprise applications are therefore by definition the fastest, cheapest software to get the job done. Anything else and the company is wasting money.
If you don't use UPDATE or DELETE, then you're treating SQL as a static-single-assignment language.

This is pretty much what I do at work; we have massive quantities of geographic and linguistic data that we have to translate to [REDACTED], and we do this by uploading it all into PostgreSQL and then running through a long sequence of "CREATE TABLE foo AS SELECT hairy_expression FROM bar;" statements.
While it is not really infinite, I think that in this situation, the term is justified as it is semantically very close to it.
i love stories like this about ancient civilizations and lost cities, can't get enough of it.
Who needs libraries for non-destructive programming in java?

You can just use an interface for a list of T (ILoT), a representation of an empty list (MtLoT), and a ConsLoT which has a first (which is of the type T) and a rest (which is of the type ILoT).

Bam, you've got a list implementation ( new ConsLoT(new T(arg1, arg2, argN), new ConsLoT(new T(argA, argB, argN), new MtLoT)); ).

Function objects are a little different though (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Function_object#Functors_in_Jav...).
That's in his personal life (and is probably why he is so well-liked); but in business decisions, he buys when others are selling (and vice versa). He closed up his first partnership, depressed, because the stock market was booming. He has described himself as being excited when the market falls. (but maybe much of this contrarianism comes from his partner, Charlie Munger, and his mentor Benjamin Graham?)

I think he also supported breaking a strike (at the Washington Post). That ain't nice stuff, and I think he vowed never to get into that situation again. But he did get into the first time.
I was thinking about the role that technology plays in being a kid, what with "Sexting" and all, so I wrote this essay.

It occurs to me that a vital part of modern software, at least in how it interacts with people, might be an ability to forget. Databases remember things forever. People probably shouldn't.

Hope you guys like this one as much as you did the last one.
That's a question of salesmanship. It's a very different sell than B2C, but much more rewarding. A facebook customer will maybe earn you $10, a corporate account might net you $100.000. It's certainly not as easy, but the reward per sale can be thousands of times bigger.

And it's not true that corporate buyers don't care about quality or innovation - often they simply don't have much choice. And, of course you have to speak the right lingo.
So, You Want to Be an Entrepreneur
The page says that it is targetted at games:

"LoseThos is primarily for making video games. It has no networking or Internet support. As far as I'm
concerned, that would be reinventing the wheel and you can do that instead by dual booting another operating
system. Similarly, it's not for desktop publishing or multimedia."
Not. easy.
Well, you'd suspect that information, but you wouldn't know for sure. That's the difference between anecdotal evidence and a scientifically rigorous study.

The explanations you give are valuable for understanding why these trends exist, but they're not proof of their existence.
I'm thinking someone might have gamed the system. Not sure who is eligible to vote, but an organization might be able to encourage it's members to participate in the poll?
HN Clone?
This is a great idea. One problem with the class upon first glance: the grading structure.

It's a compilers class, where you'll actually implement a compiler, for only 10% of your overall grade? The rest of the grade is made up by midterm, final, and quizzes.

Teachers not putting emphasis on the actual development often leads to students half-assing assignments and not getting the coding done. The compiler implementation is by far the most valuable experience in this class. The final isn't. The grading weight should reflect as much.
For the most part enterprise apps do suck. But I imagine there are enterprise apps that are just amazing. The software that allows UPS/Fedex to deliver packages so efficiently must be fantastic. Or the stuff that powers the supply chain of Walmart, or the stuff that powers Amazon.com's ecommerce. It'd be great if someone could share insights from real world examples of enterprise software that works amazingly well.
"vote early, vote often"
Yup, it does indeed look like a vocal minority may have skewed the outcome a little there...
"The offer was simple: Pay Microsoft a $50,000 fee plus a share of any revenue, and in return it would provide this great platform for publishing, with proprietary publishing tools and file formats that would restrict our content to users of the Microsoft platform."

Downside - you probably wouldn't have a business right now.

Good choice from Tim - I wonder how long he considered it for?
What the car industry needs is a restructuring.

Let them go bankrupt and sell off useless assets. There is no need for them to make 3 different versions of the same car for 3 different brands.

Then they need to stop making 50 million different options. There is absolutely no reason to make cars completely customizable. Consumer confusion is not a good thing. All you need is 3 trims, a) DX model - the cheapest model available lacks the premium features(cd changer, heated seats, power windows) b) LX model - has all the missing parts c) EX model - has the premium features like bigger wheels, heated mirrors etc.

Then they need to start closing off dealerships, this isn't starbucks where the price is fixed, your dealers are negotiating prices, when you have 2 dealers, a block from each other, your average car price goes down, which hurts your resale values.
I think he also supported breaking a strike (at the Washington Post). That ain't nice stuff

What's not-nice about that? Letting a cartel exploit its customers seems like the moral low ground.
Help Boxee Build Its Pitch To Content Owners
Creative Entrepreneurship in a Downturn
Managing with lists vs. managing with trees
I believe the point was he did this in his spare time for fun, with no expectations of anyone using it. There is no novel work in this, which would be consistent with a hobby project rather than doing brain-draining work in one's spare time.
Once you know what to make, it's mere effort to make it, and most decent hackers are capable of that.

This explains why someone like myself can start a startup and not feel embarrassed when they meet real wunderkinds (specifically CS gurus) along the way. On the other hand, maybe this means that good hackers aren't necessarily CS geniuses? http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html
HN is written in arc, you are free to d/l and setup a similar forum.

NewMogul is run by NickB. A bunch of us help him moderate. Please feel free to share interesting articles, essays on NewMogul: http://newmogul.com/guidelines
However, a cursory glance through the 'Readers' list reveals some strange/unexpected list members, that might suggest strange/skewed sample population.

Yes, the reader-nominated list illustrates the systematic defect of voluntary response polls. One professor of statistics, who is a co-author of a highly regarded AP statistics textbook, has tried to popularize the phrase that "voluntary response data are worthless" to go along with the phrase "correlation does not imply causation." Other statistics teachers are gradually picking up this phrase.

"From: Paul Velleman [SMTPfv2@cornell.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 1998 5:10 PM
To: apstat-l@etc.bc.ca; Kim Robinson
Cc: mmbalach@mtu.edu
Subject: Re: qualtiative study

"Sorry Kim, but it just aint so. Voluntary response data are worthless. One excellent example is the books by Shere Hite. She collected many responses from biased lists with voluntary response and drew conclusions that are roundly contradicted by all responsible studies. She claimed to be doing only qualitative work, but what she got was just plain garbage. Another famous example is the Literary Digest 'poll.' All you learn from voluntary response is what is said by those who choose to respond. Unless the respondents are a substantially large fraction of the population, they are very likely to be a biased -- possibly a very biased -- subset. Anecdotes tell you nothing at all about the state of the world. They can't be "used only as a description" because they describe nothing but themselves."

http://mathforum.org/kb/thread.jspa?threadID=194473&tsta...
Just because the open standards won on the web, doesn't mean they will always win. Microsoft won for decades. Often, standards are closed for a period, then opened when users won't pay for further improvements, and a competitor has almost caught up. Adobe did this with postscript fonts.

Interesting alternative of the iPod supporting both a closed eco-system and open standards:

People didn't populate their iPods solely with music purchased from Apple. It was easy for them to "rip" their own CDs into the standard mp3 file format and load their entire music collection onto the device.

But, of course, Apple is trying to keep the iPhone closed.

What's stopping competitors from making an e-ink device to compete with Kindle? The tech is only going to get cheaper. A difference from Apple is that Amazon already has a book store online.
most people played with people in their general geographic area

Maybe it's more of a speed-of-light issue. Does everquest prioritize connections by ping latency?
Exactly! What's he doing programming just for the fun of i? He's not being serious! Down with fun!

Seriously though, this is a hobby project with an express purpose of being fun. I'm sure there's also a lot to be learnt from it (by the author and by others) but that doesn't seem to be its primary goal.

There is never anything wrong with doing something just for the fun of it. If everyone though like your comment reads the world would be a worse place.
Everything on that list is true.

It's not false hope.
Haklog: A prolog dialect, written in prolog.
Nice stereotyping.
>10. Avoid distractions.

hacker news, reddit etc
Your own mini-OS is a "waste of talent"? Looks like a much better application of talent (to me) than yet another "discover! discuss! share!" web site powered by rounded corners.
A Character Mapping and Encoding Primer
"and"

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22you+sir+are+and+...
Share Information Or Don't Bother Calling
"This is a waste of good talent."

Nearly everything you do each day is not focused on any of your declared important topics. Why not? Because you're human, and you can't work on important stuff every waking moment. Some people play golf for fun, some people watch TV, some people program mostly useless operating systems. I recently bought a couple of Commodore 64s to play with...time spent tinkering with an outdated computer like that is obviously time not spent on parallel computing, robotics, AI, balancing/control algorithms (but I'm getting all tingly just thinking about those, yes, sir!), speech processing or vision processing. Wasted.
Do you think that no American women read this site? Or do you think that you are so superior to us that your blanket statements, no matter how ignorant and harmful, are more important than treating us as if we were actual human beings?

Do all men stay in shape their whole marriage? Is pettiness always limited to the female partner? Please.

I work hard, I have always worked, and every woman I know works (aside from the ones still in school). I pay money to my ex-husband, NOT the other way around. Who are you, and how dare you?
I find this situation very perplexing because there seems to be a grossly unsustainable "mating economy" here but I have never seen a discussion addressing it (possibly because they seem to be held by, almost exclusively, men).

But consider this scenario. There are a group of farmers, who only know how to plant food X. For one reason or another, food X starts tasting bad. Then, the farmers discover a food Y in the vicinity, and decide to eat that instead. Meanwhile, they still only know how to plant food X, and they also don't know what is really causing food X to taste bad, nor where or how food Y appeared, and why it tastes better.

In this case, who can really excuse themselves, claiming that they are really an unfortunate victim of unexpected food spoilage?
Huh, I've been quite happy with backgroundrb lately, both for repeating (cron-style) background work and for deferred processing. We've had little trouble tracking worker status once we switched to the memcached-based result cache, which allows the app to interrogate workers however it sees fit...
So how do we refer to the low quality suburban men? Or is this thread limited to woman-bashing?
A somewhat useless list -- who cares about the 100 Best? I care about which book I'll learn the most from right now. I forced myself through a bunch of classics in high school without learning much from them. Eventually I realized that I can judge what I'm getting out of something by my level of interest. If I can't get interested in a book, despite working hard to find something of interest in it, then I'm wasting my time.

The best books to read aren't necessarily the best books. For example, I just happened to pick up Creation by Gore Vidal while halfway through Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind which I happened to pick up after a painful breakup caused by incompatible cultural assumptions. It was a happy coincidence, reading exactly the books I needed at the time and getting the most out of each as a result.

What's the point of lists like this if reading is so personal and context-dependent?

Also, number 24 is The Mismeasure of Man, which isn't a particularly good book -- just a popular book on an important subject. How many other books on the list are mediocre books that address noble topics? By the number of noble topics addressed, I would guess quite a few.
its the fate, what we need is to just go with it.
it will carry you the way it wants
as we have a saying in sanskrit
"vidi likithalekani parimastrum na shakyathe
Link working now, FYI.
Checked both lists for "Godel, Escher, Bach". Since it's not present in either list, we can conclude that we should pay attention to neither.
Word of mouth. Your first job will beget more jobs, if you are good. And, of course, you have to make it clear in all of your marketing materials (your blog, business cards, author info in any books or articles you write) that you are a consultant/contractor working in whatever field you're working in. It depends on what it is you do...but some fields are so empty of competent providers and demand is so high (this is definitely the case in system administration) that you can't help but work if people know about you and know you're competent and reliable.
Those examples are different because they are core to each of those companies' business model by being directly tied into their revenue stream. Simply put, it makes them competitive. Therefore, those apps you mentioned have to be good if not better than what their competitor uses.

The problem is more about internal applications that have nothing to do with the identity of the company itself. Personnel management, time tracking, accounting, and payroll apps suffer from poor quality if built in-house because they are part of the cost of doing business independent of what that business may be.
I'm pretty sure that SQL is actually set programming, not functional or imperative.
Looks to me like Tynt is trying to head in a new direction with Tracer. I don't see any references on their homepage to the sort of technology that these guys are concerned about.
I've read this rule before. Are you a Something Awful goon by any chance?

I have a 28-year old friend who has an 18-year old girl, there's no problem there, so this rule doesn't always apply.
Last.fm: "Techcrunch are full of shit"
I really like the idea of embedding images and media into a source file for documentation purposes. Has this ever been done?
If you confront strikers, they won't like you - see the context of this thread.
Porsche is a low volume automaker in America so they are exempt from CAFE standards. They also only sell high margin vehicles so they can take the high labor costs.

The issue is not GM being unable to build the best cars in the world (compare Corvette ZR-1 to a 911 GT2), it's the lousy way they approach CAFE standards (Aveo, Cobalt). Can Porsche design and market a car that goes 35 mpg?
In his defense, he's merely speaking out of Bayesian consequences. There's nothing to dare or not dare about. If you hear people get mugged in a neighborhood more than another, you'd avoid it and possibly speak out against it, but as a consequence, violate all the good people in the neighborhood.

What I feel is lacking, and very much so, is the other side of the perspective. (and by that I don't mean by merely pointing out that opinion is disrespectful; I mean by showing evidence for the opposite of the opinion)
Why does the installation of new electronic components have to be such a headache? We don't even have wifi in our cars today. To get a standard cubicle feature in your car it's a PITA DIY project. Maybe we need to design with customizability and modularity in mind.

Take mobile music for example. There is no respect for wifi or CRUD. If you want internet variety you're stuck with either an iPod or a CD player. Wouldn't we all like access to last.fm, pandora or a simplified version of itunes in our cars? Wouldn't it be nice if, whenever your car was in an open wifi area, it synced account preferences and pulled appropriate new content? You should be able to blacklist tracks and podcasts on the fly. Instead you have to remember preferences in your head so that the next time you sit down at your computer you can edit your playlist.

I think Detroit should open up standard panels in the dashboard so commuters can snap out last year's modules and plug in this year's technology. Nobody wants to perform majory surgery on their car, they just want to pop in whatever 3rd party vendors are selling this year. Break the rules, Detroit, and open up an API so 3rd party developers can access a few standard buttons.
SQL is a declarative language, not a functional one. Writing SQL is telling the DB what you want, not how to do it.
See thats the thing, your anecdotal evidence doesn't disprove my assertion, it reinforces it. 40 years ago the women knew that for a successful marriage you needed a mutual effort. I'm talking about modern women, who know that divorce is a viable option, and that it is not worth trying when you have a big pay day in front of you.

I know a lot of unhappy men, not couples. In those relationships women seem to be fine. Why not? They sit on their asses doing nothing, while the man works his ass off trying to get the relationship humming again. Do I know some happy couples? Sure,but most of those have the european wife who wasn't raised on sex and the city.

Except the startup thing is your own doing and you know what you are getting into. With divorce, it can come out of nowhere, when you least expect it. And do you think taking a risk at 25 to do a startup is the same as losing everything you worked for at 30, 40, 50? At least with a startup there is a payoff at the end of the tunnel, with marriage you either gain nothing or lose everything.

Well maybe its just my personal experience, but the European girls seem to bring a lot more to relationships than the American girls. And its not a submissive thing, its more of a willingness to work things out.

The thing you need to realize is that the way the woman behaves when she is single or dating, is COMPLETELY different from the way she behaves when she is married. She doesn't need to hide who she truly is, because with the divorce option on the table she hit the jackpot. You think any of my friends would have married their wives if they acted the same way they act now? Hell no....hell one of them married his wife for the sole reason that she supposedly enjoyed having sex and couldn't get enough. That lasted exactly until they had their first kid, at which point she completely cut him off. The other, married his wife because she was supposedly the nicest girl he ever met, with that one she acted like bridezilla before the wedding, and seemed to have forgotten to turn that off afterwords.

Its not a hatred, its realism. I'll date American women, no problem. Because during the dating phase, they act just fine. The problem is, that for most of them its just an act until they tie the matrimonial knot, at which point the real them comes out, who you are stuck with.
Are bad sleeping habits driving us mad?
Remembering the death of the Avro Arrow
That's the thing, though, right? Someone else adds drag and drop UI elements and Balsamiq's advantage fades. I think Balsamiq is really cool. I'm inspired by a single developer making a living from a website, but the barriers to entry are scary low.
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No.

If there was some way that was EASY to earn $30k, everyone would be doing it.

Just like if there was some way that was EASY to lose 30 lbs, everyone would be doing it.

In fact, there are drop-dead simple ways to earn $30k and to lose 30 lbs.

Take on a second job.

Tons of first generation immigrants work 60 and 70 hour weeks.
I just discovered this inline LaTeX editor through them. Cool

http://www.sitmo.com/latex/
When I was a kid I had problems with one particular boy always copying my tests in school. I mentioned it to my mum and she suggested I write fake answers in pencil, wait for the boy to copy, and then go back and correct myself in pen.

Similar technique I guess; and he took the hint after a couple of days.
Mathematica's notebook files come to mind, as does Donald Knuth's literate programming work.

DrScheme lets you insert images into the program text directly: http://maclab.cs.uchicago.edu/tutorials/DrScheme.html#_Addin...
Being Effective as CEO by Union Square Ventures' Albert Wenger
Well, it's written in C. That's what everything written in C does.
Microsoft Research: A Look At The Intriguing Social Desktop Prototype