skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
To quote Wikipedia:

"The use of coloured and patterned neckties indicating the wearer's membership in a club, military regiment, school, et cetera, dates only from late-nineteenth century England. The first definite occurrence was in 1880, when Exeter College, Oxford rowers took the College-colour ribbons from their straw boaters and wore them as neckties (knotted four-in-hand), and then went on to order a proper set of ties in the same colours, thus creating the first example of a college necktie."

Ties are only out until you aren't allowed to wear one.
I constantly check http://www.styleboost.com
It's not really about usability but more like a barometer of what's considered good design these days. If I ever need design inspiration this is where I trek to first.
With trend stories, PR firms usually line up one or more "experts" to talk about the industry generally. In this case we get three: the NPD Group, the creative director of GQ, and a research director at Smith Barney. When you get to the end of the experts, look for the client. And bingo, there it is: The Men's Wearhouse.

http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
I'd highly recommend http://designinginterfaces.com, the companion site to Jenifer Tidwell's eponymous O'Reilly book.
How do you measure User Experience on your Web 2.0 site?  Apdex is Answer
The Application Performance Index (Apdex) from the Apdex Alliance is a metric which represents a milestone in application analysis. The Alliance is an open consortium of vendors in the network analysis and measurement industry that develop and maintain Apdex. What many network management tool vendors don't realize is that the way in which data is collected and computed before applying the index can remain proprietary, thus protecting their intellectual property.
"They are the ones eradicating terrorism so the world can have peace."

You mean this in a "War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength" sense, presumably?
Should I flip or should I build?
How To Hire A PR Agency That Doesn't Bite
Google-Jaiku: Twitter's Value Just Soared
Though the average life expectancy in medieval Europe (which is what he seems to mean by "in history") was about 40, people didn't only expect to live to be 40. Everyone considered the natural human lifespan to be the canonical 3 score years and 10. I.e. 70. They knew there was a good chance some accident or disease would nab them before that, but they didn't feel as if they were in a rush because they only had half as much time.

It's also an urban legend that "centuries ago" women matured earlier and had children in their teens. In the Amazon rainforest perhaps. In Europe the average age of marriage for women has been in the mid twenties for many, many centuries. Possibly back to pre-Roman times. The worse things were economically, the later the age tended to be.
An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth
I just love it. What do you think?
"Young people grow up in tightly structured childhoods, but then graduate into a world characterized by uncertainty, diversity, searching and tinkering."

"And as the new generational structure solidifies, social and economic entrepreneurs will create new rites and institutions."

Because the solution to a bubble overflow error is a bigger bubble. These two quotes side-by-side explain the downfall of humanity.
Why Nokia Won't Beat Apple's iPhone
Heh, I'm curious how many people here actually know who John McCarthy is. :)
Henry Blodget has a pretty bad track record for making accurate predictions.
Does Google's Equality Drive Extend To Old People? Leaving at 7pm is too early!
great thinking...on a different note -just would like to know PG's perspective on kelly felix a.k.a. rich jerk and likes !!
His sentences are really long.
Why scientists and other groups fall prey to the fads called "informational cascades"
How Baboons Think
"good design these days."

Isn't good design supposed to be timeless, or something like that? Maybe the word you're looking for is fashion.
Schopenhauer on Informational Cascades
In-depth look at Chinese internet censorship operation
"... Heh, I'm curious how many people here actually know who John McCarthy is. :) ..."

All those who can lisp when they speak.
19th Century England? That's terrible.

Cravattes are much older than that. Croatian mercenaries used by Louis (I think XV) used to wear red garments around their necks. The mercenaries had a reputation as being fantastic soldiers, and French men copied the military trend with what they called a 'Cravatte' derived from 'Croat'.

(My girlfriend's in the fashion industry - she works at an Australian lingerie label now but used to work at Aqua Scutum)
I think Gore is working on redoing that presentation with the new Google presentation tool.
If you are:
- just starting out
- not a hacker
- want a real commerce site
..then you you have only one choice: PG's Viaweb, now known as Yahoo Store. The Entry level version costs around $40 per month with a $50 one time setup fee. You cannot go wrong: http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/ecommerce
> Do you think Google was afraid that Zenter would displace it?

No, but I think Google was afraid that it would displace Presently, its presentation software. Since Google wants to play in the "online office software" market, they're afraid of someone else becoming a market leader in one of the sub-markets for that and fragmenting that market before they can dominate it. They also bought one of Zenter's competitors.

> If there is a 99% chance that nobody will want to pay for it, are you really making something people want?

It's not enough just to make something people want. You have to make it better than everyone else.

This is implicit in startup advice, but it applies here because we're talking about mature markets. With startups, it's assumed that you're not going to build something someone else is already doing better, because then you're not really making something people want (they want your competitors instead). And you don't generally worry about someone coming along with a better product later, because if you have a head-start and work your ass off, they'll want to buy you rather than spend the time, money, and risk of developing it themself. However, if you then spurn their acquisition offer, they have no choice but to try and beat you, and there's a good chance that they will, because they have more resources. You've still made something people want, but then you force BigCo to waste money duplicating it (and possibly duplicating it better) instead of buying you.
Kandid:  a genetic art project
Why hasn't TeXmacs completely replaced TeX/LaTeX by now?
Why haven't apples completely replaced oranges by now?
You're rubber and he's glue, with all the mighty splendor of 4chan.
Please elaborate. TeXmacs is good enough for writing scientific papers and books. So why are people still using TeX/LaTeX?

Most people now use WYSIWYG word processors for business. So why won't scientists & mathematicians use WYSIWYG scientific word processors such as TeXmacs?
Um... sell t-shirts?

I actually bought music this week for the first time in years. I was listening to this[1] in someone's office, liked it, and suddenly realized that I could buy a DRM-free version from either Amazon or iTunes. I checked prices on both, but the iTunes interface was a little easier to deal with, so I bought it. I wouldn't have considered buying it if it had DRM - I've got three Macs, three Ubuntu boxes, and a Sun in the house here and DRM music is too much trouble. It worked so well and was so easy that the next time I want some particular music - I'll probably buy it!

1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chips_from_the_Chocolate_Fireba...
Effective speaking before a strange audience is as much about power as it is about communication. If you look weak, sloppy, or disorganized, you're going to have a bad time. Sitting down certainly doesn't help you look strong, neat or organized, and in the worst case, it probably hurts you.

Ultimately, this fellow's argument sounds a lot like those people who worry about being "too formal", and therefore under-dress for every occasion. If you're in doubt, dress up and stand up. Neither can hurt you.
Page Rank 6. I need a link from Zombo.com!
Kimberly checked in the fix to that earlier today. Thanks for the help.
That pretty much makes sense. Know any good sources on either of these topics?
i don't think this article is about PR gaming reporters, even though PR sadly does set the agenda with reporters sometimes.

my read of the article is that some hipster NYT reporter's narrow hipster-centric view of the world made it through the NYT editorial filter. why? because the reporter was no doubt influenced by their hipster friends in ny/la who were wearing this crap.

beyond the reporter, the NYT prides itself in its NY bias, whether its fashion or politics or whatever else. they love this local fashion hype, because its local and strengthens the paper's own image as a part of the local scene. that's most likely why some aging NYT editor let this BS through.

all that said, i'm pretty sure we can all agree that the dudes in those NYT pictures looked really, really annoying. punchable, even.
http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Make-Me-Think-Usability/dp/032134...

Yup...I liked "Don't Make Me Think".
Why Businesses would be Evil
If by new you mean 'just as old as', yes.
Only a problem if you are browsing your project with notepad.
the funny thing here is that ted is the prototypical candidate for ycombinator:

- technical skill: math degree, radrails
- belief in tech meritocracy
- ambition to solve a hard problem

thats why ted's criticisms hurt so bad -- he is slamming his peers. at least give uncov some credit for both brains and balls. life without these guys would be more status quo, which is not what any of us want.
Dreamweaver is good enough for writing professional websites. How come most people use a fancy text editor?

To those that already know LaTeX, I would be surprised if TeXmacs offered a productivity increase. And LaTeX is actually taught in universities, not TeXmacs. So I am sure TeXmacs is fine if you use it to write your first documents, but there seem to be very few scientists or mathematicians that are exposed to TeXmacs before LaTex.
Are you doing this for profit?

If you are congratulations for sharing so much of what goes on at ycombinator, you have been a great inspiration.

If you are not why not help other "clones" become better by opening up a little bit more about how you achieve your magic, kind of open sourcing technology "incubation" processes, so that people from the rest of the world can enjoy such an opportunity.
LaTeX is good enough for writing scientific papers and books. So why should people switch to TeXmacs?
http://sciencethatmatters.com/archives/30
Why Facebook Will Flourish: No Food Fights or Vampires On LinkedIn
Try TeXmacs and it will be obvious why.
Dreamweaver is a commercial product. TeXmacs is free.

The learning curve for TeXmacs is not that high. You don't need to be taught to use it.
Laslett's The World We Have Lost
I can certainly understand why you would want to incorporate in California as it has the single largest local economy in the US, however you may want to take a look at: http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/9/06beststates_The-Best-Sta....

Really though, if you are an online company what you need are big pipes and good brains. Physical location is not as important.

Forbes recently ranked all the states for their business friendliness and California didn't do to terribly well (36th). Virginia was the best followed by Texas and North Carolina. We are seriously considering incorporating in NC since they are so business friendly. Raleigh was ranked 2nd (nationally) in being the best city to start a company too. Furthermore it is the home of the research triangle so there's a lot of brains floating around there.

Best of luck.
wow, thanks alot!
Does that really outweigh being transparent in this case? I think one thing that a lot of people admire about YCombinator is how up-front you guys are with everything reasonable to be up-front about.
In the wrong light, that comment could be seen as quite insulting.
Personally I have never given a presentation to a VC however I have had to give presentations to collegiate audiences and I can tell you that standing helps in those situations. Indeed, I have never even seen any professors sit down while lecturing. As is said elsewhere in this thread, body language is restricted while sitting. Body language can capture the audience's attention and put an energetic charge into your presentation which can excite your audience.

If you hit your audience with a series of dull PowerPoint slides, be sure to bring lots of coffee to help them stay awake. In college some of my professors would do nothing but flip PP slides and drone behind a pedestal. No movement other than to click the mouse. Oh the torment of those classes. Never underestimate the potential destructive power of PowerPoint to otherwise good information.

Recently I was introduced to a group that actually teaches how to do public speaking. For all those interested, it's called toastmasters. You can find them at http://www.toastmasters.org/ Some of their members include people such as senators, prime ministers, and lots of CEO's so it can't be too much of a waste of time and money.

I have not had the time to try it out but I believe that it will be worth a look shortly.

Regards, Derek
So basically, the reason not to try to go for revenue is that BigCo will crush you, unless they buy you. But will they every time? In Zenter's case, it was inevitable that it would come to that. But are BigCos after every market that exists? Does Google care if $1M can be made a year from something that has nothing to do with any of their products? Duplicating your technology is worth it if a lot of money is at stake, by BigCo's definition of "a lot". But if there isn't?

I don't think you will deny that, in theory, there are markets such that if you want to capture them, it's better to go for revenue than for exit. The question that interests me, what percentage of all markets do they comprise[1]? Everyone seems to completely ignore them in favor of the Zenter way, as per pg's advice. Are they insignificant, or underestimated?

[1]Of course, there will be no precise percentage figure, unless someone can come up with a list of all the things that people want. pg's next essay, maybe?
http://welch.econ.brown.edu/academics/journalcopy/1992-jpe.p...
The last couple of years my programming style has changed a lot. I've noticed that I've been using inheritance less and less. When I was still doing Java, I only used (implementation) inheritance when the API forced me to, and now in Ruby I hardly use inheritance at all.

I even use objects a lot less - prefering to pass around hashes until they've blossomed into fairly well defined types. To me, a class is a data structure that provides a namespace for the functions that manipulate it, and little more.

In any case, I think nearly empty classes with nothing but accessors have no use in dynamic languages (in static languages they provide at least code completion support.)

I also increasingly dislike local variables and if-statements (preferring case statements). I like my methods having flow, and if-statements and local variables break that flow, like a caesura in music.

What bothers me is that I don't know if this is my progress towards becoming a zen-like programmer, or just me being bored with the old way of doing things, and discovering a new fad. It seems there is no way to tell.
is this the tie that you're wearing:

http://www.thinkgeek.com/apparel/hats-ties/9352/
It's probably the real one, considering he lives in the area and spends his free time blogging.
Oh, I think the majority of markets are ones where it's better to go for revenue rather than exit. By a large margin. After all, most of the country is not Silicon Valley, and most industries outside of tech (and to a lesser extent biotech) do not support acquisitions the way tech does.

Actually, I think that even if you're going for an exit, it's better to go for revenue - at least enough to support yourself profitably. You're in a much better negotiating position if you don't need to be acquired.

But I assumed that if you're here, you're interested in the normal tech-startup lifecycle. Come out with an innovative product, grow very fast, disrupt some markets, and then get bought. Because that's what PG has experience in, that's what his friends do, and that's what most of the sites featured here do. If you're in a brick & mortar business, you're much better off talking to local entrepreneurs than reading here.

Just make sure that you know which strategy you're pursuing (revenue-based growth vs. quick acquisition), and that everything you do - market, team, capital structure, business model, positioning, technology platform, engineering process - supports it. Some tech entrepreneurs think that they'll do a technology business that's based upon slow revenue-based growth - I worked for 2 years at one. However, there's a very real risk of having the market pass you by, and being marginalized in a tiny corner where you're essentially relegated to consulting. If you're going to grow slowly, you need to pick your market niches carefully, you need a robust software engineering process, and you can't afford to enter a market with lock-in.
Im not saying that I agree with that practice of "supercharging" the stock market but it seems to me that if too much money is chasing too few stocks, then stock prices would soar.

Its a well known fact that when there is more demand than supply, prices rise.

Perhaps the instability that you are referring to comes from people getting nervous and sidelining their money. That can hurt the 401(k) guys since, unlike their money manager and individual investor counterparts, they cannot sideline their money quite as easy and so they they feel the effects of a stock market downturn more so than the rest.

But, I do agree that there should be more tax breaks on saving through other formats as well.
If only public schools spent as little per pupil as private schools!
Yeah, I see where I went wrong now. I was talking about tech startups, but it didn't occur to me that a company whose market is off BigCo's radar is by definition not a startup.

You know, I've learned something today. Thanks for this conversation.
Not a bad read, but his words aren't chosen terribly well--he comes off as suggesting that flipping comes before building. Even setting yourself up for an early acquisition takes a lot of work and a pretty good-sized chunk of time (e.g. reddit). The decision isn't so much about how much work to do as it is about how much risk you're willing to tolerate--a big chance at (relatively) small money vs. a small chance at big money. Sim gets into that, but I didn't expect it from the title.
it's mc hammer. i think weebly met him at techcrunch 40 and cajoled him into making a demo video for them. he has a startup too or something and was born, raised, and still lives here in oakland
Its not a web 2.0 startup and I think thats the point of Persai. Persai from what I hear is going to be fairly void of the things that make up the 2.0 web dance. Its be a web application that actually does something of value for the user.

Another web application I admire is Amigo created by the folks at Carsonified (was known as Carson Systems). Instead of spooging loads of ajax everywhere and calling them platforms and technologies, actually build something someone can use.
Google Hinting at Its Own Social Network?
well to me it's called patent reform...
Advice for hosting services
I'm interested in continuing a small web startup, and my server now only supports PHP. Does anyone have recommendations on good hosting companies that offer good packages with lots of feature support that doesn't cost too much?
artlung, you need ranked data, not just raw feeds.
Anything that helps makes hipsters identifiable at a distance is a Good Thing.

My favorite quote:

"ThereaEURXs no question that there has been a dramatic increase among younger guys, who are age 18 to 34, expressing themselves by dressing up", as said by Some Important Fashion Person.

I'm pretty sure I read or hear that exact line every 3 years.

BTW, is 33 still in the ballpark range for the "younger guys" category?
I'm going to plug for http://www.faradic.net/

It's a small company, but it's run by a Princeton PhD student who happens to be an industry expert in security. And he's very nice. Just ask him for what you need. Say Dani directed you.

(Yes, he's a cofounder =) )
I was using LyX for homework. To be honest I didn't even know about TeXmacs. So maybe the problem is marketing? laughs

Is there a decent LyX TeXmacs comparison? My Google-fu is failing me.
TeXmacs has its own real-time typesetter. So what you see while editing is exactly what gets printed.

LyX just has a rough approximation for editing to make it less painful and uses LaTeX/TeX to generate the output.

For scientific publications, you may be required to use TeX, so LyX might be preferable there.

For homework, there's no reason why you can't use TeXmacs.
> The article mentions the strategy pattern which, ironically, often requires inheritance to implement.

Not really. It only requires interface inheritance for statically-typed languages, which is not really inheritance, and no inheritance at all for duck-typed languages.
Wow. That sounds much better.

I wonder about the underlying technology. I've been longing for an editor that could handle special characters so things looked more like math.
TeXmacs is an incredible achievement. It's probably one of the most sophisticated open source programs ever written. Its main author is a genius.
user:	zombo

created: 23 hours ago

karma:	46

;)

That Zombo thing rocks!
...sudo apt-get...
I went to a private grammer school, they couldn't afford a xerox machine but what I think what worked about the school is that they did more teaching and were very attuned to how each person is doing.
I'm a big fan of information-architects.jp this article on web design typography is great:
http://www.informationarchitects.jp/the-web-is-all-about-typ...
What, to you, is "too much"? And what features do you want supported?

Additionally information will help us make an infinitely more precise recommendation :)
Chinese internet censorship machine revealed
I don't know how much is too much.

I'd like to be able to use what languages I want without changing hosting plans. My plan now is just PHP. I want access to python in particular, but also to keep my options open for possibly ruby or lisp in the future.

MySQL installation is essential.

I basically want to be able to experiment alot and use many different technologies (not anything .NET though).
Infomercials use similar temporal structures, but they are forced to use different endings because the whole thing is framed as something offered by the client. So they use the Client offering vast reduction ending.
User, Expert, Expert, Client Discount!
These methods surely have evolved to dovetail with psychological biases: New information leads to a tonic level of skepticism, which should be assuaged soon by expert assurance before it coagulates into general aversion for the product. Once this has been achieved, you can plug a specific product meeting this newly created cognitive shelf-space for a want.
Wow. It's really nice. I've noticed that they've decided to make their own decisions as to the menu structure, so there is a bit of a learning curve. But it's so beautiful!

I've formatted the YC application we have, and put it in here. It looks really professional. That's quite an achievement, given the conversational language we used. ^^

I then sent the whole thing around as a .tm file, so now the rest of the team has no choice. Viral technology yay!
10 Things on my Google Wish List
Ten things I'd change to make Google products better.
http://www.slicehost.com is just about the best you can do for $20/month, except they have a waiting list now. You get your own slice of Unix to do whatever you want.