skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Well, consider google. When they rolled out the competition was called 'altavista'. Google did exactly what altavista did, the layout was roughly the same (in fact, googles was considerably simpler, and there were no ads at the time), there were search boxes, results pages and so on.

The only thing different iirc, is that the altavista logo was mostly 'blue' and showed some mountains, the search box was yellow and they had a bunch of useless buttons on their homepage.

So conceptually, not a lot of differences. But in execution there was a world of a difference.
Etsy has three revenue sources: a 20 cent listing fee, a 3.5% sales fee, and an in-site ad system named Showcase.

Their board is Jim Breyer, Fred Wilson, Caterina Fake and Rob Kalin (founder, CEO).

They are profitable as of earlier this year, founded in 2005, based in Brooklyn, and put on a good show fo' sho'.
This is a little off topic. But I was browsing this thread (and enjoying it per usual), and then I realized that the voting system doesn't have to be one-dimensional. Imagine voting on a 2- or 3-dimensional axis. In this case, one might want to 'vote' towards an idea. Like say:

[Good idea]

[Ignorance]

[Mistake]

[Disagree with idea]

It would be more difficult to represent the frontpage, etc. Basically, things would cluster based on 'goals' or axes or what have you. But it might make reading things even more easy. It would be sort of tagging meets voting (but not really 'subject tagging' a la blogs or news websites, but 'response tagging').

The cool (and time-saving) thing would be that you could drift towards response tags that interest you as a reader. Per HN topic. And per HN globally.

Anyway, just an idea if anyone is thinking of experimenting with a new HN....

Ideally, I think you'd make the system as bottom-up as possible. There wouldn't be a set list of 'response tags' or 'vote tags', but there would be commonly-used ones that were readily accessible. Anyway, semantic-voting-ish.
Also, I'm concerned about establishing burn-out as a disease (as am I with most psychological diseases) because the victim mentality can set in pretty quick

Yes, kind of like how people with major depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and a host of other psychological afflictions feel like victims.

Of course, they are. That the problems are mental is no reason to put these things any lower on the "serious" scale than physical problems.

I'm all for accuracy and debate when figuring out whether certain "diseases" are made up or not, but once there's clear evidence that something is real, to pretend that it's not just because some people might use it as an excuse is ridiculous and cruel. Sure, people might abuse this as an excuse, sort of like how they lie all the time about the stomach flu and dying grandmothers, but that doesn't change the seriousness of the situation (and the fact that you really can't work) when you actually have one of those things happen to you. And the solution is, as before, to sniff out bullshit and punish it, not reject wholesale what doctors are saying is a legitimate excuse.

Of course, this has only been a single article, this is certainly not as well established as most other psychological problems are, so the jury is still out, for sure.
The snapshot computer is my main desktop (amd64), and in general, I haven't had problems. (On second thought, updating "very frequently" is probably an exaggeration - more like monthly/biweekly.) One time I noticed that my CD burner had stopped working, but I hadn't used it for several months before that anyway, and it went away on a subsequent update. Other than that, no problems.
I heard they have a pretty kickass tech blog though! http://codeascraft.etsy.com/
What's childish is the notion that there's no cost to offending people, or that the cost must not matter because there's a principle attached to it.

Thanks, you've put exactly into words the idea I've been struggling to sketch out for the last few days.
From MODERN christianity. Did it get that way trough compromise? Will we get a MODERN islam trough compromise?
ChatVille is ChatRoulette meets Facebook and game mechanics
Absolutely. And many of the moderate Muslims I know are actively fostering that idea.
This is a good point. At the same time, bacteria have been mutating for much longer than birds or land animals, and they iterate generationally at an unbelievable speed compared to their multi-cellular cousins.

The risks should be taken seriously, even the seemingly far-fetched ones, but need to be viewed in the context of an already cut-throat competitive landscape. IMHO, the bigger risk is intentionally designing malicious life forms (bio-weapons) more so than than beneficial ones getting out of hand.
I think it's a big loss for HN when these questions and discussions get posted on Reddit on another platform. A lot of the people here are young, but I feel they feel a need to be brainy or wide when posting here. Who says HN should be buttoned up?

But for people who feel that way, maybe we should have a "HN-unplugged" or "bleeding edge HN" forum.
I wouldn't be able to live without flash and here's why.

If I visit 100 sites a day maybe 5 of them will be dependent on flash in some way. Menus, slideshows, etc. Without flash the site is worthless. I won't remember the 95 sites that work, but each and every one of the sites that don't will annoy me endlessly. Maybe I needed that quote on a new Dewalt powerdrill from the local website programmed in flash. Maybe I really wanted to see the funny link someone posted on twitter. But I can't. Not without flash.

The problem is a lot like spam: False positives are a serious problem. If 5 e-mails a day were mistakenly labeled as spam my spamfilter would basically be useless. This is exactly the same.

I don't endorse flash, and think it's annoying as hell but until 99.5% of the sites I visit work without flash not having it simply isn't an option.
Etsy does really creative product search - it might be the best site out there. http://www.etsy.com/buy.php. It's a really fun site to navigate.

They probably get less attention in the tech space because their user base is mostly women.
>>It's designed to insult muslims.

I might also add that the Swedish artist discussed now (Vilks), has a history of provocation in his work. Not only for muslims. He also made a cartoon of one of these, which imho clearly overshadows the Muhammed reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judensau
They also have smtpd now. (http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=smtpd)
Etsy tapped into one of the most passionate communities out there, which happened to be on eBay not by choice, but by necessity. If you want to find opportunities, I'd say look at who is using eBay, Amazon, etc. (as a platform) out of necessity due to a lack of alternatives. Once you find those niches, you've already established that there is a market, and if you design a product for that community, customer acquisition should be directly related to the quality of your product.
It also inhibits the growth of viable competitors => more value!
Sounds a little like "bad form". ;) In seriousness, how would you go about avoiding that? Doing what someone else is doing, better, still makes me uneasy if the two products seem too alike.
You mention TV Web and Web TV, but not WebTV.

http://www.webtv.com/

Other systems, Boxee, MythTV, Microsoft Media Server, Apple TV
The url to hobby is broken by a sticky right brace.
Well, I do try to explain on the site that it's not just for pronunciations, but for any sound whatsoever (funny sounds, etc)

It's like TwitPic but for sounds. You Record/Upload your sound and share on social media like Twitter, just like you upload pics to TwitPic and share on social media like Twitter.

Maybe I should de-emphasize the pronunciation angle and emphasize the "record any sound and share" angle?
> Hmm, I don't see this as an attempt to expose muslim extremists to muslim moderates.

Sorry, that was just an example of IMO a better way to react to your hypothetical extremism. It was a bad one but I was trying to avoid suggesting reporting you to the police (which was a worse one :P).

i.e. it was a solution rather than a "show".

In terms of a real solution to this problem.. well clearly the most sensible one is to ignore the majority of the threats (it avoids propagating fear and forces the extremists out of the limelight - one of their greatest weapons).
From the entry on opera.com:

"The x264 developer's analysis is certainly interesting, but I don't think it is the final word on "WebM vs. H.264". Not only is WebM doing well compared to the H.264 baseline profile, which is what's relevant to HTML5 video, but I think WebM will continue to improve both quality-wise and performance-wise."

From the x264 developer's article:

"Update: it seems that Google is not open to changing the spec: it is apparently “final”, complete with all its flaws."

Mhm.
The heavy hand of Groupon
Also heard they are hiring like crazy! http://www.etsy.com/jobs/
Haha. Not quite.
Reads the bytecode straight from the swf. Haven't tried it yet, but it looks to be a lot further along than Gnash was.
The scoop on Google TV
They are not virtually powerless. They effectively use intimidation to coerce people to not offend them.
Adult diapers in Japan recycled to provide energy
Even if it is a toy, it's still a new toy. It's barely just 6 weeks old. I'd wait a bit before declaring the iPad revolution legit.
He lists his reasons in the following order:

AT&T service

Yes, AT&T service has been pretty shitty. It's hard to make this a direct knock against the iPhone, even recognizing the exclusive deal. I believe that Apple is pushing AT&T to fix this issue in one way or another. Though it has been taking way too long. Still, I don't consider this a pure iPhone issue.

major limitations in some of the applications such as email

Really? Have you truly tried some of the Android apps, Brad? The default email client on the Moto Droid I had for a month didn't even support signatures. Many of the other apps I downloaded and tried were half-baked at best. Some were targeted towards specific handsets, others just didn't perform as advertised. There have been very very few iPhone apps that I've downloaded that didn't do what they advertised (note: I also read app reviews first. If the majority of the reviews are 1 or 2 stars I skip it.). My personal experience was that Android apps were fairly poor as a whole, though there were some really good apps too.

restriction of Flash

Until I see true working version of mobile Flash, I don't blame Apple for not including it. I've never felt slighted by my iPhone not supporting Flash.

lack of tethering

This is, again, a carrier issue. So, you're not really comparing handsets, you're comparing carrier restrictions. Again, I get the exclusivity part, but this isn't really an iPhone limitation.

lack of statefulness, lack of multi-processing

Yeah, these bug me at times also. Though not significantly, and my Droid ATE the battery if I tried to multitask an app that did a lot of background network activity. So again, I'm not sure this is true iPhone issue as much as an overall technology issue.

and the unbearable shittiness of iTunes for Windows

What about the unbearable shittiness of Windows in general?

Sorry, but I put less merit into someone who switches products after getting one as schwag. I thought my Droid sucked and wasn't worth what I paid for it. If it had been free, I may have been more tolerant of it and wooed by the novelty factor.
> The social contracts are codified in our laws. And the laws says that blasphemy is legal.

And those laws, equally, don't say that it is illegal to be offended by blasphemy.

As much as I would fight for the right of people to draw Mohammed I would fight for an individual Muslims right to feel offended by that drawing.
> Are they that desperate for porn?

Only big-breasted porn.
I'm not sure how you'll monetize it (ads, I guess), but I think this is actually a pretty interesting idea. You may need to pivot a bit to find a better market fit, but FWIW I think you're giving up too easily. (And actually, 2.3 pages per visit seems pretty good as a first pass, but I don't have a lot of experience running adwords campaigns.)

My guess is adwords are probably the wrong way to reach contributors to this site. No one is searching google thinking "I know how to pronounce this word, if only had a way to tell people". You may get some exploratory clicks but you're probably not addressing the problem they went to google to solve. I think you should be spreading awareness (virally?) among content creators, so that they keep you in mind when the problem your are solving occurs to them.
I didn't know there was a Australian Sex Party. Can we vote for them :-)

This porn thing is really getting out of hand in Australia, first they tried to block web pages, now this. I've never been there, but my naive picture gained from the movies (admittedly not a reliable source, but nevertheless a data point) is that they seem to be quite a normal bunch and not a prudish, bible-thumping, porn-hating crowd. So, which part of the Australian society backs this anti-pron movement, I wonder.
it's the ultimate toy... there are so many great games built for it.
It's difficult. I would ask someone not familiar with the competitor to come up with a user interface, then maybe tweak it until I'd be happy with it.

There are usually more paths that lead to a valid solution, but you're so 'in' to that other one that it can be hard to see that without starting from scratch. But since you've already seen it there is no 'from scratch' for you.
No, they effectively use propaganda and the media to propagate fear leading to demonstrations such as this.

Lets not beat around the bush; this protest was born out of fear.

And so the extremists aims are met.
Do you think when they made those initials pitches investors had a hard time seeing the market potential for hand made items?
Also, I meant to add this:

> Have any of you had experience with web apps that you
> put up, and initially got negligible traction from
> visitors, and then, after the right steps had that
> increase significantly?

Yes. Moreover, I'd guess this is the most common case. That's what this whole release early/iterate thing is about.
Why should anyone want to get high grades in eighth grade? What's the point? No one's ever going to look at them.
You can't understand why people would line up out the door to pay money for toys?

Have you ever heard of George Lucas? [1]

Do we need to send you on a remedial field trip to the local mall on the day after Thanksgiving?

---

[1] I'll bet that over the course of my lifetime my family has paid George Lucas far more than the cost of an iPad, for fewer hours of enjoyment. I've probably spent half an iPad's worth on Lucasfilm movie tickets alone.
From what I understand they'll sync it to one of the computers in the Apple store before you leave if you would like so that you don't need a computer to use it.
Well it's probably not good to not call us consumers if that's what we are doing. I'm a big believer in being honest and trying to be happy with your lifestyle, not repressing the truth to find happiness.

As for the comment about us being producers, while partially true the ratio between what you produce and what you consume is much more arbitrary than it should be. So we all sort of have to produce, but few do it in sync with the amount they consume (not pointing fingers or saying I do - I definitely don't).
Tried to install a couple of days ago; it builds with tweaks but crashes on my up-to-date Arch Linux install.
6 Essential Android Apps for Bible Study
Their die hard fans didn't really help the Apple TV much unfortunately.
"like TwitPic but for sounds"

I wouldn't use that verbatim, but that sounds like the right angle to me.
A phpBB-like forum would be great. I think you should just go ahead and start it. I'd use it.
My reddit experience improved dramatically once I started to discover the smaller subreddits that relate to my interests and unsubscribed from the most popular default ones that have low signal:noise (/r/pics, /r/politics and /r/reddit.com come to mind).

Here are some more that might be of interest to the HN crowd:

http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/ (replace haskell with your language of choice, it's bound to exist)

http://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/

http://www.reddit.com/r/ReverseEngineering/

http://www.reddit.com/r/coding/ (a replacement for /r/programming, which has suffered due to its popularity)
This is why I am beginning to consider NoScript essential for web-browsing.
Yeah, but you can't eat solar panels.
Nice. Anyone have experience with Paperclip on Rails 3? Almost all my apps rely heavily on Paperclip for image storage.
Yes, they do have die-hard fans. People often state this like it is a bad thing, or like Apple has done something wrong by building products that attract a loyal following. Any real developer on here would give their left nut (or tit, if the case were) to be able to build a technology company that could attract the following that Apple has.

That fan base has been acquired by creating products that people feel good about owning and using. I don't want to make this a fanboi/anti-MS thread, but the market perception of most Microsoft-based products seems to be that most of the users purchase them somewhat begrudgingly.
11. - unless you get fired because you couldn't push yourself hard enough to get project X done.
Yeah, I think this gets back to something Drew Houston of Dropbox said, which is something like "AdWords is a good way of harvesting existing demand and not creating demand"

And I do need to create demand, as this is a new sort of service and I need to inform people of its existence.

So, I need to find ways to spread awareness, as you say.
The Statistic Behind a Mortgage Meltdown
> That kid that you made fun of during the interview for not knowing some obscure feature from C could be buying your company in 10 years and you could end up working for him.

That actually more or less happened to me, my former boss worked for me for a bit. Great guy by the way, so it wasn't that he made fun of me, and as a boss he was pretty good too. I hope I was just as good a boss to him as he was for me.

The reverse also happened to me, a former employee struck it big and I did some contract work for him.

It really is a much smaller world than most people think and if you burn your bridges behind you or are nasty to people it will definitely come back to you. It may take a while, but it always does.
While I can see something like this doing very well against the Wii in the casual gaming market, the hardware is too slow to compete with the 360/PS3 graphically for hardcore gamers.

That said, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Hasn't the Wii been wildly more profitable than its competitors?
Can you guys think of a way to say that without using the word TwitPic, which I guess gets into trademark issues?
But it's a toy whose novelty wears off really quickly, I find. I have one here on my desk, but I haven't used it (apart than to verify the UK's app store is up and running) with any seriousness in around two weeks.
I mean, all we have to do is draw a very important prophet, for god sake!

That's a little intolerant; you might not understand why they feel that way (I certainly don't) but it doesn't allow you to sneer at such things.

Sure, that is all we need to do. Does that mean we should make a point of doing it?

Walking around nude in front of visitors you your home is, clearly, going to offend some people. That is something I don't really understand because it is just bits, and we all have em!

But would you deliberately take your clothes off when you had visitors? As opposed to accidentally opening the door naked to someone?

There is a difference I think.
That book is amazing.
Yes, but few people would say an iPod or an iPhone is a credible alternative to a computer.

I have a 3G iPad, I am frequently picking it up to do casual computing tasks (web, email, entertainment) that I would have ordinarily sat down at my desk for, or grabbed my laptop (MBP) off the desk for.

I like the fact that I can use the iPad on and off all day. It comes alive almost instantly, yet doesn't drain its battery after a couple of hours of use and idling.

The iPad is, to me, one of the first well-executed PC alternatives to come out in about as long as I can remember. I've also had netbooks (EEE 701), various smart phones, PDAs, computers tethered to TV's and other "alternative computing" devices throughout the years. None of them have ever really felt like viable products for me.
What is funny is that as Etsy grew a lot of sellers got dissatisfied and left to 1000markets. The sellers that all left were able to organize this because of the strong community communication tools provided by Etsy.
Six degrees of Black Sabbath
The violence associated with football in Glasgow is literally religious - it's an example of Christian sectarian violence.

Attacks on Christianity don't get the same reaction because in most places it's the dominant religion, but that's not to say there's not violence associated with Christianity. The history of Northern Ireland is more complicated than simple religion, but that is an important aspect of the Troubles.
Thanks for the comments all!

@ jmillikin : Two main issues I see what your propsal: it isn't a real solution to guaranteeing quality, because (for example) I was seeing different WM-XServer interaction between the 32bit and 64bit distros of the same Ubuntu version (9.04)! So I can't even say "The game experience is tuned for Ubuntu" with any real assurance my code will work. The best I can do is say "We tested our code on Ubuntu and managed to cobble something together that displays no known issues."

Secondly, I'm hard pressed to actually get an objective answer on the question "what are the major distros/versions" without igniting some kind of flame war.

Thirdly, how do we select distros/versions/etc without 1) the userbase crying foul for lack of support for their config; and 2) without subdividing an already small market for games? For example, even the support burden alone when dealing with folks who accidentally buy the game without reading the 'fine print' would be significant and prohibitive.

And our experience is that Linux users are not more forgiving when the app in question has been paid for. Expectations are low when something is free but high when something is not. So we need that work to be justified.

@ gte910h : you can't statically link LGPL'd libs without breaking license.

Dave, Hemisphere Games
If we draw silly pictures, the terrorists will win.
Ruby Summer of Code Projects
Hello Tom, first I should say that Ruby is my favorite language and fortunately there is a lot of demand for Ruby development. I don't really pitch customers on language since almost everyone I work for is very tech saavy and know what they want they want to use.

If you want to work in a particular language such as Common Lisp I suggest writing a useful open source project and that could lead to work in Lisp, and at the least you will learn something and have fun.
Extremely good point; I hadn't considered that.

I'm not sure it entirely invalidates my theory - but it certainly makes it more complex :) cheers.
Well then Microsoft must be kicking serious ass in the space too because they have spent a lot more.

I am super skeptical of any company that spends a lot of money to break into an area that isn't in their 'core competency'. Apple has shown they only know how to offer online services for a high subscription rate. It'd be interesting to see if they can offer anything decent for free or a low price point.