skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I've gotten tired of Fred's blog. I really don't like seeing requests made from my browser every other second. I don't like how slow it is because he has every social hook in there, many to his own companies.

He's a venture capitalist, why is he wasting his time with affiliate marketing? In the amount of time it takes him to build the link to amazon, he should have been working on closing a million dollar deal or doing research into companies or finding a better justification for supporting web fraud companies like zynga who make the internet worse like a lot of his investments, bit.ly to name just one more.

I also find him to be a bit hypocritical. He blasts conferences, then blogs all about having gone to them. He's lost a lot of credibility in my book. I don't think he or his investments make the web better.
Merging.

Subversion 1.5, released in June of 2008, supports merge tracking.

If you're using the limitations of your VCS to manage team communication then you have bigger problems.

A simple but sufficiently powerful solution leads to simplified communication. If you're using the complexity of your VCS to hinder team communication and support cowboy coding, then you have bigger problems.

Frankly, a lot of the arguments against DVCS smack of the same sort of ignorance that the Java zealots were leveraging against Ruby back when Rails started picking up steam in 2005/2006 ... But I think the past few years have borne out the fact that mediocre and merely-competent programmers can make strong use of these tools without leading to disaster.

Nobody (intelligent) said there'd be disaster because of the "powerful features", just that operating in that manner would be more expensive than the much simpler alternatives.

Expending more effort with more powerful tools isn't actually an improvement, it's just busy-work -- constantly working on your muscle car instead of driving it.
I've had the idea to travel to the sun to collect huge amounts of energy. But how to store the energy and bring it back to earth? One possibility would be to store it as rotational energy, and that would mean to attain a high number of revolutions/sec (or alternatively do that with the spacecraft itself).

But I'm by no means an expert, so I want to ask: Could magnetic tools like these be used to in-/decrease rotation and keep it stable? Maybe in a setup comparable to quadcopters to control the rotation of the overall system?
wrt value types, shouldn't it be partially solved by escape analisys?
Cfr: http://weblogs.java.net/blog/forax/archive/2009/10/06/jdk7-d...

not that it would matter much in the case anyway, I guess.
Great article - I especially liked the idea of using several for a very low power "server farm." I bookmarked the page where the shiva plug dev it can be purchased - probably won't buy one, but I might!
US shuts embassy as al-Qaeda 'plans attack in Yemen' | news issues google trends
This business looks like it has a tremendous amount of upside -- as they get better, I'm sure the prices will come down, making them more and more competitive in more and more markets. It could (if industrialized enough) replace huge swaths of other industries.

EDIT: and on a personal note, these guys are about an hour away from my startup. Go Southwest Virginia!
Affiliate programs generally try to account for click-now buy-later behavior by setting a tracking cookie on the user's browser that lasts for a period of time - 30 days is pretty typical. Provided the user doesn't click another affiliate link (since credit is generally only given to the last affiliate clicked), Fred should eventually get credit for those future purchases. (Edit: I looked into it and Amazon only gives credit for purchases made 24 hours after the click. Ouch! This is abysmally bad for an affiliate program.)

What affiliate programs (and all performance-based advertising, really) actually undervalue is the view. Fred spent all that time talking about that product, but he gets no credit for it unless the link is clicked. That's why publishers with market power sell ad space by the view, not the click, and why the rates brand advertisers are willing to pay are much higher than the number of clicks the ads generate would justify.
You Should Waste 90% of Your Time

"If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough." -Alan Kay

I think therefore that the expected value of the ratio of time wasted to total time should be x, where x >= .90
We all tend to be hypocrites in one way or another and whether Fred Wilson is one, to me at least, isn't relevant. You've just posted a completely ad hominem attack while completely overlooking the premise of an interesting post (granted, "interesting" is a subjective statement). I also don't think it's terribly surprising that he would promote/give a platform for his portfolio companies - that's almost expected.

As for affiliate marketing - why wouldn't he? Aside from a smaller argument that every penny counts, it would seem like it's a useful little experiment which broadly speaking ,suggests a significant opportunity in ecommerce given what he's saying is that it's a mispriced asset. Whether or not it's a mispriced asset that can be monetized is what should be up for debate.
Gretl: Gnu Regression, Econometrics and Time-series Library
To his credit, Fred donates all proceeds from his blog to charity: http://www.businessinsider.com/2009/1/fred-wilson-makes-3000...
Please don't get me wrong, it was not my intention to compare the features of tarsnap to a 10 minutes hack. I am sure there is a lot of good work behind and it looks like great code and a great project. I am also sure that a lot of businesses would be happy to pay for your service if they were directly targeted for it.

But I have no doubt the reason while your revenue doesn't make you happy yet it is because hackers are not the right target for it. I do differential backup using encFS and dropbox; it's not even remotely as cool as tarsnap but it's free for now. You see my point?
Just came across this little beauty. It already has datasets for many Econometric texts. Seems like the community of econometrics educators are throwing their weight behind this. Let's hope it becomes the next R.
VCs should have hands-on experience with the things they invest in. You can either not read his blog or use browser extensions to blog the social hooks you don't care for.
So, instead of

.5 * 1

does that mean we should waste

.9 + .5 * .1 (90% plus 50% of the remaining 10%)

or

.5 * 1 + .5 * .9 (50% of everything plus 90% of the remaining 50%)

?
I agree that trending topics is no longer "trending" simply because Twitter has become "mainstream" more or less. Remember when Facebook wasn't mainstream? Now it's a spammer's dream.

So goes any well guarded secret that gets let out. It's inevitable.
I think in this case, ad hominem is appropriate. He is arguing about mispriced assets while investing in companies that sells more virtual tractors than John Deere.

He's saying, in effect, Amazon isn't paying you enough to waste your time posting links to their books, while making other people pay good money to waste their time growing virtual gardens.

Rationale like that doesn't work well for him.
Can you private message peeps on Hacker News?
Can you private message peeps on Hacker News?
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Doesn't "tripwire" allow something like that? I'm not personally familiar with it and don't use it, but I'm sure I've seen something about it.
i am "wasting my time with affiliate marketing" because i want to understand this stuff and possibly make it better.

and zynga is far from a fraud. it's the most successful social gaming company on the web, it has innovated on the virtual goods model and proven that you can build a very large business with that model.

i don't like to go to big splashy conferences and that's what i blogged about. i do like to go to niche conferences where i can meet real people and entrepreneurs.

i'd like to understand why you think the investments we make don't make the web better.
I don't think so. Some people put emails or websites in their profile.
Cloud Computing Instrumental in IT Recovery for 2010
I have a friend who is trying to find a way to make the Tarsnap website look nicer without losing its essential geeky/minimalist character;

Maybe you misspoke here, but based on this quote I think your approach could be improved.

1) You went to a friend. Unless this person is an experienced designer of commercial websites, that doesn't sound like the right approach.

2) Your primary concern is preserving the site's "geeky/minimalist character", although that seems to be your Achilles heel. The last time Tarsnap was on news.yc, I made the same incorrect assumption, that this was not really a business, but just a side project of an academic. You and I even talked about that in the comments.

3) You're framing the problem as aesthetics, but it's really about poor communication. Engineers often make the mistake of thinking that visual design = making something look nice. This is like saying a database designer makes data nice.

Just like a database designer sees important patterns to capture, a great producer or designer understands how to drive website visitors to the right understandings and behaviours.

It sounds to me that if you go down the route you descirbe, you'll have all the pain of redoing the site, without solving the more fundamental problems.
Did you already talk to the guys from OpenIndie? http://openindie.com/

They seem to be working on a similar idea, though focused more on screenings.

Arin Crumley (one of the founders) did quite a nice job with the distribution of his film Four Eyed Monsters.
I really like the idea of etsy. I have a lot of friends in the town where I grew up who have valuable skills, but due to the recession nearly none can find jobs. The local economy is crushed, but sites like etsy open up possibilities to people who didn't have the technical skills to reach a global community previously.
Upvoted!

While I don't necessary like the way how people in our industry tried to infuse new technology to their working place, someone has to do it somehow and I suppose this is the shortest way to convince upper-level: pick a famous company/corporate/organization as an example instead base on needs.
virtual goods is a way for people who play the game to pay for it in a very elegant freemium model.

you are mixing two issues up.

affiliate marketing is about helping publishers/creators of content make more money for the work they do

virtual goods is about helping game developers get paid for building games people like to play without having to charge upfront
Wonderland Cave | Your Big Break
what are some examples of software products with soul?
No, IIRC pg asked once and some people said they didn't want yet another messaging system to check.

Personally I think it would be great because a) not everybody remembers to leave contact information and b) you get the instant context and can forgo the "hey, I'm not a stalker but I thought you wrote something interesting on HN"
Darfuristan: How the world's campaign to stop a genocide created a quagmire
>The one thing he doesn't mention is the staggering brainlessness of putting the 'Eject Disk' key at the top-right corner, above 'Delete'.

You think that's stupid? On the HP keyboard I'm using, there's a similar key above Escape. What does it do? It sleeps the computer. At least on my Ubuntu, there's no confirmation, just immediate hibernation. (Nor, for that matter, can I find a way to turn it off. But then, configuring the keyboard in Ubuntu is quite frustrating -- alas, a separate issue).

I can't imagine this wouldn't've come up during testing. I mean, really.
Virtual goods are entertainment. Granted, I don't play Farmville or any other game (and I do find all those updates on fb annoying). I assume the pricing is pretty transparent. Just as I find buying tickets to sports games to be a waste of my time (with a particular net negative on baseball), to each their own.

Affiliate marketing however, is where the assignment of value somewhat more arbitrarily/discreetly decided as it depends on actions of third parties. Besides, it's about pointing out an opportunity that exists - and in that light, even if I were take your position, you could make the argument that it's one that he's very qualified to make.
Ask HN: Weekend update -- What weekend projects are you up to?
Many of us draw on Hacker News for inspiration on our ongoing evening and weekend projects. I'd bet most of us are soloing on our projects too.

Since weekends are a bit slow around here, I thought it would be fun and useful to have a weekly or biweekly open thread to talk about how your project is doing this week. I'd be interested to know what people are spending their time on and I'm sure it'd be nice to have a place to talk about our projects.

I'll start with mine in the comments. If it goes well, we can do this again next week.
I don't agree with the trash talk on the AGPL in these comments to the original article. I would like to see fewer open source licenses: in my opinion the Apache 2, LGPL 3, and AGPL 3 would suffice since I am not that clear why Apache 2 and BSD styles licensed projects just couldn't be Apache 2. That said: creators should obviously have the only say in what license they choose to use.

I know someone who has a small AI + semantic web company, they use the AGPL, and I think that they are doing OK. The trick is selling a "commercial use" exception.

Also, my understanding is that if you use AGPL code in a web service, then you need to make the entire web service implementation AGPL. However, other systems that use the newly created AGPL web service do not need to be AGPL - if I am wrong about this, I would appreciate being corrected.
So, I'll play the devils advocate. What exactly is the value proposition here? Are there people scouring the internet for certain indie movies? I like indie movies, and I like the idea of rewarding the people who are behind them, but it is hard for me to imagine what an itunes for indie movies with a marketing spin (is that what we are talking about here?) is really going to accomplish. I have netflix. I can get a lot of movies from there, for cheap. (including many of the more famous indie films). I also have HBO, more cheap movies. Granted, they aren't indie movies, but I can't see my self spending extra money for movies by people I don't know and have heard nothing about. Maybe I just don't get it. So, I guess, could you explain a little more about what the niche you're filling is?
Agreed; speaking personally anyone willing to spend the 10 minutes with a whois database service, my email address and a little digging on my sites could find out pretty much every address I've ever lived at.

(bonus points if someone does it and gets all 3 :))

But I know that data exists - and for now I am happy for people to discover it about me.

Speaking for non-techy types, though, it is something to be concerned about. Less so for marketers as things like stalkers and fraudsters etc. It's worth raising these issues gently to try and encourage people to understand what data is accessible about them - and ensure their comfortable with that.
Reading this comment and your other comments in this discussion, I think you have some issues which have nothing to do with what version control system is being used. While you keep talking about "hiding code" and "hindering communication" and "cowboy coding", I think about keeping the history of our codebase well-organized so that you can understand the evolution of a single feature, so that commits are logically ordered, so that unrelated changes don't get lumped together because it was the easy thing to do.

To quickly comment on a couple of your other concerns, my local hard-drive is backed up, so that's irrelevant; and I personally feel that code review at the level of individual commits has very little value, and you should instead be reviewing complete feature implementations.
which they've done a reasonable job of promoting.

A larger and larger number of my non-techy friends are locking up their Facebook accounts.

Whether this is just because the default settings have changed to be more restrictive I don't know (when they did the updates mine tried to get me to swap from "fully open" to "friends only" so I am not sure their algorithm for suggested settings is very good)
these dorks I saw were wearing the latest trendy Southern California clothes like baggy jeans, surfer shirts, cargo shorts, skater shoes, etc.

Ummm, why does the author of this article feel that he knows what's in style? That stuff hardly sounds like anything I see considered in style at the time (the article was written in 2006), but I can't speak to what's popular at Irvine high schools. My guess is the only way to really know would require some real research. Often times clothes can look similar to an outsider, but to someone in the know small differences make all the difference.

Can you tell the difference between a $1000 Marc Jacobs bag and a $30000 Hermes Bag? I sure can't, but my ex-girlfriend could spot the difference from a mile away.
But tell me, where does it end? At what point do we say that people should learn the basics about the things they use every day, and that might harm them?

Agreed; but none of these sites tell you, in a clear, concise and understandable way what information is available and at what level. Facebook is fairly good - but you still have to go digging.
Fred, as someone who felt your wrath earlier today all I can say is that we (the loosely dev/hacker community) feel that Zynga, playfish,et al. peed in the pool by having bad offers in the first place and made it much harder for the rest of us.

We also placed lots of stock in you personally as the older, wiser voice on the Web, and then the shitstorm broke out over "scamville" and you were nowhere to be found on this subject. It hurt to see someone we looked up too as a "grown-up who gets it" not say what you were clearly thinking.
Some programs undervalue links more than others. I am avtualy quite cool with Amazon's system, but recently got burned really, really badly by eBay. They don't allow you to post affiliate links on Twitter, but we ran Twitter posts about the NIN eBay auctions that drove hundreds of thousands of viewers to eBay. I was lined up to make nearly $2k in commission when I got a notice that all my commissions were canceled because we used Twitter.

I don't understand why that means I shouldn't earn commission for the traffic I drove.

Additionally, I am banned from ever joining again.

Unfortunately the revocation and ban happened while I was (and still am) on vacation to Egypt, so I don't really have time to deal with it.

Yes, affiliate programs take advantage of you. You have to decide how comfortable you are with that, and at what level. It's still better than no affiliation at all.
Playing devils devils advocate, I think the "right" answer would be that you provide a more efficient market that existing distribution channels -- easier to access, more readily available information, freer access. Then you combine that with deeper engagement and virality that existing channels don't have (and one that actually works instead of sounds good on paper)

That's probably the "right" answer. Not sure it's theirs, but it's how I would answer the objection if I were them.
Cognitive Biases, Positive Black Swan Events and Startups
An anecdote that may help you...

One of my former employers had a product that came about sort of by accident, providing a Perl hook into a Sendmail milter interface. It wasn't vastly better than a few open source CPAN modules, daemonized. Management found that it was taking time away from all the really cool geeky stuff we wanted to do. We, the programmers, complained loudly over and over again that at $700, this product was ludicrously overpriced.

Meanwhile, out in the real world, our customers were dealing with a rising tide of spam. They were bowled over that there could be such a powerful and flexible solution that fit right into their existing mail infrastructure. It was a perfect match for big institutions like universities.

The problem was that they wouldn't even consider a $700 product.

This is more than just institutional prejudice. At $700 a pop, they knew that we weren't putting any effort into this product. We wouldn't be there to expand for their needs, or respond quickly.

Everything changed when we started charging thousands of dollars. This product soon outstripped all others in revenue. It saved the company, gained us reliable customers, and led to an acquisition. Nowadays it's a very user-friendly system, with all sorts of GUI wizards, but at base it's just an elaboration of the Milter API.

So, the point here is, it is very possible to charge too little. You might be sending the wrong signal to your customers, that you aren't serious enough for the long haul. If your main product is totally secure backups that last forever, that kind of pricing signal might be important.
Intel's "cripple AMD" function
I agree totally. +1
What I personally am learning is this: Closed marketplaces are good! I tried doing stuff for the internet - I had a BIG discovery problem. How do people find you? If you do stuff for a closed ecosystem like the app store, ebay, amazon, etsy, facebook - the discovery channel is already in place, all you need to do is optimize for it

I think it is easier for an engineer to make money in a closed ecosystem where there are already a lot of customers than if you just go wild in an unlimited place like the internets.

Think of it like a shoe store. They open their stores where other stores already are and where they know the customers are already there.

Opening a startup with no clear idea where your customers are is like opening a shoe store in a residential part of town where you are the only shoe store for miles. You then have to start getting really creative with marketing, which is hard.
Forget RIAS, I want native/web hybrids
Uhm.

This is bullshit. A blog post on how not to be homeless and get a job?

Are you fucking serious? I mean really.
I've heard this about European countries, such as Italy and Spain, many times over the years.

If it is indeed true in general, I wonder why. Better family structure leading to less insecurity among kids, so they don't take out as many of their issues on classmates later in life? Different kinds of TV shows molding their impressionable minds when young? There are likely a variety of factors, but I haven't come across an explanation.
For Fred Wilson? No it's not. I don't know why he chooses to use Amazon affiliates, but the man's personal brand, the quality of his traffic, and his stature in the "community" allow him to negotiate directly with advertisers in an endorsement model.

His readership is the most coveted in all of the industry. Educated and affluent 30+s. Ignoring the personal brand for a minute, if Amazon wanted to compensate quality publishers with bonuses, it wouldn't cost them anything to see him in their matrices immediately. 40 purchases is very high. He would make bank pushing financial products, even more if he stooped low to gambling.