skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I was fifteen when I came to this country. I didn't speak English. I eventually graduated from high school but since at the time, Chinese was not taught in school, it was not considered a foreign language and therefore could not be used to satisfy the language requirement for getting into University.

Instead, I applied to the local city college and spend the first semester taking high school math, physics and chemistry. Then after two more years, my English improved well enough that I was able to transfer to a four-year school, majoring in engineering. I also worked part-time in a laundry at minimum wage to save enough money so that I can move away from home to finish my degree.

After my bachelor degree, I worked summer before returning to graduate school. Then after my master, I worked a few years before returning to get my Ph.D. Then I worked again and after a few years, took a teaching job at UCLA.

When I was forty years old, I left the comfort of academia to start my first company.

I just took life one step at a time and every step of the way, I didn't ask for any favor, except for a chance to prove myself.

Now after two companies, I am retired.

You can do anything you want in this country, even if you weren't born in this country and didn't even speak the language. Just don't take no for an answer and always accept responsibility for your own failure.
I had real contact info listed in whois for 15 years. It was rarely used, and those who did had a legit reason for doing so. Email addresses are way more subject to abuse.
Synesthesia, at first blush, seems to be something that would be very difficult to study, since it involves the subjective experience of the subject. If you claim to see certain numbers in color, I either have to take your word for it or declare you crazy. But actually there are some very clever tests that have been developed that provide some confirmation that synesthesia is a real effect. Number-color synesthetes can very rapidly identify a shape hidden in this image: http://mindbluff.com/syn3.gif while non-synesthetes must do a very slow manual search (the shape is hi-lighted here: http://mindbluff.com/syn4.gif).

The theory of cross-wiring as the neuronal basis of synesthesia very suggestive and there may be other instances of it in other domains. For example, on the human sensory homunculus, the representation for the feet and toes are located right beside the representation for the genitals. Some degree of cross-wiring in that region could explain foot fetishes. Likewise the sensory-cortical representation of the nipple is adjacent to the earlobe, and so on and so forth.
Last time I checked Georgia Tech wasn't a no name state school, and depending on your CC gpa you could very well transfer(Transfer requirements are usually a lot lower than initial entry requirements.) Second, there is intro to engineering, basic engineering classes that don't have the high math reqs you are envisioning. In fact if you go the CS route most of your classes will have no math req.
I would be interested to hear about what gets everyone in a productive mode.
I didn't say that Udi Manber was directly involved in this project -- but that doesn't mean that his presence at Google didn't contribute. Firefox uses bsdiff, and I know Chrome people have looked at it; it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if they saw the name "Udi Manber" in my thesis, said "hey, we've heard of that guy", and were consequentially encouraged to replicate his approach (well, his student's approach, technically) to the problem.
It didn't come across to me as a cheap shot - I think it's literally true. Stuff that would have been extremely discouraging to me 5-10 years ago simply bounces right off me now. Based on this, I know that stuff I worry about right now isn't going to seem like a big deal as I get older. The best technique I know for making this process work is to continually do new things and challenge myself. Some of it may be painful at the time, but once you've come through it, you'll be surprised at the confidence you gain.

The only thing I know of that works against this process is sliding back into the "safe" realm in order to avoid having to deal with the problem at hand. This becomes a repeating pattern and you end up being much less capable of achieving challenging things.

It sounds to me like the problem is less one of motivation and more of vision. What is it exactly that you want to do? If you need to answer that question, I recommend changing contexts dramatically. Go travel for awhile, try moving to a new town, etc. Once you know what you want, little things like money and wondering how you're going to survive matter surprisingly less than you think they would.
I am familiar with Georgia Tech, and have a few friends there. My GPA is not so great after randomly leaving town last semester, but I can always bring it up elsewhere.
No offense taken, my fail, I should have explicitly said "the darkest hour in my professional life".
Sounds suspiciously like Marxism.

Is that a reason to dismiss? This may be a stumble on an idea that Marx would agree with, but noone is asking you to accept marxism wholesale.

'Sounds suspiciously like..', is a defensive way of thinking. It's wanting to know who's side you are on so you know what position to hold. It's almost like being afraid of being persuaded by argument.
Thanks for the reply. Really what I need to hear. I am always impressed with people who come here, adjust to the culture, work hard, and have such great success. Really inspiring.
What you should really do is make a complete system and put it out there for people to use. A web service, an iPhone application, a desktop application, whatever. There are no educational prerequisites which prevent you from doing this.
This will give you something to put on a resume, experience getting something done from start to finish, more general programming experience, and possibly the foundations of your own startup. It will also let you know if this sort of life is something you even want to do. If you didn't enjoy the process or you couldn't get anything out the door, chances are you might be better suited for something else. This website is hacker and startup oriented, but truth be told that sort of thing isn't the best fit for everyone and there are many other paths to success. It's better to figure this out when you're 20 and then adjust accordingly.
Nothing, as long as it satisfies you.
>Besides that, will it even do me that much good to have a degree from an unknown state university?

It won't make you a successful startup founder, but it will give you a ticket to employment as a member of the professional class. That's enough for a lot of people.

What state are you in? Why not go to the flagship state university while you figure out what kind of startup you want to do?
If you accept evolution, you must oppose over-regulation of the economy
See http://www.admission.gatech.edu/transfer/requirements.html for GT's transfer requirements; You only need a 2.7 GPA to transfer from in state. The bigger thing to look at is what courses you need to have finished before you can transfer in. Which you should be able to knock out in a semester if you haven't finished already.
> it was too slow, and I got behind.

This is purely a function of practice. 5 years ago, a friend of mine could TeX math notes substantially faster than I could write them by hand, including reasonably complex commutative diagrams, lots of tricky formulae, etc. A big part of TeX speed is setting up a bunch of personal macros for commonly used symbols (e.g. \a instead of \alpha, etc.).
Keep your head up. There are lots of dark hours when you pour your everything into something. It's true of girl/boyfriends. It's true of jobs. It's true of your family.

Business is slow for everyone. It's is a dark hour for the world. As a nation, we have lost courage. Don't lose yours.

If you run out of cash, it's okay. Lot's of companies run out of cash. How many banks are closing right now? How many companies are bankrupt? How many companies are unable to pay their employees? Be glad you are not in debt. You are ahead of many. You are out of cash. Many are out of cash and credit.

It's okay to go back to work. It is okay to build a cv and send it out. Take the time to find a good company where you can learn and bring the skills back to your business. You can keep running it while you work. It isn't going away. Longevity has value. How many companies stuck it out through the last dot-bomb?

Learn from any mistakes you have made that brought you to this dark hour. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. There are many tunnels.

Keep your head up. Be proud of how far you have come. Many don't even begin the journey. Life is long. You will have many failures enroute to your final destination.
I'm in Georgia, but I just moved here (ran away to the mountains) from Florida, and am a Florida resident. UF I guess is our "flagship school", but I'll probably need to spend more time at a community college to be eligible to transfer there.

Being employed as a member of the professional class isn't all that I aspire to, but there is no shame in that. The idea quite depresses me though.
Not only is GATech a good school, Atlanta has a good startup scene. Attending GATech will expose you to it. Just be active in clubs, like the Young Entrepreneurs Society.
People with wealth and connections are the bad guys, while the struggling guy at the bottom is the good guy.

It's not that simple. There are people who have both wealth/connections and talent. There are good guys who are well-connected and wealthy.

The moral battleground is the exchange rate between these two fundamental commodities. Talent should trade very high against property, but often it doesn't. The good guys are those who are trying to make the exchange rate proper; the bad guys believe the talented exist only to serve those who are already powerful. So powerful people who use their resources to advance those who are talented are among the good guys.
I actually just bought it yesterday, and am going through it.
I'm not in state, unfortunately. I just moved hear from, again unfortunately, Florida.

I was just browsing that same page, actually. GT is a good school.
> You can do anything you want in this country, even if you weren't born in this country and didn't even speak the language. Just don't take no for an answer and always accept responsibility for your own failure.

Hot damn, I love the American dream, and I love hard working immigrants who show the rest of us, when we get lazy or self-pitying, how it's done.

Dennykmiu, it's great to have you here in the US. You're an inspiration. Thanks for being here, and thanks for posting!

Hoo-ah!
Does anyone actually advocate over-regulation?
Thanks for the kind words, and I'm glad you're finding Virtualmin useful! We certainly try to provide the best support in our industry, and when we screw up we apologize and do whatever we can to make it right. The bar for support among market leaders in our industry is pretty low, but I think in an area this complex, great support can be a very good differentiating feature. So, we're never tempted to think, "Well, we're providing way better support than Plesk or cPanel, so we can rest today."

I've got a todo list a mile long for things we could be doing better, but we're getting there.
If your freelance experience will set you up to get a good job, then you're not in a bad place. Most jobs available early on (e.g. out of college) suck; some jobs available later on are great. If you learn from and enjoy the people you work with, get interesting projects, and are respected, having a paid job isn't so bad.

My darkest hour was when I moved under undesirable circumstances, developed a serious health problem, lost my job, and broke up with my girlfriend in the space of 3 months, while the economy/job market was falling apart but before it started making the news (spring 2008). What was it like? Well, it ended.
I listen to Robert Reich radio commentaries, and he seems to advocate over-regulation.
The loading/unloading was a form of exercise.

Uh, no, this was a war-time example. So were my notes about "incoming Units". When we were relieved in Afghanistan, our work was pretty much thrown out, despite the fact that we'd had the most successful deployment (in terms of native opinion improvements, processes improved, etc.) of that theater in years (for our AOR anyway).

While I appreciate the logic of your argument in theory, I assure you, there is no such thing as a "magic efficiency button", which any actual soldier will tell you (or rant to you about) for hours ;)
You can also just go hang out in the lobby for free at most of them -- if you don't care for the talks, that's just as good.
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You can accept evolution -- and then conquer it.

If the premise of this article is true, then we would oppose medicine. We would oppose plastic surgery. We would oppose debt. We would oppose the police. We would oppose marriage and commitment to one individual.

All those things are contrary to evolution, yet, they are social institutions that have evolved to protect and further our species.

If you accept evolution, then you accept that it is the species that is important -- not an individual organism. We are fighting for the very existence of intelligence in the universe. We are fighting to preserve the most unique thing we know that exists -- life itself.

This word "over-regulation" and these arguments about government intervention are all bogus. It is because the government backed off what many called "over-regulation" that we are in the very mess we are in!

If you accept evolution then you must also accept that some individuals within a population are going to attempt to ensure their survival over the survival of our species. Some individuals do not understand that they exist in a fabric composed of threads between every living organism. They believe their individual success is of the prime importance -- but this is not what evolution teaches.

Darwin's theories of evolution are made in a world devoid of free will. We can choose how to proceed as a group. We can come together as a planet and make our planet better for all. We do not need to compete with each other to the deteriment of our opponent. We need to compete toward common goals: Survival for all, good health, longevity, eternal intelligence in the universe.
The Flimsy Doorknob & The Forgettable Receipt
Should?
Visit California
A california travel guide
Memo: Evolution is an explanation of fact and contains no moral (or religious, for that matter) position. Accepting evolution as an explanation of what happened does not require that one subscribe to so-called "Darwinist" social and economic ideologies.

^OP didn't get it.
This piece is so horribly fundamentally naive, that it's not worth even considering.

You want to use the evolutionary example? Fine, look at livestock or plant husbandry. We breed and select for animals which serve our needs. Cows that have more meat, which produce more milk. Ones which are more docile. Plants that produce more yield, which are less susceptible to poisoning us, or making us sick as vectors for diseases.

We control a great deal of evolution, because it makes us safer, and healthier.

============================

This is easily put another way.

There is an Economic fitness landscape, just the same way that there is an Evolutionary fitness landscape.

Just the way that we control the incentives, and conditions for how reproduction takes place in our livestock, we also control the incentives and conditions for economic growth and (re)production.

We must ensure there are sane incentives for how corporations and individuals behave in the economy. We must observe and shape the landscape that we live in or we risk becoming victims of evolutionary, or economic pitfalls, both seen and unseen.
I don't follow the argument. It seems to claim that because there ISN'T a God involved in evolution, there OUGHT NOT be a God figure involved in the economy. Regardless of how anyone feels about each individual statement, I fail to see the logic that connects them.
Sure, thats reasonable. I think I'm just a bit frustrated by the "so and so works at Google, therefore they must have chosen technology X or approach Y because of their presence!" when its very hard to know what everyone in (or formerly at) Google has ever worked on and remember to call them up.
I've handed my copy to a few people now, some found it intimidating it first but I don't think it's genius level material. Just take it a page at a time and keep in mind that it'll be worth it.

Oh yeah - and if you're struggling with the math/meta-math examples you should do what he says and play around with the ideas with pen and paper. If I remember correctly they're mostly closer to the start of the book so after that you should be fine.
Sites without Delicious, Digg and Fark bookmarks

I find those to be just dumb and extraneous information on a usually already too busy page. But, I'm not selling my site, I'm using my site to sell things. So maybe the things I find important don't quite align with a guy with a blog.
I advocate over-regulation. It's not very hard: figure out the exact set of regulation you want, x, and then advocate x&y, where y is not the null set. Since the likelihood of x&y is logically less that of x alone you stand a better chance of getting x implemented.
I agree. Once I learned how truly powerful Javascript really is, once you get past the horrible DOM, I knew it could one day become a general-purpose scripting language and not just a web one. As soon as someone makes a good command-line Javascript interpreter, web apps will come as soon as someone creates a CGI extension to that interpreter.
"If you accept evolution, you must oppose over-regulation of the economy "
...
How about this: "If you accept evolution, you must oppose putting to jail murderers."
He makes a very good point. When you pay $500 for a meal it is very disappointing to see a receipt like that. I never really thought of the receipt as a marketing opportunity but now I realize how important receipts can be as a marketing vehicle.
Surprisingly, I'm not finding much evidence of a myspace url market. Has anyone seen anything high profile, like a url getting sold for 1k?
Ask HN: Why don't PG's essays' footnotes use links?
Just reading http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html and I was annoyed by this shortcoming again.
Is does not imply ought.
So absolutely not true.
Ben Franklin would have issued you a pecuniary penalty.

The reality is that it varies. You can't claim just because your startup is working out fine with 50 hours a week of work that other startups don't need more attention. The complexity of each startup is different; the number of founders is different; the amount of time a founder commits varies; and so on.

I should have been more blunt about my co-founder: full time job, girlfriend, side work freelancing, drinking with friends on weekends, and a startup. Do you really think it is possible to juggle all of that?
An addendum:

Regulation is a tool to change the landscape and the conditions in which businesses and individuals operate.

You can regulate in a way that benefits certain types of business, i.e. breaking up a monopoly helps smaller businesses. Making the phone companies lease their lines to smaller competitors is a GOOD thing for competition and diversity.

The notion that regulation only ever stifles the economy, in that sense, is simply incorrect.

That is not to say that there aren't regulations that have a stifling/dampening effect, nor that there shouldn't be. Sometimes you do want to raise the bar across the board. We need banks to be sufficiently capitalized in order to be able to pay their customers back.

That may be stifling for banks, but it's in OUR best interest.
Use of the word "sexy" 30 times in something purporting to be scientific

Well, he's using the word "sexy" to mean what it means. That is, marked by or tending to arouse sexual desire or interest. I found it rather refreshing that someone was using sexy to mean "sexy", rather than to mean popular, or cool, or useful, or profitable.

How does the article "purport to be scientific"? I read it as interesting speculation. It doesn't claim to be based on rigorous empirical evidence; it just claims to be interesting. And clearly a bunch of HN readers agreed.
I'm working on it:

http://jackjs.org/

http://narwhaljs.org/

https://wiki.mozilla.org/ServerJS
If you was wondering about where Google keep the Gmail data, the answer is in this: http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/669.html :)
Another thing you touch and interact with in a home is light switches.

It's amazing to me how nice odd light switches are. Twisty knobs or metal buttons – anything besides the normal off-white plastic switch and cover.

They don't play as well with my muscle memory, but that inefficiency becomes a good thing somehow: it's something I remember.
I'm not entirely sure I agree with the point about the receipt. I want to be left with a memory of how awesome an experience was, not how much I paid for it. For something like Starbucks, having a stack of receipts that are nice to look at and inform me in a pleasant, easy to read font exactly how much money I'm spending there might make me reconsider my expenses in a hurry. Forgettable receipts might have an advantage after all.

Of course, this is all theory... I would love to see some actual data!
As far as restaurants go, I notice that the receipts have a way of sticking with me (pockets, etc.) long after I've forgotten about the meal. I'm sure I'm not the only one either.
I type facebook into my search box.
Great points and I'm still amazed by his article presentation.
Ideally you want to make it easy for people to save/share your page on the services they use, and to not show links to the services they don't use.
I bet if somebody made a receipt printer that could print nice, customizable receipts and interface with existing equipment, they'd get plenty of customers.
> when I'll have to fill up an entire semester with just a Trig class, so I can fill up another semester with just Calc 1 so I can get to Calc 2

A lot of people 'place out' of these using AP exams - you can take them even now. This should help you move faster.
I'd like some data too!

Anyone own a chain of restaurants? Do you want to implement better receipts and the hardware/infrastructure required? I'll help.
I see your point but guys has come to become gender neutral. Sure a guy is still male but "you guys" is anyone.
The problem with regulation is that for every set of rules there's a corresponding nonempty set of loopholes that can be exploited. Finance is now so complex that coming up with rules that can't be gamed is not as trivial as one might think...
Surely the level of regulation he advocates seems excessive to you, no? (I have no particular opinion RR's actual recommendations).
Regulatory Capital Arbitrage for Beginners
This is almost certainly bad, over optimistic advice.

If the idea of being a member of the professional class depresses you try shooting for the stars before going to college because that's what college is preparing you for. If you want to do the startup thing, surely the thing to do would be move to the Valley, do open source stuff, and just keep trying.
Will you be watching E3 2009?
Dreamers
I am failing to see the problem.

No seriously guys. Here's the problem:

20 years old. Doesn't know what to do. Options are college or work. And how is this "problem" anything other than universal? And how is the advice anything other than banal? Go to college. Keep working. Whatever.
Excellent article. I usually don't log in to HN, or comment frequently, but I had to bump this one up.