skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You make a good point. I personally don't use FB too much, and don't see myself migrating, but I can see a lot of my friends who use FB possibly making the move.

For me, I use several of Google's products daily, and always have my Gmail open. That's why I like Buzz, because it seems like it fits me well.

What do you see happening to twitter then, if people move to FB mail, in addition to the introduction of Buzz?
I read the story. It claims to be "a product of a highly focused, laborious effort to write a song that was extremely simple to sing yet musically interesting and emotionally expressive,
undertaken by a composer and an educator who happened to be sisters."

I still don't really buy that it was "laborious effort." And I don't think the song is popular because of some fantastic musical merits. If the song was still "good morning to all" then it would be just another song. The only reason it has any monetary value is because it became associated with birthdays.
I have a Roomba. It simply doesn't work well. There are always spots that are missed in a medium sized room even when I leave it running for half an hour. I just end up vacuuming the place myself since it takes about a minute to get 95% coverage instead of 75% coverage in 30 minutes.
Nokia N900 - yet another iPhone killer
Nokia N900 Review - Videos & Tech Specs
From the interview: Jessica Livingston is working on a second edition of Founders At Work.
[1998]
>> It would also be trivial for FB to allow response to notifications via external email if they decide to do it.

You can actually already do this by replying to the notification email!
Why should the tech press be in a "business relationship" with tech companies?

Surely companies recognize the risk they are taking when disclosing preproduction info to the press. I would much prefer to at least have the illusion that the press is objective rather than acting as contracted PR.
Our approach to maximizing advertising revenue for online publishers
We can measure that. Founders book office hours online. We know the founders are getting enough attention (by their standards) if not all office hour slots get taken.
These are court rulings, not laws (which would have been created by the state legislature).
Not sure. Sure wasn't me. I think we all tend to hope that the answer is simple
Gowalla releases API
That's what I never got about Wave - that they didn't somehow integrate it with Gmail, not even loosely.

After I got a Wave account I invited a couple of friends, and they checked it out - signing in once, and forgetting about the whole service after that. So I tried including them in a few "waves", but there was no option to get email notifications of new waves! Of course they never returned, and the next time 'round I'd just email them again...
The on-demand approach is not completely eliminated. Users can still watch episodes of previously broadcast shows. I'm hoping that the show owners will be out there encouraging voters. I also thought that some statistics displayed to the user could encourage voting(consecutive weeks voting, total shows voted for, etc.)
For the part: "Why C instead of Lisp? Because worse is better." Well, C has a distinct position among many other languages such that constructs in C map one-to-one to the way the cpu executes. That is exactly why C. Not because it is worse.

I've heard of the term lisp machine but I must admit I am not much informed on details. I would bet that if those took off as real hardware, lisp as a language would take off together with them.
My Android phone automatically syncs contact information from Facebook, so it's not like Google isn't open to that. I understand that Google's right hand doesn't always know what the left is doing, though.
This was a great interview; I can't wait until it's available online to watch again. I had to take a few phone calls during it so I missed a few things.
> What makes you think that the Wall Street folks are free market advocates?

Good point. I guess I believe everything they tell me on CNBC. ;)
Open Angel Forum Marches Onward to San Francisco and New York
Apple to create virtual social app store environment
> Some naive intellectuals want to abandon copyright altogether.

It's more like "Some are abandoning copyright altogether." now.
An idea for a web app is really no big deal. They're a dime a dozen. I think it's really the execution that counts. I'm not concerned about that
This would be far more interesting if you kept the premises to yourself and got busy with the applications. Delete your essay about why capitalism is good, and replace it with an essay extolling the virtues of price gouging during natural disasters.

(Price gouging during natural disasters is a good thing, because it encourages the accumulation of excess gougable goods. If a hurricane means you can rent your $500 chainsaw out for $10,000, it also means that it makes economic sense to own a chainsaw you'll rarely--or never--use. The disaster reallocates capital from the people who accumulated cash to the people who accumulated physical goods that help them survive disasters. The efficient market triumphs.)
HTML 5 vs Flash
HTML5 vs Flash is a hot debate right now especially when it comes to mobile and the iPhone and iPad. This article does a good job of describing the landscape.

Image by justinsomnia via Flickr

http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/05/the-future-of-web-content-html5-flash-mobile-apps/

Related articles by Zemanta

* Flash, HTML5, and Mobile Apps (avc.com)
* Joojoo tablet now in production, will support full Flash at launch (engadget.com)
* Adobe claims they don’t ship Flash with known crash bugs, user proves they do (pheedcontent.com)
Monkey-Patching, Single Responsibility Principle, and Scala Implicits
One of the poster's "cons" was lack of support for multiple databases.

Django 1.2 will have support for multiple databases: http://djangoadvent.com/1.2/multiple-database-support/
Just out of curiosity, how many hours do you guys keep open each week for office hours? Or is that something you'd rather not say?
Rotating a map with CSS3 and jQuery
A non-zero second deriviate invites gaming. The tax rate (e.g. 20% or 35%) is per "unit". If the marginal rate is too high, you can always break up into smaller units (e.g not get married or split up a company) or defer realizing income until next year, then your overall tax burden is lower. A flat rate means that scale and timing do not effect the amount of taxes paid.
Yeah, it was a (I believe related) talk of his at MIT that really got me thinking seriously about rejecting the big cubicle farms and doing a startup... before that, it was just an unrealistic-seeming dream.

I'm still amazed by the effect he had with one speech, but it was just what I needed to hear.
I'm excited for that but what I really meant was split/sharded databases, something you need at scale (which Fluther doesn't need...yet). Correct me if I'm wrong but the upcoming multiple database support can't do that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shard_(database_architecture)

What it seems to support is "Database Routers" which let you implement your own sharding. It's not that you can't do it. It's just that it doesn't support sharding out of the box.

I'm more excited for the template performance improvements.
Split database support is in Django 1.2 (currently in beta), so that's one con to scratch off the list.
Agree, absolutely. If I didn't know my business well enough to close our first partnership with the top 4 US health insurer (paying) to develop an app we designed that will generate two patents, I'd bow out. We've closed a 5k deal, another 10k deal on the books about to close, and taken only 10k in angel money. That's not only understanding the company, it's understanding where the company is headed, and then working with my tech cofounder to implement like crazy til we get there. Plus, 'tech' of any type is a means to an end. One founder working on the tech and one founder working on the rest of the stuff that forms the means to the 'end' isn't always a recipe for disaster.
Blog article about it here: http://www.wait-till-i.com/2010/02/09/rotating-maps-with-css...

I had some problems getting it to work at first. To fix it, try using the tab key to get the focus onto the map, then it'll work. Pretty neat!
Introducing Google Buzz
They Make Apps
> 50 New York Times executives

Wait, what? The New York Times has at least 50 executives? No wonder they're having a hard time with profitability.
Exactly! We've built our company based not just on tech, but market needs. I've seen startup friends build kick-ass stuff that goes nowhere because no one knows about it (the marketing and biz/dev functions) 2 years after launch. Then they're demoralized, die off, and go back to a day job and hacking nights and weekends.
it doesn't bother [flat tax proponents] because of the idea that regressive tax structure is a net win even for the poor by keeping money in the hands of the people that can do the most efficient things with it.

Also worth noting is that fact that flat tax proponents are usually the people in whose hands this money will be kept :)
I was able to get (at least the beginning) to play at the archive: http://www.justin.tv/mixergy/archive
Deja Dup 13.7 su Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic
I wonder if Google's API docs on the whole are too comprehensive. Most people just want to get to the meat fast, and then consume it. Twitter's API doc is one page.
preparing for AI that may never be invented...

I think it's a mistake to let the zealotry of the singularity weirdos cast doubt on everything that they're predicting; yes, they've got some pseudo-religious delusions about what AI will do for us, but I don't think they're far off when they say that it's coming, fairly soon, and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

There are some very clear numerical reasons that AI has failed thus far (we simply don't have the computing power right now - people hoped that we were clever enough to find algorithmic workarounds, but apparently we weren't), and whatever happens in the actual field of AI research, we're all but guaranteed to succeed at brute force AI some time over the next 50 years or so. The only real question is whether someone is able to figure out a hack that makes brute force unnecessary and bumps the timetable forward, but as I mentioned above, so far nobody has, so we may just have to wait for full brain simulation to be feasible.

Apart from that, I'd agree with you: with a few notable exceptions, most Singularity inspired "work" has been very low ROI, amounting to little more than speculation about the future and how great it will be rather than actually doing something to ensure a good outcome. There also seems to be a common delusion (again, with a few important exceptions) that AI will automatically be friendly without us needing to spend significant efforts towards that goal, which is very misguided.

...especially since a lot of the best funded and most focused AI research is taking place in China right now. In the rest of the world the past failures of AI have made people assume that it's a fool's errand, so there's not a lot of money going towards it, which could be a real disaster - regardless of how friendly AI can be made in principle, it's pretty much assured that if the Chinese government gets there first, we're going to see some pretty nasty stuff (though an argument could be made that once any government gets there we're all screwed).
Accessing http://m.google.com/app/buzz from an iPhone works whether or not you see the buzz label in gmail. You can use Firefox with the "User-Agent Switcher" add-on set on iPhone to try it out.
Good point Tichy - not complaining about being a woman, which I very much enjoy. Being a woman doesn't make, by virtue of your sex-linked chromosomes, doing a startup in anyway special. And as to choices, exactly. That's the point of the post (sorry if that wasn't clear). We all accept (or should accept) responsibility for our own choices. I like your closing comment ;). More choices, more challenges. Synonymous?
http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html
Absolutely - he always seems to ask what I want him to ask next.

And a podcast a day - astonishing output and great interviewees. The advice in these interviews, along with advice on HN, constitutes my main source of not-on-the-job entrepreneurial learning, a sort of 'startup MBA'.
Change Happens
I second that. Some of these IP agreements are down right ridiculous and unenforceable but totally skewed towards the employer. If you have an entrepreneurial bone in your body you should make friends with an IP lawyer and have them go through any employment agreement before you sign. Have them make edits and resend it back.
Is Google Wave a Flop?
Well, the only time when ordinary people care that a task is hard is when it's difficulty been floridly demonstrated to them - when they've been wanting something for a long time and someone comes up with something that barely succeeds, you might get a pass.

Apps with barely functional features that a group of users have been chafing for often succeed.

But if you're trying to sell someone on something they didn't know they might want, if that something works in a clumsy and unreliable fashion, you probably convince the person the whole thing is a poor idea.
How (and why) Baby Carrots are REALLY made
Google Buzz vs. Brightkite (look familiar?)
We want the prosecutor to decide which cases to prosecute, and which to abandon because it's not likely that the accused is guilty. What you say you want is actually horrible and unnecessary, unless you just mean that the prosecutor should proceed if his personal certainty of guilt is only say, 80%, before having encountered all the available evidence; that's fine, because trials should have some truth-finding value, and make all the available evidence known to the prosecution and defense (even if judges can rule out some evidence). At the end of a trial (after all the evidence and testimony is known), in theory, the prosecution and defense should have a pretty good idea of the likelihood of guilt, but we excuse them for playing the game to its conclusion - playing to win even when they suspect their side is wrong: either lying, or deluding themselves with biased/self-interested thinking.

In the event a prosecutor is pretty sure the defendant is innocent AND that they can probably get a conviction, I'd like to see them abandon their case (I don't know if this allowed, but they could certainly argue to a jury or judge that the person is innocent), but I understand that it's not required, and I don't consider them evil unless they go further and try to block appeals, or conceal exculpatory evidence.
Good riddance, man on the moon
Fair enough. Serving completely dynamic content to 200+ million uniques is a pretty solid achievement in itself.

Though still, with the growth they've been seeing, doing anything besides throwing PhDs and scalability geeks at the problem would have been colossal foolishness (see Twitter).
I dunno. I tried to do this at another big 4 consulting firm and basically got the runaround. Nobody wants to put that in writing because if your stuff does happen to take off, nobody wants to be the patsy who let that get away. Basically I lost 6 months of time because they stalled. In the end I didn't get anything in writing. My immediate managers just told me that it's a don't ask don't tell and not bother wasting your time.
Ksplice launches Uptrack -- never reboot Linux again
iPhone webpage works for me but it still have issues when you post updates. I tried posting two updates, it kept going but updates were never posted.
Reddit Clone — Now accepting registrations
What I meant was that my friends pc still does everything he needs and has no compulsion to upgrade to windows 7.

Stability aside (which I think is a good thing) all that I can see that is different in windows is a bit of eye candy. Big wow.

OSX and iPhoneOS is infinitely more intuitive than windows. And there lies it's strength. Linux sadly just imitates where it should be innovating on the desktop.

I can understand though the desire not to confuse the users by radically making a design change. And quite frankly the security model on windows has been a joke.
A tip from (bad) experience is to check for bacteria infection, if that hasn't been done already.
Just tried it out on my Android, can someone tell me why I'll go to Foursquare now... This is the best checkin interface yet.
The place I went with (link a few comments above) sells all the various cuts and sizes - a 1 carat princess cut is around $100 I believe, compared to $2,500-$15,000 from a quick search on bluenile.com (which is considered a relatively inexpensive way to purchase diamonds). So everyone's clear - I'm not endorsing any of these places, merely stating my own experience.
I had a similar insight when Google announced a tablet concept: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1094476

Microsoft's business strategy has always been a kind of unfocused. They didn't ever sit down and say DOS or BASIC or Word was going to be the cornerstone of their business, they just did what they thought would be useful at the time until they managed to hit on something. You can tell because, though I can't say anything for their old BASIC's, DOS wasn't even very good! As Microsoft got big enough to parallelize this strategy, it turned into a kind of shotgun strategy where they simultaneously tried to build web browsers and gaming consoles and mobile phone operating systems and MP3 players and webmail and everything else. If you read The Road Ahead, Bill Gates writes about Wang, which was enormously successful but missed the PC wave just long enough to go out of business. After Microsoft's own close call with the internet (ironically around the time The Road Ahead was written and first published), I'm sure these fears intensified to the point where Microsoft started jumping after every hot new thing, be it multitouch, MP3 players, search engines, or whatnot.

The contrast to this is Apple in the respective Jobs eras, which focused intensely on building a few great products. It's a far riskier strategy--if Apple invents the Macintosh and no one wants one, what then?

Google's had a shotgun approach as well--I don't know why, but it seems like a good use of the talent they seem so intent on recruiting. Part of the shotgun approach is that some products are better than others, but a likely bad part of the approach is that you are prone to go chasing after every new trend.
What is the major problem you have that the iPad solves? That's precisely what the "naysayers" are asking, and aren't hearing any convincing replies.
Perhaps you are not asking for legal advice... but I think the point is that you should be... if want assurance that the answer you receive is correct.

You will hear from people who have been in this sort of situation, but not the same situation. For example, their employment contracts likely differ from yours.
Does the Ericsson card have a GPS radio and quad-band G3 as well, or just 3G?
Wasnt able to read full articles but my initial view on look and feel is font size for article text is two small.
I'll make the weak speculation today that Google Buzz will be the new social network for "grown-ups" and leave Facebook to the teens (and old people). Similar to the MySpace -> Facebook migration. Mostly because people love Gmail so much.
http://www.paulgraham.com/revolution.html
Argh what is the point of comments like these? It is totally drowning out any useful discussion about the actual merits or demerits of the product. The iPod was a lame "me-too" product, eh?
Similar article from some days ago:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1078483

Some discussion there already.
Cleveland Plain Dealer | Cleveland, Ohio Newspaper - cleveland.com
It can also describe something as simple as desktop publishing.

I want something produces a certain print effect. I don't care how spiffy, reliable or pleasant your app is if it doesn't do what I need. Why did Indesign take so long to catch up with Pagemaker?

Come to think of it, I think the feature-effect goes for just about program that is used as a tool. To succeed, a "serious tool" has to do everything the old tool did plus be nicer to use. You can see that in everything from drills to spreadsheets to programming language (inspire a stubborn conservativism in their users).
Yes, that's exactly how I think we should look at this. The open web is full of AdSense-junkies, while on Facebook they won't have it.

I'm not sure I agree that there's lack of innovation at Google; I'm trying to think of a big company that does any better in that regard and can't think of any.
Not bizarre if you consider Google actually gives away source code of some of their best products for free. Microsoft just couldn't do this.
Microsoft was seen as ruthlessly destroying their competition. Google is seen as innovative. Bizarre.

Google gives away a ton of free services that work. Microsoft sells people something that they have (almost) no option not to buy, and causes a near infinite stream of headaches to just about everyone (even if you don't use it yourself - how many times have you had to help out friends or relatives whose Windows installations got screwed up?).

Sure, giving stuff away may be a cheap ploy to earn goodwill, but I can truly say that Google's services have provided me with a lot of value. In the old days of Microsoft that was true for them, too, but over the past decade Microsoft products have done little more than cost me time and money.

Is it really that bizarre that I feel differently about the two companies?
Just as a nitpick: "the messages can be larger" is an anti-feature for me, and for many others that use Twitter. Inline images and videos is one thing, of course, but if longer messages was a feature then blogging would have defeated Twitter before it launched.
It's got a big 'download' button instead of a URL. Grrrreat!
Early warning at Blogoscoped: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1090344
Re: Idea for alternative RSS syncing system
History of the Internet in ship years
Years ago I read about TRIZ in HN. (I couldn't find the article now but it was this article http://www.triz40.com/aff_Principles.htm)

The Principle 27 of the 40 principles is "Cheap short-living objects" eg, replace an inexpensive object with a multiple of inexpensive objects, comprising certain qualities (such as service life). This is the philosophy behind Google's building their servers from cheap components and allowing for their failure. I was wondering if with their Russian background Google founders were familiar with TRIZ.

Then I thought about another notion of TRIZ: the constants of evolution (or patterns of evolution, as TRIZ calls it). If we can recognize the constant of evolution in two systems we can use the known stages of one system to predict the future stages of the other system.

To test this view I compared the history of ships with the history of the Internet. http://science1.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/history-of-the-internet-in-ship-years/

This is topical because with Google Super Bowl ads it seems that we reached the "cruise ship" consumerism stage of the Internet.

Comments are welcome. Thank you.
I wish we could see more evidence of this talent in their products.

It seems like their "shot-gun" approach is to release a lot a half-baked crap just to generate some headlines and then hope people forget about it (e.g. Wave). I think this used to work when they were competing with Microsoft (which also released half-baked crap but for got called on it.. constantly). But now I think a lot of companies are releasing good products right out of the gate (e.g. Apple, Facebook) and this strategy is going to be less successful in the future.