skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I used to maintain the investor database at an investment bank and I can say, without any doubt, that the Crunchbase data is really, truly terrible. There is simply no one in place with the right incentives to make sure that the data is updated/cleaned with any regularity. Dow Jones VentureSource and Thomson ONE have databases that track venture capital rounds fairly accurately, although obviously there are a ton of deals that are never exposed to the outside world, and there are rarely regulatory requirements that such things be disclosed.

Even when you have the data though, it's hard to tell which investors are actually still doing deals. There are a lot of small funds out there that may not do a deal every 6 months even when they are still actively looking, perhaps because they are in the tail end of their investment period and are trying to be very selective, or perhaps because their typical bite size is large relative to the capital they have to deploy. There are also investors who will tell you that they are continuing to look at deals even when they aren't in a position to invest because they don't have committed capital and it doesn't look good to be out of the market. So all around it's a pretty fuzzy condition that you are looking to describe.

Of course, having a list is still nicer than not having a list, because if you simply "tap your network" for active funds, people will just think about who they've interacted with recently, rather than actually having any knowledge about the specific proclivities of the country's hundreds of venture capital firms, organized angels, etc. It's easy to overlook reasonable candidates.
Ugh... Why does every portfolio website use this identical layout? (the left nav, the random image header above it, etc). All people do is switch up the colors and put their own obscure image at the top. Lame.
I'm a tech lead who does interviews and makes hiring decisions for Rails developers, and I completely understand your sentiment, but I encourage you to push past that and publish anyhow.

More published code is better than less published code irrespective of quality, because it tells me that you're engaged and devoted to your craft, and it gives me a sense of what projects and technologies you're interested in and have been exposed to. Additionally, publishing code gives me a way to see your progression through the craft, and to get a sense of not only how developed you are as a programmer, but how you're growing.

A junior programmer who shows growth and improvement is a much better hire than a junior who is competent but shows no growth. When I hire people, I want to hire people who will grow into strong senior developers over their career, which means that I'm primarily looking for ability to learn and grow rather than a specific buzzword checklist. Hiring a junior comes with the expectation that I'm going to have to train and hand-hold them, but I want to hire a junior who will progress out of that stage, and will be able to start taking care of those things for new hires down the road.

Publishing code on Github doesn't mean that you're asking other people to use it; it just means you're publishing it. A Github profile on a resume is a +1 for me; a Github account with a lot of forks is another +1, an account with original code is yet another +1, and an account with original code that other people use is the big cherry on top. In all cases, though, I'd rather see an active account filled with "noobish" or "messy" code than an empty account.
I really hate that the headline references "a Start-Up’s Spirit" when they recently did just about the most technologically and culturally backwards move possible. This is the kind of move that a nimble startup would reject and a slow-moving and backwards big company would embrace.

The article cites Yahoo's desire to attempt to compete with top companies for prime talent. Yet they're throwing away the chance on hiring top remote developers and relying on such innovative workforce management techniques as "your butt better physically be in this chair from 9 to 5."
The practical ease with which laws against murder may be violated is in itself an argument against its rigid enforcement.

If you have a problem with copyright in and of itself, make a case based on that. The logical conclusion of your argument as it stands, however, is "laws may be violated so we should have no laws".
Great work! 7 days is inspirational. I also did a small side project to clear my mind and it did wonders! Yours however, is simply jaw dropping for 7 days.
The main reason why I'm considering giving ember another shot is discourse (discourse.org), which is a pretty large open-source app written in rails and ember. Having a large app that one can reference is pretty invaluable. I'm not aware of any larger apps written in angular.
There are always outliers. Ignore them.
One of the major factors in the debate was community support. Marionette is built on top of Backbone, which meant depending on support of two separate projects. Ember.js, on the other hand is by a single developer. Kind of like why people prefer buying Nexus phones. They are the first ones to officially get updated with the latest Android version. Others might take months before the handset manufacturer decides to update them.

Also, we were certain that we needed view hierarchies, and Marionette provided them too. Back in the day though, it was still in its early stages, and we couldn't really count on it. "What if an API change broke our app with the next upgrade?" we thought. Ember.js on the other hand was pretty much frozen and as in a 1.0 pre2 version. Also, there were many options available, Backbone+Marionette or Backbone+Thorax? It was confusing.
Was that really it?
-O2 seems to be the most commonly used optimization level. That's what most of the distro software and the kernel etc uses. In the past except for maybe a handful things, O3 was an overkill. (O3/Ofast remind me of my Gentoo days! :)
So is the mysql2 driver (at least the slow parts), and Passenger is C++. C extensions are a common part of your standard Ruby deployment stack.
The fact that his visually stunning and interesting app Percolator was a staff pick in the App Store (at one point, I bought nearly all staff picks near automatically) is relevant. I wish he had talked more about the week he spent working on the app (how long did he work, how does he balance visual and technical tasks, his mentors, his weaknesses, the creative process, reuse of clever graphics routines, any backtracking). Perhaps a future blog post?

I remain convinced that Apple has a watchlist of great app makers and apps (e.g. a reviewer that finds an Apple worthy app can flag it to the editors as worthy of consideration).

And, Percolator and Tinrocket were rightly on that list.
100 candidates for a junior Rails position? Egadz. That's not super encouraging.

What are some things that you find disqualify candidates when you interview them?

Or conversely, what makes candidates look especially good when you're narrowing it down?
I quit my job just over 1 year ago to work for myself, to do some consulting work and improve on a website that I had knocked up with a mate over 2 weekends and see where it would take us and we are doing OK.

I felt I got the same treatment as the original poster did (quiet pity & the why's) but I didn't care it was/is low risk and if worse come to worse I will get a job again if I feel things really aren't going the way I want. One of my friends even asked, "do you like money and want to get rich so much that you are willing to leave your job that is stable and go out on your own". I think the assumption for everyone who doesn't know about the love of working with tech is that its done just for the money only not because its so fun and challenging to some of us.

I responded by saying that I actually like money less then he did because I was willing to go for 2 years (if needed) without stable income or money to do the things I like (within and outside of tech), the way I figure, this shows less of a desire for money then someone who wakes up everyday hating what they are doing just for the money when they don't have the kids and a wife ?!

One of the advantaged that I didn't realise about quitting was other then being able to do the work that you want to make $$$ (work that replaces your 9-5) you end up with much more time because you are able arrange your time appropriately and the time wasted on ridiculous meetings, coffee breaks, friday drinks the 2hr total train ride everyday and the complete drain at the end of the day that just leaves you wanting to veg-out after work and not do anything was no longer there. At the moment after I get a piece of work done and I am happy with it I move onto the next thing whether it is a "work related" task or "something fun" (like going to the beach for instance).

When I had that additional time the one big issue I had was trying not to feel guilty about not working on the tasks that I was doing to replace my previous day job and force every bit of work in any free time BUT once I was able to get over this I managed to pick up a new sport a new language and learn many things that I feel has enriched my life so much more.

What i kinda learnt is sometimes you quit work because of the usual HN reasons, to do a startup, work for your self but for me specifically because I didn't have to waste so much time I ended up discovering lots of other things that makes life awesome. Unless i really need it and things go south in a big way, living life with much less salary as before but with this additional freedom is so much better. I guess its good to enjoy this whilst you can for those that can because when kids come along being a responsible adult things will obviously have to be different.
Happy to finally see an intro to data science article that puts statistics as the #1 skill. While software engineering is also important, all the engineering in the world won't help you extract any meaningful insight from data without a solid foundation in probability and statistical theory.
I read the "Korean immigrant" comment slightly differently. Not as a "if that schlub can do it so can you!", but rather as pointing out that immigrants to most countries generally face all the same business challenges of any citizen plus the burden of being an immigrant in a society that may not always be welcoming. If someone can succeed facing all the same challenges you would face plus a few more it can show you that your challenges aren't insurmountable. Or maybe the person is just so head-and-shoulders above you that you shouldn't even compare, but that is less likely in my experience (i.e. variation amongst people in sub-groups, say entrepreneurs, are generally not as vast as people think, mostly because most people only compare against the outliers).
How A Tiny New Compose Window Could Reinvent Gmail
I'm not surprised the comments are closed.
My wife and I made a great book of wedding photos for both sets of parents on Blurb. Great experience on the site -- keep up the good work!
For creatine, while it is true that the supplement serves to help you push out an extra rep or two, I've literally never heard of anyone getting "overuse injuries" due to starting creatine. It's just a scare tactic on one of the best-studied supplements out there. Read up on it here: http://examine.com/supplements/Creatine/

For breathing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valsalva_maneuver

[If it matters, I'm a not very competitive powerlifter who has been lifting for nearly two years]
The Rules of Amish Business Success
Unfortunately, those of us who are on an H1B visa do not have much flexibility when it comes to employment. For example, I can't just quit my job and found a startup. I can't join one either, because most startups do not want to deal with the costs and administrative details of sponsoring foreigners.
I would have to agree that it's a little of column A and a little of column B. Though there are always little known pockets of gold that exist on the internet (hard to come by through normal means but instantly useful the moment you find them), I think that the quality hasn't declined so much as the amount of noise out there has increased.

A lot of the noise relates to stuff people find socially relevant (celebrity news, people blogging about food, mom forums, whatever other mind junk food you can think of), there is a huge increase in all of this kind of material. The flip side that the real intellectual/technical gems of material are being outpaced by the other types of content out there.

Also Google's drastically changed the way search works over the last few years (some might argue decade). The "organicness" has kind of been drained from search and has instead been replaced with Google's idea of convenience. The amount of chance and "freshness" in your results has been replaced by, not only SEO oriented content, but also by Google's expectations of what they think you wanted to find (a wikipedia article, an IMDB entry, a Google places listing). It works for some concrete stuff, but on the whole I think it's done a disservice to the core of what makes "the internet" the internet.
I am a woman with a degree from a top public university. When I was choosing which college in the UC system to attend, I remember my mother having the exact same advice in reference to the male/female ratios at the various schools. And her advice came from the same place as Susan Patton's. I remember her concern over the slightly greater percentage of women at Cal than men, but she was comforted that the difference was significantly less than at UCLA.

This is how 'old boys clubs' are built, and this conversation happens far more often than people realize.

Also fun to think about right now (in terms of vaguely shocking class categories/distinctions): http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22000973
How does recognizing you are lucky imply "needing" them? Telling well of American children to keep in mind their privilege and that most people in the world don't have what they have hardly seems like Marxism to me.
I really think it's as simple as this:

For an extrovert, being alone expends energy and socializing replenishes it.

For an introvert, socializing expends energy and being alone replenishes it.

It's not about social skills, or whether you enjoy the company of others. It's just that if socializing feels like it requires effort and makes you tired, you are probably an introvert. By this standard, I am most definitely an introvert. I like socializing, hanging out with friends, and going to parties, but they make me feel tired and I need time alone to "recharge" afterward. It's especially draining to meet new people. Among people I already know well, there's less "friction" so it uses up less of my social energy.

I also think (anecdotally, I don't have any statistics to back this up) that introverts are the majority, while extroverts are a highly visible minority. They tend to connect people and provide "social glue."
Or possibly "don't follow instructions from people you don't trust", regardless of what they tell you to do.
Work Together
I think you're right on with the monetary bit, statistically every startup/consultancy/independently produced product is a money/time pit waiting to happen. The number of successes in either category is tiny and you really have to do it for reasons other than cash. I spent 4.5 years on my first startup. If I wanted to maximize my income, I would have pursued a career in finance, not started my own company.

As you say, I too find the freedom liberating, but more than that, I find it exciting to work on problems that are personally interesting. To have skin in the game is the best way I've found so far to keep my work interesting and engaging. The fact that I can define my own work-life balance helps too. :)
"well deserved if they worked to build it"- does that still apply if it involves centuries, decades of colonization, oppression, slavery?

" if you want to be on top in 10 years, spend your weekends toying with bitcoins, drones and/or 3D printers."

how many black kids- or poor kids in India, for instance (consider Ramanujan) do you think are going to have the OPPORTUNITY to spend their weekends toying with bitcoins, drones and/or 3D printers?

There's a REASON it's mostly white males who are playing with those areas, and it's not "White Men Work Harder".

African mothers work harder than anybody else, walking tens of miles everyday to bring home water to their kids. Where's their well-deserved advantage?
Also, we did sent a thank you email to our first customer :)
Every once in a while I think I have my shell environment set up exactly the way I want it. Then I find out about something like this - thanks for the tip.
This column will change your life
The only good way to set Django environment variables
A big improvement over http://django.2scoops.org!
Nice, that's pretty awesome.
Good terminal emulators (xterm, urxvt, iTerm2, etc.) have support for "bracketed paste mode" which can be used to fix this problem in zsh: https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/pull/1698 (original code: http://www.zsh.org/mla/users/2011/msg00367.html)

It's probably easy to write a similar fix for bash.
I can't talk about specifics in public, but shoot me an e-mail (address in profile) and I will provide you with some guidance if you'd like.
> Regulation on disallowing a company to pump cyanide* into the water supply? Find someone who disagrees with this!

You can find millions of ordinary people who will fight for the right of companies to endanger aquifers with fracking fluid.
Futura - A tribute to buzzword filled startups
When introverts and extroverts are in the same family (or romantic relationship), there can easily be enough drama to justify the tone of the post.

Beware of mixed marriages.
I used to strongly define myself an extrovert because I can be loud, gregarious and I'm passionate about great conversations- but I also hate large crowds and large parties.

I'm okay with meeting new people if it's a relatively small setting of 4-5 people. Otherwise it's usually a waste of time.

Now I don't know how to define myself.

I get energized by doing energizing activities and being around energizing people, and I get drained in the opposite. I used to play in a rock band and I enjoyed entertaining crowds- and that was simultaneously energizing and draining, in separate spheres.

I suppose it can be useful initially to identify as one or the other, but as you really begin to feast on your life you start to realize that life is far too complex to be binary.
Really good point about symptoms / causes (I do not entirely agree that it is automatically follows to make the gov not worth buying.. a bit like smashing up your car so no-one steals it). And I do not disagree with your comments about the US voting.

WRT Australian voting, in 2010 the voter turnout was around 92/93%, with a further 5.5% informal (donkey). Around 20% of the electorate voted for the minor parties / independents.

All this translated to.. 90% of the seats to the two major parties. Nope, no corruption here. In a very real sense the system is designed by the parties that run it. I mean, we all remember what happened in Tassie in the late 90's?
Crisis averted in BIOS source code leak
The author clearly injected the political meaning into the discussion:

"In politics, the spectrum of belief is right on the surface: conservative/liberal, right/left. In tech, that same spectrum exists, but it’s rarely discussed."

He may have the OED definition in mind more than the political one, but that's irrelevant. As soon as you invoke it as a label, it twists the discussion into an ideological one.

And there's no real reason to do so. He could have just said something like: "Don't be too conservative or set in your ways when it comes to technology. When something new comes along and makes to uncomfortable, rather than try to revert, see if there's a new perspective that shows a better way of doing things." The difference is that is simply a suggestion about how everyone can improve personally, rather than an ideological battle.
Start up spirit equals:

offices are covered in chalkboard paint and whiteboards, for scribbling down ideas and code, and also feature a fully stocked kitchen. They are decorated with posters of software applications the employees admire and aim to compete with. The team has also installed two large television screens for testing app prototypes and has built a game room with club chairs.
I've really like Watsi since the first time I saw it on HN (before you were in YC). I was thinking about it yesterday and I think the satisfying part is the ability to see a case actually get funded. A lot of charities you give money but it is for a somewhat amorphous problem, to "fight hunger" or "help fund education" or "research a cure for cancer". These are all noble causes but it is somehow less personally fulfilling because you can't see any near term changes and just have to tell yourself perhaps your donation helped in some small way. With Watsi you can actually see that you and some other anonymous strangers paid for an actual procedure, and it got done, and it is pretty easy to see the direct connection between your donation and a real, positive difference in someone's life, even if you don't know / will never meet that someone.

It is the same with that IndieGoGo fund the other day to help the Kenyan hacker trying to get to NYC for Hacker School. There is something fulfilling about refreshing that page and seeing the goal met and then exceeded and knowing it will impact their life in a way that is greater than I could have impacted my own by spending the same money on something for myself (or, perhaps, something more directly for myself, since clearly this kind of thing gives me some personal satisfaction or I wouldn't do it, selfish altruism and all :))
How is this news? Its been done so many times I've lost count.
The first sentence alone should be enough to ward people off from reading this post.
> If you select text it always goes into the selection buffer.

But as far as I can tell, if text is selected for you that's not always true. I sometimes have difficulty with text boxes which insist on self-selecting as soon as I click them, and which I just can't seem to pull into the selection buffer.

Github doesn't seem to have this issue, but I had recently when trying to get a google maps permalink, for example.
This is interesting for Google. It one way it's huge validation. Afterall, Facebook is working with Android and not Apple. Android still in general suffers from at best apps on par with Apple's and usually they feel a little behind. So this is significant from a simple PR coup perspective. Facebook's big announcement evolves around Android!

Yet as noted in this article it comes with it's own set of challenges which are well documented here. In general, I think Google is the winner here - only because I don't see Home being that much of a threat as a concept. I think Facebook has now positioned itself as a "necessary evil" in our culture. In general people use it to keep up on friends and family. But embracing the entire experience a la home probably makes you look like more of a dork than a hipster.
If I ever was hired for my looks, that was a long time in the past.

My connections, however, are pretty awesome. :)
It would seem intuitive that the search process would be greatly speeded up by using a genetic search of the solution space rather than brute force search, it's a bit odd that genetic algorithms aren't mentioned.
Availability. It is easy to get a short, memorable name with a technical connotation for relatively little cash.
How a banner ad for H&R Block appeared on Apple.com without Apple’s OK