skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is just one point of many made in Gregg Easterbrook's The Progress Paradox. It describes ways life continues to get better, but people feel worse despite it.
I had the same question... I'm also positive it was marketing flacks writing his Sun blog.
The definition I've seen given by PG is anything that scales up. In other words, a business that sells a product that can be used by many users. A small business is usually something that offers a service (a restraunt, a barber shop, or a consulting firm).

Funding has nothing to do with it.
Every button, every word, every link, every switch is scrutinized to make sure it’s absolutely necessary and won’t generate a future support request.

With the obligatory disclaimer that I really love talking to customers even when they can't find the Save button: I agree with this so much it is physically painful to contemplate not doing it. There are thousands of them and one of me. If I screw up, there goes my weekend. (This has happened before at least twice.)

Relatedly, on the question of trusting what users do over what they say: if you instrument your site well (i.e. track events of significance), you can come up with your best two (or ten) candidates for a particular interface element, throw them both up in parallel to different users, and see which (empirically) is the easiest to understand. A/B tests: not just for signup forms.

It is insane how much mileage you can get out of this. e.g. I increased the percentage of customers who succeeded at one task from 50% to 60% with just a month of iterated A/B tests on two pages. It is a good way to cover for the fact that I have all the design/UX skills of a mole rat.

There's also a somewhat more difficult variant of this that I've been working on, which is supporting multiple interfaces at once and segregating users into them automatically based on classification of their skill level. It appears to work very, very well in my limited testing so far.
I'm not sure I agree that that's what Boolo's clarification says however, it makes not a whit of difference to my analysis. For, if, indeed, "Hey A, are you Random?" is not one of my three questions, then it has no True answer other than "maybe". Conversely, if that is one of my three questions, then the bogus solution offered fails.
There was a healthy discussion on this issue just two days ago on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/b1n8h/i_remember...
Hardy–Weinberg principle
Translation of title - "Babes with curves are hot!!!"
I couldn't be arsed to read it all due to the fact that none of the pages wanted to load in a timely matter. Seems like some of those agencies should take some of the money they invest into their "creative and strategic processes" and divert it to a much more functional technical services team. :)
Your startup idea... sounds neat. (A short dialogue you may have heard before)
I believe you misunderstood the solution. You would turn to B and ask if A was random, not if he was himself random...
The fact that they call themselves the MeeGo Technical Steering Group seems to confirm your conclusion.
Russian Pres. Medvedev is looking to build "Silicon Valley" near Moscow
> And they're not all moving to one place, and of course there's evidence both ways, but smart people typically want to educate their kids well. Our schools have been slipping a lot for quite a while.

What definition of "our" are we using?

Are Palo Alto's public schools slipping? Are the private schools in the valley slipping?

Or, are you talking about universities? How many countries have 4 schools that would be considered top 50 in the US? How about 10?
Perhaps the most accurate way to put it is that the same broad systemic forces that produced the corporation also produced the current educational system.

And the same broad systemic forces that is forcing us away from the corporate model, is also forcing, gradually, our educational system to change.

And as always, those of us living at the margins, feel the impending changes most keenly. I have a lot of friends who still feel quite comfortable within the current educational system.
> ...and with the addition of a few proprietary fonts (which come with Adobe Acrobat Reader)

Can you elaborate on this please?
Edit: I mean, what is your method of acquiring them, and having your system use them?
Haven't reached that aspect yet (trying to stay in HTML), but I am surprised. I thought apps would be shielded from each other, which would imply they could not mess with each others files. Well, I am curious to learn more about it.
So is there no such thing as a freemium model for a Twilio-like web application?
In contrast, I purchased a ticket for and boarded a recently-developed commuter train in my area and not once on my journey did I encounter anyone who worked for the transportation company. Not even on the crowded return trip was there a ticket check.
With cursing, an increase in the frequency of cursing is not necessarily a bad thing. These forbidden words only hold power in their taboo; by using them more frequently and openly, it robs the words of their power.

I frequently hear people swearing without trying to express hate, it has just become a part of their parlance.
What's wrong with choosing an arbitrary reference point to be local.

Choosing a non-inertial reference frame would be the problem.

Relative velocities (including temporal velocity...) are essentially arbitrary, but acceleration is not; and the accelerating forces experienced by objects in the solar system are overwhelmingly dominated by the sun.
At least people drive smaller cars in SF. ;)
Stackoverflow: Joel and Jeff want VC Money? Say What?
> Backing those bonds decreases the already shaky credit of the US as a whole.

And, it tells CA that it can go on a binge and get someone else to pick up the tab.

CA does stupid things because there's no negative consequences to doing stupid things. CA would be better off if it didn't do such things. And, if it does, the rest of the world would be better off if such things were funded by volunteers.

The best case is for CA is to wipe out bond holders and be forced to live within its means. The next best case is for CA to wipe out bond holders and then find a new group of suckers to voluntarily fund the next round of crazy. The worst case is for CA to get bailed out by taxpayers.
I figure by the end of the month most of the people on Chatroulette will be reporters doing stories about Chatroulette.
nice. thanks.
so, why the hell is everyone linking to that silly movie that shows just a phone rendering?
>An uncharitable summary of your argument: 37signals has been too successful to know what they're talking about.

That's not a completely unreasonable argument to make. The fact that they were able to achieve success without having to take in investor money, in some ways disqualifies them from giving advice on when its ok to take investments.
i'm curious why anyone voted this up. is it not exactly like every other chatroulette post on here in the past few days? someone tries out the site, sees a bunch of dicks, and posts screenshots. where's the interview with the site creator or the technical information about its infrastructure or anything else hacker news-related?
ah, seeing that on the mobile really feels like it's a windows phone. it only keeps the fliping page interface when launching the main apps. after that is just load time and buffer change. or side scroll. or zooming.
My point is that it was never (or rarely) mentioned as such in HN prior to Jobs' comments...

Generally I don't think any company is more or less evil than any other. Most publicly traded companies pretty much do whatever they can get away with - and if they don't do so now, their next CEO will.
I just submitted(so 1 vote) to see if all my submissions were getting banned or just the ones from my blog.
I would say any business with fewer than 50 employees is a small business. According to Wikipedia, 37signals has 16. There are technical definitions in various countries of "small business", based in some cases on number of employees and in some case on revenues or other economic metrics. Any way you slice it, 37signals is a small business.
What's a Dress Worth? A $400M Fashion Startup founded by former Doubleclick CEO
tl;dr there's no pics.
Why do the machines need humans?
Wonder why there's tons of those articles and they talk about fertility cues but never deliver any solid data on this.

it's always 'women prefer this mans face because of fertility cues', 'man prefers this ass because of fertility cues'.
it should be IN Moscow...near Sherementyevo. Only way for this to succeed.
I think Touchscreens are probably a software issue. Not sure how they work, but I would expect a classic machine learning problem for determining the location of a touch.

Therefore I think they will get better with subsequent software updates. The iPhone just has seen more time dedicated to the problem already.

Anyway I am doing fine with my Nexus. Never tried to draw a straight line, don't expect the need to arise anytime soon.

As for straight lines, it makes me think that probably one could add all sorts of heuristics. Not only the current touch, but also the context (what is the user most likely trying to do).
Great find! They are indeed!
I guess I just don't have the narcism necessary to understand any tech reporter or otherwise would think anyone one would be interested in reading an entire article of them spending the morning on a social media website.

I don't think I've ever seen anyone write an article on how they sat on Facebook all Saturday night and how great it was.

I could understand if something hilarious or eventful came from it - but even then I would post it to my twitter or somewhere it would be relevant, not make it an article for my job.
Funny ;) Loved the (no text) part. And I really know the feeling when they tell you: isn't what email are for? or, well can't you do that with facebook, or worst: Haven't you heard about www.awesomewebsite.com.. it does all that and it's free.
Yup, skeptics like John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC. He now says "The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change" and "The story is the same for each one. The popular data sets show a lot of warming but the apparent temperature rise was actually caused by local factors affecting the weather stations, such as land development."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article702...

Meanwhile, Phil Jones has admitted that the hockey stick didn't happen and that the medieval warming period probably wasn't a local abberation. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm

However, Jones is simply wrong when he says "Solar influence was about flat over this period." (recent years).
Google Blurs The Line Between Paid & Unpaid Results Again
I actually used AjaxIM a few years back when the facebook platform first launched (Imessenger app). The app quickly grew to 18k users in 3 weeks, then we just stop working on it for reasons I can hardly remember. Very nice and easily customizable app.
They say the first step is denial. You can't yet admit that you were lied to by the proponents of global warming.

How about letting the scientists who are critics have access to the data? Seeing as how the warming trend isn't supposed to start again until 2060 I think we have the time. Let data and not emotion rule this debate.
Hackernews RSS suggestion: separate feed for items with many comments
Hackernews' standard RSS feed has too many submissions to be useful. Could we get a feed that is only updated with stories with X comments (20 or so) to get a 'best of' HN?
Fred is one of the many believers in the so-called "secondary" raise, but NOT for Series A.

http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/01/the-tug-of-war-between-ma-an...
References for that, please?
From what a Russian co-worker tells me, Moscow is the only really safe place for any foreigner to really be.
Mencius Moldbug (Unqualified Reservations) has video debate with Overcoming Bias
Use HTML5 player. Flash still seems to be processing.
So far, all of the Apple apps on the App Store seem to abide by "the rules". I hope that continues.
I think DHH's post raises a valid question about the land-grab analogy. What land exactly is being grabbed here?

I guess that is the real mystery, as other commentators have pointed out. I assume there is some kind of grand business plan which yahoo answers and expert exchange missed and which Joel et al have not missed. It would not be the first time they took a 'solved' problem - bug tracking software - and built a successful business off of it.
Postini did, but they were bought out by google :)
I don't see why you can't do freemium for applications which have non-zero per-user costs. You just have to either a) be careful with it or b) have a lot of other people's money to burn through prior to discovering your COCA and LTV.

I spend rather substantially more than my rent on AdWords, to acquire users who don't have to pay me money. This is less risky than it sounds because I have a pretty good idea that a portion of them will indeed pay and that I'll come out profitable.

There's also cash flow to consider. AdWords has post-pay, which is quite convenient for cash flow. Twilio, by my understanding, has you pay in advance. That is a bit less convenient. Basically, if you click on an ad today I owe Google money as of sometime in early March and then money actually leaves my physical possession to pay off my credit card sometime in early April, but I get physical possession of your money on Friday. This is pretty powerful -- it means, if Google were to offer me infinite advertising inventory, I could blow up my expenditures very quickly without needing any capital to do it.

Prepaying is not nearly so fun, although since you're prepaying with a credit card you still get at least a few weeks to get the customer's money prior to effecting actual transfer of the money to pay for the services they used.
What a stupid design! Clicked 5 or so links and gave up.

Question: is there a reason for using Flash when it's just static content being displayed? I'm using ClickToFlash on my Mac (Flash sucks on the Mac) and that made this just that much more of a pain...
The fastest-gun-in-the-west problem can be a feature depending on your perspective.

If I come to Stack Overflow with a question, many times a quick, off the cuff but not perfect answer will solve my problem. Sure, it might not be the best possible answer, but if it solves my problem, why would I want to look for something else? The primary person getting value out of an answer should be the person who asked the question, or else no one will bother coming to ask their questions. If you put anything in to slow down the submission of answers, you reduce the value of the site to people asking questions.

And there's an easy solution if the top rated and accepted answer is actually incorrect or misleadingly incomplete; just edit it. Sure, it takes a bit more rep to be able to edit people's answers, but it doesn't take all that long to get that rep.
I wonder if she's holding an real prototype or if it is just a nice high-density lcd.
Tch, show proper respect. That's "Sir Terry" to the likes of us.

And I don't think "becoming an advocate" is perhaps worded strongly enough. A few choice quotes from something he previously wrote on the subject (the link in philk's comment):

"I live in hope - hope that before the disease in my brain finally wipes it clean, I can jump before I am pushed"

"I am enjoying my life to the full, and hope to continue for quite some time. But I also intend, before the endgame looms, to die sitting in a chair in my own garden with a glass of brandy in my hand and Thomas Tallis on the iPod - the latter because Thomas's music could lift even an atheist a little bit closer to Heaven - and perhaps a second brandy if there is time.

Oh, and since this is England I had better add: 'If wet, in the library.'"

"I have met Alzheimer's sufferers who are hoping that another illness takes them away first. Little old ladies confide in me, saying: 'I've been saving up my pills for the end, dear.'"

As terrible as death is, interminable, futile suffering with no hope of respite until the bitter end isn't necessary and isn't what most people want.
Intel, Nokia aim to unify mobile Linux ecosystem with MeeGo
I have a serious problem with the UNR: Why the fuck did they include an email client? I mean seriously.

Worse, removing the e-mail client removes the Gnome-Panel. Genius, guys.
I seem to remember a talk about Abu Ghraib where the TED folks tagged a warning about the disturbing nature of some of the photos to the beginning of the video. I think they also censored the more disturbing photos (omitting them completely).

I'd hope, at a minimum, they post a bleeped version!

People are going to be asking to see it after all the attention it's received.

Plus it sounds like a number of folks gave her a standing ovation - so it's not exactly like it was a complete disgrace. Kind of bad enough for Chris Anderson to slam an invited speaker so publicly - hopefully TED doesn't act petty about it.

TEDtalks are licensed under Creative Commons. Anyone know if speakers have the right to obtain a copy of their individual talks to share, even if they don't make the site?
This is where America's organization as a collection of states is helpful. At least one or two states will be willing to let automation take over once it's developed, and it's effectiveness there can become leverage to spread it to other states.
Thanks for the comment, lambdom! How could I forget the dreaded awesomewebsite.com... gut blow.
Given Russia's somewhat shady rule of law I doubt the real Silicon Valley is worried.
The point is that 37signals explicitly claims not to be a startup. Their line is that they're a profitable 10 year old company.

I once asked DHH in a Q&A his opinion on working on a startup outside of Silicon Valley. He corrected me.
Tubed
It's when that video of you ends up all over the Interwebs.
You can relicense your own contributions as you choose, as long as it's at least as permissive as cc-by-sa or you dual license your code under cc-by-sa. Just mention your license in your user info. I license all my code samples under the WTFPLv2.

Also, it doesn't matter for most code sample on there. Most are not anything you would want to copy (too specific, or too general, to apply directly to your problem), or short enough that copying them would be considered fair use.
Science is the Only News
Does anyone NOT think Joel is going to get one of the best VC deals of all time? He's insanely well connected and has a proven product. He'll get meetings with all the top angels and VCs no problem then start a bidding war. I bet he gets a great valuation with good terms on control and equity.
See also: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1128107
"What I Couldn't Say..." about driving a Fortune 500 company into the ground.
what science news aggregates do people use? science daily is alright. anything better?
Seems like M$ has re-prioritized. Backwards compatibility is no longer sacred. Now it's alright to forge ahead and tack-on backwards compatibility afterwards. (I'm also thinking of Vista and Windows 7 here.)
because apple didn't developed their technology in a stretch deadline, they took their time perfectioning it... all others, just worked hard for a couple months to take on apple's innovation...
The issue is that business succeeds in America because, generally speaking, there are few barriers here and wonderful protections. In America, the idea that the government would simply take something you made is abhorrent. Even when things like eminent domain are called upon, there is compensation provided (and compensation that can be challenged in courts). So businesses and investors feel safe that what is their's is actually their's.

Likewise, there are few barriers. Censorship is near non-existant in America and that's important for a lot of technology companies. Likewise, there are few administrative hassles - especially compared to economies that thrive on bribes.

There just isn't enough safety and security and too much hassle and you can't just decide to build that. It takes time to change the culture around that. And you have to prove that it's a durable stability. Many countries try to lure in foreign businesses with tax credits and the promise of stability and once profits are seen and businesses created, that stability is yanked away and assets eroded. America just has a long history of defending property rights in a way that actions over the past decade speak differently of Russia.

And, with that in mind, money going into Russia will demand much more favorable terms (since there's more assumed risk). The more favorable the terms, the worse a deal it is for Russia and the more incentive there is to yank the deal later on. Remember, politicians have maybe 20 years or so. They want their results quick. They often don't care about creating stability and responsibility that will leave their country in an advantageous position while the current voters vote them out of office.

What Russia really needs is a commitment to the rule of law and the enforcement of that law whether it's in the government's interest (or anyone's interest) or not. That's what really attracts money and prosperity - when the rules are just and enforced fairly against all parties.
World's leading telcos unite to take on Apple
Too bad. I tried to read the whole thing but things stop when you get to publicis.be.

I'll try to write something insightful and witty when the whole tattle-tale is complete.
I admire how all the agencies are working together to protest a cause. However, I really don't like how they chose to do so. First of all, as rajat mentioned (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1128286) why use flash? Not only is it slower to load than an image such as a png, but what about those browser's/phones (ahhem the iPhone) that don't have flash capabilities?

I attempted to read the messages on each site, but many times I would get connection timeouts as I jumped from site to site, which became annoying after a while so I stopped even trying to continue reading.

With that said I don't think it's very effective. I think a better way would have been to buy a domain and have all the websites protesting forward to it and show the protest message there.
My brother-in-law says St. Petersburg is much safer than Moscow. (But even St. Petersburg isn't safe enough -- he's a Jew, and eventually had to flee because he was getting harassed very often. Basically, all of Russia is unsafe for anyone non-Russian-looking. And especially non-whites.
There have been 7 million attempts to download Flash from iPhones
Interesting point that a post earlier today discussed - timing and first movers http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1127500:

The problem:
One morning, the site was mentioned briefly on The View, and Gilt was deluged with 60,000 invitation requests. It soon became clear that the company’s greatest challenge was going to be expanding its supply to keep up with demand.

How timing is essential:
The world economy blew up. With shocking suddenness, $11 trillion of American wealth dematerialized, leaving the country awash in unwanted extravagances. Between the autumns of 2008 and 2009, according to Bain Capital, as little as 25 percent of all luxury goods moved at full price, and nearly half of all items didn’t sell all season. Some department stores canceled orders from designers, or refused to pay for shipped merchandise. Quite a few smaller retailers went out of business entirely. That was when Gilt stepped forward with its checkbook, and said good-bye to its supply problem.

The fifth 'page' of the article is where you'll find some interesting answers as to how to sustain this as the economy recovers.