skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Your title is misleading vis-a-vis your "real question." They aren't even in the same ballpark. and it's ridiculous really - it's the fallacy that "Just because I don't click and my friends don't click, then no one clicks."

Here's your question re-phrased:

Ask YC: Does spam really work?
The real question is: When was the last time you were inspired to buy something by spam email?

I can't recall any time that has happened to me. I also have a friend who has spent a couple hundred on spam at one point, without really seeing results. With this bit of disappointment in mind, my question is - does spam on the web work?
I hope you're right; but this does look like an attempt by an entrenched monopolist to limit competition by killing an emerging market.

Too bad we don't enforce the laws that we have on that topic.
Don't hate, he's just sharing his love with the rest of us.
This company will never mend its ways. I hope (and I know it may just be a hope what with its billions of cash reserves) it dies a really painful death for trying to be against progress almost all the time. Control freaks.
You forget that you had to press "shift" to type "N". The number of key presses are the same ;-)
When you wrote your app for Nokia and SE did you write for MIDP?
so you get 1 hour of sleep?
I think it was a combination of:

* A better search algorithm than the competition

* Lack of paid-for search rankings, which were common-place previous to Google

* Tasteful, lightweight, fast design with a lack of intrusive banner ads

All 3 are largely taken for granted these days.
No, he spends that one hour spamming sites with a url to his poor splash page.
Correct, both. I sleep each 11th hour of the week, now and then even underwater.

Really though, I'm reaching out in hopes that a moderate yet credible background in programming, and my eye for solid detail, might appeal, in a pinch, to a few of us here.

Hey guys, spammers are people, too. Write your congressman!
Hmm. Somehow, I can't see Apple ever producing an "ultra cheap" computer. I hope you're right though. Who knows, maybe they'll make something 2-3 times the size of the iPhone... and a third of the price?
What do you know?
Seriously? That looks pretty easy to avoid.
OK, this might be a really stupid question. If so, I apologize, but...

What happens if Disqus goes out of business? Do all of your comments evaporate? Or are the comments stored locally somehow?
They would sell because their product has no demonstrable value at this point.
Once they secure their position, I wonder if MS will start imposing comparable constraints to the future OLPCs (which they should have never been allowed to put their grubby hands on)?
Also, I wonder who in the world their PR dude is and if he sleeps most all days... In any case, they really should be working on improving their public appearance through their policies rather than trying to impose restrictions on their potential customers. Dumb.
Google pulls a copy cat on facebook + myspace
You claim "non-falsifiability" for your opponent's claim

No, I said the opposite.

You just seem to want to avoid meeting the argument

I didn't want to argue at all. I wanted to assert just like the parent asserted. We both asserted and now it's over.
More importantly, Powerset is currently only indexing content that is actively checked for correctness--content which contains very little deliberately misleading information, duplicate content, or SPAM.

Do you remember when you could tag your content with keywords and the search engine would naively trust that those keywords were relevant? I think Powerset will only excel in domains where that kind of trust makes sense--closed and/or heavily moderated communities.
I'm always greatly amused (and a little confused) when anyone mentions Apple as a force of good in the face of Microsoft.

What, exactly, did Apple ever do to make you believe that they are a benevolent force in the technology industry?
Is there anything there that does not apply equally to women?
Why Filtering is the Next Step for Social Media
Ask YC: Writing a business plan?
Does anyone know or have any resources they like to reference when writing up business plans?

We are very early stage and don't have an alpha for our web product yet.

EDIT: we are planning on doing this so we have something to show VC/Angels when we seek funding. which we are needing (somewhat) now.
"Life will test the man to see if he’s willing to put loyalty to others ahead of loyalty to his principles."

But one of my principles is loyalty to people I love!

Man? Not man? Man?

Oh, man! My head asplode.
#1 - That is what your VCS history is for.
#2 - Choose good variable names and you don't need these comments.
#3 - Use built-time templating to do variable substitution in your CSS as part of your build process.
#4 - Nonsense.
#5 - Nonsense / That is what your VCS is for.
Only a non-story if you believe ultra cheap PCs will continue to have limited capabilities. This is Microsoft's way of insuring that the low-cost machines remain limited enough to where the price of Windows doesn't make the system significantly more expensive for the consumer than Linux. Luckily, the cat is already out of the bag to some degree...the Eee PC has been quite successful in its Linux incarnation.
This is getting up-voted? Ugh.
Interestingly, the casino's financial interest, since it makes its money only on the rake, is to have as many players or bots as possible. In fact, from their perspective, an infinity of bots battling each other should be just fine--bots scale better than humans. From Ultimate bet's perspective, bots are great:

It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until UltimateBet is rich.
I seem to have a whole schoolyard of inner children running around in there. Does that count?

More seriously:

"But merely adequate solutions (what engineers call "kluges") -- like the awkward, injury-prone human spine, good enough but far from perfect -- can stick around indefinitely if better solutions are too far away on the evolutionary landscape."

Compare this to the dictum, "Do the simplest thing possible that works."

Are "merely adequate solutions " always kluges? I think not.
All I meant here was that they're a competitor. So if Microsoft gratuitously breaks some range of devices, users will have an alternative.

But Apple is a more benevolent force than Microsoft in that they owe their market share to the quality of their products rather than to taking over the PC standard from IBM.
What do you expect to gain from a business plan?

Keep working on your product, get a user base, and worry later about verbalizing the specifics of your projected market share and what day exactly you plan to go cash flow positive.

Sure, a business plan will force you to really question what your value proposition is, and how you plan to differentiate your product, but that can all be done by creating a brief outline.

But if you must: http://www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness/resources/startups/bu...
This isn't "evil", it's basic market segmentation. Microsoft doesn't want to limit the capabilities of any device, but if it sets the price of XP to a level that works for ultra-cheap vendors, it surrenders a vast amount of money to companies like Dell.

Like any business, Microsoft wants Dell to pay what XP is worth to Dell, and Asus to pay what XP is worth for the Eee. It can't simply charge one amount to Dell and another to Asus. So instead it uses arbitrary specifications to create a category of XP license that is unattractive to Dell and cost-effective for Asus.

You can argue about the ethics of this up and down, but when you start looking for it, you see that we're awash in market segmentation. Often, the most egregious examples of it actually have consumer benefits: take airfare, where the total ripoff fares I pay for last-minute business travel effective subsidize tickets for tourists who would not otherwise be able to fly.
Powerset has many signs of being doomed. Natural language search, based on "commercialized" research, taking a long time to launch, talking a lot before doing it.
Write a business plan for the experience.
Not that many people will be reading it.
Write it for yourself, and for just exploring your monetization options.

For writing a business plan, try the book Hurdle (OOS on Amazon at the moment) or try the following from the SBA:
http://www.sba.gov/smallbusinessplanner/plan/writeabusinessp...
we want something to show potential investors.
Kindergarden sure has progressed since last time I went there!
Free and free alternative - http://www.mnemosyne-proj.org/principles.php

Comparative review - http://www.nihongoperapera.com/spaced-repetition-memory-soft...
Ask YC: Can someone recommend a Ted.com-like video player platform? 
I am looking to deliver lots of video lectures and wanted to see if there was an existing solution as a video player platform. It could be for pay, but ideally open source.

I like the Ted.com- elegant interface with large screen playback, and chapter-marking technology that lets users find/skip to key moments in lectures.

Let me know if you need more clarification. Thank-you.
It's a two way street - a long discussion on a topic with a specific keyword can hurt your ranking for that keyword if the discussions aren't using the phrase you're targeting.

I love the quick and easy functionality that Disqus has and am using it on a few of my blogs. I'd like to set it up for my companies web properties but am reluctant because we already have our own login and user systems.
Mmm, sure. That and a pair of testicles.
I'd have to think that they are working on an API solution that will have MT and WordPress plugins that use it...The JS problem is just too big not to be addressed.
Obviously it's working. Anyone using PPC seriously is tracking ROI on their keywords and if they weren't getting a profitable return, they wouldn't be buying keywords.
Google Video
It's actually surprising how terrible the front page articles are on a weekend. Among the trash today are this tired rehash of useless proverbs, a PDF presentation of UNIX commands, and a pop psychology article from the LA Times.
Investors don't typically look at business plans. They look at your elevator pitch and about a 10 page PPT slide highlighting your main points: your technology, your team, and the market.
Let me add two more:

<Alt> <.> brings out the last argument of the last command, and can be pressed multiple times.

<Alt> </> prints the contents of the cwd, or the directory from the path you're typing.
I have coded my own blog in the past, and yeah, after a while it's boring and so I just use Blogger now. But you can stick comments on more than just blog entries.

At least I was under the impression that you could put Disqus comments on anything really (is that not true?). It would be trivially easy to make a site like HN... just a list of links and with disqus comments for each of them. I am working on a project right now where people can suggest strategies for something and others can comment on them. Disqus would be an easy fit there as well.

You could host your own photos with some quick gallery code too, but why not let Flickr do it? I think Disqus is in the same category.
Good points. One that's not really mentioned is that beginning CS students often want to start learning a language that will make them employable, right away. (Or, their parents want them to.) I know professors get a lot of pressure to teach Java instead of, say, Scheme or ML. Python offers a way out of that, by leaving room in the language for illustrating different CS concepts clearly, but also dangling that carrot of employability -- see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=181676.
Sequoia has some interesting bullet points (right side of page): http://www.sequoiacap.com/ideas/

Granted, most online business won't meet all of those requirements, but they also aren't likely to be funded by Sequoia.
Look at Viddler (http://www.viddler.com). You can put markers in the video progress bar indicating various chapters, and other supplemental information, such as lecturer names, etc. For an example of large sized playback with markers, check out http://tv.winelibrary.com.
You're joking!
Definitely need to work on the elevator pitch.
A Social Network Scramble | Technology Blog and more
I wonder if doing jumping jacks on the bed counts.

Talk about cabin fever. I don't think I could do it.
What? All you need to become an authority on personal development is to have been a software engineer? Okay, I'll bite:

How to Be a Manly Man:

1. 100 pushups. In a row. While chugging beer.

2. Laugh at other 'men' who enjoy romantic comedies.

3. You must have enough chest hair to stuff pillows.

4. Write a web application in machine language.

5. Put your children first. Until they get in the way of your principles. Then put the little buggers up for adoption.

6. Be confident. It worked for the president when he invaded Iraq.

7. Make real decisions decisively. It worked for the president when he invaded Iraq.

8. Die well. Don't make huge gasping sounds when you go, that'll just make you look wimpy. Instead, why not place a broadsword across your chest?

9. Write essays with empty platitudes about how to be a manly man.

I stopped at 9 instead of 10, because I firmly believe that real men believe in quality over quantity. Oh, in case you're interested, I'm available for personal development consulting...
That's reasonable. While Apple may not be a force for good, competition certainly is.
So, two possible motivations come to mind:

1. This is part of the push for Vista over XP -- computers than can run Vista must run Vista, otherwise, XP is offered to avoid forfeiting the market to Linux.

2. This is a precursor to a campaign to cast Linux as a cheap operating system for low-quality computers. Hardware manufacturers can't resist offering these Ubiquitous Linux PCs, but if there's this extra incentive to keep the specs tight enough that these things can't quite be used as general-purpose computers, that can theoretically trap Linux for consumers in a sort of technological ghetto.

Or, since the left hand and right hand appear to be barely on speaking terms inside Microsoft these days, one hand might really be earnestly pushing for #1, while the other hand cackled and bought in based on #2, and thus they agree.
It's a funneling thing - 10000 people see the ad, 100-300 people click through, 2-3 people complete a transaction. A/B testing on ad copy and landing pages can fine tune the process.

Check out AzoogleAds.com, ShoeMoney.com, etc.
Thank you!!! Why couldn't this be done in normal HTML?
Thirded. I've used them for much longer than I can remember, and they have never ever let me down.
You know, I remember back when PDF links used to seem like torture. And yet, this one is like a breath of fresh air.

(Part of the reason is that PDF has been around long enough that better tools have evolved to replace the astoundingly awful Adobe Acrobat of yore. Thank you, Apple Preview! Thank you, Foxit Reader! Thank you... um, whoever wrote that Linux PDF reader that I can't remember the name of, but which comes with Ubuntu and just works!)
It's interesting that the limited specs don't mention RAM or processor speed, and don't rule out solid-state drives. A small screen and 40-80 GB storage could be a pretty sweet machine, with or without a touchscreen -- the price for these laptops could just as easily drop to $99, where the cost of Windows is a serious problem, or rocket up to $800, adding wild custom hardware and tweaking the OS significantly to accommodate it. This looks like a move that could have a ton of unintended consequences.
Clearly, CSS is crying out for a good IDE. Not the Dreamweaver/WYSIWYG variety, but serious text editing features that are pretty standard to programming IDEs.
That´s right, I think there´s also a hybrid, probably like banner advertising, google adwords, amazon recommendations and gmail, which is showing you ads for things you might be interested in but not necessarily actively seeking.

When you see an ad for coke on the street there is just some probability you are thirsty or will remember coke when you become thirsty, with adwords and other kinds of contextual advertising there is also a probability you might be interested in what the advertiser is presenting you, so they might just hit a need or making you aware of it, and not really creating it as in creating demand.
Is Microsoft stalking Powerset's search technology?
I had not read these proverbs before and found some real insight to them and points I had not considered.
"Investors don't typically look at business plans."

That's only going to be true if you're making something like a website where the market and the monetization strategy are limited to a few well-understood choices. If your business is something like, for example, selling handicapped-accessible home swimming pools to parents of children with disabilities then a business plan is key.
I was involved in a fairly elaborate pokerbot effort. Believe me, the mechanics of playing the game are the easy part. The hard part is writing the poker logic. Check this out if you want an intro to the "basic" concepts:

Lokibot: http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~jonathan/Grad/papp/thesis.html

The bot described in that paper lost about 8c a hand at the $1 tables. After extensive modifications, we got it to the point where it was losing about 2c a hand. This when Bush made poker illegal in the US, and we killed the project.
Personally, I'd just remote desktop into a stray Windows machine unless I absolutely had to have it onboard. I don't know that I'd want the added load from Wine on a lightweight Linux laptop.

Those forthcoming 9" Linux Eees for $500 with 20GB SSDs look really enticing. Emacs + Firefox + a terminal is really all you need.
Apple hasn't shown the slightest interest in the market. Their idea of a lightweight computer starts at $1800.

Meanwhile, Linux is eating their lunch in this segment.
Show your love or hate for companies...
Just found this cool little site www.pingmycompany.com where you can add your comments on any firm. Very simple site without any signups..

I dont know how long will they last but cool...
Coming up soon in my blog, "How To Be An Asshat"
"... What happens if Disqus goes out of business? Do all of your comments evaporate? ..."

A quick look at the website would reveal, "No" ~ http://disqus.com/help/#faq-6

I use Disqus because it gives me
"the freedom to leave" at anytime

Understand that data "Lock-in" is the new "Lock-out".
If Disqus does collapse, I still have my data because I have access to it now. To understand why this is important read about "The zen of free" ~ http://asay.blogspot.com/2006/06/simon-phipps-on-zen-of-free... by Simon Phipps.
Well, not all their money came from within, I am just saying they likely had an easier time getting money as they have a proven record of building stuff that gets bought
Simon Phipps on "The Zen of Free" (OSBC London)
Very innovative idea, and a good tool for assessment!
Phew! Well, at least somebody still has a clue!

Thanks for the update.
Sounds a cool tool, will help firms to improve.....
good site! Will work both for marketing and for bringing positive changes.
A couple of my rules for startups
I found this very interesting as it seems true for many business in general, especially in my humble experience.
Hey, Barack Obama started preparing in Kindergarten to become President. Kindergarten's no time for slacking.
Integration: the filtering of source code revisions
sweet app. anyway to pull in fb friends?
I've tested some of my SVG demos with FF 3 and they run much faster than with FF 2 (I think that's due to Cairo being integrated into Firefox 3). Opera and Safari are very fast compared to FF 2, too.

As for feature completeness I agree with you. The Firefox SVG team is very small and not funded by the Mozilla corporation (at least that was the case last year when I talked to one of its members) - the SVG standard, on the other hand, is HUGE.
"What, exactly, did Apple ever do to make you believe that they are a benevolent force in the technology industry?"

Make really nice products.
You also get no loan from a bank or (free) state financing without a business plan.

They don't invest their money in hot air :-).
"... Just found this cool little site www.pingmycompany.com ... I dont know how long will they last but cool ..."

You haven't been on HN long? Do you work for zigron? An associate maybe? Blatant plugs like this post deserve a more skeptic view. The app works. No clean urls. I have a problem in submission of companies without knowing who is submitting the negative/positive vote. No transparency and it is easy to rig. Did pg really vote in favour of HN? ~ http://72.232.232.130/pingmycompany/ping_sheet.php?company_i...
Omnivisio, (http://www.omnisio.com/) allows you to annotate and add comments to the video.
Which would you rather have: Gecko/Webkit embedded in an Emacs buffer, or an Emacs/Vim buffer embedded in Firefox? I've seen some stabs at both, but neither really Done Right.
Not if you're using Safari!
Ask YC: Project Management?
I never deliver any custom software that I develop on time. The clients never complain about the result, though. But they are unhappy because I miss the deadline.

Do you guys always meet your deadline? Any suggestions, advice, or pointers? Thanks!
Will Google Join the Crowd With A "Friend Connect" Platform?
So long as you're writing the business plan with the purpose of helping you think through your new venture, rather than with the purpose of being able to drop it off John Doerr's lap and have him be, like, "Sweet plan, dude, here's three million dollars to go make it happen," it's a good idea. But be careful about writing the perfect business plan without working on your product simultaneously; business plans go through many revisions and iterations, just as do most software development projects.

Having said that, I'm one of those guys who really did find the process of writing a business plan to be personally helpful, whether or not a potential investor likes the result. So here's my .02. I'd start with John Nesheim's books, both "High Tech Startup" and "Unfair Advantage." I'd also check out his blog and his reading list. Somewhere in there he has a template that many successful tech companies have found useful for their own business plans. He also has a sample business plan, written by students, that you can take a look at.

Again, a rough 10 or 15 page business plan can't hurt at this stage, but you should be focused on making your product awesome, so that people will want it. Get that handled, and then worry about writing a really tight executive summary and you'll be good to go.

Good luck.
Are we sure about that? From the Wired Q&A:

"We give them approximately two weeks of recovery time on the unit. We monitor them and give them rehabilitation exercises. That's usually enough to bring them back to normal functioning..." [emphasis mine]

"They will lose 1 to 2 percent of their bone per month. That's not going to come back within two weeks. So, we bring them back at six months and then a year later to look at their bone density...

"What we tell people is that they will lose bone and it may never return to their prestudy levels. It's entirely possible, but a significant number [of people] do return to their normal density..." [emphasis mine]

---

Hmm, malaria plus some chance of recurrent malaria, vs loss of muscle tone requiring physical therapy plus potentially permanent loss of bone density? Not an easy call, really.

At least their simulation of space travel doesn't include the cosmic radiation or the risk of explosive decompression.