skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That might work if generations were discrete, but they're not. I've recently tried to hire a programmer, and while some of the candidates were excellent programmers, none could stand up and give any kind of explanation to a customer of anything. My customers are conservative (to say the least!) and none of the candidates could change their language style to match the listener.

In many industries getting a job early and having work experience is very important, and your employers and colleagues will all be older. Being able to communicate effectively outside your peer group is critical for many jobs. Those that have the skill will benefit. Those that don't could easily get left behind.

Inability to communicate effectively outside your peer group doesn't matter much if you just program and don't try to talk to VCs, bankers, customers or potential mentors.
He was terribly frustrated he was like this guy who had all kinds of ideas, but he couldn't articulate them with his hand.

I've experienced this. Since several years ago I've had tons of idea's for startups I'd like to create. Problem was, I had a business/finance/network engineer background and had no way of actually building anything. It's extremely difficult being stuck like that. Ambitions are polluted by your own limitations.

Three years ago a few close friends and I decided to develop a video game using XNA for Xbox 360. We were three programmers, two artists, and myself who handled game design (not a coder). It was a simple game. Basically, you were a guy on a board with a bat and would melee with others, trying to knock them off the board. It was sorta like Nintendo Hockey crossed with Super Smash Brothers in a top-down 2D view. Long story short, the programmers lost interest and the project died after two years of part-time work. The two artists and I were more or less helpless in trying to finish the game, so we had to abandon it.

This was a year ago and I was frustrated. I came to the realization that in order to build something, you need to have the idea, and you need to have a means of building it. So I ordered a bunch of books and started to teach myself how to program. Thats enabled me to work on a new startup.

Now I can see things much clearer having the ability to write code. That frustration of not being able to build your ideas, or having their destiny out of your control, is completely gone. It's empowering. This quote really rings true to me now:

The best programmers are the ones that combine in one head both the ability to translate ideas into code and having the ideas. Just like the best artists have both the ability ... (have) a great hand.
I upvoted the story before reading the article, just because I saw the *.acm domain and thought meat awaits.

Really disappointing. No actual discussion of the real technology, only a plug for OneRiot and Scoopler, neither of which has nothing more than fluff.
Exactly. If you didn't see the death of privacy as early as the 80s you either weren't paying attention, or weren't born yet.

What's going on here is a redefining of personal data as "private but without privacy." While the distinction itself is somewhat subtle, the ways this redefining is being carried out are anything but.

In Eric's case, he has never exactly been known for his subtlety of thought, has he…?
So, in business terms, it's like the venture capitalist flying his private jet out and chartering a limo to meet with a portfolio company to tell them they're pulling the plug the because times are tough and they have to save where they can.

Might still not be the jet and the limo throwing off the balance, but it's still hypocritical. At least he could be direct and say "We don't believe in your business any more, and we're not going to throw good money after bad. So long".

Especially given all the talk about the sacrifices we all have to make, it's curious how politicians, activist leaders and especially public servants can't at all be bothered to make those sacrifices.
Yes, but you only have to pay for it once.
I'm not sure if it's in my nature or my Unix-tradition nurture, but I prefer shorter words, like "propriety."
Google Live Search - Every Second Update can be searched now (Impact On SEO?)
"The core idea of the original is that hackers are like painters."

No it's not. This is wrong for the same reason that idlewords is wrong when he says that the thesis of H&P is:

"Of all the different types of people I've known, hackers and painters are among the most alike. What hackers and painters have in common is that they're both makers."

This isn't a thesis that pg is trying to prove. Rather, it's a source of ideas. That is,

"Because hackers are makers rather than scientists, the right place to look for metaphors is not in the sciences, but among other kinds of makers. What else can painting teach us about hacking?"

The essay doesn't even identify what those ideas are, let alone try to disprove them. All he's attacking is the source of the ideas. That's like saying Newton's theory of gravity is wrong because sitting under apple trees is gay.
Did Eric Schmidt really do a Google search for "Did I cheat on my wife?"?
How would a search engine that doesn't look at your search string work?
it means that you can generally let go of any debate after a few days

I feel that it leaves a lot of debates unfinished. This leaves me disappointed and means I don't put as much effort into comments as I might otherwise.

However, I guess its just another one of the reasons I'm only "sort of" an HNer. Its really up to pg to set up the site to act how he wants (shorter discussions could be what he wants).
Maybe all it takes to succeed is a fifteen minute advantage
The thing people don't realize with google - You are not the customer. You are the product. The customers are the people who pay google to do their advertising.
LinkedIn's demographics vs WSJ, Forbes and Businessweek
The DOs and DO NOTs of Brand
At CMU, the consolation masters took about 4 years to get.
But is this the health care system we would be getting with the current proposal? I see a lot of these types of posts, health care is great in [somecountry] and it's a [otherthanus] system.

I think most people are concerned b/c the US Congress is corrupt (either to a major or minor extent). So special interest groups (AMA, insurance co's) have a greater chance of getting a bill that looks after their interests.

In the end, doesn't it come down to paying doctors (and their practices that own the testing equipment) less?
A Digital Breakthrough for Cancer Diagnosis
4 Things to Remember For Diabetic Patients - Control Diabetes
Enjoying yourself such that you lose track of time -- when it happens all the time -- is a bad thing. Imagine yourself saying the same thing about anything else you can get addicted to. "I watch 14 hours of television a day because I genuinely just enjoy it." "I drink 14 bottles of beer a day because I genuinely just enjoy it."
The American president is a target and must be protected. It's when it's argued that the precautions you take for yourself doesn't apply to others in the same situation that the wheels come off. Fortunately, no-one is nearly as critical a target as POTUS.
Google Chrome for Mac released (beta)
When I get drunk, I also lose track of time and enjoy myself quite a bit. If I were an alcoholic, that doesn't mean its right. Trust me, im all for enjoying work, but this startup culture mentality of: "outwork the other guy 16 hours a day and have nothing else" is getting out of hand.
You end up with a lot of unfactorable redundancy in the things that implement the behaviors. You end up having to do a lot with records, and the syntax for dealing with them is very verbose. The distinction between handle_info and handle_cast is a bit odd. It's a lot of little things, many of which are actually Erlang-the-language/syntax, that adds up to an experience that is better than anything I know when you're hitting the strengths of the system, but still could use some improvement.
This depends how far you change the system. US has a much higher per-person spending on healthcare than does Germany, so it has to be questioned how that money is currently distributed...
Editable/Printable Invoice
Oh and I've gone to the emergency room and not waited also.

However, the bill was much higher. But, the bill is reduced by agreements with the insurance company and if you've met your deductible, you might not pay anything at all.

Better or worse? One visit to the ER does not make a compelling story one way or another.
Apologies, I misstated my intentions. What I meant to say is that I want to work in industry for 3-5 years, and then decide if I want to keep working, or pursue either a PhD or MBA.
I think Im probably with you on this one. There has been a lot of anti-google rumbling the last few months and I guess this is mostly a continuation of that.

Pretty silly thing to have said though.
Build It With Me Helps Connect Designers With Developers
The problem with that motto is that "evil" is entirely subjective.
It's not the same. Beer has an effect on your liver, your general health, wallet etc.

Sure, everything in moderation, but if you enjoy something, do it. If you suddenly realize that you had neglected something/someone else, then that's another matter.
Ask HN:  What to do when some users want a feature back that was bad?
For example, the first release of my game DropZap had irritating high pitched laser sounds.

V1.1 has something more pleasant, but some users (don't know what percentage) actually liked the old sounds better.

What do you do in a case like this?

IMO, even making the old sounds an option is not a good idea because I think they are really irritating in comparison to the new ones for most people.
1. Looks like a pretty good product.
2. Clean up the page. Make it simple! It looks so cluttered, I've no clue where to look. Way too much text, and too many moving flash images.
I disagree. The major consideration for staying at my current job is the health insurance benefits. I carry the health insurance for my family. So it's a large expense that I must consider when starting up my company.
The problem is not working long days. It's spending time inefficiently on tasks that don't have a real impact on your bottom line.

I wish I knew which tasks were the most important, every day I try and guess and follow my instincts.
Democracy is in peril when leaders don't subject themselves to the same standards as they subject their peoples to. "I'm a leader, my leadership is in itself important, thus I'm actually morally obliged to take my private jet" is a very dangerous line of thought.

Also, I can help but think that at least some of the guys in the 650 GBP hotel rooms, eating caviar (on the taxpayers dime, of course), have spend some time during the past year berating greedy bankers.
What startup mentality. Where? When did it start getting out of hand?

Some data needed there me thinks.
It seems to me that what he thought he was referring to was cases like a subpoena for child pornography. The cases when google is obliged to divulge personal information are reserved for cases in which someone is seriously believed to be evil.
When people read his quote I think tend to think of embarrassing things they themselves have searched for, but no one is going to subpoena (or even care) about your search for "nurse + handcuffs".

When I use google I know that there is some probability of the results getting hacked or leaked or subpoenaed or looked at by a google employee trying to improve search. However the expected value of that embarrassment (probability of someone I actually care about seeing it X how embarrassed I would be) is very low, and, for me, doesn't even come close to outweighing the benefit provided by the suite of google products.
On the otherhand (and I think this is Erik's point) if you are using google to do something that would legitimately land you in jail the expected value of bad-stuff is much higher. (Actually both the probability of getting subpoenaed and the level of bad go up).

I feel that there is this idea that everything you do everywhere on the internet can and should be totally private and that any chance that it isn't is seen as removing a fundamental right. In my opinion the internet is more like a trail out in the middle of the wilderness: usually no one sees what you do and its probably ok to have sex with your girlfriend without anyone knowing, but if you start burying bodies out there the FBI can and will use that against you.
Drum Wear: build a drum kit into your pants
Drum wear gives aspiring drummers a fully portable and fun drum kit anywhere they go. The system uses force-sensitive sensors built right into pants and shoes to create corresponding drum noises.
If only hacker sketches on a napkin looked like this:

http://tinyurl.com/y9b5n2d
"... we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities."

The right to privacy from the government is a logical consequence of the fact that the government is the servant of the people, put in place to protect and promote the people's interests. The Declaration of Independence describes our reason for instituting a government at all:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, ..."

We need no justification for privacy from the government and its proxies. The most upstanding citizen still has the right to keep his affairs private. Even people with nothing to hide have the right to hide it.

We explicitly give the government the power of search, but only when we (through a judge) agree that it's necessary. Without that agreement, they're not allowed:

Amendment 4 - Search and Seizure. Ratified 12/15/1791.

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

We explicitly restrict all other powers of government through the 10th Amendment:

Amendment 10 - Powers of the States and People. Ratified 12/15/1791.

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

We do that because we recognize the tendency of unchecked governments to gather more power to themselves. When a government becomes more powerful than its people, the people are slaves who have lost "the Blessings of Liberty" as listed in the Constitution's Preamble.

Government is a dangerous tool. It's the people who should be watching the government, not the other way around.
Maybe I missed his point, but first of all, yes, hospitals do have waiting rooms - just (obviously?) they're not filled in the middle of the night, as only people with, well, emergencies tend to go to the hospital in the middle of the night.
Secondly, e.g. going to the dentist is almost guaranteed to be an hour's wait (at least where I live), even if you have an appointment. Say, you do have an appointment for 1500, then what many people around here do is, check in at 1455, ask how long the wait might be, and then actually leave to do some shopping or similar and come back in whenever their wait is nearly over.

So really, I don't see how this could be superior to any other system.. And is he pleasantly surprised at the 250ish Euros or did he consider it too high? In case of the latter, I don't know why he doesn't have German insurance in the first place. I currently pay less than that amount per year (though that's the public health care kind, not the private one, which arguably would be more expensive, but also better), and IANAL, but I think if he lives here [in Germany] he is forced by law to have some kind of health insurance.

Don't want to come across as too negative, but I just thought I'd give you the other side of the story as well. (I currently live in Germany and I am covered under public health care.)
Screw holiday parties...How to throw a Festivus party at work
This couldn't come at a better / worse time for me. I finished college 3 years ago, and spent the last 3 years building a startup. It's an extremely stressful time at the moment, and we're in talks with our first "big fish" (> 1 million / year) clients. Basically, it either needs to work out in the next 6 months or the plug will be pulled.

Lately, I've been feeling socially isolated big time. I've been neglecting a lot of friendships over the past few years, always feeling guilty when I'm not working, not being able to enjoy the more important things in life, always using the excuse that I have more important things to deal with my life right now. "When my company gets going, I'll start spending things on the finer things in life", I would say. I guess for me, part of it was a bit of a dream, a fantasy image I would hold on to: this dream will either become reality or fail in the next few months, and with this chance of failure coming closer and closer, I guess something snapped with me -- too much stress, and putting way too much pressure on myself.

Failure is not an option, because otherwise I completely blew it with a huge part of my social life, and will have nothing left.

I'm not sure why I'm sharing this, and it's not really a cohesive story, but I I guess I needed to vent with people who kind of can relate. I guess this is one of those phases in life I need to get through to realize what's more important in life.

I have a problem.
The concern is that the feds will subpoena Google for everything they've got about everybody in a witchhunt sweep, and the results of that will be used to target individuals for further investigation based on 'suspicion of wrong-doing' rather than actual crimes being committed. Taken out of context, just about anything can be made to look suspicious.
This settlement provides no relief for me, or anyone else in the covered class. I am opting out. If 1500 people opt out, the whole settlement can be rescinded. That is my hope.

This settlement will only serve to enrich the law firm that did not see fit to make any provision for all of us affected by Beacon!
http://timetric.com/tags/HadCRUT3/

RESTful endpoints/CSV/embeddable graphs of this dataset. There was no way we could pass this one up!
I couldn't agree more with DHH here. Although addiction to "work's highs" is one explanation, I think its often simply a noble-sounding excuse to not expend the effort to exercise regularly or maintain a significant other. Hacking is fun, working out and maintaining relationships are hard. I fell into this trap when I was an undergraduate, sleeping 4 hours a night and putting on a significant amount of weight. After I finally got my priorities straight a few years ago, I lost the weight, started sleeping 8 hours a night, and my quality of life has improved dramatically.

There are always going to be periodic crunch times when you need to pull out all the stops to hit a deadline. However, if this is the norm rather than the exception, I think you're doing it wrong. Note that I still agree that you shouldn't be expecting to take vacations and enjoy lazy weekends, its just that 8 hours of sleep a night and regular exercise should be non-negotiable.
Who's requiring them to retain anything? For 180 days?

And retaining for policing/security reasons doesn't mean you should use the data for other privacy-invading targeting.
data would actually be really interesting. take a survey of early startup employees and entrepreneurs. in the meantime, if you spend enough time around the industry culture, you know this is a problem.
Perhaps, "if you have to retain people's data..."?
Make it an annoyingly difficult to get to option. This won't work since it's an iPhone app, but some analogue of having a Page that's not linked to from anywhere, like if HN had a "secret" controversial list at xx/controversial.

People who want to give you money are asking for something. Consider cooperating with them for said money.
If it's low-effort, make an easter egg. People that really want it can have a fun time finding it (if they know it's there).
Rproxy: HTTP via rsync (2002)
I worked for a company that routinely provided user-uploaded child porn to the FBI along with user details. The EULA gave us the right to do this although I'm not sure how explicitly this was stated. I'm ok with this, but it's a slippery slope downward.
Why can't you give me mean, median and mode instead of an unexplained average? Obviously it's the mean but it's still annoying.
I think David has the right idea, but is framing the problem in the wrong way. The problem is that startup founders don't know the difference between work and play. When you're working, you better damn well be sure you're refreshed, thinking clearly, and working on something that is going to get you a desired outcome related to your business (i.e. meets the goal). When you're playing, who gives a shit?! Do what you enjoy and do it for as long as you want, AS LONG as your work is done.

What happens more often than we suspect is that since we enjoy what we do so much, the lines become blurred. How much of those 14 hours of "work" were really aligned with a goal for your business vs. working on something that you just enjoy working on. If you framed that activity with the idea that this is "work" and that it needs to accomplish a goal and it needs to be of a certain quality, would you take it on at 9pm with your tired eyes? Probably not.
What I never see talked about in real-world systems that _does_ get talked about in computer systems is pretty simple: scale.

Does health care scale? For that matter, does government in general scale? Germany (according to Wolfram Alpha) has the largest population in Europe, at 82 million people. America has 300 million. And Germany is much, much more dense, at 613 people per square mile vs our 86 people per square mile. Wouldn't that make it much easier for fewer hospitals to care for more people?

I have concerns that the amount of beaurocracy neccesary to manage a nationalized health care system here in the US would be staggering. I'm not involved in the field in any way, so I don't _really_ know what I'm talking about, but the engineer in me looks at a system that complex and lets out a curse word beneath my breath.

This also applies to almost everything else the federal government does. I feel like we'd have been much better off staying a loose confederation of states. They're small enough to be able to pull off something like this.
Google Chrome Beta for Mac
Google Goggles: Businesses need to evaluate this disruptive technology now
In other words, if I use Google Checkout, I should be ashamed of myself for wanting my credit card information kept private?
come on, my fiancee booked a flight for EUR 17 round trip recently, including their credit card handling fee (which can be avoided by using visa electron). if that's not budget then i don't know what is. i have booked GBP 20 round trip flights with ryanair or easyjet numerous times, you just have to know how to play their special offers game and be somewhat flexible on dates. often, getting to the airport or parking costs me more than the actual flight. if treating incompetent customers badly enables these prices then so be it.
Again... huh? The cost of producing a modern US coin has nothing to do with its value.
i was on the same yc batch as octopart. whenever i think about determination in founders, these guys are at the top of my list.