skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Eat their lunch ;) by following the above ^
My site is a turn-based games site. There are many others like it, most either charge for memberships or are free, advertising-based sites. Some seem to be very successful, some I would classify more as hobby sites.

A few of my current ideas are:

* Vacation days (a very standard feature... they extend the time limit on your games so you don't while you're away on vacation) (carrot)
* Advertising free (I don't have advertising now, so I'd have to introduce it for the free accounts) (carrot or stick?)
* 30-day free membership (stick -- don't like this idea)
* Limit on the number of simultaneous games a user can have (stick -- don't *really* like this idea, either)
* Prize tournaments for members only (need to research this idea... not sure I like it) (carrot)

And I'm considering a bunch of other minor perks (customize your profile, change colors, etc...) that would count as very small carrots.
The the guy who just down modded the comment, When is forcing users to leave a good idea? ... and where is your response to the question>?
> As in, they force you to go there.

At least in the US you are under no obligation to send your kids to public school. You can send them to a private or parochial school or home school your children.

Why? Do you think making education completely optional would be better?
Designing Details: Autoscrolling the edit state [video]
I didn't want to get to specific, because I'm generally curious about this. Also, it seems like an issue that would effect a lot of startups, and I think it'd be better for everyone if the discussion was more general.

As to your comments about my site specifically, I think you're absolutely right about the 30-day free account. I think if I force anybody to leave I'd risk killing the site. I'd rather run it as a hobby site than kill it.
As far as I know, there are countries that still accept immigrants if you feel that the social contract of the nation you are currently inhabiting is unreasonable.

Failing that, there's always working for political change, or even armed insurrection.

Or you could just log on to a website and complain about it. Hey -- done!
Question along the same line: has anyone open-sourced their app before selling their startup because they didn't trust the acquirer?
I've heard that some college fraternities do this, but it may have been just a rumor.
Surgeons give hope to blind with successful 'bionic eye' operations
I would personally take a minimum to not worry ($1mm) and give out up to 10-15% ... guess I'm a sell out.
goes back to my own moral system, probably a weakness.
I imagine this theorizing all goes out the window when there is an actual live offer on the table.
Have you been to San Francisco? This is a very diverse city, from nationalities to political persuasion, etc. The tech community is definitely in the minority here.
Isn't this really good for route learning? Which outside of a limited few situations (vocab, exams) is the most useless type of learning there is?
You have no idea if I am working for political change, or not. Why be a jerk making a personal attack? i made a statement about what i think is true, and you respond with made up comments about how i'm not living up to something.

also advocating violence against Americans is pretty awful.
Windows' annoying characters, and how to abolish them (in Python)
Capitalism Day
I don't want to sell. I want my company to get big so we can do the exciting work I see a company like ours doing down the road a few years. It isn't about the money, I don't want to lose my chance to influence the future by creating it.

(We are not yet funded and have no obligations to investors)
It depends on the fields you're interested in. Seattle feels just as diverse as NYC to me, just in different ways.

If you're into finance, advertising, and fashion, NYC is hard to beat. Seattle, OTOH, wins big at mountain climbing (we have mountains nearby), aviation (we have Boeing nearby), and martial arts (we have Japan nearby), for example. It's also a hotspot for medicine, microbrews, and certain kinds of music.

I've been to NYC a few times, and if you're into the things they do well, I'm sure it's heaven. But if you're not, it's just another big city where people talk about boring things like finance and fashion.
It looks like somebody trying to be clever. It's an obfuscation of the word 'pussy'
Intel Tries Hand At Consumer Mashups
Not my site, but I came across a pretty big "SEO checklist" page a couple of days ago that I bookmarked. I'm not sure how accurate the information is, but it's worth a look if you're interested (and can get by the ugly design):

http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/internet/google-ranking-fact...
You can't hate and then provide logical reasons for your hate. Hate by definition is illogical.

People hate Microsoft because it IS cool and because they ARE the leader. However they then try to justify their hate with rational reasons. Hate comes first, then comes reason, not the other way around.

Because if reason came first, hate would never follow. Perhaps dislike, or distaste would. Microsoft has its flaws and weaknesses but only because it has accomplished far more than many. You never hear people applauding Microsoft all you ever hear is the same old rhetoric.

To be a true critic one has to acknowledge both the positives and the negatives. Otherwise you're just hater for the sake of convenience.
Ex-Googlers create stealth social search company Mechanical Zoo
For the curious, this story is about Jeanne Calment:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment
Are the enhancements you're planning with the next version separable from the rest of the site? It sounds like you answered your own question: you feel that the stuff you're adding to the site will make it worthy of paying for, as opposed to your current site which presumably is less worth paying for (but it sounds like you have a significant number of users happy with your free site). Why not just charge for the new features that you're adding?
New Service Will Monitor Your Site For Typos
Plenty of people get paid the big bucks to do something interesting, exciting, and fun!

Consider the founders of YouTube, HotOrNot, reddit - those seem pretty fun to me.
I am flattered, since I'm sure there are tons of more pleasant people :) Someone told me the Q&A troll would fall asleep during the presentations. Sheesh.
DHH: The silent majority
No amount. Really!?
although you can put ads. If your crowd is technology minded they won't work, as they will likely have adblockers installed. But people are used to ads and as long as they aren't obnoxious people will be unlikely to complain.

But more carrot than stick. If you hit your users with a stick too hard they won't want to pay and will leave, they may even talk to other users who wouldn't have cared and convince them to leave.

Perks are good. If you have any kind of social aspect consider having people advertised as paying. Theres a certain... prestige gained by letting people know that you are paying for a product that can be mostly used for free (at least I think there is).
OK, I added a no amount choice. But really? You wouldn't sell for any amount?
I think people are too focused on the logistics of "startups" and getting investors instead of actually creating websites that make money.

The fact of the matter is, there are tons of individuals across the country that make thousands of dollars a month creating websites themselves. They don't seek funding, they either hire a designer/programmer or do it themselves. They don't have a beta, they launch whatever they they are making. They don't have one obscure idea that they think they need to go out and pay $5,000 to form an official company for, but instead have a couple of useful websites that generate money. If they start to make a lot of money, then they'll open a LLC for tax benefits.

On top of that, I'd bet a majority of them have no computer science degree or the knowledge that the hackers here do, which means anyone here can make as much as them since they won't need to pay for programmers.
MySQL so busy becoming PostgreSQL it forgets its community
Self-Commenting Code
Consider this programming style:

for each function,
- first write out its algorithm in comments,
- then implement that.

It seems like that programming style can result in higher-quality code with fewer bugs.

As an example, let's implement a simple "ends_with?" string utility function. The function takes two strings and returns whether the first ends with the second:

bool endsWith( const char* haystack, const char* ending )

Following our new programming style, we first write out its implementation in comments:

bool endsWith( const char* haystack, const char* ending )
{
// find the end of [haystack] and [ending].

// if [haystack] is shorter than [ending] then it can't end with [ending], so return false.

// walk backwards through both strings.

// if a character differs, return false.

// otherwise, [haystack] ends with [ending], so return true.
}

Pretty straightforward. And now we can implement the function in an equally straightforward way:

bool endsWith( const char* haystack, const char* ending )
{
// find the end of [haystack] and [ending].
const char *haystackEnd = haystack;
const char *endingEnd = ending;
while( *haystackEnd )
haystackEnd++;
while( *endingEnd )
endingEnd++;

// if [haystack] is shorter than [ending] then it can't end with [ending], so return false.
if( haystackEnd - haystack < endingEnd - ending )
return false;

// walk backwards through both strings.
while( endingEnd != ending )
{
// if a character differs, return false.
if( *endingEnd != *haystackEnd )
return false;

--endingEnd;
--haystackEnd;
}

// otherwise, [haystack] ends with [ending], so return true.
return true;
}

What is interesting about this style is that the result will usually be simple to read and understand. The key is to write out the function's comments first, not last. Is this a common programming style?

A friend of mine uses this technique in his game engine to great effect. The engine's source code is beautiful, mostly because each algorithm is simple and can be understood by reading clear English.
I didn't downmod you, I think it's a good question. I think forcing users who won't pay to leave might be a good idea in some cases. Consider the cost in server resources (if it's a server-based app), customer support, etc. It may be too expensive to keep users who won't pay.

Of course, that assumes you can get plenty of paying users in the first place...
The authur seems to be so close. Quick sketch. Fill in the details. Implement new features one at a time. If you design the thing well, you shouldn't have to have any idea what these things are going to do and you can add functionality later. And test new features as they're thought up and added.

Or you could write the same code over and over. I don't like typing that much.
I didn't mod the previous comment but in answer to your question. Their are a lot of good reasons why you would want to for a user or set of users to leave your service. If for example you are not generating revenue from them and they don't appear as though they would ever pay then having them use a subset of your features would cost you money with little return.

There is the whole idea that they will recommend their friends who will in turn pay but the odds are if they are happy using the small portion of features you offer for free then so will the friends they recommend primarily because they can only recommend it based on the merits of said free features.

Not all customers are profitable and dropping the ones that aren't is never bad business.
This is really personally my remaining annoyance with News.YC. Too often, people either agree with a submission, or they disagree with a submission. There are too few posts per day that critically think about what is being discussed.

In this case, I don't remember seeing one post about following a combination of strategies at once (if there were a couple of posts, that doesn't make the situation any less sad.) Making a smart product, having a strategy to grow, and offering a free viral version as well as a paid version that pays your bills is the way to go! In fact, having an abundance of free customers will increase the chance you NEED investment, not just the fact that VC's will be more interested. They're more interested because they know you will need money!

If you have a paid version that pays your operating costs, and gives value, you can keep working on your startup indefinitely. It's also another way to get VC's interested. But except in this case, you logically won't be a little bitch. Instead of having to fake confidence while your cash flow has brought you down to nothing (more likely below nothing), and the only reason you're getting a good valuation is because there are many, many VCs around, and they like that you went to Stanford or something, you will instead be in a situation where you proved people will pay for your product and you don't really need to time selling your company or getting investment in the right cycle of the economy. So which option is better? Whichever one is better at the time! That's what DHH has been saying. If he actually needed investors for a venture, I'm sure he would surely take the money he needs. But he doesn't, so he doesn't. There's no wrong way.

But he's wrong because Silicon Valley gives you that option to pursue VC's in case you need to, and the quality of life seems to be among the best places in the world. And it's sure better than living in the middle of nowhere. And it's great that you can meet cool people and ask them feedback about your apps without receiving questions like "why are you doing a startup" (because working for most companies is a rip off), "wow you must be rich" (people think it's rich people who do startups), and "can you fix my computer" (no explanation needed.)

I like YCombinator's approach, where one can launch and see what happens for a few months before figuring out the best steps -- more angel funding, VC funding, multiple VC funding, selling, quitting, changing an idea, or even having a paid version.
Here are a few more good tips from Google

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en...
fascinating article. wonder if it also applies to
correcting wrong memorization
-- ie to break a mental habit, space it out according to
this formula.
Does anyone else get the feeling that MS is just playing catch up and releasing whatever seems popular?
Using Good Botnets to Defeat the Bad
This excellent article helped changed my thinking about Tcl:
http://antirez.com/articoli/tclmisunderstood.html

I had to use Tcl for a large scientific software system and grew to like its strengths. There's something to be said about an overly simple syntax and nice coupling to C.
Because why? You didn't make an argument, you just recited the premise of DHH's argument.
Facebook's users aren't valuable to advertisers because they're "fragmented" (i.e., no common interests).

That's why the only ads you see on MySpace and Facebook are for dating sites and T-shirts.

The bigger money is in selling very specific advertising (for example, selling HD-TVs to fantasy football fanatics).
So, the point of the article is "bullshit your customer so he feels good". That might be good for your business, but it's terrible for society. I rather have a straight answer than to be fooled with "oh, you're right, it won't happen again". And if I go back there it happens again.

Maybe most parking places won't turn off the guy's car if he doesn't explain to the workers. If that's the case the answer he got was far better than "you're right, I'm so sorry. It won't happen again". What scares me the most is people who want to be fooled.
The post isn't really that bad. Some people are into "networking" and I guess this is a post for that kind of people. I'd rather find a handful of people to bounce ideas around and hack on projects than accumulate 1000+ connections on LinkedIn.
EBay Files Suit Against Craigslist
what do you do with a rewrite or bugfix, feature adding? more importantly what do you do when you know what you want it to do but not how you are going to do it?
"You can't hate and then provide logical reasons for your hate. Hate by definition is illogical."

You're right. The only reason I even used the word "hate" was because I was responding to a "haterade" article. I know that's not much of an excuse, just a little literary license.

"People hate Microsoft because it IS cool and because they ARE the leader."

Microsoft was NEVER cool.

And fortunately, their leadership days are waning.

"but only because it has accomplished far more than many"

Only? I completely disagree. Did you understand the bullets in my original post? Microsoft achieved what they did not by excellence or innovation, but by lying, cheating, stealing, and crushing innovation every step of the way for 30 years. This is direct opposition to what I believe (and probably what many people on this board believe). I didn't cite references because anyone can google hundreds of examples.

"To be a true critic one has to acknowledge both the positives and the negatives"

I would have cited the positives if I could have thought of any.

I was a programmer before Microsoft came along and screwed everything up. I imagine many people weren't even born then.

So how could they remember the good old days of fabulous software? With stuff like smalltalk, lisp, or Pick. Or even visicalc, Wordperfect, or Netscape.

I sincerely believe that if Microsoft never existed, we'd be better off. Fortunately, open source and the internet are finally bringing the good old days back. Lucky for you and your generation (I'm guessing) you didn't have to live through the darkest days of Microsoft dominance. So how could you understand my "hatred"?
Billions of Videos & YouTube's Unstoppable Rise
While we're waiting, zapreader (http://zapreader.com) solves half the problem.
Yahoo Q1 Earnings Released, Blows Through Expectations
I'm just confused because I see so many sites that aggregate RSS feeds. It seems like almost every site is doing it now - especially those sites like popurls.com and alltop.com. I emailed a handful of the companies whose feeds I am planning on using to see if they could elaborate a bit more. Thanks again.
Give me a break. I lived in San Francisco for a bunch of years, starting after my first company got bought out --- I've experienced the city both totally flush with cash and living paycheck to paycheck. Allow me to retort:

* Public transportation in the Bay Area is a shambles, and, in particular, getting between any two points in the (tiny) city of San Francisco involves interaction with the worst bus system in the country.

* Housing is spectacularly expensive, which, in hacker teams, simply means you're going to be living in half the space you have now, with no amenities.

* Office space in San Franscisco? I already spent the modifier "spectacular", so let's go with "catastrophically" expensive, meaning: your office won't be in the city, it will be in San Mateo, which despite its relative proximity to the city, will still be an hour and a half commute. Unlucky enough to wind up in Santa Clara? I was. My commute from SOMA often exceeded two hours each way.

* Half to 3/4s of your friends are going to live in the South Bay. No matter where you choose to live --- San Francisco or the suburban Mallhalla of the South Bay --- you are going to be 45 minutes to an hour away from anyone you want to visit.

* An ongoing dispute between the dispatchers, the city, and medallion owners keeps taxicabs artificially scarce, so that you are going to wait 20 minutes to catch one on Folsom or downtown.

* There isn't one good place in the city to see a show, but that doesn't matter, because your favorite band skips San Francisco.

* Last call in San Francisco? Earlier than other cities.

* Weather? Choose between "brown" or "wet".

* Streets? Laden with human feces and garbage. Am I being hyperbolic? No.

Almost any other city in the country, save Los Angeles, can lay a better claim to being a destination for long-term lifestyle companies than San Francisco.
I don't know. Why don't you ask FeedBurner?
"Why not release a proprietary licensed PostGreSQL under the name MySQL 7.0?"

ROFLOL. YES, we'll skip a whole major revision, we have so many improvements we thought it worth 2 revisions.

and yes postgres is 99% better than msyql. The only thing I can think of bad is lack of in place updates (which someone is working on).

PosgtreSQL ftw.
the carrot stick
completely optional

It is completely optional. But you still have to "go there", to the building.
Google Sued for Ad Program Fraud
If your site is the kind that can be of use to both persons and businesses, you can set up a pricing/features structure that encourages businesses to pay a decent amount, but lets individuals get by for free or cheap.

I believe DHH touched on that in his Startup School talk: Businesses are usually more willing to part with their money and also tend to stick around longer.

Whatever you do, be sure to let people get a really good feel for your site before bugging them to reach for their wallet...
What's up in Ruby? - A Search Site for Ruby
OLED displays gaining momentum
Mobile Banking Gaining Traction Among Younger Customers
How do you get blurbs from a website?
When you type in a URL on websites like Facebook and Digg, they automatically pull up a blurb of the website that contains the first few sentances of the site.

For example, when typing in cnn.com, the CNN blurb "Breaking news U.S., World, Weather, Entertainment & Video News" and the first few sentances on the CNN website automatically appear as well.

How is this done? Is there some sort of crawler that goes to the link provided? Thanks all.
Sorry, I guess that was unduly harsh. Maybe I misread the tone of your prior post.

Referring to the social contract of a democracy as simply taking things by force sounded to me like deeply seated anger, and I guess I responded accordingly. And yes, advocating violence against Americans is pretty awful, but if you believe you live in a tyranny, violent overthrow is one of the traditional avenues for rectifying that situation.
I saw a demo of this and it sucked.

Then the salesman said, "This is the only CRM that seamlessly integrates with the contacts you already have in Outlook."

So it doesn't have to be good. They'll probably shove, er a, sell 100 million of these.
I don't think I would trust my data of all my customers and sale cycles to MS. Also I think online apps scare the average user because there is no physical copy on your machine that you know is there... and you never know who can see your data on the cloud.
Winter in Chicago isn't that bad. Do you think "wow, this is great weather" every day during the winter? No. But the spring, summer, and fall is very enjoyable.

The problem with Chicago is that there are no other hackers around (all the tech people work for banks, and end up being as interesting as you'd imagine), and there are no 24-hour coffee shops, at least not near me.

Chicago is a good place to be if you want to be alone. I guess it's "a big city" but it sure doesn't feel like it at times.
Looking for the next big thing? Social gaming startups heating up
I wasn't trying to make an argument.

However, if I was, I'd say:

Draw a 50 mile radius circle around Stanford. Get a list of all consumer startup acquisitions in the last 2 years. Put a pin in the map for each acquisition. (This is straight from the mouth of Ron Conway, so apologies to him).

Rinse/repeat for VC investment (which is nearly required for any consumer startup)-- it turns out that VCs tend to invest in Valley companies (because that's generally who they can meet face to face).
It's even for a human to recognize that stuff. I usually get the captchas wrong a few times before getting it right, I supose that it'll be even worse if people start doing that.
You got a good deal - the federal claim on my income is more like 60%