skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
dave, I think you "just" need to look at the consequences of being late, and what those mean to you, and make the decision on a case-by-case basis. That's more realistic than the punishment anyway. All of life is a trade-off, if you think about it. "If I do it with x bugs, then..." "If we ship before y is done, then..." Then you are prepared for those consequences (or not). That tells you whether to keep going.

But I'm in the corner for shipping earlier. For our app, Freckle Time Tracking, we got the time entry interactions really, really done well, but the rest was very beta/alpha. We decided that we wanted to focus on the single biggest, most important interaction. We're still polishing the rest.

It is, of course, an unending task, but you have to use logic & foresight to decide where the intermittent goal posts are.

Creating a punishment for yourself for going over a timebox is not gonna do that hard, human thinking for you :)
Yeah, it's not the $99 that is the problem, it is that it buys you 50GB. The most valuable digital data I have is baby/kid photos, video etc. They are truly irreplaceable (to me, anyway), and I wouldn't mind some convenient way to do off-site backup rather than lugging rsynced disks around, but 50GB is not enough to back it up.

As for syncing and sharing project files, that is what the git repository is for.

But quite obviously there is a market for what they sell. I'm just not in that market. Not until I can get half a TB for my $99, anyway.
I think you want more than a lot of data.

That's a good start, but you also want it to be structured in a way that requires some thought (or just in 3+ normal form). Have someone ask for a report out of it (or come up with as many reports as you can).

I wish I had a suggestion for such a data set. Microsoft's famous case is Northwind, but I don't know where you might find it (without having searched just now).
> Malware is enabled by vulnerabilities.

I'm not so sure about that. Some malware installs itself by exploiting vulnerabilities. (Not all of it, though - there's plenty of Windows malware that gets installed by social-engineering the user.) But, in order to stay installed, most malware depends on other properties of the OS to conceal itself and stay installed. Windows makes this much easier for a programmer than Linux does.
Reading -> Starting -> Writing

Reading about startups was very important when I was in the learning mode. Then once I started, I stopped reading. Now that I have sold my business, I started writing, hoping that someone else would be reading.

http://StartupForLess.org
This is a good point. We just lack the data to make any predictions whether going the "road less traveled by" leads to success (whatever that means) and assume that "all the difference" equals good (whereas it's rather neutral).

[1] Robert Frost: The Road Not Taken (http://www.bartleby.com/119/1.html)
Sounds like a confusion of cause and effect, to me.
If you succed you are basically set for life. If you fail you loose 4-6 years of your life. How is that different from a startup?
I love that research, but one has to consider whether the people regretting education-related things are just saying "I should have finished my education" as an excuse for everything that's wrong with their life.

E.g., if only I had my degree, I wouldn't be stuck in this crappy job -- while, of course, there are many avenues to pursue for people who will make the effort, degreed or otherwise.
Why Email Clients Need to Change
Forgive yourself.

Nothing you have done -- avoiding school, losing touch with people, whatever other mistakes -- makes you a bad person. It just means you took (or didn't take) actions and they had consequences. You're suffering through those consequences now, but that just means you're suffering through those consequences... it says nothing about you or the situation, beyond than that simple, provable fact.

A lot of anxiety comes from guilt and fear, and trying to avoid guilt and fear. So, forgive yourself, and be kind and loving to yourself.
The one difference is that twitter is embedded as an API now. Their lack of innovation leads to others innovating ON their platform not the innovators own.

I don't disagree. I think there will always be the next innovator/innovation and evolution of ideas but I think this differs and twitter has a strong hold because it is both a mind/marketing share that twitter owns, and a technology share inside of all the apps built on the API. It is the first big web communication platform that used the web friendly REST apis to explode. It was timing as much as simplicity. The complacency though is forcing others to innovate, on their platform, for them and not harming them currently.

I think friend feed has a fair shot. But I also think twitter has a certain style, design, culture that is hard to mimic and others aren't there yet.
Hooray, my favorite least-favorite topic.

I've written about this several times[1], and my final conclusion is: Maybe the lack of women in IT just goes to show: they've got sense!

Unless you're in the top 10% -- or higher -- then the tech field sucks. Most programming jobs are deep inside massive companies where they treat programmers like slightly more skilled typists. There's a reason Office Space was about developers.

I'm gonna commit a major sin and quote myself here: 'It's like we're all busy eating the same shit sandwich and—ill-content to eat it alone—we are holding a slice out to these putative women blocked by sexism, and saying "Hey, this goes GREAT with Wonderbread. Want a taste?"'

I will definitely use the OP's "don't treat me like a three-headed" monkey line in the future, however.

[1] http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/womenintech/2007/09/12/i-don... (where women in technology bash me for saying it's a non-issue!) and http://www.slash7.com/articles/2008/10/19/can-we-can-it-with... (where above quote comes from)
Why not link to the actual articles, instead of a blog that adds little original content?

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/04/27/090427fa_fact_...

http://radian.org/notebook/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/brain-...
Something curious I've noticed: Twitter is basically a Rorschach test for people. I have a bunch of groups of friends/acquaintances, and each of it sees Twitter's "killer feature" as being different.

My mom is a retired teacher. She recently went back to work, to hear her colleagues excited about how they could use Twitter to reach students and parents.

My Googler friends are excited about the real-time search aspects of Twitter.

My politically-active lawyer friends were all atwitter about the election coverage.

My LiveJournal friends all ship their tweets to LJ through LoudTwitter now. It's essentially a form of vanity posting - everybody writes them, but I don't know anyone who reads them.

My consultant friends use it for networking and keeping track of folks that they may need information from.

My college-student, grad-student, and college-dropout friends use it to procrastinate and waste time.

I'm not sure if this is good or bad for Twitter. They've certainly built something useful, perhaps massively useful. But it'll be really hard to capitalize on all these markets at once, and these are definitely separate markets. Perhaps the future of Twitter is in infrastructure, a tool that people can then use and extend as they see fit.
It's really funny watching people use twitter.

At the TechCrunch Geek'n'rola they setup a 'back channel', with the #gknr hashtag on twitter. Some guy sat there hitting reload on a browser while we watched new tweets come in with that hashtag.

I know this is the "hip" thing to do, but seriously. This is poor mans webchat. Just use IRC for the love of god.

Using twitter to emulate channels by using a hashtag is just ridiculous.
Why is it neither natural nor healthy?

An industry is not a society. You aren't restricted to choosing a mate from your company or your industry, so the main issue of an extreme gender mix (mate resources) is not an issue.
Its hard for me to work on mine. Too busy helping build other people's startups. Fortunately it looks like this year maybe the last year I do contracting and switch to full-time startup mode.
It's more than that, though. If you were around in the 90s, you'd know that Scripting News was, like, THE weblog. Everyone read it. Bill Gates famously read it, along with lots of other people in the tech world. Winer's writing was very, very influential in the Netscape era.

In essence, a lot of today's tech pundits are basically trying to recapture what Winer had back in the day -- just like so many entrepreneurs are attempting to re-live the soda-drinking, pizza-eating, 24-year-old-with-an-IPO lifestyle of Marc Andreesen.

I wish some of the people on here who don't have historical context wouldn't be so insulting and dismissive of people they know little about, aside from what others have told them. It doesn't make you look smart and snarky -- it makes you look young, naïve, and at least slightly arrogant. (And this is coming from an arrogant 24 year old, so ya know.)
Did you read the article? She talks about a gender-specific effort she was involved in, that didn't work and perhaps worked against promoting girls who game.

Exceptionalism is a bad way to effect change... and nobody will bother trying to create pro-female environments, etc., without making them explicitly for women, which makes them exceptionalism.

I, on the other hand, do create pro-female content, because I write for designers and right-brained people... and since I don't go "Learn Programming: For People With Boobs!" then I also help many right-brained men, too.
I've started. I've already been self employed for a couple of years. But since it's been as someone selling hours of work for pay, it doesn't count

The past couple of months, I've been working on an actual product. That's my startup. (I hope to have a minimal feature set version ready for launch this summer.)

Reading about this stuff leads to ideas for doing it though.
you're right. but someone please tell Dave Winer he can do 140 character posts with wordpress, too ;)
I hate teachers' unions. My highschool's highest paid teacher was a gym teacher (who had been around for 40 years), who made ~$150K. While I had a great calculus teacher who only made $60K. The Calc teacher had a masters in math, and had over 90% of his two sections of Calculus BC students get perfect scores on the AP (and no student from his class had ever failed to pass the AP exam).

http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/kausfiles/archive/2009/04/2...
The problem is that if the district wants to get rid of a poor teacher, that teacher has the right to stay (and force a younger, non-tenured, teacher to get let go instead).
Below is some tough love because I have your best interests at heart:

1. "Being 21 I can't help but feel quite useless. I'm still working to get out of my university and future doesn't seem to be really bright, although perhaps it's just my mind playing tricks to me."

How do you feel useless? Are you depressed or do you suffer from low self esteem? If you're posting on HN, you surely possess some sort of tech-related skill set. So you aren't useless. Moreover, you have internet access, and thus have the capacity to expand that skill set. Bam. Your mind is indeed playing tricks on you.

2. "But the mere fact that someone like me is (or was, when he was 21) already established in some position, even if 'just' in the position of being independently bringing in money, kind of seems to set the bar too high."

This is nonsense. What does what someone else did have anything at all to do with you? At all? The only possible explanation is that VCs won't ever give you money if you haven't accomplished Serious Things by age 21, but this is not true. You've got to stop comparing yourself to others. The only time comparing yourself to others is possibly useful is when it motivates you to work even harder. But, it seems that is not the case; you aren't working harder, you are just complaining. So stop comparing yourself!

Bottom line-you have some university education and internet access. The world is at your fingertips.
In startup, if you fail you dont lose 4-6 years of your life. Moreover people wont consider you a failure if you fail in a startup, as opposed to say landing up in a prison.
This is such a stupid comment, I don't know where to begin. Possible attacks on your argument:

1. "set for life" - not necessarily, plus you would have to sell the drugs, etc.

2. just lose 4-6 years of your life - criminal penalties likely greater

3. horrible effects of prison on your psyche and future work possibilities

4. possible death from involvement w/ criminal underworld

5. with a start-up you get transferable experience

Other reasons why this is a stupid comment:

1. Learn to spell succeed

2. Learn to spell lose

If you are not a native speaker, I apologize for #1 but #2 can be corrected with a spellcheck plugin. But it seems like you just typed quickly without thinking your comment through.
That's pretty vague. "Browsing the Web" includes and is not limited to:

- Watching videos
- Listening to music
- E-mail
- Word processing/spreadsheets/etc
- Video/audio calls
- HN and other discussion sites
- Blogs

The Web itself has become highly generalized, to the point where a Unix-style Web browser seems superficial. It seems to be little more than a cleaner and more extensible browser design.
I think this advice shouldn't be taken too seriously by most, as it is too centered on this particular person and his employment of hindsight.

1. I’m not talking stupid risks. But smart, calculated ones.

And the problem is: when you're 21 and have never started a company, you don't yet have the experience and knowledge to judge the risks properly. This point is based on hindsight, which just just don't have when these decisions are to be made.

2. Literally everyone worth a damn complains they wasted time early in life. You know what: I think it's because that 'wasted' time is an essential part of what made you who you are. You consider it wasted, because you didn't learn anything tangible in those times. But learning isn't all about tangible skills. Denoting that time as 'wasted' means you haven't looked closely enough into what that time actually brought you. Consequently, you don't actually have that much time to 'nail the fundamentals'.

On the side, about the typing speed fallacy: I spend most of my time behind the keyboard thinking, not typing and I hope you're doing the same, otherwise what you are typing isn't worth a damn.

3. Depends very much on the person that you are. Some excel when they are surrounded by unbelieving critics. Others are best when those around them don't pester them continously about 'succeeding'

4. Basically the same as 1: you don't know your 'bliss' yet when you start out. Moreover, your 'bliss' changes with time. You are basically encouraging your 21 year old self to follow a bliss he didn't consider bliss yet.

5. And again: hindsight. When you are older, you know that your opinion was the right one, but how many wrong ones were corrected by good advice from others? When looking back, you're bound to suffer from confirmation bias, only considering those opinions of which you now regret that you let them be influenced. Was that really the important majority?
I could never get used to the split Microsoft keyboards - or the chicklet Apple keyboards.

My current favorite is the Logitech Wave... before that, I used a Das Keyboard -- which was fantastic, but the space bar became detached after about a year and a half.
In some capacity, yes, because I spend most of my time reading and researching instead of getting down with the nitty-gritty. On the other hand, I don't have an idea I want to implement.

I currently have a Bulgarian programmer making me a Flash game. But I'd rather have something I could devote myself to for 10+ hrs/day.
3D Web - has lunch arrived for multi-dimensional giant alien spiders?
Here's a direct link to the thorough review by Joe Weiss of "The Emperor's New Kind of Clothes" book http://www.amazon.com/review/RUGSCP3XBNBUV/ref=cm_cr_rdp_per...
I actually just meant increasing transmission lines & transformer capacity, since that's what's on the edge. But we should increase generating capacity too.

Increasing capacity doesn't increase usage. We should increase capacity to a comfortable margin, and separately think about reducing usage.
I use a basic Lenovo keyboard, I love IBM hardware :) Whats everyones opinion on the happy hacker keyboard - I hear they are expensive.
I actually started first and then began to read, kind of counter intuitive but it wasnt on purpose.

Reason is in my circle of friends when i was at uni we didnt talk much of startups. Actually it was unheard of, stable job was the way to go. I had ideas back then but never implemented them cause it was all about the big income in a big company.

If i knew of this world of startups and this whole startup scene i would have probably started about 2 years out of uni cause its dam more exciting and fun plus the payoff for hard/smart work is actually there. I guess everyones path is different and things happen for a reason, main thing is im here now so its all good.

Now its been 5 years out of uni and im almost done with my first startup. Its been about a year in the making. Designing, planning, coding and then reading as i went along. We are about 2 months away (doing final testing) and quite excited and scared at the same time.

If all goes well the i will do more reading (cause i'll need to know alot more) and myself and the team wont be looking back ... full steam ahead.
This article is idiotic.

Adderall is not a neuroenhancer. It is not nootropipc. It's an anti-narcaleptic (something that keeps you from falling asleep).

A true nootropic doesn't increase the amount of crappy work you can put out. It makes your brain capable of greater peak performance. At this time, there aren't many drugs that fit this category, but there are a few. Caffeine, for one, does have nootropic effects after long term use. In multiple long-term studies, it's been strongly correlated with extra "spindly" dendrite structure and enhanced short term memory.

Probably the most effective well-research neuroenhancers are racetams(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racetams) (such as piracetam). They aren't popular with struggling students because they're a long term treatment. I.e., they won't help with your test next Friday, but after months to years of use, they'll make you a smarter person.

What Margaret Talbot did in this article would be akin to writing about athletic enhancers, ignoring things like steroids and just writing about people who take speed before the big game.
You should keep in mind that this evaluation was done more than a year ago.
My inbox is empty, everything filed into my GTD system. I have scripts that auto-compile the financial stuff into the right place, and other scripts that semi-automate (using a Bayesian classifier) stuff that needs an answer now, stuff that needs to be answered soon, stuff I need to think about, and archive.

I hate repetition, and have scripted my most common actions. I guess I've hacked my email system.
I'm 21 and live my life pretty much the way the OP suggests, but already I'm having many regrets.

I spend a lot of time on things that interest me and my grades are in the hole. The university has taken back my scholarships. My classmates that do well in the coursework earn more money in scholarships than I do working all summer.

I'm not particularly employable. I've failed to find any work or internships because I don't know C# or Java. Although you may say "those aren't the people you want to work for anyways" rejection is hard and I've been forced to do menial labor to survive.

I find my life is very stressful and my greatest worry is: "What if you worked really hard for 10 years and nothing came out of it?" In my experience it hasn't paid off to buck the boat.
Correction - eMusic.com

Sorry.
Question is, how much will it cost. In terms of money, and hassle.

Personally I would have just chosen a name that isn't already taken.
Facebook users say yes to changes
As I understand it the title - quoted directly from the BBC - is misleading. The changes voted for are those that "return" control of content to users. The changes originally imposed by Facbook took that control away from them. Either the BBC is being breathtakingly ignorant of what the fuss was about, or deliberately misleading in its construction of its headline.

Either way, allegedly the voting is being audited externally. Can we trust them?
Character countdown is back and I cannot repost the message. was either a bug or they are trying out the feature.
Is it sandboxed? Or does it have free-ish reign of the user's resources? Meaning indefinite patching of XP, assuming that there'll be a substantial enough target for XPM-specific malware?

(ps IE6 4EVA! Really, now.)
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Giant leap looms for mobile bugs
Quoting selectively:

The widespread outbreak of mobile phone viruses
will occur when a sufficient number of them share
an operating system ...

Viruses spread by Bluetooth could reach all users
of a given OS in days, whereas those spread by
multimedia messages could spread in just hours.

But the virulence will only appear when a given
OS has about 10% market share.

Monocultures are always a bad idea, but users seem to insist on ubiquity of interface. Perhaps there's an opportunity here to use a radically different OS, but provide effectively the same user interface.

Ah, no, the law regulates "Look'n'Feel" so the legal system coupled with quite reasonable user expectations ensure that we end with a technology susceptable to viruses and other attacks.

Interesting dilemma. I'm sure my "analysis" (written as a stream of consciousness, hence not to be taken seriously) is deeply flawed.
http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:ngG57s8Nb3wJ:fabiensang...

Cached version as I'm getting an error about excessive bandwidth.
Expensive And Powerful
Saving the planet by the numbers
A calculated and calculating look at energy saving measures.
Re-review of Kinesis Keyboard
I'm getting a sense of deja vu here. I'm sure this was their plan back in the 90's.
I wish I could follow in Randall Munroe's footsteps and get a Kindle and bend some wires to read in bed easily...but the Kindle has no backlight. I hate leaving the lights on while reading, cause usually I just fall asleep in the middle of reading. So it's a huge dealbreaker for me. (I have a lightwedge I could use, since I used to read paper books in bed, but new gadgets I spend a few hundred $ on not having any sort of lighting is a downer. Plus that's extra to hold in bed.)

I like to use my iPhone for reading, with bookshelf or stanza usually (kindle app is meh). I have a place to put my phone near my bed, plus if I fall asleep with it it's not large enough that it would be uncomfortable to roll around on top of while sleeping. Plus, I can always find it in the morning by calling it ;)

Unfortunately, I do have to mention that my reading ebooks in bed on this past Tuesday night somewhat ruined the next day, as I slept for a couple hours, woke up being unable to go back to sleep, and then spent the next twelve hours reading ebook after ebook on my iPhone. It's really nice to be able to grab books whenever I want without even getting up like I would with paper, but there is always that downside :(

What was it about reading on your iPod touch that didn't work out? Pretty much any ebook reader worth using for the iPhone/iPod touch has something similar to rotation lock and tap to scroll, which I would imagine would be the biggest problem with being on your side.
Animals that resemble each other may be different species
What software do you use? Python scripts and procmail? With what GTD stuff do you interact? What do you use for archiving (indexing, searching)?