skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
you could say the same about any form of communication. some people just don't know how to communicate ideas effectively, whether it is via email, essay, phone call, conversation, twit, et al.

i do my best, when i'm about to communicate an idea in any form, to condense, polish, and qualitatively validate the idea/message/whatever before i actually communicate it, whether that means actually verbally saying the words, or hitting send on the email. not everyone will understand my internal dialog. you have to translate your thoughts into a real-world message before it gets sent.

dealing with others that don't? ask questions and take notes if you have to. other than that, you just have to adapt to understanding other people's brain dumps if they can't filter them on their own. look for topic sentences and latch onto them.
I don't know if I love this or hate it.

Sometimes I'm afraid if I look at enough "slack code", I may go blind.
If Scribd would be a technology startup in the sense that it would leverage NEW technology or develop NEW technology, it would make sense for it to take a longer period of time to become profitable.

However, Scribd is just another company leveraging the internet delivering a service to their customers. Nothing great and nothing fancy going on there and if the idea would indeed be worth the effort, they should have no problem starting of profitable or getting it profitable within the first year of operation.
You mean Lisp? ;-)
Never really thought about it, but OP brings up an interesting point, especially for specialized apps.

Hmmm, instead of typing out free form text, just click on certain verbs, adjectives, and nouns to get across your point. Kinda like xml for humans. The possibilities are endless.
It may sound silly but we built it from scratch. I think it was necessary given what we wanted to achieve.
Muxtape: Make A Mix Tape, Make Some Cash?
Yes, I refactor emails. Iteration. I find the more time you take to compose an email, the better and more coherent the end product. Especially true when sending an email a client.
I think if you're going to be using his idea, it's bad taste to use him as the designer and only give him a few %. If you're going to copy his idea, which you've said he's already started bringing into reality, then offer nothing and prepare to potentially lose a friend over 'some residual income.'
Finding Misery in Another Programmer’s Success
DHH's translation of the MIT License
I very much like the idea. You should consider selling it on an appliance that you've optimized for, a la google search.
“Perfection (in design) is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but rather when there is nothing more to take away.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Your essays are not bad, but there are still parts you can
take away.

Creating a good design is very time consuming. One spends most of the time searching for the onions.

PB
Frengo Launches OpenSocial Toolkit
60 percent of college students say their next computer purchase will be Windows
Really? I've seen an awful lot of JSON services.
I don't see the point of the article?
More commonly processors such as XScales are used for many of these applications. These are very common in applications like smart phones, Ethernet switches and the likes and are ARM based. Since of these can operate into the GHz range, I would say they would beat a 500MHz amd...

But the real reason to use them is for the applications that don't need a 500MHz processor like all the pxa250 and 255s out there running at below 200MHz.

I would have to agree that most embedded systems do not use x86 processors.
Responsive Face Simulator
Google CIO Douglas Merrill Quits Becomes President of EMI
Intel Will Make a Push Into Pocket-Size Internet Devices
Err, Rollyo.com?
Brilliant approach to selling a house in a bad market
If you hesitate a lot, try climbing or ski mountaineering ;-)

Either one is easier than having a kid, though. Don't do that until after you've got a few businesses under your belt, if you can help it. Execution is a habit, IMHO. Hard to acquire but much easier the 2nd, 3rd, 4th times. Make it your habit and you will be better off regardless.

Oh, if I'd known back then... fuck, if I looked back on the opportunities missed (instead of the ones we capitalized upon) I'd slit my throat. But that gets back to the three important qualities for a (founder|mountaineer|parent):

1) good pain tolerance,
2) shitty memory,

...and I can't remember the other one. ;-)
After having read a few pages category theory somehow seems similar to OOP. As with OOP you package data with its operations (morphisms).

> Quoting Asperti and Longo [1]: “The basic premise of category theory
is that every kind of mathematically structured object comes equipped with a notion of
[ . . . ] transformation, called ‘morphism’, that preserves the structure of the object.” By
means of the categorical language one cannot express properties of the internal structure
of objects. The internal structure of objects is accessible only externally through the
morphisms between the objects.

What is described here sounds a lot like information hiding/encapsulation. Is category theory similar to OOP in this way?
Interesting that it was the CIO. That's an encouraging sign. Perhaps now they're going to try to figure out how to make something people want, instead of continuing to sue them.
Rollyo is about 4-5 years old and is the best known of these,. there are probably quite a few more. Will you be doing something different at all?

http://rollyo.com/
ah... I hate april fools. I'm always the fool. regardless. I posted good info. So why should I get modded down?
So you don't count iPaper as technology?
Scribd is just another company leveraging the internet delivering a service to their customers.

You mean like Amazon, or eBay, or Google?

None of those companies make much of anything either.

Good point on responsiveness, my experience is that even pain-in-the-ass customers are important. Sometimes they're the most important ones over the long haul. But you're still a pain in the ass ;-)
yeah, but TechCrunch is practically a gallery of fuckedness.
Stuck in a 3rd-world information vacuum? download real books for free...
When I was in China, getting books was just hell until a friend of mine sent me this link.
Ah. The beauty of logarithms.
Is it even legal to require a $100 entry fee under contest law?
Our idea is different from Rollyo

We drive the search 100%
You initiate the crawl; you actually chose your URLs and content not just filtering results from some domains, your repository grow over time totally under your control
You can crawl behind firewalls, this is practical for intranet
With the URL to your search, you can search from anywhere and share with anyone, no login necessary

Still to come: File search and Data search with a great emphasis on ecommerce
WhyTheLuckyStiff vs. Conrad Barski!

This battle will be truly epic.
Well it sure does sound like something DHH would say.
Why this method of voting works so well for photos on likebetter.com is that you can make split second decisions. I'm not convinced that this would be all that "fun".
OK. I agree that Facebook doesn't play well with anyone else. Not meaning to be contentious but I'm not sure if this can be classed as a failing us.

I have to strongly disagree that their implementations of existing functions are half-assed. I, and many people I know, communicate more with Facebook's messaging service than email service.

I would also argue that the user experience is considerably better than performing the same communications via email clients such as Gmail. Their photo sharing service is also highly adequate for my and other's needs. I have never considered creating a Flickr account because on the whole I think the centralization of features by Facebook outweighs any benefits provided by additional features in Flickr.

Perhaps you view these Facebook features as superfluous however for me they are the reason I use Facebook so much. I deliberately decide to message my friends using Facebook instead of email. I deliberately log in to Facebook to see if any of my friends have posted any new photos. The supposedly core features of Facebook like the profile and the wall are things that I rarely use.

I have a feeling that we may be 'violently' agreeing with each other.
Asperger's and IT: Dark secret or open secret?
Perfectstorm: RTS written in Common Lisp using OpenGL
The main difference: whether a site is public or not you can build a search for it, chose what content to include in your search, when to crawl it and who to share it with.
Scary thought: Maybe the Rust Belt is the whole U.S. now?
Google/Skype Acquisition or Partnership Imminent?
Quick feedback:

* I like the idea. Reminds me of Google's CSE tools, but with individual crawling control.

* I think you need to proofread the text on the main page a bit. Some of it doesn't parse correctly for me, for example: "You decide what sites to crawl indexed and search"

* A lot of your links on the right are 404 or missing.

* Your signup form does not accept emails with a "+" in them. So I cannot signup with my default email address. Please resolve this if you can.

* So the crawler itself has to be a local app? In other words, my local computer is doing the crawling? I had assumed the service was that your site would do the crawling based on the information I provided and on the schedule I wanted.

Seems like an interesting project, but you do need to work on the user-facing aspects a little to prevent people from being confused.

The layout is pretty unprofessional, so it doesn't encourage me to want to download an EXE client to run locally.
Sounds like an awesome idea, but you should really hire a designer who can focus on the interface.
damn, caught in the back thread! Thanks (sheepishly)
My beef with Scribd (and all other similar sites, including YouTube) is all those copyrighted stuff. Just go verify for yourself - you will find entire books there.

Yes, YouTube has established a "role model" here, but just because they got away with it - at least dumped any potential legal problems on Google - doesn't make it right. Google could still be held liable and it is certainly the case that YouTube has turned a blind eye to large scale copyright infringement.

I get the gnawing feeling that way too many start-ups are in this mode of "Let's see what we can get away with". That is sad.
The fact that mp3's are the default means that adoption of any new technology (no matter how good) will take longer than it should
This was an interesting, well written post. I look forward to reading more from this author (he only has 3 blog entries so far).

It's an especially interesting article in light of Intel releasing the Atom.
Yes, I wonder if they will eventually get involved with the Warner Music/Jim Griffin plan to charge for music at the ISP level. That's how most people I know would like to pay for music.
or maybe they are just trying to find a more efficient technical approach to tracking, catching, and suing people :)
you can't polish a turd. Just make sure your name isn't a turd and you'll be fine
Music 2.0 book - Gerd Leonhard
Not to be disrespectful but perhaps you shouldn't be using Hacker News to sell books.
2000 is the breaking point, very do-able... of course I would try to get the local press to cover it
That was a very subtle joke over the span of several years if so... I fell for it hook, line, and sinker with all of the easy mathematical notation. It preyed upon my desire for a language that would typeset and parallelize itself, so that I didn't have to run around with a hodgepodge of R, Python, and LaTeX to get my work done :-)
I just saw it on The Today Show.
Amazon's new text message shopping--from a brick and mortar, conveniently comparison shop by UPC
nickb is Enoch Root.
you should focus on this idea. SEO for "search behind your firewall" don't try to be generic. don't try to put a foot on rollio market.
I used Axis for some very minor work, and it wasn't too bad. I didn't get into SOAP at all, but it seemed like a good and (by java standards) lightweight way to turn a bunch of POJOs into web services quickly.

What are some of the bad implementation problems you've experienced or heard about? Btw, I'm definitely not asking this to challenge the truth of your statement (ie., I'm not looking for a response to pick apart and argue - I would genuinely like to hear about some of the pitfalls you've seen).
There is a quote I love from the movie "city slicker" that reminds me of this article

You know what the secret of life is?
No, what?
This.
Your finger?
One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and everything else don't mean shit.
That's great, but what's the one thing?
That's what you've got to figure out.
Dark secret? No way.

I can't even count on my fingers and toes the number of people I've worked with that have been either aspies or HFA... every single one of them has been someone I'd want on my team again. You give them a little direction and they will just take off.

The hardest part is containing them and stop them. They have a tendency to keep going when something is obviously not working or to tangent or drift and not realize it.
Adobe AIR for Linux Alpha
Game Neverending Rises From The Dead
Ahh but they don't have to be. Most small arm, xscale, mips, blackfin, etc cpus lack basic functionality like an MMU, DMA, bus trancievers, large cache, etc making the linux you have to run on them very crippled and the toolchains used to compile for them very specialized.

With the geode, you can have a standard distro and are just an apt-get or a yum away from software bliss. Also a geode at 500mhz with its on chip mmu and cache runs most apps many times faster than a multi gig arm, particularly when multitasking.

Its true that there aren't any geode imbued cell phones that I know of, but they are small enough, and can be made low power enough by slowing freq that its certainly possible. I'd like a cellphone running stock centos5.
It's like famous first sentences of classic novels - the sentence is famous because the novel was classic; a classic first sentence did not make the novel famous.
Frengo Launches Mobile Open Social Toolkit
The dentists will decide.

Technologies such as this one, that that do not threaten dentists' incomes, may succeed. But any technologies that threaten dentists' incomes, such as vaccines for tooth decay, inevitably fail.

Tooth decay vaccines have been under development since at least 1970. To the best of my knowledge none have come to market in the U.S. although the FDA approved human tests in 1983 and IIRC some have been introduced in Europe, esp. England.

We are promised a caries vaccine "real soon now". That is to say we are in the same situation we were 30 years ago: no tooth decay vaccine but plenty of promises. Isn't (dental) science wonderful!

The ADA recently refused to allow more graduates from dental schools despite the burgeoning demand for dentistry services. This guarantees that dental fees will rise rapidly in the next few years.

Yet another medical field that must be deregulated, dismantled and restructured.
> For graphics, i first tested SDL which turned out not to be hardware-acceleratable under X11.

Wait, what?
My fault, wrong thread.
So we've got a fuck (http://www.flickr.com/photos/doesrails/128015501/in/pool-can...) and a shit... what's next???
3) Balls?
Neat idea, but it's also been down every time I clicked so far. If you're working on fixing it at the moment, you should comment in here, so people know to come back.

It might be wise to invest in some load testing so you know in advance this won't happen when you get traffic at a larger scale.
I don't think you should condemn every company that raises material capital.

However, I know first hand that some companies definitely should not have raised capital, and were resting on the laurels of a previous success and a well-known name. These companies really haven't thought enough about what problem they're actually solving, and are almost arrogant about what the market really needs. "Of course the market will want this, because I'm awesome" syndrome.

In short, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater... there are plenty of companies that need that kind of capital that are doing great things. And if I had to guess, I'd bet that Scribd was one of them.
Im a virtualmin user, I love it, I use the GPL version as it's lighter and I need to squeeze out every cent of my server as memory is the big issue for my app.

The app I have running on it is purely search engine traffic driven by seo. I am top for the main 3 - 4 word terms, (suffering a slight drop with the latest end march google update) that said the next term were going after is the big one and will bring 4 fold the traffic we have now.

My position is this, if your not into seo and your doing a startup then you better have some nice friends, and hope to make the first page of TC etc. Else you will sit there with 50 hits a day and most of them will be from crawlers.

I have no 'nice friends' apart from my seo adviser. I'm lucky he is a good friend and trained me well. Now I have a site that has tremendous growth, targeted traffic that sticks about (and comes back) and absoulty zero effort wasted on pitching for editorial, advertising, other marketing, etc.

I could care less about word of mouth because it is very hit and miss. People only want to talk about you if you have upset them or if you have a real game changer. Competing or slogging it out in established markets, like music for example just doesn't get the masses enthused to enough to chat about (mind everyone will blog about you if TC did so that's a bonus of being T.cked.)

I often check my apps progress with compete and benchmark it against sites that are in the same market that are going for the big bucks, VC backing, big splashes of editorial on TC, advertising and generally hustling their way in, and while I am often behind there initial curves the encouraging thing is my traffic is constantly rising and Im nipping at there ankles as they dip after the sharp rises, while also building a large net to crawl the ocean of organic search traffic.

I also freelance, coding and SEO, and it's really amazing talking to potential clients that are working on startups, they are interested in me helping them with their apps, but when I say, look the best advice I can help you with is not coding but in getting your SEO sorted out - blank faces stare back. Just like all the examples given in this article, they are equally nonchalant.

The biggest laugh for me was a competitor who had made TC because it had been backed with 5 million USD or some other worthless currency and when I did the quick seo scan (10 secs work) the biggest laugh of my life (index=1 page).

Alas I don't expect that the startups I see here will change there focus and concentrate on SEO anytime soon, the general opinion that seems to be prevalent is that SEO is like web1, and social graphs and viral marketing will build the traffic.

That is a huge shame, I feel a huge empathy for the fellow entrepreneur's on this board, sharing many of the same trials and tribulations I feel like I also share some of the same genes, and this is nothing more than a little clan, and I want nothing more than to see my fellow clan members go out and change the world. For better and worse, that is model of creation and one bloody good reason to live.

Long live Virtualmin.
Lots of articles from the "Silicon Valley Product Group"
He was meaning 2d graphics
What would inspire you to work for someone?
A friend of mine has a very interesting project in the works and has been teaching himself Java to bring his process into a reality, but just isn't comfortable with his skill level in the language and has a large bulk of work to do in developing the business and doing further research on the product itself.

Recently he contacted asking if I knew or could help recruit a hacker who can assume the programming tasks under his wing and to work by his side in developing the system.

My problem is, I don't think sites like Monster and Dice have the sort of people he is looking for. They have the skills, but he is looking for a particular mindset (as well as other specifics).

Some of the things he stressed were that they should:

- Ideally be from Denver, CO or surrounding areas
- Be young
- Be fresh
- Be especially good with Java (damn good)
- Want a laid back atmosphere with LOTS of room to grow
- Want good compensation for their work (solid starting pay (very negotiable, with bonuses and raises from the get-go); he thinks (as I agree) that those who are the best only deserve the best.
- Can handle a fast-paced industry and like working 1-on-1 with the boss to bring solid formulas and ideas into a working reality quickly

This all brought me to wonder what I can do to help him find the people who meet those descriptions, and what he can do to make people think, "I really want to work at this place."

What do you guys think are the best ways to bring fresh, young, damn good talent to the table; and even more so, keep them there and keep them inspired?

PS: If you fall into this criteria or know someone who does, let me know. I can get you guys acquainted.
I thought it was determination and luck.
One thought.

What I dislike in this text is that it treats people with Asperger syndrome as people with a problem that needs to be addressed.

What if not Aspies are wrong, but rest of the world?

When I'm in a regular office the first thing that I notice is how unproductive an average worker is. Massive amounts of time burned in bureaucracy; hours wasted during the meetings etc., etc.
I am inspired to work for someone only if that someone is an accomplished figure in a field that matches my interests and as a result I can expect to learn a great deal from that someone.
3. We focused entirely on product/market fit.

I'm curious. In what way did you focus on product market fit? What signs did you look for to point you towards it? Seems to be a very important aspect of success (besides boldness).
I've implemented a small (in terms of number of supported calls) read-only web service which has SOAP+WSDL, REST/XML and REST/JSON frontends.

From the server development point of view: SOAP is a giant pain. Randomly selected SOAP implementations are just not likely to interoperate. We eventually coaxed PHP5's SOAP server stuff into talking to both .NET 2.0 and Java (with Netbeans 5.5's J2EE libs) clients - IIRC we recommend SOAP 1.0 for one, and SOAP 1.1 for the other.

A week after we finished Netbeans 6.0 was released, and the SOAP client stuff that's bundled with it wouldn't play well with our server.

From the client end: /if/ you can actually talk SOAP successfully, things work nicely. You just call the generated stubs and the RPC happens transparently. If I was calling our web service from C# I would choose SOAP every time.

The REST stuff would be a pain to use if you had to use the DOM to read the XML that comes back, because, well, the DOM is painful. If parsing what comes back isn't a pain, REST works well. For internal clients, we prefer REST/JSON with the standard PHP json parser.