skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Looking for advice from other successful startups.
In a little less than 2 years I've been able to develop a web application/community that has been continuously but slowly growing. With little more than word of mouth I've been able to gain over 4000 registered users most of which are very serious contributors to this community. At the beginning of last year I was able to add a product to the community plus, based on a freemium model, was able to attract ~100 members to sign up for a premium account in just the last 10 months. Sales of the product (which is produced by the community) and sales of the premium memberships have added up to a modest $4K gross. So quick math tells me I've earned about $1.00 per registered user.

Now this project has been part time. Sometimes it takes up all my nights and weekends and other times I don't touch it for weeks. So the other day I realized if I could seriously scale up membership the business could be earning anywhere from 100K upwards to 1M / year. But here lies the problem. I am not business guru and I mostly depend on the community to do the marketing for me by word of mouth, links to the site, tell a friend, etc.

What I need to know from some of you startup gurus out there is what would you do next? Simply stay the course? What should be my goals at this point of the game be? Growth or conversion? I have the product and service in place which is really where I've spent most of my time during the project and it has been finely tweaked now.

Just a side note, what I have found is that whenever my service/product does pick up a blog post or some outside exposure my membership numbers go way up in very big spurt, then levels off when the smoke clears so I do know that the conversion rate of the right people seeing the site and joining is pretty good.

I'm looking for guidance or mentorship especially if you've been involved with some past successes.

Regards
> Possibly it would be better to extend the length of the 'new' page because in practice once something moves to page 2 it is lost. It is very rare that something makes it to page 2 without enough upvotes and after that still collects enough votes to make it to the homepage, no matter how topical or interesting.

I don't think that's true at all. I'm not sure if pg logs enough data to test this, but I am quite sure that a lot of the popular stuff that makes it to the front page got there via multiple-submission, not off the new page. It's fucked if the first submitter is more than a day before the second, but the usual course is for multiple people to see something their feedreaders around the same time. This doesn't require fresh content, fresh references to old content work too.

Because of this, news.yc generally ignores any links that aren't presently being talked about elsewhere -- it's not the locus of discovery. Metafilter is the only site like this that manages to really handle it well.
Earthquakes have a way of crumbling complaints | My Complaint
This book has 2 chapters on patents: http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596517960

I read the first half of the book and found it enlightening.
Chrome OS Zero VM Image Available
Most of the benefit of Sass lies in variables, mixins, and nesting. If there are any programming constructs, they're usually in the background, in library code. When there's debugging to be done, it's the same sort that's done for CSS: touching up styles and so forth. And in many ways Sass makes that sort of debugging much easier.
Thats a lot of writing to explain a diagram which explains itself perfectly well.

That said, it still looks like a great way to handle branches!
I'm now unconvinced that you know what payroll tax is, or how S-Corps work. One of the reasons you file as an S-Corp is to W2 your income. Owners of S-Corps pay W2 like everyone else.

This isn't some system where by design we designate S-Corp income as "income" and thus "exempt from payroll tax" (payroll tax being, for the most part, FICA). If it was, LLC income --- which is, for owners, entirely distributions --- wouldn't be liable for self-employment tax.

This is a situation where very specifically the S-Corp designation allows people to create a channel to avoid paying FICA tax that they owe.

If you have $90,000 of income and you're a small business owner, you should be paying your share whether the income is salary or distribution.

You can call it "whining" and "noise" but since this practice was already an audit flag I have very little to whine about; my side of the argument already won. All I'm saying is, "good for them for closing this loophole".

[Edit: you clearly do know how S-Corps work, so now I'm wondering why you're playing semantic games with the word "income".]
When I was 3 I sat on our back step all afternoon trying to tie my shoes because my older brother knew how.

I use this technique - I figured this was the standard way.
I'm on the advisory board and I'm speaking at this conference, but MWRC has been consistently kick-ass. And it's $100 for 2 days of hard-core Ruby talks.
So you can go on web forums and say "Well I really don't see it so you must be cheating with some JS stuff...".
China may be oppressive compared to developed countries, but if you look at where it came from, at its current state it's probably the least oppressive government it's ever had.

Historically revolts were fought by peasants over high taxes that left them starving. Now-a-days the issue is the lack of private land ownership, and the government is already implementing land reform for this specific reason. Corruption is still rampant, but people are generally kept well-fed. People will only shed blood if their livelihood is on the line, usually abstract reasons such as freedom of speech alone is not enough, these things usually only change gradually from within.
I've seen it used for an effect where it looks like you are raising and lowering a flag on a pole as you scroll up and down.
A Starbucks Shift Manager who picks up an extra 2 days worth of hours is paying payroll taxes on those extra hours. That argument doesn't work.
I'm coming at this as another blogger who makes a living off of writing out my opinions, and from that angle, you're not trolling, just offering a strong opinion. You truly believe Tumblr is kicking Posterous's ass (the mildest possible "swear word"!) and you present your case with evidence, not appeals to emotion or coolness. And now you're perfecting the article based on feedback, which is one of the coolest aspects of blogging and interacting with your readers.

So because of this piece, I'm following your blog. Please continue to rock.
Conservatives don't value intellectualism.

Edit: Okay, blanket statement. How about this: MOST conservatives don't value intellectualism.
Jacob Kaplan-Moss: What The Enterprise wants from Django
My knot skills are horrible, I only know about 3 knots. At camping (real camping where we canoed 4 or 5 hours out to the middle of nowhere and camped) I had to do a zillion knots because everyone was so impressed at how I could tie things down correctly.

It was surprisingly helpful - I can't even remember where/when I learned them.
Ancient Egypt’s Toxic Makeup Fought Infection, Report Says
Sass is coming out with a new syntax that's an extension of CSS. It's available to use right now: http://github.com/nex3/haml/commits/scss
The rule isn't as as strict as don't talk shit about the government, more like "you can talk some shit about the government as long as you never question the ultimate authority of the Communist Party to rule China."
The Idea behind Map Reduce itself is extremely general (and not brand new):

map :: (a -> b) -> [a] -> b
fold :: (a -> a -> a) -> a -> [a] -> a -- the first argument must be associative if you want a parallel fold.

mapReduce :: (a -> b) -> (b -> b -> b) -> b -> [a] -> b
mapReduce f g e l = fold g e (map f l) -- conceptually. You have to write an actually parallel version.

If the patent isn't more specific than this (by being limited to MapReduce, for instance), I bet it can be overruled by prior art. Now, I admit I don't have the courage to check.
is there a git of HNs code?
Say you're the sole shareholder of an S-Corp which, not including your salary, has $200,000 in the bank on Dec. 31. You have two ways to put that money in your pocket: either a) pay yourself a salary as an employee (say, $75,000) plus the remaining $125,000 as corporate profits, or b) just give yourself, as the sole shareholder, all $200,000 as corporate profits.

With option b), significantly less money will end up in Uncle Sam's pocket. I happen to agree with you that that's a good thing, but the fact remains that the IRS considers it tax evasion. So not a good thing to engage in. S-Corp owner/employees have to pay themselves what the government agrees is a reasonable market wage before they can start banking relatively lightly taxed corporate profits.
Shh, Jacob, get out of here, we're talking about your stuff!
I'm not sure what you mean by "straightforward correct answer".

I just used a big integer library, calculated the answer, and then took the first 10 digits. That should work out fine in any reasonable general case that you're likely to be thinking of.
I know there are probably cultural differences in what content people send in their texts in China, but I still have the feeling that they are going to get overwhelmed with the amount of text messages that alert their system.
It's especially interesting given that the U.S. model for IP is pragmatic rather than ideologic, i.e. temporary government-granted monopolies are a necessary evil we accept in order to further technological and creative progress for the benefit of all citizens.

Considering the opinion many here have that innovation in the U.S. is stifled rather than encouraged under the modern politicized IP model, it might be enlightening to compare how effective innovation is under each model. I am curious how much sustained innovation is happening over there versus the highly-publicized accounts of IP 'theft'?
sure, at the margins. if we're talking about social science we're always talking about correlation, trends, etc.
A Starbuks manager who buys a powerball ticket and wins, does not pay payroll taxes on the win.
This kind of ties into in idea I've playing with, basically a sort of meta-yelp. Since for any given city in the world there probably are at least two or three web sites dedicated to reviewing the bar and or restaurant scene in that city, why not have a site that collects and reviews those sites. So instead of going to Yelp to find the best restaurants in San Diego (or wherever) you'd go to this site find the best sites covering San Diego restaurants and then go to that site find a restaurant. Anybody know if such a thing already exists?
I'd argue that Tumblr, by focusing on the social, has opened itself to a wider variety of possible revenue sources. They could succeed at social advertising where Facebook has failed. (Not that Facebook doesn't make money, just that they do it while looking like idiots to users who see mismatched contextual ads.)
Slightly off topic but the Git model is generally interesting. I'd like to see it used for writing, publishing and sharing ideas (like it can code). To me it seems like it could be a great system.
Why Google had to make this about China
Using Ruby to fetch iTunes library artwork via Last.fm
> "give businesses the ability to respond to reviews for free and "

Yelp has had the ability for businesses to respond publicly or privately to a review for almost a year now I believe.

> "don't artificially alter results, be like Google and let your algorithm work."

The same game happens in the web search world - it's called SEO. Yelp's spam algorithm is decoupled from any advertising, yet since business owners don't write their own reviews, they have less control over their reputation (as opposed to webmasters who change their page content), and are much more likely to come up with conspiracy theories as to why things happen the way they do and consequently often get very frustrated.
If you had to, how would you backport a fix onto an earlier release using this?

Or is that something that's not considered as necessary? (This is used for a website, for example?)
Ok, I went through the page quickly and was kind of wondering what was so special about the knot and what it was doing here.

Then, I tried it, and it is pretty cool! It feels like one step is missing when you're done.
"This would mean that China would prosecute and disavow IP theft."

There are (at least) three major areas where outsourcing to China provides economic benefit to foreign companies:

1 - Wages - Many Chinese are paid a wage that despite China having "minimum wage" laws are significantly below that of the foreign company's home minimum wages. If Chinese workers are paid a "living wage" in parity with that of the home country, the economics of outsourcing to China take a hit.

2 - Environment - China for the most part has let enforcement of environment law (the law does exist) take a back seat to capturing business. Covering the cost of protecting environment damage raises costs.

3 - Intellectual Property - Protecting IP increases cost and is for the most part a long term "foreign tax", not an initial capital investment.

Start doing the above three "right" and doing business in China becomes unprofitable for many.

The author of the article continues to express this as a one-sided problem: "We look forward to having China as a real partner in the world, not on its own private terms, but on terms well understood by global trading partners."

I support positive change in regards to doing business with China. I do not see how this can happen without more objective discussion, which would include how "global trading partners" contribute to the problems.

I'm with swombat and maxklein on this one. I'm going to start flagging HN submissions that only paint half the picture.
separating preferences from their environmental context is also a fallacy. there are no ideal preferences that would exist if only some outside agent hadn't interfered. life is a long series of outside agents and our response to them.
Wow, you make your point and then run away stating "I'm not going to involve myself in any more of these discussions.", how nice.

First of all, China was not communist for 5000 years, so not sure where that is coming from.

No one is criticizing China for being different, all countries in the World are different, no two are the same, yet we criticize some and admire others.

China is being criticized for:

1) Complete and utter disregard of IP of companies in other countries. Ex: Huawei vs Cisco, IP theft against Google and other 30+ companies and numerous others.

2) More example of blatant copies of cars: http://www.autoblog.com/2005/04/16/chinese-copy-cats/

3) Censoring of information to its citizens. Even Iran, from what I can tell, is better than China at the moment.

4) Organized, and fairly obviously state sponsored, network intrusion attacks on other countries.

5) Human rights violations, whether in Tibet, or any other
place.

6) Complete disregard to environment.

7) Hegemony of neighboring, and much smaller, states.

8) Australia blocks investment of China in Rio Tinto, within next few days China arrest Rio Tinto's China head in espionage charges.

The list goes on and goes, and none of the above is fabricated, it's all public news
Trying to sublicense it non-competitively to only one hobbyist in each area is a really awful idea. FreeCycle turned into a massive clusterfuck because of this.

If you want your implementation to spread to other cities either make a franchise business out of it or make it open source.
I would think with that many reviews the potential for libel is a concern.
They could, yes, but it undermines the fundamental basis on which the consumer PC industry is based: cheap, throw-away computers. Well-designed machines require precision and machining that adds to the cost of the computer, and with companies such as Dell, HP, Lenovo, and such operating on such thin margin, high-volume selling, any additional cost adds up quickly.

There is a massive difference in the build quality between a typical Apple product and a typical HP or Dell product. There's an attention to detail that appears to only exist at the higher price point. For those that build their own boxes, you have likely found that a quality case is worth the price differential — and this is only one piece.
No explanation, no science.
Whoops! I guess it is rare...
I wouldn't call what cyclists and rowers do "sitting." But, more to the point of your comment and its parent, does anyone have any carefully gathered figures on differences in mortality between Buddhist monks and other residents of countries the monks live in, or between cyclists and rowers and their compatriots?
Dunning-Kruger effect
There probably isn't a single business owner out there that feels comfortable with the existence of an online directory where disgruntled customers can collate and publish their opinions. I'm sure a good deal of them are willing to lie to rid themselves of the nuisance. Just because Yelp is creates a large headache for lazy business owners doesn't mean it's evil. It's creating an environment where business strive to provide quality service. It does so by creating incentives for doing so (good reviews) and disincentives for failing to do so (bad reviews).

There are no facts in this article. Just allegations.
In the context you described I don't think there is anything wrong with that kind of splash page. I could probably go either way if the various links to other parts were clear and straightforward. I think the main thing would be to try and determine why people are visiting the site. If it's pretty varied the splash may be more useful than if most people are coming primarily for the blog.
I find this disintegration of moral standards a very hacker-worthy issue. Hackers have been on the forefront of the defense of civil rights in a moment when technology advances much faster than the law can react to it or society can absorb it.

A guy was arrested a couple days back because he jokingly vented his frustration on Twitter. Another had his face stamped on a most wanted criminals list seen around the planet because a technician found using his face would save him some work. We understand this changing technologies better than most. We can help.
Building an entrepreneurial ecosystem: what does success look like?
However, an EXPERIMENTAL design for a study of this issue would go a long way toward clearing up that problem.
The relevant prior art is not the idea of a "map" or "reduce" function as such (that isn't what is significant about MR, anyway).

The patent is about parallelizing M and R operators for large-scale data analysis; I think that the relevant prior art would include 1980s work on parallel database systems (e.g. Gamma, Bubba).
Keep in mind that S-corp owners (full disclosure: I am one) pay not just the employee's side, but also the employer's side, of FICA -- so what's 7.5-ish percent of payroll to a typical employee is actually 15-ish percent to a small business owner.

Also, if you happen to be contributing to a SEP IRA, or concerned about the size of your eventual Social Security distribution (which is based on your 40 best payroll quarters), then you as an S-corp owner also have an interest in running a higher amount as payroll rather than profit. It's a balancing act with multiple factors, as with most tax considerations. Add in month-to-month cash flow uncertainty, and "reasonable" becomes very elastic very quickly.

Pure speculation, but I'd wager that the amount of tax avoided by small business owners by underpaying salaries is likely dwarfed by those avoided by the owners of bigger companies, who have the combined benefits of lobby power and armies of accountants figuring out loopholes for them. But maybe I'm just cynical and getting old.
You can find many examples of China or other countries playing the bully. You'll get no disagreement from me.

Your point that "American CEO needs to think long term before moving jobs to China" gets closer to where we may find a solution. The trouble is that CEOs do not concern themselves with human rights in China or Intellectual Property other than their own. They make decisions for the most part on immediate value creation for shareholders.
taking iterative improvement literally i see. :)
I'm afraid of open source just turning it into a project that consumes my time and money with no return. I'd definitely be interested in "franchising" it so to speak so that other areas could use my work in their specific non-competing area and hopefully get a little bit of my development costs back. Anyone who has experience with this, I'd be happy to hear from you (email is in my profile).

I'm a sharing guy, really! I just don't want to jeopardize the project I've been working so hard on.

Thanks for your comment.
I am on the opposite end of your design, feeling like its hard to navigate or figure out, because all the filters are displayed in several different content boxes in the same column, and each column representing a different option.

The beautiful thing about craigslist is that there are few options and when they do give you options they bundle it in a nice little box at the top. Yelp is beautiful because of the filters and ability to drill down to areas quickly.

Overall not something I would use as I feel yelp does a good job of this already, but overall good job.
A cursory examination of the patent would tell you that it says very little about map and reduce functions as such -- the emphasis is on the system for executing such functions in parallel for large-scale data transformation.
The best part is that you're always asked to review an app when you're deleting it. Clearly you don't like it enough to keep it, how well do you think you're going to rate it?!
A Functional Programming Bibliography
I've owned an S-Corp for 15 years, I think I would know how one works.

Do you or have you ever ran an S-Corp? You seem to be providing a lot of opinions. Just wondering what your credentials were.

Owners of S-Corps pay off a W-2 for that portion of their income paid as payroll. The rest of it comes across on a different schedule (1120-S). I've been doing this for years. I think I know.

All business arrangements have the option of how to handle excess income. Some entities may pay every penny of it to founders as W-2 income. Some may choose to pay a bit and hold the rest as savings. Some may create a bonus situation, LLCs have direct disbursements, etc.

For sole proprietors and S-Corp owners, excess income (income not spent in payroll or other "legit" expenses) "flows down" to the owner, which has to pay the rest as income tax.

It's not specific to S-Corps at all. The "scam", as you put it, could be as simple as the decision to hang on to some cash in the corporate account at the end of the year instead of paying payroll, or it could be the decision to use a bonus-as-disbursement system. Either one would be bypassing FICA.

Or you could decide you'd rather not take a payroll for yourself. Perhaps your income is spotty, you can't afford to pay yourself minimum wage, or perhaps you can't deal with the overhead required for payrolls. Whatever. It's your decision.

I'm going to bail out now -- I've played the infinite argument game with you before. I'm happy to admit fault if I don't understand this -- but I'd be really, really, really surprised if that was the case.

And congrats on ducking the question I asked about solutions and instead turning the conversation to my qualifications. Makes it much less a conversation and much more a debating game.
git cherry-pick can help. I'll add a bigger comment to this posting to explain how we are doing it with a web application - maybe if can yield some additional clues.
I really couldn't read it past the first for the same reason as everyone else, the account was just annoying to read. Not sure if it was intended but it seemed to sympathize with a crazy person.