skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Look no further than Fossil SCM. It had a distributed ticket system as well as a wiki, and it was developed by Dr. Hibbs (of SQLite fame) who provides unbelievable support for it: I saw him address a user's question on the mailing list within ten minutes this morning (Labor Day for posterity). And I'm using it for all of my projects now.

Another nice thing is that there's no notion of Git's "bare repository." A repository is a single SQLite database file, and you check out your working directory from it.

It also comes with a browser-based UI (no Tk) that includes the wiki, tickets, and admin. Oh, and it has an optional "autosync" mode that will push your changes immediately to a remote repository if you're connected.

In all, a high-quality piece of software.
Have any of you read David Brin's "Transparent Society" http://www.amazon.com/Transparent-Society-Technology-Between... He makes the argument that universal monitoring is going to happen, almost certainly, and the only real alternatives is who gets to watch, just the gov't, or will we get to keep an eye on the gov't too?
Yeah, nothing yet for me. The conference should've started by now.
And exactly how are checks in legitimate source going to solve issue with tricking users to add malicious sources?
When given two integers pretty much any language will return an integer (so 1/2 = 0).

In Python 2.6, if one of the arguments is a float you'll get a float result, the same is true for Ruby 1.8.

The new behavior is to return a float even if two integers are passed.
I'd say the answer to both questions is code review. The difference is in how you get people to actually dig through the code and comment on it.
Not to derail the conversation but when did 40 become 'old'? I'm just a decade and a half from that age and that isn't long. I'd probably consider 60 or 70 to be old. Not 40.
Whitelist the trusted sources =)
I'm 21 and CEO of a startup and I don't know shit - I'm not even that smart - hence why I talk and listen to as many smart people as I can. I like to think I'm pretty good at working out what advice is good advice...

I also feel the only way to learn properly is to do it. You'll only follow someone's advice so far till your gut sets in and you need to make your own path - even if that requires being proved wrong.
Your theory is about a third right. Young founders do get more attention from the press. But not because of propaganda campaigns by their investors. The press doesn't have to be talked into it: they already have a bias toward writing about young founders.

And it's definitely false that VCs prefer founders who are young because they can be pushed around. VCs are very unlikely to invest in someone they can push around. Nothing turns them off like weakness.
Wasn't there a big to-do at Revenue Bootcamp with PG and Mike Moritz? Didn't Moritz dismiss/dodge questions about "older" (> 30) founders? (see: http://www.thefunded.com/funds/item/5749)

Aren't most YC founders < 30ish?

It's curious.
1. Outsourcing tasks that don't require my specific involvement to my offshore team.
2. Dining out instead of cooking. It is not much more expensive to dine out, but it saves me time (grocery shopping, cooking time, cleaning time).
3. Roomba. I will never vacuum again. Ever.
Fossil SCM (from SQLite's creator)
The New Nostradamus (2007)
Money. I suspect that Dru could make quite the counterfeiter if he decided to be.
I batch my tasks for greater efficiency. If I have to do 3 meetings in a week, I try my best to schedule them all in the same day. I check email only once a day. Check and go through regular mail only once a week. Do all my shopping, groceries, errands all in the same day once a week. Also I try to never do any work after dinner.
Same here, really simple and powerful technique. Just focus on what you need for 25 min, than pause for 3-5 minutes. Repeat as needed.
How to use game theory to buy a car
1. Vim

2. Efficient shell usage

3. Alternating coffee and ganja

I think only the last one's a hack but it's a damn good one.
That doesn't make much difference to me as a viewer. I'm impressed with his chops, but I don't see what makes his reproduction better than the original photo.
You are being too simplistic.

It's the price relative to the time. It's not the price alone.
This is a quote from a talk at the International Conference on Function Programming (or more specifically the Workshop for Commercial Users of Functional Programming http://cufp.galois.com/2009/abstracts.html). But Lee Benfield who said it, attributed the saying to Simon Peyton-Jones.

A higher-order functional language allows higher order functions like map, filter and foldl (functions on functions). A first order language allows to define functions, but not on other functions. And a zeroth order language does not allow you to define functions (or name anything) as far as I figure.
They're also all male, in addition to being old, married, and having two kids. Therefore, women won't be successful start-up founders.

Interesting, but I don't think it's productive for people to focus on how they are demographically different from your typical "success" story in any field or endeavor.
Interesting thought. (Though I doubt that Java is more expressive than Javascript. I'd replace Java with something like F#, clojure, Arc, Haskell or so.)
I can't wait 'til somebody makes the tools to let this guy create holograms of people.
TOP 10 EXTREME OBSERVATORIES
Uh, no, he didn't say photorealism was pointless. In fact, he said the opposite:

> As a style, Photorealism has a few detractors, who often dismiss it as pointless, or non-art. They fail to realize that many photorealistic paintings are not mere copies of photographs, but interpretations of reality based on the artist's vision. The act of merely copying a photograph has no artistic merit except to hone one's artistic skills. Most of my aviation paintings would be impossible to photograph, such as Timing is Everything for example. This painting of Tica is not just a copy of a photograph, but is a product of many artistic decisions, whereas I deviated from the reference photo for more aesthetic appeal.

Your "craftsperson" reference is snide. I have a couple of snide opinions myself, I guess. It's obvious that there is a wide variety of compositions just dying to have photorealistic treatment--subjects where, as the author points out, getting a camera shot would be impossible. Unfortunately, being able to do photorealistic art takes real skill, and that skill appears to be consistently deprecated by the art world.
In other words, let's redo PageRank, but instead of which pages link to my page, use who follows/reads/spreads/reworks my stuff. A good idea, but probably tough to implement without some kind of standard identity system. (What does "who" mean on the web?)
It's unhealthy, though, isn't it? I have a hard time finding places that are healthy, fast, tasty and cheap all the same time. Whereas I can quickly cook healthy cheap and tasty meals.
Oh, I'm not arguing the artistic/aesthetic quality here. I was only saying that I do agree with him when he says that he made many decisions in changing the original for what he sees as aesthetically better.
Once a week, take something you're doing ad hoc and systematize it, or take something you've systemized and measure it, or take something you've measured and improve it, or take something you've improved and automate it.

Note that the above suggestion is self-referential.
Silicon Valley has probably funded a huge number of companies that are really features and not companies. It’s very easy to build a feature and call yourself a CEO. It’s much harder to actually grow a company...

This irked me a bit. I wonder how the author would define "feature" and why he believes that real companies don't simply make features.

As far as I can tell, there are companies out there with small feature-like products that are making consistent profits... and there are plenty of companies with massive complex products that haven't got a clue how to make money. I don't think you can choose to call something a company or not based solely on the complexity of what its main product/service.
The more interesting question to me is which age demographic does better with less funding. Web 2.0 companies may be just "features" but the great thing about them is that they require barely any investment. In fact, a young person without any commitments (family, mortgage, etc.) and enough determination could figure out a way to do a startup with no VC investment at all. Could an older entrepreneur with a lot of commitments do a startup with such little investment? Probably not.
This is simply survivorship bias.
That's one (very risky) way to start a start-up. I prefer the safer, "let's fund ourselves from revenues" approach. And, from what I've observed, it's the only one that works reliably.
what is the argument about?

older guys have a better chance of starting successful companies because of their experience

younger guys have a better chance of starting fundamentally disruptive companies PRECISELY because they have no experience.
Oracle's tools and installers are still not what you'd expect for the price. They are vastly improved from 2002 however.
Tell HN: Hacker News Watch
http://hnwatch.scalien.com

Demo account: demo/demo

Hacker News Watch monitors submissions so you don't miss out on topics, comments and commenters relevant to you.

You add keywords (like a Google search) which are saved as permanent searches. Hacker News submissions and linked pages are monitored for your keywords. Results are delivered to your browser in real-time via a Google Reader type interface.

It's a release-early-release-often type release, so it's still rough around the edges (eg. broken on IEx.x). We'll work on features/bugs based on your feedback.

About the project: When we released Keyspace, our replicated key-value store, we would gladly have payed $10/mo. for a service to monitor the real-time web for comments about us, so we can quickly react and make connections. The existing sites ("social media monitoring") are not very good, so we started building our own. HNWatch is a HN-only toy version of this more general product, which is also our primary use-case for Keyspace development.

Hacker News Watch has been OK'd by pg.
Perhaps a bilingual Chinese person could weigh in on this. For this exercise, we are concerned with the language in their head, not what they say when they talk to another. I'm guessing they think in terms of math notation with word-numbers, so "3/5" in their head would be "one-syllable-number" "slash" "one-syllable-number".
Clickable link:

http://hnwatch.scalien.com
Assuming reporting is always objective would be a a bad idea, but expecting the publication to strive to make them as objective as possible isn't flawed at all.

The fact there are dozens of elements that may effect the way a reporter covers a certain issue doesn't give him free license to just be as subjective as he likes.
Strange Days is another variation of the theme: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114558/
It's not "money on the side". He makes money selling products based on the ones he covers. If Snow Leopard doesn't sell, "Snow Leopard: The Missing Manual" doesn't sell either.
GitX is awesome software, I use it everyday. For the most part I'm comfortable with git on the commandline, but I still need a gui for looking at complicated branching situations and I can build commits much more quickly with a point and click interface. And as I'm sure you know, gitk/gitgui are terrible on OS X.

So, thanks for GitX!
The big industries are so short-sighted. They need to be worrying about Netflix and online delivery.
100% no income, I run my site because I love to (no linky).
Building Your Personal Brand
I'm going to quote Indiana Jones.

'It's not the age honey, it's the mileage'
I understand his argument that what we've got works now, so who cares, but it doesn't work for _everyone_. I'm sure people with screen readers (it's the header because it's darker and that's the nav bar because it's got that box around it, duh!) would really appreciate some standard way to know what's what on the page.
Let me assume you are said developer:

"Is is fair to judge a developer's performance based on the number of bugs filed against his name?"

Is it fair to judge your performance by how many bugs you submitted?

The only answer is yes.
I know I'm biased [I'm the author] but I really think this is kind of a big deal - I think its a step in the right direction in terms of giving users what they want for content.

what do you think? would you use it?
> It was also possible in recent Python versions

Not that recent, the switch has been there since 2.2 alpha 2, released 8 years ago (August 22, 2001):

__all__ = ['all_feature_names', 'nested_scopes', 'generators', 'divisi...
absolute_import = _Feature((2, 5, 0, 'alpha', 1), (2, 7, 0, 'alpha', 0...
all_feature_names = ['nested_scopes', 'generators', 'division', 'absol...
division = _Feature((2, 2, 0, 'alpha', 2), (3, 0, 0, 'alpha', 0), 8192...
generators = _Feature((2, 2, 0, 'alpha', 1), (2, 3, 0, 'final', 0), 0)
nested_scopes = _Feature((2, 1, 0, 'beta', 1), (2, 2, 0, 'alpha', 0), ...
print_function = _Feature((2, 6, 0, 'alpha', 2), (3, 0, 0, 'alpha', 0)...
unicode_literals = _Feature((2, 6, 0, 'alpha', 2), (3, 0, 0, 'alpha', ...
with_statement = _Feature((2, 5, 0, 'alpha', 1), (2, 6, 0, 'alpha', 0)...
Launching a start-up and having a family life: It’s possible
No, but browser implementors could implement <video> and define it within the high-level HTML markup language. There is no need for the HTML spec to define elements that can be determined to be necessary by the market. If it provides a framework for creating new elements, the market can come up with the necessary elements. Obviously, every page would not have to define every element in existence before being viewable, there would develop -- organically -- a stock of pre-existing elements in browsers.
I needed one. Also the ones I looked at either didn't do what I wanted, or weren't suitable for clients.
I have that problem with this meat robot I have hooked up to my brain, currently.
Regarding the advice on buying a car, it seems like a condensed version from the Motley Fool's Guide to buying a car, in the section titled "The Art of the Deal":

http://www.fool.com/car/car12.htm
I've been reading HN on my G1, and it's pretty much fine for reading, but I cannot get my sign-in to stick.

I can enter my name and password, and it kinda sorta acts as though I've been signed in, but it never shows my user name or allows me to post of vote. But it never tells me there was a problem signing in either.

Has anyone else seen this?
A nice theory, but has it been tested? It assumes rational behavior on the part of the salesperson, not to mention assumes that the writer understands the motivations of the salesperson.

I once found a car salesman who was asking way too much for a used car on his lot. He refused to budge on price. I couldn't believe both that it was priced so high above market rates or that he wouldn't come down on the price at all. I kept asking, don't you need to go talk to your manager?

I decided that eventually he would come around and called him every day for two weeks with a low ball offer. Eventually the car sold to someone else for $100 above my offer. If rational behavior is to maximize the sale price, then this was not rational behavior. A simple counter offer would have closed the deal with me and netted an additional $500 for the dealer.

After that experience I've often wondered if there are other incentives for car salespeople beyond money. Maybe there's an opportunity cost of selling to a good negotiator when a bad (i.e. normal) negotiator might walk into the dealership. Maybe car salespeople just don't like being on the wrong side of a deal. Maybe they get harassed by coworkers when they strike a bad deal.

If the method works, I'd still be suspicious of the reasons. Maybe calling for 20 prices is a good idea just because one of them, independent of the others, really wants to get rid of the car.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=638350

from pg:

"There are quite a lot of founders over 30. I don't know exactly how many because we don't keep track of ages. The sharp falloff is around 35, but we've had a handful of founders over 40. None over 50 though.
I think our age distribution is probably close to the age distribution for startups generally. We've funded more founders who are 27 than 20 or 35 because more people start startups at 27 than at 20 or 35."
An oldie but goodie.

Corollary #1: Do the same thing, but everything in writing.

Corollary #2: Set up a leasing company and put Corollary #1 on your letterhead.
Because your paying customers like newspapers but want the convenience of a website?
Source code is highly overrated, when an attacker can take advantage of known classes of security problems and successfully exploit them without the bother of even looking at the source code.

See recent twitter XSS attack, SQL sanitization attacks, etc.
I use iCab Mobile as my default browser on the iPhone since it supports loading pages in background tabs and that has been sufficient for me.
I have the same problem, and have never set cookies one way or another for any site. Other sites (e.g. Reddit) that require authentication seem to work fine.
A nice theory, but has it been tested?

Yes, for 30 years. It's simple supply and demand.

I doubt if this would work well for a 2010 Camaro, but there are probably lots of models it work work well for.
There's no pricing or Buy button, why?
I will not read this - but here is what I do:

Figure out the lowest price they can sell at, add $100 to that, walk out if they say no.

If you really want the car, add another $100. Still no, stand up and walk out. Really, you can live without the SUV.

Tell them you will discuss financing LATER. You have the total amount in cash [right?] so you can decide whether the financing deal they offer is better than a CD or T-bills.

If you don't have cash [stupid] get financing BEFORE you negotiate - talk to your credit union or LOCAL bank first.

How many times does this simple info have to be shared?

Oh, new Internet twist: do it all online.

Do not buy the floor mats and rustproofing.
I have heard of Dreamhost accounts being disabled(I can not remember if they deleted the account too) for this.

Edit: This was actually a reply to duskwuff's comment.
This story is straight out of Asimov's Foundation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hari_Seldon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory_%28fictional%29
I think the better point to be learned here is administrating any public facing server has to be more than a hobby. The barrier of entry to installing WordPress or PHPBB is extremely low. Anyone can do it. Only a small subset of those people will ever take the time to understand security issues and keep their servers patched. I mostly blame the "I read a 2 page HOWTO now I'm an expert!" types. Pay someone to take care of the details if you don't want to handle it yourself. I've previously used Blogger (recently switched to SquareSpace) for exactly this reason. I don't want to spend my free time installing patches and checking logs. (I do enough of that at work)
Analysts also see a threat to studios in Redbox’s practice of selling about half of its DVDs into the used market

I can sell used cars, used couch, used books but I can't sell used DVDs?

Music and movie industry has some of the craziest people in business
Is anyone else unable to go to this page in Chrome because it issues a bunch of Adobe errors? I'm using the latest dev build.
My best productivity hack has to be the "million dollar idea list" that is SEPARATE from my daily to-do list.

Every time I have an idea now, I force myself to put it on that list, and if I'm still thinking about it in 2-5 days, then I'll allow myself some time to explore it further.

It has saved me hours a week. I used to explore an idea immediately for up to an hour, sometimes more, and all that time is lost because several of the ideas shouldn't have been allowed even 2-seconds.
One project I'm on uses clockingit.com - it's a free hosted collab tool and it's also OSS in case you want to migrate from the free hosted version and host it yourself down the road.

It's pretty straight-forward and easy to get non-techy people to use (which may or may not be a critical attribute, depending on the makeup of the rest of your team).
This is actually the most scary comment I've seen here in a while. VC is not income.
The default site works fine for me on the iPhone. The text is a bit small on comments but it's readable.
Agreed. Hopkins' book is a classic and an excellent read. I had the same reaction when I read it: the way this guy ran his campaigns seems more like the internet than anything you'd expect from a century ago. Another thing that struck me was how many of the brands he created are still household names today (Palmolive, Goodyear).
100% Monthly subscriptions.
The economy is a rounding error in predicting the success of a startup. Paraphrased from pg.
I would love to hear a few of your recipes for healthy cheap and tasty meals that can be prepared quickly.
I like to keep it simple. My list has 1 item on it. I work on that until either it's done (often) or I struggle so much with it that I decide to change plans (rarely).

For the last 2 days, I've been writing a model configurator that explodes input parameters into individual objects. I probably have 8 or 9 things dependent on this (not really sure yet), so I plug away until done. Then I'll figure out the new only thing on my list.

I've tried every conceivable "productivity hack" and nothing has worked as well as this. I have scratch pads, paper on the wall, 20 colors of markers, and all kinds of automated tools for scheduling and planning. I've varied my diet, my exercise routine, my daily routine, and almost anything else I could vary, and none of it really mattered. All it ever really did was take focus away from the real task at hand.

Just identify your critical path, remove it, and repeat forever.

I started with this and fine tuned what worked for me:

http://paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

Other inspiriation:

"I see only one move ahead, but it is always the correct one." chess master Jose R. Capablanca
> Any practical ideas on how to actually do it?

The (forbidden) answer has been staring everyone in the face for half a century: bring back colonialism.

http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/08/from-cr...
No, the article claims that this is some special game theory and that there are only 21 actors (you and the twenty salespeople). Modeling this in terms of S&D would take into account all potential purchasers.

My point, though, was that the article has presented a hypothesis without any data to back it up. In a way, it's worse than an anecdote, because I'm not sure even the author has tried this method.
I can confirm that, I use clickpass + openid to log in and about once every fortnight it just refuses to log me in for a day from my phone (it says "bad openid" or something like that). The site is still usable though so it's just a minor annoyance.