skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This reads like my life story. I actually went a little further - I came close to failing my undergrad degree because I was bored and partying too much, then I put in a ton of effort at the last minute - enough that one of my lecturers offered me the opportunity to do a PhD under him... then I started thinking about the futility of it all again, and slacked-off the first couple of years of the PhD!

Fortunately, the extreme ups-and-downs seem to be lessening as I get older.
Sure.

I'm doing two types of work mainly: software development and management consulting. On the software development side of things I've been doing work on the backend of web sites (the most well know is http://www.signal-spam.fr/). On the management consulting side I'm helping a start-up that's growing rapidly to put in place some appropriate processes in engineering so that they don't explode :-)

I arrange my schedule like that by telling clients that I'm not available at certain times (the times I want for myself), using the white lie that I'm busy with a different client (which just happens to be me).

So far, two years now, I've managed to juggle that and bring in enough money. But there's been some standard of living decline as purchases for expensive items (say that new video camera I'm ogling) have been delayed.

John.
As far as I can tell, there are no strings attached with this offer. They simply give you the cash with nothing expected in return. And 50 teams selected for the $25k prize are good ods, not to mention great publicity. Start coding!
XP inventor talks about agile programming
Title got my hopes up.

Robotics > Embedded development
Open-source Java could result in port to iPhone
Discipline is routinely mistaken for intelligence, because it does all the things intelligence claims to do (as opposed to what it actually does, which is significantly more limited).
Google Android SDK is Live!
It may be a sign that you need to have your wisdom teeth out. I used to use the pressure from my wisdom teeth as a measure of stress, and then eventually got them taken out.

Also, I find when I get that pressure before going to bed it's a sign that I'm going to grind my teeth. I sit up, give the jaws a relaxing rub, maybe prepare myself for some reading and the expectation that I won't be at work early next day, then have a good sleep.
And my question was whether the YC company was told or is going to be told about this trick?

Of course not. Wasn't that clear from my comment?
The real question is why people complain about the rise in gas prices. Other prices rise and fall. Other goods are ruled by a semi evil few (diamonds, cuckoo clocks, etc.).

I think it's because the price is posted. That's all.

If the price of milk were posted on every street corner, the braindead megaphone of mainstream media would amplify the concern for milk prices.
wasn't written by ONE person.

LOL. Two.

ADDENDUM: Oh, and his "point" is pointless. One person, two people, N people are meaningless distinctions. Besides, most Lisp projects that have any real success are group efforts as well, I'm sure. The REAL point is always the same: What are those projects? Where are they? How successful are they, really? I'll point it out as often as this article gets re-posted: When you compare C/C++ with Lisp based upon the only thing that matters, results, then Lisp is a near-complete failure. The applications that really matter, that people really use, that have real performance, that solve real problems, are written in C/C++/Blub, or some scripting language.
I don't disagree with his portrayal of the brilliant failure, or even with the statement that such a person would be attracted to Lisp. But brilliant successes and brilliant failures both seem to be attracted to it, which implies that the brilliance is responsible for the attraction, not brilliant failure specifically.

He's even further off when he says that the reason Lisp isn't more popular is because of the mysterious quality that attracts such people. It's unpopular for more mundane reasons: the syntax looks odd, and there's no good, standard implementation with lots of libraries.
Well... j2me is going to be around for a while yet. No actual telephones are being sold that run Google's software, and even when they come out, people wishing to 'run everywhere' will be stuck having to create both Android and j2me apps.
it probably was pg, thanks, somethings you just want to double check and clarify
I'm curious as to how snipshot and splashup deal with their substantial overlap.

I notice that http://www.paulgraham.com/ has a new link for splashup, but still says "photos edited with snipshot."
"...there's no good, standard implementation with lots of libraries."

I think his point was that there's no good, standard implementation with lots of libraries because many of the people drawn to Lisp have big ideas but are bad at finishing things.
Comment I posted in reddit when this article turned up a year back.

"And here we are rushing to put in a mee too comment. I have known this about me for sometime. I had this thing about people. What ever you admit, you admit it because you are proud of it. Like for eg. I am always busy - yeah, you are proud of being busy. Or to bring the point out, one of my friends admitted to me that he suddenly realised that he was arrogant ( a BBM himself ), subconsciously he is proud of being arrogant.

My simple question: Does it have to be like this ? I mean, being Brilliant and a failure. C'mon guys, failure sucks. Big time. If you don't feel that, you don't have a problem. But if you do, consider this. Lets turn this inside itself in the true spirit of Lisp. Being BBMs we can come up with brilliant solutions to 'cope up with brilliance' while avoiding failure. Can't we ? Stop being proud. That's the point where it Starts. Post any coping mechanisms you have discovered over the years as reply to this thread. Thanx."
Story of my life.
Started CS in the age of 13 flunked out after 2 years. Been in & out of universities (mainly CS & philosophy) ever since, attracted to the ideal, disgusted by reality.
All my life I abandoned most projects that took more than a a few weeks, but did some very cool things in these short time spans.
But I think I found the cure, at least for me, a project that is superbly compelling...
Suddenly my highs were longer and the lows not so low, and I have been finally been able to apply myself to a single project for a long time, over a year now.
I think you need to find a project that will captivate you like the Everest captivated Sir Edmund Hilary, a monumental challenge in a field that interests you.
Mine is developing a new machine learning algorithm.
Intel launches power-efficient Penryn processors
Hacker Faces 60 Years
Post bubble: Internet startups go low budget
This branch of the thread seems like a good example of the existential questioning in the article. Some folks are comfortable with the idea of certain traits being hard-wired by evolution and/or God (depending on the person). Others seem threatened by the idea of an existence over which they do not exercise full control -- as if to ask "what meaning can be derived from such limited opportunity for self-actualization?"

I'm in the first camp. Sometimes I have some anxiety over my existence, but (as a Christian) it usually revolves around questioning whether or not I am living the right kind of life.

One thing I do know is that worrying does nothing to help the situation. Getting out there and doing something with your life does.
Paul Graham has a garage
Nice...extra incentive to code for their platform.

Plenty of time to finish too!
Google Calling: Inside Android, the gPhone SDK
Chicago police make $60k after 18 months. That is actually a lot of money for any entry level position in Chicago. As far as I can tell, they work three 12 hour shifts a week. It looks like interesting work that leaves a lot of time for living.
Yeah you're right. It will be interesting to see what kind of JavaME/Andriod integration arises in the future. Maybe all of the Android APIs could be wrapped and rolled up in a JavaME optional library or something.

A more realistic statement would be RIP Palm/Access. I dont know how they can expect to build their own Linux platform to compete with Andriod... I hope they embrace the open handset alliance rather than try to define their own standard.
Is ycombinator news indexed by goolge/yahoo search engines?
A lot of time I have to re-read something on ycombinator. Does ycombinator news have search or is it searchable from yahoo/google?
It shouldn't be a matter of which position we feel better about, or feel threatened by. We should evaluate this as a matter for reason and evidence.
"you need to find a project that will captivate you like the Everest captivated Sir Edmund Hilary, a monumental challenge in a field that interests you"

Quoted for truth. Plus with a big enough problem, there will always be neighboring issues you can look at when you get bored of the sub-sub-problem that you are focusing on at the moment.
Reflexes are not high level human behavior. They are not part of our creative mind. Reflexes are built in, but that isn't relevant.
Does anyone have a link to the thread from the last time this article was posted on news.yc? I tried a few google searches, but it seems that the link depth is too far back and it isn't indexed.
Great cartoon on what the customer wants...and what they get
Live.com offers easy web translator you can add to any site
I never thought that being bipolar meant living through, frenetic herculean work cycles with copious amounts of output followed by long periods of inactivity. That describes me to a T, though.

I never thought I was bipolar.
I didn't say memes thwart biological evolution, I said they evolve faster. So any niche that can be, will be filled by a meme before our biology changes.

You are right this wouldn't reverse pre-existing stuff. But what pre-existing things were there? Reflexes? Check. Face recognition hardware? Check. High level human interpretations of touch? No.

You say memes are a top layer. That's what I said originally! And I made an analogy you have not answered: Ruby is a top layer, on top of an assembly language, and C. And the fact is, if you switch to a platform with a different assembly language, Ruby stays the same. The lower layers aren't important once you abstract them away.

You say we have a "primate brain" but aren't clear on what this means. We have a brain with universal creativity. No (other) primates have that. It's a different kind of thing.
[SF/NYC] Heysan! is hiring Mobile Web/Web Developer
$1 Million Developer Challenge: Sergey is Excited, You Just Can't See It!
to whoever downvoted my comment... you really know how to make friends and influence people!

the funny thing is, i might even vote for ron paul, i just think ron paul supporters need to analyze their own behavior a little more carefully
It might not be worth negotiating the finer points of the deal at the term sheet stage. The fact is, everything can be changed once a term sheet is signed, so negotiating on the finer points of it may be overkill.

This reminds me of http://www.negativland.com/albini.html :

"These A & R guys are not allowed to write contracts. What they do is present the band with a letter of intent, or "deal memo," which loosely states some terms, and affirms that the band will sign with the label once a contract has been agreed on. The spookiest thing about this harmless sounding little memo, is that it is, for all legal purposes, a binding document. That is, once the band signs it, they are under obligation to conclude a deal with the label. If the label presents them with a contract that the band don't want to sign, all the label has to do is wait. There are a hundred other bands willing to sign the exact same contract, so the label is in a position of strength. These letters never have any terms of expiration, so the band remain bound by the deal memo until a contract is signed, no matter how long that takes. The band cannot sign to another laborer or even put out its own material unless they are released from their agreement, which never happens. Make no mistake about it: once a band has signed a letter of intent, they will either eventually sign a contract that suits the label or they will be destroyed."
Seeding the Google Phone With Apps
NY Times
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/seeding-the-google-...

by Dave Winer
http://www.scripting.com/stories/2007/11/12/android.html

Google Android: we want developers but... by Robert Scoble
http://scobleizer.com/2007/11/12/google-android-we-want-deve...
Intelligence is an abstract measure, hard to measure and it's utility is unclear. Discipline, on the other hand, pays rich returns. Just in the last week there have been two articles on news.yc about how "experts" in every field are much more likely to be people who get average scores on various intelligence metrics like IQ but worked harder and longer on the same problems.

If you would like a more authoritative source that backs up this claim with extensive research take a look at the Cambridge Handbook of Expertise.
Engineering is one of the better defined/controlled degrees in India. Any accredited engineering degree is a 4 year degree and the core curriculum includes as much Math as a US engineering degree.

However, very few of these schools and professors are anywhere close to the good schools and professors in the US.
Pity it's not true. Steve and I weren't anywhere near that good at finding interesting content. Here's the C&P'd response I left on his blog:

Thorough writeup, Tom.

I'm curious as to where you got all your data, though.

Steve and I were indeed the only two people using the site when we started it (aside from a few friends we begged) but we were submitting&voting under multiple usernames only for a couple weeks. Once we got a link from a PG essay, we started seeing some traffic -- people who did a much better job than we ever could at finding interesting content.

Your "80% for many months" figure is incorrect. If you could provide the source, I'd be happy to contact them to correct this inaccuracy.

Otherwise, you've got a pretty spot on piece. Thanks for writing it.
The only thing India is a leader at right now is developing outsourced software and services. I agree we need to see more finished products coming out of there. One of the reasons this doesn't happen is (I think) you can't develop a product while sitting thousands of miles away from your customers. You need a local market for whom you make the product and then if it's good you can export it. The local market in India for most types of software is still small (but growing).
Modern-Day Tech Startups Tread Carefully
Would it make sense to ask people to play thinking games during technical interviews (e.g., Portal)?
I actually make almost daily use of a social news site that's written in a Lisp dialect. The guy who wrote it had a prior success with Lisp. If you're interested email me and I'll send you the link.
I couldn't agree more.

Talk about a basic lack of perspective! Which is better: the student who plays competitive tennis, studies music, art and literature, in addition to competing with the Mathletes; or the student who studies Mathlete problems as her only hobby?
Karto. Commercialization of SRI robotics research in mapping.
Glorious error messages (which IBM just paid $5 billion for)
In honor of IBM's acquisition of Cognos, here are some of the best error messages of all time. A little taste of what you get for $5 billion!
This thread has some really terrible advice.
Do you care to offer better?

This question isn't really aimed at people who can afford to live in cardboard boxes while working on the Next Big Thing. Some of us need a relatively high baseline level of stability while we pursue chaotic business opportunities.
China supposedly has top notch programming going on for its military. Second (only?) to the US. Otherwise, they're far behind. India... nothing to brag about.
Me too (and everyone else, it seems), but I wonder how much of this is Forer Effect. If you go through his description point by point, you'll see that each thing is something that people like to think of themselves, or tend to notice in themselves, but not in other people.
You can use Google try

site:news.ycombinator.com: _SearchString_

PS: Why post a question vs testing it?
A full-time startup job and a decent stable job are somewhat conflicting. But the easiest thing I can think of to try to solve this conflict is to move to an area with really good job opportunities. This is what prevents me from taking up the good suggestion of doing consulting - I don't live in an area where this happens or know people that do.

Probably the best for stability is to join an existing startup and negotiate with a preference for salary over equity.

If it comes down to you considering some minimum-wage job, like these guys are suggesting, and you still want to do your own thing then I'd say you're better off trying to find a quick investment from an angel.

I really think that there is nothing more important in a startup than the employees (your) time.
I play Floyd songs on my guitars or ride my Ducati - when the lousy weather here in Norway allows it. Actually, I have also found that listening to bineural beats a la Holosync really helps me take a powernap when needed :)
When I start to look at it, I get a random direction every time. I suspect this means the test isn't very good.
How do people actually read scoble?
Thanks for the info. I always wanted to know what MIT is like.

By the way, didn't you have to take any classes like English or History? Or did you leave those out?
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20012

(Hack, the only way to search YC at YC I know of: try to google for the old link and submit it to YC again, and it will detect the duplicate and lead you to the thread )
What Mark Cuban Taught Me About Blogging
I had the pleasure of listing to Mark Cuban speak at Blog World 2007. He shared numerous insights about blogging which I have summarized here.
Do you have any idea about an application for the androind platform?
http://www.kirubakaran.com/phr0zen/

(Front page snapshots from Sep 29, 2007. (wouldn't have helped you in this case))
I'm not at all surprised to hear that there are organizations in India that take a more restrictive definition of engineer. The problem, I think, is that we're comparing a lenient count in India and China with a very restrictive count in the US. When you count more similarly, the gap vanishes - and actually looks more favorable for the US on a per-capita basis.

If you're interested, the Duke study that refutes the 350K number is available at: (warning, pdf!)
http://memp.pratt.duke.edu/downloads/duke_outsourcing_2005.p...
Heroku's Cofounder Explains Why They Created It
Marc Andreessen's 3 Truths about VC
what do you mean how? whats wrong with it?
The price of milk is a result of inflation. The price of gas and oil are drivers of inflation. Big difference.
AOL Gets Into Q&A Business, Acquires Israel's Yedda
It's amazing how many multi-billion dollar tech companies exist that I've never heard of.
how hot is this market anyways, there seems to be way too many players in there? and Google Answer and few other ones have already failed!
Chumby... it's finally here!
It's FAST too, in terms of calories burned per minute.

I love cycling - but any bike ride under an hour isn't really worth the time, unless you're doing hard intervals or climbing a really steep hill. If you have 30 minutes, there's nothing more efficient than running.
Operating systems, the sort you're talking about, are fairly small. Students write them as one-semester projects.
My bet is that existing Object Oriented Programming languages will become more "functionnal".

ie: Everything is an object... or a value!

http://virteal.com/ObjectVersusValue
[SF] Justin.tv needs front end web developer (hopefully you)
Okay, Yet-another-digg-clone versus http://www.research.att.com/~bs/applications.html

...and that list is woefully abbreviated.
Windows 7 "top feature request list" leaked
I see what you've done there.
In the BI world this year we've had Outlooksoft, Business Objects, and now Cognos. All whopper acquisitions.
I first got into programming, because I wanted to be a VFX artist in "The Industry". I moved to LA for 1-1/2 years to give it a shot.

Problem is, the TV/film industry is big, fat bloated and filled with nepotism. Junior Studio Execs in charge of nothing drive around in Mercedes 7 series, because their uncle got them a job.

At the same time, there are literally tens of thousands of talented artists who are broke and underemployed. If someone can figure out how to let the artist sell straight to the consumer, the industry is over. It's ripe and ready to be plucked from the tree.

Viva la revolucion digital!
One Laptop Per Child - Give 1 Get 1 starts today
Web 2.0 Filter
Latest web 2.0 news from the web 2.0 news pages.
Twiistup 3: Enter Your Startup and Save 20% on Registration
I think if you need high baseline of stability while you work on your own stuff, spend some time finding a good long-term consulting gig and then be disciplined about it. If you can get away with working 2/4 weeks, then the other 2 are for your startup. Some clients may want you to report daily, in this case, I would suggest that you work half as long as a normal work day to fulfill their reporting desires. Its a bit more annoying but once you build trust, I'm sure they wouldn't have a problem.
http://www.google.com/search?q=Is+ycombinator+news+indexed+b...
Yahoo! Launches New Program to Advance Open-Source Software for Internet Computing
Those two compete less than you might think. Snipshot is an easy tool for ordinary people to tweak their photos; Splashup is aiming at Photoshop.

The link says the photos are edited with Snipshot because they are edited with Snipshot. All I need for my site is something simple.
wow scribd fails. it worked last night. email me if you want to see. (see my profile for addy)
it turns out that a lot of USEFUL projects require a group of people to complete. And when large groups of people work together for a long time they can write anything in C++ (if you have the time and resources you can always start by reimplementing Lisp).

But if i want to hack something together for my own purposes I dont have the time to do it in C.
The only thing that sucks (for me) is the app has to be developed using Java. The SDK does not support native application development yet.
The reason they think it is high is because it was historically low from about 1985 to 2000. Most people (especially kids like myself) aren't old enough to remember oil shocks and major wars that drove the price up. At 24, I got used to buying gas during the oversupply of the late 90s. People have short memories and no concept of inflation. My dad swears that gas prices are insane, even though he was paying much more per mile (inflation adjusted) during high school in the late 70s (due to lower fuel economy and the oil shock at the time).

The reason they complain is like you said... it has somehow become a really visible number. The morning news here cites the price every single day, as if the price of a barrel of oil was going to determine how my day would go. For once, we actually have something worse (more meaningless) than citing the Dow Jones every day.
I think you're right about those mundane reasons, but the community can be a major turnoff too. Try posting a stupid question[0] on comp.lang.lisp - you'll almost certainly get flamed, and maybe get harmful responses[1]. Try the same on comp.lang.ruby or comp.lang.python and you might get some gentle correction, but not outright hostility.

[0] A stupid question would be anything you can find out by searching google, reading the manual or possibly digging through a few thousand lines of source code.

[1] http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/4c95766a8b...