skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN:  Am I crazy?
So I just graduated college in the spring and I have about $1500 in savings that I could spend on the deposit + rent/moving expenses for an apartment somewhere and continue looking for a job, but something in me is telling me there's a better way. I have a plan, but I want to see if you guys think I'm crazy (If HN thinks it's too out there, then I know I'm off-base) or if I'm going to need more money or what.

I have known for some time that there's something different in the brain of an entrepreneur that changes the way they see the world, and I want to find out what that is.

So I want to set out to find entrepreneurs, either through appointment or serendipity, and spend a little time with them. Just get to know how they decided to do what they do, what keeps them going, what their hopes and dreams are, etc. I posit that there's commonalities to be found there and a lot of insight to be gained from those commonalities. My contacts are somewhat slim, and it would probably be reasonable to spend a few years building up more, but something tells me now is the time to do this and it's getting harder and harder to ignore.

I spent some time as a freelance writer, so I believe I can make the result compelling and interesting. But there's a lot of things I need to work out, and this is where I need your help:
- Do I have enough money to do this long enough to produce anything of substance? (numbers at the end of the post)
- How should I publish this? It could be a blog that I update regularly, an ebook that I put together as I go, a physical book (leaning away from this for many reasons) or some combination thereof?
- Can I somehow monetize this as I'm working on it so as to extend my trip?
- How should I pitch the project to potential subjects? Free publicity? Altruism?

Numbers:
A trip from Chicago(where I live) to NY, boston, New Orleans, Austin, SF, Seattle, back to chicago is 7695 miles. I'm thinking $700 for gas, oil changes, and some other tune-up stuff before I leave/along the way. If I eliminate the west coast, this drops to around 4000 miles, If I just do SF and Seattle (this is probably what I'll end up doing) I end up with around 5000 miles.

I have no aversion to couch surfing, sleeping in my car or camping, all of which I've done plenty of. With around 5 days of pure driving, I can spend a month doing this at just over $20/day to spend on food/bribery.

My hope would be to get around 15-20 case studies of at least an hour or so interview time, plus maybe shadowing and secondary interviews. Though this is flexible. I think this would be enough for a worthwhile product.

So. Am I crazy? Should I do it? Suggestions? Volunteers? Donations...?

Also, you can email me at alex |at| mohrslaws.com
What does that have to do with liking Ayn Rand's writing?
And by the way, the people who run these simulations could be one of our descendants who wanted to know how they evolved. Anyways, its definitely a fun read.
People's stupidity is infinite and therefore it can't be simuleted.

On a serious note, even if we are in simulation we are still part of the real world just like many computer programms today.
Thanks for the information. I think I'll give that a look on a test system, if only to see whether I care enough to bother.
It works for NPR. Why not for WP?
At least 3 years old:
http://jeremiahgrossman.blogspot.com/2006/08/i-know-where-yo...
What-the-customer-actually-wanted. (JPEG Image)
That's really an odd post. The Hindley-Milner type inference algorithm is from ~1969. Advanced static typing systems have been around for ages, it's not like we suddenly have the capability of building languages with them.

Mark me down as confused about what the author was trying to say here.
Not quite the same thing but Sean Aiken did something similar - http://www.oneweekjob.com/

Sounds like fun.
thanks - do you mean that many of the RoR contractors are monkeys or that their hirers do not know what to look for?

edit: but when it comes time to code-monkeys, how do you hire?
Tarsnap has reached profitability with a website that has no style.

Yes, but I've had enough comments from potential tarsnap users about the lacking website that I'm currently working on building a real website -- and as you point out, tarsnap is an unusual case.

While I think many sites are overly flashy, I wouldn't recommend tarsnap's minimalist approach except in very rare situations.
It's great that this is back online again. I got lot's of people trying ruby thanks to this.
er - type inference in ocaml is descendent from ML, which had the feature in the 70s - hell, hindley-milner was published in 1969. This has nothing to do with how recently the language has been developed, it is a simple tradeoff between type safety and developer effort. There is really no room for speculation on a subject that a 15 second visit to wikipedia would clear up.
The nice thing about subscription service is that you're never in danger of losing your music. You're not locked into a specific codec, audio quality, or player.

If the service or technology went down, you're not out anything--you just move to a new subscription service.

I'm not claiming that it's perfect for everyone, it's a personal choice: you can get all of the music now but have to keep paying, or you can slowly build up a library but start out with not much.

The other advantage of subscription is that you can easily try out new music. It's incredibly easy to discover new music when it's all in one catalog and there's no marginal cost of listening to entire CDs.

The only problem is that switching from one model to the other is going to be painful--but this isn't an advantage either way.
If you don't have any other streams of income, you might want to think about ways you could get $1k/mo flowing into your bank account to keep you afloat while you flesh this out. $1500 isn't a lot of money, but perhaps that constraint will just make you more creative.

As for the validation that you're seeking, I've seen people do much crazier things that have turned out well. Which is all to say that, yes, the idea is crazy -- maybe even just crazy enough to work if you are committed to it. It sounds like the downside risk to you is pretty minimal, so why not?

To get you started, here's your first tip from an entrepreneur: don't be too attached to the outcome you have planned now. Just like in a startup, once you start on your adventure, you may find that going in a different direction looks more promising. Take the first step, then go where opportunity leads you.
What I really would love to see is a commercial version of this concept attached to the warehouse of one of the big parts companies.

Imagine a hacker space with 5 minute delivery from Newark?
Not quite. Science doesn't apply, sure, but rational argument still does. Two very different things. Mind you, rational argument completely disassociated from any assumptions about the verifiability of the world we appear to inhabit has an irksome habit of going in circles.
YouTube may stream movies on rental basis: WSJ
The premise is falsifiable given enough time. Do you think we will ever be able to create artificial intelligence equivalent to a human being? If we accomplish that, do you think you simulate a world for these AI beings to live? Do you think these beings living in this simulated world would know they are in a simulated world?

It's fine to think that we will never produce such AI and/or simulations. But to compare it to something that is not falsifiable is a different thing, in my mind.
You should really read Isaac's comments on the blog:

http://blog.greenfelt.net/2009/09/01/caching-javascript-safe...

They are really insightful and expose the knowledge gained from a lot of work he's done at Yahoo! on this subject.
Seeing the "results" of surgery improves outcome
> Unless he had a pre-order form for the book as the landing page, that's not generally accepted.

This sounds like an assertion with no real knowledge to back it up.

What does "generally" mean?

Either it's acceptable or it's not.

Here are the adwords TOS:

http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/static.py?page=guid...

This may be what you're thinking of:

http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/static.py?page=guid...

Your ads and keywords must directly relate to the content on the landing page for your ad. When users see your ad, they should be able to understand what kind of product, service, or other content they will find on your site. Products or services promoted in your ad must be reflected on your landing page; ads can be disapproved if a promoted product is not offered or available for sale as promised.

The ad doesn't promise that anything is for sale - it seems like a general branding campaign.
I hope that you don't agree the idea that people don't have to pay taxes because they disliked Bush. It's insane.
Not being web-based is most definitely in favor of Chicago.

Here's a story that I think illustrates everything about Chicago: so a group of people decided to form a new angel group (http://www.hydeparkangels.com). Got a lot of people together, associated with U of C, lots of smart, hardworking people. A little younger skewing than other "groups" (I use the term loosely because they're more social clubs since they don't actually invest) in town. What's their first investment?

A company that makes automatic fucking card shufflers for home poker games. Yeah, if it's not a manufacturing model - $x input => direct $x+y output, good fucking luck.

EDIT: The lawyers, combined, have charged me $60K for stuff that could easily have been done for $10K by an experienced firm in SF (as confirmed by a partner at a representative Palo Alto office of a representative firm). And $10K would have left me another $15K on the loan most good firms will do for a leveragable company targeting VC investment.
While it can't be proven either way, something I find interesting about Bostrum's formulation (and before it, Hans Moravec's 'Pigs in Cyberspace') is that it does seem possible to infer some probabilities.

As we get closer to a world where our own ability to create world-simulations approaches verisimilitude to our 'real world', it becomes more likely that we are ourselves in such a simulation.

Some people find this idea existentially-threatening, but if it's any consolation, those running the simulation can't be sure they're not in a simulation either.

For example, let's say we're inside a simulation run by a race of hyper-intelligent turtles, whose universe simulation, after a few tredecillion ticks, has given rise to our current perceived reality.

Well, it's turtles all the way up.
No, when you are dead. Since you were once U.S. citizen in tax sense by owning U.S. properties and securities. (including you as permanent residents, or H1-B visa holders) The U.S. tax authority now has right to go to Swiss banks to request freezing of assets.

The worse part is when calculating your tax, the U.S. tax authority will treat you as a non citizen so they can tax assets more than 60k, instead of usually 1 million in 2009.

This just happens to one of the Taiwanese Billionaire, Wang Yung-ching. He owned U.S. properties and his company Formosa Plastics Corporation now is trying to estimate the amount of the tax they owe to U.S. tax authority, even the company is not a U.S. company and he has no U.S. citizenship and permanent resident status. But because both entities owns U.S. properties. The U.S. tax authority has their bites to all the company assets in Taiwan, too.

Meanwhile, his heirs in Taiwan still need to pay the inheritance taxes for their own shares of the inheritance.
Is this any relation to Programmers at Work?

Edit: Downvoted? I was being serious: Programmers at Work was a mid-80s book interviewing a bunch of programmers from all over the industry. My copy still sits on my bookshelf, which is more than most computing books.

The original author’s blog about the book is at http://programmersatwork.wordpress.com/
Do it. You just graduated college. This will be an educational breather, and, it could end up influencing your future career. It's going to be tight on $1.5k, but where there is a will, there is a way :)
Yes, but file.js is on the disk and is always the new version.

If the html is cached then it will still have the old reference to file.js?1111. If it goes and gets that from your site it will not get the old one it will get the new one. In which case you now have a mismatch and you can get errors.

With the hashing scheme this does not happen. The html references file-oldhash.js which still exists on the server in its original form. Therefore, your pages are atomic--either you will have all new scripts or all old scripts. Which is exactly what you want--it's the mismatch between new and old that causes problems.
BCI2000 Software Lets Your Mind Control Computers
> You're not locked into a specific codec, audio quality, or player.

You're not locked into a specific player with mp3 audio either, and IIRC there aren't any subscription services that give you mp3 audio... so you are limited in your choices of music player in the first place since subscription services all use some form of DRM.

If you buy CD audio, or are able to find a service that sells FLAC/APE/ALAC audio, then you're also not 'locked in' to a particular codec or audio quality (because at that level you can easily transcode downwards in quality and/or to lossy codecs).

> If the service or technology went down, you're not out anything--you just move to a new subscription service.

This is assuming that the subscription services use compatible DRM schemes, or that your player supports both DRM schemes... Otherwise you're stuck needing to buy a new player. And that's not to mention any time and effort that you put into building custom playlists that won't transfer to the new subscription service.

It's sort of like all the personal information that people put into Facebook. They are investing a lot of time into one vendor of social networking services. The more time that they spend on Facebook, the more heavily invested they are in staying with that particular vendor, because it becomes more and more painful to rebuild all of your information/connections/etc on the new service.
I think it does color our behavior if we are able to produce such a simulation. If at some point in the future we are able to produce a simulation such as this don't you think our behavior would change in that we would acknowledge the possibility of ourselves being in such a simulation?
Best guess on the street is that it's actually a collective of about 40 people.
Olark (YC S09) Brings Chat to Any Website - Whether You Own the Site or Not
How about reaching out to Mixergy and see if he needs any help?
I don't know. Tax authority will try to get maximum benefit in both ways. For H-1 B holders and Green Card holders. When they leave U.S., they lost their right to claim Social Security benefit and Medicaid they paid to U.S. in future. Is that fair? I know it depends on which side you are standing.
Not sure what the moral of this piece is. But that piece of Java code is both impressive & scary as hell at the same time.
HTC T Mobile G2 Touch Unlocked
HTC G2 Touch T Mobile Hero is a rather striking handset, currently available in either white or graphite color schemes in the UK, with a characteristic ‘kink’ in its body, giving it a distinctive chin at the bottom. but are calling it the ‘G2 Touch.
I do not honestly know much about patents and the wording of laws, but on the Wiki page about Design Patents the phrase "Thus a design that was arrived at independently can still infringe a design patent." seems troubling. Hopefully it's as Perceval says, that they are just covering their ass from patent trolls.

Also Google's patent for "Collaborative web page authoring" http://bit.ly/2t287H seems more disturbing than the design one.
The Autistic Surfer
The NATO ones based there shouldn't have American markings, they should look like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nato_awacs.jpg

I went for a walk in a British one at the Abbotsford Airshow this summer (all UK crew), and I know the NATO ones can have Canadian pilots and Radar ops.

The US does operate the E-3's as a part of their Air Force as well, but the NATO ones are not American.
Facebook developers working to establish their business
Set up a website to chronicle your journey posting photos, interviews (even summaries), etc. and put a donate button on it. I wwould donate once I see you're doing it and committed.
Yeah, you're a little crazy, but there's no better time than now to do crazy things. It won't get easier, cheaper, less stressful, as you get older. I think you're underestimating the expense of some aspects of this...but if you plan extremely well and live extremely cheap, you can probably live a couple months on the road for $1500.

You should start blogging about your plans (your route, what you're taking with you, who you want to talk to, etc.) immediately...it won't bring in any revenue, but it will (hopefully) get you in touch with enough people willing to help along the way. Video might also be helpful. Once you're actually setting out, you might be able to get enough traffic to bring in some cash. The blogging process is also good for other things...it makes you a better writer, and if you get some traffic it might catch the attention of a publisher or magazine editor.

Also, you can crash at my place when you get to Silicon Valley, if you like.
Perl sort tutorial
You are living in the past on several of these issues. For one, Sony's players have supported mp3 for at least the past 3 years and possibly longer. Second, options like Microsoft's Zune Pass let you do both: paying $15/month gets you access to the entire catalog of music, but you get to keep 10 of the tracks (in a no DRM, quality mp3 format for most songs) every month -- making it equivalent to only paying around $6/month for the subscription.
How able/averse are you to living with or taking money from your parents while you do this?

I think it's a great idea, but there's no way you've got enough money to do this and take it to the point where it's publishable or monetizable. $1500 is like one month's rent in SF. While you can stretch that out by couchsurfing or camping, there'll be a lot of other expenses (gas? car breaking down? cell phone bills for all the calls you'll need to setup interviews?) And you'll need a lot of time to condense your interviews into something worth reading, and then more time and money to publish it (even if just online).

Again, I think it's a great idea, and it could work well if your parents don't mind you bumming around the house while you collect your notes and make it into a book or blog series or whatever. But if you don't have their support, it may be better to spend a year or so working and save up $10-20k first.
I'm no detective, but here are some of the names:

Annabel Strange
Annabel Spring
Annabel Sketch
Annabel Scrape
Annabel Start
What if the turtle's universe was a dream thought up by the great flying spaghetti monster?

My probability math is rusty, but it's my understanding that probability is only relevant in a finite system. The article (in a very sneaky way) assumes, as it's premise, an infinite set of 'simulations'. But if this is the case, wouldn't that negate the usefulness of their 'probability'? In other words, if your conclusion is that we could be living in a simulation running inside a simulation running insi.....(keep going until blue in the face) doesn't that undercut your ability to say that one course of action is more likely than another?

Or, even better, isn't this the same as the proof for god that goes: "Our world is so complex and the probability of it coming about by by accident is so small that there must be an intelligent being controlling it'

(I was a CS/Philosophy double major in college, so my theoretical probability skills may be off, are there any math majors out there that can clear this up?)
Damn, Drudge Report used to look slick.
That thing may be ugly but it shot down countless American F-4 Phantoms over the skies of North Vietnam. Do not underestimate Soviet tech.
This is now the 5th time this topic has been posted to HN. May 2008 was when it all started:

http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/socialhistoryjs/

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=248558

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=404564

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=617546

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=717802
I'm familiar with Hyde Park Angels and talked with them for a while. Never got any traction with them and kept getting pushed off for a pitch, for vague reasons. This was after we had reached >$1mm in annual sales. Now I know it was because of the card shuffler.

I see what you're saying. Although my business isn't web-based, it is a media company that relies on advertising as a sole source of revenue. There were a lot of misconceptions and distrust about anything related to advertising. I've gotten the most absurd questions during pitch sessions. To the extent anyone invested, it was because there was personal trust.

My challenge has been that most rich people here have, by and large, not made their money in "startups" (even more loosely defined than on HN). Many of them have made their coin in big corporate management, finance, or from family. That kills the investment ecosystem because they largely turn it over to their financial advisers, who have no reason to consider risky startups.

Angel groups here are a joke. Our money came from getting to know people individually.

Have you considered pulling up stakes and moving?

Edit: on VC -- I have turned quite anti-VC since being here. I think it is because most of the VCs, when asked why they are in Chicago, tell you it is because they can get "great deals" on "desperate" companies. Even on the angel side, I've had to explain to people why EBITDA multiples are not an appropriate valuation mechanism for early stage ventures. And then they act like I'm trying to con them.
The real numbers are infinite, and probabilities involving continuous functions on the reals make sense; it's just that P(X=c) = 0 for all constants c, and you have to integrate the probability density function to obtain probabilities. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_probability_distribu...
you're not crazy, this would make for a good read. it's like founders at work, but improvised and down in the trenches.

we have a tent you can borrow for a few nights if you'd like, won't charge. look up the palo alto hacker house and if interested email me (jared /at graffitigeo /dot com). we have people who have dropped out of school, left jobs, etc. and would probably be open to letting you profile a bit.
University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign

My degree is in Political science with concentrations in computer science and economics. I also have about half a degree in physics and a whole lot of coursework (around the reqs for a minor) in math, english, and music.
I would be more interested in seeing the initial frontpages of newer services (launched in 2004 or later). It would be interesting to see how various companies have followed the principle of "launch early and iterate".

It's harder to tell with sites launched around the mid-90s, when webpages were a lot less sophisticated.
cool, same here. are you on hndir.com? there is a collection of about 25 or so hackers for uiuc, many of them would be good to check out.

shoot me an email and let us host you for a few nights in palo alto, no costs -- jared /at graffitigeo /dot com
I'll donate a six-pack to that endeavor, as long as I get to join in drinking it. :)
I don't think you're crazy, it's something uncommon and it'll be a great experience no matter what happens.

If you are happy about your idea, do it without a doubt.
Flip the coin to get sufficient entropy, then take the md5 of the bits generated. That should give you some number of virtual flips as output.
My mom would bankroll my phone bill and probably some other things. She also has her own business, so I could work for her while I compiled my work.