skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That's where the Economist ends the story, and Slashdot picks it up.
unlike most of the rants/flames, this one is a well balanced interesting article.
Braid - a Piston equivalent for Git users
Fair enough. But the sub-title leads with "How" and the review of research goes into a bit of detail (for a popular account). How hard could it be to get a few quotes from Rose or Steve, esp for a writer at the Economist?
I don't get this article. The author compares 37signals to Southwest in their refusal to grant seating assignments, baggage transfer and in-flight meals. However, he makes a good argument that Southwest knew better than their customers what they wanted. They want amenities, but not at the expense of cheap airfare and on-time flights. Doesn't this prove that Southwest does, in fact, know what their customers want better than the customers know what they want? Can't you make the same claim about 37signals? It's like the old cliché: don't give the customer what they ask for, give them what they need.
It's not that 37signals writes software for themselves and no one else: they write it for themselves and people like them.

Their thinking is that they know themselves and what they want, so they seek to satisfy their needs. If they tried to satisfy other people's needs – needs they don't have or understand – how will they know how to succeed?

Companies do that, yes. Apple is doing it by adding enterprise features to the iPhone – I'm not sure Apple gets the enterprise culture, and Apple employees probably don't use Microsoft Entourage, but they're adding enterprise features to satisfy a customer that isn't them.

37signals has chosen not to do that. And I think that's a choice they can make. I also don't find anything inherently wrong with arrogance.

Norman's article seems contradictory. He says at the beginning that simplicity is bad, but says customers complain about complexity, then he highlights Southwest Airlines refusal to add requested features as a good thing – but 37signals is bad because they don't add requested features.

I love my Backpack. I've enjoyed using Writeboard in the past. Ironically, I feel like Norman's saying I'm dumb for being satisfied with these tools.

Norman's post reminds me of designers complaining about the success of MySpace. "It's so poorly designed, it's success must be a fluke! If people only saw a well designed option they would abandon MySpace." Here Norman is saying 37signals doesn't deserve success because they aren't doing things the way he's familiar with.
7 startup savings tips
Designing for yourself doesn't show contempt for the customers but quite the opposite. They design for themselves as they are representative of their customers. This is true because this is what they've always done.

If you design for someone else it is harder to know if building the right thing. Also you are less likely to be enthusiastic about the product and therefore quality will probably suffer.

This attitude doesn't show contempt but courage. The courage to be able to say no and disappoint a few to protect the quality of the product that serves many very well.
Well... ok, but there's also an argument to be made along these lines: they're not "ignoring their customers", they're using their own needs, wants and tastes as the truest guide to what their customers want, because they don't want everyone as their customers, just those who self select because they have basically the same tastes as 37 signals.

Perhaps the perceived arrogance is that this model probably doesn't work for all industries, and the 37 signals guys are sure... well, loud, about how great their model is.
37signals successfully became the company I spoke with a few friends about starting quite a few years ago. Make good products leveraging new technologies aimed at small business. Work smarter, not harder. Make a strong, useful core set of features and provide simple interfaces.

We decided against doing it because we estimated it would be too difficult to market our products, regardless if they are superior to their competitors, because of the target market. Although our plan was selling actual software, in a pre-web technologies world. How 37signals has been successful in doing that is quite impressive. That gives them the right to be arrogant in my opinion.

Now whether or not it is going to help or hurt their sales is an issue that needs to be addressed. Just because they CAN be arrogant doesn't mean they should. But if they are trying to start some 'beef' to get some PR going and its working, then kudos.
So what do you want from me? Affirmation of privilege? Compliance to some vague utopian model of 20th c. capitalism vis patriarchal tradition? I'm right here. It's unclear where you are. Clear that you aren't interested, except now to farther your own effusion of self esteem, and moreover then discount the life experienc of any other to disagree. I'm sure you can do lots of things very well, but for wit and force of action, you are overmatched right here, and on the ropes. I'm not your boy. I don't care who you are. I've taken harder hits than you could dream. So, what do you want from me?
X has already solved Y

That's probably, the most CLASSIC phrase people said when they heared about the lamp, the clock, typography, and will continue to say for every other invention that exists out there. Real entrepreneurs don't start their phrases like that.

You just said that to convince yourself. By the way you used 4 times the word facebook in one 1 paragraph.

That's 7%! So, let me just neglect your opinion.
As a breadcrumb for anyone stumbling across this via google, I also had to install the latest X 11 to get the X windowing to show me anything. X 11 is grayed out on my install disks in the optional installs for leopard. Until upgrading X 11, the terminal window would run and the X 11 process would launch, but no visible window would appear.

http://trac.macosforge.org/projects/xquartz/wiki/X112.1.4

Now the macports putty is working. Sweet!
Which rap song is this?
By earning enough revenue to cover their costs, 37signals is automatically more successful than 98% of other software startups that have ever existed. If the author believes his philosophy is better, then I suggest he buy them out and have them work his way.

But honestly, I think he is blogging just to see himself type. Both 37signals and the author aim to "make something people want", but they approach that problem with different philosophies. The author acknowledges that the 37signals philosophy is successful at making simple things for people with simple needs, a valid market niche.

The 37signals attitude is not "a symbol of eventual failure" as long as they can continue to make things people want. By focusing on his customer feedback, I'm assuming Don Norman can also be successful. There is no One Right Answer, and it riles me to no end when people insist that there is. In fact, these approaches aren't even mutually exclusive. Does Don Norman honestly believe that 37signals NEVER reads customer feedback and NEVER does any usability studies?

Paul Graham insists that a startup should not focus on revenues, but Viaweb did in fact sell a service and was profitable. Should he then write angry blogposts condemning his past self for "doing it wrong"? Should he yell that young Paul Graham is "bound to fail"?

The only thing that I learned from this article is that I never want to work for Don Norman. He should have a nice cup of tea, reflect, and then delete this blog post.
Opinions like Don's sometimes come from envy and a sense that successful people should be humble and not affront one's sensibilities by disagreeing, and especially not disagreeing AND succeeding. To summarize: Successful people should be humble and know their place, and not threaten my inflated ego by flaunting their success.

If the actual results of 37 signals' philosophies are bad, the market is the judge, and so far, the market seems to be saying "nice work."
Heathrow airport first to fingerprint
Arrogance?! Kettle, pot, black Mr. Norman?
A butterfly. Wow.
Really?

http://www.notebookreview.com/assets/15839.jpg
You know, I'm starting to think there's no intrinsic difference between self-confidence and arrogance. Both arrogance and self-confidence amount to having balls and the willingness to piss people off because you don't care what they think. Whether you were self-confident or arrogant comes down to whether you used good means to achieve a good end. This replaces the self-confident/arrogant dichotomy with the more familiar good/bad dichotomy.

Then, a lot of people are selfish. If you are doing something they don't like, they'll say you're bad, and if you help them out, they'll say you're good.

My (probably inaccurate) conclusion is the people you piss off will say you're arrogant, and the people that you helped out will say you're self-confident.

Nota bene: this is all pretty tentative. My guesses don't represent my opinions, or those of any startups I start in the future.
A Pleo robot skinned alive. Plus some cute kittens.
These are all so marginal. 5% is never going to add up to much on a small scale.
Then most people in the world could not "afford the kind of things an MIT-caliber mind needs".
That's journalism?
A conversation with Michael Arrington of TechCrunch
The Future of Social Networks: Social Networks Will Be Like Air
i don't know the whole story of pg taking away your voting rights, but as a guess, i'd say he did so because he felt you were abusing the privilege.

so now, rather than getting the message and being cool about it, you and curi are incessantly belly-aching instead.

in pg's place, i'd be thinking it's about time to ban both of you altogether.
I love Don Norman, and have since the '80s.

But, he's contradicting himself here.

"But I would prefer someone who designed software for other people. If you want a hobby, fine, indulge yourself."

...

"Use Southwest Airlines as the model ... It is not because they ignore their customers. On the contrary, it is because they understood that their customers had a much more critical need."

...

That's exactly it. 37signals isn't trying to ignore their customers. They're keeping apps simple because feature bloat is to web applications what reserved seating is to Southwest Airlines.

I am at a loss to explain why Don doesn't see this.
If you have clients High Rise is good.
No, man. DHH looked it up. Don was just quoting DHH. Neither Don nor DHH are calorie-free, BTW.
(After Calacanis edited his post)... As long as it's a decent wage and it's the sort of stuff I want to be doing, I would be happy to have a workplace like that.

OS X, dual monitors, good chairs, free lunch, no getting shoehorned into MS Office or Exchange email, no phone system... sounds great!
"I'm starting to think there's no intrinsic difference between self-confidence and arrogance"

IMHO, the difference is in attitude. Self-confidence says "I'm OK, I'm pretty good." Arrogance says that, plus "oh, and other people suck."
Knew a developer who solved problems by modifying code until it worked: a veritable one-man GA (Genetic Algorithm) poor at math but able to sling code 24x7. He worked atrocious hours. Usually he got something close enough to correct for others not to notice. The bosses admired his "work ethic". Last I heard he was an officer in a VC firm, on his third marriage, in failing health and still working round the clock. He asked the same of his developers which led to hi turnover.

I know another developer: after analysis he could predict time-to-completion within days; he was always correct; his code was always perfect and well-documented; he didn't pad his work: nobody else could do equivalent work in the same time. He's worth 10 of the GA-type developer. Today he remains a developer; he's in good health, happily married and hasn't worked over 45 hours a week in the last 10 years. He's very well-paid.

Life's like that: incompetents often succeed (after a fashion) but few are lucky enough to depart the game unscathed. And as some Chinese guy said it _is_ better to be lucky than skillful!
I remember well. You had a choice between chocolate chip or plain cookies and once an articulated truck pulled up and dumped 35452 tins of Spam on my lawn.
They are masters at presenting information properly in terms of visual layout. But the stuff always struck me as ... how to say, "fashionista" in that it makes a fetish out of obsessing over details that have almost no yield value, ie, their impact in the final scheme of things on your finished work result is minimal, if at all.

But just in case you didn't realize that using the right sort of bullet point or putting one option to the left of the other was the be-all end-all of life itself, they constantly remind you with their writing, which to me varies wildly from intuitively useful, if not always applicable outside their own companies, to vastly oversimplified in ways that make me suspect they tend to gloss over the complexities that can be found in other people's businesses.

It's almost like they're saying, or at least I'm hearing, "Look - we made this very simple neat looking to-do list - why can't Microsoft make a whole operating system this neat and simple? They must be stupid or something! That's why we rule!"
My startup (not launched yet) is a dating site and one of the features we have is showing the response rate of the users (with some tweaks that solve the problems that I talk about in the next sentence). However, you need to be careful in how you present this data to the user. Because even if a girl's response rate is only 20% it might simply be that she's attractive and has gotten all the guys to contact her and she just can't respond back. So the response rate is not a really accurate way of telling the user "you have a 20% chance of getting a response".

By asking the user for criteria and then saying "20% of users that met her/his criteria received a response" is not a good idea. A lot of users of online dating sites are frustrated with the perfection that they need to achieve. Not everyone can be perfect and fit your criteria, and just because the user doesn't fit the criteria doesn't mean that they can't be a perfect match for the user.
The point is moot. Storage schemes are not important in themselves.
Ask YC: What music do you listen to when hacking?
What music, if any, do you listen to when hacking? Do you find it helps you concentrate or is it just a distraction?
There's that, to a degree. But <argument from authority> PG says smart people don't think they're smart, they just can't understand how dumb everyone else is</ argument from authority>. This doesn't mean they go around telling people they suck, but that's generally the attitude at Hacker News. You often hear about criteria being about whether something sucks or doesn't suck.

Also, being pretty good implies being better than others. Whether you praise yourself or dis others, you're still saying you're at a high percentile. Being good or sucky is relative.
So ... if you despised your own intelligence, your intelligence would be your flaw?
From what I've experienced, that's pretty much how any creative person works. When you're on a roll, you don't want to waste it. I'm like that myself, I've done a 36 hour 'shift' before because I was on the damn biggest idea of my life -- so much so, I did 1,000% work and it was to my usual standard, if not higher, for quality. If I do one of these days in two working weeks (10 days) then who cares if I produce less work on a day to day basis, as long as my average productivity is equal or higher than the rest?

Some days I blatently just don't work, creativity hits me when I'm doing something different. If I'm focused too much on a task, it's like I inhibit my mind from processing it in different ways. It's like pushing a rock up a hill, if you just keep trying you never think that pushing it in a spiral is much less effort and faster than killing yourself taking the direct route and getting nowhere.

Hackers should know this lesson as it takes creativity. The unconventional way is what everyone here should be interested in, otherwise it wouldn't need hackers; would it?
There is a right click, simply click while you have two fingers on the touchpad. This is much simpler than moving your thumb to click on the right button.
Yes really, look at the up and down arrow keys.
The two finger tap is easier to use than a right mouse button, IMO.
I think you missed his point. He certainly isn't worried about redistribution of power.

I don't think he'd argue that any citizen should have the power of a police officer to arrest someone. That could involve a great deal of violence, and officers are trained for those situations.

His point is more that given existing asymmetry in power, symmetric exposure of information is not equivalent.

You can find out about a cop arresting you. The Cop can find out about you. But the cop can do so much more with that information, and can do it faster.

He often has argued for the inherent benefit of privacy.
Because they can get away with it.
If you have a folder full of media files (jpg|mp3|avi) then zip is going to waste a lot of time and CPU cycles over just tar-ing it all up.

Other than that, I've just used tar directly in some edge-cases to fit within some constraints.
Strategically speaking, since you know that people are predisposed to envy, it might be a good idea to at least appear humble on the outside. You make more friends and allies that way.
right - $1000 in flights every other month, returning $50 isn't much? that's a mobile bill for the month
DHH looked it up.

Well, that's who I'm referring to.
Tim Berners-Lee makes a business case for the Semantic Web in 14 paragraphs
wow, that's some amazing deference to authority. you don't know what happened, but assume if someone gets in trouble they must have deserved it.
1. When things go awfully wrong, still go ahead - but analyze what went wrong where. Make note of what contributes to the failure, and how to fix it. Start with why did the startup fail? Or why is the startup losing users? Is there anything you can do to fix it? Is it feasible to fix it, and will it generate profits? When will I reach a break-even point? etc. But if you believe in your DREAM, then GO AHEAD.

2. You can almost sense about the potential of your startup idea. If you think there are ways which could improve you revenue, or media exposure ( in a good way ), do it. Change your maket processes, partners so that you save every single penny, but make sure you build a lot of good will along the way)

3. If your startup is bleeding a lot of money, and when you don't SERIOUSly see a future for your startup, QUIT. Of course, when the market doesn't need a product, its value goes down. If you believe you product has the potential, but isn't successful because of other factors (like lack of media exposure, etc), go GET IT.

Hope I was clear...
Thanks!!!
PG and I are saying the same thing, essentially.
and if your lengthy list contains a mistake somewhere?
So which one of you on this board is going to solve the riddle?
Arrogance is self-confidence carried too far. Up to a point self-confidence helps you do better work, but if you have too much you start to do worse.
WTF? I submitted that same idea (extremely similar) to YC as my secondary idea!
They did, once Facebook allowed open registration.
what i meant is a dedicated key that when pressed will trigger a page-up/page-down event. on the mac you have to press a modifier key to make it go. most of the time this is ok (and i don't really mind it whilst in emacs ctrl-v/meta-v are basically the same thing) except that you can press ctrl-pageup/down on firefox to toggle the tabs. on the mac you have to press ctrl-mod-pageup/down ... same goes for gnome-terminal. i don't feel like turning my fingers into a pretzel for no good reason.
Scaling at 2am with EC2
i'll have a go at it. im really bored atm
why is NSX2's comment (sibling of this comment) dead? does anyone else see anything wrong with it? (i'm not saying i agree with it, just i don't see any reason it should be killed)
All kinds, the only time I avoid music and keep silence is when I have to do reading/writing stuff. Probably the same reason I find reading and writing to be more of a chore and coding/designing more enjoyable.
The End on an Era
It's lighter than an X61, yet has a larger screen. That's what the thin-ness buys me.

I'd still have gone with a thinkpad if they came with anything but #$%# vista.
What the hell is wrong with looking up a word in a dictionary to be sure you understand the meaning or the nuances of its meaning. If you are going to the trouble of writing a blog post specifically criticizing someone, you had better use words correctly and spell them right too.

For example, the word "irony" has a more nuanced definition than you might think. It can be either: saying something but meaning the opposite, something happening when you thought/expected something else would happen, or its use in theatre when things are clear to an audience but not clear to the characters.

I'm sure there are plenty of other examples, but looking up a word and thinking carefully about its meaning is just good writing.

Its also an easy way to start an article. High schoolers do that a lot at valedictorian speeches. ;P
The JME IS their platform. All they are doing is pushing that platform out to more users.
Probably NSX2 deleted it himself.
It always struck me how my math classess seemed to focus on the mechanical exercises and never let us glimpse at the true genius of what we were brainlasly repeating with them.

However, I think I could say the same for many of my classes. As an Engineering student, I'm sure most of my physics classes are way beyond what I will ever use when I leave university (trig btw, heavily used for most of this classes). I think the same reasoning could be applied here, instead of repeating painful exercises consisting basically of memorizing and rearranging formulas, let the student wonder at the context and history behind each of the subjects and the problems that were solved with them.

This is a problem affecting education systems in a deeper level than the math curriculum, it comes down, I think, to something the author points at, which is this widespread notion that education is supposed to be something that "prepares tomorrow's workforce" instead of it being a source for inspiration and enlightenment.
no, deleted displays a different message than dead, and i can still read the comment. it's not deleted. turn on showdead.
When people accuse you of something..."You're arrogant"...it doesn't matter if the word has a nuanced definition. "The people" don't use nuance. Now, if an intellectual makes a detailed philippic against you, it might be worth explicating carefully. Even then, probably not...especially if you're trying to sleuth out some deeper compliment buried in an insult.

I don't care if he's arrogant, for what it's worth. My problem is that he is a dispenser of humdrum truisms and humdrum falsehoods that mysteriously result in adulation.
It would be quite easy to inspect the bytecode and find if the class loader would be invoked. I don't believe that you can eval source with mobile Java, so its fairly watertight.
AIM solved online dating because it let's you have your whole date online. With a guy.
There's an overlap with job hunting ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=131870 ).
No, PG is just jealous of my "arrogance/self-confidence" so every once in a while if I say something people give me points for, he goes on a down-modding binge and cuts my karma in half. If it creeps up again, then eventually I just get sent to the "showdead" group.

I will now be starting my 4th account ... kinda funny because if I had all my accounts' karma accumulated sans the 30-40 point downmodding binges, I think I'd be at about 4-500 by now.

But the mere thought that I piss him off enough to distract him from more important matters brings me more joy than his downmodding of all my comments sessions will ever bring him, so I persist.
Did pg "have a life" when starting viaweb? If I recall correctly he was arguing in favor of work 10x harder for 4 years instead of working for 40 years at normal velocity.