skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Too many questions, and why on earth do your users care that you use SIMULATED ANNEALING? I've actually used SIMULATED ANNEALING (for graph layout) and I don't even care.
What is residual type in traffoic? You mean people visit the site without searching for it, by just typing the name into the url bar?
I like Squeezed Books a lot. You should promote it more.

You're right, Tcl isn't going anywhere. Finish quickly.
Oops, you're right, I fixed it.
You can buy the right to have a "better" search result via a sponsored result. Hence, their search will never be "perfect."
Schwartz. Perfect example. The government-issued PR firm for Boston companies. Competed with 2 companies simultaneously repped by them. Saw, maybe, 5? trade press hits between the two of them.

We didn't do much better, because we were also repped by a PR company, and playing the same pasteurized process press food strategy as the rest of them.

Which is my point. Wasting money on a jaded middleman to circulate press releases every time you make a dot release isn't something you should aspire to do when you can afford it, and PR isn't something you should avoid doing now.

My current company, a tiny startup, is in Forbes, Wired, EWeek, Network Computing, Inforworld, Baseline, not to mention Slashdot, Digg, and Reddit. Didn't spend a dime to do it. Definitely got lucky, but there's also definitely a trick to doing it.

I agree with the "survey" trick Graham talks about. I've seen that work over and over again.
It's amusing that anyone would disagree with this.
How to Prep for an Investor Meeting?
Cars are more dangerous than guns and should be banned immediately.
Good Video - but your link is broken. Here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oAB83Z1ydE
thanks. makes sense.
I've been playing around with Symfony lately and I am very impressed with it. At first, the endless amount of directories seems to not make sense, but once you start to use it you'll see they make perfect sense.

Very easy to deploy as well given that it's written in PHP.
They should give a list of cities they support at the moment. I can imagine a lot of people getting frustrated by not being able to sign-up.
Ask YC: The Value of a Degree.
I'm currently an Electrical Computer Engineering. I've worked in the Dilbert environment and I won't do it again, I do freelance web development on the side, and I was wondering if it was still beneficial to get a degree if I don't ever plan on working for 'the man' again. I keep hearing that I'll shut out opportunities, but to me it seems that they are opportunities that I wouldn't want anyway. Thoughts?
I didn't get it.
True, so the top result may know that you searched for them even if you didn't click on them.
I'm at a loss to see how they would use that information in a bad way though - all they have is some server logs telling them a person from the IP address a.b.c.d did a search for them, and google suggested the browser prefetch their page.

I know it's the principle and a slippery slope and everything, but I'm not sure how an IP is of any use - especially given the number of ISPs that use dynamic pools, or web caches etc
'installs several cookies'

eugh please
Amichall, are you a troll? I mean this in the nicest possible way, but when I look at your submission record, you either don't think things through before posting, or you're deliberately trolling.
its different because there are profiles, voting, comments plus we are focused on comment and opinion
Cost of software is not only money
If not Silicon Valley then where would you move your startup? (me: I am thinking Portland)
What would be your second choice for your startup location?
I have never been to Portland, but I think it is a good place to start a tech company.
Portland's a pretty nice place, although the weather is very gray and depressing during the winter.
I'm very strongly pro-gun, but I don't want to see political articles on Hacker News. Take it to reddit.
what does "eugh" mean?

Sorry if my language was not precise enough. What I meant is that several cookies get set via the Sage reader. Better now?
The best languages and frameworks and tools for doing web startups??
I m planning to do so web startup , so where do I start.... As of now , I know c,cpp , java....give me an insight into the kind languages , web frameworks and tools used by startups today...
They also get to set a cookie. Anyway, maybe that one use by Google is not too bad. But it seems unnecessary, and in general that functionality seems to be only good for spying on users. So why enable it in an open source product?
<scratching head>A rewrite in two days? Hmmm, either its not much of a product in terms of complexity or you are gravely underestimating the effort. I would guess the latter.

You must be prudent in this situation; any sort of rewrite/refactoring will not show visual progress with the product, so while things may be getting better on your end everyone else thinks that the development is stagnating.

Always be weary of actions where the end user won't see results. Refactor on the fly as best you can. Nobody will care (except for you) when you emerge from your cave a few months later and proclaim "The code is nice and clean; now we can proceed!"
The danger of something must be balanced with its utility. Cars are (sadly) unavoidable.
He seems to be like a troll in the sense that he likes to stir up controversy, but I don't think he has the same bad intentions as a troll. The hallmark of a troll is to engage people in long, acrimonious back-and-forths that push the thread to the right side of the page.
I personally think that you can't beat Visual Forth ++.
Why Does Software Cost So Much?
This kind of posts just make me laugh, can someone really compare cars and guns?

I don't have the numbers but I'm pretty sure that heart attacks kills more people than cars and guns together, should we ban Mc Donalds?
Cars are banned in most places. They're only allowed in roads and parking lots, and even then with severe restrictions. Start driving your car on the sidewalk or across someone's front yard and you'll be rapidy arrested.
How Important is SEO on your Startup's Priority List?
networking...notworking!
hopefully no one that uses the service will ever encounter a crazy (in a bad way) blind date. I wonder what their contingencies are for that scenario?
Job: Elite C Hacker for OpenDNS
A friend of mine at OpenDNS (SF-based startup) is looking for someone to fill this position:

Company: OpenDNS
Job Title: Senior C Programmer -- Elite Hacker / Engineer Types
Description: Elite C { Hacker | Software Engineer | Programmer }

The Opportunity:

OpenDNS is looking for an experienced unix (linux, openbsd, freebsd or solaris) software developer to join our engineering team. This is an opportunity to join an early-stage startup where you will be instrumental in architecting and developing software for next-generation Internet services.

You will be expected to work with us to design, code, test and deploy sound engineering solutions to complex problems. You will probably write code in C, but you should speak some scripting languages too.

The ideal candidate will be familiar with coding within a complete system and not just inside an IDE. Current and former OS hackers (linux kernel, freebsd, etc), database hackers (postgresql, oracle, mysql, etc), and popular daemon hackers might be great fits.

Some problems you might work on include:

- Helping collect, process and store large (LARGE!) data sets of DNS data. If you can chop a trillion rows of data without sweating, we want to talk to you.
- Working on signal/noise algorithms to detect malicious traffic on the Internet and proactively stop it before it reaches its destination.
- Optimizing network routing topologies to better traffic engineer data as it traverses our global network.

Requirements:

- A proven track record of getting software out the door and working well with a team.
- Extensive network programming on a unix platform.
- Comfort moving around a unix environment and using tools (for example) like make, strace, gdb, awk, sed, etc.
- Experience with some or all of the following protocols: DNS, HTTP, SMTP.
- Familiarity with various techniques for logging, storing and queuing data on a network, disk or memory system.

Bonus Points:

- BS or MS in Computer Science or related field.
- Experience developing software to interoperate within the specs of various RFCs.
- Experience with network routing protocols including BGP4 and OSPF.
- Experience with non-SQL database systems
- Familiarity with SQL (We use MySQL)
- Familiarity with PHP.
- Involvement in any Free or Open Source software projects.
- Quick Skill List (aka, keyword fodder for craigslist searching)
- C, libmemcache (memcached), Sockets, Network Programming, DNS, SVN, CDB (libcdb), hadoop, sawzall, BigTable, djbdns, apache, freebsd, debian, etc.
Some people just can't work 9-5.

Some people just can't be told by their bosses.

Some people just like to do whatever they please.

Now for the issue of H1-B. I think the government should increase H1-B visas because it seems to me that most Americans loathe the idea of working in a cubicle and getting steady cheque with health benefits and stock options. If that is the case, why don't give your day jobs to people who need them the most?

There are thousands (or more) people that might envy at your day job.

I think US government should be aware of this situation. The reason why hi-tech companies need more human resources is because:

1) People don't major in CS anymore

2) People loathe the idea of working 9-5 for the man.
RIAA Hits a Sour Note With Its File-Sharing Witch Hunt
It's only live in Austin right now. According to the FAQ, if you enter another city, they'll tell you when they launch in your city.
Facebook Vs ConnectU: "Facebook Makes Untrue Assertions" Claims ConnectU
Actually, they only support a single city now.
415 287 7721 if you have questions. or david {at} opendns.com
The most powerful microscope in the world
Google Founders Pick Up Another Big Plane
HAH. Yeah right.

Everyone (women especially) will ditch this once they see how poor the average date partner is. That's my prediction.
Within a single administrative domain, this wouldn't be a problem. The target already knows you visited the origin page, and exact contents of the origin page. The only information leaked is that the user has 'prefetch' on.

In Google search results, this is problematic. It reveals your search terms and IP address to a third party you've never decided to visit. It's essentially equivalent to a 1-pixel 'web bug' sharing your Google search visit info with the first result site.
Not important. If you build something which people want, they'll tell their friends about it. If the majority of your users are discovering you via Google, you're doing something wrong.
if not sv, i wouldn't move it anywhere. (currently in chicago)
Splashtop, lets you hit PC start button, and browse instantly
That often works for free web "tools" or sites. In the service industry or selling a product, search engines are important to reach customers that are not as tech savvy.
I like mzscheme (a variant of Scheme, which is a variant of Lisp), but Python is growing on me. When I need database interactions, I use PHP, and when I want neat effects, I use javascript.
Why don't you try Code Igniter out? I fell in love with PHP again cuz of it. Plus it's pretty lightweight and snappy compared to Symfony. Not to mention they are pretty much similar in structure.
The "externalities" (CO2, traffic) are less extreme - at least on a per-unit basis, than threatening someone, or actually shooting them. We have the means, if not the will to make some attempts at calculating and taxing them. I wonder what those sorts of calculations would look like if you calculated a value for each person killed by guns in a given year and spread that out over their sales in a tax of some kind. Hrm. Anyway, yeah, cars are useful, guns I can and do live without.
I'm a "non-degreed" guy that (IMO) has done ok so far in life.

Unless you're getting a degree in a highly specialized area, I personally think their value diminished over time. Right after graduation a degree is a valuable tool, in theory, that an employer can use to assess your value. When you're 45, your work experience and career accomplishments will/should outweigh any degree(s) you might hold. Of course, this is as related to tech-type jobs.

I sort of see this "slider" concept for measuring the value of a degree, as it related to most of the things relevant to what we discuss here. The more entrepreneurial and hard-working you are, the less value a degree holds vs. real-time hands-on work experience. The more you want to rely on a steady paycheck in a cube-farm, the more you should thing about getting that diploma.

Some of the top wealth-holders in business and technology have no college degree (Slim, Gates, Ellison, Allen, Dell). Not to mention many more "mid-level" types who have done better than their peers, on-average, by virtue of hard-work and logical thinking.

In your specific case, I would politely say that I question the potential for "freelance web development" to yield an ongoing income stream of appreciable value. My guess though is that you plan to augment or enhance those skills and continue moving forward. In which case it makes sense to start devoting as much of your time as possible to that venture.
I have no degree. I have worked for tiny startups, small businesses, Yahoo, the IRS Modernization Project, Big Co Consulting companies, with degree-heavy dev teams and with multi-talented cowboy hackers. I never planned on taking the man's money either. But I go where there is interesting work. There is a pay discount wherever you go and are not a founder. I have ten years' experience but usually not the same pay as someone with 10 + bachelor's, or even 5 + master's.

Often, I have lacked the theory, the mathematics and the discipline of creating and analyzing algorithms. It is a big hole that takes years to become aware of.

Another hard-to-see hole is what you take for granted in college or a tech-heavy city: where else are you going to meet other people with the same interests, work on problems with them, have late-night bull sessions, etc?

So now that I live a few train stops from Berkeley I am taking some of the harder courses that people have said are worthwhile.

Take the good stuff. Meet people. Stay loose. Follow the interesting problems. But take neither the pros or cons of college too seriously. You are choosing the general heading of a ship, not choosing a single set of tracks.
"Some people just like to do whatever they please."

Technically, entrepreneurs can't do whatever they please either. They have to do what their customers say.

That's perhaps a good test for whether you'll make a good founder: how do you react when asked to do something by a customer, vs. how do you react when asked to do something by your boss? If you jump to attention for the customer but blow off the boss, you'll probably do fine. If you jump to attention for the boss but blow off the customer (far more people do this than you'd think), you're better off as an employee. If you won't do anything for anyone, you have a very difficult life ahead of you.
Berkeley Pluses:
- Everything is in walking distance if you live around downtown - from the grocery shops, to the many many good, cheap (compared to East Coast) restaurants, and the BART (subway) that takes you to San Francisco in 20 - 25 minutes.

- Office space, the last time I checked was about $2 per square foot. Check:
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/off/eby?query=&minAsk...

- University town - the campus libraries are among the best places are awesome. The Berkely gym and the downtown YMCA here are also really excellent.

- The weather is really nice - not as cold and windy as SF, and not as hot as San Jose. It warms up and cools down very gradually here - and usually stays between 15 and 25 degrees Celsius.

- The parks and the marina are great. There is pretty good hiking, and the sailing club here will get you sailing (or wind-surfing)! For cheap! (www.cal-sailing.org).

Cons:
- It is dirty in places - it doesn't smell though.
- There are lots of homeless people here - quite harmless.
- Everything shuts down early. Berkeley is a town more than a city. There are two 'night-clubs' - only one is worth any time - the other is a dirty (in a bad way) hole in the ground. Only a couple of bars and restaurants are open late - thankfully they're quite good. Lucky for you, San Francisco is less than half an hour away by public transit. There's a bus that drives back every half an hour all night long.

Non-issues:
- "Activism". big deal - some people like to protest - they don't come in your way or bother you. You are invited to participate and the locals can be engaging and opinionated if you talk to them. This is one of the most educated places I've ever lived in - that is a good thing.

Conclusion:
- Berkeley is great! You can raise your kids here. You can live in a relatively quite place but live very close to two main cities - Oakland and San Fran - so you can go crazy and then return to relax and work in a quieter place.
Why in the world I would read 1994 article about software cost? We are in 2007 - you shouldn't even try to compare.
"As a result of that arrangement, NASA scientists now have access to aircraft for experiments they might not otherwise be able to perform"

I am curious as to what that means. The fact that NASA wants to use the Google plane for experiments seemed immediately strange to me, when they already have plenty of resources for that purpose.

But maybe these experiments are different somehow? Like ones NASA does not want to be liable for performing themselves?

The whole deal just seems a bit fishy.
1 word in beta invite email subject reduces conversion by 14%
Hey All-- thought any startup folks out there might find this interesting. We're rolling out more and more RescueTime invites and I saw conversion on the invite email plummet on the most recent invite (with the only change being removing 1 word from the subject).
What we need are robot cars and robot guns. Folks are working on both :)
cars:
http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/index.asp

guns:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMkV8E2re9U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQf0Q0JEdtE
As much as I like DeMarco, I have never agreed with his argument here.

The reason software costs so much is that most people DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE DOING.

That's why, in our industry, things don't gradually get better. They become obsolete and get leapfrogged.
Ryan Carson responds to Paul Graham on startup hubs
This post doesn't belong on this service - can anyone delete it?
Heh-- I got acquired early (and left after my contractual obligation) and have a long list of bookmarked blog posts detailing frustrated founders who have been gobbled up. I certainly would ask some different questions and set some different expectations if I'm ever acquired again.
The editors mark content they really don't want here as "dead", which means you don't see it unless you have the "showdead" option turned on in your profile. I don't think they ever delete posts.
I never understood this. Apparently working a 9-5 working on someone else's problem and not pursuing your interests is considered the pinnacle of the human experience. Who knew.
It's probably so that NASA can do experiments for which their director doesn't want to go in front of Congress and say "yes, we spent $X leasing a plane so that we could do this". This way, if someone complains about NASA doing loony experiments (and NASA certainly does loony experiments at times) NASA can say "sure, we did that -- but it didn't cost any taxpayer dollars".
I should add that this word cost us 89 users directly (14% less people opened the email, 91% of people who open the email convert to an account).

I don't yet have the volume of data to understand word of mouth virality, but we see a big spike of signups every time we do a batch of invites, so losing 1 user costs us more than 1 user...
Your comparison is invalid because you're comparing externalities from legal use of cars to externalities from illegal use of guns. Compare the externalities of legal use of cars (pollution, traffic, some crashes) to legal use of guns (pollution from lead and propellants, some accidental shootings) and illegal use of cars (crashes due to DUI, reckless driving, racing) to illegal use of guns (assault, murder).
Ya... exactly what I was thinking... for what I need right now, I wouldn't travel to Austin or Houston (I'm in the Dallas area), but for other things (cars), I would want to know when a 68 corvette comes into Austin, Houston or Dallas.
Ok, so throw them all in there and see what comes out, it would be interesting.

Oops... I saw your other post about it not belonging here. I agree, let's drop it.
I tried to tutor Computer Science while I was an undergraduate. My clients were always people who would call me around finals time and ask me to help them cram. There were seniors who simply could not write computer programs--some might have a vague notion of what a loop is, but not enough to actually write a (trivial) program using one. I often had to stop the tutoring sessions, because I simply could not help them without just doing the homework myself.

I watched many of those people graduate with B.S. degrees in Computer Science from my university. If I ever need to hire a developer, I will actively avoid anybody that graduated from my own university. Once I realized that, I quit.

Having said that, some places have rules that won't allow them to hire you without a degree. If you want to work for these kinds of places, you need the degree. However, I think that a degree requirement is a good indicator of a bad place to work.
"In your specific case, I would politely say that I question the potential for "freelance web development" to yield an ongoing income stream of appreciable value. "
--Certainly, I am currently working on developing two internet based products and building my skills in other areas as well; working for other people on a salaried basis won't appreciate too well either (such is my understanding)
Take some courses about hard things you want/need to learn and don't worry about the degree.
What are you doing now? What (if any) problems have you run into? I certainly realize your frustration.
I've avoided driving a car for my whole entire life and so did everybody else for thousands of years before they were invented.
Again amusing that people disagree, and think that a questionairre which allows for "WhatSpace? WhoBook?" should advertise algorithm selection on a splash page.
Well, if the article is good enough then it shouldn't matter when it was written. Old==Bad and New==Good can get you pretty confused.
You need to understand Carson's position on this matter...He is trying to build up Europe as a startup hub, then someone walks in and tells his audience that there is a better startup hub. Ouch!!
If you love what you do you will rarely find someone that can compete with you. That being said I am a non-degreed programmer of 14 years experience. Having researched this topic many times I believe Michael Spence has cornered why and how a degree is useful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Spence

To summarize a degree or certification is a signal of private information from an agent to a principal. Nothing more, nothing less. If you can replace that signal with another kind of signal (ie experience/references/monument made in your name) you don't need it.
Rule Three: Contrast, Contrast, Contrast
The OWASP Guide to Building Secure Web Applications
Cars aren't designed to kill. Guns are.

That said, take it to Reddit.
Sometimes the truth really hurts.