skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Hi Tawheed - looks like you've got a slick product there! Problem is a visitor to your site has to be really motivated to trawl through all the stuff to work out what it is. A few points (most echo apsurd's comments):

* The large/desaturated product-shots are too confusing - a significant proportion of your visitors will be confused by these - I was. I thought they were the sales site.

* I was desperate to be told what it is. Front-and-centre, first thing I read. I get the yellow box is trying to do that, but, I read it as: 'Buzzword Buzzword for your company. The fastest & simplest way to buzzwords.' I got nothing from it.

* Scrolling down (a long way) - the first information dense part of the page appears, listing features, in a seemingly random order.. Ok, my data will be private, but, WHAT IS THE PRODUCT?

* Benefits before features - people want to know how it will help them, not what bells-and-whistles it's got.

* The demo video is good, but long. People will need to be pre-sold enough on the product already to sit through it all.

The page/site isn't customer focussed enough. It's 'conversation' needs to go like this:

* Our product is THIS.
* Do you have problem X? (and Y, and Z?)
* Yes?
* Well, our product solves everything.
* Here's how it does it, and here's how your future will look and feel when you use it.
* Sounds great huh?
* Give it a try by doing this - no risk, you can do it for free!

'THIS' in the list above should be phrased using the words that your customers use. Not clever, not fancy - the exact words they use. The only way you can find this out is by getting out of the building and going talk with them (Customer Development style).

If you don't know how to explain the problems it solves, again, go and ask your prospective market what problems they have, and make note of the words they use to describe them (this is where I think apsurd's suggestion to narrow your niche makes sense).

Currently your site's conversation is more like:

* Buzzwords
* Confusion
* Our product's nice and got stuff in it
* Give it a go

Perhaps the following might be a bit too 'salesy' for your liking, but you should be able to pick up some good tips: SEOMoz landing page overhaul case study http://www.conversion-rate-experts.com/seomoz-case-study/ - I can also recommend
signing up to get the annotated PDF, it's full of interesting points.

Best of luck with it! Your product looks very good - niche it down/focus on a narrower market, then get out there and talk to your prospective customers to find out how they want to be sold to!
In for any advice on this, interested as well.
Lots of people seem to be trying to live Steve Jobs' life vicariously.
I was surprised to find disdain for Chrome's silent updates in the comments of the article. The fact that Chrome silently handles such security updates and never nags me about them was one of the (lesser) reasons I switched away from Firefox--even though Firefox's minor updates are fairly quick and relatively painless, I still found myself annoyed when it kept asking me to install them.
Reddit has worked on this, here is a guest blog post by Randall Munroe explaining: http://blog.reddit.com/2009/10/reddits-new-comment-sorting-s...
I posted a link to the videos on the Solar Dynamics Observatory website earlier, but it didn't go anywhere. This is fascinating stuff!

Link to more videos: http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/firstlight/
Canceling the launch would be utterly insane. Steve is not going to throw away millions of dollars because somebody exposed the "secrets" of a slightly modified exterior and front-facing camera.
"The unix command line ('cat foo.txt | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn') is wonderfully concise and powerful". And yet, contrary to the author's assertion, it can be made even more concise without sacrificing the power:

sort foo.txt | uniq -c | sort -rn
Joining a startup out of college is not hard. As I grew up, I went through the educational funnel to these types of jobs (McKinsey, Google, etc) and I found myself disliking the people around me and (especially in the case of finance / manage consulting) disliking the work they were going to dedicate their lives to.

So I just never applied to work at companies I found distasteful. It was quite easy.
Maybe it's only me, but I find it too abstract. If I was someone who didn't know what Chrome was, much less what extensions are, I might be scratching my head at this point.
Just to note, this is an evolution of the same video codec (VP6) that Flash Player supported from version 8 onwards.

Also, Flash Player since version 9 has supported h.264, a codec that is supposed to be a condender for rendering Flash useless.
The White House: open-source Drupal developer?
yes, we agree. science and rigor, not opinion and conjecture.
I find it interesting that they don't support any of the video cards in the Mac Pro (GT 120) or high end iMacs (ATI Radeon). I guess it will make the biggest difference with battery life in the laptop line so they're not concerned with the desktops. Still somewhat disappointing.
A Desk That Allows You to Stand or Sit
iPhone Becomes the Most Frequently Used Camera on Flickr
At this level I mostly agree with you.

In fact, a recurring discussion between my wife and I includes me asking her these same questions ("Who is forcing them to treat these patients?")

I'm generally unsatisfied with the answers. A legitimate part of it is that it's a Catholic hospital, and so feel a greater responsibility to help.

But there's also an aspect of just needing to play along with the regulatory game. It seems that they've got themselves so dependent (or is that "addicted"?) to governmental aid, that they can't see a way to continue without it -- and that means full participation in all the wasteful, inefficient stuff. I believe (without quantitative proof) that at the bottom line they lose more to the bureaucratic garbage than they gain in subsidy.
I've said it before; there needs to be an flash-like IDE for html canvas (and whatever Microsoft uses) that outputs html, css, and javascript (maybe its own library or it would use something like mootools or yui).

This IDE could start off as a clone of earlier flash versions where you just manipulate shapes over time(http://dev.w3.org/html5/canvas-api/canvas-2d-api.html#images) and of course you could do more useful stuff using common html elements and incorporating audio/video. Once more features are added to the html spec, the application's functionality could grow.

I thought about attempting to start this up as a web-based app, but I have to familiarize myself a bit more with canvas, canvas shapes, and animation.
I guess a Dell engineer was drinking at a bar when a bunch of product renderings fell out of his pocket.
How you do it in 5 seconds: show them you're profitable.
But you didn't straight out of college, which is my point.

I am in the same boat as you.
This article points to one of the most important survival skill of any struggling entrepreneur, which in the past I have summarized as follows, "Make the hard stuff look easy and the easy stuff look hard."
"I want flash to die"

Adobe and Macromedia were a startup once, just like many companies by HN members.

I want Adobe and its technologies to improve, not die.
people also seem to forget that flash is only "better" for some small definitions of better, there is a reason people hate it and most of them arent political.

your "from a pure business standpoint" is exactly what I was referring to, people are far too quickly jumping to quick and ugly fixes like flash that do nothing to help fix the core problems of why web standards are limiting. It takes a lot of "idiots" to push canvas and friends into widespread adoption, I am glad to see people like github taking the initiative.
This is the solution: a program where talented young people are mentored by the VC firm, under the condition that they work for startups (as founders or early employees) for the next 7 years. The VC does not necessarily fund their startups, but uses its contacts to ensure that the founder remains employed and able to survive. At the end of the 7th year, employee has the option of joining the VC firm as entrepreneur-in-residence.

People would be less afraid of the career risk involved in starting companies this way.
The most important reason seems to just be a variation of the status quo bias: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_quo_bias
I have the geekdesk or something that looks exactly like it. I love it. I sit in the mornings and after lunch switch to standing mode. Occasionally if I have to really focus or type a lot I will switch back to sitting mode, but it definitely helps to get me move around more / feel healthier.
> "passion is a big part of it"

Right, and having known a lot of the "Wall Street" type engineers in college, I'm not sure if I really want them in my field.

Yeah, they're smart and bright (you kind of have to be in those environments), but I know more than a few who went into engineering position at major investment banks - soul-crushing, mind-numbing work that it is solely because of the compensation.

Maybe this is me being too startupy-self-important, but that speaks to a complete lack of passion, that you're willing to take on the IT equivalent of coal mining, where the only real upside to your job is the gigantic paycheck. On this side of the divide I'd rather have people who place an utmost importance in the, well, work of their work - someone who will take a high-paying, rewarding position over a ludicrous-paying soul-crushing job.

This isn't some justification to pay people less - if we can sweeten the pot for new grads I'm all for it, but I'm not sure I really want to attract Wall Streeters to our side of the industry.
ispell-mode comes with emacs, but not with FireFox. Anyway, my browser is currently a little mis-configured so I can't actually see what I type as I type it. I need to fix it, but I haven't gotten around to it.
Some browsers can do all of those things - but you've still only scratched the surface of what Flash can do TODAY with 98% penetration. As for webcam support, some people feel that HTML 5 as a spec will be fully out there and usable by 2022. I wonder when enough browser makers will start on their PROPRIETARY webcam interfaces?

Do you think Flash will stand still in that time? Suddenly jump from 98% to 0%?
I'd have to disagree with most of what you are saying Andrey.

The product was not stolen from Apple, it was left in the public domain (if it wasn't leaked).

The IP was therefore available for them to photograph and publicize.

Gizmodo didn't sell it or benefit from it's sale. They benefited from reporting on a lost or stolen object. I doubt there is much legal recourse for Apple there.

If Gizmodo did in fact pay for the iPhone, then Apple may have a case. But I think it would have to depend on what they actually paid for.

They didn't hand over $10k without a legal contract, and that contract is likely for the story, not for the physical product, as that could be construed as possibly purchasing stolen goods, as Gizmodo really had no idea how the person who found the phone actually got it.
I'm getting really angry with people about this whole thing:
It's called a free press people. While they skirted the law, I doubt any DA would touch this affair (prosecuting the press when no one is physically harmed is a generally losing proposition; ditto for the sources of the press when they're not government employees).

If Apple doesn't release the phone due to the leak itself, they're silly. And you don't become one of the biggest companies in the world via silliness. I don't hate or love Apple. I'm a realist. Guess what: Apple is made up of realists too! They're going to release the phone still

Sure, some of you actually have talked yourself into liking the ultra-secret nature of Apple's product cycle. Good for you. A huge other portion of reality hates it. It makes that group of people make poor buying decisions (such as people who don't realize you never ever give Apple items for Christmas, because they're likely going to be superseded by the next thing in a release in a month).

Even if everyone DID like the secrecy and theater: Guess what, Gawker is a for-profit company, just like Apple. They do things for money, just like Apple (section 3.3.1 people? Is your memory that short?). Gizmodo was presented with a prototype. They'd be remiss to not run with it, after finding out it wasn't stolen (in the common understanding of the word, not the quibbling "but by California code 2309482 it is stolen" sort of manner). Gizmodo is a company that makes money by selling the eyeballs of people looking at interesting information. This is exactly what they SHOULD do when presented with this.

Apple took a business risk in field testing phones. Guess what, sometimes the bad thing happens. That's why they call it risk. In this case: the bad thing did happen.
Honestly, the fact people were still talking about 3.3.1 even after the iAd and other 4.0 items being unveiled makes me wonder if this was an intentional leak to regain the control of the news cycle for Apple.

And as to the guy who got outed: Honestly, I think Giz was doing two legitimate things (but likely hurting a random person in the process). 1> They were establishing the authenticity of the phone. By pointing out 'hey, it is from someone at Apple' they dispelled the rumors of this being a faked up phone. 2> They were revealing how they came to get it, dissuading the police and Apple from finding out through legal discovery processes. Apple could have argued industrial espionage if more details weren't out there, but by publishing it all, Gizmodo likely pulled the legs out of any legal proceeding.

Do I think the self serving saving their own ass was a good thing? Not the nicest thing, but I think it was a realistic business decision which was good for the business, just like 3.3.1 was for Apple, and just like publishing this whole story in the first place was for Gizmodo.
Now there's something! Just couple days before I was talking with a collegue about switching the main browser ar work to chrome, and the we came to the comclusion that the LACK of awesomebar in chrome is what's holding us back.
It only shares information that you've made public anyway. Which if you're me is none of it.

So it's still giving them at the very least a name, which is sketchy, but it's not as bad as it could be.
Does anyone know if any of the YC companies have Open sourced code as they shut down?
Wait a second

http://glimr.rubyforge.org/cake/canvas.html#CatmullRom
I haven't looked at it in detail but I assume this is done with javascript so that the site doesn't actually see you or your friends, Facebook just includes a bit based on the site you go to. This not the case?
Start-up Goes After Big Data with Hadoop Helper
Agree with a lot of what you're saying, but not all of it; I want whatever it takes to build amazing new companies that change the world, I don't really care who's doing it, as long as more phenomenally smart people are.
Very true. I agree that plastering the Apple employee's info all over the place was tacky, but I see nothing wrong with publishing their story. People love it when wikileaks breaks huge stories involving governments, armies, and corporations, but they get upset when a (lackluster and predictable) Apple secret gets leaked by a tech/gadget journalism website. I personally enjoy both.
duplicate: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1283935
That's a cool idea! I don't know if it works with that timing, and those constraints, but that's such a cool idea, just conceptually.
I was hoping someone would say this, because I want my struggles to be about finding the right set of features do deliver, not about who invented what when. But to be clear, are you saying that your startup ran into some legal threats, that you more or less ignored them, and that strategy worked?
I independently observed this on slashdot and made a few bucks exploiting the psychology of readers. I wrote up my thoughts a while back: http://squareone.pheared.net/2009/10/make-money-posting-to-s...
I got an artist's stool. Instead of adjusting the desk height, I merely hop on and off the chair as necessary.
Thought experiment: you see two reference books, one at 100 pages and the other at 200. Do you wonder if the smaller book could be concise and well-written, or do you immediately assume "bigger is better" and reach for the tome?

Seriously, people do this? What is wrong with them? I'd try to imagine every justifiable reason to buy the 100 page one. Padded technical writing deserves its own level of hell.
I disagree with this advice. My bitvector solution was memorable enough that I spent a good portion of my in-person interview discussing it (it took advantage of multiple cores even during parsing, and had some passages of hand-written assembly in order to exploit SSE2). A good-enough solution will be good enough to get you in the door, but an excellent solution may carry you further.
Not to mention that Apple's efforts to keep their stuff secret means they know that people will try to find out. Surely Apple expects at least some secrets to get out--there's no way a single leak upends their entire business model. Better this secret (new iPhone with slightly different design) than something much bigger (e.g. Intel machines, the original iPhone, iPad, etc.).
So the media can only cover subjects that lead to a "greater good"? Why not hold Apple to the same standard -- they can only keep their phone model secret if it does so for the "greater good".

Oh wait, maybe businesses -- even the media -- are motivated by something other than the greater good.
Does anyone else think once 75% of what flash does is supported by canvas, HTML5, etc, Adobe will just make it a compilation target for the Flash toolchain?

I mean: Wouldn't that be great?
Well I'll agree with you there, but arguing that the media shouldn't publish factual information gleaned from a prototype that they bought knowing it was stolen while flaunting their disregard for the law just to rub Apple's nose in it is something I can get behind.
hudson ci and apache abdera. Can vouch for both.
Ask HN: Please help review my startup's messaging
Hi Guys,

Instead of describing our product here, I'd prefer to let the website speak for itself. Could you please take a look and let us know:

1) Is it clear what we do?

2) Is the value of our product apparent?

3) Any other suggestions/thoughts on the messaging, product, or company would be very appreciated.

Our website is: www.eggzack.com

We have paying customers, and are now working on refining the message to attract new users over the web.

Thanks in advance!
The author of this hits on a really important topic in my opinion: that for all of the talk about adhering to the standards, in every other field of engineering adhering to the standards it the absolute bare minimum to have a product.

Imagine if you made cars and you didn't conform to the safety standard? Obviously that wouldn't work and you'd be shut down. However, a lot of web standards zealots seem to imply that meeting the standard is a great goal to achieve. There needs to be a bunch more innovation in all browsers, even just as tech demos or features for the vendor's home page so that other browsers can adopt the ideas.

Basically I think the author is spot on, but I wish it didn't have to be done through Flash.
Let's pretend that he wasn't trying to fan the flames, wasn't chasing increased page views and wasn't motivated by ad impressions, that he just wanted to share the information he got from his sources and his views on Gizmodo's actions with his readers. In what way could he have done that without giving you the wrong impression?
I'd like to get one, but at $750, it is way too expensive!
Show him videos on youtube of various science experiments or lectures. When he seems interested in an idea, work with him to create an experiment, find the items, and perform it.
Ah, interesting! This problem is NP-complete even in if you don't specifically want anagrams that are interesting to a human.

Suppose that you only have a single letter alphabet (say "a"). Now the input string can only contain a's, so it can be represented by a number n. The dictionary also consists only of words of a's, so the dictionary can be represented as a set of numbers D a subset of the natural numbers. Now the problem of finding an anagram is finding a subset of A of D such that sum(A) = n. But this is the subset sum problem, which is NP-complete!

How are you determining the interestingness of an anagram?
I have a similar looking one to the geekdesk model, but it was from a local company at a cheaper price.

Had to add some improvised shock absorbers and place it against the wall because my monitor would otherwise shake when typing...

Did investigate several other options after that, up to 1500 euros and they all shake (the expensive one even more so).

Does the geekdesk model also shake?

That said, with my shock absorbers (just two pieces of memory foam), and sliders under the desk to move it against the wall, it works just fine and a great investment for general health.

Also have a mini stepper to do an hour of stepping in the early morning, whilst I read my email and check my RSS reader.

I may upgrade to a treadmill later, see http://officewalkers.ning.com for inspiration
People are scared to touch their computers, that's why they don't upgrade anything.
Nobody will ever want 3-D HTML anymore than anyone wants 3-D movies. The motherfuckers who down voted me will soon realize this.

Ia! Ia! Cthullu fhtagn!
I'm not sure what you mean. I never applied to any companies when I was in college. I was courted by a few tech startups and almost joined them because they looked interesting and fun - but at the beginning of my senior year I decided I should make money on my own and just started laying the groundwork for that. I basically spent the end of my senior year blowing off classes and iterating through ideas I thought might be profitable. After I graduated, I continued doing that. 2 years later, I have successfully bootstrapped a profitable company.

I don't think your solution will work. The people who should join startups don't prioritize brand value or the alleged security of working for a big company. They may prioritize compensation - but the startup world already answers that problem by allowing you to choose where on the risk scale you want to be (you can always start your own company if you're like me and very interested in compensation).
I doubt investors would want to see the code they paid for released under a truly free license, since that would destroy any ability they might have to make money from it in the future. (Even if you're shutting down, they might fund another startup which they could sell the code to.)

However, you might be able to convince them to release the code under the GPL, since that leaves the option of dual licensing open -- in fact, you might be able to spin GPLing the code to your investors as a marketing tactic.
It's an excellent idea, but it has a flaw: it doesn't pay off in the short term. The only think the VC gains is a connection to someone who will be important in a few years.

I'd be pretty much an ideal candidate for such a program, but I'm pretty sure that if I proposed it to a top VC, I'd be laughed out of the conversation.
Everything was a startup once. Not all technologies are necessary, and some fall by the wayside.
There's also gRaphael specifically for charting: http://g.raphaeljs.com/

Also, the article mentions that IE doesn't support the <canvas> tag. While this is true, you only need to add the excanvas JS library to use <canvas> in IE.