skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Income is not the important factor.

Screw income, businesses can run on fairy dust, Tink!

> Read pmarca's blog posts on "product/market fit" to understand.

I read that when it was first posted, and it's nothing new, it's the same "make something people want". Which comes down to the same thing, income. "Product/market fit" is determined by exactly one thing, making money. It can be garbage, as long as you can get people to pay for it.

"Scaling up" translates to "increasing expenditures". And what is "traction", if not having an established customer base, i.e. people to make money off of?

Even if you're considering the case of startups which don't have a user base -- e.g. they are working on some cool technology in-house, as opposed to something with simple technology but a lot of users ala social news sites -- there's still a customer there: Google or Yahoo or whoever is doing the acquiring. Then you're finding one BIG customer instead of thousands of individual customers.

So it's still back to the same thing, money out vs. money in. I don't know why people like to mystify it with tales of startup lore.

Even PG's "If you can just avoid dying, you get rich" doesn't specify a timeframe; of course if you have an unlimited amount of time and resources, you can eventually "succeed" -- except if you already have such staggering financial resources available to you, you're already rich, so it's a wash.

In any realistic consideration, it's possible that you keep changing your approach into one of the many other directions that also won't work, instead of one of the few that will. E.g. after 6 tries, you don't hit on a PayPal, but on failure #7. Then you run out of money. Oops, you didn't successfully implement the "don't die" principle.
More Facebook Advertisers Bail From Beacon. Plus, New Concerns.
Ask news.yc: Is Mark Zuckerberg Shawn Fanning 2.0?
"The old testers at Microsoft checked lots of things: they checked if fonts were consistent and legible, they checked that the location of controls on dialog boxes was reasonable and neatly aligned, they checked whether the screen flickered when you did things, they looked at how the UI flowed"

That's a crack-up. Please, regale us with more tales of the incredible quality of Microsoft products of the 90's.
looks really simple just the way I like it...

also you can plugin your own routing if you want to do it your own way I think. I watched the video from part1 and it was mentioned that most of the mvc stuff can be swapped out.

I am really looking forward to getting my hands on this.
The problem is, yes, there are libraries available for these things, but as far as I can tell they're not usually included or standardized. When I fire up Ruby or Python or whatever I know that most of the things I need are already there, and I don't usually have to go hunting down libraries all over the net.

There are just too many options for dialects, libraries, etc. I want one standard Lisp that has all the "expected" things built in so I can focus on programming.
Golden Gate Bridge, Fisherman's Warf, Alcatraz, etc if you're into the touristy stuff. The hotels around Union Square are nice and centrally located.
Check out: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=67460
BTree: An Incredibly Useful Structure

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Btree
RockYou Dominates The Fake Business World
Hilarious as always.
It might be interesting to compare Mindrosia with other methods used to extract useful information from users as a by-product of some other activity:

http://recaptcha.net/learnmore.html

http://www.espgame.org/
I stayed at this hotel when I was in SF recently.
http://travel.yahoo.com/p-hotel-358053-travelodge_presidio_s... It was just about the cheapest hotel in SF and it was surprisingly decent, other than the thin walls and unfriendly front desk person. It's in a nice neighboorhood and was very close to a bus line that goes downtown/to the Caltrain. Near that hotel we ate we here which was great for an inexpensive meal. http://www.yelp.com/biz/PuOsLglHAg0kpHVvGj2new

Thanks for the advice last time everyone, it was a great trip!
Uncov is getting old. It was funny for awhile, but now it just seems like he's being an asshole for the sake of being an asshole. Like the "Web 2.0" version of Maddox.
That's got to be the easiest way of getting passwords. Forget keyloggers, the keyboard broadcasts everything.

Which is why I always use a wired keyboard. Any examples of wireless keyboards that use a better protocol? E.g. plug it in, set up an x.509 cert, then you can unplug it; and have it pad out keystrokes (a bit like chaffing and winnowing, or steganography) so an eavesdropper can't tell the length of what you're typing.
http://www.news.com/2100-1029_3-5109435.html

OnStar intially helped the FBI in a case by letting them listen into a conversation inside a vehicle, then decided to sue the FBI over it. That doesn't mean OnStar won't change it's mind later...
Programming Languages and Cognitive Dissonance
What more axes are there?
and I hope it keeps going downhill. The way this feature was implemented is unacceptable.
Ubiquitous Connectivity - Distribution Trumps Aggregation
If you develop your product or service you have to think about widgets, APIs, web services, feeds, third-party integration, collaboration, coopetition and every opportunity to distribute your services. To reach customers you have to face them where they are and nowadays more and more time is spend on social networks like Facebook or MySpace.
Touch Screen BlackBerry to Take on the iPhone in 2008?
This blog post includes an image and technical specifications for what could be the first touch screen BlackBerry from Research In Motion (RIM).
I have read many of Joel's posts and most of them I find quite lame. There is no substance. His world seems to be centered around how to developing boring software optimally rather than making next generation of software which nobody has ever made. This is apparent from his ideas against the grad school where you actually learn to do new things and also looking at the kind of software which fog creek makes which seriously makes me want to yawn. Why is he given so much importance by the people? I really don't understand.
It seems that, if anything, he's attacking the ivory tower mentality that a lot of geeks have. He's looking at the whole software picture, rather than just the utilitarian aspect.
Poker blogs are a tiny niche in the overall blogosphere. Poker itself may not be one, but blogs about it (where a very highly trafficked one might get 1.5k uniques a day) definitely reside in the long tail.
Programming CouchDB with Javascript
Firstly, the BB is not going to get rid of the keypad like that mockup. It is far more likely they add touchscreen and leave the keypad.

Secondly, they aren't going to go all out with touch the way Apple did. Their entire OS is geared to the keyboard with a few clicks of the pearl.

Lastly, the actual portion of the market they compete at is quite small.
Matt Maroon:  Why I Quit Playing Poker For A Living
Thanks, that's a good resource, I'll take a look.
Jane says that her car's engine has a problem.

Jane works at a bakery.

Therefore, Jane is wrong.
don't go through this mental process.

I'm not suggesting that there is actual ratiocination going on when people look at ads. But a large, public, showy ad argues from authority much more than a little flickering thing on a website (that only I can see).
sounds a lot like trading.
How to name your company: Igor Naming Guide
in what sense?

(young entrepreneurs... popular companies... what in particular?)
rather than making next generation of software which nobody has ever made.

Yeah, good luck. I think Carmack performed the last instance of that right around 1993. Most Web 2.0 applications that I've seen are basically CRUD apps.
Fastest DeadPool Ever? IRSeek Shuts Down
Yeah it looks so much sexier to throw together some lines of rails code over the weekend and become a millionaire over night. However, most of the time getting successful actually entails some hard work. So don't laugh about Joel's posts too soon.

Besides, his latest feature for estimates sounded quite interesting (when he described it, anyway). Certainly more interesting than yet another "vote me up, vote me down" Web 2.0 application.
Things to do in the Bay Area.
Georgia Tech Edison Fund Provides Funding for Early-Stage Technology Companies
Joel has lot's of money, you don't (I presume - wildly)

Software that changes the world is a lottery with slightly worse odds. Software that solves boring problems effectively and elegantly is a good way to make a living.

I'd put Fog Creek up against the latest web 2.0 fad company lasting until 2020 any day of the week. There is some merit behind that.
They are used by 90% of the marketplace afterall.
the cool thing about poker v trading though is you need solid 6 figure bankroll to make a stable living trading, you can start poker with a few K or less
Online you could turn a $2k bankroll into six figures in a year, and it's actually fairly easy.
I think deserve some credit for getting a hold on the hardware diversity mess. A problem that Apple never had to solve.
I was hoping for a few juicy poker details, but, that aside, thanks for the very honest and engaging post.
Watch Paul Graham from afar.
Matt's implication that poker is more complex than chess is entirely unfounded. Computer scientists have been trying to create the best chess programs since the days of the first computer as a test of artificial intelligence. Poker has been ignored because a computer can easily figure out the odds (figuring out the strategy is the hard part), and it was never as popular as it is now. I would expect that a computer will be the best poker player in the world in a few years, one is already close now.
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9750210-7.html

Phil Laak (one of the best) didn't start playing poker seriously until he was 25. Contrast this with chess, where if you didn't start studying by the age of ten for hours every day, you don't have a chance at being the best.
Real programmers work on bug trackers. You can move the columns in tables around, for gods' sake! Why don't you people appreciate genius when you see it?

I bet it's because you don't understand pointer arithmetic. Morons...
Regardless of (purported) security issues, I'd choose a quite standards-compliant browser over a not-quite-standards-compliant browser any day.
Computer History Museum in Mountain View has a pretty cool 1.5 hr tour. You can see parts of a Babbage Difference engine, ENIAC, CRAY 1, 2's, One of GOOG's early server racks, washing machine sized hard drives, etc... It's a lot of fun.
How about DabbleDB?
i actually found his tone a bit condescending with an "I'm better/richer/smarter than you". many be people say they ignore ads that actually click on them, its cool to ignore ads. but the whole bit on middle America is lame.
Ruby VM Benchmarks: YARV (Ruby 1.9) vs JRuby vs..
you are incorrect imo

chess computers are better than people because chess computers brute force the problem, they can think millions of moves in advance and plan out every possible game path, a human can only think several moves in advance, so huge advantage for the computer.

in poker, there are only a handful of cards in play, only a few decision spots per hand, a pro poker player could probably program a computer to be as good as he is by giving it the rules which he plays by, but it is unlikely a computer will ever surpass the talent of the best players imo
Sounds corny, but try out one of the tour bus deals. It's a good way to see a lot of stuff quickly. Then you can do other stuff at your leisure.

I have great memories of neat stuff to do -- try taking a tour in the floatplane over the Bay. Or take a day and do Napa. Or check out the great restaurants. Or some of the great live music joints. Lots of fun stuff.
I'm a huge fan of Michael Mina for seafood, though it's rather spendy. It's definitely one of the finest seafood restaurants you'll ever visit.
There are still some sites that will give you a free $50 to start playing. I made more money exploiting affiliate schemes like that than I did playing poker. For a while, Party Poker required a $50 minimum to open an account and paid out $65 for referred account + around $25 in bonuses + free polo shirt, hat, and jacket. So I bought a Fark ad and gave out a bunch of Party Poker accounts.

Party Poker wouldn't pay me my money for 6 months, but they got a new affiliate manager who eventually cut me a check. I wonder if they cut their losses or if my players actually generated enough rake to pay me back.
fairly easy?
How do I go about doing this?

Edit: Never mind - realized this does not scale.
It's only easy if you have an extraordinary amount of self-discipline. I couldn't do it, though I am sure many here could if they really worked at it.
Google Looking at Detection Technology?
And recursion. You ignorant clod. You forgot recursion. Clearly you will never rise to the level of writing bug trackers in VBScript.
You are very incorrect. Here's where you're wrong:

1. Phil Laak is not one of the best poker players. Not even top 100. The fact that you think he is shows how little you know about poker. Also, I don't even know who Ali Esmali is.

2. The game (which I think was No Limit Hold'em) played was the simplest form of poker for a machine. Even if one became better at this than humans (which probably is possible in the not too distant future) it will be far from beating a 2-7 Triple Draw player.

3. Figuring out odds is trivial, but virtually useless. Figuring out odds as well as a human, who has the ability to put his opponent on a range of holdings, is not.

4. No poker bot ever made could come anywhere close to me in an 8 man, limit hold'em match, and there are far better players than me.

5. I don't know if chess has had more man hours dedicated to it. It probably has. But Polaris has been worked on for 26 years. That's certainly not insignificant. Phil Laak has probably been playing for 10 or so.

6. I'm a mediocre programmer at best but could easily write a chess program that, with infinite processing power, would be perfect. (I'm not sure if it would be unbeatable, as it is possible that with perfect play one side will always win.) I could not do that with poker.

7. Chess may be harder to learn for a human (though even there I'm not sure) but that doesn't mean it is also harder for a machine. Calculating the 18th power of 2 is harder for a human than picking out an apple from a group of pictures. Not the same for my PC.
Why is it unfounded that "poker is more complex than chess"? Chess lacks chance and bluffing. There is perfect knowledge of the state.

The long apprenticeship in chess doesn't mean chess is inherently tougher for computers than poker. It means for humans, chess is a difficult game that requires a lot of training. Humans would take a long time to memorize and incorporate book knowledge. Computers could suck in that knowledge in no time.

Babies acquire visual recognition and speech in a smaller time period than adults go from novice to grand masters in chess. So it depends on what you are learning, not just the time it takes.

It's also interesting that the computer vs human poker contest tried to remove "luck":

"The man vs. machine poker contest was designed to eliminate the luck factor by dealing the same cards in each hand, but in reverse. So in one hand, Laak might get lucky with two aces, but in the other room Esmali would be unlucky as the computer was dealt two aces. To finalize a winner, officials added the two human scores and two computer scores separately, and the highest number won."
What sort?
There are years of archives if you want to read about poker. Matt's blog was the only poker blog I ever got into. I think I found it from Fark.
Figuring out pot odds is an elementary part of poker. Most who play poker well can do that correctly, that is just as well as a computer. On the other hand combining those odds with an estimate of what other players and how they may react is a damn interesting problem for a human player or a computer programmer.

Isn't strategy the hard part of chess after all?
The most downloaded programs on SourceForge: P2P apps and Windows utilities
If you like views: twin peaks in SF, the Berkeley hills, the Marin headlands and lookouts around the GG bridge are some classics among many.

If you are considering further education, seeing the Berkeley and Stanford campuses might be interesting.

If you like electronics and shopping, Fry's (esp. flagship store in Sunnyvale) is worth a look.

Fisherman's Wharf is a tourist trap; best reason to go there is to catch a bay cruise/Alcatraz tour.

Upcoming is a great source to find relevant events; see http://upcoming.yahoo.com/search/?type=Events&q=&rt=... for a prospective SF-centered search.
The advice comes down to "Start at a low limit. Win consistently. Move up to a higher limit. Win consistently. Move up to a higher limit. Win consistently."

It's the winning consistently that you have to worry about.

Also, if you want to start playing poker using someone else's money, I would recommend these guys -- http://www.pokersourceonline.com/free-poker/money. They give you free money at one of the poker rooms.
A few minor corrections. First, most chess programs don't literally "brute force" the problem. A lot of work goes into pruning the search tree and only looking along the most promising paths. Second, humans can actually think many moves ahead along certain paths.

As other's have stated in this thread chess is particularly well suited to be played well by a computer program, but that does not make it trivial.
true. their copilot app (built by interns largely) is actually pretty cool.
they have a bit of competition now
http://www.oncetechnologies.com/radix/
http://www.aphplix.org/

probably 100's of others (probably not as good though). Dabble db is pre web2.0 though.
No matter how well you do something, sooner or later you reach the point where you question the value you are producing for others.

This sorta reminds me of the guy who got paid a fortune to dig holes in the beach, only to see them filled in by the ocean each night. No matter; he just got paid to dig them again the next day. Wasn't long before he thought, "This doesn't make any sense - I wanna build something that lasts and that others can use."

I wonder how big a role this kind of thinking played. The fact that you're part of ycombinator suggests that it's > 0.
Spolsky has a lot of good things to say, but he does take it a little too far sometimes. His technical credibility took a major hit in my eyes when I heard about the mess that is Wasabi. Still, the way he runs his company is very innovative, and he has a lot of good things to say about enhancing productivity. Overall, I wouldn't say he's a great technical resource, but in terms of running a successful niche business, he's got some good ideas.
Disqus Scobleized!
All the scaling you need to know at the very beginning:

Shared state is, at best, a necessary evil, and you should always be aware of how much there is, where it's going, and what it's for.
what the hell is wasabi? VBScript with picture functions?
> If you are considering further education, seeing the Berkeley and Stanford campuses might be interesting.

Drive down University Ave in Palo Alto. Absolutely gorgeous, in a way that you normally don't see on this coast.
"Fisherman's Wharf is a tourist trap; best reason to go there is to catch a bay cruise/Alcatraz tour."

Hey! I stop by the wharf whenever I'm in the area, I pick up a bread bowl of clam chowder and munch it while watching the sea lions brag. But yes, the interior of pier 39 itself is the worst sort of mall.
It's pretty easy really, and nothing secret. Read good books. Practice. Discuss with friends. Start off low, build your way up using proper bankroll management (which is found in said books).
Not straight up VBScript -- a poorly designed Basic dialect that is less powerful than VB.NET and far less general.
No Internet in South Florida if you use Bellsouth/AT&T
I'm using my tmobile dash to suck internet! I feel like I'm back in 1995!
The poker bots out there mostly suck because they don't need to be great to win lots of money from the weak players. The real problem the bots face is getting around anti-bot security measures.

But, although almost no effort has been put into poker bots, they're already pretty damn close:

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/07/25/289607.asp...

If poker bots analyzed a massive database of how pros play like humans or the chess bots do then I'm certain that the poker bots would blow you away.

> No poker bot ever made could come anywhere close to me in...

You'll be seeing this quote again:)
The idea of a reading protocol is a pretty essential concept. I appreciate the author carefully detailing such a protocol for Mathematics, and I imagine this exercise would be pretty simply done for code as well.

I'd vie that Mathematics is much more subtle, in general, than code: average reading speed something like 0-15 "concepts" (because we all know how terrible LOC is) in 30 minutes, depending, of course, on how subtle the code is, how skillful the reader, and how elegant the coder.
Did the Long Tail Beget Social Design?
Security in Ten Years
The poker bots right now are also only good at heads up.
Ask YC: How about some other user/karma stats on news.yc?
The leader board and user pages have total karma, but what about things like average karma per post? (perhaps with some minimum karma cutoff)

Surely someone with 20 posts with an average of 5 should be higher than someone with 100 posts with an average of 1, right?

Others could include min, max, even standard deviation. Maybe I just really like statistics... does anyone else want this stuff?
I've always been curious as to whether the whole reading people thing was exaggerated for the tourists. I'm sure poker strategy is a lot about trying to gauge what an opponent is doing, but does it really come down to people scratching their noses funny?

I used to play soccer quite a lot, and playing well is a lot about knowing whether both your players and their players are going to go. The thing is though that it has nothing to do with explicit tells - its all about the geometry, the state of the game and how they are playing.

I've always though past a certain level there would just be no way a poker player was going to reliably give themselves away.
6. I'm a mediocre programmer at best but could easily write a chess program that, with infinite processing power, would be perfect.

Yeah, IF you had infinite processing power, it would be a nearly trivial exhaustive search program. IF I had a way to read my opponents emotions, etc like humans can, then I could write a fairly trivial program to do well at poker. But those are two very big "IF"s.

The problem is the two games are very different. Chess is a game of perfect information, where both players know the entire state of the game. Poker is not, plus it has an element of chance.

You can't really compare the two.
It's his secret weapon to build his product both in ASP and PHP. I bet if you were him you'd say "go away customer, I only write my software in Rails/LISP/Haskell".
>The poker bots out there mostly suck because they don't need to be great to win lots of money from the weak players.

That's dumb. They'd win 5x the money if they were great.

>You'll be seeing this quote again:)

I meant made yet, maybe I should have specified. I've no doubt that computers will one day overtake humans. It just is nowhere near having happened yet.
Not really interesting to me...

Any leader board just tempts me to game the points and get to #1 anyways.
Hearing the same thing. This is a huge outage. The last one like this I can think of is that train crash near Jacksonville in 98 that cut the fiber.
Read the Myth of Sisyphus by Camus...