skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Well, everything you learn in a 4-year humanities degree, you can learn in your free time when you're in high-school. English? History? That's not Quantum Field Theory. You don't need 10 years of training to learn humanities. Just grab a bunch of books and read that while you're a child / teenager because children and teenagers do have the time for it.

I advocate more math for everyone: if the "soft" majors like humanities and economics were humiliated on a daily basis with math problem sets, they probably would grow to be more humble, logical and (nasty side-effect) bitter people. Mathematicians and natural scientists do know how hard it is to actually KNOW something, how to try to falsify your own hypotheses, etc. That makes one a better citizen than knowing Japanese, Literary Criticism or why the French Revolution happened.

History is really interesting! Seriously! Why wait until you're 18 to study it when you can read about the Greeks and Romans when you're 10? I loved History when I was a kid. Humanities education is vital, but it should be cherished and nurtured and provided to students between the ages of 10-18. That would be possible if most people didn't put their brains on hold during high-school.
Timber compiler 1.0.3 released (functional reactive language)
HN was not designed with SEO and linkage in mind -- after a while pages can become "orphaned" after they get pushed down by new stuff. No search engine follows all links. As a practical matter they generally give up after 6-8 links away from the home page.
Reading aloud is another art form in itself, just as writing is.

Why are people so cynical about audio books? I think they contain two art forms (spoken word reading and literature writing) and can be far more satisfying than the dead tree version alone.

Yes there are some audio books that are read very badly, but they are fortunately in the minority.
I agree. I haven't used Google for months. It's so web1.0 It's not even in the cloud. It's in datacenters! Google stopped being relevant the moment twitter burst onto the scene with its paradigm shifting earthquake. Everyone I know now just tweets people asking for stuff instead of using google. That way you get 'realtime' results - also Twitter is immune to spam or gaming. It's impossible. Either that or they go straight to WolframAlpha which has largely killed off Google in recent days.
which is why a standard of living metric that takes housing into consideration (among other things) gives you a better picture of the living situation in various places.
NB: Newsqueak != Squeak, the Smalltalk. It's a C-like thing that looks allot like Pike (the language) and Awk.
I have to disagree with this blogger. I think CS Unplugged is a great idea. Djikstra himself said that computer science has as little to do with computers, as astronomy has to do with telescopes. Telescopes are a tool for study in astronomy. But astronomy itself is a study of the stars. Similarly, computers (PC's, mainframes, iPhones, and everything in between) are tools for the study of computation. But the object of study is not the computers. It is computation itself - algorithms, encryption, etc. etc.
The computer is not the algorithm. The computer demonstrates the algorithm but it itself is not the algorithm. The telescope is not the star. It shows the star but it is not the star. CS Unplugged is doing the exact right thing in my opinion.
Video: Opensource vs. Proprietary content management systems
I got seven QS20s for $700, so I was happy. Older Cell blades are more affordable than you might think.
this form of argument would imply that all holes need to be filled before you can "prove" the other side wrong.
I figured out how to get the QS20 booting, just haven't had time to go through the process yet.
Ask HN: Marriage
From reading the biographies of famous entrepreneurs (Gates, Ellison, Jobs, Woz, Clark) it seems like:

() those who marry in young 20s end up with divorce
() the successful marriage ends up one in the late 30s or early 40s

Can HN shed light on this? Do most entrepreneurs end up with this problem, or are these just especially high profile founders, and as a result, they needed balls of steel to bring the revolutions they did (thus probably resulting in slightly intolerable personalties).

Thanks!

[Curious about this myself via the whole: marriage or startup first question; marriage first results in the question of -- crap, I have responsibilities; startup first results in the issue of -- crap, gold diggers]
Personal anecdote, I have no idea if it's 100% related to OP:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=576727

Now google today for "80-19-1"... it's not even on the second page (and it was the 3rd result to me too previously).

I guess OP's point is that Google is "happy" with fresh content, puts it on the front page, then the evil algorithms ;) push it farther.
really cost of home ownership is a pretty good measure of overall cost of living

Not true. In some places there's a big gap between the cost of owning and the cost of renting. In Silicon Valley, renting is much cheaper than buying, because there is still so much expectation of future growth built into house prices. So you can't use house prices as an index of how affordable the Bay Area is for e.g. someone who's 25, because they probably don't want to buy a house yet anyway.
this is the key question. you have to build for your peak access rate.

Also, are you replacing an existing service with a known traffic pattern? If not, how are you coming up with your estimate?

Is there any way you can dial back the service a bit if load exceeds capacity -- maybe scheduling the cron jobs for every hour instead of 15 mins? If so then you might want to start with a smaller number of servers and provision additional ones as you are sure of the load.

Also, why not use ec2, slicehost, or some approach that lets you grow (or shrink) your infrastructure as needed?
Reminds me of the spiders from Minority Report.
The site's PR, uptime/age, update rate, uniqueness of content. By this measure HN is near the ideal: it has amazing inbound PR but does not link out much. It's been running fast and fine for ~3 years, the content is often unique, in the sense that it contains phrases Googlebot has never encountered before.

An experiment: here is a search that matches an exact phrase in this comment. http://www.google.com/search?q=%22By+this+measure+HN+is+near...

At the moment it returns nothing. within a minute or two this comment till be the first result.
waiting for increased battery life and ubiquitous wireless to ditch my desktop entirely.
Woah! Day.YouMadeIt = True
I often read essays aloud as one of the filters before publishing them. It helps me find awkward sentences. I discovered this trick when practicing talks, but now I do it even for essays that aren't talks.
Actually today Google seems to be indexing most of the site. But usually when I do searches like:

site:news.ycombinator.com alex3917 "rule of thumb"

Only half of those posts show up, and to find the rest I need to use searchyc.com
Tell HN: Update from last week. Cherrypeel.com is now up for auction.
I'd imagine that everyone on the Gmail team has the "Finish Gmail Gold" task still unfinished and never, ever, plan on doing it.
I think it has to do with the work load. When you are young, you pretty much focus 100% on your business and neglect your relationships...so you work 60-80 hours a week trying to get it off the ground and make something of yourself.

In your 30s/40s, you are already more or less successful and can have a lot more free time, so you can switch to the basic 9 to 5. And have time for family and kids.

As far as gold diggers etc, just stop showing off your wealth and you'll be fine. Even if you saw Steve Jobs or Bill Gates on the street, chances are you'd never think it was them. But put them in a Ferrari and you'll probably connect the dots. Worst case scenario, you can go James Bond on this issue. Have your mansion and the Ferrari in one town. And a rented apartment and a Honda in the next one.
Eric Ries: Vanity Metrics vs. Actionable Metrics
My assumption was operating on the "one big win" model.

But - forest, trees, guys? Seriously?
Thanks asb

Here is some more clarification:

1. Distribution - We have the option of getting a rack at a co-location facility or using something like AWS. I'm leaning towards AWS and de

2. Normal rate will probably be around 50 requests per second rising up to a peak of about 500 requests per second.

3. The acceptable server latency is around 0.25 - 0.5 seconds per request. In order words, at peak, it is acceptable for the server to be twice as slow.

Thanks again for your assistance.
I didn't realize there were so many pro-bush people on HN -- I didn't post the story btw, I just made a comment.
just because some areas might use craigslist for tech recruiting doesn't mean they all do.
Google search for this site still returns years old results:

http://www.google.bg/search?q=site:http://news.ycombinator.c...

(for better results try "800 days ago" with quotes, HN strips them for some reason)
thanks grandalf.

We are consolidating a number or services from different departments into one single access point.

We are also open to using ec2. The question on my mind is how do I estimate how many ec2 (small or large instance) servers (and consequently the budget) we need to support the expected traffic.
What matters most is working with good people -- the rest will follow.

That usually means a city. I like being in or near one. I want to work on important projects with great people. I like being around people who care about the same stuff I do. But I also like mixing with people in other fields; a lot of growth comes from there.

There's no perfect place. And every place has it's downside. But I'd love to be a part of the burgeoning of the hot new city. I'd love to run the Sims on life to build my own perfect city.

I can see the city model soon becoming obsolete. At least the model setup today. Hyper-specialization may force things to scale down and network, instead of centralize like we have today.
The Real Secret to Successful Networking
I really want to do a meet up here in Atlanta.
Did you mean Wed 5/20?
startup first results in the issue of -- crap, gold diggers

This statement is funny. You seem to think you will make money of your first startup :)

For most people entering the startup world today... find a girl with a comfy couch that you can sleep on when you're broke.

In all seriousness, you need to assess where you really think you want to end up.

I got married fairly young. Started a couple of companies and have participated in many more. My wife is (mostly) understanding, and more importantly intelligent and a good reality check for most of my schemes and ideas. I couldn't imaging getting through some of the situations I've been in without having someone who is knowledgeable and unbiased to discuss these things with.

Figure out what you want to be when you grow up, and screen for a person who fits those criteria.
If you think of marriage as duty, responsibility, time commitment and compromise then it probably isn't compatible with doing a startup.

But if you and your spouse love each other for being motivated, self-actualized, driven, and passionate, then a startup and marriage can be wonderfully complimentary.

I actually really liked the movie Revolutionary Road for this reason -- it showed what happens when a guy who should be doing a startup ends up taking a safe job because he thinks it's what his marriage demands of him. In reality his wife was attracted to him because of his passion and his vision and she only came to loathe the soft, mushy, 9 to 5er that he became. Not a perfect parallel with the startup world but a great exploration of what it means to be "a man" outside of the narrow confines of man as simple uninspired breadwinner or corporate yes-man.

Bottom line: If your relationship thrives on the creative life-energy of passion, work and drive, then go for it. If not, why would you want to marry such a person?
This makes sense for heavy bittorrent users who are generally bright enough to realize how much data they are sending back and forth, but do you really expect casual YouTube viewers to know how much data is transferred when they watch a video? What about Grandma who wants to video chat with her grandkids? Graduated metered billing makes sense for certain things: electrical power, telephone calls, etc, but it doesn't make sense for Internet usage where there is no good way for users to easily get a handle on the amount of data transfered by their applications.
Use an ad blocker. I did not see a single ad on that page.
Attracting gold diggers is a problem of success.

More likely, you should be more concerned that doing your startup first and neglecting relationships means you will burn through your younger years (and younger looks) and won't be able to leverage them when it comes to finding a mate. Then, if your startup fails... oops, no leverage at all.
Google Calculating Which Employees Are About to Quit
Not at all.

The real difference between science and creationism is that science makes predictions. Darwin's theory predicts that there were creatures that formed bridges, as it were. That's a strong prediction, and the apparent absence has been used by creationists to claim that Darwinism has a problem.

Creationism makes no predictions.

The fact that a fossil has been found that fits Darwin's predictions is strong evidence that Darwin's theory is right.
You may be referring to the average rent compared to the average mortgage on a home. But they are not equal. The average rented place in the valley does not have the amenities and comforts of the average owned home. If location, comforts, size and all other factors are equal, you will probably find that the cost to rent is almost equal to the cost to own.
I read aloud when I've finished a draft of a screenplay, to help in making the dialogue better.

Also, I read a short story of my own (just 2 pages) out in 1997 to members of a writing class, and they all laughed at the places I expected and clapped at the end. It's a nice experience.
...the algorithm helps Google “get inside people’s heads even before they know they might leave”...

Sounds like the department of pre-crime. :)

It's fascinating: enough Google employees want to leave, that Google is studying their behavior. Clearly, even amazing perks, challenging work and brilliant colleagues will wear thin on a person? Or maybe it's not that there's anything wrong with Google per se, but that people are regularly trying to branch out and start their own companies, etc. and no amount of pampering will change those ambitions.
"He also says that the algorithm helps Google “get inside people’s heads even before they know they might leave”."

What part of "Don't be evil" does this kind of hanky panky fall under? It's downright creepy. Not to mention the fact that there are very few ways in which this data is actionable without inviting some sort of lawsuit.
Intro to Algorithms by CLR is the best first book on the subject I know of. MIT has a complete set of lecture videos:

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-Compute...

But based on my own (admittedly weird) experience, Algorithms per se might not be the best place to start. You might do better starting off with graph theory instead because:

1. It's an equally fundamental entree to the same theoretical CS material. Graphs abstract data structures like algorithms abstract programs.

1a. You wind up learning a lot of the same material.

2. The "core" of Algorithmic analysis is solving counting problems with recurrence relations, sort of like the way "canceling terms" is the core of high school algebra. It's easy to explain the concept in a few words, so it's easy to think you understand it, but you have to practice it in a lot of different contexts to really master the skill. There's also a lot of deep theory hiding below the surface. Graph theory, on the other hand, starts out with definitions that you can blow through in a day, and then builds progressively more complicated structures for you to analyze.

3. Most of the proofs in graph theory actually involve writing programs to construct an existence proof or verify a property. Obviously this is also true of algorithms, but the correspondence between proofs and programs is harder to see there.

4. Graph theory touches higher math in more accessible places than algorithmic analysis. You can analyze graphs with matrices, mess around with their eigenvalues (although I think the preferred term is "spectrum"), do some group theory -- "advanced undergraduate" stuff. The only place in higher math where algorithms really come into play is number theory, which requires a lot of theoretical machinery to make its sausages.
I am planning to do exactly that. If you are interested in a joint project in this area, drop me a line.
I think rephrasing / reframing it as "show your better side" may sometimes be useful. I don't like the "fake" connotation; on the other hand, realizing others' reactions to you will correspond to your deportment, is useful.

Heck, your reaction to yourself will correspond to your deportment. This is why a central tenet of self-help is self-respect.

Thinking of this another way, most people are social creatures and have a certain tendency to "follow the crowd". If "the crowd" at a particular moment is you, and if you are demeaning or dismissive of yourself, they will pick up and respond to the message.

Sometimes -- often -- socialization not about some "absolute" of behavior. It is all about context, and about relative values defined within that context. Don't blemish your own reputation (or "brand", as they say these days), either by being a fake or by disgorging all its flaws. People aren't too interested in the flaws, unless it's something they can and need to learn from. And the situations and time for such sharing and learning are a limited part of overall social activity.

EDIT: Upon rereading, I guess I may have digressed a bit from the business / start-up context of the original question. But there, too, people are most interested in how you can solve their problems and make their lives better. Don't let the challenges you face overshadow your ability to do this for them.
> Even if you saw Steve Jobs or Bill Gates on the street, chances are you'd never think it was them.

I saw Eric Schmidt on University Ave in Palo Alto last year, and I didn't need a Ferrari to believe it. He was actually driving a Prius.
That's odd. I'm a computer scientist who uses Google scholar quite often, and I can't remember when I last needed to read a paper which Google couldn't find for me.

Maybe the situation is different in my fields (algorithms and cryptography) than in yours?
I understand your basic point, though I don't think it is strictly true that Creationism makes no predictions.
Hack: Site steals your browsing history based on URL link color
How do you know it was him and not just someone who looked like him? Thats what I mean, if you more or less appear average, most people won't link you to the "celebrity".
How is it creepy? They are most likely finding underutilised employees. They are not trying to weed out the non-performers from the looks of it. From the WSJ article

"The move is one of a series Google has made to prevent its most promising engineers, designers and sales executives from leaving"

So they are more likely looking at engagement levels and utilization of employees. From the way I look at it, it is actually awesome. If my company can understand that my motivation levels are dropping because I feel underutilised or caught up in a web of bureaucracy and take an action on it without me complaining it is practically awesome.

Also, most importantly, if google calculates that an employee is going to quite, there are only two outcomes

1. If the employee is good, they will offer incentives to stay back [without telling him/her ]

2. If they don't care about the employee, they will do nothing and wait for him/her to quit.

I don't see how the above two scenarios are bad for an employee. Both work out to the advantage of both the parties. If there ever was a win-win this is it.
The Benefits of Distraction and Overstimulation
Facebook Connect + Car Hacks = dubspace
Ferraris? Mansions? James Bond? Gold-diggers? Is this HN?!?
Ask Wufoo: Are you down?
Obviously, it would seem so. I can't read your blog either? Any idea when you'll be back?
Interesting concept. My feedback on his page as well as my profile, if anyone is interested:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/Dubspacecom/78574990... and http://dubspace.com/daveambrose
A Decade's Worth of Entrepreneurial Advice
These 'gold diggers' that you refer to... are they top-karma users of Digg?
Amazing perks? Such perks should be insulting. Who would make a career move based on free food?

As for brilliant colleagues: that could be good or bad depending on whether you get along with them. Sometimes it's better to be the brightest person in the room.
Well, with ec2 you can fire up an instance for a few hours and do some load testing.

I recommend creating a load test with characteristics that mimic what you think you'll see in production and then just run apachebench or httperf from another ec2 instance.

You might even want to include in your code some calls to sleep or some slow loops, or even some code to create more frequent cache misses, all of this might help you generate a more conservative estimate.

These are just a few ideas. I think you could probably come up with a reasonable guess at costs this way, all for a few hours of ec2 time.

A lot depends on your load and how memory vs cpu vs IO intensive it is, and it will all impact which sort of load balancing you end up deciding to use. I suppose even if you don't end up going with ec2 it would still provide some useful benchmark results.
* Who would make a career move based on free food*

Well, all the people I've ever worked with need to eat.

If food is provided free (and it's edible), this seems like a perk with a direct measurable benefit.
http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/wufoo.com
You're not alone. The over-hyped "terminator case" is not only tiring, its also ridiculously unlikely and not even very scary. These are just wifi AP's on rc cars. With openWRT, and $40 at the Rat-Shak, you could make one too. And that's whats really scary. It only costs $40 now to make the land mines walk.
50% of all US marriages end in divorce. I would say it's partly the poor judgment of youth; mine wasn't so good. Maybe it has always been true, but now it is easier to get out. Romance is a pretty poor basis for a marriage. With mutual respect comes love and a more lasting relationship. Consider all the other qualities needed for success.

Starting companies is a huge commitment and raising children is an unbelievable stress load. The combination is a marriage killer.

With all that said, a good mate is a good thing to have.
Currently on Sprint with a palm centro and for me they have to nail (Phone, Streaming Radio, Web.).

I don't want an iPhone since I want a keyboard, hate apple apps on windows and AT&T sucks in Los Angeles.

The company I work for has an AT&T plan for blackberry and I can't even activate the phones from my desk and I notice employees talking outside the buiding due to the horrible coverage. I have sprint and am streaming radio at my desk as well as my entire 1 hour commute. I probably will get the Pre when it comes out.
Moblin Netbook Intro
There has been no apparent absence. Ever heard of an australopithecine? Homo habilis? Homo erectus? These hardly scratch the surface of the variety of the man-apes we've found, yet Creationists still somehow cry for a missing link. They've got several. It's just a problem of willful ignorance.

Hm. The article seems to be referring to some other link. My points still stand!
Surely pretty much every large company does this? eg analyze performance reviews and other data to see if an employee is underused/unmotivated/etc

Is it surprising Google does it?
Welcome, Wired. We call this land "Internet"