skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Obviously, Posterous is more than just blogging via email.

What does Posterous do that is absolutely unique and useful that wordpress or other blog platform doesn't do?

I know saying anything negative towards YC funded startup is not looked upon here, but I will take a shot.

Posterous is nothing unique, it doesn't do anything that other blog platforms don't have or can't be configured to do the same thing. The only thing working for Posterous IMO is that they have done a really good at their landing page which is short an informative. They also have good ideas to promote their platform.

Personally I don't understand why would any tech savvy online user would "switch to" Posterous or even use any of the hosted blogging solutions out there for that matter. Its not only mindlessly easy to setup and maintain your own blog (wordpress or whatever), it makes more sense to host your own stuff and have 100% control over your own blog.

Posterous makes sense for grandpa and the guy/gal who just discovered blogging, not for a seasoned blogger/internet user.
It's been that way for the 13+ years I've been using it.
I hear ya... I have no idea what happened in the last 4 months of 2006 and the first 6 months of 2007. My second son was born in August 2006 and he cried if he was awake until he was 8 months old.
+1 for "The way a startup will win against Google is by doing what Google did 10 years ago."

I find myself typing stuff like +<keyword> way too often in google, because google to be smart by including pages just because they are linked to by <keyword>.
There is a lot of awesome information at http://venturehacks.com
Since we got a whole board full of developers, the question is how do you build this kind of app without getting yourself in trouble with consumers (and I guess eventually after a lot of credit card reversals: Apple)? Or do you just do ads or charge for the initial app?
Strange how this meme has taken off in the last year or so. I first heard of it from Steve Yegge's blog in 2008, but it's been a regular feature on HN and Reddit in 2010.

Is there any impartial treatment of this subject that can make it easier to believe in? It sounds peachy but it's so easy for us to buy into that I'm skeptical.

Here's a Google Trends search on the term, looks like it spiked last fall and has been going strong ever since.
http://www.google.com/archivesearch?q=%22dunning+kruger+effe...
Yes, the iToilet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b3JG9_6RD8#t=1m36s
David,

I have been looking for a co-founder with your profile for my start-up as well. Looks like you have complementary strengths. We should at the least talk. Let me know if you would like to chat up and I will send you my contact info.

my email is krishna.jonnakadla@yahoo.com
In Amsterdam I remember some interesting iron outdoor urinals. In Munich (I think) there were these futuristic pee-daleks that would arise from the ground at night, in one of the squares. I could be mixing up Munich and Amsterdam, it was about 10 years ago.

In Tokyo, the salaryman just pee directly on the street - in unison, while singing. In San Francisco people also pee on the street, or on the wall, or on your car, or next to the poo they left on the bike rack. NYC is a challenge, but Starbucks is usually a good bet during the daytime. At night, most bars won't notice if you just use the restroom if they are sufficiently busy (but not too busy). As far as I can tell, the entire world sucks for finding a restroom if you are a woman.
I think we're making good progress when you look at how long we've been at it vs. how long nature has. I mean we at least knew where to look for the solution!
There's some info towards the bottom of this article:

http://answers.oreilly.com/topic/1570-how-to-track-your-ipho...

"About 2 weeks after the end of the month, you'll start to get emails from Apple with a subject line that begins with "iTunes Financial Report". That's great news—Apple has taken the first step toward paying you."

My app has been out for just over a month, I haven't gotten this yet but I expect it sometime in July.
Chirpie for iPhone 1.2 Now Available
> Aren't they almost there already? Documents, email, maps, news, phone/voice, search, videos online, and soon television.

I think that there's still a long, long way to go. I run into information problems that I can't solve with Google all the time, mostly relating to obscure niche interests. Are there really no people talking about my favorite books on the Internet? Because unless I want to talk about Harry Potter or Twilight, I can't find any. Has nobody run across this error message that I just found in my Haskell/LLVM program and solved it? Of the dozen or two restaurants within a mile of my apartment, only about half of them show up on a Google Local search.

Google does really well for popular stuff, basically anything with a Wikipedia entry. It's still remarkably immature for things that are very niche, when there's just a handful of people around the world interested in that topic.

Udi Manber, Google's search VP, had an interesting interview about that:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9960259-7.html

> ... and to sell ads based on that information. Google is still primarily an ad company that just happens to also do technology that helps them sell more ads.

Honestly, working in search, I don't see that. I'm explicitly told not to worry about revenue or ads. There are other departments that handle that.

I think that the way the founders view it, Google is a technology company where ads give them the wherewithal to build interesting technology. It's the old Drucker view of a corporation: profit is the cost of staying in business. A business exists to fulfill a social function; the profit motive exists to keep the business honest, so that it doesn't consume more resources in pursuit of that fulfillment than it generates.
I like the idea, but I think the main issue is design. It's pretty hard to figure out what's going on, and the interface is inconsistent. Example, on a user's page, each link they posted isn't in the same position, they're staggered down the page. That makes it difficult to scan someone's posts to find something interesting. I would say if the posts are going to have images, make sure they're all the same size, or maybe have them float right so all the link titles are aligned left. In the same vein, each user has a different size/shape avatar, they should all be, say 48x48 square for example. There's a lot of those little details throughout the site that doesn't make for a great user experience.

Also, I think you need to switch the focus to reading, as others mentioned. Interesting content is what's going to get people coming back. So the front page should show the most popular links instead of people. I actually think this page (http://www.howl.com/explore/all) should be the home page. I think that would make a much more compelling first experience, and you should be able to get there without needing to sign up. It's simple and you instantly get a feeling for what the site is.
I read about at least one study (different description, illustrating the same principle) where they gave a set of teachers a list of students' names with numbers next to them. Apparently it was implied (or just not stated, which would be similar here) that the numbers were test scores or IQs. Sure enough, there was a strong correlation between the number by the student's name and how well s/he tested after a year.

The numbers were random, of course. Specifically, they were locker numbers.
This sounds like:

I don't know how clojure works.

I know how clojure works.

...
Thank you for the downmods.
Welcome To SEVEN CONFESSIONS simonemimbs.com
That's correct for an angel round in the valley right now provided the stats are very recent and they're trending upwards i.e. your growth is accelerating.

The reason is because growth is what all valley angels look for. So if you have growth you create (as Cialdini would put it) social scarcity for your stock which creates a feeding frenzy.

This is only in the valley. Seattle (where I'm based) is different. Many startups here focus on generating revenue from early on and there is less growth based demand. The valuations here are also lower. I think the number of investors is the reason. Not enough for a feeding frenzy and less growth-based exit stories to fuel the appetite.
Can't see the other without a FB account, so thanks for this.
Why the downvotes? This is a decent question. All other things being equal, having a "standard" Java webapp is preferable to a server-specific app.

Of course, the correct answer is (IIRC) that standard Java web servers don't support the NIO asynchronous request paradigm - the standard Java servlet spec is thread-per-request.

But not everyone knows that.
Yes, it is important to know the reporter's bias, but I think we need a lot less opinion than we are currently getting. For example, we spent a huge amount of time talking about the health care bill in the USA. Lots of people shooting their mouths off on both sides, but no news agency actually going through the bill and getting people to translate it from legalese to human. That would have been useful, but opinion fills the pages and generates revenue.
Mine does all that. :-)

http://michaelgrinich.com/hackernews/
So, in hindsight would you change anything / be a tad more secretive? I'm guessing you wouldn't, but would love to hear your take.
Funny, as someone who took up guitar and pick-up skills, I would have to respectfully disagree.

You can be the best guitar player with the fastest fingers or with the huskiest male-acoustic singer-songwriter-voice, and still can't laid or get signed to a contract. For evidence, just go to your local city's public square or subway station and see all of the talents out there, strumming their hearts out, alone.

Social skills is a misnomer; it is not a skill but rather a shell/skinning/GUI to present the contents underneath. Having lots of friends or gfs would not validate your causes (I'm talking about intrinsic causes) and vice versa too for lackthereof a social life. Social skills are just a set of fancy ways to announce to the world, that "I'm single, and I'm ready to mingle."

Sorry about being blunt, but it's just I feel like a lot of people confuse these two area's in their lives (not saying that one's social life isn't as important; one can't fight against one's biology) and take one for the other; and try to use social superficiality to resolve their intrinsic goals and come off vapid; or try to work on their personal projects in hopes to bolster their social lives and come off frustrated and lonely.
The comments do get throuhg (sometimes). Something destroyed Wordpress on the last update :( must fix it.

r.e. VM's the answer is "no not currently", however it is on their list of things "in development".
Nootropic drug use among pro poker players
"a strong campaign of eliminating HIV spreading behavior in those areas could really reduce the spread of the disease."

That's a LOT easier said than done. There's a widely held belief in parts of the world (such as Africa) that having sex with a virgin cleanses one of AIDS. Because of this, child-rape is extremely prevalent in that part of the world. I suppose you could make the case that education is the easier part of solving the AIDS/HIV puzzle, but it's a very large behavioral problem that can not be solved using a scientific approach.
I Am Not An Immunologist, but antibodies are usually produced by plasma cells, after their predecessor B cells are triggered with the appropriate antigens, right? I'm pretty sure that mechanism and its memory is acquired, not innate. In other words, it's not coded for by DNA, and you can't inherit that immunity from the father. Some maternal antibodies are heritable, but I think that's through shared blood.
The fact that there are fewer barriers to entry also make startups where there are barriers to entry more valuable. Some of the big successes this time around are e-commerce operations which require a lot of capital for the parts of the business associated with moving physical inventory.
It's nice to see that a number of things have to come together to get outsize effects like in 1859.
this guy won't be working with them. i guess that's the point; to find the person you are compatible with?
I've implemented servlet-based solutions with Clojure on top of Tomcat (e.g. at http://elev.at), and although it wasn't too bad, there is still cruft to deal with. This looks like an interesting option indeed.
Avoid; we used to do this in our office (set up before my arrival :)) and, of course, if your line went down or slowed then... no email.

We lost some pretty critical mail that way (mad eyes).

What you could do is host a VPS somewhere with a mail server on it and get it to push mail to you when it can reach you (buffering them when unable). This is what we do with some success.
I agree completely with this thesis.

It's absolutely impossible to write without bias. If nothing else, you must choose an order in which to present the information, and that necessarily forces you to give preference to some things over others. But of course it runs much deeper than that, to assumptions the writer is making that he may not even be aware of.

I think that a journalist would be doing his readers a good service by allowing them to know his feelings, so that the reader could be better prepared to identify any biases, accidental or otherwise.
> What does Posterous do that is absolutely unique and useful that wordpress or other blog platform doesn't do?

From the top of my head: Intuitive user interface, awesome iPhone application, vibrant community, ease of usage, works out of the box.

It's not aiming for the serious blogger. It's the easiest way to post stuff online. The rationale is most people aren't tech savvy and there are tech savvy people don't care about whether the index should have 8 or 10 posts, whether the date is YMD or DMY. It's for people who want to just post stuff online easily and share it with others.
Take the runoff water from the road with high nitrates and collect it in ditches with algae or Hydrilla absorbing CO2. Convert the algae/aquatic plants into bio diesel or dry it and make soil for plant nurseries.

Edit: Taken from Wikipedias Hydrilla article, "This abundant source of biomas is a known hyperaccumulator of Mercury, Cadmium, Chromium and Lead, and as such can be used in phytoremediation."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytoremediation
I actually live in a stawbale house. It looks completely normal, except for 2' thick external walls and the stained concrete floors. I absolutely love it.

My dad/brother built it. One practical piece of advice, keep any walls that you are going to hang cabinets on standard framing walls. This will save you an huge amount of time and effort to get them to hang properly and look good. Also be careful how /where you run your water pipes. Straw (and probably other materials) really don't like water if you get a leak.
Nope, never really followed up on it. We were just having an informal chat and that part was clearly confusing to both of us.
De Bruijn sequence
Ahh right.
Seems Linux is well supported everywhere. But when it comes to Windows reasonably priced solutions are much harder to find.

I have a VM of my own running Windows server that i really wanted to stick on the cloud somewhere.
Amazon EC2 works out a little too expensive.
Well, the insurance company hopefully doesn't demand that you use a helmet but rather asks whether you want coverage that applies when you're not wearing a helmet, and it costs more.

And freedom is a slippery slope to anarchy. Slippery slopes are best addressed with some reasonable theory that explains where the line is - where cost exceeds benefit. Ideally government would attempt to decide what our core values are - how we weigh privacy vs. freedom vs. equality vs. security vs. fairness - and then try to evaluate policies based on how they fare in these dimensions.
This antibody, however it was created, will now be a good starting point for tweaking and improvement. Hopefully, it can be made to be effective against 100% (or as close as possible) of the HIV variants.
A guy fails at configuring BIND9. News at 11.

BIND sucks. But seriously I am stil a little concerned about whether Power DNS is secure/per formant. I'm hoping to have some solid data on that soon.

Mostly this is an attempt to prove it is getting easier to do this; with VPS's getting cheaper and more abundant I seriously expect to see "all in one" VM's springing up with more and more people "self hosting". Could even be a viable startup there...

I've been wondering if I should get myself a website on a Rackspace cloud, but I'm not sure if I can keep the same static IP if I delete/copy server instances.

I'm not sure you can on Rackspace - I also would be interested to hear for certain. Same for any other VPS providers. I'm looking for US ones to provide failover/US hosting.
This is good advice, but it's not enough.

I found I had to actively train myself to use two-handed key chords. Right control-w, left control n, etc.
AppBrain Upgrade Installs Android Apps Instantly From the Web
it's probably better NOT to sharpen the pencils :-)
Maybe, but how far forward will biotech have moved in 10 years? Buying time might be enough, in this case.
You realise that Emacs is highly customisable, right? I mean, if that was really the reason, why not remap some of the more common sequences?
I believe there were quite recent new regulations which stop all bank payments from US banks...my bank sent me a letter (although I'd never paid one of the sites) about this, at which point I asked the player.

Am I mistaken about what happened?
That's true, but it doesn't generate feedback to bad historians.

For example, if a country gets into an unnecessary war because of bad history, the historians aren't penalized.

> There was a reason that the government created and spent so much on the Ministry of Truth in Orwell's 1984. If you control people's understanding of history, you can have a big impact on what they do in the future.

Bingo, and it's not just govt that tries to influence history to influence the future.

Note that there's nothing in here that encourages accuracy.
> we prompt them to share their new page with friends immediately after signup

Does this actually work? I've seen a few places that do this but I've always assumed it's probably a poor performer (and makes your site looks spammy) because people haven't had a chance to evaluate if they want to tell their friends about your site.
Ask HN: Master a Language in 1 Month
Can you master a language&framework in 1 month? (Rails,Django, etC). How?
I thought people call it gaming because some people try to argue poker and other games of chance which have a skill component aren't gambling.
Claim your $16. Comcast P2P settlement now final
Unfortunately the opacity was a feature created and perpetuated by the legislators (of both flavors). This, and other bills like USA PATRIOT, were kept close to the chest. Even the legislators themselves weren't given enough time to read the bill before being forced to vote on it.

Journalists need to help us with this problem, but since they can't see the bills either, they need to be more vocal about the lack of transparency in governmental processes.
Funding & national media attention for my political accountability startup. http://votereports.org/ (next 6 months)

Partner with a certain local government agency to make a major user-facing improvement. (next 2 years)

Start a school using an the updated version of the monitorial/lancasterian system of education. (next 20 years)
Typically, about 25 days after the end of the month in my experience. For reference, I got paid on 6/23/10 for May, 5/26/10 for April, and 4/28/10 for March.
The problem with benchmarking raw node.js code is that not a lot of real web apps will look like that. Naked node.js pushes all the asynchronous complexity on the application writer - writing everything with callbacks is equivalent to hand-writing a state machine.

Since V8 does not have native continuation support, realistically it's going to devolve to libraries either doing CPS transformation (http://gfxmonk.net/2010/07/04/defer-taming-asynchronous-java...) or monads (http://matthew.yumptious.com/2009/04/javascript/dojo-deferre...), which both involve performance penalties.

A fair comparison on say a 4-core machine would be 4 JVMs running Clojure webservers with some front-end, and 4 node.js instances running one of the library front-ends, with the benchmarked page written with one of the CPS-transforming toolkits (coffeescript, narrative JS, jwacs, etc.) or maybe monad toolkits if/when somebody decides to write one.
Dosent appear to be. My server took a while to get but im pretty happy with it. No double billings either although im keeping an eye on that.

I think they are selling off old hardware they would normally bin.
GNU screen is better at that, IMHO. But then screen doesn't have Google Maps http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1472314 :-)
European lotteries actually tend to have much higher percentages of money paid, but much lower payouts. They're "less of a bad deal" from an odds perspective than American lotteries.
xkcd uses title attribute, which does not require hover.

Browser is free to implement it any other way (and I think Apple should show title on tap-and-hold gesture).

So it's not lack of hover, it's just Safari's incomplete HTML support.
With viper and vimpulse you get a pretty good vi emulation.
Breaking Your "Four Minute Mile"
Please awaken me... I've read the page, and have no idea why I would care if a website knows what search terms I used to find it.
Yeah, there was actually an article on this - I'll see if I can dig it up later.

It evaluated the performance between asking them to refer right after sign-up vs. after they have tried the product for a while.

The message we currently use is something along the lines of "Now that you have a brand new link blog, it's time to get an audience", or something like that.
I like the Toms stuff. Aquafresh burns, and most toothpastes leave me with a worse flavor in my mouth in the morning than Toms. I've always wondered why, but have been too disinterested to find out (and I suspect the answer is hotly debated).

I might give the salt stick a try... suggestions for a n00b?
I suggest the author's point is differentiation - not using the same model/approach for different businesses.
> It's the easiest way to post stuff online.

While posterous is an easy way to post stuff on line, twitter and facebook also have easy ways to post stuff online. tumblr and weheartit's bookmarklets are also easy ways to post stuff online.
It's... an interesting idea.

Firstly I don't think journalists are generally sacked over putting their opinions into their work - it is just those issues are contentious so the media company plays it safe (this is wrong - but possibly another, wider, issue).

And he has a strong point about knowing bias's to help put media into context.

But putting opinion into stories? It has it's place (editorial, columns) and we should see more of that! It also has it's place in the general commentary about a writer - so we can see their bias.

But directly in news? I think that is a bad idea - I like my news to at least try to be non-biased. If I know the leanings of the reporter I am happy I can pick out bias that has crept in and dig into those issues more. That becomes difficult if opinion is liberally sprinkled into reportage.

My ideal News website would have the following; unbiased, factual news reports with attached commentary/editorial from writers with complementary bias. That would be cool.
You see, foursquare can be useful.
OK, even if we accept your assertion that the tech savvy won't use Posterous, what about everyone else on the internet?