skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Kickstarter's had a very impressive rise prior to Diaspora. They had over a quarter million UVs in March according to compete (http://siteanalytics.compete.com/kickstarter.com/), up 100% over the prior month. With a quick look at the site to can see lots of ~$10k project are getting funded all the time. That's revolutionary.

In my original post, I acknowledged Fundable had bigger problems:
Now it’s important not to overlook all the other things that might have caused one business to succeed where another failed. If you google “Fundable” you’ll see they made a number of execution missteps. Fundable also didn’t have the advantage of launching in a time when high quality video creation is so easy and sharing is so powerful over platforms such as Twitter and, well, Facebook. Nevertheless, it’s great to see a venture that’s executed well and in Kickstarter’s case its competency certainly extends to its design.
This is unusual behavior for MS. I wonder if this is the opening move in a buyout/takeover gambit.
But then physical goods wear out AND become obsolete.
> These registries are occasionally purged of dead people when possible, but the risk (a few "dead" people voting) is considered slight compared to the cost of keeping the registry up to date or of disenfranchising someone by mistakenly deciding that they were dead.
And this applies especially to code.
care to elaborate for the rest of us?
expanding on "unusual" its only the 4th time they have done this.
It's an excellent question. My answer is, use XML for data if you need features that come with it, such as validation, or if you'll want to use it with tools/standards that orbit XML, like XQuery, or if you have a situation where you're dealing with both documents and data, and you want them to interoperate. Otherwise there's probably not a lot of benefit to XML; JSON, YAML, or a DSL will suit you just fine.

A lot of XML-hate comes from its overuse—it comes with overhead that is too expensive for simple cases, but is pretty useful when you go beyond simple. Right tool for the right job and all that...
I think being around large numbers of people exchanging good ideas facilitates innovation faster, but that certainly doesn't mean that there aren't great ideas in rural North Dakota. Passion, inspiration, and motivation are the most important things regardless of where you are, but luck seems to play a bigger part in places like New York or Silicon Valley.

I also think location can be crucial to success for companies like foursquare, where it has the chance of a much faster adoption rate in a large city like New York.
Ask HN: Please help me improve my StackOverflow hiring ad
Hey guys,

Coming to you guys again for advice. Paid for this ad on SO last week:

http://jobs.stackoverflow.com/?7056

And so far I got 1 (low-quality) resume. Can you please help me improve it so that it is more attractive to job-seekers?

Thanks!
Sources of Capital - Private Equity
I use Ruby a lot, and I always deploy Ruby web apps to Heroku. This is all about loading request times. Right now, I think that the best bet for AppEngin is coding in Python. Since I don't much use Python I have been experimenting with using Java + Objectify instead of JDO: this gets my request loding times down to usually just over 1 second. I have two writeups about this on my blog.

I have spent quite a lot of time trying JRuby + Sinatra + AppEngine. Lots of good work but not really ready. Google needs a paid for option to always keep at least one JVM for an application spun-up.
Do you think prescriptive rules are necessary, or is it better to handle these kind of situations on a case-by-case basis?

Most social systems seem to be based on a maximin decision rule, and try to minimize the impact of imagined worst-case contingencies (there was an interesting thread on HN last week discussing this) - but perhaps we would realize our objectives more effectively and minimize the entropy that accumulates by too often adding new rules if we instead optimized the system to the general case, and dealt with outliers (as catastrophic contingencies necessarily are) specifically and individually.
Link: http://jobs.stackoverflow.com/?7056
Yeah okay I got it. I think the funcall/lambda stuff got me confused, it's kind of obvious in hindsight.

In which case I agree it's a matter of taste. I guess I just like the taste of Factor/REBOL always passing blocks to if, having to say t [ 0 ] [ 3 ] if instead of simply say t 0 3 if is the trade off I suppose[1].

I'm guessing it works for picolisp because it's purely interpreted? because it certainly doesn't seem to be passing lambdas to 'if'. Can anyone confirm/deny?

[1]well actually the word ? does that but to make it work for both you need to do:

: myif ( ? true false -- ) ? dup quotation? [ call ] [ ] if ; inline
> Funny how the most upvoted comment here has pretty much nothing to do with the premise of the article. This community is going down hill rapidly...

Firstly, the comment you refer to IS relevant because the article explicitly states that PosgreSQL cannot compete with Oracle, et al in the enterprise. I mean it's right there in the conclusion. Maybe it needs more info to back it up, but then so does the article itself when it makes its point.

Secondly, the reason I would wager on it being the highest rated comment is because the greatest value of HN comments is when you finish reading one of these articles and are quite taken in by the premise, many times (for me personally) right there at the top of the comment page is someone with a different experience reminding you not be so impressionable. In my time here this quality of HN comments has been consistent. In this case I would say patio11's fleshed out response is more useful (edit: and already it has overtaken the parent in votes - I would hold off any emergency quality control measures for the time being) but the cream usually rises to the top.

> I wonder if this type of degradation is inevitable when the masses invade

When I read a reaction like this to someone's comment, I always find it interesting to click on the user profiles and see when both parties joined. In every case I've done it, the person making a comment about "the masses" invading has been here a fraction of the time of the person they're referring to. In this case, your 111 days is barely more than a quarter of the time forinti has been registered.
I used to live in Norfolk, VA, a military town. Then I moved to Cambridge, MA. Since moving to Cambridge, I've been involved in the active startup scene here, which is practically non-existent in Norfolk. From my experience, location matters.
Google IO streaming live
Makes me think of "Hire the Better Writer" out of Getting Real. http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch08_Wordsmiths.php

Edit: I'm the local grammar Nazi and have always been a fan of engineers/programmers that could write their asses off, e.g. Paul Graham, Joel Spolsky, _why the lucky stiff, etc., etc. Gives us all something to aspire to is all.
No, I'm pretty sure that's exactly the matter. Only Apple apps can multitask.

But that's iPhone apps, they were never intended or claimed to be truly open. Adobe is claiming they "openly published the specification" to PostScript, but they didn't. Compare that to a truly open standard like HTML5. Does Apple have a secret, proprietary API for that?
What about for lazy languages such as Haskell? I guess you get short circuiting by default there no?
In praise of continuous deployment: The WordPress.com story
Interesting, but a silly/incorrect analysis. Jobs was obviously already building the iPad when this conversation took place. I'd assume he would want to divert attention from the tablet/phone model so nobody would guess that Apple was already working on it. Sneaky.
I don't claim any real seo chops, but after reading the full post I tend to agree with the view of going hybrid
Ask HN: Facebook Connect vs. Own Database
Hi, I am wondering if it is even conceivable to create a new app with the intent of it becoming big and being sold eventually and have the only method of logging in being Facebook Connect?

I mean would the fact that all of the users' initial data being Facebook and not technically owned by the app create a kind of scarlet letter for the app, regardless of how big it becomes or other data points it may create around the Facebook Connect data?

Does anyone know of a pure Facebook Connect app acquisition?
See also: "Information Rules": http://www.inforules.com/
With the exception of Tamarin, I don't recognize any of Adobe's open source contributions (perhaps that's because I'm not a Flash developer).

Apple on the other hand has released a lot of great software under open source licenses: WebKit, launchd, bonjour, Darwin, libdispatch, etc.

Adobe calling Flash open compared to the corpus of actually open software that Apple has produced is disingenuous, in my opinion.
I don't have the specifics but I believe the other times were narrower claims against specific technologies. This is a broad brush stroke against an entire industry segment.
> Soon we'll have some new ridiculous hype so that silly people can make lots of money being doofuses online by calling themselves "web 3.0" evangelists or whatever.

There will be always be a new hype but Web 3.0 is so 2007 - see
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2102852,00.asp
If claim 1 is tossed then subsequent claims based on claim 1, which will probably be many, are automatically tossed. Therefore claim 1 better be your best claim.

For example, in "Method and system for mapping between logical data and physical data," if Claim 1 is tossed, then claims 2-9 automatically go with it.
That actually make sense. What you say is like suggesting that, back in the modem era, an ISP should keep matching number of modems on it's end equal to the number of users it has.

If there's 10.000 users, there should be 10.000 modems to dial into? Business can't survive like this.
Yup, you have to examine the claims. So I took a look at the claims for US patent 5,742,768 ("System and method for providing and displaying a web page having an embedded menu"). Claim 1 is (I'm paraphrasing a bit) having a web page with an applet that displays a menu in which there are some links. You might think "oh yeah, that's a typically overbroad claim 1", but the others don't restrict it in at-all-interesting ways. Doing it over the internet. Doing it on a private internet. Doing it in Java. And -- this is as innovative as it gets -- having the applet pop up a menu when the user's pointer moves over a hot spot in the web page.

Yup, it's true that sometimes what seems on the face of it a ridiculous patent turns out to be a more sensible one whose title and/or abstract make it look worse than it is. On the other hand, sometimes what seems on the face of it to be a ridiculous patent really is ridiculous.
Maybe this is just the ol' good MS trying to get more customers to its Microsoft Dynamics business solutions.
Business Plan Contests Should Focus on Testing & Learning
The really amusing thing is that (at least on my machine) it's pv that's the bottleneck there; I have it using 101% cpu, anyhow. pv will give me 9.7GB/s, whereas dd will give me 13.3GB/s (also at 100% cpu). I wonder if anything's faster than dd :)
How To: Get Your Startup Featured on Mashable
Basic tech is Matroska container (at least "based on") + Vorbis audio + VP8 video.

Biggest news imho, Adobe Flash Player is listed as a supporting software, but I can't see any details yet. Pretty good list of supporters altogether actually:

http://www.webmproject.org/about/supporters/
Mozilla should fork chrome.
XML Schemas are well established in areas like insurance. I worked on a insurance portal in 2001-2002 that made extensive use of the Origo schemas - I realized that XML is really huge in some areas. To the non-enterprise / HN startup / web dev types it seems that XML can be wished away, but they have no idea of how well entrenched it is.
Google Calendar gets a new look
Really well done. I like when there are post like this because, even thought it's not about technology or startup, it's still related to hacking. I'm sad when people down this talking about reddit because this post is clearly different. It has historical lessons in it and even thought you might not like gaming or starcraft, known that this game is still played today by thousand of players worldwide and that it is more than 10 years old.
Communicating well is just as hard as any other worthwhile activity and it doesn't come naturally to most people. It took me forever to figure out that part of the reason that I was always so frustrated with people was because I wasn't communicating well enough with them. Oftentimes I'd think I had expressed one thing and later I would find out that the other person had completely misinterpreted my meaning. After the n-th time I figured I was partly to blame and decided to do something about it and picking up a grammar book was the first step. It's not hard, it just takes practice like anything else and the benefits of being understood better are definitely worth it.
Alan Kay told everyone in 1968. Dynabook?
The Perfect Desktop - Linux Mint 9 (Isadora)
Firefox doesn't have feature creep. Memory and CPU usage is down, startup times are down, and the awesome bar is not bloated (it's nicer then Chrome's and just as fast). They've promoted lightweight Personas over full themes[0], and the new JetPack project aims to reduce the complexity of extensions[1]. Firefox 4.0 will continue the trend of faster, more user-friendly Firefox releases[2]. What are these people talking about?

Also, there is already a "hothouse of new ideas" run "alongside the main branch of Firefox," it's called Mozilla Labs[3]. Personas has graduated from Labs into main Firefox already.

[0]. http://www.getpersonas.com/en-US/

[1]. https://jetpack.mozillalabs.com/

[2]. http://beltzner.ca/mike/2010/05/10/firefox-4-fast-powerful-a...

[3]. https://mozillalabs.com/projects/
I wonder what the odds are of all browsers supporting this codec or not. I'd love to have a encode once play anywhere situation.
Oh, well, that's a different problem entirely :). Although I guess it's much harder to start 1000 downloads in a browser, theoretically it's possible!
Anyone who adopted JSON could have been using s-expressions all along, but it's become a tradition to ignore everything Lisp got right until some brave soul gives it a makeover with curly braces.
Most people I know say "fack". I am in the UK.
MongoDB at Etsy
I think this is a pretty bullshit move by MS but I have a hard time feeling back for Salesforce. Their software really sucks.
> Unless HTML5 comes up with a UDP websocket protocol :D

And passive mode for WebSocket. And NAT traversal, and a central coordinate server, and fuck it, let's just use Flash.
European banks caught in a sovereign debt trap
Probably in reference to the various API "profiles": IMP, MIDP, CLDC, and myriad lesser-known acronyms:

http://www.ericgiguere.com/j2me/acronyms.html
But the point is that it IS a nightmare scenario, since the situation is virtually unrecoverable. Ask any marine biologist about the chances of restoring any ecosystem of such dynamics past a point of no return (I work with them, so I HAVE asked).

Again, you're making a huge fuss out of something that is a technicality, because it IS a nightmare scenario, it IS coming, and for us as humen beings it's as disastrous as claimed.
Making a Compiler with Python and Assembler
My first official blog, so don't be too cruel!
This is a crazy idea. It probably won't work. But just in case you're weird enough to try it:

Startup Panhandling

1) Find the most crowded Starbucks that is visited regularly by a startup-y crowd (google, etc).

2) Sit outside said starbucks with an extension cord running to external power supplies from 7am-7pm.

3) Bring cheap at&t wireless 3g phone to tether for internet or rely on starbucks wifi (jailbroken iphone 3g maybe?)

4) Make a cardboard sign (or for more points, use an old beat-up CRT monitor) that says "Building software prototype - Any $$$ is appreciated." I'm sure you can come up with something much wittier.

5) Place some spare coins in an old laptop bag in front of the sign or monitor.

6) Earn $60-100 per hour from people dropping change and dollars into your 'hat' and offer to e-mail them when you finish your MVP.
Unfortunately I don't have a solid recommendation for you. But I feel similarly and would be interested to hear what you come up with. This past January I completed a Ph.D. in physics in an interfacial science/polymer physics/biophysics group. During my time I found that one of the aspects that I really enjoyed was performing data analysis. A large part of my work involved writing custom scripts in Matlab to model experiments or to analyze experimental data. As I'm not particularly interested in continuing on in academia, I'm really beginning to consider the idea that rebranding or retraining myself in areas of data mining and analysis may be the way to go. I'm not sure how best to accomplish this either. I let the thought of doing a quick Masters enter my mind but that's not ideal for me. I think I can quickly come up to speed on theoretical considerations I might be lacking so another option may be to just convince a company to give me a shot.
As someone who has been a TA for the past three years at a top-tier university, I have had the same experience as the author. It's shocking how many students are admitted that do not know how to write an essay. I find that I spend at least half an hour per 10-page essay and almost always end up drowning them (even the good ones) in red ink.

Perhaps this is due to growing up with a mother who worked as an editor, but I tend to think that I'm not being overly harsh when I have to repeat the same comments over and over again: proofread for typos, needs a strong introduction, put your thesis up front, number your pages, use consistent formatting, punctuation inside quote marks, footnotes outside quote marks, don't use big fonts / extra spacing to pad the paper's length, use a (correctly formatted) bibliography, don't cite Wikipedia (or any encyclopedia), give the reader a roadmap up front, etc.
Google announces new royalty free codec (On2's VP8)
"previum" the evolution of freemium
Wolfram Alpha gets a brand new, less cluttered, front page
I would say, if it's truly twice as good as the current options, only a matter of time.
From the suit:

As a result of the Defendant’s unlawful infringement of the Microsoft patents-in-suit, Microsoft has suffered and will continue to suffer damage.

The patent system's primary goal seems to have become protecting patent holders, which really ought to be only a secondary function. The original purpose of patents was to encourage innovations that would benefit society. It was a simple trade: if you invent something that will help society, society will give you protection against competition for some period of time. Somehow the system has morphed from a tool for encouraging innovation into a panicked land grab. And in the case of software patents like the ones in this suit, society receives very little benefit for the protection it provides.
I think it's refreshing because it will soon support intranet p2p, both live and on-demand.

On-demand p2p is easier than live p2p.
Google IO live keynote
Perhaps I missed it, but how exactly does this posting verify that it's official?

Other than the opening paragraph, the words 'official' and 'announce' do not appear anywhere else in the article -- nor can I find any links that point to anything resembling an 'official' announcement.
NASA Captures First Photos of Massive 'Arm' of Oil Slick
Go go gadget Streisand Effect!
This sounds like a great way for busy startuppers to outsource menial tasks. Are there services like this that aren't tied to a credit card?
Are you saying Amazon has announced an Android-based tablet computer? That would be pretty huge and I've never heard about it. Got any links? I tried to Google it and got lots of android tablets for sale at Amazon, plus stories about the Kindle app on Android.
"but not quite actually "officially" official until Google announces it during their annual I/O developers conference"

This must be some definition of "official" of which I was previously unaware.
> wouldn't a mutual fund have access to the same sorts of low liquidity opportunities?

It depends on the fund's rules and mutual fund regulations.

Also, non-liquid assets make it hard to maintain the target allocation when the fund is attracting lots of new money or folks are bailing.
I think this is semantics. You don't have to be a patent troll-an entity like you describe with no other real business, in order to go patent trolling.

MS is trying to be a troll under the bridge for Salesforce, and if you look at the patents, they are so broad and non-innovative that using them in an offensive manner constitutes trolling.
Can you be more specific?

[Disclaimer: I work for salesforce.]
I can't wait to see some side by side comparisons of VP8 like this h264 and ogg article http://www.streaminglearningcenter.com/articles/ogg-vs-h264-...
Well, if everybody but Microsoft implements it, then it will be a foregone conclusion. Someone, probably Google, will develop an IE plugin to play VP8. If that's relatively painless to install, then the most cost effective option for distributing video will be VP8. (With perhaps the most viewed 20% also encoded in H.264. This way, you can still hook most all users with a zero-effort introduction to your site, but save on re-encoding your entire library.)
Be gentle, this is my first blog! :O
Mozilla is also aware of all the standard criticism of the Firefox experience and more, and they have a number of projects working simultaneously to improve the browser, make it faster, and de-clutter the interface: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Projects/
Chrome is only free software if you build it from source (http://code.google.com/intl/de/chromium/terms.html). If you use their pre-built executable (as most people do), different terms apply (http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/eula_text.html).

Also, the license isn't everything. It is also important which entity controls the official version of a software. It makes a huge difference whether the decision process is designed for transparency, or whether you can only audit the produced code commits afterwards.

So instead of forking Firefox, it might be a better idea to fork Chrome.

That way, we'd have an independent version that's regularily checked (and fixed) by persons outside of Google. And we could also provide a free binary to which Google's strange terms doesn't apply.

(It would be interesting to see how Google reacts on such a fork. Will they insist on their term and try to apply them to the sources, or will they keep Chrome being free software?)
Can someone explain what MVP is?
I understand the need for people on HN to play devil's advocate and try to defend Microsoft's actions, but I don't think there's much of a case here in their favor, even if one did really dig into the patents. Microsoft should be spending its time and resources making their own software better, not suing other successful companies. To me this whole debacle stinks of desperation. Microsoft can't figure out how to find success in the web applications space and out of frustration are simply choosing to sue the most successful SaaS companies. I knew things were getting bad at MS, but I didn't realize they were this bad.
Love it! Minimum viable company!
Facebook Banned in Pakistan
This is a bit too misleading and content-free. Flagged.
I missed this one, but what's wrong with citing an encyclopedia other than Wikipedia? :: prepared to learn something new today ::
Google Wave finally opens up to everyone.
German prosecutors investigating Google
Pakistan blocks Facebook
> Gold is a metal. It's not a currency. It's worth about $450 an ounce at the moment.

As of 10 minutes ago, gold is selling for over $1100 an ounce, so I'll gladly buy all that you're willing to sell me for $450 an ounce.