skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The $250 application fee is a big red flag to me. Given that angel investments are for small amounts of cash, $250 is a lot of money in exchange for a chance to maybe ask for $100,000 of investment. It's worse than the lottery, because you'd have to give up shares in exchange for that investment.

If I was an investor, I'd disqualify any company that was going to pay $250 for a chance to maybe speak to angel investors. That's not a sign of a capital-efficient or customer-focused company. I'd much rather see a company that put $250 into attracting customers or creating a product.

That said, I would contact the organizers anyway and try to meet some of the players. If your story is compelling, professional investors will want to hear it, even without a bribe.
When did it become significantly more difficult to open a web browser vs a text editor? Command-line?

[indie@localhost~] $ firefox
[indie@localhost~] $ gedit

I don't disagree with Mr. Yegge's assertion that plain text can be a decent way to present info on a resume if that is the only other option vs. discriminatory Microsoft .doc formatting, bullets, etc. . . . but his statement:

"HTML formatting usually makes it through safely because it's plain text. However, even if your tags are left alone by the automated mangler, there's no guarantee that your resume will be viewed from a browser, and nobody wants to read through a bunch of ugly markup while they're trying to assess your skills. So you shouldn't use HTML either."

Hello: programs (usually written by "programmers") are usually the entities doing this "automated mangling".

Anyway. I realize now that by putting "programming guru" in quotes, it seemed like I was attempting to insult the author's (SY's) skills, which I wasn't. . . apologies for that. I simply have an aversion to the word "programmer"; phrases like "programming language" seem really immature and pedantic to me. To me, code is the magic word.
<<The latter is arbitrary and mostly meaningless>>

Although I'm a terrible speller myself, often arbitrary conventions are important for communication w/ both humans and machines. Why does lisp use parens instead of brackets? Arbitrary, but your code won't work if you change it. Why should a spoken/written language be otherwise?

<There is no doubt that such a system would educate more fully, and more broadly, than high school.>>

Speak for yourself. I certainly would not entrust the education of my children to Microsoft.
Can you really say that's easier to read than this?

I think it's generally less about readability and more about flexibility and error-checking (when it's not about being stubborn). If you want to generate SQL queries on the fly, it may be faster and less error-prone to use python objects rather than strings.
If you're opening a sandwich shop, that's totally reasonable, but it's an unnecessary limitation for technology companies -- there are so many more unknowns. Companies like Google and PayPal certainly didn't start off with a viable plan for profit. Perhaps that is why these angel networks have failed to fund any truly significant technology company. They're probably great for funding sandwich shops though...
Yeah, list comprehensions are isomorphic to query languages. There's at least one database (Mnesia) and three database abstraction libraries (HaskellDB, SchemeQL, SQLAlchemy) that exploit this.

That does not mean that databases are useless. Your [(customer.name, customer.phone) for customer in customers for sale in sales if sale.customer_id = customer.customer_id and sale.product_id in defective_product_list and sale.date.month in (10, 11, 12) and customer.lifetime_sales > 10000 and customer.state in ('CA', 'WA', 'OR')] isn't going to help much if you have thousands of customers and millions of sales.
also related: How to Find, Pitch, and Work with Angel Investors - MIT Enterprise Forum [video]

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35393
You have to snatch a pebble from Dexter's hand.
Yeah, pg pointed out a big hole in my idea, so I scrapped it in favor of something bigger/better, which I'm still working on.

But nothing related to angels, no, besides the video I posted below.
True, but not consistent with the theme of "risk aversion" cited in the source.

For each Google or Paypal, how many startups without a "viable plan for profit" failed? Hundreds? Thousands? More?

Just because a high tech startup has taken the time to pound the pavement and get a little traction BEFORE seeking funding doesn't put them in the same class as sandwich shops.
Give 1 XO, Get 1 XO: OLPC to Make its "$100 Laptop" Publicly Available
OLPC, maker of the XO "$100 laptop," is running a promotion that will allow Americans and Canadians to pay $400 to purchase a laptop for a child in need, as well as one for themselves.
I suspect the use of italics indicate sarcasm.
It depends on how fast you need to do it. In Rails it's as easy as person.apartment.landlord.house.city.state.country.continent.planet.name.
I'd learn Python honestly. It's very concise and can take you from nothing to something without needing to change languages.

RoR might be a little difficult for a newbie, and PHP is going to give you a lot of bad habits that you'll eventually need to break.
Also RDBMS' are based on some pretty solid mathematics, unlike almost all other areas of software (the other famous one is the lambda calculus). Generally where mathematics and software intersect, you end up with some powerful stable systems that stand the test of time.
Actually, the minimal amount this particular angel group invests is $200k. They classify themselves more as a "angel round" group than an initial "seed round" group. Again I think this comes down to risk avoidance.

Just curious, do you have experience raising capital? I am quickly discovering it is much harder than I previously thought. Its just not as easy as contacting organizers and having them hear you out. I think YC is extremely valuable to founders in this regard. But chances of being funded by them is unfortunately even less likely (statistically at least).
Well.. I believe scaling out will solve the slowness problem. Map/reduce is really powerful.
Or if N = number of people with blue eyes.

(N=1 blue) 1B goes home 1st night.
(N=2 blue) 2B go home 2nd night.
(N=2 blue) 3B go home 3rd night.

To see why this works at N=4
B1, sees 3 blues so if his eyes are not blue everyone goes home on the 3rd night. But they don't go home on 3rd night so he and all the other blues go home on the 4th night.

etc So at N=100 all blue go home on the 100th night and everyone else stays.

Note: brown and green don't get to go home because having 2, 1, or 0 green eyes presents blue with the same information. AKA Blue and brown eyed people know their eyes are not blue but they could be brown or green. So having 10 or 10,000 people with brown eyes does not change what happens.
The examples I cited are real. (When you're in the trenches, you don't need to make them up.) The database has 1,692,438 Customers and 7,823,356 Sales Orders. All 4 questions had subsecond response. But not using a single SQL statement as you suggest. Using a combination of resources: indexes, stored procedures, common functions, and other code, applied exactly as needed. And a RDBMS.

Remember, this is a discussion of relational databases, not SQL. 2 different issues.
HaskellDB would be so awesome if it actually worked. Every time I've tried to use it, though, the backend has choked on some piece of the generated SQL.
How Hard Could It Be?: Unfocused and Unabashed
"If SQL was so great, why in the heck there is so many ORM frameworks out there?"

Uh, isn't that an argument FOR the popularity of relational DBs? There would be no need for ORM tools if there weren't lots of R databases that programmers need to interface with.

To turn your rhetorical question around "Why haven't OO databases become popular if that's what so many people really need?"
"How about actually having the database start evolving just like programing languages have?"

What's stopping you from solving this problem? Sounds like a great entrepreneurial opportunity. Maybe you could submit a YC application.
This is an interesting question to me, as I know someone who is actively making the rounds with these angel cartels.

My impression is that these are just VCs in angel costumes. You have to do all of the work and business development that you would need to do to pitch a VC, but the dollar amounts are much lower. The funding terms may or may not be good (my friend hasn't gotten a term-sheet yet), but the terminology is suspiciously similar to the VC world, and most of these groups' members seem to be VCs as well.

On the whole, it isn't clear that these organizations are worth the effort for the money involved. You're not going to have a chance with them if you're truly seed-stage (i.e. you probably won't make it past the telephone screen unless you have a really mature business plan), but if you're that far along as a business, then it's questionable that angel investment is the right strategy.

I think, perhaps, that these cartels are just a clever way for VCs to make themselves more relevant in a world where their services are less and less essential....
The Real Reason why Programmers Dislike Databases
I tried using their services, but since my sys admin skills are currently lacking (for Solaris) I just stayed with my current host MediaTemple. Mainly this was because MT's ui is ^$^@$#ing awesome. I could be wrong but I believe a YC alum is responsible for MT's admin UI. I've only seen one company compare to it and their prices aren't great
I'm starting to think that about ValleyWag's readers...
>>'If I have to open a browser to read your "plain text"....'

If you are able to open a browser to read both plain text (source code) and a rendered page with some text, you can be pretty sure that the person who wrote the code knows what he or she is doing with both.
Perhaps I should have said querying recursive data structures. E.g. you can easily represent a family tree in a RDB, but it's not so easy to write a query to get all ancestors of a specific person.
Slides are somewhat readable, although in parts a little thin without the presentation.

I think the single thing that stuck out was how scalable Sun's Directory Server was -- supporting up to 230 million users in the Sina example he gives. Not bad.
the really "good" angel investors are typically independent and work almost entirely off of recommendations.

Yes, but it's not that hard to network into a meeting with an angel (remember, they're out there trying to find you, too): use your alumni contacts, mentors, attorneys, financial advisors, et. al.

they will also look at business plans which are submitted cold turkey (although there is a $250 application fee, which I found strange given the organization is non-profit). Does anyone have input on this?

I've yet to hear of a deal coming to fruition through one of these "panel submissions" (it seems the only reason most angels participate is to research the current market, not to fund new companies).
No. But I did intend the word "microsoft" to be a placeholder for any given company. Maybe that was unwise given the ms-hatred around here. Really--high school is all but worthless, and learning software design + 0..n domain-related topics at a company would be...immeasurably...more valuable than sitting in social studies class.
When I tried it, I didn't even get to that point. It choked on installation; I couldn't get it working with MySQL, then I tried with PostGres and it couldn't find pg_config or something silly like that, then I gave up. (In hindsight, I was probably just missing the dev headers or something.)

That was early 2005, though. It may be better now.
It's frustrating how many smart people agree with ardit33's argument, though. I've even heard the same thing from spez. When you're mostly writing CRUD queries, you can get away with just treating the DB as a hash table, but it still means you're probably doing a lot of things inefficiently. The database needs of the company I work for now are just run-of-the-mill web app stuff, but still it's just another day at the office when I write an SQL query that could easily translate to 100 LOC worth of hash table operations.
Here's a real example from our forum code that I've used as a job interview question: each user is member of some set of groups (groups in the UNIX sense), and each forum requires membership in all of some set of groups in order to be allowed to post. Given a userid, return the set forums to which that user is allowed to post. You can do it with a single, concise SQL statement containing nested existential quantifiers, and the query plan it generates is very fast.
My experience is from last April.
For the kind of money that MT charges, why would you not just get a dedicated server?
Using the internet for dissidence in Burma
blog.pmarca.com: I think I can, I think I can
I lived in Kenya for a few months and I find now that I have little sympathy for the "poor" in western countries. The "poor" here have access to free libraries where they could learn pretty much whatever they want. They can access the Internet for free. They can get a $10 an hour job at a fast food restaurant to pay the bills. Yes, it's not glamorous but it's a start. The resources are out there if they want to find them.

When you've seen child of 6 years old who probably does not have parents, who is living on the streets and who is drugged up on sniffing glue, poverty takes on a whole new meaning. Real poverty is not being able to afford food or shelter, not not being able to afford university education or cable TV.
Bertrand Russell: The Value of Philosophy
For what it's worth, it worked for me. I dropped out of high school (I was failing anyway) and "apprenticed" at my place of work when I was 17, two years ago. For about 8 months I wasn't paid, then I was hired. Over the last 6 months I feel I've contributed very nicely to the company's project.

The problem is a lot of employers aren't as nice as mine was. In fact, I doubt he would have let me come on had he known the full extent of what he was getting into. I asked questions like mad about the project until I had a knowledge base wide enough to really sit down and figure things out for myself. This translated directly into lost time for one employee (My mentor, Andy. He's an awesome guy). But in the end they have another productive employee.

I'd say the company's happiness with me strongly resembles this graph, minus the falloff at the end: http://www.tylerreed.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/the-eb...

So a company would have to be extremely patient to do something like that. And the downside for me is that I don't have a degree. That doesn't matter in terms of raw ability, but it does matter for salary and other employment options.
"a. prepare paperwork that completely neutralizes my differentiating assets just to satisfy the automated processes of mindless drones"

Nah, if you've got differentiating assets, list/show them! Yegge is just saying that people without any differentiating assets cover for that by filling their resumes with buzzwords and buzzphrases. Communicating your actual accomplishments clearly and succinctly should be sufficient.
Let's say I have the entire structure in memory, interlinked with pointers. The solution in pseudocode:

allowed_forums = [] // empty set
for each group in user.groups
allowed_forums |= group.forums // union

That's all. I can probably write a compiler that translates this to SQL if necessary. Nice thing is that when I write this piece I don't care about how exactly data is stored and accessed.

Now let's compare it with your SQL solution. You see, mine so simple, it's not even an interview question :)
I wrote this article after quitting my day job. Its better in a startup
Actually, people have had entire hemispheres of their brain removed and continued to survive, with other parts of the brain taking over for the jobs of the removed parts.

In addition, to treat epilepsy brain surgeons sometimes cut the corpus callosum, or the nerves connecting the two hemispheres. The two halves of the body act almost like the bodies of two different people who just happen to be connected.
well I only pay $20 - what places do u recommend?

o yeah it comes with 24/7 phone support

not to mention there are tons of tutorials that cater to their grid services... right now we're trying to just nail as many features as possible, so we're spendind as little time as possible doing sys admin work
My solution to that: store representations of trees as simple paths like "/trunk/branch/leaf1/", "/trunk/branch/leaf2/", etc. And just rely on the application layer to parse it all out into a friendly IU. When you want a specific branch, just do "select * from table where signature like '/trunk/branch/%'
(I just find it curious that any single user here has to guess how to do proper formatting.)
Everything new about facebook (widgets/apps/etc) is more or less opposite from why everyone old joined up. The only feature change that improved the facebook/brought in more people was the newsfeed and that was only after initially running into a huge resistance against it from within the community.

Hustling to find a way to monetize the users by continuing to add features isn't going to get them far. What else could be done to dramatically alter the experience and generate more people or more activity? I think the success has gone to Mark's head and agree that he should cash out now.

Not to say that it won't be a service used by millions for years to come, but the model for growth seems to have hit it's peak.
> Resumes are about presentation.

Actually, they're not. Resumes are communication, specifically a request with argument. Some of that argument is demonstrating good judgement, knowing that everything isn't a nail (even if you're a hammer swinger).

> HTML, coupled with CSS, is a valuable way to demonstrate ability to present plain text.

Valuable? It's not the least efficient way to present plain text, but the overhead didn't buy anything.
to play devil advocate here, what do you feel is everything wrong with incubators?
1. Your solution is incorrect. I said you need to be a member of all the groups associated with a forum, not one of them. How would your code handle a public forum (one with no groups associated with it)?

2. Suppose you have one million users. Then you're sucking up an awful lot of RAM just for this tiny piece of functionality.

3. Your pseudocode makes a lot of convenient assumptions about what functionality is already provided in standard libraries and in the accessor methods for user.groups and group.forums. Let's see it written in a real language.

4. You say you don't care about how data is stored and accessed, but given the right set of reasonable assumptions, I can conclude that the running time of your algorithm is O(n^3). The beauty of relational databases is that you usually really don't have to care. The query optimizer is pretty good at figuring it out for you.

EDIT: nostrademons, I saw that peer reply before you deleted it. That was just spookily similar :-)
"I still don't see what I can do with how we group those preferences. "

The way in which this site will allow users to group their preferences seems like a slight organizational difference when compared with other recommendation sites that use collaborative filters, but it has huge implications. This post is meant to give people a taste of what I'm starting to try and find others who are interested. I'd love to talk about any and all specifics and their implications especially if you are programmer. If you want to chat my AIM is rocksld3.
> But she did have an effect on people's lives.

But isn't that the point? Its the only reason I have an interest in philosophy.

--

> didn't have an effect on later developments in philosophy

And in a sense, Paul was arguing against that in this essay. When you think about it, it was exactly this effect that has lead Philosophy to remain so stagnant for so many years.
I'm sure that databases need to evolve to some extent, but is the relational-ness really the problem? When I start with a data model, I find that thinking in relations (and the various normal forms) is a very natural way to approach the problem. I also like the way that sql and relational databases mirror (to some extent) relational algebra - of course, I haven't written relational algebra since school, but it's actually interesting, and shows a solid mathematical foundation to rdbms systems.

What I hate (and I get the feeling you hate it too) is object-relational mapping. This is truly, exceptionally tedious stuff. Hibernate was no fun, but I find Rails to be far, far less of a hassle.

And there's plenty to object to in the various implementations of relational algebra (ie., the different RDBMs's). But maybe the programming language side is exactly where the innovation should be occuring.
one more level to the walled garden
1. Again, easier than you think:

allowed_forums = []
for each forum in forums
if forum.groups <= user.groups // set comparison, like in Pascal
allowed_forums |= forum // include an item

2. Let' say, I have a system that will do swapping and optimization for me.

3. My pseudocode is an assumption that it is possible to build some language/environment that would replace databases, only in theory so far.

4. Ok, maybe I'm going to use the "beauty of databases" in the implementation for my language. The goal is to eliminate SQL (and useless interview questions at the same time :)
Indeed, I was panicked back in high school over the sudden need to suddenly pick a college major, specialty college and/or career. I had just been focused on "college prep" up to that point. I knew little about engineering, which is what everyone who I asked for advice pushed me towards, but I did end up going to an engineering school. That's really not a good way to do it.

I endorse learning by specializing early and often. You really can't beat serial specialization to give you a broad set of experiences, rather than a little about a lot or a lot about a little.

One of the most common improvements I see in our local schools is earlier specialization. Here in LA, we have life sciences, math & [hard] science, and even marine biology high school programs. For my part, I went to an arts elementary school (grades 5 & 6) to learn acting and still value that experience.

However, I notice that well-regarded private primary and secondary schools rarely specialize in that same way. There's Julliard and Olin and even Deep Springs, but not so much before that, is there? I don't think there is, but I'm not sure whether that's an issue of quality or simply parental demand.
The query optimizer is pretty good at figuring it out for you.

This is not true. Let's get back and compare the intellectual effort required to solve your task in SQL and in my imaginary language. The difference in complexity is exactly the amount of effort by which you help the SQL query optimizer to do its work.
Maybe b/c there haven't been any good attempts at it, and the major players (oracle) don't have incentives to build such systems.
Getting OOD Right, would be a huge task. Why do invest on it, when you are already making lots of money on the current offering?
1. Ok, that looks correct now.

2. There's a word for such a system. It's called a database :-).

3/4. Ok, sounds good. But like many others in this discussion, you're confounding SQL with the relational model. Your pseudocode above goes slightly outside the relational model because it's written in imperative style, but can be adapted to it easily enough just by replacing your for loop with set-builder notation and maybe a unary union operator. Sure, SQL has warts. It was originally designed as a language extension for COBOL for chrissakes. But the language you're inventing is just a prettier syntax for basically the same semantics.