skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Well said, Loren.

We are all a part of this mess. We all play the numbers games. We all assume that people with more readers are more important. We all strive to have more readers so that we can be more important. We worry about pageviews and clickthroughs and every other possible way we can possibly whore ourselves out because everybody else is doing it and telling us how much fun they're having doing it.

TechCrunch is only well-read because it's well-read. People don't just stumble upon it and fall in love. They go to it because they've been told how many other people have gone to it. And we have decided it's still okay to rate things based on how frequently other people go to them.

Brusilovsky is a prick. Not because he accepted a present from a business, but because he's spent his entire life doing vacuous, meaningless work in exchange for attention and celebrity. We all gawk and applaud that it's so nice a 17-year-old managed to write for TechCrunch, but when you look at the guy you realize he can't code, can't design, can't write. All he can do is whore, and even that he doesn't do well. But he writes for TechCrunch and so he's worth our time.

We care more about quantity than we do about quality, as an industry. Witness the recent conversation about the Google redesign contest, with people bitching and moaning about how the new aesthetic design was "worse" than Google's current design because it denied information. We have this mindset wherein we still think Google ought to be everything for everyone; the result is that Google meets a lot of people's needs without really providing a breathtaking experience. Google's the archetypal villain here, that cares more about edging out clickthroughs than it does about anything else. And yeah, it's nice, and yeah, it's made Google the industry leader, but in the end being ranked #1 means jack shit, or ought to. It doesn't make you in any way better or more valuable.

It comes up in fucking everything. Mac vs Linux vs PC arguments are the same way: We're so determined that what we want ought to be what everybody wants. So rather than discussing feeling and process we discuss pure, blunt numbers. We're just as childish as the people Loren scolds here. We think about our world in the simplest, more black-and-white terms.

Hacker News was designed to foster this. It "ranks" conversations. It assigns people as "leaders". We have so many fucking posts about what domains get the most upvotes and which users have the best comment average and basically it's all of us sucking our own dicks in the hopes we can get them longer than anybody else's. But this is a debate that's raged for a long time, and this comment won't change things. The people in charge of Hacker News are just as immature about this as anybody.

I'd like it if a few of us, just a few, saw this and decided that perhaps spending a lifetime looking for more numbers and variables and stats isn't the best way to spend a life. In the end, we're playing a schmuck 17-year-old's game, as much as we'd like to pretend we're doing anything remotely meaningful.
If I understand the model: I make a reservation, but nothing happens until the end of a designated time period. Once that time is up, I get it for the lowest price.

Could work. I really like the Groupon.com model though, where the price is specified, but it only activates after a certain number of people agree to buy.
The article makes use of straw-man argument by bring up VOIP apps. But the avoiding of mentioning a competing app seems reasonable. If there was a Zune store I don't think any would think it appropriate for apps to mention the iPod.

The developer can always encourage people to visit their website, and provide more company/product history there.
11 Ways to Successful Innovation
Forrester tells analysts no more personally-branded research blogs
Welcome to Facebook
Well since there's no roll call or concept of membership at ietf a more real problem is companies flooding the room with their employees for critical votes.
If you've watched the video then you know this already, but for those who haven't: For most intents and purposes, HFCS is biologically identical to table sugar, except it tastes a little sweeter. Sucrose (table sugar) is a glucose molecule bonded to a fructose molecule. HFCS is roughly half fructose as well. The problem is overconsumption of sugar and consumption of sugar unaccompanied by fiber. Watch the video.
Never user Java without Eclipse. You will be much productive in Java using Eclipse.
Distributed computing in Java? Use Erlang instead...
"No plan survives contact with the enemy." ~ Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke

Of course, one always 'knows' how to sell the product from day 1. It's just that the more you do, the more you know about how to actually sell it. I've found that being in a startup is a continual learning process, where you mainly learn how little you know!

If you've been successful in your startup with the same sales plan that you had at the very beginning, then I'd be somewhat shocked.
Publishers continue pummeling Amazon over e-book prices
Wikipedia also publishes its own stats, though they take some time to update them: http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportClien...
I'm all for scrutinizing the recent intern situation at TechCrunch (unfortunately I can't really talk about it, other than to say it makes me feel sick to my stomach).

However, given the fact that a good chunk of the post seems to be a rant about TC itself, I think it's worth pointing out who this is coming from. I've known Loren since the day I started at TechCrunch and think he's a funny, smart guy. But he's also spent a lot of time in the last few months ripping incessantly on TechCrunch.

That's sort of his thing — he's been ripping on Scoble and Dave Winer for years, but I suspect he gets a bit more attention when he does the TechCrunch bashing simply because there are quite a few people out there who love to hate TC. You can get a sense of this by looking through the archives of twitter.com/1938media. Maybe he's really had some epiphany about TC being evil after being friendly with us for years, maybe he's bitter about Michael failing to attend his conference, or maybe he's just doing his schtick.
"Have the candidate come in to work with you for a day. "

I'd only agree to this if I got paid for it. Interviewing is one thing, but actively contributing to a company's codebase is another. I don't think it's asking too much to get paid for what I do.

Plus, it would be difficult for me to shake the impression that such a company is cheap and is trying to get free labor. If they're not going to pay me a day's pay, how can I trust them to pay me a yearly salary or provide me the tools I need? How likely are they to be in business a year from now?
Data and transparency - Of governments and geeks
Another example of how the unenforceability of non-competes cripples high tech outside of California.
House Passes Bill: To advance cybersecurity research and development
We all assume that people with more readers are more important. We all strive to have more readers so that we can be more important. We worry about pageviews and clickthroughs and every other possible way we can possibly whore ourselves out because everybody else is doing it and telling us how much fun they're having doing it.

Umm, no. We worry about those things because more pageviews and more clicks = more money. And some of us are actually interested in making money.

What does "meaningful" even mean to you? If Google did provide a "breathtaking experience", how would that be any more meaningful in the long run? Useful is better than innovative.
Yup, I figured I'd just let the video speak for itself. It doesn't support the idea that HFCS is especially evil in the way that, say, transfats are, but it's still bad enough for you that the presenter is willing to call it a "poison", and he backs that up reasonably well even if you aren't quite willing to go that far.
I never said I hated you, in fact looking over your posting history I'd say that we agree on most things most of the time.

As for the rest of this rant, I think you are simply using this to pick a fight, and you are spoiling for one because of a lot of stuff in your life that bothers you.

If you want stuff to be invented or changed then go and invent stuff or change stuff.

But don't blame others for not inventing stuff that would be convenient for you to have and don't blame others for not liking your body, as far as that is the case.

It seems to be a very sensitive point with you, but you have to keep in mind that some part of your body comes under your control and some part of it you are simply born in to and you'll have to make do with that.

For the record, I've had an extremely disfiguring skin condition, it used to make me feel so uncomfortable that I wouldn't leave the house. I literally used to scratch myself to little bits. It took me a good 15 years to get it under control, careful experimenting with diet and trying to avoid situations that were stressful is what finally did it.

Just because I'm 'thin' doesn't mean I didn't get my own taste of that sort of thing. And even now I have to be careful. But I'm more than ever convinced that we really can make a difference in our own lives and in the ones of people around us by working hard at it.

If your problems are glandular, hormonal or some weird combination of things then there might be something you can do, there might not be. But I've seen one guy kick the issue with an iron fist and go from well over 280 pounds to a regular weight, and his problem was definitely medical.

If he could do it, you may be able to do it too.

As for your friend, that's a really really sad thing that that happened.

If I made a post that asks the questions that you ask and left as much unclear as you did then I would be the last to start using that and a bunch of strawmen to pick fights, HN is not a place to vent your frustration in general, much less one where you get to threaten people with bodily harm.

Doing so makes you look juvenile and unbalanced.
That seems like an excellent place to put an engineer to work improving the marketing. It is really shockingly easy to put a pipeline between the product and marketing rather than treating them as two ill-fitting bits grafted onto the Frankenstein monster that is the company. For example, your company has nigh-omniscience regarding the value they're getting from your product. Your company wants to ask them for a sale (the renewal). Combine both of those into one email: you should renew this because you saved 47 photos with us, saving you several hours and loss of precious memories like Cousin's Wedding and Study in Violet #8. Did we mention it is only $PRICE? (Obviously, handle with care, particularly for regulated industries.)

I spent $250 on MailChimp credits this morning because email marketing is printing money at the moment. Previously customers received a hints & tricks followup email 1 day after signup (if they asked for it). I tweaked that a bit so the computer watches their activity in the first day and customizes the subject line to fit their interest. That took thirty minutes of work to double open rates, which helps retention considerably and ultimately leads to more sales.

Back to Evernote for a second: they could also probably make serious money by A/B testing obvious candidates for improvement on their front page and their purchasing page. Revenue per user is not a fixed number if you start doing conversion improvements.
Daniel was definitely old enough to know what he was doing. The problem was he was so use to doing whatever he wanted in the tech community, he thought he had no boundaries.

There's a big difference between knowing whether what you're doing is frowned upon or not and appreciating the severity or consequences of same actions. Age certainly correlates with acquiring the latter.

I was a young writer in the dot com era.. and when I was 17 (or even 21!) I'd have known taking a kickback for a story was wrong. What I'm sure I wouldn't have appreciated, however, is how damaging taking a kickback could have been for my career/reputation/integrity and how much it violates the bonds of trust we form as adults.

It's a bit like toilet papering or egging someone's house. You know it's wrong as a kid, but it's not till you're mature that you appreciate how distressing it could be to the other parties involved. Empathy and a greater awareness of how your actions have consequences within a bigger ecosystem certainly comes with age.
Yes, that is exactly how it should work. Here the price is/should be always guaranteed, as it drops with each reservation. So, there is no price for 1-10, 10-20. It always decreases proportionally.

Groupon and buywithme are cool, but centralization, just because of the purchasing model is not right iMHO. It would be much better that you have the option at the website of purchase, whether to buy now for the full price, or get in the group to buy later for a lower price. It's segmentation of the market.
Having spent a lot of time and effort working to inject and enforce robustness in projects, I appreciate the sentiment. The list at the top did, however, remind me of this bit of humor:

http://www.klingon.org/resources/klingon_code.html
Deepak Singh of Amazon Web Services maintains a great list of (cloud-focused) parallel computing frameworks and platforms:
http://deepaksingh.net/Resources/Computing_in_the_Cloud

He's on twitter, too: http://twitter.com/mndoci
"I know personally that lots of you know lots of things and you don’t say the Stuff That Matters.

It’s okay to call people idiots, or dopes, or morons, or liars when they are. This is part of the process of transparency."

No, it's not, that's called an insult, and it's generally bad form. It's only useful when it actually contributes to something, and I don't see how insulting people contributes to anything. Likely, this is what separates the people that actually know the "Stuff That Matters" and the people that act like they know.
I have no idea who he is

He's sorta the Perez Hilton of the tech world. He's well known, has lots of funny and extreme things to say, is funny, and "knows people" but it's hard to classify exactly what he's done. I still gotta love the guy though.
People who say that need to be more specific. In the case of a negative gross margin, that's true, but what about high fixed costs and a positive gross margin?
"Net loss: $10 per eBook."

Why are we equating a published singular book with an ebook?
Net loss per ebook can only be calculated based on the number of ebooks sold, not on the number of ebooks produced. One ebook is equivalent to thousands of ebooks, there is no difference.

People, it's digital.
The truly deceitful food industry trick here isn't with calories but trans fats.

The FDA allows food companies to round down and say "0 grams of trans fat" on the label if the product contains less than 0.5 grams _per serving_.

So food companies proudly say "0g trams fat" on the front of a package, even though it might be loaded with heart poisoning hydrogenated oils.

Unsurprisingly, FDA requirements are fairly relaxed in this area compared to Canada and the EU.
He wasn't an intern. That was spin.
Note that as it relies on subpixels it'll only work as intended in one orientation on iPhone.
Time and time again, the people seeking attention are the ones who have the least to contribute. The people who really understand what's going on don't need to tell people how great they are. Their actions speak for themselves.

I don't care much for the petty politics of all of this, but I'm glad someone else feels the same way about Scoble. :)
You realize it's a catch-22 to upvote you? ;)

People want to be heard. People want to know others care about their opinion. That's how humans work. You can pretend to be above it, but you still just wrote 7 paragraphs arguing your point in the hope of other people reading and agreeing with you. That's not a bad thing. It's human.
We need rankings to prioritize our activities online - there's too much choice online, and not enough time to evaluate all those choices. So we let google and techcrunch and hacker news do the evaluation for us (by link-graphs, editors, or community ratings). In each case, the algorithm used inevitably becomes an important topic to be concerned about, so it rises in the rankings as well, and people who want their stuff to be seen more try to make the system work for them. I don't think this is "evil" or that caring about this makes us "dick-suckers", it's just a byproduct of the realities of the web.
I can relate to this post quite a bit. During the dot com boom, I worked as a consultant to quite a few startups. All of them have since disappeared, but all were great ideas that would have survived had they not need to be immensely popular immediately. One example was a movie streaming service that would right now be way ahead of netflix, which wasn't even a thought at the time, but there just weren't enough people with broadband then.

Compare that to now. I'm running a bootstrapped startup that has time to wait on customers. We have the patience to work with existing customers and nurture them and make them very happy. We are cash flow positive and there's really no reason we won't keep growing forever.

We got started several years ago and are in a market that sees newcomers come and go within the span of 6 months. I've watched the industry leader crash and burn -- it was venture backed by SAP Ventures and many big names in silicon valley, but it was too soon. Not enough customers and the vc's closed the doors.

Some of our competitors do what they do precisely because they don't have a long term vision. They have the short term vision that wants to pop! Get big fast or die. But not all technology gets big fast. Sometimes a patient slow growth of customers is the way to go. That's the traditional way businesses get started, grow and succeed, but today, it seems the majority of tech entrepreneurs think the only way to go is the vc path to spectacular growth, but old style businesses still work in technology too.

Lesson is, take your time. Get profitable enough to quit your job and concentrate on the business and own all of it for yourself. Slowly grow your revenue like you would a salary or something else. You don't need a million dollars a year to be happy, if you're making $100k or even $40k on your own with a product you've developed, you can easily live off that and have all the freedom and luxury that comes with being your own boss -- or well, having customers who are your own boss. But with even 10 customers, it becomes a lot easier to say no to the wrong direction and focus on the path forward.

On the other hand, it's almost impossible to say no to an employer or a venture capitalist that pays your rent and they can easily steer you in a direction that isn't in your long term best interst, which is and should always be happiness.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and disagree.

What most startups need is not another engineer. What most startups need is a business person who understands engineering. We can quantify value.

After attending the Hacker Fair 0 (Mtn View) . . . flying out there especially for it, having my demos ready and talking to way too many "recruiter" types who understand nothing about code, this really rang true. Technically-oriented business people are not recruiters any more than engineers are recruiters. Recruiters are people who read articles like this (parent) and manipulate people to work, solving a company's problems for free. They're usually the last ones a company must resort to to find talent.

I've yet to find a company intelligent enough to hire me.
TechCrunch is only well-read because it's well-read. People don't just stumble upon it and fall in love. They go to it because they've been told how many other people have gone to it. And we have decided it's still okay to rate things based on how frequently other people go to them.

That's a 2008 onwards phenomenon. I'm a TechCrunch fan and have been a reader since 2005 (though I only follow on Twitter now because they post too much). Back then, people genuinely appreciated TechCrunch because it combined a few magic ingredients:

- pithy, well written posts
- occasional outbursts of humor or insight
- irreverence for the companies profiled but reverence for the Web 2.0 ideal

Up until around the 60k FeedBurner reader area, TechCrunch seemed, to me, to be very well reviewed and appreciated by its audience.

After that, though, it started to end up on almost every RSS reader's default subscription list and.. blam, the number rocketed up to 1M subscribers pretty quick and the number of posts each day went through the roof as well. Suddenly it was a high traffic site for the "everyman" rather than the reasonably small Web 2.0 cabal. That's when the "well-read because it's well-read" stuff clicked together - but it wasn't always that way!
This is something that's bugging me about the iPad. Since the screen is 1024x768 (and TFTs are typically manufactured in portrait), I wonder if the pixels are oriented vertically rather than horizontally when you're in portrait mode. If so, the font rendering for books could be horrible compared to if you had it in landscape.

Anyone got any ideas/insight on this?
I question the validity and enforceability of a trademark on the word Android anyway. Google neither coined the word or were the first to use it in a technical sense. Android had a pre-existing meaning and in your example maps to paper tissue not the coined product descriptor Kleenex.
Not to be nitpicky with the article, but it's a little misleading when it says (right above this quoted section):

"What is clear is that the “non-obviousness” part of the test for patentability has not been applied anywhere near rigorously enough to internet and business-process patents. Because they lack a history of “prior art” to refer to, examiners and judges have granted a lot of shoddy patents for software and business processes."

Bilski has nothing to do with obviousness. Bilski is about the subject matter requirement, which is that patents can only be granted on certain types of inventions. For example, physical machines can be patented, but electronic signals cannot.

This is another reason (in addition to Grellas's below) that I doubt Bilski will have a big effect on software patents. Regardless of the outcome of the case, it will be most likely easy to work around, simply by tying the software to some sort of machine, be it a computer, mobile phone, embedded circuit, or anything else.
And the weakness of the premise can be seen in "Update: Josh of EventVue clarified that they raised angel money, not VC money."
Help me understand: What part of my intellectual curiosity should this be gratifying? What am I missing here that makes this hacker news as opposed to straight-up gossip and verbal backstabbing?

PG has written at length about the social dynamics of high school from the perspective of a nerd. Are we now doomed to recreate the high school social dynamic within our community?
Ask HN: Why is Software Engineers frowned upon by programmers?
I don't get why programmers have such big grieves against software engineers and project leaders. Is this the classic case of 'hate-your-boss' or are there some more fundamental knowledge underlying this? Don't programmers want the project to hit budget? Don't programmers want their domain problem to properly solved so the customer gets pleased?

I'm sure there are bad software engineers out there, but I'm sure there are some good out there too. Just like there are bad or good programmers.