skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The definition seems to involve being unsuccessful and/or purposelessly damaging to others. But sociopaths are not generally sadists; hurting others isn't the point, it's a side-effect.
World's Biggest Pilgrimage Now Underway
I remember one famous startup I was in, one that went public, where the founder/ceo was genuinely mean, as in a nasty, litigious, selfish, self-centered, emotionally immature son-of-a-bitch, and ran the place like a tyrant. I quit two years in. Simply could not stand being in the same room as that ceo. But did he fail? No and yes. No, financially; he made over a hundred million. Yes, personally, I would say; his reputation as a tyrant has stuck with him, and most friends I know who worked at that company would never in a million years work for him again. He's the only truly mean-to-the-core founder/ceo I've dealt with in startups.
>I'm not sure what project had pipes first (should we credit F# or Unix shell itself?)

You'd have to go with unix out of those options, F#'s pipe operator is just flipped function application, and is primarily to make up for the poor type inference F# has. Every functional language has or can easily have a function application operator.
Perhaps. And I have certainly encountered the type of traveller who seemingly tells you stories of their journeys so that they may one-up you on the social scale. I tend to forgive this, though, because underneath it all we are simply simians with shoes, jockeying for social status and sex.

I have travelled some in my life. Not extensively, but enough to have a few stories of my own. My guidelines around traveling are:

1) Be humble. Related: be prepared to apologize if you do something unintentionally rude. I had to do this frequently in Asia because me, being American, was not used to taking off my shoes whenever I entered a home or restaurant. I quickly learned, but there were times at the beginning where I forgot. Apologies helped. Exception: Australia.

2) Be reserved. If someone is interested in you or your country they will ask. If not, don't bore them with something they may or may not care about. Exception: Ireland.

3) Do not portray competitiveness. This can easily come across as arrogant and provincial. Exception: Ireland.

4) Be inquisitive. Ask questions about the country you are visiting, and be genuine about it, not judgmental. Exception: North Korea.

5) When you return home, tell your tales to interested friends or coworkers, but be aware that not everyone will care. Exception: Finland.
There is also research pointing to this--including research proving that non-agreeableness (which is the same as meanness) correlates with increased salaries and business success.

So pg is just factually wrong.

Pg seems to have some kind of fantasy that Jessica is a gifted psychologist. The truth is that she probably is when compared to other autism-spectrum programmers, but not when compared to professional cousellors or other people whose job it is to understand and empathize.

What Jessica considers niceness--"niceness for the purpose of making money"--is not going to be the same as what most people consider niceness.

The programming world scores high on the autism spectrum and on the psychopath spectrum. Compared to the rest of the world, programmers seem like very mean, cold, ruthless people.
Absolutely agree with this.

There are hundreds of tutorials on how to write JavaScript, use the for loop, use if else statements, and so on. But not very many that I have found actually show how to use those to build a real program, explaining the steps and thought process behind the program along the way.

There are definitely ones that show you how to do things with it, but there's often not an explanation of _why_ something works the way it does.
I fail to understand how that guy is soooo euologised in the tech community....what you just said, wage fixing agreements and non-poaching agreements of his staff...what a bad example he is.
Mean is an umbrella term that could be a lot of things, including ruthless. I'll use parallel analogies to make my point: Mean is to Martial Arts as Ruthless is to Goju Ryu Karate.
Why couldn't they simply stop issuing new ones entirely, and let existing patents expire normally?
> Until some of the problems are fixed, I don't think TMP will ever take off and become popular. It's just too hard to work with.

Perhaps, although I've seen expression templates a few times in the wild.
The title of the article is not the same as HN's title (which is a HN guideline). I was commenting on the editorializing on HN.
Shouldn't it apply to everything, not just code?
So I had a bunch of important stuff to get done today, but now I know what I'll do instead. This is so much fun, well done!
> it's actually a genuine claim that so-called mean people don't succeed. That is absurd.

The claim "people who are mean (by the YC partners' standards) to the YC partners or in their presence are unlikely to succeed in YC or the scene which has emerged around it" is a bit more reasonable.

It's not so much that pg has tunnel vision as it is that every founder has tunnel vision for YC's money and the smart ones structure their interactions with the moneyholders appropriately.
There is rigorous empirical research showing that psychopaths are more prevalent among the successful.

"Studies conducted by forensic psychologist Robert Hare indicate that about 1 percent of the general population can be categorized as psychopathic, but the prevalence rate in the financial services industry is 10 percent.

These "financial psychopaths" generally lack empathy and interest in what other people feel or think. At the same time, they display an abundance of charm, charisma, intelligence, credentials, an unparalleled capacity for lying, fabrication, and manipulation, and a drive for thrill seeking.

A financial psychopath can present as a perfect well-rounded job candidate, CEO, manager, co-worker, and team member because their destructive characteristics are practically invisible."
Nah, we've got the police and military on our side. Oh, and food and running water and communication networks and healthcare.

We're prepared for class warfare--they're not. :|
I wonder if there is Sublime Text plugin for this behaviour.
So, the solution is: Don't pay your taxes. Wait for your house to go to auction. Hope no one buys it. Pay $500 to effectively erase your three year tax debt. Repeat.

That apparently currently works. It's a clear market signal to the government that it has no alternative but to put up with you not paying your taxes. But, I expect if it became widespread, the tax man would see it as a loophole to be closed.
damn Millenials, everything is an exercise in narcissism these days
well then you are also responding to what I'm responding to; the comparison of the highly dangerous skilled factory job to the low level warehouse job is not an apt one. One is a career and the other is not.
Apparently traveling is "something to do" for developed-country-dwellers. What used to be a hobby for the ultrarich of the 19th century is now part of the middle class dream. The bigger issue than narcissism however is the homogeneity of cultures today. There is barely anything to "explore" that is original and not part of some touristy routine (even space will soon turn out a boring destination). There's just an enormous industry built behind it that keeps the train moving.
http://wbond.net/sublime_packages/alignment
Short answer is no, but it's as much what was not said, as what was. It's probably something akin to the "x-ray vision" experience. Mine is probably much weaker than jl's - it doesn't trigger that often, but when it does I am fairly confident in it.

I've edited my comment to remove identifying information because I don't feel like getting into more detail, and I agree that anonymous character attacks on the Internet are not that helpful.
No, something has changed and PG understands it while you don't.

As http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html explains, what you are missing is that what people really want is wealth, not money. And wealth is things of value created by people. As productivity improves, we can create more wealth. One form of that wealth is that we can make more efficient use of fundamentally scarce resources. Which admittedly does not increase them, but does decrease pressure on them.

The aggregate effect of these trends over time is truly remarkable. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo for a vivid demonstration of how remarkable it is.
I felt similar at your age when reading through Popular Electronics. I'd think to myself "this soldering is FRUSTRATING - how can these guys KNOW so much stuff".

It's not important to be the best. Trying to beat everyone else in the entire world is really pretty silly when you think about it.

Follow the boyscout motto and do YOUR best. That's something achievable. Given your circumstances, find some passions, consider how you should prioritize them, and just keep learning about them and practicing.

Life is relatively long. You don't need to be an expert, just have a passion for it. That passion over time will FORCE you into becoming an expert in whatever it is you love.

But it's important to identify what it is you love early on so time can work it's magic on ya. And keep the passions list short to concentrate the buildup.

It doesn't need to be computer programming. It is for me, of course :)
If they're invisible, how do the characteristics become known?
Agreed. I edited my comment to remove identifying info; would you mind updating yours also please? Thank you.
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Cool story… 👎
Because at these distances we can't actually detect their photons with our most powerful telescopes - we can barely see galaxies.
I agree with this, but I do think there must be something that we're missing. Many, many skilled developers are saying "just go out there and build." The problem is we don't know how to build.

I think there might be an implied aspect of this that we're not getting. Someone said to (paraphrasing here) "Google every problem you come up against; 'how do I do x with y, how does a work, how do I implement b, etc.'" That seems like it would work--if you Google every problem you have, or look at the docs for every function you use, a pattern will start building in your head that shows you how to do x with y. I think the key here is looking at the core source of the tools you're using and connecting the dots in your head.
PG is pretty careful with his word choices, and I think he's probably right about being mean interfering with success. You can not be mean, but still be a healthy distance from kind, good-hearted, honest, justice-minded, generous, etc.

A question successful people ask themselves is "Why be mean? What do I get out of it? What does my company get out of it?" They can be ruthless but realize that treating people with respect and warmth is smart in the long-game. Forum-trolls don't ask that question-- they just get emotional satisfaction from being mean.

Note that I'm not saying successful people are necessarily ruthless and manipulative-- just that they CAN be and still correctly be called "not mean".
When Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad, published in 1869 contained:

The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad. I speak now, of course, in the supposition that the gentle reader has not been abroad, and therefore is not already a consummate ass.

to describe the results of the first-ever pleasure cruise to Europe, I have to assume that pleasure travel was an exercise in narcissism since the very first.
Give the Art of Unix Programming and honest read, and I'm
sure you will come around.

If you have ONLY used Unices, then I could understand why the philosophy is invisible.

If, like me, you had used Windows exclusively for a decade, and then Unix for a decade, then the Unix philosophy would knock you up side the head. The systems could not be more different. (Despite the fact that they run mostly the same applications. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Biculturalism.html is the review that got me to read it).
How are his vibes less credible than Jessica's?

Judge a person not by how they treat their superiors (Jessica, Paul) but how they treat those weaker than them, or those who can't do anything for them.

You are happy to take Paul's intuitions as data, but the intuitions of real people NOT in a position of power, who interacted with this guy in a place where he will show his true colors, you will dismiss.
Great work -- Learned something today about reentrancy, also wasn't aware of jhc as an alternative haskell compiler.

Excited to see more haskell work in embedded systems
Next up: Why I pick my nose, and you should too!
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Since Lua is Portuguese for "moon", is this a Sailor Moon reference?
The term "vertical align" confused me at first, as I assumed it meant the same thing that CSS does.
SaaS – Don't Forget the Services Revenue
Yes, but it's an auction, no guarantee that the place is going to go for less than the taxes owed, let alone $500.
This is now 404? Strange, maybe attention resulted in a DMCA takedown request?
I am well aware of media distortion. As with all news reporting and analysis the answer is not to withhold judgement (otherwise you could not make decisions) it is to use reasoning and experience to form an opinion and assess a confidence level to that opinion.

You have a double standard: You certainly won't be coming to the defense of alleged misogynists and sexual harassment, for example, with cries of "but you don't really know the person" and talk of "fictionalized characterizations".
Flickr is about to sell off your Creative Commons photos
Would you be willing to expound upon your exceptions?
I have a lot of tests, but tests and bugs can and do live in harmony together.
I didn't say anything about Paul or Jessica.
Maybe this is the case in SF and NYC, but in most of the rural, suburban, and small-city United States, there aren't that many people who have traveled or lived outside of Europe or North America.
Is there room for simple decency in business?

Markets appear to aggressively favour so-called winners who aren't notable for civility or decency.

Gates 2.0 is tangential to the argument, because to some extent 2.0 is the creation of Melinda and a supporting PR machine.

Gates 1.0 was a borderline sociopath who did a huge amount of damage to personal computing. At the very least MS held back OS innovation by about a decade or so, and also wasted huge amounts of time and money by forcing IE on the Internet, and also became notorious for killing promising start-ups.

And yet MS was a hugely successful company.

So PG is factually wrong. Markets, investors, and business culture don't just tolerate meanness, they actively reward it, and actively punish its opposite. (Go on - think of a corporation which is known globally from board level down for its outstanding ethics, its intolerance of exploitation, and its generosity. Now - what percentage of successful corporations has that reputation?)

So I have no idea what the point of this essay is.

FWIW I think PG's lucid prose style should be taught in schools as an excellent example of how to write persuasive essays.

But I guess most people here understand the difference between persuasive stylings and factual correctness.

I'm not seeing much of the latter here. (Unless PG means people aren't mean to him? Which is possible, I guess - founders will generally not be nasty to the dude with the money.)
Why you shouldn't: commit noise.

(NB I'm just giving one reason against, I'm not really advocating against this practise overall. I do it myself, to some extent, but I tend to find it pretty hard to be consistent, which is quite a personal failing! There always seem to be far too many edge cases)
I like to format my code in ways that make it more readable, too. Vertical alignment is one way. I'm familiar with the arguments against it, but it always seems to come down to the limitations of source control tools.

My half-fix: make functional changes in one commit, formatting changes in another, with a simple comment, "formatting".
Next article: "Who are these kids and why are they on my lawn?" published by Onion Belt Quarterly.
I find that vertical aligning is great if all the lines (variable names) are of similar length. If one is way longer than the others, then it actually gets harder for your eyes to trace from one (short) variable name to it's value (that is relatively far away because of the outlier), when the shorter ones are all next to each other.

I don't think the solution to this problem is adding spaces to the files, I think it's an IDE/text environment problem.

If you use a configurable text editor (you should be), then just download or write whatever plugin will subtly highlight the line you're on.
I think it's even more screwed up than that, right? One pays property taxes in order to get the benefits of the people they pay taxes to. It looks like the local and state government have utterly failed to provide the policing, schooling, or other tangible benefits associated with taxes.

There is literally no incentive to abide by that part of the social contract other than the vague fear that they'll be called in one day or forcibly evicted. The state is acting in bad faith.
This runs contrary to the final bullet point under Pet Peves in the style guide for python.

https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008#pet-peeves
This assumes no one else buys the property out from under them the first time it goes up to auction. If someone does, it's nice that they get some value out of it, but they're still ejected from their home. If they can't find something nearby, their kids have to change schools. Their job may be harder to get to. Until they can find another place to buy, they're throwing money away on rent. Etc, etc.

Yes, in theory they can stay in their home, but only if no one else wants it. And if someone does, their lives are upended and from the sound of the article, the money they get isn't going to be anything like enough to buy something comparable to their former home.
I'm sure the biggest asshole in the world is sometimes nice to his friends. Do we need to know people to know whether they're mean, and why does pg get a free pass when he asserts that most drug lords must be mean while admitting he doesn't know any?

If Uber, as a company, strikes you as "not mean", you're delusional.
Around Paul and Ycombinator there are a certain amount of policies that apply to the creation of killer startups and they have been very successful on proving them, being good is one.

A good person inside -and outside acting on behalf- of a company is definitely in the checklist for creating a great startup, I can personally tell. Modern leaders do not fit into the vertical violent commander type and simply loose followers without assembling.

However real life is much more grotesque, dantean and mean than that and bad people sometimes win. In my country there are lots of them and usually respond to a much larger and corrupted ecosystem.
I agree that throwing money into tax auctions every three years is a band-aid. However, there is certainly an 8-figure opportunity here for whoever can come up with a more permanent solution.

Perhaps instead of paying $500 each to boot out poor grandmas to the streets, some low-income apartments could be built for those grandmas based on the expected values of flipping their houses and a govt tax break promise.
I agree, and even if he did something wrong, that shouldn't taint the guy forever. "Linus is rude" is a similar problem.
I was about to ask the same, particularly as I'm currently traveling round Europe, and happen to be in Finland right now.
Successful people have the luxury of isolating themselves completely for the consequences their actions have on the "little people".

They can afford to be "nice" in person while their actions fuck over multitudes in way that is a thousand times uglier than being a dick to someone in person.
In part, I think today's emphasis on narcissism is just another way of saying that you need to pick your company carefully.

If you read that previous sentence carefully, there's a bit of a rhetorical edge to it.

Self-absorption is a major component of, if not every human condition, certainly of human society.

If you don't like where it's going, striking early is the best response. Don't let it take you there; don't lend it your power.

To the extent you can, don't put up with the narcissistic boss. Don't let narcissistic friends and acquaintances dictate the agenda. If they want/choose to break out of that shell and engage in what you are doing and interested in, fine. Maybe they'll learn something.

And then, when it's your turn, maybe the lesson will be a bit more gentle and strike a bit sooner, before you get too far down that path, yourself.

If anything, today's world seems to be teaching this lesson less and less effectively than perhaps it should.
Show HN: Labster – Virtual Labs for School and Colleges
That is what we did in California. We started capping the rate of growth of property taxes. Now old people and companies pay little property taxes since they bought the property long ago. Meanwhile the young people usually end up paying the bulk of the property taxes (along with sky high mortgages.)
Maybe what he said was mean, maybe imprudent,
rude, crude, etc., but also: Maybe he
was mostly just trying to get his point across --
with what he said, it would be tough not
to get his point!

And maybe clearly it was important for him
to get that point across, to have people
consider it;
or, of course, reading one byte at a time
via a system call is dumb: Since that practice
had been going on for a long time, apparently
he felt he needed to work hard actually to get
the real and meaningful attention of people.

Another way to put it might have been, "What
needs to be done, to go around with a 20 gallon
barrel of ice water and one person at a time
dump it on them to see if
they are just asleep or really dead?". When
seeing something clearly bad going on for
a long time and still little or no outrage, or even
effective attention, to improving the situation,
can get frustrated and then be crude, rude, etc.
if only just to get people shocked enough
actually to pay attention.

Maybe I'm not the only one to "feel his pain",
and maybe such a statement, under such
a circumstance, does not make someone "mean".
I'll respond with a quote by Rumi (and try not to sound pretentious as hell while doing so):

If you are hungry and unable to find food, be the bread.
I made it to http://regexcrossword.com/challenges/experienced/puzzles/4 before I opted to keep my sanity for the remainder of the day instead of continuing :) very well done. As noted, add non-FB login options!
Yes! Thanks for noticing! And the blog app example is called Tuxedo!
I found this post interesting, but it was also funny because you maybe unknowingly became the guy who has traveled and thought it gave him some unique insight into the world. And you were compelled to share it unprompted with people who presumably don't care. ;)