skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I bet they offer less than $15 Billion.

Now, granted this purchase would align with their current business goals to cater to younger, hipper customers (hence their recent advertising shift) supporting their Zune and XBox businesses.

But why aren't they courting LinkedIn. LinkedIn has a more professional (read: worthwhile) business model, one that would actually gel with Microsoft. Additionally, the purchase of LinkedIn would complement their business service offering and allow them to expand their B2B business to compete with IBM, especially in the small business area. I'm baffled by this one...
Oh boy, now people who don't give a crap about technology can enjoy Michael Arrington's idle speculation and ad hominem attacks.
I like this solution, as it sends a message to the roommate that contracts represent an escalation. The verbal agreement was made with the assumption that there would be no need for legal fees. By introducing contracts, the roommate has changed his side of the bargain, so the bargain needs to be renegotiated.

For a dormroom friendship price, he should get a dormroom friendship product. The contract indicates he is expecting a professional developer product, so he should expect to pay a professional developer price.
Please let us know how this shakes out.

Fortune favors the bold.
Facebook To Announce Safety And Privacy Deal With 49 States
I agree. I was just meaning it seems 37signals life experience is especially limited.
The one thing that stands out in this analysis is the author's almost casual statement that Flicker users regard "Flickr as their property and are resistant to change of any kind." Given the recent flap over adding video to the site, which is an individual user's choice, what would kind of noise would people make if ads started popping up on Flickr even if people could opt-out? The issue of how user's seemingly arbitrary whims may obstruct monetization of community sites seems to begging for further analysis.
17 essential online tools to maximize personal and business productivity
You picked a pretty good post for a first comment. Welcome!
PostgreSQL for many reasons. If you use MySQL check out http://sql-info.de/mysql/gotchas.html to stay on top of potential problems.
However, being true to his word needn't include signing anything.
this is certainly true when you're considering the finest of algorithmic fu,
(yay, that rhymes!)
on the other hand, it worth mentioning that when you break out a computerize theorem prover to verify properties of say, a 15 line assembly bootloader, that winds
up taking ~ 15k lines of code in the COQ theorem prover http://coq.inria.fr/
(granted a lot of it was in libraries that were reusable)

as far as I can tell, proof engineering is the most technically challenging form of software engineering
Here's a "zen" answer: do the right thing at the right time. Practicing zazen/meditation can give you the balance needed to see what the right thing is...
I find it interesting that some people still pay attention to what Henry Blodget has to say with regard to valuations. The "25X revenue" as a generic formula is nonsense, not even worth debating. This type of thinking is what inflated the first dotcom bubble.
most of the significant apps are cross-social-network and their value is not based on Fb alone.
hmmm. you're maybe right.
problem is that's really the shortest way to describe it accurately
While this is a neat project, what does Python gain by being hosted in the Common Lisp interpreter? Is there an extensive library as is available for languages hosted in the JVM or the Microsoft CLR?
I think it depends on what you mean by "nice designs." Personally, I have a (pretty low) bar that's set in my head. If the design doesn't meet that bar, the website gets relegated to the "mom and pop" bin. If it passes the bar, I will usually give it more consideration.
The word "workaholic" has several senses. The one they mean is someone who works long hours but gets little done.

Can you cite a definition of "workaholic" that has this sense? I can't find one (in a few minutes of googling). The definition that seems to come up everywhere is "compulsion or addiction to work". If they're arguing from that then it's not tautological.

The closest thing I found to the sense you mention is in the second-last paragraph of the (rather good) Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workaholic. Which makes me imagine the following thread: "Ask YC: Are you a "bulimic" or "relentless" workaholic?" :)
Quasi-medical record keeping applications like this are boring. SUPER boring. Constantly rethinking your career as a programmer boring. French movie character experiencing existential despair boring.

Nobody outside of the medical world could possibly care about this stuff or get excited to work on it. Hardly anyone INSIDE the medical profession cares about it. Entire entry-level careers have been created for ths type of thing (medical records specialist) because nobody who can do something else wants to do it. I'm surprised your programmer ONLY wanted $6900 a month. Boredom is the real reason she didn't get much done and eventually left. Also, let me guess... she also hated your guts because she was sitting here working on this super boring application while you were out doing stuff she perceived as not very important.

This isn't meant to be insulting. I had an experience similar to yours. Nearly identical, aside from the duration and money involved. I didn't get paid as much and I bailed after 4 months. We even were using Python! I was the programmer. Other person was a doctor. Building some sort of medical record keeping startup thing. He was paying me ok, but not great. I had some laughably low percentage of the company. After the first two weeks, I alternated between wanting to kill him and wanting to kill myself. It sucked that bad. Medical record keeping is insanely boring. The programming issues are equivalently boring. It is like doing your taxes multiplied by 1000. It sucks. SUCKS. The hardest part of your programmer's day was probably mustering up the psychic energy needed to even fire up her text editor. I'm almost having a nervous breakdown right now just thinking about it. You medical people have really gotten yourself into a record-keeping pickle.

Your only hope is to learn programming because any programmer that is any good will want to disembowel themselves working on this sort of project. There is a real opportunity here, because all this work is going to end up being done by huge mega consulting firms who specialize in these sorts of boring recordkeeping problems. They are going to charge $69,000,000 per month to do this. The thing is, they don't really want to do it either, so I'm sure they will gladly pay you at least $6,900,000 for the right to license your finished software. That is reality.
Thanks for feedback!
1.I am aware of that problem, and i'm thinking about ways to make adding tags easer, like suggesting tags according to content. Your suggestion is interesting, I'll consider it definitely.
2. You're right. I added the link on the homepage
This solves a non-existing problem. Regexps are hardly a "headache" for any reasonably good programmer.

This is also a dupe - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=149631
agreed. bug added in todo list
The most amazing part is the end of post in the slashdot.

"No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame."

7 years later when we look back, it look like iPod team really just worked on some consequential features. But at the same time, how do I know what I am working on is not inconsequential features?
Why wasn't it called Cylon?
Both. I'm a big fan of what Paul said (Paul of biblical fame :) ) He was all about "All things in moderation". The idea that even the best things in life can be detrimental if you go overboard with them is probably the single best guiding principle I have found by which to live.

Sure, a week of coding without peeking your head out of your room isn't a bad thing per-se but balance that with some socialization the next week. Things tend to run in seasons and cycles for people like us who can get lost in our current obsession. I think it's ok to dive into a mad rush to finish a project or an idea, just be intentional about pulling back and balancing that out with broader things when you are done.

I tend to find that reminding myself to try and focus on meeting somebody else's need allows me to enjoy social occasions more, as odd as that sounds. Letting somebody else complain to me about their week for 15 minutes might not be all that interesting but being able to serve somebody else in that way can actually be very fulfilling and as a whole, looking at social interactions from that perspective can give you a whole new outlook on things. (again, within balance)
I like the concept! Tags have never made sense to me because I may describe very similar things using very different tags depending on my mood that day, what I happen to be thinking about, or any other external influences. But if there are designated "tags" for each concept then your bookmarks really are better organized.

Definitely a good job overall!
Yahoo owning Flickr allows them to dominate the photo sharing market ... just as google owning YouTube..

- owning something that has a moat (its user base) is definitely worth a lot, I put Flickr at 1.6bn
The voice of doubt ("imaginary issues") is the only thing that can help correct the wrong course. If you ignore it now, it will be back when you retire...
Agreed. Regexs are not very difficult to write if one is a good programmer and understands what they are searching for.
"Rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men."
Douglas Bader
I am just afraid what he is doing is creating another tech bubble artificially or assisting creating a bubble. It reminds me all things happened in 10 years ago in dotCom bubble. And I would rather concentrate in making what people wants instead of flipping a startup.
they've been courting, in fact the 240mm investment made by them already was a gesture of good will towards FB from MSFT
Facebook Self Service Advertising SUCKS
> It would be great to have a tool that visualizes existing REs, I think.

This one is pretty cool to play around with, not sure how useful it is in practice though: http://osteele.com/tools/reanimator/
Why does MS seem so desperate to make a move for the sake of making a move right now?
It feels as if the failure of Vista has shaken their confidence in their ability to deliver software anymore so now they are trying to become a player in a different field to compensate.
It feels weird to me, I wonder what's been going on behind closed doors over there.
Correct. But there's not a clear legal agreement here. Returning the profits (which are minuscule in this case) simplifies matters substantially.
Agreed about the linked in point. FB brand would suffer from day one under MS. Linked in brand would not. Simple as that.
Great concept! Certainly does help to structure tags that can grow out of control in any tag cloud. I'm wondering if you've considered building this as an API or dev library so that it can be used by developers not just for bookmarking but also for tagging in general. But then, where's the money in that, eh? (^_^)
China refuses to guarantee open Internet during Olympics
Why not? :)

Target users are people who need more precise way to tag. Wikipedia covers concepts from various fields..
I wonder who originally said that.

http://books.google.com/books?id=9-9D_5wK01QC&pg=PA87...
YOU own all the rights to the code, since you created it - even if they paid you.

Are you absolutely certain of that?

I'm not an attorney myself (nor am I trying to be flippant or argumentative), but it seems the combination of verbal contract, his continuing to do the work specified by his roommate, and his acceptance of payment may create problems for the O.P.

Lawyers are assholes - DON'T let him bully you into signing anything.

Very true: standard legal M.O. on the first contract document is to try to get away with anything.

I.e., they will expect you to push back and remove some terms (and if you don't, that's a bonus win for them).
Charity, probably not. Incredibly complex tax reduction plan, sure.
Beautiful work. Can be useful for RE compiler makers perhaps...
Of course here the questions becomes: how to you quantify the relevance of genes in a subjects lifestyle choice? That is to say: do someones genes play a part in the lifestyle choices they make and if so, could you not say genes are at the root of the story in either case?
just because people don't agree on what moral knowledge is true does not make the term meaningless

Words or phrases only have meaning when there is a shared understanding of what they mean. GLARPF people who JAVARA understand this SLFARL VERORLRA when they SFLLKKLSA. You can't agree to that statement because it has no meaning but at the same time you can't disagree with it. If you define love as the sky and then say "the sky is love" there is no meaning to those words. Basically defining terms is semantically identical to gibberish. IMO, this is why people gave up on philosophy as a science.

PS: I don’t disagree with your original statement because it lacked meaning.
Most of the time in my experience, the "crisis mode" resulted from poor planning. The leadership tried to fix the situation by convincing the employees to work longer hours, which invariably made things far worse in the long run.

The reality is that very rarely did the longer hours help to get things done more quickly, instead the sweatshop mentality resulted in more bug-hunting and less progress.

I have not yet in over ten years encountered a situation where the long hours approach actually worked, though the management thought that it was working because people were working long hours churning out lots of code.
Thanks for the info, this is really useful. Currently I'm using mostly Python, but a parallel Ruby install is not out of the question.
It's funny, I think I have made all the mentioned mistakes up to number 8 over my 10 years of web development. I learned the hard way, and I can tell you that those are really great advice.

Point 1, 2, 4 and 12 are especially important. Developing a prototype quickly and and including the end user as early as possible make a huge difference in the success level of a project.
Take a look at our open-source tool, http://hounder.org

Among other sites, it powers wordpress.com (over 3M weblogs indexed).

We are looking for feedback and feature suggestions, you can also join our discussion group: http://groups.google.com/group/hounder
I work in post production for video. I remember a few years a go when the movie Twister came out how all of a sudden everyone wanted a tornado in their TV commercials. This year, it's super slo-o water simulations because that's the great new thing software knows how to do.
People are fickle and fad-driven.
CMU students create HandTalk glove, which translates sign language into speech (2 min. video)
For one thing I'd be interested to see if Python runs any faster when it's hosted in Common Lisp, since it will presumably reap the benefits of a native compiler that produces machine-code instead of byte-code.
i dont have the #lang slideshow module, is it supposed to come separately or only with the newest download?
You may laugh at me now, but I'm 100% dead serious when I say that this sort of thing will be a HUGE problem if BCI 's become popular in the future.
Y Combinator Command Line Search Utility Version 1.2 Released
To keep your Y Combinator dataset of posts ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=182374 ) and users ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=183706 ) current and indexed, try our command line and web service search utilities. This 15KB archive is available by accessing http://www.rushy.com/shetland-pub20080508.tar.gz
There is shared understanding of what 'morality' means. There is also disagreement. The same can be said of a wide variety of other words, such as 'christianity', 'freedom', or 'liberal'. None of these words are meaningless or useless in conversation despite the existence of some disagreement about their meanings.
Slony. It is far from perfect though. But at least it is a good and stable way to have a backup database ready.
At a certain point dvcs has to be somewhat centralized. If I'm managing an app in git and need to push to production, it's much easier to pull from a service than to try to setup something that allows production to pull from my development machine when it comes time to deploy.
Yes, I am absolutely certain. I am not a lawyer but I was an independent programmer for 6 years and successfully resolved 3 disputes over IP in my favor.

Most programmers want to avoid any sort of conflict and confrontation, especially with lawyers. You're correct in assuming that this may create problems. The potential problem in this situation is that the lawyer dad is going to be an asshole and try to intimidate the programmer. This sucks, and the programmer should maybe back out of the project if he wants to avoid this.
The article that the link references is much more interesting than the post itself.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/12/080512fa_fact_...
I've also heard a similar saying, without a religious basis: "Fortune favours the bold"
What about "A social bookmarking extension for wikipedia, attaching bookmarks to different wikipedia articles."
Really, really nice. Excellent work, and I especially like the toolbar button to make bookmarking easy. I'm seriously thinking about using this over del.icio.us.

One quick question, is there a way to import del.icio.us links?
Interesting. I hadn't read the background of WFH. I guess in this case we're talking about contract work, because there's no physical office or purchase of equipment (two tests that are typically applied in determining employee vs. contractor). That means that all of the created IP belongs to the author. (Although, again, IANAL. :)
OSGi for Beginners
Ask HN: Geocoding for film/tv/fiction locations, historical events
I am wondering has anyone built a database for the geocodings of historical events. To stretch it a bit more, how about locations that are referred to real world in films, tv or fictions?

I started to think about this problem because I heard a pedicab rider in NYC telling his passengers why this location is famous because it was shown in what tv shows. Then I started to wonder what happened if I can type in a location, then all events happened in past, real or fictional can be drawn up? Or course for historical event, no one will record the locations until the event becomes a past tense. But I think film, tv, fictions may be interesting.
I don't think your roommate is being malicious. He probably told his dad about the project and his dad being the lawyer that he is, said "hey, have him sign this contract." And because it was a 17 page contract, your friend didn't even read it.

I would have an open & honest conversation with him about what your vision is for the software and what expectations you have for compensation, including equity.

If you can't have this discussion, walk away. It's a good indicator that you two won't be able to work out tougher problems in the future.

PS: This conversation doesn't have to be a tense situation. In fact, if you are excited about the future of this software, communicate it and maybe he'll catch the fever.
Yeah, it can get crazy sometimes, but I think it's fun still. What would you suggest that is better?
PostgreSQL. There's actually a couple of good MySQL v. PostgreSQL threads on News.YC today; check them out.
Absolutely. By networking I (I'm the author) meant putting yourself in situations where you will meet the kind of people you want to be working with and become friends with them.

If you go there with a pure agenda of "recruiting a co-founder", people will sniff you out and you won't make any friends. But if you go there to meet people in the community you probably will, incidentally, meet some who might end up being your cofounders.

Daniel
Am I the only one who is amazed that Compete has Flickr receiving same amount of unique visitors per month as Facebook!?

Every single one of my friends uses Facebook, yet I'm one of the few who use (and even know of) Flickr.
Undercover Shoppers Find it’s Increasingly Difficult for Children to Buy M-Rated Games
Nice gig when you can measure your productivity based on how many feed items you read. I guess.
Thank you. I did my best to make it as simple as possible.
Nobody has written a sarcastic comment about MS Word that made this all possible, yet. Strange.
I'm glad you like it! Thanks for feedback!
stupid nytimes urls... mods can kill this
Yeah, I've heard a lot of great things about PostgreSQL. I'll check those out. Thanks.
I agree with you that the author is overly negative. If github provides some value to some people, more power to them.

At the same time, I object to "doesn't know the value of time."

As an independent coder, I can turn two hours into a working Trac + git, or I can turn $22/month into a github + lighthouse setup, but depending on the context, it could be very difficult to turn an arbitrary two hours into $22. It's not always possible to just bill another two hours. That asymmetry is why it's sometimes better to DIY than to pay cash.
Cool! Let us call it that. People underestimate the importance of a catchy name.

Steve Yegge : How to Ignore Marketing and Become Irrelevant in Two Easy Steps
http://blip.tv/file/319044/ [video]
Personally, I love the UI, awesome design, awesome execution. Bookmarklet is sweet as well.

But, I don't know why I need to use this? Why will this help me? What would I store in there?

Currently, my bookmarks menu bar is pretty sufficient.. Is the idea to bookmark stuff I don't know a lot about so I can learn about it via wikipedia?
what sources of revenue does facebook have at the moment?

has it actually made ANY money yet?
Here are some rules of thumb that may help guide your approach.

In my experience, you need to divide up your problem into two different issues to solve: design and branding. Design for functionality and smoothness of user experience. Brand so that your audience relates well to your product.

A lot's been written about good design. Yes, teens definitely respond to it. If a site's hard to use, they have the attention span of hummingbirds and if you cause an engagement failure because of poor usability, they'll be gone and won't return. Above all else, focus on making your site easy to use and the user experience seamless.

Branding depends on your audience's demographic. Most teens have developed a strong enough, though flexible, identity to be attracted to some things and repelled by others based on their perceived sense of who they are in their greater and lesser social ecosystems. You might be interested in reading everything danah boyd (intentionally lowercase) ever wrote, most especially "Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace" here:
http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/ClassDivisions.html

In general, people, no matter what their age group, adapt to symbolic systems they're immersed in. Kids in gradeschool can glance at a page in a textbook and from the fonts, point size, layout, graphics, tell you precisely whether it's a third grade book or a fourth grade book, and therefore whether it's for them or not. (The same goes for someone looking at a full page ad in The New Yorker - font, point size, color choices, etc..) Higher income demographic kids are exposed to high end design by the time they're in their teens and have a more positive response to it than kids without the opportunity and exposure to design. In my own work with teens, non-college bound teens find Facebook's design BORRRRRING! [picture an entire class of kids singsonging that in unison] They tolerate a _lot_ of busy-ness and chaos on a page and will jump onto MySpace whenever your back is turned.
Why do all browsers and email clients suck?
That's crazy that there were changes to query results from such a minor revision. I haven't experienced anything like that, but maybe my unit testing could be better.