skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm not sure why I think this, but I had them impression that they use it for test environments, but I'm pretty sure they also use it to provide "cloud" desktops for employees, I think I saw reference to it in a presentation about the open source NX server they released a little while ago.
Mine as well. It seemed very intense. I could imagine him sitting there, hardly able to sit still.

The accomplishments of all the interviewees in the book are very impressive and very informative.
This is a nearly week-old post syndicated without credit from TechCrunch: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/01/avoiding-the-cargo-cult...

He has a point, sort of. In Europe it's easy to get caught up in the form and function of what one should do to raise money, copying the dance moves of those in Silicon Valley but without the same support net and ecosystem. But y'know? Most of the European entrepreneurs I know realise it doesn't work the same way over here. Hell, I'm in SF right now learning this from the inside out.

There are definite advantages to being European though. Global focus from day one (native markets are too small). Multilingual. Multi-currency. Ideas that actually work across diverse countries (some of the ideas I've heard in Silicon Valley just wouldn't work outside the US at all, and people seem surprised to hear that). Diverse teams. Local and regional funding support. VCs interested in fostering homegrown talent. Sure, there are counterbalancing factors to being in Silicon Valley too, but people know these, and generally realise Europe isn't SV; I don't see the big reveal here.
Why this post got 5 points, being a rip-off??
I just used "pround" to differentiate from the drafted grunts. I have the impression that members of the military are viewed as slightly nutty (in Germany).
this shows up in one of the IE browser 'explorer' bars.
Do you know if there are any for the other functional languages?
Taking it further, you could build a vocabulary of issues[...] extract them from Twitter, along with their geo-locations, and do a sentiment-analysis on them [...]

OK, so hi. That's my startup. :)
Hmmm. The number 1 thing that worked for me (I refuse to call it a trick) was being attentive to what the client actually needed.

A lot of consultants want to walk in the door and propose all sorts of fancy / flashy solutions. Many times, that's not really needed.

Almost all of my clients (it's been a few years since I've consulted) told me that the reason they always called me back was because they knew I took the time to first understand the problem that they needed to have fixed and that my only interest was to find the right solution for them.

Sometimes that meant I had to spend weeks working in Access or VB, but that's what the right solution was for them.

It's easy to get a big head when you're consulting; you know everything that there is to know and people pay you serious money just to hear your advice. I have seen a lot of consultants who insist on only using bleeding edge everything for every solution they write; some of them even do it with great success.

I guarantee you that none of them have the same kind of word-of-mouth marketing you get by proving to your client that you care about their problems, and that you're going to find the solution that fits them the best. I closed up shop 3 years ago, and I still get referrals from my old clients on a weekly basis to this day.
The Unemployment Rate for People Like You
These are separate use cases for the same technology (and same product).

Governmental listening. Media analysis. PR and spin doctor campaign monitoring. Local election candidate passive polling. Local agency (e.g. Scottish NHS) polling. The list is pretty endless.

The problem is that so, so many of these people just don't have big budgets. Good sentiment analysis is hard. Tracking and quantifying opinion across platforms (not just Twitter), in real-time, to an appropriate degree of accuracy doesn't come that cheap - even with web-twenty cloud-malarkey stuff.

We've found other (potential!) sources of funding beyond the government and agencies themselves, 'cos they just don't have flash cash, and with their spending under scrutiny in the UK... yeah, we basically had to.
This one asks, quite directly, for your password. I can't imagine this is anything but a scam for stealing Twitter accounts.
That's some serious drivel.
Sorry for offtopic, but just looking for an ACK for the email I sent, in case it found itself in a spam filter. :)
http://ipv6.google.com
I've been using this at work to rebuild our internal infrastructure for test, file serving, etc. I was intrigued by its ability to manage disk redundancy via DRDB, though I haven't really tested the instance failover features. So far, I've been focused on getting it working nicely for Ubuntu guests. It's pretty cool to bring up a fresh machine with the latest packages in a few minutes. It'll really come in handy when I start working through configuration management and deployment automation for our apps.
it doesn't have any built-in revisioning like CouchDB

This is probably one of the most mis-understood features of CouchDB. It's not a revision per-se. It's a feature to support MVCC. It's not meant to show the history of the document over time and it's not guaranteed to be there for all time. If you compact the database the past revisions will be deleted. Referring to the revisions as a feature is somewhat of a misnomer. They are there to enable a feature(MVCC and as a per document consistency check on writes) but aren't really a feature in and of themselves.
Need work? Trying making your own.
I think it seems a problem with the history of his persona too. Originally set up by a PR guy, it's vastly shifted - towards the 'real' him, yeah, but shifted nonetheless. If he'd been shirtless Burning-Man guy from the start, I don't think there would be quite so much uproar.
imo the site seems to focus too much on stuff like saying "Pushy is freaking awesome!" (to answer the "What is Pushy FAQ question) and too little on relevant stuff that developers would want to know.

For instance, I couldn't find out what the rates are.
From a tech perspective, I'm assuming that the developer will have to provide you with a certificate or some other means of authentication (to allow pushy to send notifications on the app's behalf). However, I couldn't find any information on what the developer needs to do to get started from zero and send push notifications using pushy.

Of course, I'm not a marketing expert. So it is possible that your website approach may give you the results you want and that interested developers will email you to get more information. However, imo providing more upfront information (like certificates requirements etc.) may help get more traction.
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Design your cheap custom t-shirts online. Providing top-quality t-shirt printing and low wholesale pricing.
Was your post only saying that? That you agree with DHH? In that case you got those downvotes for adding a useless comment to the discussion where a simple upvote would cut. Your agreement or disagreement without a story backing you up means nothing to the reader. Don't take it the wrong way.
And there is all the data handling/mangling that needs to be done.
I agree Photoshop is the wrong tool. Have you tried Fireworks? That's what I use.
I home-schooled myself for a year and stumbled upon them, and decided to call them "differentials" because I had heard that term before.
It's also possible I was had been sitting too close to my brother while he was studying them and had forgotten about it for a time.
It's funny how self-conscious that bird on the right looks.
I don't know why you're getting modded down. That was an awesome story!

EDIT: Do I really have to put sarcasm tags in here?
It got my attention. Maybe not for the right reason though... I saw it and the first thing that popped into my head was the "stop punching yourself" joke.
Reality Check: What Are Some Good eCommerce Platforms?
Is it just me, or are 98% of all ecommerce platforms out there unbelievably awful? Miva, 3DCart, OScommerce, Volusion, AspDotNet, ModularMerchant, ZenCart - their admin panels and checkout processes look like they were designed in 1992 by a 7th grader.

I'm aware of Magento but they don't offer support without their premium package ($10k a year). I'm aware of Interspire but I have heard horror stories about their support. I'm aware of CS-Cart, who has a beautiful checkout process.

Why aren't there any GOOD ecommerce platforms out there that are the whole package? Aesthetics count! Features count! Support is critical! Help!
This is a good example of the problem with saying "closure" rather than "lexical scope". What most people mean by "closure" is a single anonymous function with state attached. What you've done here is returned an anonymous object containing two named functions.

So, it's obviously a closure because x is being "closed over". But if we're being pedantic it's actually not a closure. It's a lexically scoped anonymous object. And a closure is just an anonymous function, no more no less. A function in a language with lexical scope.
Maybe only let the person who's being replied moderate a comment.

And up-arrow means "This is insightful and I'm glad you took the time to talk to me, you've made me a better person and I would like to continue having this conversation with you" while down-arrow could mean "I wish to stop talking right now, you're boring and I wouldn't have a beer with you".

I mean, when everyone has the chance to judge what everybody says, you're favoring group-thinking. It's a meritocracy. Which isn't something bad, but if it's not your objective, then drop it. It's a pipe dream to still deny comments are up/down votted based on quality instead of agreement or agenda. It's written on the rules, yet it's simply not followed. I wish people could simply accept that this has been tried, many many times, on a lot of websites, and the reality is that it doesn't work. There are the rules and there is how people actually act.

It's like how project management with Scrum is done. Or rather, what it is up against. Like the person who gave me the course on Scrum said: You can make the client write his requirements with the blood of his first born male, he'll still want to change. It's just how things work. Instead of trying to swim against the tide, fighting its force, we should accept and work with it.

I think designing a system where "helpful" is the ultimate goal might be worthy pursuing. Or maybe Yahoo Answers or Stack Overflow -like systems are the best we can do.
Microsoft COFEE leaks all over the Internet
Yup and a good sized one at that, working snippets are always welcome. I was just a bit confused due to the contrived use-case.

I don't share your concerns about the MTA (they are lightweight and it's usually helpful to know that sending mails won't block) but to each their own.
Pelosi Breaks Pledge to Put Health Care Bill Online 72 Hours Before Vote
This is right in line with the three things early stage investors look for in a company: technology, market and team.

While we're sharing, we interviewed and didn't get selected for S09 also. Leaving aside any flaws with the idea itself, I believe the main thing we should have done during the interview -- and didn't -- was coherently express how we were going to make a ton of money out of the idea. pg et al may totally disagree on that, of course, and there are other things that -- in retrospect -- could have a) been better or b) been communicated better. But that's my main 'I wish I'd said...' from our experience, anyway.

The other thing is demo. Ours really wasn't great - it was a screenshot walkthrough which didn't show the tech in action. We had to do a lot of talking to overcome that, which meant not enough time to talk about everything else. If your demo explains everything in 30 seconds, you'll have a way stronger foundation than we did.
Agreed. I'm a fanboy now, and will go out of my way to stay at one of his boutique hotels the next time I'm in California.
In our experience (Mixpanel), your goal should be conveying what you're doing in the most basic form (nothing convoluted), getting all of them behind your computer checking out your demo with pg interacting with it, having pg throw out suggestions on what your product could do, and having Jessica distracted about the time limit while telling you "we're already 2 minutes over guys."

If you can do that I think you've sold yourself reasonably well as long as market size is reasonably resolved as an issue.

I would say showing that you're passionate about your company is important but it's not something you can make up. Having an actual product with real customers can easily help you prove your case.

I don't know if we would've got in without Garry from Posterous' help, so Tim and I are happy to grab coffee just like Garry did with us right before your interview and hear the pitch. Just let us know: support@mixpanel.com (goes to Tim and I)
Python Asyncronous IO Engine, with ported Paste http-WSGI gateway
But, if you've done too much building, generated too much revenue, got too many customers, you grow right past the "sweet spot" for YC and become less likely to be accepted - so, what is the optimal amount of building by the time your YC application is considered?
Kiwi - A little javascript framework I wrote that saved me a lot of time
I wrote Kiwi for a project I just launched. I think it is quite a solid base for something better, so I'm putting it out there for any potential collaborators. Needs some work, feel free to fork or critique :)
"... If you were attempting a parody of amichail, you've failed, ..."

Parody? No. Having just done some work on identification and analysis of bullies in social systems by mapping behaviour using network science techniques a couple of weeks ago - identifying & neutralising bullies is quite fresh in my mind. No failure on my part.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: I can't stand them editorially speaking but the NYT is hands-down the best paper in the world at taking advantage of modern web technology.

This shows, in almost painful detail, the bifurcation of the economy I was talking about earlier. Those of us who are college educated with a few years of experience could be excused for not knowing we are in a recession (4.3%). New graduates have it tougher (8.X%). Folks without high school diplomas are in total crisis.

(The highest unemployment rate, to the surprise of essentially no one: black men 15-24 with no degree. Its 8.5%... sorry, missed a digit, 48.5%.)
I actually want one.
Hey. Service looks neat, I created an account and I'm trying it out.

One thing, I tried to "Kart" this site:
http://www.waveletsandsubbandcoding.org/Repository/VetterliK...

It couldn't auto generate a name, which makes sense. However, I didn't realize this and when I hit the kart this button, it came back and I didn't realize why. The message on top was too small and I didn't notice it.

Not a big deal, but just something I ran across.
Ask HN: A good forum/site to hang around, ask questions, help others?
I am not a Twitter/Facebook guy, i prefer a forum to mingle with people, ask the doubts i have, or help others with what i know, and in general get to know people from different countries.

I used to frequent computer related forums back in study days. But now i would really like a forum/site with varied range of topics.

For example say i need to ask questions in varied topics like which monitor/tv to buy, info about income taxes, an affordable asian tourist destination, which new movie to watch, etc, you get the idea.

So is there really any big/popular site with lots of people from different countries [i have a hell lot of country specific questions to ask :)] with many different sub-categories/topics?
If you are a black man between 15-24 with no high school diploma, changing the color of your skin (to white) has more positive impact than getting that high school diploma.
I really liked your first comment. It appears you have a good point about the medical comment, that is, that comment would have been better with a more complete commentary. Now, this graph says more to me than the short paragraph you wrote, it also suggests that hn's comment quality is cyclical and it's just tmporarily in a downturn. There's an implication that the average quality is trending down, but it hasn't been long enough to know, so it isn't worth worrying about. It's just how it is.

Come christmas break some of the college kids will drop some ineresting academic stuff and things will look up.
Been there, used that. Very handy URL for Gmail users.

On a side note, i could not find a 'easy' way to sync my contacts online & offline (i know thunderbird plugins r there, did not work smoothly for me on gmail) so switched to @live.com email & their Windows Live Mail Desktop client instead.
Can anyone say a little more about how to "actively attract and screen for good clients"?
Only yesterday heard about opencart, is that good for you? [ps: i'm not a php dev]
Oh man, because of this HN attitude (Gawd, we can't become like Reddit) I resisted looking at Reddit for a long time. Finally I looked last week, and frankly, I'm just not seeing this. So far, I'm really enjoying Reddit's ability to flag news I'm interested in.

Of course, I don't spend much time reading the threads themselves. But ... I just don't see how horrible Reddit is.

I haven't seen serious discussion like this there, either. But that's hardly enough to condemn the site entirely. (Of course, maybe I'm one of the negative influences here; I do have a tendency to enjoy off-topic posting.)
I'm aware difference tables can be used to find the final term in the sequence - it's what I did to find the answer.

I was using differential equations to find the equation that describes the sequence and I was wondering why the constant that you get when you integrate a function isn't actually a constant after the second integration.
"Seibel: Do you have any advice for self-taught programmers?
Fitzpatrick: Always try to do something a little harder, that’s outside your reach."
My one piece of advice, and this is not confined to YC interviews but goes for any time you are selling (and make no mistake, you are selling), is to talk up the problem a little bit before you lead into your solution.

I expect PG and company are experts with regards to the needs of web startups and inexpert with regards to many fields of human endeavor. If you're going to be targeting one of those fields, mention the importance in ways which are easy for non-experts to understand. Our field is important: it employs X million, supports N companies on the Fortune 500, and did $ZZ billion in sales last year. Our problem keeps these people up at night -- they write journal articles about it, they spend hundreds of millions addressing it, it might even have killed a few thousand people they care about last year.

After you do that, people will be more inclined to view your solution in a positive light. Without the perspective of the problem, folks tend to latch onto things they understand about the solution: hmm, that button placement is off, this visualization lacks a bit of panache, I can't see myself ever really using this...

These are not the thoughts that typically precede writing big checks.
you also need to take things like underemployement into the equation, the main reason there aren't any jobs for people without a college degree, is because people with college degree are taking jobs at 7-8 bucks an hour just to put food on the table
Ambient media|abient media agency|Live marketing
There are several Experiential marketing agencies that would provide live brand experience.
What's even more interesting is that changing your race to Hispanic has an almost identically positive impact as changing to white.

Are we actually that much more discriminatory (as a society) against blacks as compared to hispanics? Is this purely racism, or is something else at work? Perhaps it has to do with the ratio of passport/green card holders between the two ethnicities, and the economic advantages of hiring non-citizens in low-end jobs?

The results are clear though:

White men 15-24, no highschool: Unemployment 25.6%
Black men 15-24, no highschool: Unemployment 48.5%
Hispanic men 15-24, no highschool: Unemployment 25.8%
Although this is depressing, it's also a good learning tool.
I haven't a clue but if you find such a place please do post it!
Ask YC: Business books actually worth reading?
I'm curious if fellow YCers can recommend business books that they found were worth reading (whether focused on startups/entrepreneurship or more broadly).

Given the vast swamp of business literature out there, it is hard to tell the signal from the noise (and it is definitely mostly noise).
Well, the article was written in 2007, so maybe there are more now, but then again in 2007 the economy looked strong. So maybe there's less than 6300 now.
To get the list started, "Founders at Work" was outstanding -- by far the best business book I've read.

Guy Kawasaki's "The Art of the Start" was okay, but it was too superficial / trite for my taste.
Are you joking? This is one of literally HUNDREDS of such sites that exist for "gaining Twitter followers fast." If you've ever dealt with the Twitter API and filtering out spam you'll know what I mean. It's ridiculous.
I don't think that's the case. They just want access to your account so they can make it auto follow the next round of suckers. They probably are too lazy or don't know how to implement OAuth.
Unless I am missing something, they contradicted themselves.

The graph shows that the recession IS affecting everyone in all the groups equally.

They are all a few percentage higher than last September, but the ratio is the same as last September.

Instead of doing this by age, gender, race and education they should have shown this by TYPE of job.

Then it would be very uneven.

They should do this kind of graph for health care coverage.
Plans for Prometheus Device (lets you shoot fire)
I think part of the stigma of buying online goods stem from the 'fantasy' games where people think they originated from. That had more to do with generalizations about fantasy gamers more than any real concrete reasons. A trade is fair as long as both parties feel they gained from it and has nothing to do with whether there is anything physical or tangible involved or the marginal cost.
<snark>I define crap as gold. Anyone noticed that gold has a funny smell these days? </snark>
For women:

White 15-24, no HS: 20.1%, Black: 36.8%, Hispanic: 29.9%
I wonder how much of this increase is due to the way unemployment is calculated. When workers stop looking for a job, they are no longer counted as unemployed. When they start looking for a job, I assume they are once again counted.

Given that we had been hearing a good amount about economic recovery and lowering unemployment, is it possible that formerly discouraged workers got back into the job market? Nothing fundamental seems to have changed since 6 months ago.
Towards a Better Template Tag Definition Syntax for Django
"they're looking to fund companies with IPO potential" - Is that correct ? Difficult to make that out from PG's essays, maybe some founders can clarify.
The only problem I see is that the author uses abbreviated variable names quite often. For someone like me, just learning the language, this can make some of the examples quite hard to follow, such as:

ltrs.foldLeft(List[(Char,Int)]()){
case ((prevchr,cnt)::tl,chr) if(prevchr==chr) =>(prevchr,cnt+1)::tl
case (tbl,chr) => (chr,1)::tbl
}

Keeping track of cnt, chr, t1, tbl, etc is hard enough, even when you're not trying to learn the syntax as well.
Hackers and Painters
Go It Alone
How to get Rich - Dennis Felix
Mark Vella died in Florida shooting - Gvke
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I wouldn't jump to racism right away, the system doesn't break down the numbers by locations. For instance rural people with no degrees may have an easier time finding jobs, whereas those in a city may not. I don't know the breakdown of rural hispanic, white, black, to the city but that might be able to explain it.