skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"I love the Internet, online communication and Facebook because these technologies allow me to do what I do best: multitask."

OK, let's get this straight once and for all...

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS MULTI-TASKING.

Even when you think you are, you aren't. You're just switching really fast. Probably too fast to do any one thing well. Which makes the following statement all the more ridiculous:

"I want devices like BlackBerrys, Palm Pilots and the like, to allow me to stay focused on work at all times."

Does anyone even remember what "focused" means any more?

Just do one thing, the most important thing until it's not the most important thing any more. Then do THAT most important thing. Don't need much technology for that. Just a little discipline.

Now stop reading this and go do that.
c) are my thoughts exactly. Few months ago I even wrote about why does it happen:
http://nik.blue-edge.bg/?p=17
awesome stuff, i hope you guys win!!
Joel on software's, Business of software: http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/?biz
yeah, there are a few problems for us with their service,

1. we live in America and because our politicians suck so much, our currency is falling (go home ownership, at the cost of our currency, frickn idiots) and its hard to track what we are really spending on a service that bills in pounds.

2. they are expensive, and in some cases about 2x what ec2 is.

3. they do not have an image deployment system like amazon, nor do they have an s3 solution.

all and all, i think that once we move to linux, with mono we will be better off, as we can run RoR, PHP, C#, and Java all side by side on a scalable server platform.
if you want to see others in your area look at http://hackrtrackr.com
My impression was that they moved to asp.net when they were having scaling problems and Microsoft promised them free consulting to solve those problems... provided they switched to .NET.
I see "Java/C++" and people generally know what it means. Fair point, though.
Can you email me your digits?
Hard question, but probably no. First, I don't think a "youtube for games" will succeed, at least I wouldn't use it, but people keeps watching sports life/on TV and I find it quite boring so maybe in 5/10 years there are more pople watching the Final match of the Unreal Tournament World Series than the Superbowl.

Second, $500k seems a way too much! I believe it's better to start small but be ready to scale. And more for a risky business like that.

So, I wouldn't give him $500K, $25K to $50K yes but no more, at least until they have a public site and need the money to grow.
Are You Keyword Optimizing Your Resume?
I provided an example where the answer to the question posed is false. There are examples where it is true. Since a counterexample exists then the conjecture is considered false. A conjecture can be false even though there exist instances where it is true.
I Write Code Movement
"Surely the lives saved would be worth any loss of privacy?"

Very scary mindset you've got there.
Suppose such f is given that the roots of f (of order n) are bounded by 1 in the complex plane. Now let f1=f, f2=-f, a1=1/2, a2=1/2. Then a1f1+a2f2 = 0.
Here are 4 twitter-like sites - built with php and mysql. I guess they won't scale all that well, we'll see :)

I just wanted to get them out there, like, quick.. so, people could, like, use them.

www.HelpWorldClimate.com

www.HelpWorldPoverty.com

www.HelpWorldPeace.com

www.HelpWorldWildlife.com
Hey this is the modern world. We don't expect to take personal risk for anything. If there is any death at all from doing something, there's somebody out there who wants to take away our freedoms to do it in the name of "safety". This is just the logical continuation of that trend (which has been going on for many decades, I might add)
When I applied to Google last year, in addition to the usual sections (Education, Scholarships, Awards, Employment, Research, Other Activities, Publications, and Software written), I listed "Grep Bait":

Algorithms, Computer Algebra, Computer Security, Cryptography,
Delta Compression, File Synchronization, FreeBSD,
Matching with Mismatches, Numerical Analysis, Parallel Computing.

I think listing keywords is useful, but it's important to be honest about the fact that you're listing keywords -- and to separate them into a different section in order to avoid cluttering up the more substantive sections.
I think that normally, when people compare Java to .NET, they're either comparing the Runtime Environments, the Class Libraries, or they're comparing the whole 'development stack' which usually includes the primary language (eg Java or C#) and the primary OS (eg Solaris/*nix or Windows) and a variety of other tools like Eclipse or Visual Studio. Java is funny in that it uses the same name for like 4 different things, while MS makes a greater effort to distinguish between them.

VB.NET is basically C# with a bit of syntactic sugar to make life easier for Visual Basic 6.0 programmers transitioning to a more Java-like development style. The last time I checked, most of the .NET documentation includes code samples in each of the 4 main languages (C#, VB, J#, and C++).NET Usually, the C#, VB, and J# versions are close to identical. I've heard that the C# optimizer works better than any of the others, but that was 2 years ago and I didn't follow up.
Replace each x with 2x.
Show me something new
Conversion Attribution - Which Ad Is Converting for You?
This posting is heavy on marketing and advertising, but is relevant to any digital media startup who is using ad dollars for their business model.
If only raising money were that easy.
Maybe after all of these answers it's time to fix the question?
Use keywords.

In my experience tech resumes should run a lot longer than normal resumes. First of all, 99% of the time they're being read by machines, not people. Put a bulleted list of "why should I care about you" items at the top of the first page for the humans to consume. The rest of the stuff, at least initially, is machine food. If they like you, you can both talk about the rest of it during the interview. Of course its totally different scenario if you're doing something like a resume to present to VCs or something. A resume is a sales tool. You have to know the audience. Unfortunately, for places like monster, dice, and such, the audience is a machine. That means keywords pay off.
Memory test - Firefox 2.0.0.9 vs Firefox 3.0 b 1
The original comment was: "C#/C++" is about as valid as "Java/JavaScript"

It was a really bad analogy. I believe I have made my point that C# is a lot closer to C++ than Java is to Javascript. Thanks for joining in, though. I take it you stand by your comment that I "clearly have not used both languages"

As for rambling, one does what one can.
yeah good point I am in the uk. There storage system is integrated into the package and is actually pretty neat. They do have a way to setup your server and then save that setup and then startup other instances like it.

I have not looked at mono for a while I might go back and have a look.
How depressing that webvan.com is owned by a vanilla domain parker.

It's actually not that bad of an idea--selling groceries to UMC city people. They just executed badly.
How to get subscribers
I think Jolie is a terrible casting choice. A friend of mine suggested that a more appropriate choice would be some unknown actor. I think that would lend a lot of credibility.
Or getting work experience outside of your area of academic study.
One thing worth mentioning is that this sounds like fraps/youtube integrated not just a niche video site. If his video capturing technology is as good as he claims (I'm in the wait for the private beta so we'll see) he may have something here.
Political Group Protests Facebook Ad Program
Is this going to be a new trend? In this case the group used the site to create a group to protest the site! Is it just "shakedown" politics redux for the web?
Glad to see Hacker News fans like Classical music.

I am a huge classical music fan. That's all I listen to.
Dearly Departed 2: Readers' Most Mourned Dead Products
Again, these are all transistent issues. All it takes is for one team to get its act together and make something that actually doesn't suck.

There are no technical barriers for the electronic book to overcome. It's all politics. And ass-hats.
"If you told me you were going to write me a check for $10 million, I'd say, 'Forget it'"
--Lance Tokuda, the chief executive of RockYou, which developed the "Super Wall" Facebook application.

I have a difficult time seeing the value in an application that can be developed by a first-year computer science student in one weekend.

Also, if Facebook ever decided to enhance their Wall feature, Super Wall would become obsolete. (Facebook would never cannibalize its highest profile developers like this. At least not yet.)
Phone controlled gaming on jumbotron (Dan Albritton's "secret" project)
peter at pchristensen dot com. It's in my profile too
Nov. 21, 1905: It Was a Very Good Year, If You Were Einstein
How to Destroy the Web 2.0 Look.
He probably meant that the sequence of partial sums should be stable, as a whole.
[A real polynomial P is said to be stable if all its roots lie in the left half-plane.](http://mathworld.wolfram.com/StablePolynomial.html)

What's your definition of stable?
And besides, the Facebook deal was "only" 200 million dollars. If Facebook tanks tomorrow, that is a small loss for a large business event. As others have pointed out, the numbers today are small by 1999-standards.
Of course, Lance is saying that because no one is actually stupid enough to write him a check for $10 million right now. Not for Super Wall, at least.

Most Facebook-only apps are in absurdly precarious business positions: they're features, not products, they've got a low barrier to entry for competitors, and they exist at the whim of a shrewd, aggressive company with a history of "incorporating" applications on its platform into its own product with little regard to the developers who created them.
The purpose laid out at the beginning of the video was the ease of developing UI code. But in reality, the author does almost no UI development. He sets up projects, and then in every case where a UI could be auto generated, uses it verbatim.

Forgiving the overwhelming simplicity of the sample project, the video gives little insight on how difficult it is to modify and fine tune interfaces, with the notable exception of pointing out if they work in "html editors". I do not know a single serious developer who would trust his html to a wysiwyg html editor.
I think GWT is very cool. I wouldn't attempt to write a big application in Javascript but I would do it in Java. Not only I am more familiar with Java, but I also appreciate having strong typing as a safenet.
Guys, you are totally right. I found a simple, 1st order counterexample. This was more an exercise in my wanting to believe it to be true than math. Sorry to waste your time.
I meant the z-plane not s plane but it doesn't matter.
I think one of the reasons the "web 2.0 look" is popular is that it is fairly easy to design. Basic photoshop skills and a little bit of aesthetics go a long way.

retro-vintage, custom fonts, crazy edges and textures. These are all pretty difficult for a novice. I tend to think most startups don't have a lot of time or money to become or hire photoshop/design experts, and probably the majority of hackers aren't experts either.
Pay Me for My Content - creative people and the web
I propose Dec 6 at 5pm in Makati
RoboDev Talk emphasizes need for more software engineers working in robotics
VC pressure also tends to dictate the decisions your company makes - and this is where I see a lot of problems.
I assume that was $10 million for more than just Super Wall. RockYou's not poorly positioned in this whole widget/app/gadget/plugin space. Meanwhile, Super Wall is a Facebook developer's boring weekend away from irrelevance.
The design elements he wants to see replace the web 2.0 look:

* Retro-Vintage
* Warm Dark Color Palette
* Rich Textures
* Grunge-Retro Fonts
* Rough Edges
* Ornaments
* Stains
* Rich Full Layered Headers

I can't stand most of these. And boucher is right, they're a lot harder to do anyway.

I think the designs that appeal to me are minimally dressed up stuff, like Hacker News and Socialmoth. And the appeal is not just the high data-ink percentage, but the fact that it doesn't take that much coding to achieve, and so is elegant conceptually as well as visually. It does take some thought and skill though, as my own forays into web-design have shown me.
What would your friends and family think of your web surfing habits? [pdf]
Co-Founder Issues Driving You Crazy? 7 Simple Insights.
Double plus goodthinkful, comrade.
Ask YC: Has anyone used the Chumby yet?
I'm thinking about picking one up, but it'd be nice to hear any experiences you've had before I do.
It's not such horrid advice to follow.

As mentioned in another comment already, Loopt uses ASP.Net in addition to other Microsoft and open source technologies.

If I could start over, I'd use it again.

ASP.Net the framework is great. By framework I mean the request pipeline and everything else on which the high level items like the TextControl are built atop. There's a lot of crap at the top (built in controls, page viewstate, etc), but you're not forced to use it. Hooks are exposed at almost every level of the stack where you can override the default behavior to do what you want (and I do). The trick is knowing when to NOT use the built in stuff.

Also of note is that while ASP.Net necessitates IIS and Windows, it doesn't lock you down any further if you're willing to take a few risks (no vendor support). From the beginning Loopt's website has used a custom session state provider: At first it stored all user state in encrypted cookies, but now it's moving to a fault tolerant, distributed Erlang based store. Results from PostgreSQL servers running on FreeBSD power many of our GIS based features. *nix based boxes perform all of Loopt's geocoding and map generation tasks.

At Loopt we try to pick the best tool for the job. Sometimes it's sold by Microsoft.

Sidenote: You can pay for Microsoft software on a per box per month basis, and only pay for what you use. I think that Windows Server Web Edition is only about $10/box/month. Not actually that big a deal in the big scheme of things. For example, good developers are WAY more expensive than software =P
I don't know about you but I like the minimalistic look.

And then again I thought that ncurses is a great UI :)
I've taken a good look at Weblocks and I think I like what I see. Has anyone (besides CoffeMug) worked with or have any other feedback?

Also, how mature/complete is Weblocks? I know it's new but that doesn't mean it's not ready for use. I'm shopping for a web framework now and I'd like to know if I should consider it. Most of the brains of my startup is data mining/composition, but I need a front-end to display those data.
Managing CraigsList Posts
Now that the holidays are approaching, there seems to be way too many things to do and no time. Here is a method to help manage your local outsourcing efforts with CraigsList. What are you planning to outsource?

This is useful if you outsource small programming jobs.
I dunno, these designs feel very "2001 ad agency microsite" to me. Nothing post-web-2.0 about them, more like pre-web-2.0.

This is what happened when you take your best print designers and set them loose on the web. How do you suppose those sites render once you much with text size? Usability/web standards did not suddenly go out of vogue, did they?

Ooo, the original presentation has much more actual content:

http://elliotjaystocks.com/blog/archive/2007/destroy-the-web...
Hmm. I've never used that before. Very annoying. Search for "XYZ song" and it brings up a list. So you watch the pretty-the-first-time-you-see-them animated windows fly around and it says..."We're creating a station that plays XYZ song"...

and then it says, "Lets start it off by playing ABC song..."

Huh?

Why did it list something in the search results that it doesn't have, only to play something else? And what the hell is "creating a station"? Just play the song.

And as for classical music, they didn't have Turina, but they did figure out his first name when I only entered his last. Great feature. Probably leeched google.
Ask the Wizard: Early Stage Board of Directors
This is exactly the opposite of what I believe in and I'll tell you why.

First of all, here is my resume...

"I have run 25 large scale development projects and have written over 10,000 original programs across multiple technologies, industries, and disciplines. I will do whatever it takes to get the job done. If I know something, I'll do it and teach it, if not, I'll learn it. If you're adamant about getting the job done, let's talk."

I consider myself as scarce and special as any opportunity I explore. I will never post my resume anywhere. I will not be a "round peg" for a "round hole" for any recruiter, HR department, or machine. If someone is looking for "x years of y", that tells me that their vision is so limited that I would never be happy working there anyway.

And I suspect many people here should be thinking the same way. Shouldn't you?
Why stop with tv shows? How about sports betting on unreal tournament matches?
"Mr Stocks also noted that what makes a site part of the web 2.0 is not its looks, is the way it works."

The article should have ended here.
|Also, how mature/complete is Weblocks?

Now that control flow is in, I have to implement two more things to consider Weblocks "ready" - more flexible UI presentation, and a default data store.

The first issue is that current default UI generation is somewhat limited in terms of how much you can customize it in declarative manner, so people have to resort to writing custom presentation more often than necessary.

Currently you'd have to hook weblocks to a data store on your own (some people have done that). I plan to make a pluggable system with a default store (probably CLSQL). Beyond that, people can contribute their own drivers to whatever store they wish.

At this point weblocks will be very usable. There will be many little things. Some that come to mind: automatically bundling css and js into one big file instead of many small ones for performance, more declarative validators, specialized presentation for more commonly used data types, "persistant" actions (so that you can send a URL of a grid sorted in a certain way to your friend), etc. However, each of these can be implemented in a couple of days or less, so I don't consider these issues essential.

After implementing the two major features described above, I'll move on to using Weblocks to write a commercial product. I'll deal with little issues as they come along.
Ask YC: Patents in US- Android competition
Please, could you share your experience in patents for software particularly in mobile communication? Any examples of valid patent application would be very helpful e.g. has Loopt any? Also general advices for what to look for and be aware in patent process (before I dive in to read the whole patent spec).

Im from Europe and consider to take part in Android challenge, but without patent I guess I can't stand a chance; the idea is the important part.

Thanks a lot- Stepan
Thanks for the insight kogir. There are a lot of young people that don't really know MS pricing scheme.
Symlinks in Windows.
I'm interested too. I'll be in Manila for the holidays.

I'll send you an email.

There was a related thread a few weeks ago.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=76204
I like the 2 insights:
-You need a cofounder that can build it.
-You need a cofounder that can sell it.

These are not necessarily mutually exclusive skills, but there is rarely time to do both as well as you need to.
Check out http://www.techdo.com/firefox-wonder-edition/

It's a super slim, zero-install (you can use it side-by side with your current FF installation), modded FF 1.5.

I've been using it for a week and it's a huge relief after putting up with FF2's awful performance for so long! The FF team really needs to fix all their garbage collection flaws in the next version if they want to retain their user base.
The Facebook Browser?
I like where you are at right now, and your direction. When I get some free time I will test drive it.
Yea I was going to say the same thing, his company is more than just a "YouTube for gamers". His secret weapon seems to be his "software camera". I'm actually curious as to how he is implementing that without requiring the standard video capturing hardware. As far as I know, there is no good software-only solution that won't bring your gaming to a crawl.
Sounds good. Do you have a timeframe for adding those pieces? It'll probably be early next year when I'll be ready for the front end of my app, and everything I've read about Weblocks makes me think it'd be a good match.

I'd be interested in hearing about your commercial project as well. If you're in the mood to share any details, I'd love to hear about them here or by email (peter at pchristensen dot com).
Excellent point. This is something that I'm very passionate about. Great developers are most often horrific designers; but they say things like "I like minimalistic designs", which, while true for us developer types (when we're looking for high-volume content), doesn't scale. If Web 2.0 is about the experience, a great design is just as important as a good idea. (that is not to say that one type of design IS web 2.0)

I've written more extensively on it here:
http://issackelly.com/blog/2007/10/new-way-of-managing-conte...

And I'm basing my startup around that exact idea.

If you're a startup, get a co-founder with some serious design skills, it's more important than most of us want to admit.
Parenscript- Compile Lisp to Javascript
If I know something, I'll do it and teach it, if not, I'll learn it.

That's fine if someone is looking to hire a generalist. But if I need to hire a cryptographer, I want to hire someone who already knows cryptography -- not someone who will go away and spend ten years learning before he's useful.

I've heard it said that the words "quick learner" on a CV really mean "I don't know anything yet"; and my immediate impression reading what you've written is "ok, that's nice... now, what are you actually good at?"
Leveraging internet and crowdsourcing to optimize a real-world problem
Where do credit card fees come from? Fees up 117% in the past five years
Coding Horror: Has CAPTCHA Been "Broken"?
Powerlabs: And insight into Powerset's technology
Prime Minister of Britain apologizes for loss of personal data of millions of Britons
Esquire: Six Ideas That Will Change the World
Edison the Inventor, Edison the Showman
10 Ways IT Invades Thanksgiving
This looks a few years old? ...but the first time I've read it.

I get a nerdy warm fuzzy feeling when physicists and theoretical computer scientists acknowledge the same barriers (in this case incompleteness).
jRails - jQuery on Rails
Overcoming Bias: Artificial Addition
But super wall has lock in, vis-a-vis the existing posts.
I agree SuperWall isn't worth $10 million, but wanted to point out that "could be created in a weekend" doesn't mean anything at all. A lot of successful startups could be written in a weekend.

For example, this guy created the core structure of twitter in 170 lines of Scala and lift. http://blog.lostlake.org/index.php?/archives/55-Prance-with-... That could easily have been done in a weekend.

Often you start with something fast/tiny and iterate like mad to fill in the gaps, but the basic concept is often easy to start.
Reddit readers manipulate AdSense
"Redditers are calling everyone to click on Rudy Giuliani's paid ads simply because they cost him money."
Ask YC: Asking users to pay for new features
You have an application with many happy users, but they're asking for more functionality.

How about a donate button to add on individual features? This allows the site to remain free and open to everyone while still collecting revenue in addition to advertisements.