skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You can target wealthy families, build relationships so that you get recommended to their friends, and market yourself as an upscale tutor.

Re: firewall, I haven't found it to be particularly problematic. Just set up a server in the US and use an SSH tunnel. The speed can be slow, but you should be ok as long as you're not trying to stream video or the like.
This came off to me as a boastful post, showing off that he can afford holidays in these credit-crunchy times. Is this just me or am I being grumpy again?
Unity House Takes LEED Platinum
I'm fine with adverts on any website, as long as they aren't intrusive or damaging to the flow of the content. I use AdBlock plus but specifically disable it for sites that I know use adverts responsibly.

I wouldn't be afraid to add one or two small slots in the sidebar. As long as it doesn't become your main source of revenue I wouldn't be put off by it at all.
I think the Pirate Bay is a shady operation. They probably earn millions on giving other peoples work for free. I don't understand the model of "free copying" - if everyone is leeching and nobody is paying how will we get movies like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings or a game like Halo (they cost millions of $ to produce)?

I hope an alternative comes where you actually pay for the stuff you leech (especially for movies). And the argument with "trying stuff out", does not really hold - you don't go and try an ice cream for free, you buy it and if it's bad you don't buy ice creams from that store any longer.
As both a user of slicehost and google app engine, I wanted to chime in here.

Google's approach for scaling is "do it our way, and you don't have to worry about architecture. You won't have to worry about master/slave nodes in your DB. Mirroring static files on separate app servers. Sharding your database by feature. Using a hardware load balancer router, etc."

It is the instant coffee of scalable web apps. Just add hot water and enjoy.

Slicehost, on the other hand, is the other end of the spectrum. You're roasting your own beans, grinding them up, boiling your own water, and so on. You get total control, but you have to know what you're doing and be comfortable with it.

As an aside, its been pretty well documented that a small team of good developers can scale a web app very quickly, but Google's aiming more for the hobbyist market: Its trying to entice a single average developer to write a web app that will scale very quickly.

And for the record, I don't see AppEngine as some kind of magic bullet either. But if I was a full-time CS student in my freshmen/sophomore year, and I was told (learn rails/apache/passenger/EC2/MYSQL/sharding/etc) vs. learn python and appEngine) I know which way I'd go. Its easy infrastructure with a low barriers to entry -- both in development and financial cost.

(Lastly: Not trying to start a flame war over what's better. I'm simply trying to state a point that AppEngine may have more "hobbyist" appeal.)
Someone who knows Richard Waters should suggest he looks up "rogue" in the dictionary. One would think from the title that it was nefarious code instead of simply faulty code. That might lead you to believe it was a sensationalistic title designed to pull eyeballs to an article that is simple regurgitation of the previously reported facts.
Dieter F. Uchtdorf explains the human desire to create.
I'm sure he'd be astonished to find that anyone thought that.

It's an interesting data point about what a minefield it is to be a public figure though. People get offended by the stuff you write, so you go off and stop writing for a month, and then they're offended that you were able to go on vacation for so long.
I think if you used words like "cultures that do not value education", you wouldn't come off as a racist/IQist as much.
Carl Jung has a fascinating theory of archetypes - you may be familiar with it - that are unconscious processes that impact our conscious mind in ways that are subtle and difficult to detect. One manner of this effect is projection. In that case your Shadow ( a prominent archetype) projects itself onto other people and onto external events and you end up interacting with essentially yourself, even though you think you are interacting with the world. Perhaps you are projecting some aspect onto Arrington's post.

Then again, you could be just grumpy.
How to fix window.prompt in Internet Explorer
I guess no-one here hates blackboard then :)
Okay, sure. But then I'd have to think of an explanation for why adopted Asian-Americans do just as well (or better) academically than Asian-Americans raised by their own parents. Culture can't explain that. Maybe you could help me out?
This is exactly my experience as well. I'm interested in hacking and making money - I have no interest in mucking about with a few hot-button political issues that, frankly, aren't any of my business. So, easily-circumvented firewall aside, nothing that they do really affects me.
If you have a master's or PhD, I believe Canada has an immigration fasttrack that might be of interest for you.

But I'm only quoting what I've read off other HN comments in H1-B threads discussion U.S. immigration policy. I don't know firsthand.
From TFA: "Thus, my answer to the title question is that no, A/B testing does NOT lead to crappy products, but poor decision-making around data can absolutely lead to it"

A more accurate title would have been "Metrics don't replace strategy."
Says the dude named yummyfajitas -- that's a great username.

But seriously, that was my favorite bit of that movie:

Pippin: But what about breakfast?

Aragorn: You've already had it.

Pippin: We've had one, yes. But what about second breakfast?

[Aragorn stares at him, then walks off.]

Merry: Don't think he knows about second breakfast, Pip.

Pippin: What about elevensies? Luncheon? Afternoon tea? Dinner? Supper? He knows about them, doesn't he?

Merry: I wouldn't count on it.
Twitter is (among other things) a communication medium. To call an innovative use of a communication medium "co-opting" it seems unfair to me; if interesting memes didn't spread through it, it would be a failure. Evan Williams noted in his TED talk that new, unexpected uses of Twitter are exciting and welcome.

Do something remarkable, get remarked about. It seems an honest form of marketing to me.
...And with that, the iPhone gained Copy + Paste capability.
Do the following:

1. Find one person who is moderately competent. When you study, study with him. You both study a topic or chapter seated beside each other. Then you discuss the chapter to see if you both understood it the same way. If yes, proceed to the next chapter. If no, discuss some more and try to work out what the prof meant. If you do not understand it, skip the chapter and move on. Sometimes it gets clearer later.

2. For some subjects, it's better to read material that is not specific to the subject. For example, let's say you want to understand electronics. If you buy an electronics book, you will have to go through 100 pages of theoretical stuff that is difficult to understand. You will lose interest and you cannot learn it well. A solution would be to buy a physics book that uses electronics as an example (Physics for Electrical Engineers, for example). This book will explain the electronics as quickly and as efficiently as possible, so that they can focus on physics. This gives you a high level understanding that you can then use to understand the denser material.

3. If you have an exam that you have to pass in a short amount of time, work backwards. Take the old exam questions, and study the theory for each question till you understand enough to solve and understand the problem correctly. Do this for a wide range of questions, and this fills in your theoretical knowledge piece by piece, like a crossword puzzle. It's not a good way to learn, but it's an efficient way of passing and exam.

The best way of succeeding in school is by hanging out with the people who want to succeed at school.
Touch Book: Tablet Netbook with ARM CPU, 10+ Hour Battery, Detachable Screen
One of the first skills that I developed in grad school was how to learn the material even when the professor hates teaching or has no talent for it. Teaching yourself things outside of school, where there are no professors, is even harder.

Be grateful for the good teachers you have, but don't let the bad ones slow you down. You can be successful despite them.
Why? They treat everyone else with the same degree of snootiness and vitriol... calling them idiots is barely disrespectful :)
If you choose not to go to college do everyone a favor and don't have a chip on your shoulder about it and bring it up at every opportunity and talk shit about people who do.

Nobody really cares that much.
פרפר אינדקס ויזואלי ..:: פרפר.נט | Parpar.Net ::.. פורטל ויזואלי
I think it's just you. I doubt that most people are really much poorer than this time last year.
re read the blog post... spot the irony? ;)

Fairly certain that the servers are not in the Sainai :)
I don't get it, could you explain please?
I did a year of Uni and it was pretty much a wasted year, although I don't regret it. I wouldn't be who I am if I hadn't done it.
It's hard to include all my points in such a nuanced issue. I actually agree with you that a visa program that brings in a smaller number of truly talented people (and preserves their freedom to choose their profession, job, and location) would be a good thing for the US. The H1B as it stands is wretched. Yeah, it brings in these folks, but it is also a massive scale indentured worker program, used extensively to facilitate outsourcing. A lot of people are surprised to discover that 6 or the top 10 users of the program are actually Indian outsourcing companies, who use the visa to cycle a worker through the US for a couple of years to facilitate moving the job overseas. And two of the remaining top 10 are based in the US but are essentially outsourcing companies. The first US company on the list, Microsoft, only comes in at #5!

I think a lot of the dispute comes from a misunderstanding about how the visa is used. It's almost like two completely alternate universes - one side is using it to bring in innovators, and the other is using it to replace ordinary american workers with ordinary workers from overseas at a lower rate. Everyone seems to agree about this, the only dispute is the extent. You might want to check out this article - :

http://news.yahoo.com/s/bw/20090224/bs_bw/feb2009tc200902239...
you've perhaps heard that two wrongs don't make a right?

pg started this site, and he has inculcated it with his values. imagine pg writing an essay about the pirate bay. do you suppose he would call them "idiots?"

like it or not, the culture around these parts tends towards respect. you violate local customs at your own peril.
For Emacs users: ediff highlights changed words. I've used it to track changes in text.
Is it just me or is the text too light for the white background? I read the article by highlighting it.
yes maybe it would get more attention - but what kind of attention? Basically it would amount to the Swedish coaurts saying that providing the infrastructure ot share Copyrighted material was ok.. which it is not.

In the face of that could we expect media companies to be reasonable and sit at the table to work out new ways to provide access to digital media/software? This is not a 2 sided battle in my eyes. TPB are as much an enemy to the consumer as the IPFI.

And why shouldnt the sharers get some fear? Perhaps it will dissuade them from sharing. Bearing in mind I am massivley pro copyright (as a software developer and writer - even though the majority of my work is open source).

In terms of copyright - I too am not too worried by DRM. I would like to see DRM dropped but can understand why it is there. In the Apple case they had to impose stupidly strict DRM just to get the store off the ground. The fact they can now release that music more freely is a testamount to how much the music companies are starting to come round to the consumers viewpoint. I am never one to blame the music companies for wanting to protect their material: even though I do disagree with the prices they charge, how they screw over the artists and how they insist (till now) on locking stuff up in super restrictive DRM.

I never fully understood the arguments against copyright. Care to explain?
Why?

TechCrunch - it's like choosing to read adverts.

Is your caring about TechCrunch more about the y-Combinator startups it plugs, the general state of news-blogging or interest in the content?
This exposition is an interesting cluster of approaches to a situation many startups are facing: "When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied."

Definitely worth mining for strategies that apply to your startup.
"Both types strike by rapidly unfolding and swinging their raptorial claws at the prey, and are capable of inflicting serious damage on victims significantly greater in size than themselves. In smashers, these two weapons are employed with blinding quickness, with an acceleration of 10,400 g and speeds of 23 m/s from a standing start [7], about the acceleration of a .22 caliber bullet. Because they strike so rapidly, they generate cavitation bubbles between the appendage and the striking surface [7]. The collapse of these cavitation bubbles produces measurable forces on their prey in addition to the instantaneous forces of 1,500 N that are caused by the impact of the appendage against the striking surface, which means that the prey is hit twice by a single strike; first by the claw and then by the collapsing cavitation bubbles that immediately follow [8]. Even if the initial strike misses the prey, the resulting shock wave can be enough to kill or stun the prey.

The snap can also produce sonoluminescence from the collapsing bubble."
> if everyone is leeching and nobody is paying how will we get movies like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings or a game like Halo

It isn't really the end user's responsibility to fix a broken business model. I agree with you that it's problematic but trying to infringe upon the public's demand to copy with suing/drm/fear hasn't really done much to stem the tide of copying. And at this point it all just feels like a lack of creativity - charge everyone a yearly subscription fee to a site that allows you to download anything for free at high quality/speeds. That's just one idea off the top of my head; get 30 smart people in a room for a week and I'm sure they could come up with tons of viable alternatives.
Well fairly certain that Tiamo does not live in Egypt.

Also they claim to have Fibre connections to XYZ countries? hmmm. (bearing in mind that that kind of thing leaves a paper trail and there doesnt appear to be one) Smacks a little too much of irony to me :)
> I'm a little scared of China

How can you say this when the Bush administration has just spent the past 8 years systematically dismantling your privacy rights and running a global kidnapping and torture network?

Meanwhile, the US imprisons more of its population than any other nation on earth, especially for non-violent crimes. It doesn't scare you that you can be thrown in jail for years because you like to smoke a little weed?

I think what you meant to say is "I'm afraid of Chinese people/China and I haven't really put much thought into this." Why don't you go there before you start getting afraid of it. Do you even own a passport?
They cover internet startup news, people. It's about as on topic here as it can get. There's a lowest common denominator aspect to their coverage, but all of this anger is not justified.
Kittens, Kittens, and the Online-Cultural Crisis of Propriety
I've never noticed this problem. But then again I'm not popular enough to have to decline very many calls.
I dont buy that. It is expressing an opinion. I do respect the excellent way they are using the media and the internet to show off their cause. I dont respect what they do. I disagree calling them idiots is disrespectful: because, well, they are.... (in my opinion):) There is a huge difference between respect and dislike.

Perhaps I should be clear and say they act like idiots. Then its an opinion...

I would edit the original but I cant any more.. oh well.

Slowly losing a lot of respect for some of the posters here... :(
I did two years. It wasn't worth the cost. I wish I had used the money to elongate my runway (if you know what I mean).
Database Versioning
I knew most of these things at twenty two, coming out of college -- however, my case is slightly different -- I've been a hobbyist before and during college.

Nonetheless all of the material I've described was offered at university I attended and getting a formalized training in the matter (particularly a rigorous mathematical approach to algorithms, data structures and formal languages/automata) definitely helped.

Nonetheless -- if one is motivated and disciplined -- they can pick these things up at a job (provided you get a job where the environment is conducive to learning, vs. one that merely expects you to crank out business logic 9-5) as well as entirely on their own.
Sucky, for all I know. Either expensive (you need 1 mil. USD - I may have a successful business but I am not rich until I sell it or something) or extremely risky: if your US business fails to grow as specified you may lose your visa.

Now I am not risk adverse in business, but when it comes to living in a place, I need to settle (for me and my family). We love to travel and explore, but home must be home: safe and stable.
Postet 04-01 2008 av Tr1n1ty
I think everyone overlooks the value of finding co-founders and ideas at top universities.

I do not have any experience at a state school, but I would posit that it is worth paying the premium for an Ivy just to meet some of the kids. I have often had this discussion of whether it was worth going to college with my friends. As I am from a small town and they are from different countries all around the world, we would have had no connection with each other. Additionally, the alumni base has helped me talk to tech CEOs and venture capitalists as an 18-year old.

Even though I think the classes are pretty much worthless for long-term success, the extracurriculars and connections you meet during your four-year experience are the shaping factors.
But seriously, that was my favorite bit of that movie:

Please read the books, they're far superior to the movies.

Edit: Downvotes, hmmm. Allow me to explain...

The LotR movie trilogy, while being excellent movies in and of themselves, do not do the books justice. PJ's interpretation (and subsequent plot hacking) left me wanting more, and not in a good way.

Admittedly, that may have more to do with the medium in which the storyline was delivered. Cinema, while more visually appealing than the written word, simply cannot offer the same depth that a book can.

I think it's safe to say that in most cases where books are translated to movies, the book remains the better of the two.

Anyways, sorry for the offtopic thread.
I do have a master's but I've never stayed too long in Canada. I am actually planning to go over there later this year for a couple of months to see how I like it. But its regular immigration process takes years...

And I'm not big fan of its more socialist government. Just like I'm not big fan of UK's big-bro government, even though UK has (lately) a rather fast and straightforward immigration policy.

But they are the closest to US, from all the countries I visited, so I'll research them both a bit more.
How did Hong Kong-based MegaVideo crack Web video's Top Ten ranking for January?
I've tried to create Y combinator in common-lisp, but I get errors with this:

-----------------

(defun Y (r)
(funcall #'(lambda (f)
(funcall f f))
#'(lambda (f)
(funcall r #'(lambda (x)
(funcall (funcall f f) x))))))

(defun fact-gen (fact-in)
#'(lambda (n)
(if (eq n 0) 1
(* n (funcall fact-in (- n 1))))))

(funcall (Y #'fact-gen) 1)

-----------------
Any suggestions? Thanks!
This is the exact situation I'm in. I'm 18, a high school senior, and am absolutely certain that I want to found a web company. However, I know that were I just to thrust myself into the world right now, I'd always be kicking myself because I didn't have a basic liberal arts education. While a knowledge of philosophy or political history isn't critical to what I will be doing business-wise later in life, I have a feeling that it will be critical to letting me feel like a whole person.
What happens if people spend 3-5 years specializing when they are 19 or 20 and they hate it? Personally, I wish I would've gone to college instead of high school. Worst case scenario I know a little bit about something I don't like and I have a better idea of what I might like.
"Actually, almost none of the conversation about the stuff has to do with any of the things that make Skittles Skittles: It’s just folks mentioning Skittles to get on the Skittles home page."

He clearly misses the point. They're mentioning Skittles and that's effective brand building.
It'll be interesting to see if he addresses things like the last.fm story, and how things really went without him.

Good he's back, I think the quality of TC dropped there...
I disagree. Although I love working with web technology, I would be miserable if the only things I studied were computer science and business. High school introduces you to a broad range of topics, such as history and literature, that can get you interested in pursuing a liberal arts education alongside your more vocational classes in college. Hell, those liberal arts subjects could even become your vocation. I just believe that it is very important for people to have experience outside of the field they work in.
I tried it the other day on my macbook pro (2.5Ghz), and it skipped several video frames every minute or so. The audio was fine, but the skipping was jarring and unwatchable.

The previous player ran very well on a five year old Dell laptop.
> “That’s just not acceptable,” said Matt Cain, an analyst at Gartner, the IT consultants. “It was poor thinking-through of a code change. In a corporate environment, you can’t just tell your CEO it was bad luck.”

And that's the sad part. In a corporate environment, you need to go tell your CEO that it was your subordinates fault, for being incompetent, that your $1 mio e-mail infrastructure went belly-up for a whole day, and it took three man-weeks in overtime to fix it, and that the subordinate was fired, and that you're going to spend $5k hiring a new guy, who's probably less qualified.

On the other hand, to say that the corporations zero-maintenance $50/year Google accounts was down for an hour, and it was bad luck, is just plain unacceptable. That's obvious.
I regret going to college before I understood how real life really worked. I would've taken it more seriously, picked a major a bit more deliberately, etc.

If I ever had kids, I'd tell them I'd pay for a chunk of college-- if they put it off for 1-2 years after high school.
I'd say they are both heroes in the Randian sense.

Although sadly Microsoft now has its share of lobbyists after running afoul of regulators who didn't like Gates' hubris.
This already got killed once: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=499909
From my little experience, generally... it is not a good idea for a new startup to put ads on it's website.

But if it's urgent for you to put ads, then don't put more than 1 rectangle ad per page!
You're more likely to be able to make a realistic decision and understand the consequences of your actions when you're 19/20 then 12/13.
I heard from some of my international friends that new regulation has been passed that makes it increasingly hard for foreign nationals to stay in the US after university for skilled professions.

If this, I think that this will only be a detriment to the US, as we need the best skilled workers to maintain our global edge.
Most of these can be replaced by a good framework. May I suggest CodeIgniter?