skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yet again, the failure to distinguish between startups and small companies generally. This "proves" that Larry & Sergey starting Google at 25 is a bad data point by showing that a lot of 50 year olds start landscaping companies.
Thanks for posting this. Even if it's not the most detailed report, any light shed on the initial launch process of a product of this sort is interesting to some degree.
It isn't solved there because it isn't a webserver problem but a general networking problem. Yes, you could go and add defensive measures to the listeners of your httpd, smtpd, sshd and all your other services.

The rest of us just uses a firewall.
I'm not familiar with the display adapters on a Macbook, but my 2008-gen 13" Macbook connects to an external monitor fine. Could I use a splitter, like he states, and connect it to two 24"? That would be pretty awesome.
I for one find text-based Amazon affiliate links to be just about the most non-intrusive form of making money on the web.
Books by Successful Entrepreneurs and Executives
nah - I like the people I work with but good friends? Besides they all have the same interests right? (or thereabouts) :) no variety.

You've fallen back a bit onto the "so drunk you black out" stereotype. Which isnt fair at all - you're right there is little value in that but it doesnt mean the other 99% of the time socialising isnt valuable :)
16 year old drops HS, gets GED to hasten pro baseball career
FreeRisk.org: open-source credit ratings
How Internet Gatekeepers Stifle Progress
Xobni + Outlook
You should not downmod people just because you don't agree with them. That's the Reddit style.
I'm quite certain that both I and you have said at least one thing dumber than this in the past year, but you and I didn't have 10,000 rampaging political partisans to jump on our mistakes.
That's one guy at one event. And even he says Firefox (and Chrome) on Windows is more secure than IE.

And, I'm not sure I understand how IE malware/phishing protection is better than that found in Firefox. I don't doubt that it's possible, but it does seem to work in Firefox, and the angry red warning screen seems likely enough to stop someone from going ahead.
Taking a stand: Facebook, TechCrunch, and Free Speech
Well, I'm still in school kinda and I'm still in the planning stages of my startup, but I feel that I learned a lot of stuff in college that I really wouldn't have touched otherwise. I dunno how practical it is in the "real world," but I thought my time/ money was worth it.

Compilers and languages -- Right now I've got ideas on how to create a new and better programming language (hopefully that will be the 100-year language =P) which will have stuff from lisp, prolog, C++, Java, and first order logic. honestly, there would be no way that I would try to learn lisp by myself, much less understand the elegance of lambda calculus. I wouldn't know where to start thinking about other complex things like knowledge representation and complexity related to it.

Linux / vim / eclipse / makefile -- I picked up how to use a lot of tools in college, when some other friends also used it. It would have really bad if I had to learn all of those without being able to call someone up and ask for help.

networking -- I've done some stuff outside of school for a year that had nothing to do with CS. I really haven't met so many "simple" people before... not that there's anything wrong with that, but I really do not think of them to do interesting projects with. Not all the people I knew from college was a CS major, but I can see myself working with a lot of them for various projects.

Machine learning -- This was one of those things that I was interested in, but I can't see myself learning about it all by myself. I took a class about it for audit, then took it again a few years later. It really makes a difference to be pushed to do the work. And even though I forgot about a lot of the details, I don't think it would be too hard to re-learn about random forest, bayesian networks, reinforcement learning, etc.

It seems to me that there are a lot of software companies out there that do some stuff that are pretty heavy on the theory side. Google's pagerank, spam filters, antivirus software, etc. I'll bet those kinda jobs are better than a "4-year-experience-with-java" job.

I'm also not too sure about the "replacing college with an incubator" thing... college is something you gotta do, doing a startup is supposed to be a risky thing. I've done a year long senior project that I just totally blew off because it was a "class project". People have done much more stuff in three months than what I did that year. If people see the startup incubator as something that's required, i don't think it would work out as well. But I think it would have been helpful if there were more incubators that were closely tied with the school, so that it wouldn't seem like such a far-fetched idea to do a startup.

btw, those humanity classes really are a total waste of time.
Posted partly in jest.

I remember something my sister once said. She wants her kids to go to college and play sports because it's the best way of learning teamwork. I begged to differ, suggesting they oughta get jobs instead.

I agree completely with your original post.

One of my most vivid early college memories was teaching the other 100 or so freshmen in my dorm how to use the washing machine. Geesh, leave them in the woods and they'd just die. Hopefully, they're better now.
I'm a bit skeptical about some of the books (I don't know much about Seth Godin for example), but at least some some of them are good. James Surowiecki, Nicholas Nassim Taleb, Dan Ariely are all well worth the read (though I would have chosen Black Swan instead of Fooled by Randomness), and I already ordered the first one on the list - Philip Zimbardo is an impressive name. Oh, and Barry Schwartz too, haven't read the book but I've seen him on TED.

Overall it's a list worth selecting from.
Loopt, Justin.tv, Xobni and Scribd in Top 50 Tech startups of 2009
I recall reading a science fiction novel where there were some proposals to store data for a long time.

Assuming sufficiently advanced technology, you could turn a seismically stable rocky planet into data storage by encoding data with valleys and mountains.
"I believe consumers benefit from exclusive deals in three ways: innovation, lower cost and more choice," said Paul Roth, president of retail sales and services for AT&T.

That is pretty bold statement to make under oath. But I am most impressed he was able to say that with a straight face.
Generally that's true, but the more useful your content is, the less promotion it'll (probably) need.
College experience is good and valuable but the mode of instruction could be improved for a lot of the classes by injecting a dose of practical, hands-on experience like the "y-combinator's incubator model", may be like 1 semester of class and the 1 semester of project work.
Yes, experiences trump possessions, but...

I almost think the iPhone might be an exception to this generality. I saw a t-shirt on Threadless recently that said "My iPhone has totally changed the way I poop." Or, as I often have said, having an iPhone means never having to be bored. Whenever I'm in line, waiting at the Dr. Office, etc... I have something interesting to read at the tips of my fingers, or a game, music, or whatever.

So perhaps the iPhone takes the edge off of what otherwise might be dull/unpleasant experiences to such an extent that its overall impact on happiness is quite high. I, for one, am still hugely attached to my original 2G and feel lost without it.
Anyone else surprised that this is a recent advancement, or is it just me? Perhaps I'm underestimating the difficulty of the implementation?

But it seems to me anyone with any ability for introspection should have known that: When the human eye searches for an object it looks globally for the rough location, size and orientation of the object. Then it zeros in on the details
I have a software-based solution for this, but I think I'll definitely look into a USB to DVI adapter now...

http://blog.carlmercier.com/2009/02/16/a-dream-setup-three-m...
This article reminds me that I've never even been asked if I graduated high school. Not having a college education has never been a problem for me either.
Named Function Expressions in Javascript Demystified
Should I revive my Firefox extension?
I wrote a Firefox extension about 3.5 years ago called Cacheout! https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1453

When it first came out, it got some minor buzz. Appeared on LifeHacker, was distributed with a free cd for MacWorld magazine in Italy, etc.

I haven't updated it in years and doesn't work anymore anyway.

Its been a passing thought for a while to get this extension working again. Should I do it, or just leave it dead?
I stopped updating it a loooong time ago
Agreed. Industry experience is great for developing practical knowledge, but it's not as good for (and often encourages against) developing theoretical knowledge. Is graph theory something you'll learn on the job?
I can't agree with this more. I am also studying Entrepreneurship, and after two years I feel that the experience has taught me countless invaluable lessons. My time at college is as unique as the next guy's, but here is some of what I have acquired thus far:

Negotiation: Throw yourself in a 10'x10' room with a complete stranger for one semester and try not to learn a thing or two about negotiations. Sure you deal with subjects such as who picks the music to play that day, but the skills are surprisingly transferable to other areas.

Networking: College is the best time to get involved with that group or activity that you never quite got around to in High School. Join a club and you will inevitably meet a mature group of people that share your interests and aspirations--these people will be there for the rest of your life.

Time management: Get a jump start on what Steve Blank just outlined in his Epitaph for an Entrepreneur (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=663432). You'll be busy as hell with a variety of activities, so you are literally forced to strike a balance. I've maintained a 4.0 GPA, held executive positions in my Fraternity, and kept a girlfriend happy so far. I know you can too.

The quality of education is not much to speak of, but if you have the money for college you should definitely go for it. Be prepared to be thrown out of your element and enjoy the ride. It will change your life.
The web is not about good content. It's a popularity game. Popularity games are played by knowing the right people, doing each other favors, getting out and meeting people, and by being, well, popular.

This is supposed to be some grand epiphany about the web? How about the fact that this is how people have chosen what to consume and whom to deal with for the all of modern history?
After watching the video, I think the problem she had in resizing is not because it isn't intuitive, but because it required more delicate movement. The same reason it would be harder for her to twist a screw driver than to hit a hammer.
If it was price skimming, wouldn't the newer versions of the product cost less?
Consumers in no way benefit. Verizon had argued that the carriers wouldn't put the marketing behind devices if they weren't exclusives. Well, phone companies would hawk their wares.

It's monopolistic competition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopolistic_competition). They each want to be a little different so that they'll attract a subset of the population and be able to charge a little more. Without exclusive devices, each carrier has a lower ability to differentiate themselves from each other and less of a chance to charge consumers higher prices.

The more differentiation, the less you have to compete on price.
Where are you studying Entrepreneurship?
wow: some awesome companies I haven't heard of here - livescribe, sermo, modu, Nila
Fifty Best Tech Startups
Justin.tv Gains DVR Functionality
Highrise + GMail for Domains + Google Calendar for Domains
Why go to the extra effort to be offended?
Thanks a lot Russell. I've been blogging for over a year, so I've had time to come up with little tricks and experiment with different techniques such as this which in the long run can have a big effect on how your blog or website performs.
Nine extraordinary clouds
Google Searches for Ways to Keep Big Ideas at Home
Check out some papers on type theory. They prove the most trivial things in excruciating detail.
How Urban Airship Saved Tapulous's Bacon on iPhone 3.0 Day
In addition to not being rigorous, it's utterly trivial stuff. This is like making string concatenation difficult by calling it a monoid.
I would work 10 hours a day in the office, come home and then…
Back to work after the kids were in bed

So, at what time did he spend time with his wife other than the weekends? I know spending time with the kids is very important, but it's also important to spend time with the wife.[1]

I'm actually struggling with this, not because I'm in a startup but because I have very little time outside of my day job to do anything on the side[2], since I have to tend to my wife and baby. But I can imagine that in a startup it would be the same or worse, since it would still be tough to be working so many hours.

[1] I'd dare to say it's even more important to spend time with one's wife. A house where the parents are distanced or not in a healthy relationship is not really good for the kids either.

[2] Although, little by little I'll be able to get something out there.
I don't see Intel biting; they're too in love with Linux
Blimps find favor as poor man's satellite
Have any IM clients updated to incorporate push yet?
This looks very interesting - I will have to check it out when I have more time. I was also looking over the Certificate/Master's programs - did I miss something or is there really no coursework on database security?
I do not believe this to be the case, hence the post.

Here's a test for you: open up a new blog account. Make a post that says "I will give you 20 bucks if you email me"

Make sure the blog does not ping all of the search providers. Or go ahead and ping them. It might be interesting to try each way.

And then just do -- nothing.

Obviously the page has immediate value and usefullness to anybody that could use twenty bucks. But how many takers or readers do you think you'd get?
Palm’s Open Source Portal is now available
So, you definitely have a better imagination than I for possible places to use this development model. That said, the areas you've proposed, as others have mentioned, are bigger problems to solve, sometimes much bigger. They require a lot more capital-intensive pieces to come together, or they require accurate models that don't necessarily exist.

Of course, that didn't stop companies from competing for the X-Prize. So, perhaps in the areas you suggest the prize just needs to be bigger (maybe a lot bigger). So, while an improved query optimiser for Oracle might require hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of hardware to develop, a $10 million prize would still be sufficient to interest some teams. At some point, the line is crossed between what is a good development+marketing investment, and what the company could do with its own in-house developers. I don't know if $10 million is past that line, or if it's enough incentive to bring out the geniuses in the field (the ones that don't already work for Oracle).

Oracle would also have the problem that they'd have to create some sort of stripped version of Oracle that only works on this one data set, or something, because otherwise they'd be giving away the biggest license of their software to any developer that signed up (because to test major improvements to Oracle, in the places that matter to Oracle, you need to be running it on big MP machinery with terabytes of data).

So, maybe that's why more companies haven't done it, despite the apparent cost-effectiveness and marketing value (NetFlix has probably gotten a million bucks worth of tech press out of this contest). The cost of getting people on board might be much higher, and the cost of providing the tools to contestants may also be dramatically higher. There may also be negative media consequences. NetFlix spun it beautifully...such that we think of them as very smart scrappy guys and hard to beat, but also eager for a challenge from upstarts. Maybe a big behemoth like Oracle would come across as, "Oh, now they can't even be bothered to build their own software, and expect a bunch of Open Source experts (since Open Source is where a lot of the expertise in databases currently exists, outside of companies that wouldn't want to help Oracle) to do it for a pittance." So, this kind of thing might turn out to be negative publicity for a big company, where it is great publicity for a small company like NetFlix.

Just some devil's advocate stuff. I think you're probably right that there are other areas where this would work. I don't know that you or I have thought of the best examples of them, though. Maybe someone reading this thread might have a company for which this model fits perfectly, though.
Could somebody please explain to me the value that Scribd provides? Google already indexes PDF's, and Scribd just seems to get in the way of me reaching the content I want.
AIM has. I'm not sure if the free (red) one has push, but the paid (purple) one does.
Good point. I wonder how much of that is due to the long period of peace and prosperity that the U.S. has experienced; in the absence of any serious external threats, it becomes easier for partisans to squeeze their political opponents into that role.

9/11 was an anomaly. Following the attacks we saw a time of genuine good will between the parties. The further we get from that date, the more our politics is descending back into petty partisanship.
it's also very dangerous to mix up businesses with family. If one go wrong, chances are the other will burn too...
Half Duplex Relationships
A Huge Leap Forward Graphics on the iPhone 3GS
Current tweets, photos & videos from Iran, updating every few minutes
When laws punish speech after the fact, those laws might be wrong, but they are laws, not censorship.

Not according to First Amendment jurisprudence, which generally views such laws as unconstitutional under the 'chilling effect' doctrine.
I sent an email to jmonegro (at) gmail (dot) com
Scribd let's people who don't know how to put their pdf, word doc, powerpoint, etc online and make it look good put it online and make it look good. And it's easy. Who else does that?
The primary value seems to be similar to that of YouTube...it provides an easy way to share documents, for folks who have no idea how to share documents on the web. It's long been possible to share video, audio, and documents in non-HTML formats, on the web, but not necessarily in a way that normal non-technical folks found appealing.

Scribd's phenomenal traffic growth seems to indicate that someone finds it useful, even if you or I don't.
Reposted, since now it's actually working ;) Hacked this together with FeedVolley ( http://feedvolley.com ), a RSS->HTML tool.
HOLY SHIT! YAY!

I knew if I just waited long enough someone would finish this off for me! Wonderful!

What do you think about folding this into sexp_processor?

I should prolly actually ask this on github. I only read ycombinator for the enterprise post. :)
If you do a Raid 6 Array and manage to keep power to the storage devices you could fix the lost bits whenever they came up. Or you could just write to 10 drives at once. The odds might be that the whole does not change 0.034% of the time for one drive, but for 10 it would be > 99%.
hunch looks quite cool. my only concern is that since they are making their money from referrals to products on some pages, that this will encourage them to skew the results of what one should do so it leads to those companies that pay them the most referral.
I disagree on a number of points. I understand that it's a difficult subject, but to just point out one example:

"The third important point is that not all speech is equal. Some speech has direct, negative consequences. Few would argue that a person who yells “Fire!” in a crowded theatre, and causes a stampede that results in 5 deaths and 25 injuries, should not be prosecuted. As an even more immediate example, the words “Shoot him”, spoken to someone who holds a gun to your head, are obviously not good speech."

Free speech, as I have understood it, is about communicating ideas. These are not ideas - these are a different creature altogether. Both are communicated via words, but they are not the same.

The issue with facebook is that people are voicing ideas - the holocaust never happened (I assume from the referenced article, I haven't cared enough about this stuff to go to the source material), etc. That should not be curtailed. That should not be limited. (Apparently) Hateful, and (to me) simply stupid ideas should be discussed and discarded. In this case it's a simple argument to make - denying the holocaust makes little to no sense whatsoever given the evidence.

When someone says, "Kill the jews", then absolutely yes, an issue outside of free speech has been raised. They are no longer communicating ideas, they are advocating dangerous activities.

The line for some (especially those with more emotional involvement) may be thin between the two, but it's still crucial to differentiate between them. For one, the cure is relentlessly open and frank discussion, and for the other a more mundane policing.
These posts come up every few months, more often than not written by people that did not go to college.

"Students today leave school with so much debt"
I finished school debt-free. I saved up for school and applied for as many scholarships as I could. Many employers will even give you signing bonuses to help pay off student loans.

"What it teaches is out of date by the time students graduate"
College is not a tech school. Going to college is more about learning how to learn and meeting people. If you really want to go places in your field of study you spend lots of time out of class exploring new ideas, and if this is the case you will likely be ahead of the curve through most of your life.

"People learn by doing, not by sitting in a class and being lectured to."
Yeah. Most science and engineering classes are heavily lab and project based.

"Four years of information is too much to retain"
Perhaps for some. However those same people can easily review and be back up to speed.

"The truth is that college is one big party"
College is what you make of it.
Actually I do mean literally. Seriously, go immerse yourself in the culture that surrounds homelessness and actually try to be homeless for a day, or better, a week. Then write about what you learned.

What you'll find is that there is no "data." Yes some homeless people are criminals. Some have mental diseases. Some just couldn't pay their bills.

You can't quantify the problem because these people have no homes,jobs,medical records, or social security numbers. They have nothing. So again, it's not about having a "bias." It's about how you deal with the situation locally and you have to evaluate every homeless situation case by case.
Unlike the cheap phone you were offered, the Kindle e-ink display uses a newer form of e-ink that allows for more than 2 colors, with a resolution several hundred times the resolution of the phone's e-ink display, significantly faster refreshing, AND which can update portions of the screen instead of the entire screen every time (which was not available on any e-ink product until the iRex illiad which came out in 2007). It's sort of like the difference between the mouse and the elephant.

The processor is not the expensive part, nor is the ram. The fucking display is the expensive part.
I completely agree with your sentiment, but I think the issue is different - what class of speech is protected? Speech, once protected, cannot be censored nor punished after the fact. Unprotected speech can be both censored and punished.