skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yes, I didn't even get that far. This may be the biggest hurdle. Of all the hackers I've ever met, I wouldn't even approach 99%. I've seen their work.

I know 2 rock stars who are local and I've worked with before that I would love to be with now. One is laid up after a horrible motorcycle accident and the other is going through a nasty divorce. Lunch and phone calls, yes. Co-founders, no.

Interestingly enough, I'm corresponding off-line with several people from this board. Who knows, maybe that will lead somewhere.

Willie Sutton robbed banks because "that's where the money is". Do you think if he was a lonely hacker, he'd be here now?
Good point on the TBD. I've changed it.

I'm actually not worried about Flickr. I'm gunning for a much larger competitor: people's hard drives. Flickr is a perfectly fine social network for photography enthusiasts. For normal people who want to share their doings, I've made something clearly better, in ways you can see at a glance. Flickr is a grid. OurDoings is an illustrated story. The only problem I expect to encounter related to Flickr is people getting the expectation that your photos won't be organized unless you put effort into it.

That said, your point about MSFT is a good one. Perhaps the time is now to make a Flickr import tool.
60+ Killer Open Courseware Collections for Web Designers
The Internet being what it is, web designers do not have a hard time finding resources. This article is talking about university courses, and they cover everything from design theory to Internet culture.
Points well taken...and as I see you are talking from experience...exactly what I was looking for to put my mind at ease. We are planning to meet in a few weeks...if all goes well I'll have a new member on the team that seems as enthusiastic as I am about the project.

I like what you said exploratory programming because with a new cofounder I can sit down and say, "look this is what I've found will work, this needs help, this needs someone to just start outright, and do you have any ideas how the hell to make this work." Thanks for replying...I'm glad you did.
No evil robot I've ever imagined to mass produce as my minions in my bid for global domination has been half this sinister...

If this were slashdot I'd welcome an overlord of some sort.
The death of self-rule on the internet @ eBay
Heh-- I'm not saying that people who don't find co-founders are wrong/stupid/bad.

I am saying that people who don't WANT to find co-founders are generally (IMO) misguided and should reconsider.

FWIW, me and my 38 year old co-founder found our 30 year old co-founder 6 months back. I know how hard it is and how scary it is (we all set aside really lucrative jobs). I agree with you about the marriage analogy.

But, sticking with that analogy-- having bad spouses in your past is a pretty lousy reason to swear off of dating. ;-)
Smaller Version of the Solar System Is Discovered
The seamless chain is actually what people like about the site. It ends up in grandma's inbox in the best possible way.

Embarrassingly, the camera-to-internet part of the chain is only seamless on Windows right now. It's a little more manual on Linux and OSX. Still, I'm questioning now whether it's another improvement that the site needs, or if it's marketing.

There are even photo frames that support media RSS, so the chain to grandma doesn't have to involve email. I actually give two Media RSS feeds--one text+photos, one photos only.

Further, if grandma is comfortable clicking buttons on web pages, she can take over from mom and dad the job of picking good pictures from among many that were taken. Mom or dad just needs to turn on the option.
It's not something I share a lot, to be honest. It always sounds like one of those "Heck with the homeless! I was poor and pulled myself up by my bootstraps!" kind of things.

I feel for the homeless and the poor. But I don't think giving them cash every month (as San Francisco does) or giving them other handouts is helping much of anything at all. Simply because something troubles you morally does not mean that there is a moral solution.

Since you asked, my first wife and I split up, I moved into a boarding house that agreed to take all of my stuff. Now this just wasn't everything I owned -- it's worse than that. My mother had decided to remarry and gave me all of the things from my childhood home. So I had all of that with me as well.

Being pretty messed up over the bad marriage, I wasn't working, so I got behind on the rent (a month or two as I remember) The family told me they were moving so I had to move out. I told them I was going to stay with friends for a couple of days to see if I could stay with them. When I came back, the entire house was empty. Nil. Nada. SOBs even took a 1979 Pontiac I had out front. So I had 2-3 changes of clothes and the car I was in. That's it. I believe that's what they call "starting from nothing"

I never did find my stuff. I checked the VIN on the car several times with the police but nothing showed up. I guess the worst part is the pictures -- you just can't replace those pictures. I'd give half of what I have now just to get those pictures back. The rest of it? Just stuff. If anything, it was a great lesson in how life can be more about your stuff than yourself. In a lot of ways, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I know that sounds cliche, but it's true. Even now, I wouldn't mind living on Ramen noodles for a few months while kicking out some code in a startup -- it'd be a blast. Whereas I think if I never had that experience I would somehow feel that I was "better" than doing that. I consider myself very lucky.
What I'm afraid of is that you're totally right. Given the choice between improving the site and pounding the pavement, I'll always be drawn toward improving the site. But maybe I need to change that.
This is just an idea (I've never done this myself) but perhaps you could create a new company with a more even equity distribution between the founders and then exclusively license what you currently have to it with an option to purchase outright for some amount. If the company fails you'll still have what you originally brought to the table.
"The Photosynth technology preview runs only on Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista."

Scoble is not the only one who is crying.
"While listening to Wong I noticed a tear running down my face."

A digital onion peeler that takes 5 minutes to turn on?
Something about the way that's phrased makes me wonder if pg could play the Donald Trump role in a justin.tv/YC reality show along the lines of "The Apprentice".
The title sounded pretty scary but the message is pretty simple: sellers can no longer leave negative feedback against buyers. This is an attempt by Ebay to allow buyers to leave more honest feedback without fearing retaliation.

I think this makes Ebay even more democratic.
Comment of the Day: Sync Kindle With iPhone
10 Gadgets Better Than Dates
The post is an interesting interview with founder of a startup I'd never heard of called EveryBlock. It's a data aggregation website for Chicago New York and San Fransisco. It takes data from various sources and builds an interactive map on Django and Mapnik. From a UI standpoint, the site is beautiful (crisp and clean). The maps themselves are gorgeous (a la Edward Tufte).

http://nyc.everyblock.com/locations/neighborhoods/schuylervi...

Interesting quotes from the article:

"An obvious example of data that's EveryBlocky (EveryBlockish? Um, location-specific?) but not yet on our site is the set of recent home sales -- lots of local relevance there. Of course, we're a news site, not a real-estate site, so it'll be interesting managing people's expectations about what real-estate data and features we offer."

"If we'd launched with awesome reader-contributed content features, that's all that people would be talking about. "EveryBlock: a user-generated news site!" People are very quick to make judgments about a Web site, pigeonholing it into some generic "user-generated" or "Web 2.0" bucket. I wanted to send the message that our focus is on providing a newspaper for your block. The tone was set. Any subsequent features that we add -- whether they involve local voices or not -- are in support of that core goal."

"On the business side, clearly we'll have to figure out how the site is going to sustain itself after our grant money is spent. I have a feeling some solution will make itself apparent at some point over the next year and a half. But even before that, we'll find out whether our idea is something that catches on with our audience -- this whole thing is an experiment, after all! For all we know, EveryBlock might be a novelty that doesn't sustain an audience in the long term. Being honest Chicago people, happily far away from the Silicon Valley BS, we have no delusions of grandeur."
B-players overprepare, A-players take the emotional risk
Ginger.

"The advance buzz about the then-unknown product was, at times, hyperbolic" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segway#History
People in Microsoft research are among some of the best researchers in the world. Why is there a surprise here?
Google's CIO Speaks: Interview With Douglas Merrill
"... By reducing sleeping hours I hope to be able to do more everyday. I know that some people need only 4h sleep and they are full of energy. I wish I could do so but I usually need 8.5 hours. I would like to know how many hours you guys sleep and if you have some tips to reduce sleep time. Do you think we are "born" with a needed amount of sleep or can we change it? ..."

Sleeping 4 hours a day and feeling refreshed! Fatigued more like it. I certainly don't believe it. I've had stretches of months with only 4 hours sleep per day. I functioned but only at a base level. I didn't feel refreshed staying up 76hrs at a time. [0] For me and (we are all individuals) I need a good 8Hrs. If I don't, I'm one sorry mess to work with. Communication is by grunt.

With rest, bit of exercise, food I work far better and do tasks far better

You need sleep. If you don't get enough sleep there is enough studies [1] to suggest performance at a lot of levels is severely reduced. Sleep deprivation is also form of mental torture. I don't know why anyone would want to have less sleep and as a result do things worse than they can.

Trying to avoid sleep is a symptom

What is the real problem? Are you trying to do more with the time you have? Is it a time management issue? Is it an issue of living far from your work and travelling? Do you have poor sleep hygiene? Do you work in a job that "demands" so much it requires you to miss something so basic as sleep?

Is your boss torturing you?

Re-define the problem. Is it sleep you need to miss out on or is it something else?

[0] 3 days doesn't sound like much bit it is. An interesting experiment was to find ways to keep me awake. Funny but some Yoga & breathing worked a charm. Another thing is I learnt how cat-nap. Fall asleep, deep sleep at a moments notice. Day or night.

[1] BetterHealth, Victorian Gov, "Sleep deprivation" ~
http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/BHCV2/bhcarticles.nsf/pag...
I'd say the spectrum of Python web frameworks looks like this

web2py -> Django -> Turbo Gears -> Pylons -> Web.py

On the left you have more fully integrated frameworks that do more out of the box (and essentially make more choices for you upfront). On the right you have frameworks where you do most of the work yourself. These frameworks eliminate some of the boiler plate of writing a web applications and give you the responsibility of handling the rest.

Which one to use depends on what you're looking for.

There is no reason any of the above frameworks can't handle a "digg effect". Just throw servers at it.
I too was initially drawn to web.py because of it's simplicity, but now that I'm using Django, I can't recommend web.py anymore. Web.py isn't as well documented, and once you get beyond a very trivial site Django enhanced functionality really helps out.

I suggest going with Django. There is a little more upfront learning, but it's worth it.
You know, I would even remove the linux option from view. I doubt that your customers (busy parents) will be dealing with linux installations.

Here's another though I had. Is there a simple rss reader that the grandmothers could install? (I apologize to all who are offended by the term 'grandmothers.' I mean it with the most respect and only to represent the non-technical picture receivers.) You could build something that automatically sends the pictures to the end-user's desktop. Maybe something similar to MSFTs and Google's sidebar program that cycles through the images on the server.

Not only does it make the process of receiving photos from loved ones simple (once the program is installed the user only has to wait for their family to upload new images), but it's also a feature that is almost newsworthy and certainly an advantage over the recognized competitors.

You could even rotate in advertisements between photos for free accounts.
I think there are more then a few lawyers who are groaning at this turn of events. Sometimes market forces don't always do the 'right' thing...
Consumating Closing Quietly, Demonstrates Another Side of a Startup's Life
They had a java applet for a while, which run on any browser. So the move is deliberate.

Apparently Microsoft is trying to make a killer app to bring the masses back to Windows. But IMO it's too late.
Meh.

Most people are wrong about most things most of the time. Some people are right about some things some of the time.

Work hard, collect your "some things" into a narrow category and you'll be a professional, maybe even an expert. Just go with the flow and you'll have a brain full of random pop culture trivia.

The world is chock full of stupid people, it just seems like they're somehow easier to spot in America.
What makes you think you NEED to stay in control and "provide vision"? I started alone and within a month realized that I was going crazy. Then I teamed up with my long-time dev. partner and he not only provided some initial funding, but introduced us to a few very interesting people, then we got a 3rd guy who's like Linux God, who I keep learning new things from every day, now we're about to add a kick-ass marketing muscle - the dude keeps impressing us with his ideas and suggestions.

Right now, at this moment, if I pretend I am dead for a day, I still know the gears will keep rolling and the engine will keep accelerating. This is an enormously helpful feeling: stop being greedy and give your company a chance to survive.

That's my 2c.
What is your definition of a monopoly?
I've made something clearly better, in ways you can see at a glance.

That presumes that I have seen my photos in both places. I haven't. I barely use Flickr, and I've never used your site.

My glance at your demo didn't sell me on the difference thoroughly enough. Make the demo even more of an illustrated story, perhaps? More timepoints? More captions? A screencast might be nice if you want to show people the automatic-organization feature in action.

Get your first ten users cracking! Get some photosets into the system and showcase them in a box on the homepage! Nothing moves the flock like the sight of other happy sheep. :)

I'd make sure iPhoto import worked well before I went for Flickr. I really am mostly joking about the MSFT thing. I don't actually think that very many Flickr users harbor illusions that their data is private, and getting invested Flickr users to convert is a completely different marketing game from the one you're playing now.
This is just like the Gang of Four pattern fetish that sprung up in the 90s, then people saw "patterns" everywhere, and everything had to be named. Its like that with Monads, suddenly people are seeing then in ordinary things all over the place.
Giving a person 50% of a company that's vested over 4-5 years is much different than giving a person 50% of a company the day the come in.

If you come up with a decent vesting schedule, I think that you can probably avoid a lot of the pitfalls that you've described: What if he screws it up?

If he screws it up, fire him, and let him walk with the 3-5% he's earned in the 3-6 months that he's been working on the product.
I really love Pylons; if you want the "no unneeded cruft" philosophy of web.py, but want a widely-used framework, you may like it too. It's what Reddit switched to.
Interesting note that there is still value in "news". Otherwise Berkshire Hathoway would not have bought into BusinessWire. [0] Newspapers as a form of transmitting news is outmoded and is being left behind by bloggers and other individuals harnessing the superior reach of the Web. Organisations such as BusinessWire aren't as value-adding as they want you to think. [1] They are just the nice business friendly view that organisations are used to dealing with.

[0] Businesswire about page ~
http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/?epi_menuItemID...

[1] "PR Wire Service to Journalists & Bloggers: We Don't Need You" ~ http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/pr_wire_services_blogs_...
The word going around is that its Photosynth: http://labs.live.com/photosynth
More democratic? I'd say so, even if, ironically, this meant more top-bottom control. But I guess that was needed:

"Now, we realize that feedback has been a two-way street, but our data shows a disturbing trend, which is that sellers leave retaliatory feedback eight times more frequently than buyers do ... and this figure is up dramatically from only a few years ago." Bill Cobb from eBay (source: http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200801290559182.html)

I originally took the link from Nicholas Carr's blog:
http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2008/02/crowd_control.php
Earning money by writing a book is wrong because ...?
I'm a parent with kids who go to a small private school. All our own photo sharing needs are met with what we have but your private school blogging idea makes more sense to me. There are lots of things you could do.

Your site could accept submissions from parents who want their kids to get attention. Parents could create their own subsets to highlight the events involving their kids. The school could encourage kids to write their own accounts of the events. The best stuff could automatically go into an online yearbook. Sell them a $10 compact disk when their kids graduate.

One thing to keep in mind if you try to sell something to the schools directly is that they have annual budgets. The best approach would not be to ask for money upfront but to charge them at the end of whatever "year" makes sense for them.

One person you may want to focus your efforts on is the school librarian. The one at the my kids school is also in charge of the library web site. I'm pretty sure she would be interested in a system that made it easy to organize pictures and discussions of new books along with pictures of the kids. Something like http://www.delicious-monster.com
Have you ever known, or heard of, anyone who has cried in wonderment at a demo? Even as an exaggerated emotion signifier, that expression is uggh. Scobleizer is the anti-lolchrist. He just inspired me to make that word up.
I've been following what' Adrian's doing for about a year now. He's got a great head on his shoulder's and an all around nice guy. And, he's coming at programming from a Journalism background. So, he has a good sense of design, as well as a good sense of what people want.

He's one of the big reasons that I'm going with Django as opposed to Rails.
"... an anonymous source just informed me the entire Yahoo! Design Innovation team ..."

Expect more as public companies & VC backed start to stop the experimentation and look to save money.
Now, if they would only release an API, or some type of animation program and USB port....
Opera details:

Version 9.50 Beta
Build 4506
Platform MacOS X
System 10.5.2

Since Opera lets me manage preferences on a per-site basis, I normally run without anything like javascript or cookies enabled and only enable those features the site minimally needs.
+Ahem+

And, here I thought that Microsoft had ripped off all those ideas from Apple.

+Ahem+
Yahoo turns to News Corp., leaving Microsoft jilted at the altar
Broke Coder: Can you build a startup from ruby, coffee and noodles.
I've read FAW at least 6 times cover to cover and some of the individual interviews even more. Dying for more. Thank you.
* Interesting idea, to save your best oration until after the first rejection. Does anyone here do this? I can't see it working in most circumstances, but in a boardroom setting where your audience has paid good money for the work you've already done, they're not likely to actually let you leave after 5 minutes regardless of your threats (it was quite a dramatic bluff, I'd say).

* His standing up was interesting, but I wouldn't respect it if I were his audience. You can put all your cards on the table with less drama. To me, he was too overtly aggressive & theatrical. It unnecessarily puts the rest of the room on the defensive.

*Did anyone else not find the quality of discussion low? Poor logic and superficial, emotional responses. Reminds me why I stopped watching (almost all) television.
I think it's Photosynth. I run a similar (but open) project, http://openphotovr.org , and wonder what the effect on us will be.
I think the MAJORITY of homeless people are mentally ill.

I live in a suburb of Chicago, and I run into quite a few homeless people around our shopping districts and public transportation. I usually strike conversations up with them - which terrifies my wife, by the way - and most display fairly obvious symptoms of mental illness even in the brief moments I spend with them. I can't begin to imagine what symptoms they might exhibit if I was around them for longer periods of time.

I think mental illness is much more widespread than people realize, and our society really doesn't have an appropriate way to deal with the situation. I'd like to see this young author try to 'pull himself up by his bootstraps' if he was paranoid schizophrenic and hallucinating. It's rather hard to interview for a job when you think the interviewer is trying to kill you and you have leeches crawling out of your ears, for example.
Here is the ending of the movie Factotum (about the life of Charles Bukowski), a favorite scene of mine:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlXJIawiPE0
Hackers camouflage 100% of Web attacks, IBM researcher says
Command line quizzes
Be Very Careful w/ Time Machine
Absolutely, it's not going to be easy and we are aware of the legal problems with privacy. But yes, the facebook app is just our first product. We are working on off facebook stuff as well.
Brad Feld: Learning to Sell at a Young Age
It's a very traditional OO situation: you want a value that know how to handle its error case. Haskell makes it easy to implement that with types. Either you can check the integer return value (which your compiler can't verify), you can hack something up similar to it (return all the values in a list, say, and check how long that it), or you can see that a list is also a Monad, and Nothing looks like [] and Just x looks like [x].

In Rails, there's a file whiny_nil.rb, whose sole job is to report errors about people accessing a nil object when they shouldn't be. Using Maybe with pattern matching, coming from Haskell, makes as much sense as implementing Iterator with first-class functions. It looks weird, coming from Visual Basic, but it makes your code readable and short.
Yeah, definitely a must-read. I'd just open up the book randomly and start reading wherever I was. The particularly memorable ones were Max Levchin, Sabeer Bhatia, Josh Schachter, and TripAdvisor .
LiveUniverse rumored to purchase video site Revver
This is 107 days old, but I can't help but mention how ridiculous it was for me to have said that I worked in Guatemala and China "extensively." I don't know what got in to my tea...
(Semi) Practical IronRuby
You didn't include C-x ( to define a macro? I live off keyboard macros in emacs.