dy

You can use mkfile 5g testfile.jpg on OSX.

I guess I'm starting to get jaded... I remember when Flickr was the liferaft of Yahoo Photos and then even before that when Yahoo Photos was the liferaft of Kodak Galleries.

I still don't have a photo storage solution that I'm happy with - but I'm hoping that in 10 years or so Google will have indexed the three or four hard drives in my storage unit and placed them into Picasa X.

The advice in this article is dangerous for finding success and profit as an entrepreneur if your only knowledge relates to the needs of a developer. Developers are an infamously hard bunch of people to sell products to; as developers, I'm sure we've had all these thoughts:

- this is cool, but I could build something better (how many 37signal open source clones are there)

- this is cool, but way too expensive (Github complaints)

- this is cool, but let me use Google AdWords to get free upgrades (DropBox)

- this writing is great, but I'm blocking all the ads on the page (daringfireball)

Another problem is that when developers decide to do their own startup, the only domain they really understand is software development.

There are millions of people who have problems who can't code - building another bug tracker, productivity tool, email management app, GTD widget might be fun, but the economy of real "business" software that's out there is far larger and more lucrative.

Come to think of it, I think there was something in their relationship that we might now call "development." There is the anecdote about how Steve "tricked" Woz into cutting down the number of chips to win a prize at Atari. Woz did the work, but it was probably Steve pushing him that made him consider it possible in the first place.

Although Steve had ulterior motives, this doesn't seem too different than what we would say now of managers who were good at developing their employees.

According to Steve, you shouldn't be emulating anyone - be yourself. You'll never be a better Steve Jobs than Steve was - or a better Woz than Woz was.

The key thing I got out of the article is how important your co-founder is - one thing Steve seems to have is that he recognized talent very quickly (Woz, Ive at the age of 29) and developed them.

Thanks for archiving this and how prescient this was about color.com: "Nothing could be less cool, at this point, than calling a startup “cool.com.”

Sorry for the ambiguity - I guess I'm looking for a better domain modeling tool, not IDE. I'm aware of UML but always looking if there are interesting tools from other trades that might apply to programming/modeling...

Awesome cstross - thanks for taking time to answer the question - I like the idea behind the MacBook Air with the 480 GB upgrade and may have to look into that myself. I just got an iPhone 4S and it surprises me how close it feels to being eligible to be my only computing device - in a few years I can imagine sitting down next to my computer and just having the Apple Wireless Thunderbolt display connect to it and have my entire computer ready to go (I'd go through the trouble of plugging in a cable if necessary :)

This line really caught my eye: "(because when I write myself into a corner and need to refactor the deep structure of a book, Scrivener makes life a lot easier)" I've heard of Scrivener being used by writers for this purpose, but do you think it would work well for programmers? I'm struggling right now like I've written myself into a corner and notes/diagrams aren't really helping as much as I'd like.

Would love to have you do a usesthis as well - the more obscure stuff is especially fascinating as it usually carries a much better story than just "I'm using the newest Macbook Pro and I got 8GB of RAM."

Yes! That is exactly what I was thinking, especially when "Captain Crunch" keeps talking about "the system."

Exploring a complex system and trying to break it down to it's underlying rules is the ultimate engaging activity. It's a little less so when that system is man-made, though I imagine Ma Bell at that time was so large and complex that emergent properties had arisen of the system that no one knew.

The idea of riding the wires using your voice because you have perfect pitch does feel very Neo in the Matrix though. Going to have to watch that movie again as I tail -f some logs.

That is an amazing piece of work - definitely something I'd buy in poster format.

Yeah if you're from Manhattan it's going to be an adjustment - I'm in Manhattan now and haven't been back since I graduated (my mom moved to NC). Here's a few things I wish I had done differently:

1. Don't skimp on where you live (live in a good place in a great location like right above Murphy's). The rent seems like a lot when you're a student, but in hindsight it's the best deal you'll ever get. Don't live far away from north campus to save money.

2. The ACM at UIUC is pretty amazing, they have a secret lab underneath DCL where they have every thing you could ever want to build a robot, hack on Arduino (I think I salvaged a HP oscilloscope).

3. If you're looking for some more money - there are a lot of companies out by Assembly Hall (motorola etc). Good jobs/pay, really painful to get to.

College is definitely an adjustment but I found my groups I enjoyed hacking with, going to Brothers' with, going to Murphy's with and got a lot out of the experience.

My mother was a professor of MIS there.

Congrats on attending UIUC, I really loved the school and got a lot out of going there. Is Wolfram still on Neil St? I loved that amongst the car dealerships and Meijers was this mecca of mathematics and technology.

In terms of things to do:

- I highly recommend you join the Engineering Freshman Committee and the EOH group, I was the chair of that group and we were given $2000 to do whatever we want (we built a lightbulb unscrewing robot to compete at EOH). It was definitely one of the best experiences of my life ($2k in college seemed like an infinite pool of money).

- Start poking around Beckman Center, I did lots of interesting research there and it still puts out some really cool stuff that freshman can get involved with.

- If you can get a car and need to impress a date, Curtis Orchard is really pretty right now.

- I loved the 318/319 courses and wish I had taken it earlier, when I was there Garland and Hart were there and I wish I had a chance to take more classes in that track.

Best of luck!

I grew up in Champaign, IL, where Wolfram is based and Steven Wolfram had a reputation for being difficult and an introvert - but the more I read or see about him, the more I find him inspiring and quite brilliant.

His story was also touching because it shows how Steve Jobs was able to touch people's lives in significant ways even through the briefest of interactions.

I'm not surprised there is such "cult" behavior behind Apple - if there was ever a cult leader I would want to believe in, it would be Steve.

I lean on the side that these are related events. These events seem to be catalyzed/centered around youth that are disengaged from any sense of traditional growth norms in their society and when given an opportunity, lash out against that system. In the Arab uprisings, that system was represented by repressive governments, in the UK it was the upward-mobile consumerist culture.

I was also under the impression that the UK looting was opportunistic until I saw the press around OccupyWallSt. The way these things sound from inside versus how they are portrayed by the media are worlds apart.

"A riot is the language of the unheard." MLK

Looks very cool - some suggestions for the README:

- who's sponsoring and using this?

- how does it compare to other message buses

- why should someone consider moving [0mq, rabbit, activemq] to this?

Hi pg - I admit, I was surprised by your speaking style when you first started but in a positive way. The surprise was in contrast to the mental model I have formed of you after many years of reading your essays (perhaps a Gandalf-esque character was what I was expecting). Overall, I left inspired about technology startups and even more enamored of both the hustle and humility of the YC team.

Very impressed with the look and feel. I definitely see putting this up on a screen for any company that's seriously tracking their twitter following - great work.

Congrats! I've been looking at a way of jumpstarting my piano learning (or re-learning) and this looks like a great way. Would love to hear any other recommendations from HN musicians.

I just recently found out that Robin (the CEO of Baidu) was also working on algorithms similar to Pagerank. It changed my perception of Google as a brilliant once-in-a-lifetime flash of insight to much more "the idea was in the air" and these guys rocked the execution.

> Widespread, permanent unemployment is one of the less favorable possible outcomes.

Wondering why you think this is a less favorable outcome - presumably if there were robots that could make all our whims come true it would be closer to a utopian society. The value of "employment" for itself seems nonsensical - the ability to procure things that people want seem to be the better barometer of a society's wealth.

Very impressive and I like your message - solve real problems that people who have budgets are willing to pay for.

When it comes to sex, you have to separate out human seduction versus animal seduction because of culture. Ideas pass down human generations through culture rather than through instinct. Future generations of humans will still be able to read books like "The Art of Seduction" unlike brine sea shrimp.

Now it can be easily argued that culture itself is also cyclical (fashion, promiscuity, cultural rules all rotate), but it's definitely divorced from the pure animal kingdom.

You're not following Lean Climate Control practices.

Maybe all the rumors about curved glass weren't for the iPhone 5 but for the new building windows :)

Just as there are A-grade startups and the B-startups, there are now A-grade incubators and a growing list of B-ones. Founders thinking that he value of participation in New Incubator X will be similar to participating in YCombinator are in for an unpleasant surprise.

Long term, I don't think that this will look like the college market since it will be much easier to measure the quality of an incubator's outputs than of a college's outputs and we'll see the lower quality ones fade away.

I'm predicting a bubble in fisherman analogies.

I saw this at Google IO (vaadin.com). I know it's in Java but it's a solid set of templates/controls/widgets that seems great for admin interfaces.

This article is linkbait and stretches a metaphor way beyond its breaking point. Also, I think the author confuses various parts of the software field (process/methodology vs engineering/development vs craft/artistry).

How do you get access to this type of data?