skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
First of all, FF has a global market share of about 21%.

If you were looking to test an idea to the "early adopter" crowd (the "echo chamber"), starting with FF/Safari is the smart way to do it. What percentage of tech bloggers of note use IE?

Assuming your v1 test is successful and it's time to "cross the chasm", of course, IE is a must.

If you'd like a little data thrown in, our userbase (after being on TechCrunch twice and LifeHacker 3 times in the last few months) is only 21% IE.
Two cheers for dedicated hardware pushing progress while Moore's law for silicone circuits approaches a wall!

After a graphics processor, you'll buy a physics engine, and then vector math, AI, and Vision engines.

Graphics card makers know this, and will just put all those chips on a single card.
It's in Google's best interest to keep MS and Yahoo separate. It would rather fight two so-so competitors than a stronger, composite one.
If the intent was to monitor communications, why would they cut multiple cables simultaneously? That only draws more attention.

I don't buy the "test to see if they could actually cut this many cables simultaneously" idea. Cutting cables is not fundamentally difficult -- they are not even armored below a certain depth. It would also be a very expensive, complicated, and potentially embarrassing test.
I guess I'm too paranoid to buy "coincidence" even if there doesn't appear to be any other truly logical explanation.
Well, yes, theories are never proven true in any ultimate sense. But it explains how people work rather well.

If a theory works time and again to explain something then, eventually, it's considered proven. For example, Newtonian physics/gravity isn't strictly correct true, but it still useful. It works to explain things well enough that it's pretty much the only model 99% of the world will ever need, and, in that sense, it's considered true.
Creative startup people: Do you have what they have?
The distinction between "theories" which aren't proven true, and facts which are, is false. Nothing is proven true in an ultimate, certain sense.

That isn't important. But not because if something seems to work a bunch of times (how many?) then it's true. That isn't a way forward. The way forward is to focus on what the best available explanation is, and to improve it through criticism.
I actually considered doing the web application I'm doing at the moment as firefox only, purely because it heavily relied on SVG. It's very much a niche market where my competitors are desktop applications, and it will be a fairly expensive subscription service so it didn't seem unreasonable to demand users download firefox.

Eventually though I just came to realise that the biggest advantage of the web was the ability to have anyone come to my site and be ready to use the product. So in the end I've gone with flash.
Yes, I worried about that at first. Someone's going to post something like "steal a cop car", and some fool's going to try to do it.

I'll do more work on the things you suggested, especially something more local for everyone. Thanks.
>"No, the other option is for your customers to install Firefox. Now this isn't always something you can demand/expect of your users. But for example for a free service or during a beta period it's perfectly reasonable"

So you think that users will go through the trouble of installing a new browser to see a free website or a product in beta? Good luck with that...

It seems to me that a lot of really good programmers (of which you seem to be one, judging from your comments) don't mingle a lot with "normal" people. These are the ones that have normal lives, use their computer only as a tool that is expected to just work, and use IE because it came with the computer.

And they are the ones that will pay for products. Early adopters are a really hard crowd to make money from, they expect everything to be free, and they will move on as soon as something more exciting comes along.

I would never launch a product, not even in a beta, that only works in firefox, Not only do you lose more than half of your potential customers, but it also sends a signal that either you are not very good at what you do since you only seem to be able to make it work in one browser, or else that you don't much care. Both are pretty bad.
Each new business gives hope and meaning to our world? WTF?
Good decision :-)

And all the best of luck...
You could try Mechanical Turk. From what I hear, you can post a "visit my site, fill out a quiz and get a nickel" link. And, you can let people opt in to give their email address to keep them updated on the site.

If you craft the Mechanical Turk job well, you could probably get 5000 visits for a nickel each.
21:30 is an interesting point
There are fewer angels in Europe. Doesn't mean that there are none. I presume enki you are from Germany?
Google offers Yahoo help to deflect Microsoft's bid
Linus Torvalds Interview, Part II
Personally - I'd have to think twice about being acquired by those guys, unless I was already vested...
I just can't wait until our video cards match the speed out our cpu. That will be the day...
I don't think that's the best way. Sure you get hits, but how many actually stay?
if i heard enough about it or it interested me i would try it. but i doubt i would use it, firefox and safari are my browsers of choice .
Didn't mean to downvote this. I click randomly sometimes.

Seems that something that doesn't matter shouldn't be legislated. Do patents matter in other industries? If patents drive innovation in some industries, but have no effect on others besides putting money into lawyers' pockets (and out of taxpayers', entrepreneurs', and corporations' pockets), that would be a case against software patents but not all patents.
I know it is hopeless for me to try to get into Y Combinator (single founder, not ivy league, never worked at a big internet company ala google, already rejected). So I filled out the TechStars application and so far I had a least some followup questions asked of me (that is good).

I probably won't make the cut but the chance at having the influence and instant publicity is too much to pass up to not try.
nope, but they look at the percentage and 1% for 15.000 feels little.

people aren't used to equity here, so we have a hard time finding people understanding the numbers.

even those that understand, don't like the feel of owning less than 10%.

convertible debt sounds like an option - will have to see if we can find a lawyer that has even heard of it ;)
Yeah, if it was cool enough, I'd try it out in IE.
We're in Austria, and we sent out quite a good number of business plans to people. We had about 15 meetings in January. Most of them have never dealt with teams like ours (4 hacker/designers with business experience), nor internet based business.

We even got some offers, but not at conditions acceptable to us. (Sell your soul for 100K and we might give you more cash later)

If you know anyone else we should send it too, please do tell! We're quite open about sharing the business plan. Just mail us at paul@boehm.org.

We think we have a good head start. We're more worried with funding than with copycats right now.
ok, will look into this.

what kind of discount is usual at this stage? 20%?
Linus Torvalds: Patents are nasty. It's kind of hard to really say a lot more than the fact that patents on ideas in general are a huge mistake and the whole notion that you can have patents, business models and software is pretty broken to begin with.
I like it. It encourages people to participate in something active, or at least fulfilling.

I'd definitely organise stuff geographically. I can bake a cake anywhere but I can only visit an attraction if I'm in that part of the world.
I know its not sort of cool, but actually using flex on rails is great.
From a cursory glance, it looks as if 4 of the current batch of 21 startups have founders who went to Ivy League colleges. Probably more worked for big Internet cos at some point, but we don't care much about that either.

It's true we're reluctant to fund single founders-- there are only 2 in the current batch-- but that's because it really does make it much harder to succeed. So you should try and find someone you know who will work with you, if you can.
This doesn't prove that piracy correlates to global warming, it shows that google searches for "free movies" are correlated to searches for "global warming"...

http://www.google.com/intl/en/trends/about.html
You Be The VC -- Your Idea + Our Support = Your Company
IPv6 is a great opportunity for vendors to sell new routers and new operating systems. However, we should fully evaluate RFC1365 before proceeding. It is possible to use IPv4 extension blocks to expand the IPv4 address space in a manner which is fully downward compatible.
Dude, Boostphase is totally bogus. I tried to reach the dude listed in a previous article about it...totally unresponsive.
Justin.tv does.
If by schemaless you mean the arbitrary name/attribute pairs, you could simply use SQL, with an "attribute" table with "name" and "value", and "nodeid" columns.
Will I try it out on IE, sure!
Will I use it on IE on a regular basis, not so sure!

What's the big deal with making it cross-browser, unless you are thinking of a short-cut?
By schema-less, do you mean that it's possible that every new record in the database could have a few attribute-values that no other record has, or that you simply don't know what your attributes are at this time but at some point you will know them all?
Where Are the PHP Developers in NYC?
Remember when Microsoft wanted to buy AOL?
If you honestly don't know why you're being downmodded it's legitimate to ask. That's not complaining, just learning.
I've been involved with the project off and on for a few years now. (I wrote the Interfascia GUI library for Processing.) As an interface designer, I find that it makes a great tool for rapid prototyping.
Just to point out... the top 4 CS schools aren't in the Ivy League: Berkeley, CMU, MIT, & Stanford

[edit: reason enough to make a new Ivy League? call it the 100 League]
I interact with "normal" people, and at one family I know switched to Firefox because of the piclens plugin.

It's actually not that uncommon for Windows users to install software on their computer off the Internet. They do so more than I do, actually. If I can't apt-get it I usually pass.
"Confined to the type system" is funny language. Which type system? I have personally never felt confined to any type system except for C++'s and Java's. And even then, it's not so much the type system as it is the verbiage needed to define new types. I don't mean to go all Haskell-zealot on this comment's readers, but Haskell's would be an example of a type system where I have not felt confined. I am confined in the sense that I am confined to the three dimensions of this universe, but not any more than that. Wanting to violate its type system would be like wanting to walk in the direction of the fourth dimension. But then again, you can (and should not) violate its type system if you really want to do so.

Also, static typing can help with testing, since if you know your types, you have handy tools like QuickCheck that you can use.

> "Type verification provides very little confidence that an application works."

So what? It makes finding errors and fixing them faster and easier. And it makes making changes easier, unless you're changing the behavior of stateful objects.
Sure, why not? IE spits out a lot of warning messages in my gnome terminal, but aside from that WINE seems to be working just fine. What's the URL?
no I think its just the overall design. Perhaps the opening page shouldn't be a blatant "here are some cool things you can do" -- rather if you see flickr or twitter or facebook's front page, its usually an "About" sort of thing or login, y'know?
Operations Mantras from a MySQL DBA at SixApart
I think he means currents and normal wear-and-tear?

But again, 4 times...

There is definitely something strange going on.
We're targeting single coding hiphop moms. It's going quite well.
Ithink it's cool that you made that decision.

But hey, I'm just the business guy ;-)
Your harddrive *will* fail - it's just a question of when
Looks like it only shines in a very limited amount of use cases.
UnConferences: Take Your PowerPoint And...
Turing Award 2007 awarded for the groundbreaking work on Model-Checking
See, I wholeheartedly agree with you about IE, but flash suffers from many of the same problems.

It's a plugin, so right out of the gate a whole class of people won't be able to use it. Plus, even though many have flash installed, versions vary widely, so unless you code for flash 6, again, good luck working with everyone's computer.

There's a right way to do things, with built in browser support, across all the major browsers. We spent time up front to make sure things did work, and now we continue to reap the benefits.
There's a bigger and cooler reason to explain this than the perceived lack of competence pg has in single founders.

Something hard to imagine until you think about it is that it will be impossible to find someone to join you when you're already in San Francisco. Apparently, there are a lot of startups, Fortune 500, and Inc 500 companies competing for the same people. At least, that's what I've come to understand. So, he is really doing you (us) a favor.
I don't usually try anything out that doesn't work in Safari, unless I have a vested interest in doing so.

Of course, that often means that Google products aren't useable for a year or so after they launch...
I meant to say 3-4 unique visitors. We are an e-commerce site - a product discovery and research site - http://www.reviewgist.com

That should do for us for now. For any kind of AB tests and even to get some money trickling that can be promising enough.
I didn't say that you won't get any users, just that you could have had roughly twice as many if you properly support all browsers.

And this is all about business, yes ?
I just started using Navicat Lite for PostgreSQL on OSX. Not open source, but free and seems pretty nice so far. Might be worth a look.
Thanks for responding. I have the same question, does this traffic stay ?

We have used stumbleupon to get 80-100 hits a day. This traffic usually has a low bounce rate of 20-30%. However when we took the same page and bid on StumbleUpon network for paid insertions it sure sends traffic but visitors hardly stay. Bounce rates hit 90%.
Admittedly this is adobe propaganda, but their website has stats on flash penetration, its pretty impressive: http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer

I did once see on a comment here that more people had flash in their browser than had javascript turned on, but I can't vouch for that.

Of course I am using SVG which means firefox or a badly supported plugin for IE. If you didn't need flash's interactivity, graphics or sound it would be pretty silly to use it.
The Law of Association
So what the hell does "You Be The VC" mean, when it appears to be an incubator? They'll provide office space and seed money if I front $1 million, drive an expensive car and attempt to wrestle them off the board?

Am I missing something, is this satire that just went right over my head?

[Edit: I think I get it now, the slogan isn't aimed at the entreprenuers that enter, it's aimed at the visitors that vote. Does anyone else think this is absurd branding, or am I just having a Day of Comprehension -5?]
That doesn't matter as long as it shines in the use cases that the average consumer cares about.
Wow, that's a great list, I'll just add studying statistics.
It's a really interesting topic and it really opens your eyes to a whole new world.

Good luck.
Pope Excommunicates Microsoft
Some of the judge choices are ridiculous. It would be pretty weird being judged by some of them.
A Gentler Capitalism
Ruptures call safety of Internet cables into question
It looked possibly interesting, until the Cambridge location requirement.
Yeah... you also can't do it if you've raised any external funding at all.
The case against patents is getting stronger as time goes on.

The rate of innovation constantly increases, and for patents to keep working as they should, the term should get shorter and shorter. Even if the system is made to be "fair" in this way, eventually the term will be made so short as to not be worth the effort of filing the patent. Maybe we are past that point already.
I run Windows in a virtual machine in Linux to test things. Sure, if you use some library like JQuery or Mootools most of the time your javascript will be cross-platform. But what about the CSS?

Of course IE6 is obsolete (since v0.1 of Firefox-Firebird), but that depends of your target market.
A Startup in the Cloud
No, it's very confusing. The problem is that they use "you" while pitching to two different people.
I have nothing to share, but check out this site it has a bunch of different processing stuff, http://createdigitalmotion.com/tag/processingorg/ the best site is their site and the forums, just cruise them and you'll find all sorts of good stuff
Agile vs. Lean Software Development
Well it's certainly true that I probably mix with many regular users. But of the people I know my parents are the least likely to buy products from the web or sign up for a subscription website. But yes, they do run IE because it came with the computer.

On the other hand a lot of my friends run either Ubuntu or OSX and shop online often. They tend to try out new services while they're still in Beta and sign up for paid services.

So that's what I personally base my decision on when I take a first cut at building a webapp. YMMV
First Drive: 2008 Tesla Roadster
That's likely a good decision. I wonder what Firefox's market share would be though if sites like YouTube or MySpace required the users to download Firefox first. Most of these people are the same ones that install random "free" screen savers and games that their friends send through email. I doubt they would mind having to download just another piece of software.
My favorite quote:
"The next stop along this path of disappointment is battery life."
I'm guessing those would be battery life and a spindle.
There are any number of pathological exceptions. The question that matters is whether it's true for every language that hasn't been deliberately broken.
Great opportunity to meet Curt Schilling.

Weird that Leah Culver is wearing sunglasses in her photo.
Interesting to see the price variation. Why should QA software be so expensive? Presumably because the market
is smaller. Which means as competition pushes the cost
of sw down, what will cost you the most is the stuff that's
most specific to your business.
We need your help to figure out what the photo is?
".. but we also will be taking a stake in the winning companies .. "
Do they say how much they will take? I can't find the figure on their site. They should mention this. Also, I don't think the services they provide are so valuable to a spanking new startup (i.e. Administrative support, IT, Accounting support, Tax services). Does IT include hosting costs? Tempting.. but so many questions not answered
Flash may "reach" my desktop, and even work sometimes, but I find myself having to kill and restart Firefox a few times a day when it quits working. Even when it's working, there are a lot of sites that don't work correctly. Of course, if you're going for market share and don't care about people like me, Flash is just fine.
Microsoft has begun lobbying Congress even before its $42 billion bid for Yahoo has been accepted
The Industry Standard, dotcom-era magazine reborn as Web site
Anyone know if you can buy some kind of auxiliary battery for it? Because otherwise I'm not getting one after all. 2.5 hours is not enough to get stuff done on planes. What a disappointment. I was so looking forward to a laptop I could use without always in the back of my mind thinking about how much time I had left to finish what I was working on before the computer died.
RIP Ruby.NET
Although you can't index xml columns directly, you can define functional indexes over them. As long as you are careful to use the same function in your where clauses the index can be used.

Here's an example taken from Nikolay Samokhvalov's XML Support in PostgreSQL paper[1].

CREATE INDEX i_table1_xdata ON table1
USING btree( xpath_array(xdata, '//person/@name') );

[1] - http://www.pgcon.org/2007/schedule/attachments/16-xml_in_pos...
The saddest thing about this hostile takeover is that Microsoft doesn't seem to care that Yahoo employees generally don't like it.

With capitalism, it's all about doing what's best for the company. It's not about the individual at all.

Don't get me wrong: capitalism is great -- provided that you are the CEO.
Using it on a plane you'd have the wireless turned off, so hopefully it would last a bit longer.

I don't know where he got his 4.5 hours for a macbook battery life - I've never gotten anywhere near that.
I came across a similar website a few days back. I suppose the creator of isonme.com already has a patent pending for "Human-powered mobile visual search and feedback" ( http://www.tmsullivan.org/patents.html )
Even at 21% market share if your core audience is intelligent/computer savvy theres a good chance your user base could have a higher FF ratio. I work for a website that has a target market of college students and our FF user base is much higher then 21%, most likely because they are young and computer educated.
Unfortunately the current PostgreSQL optimizer/executor doesn't do as much as it could when joining records from subtables partitioned with inherits clauses.

If you have a query with a predicate that can be pushed down to a subtable index then you're probably ok. However if you are doing something more intensive like an unqualified aggregation then you'll be in for a disappointment since the executor doesn't know how to preserve ordering when it scans the subtables. It will always give you a hash join or a merge join involving an intermediate sort even when the sort could be avoided by using an index scan of the subtables with something like a priority queue.

This can be worked around by doing your own incremental aggregations over the subtables and combining them, but it's a little bit of a pain.
I didn't say it was ok. More like inevitable. Big cos get sued. It doesn't mean much.

From the article, it doesn't sound like you were required by an injunction to remove any code. Someone just read in the news about some newly issued patent and panicked. What's the plan for dealing with the 1000 other patents PostgreSQL is violating?
MySpace Developer Platform Goes Live (Sorta)
Paul Allen: Venture Capital and Angel Investing Workshop
No, thankfully the issue was delt with quickly. There were also other good reasons to upgrade.

The PostgreSQL project tries to stick with things for which there is plenty of prior art and thankfully most of the best stuff in databases is old enough so that patents aren't a big issue.

Unfortunately some of the things people do with PostgreSQL's extensibility aren't as old. I'm sure there are some people out there using custom UDF/UDA functions that may infringe on patents.
I was actually referring to Microsoft dropping support for IE6. Even though IE6 market share is still high with no Windows Genuine Advantage requirements for IE7 some sites are dropping support for IE6 and requiring IE6 users to upgrade to IE7.
> it could run afoul of some contest laws.

Is this legally a "contest"?

Seems more like a game of skill to me. :-)
I only care if you're an Orthodontist :) Really though, if you can realistically use html and not flash I'm sure its better. For my application, I've tried it both ways and flash outperforms native firefox SVG support, let alone trying to get it to work in IE with the adobe plugin.

I think the big flash question remains whether to use long polling AJAX or flash for server push type applications.
No kidding. I really like reading stuff by Greenspun, and I've no doubt he's a lot smarter than I am, but sometimes he really says some daffy shit.