skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Not at all a paradox. A paradox would require two inconsistent things to be simultaneously true.

This is just an answer that's counter-intuitive. It's entirely consistent, but surprising.
yes, and those are "rich" people, much richer than the average consumer, especially when you take in account countries such as China or India.
I do! I pledge $0523530358306 gavrillion!
Yes. You post the minimum specs in an internet forum and do what they tell you. That's how you know when it's time.
Hire a marketing intern from a local college for $12/hr and do what they suggest.
Dell makes machines with limited design value add, Apple makes machines with substantial design value add. ThinkPads, for example, also have design value add -- not because they look pretty (most people think they don't) -- but because (like Macs) they're lighter, smaller, and have better battery life than equivalent-power Taiwanese white box systems.

Toshiba and Sony also make machines with design value add. Dell, not much. Gateway/Acer, not at all. HP, maybe more than Dell, but not especially.

Ten years ago, almost all the market was in generic desktop boxes, and notebooks were a minor category. Dell's manufacturing and supply chain expertise allowed them to differentiate their systems through cost savings and through rapid production of customized systems. They could carry a few more components and sell people better boxes just by swapping in the right components.

Now, the problem is that generic boxes are purely a low-margin commodity, and all the margin is in systems that are actually engineered. Macs. Thinkpads. Elaborate gaming systems. Stuff where you don't just switch out a part or two and call it a different box. And that's not Dell's game.
A mailbomb in an IMAP box would still be a cause for concern. It could mean that incoming mail doesn't get processed for hours or days--if the system relies on timely information (like in a support ticket tracker) this could potentially be a big problem.

procmail would allow one to pre-process mail and add some rules to prevent dupes and not even forward messages that don't make sense. For example, if you're expecting to receive a ticket ID in the subject and there isn't one, you toss the message rather than forward it. If you get multiple messages with identical contents, you can also toss it. procmail has built-in tests for this sort of thing. A milter or filter could be written to do the same job, but that would apply to all incoming messages unless you jumped through a few hoops and made it pretty smart.

But, a mailbomb would still be a concern just from a raw mail processing speed standpoint. But, Postfix can throttle SMTP servers that are sending faster than a certain rate...so it can be locked down, but you have to address the problems at multiple layers.

That said, any of the solutions given will probably work fine--most of the time the usual spam and AV filtering tools will keep your mail clean enough to just do the simplest thing and fix it if it breaks (possibly by going to more complex solutions).
From wikipedia: "A paradox can be an apparently true statement or group of statements that leads to a contradiction or a situation which defies intuition; or it can be, seemingly opposite, an apparent contradiction that actually expresses a non-dual truth (cf. Koan). Typically, either the statements in question do not really imply the contradiction, the puzzling result is not really a contradiction, or the premises themselves are not all really true or cannot all be true together. [...] A veridical paradox produces a result that appears absurd but is demonstrated to be true nevertheless. Thus, the paradox of Frederic's birthday in The Pirates of Penzance establishes the surprising fact that a person's fifth birthday is the day he turns twenty, if born on a leap day. Likewise, Arrow's impossibility theorem involves behaviour of voting systems that is surprising but true."

But yes, it's a puzzle with a counterintuitive result.
This is s'posed to be a demo of processing.js isn't it?
I like the vi-like interface. If only there were the shortcut keys like
http://gpl.internetconnection.net/vi/

Pretty cool nonetheless
It's impossible to know if this was a good deal for them without knowing the terms.

Also, Google actually did lease machines early on, which is essentially debt (done for accounting reasons, as I understand it).
What possible "more features" can exist for twitter? The model is incredibly simple, wrapped around a less simple, but still crucially straightforward palette of mediums for access; and this author thinks people will pay for it?

I'm pro twitter 110% but I have to play this card, and play it hard:

"Why would anyone pay for Twitter after such astonishing success (when it does work)?"
To be fair, the Disqus guys are proud of being used by Fred Wilson, and I believe Wilson is an investor in Disqus.

But, I do find it amusing that there is a little Indochinese style war going on here between TechStars and YC, with proxies in the form of Intense Debate and Disqus. I dunno how far the analogy goes, but I suspect that whichever one plays most effectively by guerilla rules will be the winner.
"Total Crap"? Normally I don't respond to people who can't manage to be polite, but I'm going to make an exception. Here's the quote you should re-read:

"Here are a few examples of companies that didn't follow this path (at first)". Note the "at first". Ebay is certainly focused on SEO right now.

The point is that you can get great without SEO-- and companies often do. And the (unspoken) point was that for some companies, search isn't how their products are found.

Low cost distribution is key for startups, but SEO isn't the only way to get that, and often it's a really inefficient way.

If you were starting salesforce.com today, would you hire an SEO specialist among your first 5 hires? Your first 20? How about 37 signals? What percentage of their traffic do you think comes from generalized search (beyond search for their brand name(s)). How about Slide and RockYou? iLike? Do you think SEO should be an early priority for a widget company?

FWIW, I ran a web consultancy for 7 years with a lot of focus on SEO. I'm a big believer in the value of SEO for many types of businesses... Just not all.

Also FWIW, I'm currently running a business that is growing 7-9% per week for the last 16 weeks (that's 3000%+ annual) with no marketing and negligible SEO (virtually all organic search is for a brand name search). We've got some interesting SEO plans, but I maintain that it's a bad thing to focus on for us right now.
Have either/both of these solved the Googlejuice problem? e.g. searches find your comments and the click leads the searcher to a site other than your blog. This is one of our hesitations in going this route, even though Disqus is really awesome to use.
I don't even find this counter-intuitive. Maybe my intuition has been shaped by spending most of my life doing mathematics. :-)
anyone else?
I think this is another case of reducing the code surface area to allow more time to focus on meatier problems.

Even though the Network Pages probably worked fine and were already up and running, it's just not worth it in the long run to maintain them through structural changes and fix minor bugs as they crop up.

The usage just wasn't there.
I'll bet Tipjoy would appreciate it if they did.
Talk about poor margins!
To spin this in a slightly different direction, there are different req's on NASD/AMSE wrt market cap (this comes up when cos get delisted).

I'd be curious to know what it takes to get onto the OTC/BB (pink sheets), b/c those tend to be smaller cap public companies.
<wants ultra-zoomed-in version>
sure the site might give you more qualified audience, who might be more likely to register, but that doesn't mean they'll stick around.

Chances are the users are technology geeks who'll just play around with your site once and then will never return. Why? Because some other website caught their attention.

Personally I'd rather get featured on a blog for my niche than on techcrunch. Sure you'll get less hits, but the hits will be people who might actually be interested in your product, and not the technology behind it.
Like the birthday paradox: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_paradox
I use sendmail to pipe incoming messages to a python script using smrsh. "sendmail restricted shell" one liner change to sendmail.conf. Google around, lots of examples.
FYI we will be launching the slide-sync feature in the next couple of days which we hope will be really useful for video lectures.

Ryan
In Santiago, a lot of people use public transport. There is no stigma against using buses like there is in US; it's fairly common to see guys in suits taking buses.
Exactly. Arguably that's the etymological meaning of the term. (It comes from Greek, "para" which means "contrary to" and "doxa" which is "opinion").
Having seen the widespread use of Dell in some larger corporate accounts, I feel bad for the employees who are forced to use such terrible machines with such terrible service. Plastic parts and poor design lead to machines that feel flimsy and break often.

With service contracts outsourced to Bangalore (or other off-shore or off-site locations), users of Dell equipment at these corporations are becoming more and more flustered. They can't get their machines fixed in a timely manner, and are locked in to long-term contracts negotiated by executive board members who don't use the machines on a daily basis.

When you say that Dell makes "cheap functional machines", I'd argue that they're simply in the business of making cheap machines these days. Functional machines, I'd argue, would be able to withstand the rigors of normal (10hr/day) usage.

One of the mains reason Apple succeeds today is because their equipment works. Lenovo is also succeeding, despite its ties with Microsoft. (Also, it doesn't hurt that Apple has stores all over the country where you can get live, in-person help with your machine.)
The extra 16cm of Radius is lots compared to a golf ball, and nothing compared to earth. I have to scale these in my mind to be able to compare the two, and the relative gap is what I expected.
But I'm still surprised that the gap is exactly the same in both.
Wow, that's awesome.
I wouldn't want to pay money just so I can ensure that developers are able to make the site stable and reliable. Not that I don't like supporting sites that I love, but we shouldn't even have to think about paying for something like this.

If I were to pay for a service, I would want features that would better my experience with the service, not ensuring that it would have a longer uptime. That's no excuse for developers to not work on scaling.

If Twitter was going to head into this business model, they have to give me something that was worth paying for.
I don't get the joke. And I thought everyone knew about the Tuscan Milk (see 991 reviews):

http://www.amazon.com/Tuscan-Whole-Milk-Gallon-128/dp/B00032...

And let's not forget the Badonkadonk:

http://www.amazon.com/JL421-Badonkadonk-Land-Cruiser-Tank/dp...
Ask YC: Getting started with smartphone hacking
What is the best smartphone to buy to start hacking with? I'd like to make use of GPS / internet / camera capability. I would prefer to keep my phone bill under $50 / month. In US is it possible to use any phone with any carrier? Which carriers / phones / OSes support open development of applications? Thanks.
Tech Jaws
I have to agree here... a meter is a meter is a meter -- regardless of how long a rope it's being added to. The relative difference between the ropes is still only one meter when taking into account the scaled proportions. I hope the other "paradoxes" in this book are more impressive ;)
Teachers provide vast amounts of value, but supply greatly exceeds demand, and therefore they make less than people with far less relevant jobs.
Someone featured on GigaOm a few months back put together some data around the "Digg effect" and stickiness/surge in traffic a post on the front page. (Can't get the link now since I'm on my bberry, but it's around).

Also, I agree with Ryan regarding the type of audience one wants to reach. For me, TM is my first source for news in the morning because whatever is listed there is important, and therefore valuable.

Up and coming tech bloggers like Louis Gray or Corvida can gain targeted audiences because of TM.
I'm not sure I understand: if your friend pays 1300EU for an apartment that goes for 1300USD, he's paying 150% of what you pay.
He also has Will Gates' resume in his recent attachments :)
Fair enough. I've seen a lot of quite innocent but flippant comments absolutely hammered before so it stands out that this was the top one. I thought your statement tended to agree with the original one but maybe that isn't the case. What ever the case I'm seeing an increasing amount of groupthink creaping into hacker news and it isn't pleasant.
There are many ways for them to make money. My point was to counter your comment that there were no obvious ways.
Interesting. I wonder if it the same for all users or if it depends on the number of votes a comment has received.
For many of the reasons/highlights listed in this article about Karp's endeavor, I chose to put my blog on Tumblr. It's fast, information effecient and has a built-in sense of community via their Dashboard.
The big challenge with the freemium model is that there needs to be enough of a separation between what is "free" and what is "premium". If the free version contains too much, people don't have enough of a cause to upgrade to premium. Too little, and not enough people use the free version.

As for simply charging for uptime, the issue is kind of a "tragedy of the commons". If everyone is benefiting from the increased uptime, the folks paying the premium don't really have an incentive to pay.

Finally, one of the big challenges of Twitter is that even getting folks to use the free version is non-trivial.
Why decentralizing Twitter is hopeless
I can see that from the back-end perspective, but come on...FB is getting rid of one the unique features that made it great: an online community watercooler for any type of network. (Hey, this feature was great in college).

Surprised to see this taken away.
Defining Web 1.0, Web 2.0 & Web 3.0
JSON: The Fat-Free Alternative to XML
Doug Crockford: Global Domination, Part Two
Test driving the free and open online backup
Adobe has released the SWF file format specification
If he earned in USD, and paid in Euros, or vice-versa, then yes. But he's European, so he earns in Euros and pays in Euros. The exchange rate between the currencies isn't relevant.

Point is, 1 Euro appears to have about the same relative earning power (in Germany) as 1 USD has in the US (where I live, anyway). The comparison isn't perfect, but it's good enough to be able to make an estimate of lifestyle, based on salary in whichever currency. EU citizens aren't all magically richer than US citizens because they earn in Euros.
Homeowner vs. Renter:  Why Should You Ever Buy a House (at all)?
Solve Sudoku with one query: The lost art of self joins
Paul Buchheit attributed the "100 happy users" thing to Eric Schmidt, if I recall correctly.
Ask YC: How do you avoid wasting too much time online?
I spend too much time browsing the web and it's hurting my productivity. There are so many interesting sites online -- hacker news, blogs, friendfeed, facebook, nytimes, etc -- and it's hard for me resist checking them on a daily basis, often multiple times a day. This stuff is really interesting and often useful, especially for an entrepreneurial hacker, and that makes it easy to justify spending so much time to "stay on top of things". However, the opportunity cost of not coding for an hour is huge compared to the benefit of reading yet another "20 things every startup founder should know" article. I need to find a way to break this bad habit. Just being aware of it apparently isn't enough.

I tried 8aweek. It didn't work for me. I've conditioned myself to reflexively press the "10 more minutes" button when the "your break time is up" popup comes up. Plus, at home I use Safari, and 8aweek doesn't work on Safari. (I avoided RescueTime -- the privacy implications are too creepy for me. Maybe I would use it if it had the option for only data collection. Also, I know I have a time wasting problem -- I don't need RescueTime to tell me that.)

The best solution I've found so far is to go somewhere where I don't have an internet connection at all, but it's not always practical.

If you have the same problem, how do you deal with it? I need a working solution.
Scalabe Funding - Money as you need it?
I agree to an extent, however, I would be most happy owning a bot battleground, personally. It would dispense with all that time wasted on "thinking" and reduce the speed to a processor/internet lag dependent game. Bots are no more zero sum than people, they are just faster. I love the idea of a money making machine that scales with processor cores/mhz.
Actually, speaking as a former psych major, similarity is one of the greatest predictors of attraction--including similar interests.
The value of an incubator: an Internet "old man's" perspective
I find that creating a schedule for myself helps where I force myself to work on something - even if it is menial things that still need to get done for the site.

I also disable all chat/instant messenger clients since you always lose productivity when switching from one to the other.

The other thing that you can do is try working from a different environment - if you find that you are browsing too much at your desk, try moving somewhere else that you can consider a "work only zone."

As a final step, try disabling your router for a bit and only give yourself access when you achieve your self imposed deadlines.
People like saving money.
Xobni Snooping on our E-mail Volume?
When clicking on the help '?' in the bottom pane of Xobni I noticed my browser opens up to a URL which includes the fields number_emails and xmid (presumably my user id) before quickly redirecting to the help page.

I'm not particularly offended or concerned but I do believe this is a minor case of personal information being volunteered without consent.

The interesting question is where should the line be drawn? Is it ok for applications to gather any personal information from users without their consent? If so, what determines acceptable vs. unacceptable information? What if it were Microsoft collecting these numbers and user id's instead of Xobni?

http://www.xobni.com/support?version=1.2.3.3644&outlook=Outlook2007&windows=Windows+Vista+(Microsoft+Windows+NT+6.0.6000.0)&number_emails=44135&xmid=6507C56D82384B66B41C337F366C5D35
YC: Don't forget to call your mother. 
It's mothers day.
I found I'm pretty much unable to do this, so I've done the next-best thing: I concentrate on making justin.tv the site I most like to waste time on.

This has turned out to be quite a useful trick. Each time I find myself wasting time elsewhere, I spend some time thinking about why I'm not wasting time on justin.tv instead, and I get inspired to fix that.
FWIW, with RescueTime you can create whitelists of the sites you DO want to track. Every other site will come through as "non-whitelisted site" (the site info never hits our servers). You can set goals like "spend less than 1h surfing news" and have RescueTime SMS you when you break them.

But there's no solution out there that your lack of discipline won't conquer.

One good hack is to set it up so that you either starve or are publicly shamed when you procrastinate. So, you could quit your job (thus putting starvation on the line!). Or you could embed a RescueTime graph on your blog and invite people to hassle you about how you spend your time. ;-)
Stop making yourself feel like you have a duty to spend time on any site. In the end, none of it will give you a meaningful experience.

I loathe apps and sites that make you feel like everything is in your face. Email is like this, so is RSS, same with pretty much all news sites. The list goes on and on.
Platforms that support open development:

- Symbian (Nokia S60/Sony-Ericsson UIQ)
- Windows Mobile (various flavours thereof)
- Android (No real hardware yet available)
- Non-Native development (J2ME et al.)

The best way to get started would be to download an SDK for one of these environments. They all come with emulators, so you can start playing around with writing apps without any investment in hardware.

I'm not from the USA, but I've spent most of my working life in the mobile industry so I believe I know what I'm talking about. In the USA, only certain places have GSM networks. This includes most of the major cities, San Fran, New York, Atlanta, LA, etc. Pretty much any Smart Phone you can buy is a GSM phone. There are a few exceptions, some of the older Palm phones were CDMA, but Palm is essentially dead now. Before you buy a new phone, just make sure your current network is a GSM network. While I understand it isn't a terribly common thing to do in the US, most developers will buy development phones unlocked direct from the manufacturer (or a reseller) and put a SIM they already own in it. In the UK, you are pretty much drowing in SIM cards. Both Orange and O2 give away pay as you talk SIM cards on a regular basis online, and I tend to grab as many as I can on each occasion, since they tend to get deactivated after a while because they sit in various of my phones not getting topped up.

As for what phone to buy, wanting GPS limits you a little. I'd recommend the Nokia N95 8GB as a good start. It's a Symbian S60 phone with built in GPS and WiFi.
I get more interesting projects.
I've done that. Then what?
This being a community of hackers, it'd be much appreciated if one of you could write a program that dialed up my mother every year leaving her a voicemail. This way, I can sleep in the entire day, and fulfill my duties as a son.
i don't really understand this: why do you have to wait for a specific day for this ? aren't you grateful _everyday_ ?
This could be good from the entreprenuer's point of view, but would it work for the investors? VCs want to hit home runs so they want to pour loads of cash in and take a big stake. If they minimize (optimize) funding to align with startup's expenditure, they will presumably give up equity - their profit - for cash, which they have loads of. They'll also have more overhang - unless they overcommit and invest in more companies like seats on an airline, which might result in a run on their capital!

From the startup's perspective, there's also the risk of the VC changing their mind with a "we're withdrawing the rest of your funding - sue us if you want, but the lawsuit will last longer than your company can stay in business", which would suck.

I'm thinking in terms of a deal, say, $1m guaranteed funding, withdraw cash as you like, equity will be priced at 5% + 1% per $100k (so the option on $1m is quite expensive). Is there another way it could be structured that would make more sense?
Money doesn't grow on clouds.
He wasn't sure, but thought it was Eric Schmidt. Whoever came up with it, I like the idea. The simplest ideas are usually the best.
You've done what? Got 100 happy users for your startup? If so, they should be spreading the word. If not, maybe you can make them happier?

Not sure if I misunderstood you...
Customer testimonials and a business model.
8aweek.com works for me. Just try switching modes, or fight against the 10 more minutes thing.
Yeah, but most of them expect a show of that gratefulness _today_.
I like and have always congratulated Xobni ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6477 ) but I don't think the product is killer yet (though they might be referring to the stuff they have in development that they can't show to anybody yet.)
This helps with inbound links and PageRank as well as some visitors.
I know this has been downmodded, but if you wanted a trick to go straight to voicemail for this "app":
http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9915518-2.html

And it just has a pre-roll ad or something.
Is the problem that you spend to much time online, or that you don't like what you're working on?
How to interview a manager