skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> In order to drive each system deep there will be one ..

I was thinking a person would want to know the expenses but I was afraid to go into too much detail on that. I think I could list a cost per account which would cover all expenses instead.
Just curious...what's the backend/architecture?
Thanks, I think I will make a 3rd page with where the money needs to go and a 4th page with survey results I took from the account holders which were very positive in regards to what features they liked, features that could be improved and a willingness to pay, over 50% said they would pay either for the paid modules or a customized solution..
JQuery, plus occasional YUI
I don't expect to ever have more then around 500,000 users on the system it is easily scalable to that many. If I had 5 - 10 million users I would sing a different tune but I am focused on paying clients, probably less then 10,000 paying clients. I have been working this architecture since 1999 so I am really good at it, just don't want to say the name since knives would come out (and I cut easily!).

About 800 users on the system login every day on a single server and I am not even close to maxing it out (1 processor 2 gigabytes of ram) and a dedicated server for sql (2 processors and 2 gigabytes of ram). I also have a load balancer that I would like to put in place one day (just sitting on the floor begging to be used) to create some redundancy would be nice.
hey don't worry...even PlentyOfFish.com runs on .net ;-)
Reddit Would Like to Buy You a Drink: Boston Oct 31
You know that if you ever got to use that when no one was looking over your shoulder that you'd immediately start saying the most obscene things you could think of. Everyone does.
I like how some of the things actually make sense, such as commenting with BTW, breaking out of a loop with GTFO, etc.
It's not clear what are the advantages of BlueprintCSS over Yahoo's YUI Library CSS tools, e.g. the YUI Grids (http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/grids/) and the grid tool. YUI has plenty of documentation and has a lot of eyeballs to test it on different browsers. The Yahoo team size seems like a big advantage of YUI CSS over BlueprintCSS.
very cool, i have always been meaning to get into audiounit stuff, but some of the dsp stuff is hard to wrap my head around.

music link: wooleyandswift.com - i'll hit you up on myspace too.
Heh. When I went to college, it was an incredible novelty to even see a laptop in a lecture hall.

We took notes on paper. I feel like a relic.
Fixing the Web
What's with designers using these psychadelic spinning voids as background animations lately?
I think he is talking about not a "new profession", but new achievements within your profession. Good artists, architects and novelists constantly strive for that.

But startups is not a profession. It's a way to get from "zero" to "financially set for life". If your "profession" is business, then after making millions, you should aim for billions, and another web startup isn't a good way to get there. If you are trying to make something people want, then you can make a much bigger difference without trying to make a profit. Wikipedia and Ubuntu (and YC, for that matter) are good examples of that. If you're trying to be on the cutting edge of tech, research is better than startups.

By the way, J.K. Rowling is not a good author, so it's a bad example.
Do you guys think this technology will get to the point where we can track all of our earthly possessions?

I think that day will come, but it will be RFID, not GPS, that is the core enabling technology.
I went on the low side on the numbers, not sure if maybe I should be more optimistic or stay with easy to reach.
From a biological standpoint, an animal is genetically designed to only do things that make it a successful animal (with lots of surviving babies). This can include certain amounts of sleeping and socializing. Happiness is a positive reinforcement for doing the right things (like eating and sleeping).

Though humans are more complex and different, it may not be too far-fetched to say that everything we do is work, in some form or another. If Max Levchin might not be happy doing anything else, that makes a lot of sense.
Ask n.yc: Can anyone recommend a good tutorial for iptables?
Pay your debts off for cents on the dollar.
Multi-Threading With Windows Forms
Introduction to Windows Powershell
Sample Win32 Api Class
Printing Tutorial (VB.net)
Real Time Site analytics
Yes, as long as 'building' includes 'extending and maintaining an application that's been in service for 12 years'.

The whole thing's a financial application written in Smalltalk, interfacing to pricing libraries written in C, with the same type of image working as both the desktop client and distributed compute node.

The Seaside web development framework (http://www.seaside.st) has attracted a lot of attention and there's a drive to push as much reporting through there as possible, but the day-to-day book and portfolio management looks to be desktop software for at least some years to come.
This essay is fantastic! I wish I could vote it up 50 times.

It's absolutely the best thing about the music industry vs. the internet that I've read since Courtney Love's rant 7 years ago.
New York Times opens up code
That Courtney Love rant was mostly plagiarized. Figures, right?

The original: http://www.negativland.com/albini.html
Ask YC: Any one uses SoftLayer?
Anyone uses SoftLayer as host?

Good, bad?

What other recommendations?

Is there a search system on news.YC?

Gracias.
Open Culture: Your guide to smart media
Sure there are always tradeoffs, basically you are trading your time (a limited resource) so necessarily other things will suffer. But where do you draw the line, how do you find the balance?
Ask YC: which editor to use for LISP programming?
I have used emacs many years ago, but I wonder if that is still the way to go? Are there IDEs that make sense?
Your post is as disoriented and unfocused as the kinds of work you're railing against. If you can't even discuss the idea in a succinct and compelling way how can you condemn others for not creating it?

Fear not though, the problem your discussing is probably the trendiest of all trendy ideas anyone is working on right now. It will be solved, by people who can articulate it in terms users can understand and create it.
Bug.gd: Collaborative Search And Bug Solutions
I can't wait to hear about a bank robber with a Faraday cage in the getaway car.
You face reality and narrow your priorities down to the very few things that really matter to you. Then you work hard on them and hope things work out okay. That's as far as I've figured it out anyway ;-)

The idea of balance seems pretty academic to me. Maybe it makes sense in the long-term, but if you mean splitting your time equally at all times I think that's the path towards doing an equally bad job at everything.
Brief? That was the longest blog entry I have ever read on the internet.

Some interesting points nevertheless, especially as I didn't know Oink before.
Two YC-funded companies are currently hosted at SoftLayer: anywhere.fm and scribd.com.

For information about hosting companies, the canonical reference is www.webhostingtalk.com.
http://www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp

Definitely should be your first port of call.
I've been using the Lispworks IDE for the last few years with medium to low satisfaction. Our production server is running SBCL on Ubuntu (which runs considerably faster that LW) and my cofounder is working with Slime. He swears by Slime and I'll be making the switch soon. We are also moving from SVN to GIT.
Thanks for the info! I was more tending towards Scheme than Common LISP, does that make a difference?
I was quite happy hacking lisp code (cmucl and then sbcl and a bit of clisp) in emacs with slime
+1 for both slime and git
Good list of books for the newbie entrepreneur
Photos: On board the Airbus A380
Any list with The Secret on it can't be a serious good list of books.
I'd skip the Covey books as well, there are a lot more worthy books that aren't on this list.
I highly recommend the Sitepoint CSS books
Then you can repeat the same process in IE with the quite good IE Developers Toolbar: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=e59...
the 7 habits? too many pages, not enough value.

here are some that i found valuable:
maximum achievement, the 13 strategies of war, the 22 immutable laws of branding, founders at work, how to get rich (felix), and a speed reading book/class.

please add yours here too.
Take a spritz: have a break; stop for a minute; chill out.

Any field of human endeavor has various facets to explore. Usually there is an entry position, where one becomes familiar with the terms and issues of the field an achieves some initial success. Then one moves on. The other poster pointed this out, and for some reason you guys down-modded him.

I could get into a long list of people who did great in a field when they started and then matured and took the field with them. Beethoven: great pianist. Went on to become great composer. Started composing symphonies. Went deaf but still composed symphonies. Went from there to completely change music as we know it.

I could add another dozen examples. Your example of J. K. Rowling doesn't fly since she considers all of the books one unit. This would be her initial success phase. Now she could continue in the field of book writing, pushing the genre (as Beethoven did with music) or she could move into a more generalized form of literature, say training, editing, or something else. She has an opportunity to redefine writing -- whether or not she could pull it off is up for grabs. I kind of doubt it. Or she could just cranking out that schlock that all of us read. It's up to her, and to say that she's somehow giving up her dream is BS: her dream should be about something big enough to keep pushing for. Being an artist and just making yourself and other people happy is a great dream! There are a lot of artists who find a comfortable niche and stay with that their whole life. But they aren't Beethovens. And they aren't innovators.

Like I said, none of my business.
Nothing. The world is full of people who work full-time jobs every day doing one thing and doing it well. Like I said, none of my business.

The world also has a lot of people that keep pushing the envelope. Finding the underlying reason they love the thing they do and making the world a better place for it. The reason you love something is greater than the thing itself. And introspection is the key to fulfillment of potential. So you can do one thing and do it well, or you can master a field and move the world.

This article struck me as a guy who made it one time, not being content that it was his skill or that he could do anything else interesting again, so going back to the well to try again. Like I said, 2 or 3 times, sure. After that you're just doing what you are used to doing, instead of the type of thing it was the first time you did it.

I guess it just depends on the person. It was a very subjective comment, and I tried to prefix it as such.
Open Letter To Guy Kawasaki: Please Don't Be Evil
I feel like I've read this article before. That would be at least once last year, and a few times in the 90s.
Slime doesn't exist for scheme. You can use Slime48 for Scheme48 version 1.3, but I don't know of any other ports for Scheme.
Sorry, this hard to follow. In one or two sentences, what exactly is your complaint?
The Principal Programming Language Paradigms
The python implementation looks overly complicated. I was thinking that the ruby and python implementations would be very similar. Here it goes

def foo(n):

return lambda i:n+i

Tried it (Python 2.5) and it works.
If you're using MIT Scheme, you might try Edwin?
My experience is that none of the self-help books ever did very much for me. This includes Steven Covey, Dale Carnegie, Tony Robbins, Zig Zigler, the Secret, etc., etc., etc. Some were entertaining, but that was it. I understand that these books do help many people who need their messages; I'm just not one of them. I prefer books that inspire me and tell me what to do.

My favorites?

How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis.

http://www.amazon.com/How-Get-Rich-Felix-Dennis/dp/009192166...

Differentiate or Die by Jack Trout

http://www.amazon.com/Differentiate-Die-Survival-Killer-Comp...

Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki

http://www.amazon.com/Art-Start-Time-Tested-Battle-Hardened-...

The 22 Immutable Rules of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout

http://www.amazon.com/22-Immutable-Laws-Marketing/dp/1861976...

Digitial Aboriginal by Mikela Tarlow and Philip Tarlow

http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Aboriginal-Direction-Instincti...

and, of course

Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston

http://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Early/d...

Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham

http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Painters-Big-Ideas-Computer/dp...

Before you do anything else, go to paulgraham.com and read all of the essays! I don't want to sound like a shill or hero worshipper for pg, but, understand, these essays are the very best thing out there for anyone on this forum. I am here because of the essays, not the other way around.
The best Scheme IDE probably is DrScheme (plt-scheme.org)
You should read stuff that tells you the most important stuff you don't know. So -- what do you know? Depending on that you should read different material.

I liked "A Good Hard Kick in the Ass" when I read it a few years ago. I've also read many of the books in that article. The business book business is strange: seems like you can read a lot without really learning much of anything.

The laws of marketing and laws of branding books are good, as is "The Innovator's Dilemma" (The sequel didn't seem as good to me for some reason).

Something I've tried that might be a good gift idea is business CDs -- you can load them up in your I-pod and take them on your morning run. Hard to do that with a book.

One thing to remember is the rule of 3: read at least three books attempting to solve the same problem that you are facing. Not only will it give you more perspective, different authors will connect to you in different ways, and sometimes it takes a while for the light to go on. But the main point I'm trying to make is to read based on what you need to know, instead of just randomly wandering around from one book to the next.
"nothing's truly private anymore"

Maybe for you.

I use one credit card (with a $50 fraud limit), no one knows my SSN except the IRS and my employer, no one has my bank info except me and my bank, and six people have my cell phone#.

Just because there's a new Web 2.0 fad doesn't mean you have to join. Just because you join doesn't mean you have to divulge private info.

"you just have to trust that the people viewing your data is honest"

Famous last words.
Two Approaches for Starting a Software Product Company
> Beethoven: great pianist. Went on to become great composer. Started composing symphonies. Went deaf but still composed symphonies. Went from there to completely change music as we know it.

You're rewriting history. Beethoven started by playing organ, viola, and piano while composing keyboard works. His collection of piano works alone outweighs his symphonic works. That's disregarding his enormous collection string works.

Also, it was hardly a unique thing to do. Mozart, Haydn, Sibelius and various other composers followed precisely the same path: start with piano training, produce piano works and expand outward. In fact, this paragraph actually supports what I was sarcastically suggesting: stick with what you do best. In this case, composing. You just got the details wrong.

> She has an opportunity to redefine writing -- whether or not she could pull it off is up for grabs.

That's ambiguous as hell. Explain "redefine writing".

> Or she could just cranking out that schlock that all of us read.

Is its "schlock" factor based on whether or not a writer's works are read and enjoyed by the general populous? In that case, Shakespeare cranked out a fair bit of schlock in his time.
Lol. The "hard to follow" is supposed to be part of the deal :-)
Performance Note: Our code is running at least 10x faster on Ubuntu with SBCL over Lispworks on Windows
Getting the capital to start your college venture
Look. I don't mind being wrong, but I just don't think you're understanding what I'm saying.

Beethoven started out as a keyboardist, sure. His father made him practice like crazy. At first he was a great performer of other people's works, not a composer. He received some acclaim as a performer and went to Vienna. At Vienna he was supposed to develop his composition skills. Hayden took him under his wing, and let's just say things didn't work out. Ignoring all his other great works (if such a thing is possible!) and concentrating on his symphonies, you can see where he started in the classical form and eventually blew the doors off of it, substituting motif development for the typical lyrical development of the time. His use of rhythm and instrumentation (including a chorus in the ninth) was completely unheard of. Music critics attending his symphonies for the first time were outraged. He was taking a field and innovating. The place he took the symphony, for instance, was somewhere the day-to-day practitioners of the time would never have went.

Glad to continue the historical bantering if you find it productive.

You ask for me to explain redefining writing? Sure as heck it's an ambiguous statement. That's the whole point! We can't see where the field can go because we're not practitioners at the top of our game. That's the purpose of pushing forward. It's not a question that has an answer that I can provide.

Interesting that you would choose Shakespeare as writing schlock. In fact, he did write a lot of stuff that was considered pulp at the time, but not only was his works popular with the masses and sometimes low-brow, he was also cutting-edge. His use of language and meter was, once again, unheard of. I could start listing all the new phrases he came up with that are common today, like "into thin air." Geesh! He coined over 2000 new words! He started a completely new way of constructing sentences in English. Shakespeare was probably more radical than any writer since him, yet he also appealed to the masses. You don't have to choose between popular and innovative. Sorry if I represented it as such.

Of course, Beethoven could have stayed with Hayden and wrote Baroque material his entire life. Shakespeare could have used the common vernacular and still been a very successful writer. There's nothing wrong with just wanting to do one thing the best you can. But doing "the best you can" to me means trying to change the world, not just plodding along in it.
If you've seen any interviews with Max Levchin, it's clear that startups are a profession for him. "An entrepreneur is someone who desperately wants to start companies. He or she doesn't even care what they are about, or which one," he said at a talk at UIUC. PayPal was his 5th startup, and I imagine there will be many more.
Your online personal organizer
An ametuer works when inspired, a professional works whether or not they feel inspired.
Actually it doesn't work - calling the returned lambda should increment n - your implementation doesn't.
I completely agree. This guy is hiding from himself. This isn't about achievement; it's about running away from a reflection. I already find it sad.
Second that. Mochikit has been rock-solid and a breeze to use.
One reason may be that it's in a series of articles in the NYTimes called "Age of Riches":

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/series/age_of_ri...
ComputerVisionWiki.org
This looks like fun. I'm in. Any other YCers going?
Vim and SBCL.
Vote for your favorite driving directions service on Squidoo!
I can't recommend slime highly enough - I miss something comparable now that I'm hacking Python.
> We could relicense components that they need under a less business friendly license so that they could not take advantage of future improvements to the platform.

Why not doing it in the first place, then?

> The most important way that we could 'rain on their parade' though is just by being way better than them at creating applications based on the platform since we will always understand the internals better than anybody else.

If the internals are not well-designed and not well-documented, yes. In that case, once again, why bother releasing the source code?
The idea of balance as a virtue always annoyed me. What great things are achieved in equilibrium? There should always be favoring, desiring, striving. They can balance me in my coffin.
Different people find satisfaction in different ways. Tycoons like Bill Gates and Rupert Murdoch are driven to build empires -- they strive over decades to increase the dominance of their companies in their markets. Many Wall Street bankers are driven by the desire to make money -- even when they are already rich, they still want more. Other people, like Michael Jordan, are driven to win one championship after another. (Incidentally, MJ tried to take a spritz -- twice -- and it didn't quite work out for him. He had to get back in the game.) Another group of characters -- the serial entrepreneurs -- get their "fix" from creating and flipping companies. It sounds like Levchin is the latter type. It's in his nature. He couldn't take a spritz even if he tried.

I think Max deserves praise, not criticism. In his endeavors, he's creating wealth, jobs, and happiness for millions teenagers who get to display animated slideshows on their appalling MySpace profile pages :)
> The most important way that we could 'rain on their parade' though is just by being way better than them at creating applications based on the platform since we will always understand the internals better than anybody else.

Bill Gates, is that you?
I agree. The right way to find balance is to focus on one thing, to be hugely imbalanced in your pursuit of it, and then to leave it when the time is right.

If you follow a routine in what you eat, and eat the same set of foods all the time, you risk exaggerating small imbalances over time, with implications for your health. To avoid this you can either spend a lot of time thinking about what you eat (with implications for balance in other areas), or you just change it up and chase some variety every now and then. Try new things. Listen to your body when it tells you it's had too much of this or that.

With 'listen to your body' this thread connects up with this one where DanielBMarkham talks about introspection:

http://scrapbook.akkartik.name/post/17541151

(Context: http://hystry.com/newsyc/follow/?http://news.ycombinator.com...)
http://www.owise.com/

Was around way before this. And I think there were others before "Web" was even "2.0".
To quote from a reddit comment: "News flash: Websites you visit know what pages you look at!"
I'll be there in my homemade reddit alien costume!
Build = play.
Honestly, what's the benefit of Scribd over a simple HTML page for a document like this?
That's what everyone says until they try Firebug. I'm not kidding -- I know at least three people who asked me the same question, then came back a week later and said "you're right, this is way better."

The interface is far more usable. Also, all WD can do with javascript is turn it on and off; Firebug has a full-fledged javascript debugger. (It's how I learned JS, in addition to CSS!) The DOM inspection tools are amazing.

Pretty much the only things I still use WD for are resizing the browser window and checking if I'm in quirks mode. But if breaking the page by adding a label to every div is a key feature for you, then maybe you should stick with WD. =)
Nedit is very nice.
Yes, he thinks evidence based scheduling is a worthwhile thing to do, so he builds the feature into his application, then blogs about it.

How dare he.