skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The goals of certain late-medieval alchemists were nonsense, but science and engineering often follow nonsensical goals (insert your favorite politically-funded project here). The major advances are usually serendipitous, and only a tangential relationship to the goals.

Alchemy had a long history, though, and often resembled practical chemistry much closely than it did a quest for chimerical substances. The practical side of alchemy produced some worthwhile facts and techniques, and overlapped in many places with early chemistry. Some late practitioners of alchemy are also honored as important early scientists: Isaac Newton, Roger Bacon, and Tycho Brahe among them. The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_chemistry shows quite a bit of overlap.

But alchemy had to be rejected in order for modern science to emerge. There were several reasons: first, it was illegal to practice alchemy in many areas. Partly because of this, alchemists were secretive, while science advances by sharing information. Finally, Francis Bacon's work on the scientific method came along late in the game. So the only logical way forward was to re-brand the sensible parts of alchemy as natural philosophy or natural science, and proceed from there.
Why? The twins who were adopted were of the exact same race, gender, age, and appearance at the moment of adoption. People aren't just given a random child when they adopt, they choose. So you still haven't untangled selection effects entirely.
You should share search text so all can appreciate your results.
Neat & Simple Resume Template
http://www.lovemytool.com/blog/2008/01/bootstrapping.html

2nd part of the long article. Thanks, @bravura.
Absolutely. If I've understood the article correctly, I can refer to my books even when I'm out of the office? This is brilliant, I wish I'd known about it sooner.

One thing I don't quite follow: it's easy to find out the ISBN number of a book you don't own on amazon or so, which would allow you to add arbitrary books. I don't see how they get away with that.
I'm not sure about hypocrisy but it's true Europe is definitely much less tolerant of foreigners. Then again the US is a country of immigrants so it would be a hell of a stretch if it were the other way around.
Summary: "I don't get postmodernism, and I'm not capable of understanding it."

His attitude here reminds me of people who proudly say "I suck at math!"

The next time a Chomsky article shows up here, I really hope that it's in an area that he actually knows something about!
All your people think that their ideas are unique and valuable.

I'd say that's a good thing, though. It helps to understand that there are probably better ideas than yours, because then you don't sit put, but at the same time, it's good we all have a drive to explain and create. Otherwise, we'd still be using punch cards -- to weave our HN postings into Jacquard's loom.
I think his theory is more like:

Buyers' appetite for 'the non standard' is inversely proportional to the current economic state.
I can't say I'm surprised really, surely it's just another example of confirmation bias?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
10k + a rolodex, from what I gather. Or a couple million in risk capital.
The real question is why would an entrepreneur want your money? Unless there's something else that distinguishes you, the only way anyone would take your money is if you offered ridiculously generous terms.

Buy a condo, put it in a brokerage account, or take it to Vegas. Your odds of seeing a positive return are better there.
Pirate Party Wins 7.1% of Swedish Vote, Enters European Parliament
So... Anyone want to make the Android app for this?
Spend at least $50k of that visiting the Valley regularly, attending conferences, and building up a network of contacts. Otherwise you'll get crappy dealflow and almost definitely lose it all (if you decide to invest at all).
But because it's "fluid and leaky", it's not going to fossilize...

I think that every culture has had their fair share of overly-respected sophomores. How many do you think trolled around Athens, and were forgotten by history because nobody cared to record what they said? With a bit of common sense, that's what will happen here too.
You obviously don't need to work (600k / 0.2 = 3M), so you're working two more years for the green card.

Did you know that $50K investment in Brazil gets you a 5 year visa, and after 4 years, you get citizenship? Brazil is positioned well for the next several decades, as oil becomes more expensive. The US will suffer in the next decades as US taxes will grow much higher. Perhaps the US green card isn't worth it.

Still, it's only two more years, so perhaps, why not stay and get it? In that case, why not begin your company now? You can outsource a lot of your code development over the next two years, so that you're ready to go live, the day you get your green card.
I live here fulltime. More time networking is definitely on the cards - but I think I need to concentrate on new circles. For example, I know well known processor architects but no
web people.
>There's a difference between culture and religion.

That's an interesting statement. Only in the West, and only in the last few hundred years can religion be conceived of as a discrete object, separate from culture.

Indigenous American and Hindu culture, for example, have traditionally had no such division between religion and culture. With the rise of global capitalism we may be starting to see a secular/nonsecular divide in traditionally Hindu areas (India, duh) but this is a very modern development.

edit: I should say, none of the above necessarily negates anything you said. I just think it's interesting.

edit number 2: Also, the above could also be further illuminated in a short description of the differences between orthodoxy and orthopraxy. Worth checking out each concept on Wikipedia if y'all are interested.
If this is 100% of your savings put at least 300K (50%) in something safer than a startup and be prepared to lose the other 50%. If you are not, ratchet down the amount you want to invest to something you can afford to lose without feeling too much pain.

-The remaining 300k is still more than enough for an angel investment in 3 startups.

-Don't rush into investing if you haven't done it before. Read everything pg has written. Go to angel events like angelconf but also to tech events in the areas you are interested in investing (conferences, barcamps, mobilecamps and so on) so you get to see something more substantive and 'real' than a pitch from the founders. (E.g. Zimbra did a lot of demonstrations of their products at events as technical as USENIX).

-Invest in the team, not (just) in the idea.

- Someone else mentioned that startup founders prefer someone who offers not just money but a rolodex and/or advice. This is true for smart founders. You may not be able to contribute to web startups but there are startups in your areas of expertise (compilers, semiconductors) that have potential. I personally know of two: www.accelereyes.com and www.coreopsys.com (no personal affiliation except friendship with founders) - although neither is in the bay area. I am sure there are others like them.
You could contact YC and ask if you can put in $100k.

Or sit down by yourself or with a friend, and draw up some rules: max commitment to any one venture X, min equity requirement Y, time horizon Z. Say you decide to start by investing $50k in $5k chunks. Then read HN and similar as you already do, waiting for things that set your spider-sense a-tingle. Interview them, see which ones excite you, throw some bucks at the ones which won't let you sleep at night. Then your job is to check in with each of these 10 for half a day each week - not too onerous for them, not too consuming for you. Assume that 7 of them will fail, 2 will survive but not thrive, and one will still keep you awake at night in 3 months. Investing $50k in your gut instincts with the knowledge that you'll likely lose 80% of it will probably teach you more than 20 books or seminars.

Edit: the failures will of course result in a variety of emotions, but as long as they fail in an interesting way they could yield great new friendships and contacts.

Your second round of (say) $100k will be better invested, and the result of that process will guide your third round of $250k, by which time you'll either have found your feet or lost your shirt in the process of looking for them.

Edit II: it may sound stupid, but you could also purchase/establish a small coffee shop with fast internet and a good tech library: give solo programmers a place to hang out and hack and later marry them with a business advisor of your own choosing.
No. Competition leads to improvement in the aggregate. It leads to "waste" of the resources of the losers.
From wikipedia: "As such, the notion of 'chattering classes' can be seen as an antonym to the older idea of an unrepresented Silent Majority"

Well anybody can chime in on Twitter, so no excuses for being unrepresented.
Leo Laporte loses his shit on Mike Arrington
i would suggest a combo idea: buy a condo and rent it out to a YC startup founders for equity (stock option) in their startups...

this will give you multiple benefits:

1. You will learn 2 fantastic investment trades (angel funding and real estate) at one shot and keep your money safe as you're buying a property which wont loose money. I wish i could do this, seriously.

2. You will make money from both, as price of your condo will definitely go high and if at all your tenants (starup founders) are successful then you will gain from the stock options.

3. Real estate is down so chances are high that you will buy a decent condo at lowest possible price. Remember to buy a condo in a good location even though you might have to pay a little more.

4. You will get a chance to be in touch with startup founders on regular basis and would learn important stuff from them which will help you to become a startup founder in the future and an angel investor once you have money that you can afford to loose.

5. You will also learn about real estate investing by meeting real estate agents, mortgage brokers, lawyers etc. Trust me investing in real estate is also an interesting domain and its one of the best option of getting good return in long term... and fortunately this is the best time to invest. MAN, you're one lucky guy.

6. Go to YC's angel investor's conference with those founders and see how everything works.

7. THE MOST IMPORTANT is, you will make new friends from variety of backgrounds... a huge networking opportunity - knowing people like Pg in particular is no small deal.

The above idea is inspired from a YC posting a while a go, please visit and read: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=565493
...had a bunch of cool ideas, about simulacra and maps and territory and the Gulf War. I've witnessed them, if only in aphoristic form.

Could you explain that in English?

But seriously, I have no doubt all those smart people have some interesting insights about culture etc.

It's just too bad they are covered up by their own cultural belief that things simply can NOT be expressed clearly and succinctly.

I happen to think this is a coping strategy with the fact that 90% of everything is crap. It's a strategy to make it very hard to differentiate the crap for the good stuff.
I don't need to work for the money, but I need to work. More accurately I love building things and having people use them. I could get a greencard, perhaps more quickly, by investing $1m in a company according to my lawyers, and even work on it myself, but I don't want to paint myself int a corner with needing to hire at a certain rate or not being able to drastically change direction.

Yes, I've considered other locations. But, I think California has made me soft - I love it here.

I don't need to outsource a lot of code development. Over the course of 2 years I can crank out a large % myself.
Working harder can reduce some differences, but no one without an adequate level of intelligence is going to be a competent, much less really successful, mathematician or physicist or any intellectually challenging field.
"Harry Potter" has sold over 400 million copies, and yet we don't all think we're wizards. Similarly, Ayn Rand sold over 25 million books, and yet outside of a few Internet-forum enclaves, Objectivism is still very much outside of the mainstream.

Many people buy a book to see what all the fuss is about, not because they personally are interested in making it their personal bible.
> it is metaphor.

For what?

> it might be saying something worthwhile about scientists and gender roles (in a stylised and heavily symbolic way) once put back into context.

Please, humor us. What might that "something worthwhile" be?
There's no rule of thumb when it comes to launching. Everyone recites the rhetoric of release early and iterate often, but that can lead to releasing a premature product.

Your product only has one reputation, so more important than "when" is "how". You'll want to make sure you have at least a differentiating feature, a marketing plan in place, and a good initial spike of users to even begin to draw worthwhile feedback. Having small sample sizes just leads to noise, which can then lead to even more indecision than you began with.

The best way to think of a launch is not as a switch you flip, but as a reveal that you build up to. The balsamiq guy had a great blog post about prepping for launch: http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/2008/04/18/preparing-for-launch...

It's as close to a video game walkthrough as you'll find.
You get what you measure. Frederick Taylor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Winslow_Taylor ) invented "Scientific Management" by measuring the behavior of manufacturing employees at Western Electric. He got amazing results. Only later was it observed that any goup of people improved their efficiency if they knew they were being watched. Another corollary: if you give salesmen higher commissions for product warranties, they will sell warranties at the expense of actual product. So if VC's ask for quantifiable "traction", they will get quantifiable "traction" at the expense of real innovation. Of course, it looks slightly wrong to the VC's, just as backing the "perfect team" gives only a 10% chance of a home run.

A disruptive venture is going to be disruptive because it cant be quantified, giving rise to "I cant define it but I know it when I see it." Or maybe not. Ask the VC's that passed on Google.
There are a lot of boot-strapped web start ups these days, I would suggest go to their "about us" section or blog if they have one and get to know the developers. Also, $300 - 600K is a big range. I would definitely think any YC funded sites should be interested in getting cold hard cash from angel investors
Now that's an interesting idea I hadn't considered; will need to ponder whether the limited amount of cash (rental equivalent * x months) is sufficient investment. I suppose a club house for hackers has other benefits as well..

Meeting the right startup people is very important to me. As with everyone else I have a list of cool ideas. The trick will be the right people to execute.
I would suggest you contact your local representative of the Angel Capital Association and talk to them about it: http://www.angelcapitalassociation.org/
I thought he said "I don't get postmodernism, either because there's nothing to get or because I'm not capable of getting it, and I have my doubts that it is the latter."
There aren't that many tenured professors making six figures. I suspect the PhD numbers are high due to the quants making 7-8 figures.

The Ph.D. distribution is probably concentrated towards the bottom with a few spikes (guys like D.E. Shaw) raising the average.
Quite honestly, as someone who's involved in the Angel world, easiest way to lose money - invest in startups. You have to invest in at least 20 to get an idea of what you're doing. Just structuring a deal so you don't get washed out later is something you'd rather learn from others than by hard experience. You'd be better off joining a group like Sand Hill Angels where you can jump in on deal flow, get advice from people who've been doing it for decades.
I, too, am surprised (and disappointed) bu the sudden influx of articles attacking post-modernism. It should be clear enough that the authors of the articles (and a fair number of commentors) have not taken the time to actually read and understand the works they are attacking, and the whole business is an exercise in smug posturing and implied superiority.

Look: I've spent the better part of 30 years studying continental philosophy (and more specifically, the works of Derrida) and anyone who thinks that the field can be summarily dismissed by folks like Chomsky, Weinberg or Dawkins are sadly mistaken. Chomsky, Weinberg and Dawkins are all brilliant men in their own fields, but it takes some mighty big cojones, and a mighty parochial view of the world, if they think that this means that their judgments on matters outside their field are more important than any other amateur. And I'm sure they'd be the first to cry foul if some philosopher or other tried to dismiss their work on the basis of a few out-of-context quotes, without bothering to actually do the reading.

I'm not saying that the writers generally thought of as "post-modern" are above reproach; far from it. What I am saying is that if you want to attack them, for God's sakes read the texts.
The access they provide is nothing beyond what you would get doing a normal Google book search. It just allows you to search over aggregations of books which you may or may not own.
A great question!

If that's what I learn here, then its a great piece of information all by itself.

Assuming I and some other angel offer comparable amounts, then you should go with the guy with more contacts and a better track record. That certainly isn't me. If you happen to need excellent technical advice on systems software and hardware then I can help and have amazing contacts for that.

But you raise an excellent point in that it may well be that I'm not at the right phase of my career to be an angel.

Vegas gets boring. I have existing separate long term investments I intend to retire off. No particular interest in the stock market right now. (Been there, wrote the code, made some money).
Depends on whether what you're building is free or costs money. Each results in different expectations on what you provide at launch.
uh?
www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=mail&passive=true&rm=false&continue=http%3A%2F%2Fmail.google.com%2Fmail%2F%3Fui%3Dhtml%26zy%3Dl&bsv=zpwhtygjntrz&scc=1&ltmpl=default&ltmplcache=2&hl=es
:-) No you didn't use up the space, but I have been looking for ~$250k+ for the company I work for. This is NOT a pitch, I don't think it's suitable for or interesting to the OP (non-tech, big chunk of change, old media business model).

But I would like to ask the OP what kind of overall return s/he hopes to make on a low-mid 6 figures investment, and how soon. I can always use guidance into an investor's goals.
2 - They are encrypted, but more importantly, they can also be signed. That could make it so that you have to pay some cert authority $20-100 if you want to set up a Wave server that talks to the rest of the world, but... actually, that sounds pretty reasonable to me.

That's just my understanding. I could be wrong.
Accomplishing what truly matters to me, that makes me happy.
"I don't need to work for the money, but I need to work. More accurately I love building things and having people use them."

God, wish I could high five you for that. I feel exactly the same way. And this is why I always contend that hackers are actually closely related to musicians. I've heard many musicians make similar statements: "Well, who cares if it makes money, I just want people to listen to it". I think they're closely related.

I've never met you, and I likely never will, but kudos to you, fellow traveller - I just want to make shit better, too.
1200, 1208 Insert Sim Card Problem
Gruber's WWDC 2009 Predictions
I think this is the greatest thing to happen in european politics in a long time. Times have changed, and this is a strong message to the establishment that things will need to change a bit regarding some laws!
Harmonic Fluids, a fast algorithm for simulating the sounds of 3D water
Out of curiosity, how much equity would you expect in return for housing? (i.e., how do you price it?)
Cool. I know you want me to download, but I'd really like to see a working example before doing so. The overlay in the image is nice, but I'd switch it to a click-through to the example. The download button is enough.
Redundancy is cheap.

Keep the present system and add a second automatically jettisoned flash memory copy of all data that is designed to float if at sea. It would also transmit a signal that would include its GPS location if possible.

Jettisoning could be set to occur at a given altitude, a given set of data values or a given acceleration/deceleration values.
In my humble and uninformed opinion, YC is unlikely to take 100K in cash from an angel investor unless they also brought in something with a LOT of real strategic value that they need. I don't know the OP so I can't speculate as to whether he would.

The coffee shop idea is also not an easy one to pull off and next to impossible if you are not doing it full time. See "I opened a charming neighborhood coffee shop. Then it destroyed my life." http://www.slate.com/id/2132576/
Better than the past, certainly, but by no means a sure deal. And while prices to buy are falling, so are prices to rent.

I suggest the OP use this great NYTimes tool to evaluate the buy vs. rent options: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/10/business/2007_BUYRENT_GRAP...

Keep in mind that the historical rent-to-buy ratio in San Francisco is something around 20x. http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2008/05/housing-price...

Nationwide it's 10-14x http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2008/05/buy-vs-rent-r...

And when you do, try to consider all the value possibilities (appreciation vs. depreciation), not just the rosy ones. Worst case scenario, the Californian government screws up its coming reorganization, and San Francisco could end up like Detroit. A more likely possibility might include more declines due to future mortgage resets and such.

Anyway, no way to know just what's coming, so it's a guess in the end, but a big purchase deserves deep consideration.

Finally, I recommend Redfin (http://www.redfin.com/city/17151/CA/San-Francisco) as a realtor, as they use the web to cut your realtor fees by thousands.
I didnt mean it as an euphemism, maybe a shorhand. The article draws a parallel between racism in the US as a residue of slavery, and xenophobia in Europe as a result of immigration of lower class workers who are different and dont care much about the culture of the host country.

Integration in the US has taken huge steps in the last half-century. My ex-wife's relatives were put in US concentration camps in WWII. I remember seeing whites-only and colored signs in the south. I remember the civil rights movement of the 60's and 70's. The article speculated whether European countries are facing the same kind of transition from individual monocultures to diversity.

I certainly would welcome any insight you have.
Buy something risky like U.S. treasury bonds, startups are for wimps :)

Seriously, take a year and BE in a startup. You'll know what to do next. It's hard to beat osmosis.
Convertible notes: http://www.emergingenterprisecenterblog.com/2009/05/articles...