skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There's a lots of answers to your question, John. I'll try giving you a couple.

One -- I might want my data to live in multiple places. For instance, I had an app I wrote recently that could persist its data to and from three places -- SQL, a funky XML format, and a private file format. That's too much read/write crap to pollute my app with.

Two -- I might want my data to live in multiple versions. If you've got multiple versions of your data format out there, such as if you were Quicken or something, you want to change/modify the data code in one spot, not all over the place.

Three -- the job of writing the UI is different than the job of knowing about data. Whether it's one box or ten thousand, one table or five, why should I care/know where the data lives? I'm writing the UI for goodness sakes. Just make the stupid stuff go away and come back when I need it. One well-constructed data tier should be able to service a hundred UI developers.

When coding imperatively and using a "short-cut" data access paradigm like RoR or CodeSmith and NetTiers (my favorite), the temptation is to start thinking well gee, if every table is an object, what's the point? Why not just hit the database directly? The answer is that you're coding just using a big shortcut -- it ain't going to work all the time like that. You have to know why the shortcut works and why it doesn't work.
Smells like a combination of bureaucracy and a rather interesting little glitch in the math... somebody observes that you could make an PRNG that works that way, somebody else says MAKE IT SO and before you know it, it's an NSA standard, even though it's obviously never going to work because it's incredibly slow and obnoxiously complicated. Bureaucrazy, as they say.
The guy in question neither has a good image or a bad image in my mind, so the post didn't hurt or help him one way or another in my eyes. I'm not much on cults of personality.

But I can certainly understand where somebody has a public image that can be damaged by some random poster, so I'm with pg to some extent. I think a better question would be about this whole hero worship idea in general. Guys like Woz are great hackers, no doubt about it. But are they really worth the elevated platform many of us put them on? I don't think so. I don't read pg essays because hey, it's another pg essay! I read some of them because they were helpful.

So I can understand the frustration many people feel when it looks like they are being sold on reading blog material simply because of the hype surrounding somebody's name. Quite frankly, I find that useless to me personally. So make the comment about _that_, and not some particular person.

The interesting undercurrent in this discussion is that the technical world is very much a reputation, name-dropping, hero worship kind of place. As much as we all understand the importance of finding and servicing users in our startups, let's be honest: teams are going to get rewarded by both the investment community and the marketplace based on PR factors. That makes an attack like this one even worse, cause it hits somebody right in the pocketbook.
This begs the question: How the heck do you become a 23 yr old former NASA roboticist?
>but this is not a case where anonymity is important.

How do you figure? There are enough people who like Swartz and have pull in the Web 2.0 world that a post like this could really hurt your career.

Personally, I think it would have been better if had been done in a less vicious way and not done it anonymously, or just not posted it on the internet, but now that it's done I think he(?) has very valid reasons for wanting to stay anonymous.
What is the significance of signing off with his real name? Anonymous criticism happens on the internet, and since this is a self linked comment, anyone can respond directly.

If his criticism is wrong, let it fail on its own merit. I love your essays Paul, but this seems like a "Support the Troops" style deflection.
errr, what's the link, exactly? I don't see a 'sign up here' link there.

-- oh, duh - http://rescuetime.com (big button on the front page to sign up)
Bush Finds Error In Fermilab Calculations
I would take a serious look at Django. You can use it as scaffolding and get rid of pieces as you write you own, the first to go will be the use of the automated admin site, and I find myself writing a custom pieces across the board.

However, being able to rapidly deploy a prototype has been priceless time and time again, and they have the basics that you need down and well tested.

If you don't like ORM, or find yourself writing a lot of custom queries for performance, that is fine. I would still use an ORM now and customize some queries for performance later. The reason? Speed of building your app...I think not writing the DB code saves me about 20% of my time.

I used to be always against using frameworks since they were massive, crappy, and relied on so much magic you didn't know what was going on behind the scenes. I am really glad I went with Django, it saved me from writing almost the identical feature set.
Ditto that - I'd love to give Xobni a spin.
http://www.rescuetime.com/signup will work
Solve minesweeper win a million dollars
I can only think of one real application of this.
It's interesting that you mention Django. Of all the frameworks it's the one I most liked as I was investigating for one major reason: the community around Django seemed welcoming and open to ideas. This was very much in contrast to the RoR community which seemed to have a "we know better than you" attitude.

John.
Indeed they are needed, but they are only the tip of the iceberg in my vision. For me the whole data gathering process has to be revised and has to become more efficient, and data is useless if it's not organised and put into context - that's what I aim to do. As a biochemist I only know how to program a VCR [retro], and so I need to find some hackers to help me out.
Well I think that he has a lot of interesting things to say and that he can hack like a man. What else do you want?
I agree so this person hides behind anonymity so that he can throw out an insult. He could have posed his question in a much less aggressive manner and have posted non-anonymously.

And I don't agree that a post like that could really hurt your career. It's nonsense to think that being an asshole is going to ruin your career. There are plenty of total dicks out there (not saying that the original poster is one) who are successful. What matters is not that you are Web 2.0 and buddy-buddy with someone who's got a high profile blog, what matters is that you make a decent product.

John.
... and you feel bad if you had a bad day and didn't squeeze any meaning out of it. Much more so than whilst working for someone else.
Like Paris Hilton, Aaron does seem to spawn lots of useless, uninteresting discussion in other people. That probably is less his fault and more the fault of people like qwertyy.
Thought Vista had a lot of versions? Check out Windows Server 2008.
but...but i love Ramen
You can read about who he is on his site: aaronsw.com
Big Thinker Al Roth engages crowd in frank discussion on market design
There would seem to be the risk of VC again: in the end of the three months, either you accept more money in their terms, or other VCs think there's something wrong in your startup.
Erm... this maybe a silly question, but how far are we supposed to take this?
Really? What?
Note: cat out of bag. We (RescueTime) are a YC Winter '08 company. Yay!
If you like Punished by Rewards, then I'd recommend No Contest. I loved Punished by Rewards, but I think No Contest is actually more insightful. And certainly better written.
Three Tips for Creating a Business-Savvy Information Technology Staff
Coding Horror: Don't Forget To Lock Your Computer
Paris Hilton is the ultimate web 2.0 platform
The beans were forcibly spilled a few days ago.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=77631

Sorry guys, I didn't mean to preempt your announcement submitting your URL, I just thought it was a service that YCers might appreciate.
There sure will....
dear amichail,

I think you should give the best answer to this question NOW, the one you say that takes 3500 days... I also hope that the first answer given by slashcom is not in fact the best answer (as you said it yourself) and you didn't just waste everyone's time for nothing ...even if its 5 min of everyone's time, it adds up to a lot of time and its not ethical...

the reason I am posting this is because this post is almost out of the news and it already seems to be forgotten ... I would be pretty pissed if I had spent more time like other users such as curi and everyone else that tried to solve your problem...
I got back to it now. Still not working...

- Divided by 1000.
- Changed the clock to Pacific time
- rounded using either parseInt, Math.round and Mouth.ceil

All failed.
Only a million dollars to prove that P is or isn't equal to NP? They should pay more.
usually I don't get such a laugh just from a title.
Being about Paris Hilton I nearly skipped this, but was surprised that it is actually pretty insightful.

The problem is you have to get attention first somehow, before you can create attention by plugging others. I guess Paris did this initially with her association to the Hilton name and the sex tape. Ways to do this in the startup world are obviously much different.
Dude... you're trying too hard on a trivial area.

You only have to be close by 60 seconds give or take, so just hard code in the timestamp: http://www.unixtimestamp.com/

It's a pain in the ass to change every minute, but it works and you'll get on with the rest of it.
The misunderstanding here is that I eat ramen because I'm that broke! Or busy. Mostly broke.
The community is quite good overall.

It is especially good about allowing random people to contribute pieces of code that are useful.
I also like how their goal is to make everything as straightforward as possible, and eliminate the 'magic' that most frameworks have. If you have any questions about it, feel free to ask.
Can we keep this stuff on Reddit, please?
""famous" for no reason?"

just a side note for fun

Paris Hilton is a marketing genius ...

her stake in the Hilton hotels is worth just under 30mil in total

she makes over 20mil annually just by selling her own products, and using her name

she is not the only rich girl out there, but she def is the most successful one no matter how much you like her or hate her

and she does have a huge target market and does a great job at satisfying them

also: it won't be hard for you to prove pg is wrong, just sign your name and leave a link to yourself on your profile... but I wonder if you'll do that?
Related Links:

CV______: http://sifter.org/~aglisi/Physics/CV.html

Reddit-1_: http://reddit.com/info/60msi/comments/

Reddit-2_: http://science.reddit.com/info/60n0z/comments/

PopPress: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/...
Differentiate Or Die: Marketing's Magic Bullet
Two more relevant links:

YC: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=79983

YC: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=80081
I avoid ORM completely and am perfectly happy with SQL.
Berners-Lee warns of 'walled gardens' for mobile Internet
Cyber-despair is a sure winner. "Cyber" sounds trendy and "despair" accurately captures the feeling, unlike some of the more mild descriptors.
What's so confusing about this? Their target is not your father and mother. It's for companies and people that know which one to buy.

I like their pricing for Windows Web Server 2008 -> $469.

Pretty good for startup if you choose ASP.NET.
The Art of Negotiation
PNG X The rising star of image formats
Ning: 115,000 social networks and counting
I don't know about others but I don't read reddit so I don't mind the occasional funny article being cross posted here.
Why did you switch to Pylons? Would you now recommend it over web.py? I'm still on a quest to find the best Python framework for myself.
Holy crap!

Try Windows Server 2008 XLT, now with 20% more server goodness. If you like that, you'll love Server 2008 XLT-VX with all the server goodies you've come to love and 10% more virtualization!

Act now, supplies are limited.
American Inventor - George Foreman = YouBeTheVC
maybe YC should have teamed up with some celebs and done something like this!
Rafael:

Good luck. It helps to know that none of us is alone in our struggle.

--Denny--
You can email me at sryan@intrench.com. Cheers. CM.
Hi Mike, drop me a line at sryan@intrench.com. Cheers. CM.
Tracking employees.
Guy is an interesting fellow.

He put himself in a position to be interviewed for CEO of Yahoo, but he turned the interview down (didn't see the potential in Yahoo!)

Question: is it better to make a $2,000,000,000 mistake, or never be in the position to make a $2,000,000,000 mistake?
Perhaps you'd prefer Barcamp London? It's happening 24-25th of November.

http://barcamp.org/BarCampLondon3
I prefer the pricing for Linux actually -> $0.
Lesson in Startup Real Estate: Location!
A solution that takes around 12 years [http://www.algonet.se/~ug/projects/lightbulb/double.html]

I couldn't resist peeking ;)
Dell to carry Solaris 10 on PowerEdge servers
Engadget Cofounder Launches Record Label 2.0
Okay, here's an on-topic one:

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29225

...remember 1999? Remember how everything was new and fresh and had E- attached to its name? Unlike now where the 'e' is droppd?
Donald Knuth: "Wanted: A Name For High-Tech Grief"
I'm also Bristol based. You should come check out openCoffee Bristol at the Watershed.

I'd be interested in hearing about your startup, feel free to get in touch newsycATdanshubDOTcom
I'm forced to use Outlook at work and search is unusable.
Google Desktop to the rescue!
I'm over in Bristol. If you feel like having a chat about your startup ideas get in touch with me via newsycATdanshub.com or come to Bristol OpenCoffee sometime
Not tracking your own time?
IBM to push cloud computing
Nope. Still not working.

I changed the timezone in my computer, calculated time differences. Everything. What is getting on me is precisely the fact that this is supposed to be so trivial.
Just keep raising tuition and cutting financial aid.
I would be surprised if they didn't at least try.
YC company Loopt Becomes Twitter on Steroids
Are You Training Seagulls or Do You Keep Your Eye on the Goal?
There are plenty of employer spyware apps out there that lurk in the background any log employee activity. We will have a business offering, but we're going to go to great lengths to keep it from being evil.

Lifehacker.com gets 15 million uniques a month of people who want to optimize their lives. GTD and the vast array of "productivity self-help" resources seem to indicate that there is a lotta demand for things that can increase your personal productivity.

Not to mention the "4 Hour Work Week" marketing phenomenon.
I had the very same question before, and even implemented many of the common things that my application needed. But I am now looking at Drupal.

In general whichever framework you would like to use, will have its own learning curve. Once you overcome that, it should be pretty easy and fast to start working. I think there are some obvious advantages in using a framework:

1- you don't have to reinvent a lot of the stuff

2- the solutions offered to you have passed all their tests as there are many people checking upon them, and many sites already using them

3- if you have a couple of ideas and are thinking of launching all, I think once you finish your first project you will see a huge advantage starting the other ones, and you will move a lot faster

at the end if you pick the right framework, that will satisfy your current needs (the features and options you like to offer) and future needs (such as scalability), you will feel like you are working with a huge group of developers on your site. Its kind of like you have hired other developers and formed a team for yourself.

Also make sure that the framework you pick will have a strong community as it will come handy.

You should make a list of your requirements and make a chart of the frameworks and which ones satisfy what. And in general I would take the following into consideration when choosing a framework (depending on your needs you could add to this list)

- Ease to install
- Learning Curve
- User Control
- Session Control
- Extensibility
- Scalability
- Themability
- xHTML/CSS
Ooma creator says startup founders are "f----d"
funny, yes. relevant to hacker news? no. save it for your friends elsewhere please.
some points about RoR, (I checked it a few months back so they might have changed!)

- It does not offer an out of box solution to allow authenticated users to create content forming pages as part of a Web site. It offers you a web app framework and you could build upon it your custom CMS from scratch (and it will take you longer to do so)

- but there is a nice binding to the database through the framework

- at the time stability was a bit of an issue!

with all that said there are great applications built upon it such as 37Signals Base Camp
Signs your startup might be off the rails
is it making the world a better place as a side-effect or is its main objective make the world better?

I guess in theory as long as you are not making the world a worst place, you must be adding values either directly or indirectly. If your company is successful then it must be satisfying a need, and that need could balance things out in the world, and either directly or indirectly make the world a better place. So in a way many of us are making the world a better place.

But if you ask how important is it to your startup to make the world a better place, or how much emphasis you give it, or is that one of your main goals, then you would probably find some interesting results, and I guess a lot of NOs (if people are honest!)
I am not an admin, and even if I was I wouldn't bury it. It's not odious, I just think it's stupid.
If you're unfamiliar with linux, then it costs $0 only if your time is worthless. Plus, there isn't a good ASP.NET implementation for linux. Mono's attempt is imperfect.
Hmm....

Marc Andreesen claims the whole world (or at least Hollywood, but he gives no obvious reason why to stop there) will be rebuilt in Silicon Valley's image....

Tim O'Reilly seems to think finance is some subset of web2.0....

Facebook is valued at $15billion; Google $200-....; and TechCrunch who knows what....

The Paypal Mafia....

And now this....

I do hope YC has made enough to sustain through less heady times.
It really isn't that difficult:

Funny is fine, just skip it when it involves haranguing, smearing or ridiculing specific politicians, ideologies or religions.
Thanks for the recommendation. Just added it to my wish list.
Clearly, you're an outlier. Most people here wouldn't presume to waste everyone's time and screen space with "John" at the end of every comment.
There are no bugs, only unintended causation
It IS confusing, but it's confusing on purpose. It's meant to convey complexity and seriousness. Look at all the parts and functions -- you'll need to talk to an experienced sales rep and follow up with some service engagements from our consultants.
"Hacker of the year" Arrested
I Want Sandy - perfect productivity email bot is free and public
The best book on negotiation is Bargaining for Advantage by G. Richard Shell from Wharton. I would reading Getting to Yes first to get the basics though.

http://www.amazon.com/Bargaining-Advantage-Negotiation-Strat...

http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Yes-Negotiating-Agreement-With...
TheOnion isn't apropos here.
I'm still trying to decide if this was written by someone who knows nothing about technology or nothing about business. Both, I think.

At one point:

"The kinds of programs American and others are installing are neither terribly expensive nor "a great leap" in technology, and thus could have been in place years earlier,"

Then, 6 paragraphs later:

"And as American was preparing to make big investments in computers, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, occurred, and sent the airline industry into a deep decline."

Huh? Why the need for "big investments" if the solutions are not "terribly expensive"?

This is not a programming problem. Not even a business problem. It's a MANAGEMENT problem. Stop looking at your portfolios long enough to decide that you want something and what you want and WE WILL BUILD IT FOR YOU.

Maybe that's why so much energy is going into Web 2.0, social networks, etc. Because big business is either too dumb or too lazy to articulate their business problems well enough to get a solution.

Hell, input this problem into a Y Combinator start-up in January and get a solution in March.

See how easy?
The GigaSpaces Start-Up Program
Introduction to Amazon S3 with Java and REST
learn from it...

but I can tell you when you do let it go and move on, you will feel a lot better about yourself, and the whole experience, you will realize how much you have learned. You should also realize that nothing is more valuable than your time, so the sooner you can let it go the more time you have wasted on it, and the less of a failure it will be.

Mark Cuban said it once, that you only have to be right in your life once and thats it, it is irrelevant how many times you have failed before it. I have taken this to heart and think of it everyday.

so get out there and try again (and again and again if needed..) you'll get it right one day, and thats all the assurance that you need
hopefully we'll get the one with 3500 days too (at this point just to know we weren't fooled and wasting time)
ya and I think he has been on Twitter way too much lately, so he is also getting used to that way of writing, lol
Despite the tone of your message you are the first person to actually give me a good reason not to sign my messages. Here and on Reddit people have objected to me signing my messages (which is odd because for _years_ I signed like that on /. without a peep) without any real justification.

Your argument that I'm wasting vertical space makes a lot of sense, especially given the clean look of reddit/news.yc compared with /.

From now on I'll stop signing.
Guys, this is Hacker News, it's about serious Internet hacker business. Please keep things professional and serious. OMG Google!
Dave Winer - Startups must be sponges
Let's look at it from the perspective of the target in both cases:

a) Somebody anonymously and publicly calls you names in plausible-seeming ways that others will read.

b) Somebody publicly claims to be better than everybody, including you the reader. Everybody reads him.

It's pretty clear that a is more damaging. Even if it goes out to fewer people. It is fallacious to reason that it's not so bad because it is hurting one person rather than many. On the one hand generality dilutes criticism. On the other the effects of libel can be greatly non-linear in who reads them, and when.
I'll raise the possibility of recycling the old "e" prefix, once more.

e-rage
e-despair (e-spair?)

It might even be applied in initially unanticipated ways. E.g. e-lag (a takeoff of jet-lag): That tired, time-shifted feeling you get from 2 am "global" meetings, without the necessity of actually getting on a plane.

It also can be taken to refer to things electronic, in general. Thus it might well be retroactively applied to activities such as programming the VCR clock, and the like.

Whatever the phrase that sticks, an important component will be its easy pronunciation. "Road rage", "jet-lag". Simple and with preferred syllabic structure. For more on that, google some of Theo Vennemann's (linguist) work on optimal syllabic structures (I assume its out there somewhere).
I'm glad someone else mentioned this. Was he an intern, or can you work on NASA robots w/ a B.S., or what?
That was supposed to read:

e-rage

e-despair (e-spair?)

Not all on one line. Guess I'm experiencing a little e-rage over this non-intuitive aspect of the comment editor.
I have referred to Google as "The Google" for a long time now.
Dupe: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=79924
Is Linux support in the pipeline?