skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
hmm... a $0.0000001 postit note now costs $0.025. I'm sure businesses will be all over it <where's my roll-eyes emoticon?)

This is just another case of solving a problem that doesn't need solving. If it wasn't MIT this would be on a late night infomercial.
Kill Vista and start the a new operating system that focuses on creating a lightweight core you can grow and expand for the next 20 years.

This means stripping the OS to it's bare essentials and allowing modules to implement different features.

Kill the visual effects and focus on stability, speed and security.

This should be as small as possible, without loosing any of the items just mentioned.

Ship a version of Office lite, that strips out many of the extra features from Word/Excel/Powerpoint and provides the basics. Ship stripped down copies of Office '07 if necessary.

Be working on an online version of office. It's not important now--but in 5 years when Google's stolen your Office clients you'll be wishing you had a competitor.

Make syncing to/from Office and Web Office seamless. This means I can write my document in Word on my desktop and with no effort edit the document online. Leverage the user base here.

I don't see users shifting away from Office completely--more than likely there will be a balance between desktop and web users. Microsoft can and should dominate both.

Give up on the Yahoo! deal and partner with more content producers--say AOL, by providing advertising in order to expand your reach.

Your Facebook/Digg deals just aren't doing a lot here--focus on vertical niches that are profitable and then slowly fill the cracks.

Make advertising rates extremely competitive--perhaps even consider taking a loss until you build momentum in the market.

Adopt a pay-per-action model for search advertising instead of pay-per-click. There are some issues with this--but it's not impossible.

Advertisers are only paying for leads and sales now, merging affiliate marketing and search engine marketing--two fields that have been closely related for years.

You're not going to beat Google by copying them, you've got to change the game somehow.

Re-focus your efforts on search. MSN is the easiest engine to game right now--without decent search results, search advertising will never work.

Consider search engine acquisitions and heavily investing in researching new ideas (think AI, Semantic, Social, Personalized searching).

Do what you did with Halo again. That seems to have worked well for you.

Just a few thoughts.

I do believe the Yahoo! deal will not help Microsoft. Sure the reach Yahoo! has helps Microsoft--but there are other (better) ways to achieve this.

Not to mention without the core (good SERPs) search advertising just won't be effective.

Much of what I've said can be summarized in focus on the core and strip everything else. It's weighing you down.
Wow that was a long post, got carried away there.
I looked into this awhile back and quickly came to the conclusion, based on the several books I read, that it's silly to try to beat the market long term. "The Intelligent Investor" is the one that laid it out clearly to me. The main point is: the performance of narrow investments (specific stocks) can't be reliably predicted, but the market as a whole tends to grow over time. Therefore, invest in the market as a whole. (== S&P index fund)
Huh? One company valued xobni at $20m - how is that the be-all, end-all of valuation? If I value my company at $500,000 and someone offers me $100,000, am I wrong or are they wrong (or are we both right) when I turn them down?

Answer: you don't have enough information to make a decision.
Foreign Policy: The Top 100 Public Intellectuals
Mack Framework: Saying Goodbye to ActiveRecord
until someone else gives you a $500,000 valuation your company is not worth 500k. So far Xobni is only worth 20 million. They are hoping that one day they will be worth more.
Sure there is no quick fix. I am just worried that people will lull themselves into feeling they are doing something, while they still remain dependent on the pharmaceutic industry. Which would be exactly what the pharmaceutic industry would like.
Exceptional. http://www.cbc.ca/writersandcompany/
But human population hasn't outstripped innovation or our ability to acquire resources up to this point. Why would it now? It's quite evident that worldwide living conditions have generally risen throughout our history. And I don't see why any innovation now would take longer to affect the world at large. If anything, with our superior communication and transportation (compared to the rest of history), innovation propagates much much faster. Hence things like the industrial and the Green Revolution.[1]

Also population growth worldwide has been declining for a couple decades now. Surely our ability to innovate won't likewise decline. Generally innovation seems to accelerate (more people spend more time thinking and less time acquiring basic necessities).

Just read about Norman Borlaug[2] to see what I am talking about. His work on wheat has been credited with saving over a billion people from starvation.

I am curious though, how would you solve the overpopulation problem? Reproductive controls don't work very well (and make people miserable/rebellious), and you can't just kill off a bunch of people (like you said, not an economics class), so what do we do? The most effective birth control method for a nation so far has been economic success for women (look at birth rates in the West compared to the developing world).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug
A Practical Approach To Managing Phishing (pdf)
What do people in that part of Moscow tend to pay for food, utilities, taxes, transportation...?
I am also a passive investor trying to capture full market returns. However, just investing in stocks exposes one to too much risk with no more return than if you spread your money across many asset classes that move in different directions at any given time.

The Benefits of Low Correlation is a good summary: http://www.indexuniverse.com/component/content/article/6/322...

And here is a summary of the summary: http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/RetirementandWills/Reti...

And here is the highlight of the summary of the summary:

His two-asset portfolio -- 50-50 U.S. large- and small-cap stocks -- produced an annualized internal rate of return of 10.74%. But it lost a deadly 30.8% in its worst year. His seven-asset portfolio -- equal portions of U.S. large- and small-cap stocks, international stocks, U.S. intermediate fixed-income investments, cash, REITs and commodities -- provided an 11.25% return. But the worst-year loss was only 10.2%.
Sage goes in every field?
Application server is not a Java specific term. In the case of Rails apps deployed with Mongrel the mongrel instances are the application servers.
Why Aren't there More Paul Grahams?
"'information' thrown up about email traffic."

you clearly still consider just the analytics part of the email, which shows you STILL probably haven't really used the product if that's all you think it is.

"While Xobni is focused for now on email organization for Outlook, it wants to be able to aggregate information from different webmail clients such as Gmail, Yahoo, and others. It also wants to bring in instant messaging, and aggregate information from social networks.

Brezina gave the example of a friend who remembers a story another friend related about a ski resort in Vermont. A user will be able to search Xobni’s database for “Stow,” the name of the ski resort, and instantly find all the related threads , conversations, and media traded with friends."

sounds a bit like useful social search to me.

and since you've already nixed advertising, and a saas model -- again based on apparently never trying the product

there's also freemium, support & service behind the product a la open source, cross-sales/ partnership with a CRM package (read: salesforce or zoho)
Index funds are the way to go. They are a passive instrument, so you cannot (should not) be actively trading them. When you put money in an index fund, you essentially buy shares of that fund (along with several others). There is a fee attached to every trade, and that fee is consumed by all share holders equally. So most index funds will penalize you for trading those shares actively.

The way I look at it, an index fund (like S&P index fund) is merely a layer of abstraction over trading stocks. But instead of putting all your money in one stock, the index fund divies up your money across many different companies and sectors in the same ratio as the target index. This protects you from major fluctuations in the market, so in the long term you essentially grow at the same rate as the index. On the flip side, if one of those companies sees astronomical growth, you won't see the same growth.

[All: This is my understanding of index funds, so if I am wrong, please, do correct me]

There are several good books in the market if you want to go down this route, including the aforementioned "The Intelligent Investor" [must read] and "A random walk down wall street"

Another book that I surprisingly found to be very good was "Mutual funds for dummies" [http://tinyurl.com/5ulpvw][The other book "Personal finance for dummies" by the same author is a good book too. There is another one [http://tinyurl.com/5wso5z] that is short and sweet to read.

Good luck!
Generally unless you're a genius in the field (ie, Warren Buffet, Peter Lynch etc) you will not beat the market, so what you have to do is join it. Take your money and spread it widely across sectors, indecies and geographical regions - if you spread it well enough, your money will grow at the rate of the global economy which is realistically the most you can hope for.

The second thing is to separate your investments from your speculations. Your investments targeted for long-term growth should be handled as above - spread them widely and sit on them for a long time. Your speculations should be money you can easily afford to lose and you should do with them whatever you instincts tell you. This can be things like buying stock in a particular company or commodity, trading currencies etc.

Finally, you need an excellent book:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Random_Walk_Down_Wall_Street
Sure, it makes sense to put a share of your assets into low-cost equity index funds which base allocation weights on market capitalization. Note that the DJIA (mentioned in the original article) isn't a suitable index for this because its 30 components are picked more or less arbitrarily by the Dow Jones staff.
this implies you consider the native Outlook search, message threading, and attachment handling better than Xobni's. i'd be surprised if you used Outlook for that long and really thought so.
This is pretty sweet. My roommates and I couldn't have made it through school without the pirated copies of Matlab floating around.
if you have to tolerate MS at work get a new job. No reason for employers not to support Mac and Linux in the work place.
Ask HN: best (toy) robotics platform?
Never mind that I don't really have the time for it, I am tempted by the Pleo. From YouTube videos I get the impression that it does not do very much yet, except purr and twist in a cute fashion, but maybe it could be programmed in interesting ways? For example I have read that it does not have image recognition that is capable of recognizing people (a ka it's owner). I wonder if there is a chance of programming it as an outsider, or is the hardware simply not capable enough?

Then again, if the cuteness factor is not the main attraction, perhaps there are other robotics platforms that are more interesting? Of course there is Lego Mindstorms - I just checked, and it doesn't seem to come with a camera per default. So maybe it is far behind the Pleo in computing power? Or what about Roombas, they can be programmed, too. Anything else? I suppose the Aibo was more capable than the Pleo? But the price tag is still too high (still >> 1000€ on ebay).
So then, if Bill Gates has ever complimented his dog for bringing him the morning paper...... is his dog the next Google?

Hot. Scoop.
So... why not just turn swap off completely? I have done it a few times accidentally and once intentionally (when I was encrypting my HD). That would get the exact same result that they are getting.
The comments so far are espousing passive investment strategy and good asset allocation, which I agree with, but I was looking for something a little more concrete.

So in effort to engender some discussion with hard %s, the following is where I am right now (excluding equity in primary residence). The accuracy (beyond decimal point) is certainly irrelevant, but it came right off a spreadsheet and I left it in because it sums to 100.

US Large Cap: 21.87%

US Mid Cap: 8.35%

US Small Cap: 3.03%

Commodities: 8.47%

Real Estate: 6.26%

International Equities: 7.55%

Emerging Market Equities: 4.63%

Cash: 12.71%

Bonds: 27.13%

The Bonds are in a 10 year ladder. The Cash is in FDIC insured money market accounts. All the rest is in index vehicles.

I'm very interested in any feedback and also what your numbers are.
You can expect your money to grow at more than the rate of global economic growth if you own equities rather than fixed-income, unless you are arguing that investors are indifferent to risk (which can't be true if they use leverage).
Indeed: the story (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/01/twitter-said-to-be-aban...) now has an update:

"Update: Regarding Evan Williams’ statement here [link to http://twitter.com/ev/statuses/801530348], all I can say is that multiple sources claim that Twitter is telling people they are planning on moving away from Ruby on Rails. This is not the first time a company has denied something that has turned out to be 100% true."
The most surprising is the inability of the American immigration system to adjust to the changes. While thousands of unskilled, poorly educated people cross the south border, there are only 65k H1Bs per year for professionals, and even that miserable quota is overfilled in one day and turned into a lottery.
You should consider ning. It is being developed by very serious people and is backed by a lot of money.

But, frankly, I would suck it up and code the thing myself. I don't think these shortcuts are mature enough to actually save much time.

Most importantly, I think building the whole application to suit your vision will yield a better product than fitting your vision into those frameworks.
The visa interview takes place in the individual’s country of origin and for us that meant the American embassy in London.

Actually, this isn't necessarily true; once a petition for a visa has been approved, you can go for your interview at any US consulate. (I'm Irish, and I got my visa in Brussels.) This can be very helpful, since different consulates usually have wildly different waiting times for interviews. In my case, it meant a wait of two days instead of six weeks.

Everything else in the article about the soul-sucking tedium of getting a visa is right on the mark, though.
I don't think there are more Googles out there because there aren't that many good ideas floating around. Yes, things move quickly in the age of the internet, but the truth is, if there were more ideas as good as Google, there would be more Googles. Duh!

It isn't about money or funding or even execution. It is about innovation and timing. Give it time. If someone has a Google worthy idea, it'll emerge because people with copy it, steal it, hack it, flame it, etc.

Or maybe it's because Google hired all the smart people and now they own anyone who has the potential to create another Google like movement, so all the VCs are doing are throwing good money after bad ideas.
Digsby Busts Chat Out of Facebook Jail
another option is lego mindstorm sets.

beyond that, there aren't any cheap, flexible, powerful home robotics kits.
I understand that. And it's true that it is best to negotiate the highest starting salary as possible because most people, on average, will get a standard "cost of living" (whatever that means anymore) raise increase on an annual basis. But, I wanted to point out that there is definitely hope for non-namebrand CS program graduates, too.
Where Have All the Startup Podcasts Gone?
The #1 most important personality trait of an entrepreneur
I know its cheesy, but I really would rather invest in myself (Education, Business suit etc)
Actions in Synergy
Has anyone ever advanced a plausible argument for how you can be an effective architect without also coding? This seems like the same conclusion everyone comes to when giving it even a modicum of thought.
My comment wasn't intended to be either obtuse or obnoxious. I was merely asking for an elaboration - its too easy to say there are lots of xxxxxx, but without evidencing what they are.

On your point about the aggregation of such data across a company, I concur. In a thread above, I did note that their current offering may be prelude to looking at the corporate market. However, this is not virgin territory as there are already tools that seek to discover corporate relationships at a macro level from data mining email inboxes, albeit they are only starting to make inroads into businesses. They work unobtrusively behind the scenes to provide business "intelligence" which can include highlighting colleagues who appear to have active communications with a "target".

Surrendering such data to your employer is one thing. However, you allude to an interesting notion, namely Xobni perhaps aggregating and making use of data from the individual in the personal market. That could be a very tough sell amidst probable privacy concerns, but of keen interest to an advertiser at the very least.
Don't do this, really. The Mathworks has a great product and offers tremendous support, training, etc. Beyond that they have always been extremely reasonable in their licensing, e.g. letting me run the Mac version on my laptop at home and the Linux version when I'm at work. There is a student version which costs you less than a lot of textbooks. If you want free then try Sage, R, Octave, etc. Don't ripoff a good company.
Aren't you comparing what Google has to what TV networks might implement? This is not very useful.
I think that the most important trait is perseverance. You may be willing to change directions and adapt, but if you quit, you're done.
Simple XML in Erlang
The question assumes you have money set aside in a thirty year time horizon with the goal of long term growth. Or are you saying that you put all your retirement money into your startups?

Also, for the purposes of the question, assume you have enough money where education expenditures don't impact this portion.
The benefits of diversification are vastly overstated. Especially over long time periods, the benefits of buying e.g. your 5 best ideas rather than your 10 best ideas vastly outweigh the benefits of having less volatility. If you have time to do the research, do this: find companies that are either the low-cost provider, the most-loved brand, or have special government-protected status in their industry. Examples would be Coca-Cola, Wal Mart, Kraft, etc. Possibly, rule out companies whose managers make irresponsible financial decisions (like over-leveraging at a bank, or buying back stock at high prices like Coca-Cola). When these stocks are cheaper than the broader market, buy them. If one of them rises enough that, after capital gains taxes, you're getting more annual earnings per dollar invested in another company of similar or better business characteristics, sell the expensive one and buy the cheap one.

Basically, your goal should be to have a portfolio you don't have to follow, of companies that will tend to grow their earnings faster than their capital and thus throw off free cash for shareholders. If you can get these at a fair price, your net worth should grow nicely.

However, this is difficult to articulate and extremely hard advice to follow. Perhaps it would be better to put most of your money in an index fund, and do this with the rest of your money long enough to see if it works for you. Sadly, this kind of strategy should be judged over a longer time period (like five years). So, index fund or take your chances.
He mentions that in the third paragraph, they had problems with kswapd.
Adaptability is obviously important, but I wouldn't put it at #1.

I would say "ability to take action".

It doesn't matter how smart, personable, determined, passionate, or adaptable you are if you don't take action. Until you do, you have nothing.
I have no doubt that China will grow as an economic power. Personally, I'm not especially worried about it. As China gets wealthier, the "wage arbitrage" involved in moving over there will shrink, so I disagree with the writer that Americans in "place-based" activities will be better off. You may be better off in a position to sell stuff to newly wealthy Chinese and Indian consumers. I also suspect that prosperity and liberalism (meaning democracy and free markets, not handouts) will go hand in hand - so far, they usually have.

As for learning Mandarin? Hey, go for it, but I doubt it'll be crucial. English is very entrenched at this point, and it's not really about the USA anymore. English became entrenched because of the British Empire/US ascendency, but now it's just a convenient standard for the 21st century. I've read that several European companies are so diverse that it's easier to just use English than German, French, Swedish, regardless of location. Scientific conferences in Asia use English even when the audience doesn't contain a single American, Brit, or Australian.

Nobody does this out of some deep respect for English - they do it because it's convenient. Everyone educated these days becomes literate in their own native language + English, and preferably some other language as well.
These types of things always seem like saying that the key to being a good runner is to have strong legs. While this is an important part, being a good runner also depends on lung capacity and a whole host of other things.

To distill it all down to one thing seems a bit naive.
Philip Greenspun (of Ars Digita fame) wrote a great guide on the subject:
http://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/money

He recommends index funds too, and explains the choice.
It's time to select my startup lawyer
I meant that I would have used Sage if I had known about it. I'm certainly not advocating piracy - Matlab is a fantastic product and well worth the money. That part had more to do with the school's horrific IT program than anything else.
Ability to take action / get hands dirty / learn
Do you follow this strategy yourself? If so, what is your portfolio right now?
Why are you comparing RDF with syndication formats? Atom and RSS are formats for data that fits a specific pattern, RDF is a generic data structure. A better comparison would be RDF and XML.

If there is some advantage to putting (e.g.) real estate data inside an Atom or RSS feed, you still need a format to represent the data itself. RDF's advantage is that it's extensible and makes it very easy to combine independent datasets.

I don't think that Atom/RSS/XML are easier to use than RDF; they're just more familiar.
Traditionally, investing in a Small Cap Value eft or index fund would have earned you about 2% more than the market on average. It's the only asset class that has consistently beat the market over the last 100 years. I know several smart people in finance who use this long-term strategy.

Had you been doing this over the last three years, however, the results would not have been pretty.
Completely agree. Courage to persevere when faced with adversity is what makes or breaks people and companies. Change and adaptability is great but what if it's a wrong direction?! Those who change directions whenever the wind changes direction shift focus quickly and almost always don't get the prize. People who change directions all the time are usually people who chase fads.