ldambra

On another note, the story seems to have been removed by the moderators from the new stories page. It doesn't appear anymore if not logged. I'll delete it myself then.

Someone (pg ?) makes a "Hacker News 2" portal up and running. Seriously, I've seen this kind of stuff happen a couple of times before and it always works fine. There is a need for something that cannot be solved in any other way : less traffic.

From what I've seen before, this works like a charm. Everybody keeps up visiting the main site, but the few that needs more focus start to feed the second portal. Interesting stories of the second portal will get into the main one, adding value to submissions. Win-Win.

Remember the early days of HN ? There is a need for this kind of environment that disappeared when HN got popular. So make a second portal running, announce it, and it'll take off slowly effortlessly.

Loopt should keep a serious eye on the south korean market then, because it's currently the most advanced country with mobile phone technology. They all walk around watching real TV on their phone (not internet TV or else pseudo-TV). You can see a little of our own future just watching them.

He may be not someone who matters anymore in terms of "money & success", but my bet is on Linus Torvalds -- 100 years later. He is the only one on that list who has created something that is transcendental, wich won't stop after his death because it goes beyond himself and is slowly but surely shaping History, in a virtually unstoppable way.

Oh, and I'm a proud Windows XP user, no fanboyism inside :)

Seesmic is to microblogging what MMS is to SMS.

The crisis started in the US but is worldwide, industrialized countries are so dependent from each others now that if the US economy happen to collapse you can expect a worldwide collapse. You won't be safer anywhere else.

They should have funded 306 start-up with 1 million instead. I'm european and I'm ashamed.

Fashion != being well dressed. You can buy the most fashionable pant and still looks like a clown because it is too large or too short. But you can dress well without any clue in fashion. Just be careful about the size (that's the point when buying new clothes) and colors. Most people would go from a bad look to a decent one just by resizing their clothes to suit them correctly. And never forget : the white shirt is the best ally of men since forever.

I posted 3 suggestions yesterday that went unoticed : http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=133618

The 3rd one concerns the karma system : makes a quota of free comments each day then the additionnal ones cost some karma to post. Sometimes your silence has a greater value than a new comment.

A more appropriate topic for his article would have been : There is No One True and Only Way. Less controversial but keeps the substance.

I dropped out from college after a successful year because I understood I was losing my time. If I had gotten in debt to pay an expensive tuition, I would have pursued the studies for the wrong reasons, just to rationalize the insane expenses and to get that piece of paper. Thank god I was free to drop out and do something else.

On a side note, a lot of psychological studies as well as common sense suggest that people wherever they are and whatever they do are less motivated if they don't get consideration. No wonder why the students that have the perspective of a Harvard or MIT diploma are much more motivated than those who attend to community college.

Is this guy supposed to be educated ? I was raised in France and I feel less alienated than the author of this article. He sounds like Moses coming down from his hill with the tables of laws.

United States are the epicenter of the economical world without any doubt, the ultimate place for entrepreneurs for sure, "the place where it happens", but history teaches us at least 3 things :

1/ Portugal was this place before (hello America), Spain was before (gold from America), Holland was before (beginning of world commerce, main Harbor of the world), England was before (industrial revolution), etc.

So today it is the turn of the United States to hold this place, but tommorow it might be China (who knows) and I don't think you'll appreciate what Chinese reporters have to say about your lifestyle (like not living as an ants colony wich is prejudiciable to your economy).

2/ France has never been the epicenter of the economical world in it's history, it has never been the #1 power in the world, never. And with our strategic geographical position in Europe it's pretty ironic. It's not that we didn't try, but the reasons are cultural, and they take their roots far beyond socialism.

3/ You can't have it all. The reasons why France is #1 tourism destination in the world are also the reasons why we weren't the #1 power at any time in our history.

France is undergoing a serious cultural crisis right now, and economy is certainly not our strongest skill, but a lot of our problems come from deliberate choices of lifestyle. You cannot have it all. It should not be so hard to understand that there are different kind of lifestyles that all come with their pro and cons. Especially for a traveled reporter.

We're obviously not talking about the same thing. Are the speakers invited for free or they must pay as well ? I was talking about the guys who make the speeches, not the general audience. I think I just realized that the talkers are really invited and do not pay anything. It makes more sense indeed :)

Sure, but the money criteria is not relevant when you want to select people for their quality. The people that history remembers over centuries are more than often people that were not very wealthy during their lives because they were too much ahead of their times and as such : misunderstood.

But I agree the journalist's rant is poor because it doesn't ask the good questions. An invite-only conference is not a problematic concept. Having money as a criteria is, because it conveys the idea that intesteresting people and "thinkers of tommorow" are necessarily wealthy. History makes this assumption very questionable.

Was any Paul around here invited ?

Why would you come up "anonymously for now" ? If you have an already successful start-up experience, why not talking about it and tell us a bit about you ? What are the risks in doing so ?

I'm a bit cautious by nature and I'm just curious about it. If I had an already successful experience and were in your situation I'd rather talk about it and introduce myself a bit. It helps to gain trust from other people and would make your request more appealing.

I come to Hacker News to read and interact with people about start-ups and hacking related news, not to read jokes. It's not that I don't like to laugh, but there are a lot more popular sites on the web where you can be distracted and read funny stuff than there are where you can have quality discussions on a specific topic with interesting people like Hacker News.

This is rare. While community-oriented sites where you can read jokes/hilarious stuff/trolls are common and all over the place.

So when I want to be distracted, all I have to do is to open a new tab and go to reddit or whatever. HN is a special environment that must be preserved from this kind of stuff in order to keep the focused and quality discussions going on.

Free will has always been a very disputed notion since the Greeks, but the debate took another dimension with Freud's discover of subcounscious. As I said in my conclusion, I did not intend to open such a vaste debate here, I just noticed the paradox of Mr Buffet stance on this matter considering the core values of the society in wich he lives (and what he represents).

Disturbing. I find it strange that no one reacted to this part yet :

"I had nothing to do with my own success. [...] I was born with the wiring for capital asset allocation. I had the right wiring at the right time. Temperament is a large part of my wiring. I was naturally good at it, and I used some feedback to develop it better.[...]"

Do you realize the logical assumption behind such statement ?

It means that if you fail, you're not responsible either, because you weren't born in the right place at the right time with the right "wiring". So basically Mr. Buffet doesn't believe in free will, and if you're on the lucky side, "there is no reason to feel guilty about it.". If you're on the unlucky side, there is really nothing you could do about it but try to be happy anyway with what you have.

But isn't the american society based on individual merit ? "Anyone can succeed if he really wants to", wich leads to the logical implication that "if you fail, it's also your fault". Mr. Buffet's philosophical conclusions can be summed up by his "ovarian lottery" metaphor that comes up a lot of times in the interview : you won in the vagina, should you apologize to the others ? Then why should it be different in the society, son ?

Now let me be clear : I'm not emitting a moral judgment about what Mr Buffet says, that he should believe something else or whatever. I just find it paradoxal that Mr. Buffet, wich is one of the icon of the american society, tends to not believe in what makes the heart of the american society paradigm : free will & individual merit.

"/Leisure and Idleness/. There is an Indian savagery, a savagery peculiar to the Indian blood, in the manner in which the Americans strive after gold: and the breathless hurry of their work-the characteristic vice of the New World-already begins to infect old Europe, and makes it savage also, spreading over it a strange lack of intellectuality. One is now ashamed of repose: even long reflection almost causes remorse of conscience. Thinking is done with a stopwatch, as dining is done with the eyes fixed on the financial newspaper; we live like men who are continually "afraid of letting opportunities slip." "Better do anything whatever, than nothing"-this principle also is a noose with which all culture and all higher taste may be strangled.

And just as all form obviously disappears in this hurry of workers, so the sense for form itself, the ear and the eye for the melody of movement, also disappear. The proof of this is the clumsy perspicuity which is now everywhere demanded in all positions where a person would like to be sincere with his fellows, in intercourse with friends, women, relatives, children, teachers, pupils, leaders and princes-one has no longer either time or energy for ceremonies, for roundabout courtesies, for any esprit in conversation, or for any odium whatever. For life in the hunt for gain continually compels a person to consume his intellect, even to exhaustion, in constant dissimulation, overreaching, or forestalling: the real virtue nowadays is to do something in a shorter time than another person. And so there are only rare hours of sincere intercourse permitted: in them, however, people are tired, and would not only like "to let themselves go," but to stretch their legs out wide in awkward style. The way people write their letters nowadays is quite in keeping with the age; their style and spirit will always be the true "sign of the times."

If there be still enjoyment in society and in art, it is enjoyment such as over-worked slaves provide for themselves. Oh, this moderation in "joy" of our cultured and uncultured classes! Oh, this increasing suspiciousness of all enjoyment! Work is winning over more and more the good conscience to its side: the desire for enjoyment already calls itself "need of recreation," and even begins to be ashamed of itself. "One owes it to one's health," people say, when they are caught at a picnic. Indeed, it might soon go so far that one could not yield to the desire for the vita contemplative (that is to say, excursions with thoughts and friends), without self-contempt and a bad conscience. Well! Formerly it was the very reverse: it was "action" that suffered from a bad conscience. a man of good family I concealed his work when need compelled him to labor. The slave labored under the weight of the feeling that he did something contemptible-the "doing" itself was something contemptible. "Only in otium and bellum is there nobility and honor:" so rang the voice of ancient prejudice!"

Nietzsche in La gaya scienza, §329 (1882).

True. If Facebook fails then it's all the "web 2.0" world that will be affected, I hear a lot of people talking of another bubble about web 2.0. Some want their convinctions vindicated, others want to save their start up and money.

My bet is that the truth is in the middle as usual, just like when the first bubble bursted, it was a godsend who cleaned up all the mess produced by the basical non-understanding of the internet.

I'm currently saving for my flight trip to come from France to the US and now that I read this kind of thing I wonder if my objective of moving to the SV is not just plain foolish.

I was born in L.A but I was raised in France, I learned my english mainly from video games and the internet. Now I'm 26 and I want to come back to my home country, hit the reset button and start a new game.

For some reason I have a strong appeal to the west coast, but since I'm the kind of person that has to save for a flight trip, maybe SV is not for me. I'll be coming in about 3 months, should I land in L.A rather than S.F ? My initial objective was to meet interesting people around the start-up world and try to infiltrate the place this way. Maybe it's the wrong approach.

Maybe the question should be : where is the best place to struggle at first ?

“Let’s have a tiny font that looks better.”

I was amazed at the number of templates at CSS Zen Garden that use tiny fonts (I was recommended this site when I started to learn CSS design). More artistic maybe but certainly not functional.

This kind of topic worries me because from my experience when a community starts worrying about "cohesion", "trolls" and like, this is usually the first sign of it's fall down.

The real problem is what most of us would call a fall down today, that will be called tommorow (and interpreted as) a rise up from other people (thus the extreme difficulty to create efficient moderating systems based on quantitative data). You know your community is irreversibly "corrupted" when this kind of people becomes the majority, and this usually happen surprisingly quickly with the faster growth of visitors.

For some reason I have some hope for HN because of PG being behind it, he kinda knows what he wants and certainly knows what he doesn't want. Still, this might be one of the thoughest challenge he'll be faced with if HN keeps growing. I've known no community that escaped this syndrom yet.

The Law of New Inventions by Mike Rozak (game designer) : http://www.mxac.com.au/drt/LawOfNewInventions.htm

It fits perfectly with your essay. Good write btw.

GMT +1 (France)

Let your body regulate your sleep, it's his job, just trust him and let it go and you'll be surprised at how much good he is at it. No expert can beat your body in this field.

Thinking about how much time and how you should sleep just brings an unnecessary cloud to your consciousness, wich is a limited and precious ressource. Keep the sky clear, focus on your objectives, be passionate about them and your body will just follow and gives you what you need. In return just listen to him and sleep when you feel tired. The quality of your sleep will be astounding.