skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Woke early one morning,
The earth lay cool and still,
When suddenly a tiny bird,
Perched on my window sill,

It sang a song so lovely,
So carefree and so gay,
That slowly all my troubles,
Began to slip away,

It sang of far off places,
Of laughter and of fun,
It seemed his very song,
Brought out the morning sun,

I pulled back the covers,
And crept slowly out of bed,
And gently shut the window,
And crushed his freaking head,

Because I'm not a morning person.

I have this printed and stapled to the wall in the office :)
Thanks, I didn't know who originated that method. I added a note citing von Neumann.
Definitely an interesting thought. I do have a few thoughts you may wish to consider:
1. Consider fewer case studies with more depth. 15-20 will involve a lot of contacts, possibly a lot of travel which will eat into the small savings, and limit your depth. On the other focusing on 6-10 but trying to get in some real time with them (several hours each at least) will let you get a lot more depth with less travel.

2. You may wish to carefully define entrepreneur. By itself it means everything from small business owner, franchise owner, founder of a traditional, capital intensive company (like Intel for instance), founders of web/softare startups, and people who make things in their garage to sell. I have not studied it formally, but I suspect this attract very different people. Unless you specifically want to do a longitudinal study to compare between groups, I would pick one. I presume you are talking about web/software founders, but this should be explicit (or explicitly rejected if I am wrong).

3. Remember you can publish this in numerous formats in short succession. There is nothing wrong with starting with a series of blog posts as a near 'stream of consciousness' on the journey, and then follow up with a book that summarizes, refines, and adds more traditional research/statistics to go along with the case studies you generated.

4. Related to 3, don't ignore physical books as a method of publication. While it is starting to change, there is still a strong bias in many circles giving books more respectability than other forms of publications. Also, they are more easily monetized than most other forms.

5. If you come to Las Vegas I know one software founder and one small business (retail) owner personally I can introduce you to.
Social Security and Medicare are not pensions -- they are welfare programs. The IRS is not even allowed to tell other agencies how much you've paid.
Just out of curiosity, why such a wide focus? Did you delieberately set out to be "well rounded"?

I personally got a degree in math with a minor in philosophy and a large number of credits in computer science and several very random credits in other fields, but that came about from changing my mind about my major a couple of times.
Nope. I wrote it the way I want it.
ref:
http://www.sportsocracy.org/imgs/BadAssMotherFuckerWallet.JP...
I Googled "She's the Sherlock Holmes for the 21st century", and that gave me 3 pages of sites that were displaying the ad when they were indexed.
I just read that post again. Good post, but it's talking about something different. This HN article is about Ryan's views on the matter.

Of course I agree that libraries should not require it. I often want to use libraries by themselves. But apps!? What do you suggest - manually place each gem directory, by its full system file path, into $LOAD_PATH? How on earth are you going to use a gem installed in its default location by the ubiquitous "gem install" method, if not by, at some point, requiring rubygems?

This whole kerfuffle was started by this gist: http://gist.github.com/54177. Note the title: Why "require 'rubygems'" In Your Library/App/Tests Is Wrong. I thought that was a ridiculous thing to say then and still do. In my app!? That no-one else will ever see, my personal little IRC bot or something? What, pray tell, is the difference between loading rubygems on the command line every single time you run the program, or just writing in the source because you know your app needs it?

I have no quarrel with best practise for responsible use of gems. I agree completely with what Josh Peek writes. People publishing gems to public repos should absolutely learn how to do it without stepping on anyone's shoes. But that is not what Ryan says. Ryan says this:

You should never do this in a source file included
with your library, app, or tests:

require 'rubygems'

and that is extremist and indefensible and, IMO, flat out wrong.

update: I mean, let's have an example. Let's take a top-level app that depends on things. I know, thin.

Here we are: http://github.com/macournoyer/thin/blob/9f391ed7fcc7c202a32e...

He needs eventmachine. He requires rubygems and loads it. Tell me what he is doing wrong. Tell me how he should do it differently. Because I can not see what is wrong with that. And if that usage is wrong, then what is the point of even having Rubygems.

update 2: And I would like to clarify that I agree Rails should only be requiring Rubygems when it is being used at the top level, such as being launched from the binary or from the script directory, not when it is being loaded as a lib. It is always the top level app's responsibility to set up paths, etc - rails is a special case because it's both an app and a library.
The music complex (labels, bands, roadies..) is likely to make more money in a world where you can sell a cd (the old world) then in a world where you cannot. How the loss is distributed within this complex is not obvious.

My point is that the industry is not dumber then the comment which appears on any music industry thread on the internet. Copyright is important to them. They have a chance of keeping it from disappearing, or at least slowing down the process.
Every time I travel I come home incredibly thankful for the opportunities I've had in my life. Certainly my perspective on those opportunities is relative, but the gratitude presents itself nonetheless. Feel free to claim travel is "overrated" and lacking of "substance". I will gladly continue to travel and I will be delighted to know I will be meeting one less ungrateful tourist along my way.
What new distinct feature set? All I saw in the article was "Line2/Toktumi is business-class Google Voice minus SMS." The only feature GV doesn't have that was mentioned was the ability to build a phone directory menu - which I would expect from a "business-class Google Voice".

Also, both ATT and Apple swore (cross their heart, hope to die) to the FCC that it was 100% Apple, 0% ATT in the GV decisions.

Oh, and there are other apps in the store that provide free SMS, so it's not like Apple's all gung-ho about blocking the SMS leechers.
- I run an advisory over at investingwithoptions.com, but it's more short term and not econ.

- Zero Hedge is good if you take it with a grain of salt

- Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture

- paul kedrosky's blog

couple others, but they interlink with each other
American Statistical Association
Being remembered is irrelevant to me. Death is a pretty macro-scale occurrence and humanity is pretty much nothing but a blip in that eternity. Having said that, I do want my kids and loved ones to be happy and healthy.
Or if you want to try and get the money ahead of time: http://www.kickstarter.com/
IT and Culture: Where Does your Team Stand?
from what I understand the coraid systems are plan9-based, and only have a gigabyte of cache ram.

If I only needed one I'd seriously consider it, as my time, for setting up one unit and working out the kinks, would unquestionably be more than that, and they have quite a bit of experience working out the problems by now, even if I made my system redundant, their system would unquestionably be more reliable the first iteration.

However, I plan on needing a bunch more, so it probably makes sense for me to roll my own, work out the kinks, and hopefully end up with something cheaper that has a lot more cache.
Chemed, the parent company of Roto-Rooter, is trading at $42 a share and has a market cap of $944.82M.
Everyone should work on a simulation of themselves that would be used after they die to remember them.

In this way, people could influence how others remember them in a more direct way.

This is why it is important for everyone to learn programming -- so that everyone could create such a simulation of themselves.
I've thought about your comment some more since I first read it. Can you back this up? I mean real numbers? Especially since you are going down a path of comparing an education bubble with a property bubble. I'm not criticizing your article, I thought it was well written and deserves to be fleshed out more. I expect some real numbers to show how moving capital around so liberally betters all society.

I have watched the effects of China free trade. There is certainly some value created. But lots of negatives, In the last ten years (since WTO membership), the clean ground water in China has gone from over 50% to less than 5%. Imagine that, 50++ years of "Communism" didn't kill all the ground water, but less than 10 years of "Capitalism" did. I see the wealth gap in China growing to a point where what has been a growing "democracy" of sorts is getting clamped done due to the "middle class" waking up and saying, "hey, where's my share?".

I want to see real numbers instead of hand waving econo-speak. Can you provide any of that? I've been listening to the "don't worry, this derivative stuff is good for you" bullshit for 20 years (I was lead architect for several very large software systems for them in the 90s). I have yet to hear some smart person be able to back this up.
You've put enough thought into the idea that if you don't do it, you'll be regretting it five years down the road, if not sooner. Plus, you're at the point in your life where you can't screw things up too badly if it doesn't work.

I would, however, see if I could dedicate an intense two months to building up a bit more savings. If you can, move back home for these two months. Get two jobs at Starbucks, don't go out, and take the bus to work. Yeah, those months will suck - but it will make the fun parts last longer.

I'd also +1 the idea about ditching your car - you are in the perfect situation for Greyhound/Amtrak: no money and lots of time. Get yourself a rolling suitcase with a suit container, and life out of that. It will handle your clothes nicely, and you shouldn't need any more gear for this than a point-and-shoot digital camera, a little digital voice recorder, and a netbook. You lose the advantage of having a backup hotel, but you save lots of money, and most places have shitty backpacker hostels you can crash in as a desperate measure.
How Do You Compete for Your Own Job?
Computer Language Trends in 2009
That would be a pretty massive trust fund to pay for all of the server space + bandwidth they need in addition to their staff
Thanks for amending it. I thought it will not be that popular for U.S. audience for his story so I simplified it. What I want to said is he is not a U.S. citizen and permanent resident. But he owns properties in U.S.

I wonder what will be the case for Morris Chang? He retired from Texas Instrument after he was sure his pension and stock was vested. Then he left U.S. to Taiwan to found TSMC.
> So, suddenly it all came together for me.

He seems new to this stuff. Nothing really advanced here, but he brings up a big unresolved issue in language design in a way that probably makes sense to a Java-educated college student.

BTW, Hindley said the concept predates computers; there's been a lot of refinement before and after 1969. (http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/types/archives/1988/msg00...)
This was what I honestly considered the biggest loss with regards to _why's disappearance. I am literally ecstatic to have this back online.

The only thing that could make this better would be if it were presented by _why (him|her)self.
http://www.colr.org
I really liked their old name Hab.la
Redis 1.0 Released
I think the majority of successful people failed many times before (and after). And his earlier freelance writing is different from starting his own project (like being a freelance programmer vs. having your own company). And it really is unimportant whether he succeeds with this project. It will teach him certainly many interesting things that give him more background -- for whatever he will do later.
The guy that did the thing.
You're dreaming if you think Craigslist is three guys in a garage. They have ~30 employees, and I can guarantee that they have large server, colo and bandwidth costs. They also make their money off of direct payments (as opposed to advertising), and their annual revenue is around $100 million, by the estimates I've seen. So they're profitable, but not hugely so. (By way of comparison, Netflix makes a bit over $20 million net per quarter, on over $300 million gross per quarter.)

I'll grant you that they're exceptionally small for a website of their size -- but being "exceptional" means only that they're the exception to the rule. The rule is what's important.
Hacker News directory by school
Looks like one of them is also Annabel Scheme

Edit: and the other I just found is Annabel Stymie
Coincidentally it's just past the three-year anniversary of the first attempt to delete the article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion...

Back then it could still be saved by tons of people saying WP:ILIKEIT. But if it wasn't for the fact that some 19th-century writer had the idea of compiling the exact same kind of list, the thing would probably be deleted under today's standards.
Ask HN: Working toward data godhood?
After reading the great article on data scientists (http://flowingdata.com/2009/06/04/rise-of-the-data-scientist/), I wondered what it would take to start toward that path?

Most articles regarding data science only speak of required skills in the abstract, but I really would like to formulate a more solid ciricullum (if you will).

Any thoughts?
I don't expect any upvotes on this comment, but if you're in the Annapolis, MD area, I've got a guest room (or couch if you really want) that you're welcome to.
Maybe B. is the current choice. Meanwhile if those H-1Bs had joined 401k plans and had U.S. securities/properties. When they go home to India or China and found a successful business. U.S. IRS can wait for 30 years when they died and request frozen assets for unpaid estate tax for their U.S. and India/China assets.

I guess when that happens, china/india will go to war against U.S. for sovereign power over taxation.
Dropbox's Summer 07 YC Application
Would the founders mind sharing if they used a PR shop or if this was an organic get?
The reason they are expected to pay is because they made a choice to come to the U.S. and become a part of that society. If you don't want those implications, don't make that choice.

The reason people make the choice is because they want the benefits they may get from coming to the U.S. I realize it is too hard for many that come to the U.S. to become citizens; we need to fix that problem. Our immigration strategies are not clear and makes immigrants pay on both ends of the deal.

But really, if you want to come to the U.S., suck out some wealth, and then say "so long", well, you'll get what's coming to you.
Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart engaged
Your account is incomplete. You failed to describe the frantic back patting they gave themselves.

On a more substantive note they did describe how their first implementation failed a usability test.
How would the world look if we were expected to learn something significantly new every 4-8 years?

That's what my world looks like, but at shorter intervals. 11 years ago I was programming in C++. 9 years ago, ASP classic. 8 years ago, perl, and for the last 5 years PHP.

Just like doctors and nurses have continuing education requirements, so do hackers!
"Aw, darn."
ditto Manhattan, if you don't mind getting woken up at 7am by a 2-year-old. PS: as someone below says, ditch the car!
Did Texas execute an innocent man?
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118600577/abstrac...

"For example, in the SMPY cohorts, although more mathematically precocious males than females entered math-science careers, this does not necessarily imply a loss of talent because the women secured similar proportions of advanced degrees and high-level careers in areas more correspondent with the multidimensionality of their ability-preference pattern (e.g., administration, law, medicine, and the social sciences). By their mid-30s, the men and women appeared to be happy with their life choices and viewed themselves as equally successful (and objective measures support these subjective impressions). Given the ever-increasing importance of quantitative and scientific reasoning skills in modern cultures, when mathematically gifted individuals choose to pursue careers outside engineering and the physical sciences, it should be seen as a contribution to society, not a loss of talent."

Or just think of the sex distribution of nerdery, which is to Asperger syndrome as AS is to autism, which Simon Baron Cohen has described as an extreme version of the male brain.
They are very clearly making money. They are just spending more than they make. Revenue is still an important metric. Many companies which are supposedly successes still have $0 in revenues. Saying such a company is already successful is much worse than saying the same about a company with significant revenues but still no net profit.
+1 on kickstarter - and if you're in NY, I'll give you my couch, the idea is very compelling and if you're passionate about it, you can make it happen.

Worst case, you lose the $1500 and end up looking for a job. Not so bad, is it?
i would love to see how some successful non-yc company founders would have filled this application out in their early days. ie- joshu, pg with viaweb,etc. pretty fascinating stuff.
Yes, just like neutrality has suffered for PBS.

http://www.pbs.org/roperpoll2009/

Oh, wait...

"PBS remains the network with the most trusted news and public affairs programs, with 43% trusting its programs a “great deal.” CNN came in second with 28% and FOX News third at 27%."
Hackers interviewed in "Coders at Work"
You're right, I was wrong, we fall in between the gorillas and chimpanzees, so we seem to be mildly polygynous but not dramatically so (consistent with our degree of sexual dimorphism)

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070925090250.ht...
This is one of the best quotes I've read on HN. Very true!

I have also seen much crazier things. A friend of mine from college who is a stand up comedian, decided to hitchhike his way from NYC to LA to "find Tom" of MySpace. He filmed his entire journey and shared it on the web. Additionally, he also crashed with all his MySpace friends the whole way so his cost is practically 0 (besides the bus tickets).

It's definitely doable on an even smaller budget :) Good luck and let me know when you arrive at the valley!
I agree that taxes, just about everywhere, are uneven, unfair, and horribly misspent. I have an interest in fixing this. I think step one is to get everyone to feel the pain. Then we can have honest debate about what is fair and continue to adjust. At the moment, there are too many ways that some people simply don't pay. As long as this happens, there is not enough force to fix the problems. When I say there is not enough force, imagine if only 10%, in a certain tax situation, can afford to dodge the tax. It is most likely this 10% has more strength/wealth than the other 90% that do pay. In aggregate, they will use some of the gains they have made to apply a force to not change the structure which allows them to dodge the taxes. This is a problem of uneven strength. And it will continue as long as we allow the loopholes to exist.
"does the world need another ____?" to me reads: "____ is perfect and needs no further iteration."
That's what they said about search before Google came around!

Altavista, Hotbot, Ask Jeeves, do we really need another search engine? Why do you think Google will be better than Altavista?
I think there's a corollary to this - if it turns out you don't always wish you did, it probably wasn't that great. The question then becomes, how certain are you this is something you will always regret having not done?
This made me happy.
i thought they were a translation service.
Sure, go for it. Why not? There's very little risk. $1500 is nothing in the grand scheme of how much money you'll make in your life.
It's true. It's much better outfitted than most hackerspaces. But I thought that these were having problems becoming profitable? I could be just remembering things wrong...
It's awesome to spend time out in the water almost everyday completely disconnected. I love surfing.
Porn videos download - Google Search
We should organize HN surfing trips :-)

That way, when we were not in the water, we could about interesting tech stuff...
Check out heroku
Got to love the guy's confidence.
i love this product. it's really useful for remote dev stuff
I feel the exact same way about posting code into online pretty printers.

It's not that I'm putting sensitive information out there, it's just a strange kind of trust issue.
So he was a single founder at the time of his YC application. Did he end up finding a cofounder?
haha - sales oriented guy - i do more than that @dhouston!
I've heard a little bit about this bill, particularly about the "President can shut down the internet" part. Can anyone explain how shutting down the internet could help national security? I was under the impression that a cyber attack's point was to do exactly that. It seems like, I don't know, poisoning our water supply so that terrorists can't do it first.
To repost the comment I made on the article:

I think this is an unfair comparison and Cory is oversimplifying. For example:

"Rather than buying a hard-drive once and paying nothing – apart from the electricity bill – to run it, you can buy cloud storage and pay for those sectors every month."

Files stored on services like Amazon are split among many hard-drives to protect from data-loss should any single drive fail. Not only that, but data is also replicated in multiple sites to protect from a geographic or network disaster in a single location. More than that, the cloud-provider is assuming the cost for any failed hardware in running this setup, the cost of paying someone to physically replace the hard-drives.

That's just the part which keeps the data safe. What about the availability? If you keep your data at home in a desk-drawer then you can't access it on the road. With a cloud service you are getting always-on, always-available data access, with guaranteed levels of speed which will be far in excess of the capability of domestic broadband connections (in which the upstream connection is throttled).

So while I agree that there is a definitely cost difference between cloud services and buying and running your own hardware, the cost is associated with real tangible value, it's up to you to decide if that value is worthwhile. Personally, I value that my backup service in the cloud will not loose my data. I can't say the same for the USB hard-drive on my desktop.
I attend a university which does not hold a ".edu" domain.
hmm... the last line kind of surprised me, even though I don't think I should be surprised. Do you think the Dropbox folks ever look at your filenames and/or open your files? I guess I similarly wonder if the Google Gmail folks ever read my emails. I'm not really worried about them doing it in some systemic evil fashion so much as some random developer or sysop just looking through things.

Anyway, thanks for posting this. I'm a huge Dropbox fan and it was cool seeing a bit of their history.
Is this actually possible for regular people? If someone, for example, was fed up with the US, where could they go?

You hear the idea of getting out if you don't like it often. But, I think it's BS.

Does anyone have facts that dispute my assertion?