skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I worked at Google for a while, pre-IPO. There were an awful lot of very smart, capable people (or so it seemed, out of the 200 or so that were there when I arrived), and the challenges in operations simply do not exist at any other company I have seen (you try administering 100K servers, expanding by about another 1000-2000 per week, using typical methods, and let me know how it goes, for example (%)). The hardware engineering produced numerous clever patents, the software engineers produced stuff like MapReduce, and despite the North Korean Labor Camp work ethos, people were generally pretty happy.

I have no idea if it's like that anymore. A lot of my friends who stuck around after the IPO report that it changed, that there arose much friction between the perceived old guard and the newer post-IPO employees. Maybe now that there are a zillion Googlers in a dozen or so countries (Ireland, Switzerland, India, China, and teh USA were already set up by the time I left), perhaps there's less camaraderie. Maybe the SarbOx role-based access control (which I helped implement as part of my job) means that you can't poke around MOMA and the Perforce tree after work hours and gawk at the new patents.

It was a great place to work, but in the end I moved on because I didn't get the position I really wanted to be promoted to, and I noticed that all of the guys doing really, really cool stuff had completed some advanced study, more often than not in CS or comp bio.

Given that machine learning doesn't seem to be going out of style, I have to try and remember that $80K or so is really not a very good salary for the amount of work that an SRE drone is responsible for, and figure out 'what next' instead.

I didn't have a wife or a kid when I left Google. Now I do. It's harder now to embrace the risks of starting up a company, although I made a sizable chunk of change in the meantime simply by developing and selling a hobby website. If the idea is solid and the execution solid, there's at least some chance that even the 'just for fun' projects will end up putting a roof over your head (literally, in my case).

I'm still conflicted, but I like to think that the mathematical and computational skills I've picked up in the meantime (especially modern statistical methodology, and applications in comp bio and machine learning) will continue to provide me with fun stuff to work on, regardless of what happens at Google. If it weren't on the opposite side of town, though, I'd be tempted to apply for a different job at Google once I finish my thesis. Hopefully I'll have something better to do with my life than be a cog, though.

(%) ps. If you've ever wondered whether it's better to automate everything up-front at your Little Start-Up: yes it is. You're not going to have any more time to deal with it if you succeed, and if your company stagnates, automation will make it easier to walk away and do something else.
If the input is numbers then what happens is simply extrapolation (or regression etc). If the input is symbols, then what? The fact that you can associate numbers to the symbols does not help. The extrapolation will be meaningless. Unless you happen to have the correspondence '1'->1, '2'->2, etc,
Stanford uses Java for their CS1 class, C++ for their CS2 class, and a combination of C/C++/Scheme/Python (or Java) for their CS3 class.
Reminder: Daylights Savings
For people with interviews on Sunday
I don't know a lot about ILP algorithms, but my understanding of them is that they basically search the space of logical rules for rules that "explain" the examples they are given. More formally, they look for rules from which you could then prove the given examples. So in an ideal world you could give an ILP system a bunch of formulas and it would give you back the Peano axioms or something like that I'm not sure if state of the art ILP systems are good enough to do that in practice or not.
Thanks for that. hilarious.
This calls for an EMERGENCY MARKETING MEETING:

http://homestarrunner.com/sbemail164.html
I think that other sites with user generated content like folklore.org has created a tidy profit by compiling the information into a format people can buy (in that case a book). I personally believe if the site had a cd-rom version say on a subscription service (every 3 months you get a new cd-rom) that people would be happy to pay $10 for it and he could hit his revenue target (1% paying $10 a month). Not that I would ever look at such material!
Facebook "open to working with OpenSocial?"
Really, good luck and if you don't make it. Don't sweat it....lol
I've been arguing for a very long time against people who think free is a possible business model for art forms. Voluntary payments/micropayments will never work.
As the mac community grows the black hats of the world will turn to it. I would hate to think that Apple are going to be caught napping on security but with the leopard firewall problem it looks like they might.
Myspace is from LA. If I moved to LA, I'd probably subtract 5 years from my age, too. It's local custom.
Yeah, it's better to trust a liar than a "geezer". What is this, the freaking Cultural Revolution?

P.S. That was something that happened before 1985.
Just like Omidyar and eBay, where they floated the story about him just wanting to sell his girlfriend's Pez collection or whatever it was that the PR firm dreamed up.
I would argue that micropayments will work one day: people are ready and willing to make micropayments, the barrier is the cognitive cost of making the payment. If there were some well-established way to give money with a couple of clicks and zero thought, I think a lot of people would do it.
california is basically los angeles, sanfran, san diego, and silicon valley. everythig else is inconsenquentual.
I was mostly relieved. I wasn't insane after all. Some problems are simple, some hard, and some can't be solved. These approaches are very indirect and people may be tempted to use them without first asking the question: can this problem be solved (in principle!) with the data that we have?
Thats a lot of places for one state
I'd lie about my age to for $510 million dollars.
Never trust anybody over 30, man :)
Berkeley, Northeastern, Indiana, Caltech, Brown, Yale (kinda)
Yeah, I'm not buying it. There's no evidence pointing to that whatsoever, and it seems silly to assume that, by default, people will pay for something they didn't have to. That's not human nature. You'd have to assume the opposite until proven otherwise.
...they're used in education, unlike e.g. Rachmaninoff's 3rd.
I'm not assuming everyone will pay, just a large enough fraction to be significant for moderately popular sites. I think (hope?) you underestimate human nature, or at least the powers of fandom, guilt, and some occasional generosity.

If this sort of thing does take off, I imagine it would work best with the sorts of things people are passionate about, and especially would want to support continuing development; open source software, tutorials/textbooks, music, fiction, webcomics, that sort of thing.
Although Apple's market share has grown, spammers still have a very keen sense of putting their unscrupulous efforts towards its best and highest use, which means targeting Internet Explorer 6 and Windows XP by and large.

I wonder if this was carried out by a disgruntled Mac hater (maybe ex-girlfriend was a Mac user?).
could have sworn it was $580?
Hey guys, this looks great but how about a YC-only meetup?

I wish there were some way to coordinate these things. I was planning a Friday meetup and wouldn't mind going through with it if I get a decent response.

Waleedka, feel free to drop me a line (email in profile) if you'd like to work together to merge plans.
The concept of reciprocity may very well be hardcoded in human nature, because it is such an effective strategy.
...it seems silly to assume that, by default, people will pay for something they didn't have to. That's not human nature.

Then why do people on vacation leave tips after dinner?
Exactly what I meant to say but somehow missed, thanks!
Don't tell Dave Winer that to his face. He'll start rambling about OPML, outliners, and other shit only he and like 3 other people care about (i.e., way more people care about Haskell than they do about outliners from what I can tell).
How are you defining symbols? How are you defining meaningless, or meaning at all for that matter?
Keep in mind, this isn't Marc's real elevator pitch -- it's one that the VentureHacks authors created as if they were in his shoes.
Google OpenSocial Now Live!
Did your friends say what it was they hated about Scheme after taking that class? I can see where people might make an association between the language and the difficult tasks they were being asked to perform with it.
Or YouTube and the dinner party story. Plus it had three co-founders, not two.
People who aren't on vacation leave tips too. And because it's a finely ingrained custom. There's a real person in front of you who will not get paid if you don't tip them, and you see them and they see you.

To most people, Britney Spears is not real. They don't know her, and don't care about her. They won't pay her a cent for her new album because they don't have to face her in person.
Yeah. Up here in the Northeast, New England is basically Boston. All Massachusetts/New Hampshire/Rhode Island/eastern Connecticut of it. (Vermont and Maine are nowhere, and western Connecticut is NYC.)
What about Radiohead?
I don't think so. Humans typically display that behavior in person, but not behind each other's backs. Humans aren't hard coded to actually be fair, they're only hard coded to give that appearance.
Suppose you have a function f of two variables and all you know about it is that f(x,y)=x+y for a few values of x,y. With this data, the computer extrapolates linearly and finds f(x,y) for _all_ values of x,y. The computer just "learnt" how to add! If all you have is symbols, however, you have to have numbers associated with those symbols. But you can't expect 1 correspond to '1' and 2 to '2'. As a result, your function f - and its extrapolation - will have nothing to do with addition (f won't even be linear).
The Internet is converging: robots meet cute-overload
I think most people feel bad when they do something mean and good when they do something virtuous, even when no one is watching. It's hard to say whether it's nature or nurture, but it's definitely there.
It's not unusual for people to try to seem younger, but this is the first case in my knowledge of a startup founder lying about his age.
So am I correct in assuming that you are looking for a machine that can do the mapping of a symbol into a form that the function can learn from? Your visual and auditory systems do this, and since they are physical systems this mapping is computable.

By the way, for the addition example , the neural network needs only one example, e.g. 1+1=2, applied repeatedly to discover the addition of any two inputs. There is no extrapolation between examples needed in this case.
Mozilla, Microsoft reps argue over the future of web scripting
How did you like Amherst (the region) compared to the outskirts of Boston?
Is that you, Captain_Obvious?
It's a fake codec installer. Requires admin password to install.
Daring Fireball: Apple Needs a Nikon
"It's hard to say whether it's nature or nurture ..."

The (extremely fascinating) field of evolutionary psychology gives some pretty convincing arguments that our brains are hard-wired for reciprocal altruism. Hard-wiring of reciprocal altruism in the form of emotions like guilt and gratitude is one of the main reasons humans can form these large and mostly stable social structures.

EvPsych basically makes one important observation and asks the natural question leading from it: Just like our eyes and hands, our minds have also been developed in response to evolutionary pressures. What were these pressures and how do they account for the features we see in ourselves, like language, love, laughter, crying, etc?
You would probably want to go for size, not just strength, so about 10 reps per set instead of 4 or 5, about 3 sets plus a warmup set, and about 3-5 exercises per body area, and repeat about once a week. So, about four times per week. You really want to take about 45 to 55 minutes, unless you do cardio for 20 minutes beforehand to build up cardiovascular strength as well, in which case you would spend about 1:30 at a gym, four times per week. That's all it takes. Tomorrow, I'll try to find some links.

But the main thing is to eat a lot of protein, drink plenty of water (to flush your kidneys), eat many meals throughout the day, and get lots of sleep. That's what's harder to do than going to the gym.
First OpenSocial Application Hacked Within 45 Minutes
understand the problems being solved by existing services. Come up with a different/better solution. Key is understanding problem domain - me thinks.
P2P Downloaders Buy More Music According to New Study in Canada
"...there is a strong positive relationship between P2P file-sharing and CD purchasing."
That point about chess is highly debatable.

Brain scans on domain-specific experts (math and chess are domain-specific skills) have shown activation in areas that store episodic memory. What this means, is that a large part of the "expertness" comes from efficient retrieval from long term memory (a fast pipeline between RAM and HDD, if you will). Writing to HDD, in the brain at least, is usually an incremental process.

I am not a chess player, but in go, this makes perfect sense. You start with the most basic strategies and build on them as you advance. If the skill gap is too wide you'd probably drown in confusion trying to take apart what is going on.

Granted, it's not black and white. If you're smart you'd be able to take bigger jumps and piece together several steps with each jump, in which case, for you, playing somebody faaar better is simply a reasonable next step for you, but relative to your skill level it's still a "slow" process.
If the audience is shallow enough to like a site more based on the founder's age, it's only fitting that he should lie about it. Caesar's to Caesar.
CollegeBoard could make use of a python switch...
Goodbye to All That
this article has nothing to do with hacking. it's an article about obama and the election that i found interesting.
Next: Tom is not the founder of MySpace.

People should read up the history of MySpace.
Games. But of course, Apple has much more room for growth overall.
"Before Ning, I started Netscape"

This is an impressive organization led by an impressive man. I think that they have potential. Give these folks a go.
I'm sure it's fantastic to work at Google, if you're the kind of person who wants to work in a big company.

As for me, I made a cool mashup with the maps API, and they offered me a job, subject to approval by HR. You could tell by the way they were talking that they thought they were offering me a glimpse of a ticket to heaven. When I asked some clarifying questions, they didn't even bother to answer them. Silence for the insolent fool!

So arrogant they undoubtedly are. People inside the company find it hard to understand why anyone would not leap at the chance to work there. I was actually considering it but they shut down the conversation, and I'm glad about it now. I turned the mashup into a company and it now brings in a lot more than even Google would consider paying me.
you are wrong because, the scenario is that they have nothing yet just an idea, and being among the founders 1/3 should be the least he would be getting.

"If it's some sort of enterprise software, and they have massive experience and connections in the industry they plan on serving, as well as the ability to sell, and possibly a line on funding, 2% might be acceptable"

That would just raise the value of their idea and their contribution, not that he should be offered 2%. It's obvious that their value is zero if there is no product built. That could raise his contribution to even more than 33% and not drop it to an "acceptable" 2%! It's ridicilus. If they are so sure about their idea then they should just pay someone to build the software for their valuable idea, which I am sure is as much naive as their attitude.

And from http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=73708, someone can make the assumption that there is no salary. Which is why he should be considered founder and no employee.

It is really offensive and provocative for someone to be offered only 2%!

They basis of your thoughts is based in wrong assumptions.

Other mistakes:

"There aren't many professions where someone who is great at his job would be preferred over 10 people"

The characteristic of a profession for someone's capability to worth a lot more than the sum of N others combined, is not restricted to only programmers or limited to a small number of professions. The correct way to say it, is that the number of the people who are way better than others is a lot less than those who aren't.

"So if you think lack of knowledge market rates for developers is the case, you might want to explain to them that they're shooting themselves"

If they do lack the knowledge of "market rates" they should be kind to discuss the value of his contribution. This show that they are naive and want to take advantage of someone. Just this by its own is enough to ignore them because amongst others negatives its an indication they dont evaluate their enviroment, their assets and people, So, why trust their contribution?

"They might simply be unaware that they're offering such a low amount that they're potentially hurting themselves by ensuring they end up with a mediocre developer, if any at all."

If they were unware of the value of writting software they would probably try to pay for the software as much less they can. But instead they went to him and tryed to "hire" him thinking they can fool.

"So try explaining. It's possible, albeit unlikely, that they'll realize how much they need your assistance, and if not, at least you tried to do them a favor."

They know they need his assistance otherwise they wouldn't have gone to him.

"So I'd tend to say no, unless you really had a lot of faith in those two guys. I suppose you'd have to have some to even consider the deal,"

Having faith to guys that treat you innapropriately is error prone, especially for a startup.

Oh, and it gave me a headache reading all those undeterministic values of the words you are using "not so many", "how big", "that bad either". Compared to what?
They just added confusion to the point you are trying to make.
Talk to people. Tell them you're starting a company. Lay out an idea. It doesn't have to be good. It's been my experience that this scenario triggers an irresistible impulse in the other person to tell you _their_ ideas. Sooner or later, you'll hear something interesting. Explore it and refine it.

The biggest mistakes you can make, IMO, are (a.) thinking your idea is too stupid to start with, and (b.) keeping it a secret. The idea you start with almost certainly won't be what you finish with; the important thing is to get started. And if you don't talk about it, you'll never really explore, refine or (as you'll almost certainly need to) abandon it for something better.

Most people have something interesting to say. Find out what it is.
Breaking: More on Facebook's ads, and potential conflict with developers
lol, great find ;)

"Are you telling me the nightly nacho cheese masks aren't working?"
No thanks. Who needs yet another programming language, when they have LISP? Ruby may be hot for several years, but LISP is forever.
Firefox plugin for highlighting text in pages
is there any plugin with which ii can highlight certain areas in wikipedia articles permanently?
Building for a target market of one is a bit too narrow in many cases to be a good idea for something you hope to sell to a wider audience.
You find ideas in one of several ways: 1) you bricolage them together from reading a lot in a wide range of topics or 2) you think long and hard about a single problem you want to solve. In the former, you come up with something interesting and new because it's an unexpected and novel recombination of ideas normally not found in the same place (cross-discipline). For the latter, you will cover a large and interesting search space where you hopefully find a number of interesting ideas that each taken by itself gives you just a small part of the solution.
Meeting Ev in Oxford in November 04 was one of the catalysts to me leaving my banking job and coming to the Valley. For that, I'll always be grateful (and that he invited us to work in the Obvious offices for YC).
Tom Coates Future of Web Apps, Translated for Product Managers - 06
Thinking in Web 2.0: Sixteen Ways
Training examples.
Frankly I trust adobe and mozilla 10^100 times more then Microsoft. The last time MS got any sort of browser majority look at the stagnation and problems that we got lumped with (only just coming out of now). Also I don't think Brendan is a "rep" of the same caliber as whatever random shill microsoft allocates to the project.

Me bitter? nah. Realist.
What bothers me about Pell's blog entry is that he acts as if Powerset has already accomplished something and that this is just some type of fine-tuned adjustment.

Giving a bunch of private demos and keeping the community waiting while hyping your solution is not impressive. I work in natural language interfaces (http://geo.anaphoric.com) so I know how difficult it is to actually put up a demo that does something. Check out our demo and you can assess if it has any value. But at least we am willing to show something!

But powerset might ruin the reputation of natural language interfaces yet again. Where's the beef Powerset!?
Even if your stuff isn't so great, you must show it. Or make a firm announcment about when you will show it. Don't let this whole thing just fizzle down without at least giving us all a peek.

Yes I have contacted PowerSet about getting into their powerlabs several times now and while I have been promised an invitation, I still am not being let in to take a look. This bugs me.

All this said, if they really knock this out of the park I will turn around and be a cheerleader for them. I want them to be great!
Exactly, there's Boston but then what? The east coast is terrible for the most part. Girls uglier in most places too.
Computers can form concepts, really?
"Extrapolation is the process of constructing new data points outside a discrete set of known data points."
That was like reading a dating site profile for Brad Pitt.
Every time you find yourself/someone else disappointed with something, or unable to do something, instead of thinking "That's just how things are I suppose" ask yourself "Could I fix this situation if I really tried?"

Write the ideas down. Look over your list. Pick the one that seems the most interesting AND has the best (clearest/easiest) method of distribution.
deploying a working system is a "success story" worthy of being written up ? I have a hundred or so "success stories" to tell. :-P
Analyse existing systems. Divide them into subideas, and mash up them.

For instance, Gmail is a MUA with good spam filter, keeping e-mails in threads. So, why not create a blog reader that keeps discussions between bloggers in threads, making it easy to follow?
I think it doesn't matter if you play people who are slightly better or far better players than you are. The secret is getting your ass kicked as often as possible.
I think the way to translate this principle for hackers is: "Continually aim to be the stupidest person in the room".

If you want to improve quickly you must work on projects with people who have a lot more skill and experience than you do.
Right. Confusing extrapolation with interpolation.
As long as you have sufficient ego to not take the experience of being repeatedly outperformed to mean that you suck.
Perl wasn't the motivation behind creating Python.