skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
All I can say is that if Zed gives up programming, he has a brilliant career in comedy ahead of him...

I feel like a dirty whore trying to get straight after a 10 year stint in a Tiajuana donkey show.

Oh wait, they don't write comments, because the "code should speak for itself." Right, that nasty shit doesn't say anything other than, "Keeeel me. Kill me please."

Oh, did I mention ThoughtWorks compared Rails to ColdFusion as well? Awesome.

No, not unstable, just pissed off. But if it makes everyone feel better then fine, I'm fucking crazy as hell. boogie-boogie-boo! (Morons).

When I cracked open Ruby on Rails I said, "Holy fucking shit they have nice meta-programming. Oooh, and you can do that with blocks? Oh and what's this nifty stuff over here? Damn this is pretty nice." It was like seeing the neighbors dorky daughter in a bikini one day and finding out she's built like a brick shit house.
Interview with Paul Graham at Imperial College London
Hear that. He is telling the truth about his 5 min speech during RailsConf 2007, btw. It really was the most entertaining presentation of the conference.
It's Plaxo (and Scoble)
Netflix & LG Partner To Bring Netflix to the TV
Caveat: I've never used facebook other than once when I signed up in order to take a peek at the documentation for Thrift ( http://developers.facebook.com/thrift ).

That said, my experience with Orkut is that it's next to trivial to end up with a bazillion friends. This is because friends never get dropped off your list and people outside your immediate circle often remember you when they see your name on someone elses list and consequently ask to be your friend regardless of the fact that you may not have spoken to them in a decade.
A classic experiment. Another interesting study involved giving people random and horrible excuses to cut into various lines. If you just asked to go ahead of someone most people would say no, but if you provide any sort of excuse people are quite willing.

I tried this a few times, and it works like a charm.
5 great acquisition targets for 2008
"All you have to lose is your cubicle" Very nice.
Also works at stores and libraries to cut in front of people who've been waiting patiently in line on the premises.
Java: Evolutionary Dead End
I'm obviously not in a position to force anyone to do anything, so it's simply a polite request. Politics discussions tend to descend into flamewars, even amongst intelligent people, and never really resolve anything in any case.
The Trouble with PDFs
His updates make this a much more effective rant.
A reverse engineer finds Kindle's hidden features
Distributed Bug Tracking
Facebook Widget Installing Spyware
Flickr reaches photo #2147483647, causing an integer overflow in a 3rd-party library
Thought OLPC would spread Linux to third world kids? You've been had.
XO team has been collaborating with Microsoft from the beginning.
This guy really needs some therapy. His anger over trivial dealings in a tiny community of developers is astounding. The anger is really about childhood issues, obviously, and he really needs to get that shit worked out before he causes himself some real problems.
I think it is even more interesting from the point of view of the person asking. It explains why most people are not that good at negotiating. It is just hard to ask for what you want and yet remarkably effective.
I want to give credit...but?
I wish for: http://ocw.ycombinator.com with speeches given by pg in YC-only dinners.
I hate PDFs.

Idea for the "link to out-of-browser"-problem: couldn't scribd offer a kind of hotlink to display PDF-documents from the web in their viewer? That is, instead of linking to http://wherever.com/mystupid.pdf, one could link to scribd.com/show?url=http://wherever.com/mystupid.pdf

Would something like that be legal, or would it make scribd suable for stealing content?
My Social Network Data Is Not Yours To Steal or Borrow
Dinesh D'Souza debates Daniel Dennett on the existence of God (part 1 of 15)
More fun with the Wiimote -  Minority Report UI
RFID Helps Surgeons Keep Foreign Objects Out of Chest Cavities 
RFID is being used by some hospitals make sure all surgery materials used during operations are removed from patients before they're sewed back up.
3 Bites of Wisdom from Barksdale (former CEO of Netscape)
Solar/Thermal power station in Nevada uses molten salt as a battery
I'm impressed that he managed to misspell "lose" in a spoken interview! ;-)

Edit: I sense an anomaly in the space-time continuum... :)
Microsoft.com being redesigned to push Silverlight
I don't speak much at the dinners. Most of the talking is done by the outside experts we invite. But what the speakers say couldn't be published; they say a lot of things that they're only willing to say because YC dinners are off the record.
It was funny when you first read it... but the more I think about it - it's kind of sad. We basically witnessed a public mental break down (which isn't too suprising in our line of work - being a former east coaster, I don't think it helps that he's in NY).

From this new revision it looks like he's trying to say he's sorry to a few people.
That's an SEO and usability suicide. Heck, Adobe owns Flash and yet pretty much all of their pages are in (X)HTML/CSS. They're smart enough to understand what the place for these in-browser technologies is.
Really? That's really interesting. I suppose that it makes for more open and honest presentations by the guest speakers. I'm really surprised that the presentations are off the record, however. I suppose that's why you hear zilch from the YC founders about the content of said discussions.

Do you have a NDA or just a gentleman's agreement?
Need early feedback for a website that matches entrepreneurs, developers and designers
we needed a web app to match people for an upcoming camp, so i made blitzmaker. i am now getting feedback about the app, and trying to corner bugs and potential problems with the interface. any feedback appreciated, thanks!
I think it violates a principle broader than that. I think everything you store in a web app, you ought to be able to get back out. As far as I know, Google meets this standard.

I'm not saying that sites have to give users all the information they have about them, btw-- just that they should allow users to retrieve information they have supplied or been given by others. E.g. an email app should let you export (or at least not deliberatebly block you from exporting) emails you've sent and received. Contact info of people who've added you as friends seems in the same class as email sent to you.
iamelgringo .... check out the FAQ here: http://www.ycombinator.com/faq.html ... specifically the section "Will you sign an NDA? How do I know you won't steal my idea? "
Very informative interview. It definitely shows PGs enthusiam for YC and does a nice job of explaining the rationale behind the company.

Question, for a YC funded company that gets picked up after demo day, what would the average salary of the co-founders be in comparision to someone with comparable experience working in industry (i.e. "in a cubicle)? adf471587879rzq
> I think it violates a principle broader than that. I think everything you store in a web app, you ought to be able to get back out. As far as I know, Google meets this standard.

While visting there, I've seen at least one whiteboard with a list of principles from (IIRC) their CEO, with "Don't hold users' data hostage" underlined.
Reads like "Lord of the Flies" for nerds

"Boys stuck on a deserted island who unsuccessfully try to govern themselves and consequently have disastrous results"
As founders you want your salaries to be as low as possible. You've raised x amount of money by selling some of your stock. Every dollar of that that you pay yourself in salary is a dollar that doesn't go toward making the company succeed. And the big payoff for you as a founder is in the company succeeding. People don't start startups to make money from salary.

Investors are usually fine with you making, say, 70% of what you'd make on the open market. But it's in your interest to take less if you can. At Viaweb I made less than half what the COO did.
I guess the purpose of marketing is to set your message apart from the rest, when every startup uses the same "tools", it's not really marketing anymore, is it?
More relevant than ever: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=87337
In under 12 hours, Facebook reinstates Scoble's account
MS used flash in their home page in the past, if I'm not wrong..
This is a good article, but it fails to explain the general principle. This is, if I remember correctly, that if it's harder to ask the question than it is to say yes, people tend to say yes. And if asking the question is easier than saying yes, people tend to say no. This has some cool implications for dating. For example, if you ask out a girl she is more likely to say yes if you do it in public, because the risk for the guy of being shot down in front of all his friends makes asking the question more difficult than saying yes for the girl.

I had actually read about this shortly before asking out my ex-gf, so I actually asked her out by posting on her Facebook wall. I think the exact message was "Hey, will you be my hot date to the farmer's market tomorrow???" As dumb as that sounds, we ended up dating for almost a year. Proving once again that the social sciences are more useful than most hackers give them credit for.
The key line in Version 2.0:

When I wrote this rant it was in kind of a private beta, but then it got out.

No kidding. Thank god my own diaries are handwritten!
I just thought it was proof that Milgram was more sadistic than previously thought.
Oddly, the thing I noticed most, having never heard pg speak much before, was that the accent does not correspond to what I thought it might be like. "Californian" comes to mind. "Like, you know, I mean". That's not a negative thing - I have a west coast accent myself and am certainly dot my own conversations with similar filler words - just a "first impression".
I have thought about this for a few days and have concluded that it's a massive publicity stunt on Zed's part.

Think about how so many people get famous -- by creating controversy. Zed has done a great job (in terms of entertaining us)... now we just need to wait for the big announcement.
Maybe I'm confusing beggars with choosers.
The screen technology developed for the OLPC has the potential to benefit mobile devices tremendously. A multi-touch pad the size of the OLPC would kick-ass. Interactivity is what makes electronic devices compelling. It would make the Kindle look like a clunky thing from the Victorian age by comparison.
My guess is that they'll use it at first for sound / video content. I would venture to guess that they'll bundle it as part of MSN Messenger at some point in the future as well, since it's a small addon to the .net runtime.
Get Well, Om (Om Malik suffers a heart attack)
Yesterday when i wanted to download something from microsoft.com i got a popup asking if i wanted to beta test the download with Silverlight. Of course i clicked it away. Downloading is a task of the browser. If the functionality is poor, fix the browser. Microsoft is not alone in this. Adobe, Sun and other companies also try to push useless download managers.
A Heart-to-Heart with GigaOM Readers
Will this be a trilogy? The Lord of the Rubies? The Rail Wars? (boring)
There's an easier way to quit. Create a new account with a separate email address (create a fake email address somewhere, use a fake name). Then add all the email addresses from your current account to your new one. When there are no email addresses associated with your account your old account is permanently deleted. You can then remove all your email addresses (except for the initial fake one). You will now have a blank facebook account that's not associated with your name and email address. The whole process takes less than 5 minutes.
This guy's "rants" are aptly named. He vents his frustration the way I'm sure most of us do after a bad day at work: incoherently and unconvincingly.

I've long wondered whether or not to put in the effort to learn Rails. I would be more than happy to listen to any well-reasoned praise or criticism of the Rails community. Regardless of any accuracy he may have in his arguments, his writing comes off in the same whiny tone one might expect from a 13 year old in Counter-Strike or Halo who just got sniped.

And, yeah, the IRC posts are a bit much. When you're trying to provide evidence that people in some community are a bunch of assholes, it hurts your credibility if you use an assholish tone yourself throughout your entire blog post.

Move along, nothing to see here folks.
I'm actually working on writing something like that. If anyone is interested in helping me test it out/write it, shoot me an email--[my username] at eecs.harvard.edu .
Hand-Drawing Style In Modern Web Design
Sure, that's the way to get Spyware on your computer.
And stop smoking...
About the web crash 2.0: what does it have to do with advertising dollars? My thinking would be, either a service provides something worthwhile, or it doesn't. Wouldn't that be a better determinant for it's future success?
Howto undo a commit in SVN. I always forget how to do this.
I think if someone was building something so important, wouldn't be comfortable with exposing his plans. So, probably this is a shot in the water...
From Gen X to Microserfs to JPod
JPod is novel set in Vancouver, BC about employees at Electronic Arts. There is a new series based on the novel airing on the CBC.

This interview touches on life in the Google generation.
It looks like you're trying to address the first problem (complexity) in Arc. Any attempts on the second (OS support)?
Moving to the valley: what about "The Big One"?
This might be the most stupid question ever, but I must admit it bothers me at least a little bit. What do people living in the valley now think/do about the threat of a really big earthquake in the next couple of decades? I am really risk averse when it comes to life threatening things...

I just googled and found an article which seems to say that scientists don't really know anything (there might be an earthquake, or there might not be an earthquake). Or maybe all houses in that region are already built to withstand the projected impact? What about floods?
I think this is a great idea. I hope scribd people hear you...
Someone should create a web app that does it. Imagine if you could just go to http://quitfacebook.org, enter your username and pw, and it would do what you described. Like a step beyond Greasemonkey.
Scribd already has it, except show is called slurp.
Video isn't working for me... :(
> I think everything you store in a web app, you ought to be able to get back out.

I think so as well, but given that the sanctity of data ownership is a rather new phenomena - for example, you wouldn't ask your bank for all your transaction history - I can give that they may not feel that they are obliged to return it.
Ask YC: webapp's frontend spruce up
Hi,

We are a self-funded startup working on a webapp. We would really appreciate any comments/suggestions/feedback/pointers regarding the following.

Some of the people that we have showed our app to have suggested that we spruce up the frontend before actively marketing our app. What is the best way to do that if we are not web designers?

If we were to get web designer on contract, how much would it cost approximately?
What would be the best place to look for one?
What should be the expected deliverables from a designer(jpegs/sample html/flash files)?

What are the legal issues that we need to be aware of?

Thanks a lot for reading this,

Manu.
I have lived in the Bay Area since birth and it has never crossed my mind to be wary of earthquakes.

If you're considering packing up your life and starting anew here, earthquakes should not be the blocker.
That's roughly analogous to saying that Citibank, because your money is in their vaults, may come up with whatever conditions it pleases for you to access that money. It violates the spirit with which people agree to let a company store their property.

Many hospitals, actually, don't let you access your own medical chart. My guess, though, is that's more about doctors wanting freedom to write snarky comments without fear of retribution than it is about fear of competition.
I just looked it up, but it doesn't seem to be quite the same thing? At least slurp seems to involve uploading the document to Scribd, which might really be a copyright problem.

I meant a way to use scribd as a PDF reader directly. But mabye there really is no point to it, because if the publisher of a PDF would use it, they would already know about scribd, and therefore would probably be better off hosting the PDF on scribd to begin with. Perhaps it would be useful for other people who want to link to the PDF, though.
What about asking somebody who is being impolite on the sub (playing loud music, shouting or even smoking) to stop?

Sometimes I feel really annoyed by some behaviors and given that I'm a bit introvert, polite and coward I find it's easier trying to tolerate it than asking them to stop.

Do you have any experience?
What about volcanoes, or hurricanes? I am just not used to having my house blown to pieces on a regular basis? But I guess it solves the "Stuff problem"...

I am not sure it soothes me that the earthquake possibility never crossed your mind. Maybe it is just denial? The problem being that it is such a rare event - but just like in "Fooled By Randomness", bad luck might still strike after 30 years of nothing happening?

Or are you just putting faith into your parents decision to move there before your birth, presumably they already weighed the risk for you? And the millions of other people living there, I guess - is it a sort of collective "my neighbors must know what they are doing" thing?

What about New Orleans, was that a comparable situation (threat known for years, and eventually disaster struck - how worried were people in the years before)?
The menus at the top don't work. It took me ten tries (very bad) and conscious thought (far worse) to figure out that the little arrows next to the words were the trigger for the pulldowns. I would sweep the mouse over the word and see this menu flicker on and off. I thought your Javascript was broken or something.

The context is confusing. As someone who happens to be a freelance Drupal developer, I was curious about the project that wanted a Drupal developer. But the pitch is one line long. There's no indication of whether I'm signing up to be a startup partner with equity but no salary, an unpaid volunteer in a community project, a contract programmer working for someone with a budget of $13.95, or the recipient of spam from half a dozen sleazeball recruiters.

I realize that I may be criticizing a throwaway piece of scaffolding text. But, if I am, you need to design around a more useful piece of scaffolding text!

I know what nonprofit-org sites are for. I know what news.yc is for. I know what Rentacoder is for. What is your site for? The whole thing is so minimalist that I have no contextual clues.
NASA Dreams of an Interplanetary 'Second Life' for Mars Crew
That does put it in perspective. Thanks for the insight.
hey thanks for the comment.
well, the menu is going to be corrected so people will have an easier time accessing the options.

about the drupal listing, the description was written by an existing member of the website, who thought one sentence would be enough. one thing though, interested visitors are supposed to ask questions to the user who posted the listing to ask for more info.

thanks again
I found jPod to be lifeless and depressing. In Microserfs the characters were trying to become something else. They may have been stunted nerds but at least they were trying. Jpod is just a bunch of stunted nerds that are shocked by nothing, aspire to nothing, and end up left on the stage in impotent rage they can't even articulate.

And as for Coupland writing himself into the story... it's a device with a long history. Dante does it, Cervantes does it, Vonnegut does it, Borges does it. But Coupland is no Cervantes.
Mapping Professional Networks
I'm right there with you on that feeling.

Not sure why... I guess my only real exposure to Boston is Good Will Hunting... so I imagine PG with the voice of Robin William's character in that movie.

Silly I know.
What was the most cash intensive portion of Viaweb? It seems like you guys could have run in YC mode (cash wise) after buying the PCs.
Thanks. I understand that you can't publish what other people say. You have mentioned it earlier too.

I asked for OCW only because you said that it takes you three months to give your words of wisdom and even then you are not done.
Finally, my partner in paranoia appears! :)

Yes, the big earthquake will arrive someday, and various things are going to fall down. Read all about it in this harrowing guide:

http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/2005/15/

Yes, all of news.yc is in denial, which is why they conspicuously failed to vote up this guide when I posted it the first time. Don't think I didn't notice. But I will have the last laugh! My vengeance will be AWESOME to behold! THE TEMBLORS WILL DESTROY YOU ALL, AND YOUR LITTLE MACBOOKS TOO!! HAHAHAHAAA!!!

Having said that: if you've read the guide, avoided buying a house in my old neighborhoods (it's a good time to rent anyway, for completely unrelated financial reasons), stocked up on emergency water, and installed proper hardware to prevent your power tools from falling off the garage shelf onto your sports car (or your head), I think the odds are that you'll survive the earthquake in fine style. In the meantime, every day you spend in Omaha, Nebraska instead of the Valley is probably costing you money. And, of course, there are tornadoes, which they don't have in California.

I doubt you can afford the houses that get really punished by the mudslides, I don't think they have floods in San Jose (Sacramento, maybe), and the volcanoes (volcanoes?!) are a thousand miles to the north.
Crude oil at $100 already happened yesterday. (Granted, there was only one trade done at that level).
ASDF - a badly-drawn webcomic of trite, feelgood, preachy... (anti-xkcd)
Google-based Ranking of American Computer Science and Engineering Departments
Intuitive Arithmetic With Complex Numbers
This just shows that they don't understand their own technology. RIA/browser plugins have their place, but not for corporate home pages. If this was the case then Adobe.com would be a full screen flex app and Sun.com would be an applet.

arrg.
I bet they are doing this to get Silverlight deployed to as many computers as they can.
Very interesting, thanks. I just mentioned volcanoes as another example for hazardous environments that people still voluntarily live in.
Super! A video is worth a thousand words. Thank you.
On the New York subways? That would probably get you stabbed.
Because I am good!
You will like this: http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail188.html
I found jPod to be lifeless and depressing.

Hmm, I live in Vancouver and work in the game industry. So, I didn't find it lifeless. And working for a big studio is kind of depressing. So, that's a feature not a bug.

I agree that jPod wasn't as good as Microserfs.

And as for Coupland writing himself into the story... it's a device with a long history.

I think Coupland uses it as a device to answer his critics. For example, in the Gum Thief, the last chapter is written from the point of view of a university professor critiquing a novel written by one of the characters in the book.
Most amazing thing I've seen today.
Leagues funnier than XKCD has been in months. And didn't even play the "Reddit readers never have sex" card.
Parsing protocols with parser generators is not an original idea, despite the fact that it's one of the top 3 value propositions Zed Shaw has for Mongrel.
For web startups, I think screencasts are the best use of video. Here's one I did for a feature added to ourdoings.com in December:

http://img.ourdoings.com/tutorial/morephotos.htm
Napster Raises Prices; Tell Me Why You Use Napster Please