skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I've been living off my (grad school stipend!) savings for almost 2 years in Asia. I do AI research, independently. Here's the rent for one bedroom in a "decent student" shared flat:

- Montreal: 300$; dorms 250$

- University town, Germany: 250$, 180$ for the dorms

- University town, Turkey: 120$

- India, monastery guest house: 60$

- China, Kunming (mid-sized city): 80$

I've found that the cost of living is pretty much proportional to the rent. Internet costs are negligible, unless you live in a very remote place.

There's a lot to write about the experience, but in short: best decision of my life. Two years without any responsibility whatsoever, free to hack or just go biking any time of day. With the advent of the Internet, a new lifestyle for doing research and development (aka, sow the seeds of the next Google) has opened outside the constraints of academia and industry. Few people seem to be taking advantage of it.
Good to find people from the same city here. I would be interested to see how many other HNers live around us in Delhi.
More specifically, Pasing.
Espoo, Finland.
Just the other week I wrote a couple of .NET classes to read 'native' COBOL Indexed Sequential files from a brand new package installation at one of my client's sites. This package is still in active development in COBOL because the code is just about unchanged across multiple platforms - (Open VMS and Windows are both very similar from a COBOL point of view)
Oh, my bad. I didn't know. :)
Mobile phone audio quality is barely a photon's cough above usable. Add in mobile phone signal transience and the suggested periodic beeps to indicate that it's being recorded ... would that be good enough to be a podcast?

If that is good enough, then don't wait for Apple to code it, use the mentioned conference call/third party feature to dial an Asterisk server that announced "Recorder present" and then records the conversation.
That depends very much on the season. I've lived in Toronto for 2 1/2 years, winters are doable but there are a few days when the cold is just unimaginable (until you move to Northern Ontario that is), summers are pretty hot.

Traditionally the summers are when the garbage collectors go on strike...

Other than that it's a great city to live in, for the most part nice people, great and affordable food, office space is priced reasonably.

I liked it a lot.
Well, given that definition, mine was $20k. That's how much I had in savings when I quit my job in 2002 and bought a one-way ticket to Cape Town. I've been traveling ever since, working the odd contract or freelance job from the beach to keep the bank account replenished, and doing Startup stuff to keep the skills up.

I've been living the rest of my life the way I want for nearly 8 years now. Wow. Thanks for putting it in those terms!
Mathematical Theory of Claude Shannon [pdf]
Los Angeles County, California
Ever tried moneybookers.com ?
The charge less and are more secure.
If he wants that much, it sounds like he's going with a conservative investment plan. At a guess, laddered CDs or municipal bonds.
Stockholm, Sweden.

But most of the time I live on the net.
No, don't worry about it, you couldn't :)

As with any idea I'm sure there are at least 10 people walking around with it.

It's pretty sketchy still but I think a social network that is basically just a database backend and a default front end that can be customized to the hilt should be a fun thing to build.
Great stuff dude! :D
Porto, Portugal
Calacanis is an agent provocateur and the people fall each time for it. Just remember a few of the idiotic things he said in the past just to get attention and links:

# SEO is bullshit

# Blogging is dead

# Mahalo is Web 3.0

etc. etc. etc.
Mykolayiv, Ukraine
Perth, Australia.
Poznan, Poland.
Vancouver, Canada.
holy shit, 5 people so close to me. Where is the "who upvoted this" button? :)
What is your problem ?
Why a new Network? personaly I think, that one shouldn't start a new social network but leverage an existing one. IMHO the community could already profit a lot from dedicated groups on Facebook, LinkedIn or another existing SN. The network would provide the "Infrastructure" to connect the people who visit and use this site regularly but want a more detailed overview about other people, want to be able to send messages etc.
Same here. 5 minutes walk or so from Oslo S.
Utrecht, present.
Well, right now in Bangkok but my 3 months here are almost over and will return to the center of the Netherlands soon ;)

Dutch Meet-up is actually a good idea!
Novosibirsk, Russia
Tunisia, Sfax (I'm sure I'm the only one!)
The hell is wrong with you!?

Just kidding.

Seriously though I read a great little post the other day (on HN). For the life of me I can't remember the link. Essentially it said how the author loved certain magazines/forums because the people there discussed things they were DOING.

The author started getting into some other magazines/forums (i think) that had a lot of people talking about theory, concepts, dreams... i.e socializing.

I loved the post because the point was crystal clear. It was beautiful. HN is a community of doers. Everyone has their own passions for things they want to (and are) creating. This is not the American Idol forums. We aren't talking about all the things we wish we could do, "if only..." We are not in the clouds. Ok maybe some are, but this is not "the masses". HN is for creators, makers, doers, producers, builders - Not romanticists.

Ok maybe I am being romantic, but please for the love of all that is good, HN is not a social network., it does not need a social network, and, and, and ... just get to work!

!
The only person I'm aware of in the tech field (though I'm sure there are many) who got into the US on an O-1 visa is David Heinemeier Hansson (Rails / 37signals).

The criteria for O-1 are particularly tough - after all, you have to prove you're extraordinary and world class in your field. I suspect David's application was based significantly around him being the Google/O'Reilly Hacker of the Year 2005. You need to be at the top of your industry (or be talked about as if you were) to get one of those babies..
Ditto.

So what's the intention of this question?
Directed Edge is pretty cool. So far, though, I think we've been hearing a lot about their graph database, and not much about how they're actually going to do recommendations. Personally, I think the latter is the harder problem.
You have around 1 month to find a new job, or you go back home.

This is often cited as the main reason why H1B holders can't negociate wages as high as permanent residents, and end up being paid much less : they can't quit easily without taking quite huge risks, and their bosses knows it...
Vancouver, BC, Canada
Rome, Italy.
Hod Hasharon, Israel
Dublin, Ireland. I believe there's a Dublin, California too, but not there unfortunately.
County Meath then, is it? (joking)
And on open-source electricity and bandwidth! And open-source sysadmins. This is how software meets the Real World, where finite resources are finite.

I think what is actually meant is a volunteer community service. People could donate time, money or servers towards running the service. Tr.im seems like a good candidate, as it's an unfortunately critical service that simply holds your links hostage.
GOTO 1965
Gaiman's The Graveyard Book wins Hugo
http://mashable.com/2009/08/10/shorturl-savior/ Bit.ly is willing to host their urls starting as of tomorrow. tr.im has not yet responded.
Suburb of Atlanta, here. (Alpharetta)
UK Police Raid Barbecue Because it was Listed as 'All-Night Event' on Facebook
Tehran, Iran
Don't use Facebook in case you're a birthday party barbecue terrorist.
Perhaps it's for bankers and fund managers only getting $1million USD bonuses ... that's gotta be hard.
Breakfast Can Wait. The Day's First Stop is Online
There also is an open source solution for that:
http://urlshort.sourceforge.net/download/
tauranga, New Zealand
Top Designers Share the iPhone Apps They Use Everyday
I think Jeff answers his own question when he refers to my entire so-called "professional" programming career.

The fact is, there are a lot of professional programmers doing a lot of work that don't mix in the same circles as Jeff. The fact that they don't read his blog, or post to StackOverflow doesn't mean they aren't out there.
Utrecht here as well :), in 4 days I'm switching countries to Copenhagen, Denmark for 6 months though.
Of course HN itself isn't a social network—but wouldn't creating a separate "socializing area" guarantee that it stays that way? People will socialize; it's simply a matter of where. Of course, it might be an irresistible temptation to constantly hang about on it and refresh it (I'd personally suggest that it would only allow 15 total page-views per user per day) but having it there will at least mean that it won't be here.
On somewhat of a tangent, consider a specification such as "sort a list of numbers". After adding a few minor details, this could be an entirely formal and unambiguous specification, yet implementation would require (disregarding prior art) an informal creative process involving significant leaps of intuition.

It seems to me that a formal spec need only provide a method of verification and is therefor distinct from the solution, though it's no surprise that the distinction goes unnoticed in our industry, given the dearth of both specs and difficult algorithmic problems.
I consider things like these scary privacy problems.

Imagine it becoming a standard and then your friends going "Hey, you gotta hear what X said about Y on the phone. Here, I recorded it."

It would probably be considered weird if you had something against recording, after all you are talking with a friend and you trust him/her, right?

If you want to record a phone call, you can always do so (maybe not on a locked-down thing like the iPhone, well, your choice). But making it a prominent feature screams for abuse.
Updated device drivers for smooth functioning of PC
Driver checkers are amazing devices that works as an important element in the field of functioning and organizing. With the drivers update, it not only consists of the advantages of an ordinary windows device manager but there are other advanced features that are proved useful in keeping the system updated. For more information log on to driverschecker.com
Bit.ly Swoops in to Save Tr.im
Rizal, Philippines
This would be a truly wise move in the long run. If I read the article right there is no official announcement yet, is it?
This does worry me about the integrity of services like Twitter in the long term.

You could be in a position 10 years from now going through your old Twitter feed for something and it is completely unusable beyond a certain date due to Tinyurl or Bitly having closed down.

Maybe an opportunity for some startup to begin spidering and recording all shortened URLs into some big historical index.

It would be a goldmine if one of the big ones ever closed down.
Now we're two.
"SL,UT" also known as Salt Lake, Utah. Intresting factoid: That is a relatively popular sticker on cars of females.
A lot of people are attacking the article, but aren't really engaging with its central point:

If you run a bricks and mortar business, you don't need to notify people to tell them that you've redesigned your website. Your customers are probably not interested in your website, except as an analog/support for your core business. If the redesign makes their life easier, they'll notice. If not, they probably won't care. In either case, they'll find out soon enough.
15mins from Oslo S.
Splitting my time between Chennai, India(80%) and San Jose, California
Google Voice has phone recording. I use it quite often for business calls. It chimes before the recording begins with a message informing both parties what's going on.
Diet to Lose Weight - Getting Those Excess Pounds Off Your Body Now
The distance from celion dion to napalm death
using audioscrobbler to find the similarity shortest path from celion dion to napalm death
So, I take it you no longer appear in public because all your stupid friends take pictures of you every single fucking time you go out to a bar?
I think I can somewhat relate to where you are coming from. I did my Bachelor's in Engg from Mumbai in 2001 and then went to the US - did my MS there, dabbled in Google SoC, worked in a Sunnyvale startup, lived in SF for three years and have just returned back for good to Mumbai last week after living away from here for eight years.

The plan for returning here was to start something of own.

One of my key reasons for returning was the cumbersome H1B/GC process. After living in the US for five+ years I was still three years away from getting a GC. And this is hugely limiting if you want to work for a real early-stage startup which is where the real excitement is.. and they can rarely sponsor H1Bs.

There is an article by Paul Graham on Founders Visa - http://www.paulgraham.com/foundervisa.html. Honestly, until this becomes are reality I would say that having a H1B and looking for work with a real YC kind of startup is not really feasible and rarely works out.

I do not have answers for the questions you have asked above. But I can share some of my experiences of working full-time in Mumbai, Bangalore and the SF Bay Area.

One thing you have got right for the startup mindset is your desire not to work in the kind of onsite/services jobs that the "big" IT firms from India provide. If you feel you would like to explore some creative/innovative technology start-up type of work there is a good chance you'll have to form your own team and take the leap. While I agree with you that the start-up culture in India is different - I'm not sure I can completely grasp what you mean by efforts/returns ratio is inadequate. "Returns" is very subjective.

I think if you work on some of the strengths of having a start-up in India but with global reach and applications - then there is no reason why you would not be able to get adequate returns as well as the kind of satisfaction.. if that is also something that you are looking for.

I'm available on email to discuss this further..
I read Hacker News to get a mashup of the web, it's better than digg or stumbleupon. When I'm bored I read Techcrunch or Tweetmeme.
Yeah, I see what you're saying. Sarajevo has a similar climate. I used to live in Florida, it was HOT 24/7 and to be honest, I'd rather live there. The thing I really love about Toronto is that it's like NYC just.....safer! :D
Cloud is Not a Big Switch
It looks like they're in contact but no deal has been reached, and it is implied that there are some sour grapes because of the blog post line quoted, but that's speculation only.

I'm very curious how this will turn out. This was a very short lifecycle for a service, but in the long run this is to be expected for just about every website. Stuff gets created and it dies again.

Url shorteners exist in the first place because of bad design in the websites that need to have their links shortened.

Plenty of websites that I'm familiar with have overlong urls, some to the point of being ridiculous.

Maybe sites should employ their own internal url shortening service, where 'http://somesite.com/shorturl gets mapped to the real url. That way the short urls will live as long as the site.
Sometimes it's good to push yourself when tired. In the book 'Founders at Work' (Jessica Livingston), there's a chapter on Steve Wozniak where he says that he hits a new creative gear when working on a problem for three days and nights straight. Not directly related to writing well, granted, but an interesting point nonetheless.

Incidentally, the only two things I actually liked doing in school were writing short stories and drawing sketches. I would spend hours blissfully writing or drawing when given it for homework, and it was never a chore. The best ways to feed the imagination is to simply read, read, read. It's plain and boring advice, but it works. I was lucky when young as I was always encouraged to read, for many people my age (early twenties), reading is very boring, but that's because they are poorly versed in it and have poor imaginations as a result.

It's a cliche, but it's simple practise at anything that makes perfect - apparently Tiger Woods gets up at an ungodly hour and practises for 5-6+ hours every day; Tyson in his prime would get up and jog in the middle of the night, and conducted a tough training regime other boxers wouldn't engage in. After the last Olympics, Phelps famously said that all he does is "eat, sleep and swim". There's only so far natural ability will take you after all.
Wrong.

It's not a substitute for data when generalizing about other people. But data is no substitute for life experience when making decisions for oneself.
The sentence after that one says: "That probably says more about my isolation as a programmer than anything else".

The point is valid, if only to speak of an interesting separation and the generally low-visibility of COBOL in parts of the programming industry.

I can't say I've met anyone who is still actively writing or maintaining COBOL code either. I know a few people who wrote COBOL at the start of their careers, but who have since transitioned into other things.

So I think the validity of the observation stands. A quick straw poll of my colleagues within earshot (yes, I'm reading HN at work) suggests that none of them know any active COBOL programmers either. This is from a group of people from very junior to very senior, with a range of about 1 - 20 years of commercial programming experience.
I regard HN as a successor to USENET (in its prime) with the quality of discussions and content. Not to Facebook. And I think adding friends in here won't help improve on that area much.
I heard about it 7 or 8 years ago from people who had been to Xerox Parc and Cambridge (UK) based Xerox Research Centres.

I can find this research paper online, although it appears to be dated 1995. It's not exactly what I was told about, but it seems to be an earlier version.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=gjm6FpMUTXgC&pg=PA509...
Prague, Czech Rep.
Capture Videos
With the Fast video indexer video capture software you can browse you entire video collection to find specific scenes. Browsing is faster and easier than searching and you dont have to waste time trying to invent search tags.
An armed society is a polite society.

We already use plenty of other self documenting communication mediums (email, instant messaging, SMS).
Chicago, Illinois, USA
Imagine if someone came if with a generic idea for a computer program and they described it as 'Windows Blah Blah'. Many would see this as reflecting poorly on the author's knowledge of computing. What about Linux or OSX? Why are you so close minded as to only think about Windows? they might say. In the same way I think that the use of the word 'iPhone' for generic smartphone concepts should be deprecated in favor of more generic terms.
With regards to a meet up: we could join "Open Coffee", Wednesdaymornings in Utrecht

http://opencoffeeutrecht.nl/

It's in "my" office (flex office) but I have to admit I haven't been yet, so I can't say if it's any good.
Knaresborough, North Yorkshire,UK
Rotterdam, but I work in Delft.
In similar vain. Autocomplete screen sessions:

complete -o default -W "$(screen -ls | cut -f 2 -s | tr '\n' ' ')" screen
Tel-Aviv, Israel.
Shanghai, China
Whoa. Dnepropetrovsk.
To be honest, that's because I'm comfortable dissecting our graph-database publicly, but less so for our ranking algorithms. There's been far more work put into the recommendations engine than the graph DB and the beginnings of the engine predate the DB. The original prototypes worked with our Store class, which is the DB abstraction that the engine sees, and were purely in-memory and then there were a number of things that I swapped in to replace the storage layer, eventually settling on our own DB.

That said, I do have one big blog post half-written on "the problems of sparse data" that I'll eventually roll out.
Propagation of Trust and Distrust (2004)
Central China
Me too. Hi. :)
I live in Tunisia and I'm about to take a desicion: leave my studies here and move to a cheap place like Egypt.

Tunisia is not expensive, but Egypt is very cheap (3X less expensive) so bootstrapping from there will be easier. and they have good internet connection.

It's dangerous to do, because if you don't succeed returning is much more harder! So good luck if you go for it!
Norman, but I'm from Edmond.
Any berliners want to meet up for a HN coffee? im visiting but im really really wanting to learn a little bit about the hacktivism/startup scene here.
And me. We should organise a meetup or something.
Let's talk about WSGI
Interesting.

It's after 9pm here, the staff have long since fled, but a quick look around reveals Mr. $47m, Mr. $14m and Mr. $8m are still beavering away and Mr. $150m+ is still answering email (albeit tersely).

I've never yet met someone with FU money who wasn't working (and working hard) - they just seem to be more selective.
Kobe, Japan too.
-> Hammersmith
Do you mean 10% a year over 5 years, or 10% year on year?
Holmdel, NJ, currently in Berkeley, CA
Won't twitter replace your URL with a bit.ly one anyway?

(There are other use cases for URL shortners. I'm just commenting on this specific one.)
Kiev, Ukraine
so do I.
Inside the short, troubled life of a music start-up
Propose HN: Give me an Idea for a Startup
I am in a position where I have the time, skill and will to start a new project. However, I cannot think of the next killer application.

Do you have one in your ideas pool which you do not want to implement?
As an up to date example, I tried a yahoo card game this week-end (http://games.yahoo.com/card-games), and I couldn't launch the game in FF without installing the latest JRE plugin. The game in question if you wanna try is "pyramids".
Wise move for whom?

Bit.ly buying tr.im is good for the tr.im guys; I suppose bit.ly would get some good will, so it might make sense from their standpoint, depending upon the price.

Bit.ly hosting existing tr.im links offers nothing to the tr.im folks; I'm not sure why tr.im would go for it, except to prove that they're mensches.
Twitter’s platform shortcomings
Long URLs are not a design flaw -- or, at least, not a design flaw in the site itself. Pagerank calculations by Google and the other engines put a lot of weight on words that appear inside the URL, which is why all SEO advice says to put your blog post titles in the URL (Wordpress has this as an opt-in one-click setting). Long URLs are required by Google. If it stopped requiring them, we wouldn't need long URLs anymore, but personally I find them quite useful most of the time, since it's like a very easy preview of what you're about to click on.
Boston, MA. USA
I think you really need to think about what you actually want to do with your time. In other words - if running and growing this company is more fun/exciting than not doing so, then do it and take the associated financial risk. If you're sick of running the business, then get out.

Once you have a feel for who you want to be in the next couple years (i.e. harried entrepreneur growing 200% vs. just minted), it'll be much easier for you to decide what you want to have. (In particular, if you have a good idea for your next company, then exit this one)

My F-U-but-keep-working-for-money: 5 mm
My F-U--seriously-F-U: 10 mm

The difference: a large, aging family whose health I will wind up responsible for. An extra 5 mm goes a long way toward getting live-in nurses, drivers and bribes for hospital managers (this is not the US).
1 hour away. Guadalajara, Spain
Kingstown, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.:)
there was this thread a couple of days ago:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=747003

If there is nothing in there for you let me know and I'll dig around some more in my attic :)
Yes, and soon somebody will do it

(update) And when done in the spirit of HN it will become the best social engine ever .. As HN is for news/forum
Unfortunately it doesn't (yet) record outgoing calls.
Salem, MA
hambourg, germany