skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
And if you fail, go back to college and get the degree.

You say that no one cares. But job postings all over the web pretty much speak the opposite. Google doesn't just want degrees, they want degrees from top schools.

So sure, if someone wants to work for a fly-by-night operation that MIGHT strike it rich, have a blast.

But if they actually want health insurance someday, then it might be handy to get the degree about the way.

People ask if you went to college and if you graduated, after that, no one cares it's true. But without it, you better have a compelling story or have contacts that "won't care."

Ten years ago or more, you could easily get away without having a degree. But graduating NOW and expecting to do that? Yeah right.

And if it were easy to take 4 years and learn to program and "make money doing it" without the slightest clue how to get there, then everyone would do it.

College affords you more than enough free time to "learn to program on the side to make money doing it" while also giving you a backup plan, in case your brilliant plans don't work out.
It is very hard to figure out. I am IMHO a savvy business person and even I have a hard time figuring it out. Ultimately it takes time and getting to know the person.

The only advice I can give to accelerate this process is to ask lots of questions. If he has an answer for everything, that's actually a bad sign as it typically means he's BS'ing.

You want someone who's humble enough to admit where he isn't sure what will happen or how things work.

Absurd certainty and BS'ing is ok although not preferred for salespeople. But it's a sign of impending doom for a manager, especially for a startup.
That's a better implementation and idea :-) Congrats
Or just direct them to http://twi.bz.twi.bz/a
From my (extensive) experience, there is no way to know in advance. The only way to guard against surprises is to tie ownership to execution.

Set specific performance goals for both yourself (modules released, SEO rankings, whatever's relevant) and "the suit" (capital in the bank, number of users, number of paid subscriptions, etc). Tie each goal to percentage ownership. If goals are met, you vest. If goals are not met, you find another partner or scrap the project altogether.

Also make sure that the goals are on a somewhat concurrent timeline. "Suits" generally have trouble executing on a "beta" product so if you do not set concurrent goals, you will keep developing new features and never, ever have the chance to see your partner in action.

What I mean is, push really hard for a bare-bone set of requirements that you both agree to be "good enough" as the first iteration of your product, and as soon as that feature set is in place, your partner needs to execute (again, whatever's relevant to you - sell some subscriptions, get some marquee clients on board, raise capital, etc).

Good luck!
As everyone owning a bike knows, you feel much better having small wheels (or anything for that matter) instead of expensive body. Two-wheeled vehicles will fall, even if it's when they're stopped and a kid pushes them.
Cool story, have you a citation?
This philosophy goes back to the days of punch cards. If the programmers relied on the punch card reader to inform them of a bug, they'd be delayed by at least a day and then perhaps more because someone else may be using the punch card reader when they have fixed their bugs.

The reason ditching the debugger makes the programmers better is because they work through figuring out what the code will do before they write it. They know it will be good code before the debugger tells them and before they have to examine a variable to see what it contains, when they should have known before they wrote the code.

These programmer articles are like investing by listening to financial analists critique stocks. You don't know how good the analyst is at their job. You don't know what is their vested interest in you believing them.

For the most part, if the reader of these half-witted blogs (not necessarily this one about the debugger, but in general, and definitely the "popular" ones that get put in here all the time) would spend as much time imagining problems and solving them, or even solving real world problems, then they'd be much better coders...
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Here is something I wonder. Since most of the billionaires are old farts...how many of them didn't go to college, because it wasn't as big of a requirement back then.

I think the dropout # is more important than the "never went to college". Because those are the people who saw success early on.
> Expect failures; what's more, embrace them

I appreciate the point he's driving home, but his rate of failure is meaningless without knowing the size and uptime of his "server farm". Is it 10 servers or 100 servers? Have they been up for a month or for a year?

I pull this point out specifically because I personally had 4 EC2 instances epically fail on me over the course of 18 months and 40 instances. Of course, this was in year 2 of EC2, so I'm sure things are better now, but I believe it's an important data point.
This is great advice. Also, by all means, never sign a big contract up front (no matter which side you're on). Just have him pay you cash for a week or two, that should be all the time you need to make a judgement.
See if you can get a hold of this book:

"Evil Paradises: Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism‎" by Mike Davis, Daniel Bertrand Monk. (http://books.google.com/books?id=TQRoAAAACAAJ)

The chapter on Dubai is excellent.
That is url-encoder istead of shortener. The goal should be in saving space for meaningful text.
I certainly didn't tell everyone to create startups. But reading here, that's what it seems like it trends towards.

If you're over the age of 27, your example just doesn't count. It's not nearly as easy today to do what you did, than it was a decade ago. The economy has changed dramatically and ancedotal experiences aside, it's hardly a blueprint for mass success.

There is no inverse relationship between "hard work" and "success" in a startup. But that's a fallacy that a lot of folks here seem to believe. If it worked for you, that's great. But it's not some sort of reality for everyone.
I'm often disappointed that Venkman is implemented as an in-process debugger. Doing so requires manipulating the main thread's event queue when you're paused (so that Venkman itself responds), allowing new event handlers to fire and generally mucking up complicated situations. For debugging simple web pages, Firebug has the same problems but a cleaner interface and fewer bugs. For heavier XUL development, Venkman is the option option, but I would much prefer an out of process debugger capable of debugging threads (which I think is a js/jsd limitation).
Australia Moves to Build High-Speed Network
What happens when two drowning people grab onto one another is that they both start trying to push the other down in order to push themselves up. The result is that both of them drown.

One of the things any lifesaving class will teach you is to always approach a drowning person from behind, because if they can get their hands on you they try to push you under.
In the 90's dotcom bubble? :-)
Google's Love For Newspapers & How Little They Appreciate It
I'm not disappointed by it--in fact, I think it's a good thing. That being said, I don't think it hurts to acknowledge the source.
Elevated Pricing Arrives at the iTunes Store...
From their FAQ:

"14) Do we have to stay in Pittsburgh after the program ends?

Companies are expected to remain in Pittsburgh after the end of the AlphaLab program. Our goal is to help you build a successful technology company and to add to the critical mass of flourishing tech companies in the Pittsburgh region. We believe that Pittsburgh is a great place to build a company and after your experience at AlphaLab we are confident that you will agree."

Is this a legal agreement? It is still a bit surprising to me that you are still "expected" to tie down your company to a specific location. Maybe some ex-AlphaLab-er can shine in some light here.
Whenever I'm stuck in traffic I tend to come up with ways to solve it. So far I have only two solutions which can actually completely eliminate the problem: rented small cars (preferably electric), and AI drivers. Having them together would be bliss.

And the second one isn't even as science fiction as is sounds. You can cheat in any way you want, as long as you get the job done. You can tell the AI the map of the city, down to traffic signs. Keep the AI in one place and drive remotely. Put cams all over the city (or better above the city), with cars' roofs painted with barcodes. Hell, you can probably simply drive remotely and it'd be enough of a killer app.
And yet, he raised taxes to get more revenue for the federal government because lowering them had reduced federal revenue too far.
Download Yahoo Messenger for iPhone
Agreed. A lot of the article seems just like a restatement of KISS.

* Using a Debugger is like a first pass sweep of where to put the juiciest printfs. It cuts down the problem space.

* If you're doing OOP and different components are calling back in at different points, a breakpoint can be quite illuminating. printf will clog your short term memory with trivialities.

* A Debugger has deep structure support built in, no coding a recursive node walk printout for each datatype.
Furthermore:

Less than 50% of people went to college.

Despite that, 80% of self-made billionaires went to college.
I think a paywall just hides a site's content from nonsubscribers so it's just a euphemism for a subscription site. As for micropayments, yes I think a lot of us are familiar with that technology - paypal and amazon fps developer docs ought to be enough to get you started. What specifically are you trying to accomplish?
My point specifically is that hard work = success is ONLY for for the very small sub-set of the population that has the right aptitude/skills to create a successful startup/tech career beyond your standard cube-rat (no offense to cube-rats). It's absolutely NOT for everyone.

If your point is: for the average person, college is important to success, then sure. My point is that for the tech startup founding type people here, college is probably not very important to success.

You called out startups in your OP "The only people who can afford to drop out of college to pursue a startup" so that's what I'm focusing on here.
"GM, Segway team up on 200-mpg 2-seater"

Miles per gallon of WHAT exactly? Gallon of electricity?
Amazon and eBay have systems going back to 1995 to support; they also expose prettified URLs that redirect to Google. They know they have a (slight) problem there, but they do the best they can with what they've got.

As for Facebook, I've always thought they were pretty human-readable.
It's not so much putting up a straw man as it is flat-out whining. There wasn't much profound in his complaint. Too many concepts -- what language doesn't? Hard to compile -- nonsense. Too much memory -- like any language, it depends on how efficient of a programmer you are. Archaic naming -- please.
I was a solo founder too. I don't think it makes much of a difference and will apply for Winter too. Don't let that deter you.
I'm (mostly) with you on this. Primary focus should be building the best product you can.

But, there's a fair amount of learning to be had from watching your competitors.

So, I'd say: "Watch and learn from your competitors, just don't follow them".
Put another way, 70% of self-made billionaires completed college. This strikes me as higher than the national average, so completing college increases the chances of you becoming a billionaire.

Your conclusion does not follow from the data.

http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

Warning Sign I7: Confusing Correlation with Causation
Well, I'm not thrilled about it. But getting something out the door is the key. Enjoying the development experience is #2. I can live with a 6% vig for the Cincom guys.
Character-encoding problem. The http header has:

Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

but presumably the html page isn't actually in UTF-8, but maybe in some kind of extended ascii?
This is what I was thinking of when I wrote the original comment. Lifesaving techniques are a bizarre mix of completely control them/help them.

It just came to mind as soon as I saw this headline. I read it as TWO COMPANIES WITH ABSOLUTELY DOOMED CURRENT BUSINESS MODELS JOIN FORCES TO ANSWER A QUESTION NO IS ASKING
I wonder how much this balkanization is a result of the syntactic extension capabilities of lispish languages?
The fact that you can implement changes to the language in the language makes it easier to improve it in terms of coming up with new features/patterns etc. However this can be a double edged sword when you need to then train large numbers of programmers in order to create libraries etc. for the new language. Or maybe its not that the splintering
occurs directly because of the language. Instead it might occur indirectly due to lisp programmers, having been exposed to the idea of language extension through lisp, become more prone to creating a whole new language when the one they have doesn't suit their needs precisely?
That Whining Sound You Hear Is The Death Wheeze Of Newspapers
Google cares. A lot. They reached out to me to offer me a position, and then retracted the offer once they learned the lack of degrees on my resume wasn't just a space saving mechanism.

I've never had another company turn me down, even if they specifically "required" bachelors in CS, etc... in the job posting. And I'm not talking about "fly-by-night operations". Large companies, Fortune 500s, traditional non-tech focused companies, etc...

Assuming that you aren't on a 100% scholarship, someone (your parents or you by working part time) is paying for your rent and food. I think most places (Google aside) would hire someone with 1 year of contributing to a relevant open source project, or a couple small web applications launched, over someone with 4 years of learning the technology from 2-5 years ago. Experience DOING relevant work always trumps a college degree, especially in the tech field.

If you want to get a degree, that's great. I won't look down on you or even think for a second that you're wasting your time. But it's certainly not the only or even the best path.
It's not nearly as easy today to do what you did, than it was a decade ago

It's even easier. Enlightened hiring managers just want to see output: github, websites, blogs, downloadable software, etc. At the startups I've worked for recently we only looked thoroughly at a resume if the person had no online presence (which was already a red flag).

Maybe you won't get hired at Google or an investment bank, though.
If you're gonna crack a Lisp joke that sucks, at least attempt prefix notation and pretty-printing.
I don't applaud Pennsylvania for spending their tax dollars investing in private companies.
(eq 'correlation 'causation) => NIL

Which could also be explained by observing that people born into more fortunate socioeconomic circumstances, with all that entails (different value systems, better health, better connections, better early education, etc.), have both a higher probability of going to college and a higher probability of becoming billionaires. The two outcomes are correlated, but one is not necessarily causal of the other. Completing college could even marginally decrease someone's chances of becoming a billionaire, and you could still see the same correlation.

see: http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

Warning Sign I7: Confusing Correlation with Causation
You say that no one cares. But job postings all over the web pretty much speak the opposite. Google doesn't just want degrees, they want degrees from top schools.

Sure, if you want a top job with no proof that you have any ability to program, you need a degree.

But if they actually want health insurance someday, then it might be handy to get the degree about the way.

FWIW, I didn't finish college, and I have a great job, and even have health insurance. I have only interviewed for one job ever, everything else came to me by way of reputation.
Yes and no. YC has more success than you but that doesn't mean that they're right about you. Your job is never to take the advice of an authority figure simply because they are an authority figure. People who work like that never succeed.
As for "aahs" and "uhhms," these happen to be Obama's worst verbal tick.
You must have missed the point. Google was successful because the founders developed a brilliant algorithm.

But in anycase, Carnegie Mellon is apparently a top CS and business school drawing talent from all over the world including SV. If you really think Google's success was because of additional talent, then I still say Pittsburgh would have been a solution.
Except that NYT article isn't really about hiring practices. It's a profile of Marissa Mayer, Googler #20, who is responsible for the look and feel of all Google pages, including the front page. The comment about "good students are good at everything" is probably more how Mayer evaluates people than Google as a whole.
From now on, geographic replication will have a new-found importance. I think a lot of businesses think "our customers will understand if the site is down for a few days after a giant natural disaster or bombing or whatever." But, how many customers are going to be understanding of the indefinite downtime that was caused by some other completely unrelated company not paying its AT&T bill?

Imagine if this company had been hosting its service on Amazon EC2 or at Rackspace or on Google AppEngine. Would the FBI seize every one on Amazon's/Rackspace's/Google's data centers? Could you imagine all of Google's services being down for weeks or months because one of its customers is being investigated for maybe violating some contract for a few thousand dollars?
Im a "business guy" out of Stanford GSB and if I was going to look for a hacker, I would expect to see a list of things that s/he had done. The more impressive that list the more likely I would be to work with that person.

Seems to me you should simply take the flip side. For me, savvy isn't the right word. There is something very self-interested about it. Instead, I would look for a business person who has actually helped build something. Preferably something very interesting.

Also, while im not big on references, it might be nice to talk to another hacker, whose work you respect, who had a positive experience working with that business person.

Lastly, I would definitely not judge a business person by which business books he has read. Business people should help you build something of value, not regurgitate the most recent tagline of a management fad.
I agree with you that in general the Right and the Left are philosophic ideals. Philosophic ideals which taken to their ultimate end in practice could be disastrous.

But I've always looked at liberalism as more of a practical economic not philosophical approach to problems.

And yes economics always ends up deep inside both politics and philosophy but deep underneath all of that ideological baggage there's still a kernel of practicality.

This kernel of practicality aims for the most efficient use of resources.

To achieve that goal, there are many real world practical strategies:

1. Rule of law - free of both government and private coercion. (No cartels like the RIAA, OPEC, DeBeers, but also no labor unions or government cartels like what used to ma bell AT&T)

2. Free competition.

3. Free information. (Not to be confused with perfect information in perfect markets).

The above imply that active fraud and monopolistic practices are against the law.

But I, like many other libertarians would take it even further.

By that I mean that in practice there are many things for which the free market does nothing. Health is one example.

The demand for insulin is the econ 101 example of things for which normal supply and demand doesn't work.

So for me liberalism is not a fanatical extreme of no government ever, but a practical optimization. Seeking the most effective market and government which implies a very small government but acknowledges that things like market failures exist and some government is essential.

That government is preferably small, local and a direct democracy like Switzerland.
The webserver says the page is encoded using utf-8, but it is encoded using iso-8859-1.

In Firefox, select View -> Character Encoding -> Western (ISO-8859-1). There is a similar option in Safari.
ah, it's out finally.

I believe it would've been better had they just shipped it out in the first place before they tried to roll it in with oneConnect.
This intrigues me, because your parents have worked in the US since before you were born. I have always kind of assumed that Asian parents who seem obsessed with stability don't understand the American system. They want their kids to pursue things that would ensure personal stability in their home country (such as marriage and a job), not understanding that things are different in the US. In the US, a job doesn't offer much stability; stability comes from things that get you a new job (experience, credentials, and work contacts) after your old job evaporates.

Obviously this doesn't apply to your parents, since they had long experience with the American system. Maybe their fear was moral? Were they afraid that your lack of concern at being "unemployed" meant you were becoming a lazy American? I would be curious to know what form your arguments took and how your parents were eventually reassured.
That really looked like a good candidate for non-relational databases. I was watching and thinking it was weird they didn't go with that approach, but he explained the reasons later on. Their solution is not that pretty, but valid.

It was also interesting that it became more of a discussion about Open Data than python or django itself.
How else would you expect them to try to bring a historically industrial/manufacturing & agriculture based economy into the 21st century?

I don't live there, but I think it's great for cities and states to try to increase the diversity of their economic bases and their cultural offerings. Long term it is a potentially VERY wise investment of taxes.
Yeah, if you download the page and serve it locally as text/html it renders ok. It's probably ISO-8895-1 or similar.
As far as I can tell, Pennsylvania isn't spending their tax dollars. Maybe you can tell differently.

http://www.innovationworks.org/About/index.html
JQuery tips and tricks
Actually Competitious has evolved into RivalMap http://www.rivalmap.com/ - I've used both at two different startups, and I found them to be useful, but not earth-shatteringly good.

In fact, I generally think that a minimum of time should be spent considering your competition (at least when you are a startup). Perhaps you set aside a few hours each month to review their progress, compare it to yours, identify features or strategies you will "borrow" from them (ie "fast follower" strategy), and consider what they'll be doing in the future that you need to respond to, or get ahead of.

Then, add those items to you action plan, and forget about your competition for the next month - focus on building YOUR business instead.

Just my $0.02 from the startups I've founded, funded, and grown.
Basically, if after signing the agreement and being part of the program, if your company decides that it needs to go somewhere else and have no presence in PA within the next few years, you have to give back the $25K. That's it.

It's not that bad if you think about it--if you get any later-stage funding, $25K is a small price to pay to allow you to move somewhere else.
I found a bug. If I try to convert this URL:

http://www.areallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreally...

I get

http://.twi.bz/d

which doesn't redirect to the longer URL.