skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Micah, thanks.

My original thought process was that it'd be better to pick a long term ambitious project and launch a minimum viable product for it in two years (not a full project like I think I implied in the original post). As you and others pointed out though, I should shrink that even more until I have something that I can release in months, not years.

I have plenty of ideas, but they're mostly, in pg's words, science projects, not company ideas. See, for example, HNTrends.com. Neat idea, but not exactly something that's going to put food on the table.

There's pros and cons to looking for a big idea. If I identify something that I'm passionate about, execute it well, and lady luck is on my side, I'll be in good shape. But, the longer I drag my feet looking for a big idea, the more I increase the chances that I'll miss out by not simply executing a small idea and gradually growing it into something big. All that said, I think your initial direction matters a lot. I imagine many founders have had great ideas that they wish they could execute but they can't because they've committed to something else which is why I'm taking the time right now to figure things out.

I suppose what it all boils down to doing exactly what you said: find something you're passionate about. that'll take care of almost everything else.
With two pivots, you can start the partitioning at either end and have a well defined location for each of the three partitions (at the top, at the botton, and inbetween). With more than three partitions, you would not know where to put the second to second last border without first sorting the array. You could just guess, but that would probably result in quite a lot of additional array shifting (lucky if you have a dedicated blitter chip for that :-)).
It would be nice if this was back-ported to Leopard (so you could use GCD without the application being Snow Leopard only), I wonder how difficult this would be..
edit: I wonder why I get downmodded every time I say that people in general DON'T WANT 'open' or 'fully customizable'... Is it because I mention Linux? Downmodders, care to explain?
Yeap imagine in 3 years you make 6 of those six-months projects/experiments.

That would give you an edge when you decide to start.

or maybe your third or fourth project / experiment
is quite interesting and you decide to have two or 3 six months iterations on it.

In that case you've found yourself your startup.
Would You Bet Your Life?
Real-time RSS notifications on your iPhone
Hm, maybe we need privacy guidelines at HN. Let people disclose information on their own terms.
Having N > 2 will require you to do a sort on the pivots :P Also you will require that the array size be at least N. N = 2 is a perfect size --

size = 0 -> no sort

size = 1 -> no sort

size = 2 -> pivots can be made, thus can be sorted

etc.
Introducing the Mixable Web - Game Changer?
Right, because websites regularly roll out fake features that need verification as to whether they actually exist or not? I wasn't contacting them to verify if it was real — clearly they were rolling it out to people (though obviously on a very limited basis). I was contacting them to figure out their logic for implementing such a bizarre feature.
ironically an article about web server performance just got hosed by HN.
I'm leaning towards something to do with online collaboration, though I'm still working out the details and am open to new areas.

I think Twitter is kind of stupid too.
This is probably a strong indication we have an oversupply of artists!
I would be interested in seeing the theoretical proof for the average case.
To all the downvoters: Guess what, I live in Eastern Europe, so I can't go to the local bookstore to flip through books. English language books (most good stuff written today) doesn't get imported at all. Books that are popular in the US are translated (terrible for technical books) about 5-10 years after their original release date. So guess what, I download the books, look at them, and order the good ones (about 5 every few months) from Amazon and Alibris.
If hair is a non-conductor, then it cannot be a semiconductor

False. For example, pure silicon is non-conductive, but when you add slight boron or phosphorous impurities it becomes a semiconductor. So it's not impossible that hair has semiconducting properties when it absorbs salt water.

Of course, the claim of human hair solar is crap. But debunkers should be extra-careful not to make bogus claims of their own.
Having N > 1 requires you to do a sort on the pivots. From the algorithm:

3. P1 must be less than P2, otherwise they are swapped.
You miss the point:

1) The APIs are in flux. Since Palm controls both APIs and the player, it can ensure that every update of the APIs will not break user expeirence.

2) Palm rejected the app from the palm store. Not banned the app from being used on webOS. In other words if I want to I can still install it, just not via. the app store. This is a huge difference from "apple app store or hack the firmware".

3) Palm immediately responded with details on how to fix this rejection.

4) The response time was quick.

5) Should we go on? You missing the point of the article.
You make a good point and that totally could be Palm's aim, but I'm willing to give Palm the benefit of the doubt here until there's more evidence of malice. Building an API isn't an easy thing to do and sometimes you want to go back and re-do parts of it which break applications. The Pre is a really new device and it did take Apple a year to create an API for the iPhone.

Plus, Palm is allowing people to install it on their own (as the article notes). By allowing it to live just not in the App Catalogue, it means that power users can install it and understand that it might break with an OS upgrade and they'll have to reinstall and when Palm finalizes the API, hopefully it will be in the app catalogue.

As long as a company allows me to install whatever I want, it doesn't matter so much whether I download it from their App Store or on my own. Sure, the App Store has a lot of benefits, but it isn't the same as how Apple's been killing off stuff. Sure, distribution won't be as good for the developer, but it's still alive.
NASA has no money for its human-spaceflight plans. The private sector has plenty
> A startup should take, say, 6 months to launch first beta...

I think he may mean a web-based startup.
This is a great question. I'm fairly new to this site, but as I read and explore around I'm finding myself in agreement with Paul Graham. In the How to Apply section for funding he explains a key thing he looks at is the founders, because initial ideas can and often do change. I think the optimum mix for a successful project is: competent key people, great idea, and market readiness. If all of these line up optimally I feel the venture will likely end up becoming a billion dollar company (youtube is an example). However, I think of all those the people component is most important, because smart competent people can make a success out of things lacking in other areas, but without competent people even great ideas will likely be bungled and flop (friendster and napster come to mind).
What other app do you pay for?
It's the other things I find more interesting, that were covered in founders at work - the things that seem like luck [...]

This is precisely why I don't find those other things very interesting: they seem like luck (to a degree larger than things that interest me more, at least). Gambling is also uninteresting, for the same reason: there's too much luck involved.
From my brief foray at Google, I can say that the code review process can be used to ruthlessly enforce orthodoxy. I would not say that this results in "clean code" as I would use the term. On the other hand the JavaScript code I saw was very, very uniform. It was also a bloated pig in my professional estimation. The JavaScript project I worked on had something like 15k lines of code and I rewrote maybe half of it (most of the UI) in 1200-1500 lines of code, and I still think I could have done the whole thing in around 3000. That particular 20 percent project didn't win me any friends it seems, or even convince anybody that I knew what I was doing.
Robinica: New 2 wheeled, programmable robots
"hoax - something intended to deceive; deliberate trickery intended to gain an advantage"

I know we all like to think that every 18 year old Nepali kid has at least a master's in electrical engineering and a PhD in materials science. However, It could simply be they are 18 year old kids and are wrong. I have seen no evidence of fraud.
A hoax implies deliberate fraud. Many scientific theories turn out to be wrong, but are not hoaxes. Newtonian mechanics or the Bohr atom model, for example.
what 'web mess in twisted' are you referring to?
In searching for the book on Amazon I found this: http://www.amazon.com/Land-Lisp-Learn-Program-Game/dp/159327...

Sweet.
Well, there is something slightly perverse about eating more food than you need, and then doing useless physical work to balance out the equation.
Most likely because the barriers to entry is lower than in mathematics. Everyone and his brother think they are "artists".
Without special kernel support, you could probably, at the very least, get a thread pool that was local to the process. That might be worth it.
Ask HN: When doing a startup, what is the best way to find capital?
I mostly want to ask this question out of curiosity, but also to help people out in a similar situation.

The situation would be similar to this:

I have a great idea which I know would be successful, but zero capital to make it happen. I need N number of developers, and N number of people to work on marketing and promotion. I also need N amount of dollars for hardware and office space in a downtown location.

If a person wanted to incorporate MyCompany, and then look for bank loans or funding, etc, what would be the best way to do it? I know that most businesses never actually get funding from investors, and a lot will just get a bank loan. If you were to go this route, what criteria are needed in order to get a loan for say, $300k? If the business ends up tanking, what happens to that debt? Who is responsible?

Now, say if you do manage to get funding, how does this usually happen with regards to exchange of capital? What happens if the company tanks, and the $300k in funding is lost?

I'm basically trying to conceptualize what sort of issues arise when raising money in both directions. Who is responsible? What do you need to do to secure capital? Who do you speak with? Etc.

Sorry if this is worded strangely, but I'm not sure how else to explain it. I would probably never even think about going a bank loan route if I was responsible for the money, but I hear that when you incorporate your company, you are no longer personally responsible for any losses.

Hopefully someone has some insight or resources on this topic, as it has always been in the back of my mind.

Thanks.
Apple doesn't allow third-party developers to use "private" API's (hence why they are called "private") either. These are private for various reasons (legal, completeness, etc.).

But in these cases (usage of private API's) Apple is very clear as to the nature (and therefore resolution) of rejection, so this point in the article invalid.

There are a few good points, but in general, most of the "lessons" Apple can supposedly learn from Palm only point out the lack of familiarity the author has with Apple's current process.
See, this is why you shouldn't use metaphors in arguments. Since there's always a point that doesn't apply, expect people to zoom in on that part.

How about this: When you produce something without having negotiated a payment in advance, thus establishing its value to somebody, you have no right to complain when nobody finds enough value in the work to give you money. You are free to produce all the art, buggy whips, windows, or any other object you want, but you are not free to demand that people give you money afterward. You are free to try to convince them to do so (marketing), but insisting that people MUST appreciate your art with money is actually an infringement of other people's rights to have their own valuations of things, as you are imposing your valuations on them.

(That's a critical point there, BTW; "right to have your own valuation" may not be a right frequently talked about but it's really quite fundamental to many of the other much flashier and popular rights.)
SaaS Startups: Knobs and Dials And Other Insights
'really open' is also a huge headache to support: could you imagine the level of training the telecom operators...

It's not the telecom's responsibility to support your phone's OS any more than it is your internet provider's responsibility to support your computer's OS. The point that was made is that an open device, analogous to the PC in the early computer days would be a Good Thing for the phone ecosystem.
Even with SSL though, an eavesdropper would know:

a) What site(s) you were accessing (the IP address is visible, and as it can't be a shared IP, a DNS lookup or SSL connect to that site should give them what site) and the length of time on each site.
b) The approximate size of those pages, and the number of embedded items, so could quite probably and within reasonable time know what pages.
c) If they knew your browser (through seeing non SSL traffic) they could probably know the length of the URL.

Have you really gained anything through using SSL??
There are two web implementations, and neither are complete(eg, twisted.web does not support even http 1.1). Even the twisted developers will tell you they are not happy with the web code in twisted. twisted.web2 was the future and twisted.web was to be depreciated, now twisted.web is the future and twisted.web2 is to be depreciated... the mess is still being cleaned up.

Link to the twisted web page describing the situation and the plan: http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/wiki/TwistedWebPlan
> Right, because websites regularly roll out fake features that need verification as to whether they actually exist or not?

Well, you have one datapoint more now than you did last week ;) Lets hope the counter gets stuck at '1'.

> I wasn't contacting them to verify if it was real — clearly they were rolling it out to people (though obviously on a very limited basis).

Yes, why bother verifying something that even the first couple of posters on your site immediately classified as a hoax ?

5:29 original post

5:37, all of 8 minutes later, Rob Abbott: please tell me this is a joke

5:39: bad april fools joke, Stephen Ausman

5:41: Matt Harwood: I call hoax

So, if you consider it bizarre enough to contact them, your readers point out that it is in all likelihood a hoax you still contradict them.

After all, it so completely makes sense for facebook to implement this, what with the popular demand for this feature and all. After all, every 'expert' in the industry is well aware of the rise of fax usage between the users of social networks.

Elsewhere you say that facebook usually responds very well, and that a response within 10 minutes isn't unusual.

So, in spite of them normally responding amazingly fast you did not have the courtesy to wait for their response ?

Must be hard to let go of a scoop.

I'm really happy that if it would have been damaging that you would have at least waited a little longer and that you would have tried to contact more people. But effectively that says: "If it would have been damaging then we would have run it regardless". Just 20 minutes and a couple of emails later maybe.

Class act.
real startups have people working 16+ hours a day on the startup. This is a class, people will not work 16+ hours a day to get this out the door.

I do think you can take a similar approach, and break the groups up in to 7 groups of 3 to work on the initial design of the product an 1 group of 4 to present the various designs to the customer, have the customer choose one, then split the product up into roles.

4 managers, 3 visual designers, 3 user interface designers, 3 user researchers, 3 developers, 3 database experts, 3 QA people, and 3 back ups to take over the work that other people drop.

The people in roles should spend time working as a team on their part of the product and also interfacing with teams in the other roles. It will be quite a class that brings together all of those skill sets, but even if it is a programming class it would be good to get experience "working" in one of the other roles to get some perspective on what they do.

This is the way a large company works, though. Or at least a mid stage startup, not a new small startup. Good luck!
They're probably just looking to make it as profitable as possible as quick as possible. They probably aren't looking long-term.

There also exists the possibility that this is a way to try and drive up share prices by looking like they are doing something.

"We're dropping off unprofitable parts of the business! Look at us! We're doing something. Skype's outlook is improving!"
> I would probably never even think about going a bank loan route if I was responsible for the money, but I hear that when you incorporate your company, you are no longer personally responsible for any losses.

wow, if you're that confident about your product why wouldn't you put your neck on the line? Note: personal debt sucks.

Build an early cheap prototype for, maybe, under $10k - use elance.com for example, and get a few users, prove the ARRR model and raise an angel round off that. Or, apply to YC with a technical co-founder.

If thats too much $$$, build a great powerpoint deck explaining exactly what you're doing, why its great, who the customers are and why they'll pay. oh and how you'll get those customers. and why you can do it but no one else. then get violated by early stage investors as you raise money off a product which doesn't exist and you're an unproven solo founder.

the short answer to "i need capital" = build something people will pay for. can't program? learn.
I was talking about absolute numbers (sorry for not making that clearer), so your assessment is correct without contradicting mine. The oversupply of arts teachers probably consists of ambitious people who hope copyright will make them rich. Abolish copyright and the teacher/student ratio will likely drop to the math level.
The OS X/Darwin kernel for the unwashed...
The human body is not 100% efficient. The efficiency of a human body can change. The amount of Kcal in a food item measured in a lab is not necessarily going to be the same amount a human absorbs.
Indeed. You're not fat through any fault of your own. Certainly not because of anything you ate. It's genetic. Now you can feel good about yourself and not have to try.

This is us, several miles down the road we started down in the '70s when we started teaching kids Self Esteem without any correlation to the things they need to do to actually earn that self esteem. You're special just the way you are.

Combine that with the basic American right of "nothing is ever your fault", and here we are. A whole country full of people who refuse to take any responsibility for their own actions.

And we just got done doing this a month ago...
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=751311
Any insights into the "fat pivot" problem?
Next Up For Disruption? College
You just compared my website to a Britney Spears cover? Them's fighting words, sir! Keyboards at dawn.
These festivals shouldn't be run by media business people, they should be run by musician business people. If there are too many people taking cuts then things will cost too much.
I wouldn't consider buying this without a Kindle option. For me it's not worth the bulk, but a digital option would be welcome.
Checklist For Better Forms
I join stse in saying that the stalking was uncalled for: amichail had clearly indicated his desire for privacy by the time you made this comment. I'd also like the people who upvoted khafra to +5 to provide some sort of explanation, because this behavior seems to me more actively harmful than amichail's purported sexist remarks. I often express opinions that people may not like; am I to take that people will cyber-stalk me for that? Do you want HN to become this kind of place?

Edit: khafra, thanks a lot for editing the post. This reaffirms my faith that HN is an exceptionally good online community.
Teachers, for one, haaaaaaaaaaate them. A lot of educational software must be rebought yearly. I've used lack of recurring costs as a competitive differentiator for three years.
And yet somehow we have entire continents full of thin people living outside the McDonalds belt, many of whom must have this same genetic disorder. How are they managing to keep the pounds off?
Rate my startup: SlamPic.com
oh calm down. I'm not missing a damned thing.

1) The APIs are in flux. Since Palm controls both APIs and the player, it can ensure that every update of the APIs will not break user experience.

API changes have traditionally been managed through communication through developer documentation. Palm saying "trust us to communicate internally (between our WebOS team and our App teams) better than we communicate to our 3rd party developers" tells you the following: (A) - Palm reserves the right to communicate less effectively to its 3rd party devs than to its internal app devs. Also, Palm internal apps get the ability to test against new WebOS updates prior to general distribution, but 3rd party devs might not. (B) - Palm reserves the right to make certain APIs private which can possibly be used as a competitive advantage.

2) Palm rejected the app from the palm store. Not banned the app from being used on webOS. In other words if I want to I can still install it, just not via. the app store. This is a huge difference from "apple app store or hack the firmware".

I never said Palm was evil and their device was locked down. Don't infer into my posts. If I meant to compare Palm to Apple, I would have.

3) Palm immediately responded with details on how to fix this rejection.

I never said Palm behaved badly in its rejection process. Don't infer into my posts. If I meant to compare Palm to Apple, I would have.

4) The response time was quick.

I never said Palm responded in an untimely manner in its rejection process. Don't infer into my posts. If I meant to compare Palm to Apple, I would have.

5) Should we go on? You missing the point of the article.

No need to go on. There was also no need to infer what you have into my original post either.
Dropbox enables effortless upload to OurDoings
The cardinal sin of community management
The support Palm has shown the homebrew community has been great. They've been smart enough to realize that guys like me who install Filecoaster know what we're doing and the risks we're taking, and that the other 99% of their users won't know or care.

It's been fun watching the apps I've used improve before they get into the app store. Homebrew is the developer's dream because there's no bureaucracy between you and the customer. You can use an agile development cycle of releasing the app widely, getting feedback, improving, etc., and the rapid improvements I've seen have been validation of that.

I really don't know why Apple doesn't do this. They're only hurting their developers, and therefore themselves, in the long run.
Google Cache got it right before it melt down: http://74.125.77.132/search?q=cache%3Awww.apparatusproject.o...
I found the remarks to be so far off the beaten path that I was wondering if culture might be a factor here.

Some things that seem strange to me might make perfect sense to someone with a background sufficiently different from mine.

Some remote family member of mine for instance firmly believed (deceased) that women 'have their place', and with that he definitely didn't mean university.

I found that a pretty bizarre statement (even as a kid) but in light of his particular cultural background I find it easier to accept that that was his point of view.
In fact 24 min is the time they took to write that article. They really didn't wait even a single minute before writing it :-)
up again sorry :)