skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The real story (http://nostalgia.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Proteus_Steinmet...):

In the early years of this century, Steinmetz was brought to General
Electric's facilities in Schenectady, New York. GE had encountered a
performance problem with one of their huge electrical generators and had
been absolutely unable to correct it. Steinmetz, a genius in his
understanding of electromagnetic phenomena, was brought in as a consultant
-- not a very common occurrence in those days, as it would be now.

Steinmetz also found the problem difficult to diagnose, but for some days
he closeted himself with the generator, its engineering drawings, paper and
pencil. At the end of this period, he emerged, confident that he knew how
to correct the problem.

After he departed, GE's engineers found a large "X" marked with chalk on
the side of the generator casing. There also was a note instructing them to
cut the casing open at that location and remove so many turns of wire from
the stator. The generator would then function properly.

And indeed it did.

Steinmetz was asked what his fee would be. Having no idea in the world what
was appropriate, he replied with the absolutely unheard of answer that his
fee was $1000.

Stunned, the GE bureaucracy then required him to submit a formally itemized
invoice.

They soon received it. It included two items:

1. Marking chalk "X" on side of generator: $1.
2. Knowing where to mark chalk "X": $999.
I think that OOP has some great ideas and some bad ideas. I really like polimorphism and inheritance, but I'm not that fond of encapsulation.
OOP is just another tool and, just like with any other tool, it isn't meant for everything. The problem is, people seem to think that it really is meant for everything.
Good question.

One of the things I do is ask potential employees to HONESTLY list several specific things they DISLIKE and/or HATE about our business (either the business model or the actual implementation.) Every business has warts, so it shouldn't be too hard to find some. If the business in question is a complete startup or is in 'stealth mode', I ask them to list things they dislike about the general industry we're operating in.

I want to hire employees that are honest and will work to improve our business. Asking this question helps me screen for brown-nosers, it leads to the obvious follow-up question of how they would change things to improve them, and it also really gives me an insight into how they think. It also shows me how much research they've done and how much industry knowledge they have. I've actually created new positions for people based on their answers to this question...it can be really enlightening. You just have to be genuine in wanting to hear their answers and you have to have a thick skin.
Apple issues warning on iPhone unlocking
Wow, great answer. I didn't really understand where you were coming from in that "how do I spend my money" thread, but this post shows how it came about. I wanted to suggest in that thread that maybe you should use your greatest asset--the knowhow about creating startups--to help others prepare their YCombinator application or similar activity. By helping young people create startups (or make their YCombinator application as good as it can be) you will help create jobs and solutions to save everybody time and money, or socialize better, or entertain everybody with better and better startups.
Thats what art galleries do, but they give the freedom to the artist and then decide whether the painting is "good" enough. This is more like contract work where someone would get payed to do murals or portraits and that too is commonplace. Also a webapp's popularity will mainly have to do with the quality of the idea and how well it is marketed and publicized, much of the programming necessary is relatively elementary.
yeah I was thinking the same thing. would it be better to put my money into kiva.org or olpc?
Like OMG, didn't you know Leah Culver is dating Brad Fitzpatrick?? ;]
Social Networks are the New Blog
I like the title even more than the actual article...
I guess that's pretty kind. Really, they are telling the community, Go back or else!
Isn't Vista enough of a reason to get the tar and feathers ready? ;)
Something tells me this approach towards the concept of platform, will be the beggining of the new bubble every single irrelevant reporter has been praising for the past 2 years.

And there are a tons of reasons that make it clear to a technology person, that bussiness persons will ignore and some will get the money and others lose big.
Wallflower at the Web Party - The Friendster story (old but good)
Still, Salesforce's forward PE is 300+. A wide variation, but still almost an order of magnitude bigger than M$.
What is the best way to learn to program/hack from scratch?
What is the best language?
What is the best book?
What software is needed?
or Dale Chihuly (see http://www.paulgraham.com/marginal.html)
Admissions have broad implications beyond just who gets admitted. For example, the curriculum of primary schools can't change because of high school admissions, high schools can't change because of college admissions, and colleges can't change because of U.S. News & World Report.

There a couple of solutions. First, as you suggest, the system could be completely circumvented. Second, the system as a whole could become less tightly coupled so that, for example, high school grades and SATs have much less influence on college admissions. There have been a couple of proposals along these lines.

To me though it seems like the system isn't going away and there is no practical way to make it less tightly coupled.

I think the most practical is to add a new layer to the top of the stack that will pull on everything underneath. My money has been on digital identity for a while.
All of Sillicon Valley is just a strip mall wasteland. If you are European, or lived in Boston/Nyc/D.C. it will be the most boring place in earth to live. (I have no clue how people living there are not shooting themselves with a shotgun. maybe paxil is helping). San Jose was named the most boring large City of USA (actually it is more of a suburb itself).
SF is much more fun, but it has its problems of bums, trash, urine smelling streets, car break ins, ugly girls with no fashion sense, etc.... ah and lots of fog. But there is lots of stuff to do, good night life, great house music scene, you can walk to places.

Rents are crazy right now, and it is VERY VERY hard to find a decent place for a decent ammount. Get ready to pay 1600/mo per bedroom, or $2200/mo + for a two bedroom.

Berkeley is fun too. It would be my second choice as a place to be.
Avoid Palo Alto, and most of the Peninsula, same boring stuff as south bay.
Oakland can be very gheto, and not safe, (except few pockets such as Montclaire, )
I wouldn't believe "forward" anything :). If Salesforce.com goes back to 9% net profit margin next yr, its P/E will become 80. A P/E that's 1.5-3x that of MS is reasonable, since MS's revenues are not growing much.
Did anyone else notice this:

According to (people|person) familiar with (the matter|those talks|the company)
Maybe thats true if the idea is "lets make a better search engine" but thats not much of an idea. If the idea is "lets make a better search engine that uses a unique ranking system based on links to estimate the popularity of any given page" then I'd say the idea is worth something.

The probable difference between ConnectU and Facebook? Facebook spammed all of Harvard to get its initial traction, ConnectU didn't.
I disagree. Over 20 million people use FB every single day. Over 40 million active users(used it within 30 days).

They have something in there to monetize, big time. Watch, $20 billion today would be a steal. FB will be worth $100B in 3 years.
It was morally/ethically wrong to not refund the money if not a breach of contract, but then again I think mEgo is getting publicity you can't buy. I hadn't heard of them before this.
well either wag or uncov failed me :(
Yes, our reasoning platform is not made to deal with this kind of stuff, but it's fun, in a perverse way, to see where can it take us.

Kinda like passing a bitmap image to an audio player, or passing it through a mp3 compressor and loading the resulting data in an image viewer, trying to discover anything interesting in the output.
Agreed. A lifetime user of facebook is worth $500, easy. I don't see what is going to get me to leave the platform, ever.
The problem is unless you're guy kawasaki, kevin rose, or some serial entreprenuer/misc luminary what proof do you have that you can outsell someone who can program?

(hypothetically if this is the case:) it's really hard to convince someone of your value if you can't even sell it to an angel or vc, and have cash as proof
One of MANY real stories. Forum freedom applies here.
I agree that individuals have that choice, and unless they want to do research, there's little reason to attend a major research university apart from the brand recognition.

But I'm not sure the elite can be made irrelevant because the products are mostly uniform and the consumers seem happy enough with the status quo. It's a Coke/Pepsi decision and the major players are so entrenched that they can continue to dominate, even among the liberal arts schools.

That's not to say regional elites can't emerge (see Wash U and Emory) just that the system is tied to the culture. Where technology fascinates me is in the meritocracy of great work. But even then the major players (Gates, Bezos, Yang, Googlers) had the authenticity stamp that an elite association afforded.

You can get a great education at probably more than two hundred schools in the US alone. But if given the choice, I bet most would choose the brand over the unknown. How can we quantify an education and how can a new product demonstrate its superiority to influence that choice?
that's pretty much the idea behind the metalab (http://metalab.at/wiki/Folder:V5a-en) - people working on projects together (and besides one another), mentoring each other.
Have you ever seem most programmers give a presentation?

Enough said I think. :-)
that's a stereotype that not all programmers fall into... especially the ones that do it out of the necessity of seeing their idea come to life as opposed to love of puzzles alone

not all business people are too proud to step outside of their comfort zone and learn something new...
San Francisco is the best place to live that I know of.
Here's a better link: http://www.onintelligence.org/

Jeff's book is at the top of my list of things to read (it's been sitting on my self for a few weeks now.) What I've read about it so far sounds damn interesting though.
1. Build an application

2. Go to 1.

I'm not being a dick. That's actually the best way to learn. You can read books (and certainly will while doing number 1) but if you don't actually take the time to sit down and build something, you'll never get a good enough feel for how to program.

Once you've iterated that loop a couple of times, you'll realize you've done it all wrong. But that's what learning is all about.
Something tells me you've got some great people working for you. :-)
Step 1. Buy whichever 'Learn Python' book you like the look of. Read book, while hacking up little programs to amuse yourself and solve your problems

Step 2. Read some tutorials on the net to expand your knowledge. Investigate open source programs like BeautifulSoup. Use open source stuff to build toy programs with (e.g. RSS reader or screenscraper).

Step 3. Implement a project of moderate complexity, while reading more advanced books, and browsing Python blogs to get a broader understanding of how things work.

I assume this process would work for Ruby or PHP, but I think Python is the perfect language for learners.
Hmm, thats a very difficult question to answer...
I think it depends on what are you trying to create.

If it is a webapp I recommend learning JavaScript, for that you will have to learn HTML and CSS before you start writing JavaScript code.

What you really have to do is to pick a simple programming language and start coding with it.
For me, the way to learn programming is by creating code, first pick your programming language, then start reading about it, be sure to start with a simple book or tutorial, don't look for advanced books.

What I'm saying is:
Read a lot, code a lot, and have fun!

Good Luck.
The audience is probably too small and homogeneous to be worth very much. See http://redeye.firstround.com/2006/05/53651.html.
Writing code that does not suck (Python specific)
I could be wrong, but referencing the Forbes survey that you cited - the results went against your conclusion...

Idea vs Execution (or which one is more important) votes:

------------------------

Arthur Blank: both

Tim Blixseth: both

Otis Booth: Execution

Mark Cuban: Execution

Gerald Ford: both

Danny Gilbert: Execution

Kennet Hendricks: both

Wayne Huizenga: Execution

George Kaiser: both

Michael llitch: Idea

William Moncrief: Idea

Phillip Ruffin: Idea

Jorge Perez: Execution

James Sorenson: both

------------------------

Both are equally important (tie): 6 votes

Execution: 5 votes

Idea: 3 votes

Conclusion: Execution wins
I haven't read his book, but his ideas are interesting.

A little taste from TED: [http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/125]

Also a fascinating and much more technical talk Hawkins gave at IBM's Conference on Cognitive Computing, watch till the end for the grilling he gets from established Neuroscientists and Computing people: [http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2500845581503718756]
Thanks for the IBM link!

What an awesome life Jeff has. Became oscenely rich through Palm and Handspring, and how he runs his own neuroscience institute. Seriously, in my mind I can't imagine anything better than that.
Myself in 1999: 'A life time user of AOL is worth $500 easy. I don't see what is going to get me to leave the platform, ever.'
The road to launch...
Something is worth whatever people are willing to pay for it, esp. in the case of internet phenoms.
Good question axiom , great answer Shooter!

I will just add that resumes could be tricky so the interviews are critical, I would look for Creativity, for me that's the most valuable thing in a startup (of course if the person you are hiring has the basic knowledge for the job).

In addition to Shooters question I would ask:
How can we do it better?

Hope it helps.
Your Man in India - Outsourcing Your Errands
Interesting point, but I would guess AOL made $500 off each user they had in 1999.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=59195
email me... contact info in my profile.
Actually, that is almost exactly how the fine arts painting gallery circuit works.
I don't think abstraction is even the right concept to be talking about here. Being able to work with an abstraction doesn't imply ignorance of the details, and ultimately the best code comes from people who know how to make abstractions that are elegant and aren't leaky (which takes expertise in both domains).
since i'm not a missile expert, the only thing I'm wondering is whether living in one of these things can either make you sterile or give your offspring birth defects
I'm a big fan of open-ended questions in interviews, and this is a great one - assuming the candidate can be expected to have enough background knowledge to answer it.

Thanks, added it to my mental list of interview questions :)
http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/reviews/wolfram/ provides an interesting read on Wolfram and his "New" "Science".
Apple to announce iPhone apps SDK at WWDC
No. Regular expressions plus backwards references is in NP; Turing machines can solve far more difficult decision problems.
"We're getting ready to hire our first employee. We've decided to go with an intern, because they are cheap, and if they turn out to be an idiot it's easy enough to get rid of them."

How do you attract smart people to work at your startup? Not like that, I'm afraid.
People constantly nagging you about supporting walled gardens?

Because right now that's the best idea I've got for bringing the wall down :(
RE: [I didn't really understand where you were coming from in that "how do I spend my money" thread...]

At the risk of hijacking this thread, I made that "Are you going to change the world" post after being up for 28 hours. I rambled too much and I see how easy it was to lose the trail. I actually only had a very brief, passing thought about going to medical school which I quickly discounted, for example, yet some people thought that was the core issue of my post. I also have zero interest in DONATING my money to charity at this point, yet some people thought that was a core issue of my post. Medical research and charity were red herrings for some people who read the post. I'm interested in social entrepreneurship, not charity. I also have tons of my own ideas and have no trouble spending my money (on business or pleasure)...but I'm always open to new ideas and opportunities, because I can only implement so many ideas myself. Interestingly, some people also thought I was having a huge identity crisis based on my post, which is not the case. I apparently injected too many specifics in the post...

Some people that commented on that thread actually helped me crystallize my thoughts better, though:

1. "Software is powerful. Engineers are powerful." (via falsestprophet) To this I would add that youth and inexperience are also powerful. And they are also the people most likely to underestimate their power and their ability to change the world for the better.

2. There are people changing the world with your skillset RIGHT NOW. To think that you can't do anything is a cop-out. (via altay, falsestprophet, Hexayurt, and others)

3. "If you are not working on the most pressing issues in your field...why not?" "If you are not tacking the biggest problem you can tackle with your skillset, why not?" As someone pointed out, everything has an opportunity cost. The true CORE idea of my post was to prompt people to examine those opportunity costs and weigh whether they are working on something that will have the biggest positive impact, versus just working in a hot field (or on pedestrian ideas that they think they can flip for cash.) In sum, don't settle.

4. Changing the world for the better doesn't have to involve curing cancer or saving the lives of African children. Again, I may have thrown out a red herring with the medical stuff. If you are saving people time and money, then that's great. But, even then, is it THE optimal solution?

Etc. Etc.
http://www.eblong.com/zarf/zplet/lists.html
Where does that power come from? Fossil fuels, eventually.
You're forgetting that by using solar power, you're not using fossil fuels anymore. You save an extremely large amount of environmental damage even though the process of producing solar cells might not be very efficient today.
So your argument can be summarized as "I guess PHP is the best option"? That still sounds like an unsupported opinion.

Let's assume you're right, and that there are ten times as many "large scale" (whatever that means) websites running on PHP as Rails. That might mean that an equal number of people have tried building large scale websites using PHP and Rails, and that ten times as many failed using Rails as PHP. Do you think that's the case?

5 minutes of searching on Google fails to return any conclusive numbers, but PHP certainly seems to be several times more popular than Rails. PHP has also been around for 13 years, while Rails was first released to the public just three years ago. Both have been gaining popularity since their introduction, which suggests an explanation for the greater number of large scale PHP sites having nothing to do with the suitability of the tools: PHP has been around longer and has more users. If you want to measure like that, you should be programming in Java, not PHP.

The number of projects attempted and failed with a given toolset is a much better indication of its suitability than overall popularity. Even that can fail though. I suspect a greater proportion of Rails projects succeed than PHP, but I don't think Rails is the reason in a direct sense. I think the sort of people who choose Rails are more likely to succeed than those who choose PHP.
I actually get asked this question quite a bit, and I'd like to be able to offer a more informed answer. Depending on the specific interests of the person that asks, I usually always recommend Python or Scheme and the standard list of starting books.

I learned Scheme first, but I think Python is an equally great starting language. In fact, I would be very curious to hear everyone's opinions on Python vs. Scheme as a starting language...preferably without having your standard language flamewar.

I know about the MIT switch to the Zelle book and their reasoning. What are some other pros and cons? I still lean towards Scheme a bit, because I think the functional approach to problem-solving can be more powerful...at least it was more eye-opening to me. (But, then, I'm not a person that was especially gifted at mathematics.) Ideas?
I actually found this title more interesting than the actual article...
Phht, this is totally worthless. This guy is blowing steam with no grounds to base his claim on whatsoever..

What some people will do for attention.

Not trying to make unfounded claims, but my personal belief is apple will keep the iPhone a closed platform for as long as they can. Only when (if) competition forces them to open it up will they do so.
The content owners' problem is that they look at this is a black-and-white issue. The DRM on iTunes is about as restrictive as is acceptable, and it's at a level that users rarely bump up against.

Here's a free idea for, say, NBC Universal that will rocket them to the forefront of digital content. Make a website with a slick streaming viewer, and put your whole content archive up there. The entirety of show and movie you've ever produced, outtakes, behind-the-scenes, everything. Organize it well and give it a nice UI, and it will instantly become huge. Put in some ads (as a user, I have no problem with being forced to watch a few 30-second ads in exchange for an hour of good, well-presented content), and you'll be printing money.
I hated facebook. From afar of course because I wasn't particularly interested in using it. Then, inevitably, someone wanted me to get on facebook, so I did. I hated the interface and the aesthetics, and really wasn't interested in making a pointless 'this is who I am' page.

But then a few interesting things started happening, my friends started using these little facebook applications (oh how much I hate the installing software analogy they've gone with is a whole other post) and I started using them as well. Like in the olden days (ie last year) when someone found a fun flash game and sent you the link and you sent your scores back and forth.

Like all these social networking sites its asynchronous communication with a low social overhead (your friends just happen to see what you're doing) and with lots of stuff to do. I think its going to become the internet for a large proportion of the population.

It might get beaten eventually, but in the short term the biggest potential challenger is google. If google leveraged the gmail user base to make orkut bigger and integrated it with igoogle widgets, it'd be something approaching facebook. I think they are somewhat reluctant to do that to their user base though, although it could be done unobtrusively.
I've hardly looked at Scheme as I came to programming with an unacademic get-stuff-done attitude. Which probably explains why I find Python so appealing, and why I recommend it to others who want to learn a language to use as a tool: it is immediately useful, fairly user-friendly, teaches good mental habits, has abudant tutorials and soforth, a large helpful community, and lots of active hackers hacking away and sharing their ideas.
From the blog ...

"In the end we decided to forego the customizable webpage market and focus on customizable homepages."

From clutterme.com ...

"We let you make websites."

Which one is it?