skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Let me help you out then.

Aside from the administration's health care nationalization goal, that you have already illogically and fanboyishly endorsed without even knowing exactly what it is, there are a myriad of other debt producing (tax requiring) instruments that the administration has or is in the process of implementing, thus making the U.S. more "inline" with the norms of western Europe. Now, if you hate America and idolize western Europe, as is the trend among many people today, then you think this is a good thing. The author, however, is of a different opinion.

But hey, one issue voters like you (healthcare seems to be your issue, doesn't it?) are the norm, not the exception, so we're all in good hands.
The Pirate Bay May Be Launched As a Pay Service
Idea HN: Tag Reduction / Unification
Since many folks here are doing web startups that involve tagging (be or blog posts, photos, etc), this might be relavant. The use for tags is to cluster groups of photos together. But across users, tags are Inconsistent, somewhat defeating this purpose.

Lets take Flickrs tag example (most popular tags)

photowalk2009, sp4449, pitchforkmusicfestival, worldwidephotowalk, skphoto, scottkelbyphotowalk, scottkelbysworldwidephotowalk, scottkelby, vihar, day199, scottkelbyworldwidephotowalk, scottkelbyssecondannualworldwidephotowalk, kelby, scottkelbyphotowalk2009, odori, photowalk, therebeastormabrewin, worldwide, riat, mefi10

Notice that the "photowalk" appears so many different ways, where it should have been just one tag "ScottKelbyPhotowalk". This is just a example, but there are lot of instances where this happens with other tags.

Unifying the inconstant tags can be done in several ways. Automatically using world similarity, or allowing users to suggest tags that mean the same (then a moderator can go select the ones that validate them). Another way is picking a random tag and all objects tagged with it, and then examining the most common tags within that set (most likely the top N tags common to all of them will mean the same).

Just an idea to make your next app a bit more usable.
Just hoping to convey a concept. I already write code by hand, just not programming languages. :-)

Thank you!
Yet another post that proves that TC is as respectable a news source as CNN and other American news organizations that do not ask the hard questions and do not criticize bullshit.

TC is an entertainment tabloid and it's messed up because you can also see that they want to be respectable and report useful information. They have a pretty good company database, they've collected some info into an quarterly analysis package, etc. but they still perpetuate the Web 2.0 celebrity gossip.
agreed 100%. this sort of crap is why evolutionary psychology has the bad rap it does.
"hardwired"... hmmm??
Nothing new under the sun, it doesn't tell anything new that can't be based on the fact that we are social products and learn our roles (which were specialized during our history). So it doesn't at all explain why, but tries to see in the brain "how" does it happen.
No offense, but how amazing can your idea be if it allows you to procrastinate on web frameworks?
I think that, depending on price vs. revenue potential, that it can totally be worth it - otherwise people wouldn't still be paying premiums for .com domains. Your questions are so generic - "how much of your limited budget do you think you should spend on the name?" I don' know - am I funded? What's my projected revenue if I don't get the domain vs. getting the domain? What will I do if I don't get the domain?
you got a point; I think a good mix of industrial/agriculture/service industry is a stable base for any economy.
Without learning a bit more about the nature of your project, I don't think it's possible to give you meaningful advice. Dish!
It reminded me of this comic, I just had to go and find it:

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/beyond_the_beyond/2009/07/...
Pretty neat that they could fit all of that into such a small package. Even as compilers advance more and more, I wonder if they'll ever end up hitting a "wall" in the sense that they could be extremely efficient and run up against Kolmogorov complexity:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity

If you've never heard of it, it basically has to do with the 'information' inherent in some data; you could generate a plot for a function like y = x^2 + 5, but the bitmap would require much more data than the equivalent ASCII that stores the actual equation (and so is less efficient).

I haven't checked out the demo code, but I imagine that they could be doing some self-modifying code or using part of their image as an executable to save space. I just don't think compilers will ever be able to get up to that kind of efficiency, unless someone finds a new and unique way of writing them (genetic algorithms, perhaps?).
If you've borrowed money from family and friends to hire some developers in order to get something working as quickly as possible you should use whatever tools are going to help you make that happen. You probably don't want to be tinkering around with a new language and framework on top of having to work with developers you're unfamiliar with when you're dealing with a project of this importance. Use what you know. If you have reservations about Ruby and Rails start thinking about one of the other languages you've used to get important work done. You can always explore other options once you're making some money and have paid back your initial investors.

Personally, I'd be a little miffed if someone accepted my investment for a specific project and then was using that project as a testbed for some fad web framework for no good reason. These people have placed their trust and money with you. You have a responsibility to deliver now.
Disregarding the human "holes", I think the biggest hole here is Hotmail allowing expired accounts' usernames to be registered again. That should be a no-no considering the importance of the use of email as an identity. They can purge the account as it expires, but they should not let others use the username again.

Most others are just "best practices" that try to keep balance between security and usability. Except for the practice of emailing a password in clear text which compromises a lot of security for little usability gain.
Software engineering is dead, long live engineering of software
Dupe: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=707466
You're thinking of putting aside 3 years of experience in Rails and Ruby in order to learn a new language + framework. On a project that you're taking friends and family funding for.

While it's easy to pick up a language or framework, you only pick up best practices by constant usage and community involvement. How are you going to assess the Python and Django competency of your hires if you're that new to a language? How will you make competent estimates for a technology unfamiliar to you?

Both frameworks have been successfully used to rapidly prototype web apps. When you say "make the right technology decision", that is always defined by context. And in your context you have 3 years of experience in one, and 0 in the other. Unless the new technology is demonstrably far superior to the incumbent one, you'll probably be better served by going with what you know.

Note that my answer would be the same if Rails and Django were reversed in your post.
"And the scene they probably wanted to create was "attractive+nerdy girl runs a fansite about our our awesomely cool developers and our cool corporate culture"."

Are you sure? You're assigning motivation here. What if she wasn't attractive? What if she was a guy? What if she was Robert Scoble (who got paid to interview folks at Microsoft, too)? What scene did they want to create with Robert Scoble?

The motivation to me is pretty clear: People think MS is Bill Gates or (much worse) Steve Ballmer. Let's interview all sorts of folks here so people can see that we've got a pretty cool family.

It's not subtle, but you can't pretend it is to prop up the complicated motivations you've created. First sentence, upper right: "Hey. My name is Ariel and I'm the person you thought would never work at MSFT." The about page talks about microsoft. The primary nav has an Apply link, for god's sake. Lots of companies create company-culture/jobs/recruiting sites that are branded in a different/fun way (note: my first startup was recruiting software, so I know the industry).
you have 2 options:

a) web2.0 the domain name(flickr, kayak)

b) make up a new word

b) use 2 words, i.e domainpigeon
Exactly. I think Jeff is forgetting, or ignoring, that there are different realms of software development. I think too often he generalizes the 'web app' experience to cover the whole industry. I know that in my work as an embedded developer that the fast iteration and feedback loop doesn't work too well with physical products with no easy upgrade system.

That being said, I do think he has a good point with desktop and webapps where you can quickly get and act on feedback from the customers.
I bought a domain name for a non-profit and the only version available was the .us version of their name. They were happy to get it for the $8 or so that they paid. I've found that a lot of the domain names I think up aren't already taken, though initially some of the ones I thought up were. Karen Ellis, who does Planet Karen, bought PlanetKaren.co.UK instead of paying hundreds of dollars for the .com. She just didn't have the money. People who are interested in her comic seem to have no problem finding her website without the .com. I know of another website using .net that started out piggy-backed onto another site and I think the URL changed a few times over the years before settling on .net. My observation has been that if you are doing something worthwhile and people really need or want the information, a non-premium domain name can work just fine. Content is king in that regard.
Face-off: The civil war inside Facebook
You can't go wrong with any of them. I think Django has a slight edge by having a slower release cycle. I find it a desirable quality in a development framework.

While the number of man-months spent developing Rails is an order of magnitude greater than that spent developing Django, is it really that much better for the bottom line?

Most of the early efforts spent on Rails were to make the infrastructure and community more mature. Even the brilliant DHH was a PHP developer before he started Rails.

On the other hand, Django benefited a lot from Python's maturity.
Well, I'm interested to hear what others think is the correct percentage amount of your funding to spend on domain names or branding.

Take YC for example. If you have two founders, you get $17k now. What is the maximum (prudent) percentage of that money that should be spent on the domain name and branding? $1k? $5k? Would it be better to get a longer (and perhaps less marketable) domain name that is cheaper/available, or to spend some serious money on it knowing that it may or not pay off in the end?

How often do people buy a longer domain name (say, hackernewsconsulting.com) and later purchase a shorter version (say, hackernews.com)? If you've already got a successful business going on the longer one, will the owner of the shorter one raise their prices knowing that you can afford it now?
Women go to the washroom together for the same reason that smokers go outside together. It's an excuse to talk in a smaller, private group.
I have to disagree about the quality of the composition of the article. While the topic is interesting and even a bit redeeming for TC, the writing falls short of good journalism.

I'm not sure mobile networks will ever go the way of the web startup. I think they had been there before, in their early days.
If anything, we ought to hope the web startup doesn't go the way of mobile service providers...
I wonder if twitter usage is mainly female. It seems like it should be.
Twittergate Is Lame
This is what's wrong with Yahoo
1. Announce exciting new cloud storage product.http://developer.yahoo.net/blog/archives/2009/07/mobstor.html
2. Link to it in a corporate blog post.
3. Page 404 Not Found...!!!!???

4. Fail
Fred's response example of Google Maps really bothered me. I hate when Internet companies say "but if we wanted to make money we could advertise" Google Maps is not a recent product. Why aren't they advertising if its so easy for them to do? Wouldn't it be illogical for them to pass up revenue? the answer is that Google worries sticking ads throughout Google Maps may diminish the user experience -- which is why they can't decide to monetize on a whim.

I would expect VCs hear pitches all the time where entrepreneurs say that they haven't tried monetizing but easily can. And I imagine most of the time those pitches go in the garbage. So its interesting that Fred uses Google Maps as an example of how Internet companies can make money.
Steve Blank: Business Model for Startups
I think a good (and easy) method would be to see if any of the tags they are trying to input can be matched at the beginning or end of any of the others, and then disallow the longer version (or suggest an alternative).

Using your example above, photowalk matches the beginning of "photowalk2009" and the end of "worldwidephotowalk", "scottkelbyphotowalk", "scottkelbysworldwidephotowalk", "scottkelbyworldwidephotowalk", and "scottkelbyssecondannualworldwidephotowalk". So none of those would be allowed (only the original "photowalk"), but "scottkelbyphotowalk2009" would be allowed, since "photowalk" doesn't match the beginning or end of the string.

Or, you could simply do what Stack Overflow does, and limit the number of tags you can enter (they have a limit of 5 per question). I think that would keep people from spamming it so much since they'll have to enter relevant tags, and not just a bunch of variations.
To add to the StackOverflow is doing is right, is the Tag Suggestions. (forcing early users to use already existing tags)
Underground lair buried deep in the center of the Earth. They have to enter a code in one of the stalls to be transported down. I don't have any concrete proof of this.
That might often be true. But I've worked for A-level software firms in the Bay Area and B-level corporate shops all over. The level of programming talent is unquestionably better in the A companies. And there's lots less friction when trying to get things done.
Domain names are a little like desirable woman, they are all unavailable. But visit a foreign country, and you will find them in abundance
Look it is just a web app framework. If you know Rails well, you should be able to pick up Django fast (and vice versa). Sure you'll get a few surprises in some edge cases, but hey, in the end it is just a framework that mediates between http requests to databases and generates web pages. How difficult would it be to grok either once you know the other?

fwiw, I've built apps with both, I prefer Django, But I wouldn't agonize about switching to Rails for a project or two if required. And no matter how much advice you get only you can decide which one suits you better and you can decide that only afer using both in serious projects.

Just start writing code.
Christian Videos Network - Apoyate en mi - Isabelle Valdez
You'd be crazy not to use Rails. If your idea is really all that you say it is, chances are good that someone else has thought of it too. Maybe they are building it right now, maybe not. First-to-market is practically a sine qua non these days, and you're talking about spending the next three months getting up to speed on a foreign technology? If I were you I'd start banging that puppy out in Rails starting like, yesterday.
Jobs is a huge dork. You just haven't actually looked at the guy. Black turtlenecks, jeans, and white sneakers? Really?
Source ? AFAIK, google will penalize you only if the target site is filled with ads. If the target page has useful relevant content then google doesn't care. This is an accepted practice and high profile people have indulged in it (shoemoney for example) without getting penalized.
> While the number of man-months spent developing Rails is an order of magnitude greater than that spent developing Django

Wildly off base figure

1. Years under development. ROR: 5/Django 5

2. Members in largest google group: ROR 18000+/Django 14000+

3. Members in Irc currently: Ror 436/Django 401

4. Commits to repo: Ror ?/Django 11000+

So while Ror has a bigger community, it is not that much bigger.
Librelist.com, Lamson 1.0pre1 Soon
"Here's a company we heard about, trying to do something that sounds ridiculous. They won't tell us how they're going to do it, nor will they name any of their clients. They have funding, though, and since no funded startup ever failed, we (TC) will breathlessly report on their existence."

Here's a litmus test for TC to use: if a) a startup makes a wild claim and the only corroboration you can find is from their funders or b) your article requires the use of the phrase, "so we'll just have to take their word for it," rest assured you can skip this story.
The PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliance folks should be interested to know that as well, assuming it is true.
How to invoice for design work - a quick guide
What's wrong with that? So he looks/dresses like one of those people who thought there was a spaceship hiding in the tail of a comet. If a certain type of clothes makes you feel comfortable, then wear them.
Someone here probably knows this: How much latency would you cut if your average page request to msn.com, yahoo.com, etc resulted in a single instantly-full-speed download of an archive of all the content the browser requires to show the page?

Actually, hitting msn.com and yahoo.com now, it looks like each takes <2 seconds on this computer on a normal-ish broadband connection without any cache. NYTimes and Bing took about 5, but they had all the useful stuff up in <2.

I suppose it'd be desirable for all of those to be <0.1 seconds, but that'd be darned hard considering normal ping latencies. Between 2 seconds and 0.1 seconds, I'm not sure how much I care.. I still see the delay, but it don't think it makes much difference to me in normal surfing.
1. see the first case study i linked to. AskTheBuilder was generating 1500$ a day.

2. At that traffic level, you will become a google adsense premium publisher and google will help in optimizing your ads to generate maximum revenue

3. It just doesn't make sense that google can't fill an inventory. Unless you have a highly limited site with very less keywords to target, there will be plenty of inventory. At that traffic level, you can privately place ads if you are not happy with google. Do you think google would let go of a high traffic site? No! and this is precisely why they have a adsense premium publisher program
No offence, but why is evaluating technologies which you are going to be stuck with for a very long time a bad thing?
This story illustrates something that I enforce with users that I deal with. I don't allow them to choose their own passwords. This is especially important when they have access to a shared resource like Google Docs, a company wiki, subversion repository, etc. where a compromised account could expose sensitive company documents. It is also a good argument not to use those kinds of services and keep them 'in house' where you have better control and auditing of access to them.

If you are running a company 'in the cloud' you need to make sure you or your system administrators have control over the user's account and passwords. They can't be trusted to choose decent passwords.
Here is a bash trick to easily detach any process from the shell it was started under.

In this example I do it with xterm .

$ xterm &
$ jobs
[1]+ stopped xterm &
$ disown
$ jobs
$

You can close your current shell and xterm will still be running.

`disown` removes all of the shell's current jobs from the table of active jobs.
What about performance and scalability? Doesn't python (with psyco and soon, unladen swallow) win big here? When you choose a platform, it's important to choose one that won't limit you when you start having users on a large scale...
There's no real motivation for compilers in such a niche area. Most programming these days is about gluing lots of code together, which requires a higher level of common idioms than has historically been commonplace.

For example, people using Python, Ruby and Javascript rely on those languages' built-in dictionaries, arrays, array comprehensions, closure support, etc., just as part of the interface between modules. Similarly, Java depends on the standard collections and their corresponding interfaces; much .NET these days depends on extensive reflection and dynamic runtime code generation (directly or indirectly using Reflection.Emit, perhaps through LINQ).

A certain amount of this infrastructure needs to be present and, more importantly, taken for granted, for high-level libraries to be built and used freely without worrying about conflicting idioms. Contrast that with the historical situation in C, where the lingua franca is more often than not text files and perhaps a struct of callbacks. Every module has its own ideas about containers, and ideas like LINQ don't get much of a look in because it requires too much infrastructure.

So, if one is building a graphical program for .NET, one is probably going to be using the Bitmap class at some point, or a specialized version (texture etc.) for DirectX. Compilers will try and focus on the runtime execution profile of the agglomeration of different modules, and make the hot path run as fast as possible, possibly inlining and optimizing across module boundaries. The hot path might add up to less than 4KB of code (though that's smaller than the CPU cache, so probably wouldn't be worth the effort in this specific case). But the starting-out executable probably isn't 4KB in size, and the high-level libraries its linking against will certainly take it well beyond 4KB. Those high-level libraries have nice rich info for debugging, intellisense support and object-oriented development.

So, compilers do focus on efficiency, and can focus that efficiency in ways that humans would find difficult and tedious, through cross-module interprocedural optimization. Separation of concerns is not just good engineering practice; it's also a matter of economics and specialization of labour. A human trying to optimize the critical path needs to know a lot about all the layers in the stack, while a compiler works best when it does the work of optimizing those layers so long as the individual layers are reasonably well-design and efficient to begin with.

Another point: none of the demo code runs on my machine, they all either give a blank screen or crash on startup. Perhaps I have the wrong aspect ratio, perhaps I have too many monitors, perhaps I have a piece of hardware (geforce 8800gtx) they haven't tested fully. It's pretty trivial for code to be the smallest and fastest in the world if it doesn't need to work reliably.
It's easy to make fun of postmodern philosophy, but no philosopher made-up postmodernism, they are just commenting or labeling phenomena already inherent in our culture, some of which is even more complex than their method of expressing it. Their comment might be somewhat cryptic, sometimes even creative, as they are always trying to cover their asses from, what they believe is, our loose and unstable language(s), but the overall message of diversity, multiplicity, the questioning of social constructions (sometimes), etc. have been essential tools in our society and cultural/social relations in postmodern culture.

I understand some of the downfalls of postmodernism and I won't defend it, but I'm not going back to rationalism, which influenced the Nazis, or Platonic or Christian Essentialism, which has marked humanity in negative ways for too many centuries, etc.
Agree totally... it's important to ask these sorts of questions early...