skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
DHH has talked before about his opposition to ad-based businesses. It is bread crumbs on a per user basis. That means you need a huge number of eyeballs to profit. Building a system so large and popular that it gets that many users is difficult and there is a lottery factor.

On the moral side, people don't like advertising. That's the seamy underbelly of Google; they are constantly playing this game of how much advertising pain will people endure for their free services. You know, maybe stoplights could flash some adsense ads relevant to the types of passing vehicles to cover infrastructure costs. I don't want to live in adsense world.
Checking now. Is this happening for anyone else?
Are you hiring a CTO or a sysadmin?
You're making a false dichotomy; you can sell your business for a lot of money and still have valuable, profitable and rewarding work plus a big pile of cash.

How many people acquire businesses just to push their founders out? Most aren't interested in that; they obviously respect or at least fear what the founder(s) were doing, or they wouldn't have bought their company. It's perfectly likely that DHH could keep on at 37signals after an acquisition.

However, in the case where the buyer just boarded the place up or pushed out the staff or whatever, who cares? DHH can go start 38signals and keep doing "valuable, profitable and rewarding" work.

Good work and good money aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.
I wonder how much of this is FUD given the fact banks don't make as much money off of debit card purchases.
If you figure it out I'd like to hear more -- have a project that I want to use PuSH with but I haven't started it for this kind of reason exactly.
I don't know why that's REMOTELY relevant. Nothing pisses me off more than someone saying, "That's already been done" in response to a startup idea. How many search engines came before Google? How many video sites came before YouTube? How many social networks before Facebook? How many mp3 players before the iPod? How many smartphones before the iPhone? I'd say the "no one's done this before" ideas are generally LESS worth doing (and riskier) than the "there are already players in the market" ideas.

Unless someone is DOMINATING the market and doing a great job serving their customers, there is always room for more players.
I haven't actually used Google TV ads. What kind of targeting options do they have?--geographic, demographic, etc.?
Can I just delete all of my questions and leave the board?
I sympathize, but as a libertarian, you probably shouldn't need too much convincing that the state is going to act in the interest of its revenue streams against the interest of its citizens. For example, the state will tax tobacco on the one hand and massively subsidize it on the other. They'll declare gambling illegal so that if you want to gamble you'll "voluntarily" pay the hidden tax on lotteries (lotteries are essentially taxed at 50% relative to typical games in the casino, with the tax being terrible, terrible odds for players which are protected from market pressure by being a legally enforced monopoly on sin). In many places in the US the government literally is the one distributing the alcohol.
My sense of humour might be miscalibrated, but I thought this was a piss-take of the very earnest open letters you see all the time, written as if they are actually addressed to someone that will actually read them.

This is just a weird way of pointing out that they don't have a NDK on the new Windows Phones, and if they did then Firefox would get ported (with some gratuitous plugs for ongoing work on competing platforms).
>Not only that, but the weed you get from the government would have to be regulated and it wouldn't be the same as the stuff you get on the streets, which would still result in dealers selling it illegally.

If this were true, wouldn't you also expect to see more alcohol dealers on the streets?

>Do we really want to legalize another substance that does the same thing or worse?

By this argument, we should just make everything that causes harm illegal. Hammers, knives, cars, etc kill people, should we make them illegal? What about prescription drugs? What about alcohol? Alcohol is an infinitely more dangerous substance than marijuana.
Hive Media's Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2010 Wrap Up
Well, we ended up hiring a person already. I was just intrigued by the thought that server guys are usually not good programmers and vice versa. What do you think?
You seem to have ignored a key part of the parent's argument: ads often mislead people. So the fact that they make a sale doesn't show that they are 'useful' for a reasonable definition of useful.
It really is my strong suspicion that the majority of conversions are due to misleading users, though. Let's divide ads into two categories:

- "Punch the monkey for herbal supplements." There are a lot of ads for gimmick products or products that simply don't work well at all. (Some are pure scams, and some just advertise terrible things, but we might as well lump them all together.) People still buy them, because people are credulous.

- Targeted ads for useful products. On Stack Overflow right now I see an ad for some tool that analyzes log files and spits out metrics and data. That sounds pretty useful, but the ad is not helping me make an informed decision. If I decided right now to buy that product, even if it worked for me, the ad would not have served me well. The better way to buy things is to decide what you need, make an independent survey of the products available to you, and figure out which one is best via reviews, experts, comments, specs. Successful ads encourage you to short-circuit this process and just pick something, which I don't think is a positive thing.
Unless I misunderstood, the cost of putting it on TV was $100. $1300 was the total outlay, covering all related expenses.
IMO you'd be pretty foolish to use your debit card anywhere. The Visa or MC logo give you a false sense that it has the same fraud protection and benefits as your credit card. It does not. And it has a great deal more potential to disrupt your life in the event of fraud.

And moreover, signature based debit card transactions make the bank the exact same amount of revenue as the same transaction on a credit card. As long as you pay the card off every month then what we're talking about wrt revenue is the discount rate. A merchant provider doesn't distinguish between types of cards-- they all have the same fees-- they only distinguish between issuer (Visa/MC vs Discover and Amex).
I agree, something about it just rubs me the wrong way.
A guy I know in the radio business said that, in the dotcom boom years, start-ups were paying 3x what they should have for airtime simply because they didn't know better. Google's platforms at least take away the fear that an ad salesman is quoting you 5x and telling you what a good deal you're getting.
I think that's BS. While I'm not a professional as either, I do both and enjoy both – I didn't have the resources to hire my own sysadmin, but now I've found that I enjoy it. I think to enjoy doing either requires many of the same qualities: problem solving, patience, innovation, curiosity and vigilance.

Then again, there are jaded "specialists" who don't dein to dabble in the "other" field, I'm sure.
The Mozilla blog is the mouthpiece of the Mozilla foundation right? Unless I totally missed something, didn't the author on behalf of their organization, offended both of their largest platforms owners?
Good perspective N8.

Note: as an interviewer trying to get information to my audience by asking probing questions--but not necessarily endorsing a position.

I can totally see the value and virtue in owning a sustainable business that throws off a LOT of cash and that you love. What I was trying to do with this line of questioning was to see if DHH's position on selling was based on a) a religious point of view (if you will) or b) just having a really big number to get him to walk away from a company he obviously loves. Also, wanted to see if maybe he was afraid of being really wealthy--which is a hangup many folks have when offered large sums of money. in fact, many times entrepreneurs are offered sums of money that are disproportionate to the amount of time they have put in (think Bebo, and frankly, Weblogs Inc.).

when that happens it is a very, very hard thing for some folks to understand... at least intelligent, considered people.
I work with a lot of smart engineers who use their debit cards all the time. The points in this article are applicable to anybody. Use a credit card and PIF every month. You'll be far better off. And to sweeten the deal, get a card that'll pay YOU. I earned 2.57% cashback on purchases in 2009.
Good point about them drawing on the same qualities. Makes sense.
In Bid to Sway Sales, Cameras Track Shoppers
It's a matter of temperament rather than technical skill. Some people like to really get their teeth stuck into a problem and work on it for years at a time. Some people like to execute one discrete task and move onto the next. Both could be equally good at writing code and configuring operating systems. But one will be happier as a programmer and one will be happier as a sysadmin. They might even produce the same number of lines of code a year, one a single 10,000 line program and the other a hundred hundred-line scripts.
That certainly used to be true for the most part. The lines have started to blur:

http://jedi.be/blog/2010/02/12/what-is-this-devops-thing-any...
Home to amateur boarders
Well, there is the issue of educational content...
note: as the interviewer i ask probing questions, but it would be a mistake to assume I endorse the positions contained within those questions.

getting into the psychology of entrepreneurs is fascinating as the feedback to the interview clearly shows. i don't assuming it's stupid or insane to not sell a business you love. however, it is curious and perplexing when faced with someone who wouldn't sell a business for an absurd return wouldn't you say? If someone offered 10, 20 or 30x the revenue of 37signals I actually think they would take it. however, those type of deals happen very rarely and i don't think 37signals--as great as it is--would get an offer like that.

assuming 37signals makes ~$10m a year (~20,000 customers x ~$50 a month on average), $100-300M for 37signals would be such an absurd price that I think you would have to be VERY "unique" in your approach to not take that deal.

That being said, there are unique folks in the world.

.... what a great interview.
The number is right, and again one mutation most certainly will NOT ensure a cell goes wrong. Most "bad" mutations are not anything like cancer.

You don't have to believe the "stuff" about mutations being just as likely to be good because it is true. Furthermore, that's not how cancer works.

Cancer might happen when a beam of light hits the nucleus and blasts the DNA out of the nucleus. (This is normally at x-ray or gamma-ray level, and the common skin cancer has to do with our repair cycle for skin when UV light hits it, and our not repairing fast enough.) Other cancers happen other ways, and I don't want to pretend I know everything either, but I do know- the idea of the cells being degraded enough over time to just kill the animal is a little far fetched. Yeah, could happen, but the degrading will take a hell of a long time based on what I know.

Also on a side note: How many base pairs do you think there are? That 1 in 1 billion may look bigger if I tell you that there are 30,000 base pairs in humans, most of which is junk DNA, and then there are also probably quite a few less in a sea jelly. 1 in 1 billion is a pretty big number now isn't it?
Not the point. Starbucks is essentially the generic coffee shop in the states.
cross site scripting and/or injection attacks
Mostly true. Tautologically because programmers specialize in programming and server guys specialize in running servers. Different problem domains with different ways of thinking, tools, problems. And we are talking about real programmers and real sysadmins and not some young hobbyists, I guess.
Skim on the mac side is excellent, open source, and free.
Indeed - it's a cultural thing. I know many people who've had it drummed into them by their parents "credit cards are evil". Of course they're not, they're just a tool. And if you are worried, use a charge card instead (this is what I do).
Very nice ad!
There are lots of things people won't do for any price. That doesn't make them stupid or insane.

I wouldn't separate from my wife for $2bn. I wouldn't cut off my fingers for $2bn. I wouldn't murder someone for $2bn. A religious person may not denounce God for $2bn.

Certain things are more valuable than money; but what those are differ from person to person. DHH seems to value his work at 37signals more than money, which seems to be working out great for him.
And these qualities make sense in consulting and many other domains, too. So would you let a consultant run your servers then? (I know this is a bit over the edge, but...)
I make no effort to argue that there is a dichotomy of either "continuous rewarding work" or "big pile of cash". I don't even imply that. In fact I think it would be hard to argue that DHH doesn't have a big pile of cash, at least when put into perspective with my bank account.

What I do state is that I understand DHH's perspective of wanting continuous rewarding work with total control of his business over a single pay day and subsequent buyout, even if that buyout is for a value greater than the business' current profits. In other words, his business is literally priceless in his mind because it gives his life meaning, something a pile of cash and no control over his creative work (which he clearly seems to believe is the best idea he's had and may ever have, in his life) does not.

I think we're looking at the hypothetical scenario from two different perspectives. Your's is arguably more realistic, in that you're right, if 37signals was bought out it's unlikely that DHH would be out of a job. And even if he was he could go on to create "38signals". My hypothetical scenario is based more on the idea of "sell to go sit on a beach for the rest of your life". That's to say, you would sell the business for a big pay day explicitly so you would not have to work anymore.
Many people like jazz ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myJj0mNNe1Y

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJBjNkacy8o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf65VY_ebUg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSfK-0tZ73I
No offence but you why are you calling the position CTO if he is expected to code and do sysadmin work. Why not simply call him/her an engineer?

Just curios on the choice of title.
No offense but that's exactly why Vietnam (and countless other places) are suboptimal for startups. As soon as people make a mark they jump ship and take with them their knowledge and ability to attract investment. Why don't you become a success AND stay in Vietnam. Help develop a startup culture and educate investors. I'm doing the same thing in Thailand. Feel free to contact me if you want to chat about anything matthew [@] jukaroo [.] com.
Whether we think that's a good place to be or not does not really matter. What matters are the underlying economics, which seem to pretty much continuously push in the direction of free services.
I think this is a pretty good characterization of my friend -- he's a great coder, but I think he will always be a better sysadmin. Not because of some innate sysadmin trait, but because he likes it better. You always put more effort into what you like more.
I also thought DHH was bluffing potential buyers the entire time he was turning down your hypothetical offers. I laughed when you actually accused him of that. I still don't understand why they wouldn't take 10x their revenues or whatever. DHH really does seem afraid of being ridiculously wealthy. He could get there if he wanted. He has the name, reputation, contacts, skills, etc. 37signals is like some indie band that swears they are in music for the "right reasons" and will never sell out, but in the end, they always do.

I thought the work ethic vs. work smart topic is worth digging into in the future. I'm convinced that working 10,000 hours on something without being smart about it will get you nowhere.
True. It's about specialization. You could also ask if programmers make good database administrators. Highly capable/experienced programmers that develop for the Web (like many on HN) will have some level of knowledge of all facets of the network computing experience, including how routers and browsers work. However, their primary focus and highest area of knowledge should be programming, hence their title.

An analogy might be basketball. Growing up you learn to just get the ball in the hoop, but those that turn professional specialize in a certain position. Very few can play all five positions quite well (like Magic Johnson).
Considering that the IE ship train has been tied to Windows for the past several cycles and IE9 will ship with Windows 8, this is hardly surprising (at that time XP will be 3 releases prior).
The first lines are actually a ripoff of The Onion's "Jim Anchower":

http://www.theonion.com/content/columnists/i_got_some_sweet_...
I left it open for a while and now I can edit. Maybe after a certain number of users it becomes view only?
>> "Firstly, it remains to be seen whether it's technically sustainable; if ad blockers continue to become more mainstream and more sophisticated, ads will start bringing in less and less money."

It's been rising steadily for 10+ years :/

Advertising in general has been pretty strong for 100+ years.

I doubt that'll change in our lifetimes. Advertisers always want to get their message to audiences, audiences always want to hear about new products. It's a pretty safe bet.
If that's the case it's quite sad. I hope that no one stakes the meaningfulness of his life on his business.

It's silly to make this particular business so central. As stated, he can sell it off and just start another shop that does the same thing. There is a lot of great work available for rich people -- they can start any business they want, they can become philanthropists and spend all day giving their money away.

If DHH sold 37s in a good deal, he'd have a lot more options for not only himself, but the future of his companies and all of their employees, and almost no meaningful restrictions not directly related to the properties associated with 37s.

It's really hard to convince people that that's a bad deal, because frankly it's not. Sell 37s and make something new; it can even do the same stuff, just has to be named differently.

I'm really not seeing how this would be a loss if it was done right.
I have to say, I found the initial audio ad annoying when I opened this link into a background tab.

I don't mind ads too much if they don't distract me and I can skip them.
As someone who struggles to come up with 'lifestyle business' ideas, his advice on just talking to people was like a punch in the gut. So obvious it hurts, yet I ignore it and spend time 'thinking.'
Why lawyer-client meetings go better as Webcam videoconferences & screen-sharing
"What market?"

The touchscreen mobile phone market.
The reason it can't run on Windows XP is because it uses some Windows Vista/7 APIs that aren't in Windows XP. HTML5 has nothing to do with it.
I'm not sure why JC keeps harping on the unique visitors number. More uniques = less commitment to the product. Unique visitors are people who search, click, leave. How are you going to build revenue off people who don't care about your product?

How long do those unique visitors visit? When I accidentally click a mahalo link, my instant reaction is to hit the back button, yet, I'm one of those numbers he's using to justify his business model.

Unique visitors is essentially irrelevant. If a unique doesn't stick around long enough to see or click on an ad, what's it matter?
I think a large part of it is competition...you don't really have any so you can work as much or as little as you want.

If you have competition like in 99% of the niches...you'll be working a lot more than that
Frankie & Johnny (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqscpuCogRE) for the lyrics -- dancers have an opportunity to re-enact the affair and its deadly conclusion. The strong bass line provides a great rhythm for pulsing.

Splanky (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUSijeq4xGU) because there are so many instruments that you can choose "to be".

Cow Cow Boogie (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9AfqVIxEzg) because of the way it undulates. The solos that break up the song, but unite it at the same time. The song cries out for changes in height, rhythm, and speed.
I've had two erroneous charges on my debit card and Bank of America refunded my money before they started an investigation. It had a minimal impact on my day.

Of course this is anecdotal evidence so take it with a grain of salt.
I think it's easier to build 'another company you love working at', than replacing a wife or your fingers.

If creating a company is so easy if you follow the rules in their book ;) why don't they rise to the challenge, and create a new one from scratch? (For extra points they'd do it stealthy so no one knew it was them).
Yep. They are trying to increase margins by skimping on cases and the feel. If the Pre wasn't a cheap feeling piece of plastic crap, it may have done better.
> Now that you can get music for 99 cents and the artist can sell it without a recording contract, piracy is worse than ever and there are a whole new set of excuses.

Have you ever talked to an artist about what their percentage take on an online sale is verses a CD sale? (Hint: it's less) Have you ever investigated how hard it is to get listed on Amazon or in iTunes unless you are on a major or minor label (RIAA-member or not)? Don't think that these issues are 'magically' resolved just because one can now buy music for a reasonable price in an ala carte manner.

You've presented the 'main argument' as having two distinct issues: 1) music was too expensive and 2) the artists are getting screwed. Music is now more reasonably priced (though they still haven't offered anything at lossless quality other than a few gimmicky promotional sales), but the artists are still getting screwed. The issue of artists getting screwed will probably not resolve itself until the major record labels are out of business (or their operations are seriously scaled back). There needs to be more competition between labels for artists, and artists need to be more aware of the predatory practices that the major labels use in recruiting.
> I've gotten the informal impression that incidental complexity (you know, complexity arising not from the problem but the solution) is a factor behind the hugeness of the XML ecosystem

You are absolutely correct.

As Phil Wadler put it: "The essence of XML is this: the problem it solves is not hard, and it does not solve the problem well."

It makes a trivial issue into a byzantine enterprise.

But, it has created a whole industry of 'experts', standard committees and other busybodies, so it must be good for the economy at least!
But the thing is that there'd be no material detriment in taking the deal. DHH would just have a ton of money, and he could keep working on Rails apps and whatever else to his heart's content.

The kind of emotional connection to what is ultimately a meaningless, lifeless brand where you refuse to sell for any amount of money is surely foolish.
>> "Unique visitors are people who search, click, leave. "

You missed the vital ingredient ;)

* search
* click
* don't find what they wanted
* <B>Click on adverts</b>