skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The Charlie Rose analogy is perfect -- Mixergy has the potential to be be a resource that has archives of interviews with The Greats. I love to pop onto the Charlie Rose Show's website occasionally and check out old interviews when one of The Greats enters my consciousness, but I do it so rarely that I wouldn't pay a subscription fee for the privilege.

It makes sense that you'd like Mixergy to make money, and I think micropayments would be the ideal way to go about this -- but until they become more practical, please try to find some reasonable middle ground. Were the sponsorships and other ad schemes not working out? You have a highly targeted audience that should be more monetizable than average.
how are they very different? Syntax aside, Lua and Javascript are actually pretty similar. I would say they actually are close cousins.
I sell iPhone apps.

Revenue is a poor metric - lag between actions and outcome is measured in weeks if not months. It's good to track over months, but does nothing in short term, so is not actionable.

I want to know what is the expected "time to stop using the app" at any given day. If this time is getting longer my app is getting better, so this gives me a metric that's better than revenue. However, this metric can only be accurately computed in retrospect, so I need to mine for correlations with something that's available sooner.

Something like "people who use the app on the first day 5 minutes are likely to drop out in two months, but people who use it on the first day for 20 minutes are likely to stay for 6 months".
In some ways North Korea is one of the few countries that feels really foreign to me nowadays, but I think that might be because there is so little verifiable information about it.

Regardless, looking at these photos I only think: Kim is looking really old.
I'm happy to pay for content if it's the right model, but right now you don't have a model that I am willing to participate in. :)

In related news, I can't see a way to even access premium content on your site right now. I'm guessing that has something to do with the "[private_Premium]" tags I'm seeing on the for-pay pages.
"where's the evidence that willpower is trainable as promised in the intro?"

In the second half of the article (linked at the bottom of the first half), they describe having people exert willpower in some small area over the course of a long study, and found that by the end of the study, they also ate better, exercised more, and reduced tobacco, alcohol, and caffeine consumption. This suggests that exercising willpower is effective for building it.

Without knowing more details, I can't tell you how solid that science is. But it does suggest an experiment you can do yourself: consciously exercise willpower in some small area, while tracking various habits that don't directly relate to that area. See if your willpower improves over time.
Wouldn't it look a little suspicious if they whisked out all the foreigners?
The point is: Cameron and the Production (together with the distributors) wanted to make a movie that earned fast enough. They didn't want a masterpiece (I think, the original Avatar manuscript, Proejct 880, is actually a lot better that this version[1]).

Because of all the buzz with the "go green" and climate change, this version attracts more people (manuscript freezed before the UNCCC Copenhagen).

[1] http://chud.com/articles/articles/21969/1/PROJECT-880-THE-AV...
In the absence of a Charlie Rose that interviews entrepreneurs, an Andrew Warner will do just fine. Yes, a free program would be better, but given the amount of work that Andrew has already done (nearly 270 interviews by my count), and the benefit I've gotten from his guests, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. If pay-walling content means that he'll be able to do this longer, then I'm all for it.
> set a separate password for over-the-phone stuff

Sorry, but I think this is the phone equivalent of insisting that you set a password using uppercase, lowercase, digits, symbols, at least 20 characters long and changing every 3 days. People are just going to start using obvious things or writing them down.

True story: A few months ago, I took out a new credit card. During the application process, including activating phone and Internet access, I was asked for something like sixteen different pieces of personal/security information. The first time I wanted to call them a few days later to check something was now ready, I was asked for my "pass code". I had no idea which of those pieces of information that was, so Call Centre Guy says not to worry, he can verify me via other details. He runs through a series of questions, at least one of which makes no sense in the circumstances (in fact, that was the reason I was calling). At the end, he says he's sorry but I've failed security and he has to hang up now. All he can say is that I haven't provided the required answer to all of the questions. I tried to go on-line, and was asked to enter some memorable information. Apparently, I gave them three different things during sign-up and any one of them would do. No doubt I chose someone's birthday, etc., but of course I had no idea who and there was no kind of prompt. So I couldn't get in over the Internet either. Finally, I gave up and went back into the branch, where the staff had been helpful and efficient while I was setting things up to start with. They called through to a special number... which transferred to the same call centre and resulted in the same series of security questions, even though I was sitting in a secure area of one of their branches, with an employee who had already authenticated themselves, and who had seen my passport and driving licence two minutes earlier (which means they had access to two photos, two signatures, and my current address as a minimum). I gave exactly the same answers I had given to the previous guy, explained in exactly the same way why one question didn't make sense, and was told that was fine and how could he help?

When I call my other credit card company, they ask for my six-digit DoB and typically my current credit limit to verify before doing anything significant.

My business account needs a single password for everything, and for extra security provides a device where you push a button to generate a six-digit code that changes every few seconds.

Two of these have the right approach. The one that uses separate security information for everything and all kinds of different types of validation is not one of them.
It looks nice, but I don't understand what it is showing?
Exactly. Charlie Rose does take a salary as well I am assuming.
This is really no surprise, Novell's been working really hard on building a simple bridge for developers to use Mono and C# for building iPhone apps. It makes perfect sense for them to be showcasing the capabilities MonoTouch provides.

http://monotouch.net/
While the idea that Rackspace, a hardware and VM hosting provider, is really jeopardizing customers with passwords is pretty silly, it's still mostly a myth that you can use "2-way encryption" to securely store passwords in a database.

Anything the good guys can do to decrypt a password, assume the bad guys can too.
Vaccines court' rejects mercury-autism link in 3 test cases
Hunch Gains B-Round Funding from Khosla Ventures
I am not impressed. The creation of glucose by the liver, gluconeogenesis, is strongly controlled by epinephrine (adrenaline), the same hormone that cranks up the heart rate. Thus it is not surprising to find heart rate variability changes simultaneously with glucose changes.
I'm not a huge fan of Computer Modern's appearance, but as a practical font for typesetting math it's a work of genius.

Alas, there are hardly any other fonts that include the range of glyphs required for serious mathematical typesetting.

On the subject of XeTeX, fontspec, et al, while they do make using OpenType fonts much easier, alas they cannot magically create corresponding mathematical glyphs. They also, last time I used them, lacked decent support for setting equations using OpenType fonts, though the situation did seem to be improving so that may no longer be an issue.

Now, if someone wanted to sponsor the guys at some of the big font foundries to make matching mathematical glyphs to accompany some of the nice, professional-grade OpenType fonts they make, that would be fabulous, but probably a rather expensive bit of philanthropy given the niche market.
If I was a stand-in for some politician that was about my height and weight, I would definitely wear sunglasses. Even at night.
Sadly, I feel the same way about "organic" and "free range" labels. I wish I could feel good about spending more money to buy sustainable food, but I think it's mostly bogus marketing.
I was wondering if he wears shades so you can never know for sure if it's him or a stand-in.
Any chance of a version that works on Snow Leopard being released? Just tried installing – no luck. A shame, I'm about to start typesetting a paper.
Hey HN: Check out my first Muse
Hey HN, I finally got around to figuring out how to implement Tim Ferris's muse concept for myself. I'd like to get your feedback on how to make it better.

Address is http://miraclefruitstand.net/

Let me make this clear: I'll be grateful if you just throw some advice my way on how to take this to the next level. Don't feel obliged to purchase anything; my desire is not to spam (but I will say I enjoy the products myself).

For the curious lurker, here's what I did:

>Contacted the warehouse rep.

>Arranged to be a distributor for the product (which isn't hard - basically just reviewing their policies and getting familiar with how they operate).

>Found out their dropshipping rates; calculated the margins for myself.

>Registered the domain with NearlyFreeSpeech.net - saved a bunch - 11 or 12 bucks.

>Built the site with wordpress and customized it in a day. Theme, plugins, etc...

>Plugged it in to paypal.

>Tested out the payment system.

>Set up an Adwords campaign which began this morning, using a 100 dollar promo coupon from Google + 10 dollar activation fee. Spending 3.33 a day on advertising, testing the system out using google's cash instead of my own. From that I garnered 3 clicks, 1985 impressions, for a %.15 Click through rate. (Here's a question: is that good or bad? The campaign literally started at midnight.)

Basically if the site fails, I'll have lost around 20 bucks. I also have the option of repping wholesale to retailers in the area, so I'm not entirely dependent on the site, thought I would like for it to be an automated source of income.

Haven't had any "real" sales yet. Processed two orders, one from family, one from a friend, and the company later informed me they'd just send it to my family for free - essentially I've earned back my 20-something dollar investment back already.

So - What do you think HN? How can I make this better and improve sales quickly? Anything I should be aware of from your own muse-creation experiences?

Thanks much!
He looked over the Na'vi bio-networking quite superficially. But his point was that how can a rhinoceros destroy a robot like that. It's like you take an armored elephant against an M1A2 Abrams.
I liked the shouting (and I've emailed this to you).

Your earlier show intros started out with so much more energy. Now, I wonder where the energy is especially with a name like Mixergy. You are doing an interview a day now so that makes a difference.

I listen to you pretty much everyday now but when I first stumbled upon your interviews, it was that initial energy that got me to listen more. At first I was thinking, "who is this guy?", but the energy kept me listening a few more minutes, and then a few more and now I'm hooked.
Why Slashdot Sucks
I remember when top-flight venture capitalists were saying Apple's only path to salvation was to adopt the NT kernel, or even to start building Windows machines.

Or when certain tech pundits were crowing about how the Pre and WebOS were about to eat Apple's lunch.

I'm willing to suspend judgment, and I find empty pontification to just be dull.
Did you try mactex?

http://www.tug.org/mactex/2009/
tuaw.com reports an average order volume of 15k/day on the apple store
Enquiry is asking someone else a question. Inquiry is looking into it yourself.
Alex Weber's custom tracker could be built for maybe $200: http://is.gd/apQ9z You could probably throw in an accelerometer for another $20 to act as trash track's motion detector.
They would need to be able to see passwords to login to your server to fix stuff anyway, unless you'd prefer for them to backdoor every machine they install with their ssh key. What's the big deal here?
The links are not working ... could you please fix that ?
What is great about this movie review, for me, isn't the exact point-by-point analysis that the author makes, but the fact that author is noted futurist Ray Kurzweil. It would be like having Colin Powell review the Hurt Locker - its just kind of cool.
I don't know. Imagine an earth filled with up to 2,000 year old humans. Many (not all) of them would be amazing in a huge variety of ways. They'd have had the time to spend 10 of our lifetimes learning how not to live well, and another 10 learning how to live well.
Thanks for the feedback. I just added some more explanatory text. We just invented this visualization last week and are working on the minimal explanation..
I would think there were cheaper options with less sensitivity using something you could order at sparkfun[1].

[1] http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/categories.php?c=4
I wish I had the option to say goodbye to mine, but I'm locked into a 2 year contract.
Given the hype is this really meaningful? I think regardless of whether this device is a stunning success or a total flop they were always going to sell a huge number up front.
Ray missed the forest for the trees. No movie de-others the other more than this one. More importantly, he utterly misses the tonality, as if he were watching without a heart. Ray, how is it that your analysis explains nothing of the continued appeal of this movie?
I segmented my probable market into two groups of customers, one which was numerically numerous and one which I felt would get the most value out of the application, and chose my pricing scheme such that the free version is close to worthless for group #2 except insofar that it demonstrates they'll have a positive experience with the paid version.
Indeed, they are strikingly similar, one of the key differences being Lua's minimal/extensible dispatch. A function call, by default, involves no searching through superclasses/prototypes. This is likely a big advantage in benchmarks.
I think a more sophisticated plot would have made a better movie, but it'd have killed the box office. Cameron knows his audience. When you make the most expensive movie ever, you better damn well be shooting for a wide audience; the nerds aren't going to get you a positive return on the investment. Avatar was exactly what it needed to be to justify its existence.

Once this technology becomes cheap enough, then it'll make economic sense to make really smart movies to chase the long tail of very specific niche audiences, but movies cost too much right now to be able to do that effectively. People who like really smart movies are a tiny niche audience. You have to dumb it down or it'll lose money.
I'd say up your Google adwords spending a little bit, maybe up to $5 or $10 a day, and see how it fares with more traffic.
I run a company that makes money.

My wife works for me and I work for her and it works great.

She is on my board so she is part of the team that can fire me.

She does the books (accounting) for the company so she works for me.

She's a very smart person and I value her opinion and every time she says that we should get someone else to do the books I say no because then she'd be less connected to the company and her board value would go down.

I do not think this will work for everyone. I suspect it works for us because we are a team in our marriage and we know it and own it. I pity the fool that messes with us, we're a team.

BTW, I agree with the comments that said that if you are in a startup your spouse is there too. When we got going I always got the permission of the spouse to hire the person. It's the right thing to do in many ways.
Glad to see Ryan on Mixergy. I remember meeting him at a UNC Entrepreneurship Club meeting my freshman year, back when he was still running Virante as the marketing arm of iContact. He and Aaron definitely practice what they preach.
The Urgent vs. Important Matrix - How to Deal with Interruptions
Yeah I'd probably want to double what I'm doing now at least, once things got serious. I figured I'd just burn through google's cash before I burned through mine.
Ofcourse, let us know when you'll be available for a meetup.

By the way, I highly highly recommend you go to Palermo Valley http://www.palermovalley.com/primer-pvn-de-2010-capital-para... next tuesday, and as a special guest I can arrange for a translator as well, though most attendees, speakers, and organizers speak english too.

Perhaps this goes against you not wanting distractions. But if you feel like getting out a bit and meeting the startup community here, let me know.
I agree.

However, did you consider the idea that we are no wise in any way and we are in need of more observational evidence?
First your website looks nothing like a shop to me. Spend some time looking at www.amazon.com and convince yourself that my chances to buy anything are much higher if your site looked like it.
Foursquare co-founder recently gave a talk at a Brooklyn middle school
Thank you for thanking us. It is easy to love that which loves us. Which makes me question the motives of the lover... ah consciousness is exhausting, huh?
> Why did everything need six legs and four eyes

For the same reason most animals on earth have 4 legs and two eyes, common genetic ancestry; It was actually a nice touch.

> and why didn't Na'vi hair evolve to be prehensile when they started needing to shove it down the data tubes of irate wildlife

They already had hands, a prehensile hair connection wouldn't likely offer enough advantage to become a primary trait.
They do appear to be working (?)
I wouldn't call it speedy:

met% python -m timeit "sum(x**2 for x in xrange(10000))"
1000 loops, best of 3: 1.14 msec per loop
met% ./bin/pypy -m timeit "sum(x**2 for x in xrange(10000))"
100 loops, best of 3: 5.18 msec per loop

Almost a five-fold slowdown, in my hands.
My HN Dinner Party #2
I see a planet of profoundly bored and weary 2000 year olds. But with 100 years of productive youth without a corresponding increase in time spent being very young or too old to work effectively, there would be outsized productivity gains.
Misread as XeXeca
How Real are the Defects in Toyota's Cars?
Not XeTeX but MacTex-2009 is great on SL. http://www.tug.org/mactex/2009/
The organic labels vary from country to country. The toughest one is in France: AB for Agriculture Biologique

The tougher the rule the better the food, it's up to the consumer to make the wisest choices an support the appropriate producers.

european regulation: CEE 2092/91 (CE) n°834/2007 and (CE) n°889/2008 available in english

in french:http://www.repasbio.org/fnab/index.php/Tout_sur_la_bio/La_bi...

http://www.repasbio.org/fnab/index.php/Tout_sur_la_bio/La_bi...

http://www.agencebio.org/pageEdito.asp?IDPAGE=33

compared european, french and us labels (in french):http://biogassendi.ifrance.com/reglesbio.htm#Les
> Especially that huge knife for the exoskeleton. That's not something I've seen before. Also the detachable gun.

Gundam?
Andrew Warner developed a product (Mixergy) that creates value for a number of people, and now he is looking to capture some of that value (in the form of profits). Isn't this the essence of entrepreneurship? Why would you feel burned?
What is exactly the difference between Casandra and a document store like CouchDB? Or are they similar?

Just trying to get my head around this nosql thing and the different approaches...
Humor is the gateway drug. If people start upvoting jokes, then HN will turn into Reddit. Then into Digg. Before you know it, you might as well call it HNchan.
That's what I thought too, but I saw the ordering system both times (before manipulation, immediately after boot-up) and the annual price was higher the first time and $199 the second time.
Good luck to you! It's inspiring to hear about starting a company on pocket change!

I'm wondering if you're allowed to use those "New York Times", CNN, etc logos... sometimes companies can be protective of their branding.

Do you plan to form an LLC or sole proprietorship?
Andrew I was under the impression that you are already independently wealthy from your previous companies?

Why are you trying to make money from Mixergy?

If it is just a matter of keeping score, I challenge you to dream bigger.

The idea of paying for content is such a 20th century idea .. treating ideas in a similar fashion to physical property is such a 20th century idea. We are increasingly seeing people capitalize on the very significant differences between intellectual property and physical property to do new things.

If you have the luxury of not needing a cashflow from mixergy, why not challenge yourself to find a new way to make money off your work, that doesn't involve paywalls?
A typeface designed using only CSS3
Taxi Drivers Overbilled 1.8 Million Times, New York Says
1. Release the source code instead. Everyone will be better off.

2. If you do #1 the relevant distributions will package the app for you.

3. Valid point.

4. He says Emacs but doesn't specify XEmacs, so, off with his head!
It's not impossible, just hard. There's no exchange you can go to, and dealers will generally not work with you if you're a small fry.

In NPR's case, I'd say: (a) it looks like they worked directly with the seller, not with a bank/broker/dealer, and (b) their foundation has $250MM of assets, so they're not exactly a small fry (http://www.npr.org/about/statements/fy2008/fy08nprfoundation... [pdf]).
Nobody cares enough about Google in China for there to be grassroots anything for it. They are the Yahoo of China. I know most Americans love to imagine that Chinese people are so horribly oppressed. It gives them comfort in the face of a rising economic power. There's lots of oppression going on, but internet censorship is grossly exaggerated by the American press.
Very profound and simple thought.
Carpe diem!
Universe / by Jonathan Harris
Is the fact that McCain is an empty suit and a handshake news to anyone? Or that Clinton is a moody castrating bitch? Or that Obama is kind of arrogant? Or that Palin is vapid?
xetex is available as a MacPorts port. Works fine for me on 10.6.2. I think it got installed as a dependency, actually. Possibly for MathML.
When I saw the pictures of Kim Jong-il surrounded by a store filled with fresh fruit while his citizens starve, I was reminded of the final years of the rule of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu. In Ceauşescu's case, to some extent it appears his lieutenants went to great lengths to present him with a sanitized view of the state of his country.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceauşescu#Tensions

I'm curious if this is also the case in North Korea.
So perhaps he should start with "Venus Plus X" by Sturgeon...
so then the question is, whats a good place to order loose leaf tea, a place like adagio or what?
I wouldn't bet against Apple selling that many, but some people are sticklers for cold, hard facts. ;-)