skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If this is original research and not just confirming an earlier result, then this is probably one of the most important studies ever done. I'm sure kids will be reading about this in their textbooks someday.

(Although I'm 95% certain that the causal mechanism proposed by the article is wrong, i.e. the idea that intuition and analytical thinking are opposed doesn't make sense either on its own or as an explanation.)
Because the equipment presumably cost more than 5$.
This statement kind of summarizes the problem: "Basically, the best way to guess who's got which socket is to brush up on your WW1/WW2 history, and to have a deep passion for postcolonial literature. No, really."
Lean & Mean Tokyo Cabinet Recipes
There are relatively few people who have logged in to Google Wave ever, which is just dumb for a product that relies so heavily on network effects to be attractive.
You're really good at customer service.
Yes. I don't understand how those are jobs or independent roles. When you just have a few people I think you need to be able to write code, design UI's, or be amazing at getting customers and handling the day to day stuff. Ideally a founding team should do those things as a matter of course.

Social Media "Expert": You should be able to spread the word via Twitter, FB, etc.

Consultant: Founders should bring the domain knowledge of the field they are attacking.

Ideas Guy: You face a lot of problems and need to be able to solve them quickly and ultimately implement solutions.
Good question, let me try to answer. I'm doing this out of memory so some might be wrong:
- DropBox is $99 a year for 50Gig
- we get Confluence hosted for free because we're a successful Atlassian plugin developer
- I forget how much Last.fm is but I think it's very cheap, plus the free version is plenty good enough
- I think we're paying about $250/month for Slicehost right now
- a SkypeIn number is $60/year I think
- we're spending $34/month for Freshbooks
- we're spending $49/month for GetSatisfaction because we signed up at the very beginning (they had an offer)
- E-Junkie is $10/month
- Paypal pro is $30/month (I think)
- Spreedly is $19/month

That's pretty much it! What does it add up to? In general, I can tell you that it's a very small percentage of our expenses (salaries is where our $$ goes)...in a way we can't afford NOT to use these tools.
I'm genetically 50% female. After all, my mother was female ;)

^ It's a joke, OK? Don't take it so seriously.
Music in Pubs: Introspections on what annoys customers.
The Dystonia Flu-Shot Case
Wave's invitation system is definitely flawed (I need invites for my whole team, not just myself), but IMO amitu is criticizing Wave for the wrong reason.
Leadgen isn't just about data. Example:

There is a business where you can go to the web site and request a quote from 3 car dealerships for a specific year/make/model of a car. They sell these leads to 3 car dealerships at $20 per. Last I heard, they were doing millions in revenue a month. I also know a senior housing directory startup that's selling customers on a per-lead basis and doing quite well.

I'm all for obvious and immediate business models. I think it's a lower risk path (and it's the one I've chosen), but the go-free-and-get-popular is a pretty tried and true path that's worked for plenty of folks. But it DOES require that you get popular, which is really hard to do. SaaS stuff can be lucrative if you don't manage to be super popular.
I agree. Startup meetings tend to be polluted by "service providers": consultants trying to sell you stuff.

To me, it's the responsibility of the organizer to filter these out.
Focusing my efforts, managing my time, and figuring out what my priorities in life are.

regex, on the big scheme of things, is a pretty easy problem to solve. If you think about them in terms of state machines, they become easier to grasp your mind around.
In short: Entrepreneurs should "think outside the box". Don't be scared of competition/constraints.
Agreed. The Jeff Hawkins talks are great.
The unstated (but unavoidable) conclusion of the article is that we are all now non-gendered, generic "individuals." Despite his best efforts at suggesting otherwise, what he's describing is not a new definition of masculinity, but the end of it. By definition, if a word or idea can mean anything at all then it really means nothing.
Even if it did, the article says "The Personal Investment Contract (PIC) can be calibrated for just about any situation where the investor believes the person they are investing in is (a) a true superstar, and (b) completely trustworthy."

If someone was willing to pay me $300K cash so that I could work on my passions rather than having to work a day job I'd be more than happy to give them a return on their investment, rather than looking for ways to get out of my obligations to them.
I agree, those jabs at heroku were in very poor taste and I'm glad that they've taken measures to avoid sounding like that in the future. It's just sleazy.
I agree with comments below that the winners used illegal and immoral models but.... And the instructor, I hope, was in violation of her contract by allowing the ad presentation but.... That's not what really disappoints me.

What really disappoints me is that she missed a great teaching moment. She handed out $5s to a bunch of teams. Where is her return?

She missed showing how to use leverage. She had every right to say "no" to an ad presentation and so she should have looked at the margin by which the "winning" team won (say $300, whatever it was) and charged that team a buck less ($299) for the right to substitute the ad for the presentation they were supposed to make.

-t
I think it just shows that it is women who decide who reproduces. It is probably easy to find some sperms somewhere (these days there are also sperm banks), but it is hard to find a willing womb. Hence only the top fraction of men gets to reproduce (with several women), because women can just stick to the top fraction of men for reproduction.
fnid described it better what I meant. It is about the diversity of men and women in your ancestry.
I'm assuming, based on the teacher's description (which involved "those little buzzers" and the concept of "trading one buzzer for another"), that these "reservations" they were selling were in fact "places in line". [1] If you built a business around selling reservations at a reservation-only restaurant, where the typical reservation was made days in advance and they were handed out in fixed quantity, I would have more... reservations about the business, as you do. [2]

But places in line? Everybody "gets one". The question is: Where is it, and how much would you pay to trade with the person ahead of you?

If I walked up to someone holding a buzzy coaster at a local restaurant and offered them $20 to trade coasters with me, would you be morally offended? Would they necessarily be unhappy?

Yes, I agree that if every place in line is for sale the whole thing gets tremendously painful for the people who arrive late and don't want to engage in a commodities-trading session before dinner. But what if only one in every 20 places is for sale?

If someone doesn't arrive -- no problem, everyone else moves up.

And, really, the kidney thing is unfair on several levels. For one thing, it's a cheap shot. If you want to take a moral stand on the sanctity of restaurant reservations, do so with pride! Don't feel the need to pretend that your debate opponents are also against motherhood, apple pie, and life itself.

For another, it's a different problem. The laws against paying for donor organs are in place because the market for donor organs is worlds different from the market for restaurant seats: You can't open up new sources of donor organs the way you open up a new restaurant [3], and the difference between the best chef and the second-best chef is smaller (in quantity and in kind) than the difference between one kidney and zero kidneys. Nobody dies if they don't get a seat at their favorite restaurant and have to eat at -- gasp! -- the International House of Pancakes down the street.

---

[1] We don't really have another name for this, do we? I've been burned by this hole in our lexicon before. Me: "Do you take reservations?" Restaurant: "Yes." Me: "Can I make a reservation?" Restaurant: "No, we don't take them over the phone. We give them out as you arrive."

[2] I can't believe I just wrote that, either.

[3] Well, not unless you're Sweeney Todd. In which case you can do both at once!
I am always put off by the "limited supply" approach of Google. Disclaimer: I did not get a Wave invite, maybe because I did not even apply, but still. So they seem to think I am not cool enough for their product. Guess what, I don't want to kneel down and beg for an invite. I'll look for other stuff to do instead.
No, I don't think he's better off "walking away".

First, you can't be too paranoid: perhaps his firm was being investigated and the bribe proposal was false.

Second, if the bribe offer was serious and that guy has any power, now his firm has a nervous enemy in the wrong place.

Third, if the bribe offer is taken up by someone else, he makes it less likely that he can get future contracts anywhere near that arm of government without making bribes.

Fourth, the corruption is independently reported by some third party, then it may come back to haunt his firm (as in questions about what they knew about it, when).

-t
To be honest, I am not at all surprised at the frustration most people are seeing with the Google Wave invite system. What I am surprised, is that so many people did not seem to expect it.

What people are forgetting is that this system is a closed proprietary system, unlike GMail.
Yes, invites to GMail were scarce, and if I remember correctly even sold for hundreds of dollars on ebay. The difference between GMail and Google Wave (GWave? yes/no? ;) is that when you were invited to gmail, you were invited to use a new "interface" of an existing and mature protocol - email. You didn't have to wait to "show off" your gmail account to your friends, you simply had to send them an email.

Google Wave requires mass adoption of something that is inherently closed (unless they open this protocol to other companies) and so will suffer from a slower adoption rate, and as a consequence, a lower utility rate, even if the invite system ceases to exist at all.

To be honest, I'm not sure if this is an issue. Many of my friends who got invites seem to think that Google Wave is going to revolutionize _chat_, but I don't think this was ever the claim. It may yet revolutionize collaboration, but in order to collaborate effectively you don't need to just sit there and wait for people to log on -- start a wave, invite some friends, and watch it evolve.

edit: to follow up on my 'non issue' comment. My point is that for Google Wave to be useful, only those who wish to collaborate together will really need to adopt it, not your entire google contact list. If a company signs up their domain for google wave, you can be almost certain that they will make much better use of it than I will with my group of friends on an individual level
I typically plug www.hndir.com when I see this stuff (a directory of hacker news readers sorted by school). This will instantly tell you just about everything you'd find out from a 30-60 minute conversation in person. "What projects did you work on? What type of stuff interests you? Which languages do you prefer?" etc etc.

If you're outside the United States and you e-mail me your school's TLD, I'll manually add it. There are message boards and easy ways of identifying YC alum within. Notifications are a bit lacking at the moment.
The explanations mapping complex exponentiation to rotations are basically right. In this context, it's worth noting that the conventional choice of circle constant is off by two. We should be using tau = τ = C/r as the circle constant, rather than pi = π = C/D. Read τ as "turn" and all those radian angle measures suddenly make sense. Ninety degrees? Instead of the confusing π/2 we have 90° = τ/4 = one quarter turn. And so on: 60° = τ/6 = one sixth of a turn, 180° = τ/2 = one half turn, etc.

In these terms, Euler's formula would be recast as

e^(i τ) = 1

That is, the exponential of the imaginary unit i times the circle constant τ is unity: one full rotation.
Future is bright in EU regarding this matter: http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE55S1XZ2...
I'm always skeptical of these gatherings that pair up potential co-founders, because I see it as trying to match up singles at a bar. The quality of the people tends to be lower, and the relationships very rarely turn into marriage.

And when you're working on a startup, your co-founder is very much your spouse, both personally and legally. The thought of going to a cafe to look for my future spouse feels rather grim.
Secure computers aren’t so secure
How is taking 30 seconds to fill out a form anything like "kneel down and beg"?
Doing nice visual design stuff. I'm apparently not all that great at it, but frankly don't really notice (I like the look and feel of this site, for instance) so it's not like I have anything to benchmark against.
Thanks; now I understand the reason. Before, it felt as if you gave them out because they were "cool" or "hip" or something, and that's now clearly not the case.

Also, thanks for spilling the beans on what you use, and why. Gives some useful perspective.
Sounds like a good idea, but your registration process is messed up. At least I'm not smart enough to figure it out :-)

I'm getting an "email required" when I click on "create account".
With the kidney example I really only wanted to demonstrate that "the customers are happy" can not be the only criterion for ethical businesses.
Bars don't ask for resumes when you come in.

Trust the organizers of the MeetUp to try to come up with a [slightly] better process...
While I do agree that it certainly helps when demand is higher than supply in terms of customer interest, this is certainly not the main reason for the Google Wave invite/nomination system.

I just got my invite today, and having used it extensively for a few hours, I can tell you a few things for certain: It is quite buggy, and still feels QUITE sluggish. Thus, it is in their interest to open this up to "early adopters" before the main population since they are more willing to tolerate these bugs. Furthermore, from following some of their twitter posts/blog posts, it seems like they are still struggling with scaling the system itself, contributing in the slow down in approving invites/"nominations" (it took my nomination 4 days to get approved, I don't think they're doing it to frustrate me once I've been invited ;)
I was kind of wondering about something similar, while not exactly that. What if someone does do a transaction (a legitimate one) for 888888.88, does it mess up the bank's handling or total for deposits because its being handled differently?

What if that amount was fraudulently taken from a large balance account, would the bank notice or assume its part of a fraud investigation?
My reasons for accepting such an offer would be the nonlinear utility of money (my chances at making more money would significantly increase with the initial freedom to work on projects fulltime), and the equity equation (http://www.paulgraham.com/equity.html).

After twittering about this, someone (possibly half-joking) offered to invest $60 USD in me under similiar conditions. Transaction costs and overhead however make these small investments really unattractive.

Is it completely crazy to propose a website that allowed me to combine lots of small PICs, and handling the overhead, to get my life as a project financed?
Guy makes a vacuum tube by hand in his workshop, with video.
Actually, chris, you wouldn't have externally mandated quantitive constraints.
Interesting idea, Silicon Valley is probably the only place where the ratio of business guys to coders might be slightly better than 90:10.

Are you going to do the TechMeetup style 2-sentence intro round the room? Organising hack-together sessions may also be worthwhile...
Next year the team that beats the Kobayashi Maru scenario wins... gah, I hate these kind of artificial competitions.
There's a field of sheep behind and above where I live, and basically they do nothing but eat. I think the only way they can get enough energy to survive is to just eat ALL the time.
You could get a better logo in 5 minutes with $10 by cruising iStockPhoto.

Leaf logos are so, so, SO incredibly passé.

This isn't design, it's trendwhoring.
Article "As you can see, I had the idea of creating a “V” from two “leaves” of water."

I don't like the concept, it doesn't say high fashion to me (though the bottle possible does but not in a water-y way) and in no way suggests water - it's more like a lotion bottle to me.

I liked the Vero as a logo but the vertical doesn't work as the v is too separated and undefined. "ero" suggests it might be a sex aid, perhaps "cooling lotion". The bottle shape reminds me of "salad cream" - http://greenpasturesint.com/cannedbottledboxed/HeinzSaladCre...

Nothing particularly unusual about the methodology though I might change my mind once I've seen the questionnaire.
Resumes are all fine and good, but it still takes time (as per my other comment) and real world experience together. Or at least that's what I've gathered from everything here that I've read about it...
Hiring Hacks for Founders
Sure, and if online dating (representative of your example of meeting singles with a pre-determined description) was unsuccessful, I would agree with you. Also, I'm not sure I see the example as completely congruous. At a bar, you're not really predisposed to a potential partner. In a search for a co-founder, what if you're looking for someone that really complements your skillset really well, or someone that has a clearly defined passion for your space?

I think that a lot of the dialogue about trusting cofounders and having them have been BFFs for life is grand, but not everybody gets that lucky. As far as go forth and hack is concerned, aren't we talking about the same thing, except in one case we're having discussion prior to working together, and the other you eliminate that step and get started.

It's not ideal-sure. But this is the toughest thing 99% of people have ever done. Why not use all available methods for success?
Excellent idea - now if someone could just do it in Austin...
kryo, that was a really nasty, disparaging, and insensitive thing to write.

You can figure out that I'm a woman within 30 seconds of reading my application because of the organizations I've been involved with, what I studied, my accomplishments... oh, and of course the video.

Second, it's less about being "docked" because I'm a woman, but more about evaluators not relating to my accomplishments because what they value doesn't line up with what I've accomplished.

You can scoff at the "'they don't relate to me' crap", as you so eloquently put it. Or you can look at it for what it is: a problem in the tech world which results in a higher barrier to entry for women than it does for men.

It's easier to ignore this as if it doesn't exist and feign umbrage to me stating my fears, than it is to actually examine what goes on in an open-minded and sensitive way.

To relate to me you don't need a "a pair of breasts and a rush of estrogen" (how vulgar?!) but you do need a modicum of open-mindedness and sensitivity. Such characteristics you sorely lack.

I'm not trying to perpetuate the gender gap, but to acknowledge that it does exist in tech. Via discussion and awareness, maybe one day it will cease to exist.

That's what I really want. Men AND women evaluating me who see my potential as a businessperson even though I don't fit the mold of a traditional Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur.

Unlike most women in technology that I've met who have encountered bias and discrimination due to their gender, I'm NOT afraid to talk about it. I'm happy I brought this up and am not at all sorry that it offended you.
Well, since you ask, juggling balls that you can buy for less than $1 are crap. Very, very hard to juggle five with them. Good juggling balls in the UK cost upwards of ukp3 each, so that's about $10 for five, and you can't buy them in your corner store.
Same here and one classmate thought I was being crass. Or being a profiteer.
Apache OFBiz might be worth a look. If nothing else than for the data models, which are top notch. It's done with lots of Java and XML.
"Would Darwinism suggest that we self-selected a more peaceful human race by breeding men who stayed home, or a more aggressive human race by breeding men who were more successful at fighting wars and then returning?"

I doubt either. Which men stayed home, historically? Pacifists? The sick? The old? Members of the wrong economic class or religion? Probably the answers vary widely from war to war and place to place.

And again, what traits helped you survive a war? Physical strength? Stamina? Keen eyesight? A healthy sense of fear? Being able to run quickly away? Being too wimpy to be put on the front lines? Being smart enough to become an officer? Again, it probably varied a lot.
Restaurants do care if they deny reservations to non-paying customers and then have empty tables because your business didn't sell as much as usual. They also care about alienating customers who are told, "We don't have any free reservations available, but some are available for an extra charge." Very likely, if they found out what you were doing, they would put you out of business whether you were hurting them or not, just to prevent their patrons from ever facing that choice.

Like I said, the greatest proof that restaurants don't want their patrons paying for reservations is that they don't do it. They already have what they need: a way of recording reservations and a maitre d' with knowledge of their business and a triple-digit IQ. They know there's demand: many people already try to get a table on a busy night by slipping the maitre d' some cash. If they wanted in on it, they'd already be in on it, and you'd be stuck trying to convince a restaurant to hand over control of a simple, vital, near-zero-cost part of their business to a third party for no gain. I maintain that you could only survive as a parasite by avoiding notice and/or paying off the right people.
The wording of this question (as summarized in the headline) suggests professional negligence on my part for not having spent a year, five, or ten learning Java. I'd like to respectfully disagree.

Ruby is my primary programming language, but I've also built apps and scripts in Python, C, C++, Objective-C, PHP, and Scala.

I'm a firm believer that exposure to a wide variety of programming languages is a great way to experience new constructs, paradigms, and approaches to computer programming, which is why I've spent the past few years branching out. During this process, I've worked with a few languages built atop the JVM (Scala and JRuby), and thus learned a bit of Java, basic language structure / primitives, and some underpinnings of the JVM. I believe that making an effort to understand and employ these various platforms has helped me to become a better programmer.

It sounds as if you're coming from the perspective of an academic advisor. This surprises me, as your question is primarily career-focused. Had Java been forced on me in University, I would have left disappointed by my education and mentally prepared for five years as a junior developer in a cube farm working on obscure, broken internal HR software. Instead, exposure to this variety of languages, architectures, and concomitant development methodologies has taught me a lot about programming / software engineering, and opened my eyes to careers I might not have imagined otherwise.

Circling back to the original question, I can tell you that I live a happy, productive, fulfilling life as a software developer at a great company doing what I love without "knowing Java."
"The Age of Persuasion" is excellent. You can ferret MP3s out of the CBC pages with a bit of work.