skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
i disagree with home-schooling. kids need social interaction, they will get more creative, they will learn faster, and more importantly be more open to new ideas. putting your kids in a walled garden is going to harm them a lot
It's funny how the person being interviewed is the CEO of a company that makes products that require the same expensive, over-hyped crap that he says is keeping "innovation" from happening in enterprise software. Otherwise, it's just more buzzword-compliant riggamaroll spewed by yet another clueless "enterprise" corporation.

Enterprise software lacks innovation because it's doing all the things that startups know don't work. Expensive, closed, proprietary software running on over-hyped big-iron servers, purchased by idiot execs and managers, maintained by clock-watching office drones who are working for old-school face-time-focused companies.
Lewis suggests that donors to charity be able to deduct the full amount of their contribution from taxes

This brings up a comparison in my mind: Bill Gates (philanthropist) vs Paul Allen (investor). Whose post-Microsoft activity is more valuable? Who should be able to deduct more off of his taxes due to his cash distributions?

Gates seems like a nice guy...but I think that's what he's going for: To make me (and the federalis) think he's a "nice guy". History has shown rather completely that charity is useless or harmful. Investing in companies, by contrast is useless or useful. I don't think we should encourage policies to make Paul Allen, like Gates, throw his money away rather than utilize it.
Okay, I think I have identified a central reason why we disagree on some of this stuff, and it basically stems from views on art criticism.

The phrase "personal preference" to me makes a case for relativism:

"If I think something is good, then it is good."

WRONG.

As Bruce Sterling and others have argued, just because you like something [or just because you can make something, like a mash-up] doesn't mean it's good.

I don't have time to parse this much more right now, but the fact is that it behooves technologists to develop a robust art criticism within these applications.

Another reason I am high on the idea of people making decisions about what to listen to vs. algorithms [if there has to be a choice] is that, while there is a LOT of choice in the music world, it's not even CLOSE to infinite.

I believe that among the 10,000-50,000 (a pretty random number of people i picked), "legit" (whatever that means) music aficionados could parse out the vast majority of great music in all genre/mood/styles, from Britney to Bach, in a fairly short amount of time.

Also, this paragraph:

"You are right when you say that compilations like "Ibiza Club" or "Ellington for Lovers" make a lot of money: so does selling Muzak (the background music in supermarkets and most commercial spaces with music). Background music is the ultimate "genre" that is compatible with group preferences: no one is offended... but at the same time, nobody really cares."

Is utter bullshit. Do you honestly think I'm thinking of it that way?

Finally, let the record show that in all my hundreds of hours listening to last.fm and Pandora [PURELY for research reasons] I have NEVER EVER heard anything that I wasn't already aware of that was half decent. EVER.

So, my perspective on this is skewed. Like everything else, 95% of people don't know shit about music, so these incremental algorithmic solutions are a panacea to them.

Your idea of weighing "influential" people heavier in an algorithm has a lot of merit. I just think that pure human-powered peer production would get to the solution of better music for every occasion a lot faster.
NetApp is against the wall. They are quickly losing market share in midrange storage. Their stock is falling. This is merely a ploy to bring them some press. Maybe there will be a settlement in their favor. Though, the victory would be bad PR considering NetApp's view on patent laws and the high regard Sun is held in.
Hmm...but amazingly, these companies are profitable. It is easy for technologists like ourselves to only think about...well...the technology. What about the psychology behind the decision process?

A little thought experiment - say that you created enterprise software that worked perfectly, but was inexpensive, easy to use, and ran on a Commodore 64 (okay, or some low end PC). Would Cisco even let you through the door?

Also, no matter how good the system you create might be, it still costs your customer time and retraining to implement and support your new solution.

One last thing to think about (and to echo my first point)
From Cialdini's 'Influence, Science and Practice':

[Chivas Regal Scotch Whiskey] "had been a struggling brand until its managers decided to raise its price to a level far above its competitors. Sales skyrocketed, even though nothing was changed in the product itself (Aaker, 1991)"
Does it need to? I am going to take the unpopular stance on this and say no... enterprise software does not need to be innovative, it just needs to work.

redhat, vmware, oracle, microsoft etc... they all deliver what their customers need, not stuff that impresses magazine editors. The software keeps steadily getting better and although they don't have every whizbang feature in the book, they get the job done... that's what matters.

Do you have a better, faster way to do backups? A solution to documentation everyone hates so much? We'll pay for it if you've got it... after someone else goes first.
By hiring someone who has management talent.

I'm not talking about the people that biz schools churn out -- I'm talking about people who can actually manage projects.

They're incredibly rare. And gifted.

And once you work with one, you'll realize that all of the project management tools out there are crutches for people without the talent. Weak, floppy, minimally useful crutches.

For the record, I do NOT have this talent.
'Wiki City Rome' uses data from mobile devices to follow crowd movements
Is everyone just sucking up/karma whoring by agreeing with PG?

I think the volume of comments is at least partially because everyone reads them and thinks about them.

Or is PG the only thing worth talking about here?

Hardly, but given that it was his essays that brought many (most?) of us here to begin with, it's something we all have in common. So his essays generally get more attention. Furthermore, his essays tend to attract attention from all over, and visitor comments probably wind up on news.yc.
from the perspective of getting assloads of free publicity and buzz, it was a pretty good idea.
'Essentially, then, ray tracing tries to find the right information in a database as quickly as possible. '

Huh - that isn't really describing the core principle behind raytracing...
If they weren't fools, they'd be on the other side of the gate...
Walk down the halls of your local middle school and tell me what behavior you see which you think your kids ought to emulate.

Whenever I meet someone who was home-schooled (or occasionally alternatively schooled) I can often guess that they were after a few minutes of conversation. There's a certain kind of confidence and maturity in them that doesn't survive public schools and never comes back afterward. I envy it.
I think we are in agreement here. I just don't find myself upvoting that many stories, and I generally try to comment on those I do. So I was just basically saying the ones I don't think are interesting to talk about are the ones I'm not upvoting. Obviously there isn't an exact 1 to 1, but generally that is the case, at least for me.
If idiots implement garbage using a certain technology, is it the fault of the technology?

Whether it's relational database, client/server, green screen, closed source, etc., etc., etc..., for every horror story, there are a hundred successes. The fact that Web 2.0 presents wonderful opportunities doesn't diminish the capabilities of other technologies just because someone with a hidden agenda says so.

SAP was a scam shoved down the throats of very large companies by their own auditors, using Y2K as blackmail, in order to add on their own high margin services on the back end. Big ERP has desperately tried to "scale down" to medium and small organizations with limited success, just as new technologies are "scaling up" to service the demand of the unsatisfied millions. No secret here who the winners will be.
I'm landlord and feeder of (let me count...) 5 cats atm- it got as bad as 8 at some point. Actually one of them is much like a dog- that's why I specified I was talking about most cats.

Intricate etiquette and highly evolved social interaction don't imply empathy. Bees and ants have the former but AFAICT not the latter. I'm of the opinion that the adherence of cats to social rules comes from enough claws on the nose, rather than for any appreciation for the feelings of others.

You can be sensitive and not empathetic. You can feel very intensely about what is of selfish interest to you, while being mostly blind and deaf to the feelings of others. I think this the type of sensitivity that cats display.

Their behaviour to mice was never a factor in my opinion. Empathy for one's prey is not much of an evolutive advantage for any species, so I never expected that.

I see no contradiction in observing that the species which are most capable of empathy are just as capable of evil and cruelty. Indeed, I think the ability to feel/understand the pain you're inflicting on others is necessary for true cruelty (as opposed to instinctive viciousness, which can be explained in evolutionary terms, as you did).

You have a point in the grandparent post that cats are low maintenance. But then again, so are cacti, and they have a positive oxygen to CO2 contribution. :>
I thought the entire point of "enterprise" was accepting low development velocity and bad design in exchange for support and scalability (however akward). So, by definition, yes. By design, yes.
Nokia Marketing Team Reaches Out To Angry iPhone Users
I'm also 32.
There are hard problems in enterprise software that require innovative solutions. For example, data warehousing is crying out for better technology, and as a result, there are a multitude of startups building new technology to compete with the established players. Stream processing is another area with a ton of innovation, as is business intelligence/analytics, virtualization, security, etc. There's tons of innovation around financial services: building systems to facilitate automatic trading systems based on financial models.

One important difference between these markets and the typical consumer startup is that enterprises are inherently more conservative, and for good reason. You need to be able to offer an enterprise a lot of value, in exchange for the inherent risk of going with a startup with unproven technology. That means your value proposition needs to be compelling: you need to solve a real problem, and effectively allow the customer to make more money than they're paying for your software.

Frankly, I think saying "there's not much innovation in enterprise software" just indicates how much of an echo chamber the online startup community is. There is plenty of innovation, it is just rarely described by TC, Om, and the rest.
Plone/Zope are difficult, but the compactness of Python combined with the clarity of the design make digging in not terribly difficult. Understanding every aspect of the stack is difficult, Zope is everything from the HTTP server to the (object) Database, to the templating language (TAL). All those different pieces are difficult to keep in your head, but I'd still give it a hand up over most Java stacks: keeping pieces of the system in your head is easy.
I have two differing thoughts about this.

On one hand, I see it as a tactic to make the iPhone appear more affordable for Christmas. "Wow, 400 bucks is nothing compared to 600 bucks".

On the other hand, it will alienate the people who did buy an iPhone at launch (I feel bad for the guy who bought his 16 days ago). They paid $200 extra to get an iPhone 2 months in advance. That's $100 bucks a month; do you think that's worth it? Many people will This no and feel screwed over by Apple.
I'm not sure if I like the idea of reducing the amount of links one can post. While certainly sifting through new items becomes harder the interesting ones will gravitate towards the top. As long as submissions aren't completely off topic I'm interested in reading them.
"When Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973, the distinguished musical satirist Tom Lehrer decided that he could no longer perform. "It was at that moment that satire died," says Lehrer, "There was nothing more to say after that.""

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/feature_...
A key driver to e-music's growth has been the availability of slick portable devices. E-books, in contrast, have no decent rendering device and have to contend with a wonderful physical alternative, the book. (Sorry, PDA screens don't cut it.)

Now imagine an Apple iBook -- polished exterior, hundreds of e-paper sheets that can dynamically update to your current book selection, autosyncing with iTunes -- and what that would do to the e-book market.

Would you migrate some portion of your physical library to an e-library? Would you start to explore the long tail of fiction outside the traditional publishing venues? Do you think there is a fundamental difference between books and music, say length, required concentration, or home decoration?
Ignite Seattle 4: Startup Talks
At Ignite Seattle 4 we had fifteen great talks (all available on YouTube). As usual the talks were on topics that we felt geeks would appreciate. Two in particular contain sage advice for an entrepreneur. The first video is Leo Dirac's explanation of Venture Capital Term Sheets. The second is Dave McClure's talk on Startup Metrics (after the jump). Both five-minute talks were selected to do a reprise at Gnomedex.
39 and trying to get my first startup done before 40
World's first per-seat,on-demand jet service cleared for take-off
"History has shown rather completely that charity is useless or harmful."

Oh?

Anyone here go to UChicago? That was Rockefeller's philanthropy. How about CMU? Carnegie-Mellon. Who watched Square One as a kid? Also Carnegie & Mellon. Ever aspired to being a Nobel Laureate? Alfred Nobel, the person who got rich off dynamite. The math competitions I went to were sponsored by a variety of corporate charities. The Intel and Westinghouse science competitions are Intel and Westinghouse's charitable programs, respectively. Olin College was started by liquidating the Olin Foundation.

My high school was started with a grant from the Annenberg Foundation. I credit it with getting me interested in startups in the first place. It's now doing teacher training with a $500K grant from the Gates Foundation.

One of my mom's friends is involved with schools in Africa. She says that the Gates Foundation has made a massive difference over there. Children who would otherwise die from childhood illnesses are going to school, learning to read and write, and even learning how to use computers.

I think a better lesson to draw from history would be that attempts to distribute money are always fraught with unintended consequences, so tread carefully. However, you don't get to be a billionaire if you're not careful with money. Gates and Rockefeller and Carnegie don't need our advice on how to put their money to good use. I'd hardly say that Gates is "throwing away" his money.

(Paul Allen, OTOH - really, can you say that the Portland Trailblazers are worth more than saving 70 million kids from measles?)
".but I think that's what he's going for: To make me (and the federalis) think he's a "nice guy"."
I don't think Gates cares what you think.

"History has shown rather completely that charity is useless or harmful"
Wow. What history are you referring to?
Ruby Matters: Meta-programming, Synthesis, and Generation
If it weren't because this radical honesty joke is getting old already, I'd express my resentment at your toxoplasmosis-induced stereotype parroting.
Wow, you think that all the contributes of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are "useless or harmful"? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_and_Melinda_Gates_Foundati...)

I would not consider giving my money back to do things like eradicating polio useless.
More from the Trenches - Rick Segal advises someone to go for small scale acquisition angering other VCs
DOJ advises that Net Neutrality could hamper development of the Internet
Bad news and the flawed analogies still persist. This time instead of tubes, the internet is likened to the Post Office charging more for express mail.
Well sure it is. You are doing intersections of rays with the "scene database". The biggest bottleneck in MOST raytracing systems is ray-intersection, not shading or lighting calculations, especially for complex things like refraction, reflection (and even worse with high-curvature surfaces).

It's not a relational database, but really, you are just doing complex database queries..
I've worked under someone like that and the tools he used were . . . a notebook, a pen, and a highlighter. (It wasn't a software project, but it was complex)
small mistake: submission form asks winter commitment but front page shows summer commitment
> "Rome's Notte Bianca is all about the city, the people and the events, and Wiki City Rome will give Romans a new awareness of how they move within their city in response to this exceptional pulse of activities," said researcher Kristian Kloeckl

I think they're pretty aware of how they move: slowly, and with lots of honking and shouting.
True women clubbing apes only think of sex once or twice a year. Thinking about sex every 3 minutes proves you have the restraint to stop thinking about sex that often.
For the first video, Leo Parker Dirac's slides can be found here:
http://www.embracingchaos.com/2007/08/5-minute-primer.html
Talk about spin.

They use the example of the post office, saying you can pay different amounts for different speeds. That's not what net neutrality prevents. Net neutrality would prevent the situation where you send off two order forms at the same postal rate, but one company gets their order form faster because they're a subsidiary of the post office, or have paid a big fee.
What history are you referring to?

The history of Africa. Billions and billions and billions of dollars thrown away. It's still very poor.
I liked his criticism of big archaic architectures built up by armies of consultants.. until he said this:

"This new predictive system is the service-oriented architecture (SOA) I spoke of earlier. We call it that because it serves you and your customers better."
Can someone just settle Apache vs Lighthttpd for me :-)
I do have one beef with this article...

This is "rendering for the masses" not "animation for the masses". The two have very little to do with each other. Great animation comes from good timing, good acting, and other things that have very little to do with the quality of the image that is being produced.
>We employ ~90 people and touch thousands of physicians and hundreds of thousands of lives.

Only in startup land would you have to justify that as a "success" by inserting the "although it hasn't had a liquidity event".

Congrats on creating what seems to be a healthy business!
or employing gatekeepers...
This is largely because people give away money stupidly, not because people give away money. Until recently, most aid to Africa was distributed top-down. Western organizations would send money to African governments or African NGOs, which were supposed to distribute the money to their people. However, since Africa is so corrupt, the money usually got "stuck" at some warlord, who squirreled it away in a Swiss bank account or bought a nice palace or private security detail for himself. Very little of it reached the people it was supposed to help.

Bottom-up charitable programs in Africa have been very successful. Things like the Gates Foundation, various micro-capital organizations, and direct school-to-school exchanges have made a measurable difference in the lives of many Africans.
I liked this part the best:

"Some of my banking customers have infrastructures that are bigger than the public Internet in terms of the storage they consume, given all the data and equipment they have to support."

Somehow, I doubt that anyone has a system larger than the public internet particularly as measured by storage. Can you imagine trying to sell that much hard drive space to someone? Yeah, you need more space than the Internet! I bet they aren't even using as much space as YouTube. I tuned out after reading this comment in the article.

Ever since I read PG's article about PR I've been leery of articles that stink of PR. This article reeks of it and then he goes and makes an incredible claim with no backup. There are hundreds of other articles I could be reading, I'm done with yours.
Quote: Ratti's team obtains its data anonymously from cell phones, GPS devices on buses and taxis, and other wireless mobile devices. Data are made anonymous and aggregated from the beginning, so there are no implications for individual privacy.
To be sure, when I said "philanthropy" I implied the "giving to the poor" variety. Schools and Universities for whatever reason don't seem to spring up through the profit motive [1], and so giveaways of various kinds are typical. Many universities sprung up from Churches but that doesn't validate all the quantifiably harmful activities of churches. More to the point:

She says that the Gates Foundation has made a massive difference over there

Here's the thing: MAYBE Gates manages his money better than everyone else. I'm willing to accept the possibility, but I doubt it. It's always nice to hear that such-and-such is going well, but when it comes to massive boondoggles, you're unlikely to hear anything else. "Yes, yes, all the billions were well spent." The problem is, Africa is dirt poor despite endless charity from the west.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)

I'm inclined to look at verifiable results rather than anecdotes. Here's the question: Do you think the presence of a well-run Emerging Markets investment fund through Gates' money would help Africa more or less than free Vista-loaded computers?

[1] I don't know why this is. Why is CMU better than Devry? The best single answer is: Reputation. I'm inclined to bet of the free market, but educational systems seem resistent to the free market.
It's more satire than parody. Some helpful heuristics:

(1) Is the author saying "things you can't say" in a place where normally the rules apply? (Bloomberg isn't an especially politically-incorrect news/opinion outlet.)

(2) Is the author out of character? This could have been written under a haughty pseudonym ("Edgar Charles Hyannisport, III") -- but was under the name of author Michael Lewis instead, who's written popular books about finance, business, technology, and sports. If a professional writer offends, you can figure they calculated to offend in service of their real persuasive/entertainment goals.

(3) Does the presentation match the implied mindset? Even people with similar views don't present them in this way, if they want to be effective.

(4) Gradual progression of implausibility. Lewis starts merely speaking more crudely than typical of "the poor", but then goes to the absurd (the poor should have teams of lawyers) and proceeds to talk of debtor's prisons and requiring menial labor of the indebted. A slow build keeps readers guessing, for at least a little while, while eventually causing most/all to realize the author is being facetious.
The site has lost some of its appeal since it was opened up to topics that aren't strictly startup related.

I've noticed that accompanying the larger amount of posts, the quality has been more spread out. It's no surprise that PG related posts attract more of that quality.
It's aSmallWorld. If you have to ask...
I'm really looking forward to emacs 23. Between this and freetype support it's going to be a big improvement.