skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I read the article and wondered that exact thing the whole time, but this type of rhetoric is quite typical of David Brooks. He tends to paint things in a way where such that in the end he can point to the article as a conservative pundit and say "conservatism is the way". He is kind of a wanker in that regard.

I have studied markets empirically for a long time. They fascinate me. But ultimately they're very simple. Markets are just games with certain rules. It's human nature to exploit knowledge for gain. And we're very good at it, which is why you see home sapiens running things and not dogs or chimps. The emergent properties of nearly all markets are pretty obvious from the outset if you know the rules and just extrapolate.

Brooks is analyzing psychological motives, but he half misses the point (for the above reason; he wanted to come to a conclusion that supported a "conservative" viewpoint). I get really annoyed when people make the argument "but if only people hadn't mis-behaved we wouldn't be in this mess." Umm, any exploitable situation will be exploited by someone. Quit expecting morality to protect humanity. Don't you grok the Tragedy of the Commons?

In the case of the financial crisis the market failure was one of externalities. If you look at the value chain of how loans were originated, sold, and re-sold, the current crisis was inevitable. It's always been obvious that several of the layers of the industry simply had no risk, because intermediaries were able to make profit regardless of risk and the risk was concentrated in an external entity. This is my favorite (and funny!) explanation of the situation:

http://docs.google.com/TeamPresent?docid=ddp4zq7n_0cdjsr4fn&...

So ultimately stupidity vs greed is a red herring. In reality, a few evil geniuses knew that they could make a ton of money with no risk, and they unleashed their massive resources to turn this money train into a years-long profit engine. The people that caused this have already punched out for more money than they could ever imagine.

IMHO the real solution here is:

1) prosecute thousands of people for fraud.

2) Let the current banks rot with the pile of assets they've amassed. 3) capitalize new banks to re-start the credit markets.

3) Vastly increase regulation.

It is not in the taxpayers' interest to have a system in which a misbehaving company can destabilize the economy.
Having a degree from a famous university may not automatically get you a job, but it will definitely get you more job interviews.

If you know for sure you're doing engineering and you got into the EECS program at UIUC, then it probably doesn't matter as much. However, it didn't sound like that was the case for the original poster.
Hypothetically, just interviewing the candidate at all should be enough, since a job interview is just an opportunity for the candidate to sell themselves. If they're good at sales, they'll sell themselves and make you want to hire them. Interviewing CS folks is hard in comparison because selling yourself in an interview is a talent that has almost nothing to do with making software.
It is not really hard to get a minor in CS in UIUC as long as you are good in Math and Science subjects.

But, one thing is sure: 17K vs 40k
My guess is a $99 iPhone will greatly expand market penetration in the US.

I don't think a 2x speed increase and video calls of limited utility will create a 10x network increase.
Paying for online news: Sorry, but the math just doesn’t work.
funny story :)
python ftw
It is odd to me that so many people are looking for some kind of abnormality which "caused" the crisis. Capitalism has had cyclical crises since its inception 300 years ago, so I would say that the crisis was not "caused" by either greed or stupidity, but is a naturally emergent behavior of the capitalist system.

Actually it is even more general than that. The pattern of exponential growth followed by die-off is common throughout nature - algal blooms, for example.

It seems that the whole discussion over the financial crisis has been warped and twisted by this absurd belief, in the face of all evidence, that the economy is in some sense "rational," that it has some kind of steady-state equilibrium, and that its problems are therefore caused by too little or too much regulation, too little or too much greed, etc.
YC-funded startups get it partly through us, partly through YC "alumni," and partly through random connections. Reporters now often approach us when they want to write about startups, because between 118 alumni, odds are there are at least 1 or 2 that would fit in their story. Plus when YC-funded startups meet reporters, they tend to introduce them to other YC-funded startups.

Basically YC + the alumni act like a large surface that's highly refractive: the large area means lots of inquiries hit it at some point, and then when they do they tend to bounce around within it.
In this case it's blaming the professor for problems encountered by students, and I agree wholeheartedly with that. There are professors who were dragged kicking and screaming into the e-mail age five years ago and immediately forced to basically manage a web site. They go through what is to them a series of meaningless magic rituals, the chapter 10 section 3 homework assignment gets uploaded to the chapter6/Mondays/quizzes/attic/old/personal_photos/onion_on_my_belt/tarnation directory, one foreign student with an exaggerated impression of the consequences for missing a homework assignment actually clicks through every folder on the site until she finds it, and the professor gives a 0 on that assignment to every other student in the class because they didn't turn it in. And that, my friends, is a true story (merely the worst of many) though directory names have been changed because I can't really remember.

That said, Blackboard was really awful when I used it, which was six or seven years ago. It was archaic and felt like a careless amateur effort. Even on the best-organized Blackboard class site, everything was a few clicks further away than it should have been. It doesn't sound like they've had much incentive to improve it since then.
How is something consensual unfair? If a person places a low value on their time or a high value on the experience that will be gained, it seems like it might be a reasonable trade. This seems especially true if the person giving up their time isn't in dire straits... i.e. If you offer to pay pennies and breadcrumbs to a starving man, that might not be cool. If you offer a good unpiad experience to a hacker/designer who is otherwise darned employable, it doesn't seem evil at all.

If I lived in the Valley and had an opportunity to hang out at YC dinners in exchange for a bit of free work, there was probably a time in my life when I would've taken that opportunity.

Random other note: cool that you play the banjo! I've recently begun teaching myself the fiddle.
That's true, but I think that it is nitpicking. There is a claim here: "Google in talks to acquire Twitter" -- which has a questionable truth value. This is exactly the type of statement which a predictions site could test (whether it is true or not).
"But in general work should be paid for."

What about equity? Most stock options end up being valueless. I'd say that a free summer at TechStars (or YC for that matter) would have a greater chance of tracing to some monetary reward than equity in most startups.
Discount Programs Work and Can Save You Money
.."Different OS for every program"

yeah it is kludgy, inefficient ... but you are pretty much guaranteed that the setup works, which I think is a lot of the value.
Arbitrage is not evil - ie making money without risk. The problem is not behaviour - particularly since it is regulation that warped incentives. Everywhere you look is regulation - regulation encouraged home buying over rentals, taxes encouraged borrowing over equity, government sponsored enterprises underpriced/didnt evaluate risk, regulation increases the time it takes to fund and create new banks, and I've yet to see a convincing explanation of how the repeal of Glass-Steagall caused this mess in the first place. I also don't get why government doesn't allow for some form of rapid bankruptcy to restructure balance sheets and wipe out shareholders and to some degree, bondholders. I'm not sure why taxpayers and "good" innovative industries should be subsidizing bond holders and shareholders of businesses that didn't adequately plan for risk. If they're worried about runs on banks, the bulk of the capital in these firms are not depositors.

The irony is that we're looking to regulation to solve this crisis? This while we're looking to bail out dying industries?
HARO - http://www.helpareporter.com/
It's a good way to reach reports.
Jeff lists Knuth and Kay as "dead programmers" Sure, he's just trying to place status instead of saying that they're really dead, but it comes across as awkward. He couldn't think of any more dead important programmers or software pioneers, Like Joseph Weizenbaum, John Backus, or Grace Hopper?

A number of people commenting on his post point out Kay and Knuth are very much alive.

Maybe he needs to shoehorn in a ninth category: Great programmers who are still alive who will be well remembered when they are dead, but were not hurrying them along, really.
You can with a GM script: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25039
This is largely unrelated to the content of the article, but as a community of intelligent individuals, can we make an effort to avoid TLAs (three-letter acronyms?)

It would be helpful for the uninitiated to have acronyms spelled out. For those of us in the physical sciences, "SEM" is generally understood to mean "scanning electron microscopy." While this is obviously not the case of Geico's search engine marketing (surprising that they have a daily search advertising budget of $244k!), disambiguation would be helpful.
Microsoft is ignoring .net developers
I'm a .net developer trying to code with Facebooks Connect API. Microsoft invested $240 million in facebook but hardly a dime in .net developers. Now even FLASH has a better supported library than .net developers.

Recently I posted my frustration with MS with other .net developers
http://facebooktoolkit.codeplex.com/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=52107

I doubt it'll have any result, it looks like the project has been abandoned...

Am I crazy to think MS should officially support Facebook (esp since they invested in the company) and also come out with a real alternative to wordpress for .net developers? If I were a developer just starting out I'd have little reason to use .net instead of php.
I use AWS mostly for static content hosting (S3 + CloudFront). I plan to shift over to EC2 when I have enough users to warrant the expenses (Currently on a 256MB slice - $20/month).
Good point. But suppose that research invented said simple and powerful system... it has to survive "market forces" too. Remember OpenDoc et al?
Interesting points you bring up and Google effectively came to the same conclusion when they were smaller (low hundreds instead of tens of thousands of employees). Everything at Google is data driven, including the hiring, but things have changed drastically. Back in the day, Larry and Sergey had a forumla that used the SATs and your graduating GPA. The theory was that your SAT was a measure of your potential, and your GPA was the ability to deliver on that potential. As you can imagine that ultimately ended in failure, but kind of an interesting idea none-the-less.

Since then they've wound up taking a much more Googly approach to hiring, by collecting tons of data from their employees. They effectively gave everyone a survey that attempted to figure out what defined the Google culture and success there-in. By hiring people consistent with this data, the theory is that they can better keep the culture and continue to hire successful engineers. Lots of interesting tidbits came from the study, but the most interesting was that a masters degree will (statistically) always outperform a b.s, but a phd is closer to a 50/50 for outperforming a masters (they attribute this to being too specialized. I forget the phd-to-b.s. probability).

All this is from memory and is a couple of years old, so take it as you may.
There's more to take away than that, although yours is one big tangible reason why he got left in the dust.

The major point I got from this article is that you can't stop being hungry for knowledge and expect not to get beat by those who are. The language didn't matter; he got bested by the people who kept learning and exploring while he decided he had learned "enough" for one lifetime. He made the mistake of making it about those around him; he didn't want to continually improve, just better than those he would be compared with. He went from learning just enough to best people, to being smug, to being a curmudgeon against other languages/platforms/etc he professed to not know a lot about. I keep seeing evidence around me that this is a very counter-productive shortcut to take, but one that most people don’t own up to; props to him for being honest, but sad that it took him too long to come to reason about it. In an odd way, I see this same pattern of behavior in a lot of the one-language-wonder Java programmers I meet today; they know Java, and find what reasons they can to declare that all other languages suck.

So, your point about libraries is a good one, but I’d amend your remarks to advise cultivating an attitude toward development that makes using libraries and ideas of others almost instinctual, and that, I think, is by making sure you always stay hungry for knowledge.
Even if you don't use it as a whiteboard, laminating the top of the door with the whiteboard probably makes it easier to clean.
Connecting the World: How We Translated Facebook
Popcuts (YC S08): Buying Music Has Never Been So Profitable
I think this is a lesson that you dont' stick to one platform or language. You always branch out. Programming fundamentals are the same, different syntax and culture sometimes but you limit yourself to one language and you are done when it is done... and it will be done at some point.
I don't know how much you can cultivate that attitude, and how much it's just something you're born with.
Damn you and your awesome metaphors, PG :)
That's a serviceable desk for $80, and I'm glad to hear of a company that spends money on important thing like programmers and not on expensive desks.

But, as a mechanical engineer, my instinctive reaction is similar to what most of you feel when you see an inefficient algorithm. My gut reaction is, "Metal brackets at the corners but no diagonal bracing?"

You could make a much stronger desk for the same amount of money by removing the angle brackets, using 2 x 3's instead of 2 x 4's, screwing the tops of the legs to the door directly, and screwing on some lengths of 1 x 2 strapping on the diagonals, thereby making a light, stiff structure.

All the same, as I said above, it's a serviceable desk; I'm just interested to see the generally positive reaction from software folks differ from my own instincts.
Haha...this really made me laugh.

Honestly, if there were no web access, how many people in the US could build their own radio?
> Am I crazy to think MS should officially support Facebook

You don't need a corporate behemoth to give you an API for a web service. You can bitch about MS withholding binary API for its system calls, but the web is wide open baby! XML protocols are the easiest to implement, no wonder there are clients for all the major languages, and the not-so-major ones:

http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Client_Librari...

MS is a platform vendor, it can't afford to hitch its wagon to a wild horse like a web application; these things come and go, but the platform stays (even if it changes face.)

If you want tight integration of "facebook" with Visual Studio, you will probably have to write your own plugin. Or use an open development environment, even if you target a proprietary OS.

Cheers!
With all of the meddling (tariffs, subsidies) by the government, isn't this market closer to mercantilism than capitalism?
Interactive CouchDB
Computing Across America
>dont' stick to one platform or language. You always branch out.

The problem is that, to many Lispers, branching out from the Lisp world often feels like branching out on a random path from Rome in its glory days might have felt like - filthy, stinking barbarians abound in all directions. Personally, I feel caged whenever I am not programming in Lisp or a language with similar metaprogramming capabilities (Mathematica, for example.)
I don't think MS was investing in Facebook as a development platform- they were just trying to buy into some page views. MS definitely thinks Sharepoint is the alternative to wordpress- really!

The more striking thing about your comment to me is that .net developers may tend to wait for Microsoft to build a library for them while members of other communities self organize to build their own. It's very nice for the developers when MS does something, because it's generally good enough, but it seems like it's harder to get open source projects started because of the chance MS is working on it secretly.
Lipton's April fool's factoring joke, part 2
you are leaving it on the table when compared to Linode

In my case, the "left on the table" amount is about 1/100th of my sales. From last week. That doesn't exactly justify me dropping everything and spending my freaking expensive engineering time figuring out how to migrate without causing breakage or downtime.
I use plain text files encrypted via gpg.

There's a gpg plugin for vim. If you don't like vim, you can probably find one for your preferred editor.
http://www.bugmenot.com/
The comments about hard problems and hard instances is very interesting. I'm curious if there are any ways to generate hard traveling salesman problems. Or even better, if you can start with a solution (e.g., an order of 1,...,n) and generate a good traveling salesman around that.
Rank ordered by amount spent:

AdWords (I spend more than everything else on this list, doubled.)

SwiftCD (outsourced CD fulfillment)

Paypal / Google Checkout

Slicehost

Microsoft AdCenter

CrazyEgg

Clicky (getclicky.com)
Maybe they're "blocking" in a superficial way, a little like how sensitive info is sometimes stricken from PDFs by simply drawing black boxes in front -- leaving the data underneath for anyone who thinks to select-and-copy.

For example: maybe they insert/overlay a obscuring element -- but some limitation of the format (like maybe a maximum duration for a non-repeating animation in Flash?) means it eventually expires.

In any case, if you're enjoying the benefits, you might not want to make a big deal of it... it should be easy to close the hole if it becomes an embarrassment to them.
Authorize.net, PayPal, and Google all have canceled my account (after first telling me there would be no problem, and then commending me on my sales volume and zero chargebacks), refusing to stand up for free speech, and instead falling back on their legal boilerplate when my political enemies (the free-speech-hating DEA) called them and threatened them. So much for free speech in the USA! When it comes to any speech that needs protecting, there is no freedom of speech, because it has to exist in an ocean of extra-constitutional tax-subsidized legal threats. Free speech only means something if there's someone brave enough to speak. In this case, the United States CC processors don't have that bravery. They are virtually all rank cowards. Jefferson, John Locke and Thomas Paine are rolling in their graves. If you get high, or you are a friend of freedom, then please, tell everyone you know to boycott google pay, authorize.net, and paypal. Boycott them, don't pay them, never give them a dime. Seriously. If you do support them, don't come crying to me when they open your records to the DEA or the tax man, or shut you down because somebody doesn't like what you're saying. In this case, my "sour grapes" aren't that I'm losing money, my "sour grapes" are that my beautiful free country was sold down the river for an idle threat. The best revenge you can get is check out my sites anyway, and if you like what you see, order by phone. Or come back when our offshote account is set up.
http://www.kopbusters.com
http://www.nevergetbusted.com
How Attorney Marc Dreier Bilked Investors Out of Millions
iPhone development using static compilation in Mono
oh yeah... regex to match all urls == ugly hack.

Why didnt they just define urls by a simple FSM / regex in an RFP ?

Hey, I complain about the internet..but I do appreciate RFCs...
Sweet lord, have a look at the UML / MOF spec - its hilariously vague and amorphic.
I'm using S3/cloudfront for assets, user data and backups, EC2 and elastic IPs, SQS, and FPS for payment processing. Love it.

To the question I also pay for authsmtp, and will probably be using the pay level of "New Relic" as well soon, for rails profiling.
btw, Windows and Java are what actually became obsolete - first because of that's simply enough, second - because there is no such goal as 'runs everywhere' anymore.

Linux is just a mainstream, which means it starting to fall.
But in this case Microsoft actually paid a third party to develop this POS and they both decided to make it open source. People, like me, want to contribute but the project has been abandoned so our changes/upgrades wont get integrated.
"The problem is that, to many Lispers, branching out from the Lisp world often feels like branching out on a random path from Rome in its glory days might have felt like - filthy, stinking barbarians abound in all directions."

There are plenty of languages as "elegant" as Lisp, but are significantly different in "feel" and usage - smalltalk, Forth, Prolog, Haskell, Io ...

Lisp has no monopoly on elegance or "metaprogramming", certainly not to the point where the "classical rome vs stinking barbarians" analogy is valid. (This ignores the historical fact that many greeks thought the romans were loutish parvenus, but that is a story fro another day).
I've use both Linode (personal) and Slicehost (picwing). AFAIK, Linode still does not have automatic backups, which is really simple on Slicehost.
The way these Apple Insider guys take the commercial like a personal insult is hilarious. Very tribal. It's an effective ad- the real point is too simple for these guys to get. "Apple doesn't sell 17" laptops under $1000 (Just like Mercedes doesn't sell 4dr sedans under $30000.)"
In addition to what Paul mentioned, we've received a few minor hits from HARO as well. Most of them (there are 3 per day) aren't useful, but they're usually worth a skim. Also, if you don't have a company blog, start one. It's a good way for people to see what you're up to and encourages feedback and inquiries. We try to update our company blog once per week [1].

My advice is to be willing to talk to anyone and respond to customer feedback emails as quickly and helpfully as possible. You never really know who's on the other side of the email. And please don't ever ever use form letters; you're dealing with people, not robots.

One of our biggest press hits at TicketStumbler was in the Financial Times [2] [3]. Paul referred the writer to us as a freelancer who was still in graduate school, and I honestly had no idea the article would appear in the FT. I always figured if someone cares that much about what we're doing, I'd be more than happy to talk to them.

[1] http://ticketstumbler.com/new-stuff/

[2] http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/59d78f42-e713-11dd-8407-0000779fd2...

[3] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=442435