skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That's exactly it. Saying that learning a new language is just a matter of learning a new syntax is like saying that an English-speaking, non-German speaker could translate a German text to English by taking a German-English dictionary and going through and translating the words one-by-one. It's not quite as simple as that.
Slide Caught Posting Fake Positive Reviews For Their Own App
You should write What Made Basic Different.
"Something I'm curious about: what if VCs worked like Berkshire Hathaway, reinvesting the cash thrown off by portfolio businesses but never selling their shares?"

How does cash get thrown off? Are you suggesting a "dividends off of profits" type of thing for growth companies? Aren't growth companies supposed to be reinvesting profits in their own growth?

The problem with dividends is that they are really only good one the initial investment is liquid. So if Berkshire invests in a value company that throws off 3% dividends per quarter, that's great. But it's only great because they can get their cash out at any time.

If a VC invests in a startup (say $1mm), how exciting is the prospect of 50% chance of failure, but a possible 3% quarterly dividend IF the company succeeds? With no actual market to sell their initial investment of $1mm?

I can't make these numbers look attractive in my head.
I doubt anyone would suggest learning the wrong languages in order to mislead competitors, but Norvig least of all.
Keeping and Recruiting Hackers as a Non-Hacker
We've heard a lot from hackers with a lot of anger or derision towards non hackers with business plans. I happen to be a non-hacker who has recruited one dev to do my database and web design. I am seeking one more hacker to do the iPhone portion of my project.

So, you can imagine how horrified I was to read all the people who are just dripping with contempt for people like me. I would like advice on recruiting a hacker and keeping my hackers happy. For hackers who have had successful startups with non-hacking partners, what worked? Rather then hearing about how bad and infuriating these relationships are, I would like to hear a different perspective about how they can work well from a basis of mutual respect. If you had a bad hacker-nonhacker partnership, how could the non-hacking partner have done better?

Also, how can I refine my approach when approaching and recruiting a hacker?
Microsoft Windows XP Dies June 30, As Planned
Ubuntu 8.04 is looking great
Make Gmail easy on the eyes
It looks like a sports rag, but the designs of most sports rags are too cluttered.

You might like to read this: http://www.underconsideration.com/speakup/archives/002462.ht...

The important bit: "the real reason pizza flyers look the way they do is because that’s what pizza flyers are expected to look like"
the article fails to answer the biggest question: how did two artist/philosophers afford to build a big crazy house in the Hamptons?
We use Salesforce.com.
http://www.salesforce.com/
The main value is that it integrates support with CRM, so salespeople and account managers can have some visibility into support cases for their customers.
It also has a web services API available to get data in and out but you have to pay extra for that.
Pizza Flyers: The Height of Good Graphic Design?
I like it. Alot. I'm a sports fan and immediately saw about 7 stories I wanted to read. I'll def bookmark this and come back. Well done.
It's called a trojan horse. People who think iPhone is a fancy phone are exactly like people who thought the original PC's were fancy typewriters.

iPhone will eventually dominate everything from video game handhelds to medical devices to credit cards to GPS to car ignition locks to cameras.

This is the science fiction future I was promised as a kid. This is the first device that beats a tricorder. It's here people.
Thanks for the feedback! I use the nickb method to find stories, http://www.hackerne.ws/item?id=99966, and also my friends help too.

For the resolution, you are in the right and I will see what I can do to make it better. I'll email you when I am done so you can take a look.

I use the blueprint.css framework (which has a hard-coded width), and the 3 column layout is deep in the code (I am not sure that any CSS will make 3 columns look good on 800x600), so I am not sure there is an easy fix. The news.arc makes significant use of tables, but I had to make a decision to replace most of them with CSS for various reasons.
There's another advertising model that may work for small companies. Here at Jackson Fish Market there are three of us. I think that counts as small. :) We also are a bootstrap.

We make small beautiful web apps and offer sponsorships to brand advertisers. What we don't offer is an audience. Our apps are basically for rent to marketers who can get an audience elsewhere but need a place to send them to interact in a way that accrues value to their brand.

We believe that this notion that advertising needs to be something that has value for the user (and not a distraction) is the wave of the future for brand marketers. These apps will need audiences, but there are literally hundreds of ad networks that can provide those. What those ad networks can't provide is useful destinations that are tuned to be complementary to a single sponsor.

There is hope. At least, we think there is. :)
Writing Recursive Ascent Parsers using CPS
I think a lot of people fail to understand what an MBA is and who MBA's were in their "former" lives. I don't have any statistics in front of me, but from what I remember looking over, a higher percentage of engineers/technical degree undergrads go for MBA's compared with Business undergrads. So a lot of these "beef-headed" MBAs that people seem to LOVE to stereotype as useless on here, were probably in a position much like yours at point in their lives. I just don't understand the blatant inferiority complex that exists in the tech community with people who do productive things other than code.
You mean you never heard of the Lotus Bloom Gamma Death Ray Compassion Flower Monks of tibet?

You are right, thanks.
Gold: Google Releases New and Improved GCC Linker
It actually looks like a nice take on feed aggregation - and sports is a great niche to start with.

If you're planning on taking the look & feel further in the direction of print news, check out sIFR and consider making it an interface option. You have a lot to gain by improving the quality of the page. (sIFR is here: http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/sifr/)

In your place, I would also play with placement and formatting of certain stories with respect to the others. It would probably require backend work, but determining which of those stories is most important and then displaying them as such would be pretty cool.
I read this on 37signal's blog once - charge only for those products which enable people make more money, or save time, or be productive, or gain something in general. The rest should be Free - like Facebook, Twitter, or so. Facebook and Twitter do provide value, but they dont enable me to make money or help my business per say.
"Launching" a company by relying on any single site to drive traffic sounds like it could hurt credibility. Aren't exclusives for old Web 1.0 people?
"The house, which is still unoccupied, was commissioned in the late 1990s by a friend who sold the property to an anonymous group of investors after the project dragged on and costs mounted."

I think I'd remain anonymous too...
This article fails to note that Microsoft is actually extending the sale of XP to OEMs producting certain types of budget PCs:

http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/04/03/microsoft-extends...

Potentially, this means XP will still be found in new PCs until 2010.
Thanks for the feedback. If you check back, you will now see a section for MMA. It doesn't have a lot of stories yet, but I will make sure to add some.

(added the MMA section via the REPL on the live server)
Actually, I'd compare that to saying that two languages are the exact same except for some of the words -- that JavaScript is exactly like Java except System.out.print is renamed to document.write. Saying that learning a new language is just the syntax is more like saying that translation between English and German can be done with just a German-English dictionary and a full knowledge of the grammar.

However, just as lambdas cannot be directly translated into languages without lambdas, some languages have unique concepts. For example, the German language has a part of speech called the particle that conveys a general feeling into sentences. While the statement "Er wisst das." could be easily translated with a dictionary and knowledge of conjugation rules into "He knows that," adding a particle to make "Er wisst ja das" could be variously translated as "Of course he knows that," "He obviously knows that," "He most definitely knows that," etc.
Yeah, I do get your point. Of course I'd argue that you've over-stated your 'entrepreneurs have a public responsibility' clarification. They do, a little, but it's obviously at the extreme other end of the scale to, say, working for a public company.
I just added an nhl top level section - it is a major sport and deserves it! If you refresh you should see it. I'll work on getting some more stories in there.

Thanks for the feedback!
one word: icanhazcheezburger.com

Just find something else, people aren't relying on domain names as much as anymore as they are on how well you show up in a google search.
i'm talking from the hacker standpoint.

if i would leave, it would be because the non-hacker in charge of the "business aspects" thought they meant that they were in charge of the direction of the business as a whole. this would manifest itself as not taking/considering the hacker's advice on things that the hacker knows better, not including the hacker on important decisions, etc.. if you're getting a hacker or two as a co-founder, they're a co-founder, not a low-level employee.

if you want a good environment and recruits, make sure that the work style is open and full of communication on important issues, and there are spheres of influence. for example, hackers know code. from a business standpoint, you can suggest features and such, but the hackers should get the final input on what happens with the code and therefore the product. and vice versa, hackers should have input on the business aspect if you're the business person, and you should take their input seriously, but in the end, you're the business person and you have the final say. the spheres shouldn't necessarily be exactly like that, but they should be well defined and stuck to, imo.

my $0.02.
Some of the other work by this architect/designer couple is liveable: http://www.flickr.com/photos/88798845@N00/15233067/

However, this house is a an OSHA-nightmare.

Let's compare this with Nintendo DS' Brain Age. Brain Age is a game that challenges your mind with clever puzzles, helping, in theory, to keep you and your mind younger.

The house is similar in that it supposed to stimulate your mind so that you avoid obstacles/don't hurt yourself but

The difference between this scary house and Brain Age is that Brain Age is fun and a game...

"Comfort, the thinking goes, is a precursor to death; the house is meant to lead its users into a perpetually “tentative” relationship with their surroundings, and thereby keep them young.

"The architect Steven Holl, who has known the couple for at least 15 years, said their architecture is intended to evoke a youthful sense of wonder. “It has to do with the idea that you’re only as old as you think you are,” he said."

Wonder if your homeowner's insurance would cover accidental death..

http://www.brainage.com/launch/what.jsp
Well, revenue is a beautiful thing, certainly. You can define product/market fit however you like-- but by that definition, most consumer apps don't have it. A customer can "buy" a product with money or their time/attention. I'd say both YouTube and Facebook have found a great product/market fit. And Gmail. Andreessen found a great product/market fit with the Netscape browser, but monetization of it really only came in the form of a few bizdev deals (which didn't cover costs, I don't think). Money, in many of these iconic companies, was NOT piling up.

Regarding my company, we focused initially on a non-paying market (individual lifehackers), as that was easiest to build for and launch a rough beta for. They "pay" in blog posts, tweets, word of mouth-- they've driven every single business lead we've gotten. Now we've got a new market (teams) that we have to find a "fit" for. Wish us luck!
Why say friends when you can say "positive network externalities?"
I agree. The way the site is currently designed, my eyes want to read the headlines in rows (the columns stretch too far down for me to read down the column instead), but all headlines except for those at the top are not aligned vertically, making traversal through the page an awkward affair. You're either going to want to ensure that there's row-based alignment for headlines, or use discrete sections that each cover a particular category of sports news. E.g. how Google News has separate column sections for World, U.S., Elections, Business, etc.
'Illegal' ad system scrutinised
There is also Mantis http://www.mantisbt.org/

Stay away from Trac, it must be confusing or something because there is almost always some problem on trac runs sites, you are better off running wikimedia/bugzilla.

Trac bad example: Yesterday the pkgcore people asked me to file a bug, I went to file but couldn't open a ticket. The dev's were surprised that it hadn't been set up right they thought it was working. I've seen many open source projects that use trac that don't allow me to file bugs, or find what I'm looking for. I usually just leave and ignore the issue. Not exactly appropriate, but how does one file a bug when the bug tracker doesn't work? I know email a dev, mail the list.
The Art of Doing Something Well
Games won't be able to compete on art and graphics for long. Look at Crysis--it's nearly photorealistic. Once the curve of graphics improvement reaches its asymptote, developers will have to start innovating on gameplay.
Because it encompasses a broader meaning. eBay isn't about friends at all, really, but has strong network effects: buyers go there because there are lots of sellers, and sellers go there because there are lots of buyers.

I'd highly recommend the 'Information Rules' book I linked to elsewhere (via my site:-) to anyone interested in this stuff. Most of it is pretty intuitive, but it's nice to have it all grouped together and explained.
"It seems like many hacker news readers would enjoy a game in which you assemble an AI in competition with other AIs -- what I'd like is a game that allowed you to do that with varying levels of abstraction."

A research project in neural networks for games called NERO at the University of Texas is along the lines of what you are talking about:

http://www.nerogame.org/
nicely done. Hopefully you can build a nice community around this, in which case I will be a regular visitor.

Just curious, is it just you manually submitting links at this point?
That was a joke. :)
I've been following your site from the start from the Arc Forum and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised when I took a look at it today. The design is so much more pleasing now than it was originally--which is not too say the original design was bad, quite the contrary. I'm not really much of a sports fan, but the site does intrigue me since you decided to go with Arc to create it. Not sure if you're holding it secret or not (which would be totally understandable), but if not, I would love to see the source code for the site seeing as how I am currently learning Arc as well and I love comparing my ideas with others to spot better ways of doing things.

Either way, code closed or open, the site does look great and I think its a really great idea. Good work!
I have had some luck in contacting the owners directly via their whois info in a professional manner. This seems to only work well though with broke people who own a domain on an expensive ($100+/year) TLD.
I think the most important things, generally, are that everyone is able to bring something to the table, everyone knows what everyone else is bringing to the table, and everyone is rewarded in some reasonable proportion for what they bring to the table.

Mutual respect is a very important ingredient, and the best way for the business-oriented individual to win respect from the hacker is to prove that what he brings to the table has value. Part of this is educating the hacker on why your assets are valuable.

What drives us crazy about the stereotype that you see discussed here is the perception that all or most of the value will be brought to the table by the hacker, while most of the reward will be accrued by the other guy. Emails like "I have an idea and a business plan all worked out, I just need a hacker" are translated as "I want to pay you to build something that will glorify and enrich me". You want to instead say something that will be translated as "I need a partner with complimentary skills to my own so that we may achieve _______ together!" and insert "glory and wealth" or "social change" or "a solution to X problem", or whatever floats your boat.

So, you ask, what's something I could bring to the table that hackers would find valuable? Characterize it this way: all the things hackers don't want to do but must be done to run a business. Law expertise, especially in taxes and intellectual property rights, is extremely valuable. Expertise and experience in dealing with state and federal regulators is another valuable asset. You need something specific to point to that can be "valuated" in some qualitative way (quantitative is even better).

A business plan does not carry any value, unless you can point to specific things in that plan that will help you achieve success (i.e., if evidence of the valuable things I listed above are in the business plan, then maybe your approach should be "read my business plan from the perspective of a partner. I'd like your feedback"). Any doofus can write out some pages explaining what they want to do and hand-wave about how it's going to happen. It takes someone with skill and good judgement to write a plan that references market data (perhaps even with results of hiring a market research firm), a viable marketing strategy with a rationale based on data, a strategy for growth made on reasonable assumptions that should be based on data, leads on funding, leads on talent recruiting, relevant legal issues and proposals for dealing with them, etc, etc, etc.

Perhaps you don't have the skill to do even that. Then prove that you have the connections and funding to assemble the team that does have the skills needed to make your venture happen.

Hopefully this helps. I could go on, but this is already a long post.
Totally agree-- that's why I said:

"I think the wisdom here is to not throw the baby out with the bathwater-- because most biz types are useless doesn't mean they all are."

But again-- the question is... What productive stuff is there to do in the first 3-4 months of MOST web startups besides code/design/write? And if you can't build something, what are you going to do to earn your equity? If the value you add is down the road a ways, what are you risking while the builders work for free for 50-60 hours a week for no pay?
Glue me back together
One reason to grab your own domain, use Google's Apps For Your Domain, and set up a catch-all address.

The pizza guys know me as papajohns@<domain>.com, Best Buy knows me as bestbuy@<domain>.com, my bank knows me as bank@<domain>.com, etc. And they all get caught by my catch-all, spam@<domain>.com.

Once I trust a place, and know they aren't all spammy, I can move them from being caught by the catch-all to being an alias of my personal account.

The thing that surprised me was how few places sell my address. I'm only being spammed on 3ish addresses I've given out, and none of those are ones given to 'big' companies.
I second FogBugz. I especially like the one-click time tracking for working on cases, and how it integrates with evidence-based scheduling:

http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz/LearnMore.html?section=Predi...

I've no experience with RT, but a quick look seems to indicate it's more ticket-based, whereas FogBugz covers more areas (wiki, integration with version control s/w, etc.).

(And no, I don't work for Fog Creek.)
Great guerilla marketing - unless you get caught of course.
Heh-- if it's easy to give something away, why is it that so many free web apps/sites don't have growth? Or happy users?

It's damn hard to give something away online, as it turns out.

But I do agree-- while free accounts will always exist at RescueTime, our future is NOT as an ad-supported biz. :-)
Ah... well, truth be told, I think that economics does tend to weighty jargon for concepts that are, if not completely obvious, not exactly earth shattering. Still, they are useful to give labels to those concepts.
No, not at all. Not to public, just responsibility to the team. In my chapter on recovering from failures, I use the analogy of learning how to ride a bike.

http://www.lovemytool.com/blog/2007/10/riding-a-bike.html

And one lesson that I have learned is that we tend to over-compensate (we fell on the right, therefore we now lean on the left). So you criticism is valid here in that I am clearly overstating because I am overcompensating ... again, guilty as charged.

On the other hand, there is another analogy here which is that of orthodontics ... braces would be an overstatement too if we start with perfect teeth.

So the question really has to do with the intended audience.

Are first-time entrepreneurs such blank sheets of paper that after reading my article, they will deviate from the path and start to focus on making money instead of making meaning?

Or are first-time entrepreneurs such enthusiasts that they are already focusing on changing the World, but after reading the article, they realize that in order to make meaning, they have a responsibility to keep the team together which means that they also have a responsibility to make money.

And since everyone else is already focusing on making meaning, is it reasonable that entrepreneurs have to overcompensate and put a priority on making money?

Thanks for your comment and another opportunity to have a discussion.
I like the site but have you considered adding a search?
How MySpace Music could beat iTunes
Linux benchmarking test suite released as open source
Their source repository is located here: http://www.phorogit.com (note: they use git, rather than subversion).
Intel shuns Microsoft, taps Linux for mobile Net devices
Writing without typos is totally outdated
Thanks!

I'm not actually the business person either. I worked in medicine, and some constantly stupid things I see make me angry. I think I can design a product to take the stupid out of the processes I saw working in medicine. I also think that my solution to the problem I see might work as a platform for other health care innovations. Once our demo is working, we will decide together how to go forward, but I probably will be focused on design and medical aspects and hire a person for the business aspects too. Because our company is basically applying design and tech to medical problems, this means I will be CEO, so our focus stays there. However, my style includes being aware of my limitations, and delegating 100% of tech to the hacker, who wants to grow into CTO. A large aspect of our company will include components like creating a medical protocol, clinical trials and medical demographics, with tech being about 30-45% of what we need, so we may be substantially different then most Y startups in that respect.

I'm working on setting up a wiki to help organize our information and communication and preserve spheres of influence. I used to do some minor hacking as a kid back in the day, but just enough to have some respect for hackers and know I'm (way) out of my league if I want it done right.