skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
By and large I would agree with the summary you have provided of the "high-tech" scenario in India. Though, I would also take exception to some of the statements you have made.
I have worked for a year in one of the services companies (I detest the word body-shoppers) you've mentioned. I have also worked in Bangalore for an ODC of a US technology products company. It is true to say that most of the work done in these organizations is not really technically sophisticated.

The part of your note which did not resonate well with me was this: "except a couple of very small unfunded startups, most are just trying to copy existing ideas and don't need any skills beyond pretty generic php mysql etc".
- I'm not sure what kind of research would give you the necessary insight to make such a statement. For a tech guy from India who has worked globally- such a statement undermines your whole writeup.

Your next statement also disappointed me greatly
"great engineers in India should be able to telecommute for the startups advertised here." Can you estimate the carbon footprint created by such a telecommute?
- The Carbon Footprint generated by a single roundtrip flight between India and USA / Canada overshoots the annual footprint of an average Indian by 62%. To suggest a telecommuting option between the India and US to me is absurd and environmentally criminal.

Also, the wishlist you have given for Indian startups does exist. You just need to look for it in the right places. Such information would not come to you on the headlines of ET but is available deep in the web somewhere.

I have realized that "great" (I'm not sure how you define such a term) engineers in India like to be courted by companies as they feel that by gaining intellectual prowess they should just have to sit back and wait for companies to come to them. This is especially true if one has been working for a large US Tech MNCs. This is not really the mindset for entrepreneurship.
If you are really looking to join an Indian startup as a part of the founding team- reach out to them and let them know what you can offer instead of waiting for them to add a job listing here.
An island
mint has potential. If they would offer to upload bank statements instead of providing the credentials, it would be great.
Microsoft banned from selling Word
Here at World on a Hanger in London - http://www.worldonahanger.com - we're looking for a rails or iphone hacker. Either intern or short-term contractor. Get in touch, email address in profile.

You can work from our London office or remotely.
Houston Home Security Systems
Houston home security systems installation and 24 hour home alarm monitoring in Houston by Safeguard, a Honeywell home security system distributor.
Glusterfs comes to mind. Some of the code from that project is simply way out of the ballpark. Check the 'continuation across network' macro in one of the C header files, if you don't want to take my word for it.

It's more sophisticated than anything else that I've seen in a long long time.

The stereotypes you are referring to exist but they are not the one and only rule. And weasel words ('the safety device') are not needed, you could simply take your own medicine and do your research yourself, then eat some crow.

The Indian software landscape is too large and too diverse to make such sweeping generalizations by one person with a possibly limited view of things. I'd hazard such a statement about my own country, which is a LOT smaller than India.

The outsourcing wave has put lots of money into the Indian economy, and just like what happened in Japan after drudgework and copying comes a wave of innovation. You can't stop that cycle. India is not doomed to be an outsourcing venue for ever, they'll be a force to reckon with (and in fact, already are).

Expect a large wave of startups from the region in the next 5 years, they have one headstart over everybody else, ramen profitable there means hosting + $500 / month.
To the extent that it is possible to strike that balance, you'll get no argument from me. :-)

I think the reason every reasonable person doesn't just do this without needing to read an article to remind him of the value of doing so is that it's really hard to do in these modern times.

Before I graduated from high school and started working in tandem with college (which rapidly escalated into a full-time career development path and compelled me to drop out, eventually), I used to hold a lot of people in deep contempt for being so ignorant and narrowminded at a time of historically unprecedented access to a never before seen breadth of information; between the Internet, book sellers, public libraries, universities, etc. there's just nothing you can't learn about if you want to these days.

What I had no concept of is that after you come home from a 10-hour day at an intense job, even a technical white-collar job that seems physically undemanding from a superficial perspective, all you want to do is just veg out; even then, there are too many other bullshit errands to do. It's not just strictly a matter of time being available logically; it takes energy, mental and spiritual, to come home at 7 PM and then compose symphonies until bed time.

Some people are more insistent than others at doing what they want to in spite of what they have to, but it's not reasonable to expect most people to do that even if the availability is technically there. We may have it easy compared to our ancestors from many economic and physical points of view, but that doesn't mean we aren't plagued with some of the problems existentially perennial to the economic man.

EDIT: Also, I am not sure that the "echo chamber" that characterises Valley web startup culture is any more sealed or myopic than the echo chambers of other comparably specialised combinations of professional endeavour. Ever seen what financial instruments traders breathe, eat, snort, etc. 24/7? People who participate in insurance industry MLM schemes? People "tracked" for "blue-collar" skilled trades? People who love and excel at working on cars or motorcycles? Realtors, mortgage brokers? I'm talking about the folks that are on top of their game in those respective sectors - the "hackers" - not the most bromidically average, uninspired 9-to-5ers. It's very similar.
do you think Herbalife is not shady? I think the shady part of herbalife is the MLM, not the placebo they are selling. GNC sells plenty of placebos, and they don't seem to be shady.

I guess it's a matter of opinion, but it seems to me that if you have to pay for good word of mouth, then maybe your product isn't so great after all.
How humbling.

And this is where religion gets it all wrong, the claim that all that was made just for us is so totally off the wall that I find it hard to believe that religion is changing so slowly to reflect the reality as we know it today.
Well, you can do the same thing for lot less by developing a facebook/opensocial application.
TP ?
@ronscenzi,

Thank you for your cogent reply. I claim no infallibility and am glad to be corrected when I goof up. That said,

"I have worked for a year in one of the services companies (I detest the word body-shoppers) you've mentioned."

Hmm I used "body shoppers" as a functional description. Why should you beoffended? isn't that what these companies do? (I've workd for these companies too btw. So I amnot putting myself up on some predestal)

" I have also worked in Bangalore for an ODC of a US technology products company. It is true to say that most of the work done in these organizations is not really technically sophisticated."

Ok great. we have some grounds for agreement.

"The part of your note which did not resonate well with me was this: "except a couple of very small unfunded startups, most are just trying to copy existing ideas and don't need any skills beyond pretty generic php mysql etc". - I'm not sure what kind of research would give you the necessary insight to make such a statement."

Ok what I meant by this was that a good chunk of startups in India are duplicating success stories from the USA and do not necessarily need people with skills in say Erlang or Haskell or Kernel Hacking expertise and so on. Please, look at the job descriptions of Indian startups? How many ask for or requiredeep Javascript or MySQL experience? Most are just throwing up random webpages.

I know a few exceptions but most startups in India lack either technical or business sophistication (Yes I know this will be controversial. I stand by this claim. Anyone "offended" by this, please provide lots of counter examples or an argument that most startups in India re doing very cutting edge work)

"great engineers in India should be able to telecommute for the startups advertised here."

Umm what is wrong with this opinion? Ecological footprints? I wasn't thinking of ecology. Frankly I don't care. In my ideal wold anyone would be able to work for any company, irrespective of nationality without wrestling with arcane visa regulations and so on. telecommuting is the only way I know for this to happen.

"Also, the wishlist you have given for Indian startups does exist. You just need to look for it in the right places."

Why don't you give me specific examples of such startups? Anyone can make vague generalizations like "look for it i the right places" . What are "the right places"? Give me some concrete examples.

"If you are really looking to join an Indian startup as a part of the founding team- reach out to them and let them know what you can offer instead of waiting for them to add a job listing here"

Where did I say I am looking for a startup to join? I have enough work (the non outsourced, technically ultra sophisticated kind ;-)) for years.
Write the idea down somewhere. However, ideas are a dime a dozen and are essentially useless unless you have a viable plan of attack. For instance, I would love to work on something world-changing like time-travel, teleportation, or anti-gravity, but there are currently no fruitful ways of even approaching those problems.

I had an advisor tell me that I should always be keeping several "big" problems on the backburners at all times, so that whenever I find out about a new technique or technology, I will be able to immediately think of ways to apply the new tools to the big problems. He said it will fail 99 percent of the time, but on the 1 percent of the time that it does work, everything will somehow fit together and with any luck, you will have found a viable approach.
DARPA SyNAPSE Project Summary
Years ago a good hacker friend of mine and I thought we would start writing down all the good ideas we had. We only wrote down the really good ones. After half a year we had more than 50 ideas that were all patentable, gamechanging or could make lots and lots of money. Some of them have later been implemented successfully by startups vouching for the fact they were indeed pretty good ideas. At least some of them :-)

We stopped because it became obvious to us that a binder (yes this was before computers were in wide use) full of great ideas is worth exactly nothing.

So what do I do when I come up with a great idea? I forget it as quickly as possible so I can concentrate on executing what I'm doing now.
My Clickbank Business
From the opposite side of the spectrum consider these facts…

1. Studies have shown it becomes harder for your brain to learn as you age. So there is some logic to burying yourself in your chosen profession when you are young and learning as much as you possibly can.

2. Thanks to the beauty of compound interest the money you make in your 20s and 30s is worth several times more than the money you’ll make in the entire rest of your life. So it make sense to get as good as you can at what you do, make a decent amount of money and sock it away when you’re young

3. When you’re young your body is generally in the best shape it will ever be. I personally think everyone should have the experience of partying all night or picking up potential mates at a bar. That’s really only possible when you’re young (or at least it gets harder the older you get).

4. You’re more useful to society if you take the skills you do well and find a way to contribute with them. What’s better, a programmer spending his day hammering nails badly or a programmer who donates a day’s wages and hires 3 guys who have worked construction and know what they’re doing?

I’m not against public service. But if you focus on yourself until you’re say…40…you’ll still have a good 50 to 60 years to go out and do as much public service as you want. There’s nothing wrong with using your youth to establish yourself in the world and then turning your attention to bettering the world once you’re settled in.
GSoC is awesome. My SoC application didn't get through, but the mentoring organization I applied to (Haiku) organized their own event, the Haiku Code Drive, and I managed to get in.

I had little experience when I applied for SoC. Thanks to the HCD, I have learned more in these 2 months than I have learned in all those years of hacking alone.
10 Levels of Intimacy in Communication
Apropos:

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

-Robert A. Heinlein
"Mr. Gervasi, whose studio writing credits include “The Terminal, directed by Steven Spielberg". Top marks for getting his, or any sort of movie made, but he could hardly be described as an indy filmmaker in the true sense of the word - an outsider creating their work without the backup, and especially the contacts, from within the mainstream industry.

This does show how the movie industry is changing beyond the comprehension of most people working within it. I say this after working in features production for nearly 20 years.
looks like it was acquired from a previous registrant whose ownership against the later .edu rules had been grandfathered, therefore liable to get dropped from the zone file at some point in the future should the service ever become popular.
Hubble deep field in 3D
Tax and Spend, or Face the Consequences
Microsoft Ready to Announce Zune HD Launch, Pricing
Slightly off-topic, but relevant for roaming hackers: What's the pricing and coverage of 3G mobile broadband dongles like in the US?
And this is where religion gets it all wrong, the claim that all that was made just for us....

Are you thinking about some particular religion, or religion in general?
greatly. wow. You're my hero =P. I am seriously amazed that you can be profitable for doing so much. You're based in Chicago, right? I might have to hunt you down sometime =).
White Collars Turn Blue (1996)
What's wrong with "element.onmouseover = fn", by the way?
I've experienced flu-like symptoms recently, but cannot say for sure if I had the H1N1 virus
Ok,after reading the comments, I've added another option to the poll
I've started noticing folks using their laptops at various locations around the local library at all hours of the day. I didn't realize it at first, but I guess they're there for the WiFi. A couple of nights ago, around midnight, there were two cars with a total of three laptops running parked in the lot with folks hunched over them. I guess they leave the network running all night.

I've thought about taking the dogs, my lappy, and finding a nice shady spot to sit down outside the library, and seeing if I can get some work done...but I never seem to be able to pull myself away from my desktop, mouse, and 24" monitor. Maybe tomorrow.
Agile Usability Engineering
Can not play downloaded WMV files - Convert DRM WMV to common AVI, MPEG, WMV
Can not play downloaded WMV files? DRMBuster can help you to remove WMV DRM and then convert DRM WMV to common used AVI, MPEG, WMV, so you can play downloaded WMV files successfully on iPod, iPhone, PSP, MP4 player, Home DVD palyer etc.
Good advice from the irrepressible Dijkstra on this matter: "Before embarking on an ambitious project, try to kill it." (http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd10xx/EWD1055A.PDF)

If you try honestly and still fail to kill it completely, whatever's left that you can't kill because it seems doable right now is one way to go.
Happy to see so many familiar startups hiring. We here at Sometrics are looking for great Frontend Engineers and System Architects. We work with tons of data, cloudy stuff (like many other startups), and some teeth-cutting technology stacks (EXTJS/Hadoop/MemCache/Massive MySQL Clusters/Data-mining Design patterns). We're in Los Angeles - so come join us in the Sunny Socal. jobs{@}sometrics.com
In linear algebra, for a given linear transformation (a certain kind of matrix which generally represents some operation) M, an eigenvalue of M is a scalar c such that given a non-zero vector v (called the eigenvector), Mv = cv, where multiplication on the left is matrix multiplication and multiplication on the right is multiplication of v by the scalar c.

The definition is significant because it says that for a certain vector v, the transformation M, no matter how complicated it may be, just scales v by a factor of c. This is useful, for instance, if you want to determine an axis by which to evaluate the range of the transformation, because by choosing an eigenvector, you are choosing a "simple" or "natural" perspective from which to evaluate the range.
The Hubble ultra deep field is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. I would've wept with you.
Most western religions, judeo-christians + splinter groups up front.

Their continued over simplification of the cosmic truths that are literally staring us in the face make it difficult to engage in reasoned debate.
I tried my local library. It was impossible. The building so over-heated, that even with snow on the ground and me wearing a thin cotton shirt, I thought I was going to pass out. Then there were the "students" who spent their time laughing loudly and chatting (even more loudly) on their mobile phones. When I complained to the staff about this, they said it was policy to allow it (I guess they are desperate to have bums on seats, and it is the students' problem if they can't study because their peers are making so much noise.)

I then tried a public museum with a study centre, only to be told after a few weeks that I couldn't plug my laptop into their mains supply! (I believe that really they just wanted to get rid of me, since the rest of the study centre was always empty, and it was clear that I was programming not studying their collection.)

Finally, the best option of all is a museum that has a private members' room. I'm often the only person there. Not only that, but there is a cafe in the members room', and toilets just outside. And all for about $100 a year. I don't think the Members Room has wifi, but that's not a problem for me. I avoid microsoft whenever possible, but my Windows Mobile phone allows me to share its internet connection (and the sharing works with os x, windows, and linux).

When I want some relief from work, I go for a stroll round the museum. I love libraries, but I find the visual stimulus of thousands of different artifacts a fine contrast after staring at words on a screen for a couple of hours.
I'd guess Terry Pratchett.
Australia Plans Airstrikes to Kill 650K Camels in Outback
How about making such a sign at home and planting it before the library at night as a subversive action?
How bizarre! Why don't they use use nuclear weapons instead? Usually you'll use a predator to decimate an animal population gone out of control.
Diffbot is a seed-funded search startup, and we work out of the Stanford campus. We're currently have openings for paid internships for local students passionate about our products (info at http://www.diffbot.com) with interest in machine learning. Drop us a line at jobs@diffbot.com !
Diffbot is a seed-funded search startup, and we work out of the Stanford campus. We're currently have openings for paid internships for developers passionate about our products (info at http://www.diffbot.com) with interest in machine learning. Drop us a line at jobs@diffbot.com !
So it's not just me then: http://www.jgc.org/blog/2009/08/whats-on-baggage-tag.html
In the university library at METU in Ankara, Turkey, they had these separation as well.
Getting webhook callbacks when people click-through links
I'll try bringing my own keyboard to the library next time.
Humble note from international talent: please specify whether you could sponsor any work visa in the country where you are hiring.
Or tunnel ssh via https.
I'm in contact with people that are like Zresearch what I call 'thin start ups', companies that have a front office in the US for funding and representation issues, and a back office in India where all the development takes place.

There are very good business reasons for setting things up this way.

Still, I see GlusterFS as an Indian start-up, not an American one. It is run by Indians, from the top to the bottom and everywhere in between.

To get funding and to be able to access the American market you have to have an office - preferably your titular main office - there. In this respect they are not different from Logitech, another 'American' company (never mind that they really are Swiss).

As for your confusion re my statement about a limited view, yes, that's a generalization too, but it's a conversational trick to put those two at the same level.

To say that you do know the Indian software industry at that level is an absolute statement that I think you can not make with any confidence.

To say that you can't know the whole landscape simply because of its size is one I can make with confidence simply because you'd have to be omniscient in order to be able to do so.

India is going through much the same phase as were Japan was when they were 'used' to produce electronics for the United States in the 60's of the last century. The amount of know-how that is being amassed there and the amount of money invested will sooner or later result in a tech boom.

The fact that GlusterFS is an Indian (not an American) company to me is some proof that we are underway in this, and I know of another 50 or so companies that follow this same model. Just like Logitech is Swiss they're as Indian as can be, even though for the outside world they'll do everything they can to present a different face. That's simply good business and I don't begrudge them for it.

Weasel words : qualifying your statements in such a way that you can twist their meaning later by pointing at your qualifiers.

As for my view of the Indian software scene I have seriously considered moving to India in order to start a new company there but for logistical reasons have decided to stay in the Netherlands for the time being, I have a son in school here and I don't want him to pay part of the price of my business adventures.

In the running up to that decision I did a very thorough survey of the Indian IT landscape and I was absolutely amazed at how much quality software comes out of India and how thin the 'we're a us company' veneer sometimes is.

It's happening, it's happening now and if you are not a part of it then get moving, you have an amazing edge over the rest of the world.

There are two countries right now where the chances of making it big as a hacker/ceo are substantially higher than in the rest of the world, the first is India, the second - and still to a lesser extent but I'm not sure how long that will last - is China.

Say hi to Anand from me btw :)

Regarding your friends with unfunded startups, drop me a line please. (email in my 'about' bit).
Ask HN: What's a good programming language to start with?
Well, I'm reading Dive into Python 3, and it's a little filled with jargon (thank goodness for the ease of google). I know a little VB6, but I think it's time to put on my big-boy pants and learn a real, or 'real-er' programming language. Any suggestions?