skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You're right on number 4. You really can't compare things to the Wii. The Wii is a black swan of sorts.

Nintendo is really firing on all cylinders right now. You can't expect MSFT to be able to beat a company entirely focused on gaming, with over 100 years of experience in the industry, in their own arena in that short of a time.

In fact, given the number of large companies that have tried and failed to make a dent in the console gaming industry over the last couple decades, the fact that MSFT has become a viable contender in such a short time period is actually quite impressive. The Xbox360 would be my vote for the most intelligent thing they've done in a very long time.

They embraced the web before their opponents and did it in a better way with Xbox Live. Features they added first (downloadable games or movies for instance, or the ability to stream media from a computer) are becoming standard elsewhere. In a lot of ways, they're ahead of the curve.
I'll agree that Microsoft hasn't had a stellar record for the past 10 years or so, but this is just ridiculous.

+ I'll give you MSN search vs. Google, which is of course what the whole Yahoo bid was about.

- Hotmail was the first widely-used web mail client, and still has a very significant market share vs. Gmail and Yahoo Mail.

- The xbox has a very good market share of consoles, particularly considering the history of its competition in Sony and Nintendo.

+ The Zune is admittedly an also-ran. Then again, there are a lot of also-rans to the iPod. Microsoft isn't the only company who tried to mimic it and failed.

- Silverlight is still extremely new, and is more a competitor to Flash than AJAX. It has potential, but the jury is still very out.

- You're kidding, right? Maybe in the server market, but the desktop market is still completely dominated by Windows.

+ Vista was a huge mistake, and OSX beats the crap out of it.

- .NET works just fine as a competitor to Java. You need to substantiate this more if you want to make sweeping claims like that.

I'm no Microsoft fan, but it irks me when people blindly bash them. I know it's trendy to be anti-Microsoft (it has been for years), but it's tunnel vision.
I still don't agree with the 80 characters per line rule. That's an old relic rule from the 70s and 80s. In the time of wide screen displays, 1080x1600 resolution, there is no really need to cut off your code at 80 chars per line.

I'd rather have code that goes a 100-110 chars per line, then having a line cut off, just to have only few characters in the second line; as it makes it harder to follow thru code.
Sure, at over 110-120 chars, it is time to cut that line in two, but at 80, no need.
I've worked really hard over the past few months to get the word out. I have a really active blog, and that helps a lot. Most of the interest has come through the blog. Leaving thoughtful comments on big blogs, twitter, and attending open coffees. It all adds up. Rather than focus on the big things, I've just spent a lot of time doing little things to build the buzz. I don't think it's our private alpha users - they would not be connected to VCs. Most VCs have said they stumbled across my blog or the site and liked the vision.

Just sent you an alpha invite.
Ask YC: What tools do you use for notifications of server/site uptime?
Wondering what the best tools for notifications are. Specifically, something to monitor the server and the site to make sure its up. What do people use? Is it best to use a built-in notification tool on the server for the site uptime monitoring?
The 80 chars per line rule goes back way beyond the 70s and 80s. It comes from typesetting. If lines are too long, you lose your place when your eye moves on to the beginning of the next line. Many years of experience showed that about 70 chars per line was optimal for text. It might be slightly different for code.
I think the point is that at a startup, ideally you're working on something thats interesting and exciting.
Monit.
I don't read code like I read prose. A line of code tends to be a logical unit. For example, breaking up arguments passed to a function across multiple lines, just because you break the 80 char rule, doesn't make sense.
Microsoft has made some missteps, but in the end, they really just have two problems they need to address now, and two they need to address over the next couple of years. Ballmer has the potential to handle them, but if he doesn't get them sorted out, they'll need someone else who can.

The current problems are that they have a failed product cycle with Windows Vista, and they refuse to admit it, and they've set a goal of beating Google on Google's home turf, and they have no hope of attaining it. They need to own up to their mistakes with Vista, and announce that they will support XP side-by-side with Vista until Windows 7 ships. They also need to admit that they have no hope of winning in the search and contextual advertising businesses, and dial back their internet ambitions to try to focus on moving their Office business forward to clients interested in software-as-a-service.

Their longer-term problems are that they're losing market share to Macs and that they've ceded leadership in the browser and internet standards space to others. They need to make sure that with Win7, they deliver something people actually want, and they need to open up their internet roadmap and try to really work with standards groups instead of blowing them off.

All these problems are correctable, and Microsoft will have to make even more serious mistakes going forward to really implode their whole business. Whether Ballmer is the right guy to fix things remains to be seen.
I'm running 3.0b5 on a macbook pro with only a few extensions, and it crashes constantly. I upgraded because 2 seemed to crash even more.
"You can't expect MSFT to be able to beat a company entirely focused on gaming"

Then why do they continue to insist on doing it? They have "focused" competitors in every market.

They compete with google in search.

They compete with Oracle in data bases.

They compete with SAP in enterprise apps.

Except for GE, who has an unfair advantage thanks to your tax dollars, the conglomerate has been dead for 20 years. Is Microsoft still so arrogant that they think they can be the only high tech conglomerate? They became big with a monopoly on the desktop and have long since lost their focus.

This is a problem of leadership. The days of the bully are over.
OpenCog AGI Framework
Reading List for AGI Research
munin and nagios
Just because my display is 1440 pixels wide doesn't mean that I want my IDE to take up all of it! The average line of code is much less than 80 characters wide, so if you want to increase the width to 120 characters, you have to increase the width of your IDE, and that means that you have even more wasted display space (all those lines that are only 20-40 characters wide).

Personally, I keep an 80-character terminal, wrap the majority of my code after column 72, and that frees up the rest of my display for a web browser, where I can read documentation, search for algorithms, check my prototypes, etc. I also like to have other terminals open where I read manpages, SSH to other boxes for various reasons, run small code snippets in an ipython shell, perform operations on my filesystem, interact with git, etc. That's not to mention having an IRC/IM client open, a music player, and more.

Sorry if this reply seems to be dragging on, but I really want to point out that when I'm programming, I'm doing a lot more than living in my IDE, so using my full display because some people want to have 120-character-wide lines is really annoying.
I just listened to Schwartz speak at Startup Camp a few hours ago and he discussed just that issue...I was surprised by how many folks were questioning him on the subject from different angles. Basically, "why have you made everything free?" (Because they have...nearly everything Sun builds is Open Source, all the way down to the CPU designs.)

His answer was, "because you [startups] wouldn't use it if we didn't". He went on to explain how startups using Sun means that in a year, maybe two or three, when those startups grow into big companies they will need the kind of infrastructure that only Sun (and maybe a couple of other companies) can provide. It made sense when he said it.
Getting a higher salary is only relevant if you're working for a big company.
Cacti and Pingdom (www.pingdom.com) for external monitoring.
I really thought I could never switch away from Firefox because of all of the extensions I "couldn't live without," but I started playing with Webkit nightlies a few weeks back and never looked back. It's faster, launches quickly, eats less memory (look! It's only at half a gig!), and has high-res scrolling. The last one, albeit small, is killer for me. Reading articles on the web is a whole difference experience when you have good font rendering and truly smooth scrolling. I use keyboard shortcuts to turn off the location and bookmarks bars most of the time to make the browser get out of my way and let me use my webapps. Goodbye, Firefox!
I didn't intend to "bash" them. (Well, maybe a little.)

I'm just playing stockholder's advocate, questioning the people who are supposed to represent my best long term interests. $40B on the left side of the balance sheet covers for a lot of missteps, but sooner or later, someone's gotta start asking the hard questions like, "What is our focus?", "How do we position ourselves for the massive tech shifts about to happen", "What business are we going to be in in 10 years?", and "Why should I keep my dollars here?"

Bullys have a tough time with those questions. Visionaries don't.
Surely a PhD is best undertaken by those with a deep love for the subject area they will be researching. 3-5 years doing something you're only half interested in isn't a good idea (especially given the comments about wages here). But if I found one which I knew I would love doing - I'd jump at the chance.
Ask YC:  Why doesn't Google use better technology to build its services (e.g., Flash)?
Almost everyone has Flash installed after all.

I wouldn't be surprised if Google is working on its own competitor to Flash/Silverlight.
I don't know a good book but I can recommend an excellent blog, Marginal Revolution:

http://www.marginalrevolution.com/

Not the intro-topics sort of material, but very interesting. Closer to Freakonomics style.
They should really push it out the door rather than talk about it.
Thanks for questioning my knowledge. Let me return the compliment. I don't think you are aware of the fact that a complex dynamical system (the economy) is deterministic. The randomness implied by stochastic models does not exist in reality. Complex dynamics looks similar but is a different animal altogether. Attempts to build global predictive models are futile in principle and can be compared to attempts to build a model that predicts the weather a month from now.

Economics needs a philosophical paradigm shift, and of course it is happening (slowly, and Santa Fe Institute is the place to watch), but is it not what you find in Samuelson books and in the mainstream academia. That is the point I am making.
because flash sucks?
Could you elaborate?

Maybe it's not convenient for developers, but the result is better for users than an ad hoc mix of old web technologies that is seriously lacking in features and plagued with compatibility problems.
To monitor more than uptime and service availability, the high end of this is automated performance measurement analysis by Keynote Systems (keynote.com). They have a lower end product called http://redalert.com/ (formerly its own service) which is comparable to pingdom.
Python script + e-mail to your cell phone number.
Joel Stein invents formula for influence
The best advice I ever got about meetings was not to ever enter one unless you knew what you wanted to get out of it.

I'd like to believe that the best advice I've ever given about doing an advanced degree is not to start one unless you know why you're doing it. Some of the best folks I've worked with came in with a very specific agenda, whether it was a problem they wanted to solve, an advisor they wanted to work with, or a company they wanted to work with. Having that sort of end point in mind does wonders for focussing your time.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that I did NOT follow this advice. I stumbled into grad school without much forethought. If I were to do it again, I'd make sure I had a reason.
It appears that AJAX cross-browser compatibility problems can be solved using infinite money.

Besides video, what compelling Flash features aren't available in JS+HTML?
From the Google Webmaster Central Blog: "Try to use Flash only where it is needed... this makes you[r] site accessible to a larger audience, including, for example, blind people using screen readers, users of old or non-standard browsers, and those on limited low-bandwidth connections such as on a cell phone or PDA."

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/07/best-uses...

I can think of a few good examples of web sites which use Flash effectively, e.g. the BBC 'Get Cooking' site:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/get_cooking/

However, Flash normally seems to be used for displaying pointless, obnoxious splash screens which add no value for the user.
Which would be better for building a word processor or illustrator service?

And even if it is not necessary (e.g., for an email service), users still like to use a more professional looking site.
Hyperspin
I know a fair amount about dynamical systems. As for whether the economy is deterministic at the most fundamental level, I suppose that really depends on your interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Concerning weather prediction, that's my point. Economics is as much of a science as meteorology is. Economics and meteorology will never achieve the level of simplicity and accuracy that fundamental physics does. Doesn't make them unscientific.
You know, that's probably the DOS protection ;)

Over a year ago, if you were using firefox on an ajax enabled site making periodic request to the webservers, firefox would request all the requests it missed while being asleep (hibernate mode) at once when the computer came back to life. :-)
> I can think of a few good examples of web sites which use Flash effectively

Youtube!
"I am thinking of moving to Opera permanently" - stop thinking about it, just do it.
But why not use Flash for the entire site rather than just the video player?
It's pretty clear if they click on my profile.
For those who want a taste:
www.altfeldinc.com/pdfs/BASICECONOMICS.pdf

Not the complete book though.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=164464
you gotta be trolling...
>I wouldn't be surprised if Google is working on its own competitor to Flash/Silverlight.

http://gears.google.com/
How much less code will he be able to write if he gets a masters degree?
Flash is useful for single player, little games, that you can play in the browser without installation.
That's not a competitor to Flash/Silverlight.
Yahoo Prepares For A Black Monday
> However, Flash normally seems to be used for displaying pointless, obnoxious splash screens which add no value for the user.

How is that relevant to this discussion?
because flash isn't always cross platform. those of us on linux had to wait 2 or more years (I really don't recall) for adobe to roll out a flash 9 from flash 7 for linux. It took another year after that to get it stable.

Also if you are blind how do you view flash websites? it has serious problems with usability for those who are disabled.

it also has usability problems for those who aren't disabled. I don't like flash websites because I can never find my way around. I can't run them through translator's either (an artist I like, who's native language is spanish, website is in flash, I can't read or translate the spanish because of that, and the english version has been coming soon for 2 or more years).
Google uses Flash for their charts in analytics and finance.
What can PostgreSQL learn from MySQL?
Google revolves around information accessibility, using Flash for anything besides the presentation of graphics is a big step back in that area.

Youtube may make good use of Flash, but even they limit it to areas of absolute necessity.
Big and bad
Why can't Flash be improved to make information accessible?
Yes, but let's not forget the most important part of any business, making money. I think he's won where it matters most.

MSFT (billions)
Mar '08	2007	2006
Revenue: $14.4	$51	$44.3
Net Inc: $4.4	$14	$12.6
Paul Nylander's visualizations of interesting functions
Ask Adobe?
Ask HN: Any users of SimpleCDN?
They seem a little on the cheap cost side-- has anyone here used them? If you know your content is going to be seen by lots and lots of users (controlled by your own rotation), then this seems very low pricing.

http://www.simplecdn.com

For one of our coming projects, I've been reviewing Akamai, etc., and stumbled upon these guys. I'd love to know if someone else had tried them and could give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down.
Funny to see this article surrounded by two huge Grand Theft Auto IV ads. It made me think at first that this was about anti-video-game groups ;-)
yahoo needs a CEO with balls, that is willing to go for it, and just cut the fat on that company. It seems to be a place that has been for long overtaken by midle management, and the coorporate b.s. that comes with it, while the good talent has left already.

I am trying to think any great product developed in house in the last year. Maybe Yahoo Answers, is decent, but what else?
> I wouldn't be surprised if Google is working on its own competitor to Flash/Silverlight.

Microsoft has big problems getting Silverlight off the ground, although it is imo technically superior to Flash. I don't think it would be easier for Google to launch a competing platform. I personally think that they will bet on HTML5 through their partnership with Mozilla.
Why doesn't Google use better technology to build its services (e.g., Flash)?

What better technology? Guess who popularized AJAX?

Flash sucks. There's no real support for linux from adobe, it makes the browser heavier, it's a closed proprietary technology and it's awful for things that are not animation related.
I give this a solid "no".

Notice that when you wear glasses, the lenses stay in the same place relative to your own eyes.

The display would need to track your head position continuously in all three dimensions and have some sort of rapidly-changing lens that continuously adjusted which way the light was pointing so that it hit your eyes from the same angles that were caused by the lenses of your glasses.

This might include growing and shrinking the lens as you move closer to it and further from it. Notice the size difference between contact lenses and wearable glasses lenses and extrapolate that to the screen.

Plus, you would get the bizarre sensation of seeing only the screen clearly with everything else permanently out of focus.

All this, and the next person over still can't see it.

Even if this were somehow possible, it's hard to argue that it's a better solution than putting lenses in front of someone's eyes.
They do some good open source stuff. Hadoop comes to mind.
Haha.... All those people that are calculating this car's running cost, forget that given the price tag, the people that will be buying this are the ones that don't give a frick for the running costs.
This car is only for those rich people, that have multiple cars in their garage, and want a new toy they can drive around, and feel good (and brag) about being "green".

A game chaning car would be one that costs less than 15k, so the average commuter can actually afford one (we probably are few years away from it).
The problem with products like Photosynth and and Surface is that they don't really address the things Microsoft has problems with (like search).

The Office/OS cash cow was really created during the 1990s. I just don't see Ballmer as doing anything except maintain the status quo - which isn't sustainable over the long term.
It's a verbose way of saying 'Flash sucks'.
Lenovo IdeaPad U110 overview and video - Engadget
The Long Way To Mainstream
We use Pingdom (http://pingdom.com)

Simple but it works.
that is the single worst url in history. Congrats!
I use two different scripts:

1. dwatch http://nubyonrails.com/articles/2006/03/29/surviving-rails-1...

2. a PHP script that accesses a URL on the other server; if the server does not respond as expected, it sends me a SMS and emails the server admin
I think FireEagle might turn out to be pretty cool.
"Firefox 3.0b5 hasn't crashed once on my laptop (Ubuntu)"

You've disabled Flash then, I assume. I can't keep the browser on for much more than an hour here without Flashblock.

Beta 5 is certainly faster and less memory-profligate than 2.0 was, though.
Firebug is a killer app. I would need something like that on another browser before I moved anywhere.
>> Yahoo won’t need their search marketing employees any more, possibly 2,000 employees.

They have 2,000 people on the payroll just for search marketing, and Panama is the best they can come up with?

Ouch.
For my own selfish reasons, I'm pleased that Google doesn't use Flash for applications. Using XHTML/CSS/JS/etc. is great because other developers can inspect it, understand it, and go from there.

For practical purposes, I suspect Flash may be a pain in the ass to use on their scale. Debug, version control, localization, analytics, and more probably wouldn't play well with the rest of their platform and processes.

Also, Flash isn't supported on many wireless devices including the high-profile iPhone.

Future releases of HTML and JavsScript will handle some of what Flash does today. Perhaps it's just not necessary.
I'm surprised nobody here has mentioned what I would expect would be one of the biggest reasons: bandwidth. Considering the number of people hitting the various Google services at any given moment, adding Flash, and/or pretty images or extra CSS or fancy-pants JavaScript could induce a pretty big additional cost, and for no justifiable reason.
Omnidrive: Lessons In Angel Investing And Entrpreneurial Tenacity
We use a monitoring service called Wormly...
http://www.wormly.com/

It's run by a friend of ours who used to work at Sitepoint and was frustrated by the limited options for good, affordable, distributed monitoring. He's been running it for over 2 years and is growing fast.

It's a great service and recommended as a YC-style startup worth supporting.
Wow, thanks for all the great feedback. We're going to try Pingdom first. I also liked nagios for its ability to restart services automatically - very cool.

If anyone wants an invite to NewsCred, shoot me a mail: shafqat at newscred.com. Its not much, but thought I should say thanks!
flash is shit. next?
Did you check http://cachefly.com/ too? I'm also shopping for a cheap CDN and this an alternative I know.
In other words, flash is an awkward adaptor (plugin) to support a form of media (fully interactive games) on a platform (web browser) that was never really intended to support it.
Where do all the neurotics live?
Any that look familiar? - "Hello World" in 366 Languages
Yeah, they're on our review lists, too.

The cool (insane?) part about simplecdn is that they only charge on upload, not on bandwidth usage.

Not sure how they manage that, but it appears like it would turn out to give us all sorts of savings.
I'd use Opera permanently if it only had a decent inline spell checker. All the options that I've tried don't really cut it.
Even if we take your first question as true (and that is highly doubtful) it is far from clear that users prefer sites which "look more professional", cf: plentyoffish.com

It's also far from obvious that an all-flash site looks more professional than a flash-free one: if you want to make a site look tacky, just throw in some gratuitous flash or animated gifs and you're away.
I've been using hosttracker.com for years because they have a 2-site free service.
Prepping for Warren Buffett: The Art of the Elevator Pitch (Videos)