skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Actually that's an excellent point that I don't see mentioned enough. Profitability enough to offset opportunity cost - ie, how much you'd be making if you were working in a "real job" - is indeed very hard to reach.

Anyone can be "ramen profitable", defining that as say, under $1k a month. In fact, in actual good countries, you don't need to do anything at all to be able to eat. Australia will pay you $1k/month just to not be a criminal; in other countries it's higher. People can and do live off that their whole lives!

Your average HN reader/startup founder is generally highly capable, multi-skilled, and, probably, a very valuable employee. To start a business capable of matching or exceeding their likely "normal" salary is indeed a far harder proposition than just making enough to eat.
Can you give me an example of an ethical issue arising from this view? Quantifying something doesn't impose a system of beliefs on its own.
"As a result, economists and other analysts say, a 30-year period in which the super-rich became both wealthier and more numerous may now be ending."

I'm pretty sure it isn't. The increasing power of technology is probably the biggest force driving variation in wealth, and I don't see any signs that technological progress is slowing.
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And thanks for taking the time to answer the questions here !
>Australia will pay you $1k/month just to not be a criminal

FWIW, this isn't strictly true, at least not in the last 10 years. Provided you are not disabled or retired, Australia will only really pay you ~$1k/month while you demonstrably look for work, or while you are an undergraduate student doing your first degree.
NY Transportation Authority Cites Schedules as Copyrighted Material
Pay a salesman a base big enough to survive, and that's all he'll do. Survive.

You have to get someone who is prepared to sweat a little. Someone who is self-motivated and ready to really thrive, not survive and die.

I'm not sure how coming up first in Google for your name has any bearing on your ability to sell. If anything, it means you spend way too much time online and not enough time with people actually selling.
This is a great summary of the problems that I have with newspaper articles. I've had a problem with the way news was reported ever since I learned to do real research. usually, my argument revolves around two points:

- Lack of Context; this actually can be split into the first two points that this article makes: "The longstanding facts" and "How journalists know what they know".

- The Monopoly of the Associated Press. The argument against monopoly is hardly unique to the press, though.

When I read an article in the newspaper, there are many questions that come to my mind.

In the worst case scenario, I'm reading an AP article which omits the author's name. WTF? The author's credentials and background (including their history of previous articles) are very important in certain cases (and at the least gives me some idea of where they are coming from).

Any technical researcher who writes a paper must provide references to be taken seriously. Journalists should also have some obligation to cite background materials. If they take a quote out of context, they should tell me where I can find the full discussion. If there is some important historical background to the story, I'd like a reference to that information as well.
Props to Ivan for getting on here and giving frank responses to nearly all of the questions and comments.
The company hasn’t disclosed the exact amount of the funding, but says that it is just shy of $1 million.

that doesn't exactly say under $1 million, its written more like 800-900K
Was the shutdown at all related to the need to get licensed as a money transfer agent? I know that's a very expensive process (since you have to go state by state) and I know you guys were thinking about doing it. How did that end up playing out?
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=776978

thread with the discussion
More calories, more variety, more cheap GMO tomatoes in their store-bought sauces and ketchup (European aristocrats thought tomatoes were poisonous -- hah, hah, funny right? Funny like scurvy, a constant scourge of all social classes back then), cleaner drinking water (!), less food-borne pathogens, less periodic bouts of famine, less dependence on seasonal variation in available food sources, hot and cold food available on demand.
put them heavy on commission. Trust them... just enough. A good salesperson you'll never be really comfortable around. They are always scheming. And this, in most cases, is a good thing for you, if they are truly hungry.

Let them make more money than you.. only if they exceed your expectations. Always give a salesperson unlimited potential, after you are taken care of.

Just don't forget - the best salesperson will work you. You won't even know it. That's the predicament.
in the sense that they aren't malnourished, like a huge percentage of the population used to be, causing widespread disease.
A big commission is a big motivator, but doesn't make for a great salesman.

Finding a salesman YOU like may not be the way to go. But finding the salesman your customer relates to is VERY important.
Mediocrities I absolve you
sandbox name: becomingGuru
You could at least switch to browsing through an SSH proxy instead of VNC:

ssh -D 12345 user@example.com

Then set your browser to use localhost:12345 as a SOCKS proxy. Add -N to the parameters to tell it not to start a shell.
Lack of traction was much more important.
No wonder everyone in Chicago is a little on the large side ;)
Thanks for being so open and honest about the whole thing.

You said, if you were profitable, you wouldn't be shutting down. But if you think there should be a way to make social payments work then don't you think its just a matter of time when you would be profitable.

I mean minimum profitability also doesn't really justify what is called in other posts the 'opportunity cost', but if you are working on something big and still believe there is customer value then profitability will come eventually.

And if that belief is still there then maybe just buckle down for sometime in a paying gig and then go back again. It might take your mind of it for sometime which might actually give you some good insights on how to take it ahead.

I though, still understand that there could be other personal reasons for you to do this, in which case please feel free to not respond.

Thanks again for the post and best of luck for the future.
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"In some places, the quality of McDonalds is much higher"

Definitely. When I lived in Thailand I used to eat at McD's fairly regularly, just for that taste of something western. I was amazed at how good it tasted - fresh salad, high quality meat, just really well made like a burger from a good restaurant. Completely different from the effortless slop I'd get in Australia.
a public speech where? a programming language conference. No disrespect intended to anyone here, but making a presentation at the technical conference does not make one either a public figure.
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I finally had time to release the code of couch.it (http://couch.it) a minimal website creator. Code source is on bitbucket http://bitbucket.org/benoitc/couchit/ so take it, hack it and enjoy.
"Profitability enough to offset opportunity cost"

Interesting thought. One can make a (conceptual) ladder with "ramen profitable" being rung 1 and "opportunity profitable" being rung 2.
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"Once there I’d get my Chai tea, open up my laptop and set my alarm for one hour, I worked diligently for at least one hour each day, I could go longer but at a minimum I had to put in one hour of thesis work each day."

I like this rule. I think that having a whole day off doesn't make as much sense for knowledge workers as it did for factory or farm workers. I think working an eight hour day is extremely exhausting for a programmer, unless we're really enjoying what we're doing. On the other hand, problems tend to simmer in our heads on weekends and sometimes are forgotten by the time Monday rolls around. For me, a little work each day beats trying to work a full day five days a week.

Edit: Oh, and if I didn't have to commute 45 minutes each way, 8 hours might be easier. That's a whole other issue, though.
As a new father I have to chime in and say I'm very disappointed to see hackety hack and shoes go away. It was exciting to see his talk from Art & Code, and I was looking forward to using both of those tools to teach my children.

In response to the article and comments, there are a lot of people here who immediately dismiss the article because its written by Zed, and still others who deem _why's actions acceptable because he's an 'artist'. Assuming _why is ok and he just decided to log off, Zed is right in this case. _why has transcended being an artist by creating art that does not only have aesthetic beauty, but also has substantial value to the people who have used it and who have invested time into it. The fact that he has created solid documentation in addition to releasing his projects in a public distributed system geared towards sharing and reuse is proof that he was at least interested in having other people use his projects. Which means he has a social obligation to not actively screw over his user base so he can be dramatic. Just wait, I can see Eric Raymond writing a new chapter about the responsibilities associated with releasing code to the open source community. Maybe this is a sign we need an equivalent of archive.org for code so that nothing like this can happen again.
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Machine learning is really good at partially solving just about any problem
puts on ex-Ivy League admission officer robe

Boy, it's a good thing they've got someone with admissions experience on their team... http://quantios.com/index.php?page=company

Wait, wha? They don't?

How is this different from any other snake oil being sold to parents of middle class white kids (rightly) worried that junior's at a disadvantage?

"We use numbers!"

That's great, but at the end of the day, the admission offices don't. The decisions made at the elite schools are either obvious or highly random/subjective.
Ask HN: 3D in Flash 10
I want to know the limits of 3D flat-shaded capabilities of flash 10.

In particular, I've found demos like:
http://www.everydayflash.com/blog/index.php/2008/05/05/vertex-animation-papervision3d/
and
http://www.yswfblog.com/blog/2008/11/12/3d-with-flash-10-part-2/

but I'm wondering if there is something more impressive around (like a 3D wireframe of a real object) ... or if flash 10's 3D capabitilites are inherently limited to these trivial demos.

Furthermore, if you have a good recommendation for learning flash 10, I'd love to hear that too.

Thanks!
And in this one (sorry google cache), hosted on hobix.com, both "The Child who .." and the "Starving but Happy" are mentioned: http://74.125.77.132/search?q=cache:A9WqFnIuA04J:b2thefroth....
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One Sock | A modern parable for tough times
And here we are: Miss Trudy (who I definitively know being _why's wife, as I uncovered this some years ago, and _why asked me to not say anything), is definitively saying she belongs to "The Child Who was ..." :

http://www.e6townhall.com/archive/index.php/t-2187.html
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im deleting this. Thought the submission died midway through, grr. I also refused to submit it with "deadpool" in the title.
http://www.ccavenue.com/content/allcredit.jsp
It says in the description the wages were net wages. Toronto proper (forget the big box store suburbs) is a great place to find cheap food. You can find tastier, healthier food at a cheaper cost than fast food, which is why I find our fast food prices tend to be lower than a comparable American city. They're forced to compete for the low cost takeout food market. Why buy a Big Mac when you can get Vietnamese submarine sandwiches for a fraction of the price ($1.50), a chicken and beef swarma, a quarter of an extra large pizza (how big slices usually are), or countless other cheap ethnic take-out food? While I was living alone, it was cheaper for me to eat well (quality, taste, variety, health) by dining out than it was for me to shop for all the groceries and cook at home.

What's your opinion on the tax burden in a city like Toronto? When I was an employee I found it wasn't as bad as I was raised to believe it was, though I was only up into the second-highest tax bracket. As a naive comparison (as of 2008/2009), CDN$100K would result in $19891.48 in federal taxes. South of the border, US$100K would result in $21720 in federal taxes. At a provincial/state level, if we compare Ontario vs California, then that same $100K would result in $8458.61 in provincial taxes and $6693 (for a single person) in state taxes. Obviously this isn't a precise comparison because the U.S. has some deductions (notably regarding mortgages) that Canada does not. But the reverse is true too, and in any event, it's not like some order of magnitude difference that I thought would exist with all the complaining I used to hear on talk radio here :-)
Just out of curiosity: Are you dissolving the corporation (and YC involvement) or are you continuing with YC involvement for a future venture?
take a look on friendpaste this isn't just a pastebin too. For code running. Yes I missed the point. Maybe because I don't see how it could works on most code if you can't import your own modules. I would be happy to participate to such project. Is sourcecode of codepad around ?
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It's stated in the article that tables of facts/data are not copyright-able.

But additionally, aren't publications of the government by law automatically made a part of the public domain?
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If sounds like they would need new funds now though, not way off into the future where they could hit profitability. The interest in another round of funding would probably be low for a company that has chewed through a sizable chunk of funding and so far not produced the results they were hoping for.
Over all I agree, but I have a problem with the term "flunky" in that paragraph. Flunkies aren't subordinates, they're slaves; I'm not sure why any lead would want flunkies on their team. A sous-chef shouldn't be a flunky, and what Brooks called "the co-pilot" in TMMM shouldn't be a flunky either. People in these roles should be able to operate somewhat autonomously, and be trusted to do so, under the direction of the lead. These roles are often sought after. It's the difference between lieutenants and grunts. The former are expected to think on their feet, while the grunts are expected to blindly execute.
OK, it's a pastebin with embedding and revisions. How is that not "just a pastebin"?

Oh, nevermind, it's a #nosql site. I withdraw my argument.
Followers are currency on twitter for a lot of people - you don't have any real relationship with them, just having many of them increases your swagger. So, play a silly game using your followers as play money - if we play and I win, they end up following me instead of you. If you played carefully and diligently enough, I suppose you could end up having more followers than (someone famous), all of whom are following you with no real idea why.

It's silly, and it pretty much says to your followers that you consider them disposable minions, fit for nothing more than to be wagered away in games of chance, because you are such a badass. Inexplicably, many people find this exciting and admirable, at least as long as you keep winning.

As you can probably gues, I like it...in fact this strikes me as a good reason to spend more time on Twitter. I guess it appeals to the unfulfilled megalomaniac in me :)
I worked with Nick on that project.

And the pictures were more than just about framerate. It was a reminder that we were all a team and that we were all working very hard. It humanized the problem and really made everyone aware that we had to help each other out to ship the game.
There's a program called NEIS which would pay you that amount for a year while you try to start up a business. You had to submit a pretty serious application and attend a fair few weeks of some business course. They do have a few BS rules but you really just have to structure things the way they want. Did it about 13 years ago and helped me and a friend get a successful startup going. Come to think it of it it was a bit like a govt version of YC.
You were mistaken this time too, it's not there :) Mine is, and I'd like to know what you're trying to sell. Maybe I can help, maybe I'll just have a few lines of advice, maybe I can only wish you luck, but I won't waste your time.
I'd love to give YC advisory shares in a future startup. We're eventually dissolving the corporation, but need to handle cash out properly.
Oh please! realtime discussions, revsions & more. Maybe you should be more attentive rather than wanting to make your point. I already said, idea of executing code is interesting. but then something should be found to execute also custom modules. that's all what I said and I would be happy to play with this idea.
I use some different terms (as a business coach, with my team's frameworks etc) but the point is valid.

Getting "ramen profitable" helps give a business owner confidence, which we call "the first brick wall of business". The only way out of this in a positive, growth direction is to invest in the right things and get profitable - and that means genuinely profitable, not just paying yourself $12K/yr and ignoring the opportunity income.

Failure to do so will eventually mean you run out of energy, even if you don't run out of money. Tipjoy, alas, seems to have done the latter before the former.
I think you make a good point, though it seems to me that Congressional Democrats (and their voting base) are more enamored of handing the bill to the wealthy than the White House, which has a good few pragmatic people in it.

Sadly, factual statements on political matters often alienate both sides in the debate - without context, they may assume the worst about your motives.
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Which is why the story is here as an example of "dirty coding tricks", and not as an example of "brilliant forward planning for coders".
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This is not a solution. This is part of the problem.

College admissions and my senior year was hell. I worked hard so that I could impress the Ivies which rejected me. I don't have any regrets about my academics but many of my applications were not worth the stress.
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Technology equalises styles of living more than it equalises monetary income.

On a tangential note: All the money in the world can't buy you better Coca Cola.
Journalists, and particularly formal journalism training (eg, a Degree over a Cadetship) really plug Objectivity as being this skill that can be developed and an ideal that must be achieved.

As long as journalists are human beings, that theory is bullshit. Bias and censorship, usually unconscious, unintended, and not impacting on the story are natural parts of journalism.

Journalists should understand that (most don't). The public should understand that (and read everything skeptically as a result).
> Quantifying something doesn't impose a system of beliefs on its own.

I suppose that is true, but in practice, quantifications are often used by a system that does impose certain beliefs. When this happens (and even when it doesn't) those beliefs are seen to carry an air of objectivity simply because there are now numbers behind them.

It is extremely tempting to treat subjective views as objective truth when there are fancy algorithms and numbers behind them. This leads to a willingness to impose certain views on people who disagree, and that's where the ethical issues can arise.

In the case of this particular product, there are related but separate issues having to do with encouraging the college admissions circus. Even if the intention is to improve it, the product would at best have the effect of propagating the myth that the college admissions process is fundamentally sound and can be perfected. In reality, adding more mathematical algorithms to the process will just give it a pretense of objectivity -- again, potentially harmful to millions of people.
I completely disagree that _why was simply an on-line persona, "a farce". The Fake Steve Jobs was satirical, first of all. _why was often funny, but it wasn't satire. I think his work alone, often times personal, was a testament to his authenticity as an artist. You may have only known him as an on-line persona, but that doesn't mean that's all he was. There's at least one video on the interweb of _why giving a talk, in the flesh and blood, and he calls himself _why... Perhaps his friends all call him _why too.

I also think Zed saying he hopes Jonathan is ok is a bit of a platitude. I'm sure Zed DOES hope _why is fine, but it rings hollow in the context of the whole essay. Plus, who doesn't hope _why is ok. His biggest detractors aren't monsters wishing him ill.

I have to say that you confuse being an artist with being 'artsy', which is a mistake. I'm artsy, but I'm no artist. Not a single artist I know would describe themselves as simply artsy. Much of my opinion on what it is to be an artist, however, comes from the Henry Miller essay I referenced earlier. I suggest reading it. It's in a volume called "Matters of the Heart".

I believe an artist has the right to destroy his own work unless he's sold it or given it away. I'm not of the opinion that publishing work on-line is the same as giving it away, and I'm certainly not of the opinion that _why taking his stuff down is the same as breaking into a place to steal and destroy things. There's a very big difference between what _why did and your Caravaggio example. _why did nothing illegal, for instance.

In a way, _why reminds me of the French New Wave film-makers. They believed in the "film-maker as auteur" and wanted complete control over their work. From reading these forums, it sounds like most of _why's code was recovered, which is fortunate, and I'm not aware of anything missing that others collaborated on. I don't think he collaborated much with others if at all, but I don't really know. I do acknowledge that, even with works created solely by _why, there's a certain collaboration osmosis that occurs just by having it on the internet with so many users/readers/extenders/whathaveyous, but in my eyes that falls short of giving it away.

To me, _why considered his programs and their source code art equal to (more important than?) his drawings, music, poems, and stories. It was all his art. I'm extremely sad at the loss of so much of his amazing work.
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Or worse, sell your company to someone, but make much more on the deal than you do. [/machiavelli]
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You gave it your best shot. Best of luck on your next venture!