skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Not being facetious actually - the finer details of technical work and engineering evolve so rapidly that there's a really, really good chance you don't know how any given engineer does what he does. You should understand the basic objective of his job, certainly - but let's take for example someone whose whole job is to get data and analytics and prepare recommendations for marketing based on them. You get the idea - this person gives you thoughts on what's selling, what isn't, and how you can do better. But what the hell are they doing, really, actually? More sophisticated analytics and datamining are constantly becoming available, and if you don't read up on it, how would you know?

How many CEOs right now know about "canonical" now being recognized by search engines? That's the kind of thing one of your people can explain to you - "Check this out boss, we now set the canonical entry for each piece, and we control which links show up in the search engine when we put out 3-4 similar versions. I've spent the last few days updating all our archives, so you should see more consistency when current users and outside people search through the archives." And then the boss goes - "Whoa, that's awesome. Party on." Or at least that's how it should work! Airline CEOs who never do flightattending have doomed companies. Those that do have a fighting chance.
I'm a newbie to Python, but I think the answer will depend on the specific interests and implementations for the group.

Are they looking to implement mathematical techniques? Then perhaps NumPy and SciPy deserve a mention. Are they interested in visualization? Check out Matplotlib.

If I were teaching the course, I would choose a couple different problems that are common to the people in the group. Then show them the tools they would need to solve it.
There are a lot of upvotes to this post, however not a lot of discussion on the papers mentioned. I am curious how many have read these papers, and the value they provide. Reading all of these seems like a time investment and I am trying to gauge it's worth.
Programmers or hackers don't build companies. Yes, they build a product or a service - the best ones can create magic. But it stops there. You need smart enterprising people who understand the bigger picture and the ecosystem, how different pieces of the puzzle fit together, how to make money out of all that stuff that's been built. You need the idea men, and the executioners. It's so wrong I believe to make programming or hacking skills/smarts/history the most important qualifying criteria for being accepted to YC, or the most important indicator of potential success.
Ask YC: Do we have to collect sales tax on SaaS?
I am selling an online subscription to a web product - just like 37Signal's line of products. Has anyone had any experience on the official Federal or state policies?
An experiment in combining Clojure and Terracotta
"i can understand her optimism, but how are they going to take market share away from google?"

That's what everyone said about Apple before Jobs came back too. It's amazing how an energized, focused leader with an "outside" perspective can make a world of difference. Look at Apple now.
thanks for the correction, I actually want to revise our founders agreement to a 4 years vesting schedule, espec with lower then foretasted growth in today's economy, two years seems so short.
BTW, the dollar amounts are kind of meaningless for non-US natives. For example, I'm from Argentina, where the US dollar has gone from 1 peso to thousands of pesos during my lifetime (it's now around 3 pesos, after several sheddings of zeroes in the peso's part).
Google suggests it's safe to start with hackers.
"Programmers or hackers don't build companies."

You should drop a line to Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, Jeff Bezos, Bill Joy, Dean Kamen, Ray Kurzweil, Jeff Hawkins, Larry Ellison and Bill Gates to let them know about that. I don't think they've gotten the memo.

[For purposes of congruency in this thread, I had Woz in here as well as he was a founder at Apple, but removed him from my list.]
Samsø island (Denmark) now produces more renewable energy than it uses
PowerShell: Windows Scripting Made Fun Again
I like the term "software developer" because it's vague about what you actually do: I mean, you could be doing software construction, project management or you could be the owner of the company -- one can be a "web developer" much like a "real estate developer."

Much of my extended family works in the construction business, where there are career paths that go between being an employee and being an owner: you might start out as a teenager putting in fenceposts and nailing shingles onto roofs, then you're working for a big contractor doing roadwork, then you and your brother buy a bulldozer and start digging foundations, putting in sidewalks and curbs and clearing snow at the mall. At some point you might end up owning a few rental properties, and if you make it big you might become the guy who does $20M contracts for roadwork...

Of course there are different paths: I worked for a startup founder who was an MBA -- we pitched an idea to venture capitalists, had it turned down, switched to a plan b we could do on a shoestring. We executed that successfully. I moved on to other things, but he sold the business at a profit a few years later.
I've had some javascript graphing pages open in the background for ages - but what data do we have that's going to be useful to graph?

Perhaps instead of "what data can I graph?" I should ask "What do we want to improve?" and find a way to measure it, then graph that.
Wow. I've been trying to justify buying a dev G1 for a while now and this -seriously- isn't helping.
Startup Lessons From The Underpants Gnomes: PROFIT
Bezos & Gates are brilliant businessmen. Woz is a superb engineer, a genius of an engineer, but Jobs truly built the Apple that is today. Brin & Page were highly capable and smart researchers and scientists, not programmers or "hackers" as the term goes here.

You're still not getting my point. Nevermind.
When you say "fread()", I wonder whether you're considering that fread() does stdio buffering in userland above and beyond the small window of memory you reuse on every read (and that is going to stay in-cache) when you use the read(2) syscall directly.
Make your engine search-as-you-type and you're onto something. Don't hide your searchbox up on the top right-- I couldn't find it on my wide screen.

Seemed fine enough once I started getting results, but I'd center/leftify the search box and make it search-as-you-type because you're filtering on a known set of data.
Почетна страна за програм Mozilla Firefox
Forget the protein. It's ok, but you don't need. I included the veggies, because the don't have much calories and they are fighting your hunger. At the end they are healthy too, but that is not the point here.
Microsoft fears Linux more than Apple
Aha! I did forget the linked list approach. So essentially, each item on the list stores what is before (or) after it. I'm assuming it's an arbitrary choice that you're using "prev" instead of "next," correct?

The use of deferred, I've never heard of, but it makes perfect sense in this case. Unless, of course, you want to insert the record first and then modify the update to exclude the item you just inserted.

Right now, I'm using MySQL.. I only have 4 tables, and product is not launched. Would you advise switching to Postgres?
I get your point, I'm just disagreeing with it.

If you want to startup in a lightweight / agile fashion, why have an "idea guy" when you can have someone who can execute AND code?

Beyond that, I think that in high-tech it's far more common to have a company founded by a hacker than it is an MBA. I don't have concrete numbers on that, so it's purely my opinion.
Diakonos: A Programmer's Text Editor in Ruby
I wish I could explain my point better.
Ah Nokia, stuck between a rock and a hard place.

"Nokia have tried several ways to own the customer over the years and operators have had to say no."

I really wish these guys would wake up and realise you dont ever "own" your customers. Customers aren't slaves, and alternatives spring up to what you do, sooner or later. But hey that's the arrogance of the operators - stifling innovation for the last however many years, so they could "own" the customer.

Good luck with that guys!
Highlight2Translate, Greasemonkey script for instant Google Translation
I'm curious of the specifics of the "new management system"
MyStart by IncrediMail.com
> still aren't nearly as "walkable" as your average European town

It depends on what standards we're using. If we're using "every store is in a mixed use area", then you're correct, but that's saying that you can't have any alternatives to mixed use. If we're saying that "mixed use" is "a walkable community that has at least one vendor for almost every need", then a lot of places qualify.

I note that mixed use advocates in the US argue that they should have the choice. If they extend that courtesy to others, they have to be satisfied with something short of universal mixed use.
If your users can't find the feature it might as well not exist
I'm an idea guy, I'm also a coder. I can write code, that works. But I'm by no means a hacker. I'm not an MBA type, will never be. Once you're done writing some code, the prototype, something that works decently well - and to do that you don't need to be a nerdy hacker - you need skills that go far beyond the bits/bytes and if-else loopy world of programming.

It's really not that difficult to build a web product or service these days.
What are the odds that you'll become bigger than plentyoffish without having an influx of money that will let you rebuild?
Pirate Bay Witness’ Wife Overwhelmed With Flowers
> The music labels? Guilty of collusion? Price fixing? Never! It's just that all music is equally worthy.

Actually, the labels hate iTunes $0.99 fixed price and want variable pricing.

The fixed price is Apple's condition.

While I'd like to think that variable pricing would lead to $0.10 songs, actual label behavior suggests that the floor would be at least $0.49 (highly unlikely), $0.75 (possible), and probably $0.99, with popular stuff going for $2.99.
4 years vest with 1 year cliff for 25%, quarterly or monthly vesting after that first year. Be careful, though, when you grant these. If you don't structure things right (assuming I understand correctly), there could be tax consequences when they vest.
Has anyone here got TokyoTyrant working under Windows? I found a static library binary for Windows, but the header files need to compile are either not there, or the code references some bizarre POSIX stuff which isn't easy to hack into working under Windows.
I think you need to collect for people in your state.
On the contrary, Steve Jobs had a eureka moment when he decided to require record labels to sell all songs for $0.99 through iTunes.

This was genius because it puts the focus on the music... that is, the artist, the sound, the emotion... and not on pennies.

Do you really care if one track is $0.99 and the other is $0.91? Is that how you decide which album to buy?

Jobs had the challenge of convincing the industry that music could be sold online profitably, and to do that he needed to break the industry of its focus on the "hot new song" and the huge revenue boom that comes at the beginning of a song's life. Jobs knew that people would repurchase older albums that they already loved, and wanted to be able to afford to focus the store on all music, not just the 3 songs that are bringing in serious money this week.

The overall result has been that iTunes has tremendous selection and quality. Now, as there is more competition, iTunes does charge more for some songs, but I view this as a step backwards in terms of the psychological ease of making a purchase. Once the consumer is over the hump of believing that a song is worth $1, it's easy to just focus on love and emotion and enjoyment.

You are free to start a music store charging $2 or $50 per song, but you have a sales pitch to make to artists and labels in order to be able to compete with iTunes.
Amazing timing on this release- I just learned the basics of CSS the other day, and this is going to be a really helpful tool to keep the learning process going. Well done and thanks!
How to design a social networking site using social objects
The way I handled a very similar situation is as follows: I went to the official Python tutorial and took a note of every major feature with a few examples from my old code and code I found in open source projects. I then went to a conference room with a lot of people, and hooked up my laptop to the projector with a Python REPL. I then went through all major topics in the tutorial interactively with people asking me as I went along to implement some examples. I tried underlining what made something 'pythonic' and what didn't as I went along. People who had laptops were going along and bringing up issues they were having.

People who attended commented on liking it.

I really despise learning and teaching via slides. I think an interactive coding session is very valuable.
Yeah, nothing is better than a whole lot of corrupt business data! It's so much better to have the system not crash than collect incorrect money amounts or send 10 million unpaid widgets out.

When an exception occurs and the system goes down, you get a nice notification and a stack trace. From there you can actually go about fixing the problems created by those hordes of crappy Java programmers rather than just ignoring the problem and hope that nobody will notice.
Interesting. A counter anecdote would be the advances in physics in the early 20th century, when we were still far from finished innovating with Newtonian mechanics. I've always doubted the whole "necessity is the mother of invention" thing; I don't think relativity was discovered because it became necessary to discover it. On the other hand, when it comes to technological innovations (semiconductors, transistors, lasers, etc.,) I just don't know enough scientific history to assess your hypothesis.
There's actually some quite healthy, cheap foods if you don't mind just a tiny, little bit of cooking. The three easiest ones that are healthy, cheap, and delicious (once acclimated!) are oatmeal, cottage cheese, and eggs. You can get all of them dirt cheap, whip it together for a meal in 5 minutes or less, and they're good. Just eat the oatmeal straightup - nobody likes it when they first start eating it since it's fairly bland, but it has a good texture and you'll learn to like it after a month or so. Dirt cheap, very healthy and filling. Cottage cheese is also not so good before you're used to it, but you acclimate. If you can get chives pre-mixed in, it's even better. And eggs - well, everyone knows eggs. I just always get surprised with how cheap eggs are when I haven't bought them for a while - you can get a dozen cheap eggs for like a dollar. A few dollar for uber-premium nicely packaged dozen eggs.
ESPN's actually launching city-specific sites now, starting, of course, with Chicago.

Every big media company is making a local content play right now. I get e-mails every month from someone developing the next one asking me if I'd like to write for them for free in exchange for exposure.
It's may be a bit unfair to suggest that progressive politicians are especially controlling.

I'd argue that the scope of (bad) controlling grows with the scope of govt control. I doubt that the relationship is sub-linear.

One might argue that progressives are more aggressive about expanding the scope of govt. (That's not to say that other types won't try to expand, just that progressives are more interested, or at least more effective, in doing so.)
Maybe they should just make their own network.

Anyway, if it's possible to install Skype on these phones, even if it doesn't come preinstalled it won't matter much, people will do it anyway.
I thought you said you'd have a "pretty easy time" figuring it out?
well its mostly by class, the $$$ is for people who don't really know...if you are foreign born list whichever class your parents were, at the age of 22.
the whole reason I bought an unlocked nokia e71 is to be free of expensive contracts and its great voip support, unlike the iPhone. if nokia stops doing it, I'm sure someone else will step up.
I'm afraid that's just the CA state income tax (soon to go up).
I love this key-value store trend. Looking at CouchDB in particular has made databases are fun again.
I wonder how much play these will get on the Times homepage, and how much editorial independence they'll have from the main newsroom. It's possible that these could end up hurting the core brand by putting it on lower quality content.

If I were doing this I'd put the Times logo small and off in the corner and try to give each local blog its own identity.
Start acting like a startup or call yourself something else.
That word executioner, I do not think it means what you think it means.
Startup Launch: Buzzable Creates Twitter Groups Around RSS Feeds (500 Invites)
But didn't he intend to obtain the PhD when he went to Stanford? I once read a long interview with him, and I believe that PhD was his goal. I am not sure, though.
Why not build a handwriting word processor (not recognizer) for the iphone?
One could try using a drawing program, but a word processor built specifically for handwriting would be much better.

In particular, your handwriting would stay as handwriting, but can be word wrapped, easily copied/cut/pasted, boldfaced, underlined, italicized, etc.

The current onscreen keyboard would be replaced with a handwriting region of the same size where you can write a single word. When you are done, that word would be inserted into the document at a much smaller size.

You could even have a search feature that looks for similar looking words. It would not need to recognize letters, but it would need a similarity algorithm that could take advantage of temporal information.
First of all, it's not an easy task, technologically. Second of all, the iPhone is conceptually a low-resolution input and a high-resolution output device. Handwriting requires a high-resolution input. I think people in general like poking at its virtual keyboard much more than fussing with some program trying to figure out what they wrote.
I realized my own folly - I certainly haven't built a profitable company or a popular product yet. I'm in the process but far from it yet. So I should stop commenting on what it takes to build one :)
Yea, I realized that :D
I'm indeed grateful for the criticism. I know of Gatherer, and can't stand it. I've used Essential Magic for some time, but it's slow and clunky. MagicCards.info is also good, but limited in its one-box search.

I built Cauldron as a sort-of Google for Magic. Because of this, all the power is in the search box. It can do all the searches that any other application can do, and has all cards, so I'm not sure what you mean by "limited" and "underwhelming." Perhaps an example?

I've been focusing on the backend, mostly, and I concur with the UI complaint -- I'm working on a module where I can start getting articles up on the front page, but for now, there's nothing there because nothing needs to be -- I'm not selling anything, etc.

The cards themselves currently link to the MagicCards.info card detail site as a stop-gap. I plan to get that information, as well as the kinds of information in Essential Magic, to make my own card detail pages.

As I say, my only excuse is that right now it's set up purely as a card search site -- by the way, did you see http://mtgcauldron.com/help/ ?
Yahoo is a content company, google is a search company. Unfortunately, being a content company is more labour intensive than being a search company, especially when you are trying to be an international company.

Yahoo needs to get off the content train, sell some of its premium services and failed integrations (delicious, anyone?) and push harder on the "your mail contact list is your social network" push that they have going. Fortunately, they have a lot of good properties. Unfortunately, their integration is absolutely abysmal.
You can write in a large region that is the same size as the current onscreen keyboard. When you are done writing a word, it would be inserted into the document in a much smaller size. So I don't think resolution would be a problem.
Etsy is pretty successful and came out of NYC.
The Netbook Effect
I just spent 5 days in Gudalajara Mexico with family. I was really surprised to see netbooks everywhere. The web in the third world is going to start booming.
How Mom sent a guy to Gitmo
Search-as-you-type would indeed be good for prefix data, but the search box itself checks quite a bit -- one-word searches are regularly in the 1,000-card range. I'll look into it, though; I agree that it would improve things.

My UI is terrible, I know. "Leftify" is a great term, btw. Do you think it's visible enough from the header, or should I move it down?

As for "known set of data," the query language is a full, SQL-like language (including compiler to SQL). This is another issue with the search-as-you-type, but compiling an 80-character (ish) search and getting a few results back should be quick and easy, so I'll see what I can do.

Also, did you notice the sorting option, or was it too hidden?
The History of Python: First-class Everything
Ideapad: The Internet you didn't know
Could you give some useful criticism? I know of both these searches, and I'm not a fan of the "let a thousand input-boxes bloom" search mentality.

This search is just as powerful (if not more) as these two, if you search for what you're thinking about. See http://mtgcauldron.com/help/ for examples.
Yes, but people aren't used to writing a word and then moving back to where they started to write the next word.
They wouldn't need to do that. You would still have the notion of a cursor, but it would be at word boundaries.

When you write a word and tap end-of-word (or perhaps pause), the word would be inserted into your document. You could then write another word and it would be inserted just after the previous word.
I'll be honest: I've only read two of these, the papers by Thompson and by Gabriel. These were both fairly quick reads, if I recall correctly. Another three, those by Parnas, by Landin, and by Backus, have been on my "to read" list for a long time.

I read "Reflections on Trusting Trust" several years ago, and recall that it seemed clever, but not especially deep. It probably wouldn't make my top 10 list, if I had one. Then again, I'm not really a systems guy, so it may just be personal bias.

On the hand, I'm a Lisper, and so Gabriel's paper, colloquially known as the "Worse is Better" paper, is a must read. I do agree that it's worthwhile reading for programmers at large. If you enjoy it, I also highly recommend Gabriel's book "Patterns of Software" (available in PDF from his website). (Note: although this book does have something to do with the "patterns movement", Gabriel is pretty much a contrarian to the what you might call the "Gang of Four" school, so don't let any preconceptions you might have about their book and its reception put you off Gabriel's writings.)
Bruce Schneier: Privacy in the Age of Persistence
Specs vs. Constraints
Responding to the myth that entreprenuers don't need college
The original Slate article basically says "almost all the web pages you go to now didn't exist then". That's true. But that doesn't mean there was no Web. The Slate article's argument is like saying that there were very few restaurants in 1996, because almost all the restaurants currently open weren't open in 1996. (I'm actually not sure of the distribution of restaurant lifespans, but there's surely a year you can replace 1996 with where my criticism makes sense.)
Wow. We did the linked list and data structures course freshman year. After that it was all compilers, computability, writing schedulers for micro controllers, designing a processor in verilog, etc. Lots of really cool stuff I mostly haven't used since, but it's a great base of knowledge. And I went to Iowa State, not a top tier computer science school.