skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Well, I agree that email isn't going away, and that it's still as useful a social device as ever it was, assuming that your Plan for Spam is solid. I'm just not impressed by the people who wrap the features I've used since 1989 in a shiny new bow and try to sell them to me as the future of Facebook. It's nice to appreciate those features once and a while, but most of us have been using them all along!

I also agree that Facebook, itself, is going to reach its limit (if it hasn't already) in exactly the way you said.

Meanwhile, we can start this conversation again the next time this comes up. :)
Traffic on 200, but users come back, WTF?
lets suppose I have a sexy photoblog, how come the traffic does not go up even thought according to statcounter more than 50 users are returning? Under this logic a percentage of the new users would also return thus increasing the total traffic, but this seems to not be happening, why???
Thanks man. Just make sure you are on top of your business documents (contracts/tax information ect.) My least favorite thing to deal with, but ultimately very important.
Alibaba wants to buy out Yahoo’s shares
It seems to me that a startup can reduce its risk by swapping stock with another startup. That way, if either startup has a liquidity event, then the founders of both startups get approximately half as rich as they would have without the swap. Of course, more than just two startups can participate in a stock-pooling arrangement, reducing the participant's risk further.

Of course a startup does not want to swap stock share-for-share with just any other startup, and there are startups whose prospects are so dim that even if they offer 5 or 10 shares for every share of yours, you would not want to swap stock with them. And learning enough about another startup to judge their expected earnings is a lot of work. But sometimes the work has already been done for you, by YC for example.

There exists what economists call a "moral hazard" here: namely, once a startup has swapped stock with more than one or two other startups, its optimal strategy is for its founders not to put themselves out (that is, to coast, to relax) and rely on the possibility that one of the other startups will make a lot of money. But this is the same concern any individual founder has when he takes on any co-founder, and the solution is the same: you have (or someone you can trust has) to watch the other startups with whom you have swapped stock closely enough to verify that they are working as hard as you are. (YC's requirement that the startups it invests in must all move to the same city makes it easier for YC startups to watch each other in this way.) Along with that you will want to give yourself a time frame (1 year seems about right) during which time you can back out of the stock swap deal if you believe the startup you are swapping stock with is not putting themselves out (or has misrepresented themselves in negotiations with you).

I can think of several way to refine this strategy to deal fairly for example with the situation in which one startup gives up after 18 months while another works hard for four years, but I will stop here for now.
I think this pretty well defines it. Even if it failed, it shows you had the confidence enough in your own ability to try. If you admit it failed, it shows that you're humble enough to admit when something went wrong without shifting blame.

I figure running a startup is like getting your MBA... but on crack.
How do I become an LLC?
Why Bear's Shares Are Above $2
If material goods are any motivation, I personally think this is far better to visualize:

http://www.yafanet.com/pics_news/2007-11/ferrari599_4.jpg

:-)
Today, March 20, is Mister Rogers Sweater Day
The Fair-Value Blame Game
Ask YC: Is it a doomed product if the barrier to entry is too high?
I love programming web apps - especially with the latest frameworks. But I don't want to host them, I'd rather have them be self-hosted because I'm already enjoying my full time job. Anyways, I made a web app and finished a licensing scheme for it but I'm having second thoughts.

I think the barrier of entry is just way too high. This particular app requires you to install it on your own shared/vps and host it yourself.. Mint was successful for this (haveamint.com not mint.com), but that was a PHP app which is a lot easier to deploy than Django or Rails.

Anyways, what do you guys think? People are saying desktop software is dying because the barrier to install it is too high. If that's the case, I don't think a self-hosted Django or Rails product will do well at all.

Thanks for your input!
http://www.eclipseaviation.com
Report: Economy Roils Executive-Pay Moves
I want a version of Gmail that can run offline on my iPhone. I currently use Gmail, and it works fine with my iPhone's Mail program, but the paradigm shift between it and Gmail is a bit of a pain. iPhone's Mail doesn't have search, and doesn't organize things by thread. If someone at Google can port offline Gmail over to the iPhone, that would be two shades of awesome!
Get an old 4GB iPhone secondhand as your test machine.
>Why might it be that people with the background to have an informed opinion on something do not show greater diversity in those opinions?

For one reason or another, one viewpoint gets a leg up on the other one. After this, life is easier for those with the mainstream viewpoint, and new people join the establishment.

Case in point: I'm working on a paper right now in foundations of quantum mechanics. I did most of the work with Bohmian mechanics as my mental model (as a result of being exposed to a "deviant"). That viewpoint helped a lot, and I probably wouldn't have built my model without it. Note that the model is completely justifiable without it, but it's an unmotivated magic trick.

I've given talks about it from a non-standard perspective. People attack that. I've also talked about it, pretending it's black magic that yields a result everyone knows. People love that.

The result is the same, but I have an easier time promoting it if it looks mainstream.

It's no wonder people stick to the establishment. Even I'm going to stick to the establishment when it comes time to submit the paper.
Intel Presents: Robobrawl
And somewhat improbably, I just finished Great Mambo Chicken today.
I don't think the predictions are vague at all. Businesses that don't profit don't stay in business.

Facebook and MySpace are both examples of companies (or corporate divisions in the latter case), as best I can tell, that are surviving only thanks to massive quantities of outside investment. If the investments were made with a realistic expectation of return, it would be one thing, but given the economic realities of social networking that this article points out (and not for the first time), these investments are looking more like gross market distortions than anything else.
Love, Singularity, and Airships
You'll like this, I promise. The STNG crew cameo is only a few strips forward.
Can't wait till google gears is available for mobile Safari. It'll make my ipod touch more fun to use (I'm not always around wifi..).
A 'dream come true' for coffee machine startup
If you are worried about your barrier of entry being so high, why don't you try and lower it?

You have ruled out doing any hosting yourself, but there are still things you could do. For example, you could try and make your application as easy to install as "apt-get install <myawesomeapp>". Or you could try and partner yourself with an existing VPS provider: you can forward them customers, and they can profit on the hosting and lower the barrier of entry for you.

Mostly though I would recommend just going for it. I mean, what is the worst that can happen? Just refund everyone's money if they get unhappy. You might lose time, but you probably have a lot to gain.
Most Firms Near Default Have Private Equity Ties
Gotta say: Bullshit point of view.
Why did you name it SlinkSet?

What is the problem that you are trying to solve?
Milwaukee is now 5th fastest growing startup hub.
MIT’s TechTV…the new youtube
Phobot: a "phobic" robot, built with Lego Mindstorms
killing me man... my profit targets just got pushed up from $300,000 to $3,000,000! :-) The Moller Skycar (www.moller.com) is also an exciting project, although I don't know when it will hit mass market.
Literally! Chapter 12 "provides a complete mini-Lisp system including a package of builtin operators that you can extend."
Function Currying in Scala
The only way to fly:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator
YES! Now I can ignore that raster burn and keep working no matter how bad it is on my eyes! Seriously though, that is really great news since I'm sure it could lead to some really great human treatments.
Great info, thanks!
this comment is an example of it at the moment :-)
My intent isn't to bat for MD5, really. But since you asked me, I'll point out that MD5 is actually not that bad if you want a deterministic string of randomly distributed bits. If you don't need all 128 bits, nobody's forcing you to keep the extra ones. That said, you might as well use SHA1.
Abstract: The Anatomy of the Entrepreneur
19 billion? Sweet, that means the government can afford 19 new B-2 Bombers. Also, seeing as these billions of dollars of airwaves will be traveling through our bodies every single day, what's say charge a fee for that invasion and rake in some cash ourselves?
The Free IT Support Engineers Toolkit
Have you thought about using Amazon's EC2. You could make a Machine image and a method whereby an instance is being launched each time access is needed.

If you need more information email at bjorn AT stadil.com
That's because the people who pay 20K to 100K USD per application to license it from Sleepycat (now Oracle) typically hide the fact they use it inside their own expensive proprietary stuff.

Oracle claims 200 million deployments here -
http://www.oracle.com/database/berkeley-db/index.html

Mike Olson says Google, Amazon and Cisco all use it here -
http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/news/article/0,2...

Amazon SimpleDB is rumored to be Erlang + BerkeleyDB - http://chatterbox.pydinner.org/post/21675996

Sun ran into some trouble a while back when they used it as part of their Java Desktop without the proper license. They ended up paying a few million to avoid a lawsuit and put a positive PR spin on the whole thing here: http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/16328/sun_microsyste...

The lesser known (and BSD licensed) db 1.85 library still works well for a lot of applications. db 1.85 has a few bugs in the btree delete and overflow page logic which are easy to deal with. Perforce for example uses their own (fixed) fork of db 1.85 for their depot metadata.
"I totally disagree with the assertion that it's important to try to do great things (...)"

I must admit, I respect your difference of opinion, but I find it very hard to relate to your point of view. Your statement seems to be contrary to a basic aspect of the human condition; that is, the desire to improve our lots in life.

Greatness does not mean "startups for everyone". Perhaps the use of "our obligation" in my quote from Seth Godin meant "completely everyone's obligation" in your interpretation? For me, it meant the obligation of Seth's audience; that is, many of the same types with dreams of entrepreneurship who read YC news. In any case, my belief, which I believe to be the common one, is that greatness has a definition in many different situations.

Personal experience and my readings on the science of happiness (see "Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience" by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi) lead me to believe that the happy Wal-Mart employee is probably happy because they are able to regularly accomplish things that are meaningful to them in an environment they find suitably challenging. To say it simply, the happiness the employee finds in their work means they are likely a great Wal-Mart employee!

I think your interpretation of my statement on the nobility of encouragement alters the meaning very dramatically from the plain contextual meanings of my words. Perhaps I am not cynical enough, but to me, 'encouraging' another implies having their best interests at heart, not one's own.

For some of the readers here at YC News, we find ourselves with a startup dream inside of us that we are nearly dying to express externally. Indeed, I agree with you that those who plan to undertake a startup should take pause and not do so lightly. I believe that most of the startup bloggers you speak of at least suggest this. Encouraging people who have taken this look at the strength of their desire and their capability -- that is, freely helping this self-prepared group to reach the happiness they seek -- seems quite noble to me.

I feel I also ought to say something about the strength of your apparent disillusionment with the concept of startups. Life as a entrepreneurial success doesn't have to mean that all of one's old friends and new acquaintances turn manipulative. If it is a fear, one could simply give money beyond living allowance away to worthy causes and step back from the power game (see Woz). It's true there are relationship strengthening opportunities to be missed in starting a company, but there are also some to be gained. Co-founders may become best friends. Compatible significant others may be easier to attract when one is doing what one is passionate about.
This is probably not old news to most readers of The Economist.
You have to give them credit for explaining it well to non-hackers.
I find the star with an inverted star below it for up/downvoting a little off.
Facebook and MySpace are great businesses. Sure, valuing Facebook at $15 billion dollars is preposterous, but that doesn't mean it can't make some money; that doesn't mean it can't make more than enough money.
A leper awakens to find himself in a strange world of magic and finds himself cured of his disease. The inhabitants of this world believe him to be the reincarnation of a great hero from long ago due to his wedding ring which is made of white gold. He, meanwhile, has no idea what is going on.
Yeah, it only took them 50 years (during almost all of which they were the market leader) to IPO. Imagine that in the tech world. That'd be like Google not going public until 2050.
$3,000 would pay for my services for a summer. It would for a lot of students. I'd love to have a cool flexible summer job where I get to implement something interesting. Shamelessly i'm putting my name into the hat. I'll build whatever cool thing you want.

You're basically suggesting google summer of code on a smaller scale. I'm applying for that too, but its a long shot.

XKCD goodies and karma points sure don't help pay for bread, rent or tuition. Or all those other things I would buy if I had a reasonable income.
I have tried OSX. The file system and the way applications are handled bugs me. If i needed something besides windows I would be much more inclined to use one of the bigger linux distros simply because the macs, despite what the fans say, seem really locked down. sure, that can be changed, but the macs default behavior seems to be <i>here, let me do it for you</i>
I'll make sure to drop by sometime.
The greatest meal I ever had was at Picasso at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. The decor you can guess. The food was great, but damn, the paintings were ugly.
5% interest (which is meager) is 50,000 a year without touching the million itself.
after taxes it isn't a fantastic salary but anyone who can't live on it is living in some kind of fantasy land.

do 8-10% and you're talking serious money for no work.

I know people that tell me they can not live on less than 100,000 a year. If i could I would send them to ethiopoia, one way.
Don't Be Evil, a Trigger for Ethical Questions
For what it's worth, almost any random number generator is better than MD5 at giving a deterministic random bit string, given a seed. You might start with OpenBSD arc4random.
It's also not useful to most readers of The Economist, since nothing they commonly use relies on MD5.
I can't see any use for this, but it is pretty cool. Maybe next the car could bounce off of the side of the roads rather than getting stuck.
Ask YC: college interview tips.
I am a junior interviewing at a college CS department in a few weeks. I plan to ask about the student's attitudes, aptitudes, how they adapt, and how their prospects or outlooks change. I also plan to inquire about what I should do over the summer specifically to prepare; job, classes, etc. as well as a few miscellaneous questions about the curriculum.

Any do's and dont's would be appreciated.
Mod_rails teaser video.  Are they pulling our leg or is it real?
Xobni To Facebook? Nah
Steps Toward The Reinvention of Programming
"... The problem is that you could always reply to the topmost comment, thus making your reply highly visible. ..."

Good comments rise to the top and attract further analysis. What is wrong with that? It's not a flaw.

Commenting in discussion sites is a bit like surfing. The wave comes along, the first to the wave get a chance to add their opinion, facts, insight. Spectators on the beach can have the best view of the players commenting and join in by voting and adding further comment. As time moves on, the wave of interest in the story also wanes. If you join in too late, the best performance has already been voted on.

So either get to the best beach early by checking the surf report ~ http://news.ycombinator.com/active or you miss out.
Social is the New Black
if room quantity > number people living in the house + 2 then it is a waste. in fact i would say these people are pretty dumb. no matte how much i make i wont buy anything other than http://napaprefab.com/ but hey that's only me.
The Skycar is an awesome concept. I have been keeping track of it for a few years now. They are already mass producing the m200 flying saucer that only carries one person to fund the development of the Skycar.
Its still a leap year today...it will be a leap year all year.
This document has some interesting ideas! I especially liked the grammar which defines the accessors for a TCP IP header by feeding in an ascii art image of the header.
If it's worth thinking about this at all, you may be better off putting something into your code that would reveal its use in an application.

I don't know if this is true, but someone once told me that a magic number used in the implementation of DoubleSpace helped Stac Electronics prove Microsoft stole their code - it was the birthday of the wife of one of the founders.
Even if I could live forever, I hope that I wouldn't continue to hold an unchanging view of the world. I know I look at things differently now than I did 10 years ago -- why would I want my kids (if and when I have any) to adopt the views that I have now, when I probably won't hold those precise views ten years later?
MySpace and Facebook aren't making more than enough money. That's why FIM doesn't break out MySpace numbers and why Facebook raised a huge round. Business rolling in profit don't need anybody else's money.
The Economist is basically general interest stuff for smart people. They seem to like that sort of thing.
Right, I'd be interested to see 10 years down the line how many successes fit into each category (and in between). Still, if you can remain in the black with just 30% ending in an HR acquisition that's pretty strong. Seems like you should easily accomplish profitablity.
That is some perfect Hacker News linkbait. Great for those covered ... but otherwise, no insight at all.
Right. My thought is take $x, diversify to ensure that if all else goes wrong, I'm still set, then take the rest and do fusion research.
One million with no investment wouldn't last you long, but only a retard would stick it under their pillow. It's trivial to earn 5% and live off of the $50k in much of the country. That's the worst case and assumes no effort at all.
it depends on the type of users. Will they be the people to install rails anyway? Or put differently: are they coders/webdesigners/content creators? And how much do you think they will need your product? is it an improvement over existing (hosted) products or is it something entirely new? Simple put, the more tech-savy the lower this barrier is perceived. The more unique your app is, the more willing people are to cross the barrier. Without knowledge of either I can't really tell if the barrier is too high.
The article is from 2002, but even so I don't think that predates Valgrind.
Infrablog: The Business of Identity
I'd love an extension that garbage collects my browser tabs.

I open a lot of tabs. Closing them is painful, and something I usually put off until my browser crashes, or I have to do a restart.

Then there's this process of manually serializing each unread URL to disk (cutting and pasting each unread URL and emailing it to myself).

I'd like something that does two things.

- Make it so that I never have to close a tab again, when I get to 15 or 20 active tabs, this firefox garbage collector starts writing them to bookmarks/saved pages, and closing the oldest ones.

- Provide some mechanism for winding back the wheel - and either searching the contents of - or just scrolling through my history.

I'd love to write it today, but feel my time is better spent hacking on mobile devices. If I don't find an implementation of this within a couple of weeks - I'll probably reconsider.

Cheers to anyone who sends me a link, or writes the code that makes my dreams possible.
Simple, nay classical, JavaScript inheritance
LA-based well-funded startup needs Python programmers
Mars needs women, and Virgin Charter needs top-notch Python programmers. The company is less than two years old, but as a member of the Virgin Group of companies it is backed by Sir Richard Branson, so it's relatively low-risk as startups go. If you want more details, contact me at ron dot garret at virgin charter dot com, or just go to https://www.virgincharter.com/contact/for_work
Zude, Visual development environment for the Web (adds OpenSocial support)
Trademarking Internet startups
Was curious to hear your opinion about trademarking newly established startups. Also I would like to hear how people view international domain suffix registration. Does it make sense to do it?
Startup Opportunity: the Activity Platform
Listen Up: 17 Signs That You Are Being Wiretapped
Mobsters and cheating spouses aren't the only ones that get wiretapped. In fact, just about anyone who possesses confidential information is a prime target for a wiretap. Get the clues to avoid becoming a victim of information theft.
$10 million bounty for super-efficient cars
The great thing about modern life is that the rich no longer live different lives, they just waste a bunch of space they don't live in, glue diamonds to everything, pay more for the same food, and then live pretty much the same as everyone else.

Health care is about the only thing left that challenges this notion and I expect we'll get that worked out in the next 50 years or so.
Ask YC: Favorite Philosophical novel?
Mine: Sophie's World, by Jostein Gaarder
I knew there was a magazine for wives of sports players, but it didn't occur to me that there wasn't one for the players themselves.

http://www.prosportswives.com/
I have been posting job ads on Google AdWords to do what Sniptalent is promising to advertisers: make my ad appear on relevant sites, and target people who are not actively looking for a job. Is Sniptalent just a better packaging of that idea, or there is more to it?
Start a religion?
By 2050 solar power could end U.S. dependence on foreign oil and slash greenhouse gas emissions
Anyways, I made a web app and finished a licensing scheme for it but I'm having second thoughts.
are you serious? Launch. Launch. Launch.Let the market decide "how high" the barriers to entry are.
Thanks murrayh, I should probably put more effort into making a good install script. It's tough because a lot of server environments are different (ie. what version of Python and what version of Django are being used..), but I'm pretty sure I can sign up for accounts at different hosting providers to make a good installer.