Linkseed/hacker_news_with_comments · Datasets at Hugging Face

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44,298	44,266	BrandonM	Hacker news or Y Combinator news	7media	I assume the author thinks it's been hacked?	null	0	2	2007-08-20 14:10:45 UTC
44,299	44,294	aston	Banner Blindness: Old and New Findings	brlewis	This information is pretty unsurprising. That said, I think Nielson is discounting to some degree the effect of good typography/page layout in this discussion. Pages that are designed well will focus the attention of the audience on the content being delivered. Note that the users also aren't looking at other things that seem to be accessory, like the navigation panes. In the end, though, that's just another argument to try to blend ads into the content area of the site, ethical or not.	null	3	25	2007-08-20 14:12:46 UTC
44,304	43,426	david927	How To Make a Funny Talk Title Without Using The Word "Weasel"	fad	I've always read and enjoyed Steve's posts, but here he comes off smug (despite the self-depricating jokes) as if he's summoning enlightment for the audience, when the talk is simply obtuse. Is a trademark necessary? Hardly. You can call something 'free' and yet try to charge for it. No one needs to trademark the word 'free' to protect it. In the same way, if some companies are using the 'open source' moniker without releasing their source, it will become quickly evident to the customer.Could there be a certification based on a set of standards? Sure. What that would look like is a great topic. But simply a lecture on basic marketing concepts is embarrassing and I think when Steve looks back on this video, it will be with a wince. (In his defence, I'm glad no one has had a camera around during any one of my numerous embarrassments.	he's blagging about branding this timehas a link to a video with his speech at OSCOM at the end	1	27	2007-08-20 14:33:48 UTC
44,308	44,307	amichail	Can we predict the future using a temporal version of the Copernican principle? [pdf]	amichail	Here's the New Yorker article mentioned in the paper:http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1999/07/12/1999_07_12_035_T...	null	1	6	2007-08-20 14:52:14 UTC
44,309	44,199	mlibbrecht	How much is News.YC worth?	blored	The value of news.yc is the input of pg and the other moderators. Without them, news.yc is just another reddit.	If someone wanted to sell a site with a similar user and traffic numbers, in your opinion, what would be the present worth in 2007 dollars, 2002 dollars, and possibly 1999 dollars for a site like news.ycombinator.com.	6	10	2007-08-20 14:59:51 UTC
44,315	44,137	SKUM	Anywhere.fm = 1.4 Millions songs uploaded.	rokhayakebe	seeqpod makes more since to me. http://www.seeqpod.com	O boy. Steve Jobs, I really recommend you call these guys up and start talking price. Seriously if I had a spare million bucks I would do anything to buy a piece of this *up.	10	25	2007-08-20 15:21:58 UTC
44,323	44,286	mattculbreth	Windows Users Caused Skype Outage	transburgh	They aren't prepared for Windows updates? That doesn't sound right at all. Frankly they need to own up to the error and stop blaming others.	null	0	12	2007-08-20 15:46:17 UTC
44,327	44,026	joe	Where can I find a good designer?	redrory	Let me recommend a friend of mine: http://phillipridlen.com/	Heya Guys, I am planning to re-do my site, as I am looking to upgrade from my free template look. Any suggestions, Thanks much	6	13	2007-08-20 15:50:03 UTC
44,329	44,286	rokhayakebe	Windows Users Caused Skype Outage	transburgh	yeah right!	null	2	12	2007-08-20 15:58:32 UTC
44,332	44,326	jsjenkins168	Django running on the iPhone, introspecting the phone's sqlite call records	nickb	Any details on how this was accomplished?	null	2	8	2007-08-20 16:07:06 UTC
44,335	44,289	edw519	The end of ERP?	davidw	Sounds like someone is confusing "ERP" (Enterprise Resource Planning) applications, which are successfully running millions of businesses with "ERP", the gargantuan garbage thrust upon fortune 500 companies by SAP, Oracle, and other bandits. The end of the first "ERP" (accounting, inventory, sales, marketing,...)? Hardly. The end of the second "ERP"? It's inevitable. Clearly, Web 2.0 is the next generation for many types of applications, including business. This is an argument in semantics. Nothing new here. Move along.	null	1	11	2007-08-20 16:20:26 UTC
44,337	44,333	piers	Anybody here know a good DNS service provider?	jamongkad	You mentioned GoDaddy, but do you mean provider or registrar? If the latter, try OpenDNS - www.opendns.com (at least I think that's the address; I'm on my phone so can only have one window open at a time)	Hi guys do any of you know of a good DNS service provider? Aside from GoDaddy.com are there any alternatives? recommendations please thanks.edit Whoops sorry I meant domain name registrar.	1	1	2007-08-20 16:26:55 UTC
44,341	44,333	davidw	Anybody here know a good DNS service provider?	jamongkad	I use everydns.net - it's free.If you mean registrar, I went through google. $10 gets you a .com, plus their web apps for the domain you register, which is a pretty good deal.	Hi guys do any of you know of a good DNS service provider? Aside from GoDaddy.com are there any alternatives? recommendations please thanks.edit Whoops sorry I meant domain name registrar.	2	1	2007-08-20 16:35:09 UTC
44,342	44,333	dfranke	Anybody here know a good DNS service provider?	jamongkad	I'm not clear on whether you mean recursive DNS servers, a DNS registrar, or a BIND host. Regardless: OpenDNS, Register4Less, and DynDNS's Custom DNS service, respectively.	Hi guys do any of you know of a good DNS service provider? Aside from GoDaddy.com are there any alternatives? recommendations please thanks.edit Whoops sorry I meant domain name registrar.	3	1	2007-08-20 16:35:15 UTC
44,345	44,137	jwinter	Anywhere.fm = 1.4 Millions songs uploaded.	rokhayakebe	Do users pay for space? Will it be ad-supported?	O boy. Steve Jobs, I really recommend you call these guys up and start talking price. Seriously if I had a spare million bucks I would do anything to buy a piece of this *up.	8	25	2007-08-20 16:45:50 UTC
44,346	44,259	aswanson	What should be considered off-topic?	rms	Anything gaming related (Playstation, Xbox etc.). Doing a gaming startup? Fine, post. Found some crack codes or new screen shots, karma should be put under assault by everyone.	Many have said that we need more explicit guidelines about what is off-topic. What do you think should be off-topic on news.ycombinator.com?	2	7	2007-08-20 16:46:30 UTC
44,347	44,137	ajc001	Anywhere.fm = 1.4 Millions songs uploaded.	rokhayakebe	for itunes users who have a big music library, i find Simplify Media much easier. www.simplifymedia.com	O boy. Steve Jobs, I really recommend you call these guys up and start talking price. Seriously if I had a spare million bucks I would do anything to buy a piece of this *up.	11	25	2007-08-20 16:46:43 UTC
44,349	44,286	palish	Windows Users Caused Skype Outage	transburgh	Hahahah -breath- hahahahahUltimate justice for the evil default setting "Start and connect on boot".	null	1	12	2007-08-20 16:47:40 UTC
44,350	44,242	pdsull	Carl Malamud Takes on WestLaw (Putting a complete database of US Case law in the public domain)	toffer	As a law student, I can attest to the fact that a great deal of Westlaw's value comes from the content they add. However, almost all of that value is derived from the texts of the cases themselves (in fact, all of it other than the search engine - which is fantastic compared to the alternatives [see findlaw.com another West product]). Westlaw provides overall synopses of cases, brief summaries of a case's points of law, and the ability to easily see any cases that cite the one you are reading (and if they do so positively or negatively).Aside from the search engine, I wonder if most of this couldn't be replicated by some sort of a wiki. Given a complete collection of the texts and enough knowledgeable, willing volunteers - could Westlaw be replicated?	null	0	6	2007-08-20 16:49:26 UTC
44,353	44,294	brett	Banner Blindness: Old and New Findings	brlewis	The more an ad looks like a native site component, the more users will look at itFor all his wacky buildup about the ethics of disclosing such a fact this was a pretty sorry payoff. It is exactly what I would predict from the results of such a study. For something to be insidious enough to consider not telling the public about it I would expect it to at least be both born out by empirical evidence AND counter-intuitive.	null	1	25	2007-08-20 16:58:41 UTC
44,366	44,330	alex_c	Just launched my new site: webmapp.com	webmapp	I can't find any content in my area (Toronto).The site also feels too slow to use regularly.But first and foremost, a simple sentence explaining the purpose of the website would do wonders for usability.	social news with a local focus	0	1	2007-08-20 17:23:32 UTC
44,367	44,365	myoung8	Living near Si Valley but with lower living expenses?	gregwebs	Sacramento is relatively close, but if you really want to be involved in the startup community, San Francisco is a much better choice.Sacramento is far enough away to make you think twice about attending all the cool events that happen in San Francisco and Palo Alto and Mountain View.	I have been thinking about trying to locate to Sacremento in the hopes of being close to Silicon Valley but being able to afford to live. Are there good startup opportunities in places like these?	2	2	2007-08-20 17:24:14 UTC
44,369	44,289	tocomment	The end of ERP?	davidw	Site is down. Is this the first YC.news effect? Semi-related question: What do large companies use for accounting software? My day-job company seems to be outgrowing QuickBooks and I have no idea what to reccomend to them.	null	0	11	2007-08-20 17:25:50 UTC
44,372	44,334	pg	$10,000 Platform Hack off	crxnamja	This seems slightly fishy. How can an event that's just announced claim to have 300 people coming?	Win $10,000 for the application that gets the most users after 24 hours.	0	8	2007-08-20 17:33:31 UTC
44,374	44,330	webmapp	Just launched my new site: webmapp.com	webmapp	it's a social news site with a very local focus. alex_c - all the content is user submitted and it's only been up a few hours so check back later... ?	social news with a local focus	2	1	2007-08-20 17:34:43 UTC
44,375	44,373	mds	Scientists: Artificial life likely in 3 to 10 years	mds	"But them getting out and taking over, never in our imagination could this happen."That's comforting.	null	1	4	2007-08-20 17:34:45 UTC
44,377	44,334	crxnamja	$10,000 Platform Hack off	crxnamja	We are expecting to have around 300 people attend.	Win $10,000 for the application that gets the most users after 24 hours.	1	8	2007-08-20 17:39:13 UTC
44,378	44,364	pg	Prediction: Newspapers will go bankrupt in 2007, unless they corner web classifieds by 1998	vlad	He said "many newspapers." And he is not far off. Newspaper ad revenues peaked in 2000.http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.org/2007/narrative_newspapers...The surprising thing to me is that they have any classified ad revenue left. This suggests there are still opportunities for startups to take more away from them.	null	0	8	2007-08-20 17:42:11 UTC
44,379	44,365	donna	Living near Si Valley but with lower living expenses?	gregwebs	You may want to consider finding a location near public transportation; e.g. Pittburg near the BART. That way you can live outside SF affordably but BART into events; http://bart.gov/stations/map/systemMap.asp	I have been thinking about trying to locate to Sacremento in the hopes of being close to Silicon Valley but being able to afford to live. Are there good startup opportunities in places like these?	1	2	2007-08-20 17:45:51 UTC
44,380	44,294	webwright	Banner Blindness: Old and New Findings	brlewis	I'd be interested in hearing trends about text-ad blindness. I know I look at and click adwords ads (and adsense ads) a LOT less than I did when they first came available... Especially since Google sold out their ad relevancy and allowed wildcard purchases or unrelated purchases (like ebay showing up on virtually every search with a "find SearchQuery and More at Ebay!!1!!1!"	null	0	25	2007-08-20 17:46:50 UTC
44,381	44,364	brlewis	Prediction: Newspapers will go bankrupt in 2007, unless they corner web classifieds by 1998	vlad	In 2000, Google changed the premise behind this prediction, that advertising generally doesn't work on the Web.The bigger problem with his prediction is that newspaper companies rarely go bankrupt. They get acquired.He was right on the money that newspapers had a small window to keep hold of classified advertising. They missed that window; craigslist and ebay took over.Also, he was right that newspaper companies are generally hurting in 2007.http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/departments/business...	null	1	8	2007-08-20 17:47:10 UTC
44,386	44,333	mark-t	Anybody here know a good DNS service provider?	jamongkad	I got mine from Yahoo! Small Business a couple years ago when they had a $3/year deal. I haven't seen anything like that recently. They seem to be a good registrar; the only thing I've wanted to do that I wasn't allowed was subdomain forwarding.	Hi guys do any of you know of a good DNS service provider? Aside from GoDaddy.com are there any alternatives? recommendations please thanks.edit Whoops sorry I meant domain name registrar.	0	1	2007-08-20 18:03:31 UTC
44,388	44,384	donna	Do you have no life because you work in a startup or...	vuknje	i create life working with my startup	... do you work in a startup because you have no life?	7	16	2007-08-20 18:05:08 UTC
44,390	44,199	Nate	How much is News.YC worth?	blored	If you want the stats for YC, you can look them up on Alexa:http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=http%3...	If someone wanted to sell a site with a similar user and traffic numbers, in your opinion, what would be the present worth in 2007 dollars, 2002 dollars, and possibly 1999 dollars for a site like news.ycombinator.com.	4	10	2007-08-20 18:07:37 UTC
44,395	44,260	run4yourlives	Skype: What happened on August 16	piers	This is going to serve as a lesson on how not to communicate a screw up to your customers in the modern age.What could have simply been, "we screwed up, we're sorry" is now going to be talked about not only in terms of the event, but the poor communication strategy.tsk tsk skype.	<quote>receiving a routine software update</quote>Sounds like they're pointing the finger at microsoft to me.	3	17	2007-08-20 18:12:21 UTC
44,396	44,365	pg	Living near Si Valley but with lower living expenses?	gregwebs	There are a lot of neighborhoods in the Bay Area. They are not all expensive.	I have been thinking about trying to locate to Sacremento in the hopes of being close to Silicon Valley but being able to afford to live. Are there good startup opportunities in places like these?	3	2	2007-08-20 18:14:27 UTC
44,400	44,384	iamyoohoo	Do you have no life because you work in a startup or...	vuknje	why the question ?	... do you work in a startup because you have no life?	11	16	2007-08-20 18:27:01 UTC
44,401	44,199	nreece	How much is News.YC worth?	blored	As per dnScoop ( http://dnscoop.com/?site=www.ycombinator.com ): The estimated value of http://www.ycombinator.com is: $2,231,230This value is calculated based on several factors shown above, including: Links, Traffic (Alexa), age of the domain, site category, domain keyword popularity, and overall occurrences of the domain name on the web.	If someone wanted to sell a site with a similar user and traffic numbers, in your opinion, what would be the present worth in 2007 dollars, 2002 dollars, and possibly 1999 dollars for a site like news.ycombinator.com.	5	10	2007-08-20 18:27:32 UTC
44,402	44,260	ashu	Skype: What happened on August 16	piers	i dont understand why people are giving skype such a bad time. they have been quite honest (technically) about what happened - a bug got exposed by some really really extreme workload. Also, whoever thinks that they should have "modeled" this has no idea how hard it is to develop distributed systems. It's a fine ideal to have, but in practice it is ridiculously hard to achieve. Especially as the code evolves. What you need is the same code base being able to run on a real TCP/IP stack and in a simulated environment. This looks easy in the abstract, but it's really tricky to do in practice.	<quote>receiving a routine software update</quote>Sounds like they're pointing the finger at microsoft to me.	1	17	2007-08-20 18:28:41 UTC
44,405	44,387	brlewis	How to promote yourself and your business with confidence	donna	This quote from the article seems especially apropos to the web, where people judge a site quickly, and will likely never return regardless of what future improvements you make:"If one part of your company's image still needs major work, fix it before you start the promotional effort. It's said a lot because it's true: You only get one chance to make a first impression."	null	0	3	2007-08-20 18:34:43 UTC
44,410	44,294	dfranke	Banner Blindness: Old and New Findings	brlewis	It seems like it ought to be easy to fool the user's unconscious processes that determine fixation while still making clear at a conscious level what is and is not an ad. For example, match the color scheme and typography of ads with the rest of the site, but clearly label them as "sponsored links". While it's possible that you might annoy users this way, it would be a real stretch to call it unethical.	null	2	25	2007-08-20 18:45:07 UTC
44,412	44,326	henning	Django running on the iPhone, introspecting the phone's sqlite call records	nickb	Fantastic, all that nice data ready to be forwarded to the NSA for illegal "mining!"	null	0	8	2007-08-20 18:48:49 UTC
44,415	44,384	rokhayakebe	Do you have no life because you work in a startup or...	vuknje	a startup is your life buddy. Anything else you do is considered as an escape from that life. Some escapes are nice (like when you have sex or go for a walk or drink) and some suck (like when you go to your day job)	... do you work in a startup because you have no life?	10	16	2007-08-20 18:59:43 UTC
44,422	43,892	Riley	bigger screen = higher productivity. ( for me it can what about you?)	rokhayakebe	I've been using a 30" (2560x1600) monitor for over a year and I'll never go back to anything smaller. I only like laptops for traveling. You do have to take into consideration the other screen sizes and resolutions when designing. But you can always approximate any config on a larger monitor.	I have a small 13 inch screen notebook. It works fine for me. It s light enough to carry around and the battery last a good few hours. But I find that when using my 47 inch screen monitor I just enjoy working more. I haven't measured output, but I believe It is slightly more than when I use my notebook.	1	1	2007-08-20 19:08:15 UTC
44,425	44,419	aston	YC next batch. Could one submit an "already-launched/private beta" *up?	rokhayakebe	The answer is yes. That replacement of star with an asterisk might be seen as a bug...	null	0	1	2007-08-20 19:14:50 UTC
44,427	44,384	siliconeurope	Do you have no life because you work in a startup or...	vuknje	it's a chain reaction. one thing affects the other one!	... do you work in a startup because you have no life?	9	16	2007-08-20 19:20:02 UTC
44,431	44,384	NoMoreSnow	Do you have no life because you work in a startup or...	vuknje	Oftentimes, working/thinking about my startup consumes my attention, such that my wife thinks I don't care about anything else... I find it hard to understand why other people just don't "get it" when it comes to entrepreneurship.	... do you work in a startup because you have no life?	2	16	2007-08-20 19:25:58 UTC
44,434	44,373	dfranke	Scientists: Artificial life likely in 3 to 10 years	mds	The plausibility of a prediction of a future breakthrough drops exponentially with its distance, and the base of that exponent is a heck of a lot smaller than three years.That said, this really would be the holy grail of biology and I'm rooting for my alma mater to be the one to discover it :-)	null	0	4	2007-08-20 19:30:35 UTC
44,439	44,384	epi0Bauqu	Do you have no life because you work in a startup or...	vuknje	"Having a life" is overrated.	... do you work in a startup because you have no life?	4	16	2007-08-20 19:44:44 UTC
44,455	44,294	blored	Banner Blindness: Old and New Findings	brlewis	Wow, the most impressive part of the article is the eye heat map.	null	4	25	2007-08-20 20:09:37 UTC
44,464	44,461	portLAN	Sorry, Lisp. I tried.	portLAN	> "Without database access, sockets, threads, POSIX, or a portable FFI (which I could at least use to write many of those features), my programs can't talk to the outside world, and that makes them basically useless."I'm embedding it so it's going to talk to my C wrapper for everything. How are you using it?Also see: Using Python libraries from Lisp http://common-lisp.net/project/python-on-lisp/From Reddit a comment: "cliki.net/asdf-install and sbcl would have got him just about all he asked. SBCL does posix and threading, cl-sql, cffi for db and ffi, and I am pretty sure sbcl does sockets too."	"Without database access, sockets, threads, POSIX, or a portable FFI (which I could at least use to write many of those features), my programs can't talk to the outside world, and that makes them basically useless."I'm embedding it so it's going to talk to my C wrapper for everything. How are you using it?Also see: Using Python libraries from Lisp http://common-lisp.net/project/python-on-lisp/	4	10	2007-08-20 20:25:02 UTC
44,470	44,365	portLAN	Living near Si Valley but with lower living expenses?	gregwebs	The Fresno Bee had an article about this recently, suggesting Clovis: http://www.fresnobee.com/263/story/99048.htmlIt gets a little hot, and it's about 3 hours from Silicon Valley.If you just want to live in a cool place that's startup-friendly, Portland rocks. It's also much less expensive.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_ForestOpen Source Development Labs/The Linux Foundation is here, too, and so is Linus.There's free wireless all over the place, and Portland was the "Most Unwired City in America" in 2003.http://map.personaltelco.net/Oh yeah, and there's no sales tax. A lot of people move just over the border to Vancouver, Washington (which has no state income tax) and shop in Portland.	I have been thinking about trying to locate to Sacremento in the hopes of being close to Silicon Valley but being able to afford to live. Are there good startup opportunities in places like these?	0	2	2007-08-20 20:29:43 UTC
44,472	44,326	RyanGWU82	Django running on the iPhone, introspecting the phone's sqlite call records	nickb	As soon as I saw this headline, it made me thinkIM IN UR IPHONEINTROSPECTING UR SQLITE CALL RECORDSI need to get out more.	null	1	8	2007-08-20 20:38:12 UTC
44,474	44,307	koolmoe	Can we predict the future using a temporal version of the Copernican principle? [pdf]	amichail	Upvoted for this mathematician's-gauntlet-throwing snippet near the end:"I sent an e-mail on 21 October 1999 and again on 2 December 1999 to my department's most comprehensive e-mail alias, which includes faculty, staff, and graduate students, requesting information on pet dogs. The responses were compiled and checked for accuracy on 6 December; a notarized list of the 24 dogs, including each dog's name, date of birth, and breed, and the caretaker's name, was deposited in my departmental personnel file on 21 December 1999. Gott's rule predicts that each dog will survive to twice its present age with probability 1/2. For each of the 6 dogs above 10 years old on the list, I am offering to bet Gott $1,000 US, at odds of 2:1 in his favor, that the dog will not survive to twice its age on 3 December 1999. The reason for weighting the odds in Gott's favor is to test his belief in his own predictions: given the odds, his rule says that his expected gain, at $1,000 per bet, is $6,000; moreover, the probability that he will be a net loser (by losing five or more of the six bets) is 7/64=0.109."	null	0	6	2007-08-20 20:42:03 UTC
44,485	44,461	palish	Sorry, Lisp. I tried.	portLAN	This is why Arc (or Otter or whatever else) is a great idea. If the implementors can create a system similar to RubyGems where people can write drop-in plugins for things like MySQL access and whatever else then Lisp could become hugely popular.	"Without database access, sockets, threads, POSIX, or a portable FFI (which I could at least use to write many of those features), my programs can't talk to the outside world, and that makes them basically useless."I'm embedding it so it's going to talk to my C wrapper for everything. How are you using it?Also see: Using Python libraries from Lisp http://common-lisp.net/project/python-on-lisp/	0	10	2007-08-20 21:08:13 UTC
44,487	43,942	ncouture	A way to find other Y Combinator readers in your area	dottertrotter	I'm from Montreal in Canada so it's impossible for me to be found on hackrtrackr!	null	14	55	2007-08-20 21:17:31 UTC
44,491	44,456	rms	xkcd: No, the 9V battery hack is not a hoax. I just tried it -- here are my notes	nickb	This is only a good deal/hack if you need AAAA batteries; these are artificially expensive because of price fixing in the retail battery industry.	null	0	19	2007-08-20 21:22:34 UTC
44,496	44,384	mikesabat	Do you have no life because you work in a startup or...	vuknje	haha great question.I had a great situation early in the summer. My apartment has a great deck and we would have parties 3-4 nights a week. At that point I was working on my startup, well, not very much.In mid-July they started doing construction and we can't have any more parties for now. So I went in full time startup mode. My "life" is definitely on hold for a bit, but hopefully it is the jumpstart that I need to really get things moving.	... do you work in a startup because you have no life?	6	16	2007-08-20 21:40:07 UTC
44,497	44,384	portLAN	Do you have no life because you work in a startup or...	vuknje	A life spent creating is preferable to a life spent consuming.	... do you work in a startup because you have no life?	1	16	2007-08-20 21:42:15 UTC
44,498	44,461	jsjenkins168	Sorry, Lisp. I tried.	portLAN	My experiences with Lisp are similar. Given an infinite amount of time, I would love to write everything I needed in Lisp and have a blast doing it. But in reality everything is a matter of time, and to build fast and achieve realistic goals I need to build off of established tools as much as possible. But maybe this can change with a wider adoption of better Lisp libraries?	"Without database access, sockets, threads, POSIX, or a portable FFI (which I could at least use to write many of those features), my programs can't talk to the outside world, and that makes them basically useless."I'm embedding it so it's going to talk to my C wrapper for everything. How are you using it?Also see: Using Python libraries from Lisp http://common-lisp.net/project/python-on-lisp/	3	10	2007-08-20 21:42:18 UTC
44,500	44,307	arto	Can we predict the future using a temporal version of the Copernican principle? [pdf]	amichail	The subject being discussed is better-known as the Doomsday Argument, btw:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument	null	2	6	2007-08-20 21:46:11 UTC
44,504	44,384	samson	Do you have no life because you work in a startup or...	vuknje	I'm not sure how much my experience can relate to yours,but after thinking about your question for a while I personally found there's nothing I'd rather be doing more right now at the age of 22 then working on my startup.I guess to answer your question. Its impossible for me to not have a life because of it, since right now it is my life.	... do you work in a startup because you have no life?	3	16	2007-08-20 22:02:01 UTC
44,506	44,384	joe	Do you have no life because you work in a startup or...	vuknje	Yes. And "having a life" is overrated, as was noted already. I work 4-5 hours a day on a startup project, and another 4+ on a "real" job to pay the bills.However, I still find plenty of time to spend on things other than work, whether it be personal project/hobbies/self-improvement, or hanging out with friends. So I may or may not have a life, depending on what standard you're measuring by. But I'm happy.	... do you work in a startup because you have no life?	5	16	2007-08-20 22:02:58 UTC
44,507	44,461	simpleenigma	Sorry, Lisp. I tried.	portLAN	Several years ago I decided that I wanted to find a language that was more powerful and elegant then anything I had worked with before. Having read much about the benefits of Lisp from Paul Graham, I obviously wanted to give it a try.I personally found it more difficult to use and the lack of standardization and libraries made it unusable for me. I gave it several weeks and tried to solve the problems I was having using it, but I finally started looking for something that had the power of Lisp, but better libraries.I ended up using Erlang (http://erlang.org) and I've never been happier. Lisp was part of the inspiration for the language, but the libraries that Erlang has built in was the real selling point for me. In fact I'm still finding gems of undocumented functions in the source code that take days off of my programming time and I've been programming in it for more then two years now.So if Lisp isn't want you want, give Erlang a try ...	"Without database access, sockets, threads, POSIX, or a portable FFI (which I could at least use to write many of those features), my programs can't talk to the outside world, and that makes them basically useless."I'm embedding it so it's going to talk to my C wrapper for everything. How are you using it?Also see: Using Python libraries from Lisp http://common-lisp.net/project/python-on-lisp/	1	10	2007-08-20 22:11:54 UTC
44,508	44,384	myoung8	Do you have no life because you work in a startup or...	vuknje	I've been working on a startup with a friend while we're both interning at different companies in Seattle. It's definitely been hard because we basically work for 8 hours, then come home, eat, and work for another 4 or 5 on our startup.Honestly, though, that's what I want to be doing. Seeing this thing come together actually makes me happy and gets me excited. It's been a rollercoaster though, some days are awful--like when we don't make any progress.We make sure to take breaks often enough. We usually play a level of Halo on legendary or go see a movie (Superbad is hilarious!) when we need one.All I can say is never give up. You will regret it more than you can possibly comprehend.	... do you work in a startup because you have no life?	0	16	2007-08-20 22:12:59 UTC
44,512	44,511	ivankirigin	20/20: "Stupid in America"	ivankirigin	In hopes to keep this on topic, I'll ask a question: what would a startup that is disruptive to our education system look like?Automated education sounds good. But in practice systems could be much, much better. Most teaching programs I've seen are found in the bargain basement bin at Staples.Why?	null	0	11	2007-08-20 22:21:38 UTC
44,521	44,137	sbraford	Anywhere.fm = 1.4 Millions songs uploaded.	rokhayakebe	So this is kind of like Orb only your music gets uploaded to a central server instead of streamed from your home PC?The UI is incredible.	O boy. Steve Jobs, I really recommend you call these guys up and start talking price. Seriously if I had a spare million bucks I would do anything to buy a piece of this *up.	6	25	2007-08-20 22:38:25 UTC
44,533	44,384	Harj	Do you have no life because you work in a startup or...	vuknje	the former.	... do you work in a startup because you have no life?	12	16	2007-08-20 23:13:53 UTC
44,535	44,523	bct	Saving the Internet with hate: a technical solution to the social problem	bct	This initiative is fronted by Zed Shaw, of Mongrel fame.The technical details are on the "design" page. I disagree with most of what he has to say, but it will be interesting to see what comes of this.	null	0	9	2007-08-20 23:22:03 UTC
44,538	44,260	falsestprophet	Skype: What happened on August 16	piers	In other news, Microsoft announces a new peer-to-peer telephone network!	<quote>receiving a routine software update</quote>Sounds like they're pointing the finger at microsoft to me.	4	17	2007-08-20 23:40:44 UTC
44,540	44,509	karthikv	Jeremy Zawodny: There is no Web Operating System (or WebOS)	toffer	Maybe we should start calling these services as "Web Desktop" instead of WebOS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_desktop	null	4	31	2007-08-21 00:02:13 UTC
44,541	44,330	aaroneous	Just launched my new site: webmapp.com	webmapp	Congrats on launching your site! Now my thoughts...1. You have no content and presumably just launched, but yet the browsing experience was obnoxiously slow. Why?And2. I don't get it. Why are you using user submitted news for geographical locations? What value does this offer over going to the website for a local paper? Why would you rely on user submitted news for something that could seemingly easily be aggregated? I'd like to strongly echo what the other two posters said - why do I want to use this site? I clicked around, and really couldn't get much of a feel for where you're adding value.	social news with a local focus	1	1	2007-08-21 00:05:32 UTC
44,549	44,548	dottertrotter	HackrTrackr Now Allows For International Users	dottertrotter	Based upon all the requests for international users I've added that capability, so feel free to sign up. I've also altered the interface based upon some other suggestions.	null	0	21	2007-08-21 00:23:36 UTC
44,551	44,525	Jd	Starting-Up and staying in Boston	ivankirigin	Is this a rhetorical question? The answer seems obvious...	The HackerNews MeetUp last night was lots of fun. Thanks to everyone who made it!I asked someone in the current YC batch how many in the current YC companies are staying in Boston.To his knowledge: none! That is a big surprise. What does it mean for those of us that like the town and would love to stay?	3	8	2007-08-21 00:31:37 UTC
44,559	44,525	champion	Starting-Up and staying in Boston	ivankirigin	Of course, there are lots of Boston area startups beyond the few YC funds. And most of those doing YC don't have Boston roots, so they might not have much reason to stay.To the larger point, Boston needs a stronger and more vibrant community of hackers, esp. for those interested in the web. And I'm bummed I missed the meetup last night...	The HackerNews MeetUp last night was lots of fun. Thanks to everyone who made it!I asked someone in the current YC batch how many in the current YC companies are staying in Boston.To his knowledge: none! That is a big surprise. What does it mean for those of us that like the town and would love to stay?	1	8	2007-08-21 00:52:10 UTC
44,570	44,509	drm237	Jeremy Zawodny: There is no Web Operating System (or WebOS)	toffer	"But nobody ever talks about a "Wall Street Operating System" or a "Small Business Operating System" do they?"Microsoft Small Business Server? - http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/sbs (I know, I'm missing the point...)I do agree that it's a web desktop, not a complete OS, but his reasoning seems a little off...	null	2	31	2007-08-21 01:36:07 UTC
44,582	44,580	rms	What programming language should I start with?	zenobo	www.hacketyhack.net is an integrated environment for learning ruby, the hardest part of learning ruby is setting up ruby on a web server.	Oh no! a non-programmer on the hacker news! But I figure you guys know?I want to learn programming, maybe not to be a full-fledged hacker, but to be able to understand the concepts and be able to talk about this stuff more with programmers so I can work in tech?I hear python and ruby are good to learn on, but what would you guys do or are there any good books you'd read?	30	20	2007-08-21 02:01:10 UTC
44,583	44,548	prakash	HackrTrackr Now Allows For International Users	dottertrotter	PG: Can you please add the hacktrakr link with the other (jobs \| leaders) links on the top of the page. I see many benefits to this:1. That way, even if this link is not on the first page, visitors to Hacker news have an idea of where the end-users are coming from2. There are more off line Hacker news meet-ups3. Since, YC has no plans of starting programs outside of the US, the # of visitors from various countries would be a good sign for YC clonesThanks,	null	1	21	2007-08-21 02:03:44 UTC
44,585	44,580	mudge	What programming language should I start with?	zenobo	Do want to learn Web programming? PHP is probably the easiest programming language to learn for server-side web programming. I've read several books on PHP and looked over a bunch, and a lot are pretty good, but one of the best is this one: http://www.amazon.com/PHP-MySQL-Development-Developers-Libra...	Oh no! a non-programmer on the hacker news! But I figure you guys know?I want to learn programming, maybe not to be a full-fledged hacker, but to be able to understand the concepts and be able to talk about this stuff more with programmers so I can work in tech?I hear python and ruby are good to learn on, but what would you guys do or are there any good books you'd read?	17	20	2007-08-21 02:08:05 UTC
44,586	44,580	epi0Bauqu	What programming language should I start with?	zenobo	Pick language X. Buy Learning X from O'Reilly, e.g. http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learnperl4/I don't think it matters that much what you start with unless you have something in particular in mind you want to do, in which case, no matter what it is, choose Perl :)	Oh no! a non-programmer on the hacker news! But I figure you guys know?I want to learn programming, maybe not to be a full-fledged hacker, but to be able to understand the concepts and be able to talk about this stuff more with programmers so I can work in tech?I hear python and ruby are good to learn on, but what would you guys do or are there any good books you'd read?	12	20	2007-08-21 02:08:13 UTC
44,587	44,580	snifty	What programming language should I start with?	zenobo	Personally I think Python is easier to learn than Ruby; it takes a while to wrap one's newbish head around blocks, which are fundamental in Ruby.	Oh no! a non-programmer on the hacker news! But I figure you guys know?I want to learn programming, maybe not to be a full-fledged hacker, but to be able to understand the concepts and be able to talk about this stuff more with programmers so I can work in tech?I hear python and ruby are good to learn on, but what would you guys do or are there any good books you'd read?	14	20	2007-08-21 02:08:44 UTC
44,588	44,580	nickb	What programming language should I start with?	zenobo	Try this: http://poignantguide.net/	Oh no! a non-programmer on the hacker news! But I figure you guys know?I want to learn programming, maybe not to be a full-fledged hacker, but to be able to understand the concepts and be able to talk about this stuff more with programmers so I can work in tech?I hear python and ruby are good to learn on, but what would you guys do or are there any good books you'd read?	22	20	2007-08-21 02:09:45 UTC
44,592	44,580	jey	What programming language should I start with?	zenobo	Preferred: Python. clean, elegant, pure, simple, easy.Just fine: Ruby. good, but less simple and elegant than Python.Good if you want to deeply understand the principles of being a programmer but don't care about being very practical at the start: Lisp (yes, Lisp can be practical, but it's trouble for a newbie)Avoid: Perl, PHP, BASIC variants. These cause brain damage.	Oh no! a non-programmer on the hacker news! But I figure you guys know?I want to learn programming, maybe not to be a full-fledged hacker, but to be able to understand the concepts and be able to talk about this stuff more with programmers so I can work in tech?I hear python and ruby are good to learn on, but what would you guys do or are there any good books you'd read?	2	20	2007-08-21 02:18:58 UTC
44,594	44,580	ivankirigin	What programming language should I start with?	zenobo	Python is the easiest to learn. You can also try Lisp, but I don't have much experience with it. Lots of video lectures here: http://swiss.csail.mit.edu/classes/6.001/abelson-sussman-lec...The argument is that there are things you can do in certain languages that you can't do with others. This is important because you're taught to think in the capabilities of the language, meaning you won't even know what you're missing in a less powerful language.	Oh no! a non-programmer on the hacker news! But I figure you guys know?I want to learn programming, maybe not to be a full-fledged hacker, but to be able to understand the concepts and be able to talk about this stuff more with programmers so I can work in tech?I hear python and ruby are good to learn on, but what would you guys do or are there any good books you'd read?	7	20	2007-08-21 02:20:40 UTC
44,595	44,580	portLAN	What programming language should I start with?	zenobo	If you want to get stuff done, Python.If you want to understand how the computer works, Assembly.	Oh no! a non-programmer on the hacker news! But I figure you guys know?I want to learn programming, maybe not to be a full-fledged hacker, but to be able to understand the concepts and be able to talk about this stuff more with programmers so I can work in tech?I hear python and ruby are good to learn on, but what would you guys do or are there any good books you'd read?	33	20	2007-08-21 02:20:49 UTC
44,596	44,580	donna	What programming language should I start with?	zenobo	I don't think learning programming is the best choice, because it's too easy to get caught up in the details of learning syntax, api, etc. I suggest working with a programmer on real projects and learning how to communicate between each other. If you're not a programmer by nature, which takes A LOT of practice to get good. You'll only become annoying since your suggestions will be uninformed. Learn to give creative suggestions at a level of abstraction, without stepping on a programmer's toes.	Oh no! a non-programmer on the hacker news! But I figure you guys know?I want to learn programming, maybe not to be a full-fledged hacker, but to be able to understand the concepts and be able to talk about this stuff more with programmers so I can work in tech?I hear python and ruby are good to learn on, but what would you guys do or are there any good books you'd read?	9	20	2007-08-21 02:21:41 UTC
44,597	44,548	palish	HackrTrackr Now Allows For International Users	dottertrotter	dotter, It's great that you were able to so quickly improve HackrTrackr. The last time I looked at it, it was a little unpolished. It's all quality now. Great work!	null	3	21	2007-08-21 02:22:34 UTC
44,598	44,461	Zak	Sorry, Lisp. I tried.	portLAN	Common Lisp was designed by committee, and it shows. If Lisp is to become popular, it needs a good, opinionated dialect or three. Arc will probably be one of them. Otter may be another. It would certainly be nice if there were more libraries, but most of the things the author complains about seem to be non-problems:>database accessIs there a problem with clsql (http://clsql.b9.com/)?>socketsMost Lisps (all modern ones?) support sockets. There are libraries to provide a common interface - a quick Google search got me usocket (http://www.cliki.net/usocket)>threadsOk, your options are a little more limited here, but CMUCL and SBCL support threads on x86 Linux, as do Lispworks and Allegro if you want to spend money. I suspect this isn't a big problem for most people writing web apps.>POSIXI think this is a weak point - CL was developed at a time when there was no clear OS of the future, so it was intended to be OS-agnostic. Today's (and probably tomorrow's) world has Windows, Unix and not much else.>a portable FFICFFI and UFFI both work on all the popular Lisps. What's the problem?	"Without database access, sockets, threads, POSIX, or a portable FFI (which I could at least use to write many of those features), my programs can't talk to the outside world, and that makes them basically useless."I'm embedding it so it's going to talk to my C wrapper for everything. How are you using it?Also see: Using Python libraries from Lisp http://common-lisp.net/project/python-on-lisp/	2	10	2007-08-21 02:23:18 UTC
44,599	44,580	aarontait	What programming language should I start with?	zenobo	Dare I say Java? Seriously though, Java is a good programming language to start with. You get used to C style syntax, but don't have to much with memory management and architectural differences. Plus you can use Eclipse, a great IDE, for free!	Oh no! a non-programmer on the hacker news! But I figure you guys know?I want to learn programming, maybe not to be a full-fledged hacker, but to be able to understand the concepts and be able to talk about this stuff more with programmers so I can work in tech?I hear python and ruby are good to learn on, but what would you guys do or are there any good books you'd read?	35	20	2007-08-21 02:31:04 UTC
44,600	44,567	staunch	Valleywag: Bow down and Worship Xobni's Party Throwing Skills	gaborcselle	Can't miss these two, they're damn funny:Part 1) http://www.flickr.com/photos/86921622@N00/1162778055/in/set-...Part 2) http://www.flickr.com/photos/86921622@N00/1163633584/in/set-... I've been a Xobni-skeptic since I saw the ads for product managers/QA people, office, etc. They appear to be doing a lot of obviously wrong stuff. I know they're smart and I do wish them luck, but it looks to me as if they're mostly interested in enjoying the funded startup ride.	There's no such thing as bad press.	0	18	2007-08-21 02:32:55 UTC
44,604	44,580	sri	What programming language should I start with?	zenobo	Here are the languages that have big communities: Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP, Javascript, C#/VB.NET and Java. Subscribe to lots of blogs from each community. (Many of them have planet aggregators like "Planet Python" and "Planet Ruby".) Also visit local user groups, wherever your are.Read/visit them for a while -- say a month or two. Whichever community makes you go, "wow, that's cool" -- join that community and learn the language. You can also interact with those communities via Google Groups.Lots of people will say -- "that's easy" or "this is elegant" or "that language sucks". Feel free to ignore them.	Oh no! a non-programmer on the hacker news! But I figure you guys know?I want to learn programming, maybe not to be a full-fledged hacker, but to be able to understand the concepts and be able to talk about this stuff more with programmers so I can work in tech?I hear python and ruby are good to learn on, but what would you guys do or are there any good books you'd read?	3	20	2007-08-21 02:48:26 UTC
44,606	44,580	misham	What programming language should I start with?	zenobo	The language doesn't matter that much. But read a good theory book on programming. I like "Code Complete" 2nd edition. You'll get all the info on how to be a good programmer.Mainly, concentrate on learning the technology and not a programming language. Programming languages are just tools for a specific job. By technology I mean, web programming, server/client, application, embedded, etc. Each industry has it's own language and you have to know the technology to speak their language.Best Option: Figure out what program you want to write and then find out which language you should write it in.Objective-C and Cocoa are going to be your best bet for learning application programming, but you have to have a Mac. Otherwise, learn Java. It's somewhat simpler than C/C++ because of memory issues.Microsoft stuff is not an option as it will teach you very very bad things.If you want to be really hard-core, learn C++ and Assembly ( x86 architecture ). But to be even half-way decent at those will take a lot of time and a lot of reading on how to do it right.Conclusion: Buy a Mac and learn Cocoa :)	Oh no! a non-programmer on the hacker news! But I figure you guys know?I want to learn programming, maybe not to be a full-fledged hacker, but to be able to understand the concepts and be able to talk about this stuff more with programmers so I can work in tech?I hear python and ruby are good to learn on, but what would you guys do or are there any good books you'd read?	19	20	2007-08-21 02:51:43 UTC
44,608	44,567	blored	Valleywag: Bow down and Worship Xobni's Party Throwing Skills	gaborcselle	XOBNI IS AMAZING AT GENERATING PRESS.They have an article written about them in valleywag pre-launch. Way to go Matt, Adam and co. You guys are truly a cut above.	There's no such thing as bad press.	3	18	2007-08-21 02:59:31 UTC
44,609	44,567	pg	Valleywag: Bow down and Worship Xobni's Party Throwing Skills	gaborcselle	That was a good party. One of the things they discovered was that anywhere.fm is the perfect stereo for a party, if you put it up on a big monitor.	There's no such thing as bad press.	1	18	2007-08-21 03:00:42 UTC
44,610	44,580	dfranke	What programming language should I start with?	zenobo	If you want to do things right, read SICP and learn Scheme. That's probably the fastest route for going from knowing nothing about programming to being a very good programmer. It's somewhat akin to learning to swim by jumping off the 10m platform, though, so don't get discouraged.	Oh no! a non-programmer on the hacker news! But I figure you guys know?I want to learn programming, maybe not to be a full-fledged hacker, but to be able to understand the concepts and be able to talk about this stuff more with programmers so I can work in tech?I hear python and ruby are good to learn on, but what would you guys do or are there any good books you'd read?	8	20	2007-08-21 03:04:08 UTC
44,614	44,509	pg	Jeremy Zawodny: There is no Web Operating System (or WebOS)	toffer	I disagree with this. An OS is whatever apps run on, and you could write things that most of the next generation of web apps would run on. I believe Parakey was (and perhaps still is) intended to be such a platform.	null	3	31	2007-08-21 03:09:07 UTC
44,615	44,580	jdvolz	What programming language should I start with?	zenobo	If you want to learn to program then C. That's right learn C. C is the language that the operating system you're using is written in, not to mention several of these other programming languages (the main implementation of Python or Ruby, for example). Is this language easy? No. Is it right for newbies? Maybe, maybe not. If you want the least amount of abstraction and don't want a bunch of stuff in your way, learn C. It's a hair's breath from learning assembly, and you can get a free compiler for it on any operating system. If you want to get stuff done quickly, learn Python or Ruby.	Oh no! a non-programmer on the hacker news! But I figure you guys know?I want to learn programming, maybe not to be a full-fledged hacker, but to be able to understand the concepts and be able to talk about this stuff more with programmers so I can work in tech?I hear python and ruby are good to learn on, but what would you guys do or are there any good books you'd read?	23	20	2007-08-21 03:10:06 UTC
44,617	44,548	mariorz	HackrTrackr Now Allows For International Users	dottertrotter	so once you find someone near you, how are you supposed to get in touch?	null	2	21	2007-08-21 03:18:34 UTC
44,618	44,580	pg	What programming language should I start with?	zenobo	Just curious, but would anyone recommend Javascript?	Oh no! a non-programmer on the hacker news! But I figure you guys know?I want to learn programming, maybe not to be a full-fledged hacker, but to be able to understand the concepts and be able to talk about this stuff more with programmers so I can work in tech?I hear python and ruby are good to learn on, but what would you guys do or are there any good books you'd read?	11	20	2007-08-21 03:23:57 UTC
44,625	44,580	palish	What programming language should I start with?	zenobo	Sorry.. This is probably the wrong question for you to ask :)The first question to ask is, "What would I enjoy creating? A website? A video game?"Based on that answer, you then choose the best tool for the job. Depending on the answer, you may only have one choice.	Oh no! a non-programmer on the hacker news! But I figure you guys know?I want to learn programming, maybe not to be a full-fledged hacker, but to be able to understand the concepts and be able to talk about this stuff more with programmers so I can work in tech?I hear python and ruby are good to learn on, but what would you guys do or are there any good books you'd read?	1	20	2007-08-21 03:46:02 UTC

44,298

44,266

BrandonM

Hacker news or Y Combinator news

7media

I assume the author thinks it's been hacked?

null

0

2

2007-08-20 14:10:45 UTC

44,299

44,294

aston

Banner Blindness: Old and New Findings

brlewis

This information is pretty unsurprising. That said, I think Nielson is discounting to some degree the effect of good typography/page layout in this discussion. Pages that are designed well will focus the attention of the audience on the content being delivered. Note that the users also aren't looking at other things that seem to be accessory, like the navigation panes. In the end, though, that's just another argument to try to blend ads into the content area of the site, ethical or not.

null

3

25

2007-08-20 14:12:46 UTC

44,304

43,426

david927

How To Make a Funny Talk Title Without Using The Word "Weasel"

fad

I've always read and enjoyed Steve's posts, but here he comes off smug (despite the self-depricating jokes) as if he's summoning enlightment for the audience, when the talk is simply obtuse. Is a trademark necessary? Hardly. You can call something 'free' and yet try to charge for it. No one needs to trademark the word 'free' to protect it. In the same way, if some companies are using the 'open source' moniker without releasing their source, it will become quickly evident to the customer.Could there be a certification based on a set of standards? Sure. What that would look like is a great topic. But simply a lecture on basic marketing concepts is embarrassing and I think when Steve looks back on this video, it will be with a wince. (In his defence, I'm glad no one has had a camera around during any one of my numerous embarrassments.

he's blagging about branding this timehas a link to a video with his speech at OSCOM at the end

1

27

2007-08-20 14:33:48 UTC

44,308

44,307

amichail

Can we predict the future using a temporal version of the Copernican principle? [pdf]

amichail

Here's the New Yorker article mentioned in the paper:http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1999/07/12/1999_07_12_035_T...

null

1

6

2007-08-20 14:52:14 UTC

44,309

44,199

mlibbrecht

How much is News.YC worth?

blored

The value of news.yc is the input of pg and the other moderators. Without them, news.yc is just another reddit.

If someone wanted to sell a site with a similar user and traffic numbers, in your opinion, what would be the present worth in 2007 dollars, 2002 dollars, and possibly 1999 dollars for a site like news.ycombinator.com.

6

10

2007-08-20 14:59:51 UTC

44,315

44,137

SKUM

Anywhere.fm = 1.4 Millions songs uploaded.

rokhayakebe

seeqpod makes more since to me. http://www.seeqpod.com

O boy. Steve Jobs, I really recommend you call these guys up and start talking price. Seriously if I had a spare million bucks I would do anything to buy a piece of this *up.

10

25

2007-08-20 15:21:58 UTC

44,323

44,286

mattculbreth

Windows Users Caused Skype Outage

transburgh

They aren't prepared for Windows updates? That doesn't sound right at all. Frankly they need to own up to the error and stop blaming others.

null

0

12

2007-08-20 15:46:17 UTC

44,327

44,026

joe

Where can I find a good designer?

redrory

Let me recommend a friend of mine: http://phillipridlen.com/

Heya Guys, I am planning to re-do my site, as I am looking to upgrade from my free template look. Any suggestions, Thanks much

6

13

2007-08-20 15:50:03 UTC

44,329

44,286

rokhayakebe

Windows Users Caused Skype Outage

transburgh

yeah right!

null

2

12

2007-08-20 15:58:32 UTC

44,332

44,326

jsjenkins168

Django running on the iPhone, introspecting the phone's sqlite call records

nickb

Any details on how this was accomplished?

null

2

8

2007-08-20 16:07:06 UTC

44,335

44,289

edw519

The end of ERP?

davidw

Sounds like someone is confusing "ERP" (Enterprise Resource Planning) applications, which are successfully running millions of businesses with "ERP", the gargantuan garbage thrust upon fortune 500 companies by SAP, Oracle, and other bandits. The end of the first "ERP" (accounting, inventory, sales, marketing,...)? Hardly. The end of the second "ERP"? It's inevitable. Clearly, Web 2.0 is the next generation for many types of applications, including business. This is an argument in semantics. Nothing new here. Move along.

null

1

11

2007-08-20 16:20:26 UTC

44,337

44,333

piers

Anybody here know a good DNS service provider?

jamongkad

You mentioned GoDaddy, but do you mean provider or registrar? If the latter, try OpenDNS - www.opendns.com (at least I think that's the address; I'm on my phone so can only have one window open at a time)

Hi guys do any of you know of a good DNS service provider? Aside from GoDaddy.com are there any alternatives? recommendations please thanks.edit Whoops sorry I meant domain name registrar.

1

2007-08-20 16:26:55 UTC

44,341

44,333

davidw

Anybody here know a good DNS service provider?

jamongkad

I use everydns.net - it's free.If you mean registrar, I went through google. $10 gets you a .com, plus their web apps for the domain you register, which is a pretty good deal.

Hi guys do any of you know of a good DNS service provider? Aside from GoDaddy.com are there any alternatives? recommendations please thanks.edit Whoops sorry I meant domain name registrar.

2

1

2007-08-20 16:35:09 UTC

44,342

44,333

dfranke

Anybody here know a good DNS service provider?

jamongkad

I'm not clear on whether you mean recursive DNS servers, a DNS registrar, or a BIND host. Regardless: OpenDNS, Register4Less, and DynDNS's Custom DNS service, respectively.

Hi guys do any of you know of a good DNS service provider? Aside from GoDaddy.com are there any alternatives? recommendations please thanks.edit Whoops sorry I meant domain name registrar.

3

1

2007-08-20 16:35:15 UTC

44,345

44,137

jwinter

Anywhere.fm = 1.4 Millions songs uploaded.

rokhayakebe

Do users pay for space? Will it be ad-supported?

O boy. Steve Jobs, I really recommend you call these guys up and start talking price. Seriously if I had a spare million bucks I would do anything to buy a piece of this *up.

8

25

2007-08-20 16:45:50 UTC

44,346

44,259

aswanson

What should be considered off-topic?

rms

Anything gaming related (Playstation, Xbox etc.). Doing a gaming startup? Fine, post. Found some crack codes or new screen shots, karma should be put under assault by everyone.

Many have said that we need more explicit guidelines about what is off-topic. What do you think should be off-topic on news.ycombinator.com?

2

7

2007-08-20 16:46:30 UTC

44,347

44,137

ajc001

Anywhere.fm = 1.4 Millions songs uploaded.

rokhayakebe

for itunes users who have a big music library, i find Simplify Media much easier. www.simplifymedia.com

O boy. Steve Jobs, I really recommend you call these guys up and start talking price. Seriously if I had a spare million bucks I would do anything to buy a piece of this *up.

11

25

2007-08-20 16:46:43 UTC

44,349

44,286

palish

Windows Users Caused Skype Outage

transburgh

Hahahah -breath- hahahahahUltimate justice for the evil default setting "Start and connect on boot".

null

1

12

2007-08-20 16:47:40 UTC

44,350

44,242

pdsull

Carl Malamud Takes on WestLaw (Putting a complete database of US Case law in the public domain)

toffer

As a law student, I can attest to the fact that a great deal of Westlaw's value comes from the content they add. However, almost all of that value is derived from the texts of the cases themselves (in fact, all of it other than the search engine - which is fantastic compared to the alternatives [see findlaw.com another West product]). Westlaw provides overall synopses of cases, brief summaries of a case's points of law, and the ability to easily see any cases that cite the one you are reading (and if they do so positively or negatively).Aside from the search engine, I wonder if most of this couldn't be replicated by some sort of a wiki. Given a complete collection of the texts and enough knowledgeable, willing volunteers - could Westlaw be replicated?

null

0

6

2007-08-20 16:49:26 UTC

44,353

44,294

brett

Banner Blindness: Old and New Findings

brlewis

The more an ad looks like a native site component, the more users will look at itFor all his wacky buildup about the ethics of disclosing such a fact this was a pretty sorry payoff. It is exactly what I would predict from the results of such a study. For something to be insidious enough to consider not telling the public about it I would expect it to at least be both born out by empirical evidence AND counter-intuitive.

null

1

25

2007-08-20 16:58:41 UTC

44,366

44,330

alex_c

Just launched my new site: webmapp.com

webmapp

I can't find any content in my area (Toronto).The site also feels too slow to use regularly.But first and foremost, a simple sentence explaining the purpose of the website would do wonders for usability.

social news with a local focus

0

1

2007-08-20 17:23:32 UTC

44,367

44,365

myoung8

Living near Si Valley but with lower living expenses?

gregwebs

Sacramento is relatively close, but if you really want to be involved in the startup community, San Francisco is a much better choice.Sacramento is far enough away to make you think twice about attending all the cool events that happen in San Francisco and Palo Alto and Mountain View.

I have been thinking about trying to locate to Sacremento in the hopes of being close to Silicon Valley but being able to afford to live. Are there good startup opportunities in places like these?

2

2007-08-20 17:24:14 UTC

44,369

44,289

tocomment

The end of ERP?

davidw

Site is down. Is this the first YC.news effect? Semi-related question: What do large companies use for accounting software? My day-job company seems to be outgrowing QuickBooks and I have no idea what to reccomend to them.

null

0

11

2007-08-20 17:25:50 UTC

44,372

44,334

pg

$10,000 Platform Hack off

crxnamja

This seems slightly fishy. How can an event that's just announced claim to have 300 people coming?

Win $10,000 for the application that gets the most users after 24 hours.

0

8

2007-08-20 17:33:31 UTC

44,374

44,330

webmapp

Just launched my new site: webmapp.com

webmapp

it's a social news site with a very local focus. alex_c - all the content is user submitted and it's only been up a few hours so check back later... ?

social news with a local focus

2

1

2007-08-20 17:34:43 UTC

44,375

44,373

mds

Scientists: Artificial life likely in 3 to 10 years

mds

"But them getting out and taking over, never in our imagination could this happen."That's comforting.

null

1

4

2007-08-20 17:34:45 UTC

44,377

44,334

crxnamja

$10,000 Platform Hack off

crxnamja

We are expecting to have around 300 people attend.

Win $10,000 for the application that gets the most users after 24 hours.

1

8

2007-08-20 17:39:13 UTC

44,378

44,364

pg

Prediction: Newspapers will go bankrupt in 2007, unless they corner web classifieds by 1998

vlad

He said "many newspapers." And he is not far off. Newspaper ad revenues peaked in 2000.http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.org/2007/narrative_newspapers...The surprising thing to me is that they have any classified ad revenue left. This suggests there are still opportunities for startups to take more away from them.

null

0

8

2007-08-20 17:42:11 UTC

44,379

44,365

donna

Living near Si Valley but with lower living expenses?

gregwebs

You may want to consider finding a location near public transportation; e.g. Pittburg near the BART. That way you can live outside SF affordably but BART into events; http://bart.gov/stations/map/systemMap.asp

I have been thinking about trying to locate to Sacremento in the hopes of being close to Silicon Valley but being able to afford to live. Are there good startup opportunities in places like these?

1

2

2007-08-20 17:45:51 UTC

44,380

44,294

webwright

Banner Blindness: Old and New Findings

brlewis

I'd be interested in hearing trends about text-ad blindness. I know I look at and click adwords ads (and adsense ads) a LOT less than I did when they first came available... Especially since Google sold out their ad relevancy and allowed wildcard purchases or unrelated purchases (like ebay showing up on virtually every search with a "find SearchQuery and More at Ebay!!1!!1!"

null

0

25

2007-08-20 17:46:50 UTC

44,381

44,364

brlewis

Prediction: Newspapers will go bankrupt in 2007, unless they corner web classifieds by 1998

vlad

In 2000, Google changed the premise behind this prediction, that advertising generally doesn't work on the Web.The bigger problem with his prediction is that newspaper companies rarely go bankrupt. They get acquired.He was right on the money that newspapers had a small window to keep hold of classified advertising. They missed that window; craigslist and ebay took over.Also, he was right that newspaper companies are generally hurting in 2007.http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/departments/business...

null

1

8

2007-08-20 17:47:10 UTC

44,386

44,333

mark-t

Anybody here know a good DNS service provider?

jamongkad

I got mine from Yahoo! Small Business a couple years ago when they had a $3/year deal. I haven't seen anything like that recently. They seem to be a good registrar; the only thing I've wanted to do that I wasn't allowed was subdomain forwarding.

Hi guys do any of you know of a good DNS service provider? Aside from GoDaddy.com are there any alternatives? recommendations please thanks.edit Whoops sorry I meant domain name registrar.

0

1

2007-08-20 18:03:31 UTC

44,388

44,384

donna

Do you have no life because you work in a startup or...

vuknje

i create life working with my startup

... do you work in a startup because you have no life?

7

16

2007-08-20 18:05:08 UTC

44,390

44,199

Nate

How much is News.YC worth?

blored

If you want the stats for YC, you can look them up on Alexa:http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=http%3...

If someone wanted to sell a site with a similar user and traffic numbers, in your opinion, what would be the present worth in 2007 dollars, 2002 dollars, and possibly 1999 dollars for a site like news.ycombinator.com.

4

10

2007-08-20 18:07:37 UTC

44,395

44,260

run4yourlives

Skype: What happened on August 16

piers

This is going to serve as a lesson on how not to communicate a screw up to your customers in the modern age.What could have simply been, "we screwed up, we're sorry" is now going to be talked about not only in terms of the event, but the poor communication strategy.tsk tsk skype.

<quote>receiving a routine software update</quote>Sounds like they're pointing the finger at microsoft to me.

3

17

2007-08-20 18:12:21 UTC

44,396

44,365

pg

Living near Si Valley but with lower living expenses?

gregwebs

There are a lot of neighborhoods in the Bay Area. They are not all expensive.

I have been thinking about trying to locate to Sacremento in the hopes of being close to Silicon Valley but being able to afford to live. Are there good startup opportunities in places like these?

3

2

2007-08-20 18:14:27 UTC

44,400

44,384

iamyoohoo

Do you have no life because you work in a startup or...

vuknje

why the question ?

... do you work in a startup because you have no life?

11

16

2007-08-20 18:27:01 UTC

44,401

44,199

nreece

How much is News.YC worth?

blored

As per dnScoop ( http://dnscoop.com/?site=www.ycombinator.com ): The estimated value of http://www.ycombinator.com is: $2,231,230This value is calculated based on several factors shown above, including: Links, Traffic (Alexa), age of the domain, site category, domain keyword popularity, and overall occurrences of the domain name on the web.

If someone wanted to sell a site with a similar user and traffic numbers, in your opinion, what would be the present worth in 2007 dollars, 2002 dollars, and possibly 1999 dollars for a site like news.ycombinator.com.

5

10

2007-08-20 18:27:32 UTC

44,402

44,260

ashu

Skype: What happened on August 16

piers

i dont understand why people are giving skype such a bad time. they have been quite honest (technically) about what happened - a bug got exposed by some really really extreme workload. Also, whoever thinks that they should have "modeled" this has no idea how hard it is to develop distributed systems. It's a fine ideal to have, but in practice it is ridiculously hard to achieve. Especially as the code evolves. What you need is the same code base being able to run on a real TCP/IP stack and in a simulated environment. This looks easy in the abstract, but it's really tricky to do in practice.

<quote>receiving a routine software update</quote>Sounds like they're pointing the finger at microsoft to me.

1

17

2007-08-20 18:28:41 UTC

44,405

44,387

brlewis

How to promote yourself and your business with confidence

donna

This quote from the article seems especially apropos to the web, where people judge a site quickly, and will likely never return regardless of what future improvements you make:"If one part of your company's image still needs major work, fix it before you start the promotional effort. It's said a lot because it's true: You only get one chance to make a first impression."

null

0

3

2007-08-20 18:34:43 UTC

44,410

44,294

dfranke

Banner Blindness: Old and New Findings

brlewis

It seems like it ought to be easy to fool the user's unconscious processes that determine fixation while still making clear at a conscious level what is and is not an ad. For example, match the color scheme and typography of ads with the rest of the site, but clearly label them as "sponsored links". While it's possible that you might annoy users this way, it would be a real stretch to call it unethical.

null

2

25

2007-08-20 18:45:07 UTC

44,412

44,326

henning

Django running on the iPhone, introspecting the phone's sqlite call records

nickb

Fantastic, all that nice data ready to be forwarded to the NSA for illegal "mining!"

null

0

8

2007-08-20 18:48:49 UTC

44,415

44,384

rokhayakebe

Do you have no life because you work in a startup or...

vuknje

a startup is your life buddy. Anything else you do is considered as an escape from that life. Some escapes are nice (like when you have sex or go for a walk or drink) and some suck (like when you go to your day job)

... do you work in a startup because you have no life?

10

16

2007-08-20 18:59:43 UTC

44,422

43,892

Riley

bigger screen = higher productivity. ( for me it can what about you?)

rokhayakebe

I've been using a 30" (2560x1600) monitor for over a year and I'll never go back to anything smaller. I only like laptops for traveling. You do have to take into consideration the other screen sizes and resolutions when designing. But you can always approximate any config on a larger monitor.

I have a small 13 inch screen notebook. It works fine for me. It s light enough to carry around and the battery last a good few hours. But I find that when using my 47 inch screen monitor I just enjoy working more. I haven't measured output, but I believe It is slightly more than when I use my notebook.

1

2007-08-20 19:08:15 UTC

44,425

44,419

aston

YC next batch. Could one submit an "already-launched/private beta" *up?

rokhayakebe

The answer is yes. That replacement of star with an asterisk might be seen as a bug...

null

0

1

2007-08-20 19:14:50 UTC

44,427

44,384

siliconeurope

Do you have no life because you work in a startup or...

vuknje

it's a chain reaction. one thing affects the other one!

... do you work in a startup because you have no life?

9

16

2007-08-20 19:20:02 UTC

44,431

44,384

NoMoreSnow

Do you have no life because you work in a startup or...

vuknje

Oftentimes, working/thinking about my startup consumes my attention, such that my wife thinks I don't care about anything else... I find it hard to understand why other people just don't "get it" when it comes to entrepreneurship.

... do you work in a startup because you have no life?

2

16

2007-08-20 19:25:58 UTC

44,434

44,373

dfranke

Scientists: Artificial life likely in 3 to 10 years

mds

The plausibility of a prediction of a future breakthrough drops exponentially with its distance, and the base of that exponent is a heck of a lot smaller than three years.That said, this really would be the holy grail of biology and I'm rooting for my alma mater to be the one to discover it :-)

null

0

4

2007-08-20 19:30:35 UTC

44,439

44,384

epi0Bauqu

Do you have no life because you work in a startup or...

vuknje

"Having a life" is overrated.

... do you work in a startup because you have no life?

4

16

2007-08-20 19:44:44 UTC

44,455

44,294

blored

Banner Blindness: Old and New Findings

brlewis

Wow, the most impressive part of the article is the eye heat map.

null

4

25

2007-08-20 20:09:37 UTC

44,464

44,461

portLAN

Sorry, Lisp. I tried.

portLAN

> "Without database access, sockets, threads, POSIX, or a portable FFI (which I could at least use to write many of those features), my programs can't talk to the outside world, and that makes them basically useless."I'm embedding it so it's going to talk to my C wrapper for everything. How are you using it?Also see: Using Python libraries from Lisp http://common-lisp.net/project/python-on-lisp/From Reddit a comment: "cliki.net/asdf-install and sbcl would have got him just about all he asked. SBCL does posix and threading, cl-sql, cffi for db and ffi, and I am pretty sure sbcl does sockets too."

"Without database access, sockets, threads, POSIX, or a portable FFI (which I could at least use to write many of those features), my programs can't talk to the outside world, and that makes them basically useless."I'm embedding it so it's going to talk to my C wrapper for everything. How are you using it?Also see: Using Python libraries from Lisp http://common-lisp.net/project/python-on-lisp/

4

10

2007-08-20 20:25:02 UTC

44,470

44,365

portLAN

Living near Si Valley but with lower living expenses?

gregwebs

The Fresno Bee had an article about this recently, suggesting Clovis: http://www.fresnobee.com/263/story/99048.htmlIt gets a little hot, and it's about 3 hours from Silicon Valley.If you just want to live in a cool place that's startup-friendly, Portland rocks. It's also much less expensive.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_ForestOpen Source Development Labs/The Linux Foundation is here, too, and so is Linus.There's free wireless all over the place, and Portland was the "Most Unwired City in America" in 2003.http://map.personaltelco.net/Oh yeah, and there's no sales tax. A lot of people move just over the border to Vancouver, Washington (which has no state income tax) and shop in Portland.

I have been thinking about trying to locate to Sacremento in the hopes of being close to Silicon Valley but being able to afford to live. Are there good startup opportunities in places like these?

0

2

2007-08-20 20:29:43 UTC

44,472

44,326

RyanGWU82

Django running on the iPhone, introspecting the phone's sqlite call records

nickb

As soon as I saw this headline, it made me thinkIM IN UR IPHONEINTROSPECTING UR SQLITE CALL RECORDSI need to get out more.

null

1

8

2007-08-20 20:38:12 UTC

44,474

44,307

koolmoe

Can we predict the future using a temporal version of the Copernican principle? [pdf]

amichail

Upvoted for this mathematician's-gauntlet-throwing snippet near the end:"I sent an e-mail on 21 October 1999 and again on 2 December 1999 to my department's most comprehensive e-mail alias, which includes faculty, staff, and graduate students, requesting information on pet dogs. The responses were compiled and checked for accuracy on 6 December; a notarized list of the 24 dogs, including each dog's name, date of birth, and breed, and the caretaker's name, was deposited in my departmental personnel file on 21 December 1999. Gott's rule predicts that each dog will survive to twice its present age with probability 1/2. For each of the 6 dogs above 10 years old on the list, I am offering to bet Gott $1,000 US, at odds of 2:1 in his favor, that the dog will not survive to twice its age on 3 December 1999. The reason for weighting the odds in Gott's favor is to test his belief in his own predictions: given the odds, his rule says that his expected gain, at $1,000 per bet, is $6,000; moreover, the probability that he will be a net loser (by losing five or more of the six bets) is 7/64=0.109."

null

0

6

2007-08-20 20:42:03 UTC

44,485

44,461

palish

Sorry, Lisp. I tried.

portLAN

This is why Arc (or Otter or whatever else) is a great idea. If the implementors can create a system similar to RubyGems where people can write drop-in plugins for things like MySQL access and whatever else then Lisp could become hugely popular.

"Without database access, sockets, threads, POSIX, or a portable FFI (which I could at least use to write many of those features), my programs can't talk to the outside world, and that makes them basically useless."I'm embedding it so it's going to talk to my C wrapper for everything. How are you using it?Also see: Using Python libraries from Lisp http://common-lisp.net/project/python-on-lisp/

0

10

2007-08-20 21:08:13 UTC

44,487

43,942

ncouture

A way to find other Y Combinator readers in your area

dottertrotter

I'm from Montreal in Canada so it's impossible for me to be found on hackrtrackr!

null

14

55

2007-08-20 21:17:31 UTC

44,491

44,456

rms

xkcd: No, the 9V battery hack is not a hoax. I just tried it -- here are my notes

nickb

This is only a good deal/hack if you need AAAA batteries; these are artificially expensive because of price fixing in the retail battery industry.

null

0

19

2007-08-20 21:22:34 UTC

44,496

44,384

mikesabat

Do you have no life because you work in a startup or...

vuknje

haha great question.I had a great situation early in the summer. My apartment has a great deck and we would have parties 3-4 nights a week. At that point I was working on my startup, well, not very much.In mid-July they started doing construction and we can't have any more parties for now. So I went in full time startup mode. My "life" is definitely on hold for a bit, but hopefully it is the jumpstart that I need to really get things moving.

... do you work in a startup because you have no life?

6

16

2007-08-20 21:40:07 UTC

44,497

44,384

portLAN

Do you have no life because you work in a startup or...

vuknje

A life spent creating is preferable to a life spent consuming.

... do you work in a startup because you have no life?

1

16

2007-08-20 21:42:15 UTC

44,498

44,461

jsjenkins168

Sorry, Lisp. I tried.

portLAN

My experiences with Lisp are similar. Given an infinite amount of time, I would love to write everything I needed in Lisp and have a blast doing it. But in reality everything is a matter of time, and to build fast and achieve realistic goals I need to build off of established tools as much as possible. But maybe this can change with a wider adoption of better Lisp libraries?

"Without database access, sockets, threads, POSIX, or a portable FFI (which I could at least use to write many of those features), my programs can't talk to the outside world, and that makes them basically useless."I'm embedding it so it's going to talk to my C wrapper for everything. How are you using it?Also see: Using Python libraries from Lisp http://common-lisp.net/project/python-on-lisp/

3

10

2007-08-20 21:42:18 UTC

44,500

44,307

arto

Can we predict the future using a temporal version of the Copernican principle? [pdf]

amichail

The subject being discussed is better-known as the Doomsday Argument, btw:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument

null

2

6

2007-08-20 21:46:11 UTC

44,504

44,384

samson

Do you have no life because you work in a startup or...

vuknje

I'm not sure how much my experience can relate to yours,but after thinking about your question for a while I personally found there's nothing I'd rather be doing more right now at the age of 22 then working on my startup.I guess to answer your question. Its impossible for me to not have a life because of it, since right now it is my life.

... do you work in a startup because you have no life?

3

16

2007-08-20 22:02:01 UTC

44,506

44,384

joe

Do you have no life because you work in a startup or...

vuknje

Yes. And "having a life" is overrated, as was noted already. I work 4-5 hours a day on a startup project, and another 4+ on a "real" job to pay the bills.However, I still find plenty of time to spend on things other than work, whether it be personal project/hobbies/self-improvement, or hanging out with friends. So I may or may not have a life, depending on what standard you're measuring by. But I'm happy.

... do you work in a startup because you have no life?

5

16

2007-08-20 22:02:58 UTC

44,507

44,461

simpleenigma

Sorry, Lisp. I tried.

portLAN

Several years ago I decided that I wanted to find a language that was more powerful and elegant then anything I had worked with before. Having read much about the benefits of Lisp from Paul Graham, I obviously wanted to give it a try.I personally found it more difficult to use and the lack of standardization and libraries made it unusable for me. I gave it several weeks and tried to solve the problems I was having using it, but I finally started looking for something that had the power of Lisp, but better libraries.I ended up using Erlang (http://erlang.org) and I've never been happier. Lisp was part of the inspiration for the language, but the libraries that Erlang has built in was the real selling point for me. In fact I'm still finding gems of undocumented functions in the source code that take days off of my programming time and I've been programming in it for more then two years now.So if Lisp isn't want you want, give Erlang a try ...

"Without database access, sockets, threads, POSIX, or a portable FFI (which I could at least use to write many of those features), my programs can't talk to the outside world, and that makes them basically useless."I'm embedding it so it's going to talk to my C wrapper for everything. How are you using it?Also see: Using Python libraries from Lisp http://common-lisp.net/project/python-on-lisp/

1

10

2007-08-20 22:11:54 UTC

44,508

44,384

myoung8

Do you have no life because you work in a startup or...

vuknje

I've been working on a startup with a friend while we're both interning at different companies in Seattle. It's definitely been hard because we basically work for 8 hours, then come home, eat, and work for another 4 or 5 on our startup.Honestly, though, that's what I want to be doing. Seeing this thing come together actually makes me happy and gets me excited. It's been a rollercoaster though, some days are awful--like when we don't make any progress.We make sure to take breaks often enough. We usually play a level of Halo on legendary or go see a movie (Superbad is hilarious!) when we need one.All I can say is never give up. You will regret it more than you can possibly comprehend.

... do you work in a startup because you have no life?

0

16

2007-08-20 22:12:59 UTC

44,512

44,511

ivankirigin

20/20: "Stupid in America"

ivankirigin

In hopes to keep this on topic, I'll ask a question: what would a startup that is disruptive to our education system look like?Automated education sounds good. But in practice systems could be much, much better. Most teaching programs I've seen are found in the bargain basement bin at Staples.Why?

null

0

11

2007-08-20 22:21:38 UTC

44,521

44,137

sbraford

Anywhere.fm = 1.4 Millions songs uploaded.

rokhayakebe

So this is kind of like Orb only your music gets uploaded to a central server instead of streamed from your home PC?The UI is incredible.

O boy. Steve Jobs, I really recommend you call these guys up and start talking price. Seriously if I had a spare million bucks I would do anything to buy a piece of this *up.

6

25

2007-08-20 22:38:25 UTC

44,533

44,384

Harj

Do you have no life because you work in a startup or...

vuknje

the former.

... do you work in a startup because you have no life?

12

16

2007-08-20 23:13:53 UTC

44,535

44,523

bct

Saving the Internet with hate: a technical solution to the social problem

bct

This initiative is fronted by Zed Shaw, of Mongrel fame.The technical details are on the "design" page. I disagree with most of what he has to say, but it will be interesting to see what comes of this.

null

0

9

2007-08-20 23:22:03 UTC

44,538

44,260

falsestprophet

Skype: What happened on August 16

piers

In other news, Microsoft announces a new peer-to-peer telephone network!

<quote>receiving a routine software update</quote>Sounds like they're pointing the finger at microsoft to me.

4

17

2007-08-20 23:40:44 UTC

44,540

44,509

karthikv

Jeremy Zawodny: There is no Web Operating System (or WebOS)

toffer

Maybe we should start calling these services as "Web Desktop" instead of WebOS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_desktop

null

4

31

2007-08-21 00:02:13 UTC

44,541

44,330

aaroneous

Just launched my new site: webmapp.com

webmapp

Congrats on launching your site! Now my thoughts...1. You have no content and presumably just launched, but yet the browsing experience was obnoxiously slow. Why?And2. I don't get it. Why are you using user submitted news for geographical locations? What value does this offer over going to the website for a local paper? Why would you rely on user submitted news for something that could seemingly easily be aggregated? I'd like to strongly echo what the other two posters said - why do I want to use this site? I clicked around, and really couldn't get much of a feel for where you're adding value.

social news with a local focus

1

2007-08-21 00:05:32 UTC

44,549

44,548

dottertrotter

HackrTrackr Now Allows For International Users

dottertrotter

Based upon all the requests for international users I've added that capability, so feel free to sign up. I've also altered the interface based upon some other suggestions.

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0

21

2007-08-21 00:23:36 UTC

44,551

44,525

Jd

Starting-Up and staying in Boston

ivankirigin

Is this a rhetorical question? The answer seems obvious...

The HackerNews MeetUp last night was lots of fun. Thanks to everyone who made it!I asked someone in the current YC batch how many in the current YC companies are staying in Boston.To his knowledge: none! That is a big surprise. What does it mean for those of us that like the town and would love to stay?

3

8

2007-08-21 00:31:37 UTC

44,559

44,525

champion

Starting-Up and staying in Boston

ivankirigin

Of course, there are lots of Boston area startups beyond the few YC funds. And most of those doing YC don't have Boston roots, so they might not have much reason to stay.To the larger point, Boston needs a stronger and more vibrant community of hackers, esp. for those interested in the web. And I'm bummed I missed the meetup last night...

The HackerNews MeetUp last night was lots of fun. Thanks to everyone who made it!I asked someone in the current YC batch how many in the current YC companies are staying in Boston.To his knowledge: none! That is a big surprise. What does it mean for those of us that like the town and would love to stay?

1

8

2007-08-21 00:52:10 UTC

44,570

44,509

drm237

Jeremy Zawodny: There is no Web Operating System (or WebOS)

toffer

"But nobody ever talks about a "Wall Street Operating System" or a "Small Business Operating System" do they?"Microsoft Small Business Server? - http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/sbs (I know, I'm missing the point...)I do agree that it's a web desktop, not a complete OS, but his reasoning seems a little off...

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2

31

2007-08-21 01:36:07 UTC

44,582

44,580

rms

What programming language should I start with?

zenobo

www.hacketyhack.net is an integrated environment for learning ruby, the hardest part of learning ruby is setting up ruby on a web server.

Oh no! a non-programmer on the hacker news! But I figure you guys know?I want to learn programming, maybe not to be a full-fledged hacker, but to be able to understand the concepts and be able to talk about this stuff more with programmers so I can work in tech?I hear python and ruby are good to learn on, but what would you guys do or are there any good books you'd read?

30

20

2007-08-21 02:01:10 UTC

44,583

44,548

prakash

HackrTrackr Now Allows For International Users

dottertrotter

PG: Can you please add the hacktrakr link with the other (jobs | leaders) links on the top of the page. I see many benefits to this:1. That way, even if this link is not on the first page, visitors to Hacker news have an idea of where the end-users are coming from2. There are more off line Hacker news meet-ups3. Since, YC has no plans of starting programs outside of the US, the # of visitors from various countries would be a good sign for YC clonesThanks,

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1

21

2007-08-21 02:03:44 UTC

44,585

44,580

mudge

What programming language should I start with?

zenobo

Do want to learn Web programming? PHP is probably the easiest programming language to learn for server-side web programming. I've read several books on PHP and looked over a bunch, and a lot are pretty good, but one of the best is this one: http://www.amazon.com/PHP-MySQL-Development-Developers-Libra...

Oh no! a non-programmer on the hacker news! But I figure you guys know?I want to learn programming, maybe not to be a full-fledged hacker, but to be able to understand the concepts and be able to talk about this stuff more with programmers so I can work in tech?I hear python and ruby are good to learn on, but what would you guys do or are there any good books you'd read?

17

20

2007-08-21 02:08:05 UTC

44,586

44,580

epi0Bauqu

What programming language should I start with?

zenobo

Pick language X. Buy Learning X from O'Reilly, e.g. http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learnperl4/I don't think it matters that much what you start with unless you have something in particular in mind you want to do, in which case, no matter what it is, choose Perl :)

Oh no! a non-programmer on the hacker news! But I figure you guys know?I want to learn programming, maybe not to be a full-fledged hacker, but to be able to understand the concepts and be able to talk about this stuff more with programmers so I can work in tech?I hear python and ruby are good to learn on, but what would you guys do or are there any good books you'd read?

12

20

2007-08-21 02:08:13 UTC

44,587

44,580

snifty

What programming language should I start with?

zenobo

Personally I think Python is easier to learn than Ruby; it takes a while to wrap one's newbish head around blocks, which are fundamental in Ruby.

Oh no! a non-programmer on the hacker news! But I figure you guys know?I want to learn programming, maybe not to be a full-fledged hacker, but to be able to understand the concepts and be able to talk about this stuff more with programmers so I can work in tech?I hear python and ruby are good to learn on, but what would you guys do or are there any good books you'd read?

14

20

2007-08-21 02:08:44 UTC

44,588

44,580

nickb

What programming language should I start with?

zenobo

Try this: http://poignantguide.net/

Oh no! a non-programmer on the hacker news! But I figure you guys know?I want to learn programming, maybe not to be a full-fledged hacker, but to be able to understand the concepts and be able to talk about this stuff more with programmers so I can work in tech?I hear python and ruby are good to learn on, but what would you guys do or are there any good books you'd read?

22

20

2007-08-21 02:09:45 UTC

44,592

44,580

jey

What programming language should I start with?

zenobo

Preferred: Python. clean, elegant, pure, simple, easy.Just fine: Ruby. good, but less simple and elegant than Python.Good if you want to deeply understand the principles of being a programmer but don't care about being very practical at the start: Lisp (yes, Lisp can be practical, but it's trouble for a newbie)Avoid: Perl, PHP, BASIC variants. These cause brain damage.

Oh no! a non-programmer on the hacker news! But I figure you guys know?I want to learn programming, maybe not to be a full-fledged hacker, but to be able to understand the concepts and be able to talk about this stuff more with programmers so I can work in tech?I hear python and ruby are good to learn on, but what would you guys do or are there any good books you'd read?

2

20

2007-08-21 02:18:58 UTC

44,594

44,580

ivankirigin

What programming language should I start with?

zenobo

Python is the easiest to learn. You can also try Lisp, but I don't have much experience with it. Lots of video lectures here: http://swiss.csail.mit.edu/classes/6.001/abelson-sussman-lec...The argument is that there are things you can do in certain languages that you can't do with others. This is important because you're taught to think in the capabilities of the language, meaning you won't even know what you're missing in a less powerful language.

Oh no! a non-programmer on the hacker news! But I figure you guys know?I want to learn programming, maybe not to be a full-fledged hacker, but to be able to understand the concepts and be able to talk about this stuff more with programmers so I can work in tech?I hear python and ruby are good to learn on, but what would you guys do or are there any good books you'd read?

7

20

2007-08-21 02:20:40 UTC

44,595

44,580

portLAN

What programming language should I start with?

zenobo

If you want to get stuff done, Python.If you want to understand how the computer works, Assembly.

Oh no! a non-programmer on the hacker news! But I figure you guys know?I want to learn programming, maybe not to be a full-fledged hacker, but to be able to understand the concepts and be able to talk about this stuff more with programmers so I can work in tech?I hear python and ruby are good to learn on, but what would you guys do or are there any good books you'd read?

33

20

2007-08-21 02:20:49 UTC

44,596

44,580

donna

What programming language should I start with?

zenobo

I don't think learning programming is the best choice, because it's too easy to get caught up in the details of learning syntax, api, etc. I suggest working with a programmer on real projects and learning how to communicate between each other. If you're not a programmer by nature, which takes A LOT of practice to get good. You'll only become annoying since your suggestions will be uninformed. Learn to give creative suggestions at a level of abstraction, without stepping on a programmer's toes.

Oh no! a non-programmer on the hacker news! But I figure you guys know?I want to learn programming, maybe not to be a full-fledged hacker, but to be able to understand the concepts and be able to talk about this stuff more with programmers so I can work in tech?I hear python and ruby are good to learn on, but what would you guys do or are there any good books you'd read?

9

20

2007-08-21 02:21:41 UTC

44,597

44,548

palish

HackrTrackr Now Allows For International Users

dottertrotter

dotter, It's great that you were able to so quickly improve HackrTrackr. The last time I looked at it, it was a little unpolished. It's all quality now. Great work!

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21

2007-08-21 02:22:34 UTC

44,598

44,461

Zak

Sorry, Lisp. I tried.

portLAN

Common Lisp was designed by committee, and it shows. If Lisp is to become popular, it needs a good, opinionated dialect or three. Arc will probably be one of them. Otter may be another. It would certainly be nice if there were more libraries, but most of the things the author complains about seem to be non-problems:>database accessIs there a problem with clsql (http://clsql.b9.com/)?>socketsMost Lisps (all modern ones?) support sockets. There are libraries to provide a common interface - a quick Google search got me usocket (http://www.cliki.net/usocket)>threadsOk, your options are a little more limited here, but CMUCL and SBCL support threads on x86 Linux, as do Lispworks and Allegro if you want to spend money. I suspect this isn't a big problem for most people writing web apps.>POSIXI think this is a weak point - CL was developed at a time when there was no clear OS of the future, so it was intended to be OS-agnostic. Today's (and probably tomorrow's) world has Windows, Unix and not much else.>a portable FFICFFI and UFFI both work on all the popular Lisps. What's the problem?

"Without database access, sockets, threads, POSIX, or a portable FFI (which I could at least use to write many of those features), my programs can't talk to the outside world, and that makes them basically useless."I'm embedding it so it's going to talk to my C wrapper for everything. How are you using it?Also see: Using Python libraries from Lisp http://common-lisp.net/project/python-on-lisp/

2

10

2007-08-21 02:23:18 UTC

44,599

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aarontait

What programming language should I start with?

zenobo

Dare I say Java? Seriously though, Java is a good programming language to start with. You get used to C style syntax, but don't have to much with memory management and architectural differences. Plus you can use Eclipse, a great IDE, for free!

Oh no! a non-programmer on the hacker news! But I figure you guys know?I want to learn programming, maybe not to be a full-fledged hacker, but to be able to understand the concepts and be able to talk about this stuff more with programmers so I can work in tech?I hear python and ruby are good to learn on, but what would you guys do or are there any good books you'd read?

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20

2007-08-21 02:31:04 UTC

44,600

44,567

staunch

Valleywag: Bow down and Worship Xobni's Party Throwing Skills

gaborcselle

Can't miss these two, they're damn funny:Part 1) http://www.flickr.com/photos/86921622@N00/1162778055/in/set-...Part 2) http://www.flickr.com/photos/86921622@N00/1163633584/in/set-... I've been a Xobni-skeptic since I saw the ads for product managers/QA people, office, etc. They appear to be doing a lot of obviously wrong stuff. I know they're smart and I do wish them luck, but it looks to me as if they're mostly interested in enjoying the funded startup ride.

There's no such thing as bad press.

0

18

2007-08-21 02:32:55 UTC

44,604

44,580

sri

What programming language should I start with?

zenobo

Here are the languages that have big communities: Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP, Javascript, C#/VB.NET and Java. Subscribe to lots of blogs from each community. (Many of them have planet aggregators like "Planet Python" and "Planet Ruby".) Also visit local user groups, wherever your are.Read/visit them for a while -- say a month or two. Whichever community makes you go, "wow, that's cool" -- join that community and learn the language. You can also interact with those communities via Google Groups.Lots of people will say -- "that's easy" or "this is elegant" or "that language sucks". Feel free to ignore them.

Oh no! a non-programmer on the hacker news! But I figure you guys know?I want to learn programming, maybe not to be a full-fledged hacker, but to be able to understand the concepts and be able to talk about this stuff more with programmers so I can work in tech?I hear python and ruby are good to learn on, but what would you guys do or are there any good books you'd read?

3

20

2007-08-21 02:48:26 UTC

44,606

44,580

misham

What programming language should I start with?

zenobo

The language doesn't matter that much. But read a good theory book on programming. I like "Code Complete" 2nd edition. You'll get all the info on how to be a good programmer.Mainly, concentrate on learning the technology and not a programming language. Programming languages are just tools for a specific job. By technology I mean, web programming, server/client, application, embedded, etc. Each industry has it's own language and you have to know the technology to speak their language.Best Option: Figure out what program you want to write and then find out which language you should write it in.Objective-C and Cocoa are going to be your best bet for learning application programming, but you have to have a Mac. Otherwise, learn Java. It's somewhat simpler than C/C++ because of memory issues.Microsoft stuff is not an option as it will teach you very very bad things.If you want to be really hard-core, learn C++ and Assembly ( x86 architecture ). But to be even half-way decent at those will take a lot of time and a lot of reading on how to do it right.Conclusion: Buy a Mac and learn Cocoa :)

Oh no! a non-programmer on the hacker news! But I figure you guys know?I want to learn programming, maybe not to be a full-fledged hacker, but to be able to understand the concepts and be able to talk about this stuff more with programmers so I can work in tech?I hear python and ruby are good to learn on, but what would you guys do or are there any good books you'd read?

19

20

2007-08-21 02:51:43 UTC

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blored

Valleywag: Bow down and Worship Xobni's Party Throwing Skills

gaborcselle

XOBNI IS AMAZING AT GENERATING PRESS.They have an article written about them in valleywag pre-launch. Way to go Matt, Adam and co. You guys are truly a cut above.

There's no such thing as bad press.

3

18

2007-08-21 02:59:31 UTC

44,609

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pg

Valleywag: Bow down and Worship Xobni's Party Throwing Skills

gaborcselle

That was a good party. One of the things they discovered was that anywhere.fm is the perfect stereo for a party, if you put it up on a big monitor.

There's no such thing as bad press.

1

18

2007-08-21 03:00:42 UTC

44,610

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dfranke

What programming language should I start with?

zenobo

If you want to do things right, read SICP and learn Scheme. That's probably the fastest route for going from knowing nothing about programming to being a very good programmer. It's somewhat akin to learning to swim by jumping off the 10m platform, though, so don't get discouraged.

Oh no! a non-programmer on the hacker news! But I figure you guys know?I want to learn programming, maybe not to be a full-fledged hacker, but to be able to understand the concepts and be able to talk about this stuff more with programmers so I can work in tech?I hear python and ruby are good to learn on, but what would you guys do or are there any good books you'd read?

8

20

2007-08-21 03:04:08 UTC

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pg

Jeremy Zawodny: There is no Web Operating System (or WebOS)

toffer

I disagree with this. An OS is whatever apps run on, and you could write things that most of the next generation of web apps would run on. I believe Parakey was (and perhaps still is) intended to be such a platform.

null

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31

2007-08-21 03:09:07 UTC

44,615

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jdvolz

What programming language should I start with?

zenobo

If you want to learn to program then C. That's right learn C. C is the language that the operating system you're using is written in, not to mention several of these other programming languages (the main implementation of Python or Ruby, for example). Is this language easy? No. Is it right for newbies? Maybe, maybe not. If you want the least amount of abstraction and don't want a bunch of stuff in your way, learn C. It's a hair's breath from learning assembly, and you can get a free compiler for it on any operating system. If you want to get stuff done quickly, learn Python or Ruby.

Oh no! a non-programmer on the hacker news! But I figure you guys know?I want to learn programming, maybe not to be a full-fledged hacker, but to be able to understand the concepts and be able to talk about this stuff more with programmers so I can work in tech?I hear python and ruby are good to learn on, but what would you guys do or are there any good books you'd read?

23

20

2007-08-21 03:10:06 UTC

44,617

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mariorz

HackrTrackr Now Allows For International Users

dottertrotter

so once you find someone near you, how are you supposed to get in touch?

null

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21

2007-08-21 03:18:34 UTC

44,618

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pg

What programming language should I start with?

zenobo

Just curious, but would anyone recommend Javascript?

Oh no! a non-programmer on the hacker news! But I figure you guys know?I want to learn programming, maybe not to be a full-fledged hacker, but to be able to understand the concepts and be able to talk about this stuff more with programmers so I can work in tech?I hear python and ruby are good to learn on, but what would you guys do or are there any good books you'd read?

11

20

2007-08-21 03:23:57 UTC

44,625

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palish

What programming language should I start with?

zenobo

Sorry.. This is probably the wrong question for you to ask :)The first question to ask is, "What would I enjoy creating? A website? A video game?"Based on that answer, you then choose the best tool for the job. Depending on the answer, you may only have one choice.

Oh no! a non-programmer on the hacker news! But I figure you guys know?I want to learn programming, maybe not to be a full-fledged hacker, but to be able to understand the concepts and be able to talk about this stuff more with programmers so I can work in tech?I hear python and ruby are good to learn on, but what would you guys do or are there any good books you'd read?

1

20

2007-08-21 03:46:02 UTC