skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Alone With You
Being alone with the person who you love most and confessing what you feel for her is a amazing thing. It's just simple I Love her so I am telling her philosophy.
You're right. That's not the sole reason. The primary reason is that originality is a relatively high bar -- particularly for the Internet.

Just look at Twitter. So many tweets are retweets of what someone else said.
>All govts selectively enforce laws. The "bad" cases get called corruption.

Agreed, but I don't see what this has to do with our discussion. Selective enforcement of laws by a government is certainly one form of corruption, but I see no reason to define the word "corruption" so that nothing else counts. If you prefer, we can talk about "schmorruption", and reserve the term "corruption" for cases involving governments, if the definition of this particular word is so important to you.

>. If I don't do biz with a company, whether or not it follows its rules doesn't matter to me at all

That's just false. Ever heard the word "externality"? If a company has corrupt hiring practices, for example, that's going to adversely affect the people who would have been employed by that company if it had a fair hiring process. And in any case, it's not always so easy for consumers to avoid doing business with a company (try avoiding business with your local electric company).

>How about three examples?

Nepotism, price fixing and protection rackets.
Semantics on the word "startup": In my view to qualify as a startup the idea or business process must be novel in some way. Otherwise it is simply "self-started" as you mentioned.
i see. but if they don't make their private dataset public, what's to prevent netflix from fitting it to a particular entry?
Unfortunately, doing is more intimately tied to having to do than many people realize. My login on Reddit is "want_to_want".
"Once you reach this point everything else is about being able to make your own choices, not being backed into a corner because you have bills to pay."

You're an individual. You can already make your own choices.

My big problem with this whole "FU" money concept, and your thought I quoted above, is that people seem to think they need to get this opportunity from someone else. That someone else gives them the opportunity to do what they want to do. That someone else is the one who gives them the money. If you continue to think like this then that's exactly what'll happen - you'll be unable to make your own choices because you are waiting for someone else to make them for you.

I do hope to post more on this shortly.
It is a matter of semantics at some point.

Club Penguin was a tech startup that sold for mid-nine figures without raising any VC. Mahalo actually seems more like a plumbing company than a tech start up in a weird way, but has raised VC from top tier firms.

The big distinction is building a business that can make you money while you sleep. something that can scale beyond the hours you work vs. being constrained by billable hours or their equivalent.
I realized just now that I have been reading hacker news without properly understanding of what pg means by a 'startup'.

Found this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=728689

Now, I will at least know what pg is referencing. I still won't know what other commenters mean by a 'startup' unless they are synced up on this too. I wonder how you can fix that?
I thought Charlie Vergos' Rendezvous was in Memphis :-)
Where's the CrunchPad?
Twitter is a human invention. Written communication (arguably) is a human invention.

Audio from the talk will be available on http://2009.dconstruct.org/podcast/ soon.
How many of us spent the first day of our programming jobs actually programming?
I don't see how they would expect to see somebody in their element with a brand new code base, new development environment etc.

And if the remedy to that is to give them coding problems in a contained environment in which they don't need to have a git account/dev server login/etc., then what makes this different from a normal coding interview?
What about a paper on lisp like "A basis for a mathematical theory of computation "?
"Architectural success occurs when artful design bolsters functionality"

Oh, we're talking about the Gates Building? I thought you meant the Jobs building.
10 Unbelievable Online CSS Tools To Make Your Designing Life Easier
Norse and greek gods do seem to be popular, I’d studied and worked at several places that follow that scheme. There’s a large scope for spelling mistakes though, as the article points out.

Best scheme I’ve used (if you can ignore the silliness) is Pokémon characters. There’s hundreds of them (and guaranteed to be more by the time you run out), the names are all fairly easy to spell and you’ve got pre-made iconography for connection shortcuts :)
nice. they're not using realmedia/realplayer to stream their webcasts anymore.

http://www.openinternet.gov/join-discussion.html
I've found instapaper during my morning commute is an app that buys me time to catch up on reading. Works even better if you commute by tube and there is no phone signal to distract you (with email, twitter, etc).
Look: if you love what you do (they seem to), and you make enough money at it to be secure (they seem to), why would you "sell out"? Yeah, you could sell out--but why?
This is a great initiatives and I am supporter of any kind of philanthropy but saving accounts is not the best way you can help those people. I have been to these places, not to say people do not have any money , they have nothing to eat. Saving account will not provide them with food unless you deposit the money and educate them on how to use it wisely. They have to be fed first and educated, then come saving.
My big problem with this whole "FU" money concept, and your thought I quoted above, is that people seem to think they need to get this opportunity from someone else.

That makes no sense. Of course you need to get that opportunity from someone else: your customers, your family, your investors, or your buyer, whoever is handing you the money you need to meet your needs. At the end of the day, if someone else hasn't given it to you, you aren't getting it.
Another $1M prize fund? Why don't they spend a few thousand tidying up their awful website?

They claim "You can browse, search or see our recommendations for you. [..] Over 100,000 titles on DVD"

But when I try to browse their selection they show three pages of seven movies per section, with mystery-meat navigation (hover to get more details). That's 441 difficult to browse films.
Startup Bootcamp at MIT
Will college tuitions be more than a million or two? Perhaps if the education bubble never bursts. Or if you have more than five kids.

Regardless, his article compares owning your own business with a million or two trickling in instead of $40 million (or more) all at once. The comparison isn't at all about the starving artist or inventor doing what he loves vs a big pay out.

If you're doing what you like and you're earning a mil or two a year (or well on your way), why sell out all at once for $40 mil? If your reason is other than getting to mojito island, he makes no claims.

But if your reason is because you want to get to mojito island, then Jason Fried is warning that it's probably not all it's cracked up to be.
Worried about stomach size
It's not about the time it takes to resize a new image, it's about the time it takes to change _all_ of your images when design changes happen.

a preprocess-only system means that you need to have a migration system in place, and it means that your designers have just a little more overhead to make tweaks. It's manageable, but producing the images on demand makes for a more easily changed system with fewer moving parts.
MySpace Hooks Up With Twitter, Offers Two-Way Sync
The only thing on this list that surprised me is that someone would actually think the common entrepreneur is "pretty young, living the red beans and rice lifestyle and working 80+ hours a week and sleeping under their desk".

Up where I'm from, entrepreneurs are typically middle aged, financially stable, and breaking ground on their new business because they've been working toward it their whole lives.

I work with entrepreneurs daily in my consulting business, and it's extremely rare, outside of real estate agents, for me to work with someone under 30 to 40 years of age, with a family, who just started their business.

Why do all these blogs constantly think that all "entrepreneurs" == "startup". Get out of your box!
Make cheats
Hopefully http://feedfliks.com/search is a little better?
Unless you're the government and can just print as much as you want. :-)

I think the 37signal's viewpoint is interesting, and the point they're trying to make is this, you can chose to do interesting stuff that will make you money while you work for the man.

It is _not_ easy. You have to come back from a long day of "meetings, politics, and code" and shut everything out and just create. Sometimes it'll be fun, sometimes it'll be downright boring and impossible seeming, but you own that time, and you can choose how to spend it. If you spend it watching TV then that is your choice. But, there are plenty of ways to make people pay you for stuff that you want to do if you just take the opportunity.

(Sorry if that sounds too guru-ish or self-helpy but thinking that way has made it much easier to rationalize working evenings and weekends for me.)
Maybe the best at MIT don't feel like being the new kids at a club full of Standford alumni.
The Most Popular Marketplaces for Templates and Web Elements
The Founder Visa Ignores Immigration Reality
I believe the question in the title should be the one answered. So in this instance "yes" refers to yes, rate my startup posts are ok.

It was one of the first things that was done on HN. It provides valuable feedback for startups and also provides a bit of motivation to launch for people struggling with their own startups.
For those trying to start a writing habit: here are some tips that have helped me over the last month, to the point that it's starting to feel automatic:

1. Set realistic goals. Mine is "500 words per day, no excuses." It takes 1-2 hrs.

2. Start when it's easy. I started my 500 word per day rule over a week-long vacation. This builds the confidence that you can achieve your goal in a reasonable amount of time.

3. Have a routine for getting started. I have a special writing playlist and play the same song every time I start writing. Over time your brain forms associations and will automatically go into the right mode.

4. If you're having trouble getting started, try imagining how good you will feel once you've hit your daily goal. While you're doing that, count from 10 to 1 as if you're about to launch the space shuttle. Then start.

5. Focus on daily progress. Your feedback loop should be "I won at writing 500 words today," not, "I'm now 10.5% done instead of 10.3% done."

The writing itself is never going to become truly automatic or habitual. What will become a habit is expecting that you'll make progress every day, and knowing that you're capable of succeeding today.
The idea’s great, but the leadership team stinks…
The NY Times had an informative article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/magazine/23Netflix-t.html?...
Torrent Scan: Multiple Torrent Search Engine
Giant Tetris: This Is One Of The Best Video (Arcade) Game I Have Seen
I got the point exactly. You are assuming that the unit price and number of units garnered by the publishing industry reflects consumer demand. This is only true if the industry has used best practices in pricing and marketing strategy. I disagree with that assumption.

As a former media planner, it appears that the publishing industry has been focused on generating revenues from advertisers. Period. But more concrete evidence of publishers' lack of marketing best practices is that publishers keep talking about selling content. Tide does not sell laundry soap. They sell superior clean. The value to the consumer can be very high or even priceless. For example, the value of getting the red wine stain out of that expensive tablecloth is very high, the value of being confident the kids look like their mom cares is priceless.

Publishers need to stop taking marketing short cuts (giving away free copies, relying 3rd parties to sell subscriptions, reacting to social marketing, and buying into marketing gurus with silver bullet answers).
Exactly.

DHH is confusing a life of relaxation with the security that comes with a big payday. It's less about sipping mojitos and more the ability to pay for college, mortgage, retirement, and relieving the stress all those things bring.

The tradeoff he proposes is a straw man: "Pull a few million from revenue each year or take a lump sum". Is this realistic in most cases? If Mint turned down Intuit, they could have bought Wesabe and reduced the value of Mint significantly. Given Mint's light revenue, how long would it have taken to achieve the same financial outcome? Would a VC ok salaries of millions per year in the near future?

I know the 37 Signals guys are anti-VC, but it is a real, lucrative, and demonstrable way to create wealth. I get that they dislike it, but I don't see the boot strapped software business being a real competitor. They do it, Craigslist does it, but not sure if there is the same portfolio of success in that system as in the VC system.
Thanks for hopping into the thread. Very interesting project you have/had here sir. :)
Freakonomics: Why My Students Don’t Get Rebates
Nope, they're right. There wasn't much there before. The Robotics Institute had a shop/shed of some kind. And also the CMU PD. But not much else.
Why would Netflix corrupt their own competition in this way? I don't understand what you're concerned about.
from an architecture standpoint, the solution using events is actually cleaner: Instead of having a flag that toggles some events default action, you have override the event default action where you need it changed.

If you need the attribute (or even a class="draggable" to achieve your goal without changing the standard), you can use libraries like jQuery.

What I'm saying is:

* I disagree with the author of the articles assumption that the default event action is wrongly set. If it was the other way around, selection of page elements would not be possible.

* The events is what we have in the standard. I would probably prefer the flag aswell, but from a architecture standpoint, using the events is probably much easier to implement.

* If I want to have that attribute, I can easily add it to my sites script code using one or two lines of jQuery-code.
I was alluding to a big external event (investment, sale, IPO, liquidation), not to the day-to-day exchanges that are part of your business (selling product, offering services, etc). You can do anything you want on your own without the blessing of someone with a lot more money than you.
"If you're doing what you like and you're earning a mil or two a year (or well on your way), why sell out all at once for $40 mil?"

Liquidity. Future success is not guaranteed.

I don't think anyone sells their business so they never have to use their brain again, which is the premise of "mojito island."
I think this is a good post. I also think the dialog is good for the community.

With this and the related posts here, there seems to be a preoccupation with not working for the man (whoever that is) and not having to work for money. I think it's baloney and I've yet to hear a reasonable argument for this stance.

If you have a startup, you're already not working for the man. If you took VC and you feel they are the man, well ... sorry, no one forced you to do it.

I wonder how many of the critics of this POV have had a growing, profitable startup for more than a year.
Erm, this certainly isn't one of my favourite 37S posts.

I actually agree with them. I think building a "company" whose sole purpose is to be sold, profitable or not is not as fulfilling as building a company that is a company. I think most of us should be striving to build for long term success.

That being said, even 37S needs to realize that building a company is a lot more fun with $XX million in the bank than it is with $XX thousand. It's certainly a lot more fun to do everything else in your life that way, like raising a family, exploring the world doing whatever else it is that your heart desires.

This is a rather weak post with a weak argument.
> If you're doing what you like and you're earning a mil or two a year (or well on your way), why sell out all at once for $40 mil?

Let's say $2m/year - a sellout now at $40m is 20 years (if we (unrealistically) discount inflation and interest etc.).

You love what you're doing, but who knows what everything's gonna look like in 2-3-4 years, much less 20? Google might decide that DHH is a punk and make improved clones of the entire 37s portfolio and release them for free. 37s may have a breakdown and find out that their backups for the past month are corrupted, and never regain customer confidence. The concept of SAAS/cloud might be compromised by Patriot Acts III-VI. All those are worst-case scenarios, but there are a million other events that could at least compromise the $40m price-point -- so waiting and taking the money later isn't a backup-plan.

If you take your $40m now, you're insured against all that, and also against growing bored with the project and conflicts with co-founders or key employees -- and the buyer just might let you work, even on salary, on the project.

Passion now != passion in 20 years. Actually, I'd venture as far as saying that if you're sure your current passion is going to last, it's not real passion.
Unless you're the government and can just print as much as you want.

Yeah, ask Zimbabwe how that's working out.

you can chose to do interesting stuff that will make you money while you work for the man.

I don't think that's the point they're making at all. They're saying don't work for the man, and don't look for an opportunity to sell your work to the man for a giant payday - "do your own thing" and keep doing it.
18th-century theory is new force in computing
Could your problem be that you're pushing the wrong product? If people don't find your product useful/exciting/etc, there's no reason to expect any amount of coverage to make an impact on your traffic.
Recruiters are always pulling this "let's be edgy and relevant crap." It's two extremes, Googlers with the "Prove that you're smart enough for us!" and Microsoftees with the "You're sooooo smart, you should apply here!" (Actually, "Hey, Genius!" Oddly enough, once you've put in your paperwork the hiring processes are exactly the same.

This is the kind of crap that gets freshmen excited, but no one else is going to stop doing real work.
You can already make your own choices.

Except of course, that the amount of money in your bank account directly influences the effects of those choices. The more you have, the more "free" your choice is.

It's one thing to recognize that you are a man that can make your own choices, it's another to tell your kid he can't eat today because you didn't like what your boss was telling you to do.
A wise man once said, "...By encouraging Americans to adopt a group mentality, the advocates of so-called 'diversity' actually perpetuate racism. Their obsession with racial group identity is inherently racist..."
Does downvoting mean yes or no in this case?
Thank you very much! We work really hard at it. I grew up listing to punk and it's variants. So there is a lot of influence from that area, but I love the sounds I find in different types of music, from ragtime to swing to blues, classic rock, indie, cabaret, folk, Celtic, and so on.
> The tradeoff he proposes is a straw man: "Pull a few million from revenue each year or take a lump sum".

I agree. It's probably more like "pizza+beer+nice car+nice summer holiday"-profitable vs. a $2m-$5m payday -- i.e. the "we can do better, let's do this for a year or two more and see who has the last laugh"-passion.
Having actually worked in one of "these places" (in microcredit in Uganda and evaluated programs in Kenya) I can tell you that providing a safe place to bank is one of the best ways to help people. I suppose the first step is to define what you mean by "these places".

If you're talking about a war torn country or a country that is ruled under a radical ideological agenda (e.g. Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Iran or North Korea) and/or with high inflation, yes, I'd agree that savings probably aren't really going to be important to them.

For the vast majority of developing countries however, most are not starving on a day to day. However, they may make a lot more money one day but none the next - so it's this variance that creates risk and why financial services of all types (credit and savings) help to smooth out the risk. To get a sense of the risk, try imagining yourself living in a room without locks in a neighbourhood with a high level of crime - what would you do with any extra cash you had? Contrary to popular belief, the poor often have an immense capacity to save - in the microcredit I worked at, there were those who joined to borrow small amounts of just so that they could access the network and save.
Ahh, ok, this is a case of "[Citation Needed]" and I am going to ask you first.

PS: It's been a few years since I read that finding so it's going to take me a while to find it again.

Edit: Americans that are 1/4 "African" tend to identify themselves as African. This seems odd to me but it's actually the case.
Electronica, compared to Brian Eno and Joe Satriani; I'm on Last.FM (http://www.last.fm/music/Hacker+Blinks) and AmieStreet (http://amiestreet.com/music/hacker-blinks/)

Oh, and tools: earlier stuff was with Reason, later stuff with Logic; mostly just playing around on a little Oxygen synth.
Providing a safe environment in which to learn how to recognize that you aren't performing at your best is wonderful; it's hard to simulate the other conditions that give suboptimal results, but lack of sleep gives a good cross-section of drowsy, distracted, over-caffeinated, agitated, etc.
maybe because 'bellkor's pragmatic chaos' won the progress prize and they have some special relationship with them. could be any number of reasons. this is i think the danger of a private corporation running a programming contest.

i'm not saying netflix is unfair or corrupt. i hope not. but i think they owe it to the contestants to explain exactly why they chose the #2 entry on the leaderboard over the #1 entry. and not just (though i appreciate people's comments) because of overfitting. how is the private 'test' subset chosen? i have no affiliation with this contest or any of the teams in any way, but how would you like to work on this for years only to be told that even though you beat everyone in the quiz, in the private 'test', you lost.
I know what you're alluding to, I'm just saying it's an arbitrary distinction. There's absolutely no reason taking a giant payday from a single source is somehow inferior to taking money from thousands of customers in terms of your personal freedom.
How to get pip/virtualenv/Fabric working on Cygwin
I generally assume that people who ask, "Is X dead?" or state, "X is dead" actually mean "dead" in the sense Paul Graham used in his essay about Microsoft:

> What I meant was not that Microsoft is suddenly going to stop making money, but that people at the leading edge of the software business no longer have to think about them.

http://www.paulgraham.com/cliffsnotes.html
In that sense, all money is fuck you money.
I created several sites using the various incarnations of ACS. I started in the TCL version and followed it to RedHat where it finished its transition to Java.

The selling point for my client was the publish-to-file system. It could dump all of the content into the filesystem as flat html files to be rsync'd to the public web servers.
The top 1% of the total population, but if all your friends are investment bankers, the average doctor might seem poor.