skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There is no "system administrator" college degree...so you pretty much get to decide when you're equipped to be an IT consultant, and what your time is worth. Of course, repeat business is the only way you'll make decent money, so you'd not want to exaggerate your accomplishments. But, "serious Linux nerds" means people who are capable of setting up mail, DNS, web, users, LDAP/NIS/Samba, NFS/CIFS, and hooking it all up in such a way that it can operate without you present (I always used Webmin for this aspect--it has great ACLs so you can give as much or as little privilege as your customer needs to be able to create/manage users without breaking anything, for example).

Even if you're not an expert at all of these things, if you know what they're for and can read the documentation and make all of them work in an afternoon, then you're well-equipped (better equipped than many Microsoft "certified" techs) for the job. Most small businesses don't even know what they need, much less how to set it all up. So, when you go in, you'll find that they have no idea what you're doing, why you're doing it, or how it all fits together. How you explain it is more important than how you implement it when it comes to whether you're called back or recommended to other businesses. It has to work, of course, but as long as you're explaining the job clearly and in simple terms, the customer will remain happy (try to look busy, as well...sometimes you'll be waiting for installs and such...do something else during that time, even if it's busy work).

Note that I'm not necessarily recommending this path. IT support sucks. It's a very stressful field, where the only time you hear from people is when there's a problem. In fact, the only time you hear from people is when there is a problem so severe that they can't get work done (people are so afraid of computers, and of thinking about technology, that they'll ignore trouble signs until the breakage is complete). Thus, your customers are almost always stressed out. I frequently worked for a company that had a quarter million in daily revenues, and so a day with all of their people off-line cost them significant sums of money. I have great respect for the fellow who built and owned the place, as he kept his cool like a champ, no matter how tight the downtime schedules were...but some of his employees (and share holders) did not.

Oh, yeah, you'll also work a lot of nights and weekends, because that's when companies can afford to be completely off-line.
EU 'Blue Card' to target skilled immigrants
It seems that the affiliate ad model for "dating" sites pays well: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2... (note the paragraph which starts "To expand without investment capital...").

It's also interesting to see that when AdBrite loses an adult advertising partnership, it's an important loss for them: http://valleywag.com/tech/online-advertising/philip-kaplans-...

AdBrite is private, though, so we don't know what percentage of adult ads account for revenues, but they do have an entire other site -- BlackLabelAds.com - dedicated to adult ads.

Anyway, it was just an obvious suggestion, given the 3boobs site you'd already created.

Best of luck to you, whatever you do.
The peninsula is much nicer than the city, I think. I lived in the city for a little while after moving here, but after my car got broken into TWICE in one month, (even my sunglasses were stolen), and a couple of way too expensive parking tickets and even getting towed on one occassion, I decided to go migrate south. Very glad I did; it's much cleaner, there are more trees, less crime, and notably fewer crazies. It's easier to hear yourself think, too. Rent is not really any less than you pay in the city, but you seem to get more -- as in square feet -- breathing room, etc.
It's actually possible to renew TN status indefinitely, as long as one maintains temporary intent. I've been living in Boston a few years, working on a TN for a slightly larger company, and haven't had problems at the border.

However, the situation potentially gets a little trickier when a start-up is involved, as one is not supposed to be self-supporting - you need to have a paying job. However, I believe that in principle, there isn't any reason that one can't hold an equity stake in a company that employs you.

I am already in Boston and working with a co-founder here, which is the biggest reason I need to be in the US. Moreover, the access to smart capital and to our target market is significantly greater here (Boston, SF, and NYC). Personally, I have found the opportunities for inspiration, advice, and serendipity are much richer in Cambridge than they were in Toronto. That isn't to say it can't be done in Canada, but at this stage, my bets are best in the US.
I've been thinking about good observations can degenerate into anti-patterns in the folk wisdom of programmers, and this article hits one of them square on the head.

Pattern: "Adding more programmers to a late project makes it later."
Anti-Pattern: "Don't bother hiring more developers."

Pattern: "There is no silver bullet"
Anti-Pattern: "A more productive programming languages won't solve any of your problems."

To this, I'll now add...

Pattern: "Premature optimization is the root of all evil"
Anti-Pattern: "Throw away your algorithms book."
Ask YC: How do you know what to fix...
We applied to YC and were rejected. Now we are considering re-applying but we can't figure out what area to improve so that we stand a better chance. The rejection email gives no specific reason. Your thoughts? Especially folks who have reapplied earlier.
b/c if i want to ask those types of questions i can ask (in order).

my friends on gtalk/yelp/google

furthermore, i would never in a million years think of paying for the answer to a question such as "which color shirt do i wear" or "where do i shop for X".

i have a brain, and the internet offers answers to those questions for free, and it doesn't take an hour.
Well, there are a pretty easy set of rules for this: You cannot generalize something to be universal, while still maintaining any of the specifications therein.

I do agree that it's useless in practice, though -- it is philosophy, after all. Philosophy has never had concrete practical applications. It's only interesting as a curiosity.
Here's the harsh answer:

Why would I want to pay you to tell me what nightclub to go to, what color shirt I should wear, or what I should buy for my girlfriend?

Those are things that either a) I should already know or b) I would find out from my friends and family.
Well, #3 is not good choice. ;) That's even not a subject for discussion. Besides, our potential clients already gave up on Google when they are coming to us. #2 - well, maybe yes, maybe not. We make it easier. And #1 - not much people have hundred of friends on IM. And sometimes, it'd be nice to know 50 opinions, instead of 10 (someone's typical online IM active list). (And well sometimes you don't want you friend know that you're interested in SOME THINGS :P

Don't forget that if you know where is the best retail store close by, some people don't, and they are not that happy to invest hours looking for it.

Speaking about my example with shirt/club/etc, these are really bad examples, saying about paid questions; but they are good if they'd be free (and they would).

However, just a silly example. I'd like to buy a gaming console, but I don't know which one. I have close to 100 of active contacts in my IM, but barely few of them know something about gaming consoles. So I'm about to spend several hundred dollars, and (me, personally) would be happy to spend $10 or $20 in advance to gather opinion of 50 or 100 people about the gaming consoles before making a purchase. And I want it now. Not tomorrow. Not after the week of gathering all pros and cons.
That's a google group? You have to seek and obtain permission to even read it.
Hey white,

This kind of idea is hard to evaluate up-front. Sometimes you just have to build it and see but I think you could be onto something.

If you do it, try to integrate visual ways of showing that the app is working, and spend effort on getting that key first answer incredibly fast. Another question to ask yourself is if you want someone to wait and watch the answers come in, or if they'll come back in an hour to see what came in. That decision is crucial to how you build the app.

This article might be of interest: http://www.seo24.org.uk/how-yahoo-or-facebook-could-really-k... Most isn't relevant, but skip down to the text "Think of it this way - today's search engines answer three basic questions:"

It's talking about exactly the problem you're solving, and the value you're providing. Hope that helps and all the best with the idea!

We built something similar, but our focus has been on gathering votes quickly rather than answers. Personally I think something magical that happens when an app crosses over into being truly (and visually) real-time.

- aaron
I'm not knowledgeable enough about economics yet but I find it strange that the same rules don't apply whether we're talking about capital, goods or individuals. If we agree that exchange benefits both parties, why not fully open everything? Why do "businesses demand graduates from India and China"?
In that same vein, how would we know what to tell you if you don't show us anything?

Generic advice: Get a lot of feedback from a lot of people.
The reason I visit certain sites is for the community, not the news. Slashdot was good, then reddit, then programming.reddit, and now n.yc. They all carry similar news, but the people are what make me come and go.

The next big site could be www.dzone.com. They have a bunch of good stories, but unfortunately no community. Everything of interest there gets cross posted to programming.reddit and here, and I think they generally have it first.
Maybe each site adds something interesting and new like the publisher's opinion, it's the same thing with newspapers and magazines.
Humor or not, it's quite possible.
Off hand, they could be using PDAs, iPhones, laptops with satellite / cellular PCMCIA cards, laptops with wifi at restaurants and truckstops, computers at truckstops, etc.
Then you should enjoy the NYT Best Sellers List because they take out that crap, as mentioned by the article. I think the article raises some good points, that it is sort of arbitrary in how they draw the line between what is accepted and what isn't. If they didn't, we would see only popular culture crap like Harry Potter.
You bring up an interesting question. I would be glad to give my critique of your application (for what it's worth). I imagine quite a few others here would as well. With enough feedback, you could probably find common themes and have something to run with.

The big question: how to share you application with others? I don't see a problem of cutting and pasting it into a new thread and asking for feedback. You run the risk of sharing your secrets with the world. Also, this approach may not sit well with ycombinator themselves.

Any thoughts?
Wouldn't it be nice if you could get the community no matter the story source? Maybe it's my fomo (fear of missing out) but when I'm interested in an event/article I find myself digging around to find more info/commentary
I find most of the startup news boring. I can only count a few that are good, for example pretty much any essay by PG. I think the addition of "hacker" related articles is great because it adds a lot. Many of the startup articles from before seemed like the "Get Rich Fast" books.
I just want to get an idea of how other folks who reapply reason this out. I am not showing the demo because its no longer stable - we are working on it.
I was doing that for awhile, but a run-in with a car convinced me it isn't the best idea. Still do it recreationally, though.
It would. Although nowadays, I'd prefer to not see the commentary from reddit on anything that gets psoted here. It just isn't my cup of tea any more.
> kratom literally grows on trees

You said before it was an opiate. Which is it, an opiate, or something from a tree?
Glad you pointed this out. I suppose these neighborhoods slipped my mind because they're far from where I live, but they do have some good features. Especially for those who work in the valley.
Bootstrapping a Software Company - down-to-earth common sense from 10 years ago.
I have a brilliant suggestion for Bountii's theme song/catchphrase:

"The quicker picker-upper, Bountii!"

The rational being it surely helps pick up some great deals online.
Ah! Just put it in the hands of people and you'll know what to fix.
I think you'd be a much better candidate if they see you, and your team, pursue your startup, despite receiving a rejection, instead of waiting for the next cycle.

You should have the drive to pursue it internally. Don't wait for YC to push you. I don't think that's their purpose.
Ah yes, somehow integrating scattered networks of conversation around distinct, emerging topics, that's a good angle (though at its simplest, a lot like a meta-techmeme?). Sounds like a lot of hard work to get it right, I too wish I had time to play around with the idea some more. I think one approach I considered was something like digg or reddit, but where user input is geared toward collecting, connecting and filtering around 'stories'. Defining what a story is, and where one beings and another ends is the fun part, though I suppose in the extreme cases quite doable.

I wonder if something like this could be built in a kinda of open source like way - make a wiki or something for ideas how to solve the problem, see if anyone wants to work on it, maybe use a pledge thing to raise money for servers when that starts to matter, that sort of thing... but that's another post.
Perhaps we will do just that. And maybe even put up the application we submitted.
i don't see the value in this. informed shopping is done either with search (google, mahalo) or simply visiting a store. that's what they're for. if you're dropping 400 bucks on a video game console, most people go to best buy. if you're dropping 25,000 on a car, most people go to a car dealership.

even when it was paid, google answer didn't gain traction. you need an even more vigilant and coherent audience in order for answers to be replied to within 60 minutes. the technical challenges aside (which, really, this site sounds cloneable within a weekend), this is just a chicken and egg problem.
I bet you don't because you're afraid of the truth. If your application sucks, why wait any longer to know? And if it's popular, you'll be glad to have released it now.

edit: I'm not trying to teach you lessons here, because I'm a programmer too and I know this feeling. But because I'm not talking about my application here, I can let my brain talk instead of my heart. You know what I mean?
> This is the crux of the problem with Kant's morality - who is the someone/something setting the standard for what is moral?

You are.
The Inside Story of a Small Software Acquisition (Part 3 of 3)
because

1. its being worked on and the demo has been pulled down.

2. It was a prototype not the beta, we are refactoring a significant parts which we had just hacked to submit in time.

3. It is a job site, it wont pick up from just a demo :)
The goal of YC is to unleash the latent potential of hackers to change the world via startups. Why would it not sit well with them for people to use news.yc to improve their ideas and prospects for success?
How much do you miss if you only read news.YC? I don't really frequent any other news sites at the moment.
It's a lot more useful than eg. "Don't be evil". No, it does not free you from having to use your judgment. But no philosophy or religion will do that for you.
Actually, I can't imagine anyone being against it. But I'm just a bashful geek concerned about stepping on anyone's toes with my crazy suggestions. There must be a 2x2x3 step program for people like me.
Wow... that reads like a - don't get angry - a mission statement:-)
Have you considered developing the technology and then licensing it to special interest groups? Somehow I get the feeling this would work well in vertical niches (i.e. trade associations).
Me too... I buy things on amazon mainly because of the large number of quality reviews. I like to read the best and worst reviews, compare them against my own personal priority list, and then purchase.
any way to fix the html bits I'm seeing?
copy the text into a .html
Yes, so if I decide that it should be a universal maxim (whatever I want), I'm acting morally according to Kant? And if you want to answer this, please explain each key Kantian concept used, and you may find that you end up ultimately no where.
The hidden costs of the multi-tasking software developer
It would be nice, and I'd like to see the world move that way, but there are practical issues. If a million people from China or India descended all of a sudden on, say, Denmark, there would be chaos.
Note To Criminals -- Don't Call Tech Support 
There are a few things in this world that thieves need to keep in mind in order to run a successful criminal operation. For example, don't take the cash you just stole from one bank to another bank down the street to have it deposited into your account. Don't steal someone's MacBook and take it to the Apple Store Genius Bar the next day to get help with OS X. And finally, don't steal a drivers' license printer from the DMV, only to call up the manufacturer the next day looking for drivers.
To go further with what others have said, it sounds like you're putting strangers in charge of answering questions that only close friends have the knowledge to answer well.

What game console do I buy? Well, the one my friends have, so we can trade games and play against each other! What club? The one my friends go to...we like the same music (roughly), and have the same general style...we probably even like the same kinds of girls. So, IM is infinitely more valuable than the service you describe even if only one or two friends are active right now. If it's not expertise that you're brokering, you've got nothing of value, as far as I can tell.

A Google search about game consoles will turn up thousands of random opinions from strangers about just about any subject (particularly game consoles, but clubs also get talked about, etc.), so without some sort of expertise, you're just doing a really inefficient and slow Google search.

Now, I'm not saying brokering expertise is an easy business, but I can at least see value in it. I can't think of any good use cases for a dedicated "trivial questions with easy answers" system.

I'm happy to be wrong. Maybe you should build a prototype this weekend and see how people react...you'd probably be able to get some media for it, since all of the big answers services have been shutdown or shuffled off into a corner to die quietly. If it looks cool, you'd be able to get a crunch and maybe some hits from design blogs. If you use a funny language (Smalltalk or Erlang or something) you can get some hits from that. It costs nothing but time to try it.

But, it's not an idea I would be willing to invest any time in. (Although, I did just invest fifteen minutes or so in my various responses to your query about it.) ;-)
Ah, Upside. The magazine that posted their entire archive on their website, before the magazine got bought out, and then it was a page saying "Pay for a subscription".

This is one of the most vicious removals of a WWW bubble archive I can think of.
You should separate the notion of the interaction modalities (mouse, touch screen, voice, etc), from the ways they can be used in various different types of software. New modalities such as touch screens will require designers to rethink how the user interacts with their software, but it doesn't change the goals of the user.

From a user's perspective, games and productivity software are fundamentally different. The point of games is to have fun. The point of productivity apps is to get things done. I saw the lead designer of Halo give a talk at school several years ago, and he used this example -- 'if we designed games to be like productivity apps, then the ideal game would consist of a big red button which said "Press me to complete game!" ' Social networking applications lie somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. You're not necessarily there to 'get things done'. You're there to linger as in a game - yet you do have more concrete goals and knowledge of your path/environment than you would if you were in a game.
Some interesting ideas in there but the table showing ownership is a bit misleading. It compares owning 85% of a $10 million dollar company (bootstrapping) to owning just 15% of a similar $10 million dollar company (outside investment).

Nowhere does it acknowledge the value of the investment - in this table it's as if the investor hands the entrepreneur a wad of cash, the entrepreneur lights the cash on fire, and when it's all burnt out they draw up the table. :P
Free book: Object Oriented programming in C [pdf]
Interesting buy. Does this mean Cisco is getting into the telecom game now?
thanks for ur answer, it helps
Pragmatic reporting for your web apps
gibsonf1 is completely right about the MUNI light rail - it is faster and the clientele are less crazy than the bus. I should add that into my post.

The only thing I would add about the light-rail is that it can get so crowded close to downtown during rush-hour that you can't get on...so take that into consideration if you're going to live in the lower haight or duboce triangle or something.
Looking better to YC is pretty much a zero-sum game. Try getting better at whatever it is that's important to your startup.
What are you saying.

maybe you missed that Simpsons epidose that explains it all ;)
Yeah, that is an important distinction.
Good point. Mostly because I like Tim Harford, am happy that he's writing an online journal, and was too lazy to click on the link. Seth Godin does just fine at promoting himself, in any case.
Filtered views of YC News
River of news style interface to YC News, combining stories and comments. Context for any comment is just a click away.

http://hystry.com/newsyc/follow/

The page will remember what you've seen before, so if you hit reload you'll see an orange line separating new stuff from what's already been displayed.

I've been using it to read news.yc for a few days, and just added filtering. To maintain whitelists and blacklists of usernames, add parameters to the url.

Conversations where pg is involved:
http://hystry.com/newsyc/follow/?pg

Blacklists after '-'. Conversations without me:
http://hystry.com/newsyc/follow/?-akkartik

You can combine the two:
http://hystry.com/newsyc/follow/?nostrademons-akkartik

Want only the chatter around Ask-YC style stories where no URL was submitted?
http://hystry.com/newsyc/follow/?ask

Or you think they are teh suck?
http://hystry.com/newsyc/follow/?-ask

You get the idea. You can also put URLs in the blacklist to filter out boring conversations. To prune out yday's flamewar on drugs:

http://hystry.com/newsyc/follow/?-http://news.ycombinator.co...

Comments welcome: hystry@gmail.com
That last one misrepresents the complaints about premature optimization. It isn't the algorithm choice that is premature, but, say, the difference between using an std::string or char*.

That difference doesn't really matter unless it's part of a bottleneck of a developed system. But the O(bottleneck-function) is determined by the algorithm choice, which isn't premature to plan before starting coding.

I peeked into the ANSI Common Lisp chapter on optimization, which I think starts out by saying "optimization starts on the algorithmic level". I couldn't agree more.
ssh... don't mention cole valley. I like the doctor's wives with the dogs and $900 strollers... and running into Craig every day at Reverie. Let all the nerd wannabees keep driving up rents in the mission, aka "la marina nueva."
It's stuff like this that reminds me HTML CSS and Javascript ought to be thought of as object code. Figure out the right way once, then make the compiler do it. Now, where did i leave that website compiler? :)