skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Thanks guys. I'm sorry I didn't define cheap. I didn't realize how relative 'cheap' is. I think ~$10/mo is cheap, this site won't directly make any money. Slicehost and Linode look great, though I don't know my stuff.
edited

Retracted - I'm just too disgusted reading this thread, today.
You can tell he's read Taleb's work with a chip on his shoulder (as many have).

Did it occur to you that Taleb's frequently inflammatory tone might have something to do with this?
This is wonderful. It looks out of my league though. I'm looking to learn by doing here, but that approach might be a bit much. (I have a soft spot for small businesses.)
I'm not sure "deserve" is the right word, considering the amount of thought that goes into most of them.
Simon Peyton-Jones manages to write papers that are genuinely readable. He has some good advice on the subject:

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/papers...
:) You're probably right, but I'm selfish and if I'm going to do this I want to learn something.
Square Circle Spiral
>Yes. You only say it's crazy because it doesn't work.

How could I be saying that it's crazy because it doesn't work when I'm considering a hypothetical scenario in which it does work? That doesn't make any sense.

It's crazy because we can't construct even the hint of an explanation for why it should be an effective method. Of course, you might in turn imagine a scenario in which we succeed in constructing some kind of explanation -- in which case the method might be rational in addition to being effective -- but there is no guarantee that any such explanation could be constructed, and I am considering the scenario in which it can't.

In any case, in suggesting that scientists should not even be rational (or alternatively, in defining rationality purely in terms of outcomes), you are departing from the mainstream to such an extent that the burden of explanation is clearly on you here. You are certainly not stating a "basic fact" about the nature of science. I'm all for methodological liberalism, but you can't assess a method purely based on its outcomes.
Where can I report companies that require Netscape?
Consider this -- if the author wrote a litany of reasons why he thought that chess was a poor way to measure one's skill at board games, and why chess doesn't train you to think creatively as well as writing novels does, and why your chess rating isn't a good metric for predicting how good you are at checkers, how would that differ from the article he's got?

I don't think that programming competitions are supposed to be "worthwhile," nor that they are intended to measure how well you can go on and make big systems in code. They exist because it's a lot of fun to compete in them, if you're of a certain inclination. Isn't that good enough?

The author states without elaboration that "Programming is not a sport like tennis or basketball, where one player/team "wins" and another player/team "loses." Well, why not? It can be if you want it to.
"For example, the actions of the defense aren't modeled at all."

That's where I stop reading...luckily it was near the end.
There was nothing new in this video, really.

Buchheit seems to be pretty good at talking without saying anything.
Fractals.  Awesome.
Self is fun but the X-Windows powered GUI is dated and hard to use. I'd love a modern version.
the mix of the time, space, and 'possibility' dimentions is completely arbitrary and is not explained at all. There might as well just be 10 spacial dimensions, which this video doesn't help to visualize at all.
Few Gender Differences for MBA Grads in a Recession
We're working on it. Want to help?

(Oh, and on MacOS X the GUI is Quartz not X btw)
I'm still waiting on the Monads chapter in LYAH :)

Yeah, LYSE is a great idea... now we need an OCaml version as well.
If you sell an individual on a perceived value that's higher than what you know they'll actually receive, that's dishonest, no matter how you try and dress it up.

How you couch that reality doesn't change what it is, and that's why I won't do business with that kind of person.
Businesses Seek Relief From Rain
The idea that everyone needs to scale horizontally has become very much less true than it was. Only Very Large sites have to go very horizontal at all these days.

Given 8 x 3Ghz core / 32GB / 5TB machines for cheap you're packing as much power as 15+ servers of a few years ago. Even quite large web sites can be run off a few beefy (but cheap!) servers. This means money saved on network infrastructure, power, space, management, etc.

Probably 80% of the Alexa top 1000 could each be run off less than 20 modern beefy machines.
I took part in several competitions and while I didn't do as well as I would have liked, I did think they were useful in that they were definitely fun, I got to meet some interesting and likeminded people, some of whom I'm still in contact with, many years later, it was challenging and provided motivation to learn more programming techniques, improve my skills and it helped me learn new ways of solving problems. Sure, the problems weren't something you'd often encounter in the real world, but the experience and education was worth it.
Arguing that Taleb is contradicting himself in relying on small number statistics or "anecdotes" doesn't make sense. You only need a sample of one to falsify a theory.
If you (or anyone else here) wants to get more plugged into the tech community here, email me. mail at awarner.com
The best link for this paper is the version in the list of published papers (http://selflanguage.org/documentation/published/index.html) in the documentation section of the Self website (http://selflanguage.org) (where, incidentally, you can download a version of your own for Linux or Mac)
Secondly, it would be naive to think that NASA does not have an obligation to provide benefit to their stakeholders by providing jobs.

Well, that's exactly the problem. The goal of any organization should be its mission. "Organize the world's information", "Dominate the operating system industry", or "Explore Space", etc. The problem with government organizations is that the employers can vote as a block. Thus over time the mission warps from "Exploring space" to "Provide jobs to NASA engineers"
You know, this is exactly the perspective I was hoping for. This will likely be my choice.

A little surprised everyone is positive. I guess I was wrong thinking it was possible to make a mistake here.
I wonder what the monetization strategy is. Can anyone share anything?
The benefits of VC funding do you little good if you get clipped in the process, which is precisely what is likely to happen to you in today's lousy funding environment unless your company is truly exceptional - poor valuations, oppressive terms and conditions, lopsided liquidation preferences, etc. are unattractive by any measure.

The author pitches the VCs' expertise, and this is a valid point. If you are going to be potentially acquired, it helps immeasurably to have a talented team at your side (as well as sufficient financial backing) to enable you to negotiate for the best price.

But that doesn't mean you take your bootstrap startup and run to the VCs when you are at your earliest stages and hence at your weakest. They may fund you but that is when you get the worst terms.

The best path I have seen after many years of working with bootstrap startups is one where the startup defers VC funding until it builds sufficient value in the company to warrant a solid valuation. At that stage, the startup can approach the VCs from a position of strength, get a good valuation, and get good terms. That brings the needed VC expertise into the company but only when it most benefits the founders and other early-stage participants.

Some startups, of course, have capital-intensive needs right up front but these are not bootstrap startups and they will live or die by VC funding in the early stages.

For the bootstrap, bide your time, plan wisely, limit your expenses, stay lean, and build value. Then you will have the choice whether you do or don't want to bring in the VC cash and expertise, depending on how it fits into your strategic plans.

VCs can and do add tremendous value to the right situations but don't go chasing after an ill-timed funding just to get VCs into your company.
You can accomplish alot of these things by finding a good set of advisers and giving them a much smaller percentage of your company.
"Imagining the Tenth Dimension"
H-1B Visa Sponsors: Surprise You're Being Audited
Obama's 10 Leadership Mistakes (And How Not To Make Them)
Where did I suggest doing that? And where does Problogger do that?

I'm suggesting that just because you think your creation is worth 19.99, doesn't mean it is. Often it means it is less, but just as often you'll find that the market thinks it's worth much more.

If you don't price it right, it could be detrimental to your business.

For whatever reason you seem to be fixated on this Amway/Herbalife deal. All I'm saying is that both those companies are obviously showing value to somebody, because otherwise they wouldn't be around. How they manage to do that is worth studying.

Suggesting that everyone that doesn't see things your way - including myself, and pretty much 80% of major corporations - is unethical is rather immature, to be frank.
Radiohead free track
The Stress Spiral
Smartphone wars - BlackBerry's plan to win
I'm in Canada and, a few months ago, on a whim, we went on a road trip to Pittsburgh. Great town! Clean, friendly people, great food.. From what I saw of the general culture of the place, It would make a great startup location.
Annoying is putting it mildly. Downright useless is the way I'd describe it. Virtually every single post is a 'paid review' where, in return for $500, John will shill anything you want him to. Literally. There is no screening process whatsoever. You pay him to talk about flaming dogpoop and as long as your money gets deposited, he will talk about it.

He has basically made it clear that his only goal is to drive readers to subscribe to his newsletter (so that if they stop coming to his blog, he can still chase after them in their inboxes) and through the newsletter, get them to sign up for some of the most useless crap under the sun and collect commissions.

Darren Rowse aka Problogger on the other hand, seems to genuinely want to offer info that can help ppl generate money online. What sets him apart from the rest of the 'me-too' probloggers is his standards. He rarely has any aff links in his posts and when he does, it's usually for something that he's personally used and wants to recommend.
Well, I wouldn't hire him. Look, no one questions this is a hard moment in time to Graduate. It's just bad luck for those who are entering the job market. But guess what, Life isn't fair. Sometimes your handed lemons. Not understanding that is what makes this guy just as entitled as the articles claim he is.

My advice to him would be get what ever job he can for now, continue to perfect his skills and learn to be grateful for what he does have. If he does that I can almost guarantee he'll find a good job. I can't say exactly when (I can't predict the economy) but it will be before 99% of his fellow 20 somethings
How to Transfer Knowledge in an Agile Project
Some previous discussion on cracking the TI:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=767419
It's not out yet, though I'm planning to release it by mid december.
Where did I suggest doing that? And where does Problogger do that?

Problogger/TwiTips are entirely predicated on selling you on the idea that you too can make money on your blog -- for evidence, just look at Problogger, which makes money selling you on making money on your blog.

At least the recursion is fantastic.

Suggesting that everyone that doesn't see things your way - including myself - is unethical is rather immature, to be frank.

Well, I doubt we'll agree. That's OK, but I don't think that there's anything immature about pointing out what I see as inherently dishonest behavior.
True, you really fucking don't.
Honestly this seems a bit weak, there's nothing here that really sells me on LA over any other location, Austin, Minneapolis, Portland all have a similar claim.
YC-Funded Flightcaster Tells You When Your Flight Is Delayed
These twenty-somethings want it to be one way, but it's the other way.
Track-record as in has actually launched products. You can look at that as not being much, or you can look at it as being more than someone who hasn't done any of that, which would include a good number of people reading this.
Once I was writing a simulator for a reversible CPU, and the best documentation available was the man's PhD and Master's dissertations. When I told my instructor about it, he said "geez, I hope nobody ever has to read my thesis" which I thought was sort of an odd concept.
Easier said than done; besides why deal with complicated proprietary licenses when an open one will do? You have to account for future upgrades too (they may not get you now but they'll nail you hard later) Plus it doesn't sound like the guy who wrote the post is shipping a product ( which is when many open licenses start giving some trouble).

I do agree if everything overall adds up in favor of the proprietary solution, then they should just use it; but in many cases I think the open product will have the long term edge especially in this economy
Holy awesome, I'd never seen the Quartz version. It works great! I love that my mouse works the way I expect it to :)

I may just start playing with it again. Thanks for responding.
Because you're attacking an HN regular for trying and failing, when he already admits he has a lot to learn (and failing teaches you a lot) and just wants to make something useful for people. It's not kind to attack people for failing and goes against the HN ethos, because the only real failures are those who were too timid to ever try.

I understand you were replying to someone else's comment, not any claim Jason made. You may wish to explore ways to be more diplomatic, or hold back the attacks if you can't find a better way to express yourself.
Esoteric Topics in Computer Programming
"Fastest-growing company in the world" by what metric? RIM is no. 43 on the profit 100 list of Canada's fastest growing companies.

At the no. 1 spot, Allegro Mobile has grown nearly 9000% in five years. (http://www.allegrowireless.com/)
I'd say just start with girls at first. Guys make it more complicated, and they don't have as much of a draw. I could be wrong here.

You'd have to have really in depth profiles of the girl of the week/day. Video intro, multiple pictures, in-depth Q&A, etc. If you're giving the restaurant for the date decent exposure, you may not really need to even pay for anything.

I think once you figure the traffic formula out, it's game over (in a good way). Creating attention and buzz for it will not be hard.
Cool .... do you have an API?
"(I'm not using the conventional variant, after all)"

Well, that's the thing, isn't it? It's always some variant. It's never "pure" MVC, where of course by "never" I don't mean literally "never" but close enough. So I get to asking myself what's the point of the MVC purists pushing the model when "nobody" actually uses it?

What really prompted this was the continual torrent of "Is X Actually MVC?" essays, which inevitably turn out to be "No, X is not MVC." You name it, it's not MVC. Just about the only other technology that has the same suite of essays is "Is X Truly REST?", which, again, is always a "no", because you can't actually stay absolutely pure.

If you're using MVC in a client-server app, I give 95% probability that you have done one of the following: Got at least one of the MVC split between server and client, not have the "pure" MVC separation that would satisfy an MVC dogmatist (V and C are really easy to mix, personally I'm somewhat less convinced they are cleanly separable even in theory in most cases, as unless your views are all virtually identical the control ends up reasonably tightly coupled to your view by sheer logical necessity), or horribly contorted the code to fit into MVC. Roughly in order of probability.

Also: Well-factored code that is poorly factored at the architectural level is an oxymoron. I mean well-factored at all levels. MVC ideas can help, but jamming an architecture into that template is no better than jamming it into any other pattern; that's always a mistake and MVC is no exception.
The article starts off well, but then veers off into Bizarro world.

The assertion that some countries are poor because their labor or natural resources are somehow being exploited is ridiculous. Countries like Sudan or Haiti are poor because of the bad choices and corruption committed by their governments, not because rich people in New York or London are doing dastardly deeds. The trade with Africa, say, is but a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the business we do with China or Canada.

Swartz's contention that protectionism will help these countries climb out of poverty is equally ludicrous. The example he cites of Britain becoming a wealthy nation because if protectionism isn't really true. Britain became wealthy because it was the first country to industrialize on a large scale, which made its workforce much more productive. There were efforts by the British government to prevent its methods of industrialization from spreading to other countries, with mixed results. The attempts to prevent the American colonies from manufacturing goods was one of the causes of the Revolution; this policy was also resented in India and other parts of the Empire. The Continent industrialized, in varying degrees, over the course of the 19th century, with Britain staying at the head of the pack by continuously innovating. (These innovations ended up making everyone, not just Britons, wealthier.)

If anything is going to alleviate the suffering of the poorest of the nations, it will be efforts to reduce official corruption and to eliminate tariffs.
first off no smart investor would invest in rosetta stones IPO or open tables for obvious reasons.
Just in time for Demo Day! Nice writeup.
I like how simple the site is but I almost closed the page out before finding the "next" arrow in the bottom right.
As a competitor (albeit one who's none too serious or good), it's remarkable how precisely you've reflected my attitude about programming contests.

Here's a written sample of my numerous (or just repetitive) rants from an old reddit discussion (http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/6xrpc):

I participate in the ICPC, my school's local programming contests, and, in a minimal way, this year's ICFP (I had midterms to study for and was fed up with their buggy sample server). They're very fun, and that's pretty much all you should expect. The contests are a lot more social than people give them credit for. Hanging out in the computer lab, kicking over chairs as you miss the deadline for a problem, getting friends to participate for the first time, the exhaustion of failure, the thrill of finally getting that message about passing all the tests, post-game pizza party, high-fiving each other for solving 0 problems each, going over solutions, reading each others' hilariously frustrated code ("Fine! Let's brute-force this fucker!"), exchanging tales of respective challenges on each puzzle, stories about cranking out solutions to a problem while sitting with your laptop in class, intermittent bantering about using conversation as a desperate distraction mechanism, breaking out the Binky (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3796146278554348828&...) for help with pointers, offering Emergency High Fives (tm) to the crowd of fellow ICPC competitors as they shuffle out of the building, golfing down the solutions for days after the end of the contest, last-minute submission races, weighing whether to use the scant prize money to get a Scrolling LED Belt Buckle (http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/7c60/) set to display a well-intentioned insult to the person who normally wins the contest, ... the list goes on.

The rankings are incidental, though most people don't seem to think so. At times it felt like our group was the only one at the ICPC that wasn't taking the contest so fucking seriously. Certainly good programmers can win contests, but winning contests doesn't make one a good programmer. The problems are short, artificial, and moreover a lot of fun! I don't quite understand the hyper-competitive students who make it their life to win the contest, as little as it counts for anything. I'm just happy to kill an afternoon messing around with puzzles and a group of friends; plus, free pizza.
Oh man, that rang true! (I just read the whole post). I did manage to finish mine a few years ago, largely running on fumes and requiring a re-write largely from scratch after the initial examination with a near-nervous-breakdown during each write-up... but other than that I think every point resonated.
The author was lied to, but not by me or my kind.

I actually vaguely remember hearing the same lies, but not from my parents, at least not without the "nobody owes you anything" caveat.

It didn't take me long to realize, intuitively, if not explicitly, that finishing college wouldn't help me get the job I wanted. Today, obviously, it might not even help me get any job.

Even absent an entrepreneurship opportunity, I dropped out, and I don't regret it, despite the stigma it carried in the computer industry, well into the dot-com boom.

I'm definitely embarrassed for my generation that we perpetuated the lies, rather than encouraging choices, including self-employment or learning a trade.
You need a 64-bit OS to get >2GB db's with Mongo, just fyi.
Unless it introduces reduced capability in say snow, depth perception or against bird predators.
No API yet--but stay tuned...it's coming! Thanks~ Jason (@FlightCaster)
I'm building a bug tracker with MongoDB at the moment. Nothing but good things to say. First incarnation I used CouchDB but found the whole 'must know your queries before-hand' stuff didn't really fit the project. MongoDB is blazing fast with custom (runtime) queries.
Every professor I have actually talked to about what constitute a thesis has professed the staple method: you take your best research papers and staple them together. This is an exaggeration, of course, because the document actually has to flow, but I have the definite impression that you can get a Ph.D. in computer security with multiple at least somewhat discrete projects.
I like the name a lot. I don't remember if I liked it at first. But now I clearly get the association with photo booth(and the reference to all of those 1 picture a day for 7 years youtube videos).
volume 1 of the best series out there...

http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Vol-One-Variable-Introduction...
Alex Jones On 'Losing The News,' And Why It Matters
I moved from Berkeley to LA several years back. I worked for a startup and was involved with the startup community in east bay. I have not involved myself actively with the LA startup community but I have to say, it does not come close.
Here's a sampler.
The Tie.org in silicon valley has this week
"The Art of Writing a Business Plan - Silicon Valley"

the LA chapter has:
"Franchising: The New Solution" Featuring Rajiv Trivedi, VP of La Quinta Corp"

Tech startups in LA are few and far in between. I visited some outfits out of UCLA campus and the attitude in general was "Me and my professor are world renowned in this field, I don't need to answer anything about our business model"