skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Here's why I disagree with you (I upvoted you because you make a valid point worth debating and weren't an asshole):

There's an instinct in us all to assume that because people are good/talented/interesting in some ways, they must be good/talented/interesting in every way. On Hacker News and in the YCombinator sphere, there is a blunt attitude that if you're at work and not starting something up, you're not being as productive as you could be/are wasting your life. This gets reinforced by everybody here, not because people are assholes about it (most of them are not), but because everybody here is so well-spoken - and most everybody here is wise and talented to boot - that it's easy to look at this crowd and say, "These people are people I like, and they do startups, and because I don't want to do startups there is something wrong with me."

Paul's essays reinforce this. Because he constantly writes from the assumption that yes, building a start-up is good, his essays have slowly taken on the attitude that the Paul Graham way is the right way, no shades of gray. The thing is, from his perspective I'm certain it is the right way. He doesn't bother writing essays for people who don't have his same mentality, and he shouldn't have to frame himself in that way. But the Hacker News mentality is so wholly wrapped around "PG"'s that very often it seems his essays define what's good people and what's bad people here. So if you're not a start-up person, there's something vaguely hostile in that set-up.

Sometimes, thinking about what advice you're giving should not be followed is the most productive thing you can do.

To the OP: My advice is to look for that knowledge somewhere outside of Hacker News. As bright as this community is, it's a very one-sided one and it's that way for a reason. If you want to round out your opinions, look for other communities that aren't so focused on the start-up mentality, and stay there until you build up confidence and realize that in the end, you get to decide what matters to you rather than other people.
We've changed directions and have been focusing on our print service.

We still think our frame is quite awesome, but it turns out that a lot of families still like getting physical prints in the mail and posting it up on their fridge and what not. We learned early on that there is a much bigger opportunity, huge market, and slower competitors in the prints business. Add on top of that a much lower investment requirement for a software business (even our printing and order fulfillment is done on the cloud), and it just made business sense for us to switch to an online printing service.
I'm sure someone in the know told me his real name a couple years back (he wrote the foreword to my book) and it certainly wasn't Jonathan Gillette. Of course, he might have changed him name again.. :)
Do you mind saying what happened when you called?
mean-spirited? he gave the internet a challenge and somebody took it up, that's all.

oh, and it doesn't have to be his real name, too.
HN has a culture of digging up old but still interesting stuff.
Jesus, Interrupted
I know Python quite well; I have done several significant projects in it over the last few years. I have also read every page of the Django book and the vast majority of the official documentation. I became quite familiar with the internals of it, as I have spent many hours studying the source code before setting off to completely customize things.

What did I say which indicates a lack of experience?

I didn't feel this way in the beginning. At first, I quite liked Django. It was a huge time saver. I don't even really dislike Django now, our project has simply out grown it.
I'm usually quite critical of trademark law as I generally think giving exclusive rights to a single company over common English words is wrong.

I do, however, think in this instance Twitter actually have a point - "Tweet" has long been associated with its service, the word itself is a variant of the name "Twitter", and all the early references I can find explicitly refer to Twitter itself.
one microbe can acquire genetic material from another microbe, even a microbe of a much different type, then incorporate it in its own genome and thus acquire resistance to an antibiotic it has not yet even encountered. It's as if bacteria are capable of downloading resistance from a gene database.

I think an analogy to BitTorrent is more precise. And scarier.
I wish. I find raw SQL much easier to use than any of the abstraction layers.
I'm guessing it'll head back to triple digits soon enough, unless some major disruptive technology lowers demand. Maybe if plug-in cars become mainstream before the economy really picks up again gasoline will go the way of whale oil.
If I could vote this comment up a thousand times I would.
I like it when people attempt to declare things they don't understand obsolete.
There are calculators for multiplication, once you know the basics you don't want to have to multiply arbitrarily large numbers by hand.
Microsoft’s Mobile Strategy: Irrelevance
You registered on HN just to post RIAA propaganda?
As great as it is to have a community that cares about an individual, _why was very happy to stay anonymous, and a few comments here purport that his sudden disappearance resulted from someone penetrating that anonymity. If that's the case, calling him (assuming that number is accurate) could be counterproductive.
i tried to build a torrent: http://tinyurl.com/ktrjs8 don't know if it actually works yet.
Bookmarked.. Will be useful in a current project I'm working on, but still months away to digging into that side of it.
Anybody knows if this one has any advantages over python-couchdb (http://code.google.com/p/couchdb-python/)?
The admin is bar far the biggest offender of tight coupling: primarily to authentication and the ORM. Being "contributed" isn't an excuse. Everything is "contributed". It's open source!

I haven't got time to actively participate in Django's development. Especially because I'm not particularly interested in the details discussed on the mailing list and I've already found components I'd prefer to work with (and, by extension, contribute to). I've got a product to build. I took some time to write down my thoughts and the key contributors are welcome to read my rant, ask questions, and learn from it.
That Jonathan Gillette was also going to school in Pennsylvania (http://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathangillette) when _why wrote that message, supposedly from Salt Lake City, Utah.
Did he literally put out a challenge or do you actually see a person's privacy as a game?
The elevator analogy doesn't really hold for me.

It's more along the lines of one person in the office bringing in bagels every week for a few years, then one Monday morning they aren't there.

The asshole isn't the one who stopped bringing in the bagels, it's the folks standing around the coffee machine empty handed, griping about not getting their weekly cinnamon crunch.

"I wish Mike would've told us he wasn't going to bring in bagels today. What a dick move." Nope, doesn't work.

But that's just the way I see what is happening here. I can understand the divide if you have a different perspective of what's going down.

I agree that failing to hold the elevator is inconsiderate, but I disagree that simply putting information on the web constitutes entry to a similar social contract.
By using a pseudonym, he implied he'd rather not be known by his given name. Telling the world his real then goes against his wishes. It is, at the very least, rude.

That someone outed him is inevitable. But that doesn't excuse the act.
Nice find - you're a more thorough detective/stalker than I. :)
What, the fact that he managed to make this about him?
I only rolled my own URL routing. The complete implementation is less than 70 lines of Python.

Why am I obliged to engage the community when things are painful? I took an easier route: I choose less painful components.
Note for posterity: I meant in the middle.
I don't quite understand the URL complaint. Each app can have its own urls file that you include in the main urls file. Isn't that a tree-like structure?

Also views can be served by callable classes, so an init function can populate the context (or a chain of them with class inheritance) and then the appropriate code can be run to serve the view.
Hahaha, if anything, writing a how-to guide for a GUI application looks to be far more annoying than one for a commandline app. With all the screenshots and all.
Yeah, much too much "art." I wonder what it would be like with better backend intelligence-gathering software, like Maltego http://www.paterva.com/web4/index.php/client# ?
China cuts US Treasury holdings in June
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Yes it can be extremely annoying and embarrassing having a scalp condition like dandruff, eczema, scalp infections or a nasty itchy red rash on your scalp. If you are suffering from: is your scalp flaky itchy or do you have dry scalp with…
Who Is Why The Lucky Stiff ?
Does anyone know if anything has ever come of this? I remember reading about this years ago, and it seems to be the exact same article now
Phil Sanderson: San Francisco is becoming the new Sand Hill Road
I wanted to try Potion, it might be too late now.
Ditto. Unless _why goes by multiple names in real life (which I suppose is possible), that's not him.
Live-Tweets from YC Demo Day #YCdemo
I think your point of social norms is an important one. You have the right to be rude, but people won't be happy with you if you exercise that right.
Yah, it does seem that way.

It's actually a list of companies that Sequoia Capitol has invested in. So it's sort of an in joke given the startup focus this site has.
wireshark does this as well, but this looks a bit more flexible.
Though now I've actually read it, it turns out that the real answer to the question of how to survive on $1 a day is "slowly starve". The guy ate a diet consisting almost entirely of rice and noodles, and wound up losing 18 lb (!) over the course of the month.
Bringing in bagels every day is active. Leaving existing software up is passive.
My most common screen name produced reasonable results, but my real name is way too common to produce anything meaningful (unless I wanted to prove to someone that I am the most interesting man in the world).
I'm trying to keep my work, personal, and startup lives seperate. My project is no secret, but one of my recent blog posts was trafficed by some co-workers. I don't need my manager wondering if/when I'll be quiting.

Our site: http://www.classlet.com

Announced here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=679000

There is a new version on the way with a huge host of new features and some significant cleanup. The version that is live now is more of a proof of concept.
there's nothing to dig up here. Its a well known text (though now its slightly dated)
MongoDB database files are memory mapped, it has something to do with that... Never looked into it closer, all my servers are running 64-bit distros.
They actually moved up the end date, it was originally supposed to stop on Friday.
Thanks for the reminder.
The coordination of the passing-on of the stick is done through an anonymous SMS gateway, meaning that the system does not require Internet availability and also that, with certain precautions, it can be a very private system that is quite difficult to monitor.

Huh?
Kind of inappropriate, don't you think? He obviously wasn't interested in having his name out there.
What problems did you exactly run into? I hear a lot of people say this, but never get good examples, which would hopefully make the framework better.
Wearing sunglasses during a talk.
"We wouldn't ever hire a designer who couldn't pass a code review for some trivial template logic."

I've worked with four design firms now, three of them excellent, and none of them could have been expected to understand templating code. If you're asking your designers to work with a template language, you're doing it wrong.

This has nothing to do with whether you put logic in your templates or not. The designer's deliverable isn't a working site; it's HTML/CSS/PNGs, and it's a dev's job to pull that into the framework.
Perhaps he's rebooting his online identity?

http://www.jonathanpaulgillette.com/
But the supposed outing happened over a month ago. I doubt he'd wait this long if that were the reason for his disappearance.

I don't know the guy, and am not involved in the Ruby community. Nonetheless, that someone would call to make sure he's OK speaks volumes to me of his presence on the Internet.
Look at the status bar!
Yes, and I participated in that discussion. But this page is a follow-up article from the author, and it would most likely get lost in the existing discussion. I figured the follow-up posed some points that deserved their own space for discussion, hence this submission.
Modify your definition of "dig up" until it allows for things that are well known but old. We do that here.
There's no way that real memory allocation is faster in C# than in C++. I don't know much about the CLR, but if it appears to allocate memory faster, it is probably because it is taking the memory from a pool which it has already allocated from the OS. You can do that in C++ if you want, using e.g. boost::pool.
I could give you my bank account number, name, phone number and email address and it would make no difference. My bank uses none of these things to identify me.
It's bizarre... I started writing a project in django 2 weeks ago and had to think about some of those elements in the first week. But I'm still running "clean" django!

Here are my solutions for anyone interested:

* URL Routing: They mention only breadcrumbs functionality here. I created breadcrumbs by template inheritance instead. There are url routers split by application and by modules. Template inheritance tree resembles the url routing levels, so that each template has: "{% block breadcrumbs %}{{ block.super }} &middot; current-level-text{% endblock %}" Simple, but works so far :)

* Authorization: My views are decorated with @require_auth() if they require authorisation, @require_auth('group name') if they require special privileges and @require_auth(redir_to='...') if user should be redirected to a special place after authorisation. (by default they come back to the same place) Simple and works.

* Authentication: I simply didn't use the standard user classes. I used my own model. I don't consider it dropping Django - it's more like not using standard helpers.

* Templating: So far I'm happy with the whole logic in the view. Not sure how complex their application is... I'd really like to see some samples that required programming in the template...

* ORM and Admin UI: Can't comment on this one. I'm writing for google app engine and simply using their object store. It feels more comfortable than RDB so far. But sometimes I use GQL if it's faster.

* Form Validation and Generation: I've created a couple of dynamic forms extended with dynamic fields by jquery, as well as some forms with fields and validation generated on the fly (from user input, or saved data)... I can't find anything that's not possible with django forms. Sometimes I customise forms as needed, sometimes the autogenerated ones are almost perfect. Again - not using helpers all the time is not "dropping django".

I'm a bit disappointed that they didn't provide more examples and their solutions... maybe we could learn something from that.
You might be right, I'm just getting started.
It'd be a good idea to collect links to backups of his various projects. Does anyone have a copy of Hobix or Potion laying around?
It was actually inspired by this comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=772027
Samsung Widget Developer comp. in SF
September 11-13 in San Francisco
FTA: "C++ isn't open to other languages"

Obviously the author has not heard of boost::python -- it provides an extremely easy way to interface Python and C++, including classes in one language that inherit from classes in the other.

EDIT: Oh, yeah, and SWIG.
Why is it sad? Because he deleted his accounts? Or are you assuming something bad has happened to him and his accounts where deleted by somebody else?

Why strikes me as the kind of person who would delete his online presence on a whim, just because it would be fun.
ot, but I love the design of your site.
It's a tree of lists of trees. I rather a tree, than tree-like :-)

Some of our apps have deeply nested paths (typically a no-no, but actually quite appropriate for our problem domain), so it is impractical to create a module and call "include" for each tree node.

As for callable classes: someone has to instantiate them. That's no different than our custom routing and authentication. I just choose function composition over class inheritence.
Magic of Method Missing in Ruby
Not true. Hpricot and Syck are in heavy use.
Leave Something On The Table
His job could have a stipulation in the contract that they own everything he creates. Wouldn't that make him potentially civilly liable for his open source contributions, as well as these books and other things he has made.
You can register to become a TrueBlue member online

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Register page: https://www.jetblueairways.com/cgi-bin/skylights.cgi?module=...

NOTE: they are changing the way their frequent-flyer program works this fall so you may want to read this as well to see what membership looks like in the long-term: https://www.jetblue.com/trueblue/newprogram/
Those two opposing viewpoints on a designer's role probably have a lot to do with the type of application you are designing. If I was doing the hiring, I would expect more template language understanding for a web application than from marketing or traditional web site.

I think it's fair for him to say he wouldn't ever hire a designer like that but I think it's because he's only built sites where it makes sense to optimize for that.
How to Type with Your Mouse
Zombie attack would be the death of us
Followed by: "Oh boo hoo, people know who you are. Fucking take Karate lessons and STFU."

Sometimes people ask why it is that a lot of us dislike Zed Shaw, despite his being bright and talented and sharp. Stuff like this is why: For all that's good about him, he remains a douche who likes making assumptions about people, sticking to said assumptions, and then acting like the mandate of heaven shines down on him.

I got into a flamewar with him once. Used to be I thought he was a great guy, albeit a blowhard, who exposed people who did dumb things. Sometimes he is. The problem with him is he still hasn't learned to calm the fuck down, look at other people's perspectives, and understand that knowing how to write an insult doesn't make you a wise badass no matter how many people online respond positively to such viciousness.
the median is better than the mean.
Nope, whoever created this site was trolled.
You can set sorting order and filtering options in your admin class, but the UI doesn't provide clickable column headers or anything like a search box.

EDIT: Apparently I was mistaken, as the replies point out. I read the Django book, but I do not recall this chapter. My apologies.
These (dead mans switches) are online services which can terminate accounts for you and send emails on your behalf. Some of them work by sending you an email once a month or so to check up on you, if you don't reply, the switch is triggered.
That's just weird enough to be plausible -- there's pictures of the Shoes shoes, kitties, rainbows, needlepoint, and Tom Cruise giving a piggy back ride.
I'd be optimistic, look at how far we've come in just 10 months of shipping devices. I disagree with your judgement of mere adequecy, but there is room for improvement, for sure.
Ten Universal Laws of Art, as Suggested by V.Ramachandran
Please tell me this talk is online.
Thank you for the feedback.

Hacker News is probably the last place someone will get advices about not starting a startup. It was named "Startup News" to begin with, hence its Pro-Startup audience.

The reason why people here push others to do a startup is because they are doing it themselves and find it quite rewarding. Not necessarily a monetary reward, but a personal satisfaction. If they see potential in someone, then it is normal to ask "Why not give it a try?".

Also I do not believe anyone ever left their extremely satisfying job because commenters push them to do so.

Apparently 20 venture capitalists told the Skype team they were not going to fund them. They were all wrong to the tune of 3B dollars and 10 millions simultaneous connection as of this writing.

This is why I am still confident PG or any investors can make a good judgment about who should start, but not who should not.
Rude, I'd agree. No more, though - we're certainly not talking about exposing where Salman Rushdie's sleeping tonight. How rude, even, is an open question. This doesn't exactly rise to the level of pestering J. D. Salinger at his house.

Trying to be anonymous is one thing. Trying to remain anonymous while writing books and blogs and making public appearances, all under one common identity, is downright quixotic and just a bit presumptuous. Simply saying his preference was to be anonymous doesn't really create much of an obligation upon the rest of the world. You can't actively be a public figure and avoid being public.
If you're going to have external designers: I agree, their deliverables include ZERO logic.

However, zero logic is even less than Django templates. If it is the devs jobs to retrofit the HTML/CSS/PNGs with templating logic, it is an even bigger argument for choosing a developer friendly template language instead of a designer friendly one.
It in fact is a gray area. We all sacrifice our right to yell fire in a crowded movie theater don't we? See, nothing is black and white. So if they did start sending out "a pink police van in states where 'sodomy' is illegal when someone called in a complaint" then that is a whole other issue. But that's not the issue of contention here.

There is a gray area and cases like the ones in the article are not the same as the case you describe above.
No verification? He's been interviewed, at his home, by multiple magazines. I recall his parents were interviewed. And I've seen him at panels: He's not like most 4channers. I doubt he'd pull an elaborate prank. On the other hand, 4channers are retarded enough to assume he would.
and I deleted his "real" name that they put on there.
Given the population shift, there might not be enough 'younger blood' to go around.
The following does not happen in this kernel.

Quoted Verbatim

* Buffer overflows: buffer overflows are a classic security attack against operating systems, trying to make the software crash or even to inject malicious code into the cycle. We have proved that no such attack can be successful on seL4.

* Null pointer dereferences: null pointer dereferences are another common issue in the C programming language. In applications they tend to lead to strange error messages and lost data. In operating systems they will usually crash the whole system. They do not occur in seL4.

Pointer errors in general: in C it is possible to accidentally use a pointer to the wrong type of data. This is a common programming error. It does not happen in the seL4 kernel.

* Memory leaks: memory leaks occur when memory is requested, but never given back. The other direction is even worse: memory could be given back, even though it is still in use. Neither of these can happen in seL4.

* Arithmetic overflows and exceptions: humans and mathematics usually have a concept of numbers that can be arbitrarily big. Machines do not, they need to fit them into memory, usually into 32 or 64 bits worth of storage. Machines also generate exceptions when you attempt to do things that are undefined like dividing by zero. In the OS, such exceptions would typically crash the machine. This does not occur in seL4.
And Microsoft tries to crush everyone that makes significant money on Windows -- Quicken, Adobe, Borland, etc. there are tons of examples.
I honestly doubt that's his real name. I doubt it would have taken him over a month to react to that blog post.