skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The point of the door desk is more than just saving money on a desk. It serves as a constant reminder that you should not spend money on something that does not help your customers. You can argue that this is a bad way to treat your developers, but most people would agree that a desk is a lousy way to spend money instead of, say, having better technical equipment.
My attempt worked great. It was kind of freaky.
I applaud Jeff for trying to think of new ways to fund open source development. Ultimately, I think open source will benefit from a diversity of funding sources, including those which currently exist (day jobs, corporate benefactors, and service sales) and those which do not yet exist (such as Jeff's sponsorship clearinghouse). There is no reason to think that the status quo is optimal and cannot be improved. There is certainly no reason to think that new ideas for funding open source development ought not even be tried.

I am not sure why there seems to be a lot of vague criticism directed at Jeff's idea, without much concrete analysis. The author of this article mentions that Jeff's proposal "more or less works here and there" but at a larger scale there are "too many factors" for it to work. How the heck are you supposed to argue with something that vague?

The author just knows that Jeff's idea won't work, but he can't explain why. He implies that we should just trust him because he "gets it", and Jeff doesn't. That implication is the only supporting argument that the author offers. It's not very convincing. He certainly doesn't convince me that Jeff's proposal ought not even be tried.

The tone of the conversation seems to be that people find Jeff's idea offensive in some way, rather than unworkable. I hope that Jeff is confident enough to implement his idea despite the naysayers, if only because I think we will all benefit if it does indeed work.

Lastly, am I the only one that finds the last paragraph dripping with condescension? Reading it makes me feel a little dirty.
Damn, a fine post. Read somewhere a long time ago a common trait of long time successful companies is a clear and commonly applied mission statement. It doesn't have to be printed in the company brosure, but has to be a set of core values which describe the company.

What's really nice in this post, and _very_ rare today, is that he stopped the count at 2. It's such a simple thing, and yet so powerful. I have no idea who this guy is, but I think highly of him already.
> And if i dont use myself all the features of OOP in Ruby, does it makes me a "functional programmer"?

No, that would be imperative procedural programming. (You are doing functional programming if your program flow can be described as a single sequence of function applications. This is hard in Ruby.)

The rest of your questions are well-answered throughout the Internet.
Music startups are mostly focused on the consumer right now. The real opportunity I think lies in empowering the artists. Give the artists the tools to do things without the labels and the consumers will benefit better. Without the artists on board (most likely without the label), the experience will never be there.

Correct me if i'm wrong, but it seems thesixtyone is a play for the artists ie- upload your tracks here. In turn, by empowering the artists, the consumers have an awesome experience.
http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/fp.html

Uses a Java-esque language for code samples, and required reading for my new hires. This and others is part of a collection of introductory-but-mind-expanding articles.
It would be very tempting for me just to answer "yes, it's very important" or "not, it doesn't matter at all" with appropriate arguments, but I don't think any of those answers could reflect in full what I actually think.

It's very important. Your effectiveness as a programmer depends on which languages you can use when solving problems. Also how easy it will be to extend your program in the future depends (among other things) on which language you've chosen.

If you want a language to reflect your thoughts as directly as possible you may want to use one of the problem-oriented languages (R for statistics, Erlang for fault-toleranse servers, Python for scripts etc).

I think that language matters, because the right chosen one usually increases your efficiency when it comes to writing a specific applicatoin.

It doesn't matter.

In short: it doesn't matter how sharp a sword in your hand is if you are a master of swords.

My current languages-to-learn list is: [Erlang | [Haskell, OCaml, Lisp, Python, R]]
This reply is camouflaged.
Some users think some game features are great, but others think it sucks. I think a lot of content will be shifted to the "other side" constantly.

You'll also have to deal with "fact". An article on Wikipedia about Gears of War shouldn't contain opinions, as in "the chainsaw effect is really cool!", but it can contain relevant adjacent information "A pool on GDC amongst game critics showed that 75% of them enjoy the chainsaw effect".

The problem with "facts" is that the articles will get edited by the game developers and publishers, removing the negative opinions. Users can revert these edits, but the companies have _an agenda_, they'll load the pages first thing in the morning to see what needs to be edited. And/or write bots.

While I am telling you what could go wrong, I don't have any solutions to offer. But I think you'll need to have these problems solved to make it work.
Geez. My brain is just not wired to have any passion for creating silly crap, even if it made me lots of money. Some of these ideas for web apps represent the watered-down domain that has been distilled on the iPhone. Look for a native iPhone client for this app soon.
I really want to know if it is going to save me time and resources for my next startup, nothing else.

You should probably learn to program before starting a software company.

If it is, please somebody show us how to spit html and from there we´ll pick it up. No better-than-sex monads, no intergalactic scripting services, no functional masturbation.

Anyway, to print HTML in Haskell, try this:

putStrLn "<html><head><title>Hello, world</title></head><body>Hello, world!</body></html>"

Amazing, although I'm not sure what you gain by doing this.

(As an aside, I prefer HXT to generate XHTML programatically. It doesn't involve "better-than-sex monads", either, although it does involve Arrows.)

I wish I could resist the urge to reply to trolls, but apparently I can't.
Ask HN: Are there any other movies like Office Space, Fight Club, and American Beauty?
As c2 suggests (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?OfficeSpaceMovie), if you watch all these three movies in a row you will life-altering epiphany or your head will explode.

Are there any other movies on middle-age, cubicle noir style?
I was waiting for a service like this for years. I actually haven't thought it's even possible. Thanks!
With regard to web apps, you ask a big question, which I, for one, am unprepared to address in a brief comment. In general, however, functional programming aims to make it easier to think about what a program does as it runs.

In imperative programming, you create variables and you change their values (or the values they reference). This is called mutable state. Functional programming claims that mutable state makes it difficult to reason about the value of a variable, because anything and anyone might have changed it. I happen to agree with this claim. Functional languages discourage, or outright forbid, changing variable values or referenced values. Instead, functional programs call functions in which the desired new value of the variable is an argument.

Initially, for people weaned on imperative languages, this is a mind-bender. It turns out, however, that with a little practice (I'd say less than two days of reading through SICP), that functional programs can be shorter and easier to understand than imperative programs. It turns out that modifying state becomes even trickier to think about once you introduce multiple threads of control. Variables clobbered by different threads leads to subtle and difficult bugs. A purely functional approach aims to eliminate this source of bugs at its root.
I wonder how invested she is in her concept. Flickr, as I understand it, was a part of an online game originally, so if there are indications that the real value here is some subset of functionality or is leading to something entirely different, will she have the presence of mind to follow the hunch?
Joel on Solid State Disks
you have to learn how the other system works in some cases

You have to do this for your own code, too, unless you have a photographic memory.
Power. Everyone may have a laptop, but the capabilities of said laptop will vary greatly. This isn't an issue for everyone, but it can be for anyone taking a computational / media editing / engineering type of degree. I can picture tons of students wondering why AutoCAD / Photoshop / Final Cut runs like crap on their $400 Celeron system.

Standardization. Dedicated labs provide the assurance that every student has the ability to use the same software on the same platform.

Software Licensing. Even if you could assume that all student were running the same OS / hardware platform, you'd still have to make necessary software available to all of them, which would be a licensing nightmare.

Laptop use works for very general purpose / light-duty work, which is what many college students do. So I could see the argument for making certain areas more laptop-centric (such as libraries). But at most unis, there will always be enough demand from those in more "hardcore" majors that getting rid of labs in general won't work. In fact, I've actually seen an upswing in lab use due to students buying netbooks.
Ask HN: How many Lines of Code do You Write Every Day?
Just wondering how productive my fellow programmers are. yesterday I spent 13 hours coding and someone at the end of the day, after writing, testing, re-factoring, deleting and re-writings chunks of code, I realized i only wrote about 800+ lines, which is pretty sad.

Any tips on how to increase productivity would be appreciated too.
Being a productive coder has nothing to do with the amount of lines you write.

Don't focus on this.
That's not true. It might be true if you have a Memento memory.
"In devising an algorithm, consider exceptions last. In writing code, consider exceptions first."

Good advice
You have to fail 3 or 4 times before you learn what to look for in a partner.

Startups are difficult.
I went through university in the UK during the last three years without owning my own laptop. Had they not had computer labs, I wouldn't have been able to get any work done at all. We pay enough to study without having to fork out for compulsory gadgetry on top of that--part of the fees we pay are for the provision of facilities like computers. It might be OK for those with parental support, but I had to pay for it all myself and couldn't afford my own laptop while studying! (I had my own desktop at home in the final year, a hand-me-down bought from a friend for £20. I'm still using it to type this.)

However, they could perhaps shrink the size of the labs; there were rooms with 50 or 60 PCs all switched on, wasting energy displaying that immensely irritating advertising screensaver and two or three of us working in them. Perhaps they could even go as far as to close labs and provide students with laptops with required study software pre-installed, but that's cloud-cuckoo land stuff...
Okay funny, not sure you'll ever see this but, I just followed your profile to your site to linked in (curiousity thing).

I think we might have crossed paths once, I was the lead ITV engineer at TechTV doing an Interactive IO Portal for CableVision that Extend designed. Worked mainly with a woman dev who's name I can't remember right now.
Myths And Misconceptions On Pet Health Insurance
Right. So have a plan for failure, in addition to your plans for wild success.
(I don't mean to disparage your coding ability or Prolog). If you have written 800 lines of ruby, you have earned yourself a 6-pack beer, go chill! If it was 800 lines of Prolog, go buy a bottle of Nyquil - you need to rest your mind and body!
I was blown away by the beauty of that website.

As for the content, its stuff hardcore HN'ers already know, but could use some reminding.

Tangible or Worthless - just get it up already!
Test, test, test!
The most annoying feature of Haskell's type system
More support for "the regulators failed" comes from Fannie Mae. They brought in some professionals because pols have figured out that it's a toxic association.

The professionals decided to accurately report the value of certain assets to investors, namely that said assets had lost a lot of value. The regulators objected....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03...
How many FPS in Quake?

(just kidding)
I agree. Especially about the required software. University shouldn't expect me to install windows, matlab, indesign, full office, visual studio, etc. on my own box. It's also nice to have a reference machine - it's much easier to work with "project has to run on the standard uni boxes" than "it has to be compatible with X, Y, Z and compiled with V". At my university they reduce energy usage / maintenance costs by using Sun Rays - we can login to a unix, or windows server, or just get a simple mozilla-only session which loads in a second or two. Possibility to print something on the network printers (~10) at any time is also something I find useful. Amazingly, I haven't even found anything TDWTF-worthy about that setup...

Even though almost everyone has a laptop here, the library / lab (wifi available) is still full with people using the local computers to study (~200 places).

But now that you mention books... I'd be really happy to get all the books I need in pdfs, so that:

1. they're searchable / bookmarkable

2. I can print out those 2 pages I really need and not carry the whole thing around
Privacy is dead, move on.
i hope it remains at least as easy as it is now for poor people to make it through school without worrying too much about this.
Yes, that should be "not like" and the procrastination timer ran longer than the edit window.
What is a better metric?
I only wrote 2500 LOC yesterday, I was disappointed in myself. Normally I do at least 4000.

Also, my dad is 12 feet tall and he can beat up your dad.

In all seriousness, LOC will always be an almost-meaningless metric.

Sustainable productivity comes from good teams working on products that have user/customer feedback early on, and which actually solve someone's problem (a tractable one) in a reasonable way.
I suppose this is what you do when your startup isn't required to support your family. :-)
Pwn2Own winner says Macs are more safe, though less secure
All the while, the fees charged have been way cheaper than PayPal's. (This, unfortunately, is changing. Depending on your monthly sales, Checkout fees are going up as much as 40% in the next month or two.)

In defense of Google, they've been losing money on Checkout from day 1. Everyone knew (or should have known) they would have to raise rates eventually. They've been low to try to convince people to get used to using Checkout. It hasn't actually worked very well and I'm guessing the Checkout folks would rather continue to lose money to gain customers, but with the belt-tightening at Google I guess they've got to prove they're a worthwhile business to have on the books.
Ask YC: How to form a Delaware C-Corp?
I've been Googling for the past couple of days and am having a tough time pinning down the steps I should follow in forming a Delaware C-corp.

Like many of you, we'll be based out of the Bay Area.
-> Who do I deal with?
-> What documents should one file and when?
-> What should one talk to a lawyer about and when?
-> What happens at what stage?

Would be good to construct some sort of a step-by-step plan for anyone.. atleast with the basic information in it.
New to Virtual Currency?
1. Number of people happily using your code.
2. Number of dollars in your bank from it.

"Perfection is reached, not when there is no longer anything to
add, but when there is no longer anything to take away."
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Use your social network to get a personal recommendation. That way you'll have someone vouching for his ability, plus they can't screw you without risking damaging his relationship with the recommender.
Ask HN: Why did Google release their mapReduce algorithm/cluster setup?
I was just wondering why Google, back in 04, released their map-reduce white paper. They didn't have to. Was it released simply out of good will? Was it done to fend off antitrust litigation? Were other companies already doing the same thing, so it wouldn't matter if it was released? I think they believed that the amount of information that was revealed in the paper wasn't low level or in-depth enough to cause any real damage to Google, even if it were implemented(Yahoo's hadoop). Or am I missing something completely?
> What's unique about the US west coast is that the cities there were not much older then the automobile

San Jose, LA, and San Francisco are all 100 years older than the automobile. Seattle, Sacramento, and Oakland are 50 years older. (Wikipedia says that the Seattle area has been inhabitied for 4000 years.) I didn't check any other West Coast cities.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=508387
Ask HN: Should I Keep Going?
I'm 20 years old and I've learned a lot on HN while reading it for the better part of the past year. In the past couple months I have been working on my second startup with a few other friends/developers. The nature of our business requires either capital to contract out graphics work or have a graphic designer on board. Since we have no capital we have been looking for a graphic designer. Ideally it would be another student, but we have been unable to find anyone. The other option is contracting out, but since we are college students thats not really an option. I am just beginning to feel like its not possible for this startup to happen without raising some amount of capital.

What do you think I should do?
I've never counted. But I'd guess not more than 300 or 400, and by the end of the week, if I've been thinking clearly, I'll have shaved the code written down to less than that. Probably my most productive week ever ended with ripping almost all of my code out, and replacing it with an SQLite module from CPAN. The program went from a few thousand lines to about 500, making the software O(1), instead of O(n^2) or something worse.
Ask HN: Is there a way to define classes at runtime in any language?
I was just thinking about chatbots, and the ability to make logical deductions. Like Men are Mortals, Socrates is a man, so Socrates is mortal. So Mortals could be the superclass, men could be the subclass, and Socrates could be an instance of the subclass men, and would be a member of superclass Mortals. But it would be nice to have a way of defining these classes at runtime, so in a chatbot if the user posed such a scenario to the chatbot, the chatbot could use some pattern matching, construct the classes on the fly, and figure out the relations, thereby sounding "intelligent". Can this be done? Classes made at runtime instead of compile time?
He still is. Well, one of the creators. :-)

I wondered if someone would mention microPledge here. Two major reasons we put it on hold: 1) issues with PayPal -- payment providers and CC companies don't like you holding funds in trust, and 2) it was just really hard to get paying customers to use it (we allowed open source projects to use it to collect funds for free, which may have been a bad idea).
This could possibly be the start of something huge, if you just look beneath the surface a bit. In effect, the users of this site will be validating a large number of machine learning algorithms.

Let's say you are a large internet advertising company cough Google cough and you are trying to customize your suggestions. You look at what you know about any given user (their IP, geographical location, recent searches, keyword that get used in their recent emails, etc) and formulate your assumptions in terms of questions in a decision tree. You can then use Hunch.com to test your results (since Hunch allows users to "correct" their answers).

You can also use it the other way around (and this is where monetization comes in). If all goes as planned, within a few months Hunch.com will have a LOT of information about about people decide what to do. For instance "People that give answer X,Y and Z to questions A, B and C think the best car for them is XPTO model". How much would this information be worth for the makers of XPTO? Or even for people getting paid to advertise the XPTO car?

Another possibility is to use it to improve search results. If you understand the reasoning behind a sequence of queries, you can direct the person to what they are looking for.

A model of how people think = A way to make money giving people what they want.
Dead right about how hard it is to create a community. That's one of the two main reasons microPledge.com didn't really work out for us.
wow. i almost exclusively used mit's athena labs when i was there a few years back. for computer science.

i have a laptop now and, working from home on my bed, think it's great.

the downside of laptops is that with greater power (and convenience) comes greater responsibility (and self-restraint).

* laptops are too often used for multitasking to the detriment of the work or social meeting at hand. doing homework while watching tv is less productive/enjoyable than taking each in turn. engaging with people who are alert in the world is easier than engaging with those who are working (or when not engaged with work).

* laptops make it easy to get into a groove and not leave until the wee hours...which is good as long as you're getting work done.

onwards with technology! let's also encourage thoughtful behavior, too.
You can always do the graphics yourself. Grab a copy of Gimp if you don't have photoshop and start designing. What exactly is holding you back from doing it yourself?
From the FAQ:

TinEye was created by Idée Inc. Idée develops advanced
image identification and visual search software for photo
wire agencies, stock photography firms, entertainment media
companies and some of the world's leading imaging firms
including Adobe Systems Inc.

In other words, yes they intend for it to be used by content owners to find unauthorized use of their IP on the web. On the other hand, they claim to respect robots.txt and give their crawler name on the same page.