skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
He forgot the most important reason (to me): You can stick a fully functional comment system on anything without doing it yourself. Why reinvent the wheel and deal with managing your own when you can just tack on an excellent system by someone else?
Microsoft to Limit Capabilities of Cheap Laptops
Cutting-edge DNA research as a window into Jewish origins
I don't think we're really disagreeing, as usually the answer to "How do I make sure this never happens again?" is some sort of design change. My point is that this is done iteratively, in response to actual problems, instead of hypothetically in response to imagined problems.

I should probably also make clear that experts don't throw away everything they've learned with each new project and start anew. They do throw away some things, and part of being an expert is knowing what to throw away and what to keep. It's sort of an unfortunate fact of software engineering that each problem is different: otherwise, you'd just use pre-existing software. But there're some skills (like the C++ tricks I picked up from my Stratus friend) that you can take with you as long as you maintain the same technology platform, and others (like unit testing and clear component interfaces) that apply to all platforms.
And the biggest reason not to: javascript is required. It causes really bad problems in IE: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/04/23/what-happened-to...
One bit of information is missing:

what's the price?
If you're selling things, you might consider an affiliate program. In one of my startups, I had a couple of hundred affiliates signed on before I launched by giving away free copies. It resulted in hundreds of thousands in income the week we launched. Most of the sales came from the top 20 affiliates.

Potential affiliates are not hard to come by and you only pay if they perform. Just pretend you are a customer, search for your product/service in Google and contact everyone who is on the first page as ads or natural search and give them a copy of your product and ask them to promote it if they like it in exchange for a healthy commission. They've got the traffic, and many of them probably don't know how to monetize it.

It also helps to suggest ways for them to promote your product. For instance supplying custom emails for them to send out to their list, promoting it in their blog, adding your product as an up-sell when their customers buy their stuff from them etc.

You can also setup things like cross-promotional auto-responder messages, where you have a message in your auto-responder promoting them, and they do the same for you. No commissions required.

It all depends on what you're doing. If I knew what you were doing, I'd have much better advice.

Despite what at least one person said, article writing is a great way of getting natural traffic and being slowly gaining traction in Google. It just takes time and has to be done right. Don't over post and make sure you post it to your own site and get it indexed by the search engines before syndicating it.

There are other things you can do as well, like buying domain names that have pagerank and putting content on them that references your site. Risky if you ask me. Google will eventually black-list everyone who does that sort of thing.
we are two technical co-founders who have just hired an intern to help us for the summer. We've decided to pay him going hourly rate based on the market. But we have also told him that based on his "impact" on the product he is eligible for equity.

If you are going to get great contribution from them then it doesn't matter if they are an intern. And just like any other contributors to your product they deserve equity.

IMO, they are going to be helping your "technical guy" bring YOUR idea to life, which it seems you are not capable of doing yourself. Doesn't that deserve equity?

If they are smart and contribute then the possibility of equity makes them take ownership of your product which is something an offshore team or "hacker for hire" might not do.
Interesting that many of the reasons listed for beginning programmers could actually apply to all programmers.
I bought one for work. A few months later, I bought one for home.
I put a large trackball in the middle of my keyboard, or on the left side. Works great.
I hope you guys realize that the above comment is the OP answering questions about the site trying to get marketed, so there's no need to vote him/her down.
Problem is that non-profits with money waste it, and non-profits without money can't afford to follow your advice.
In South Africa we are "capped," this means that you purchase a set amount of bandwidth per month, I've got 5GB per month account for which I pay $41 per month. Your connection is reset every 24 hours to ensure that you do not go over your limit.

From this do you think it would be possible to ignore the reset and continue to remain on the "uncapped" account?
Maybe we can. I hope we'll invest in finding out, and soon. Then again, John McCarthy doesn't seem to agree, as this answer suggests:

Q. Is there anything in principle that would prevent a computer from thinking as a human would?

A. No

IOW, there's still no recognition today, on the side of the purveyors of "classical" AI, that anything except digital processing might be needed for a computer to think "as a human would". So the big money is likely to continue being thrown at attempts to emulate animal brains using purely digital means. And I suspect that these funds might largely be better spent elsewhere.
Nothing says reputable like a domain registered a month ago!
I'm boycotting godaddy since they made that deal with microsoft, and all parked domains go on windows machnes.

I've used namecheap and joker without incident. I like namecheap's interface better. I should note that I've used Enom too.
For short Python scripts, I use Emacs; for bigger projects, I fire up Eclipse + PyDev.
O'Reilly Radar: Entrepreneurial Proverbs
What every entrepreneur/founder should know

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/03/entrepreneurial-proverbs.html

Old but gold.
so true, at least for me ... :(
google: "yahoo 1.99 domain" and click on the first sponsored link.

If you sign up for a new email acct every time (<domain_name>_domain@yahoo.com), you get the first year for 1.99.

Just make sure you remember to either switch to another registrar after a year or cancel otherwise they auto-renew for 9.99
Ask YC: Does web advertising really work?
The real question is: When was the last time you were inspired to buy something by an ad you saw on google adsense?

I can't recall any time that has happened to me. I also have a friend who has spent a couple hundred on google adwords at one point, without really seeing results. With this bit of disappointment in mind, my question is - does advertising on the web work?
Why reward bad behavior?

If your ISP is breaking your internet access you should switch ISPs.

Pay a little bit more for a better provider, and tell others to do the same. As soon as we stop standing for this bullsh*t, ISPs will have to adapt or die.

But, as long as we keep paying them, they will continue to try and pull this stuff on us.

And pistoriusp: probably not. It is extremely unlikely that your ISP enforces its bandwidth limit per day. What do you mean by "Your connection is reset every 24 hours"? That's a bit ambiguous ...
Powerset’s Dilemma: Go For It, Or Sell
> in response to actual problems, instead of hypothetically in response to imagined problems.

This is really one of the differences indeed and you stated it very well, and you are right, stated this way we are saying a very similar thing. Also I think this other sentence from your comment is very interesting:

> part of being an expert is knowing what to throw away and what to keep.

So now the picture I get is that the real difference is selectiveness: about what design to pick among the possible, what problem is worth to fix, what experience is worth to remember.

Thanks for the interesting comment.
He's a former software developer, for those who don't know.
i used namecheap and will continue, but they blindsided me with the free domain name protector for the first year, then you have to pay for it for the following years, but aware, but not a deal breaker.

the interface is so much cleaner then gocrappys
"You will lose money chasing girls, but you will never lose girls chasing money"

...from my first employer after he came in to work late once day from what must have been a crazy night out.
So the fact that I can much more easily remember the lyrics to some pop song than the differences between the complexity classes BQP, BPP, ZPP, and PCP is actually a sign that my brain selects intelligently?
To recap: Microsoft says that if a producer wants cheap window's licenses, they have to limit the specs on their umpcs (screen < 10.2 inches && hd < 80GB && ! touchscreen).

This is a good thing.

If a consumer wants, e.g., a umpc with a touchscreen, they will be forced to get a linux one. Getting more people to try linux (and giving the linux hardware an intrinsic edge), is probably one of the worst things microsoft can do to itself and one of the best it can do for linux.
It's convenient to co-locate your domain registrar and your DNS server, so it makes sense to evaluate DNS quality when making decision. I have picked DynDNS for super-low TTL and pretty good DNS reliability story.

If all I want is just sit on domain until its useful, I may pick yahoo instead.
I noticed the same once I finally became a laptop warrior some years back. Afterwards I switched from clickety keyboards to slimlines on all of the desktops that I work on. I really do think that the shorter finger distance makes a difference. Additionally not having a keypad means I can get the mouse closer to the keyboard, which reduces strain for me.
Yeah invested in one last year. When I was having lots of pain in my fingers and wrist. Took a couple of days to get used to it. Since then I haven't had any problems. I can't imagine working with a regular keyboard ever again. Interestingly my typing speed has gone up too.
Cheers for posting this.
I'm surprised at the number of websites that hide, or as in this case do not have search functionality. Isn't that the first thing you want to do when you arrive at a forum and have a question?
Disqus is free for bloggers
I think that's an optimistic way of looking at it. Another way is that the people who create these devices will just limit their specs to be below Microsoft's requirements.

I think this is amongst the first time MS has directly had to respond to Linux as a threat on the desktop though.
> The latter is quite a bit more efficient.

Faster, perhaps, but apparently not efficient at getting people to agree with you.

> That abilities are based on different capacities for pleasure/pain

If what you achieve depends on how you think about work, and how you think is controlled by how your brain works, then you can't dismiss the argument out of hand. But I'm no neuroscientist, so don't ask me....
i simply can't understand how powerset could sell for anything remotely close to $100 million. the rationale that Google would buy them to keep them away from MS, seems incredibly weak.

anyone care to enlighten me?
I don't think he's talking about a monetary price, rather sacrifices that bloggers might be making to use their service, as others have pointed out here - page rank, etc.
From a retailers point of view, yes, if you do it right i.e. phrase your ad well, go for the niche keywords (cheaper, higher quality leads), have relevant landing pages (ads go direct to the product buy page, not higher level category page).

If you also provide a product people want at a price point they are happy with (and ideally with service they cannot complain about - fast shipping, good dispute resolution policy, etc etc) then once they see your ad/page, they generally buy.

I actually manage about $100K of adwords spending each month for about 25 client sites which do about $2M gross revenue per month and have seen good increases with the campaigns I have managed.

Many of the clients initially managed it themselves but got poor results. My basic tips would be...

[1]. ALWAYS have metrics in place to mesure campaign effectiveness (visitor volumes, keyword search terms, click-through paths, conversion rates). you can use google metrics (urchin) for free but it is worth paying for a decent service from a cheap provider like zstats.

[2]. tailor ads to specific products, not a broad range.

[3]. use the free google adwords analyser to find niche keywords (cheaper, better).

[4]. make sure your site looks the part (professional)

[5]. try and sell your more unusual products first, as these are generally harder to find online, sell more, and best of all raise awareness for you i.e. return custom, and free word of mouth advertising.

Hope this helps.
I am not convinced. I do see the advantages but I would rather have the text on my blog. The comment text gives your blog a little more life in the eyes of Google and adds just a little more content.

If I don't want to mess with creating a comment system then why did I build my own blog in the first place?

I think a good compromise to make things easier for the commenter is to use Clickpass for easy login.

I don't mind that my blog is being commented other places (like we are doing here for this entry) but if a commenter is at my site then that is where I want my text to live.
This is fabulous for us recovering Windows users. Thanks!
How far do you want to take this though? Why not just use Blogger or Wordpress.com? Why custom code your own blog?

BTW, I assume you are talking about a custom coded blog (or whatever is being commented) because systems like Wordpress or ExpressionEngine make adding commenting trivially easy.
I'm guessing his assertion is rooted in his belief that Powerset is a remarkable service. In the comments, he says that if Powerset indexed/displayed information as good as they do already with wikipedia/freelance but for the entire web, he'd use it instead of Google. From that, he thinks that Powerset is going to be a huge player in the search industry, ultimately leading a revolution to Google's demise, which is why Google would want to take them in, instead of giving MS that edge.

Has anyone else seen a demo of Powerset? Did you indeed experience the same remarkable 'Aha!' moment as Arrington?
Non-Scribd link: http://www.deer-run.com/~hal/UnixCommandLineKungFu.pdf
You get free private registration with them. They're also cheap.
They have a limited beta (Powerset labs, I think its called). I used it a few times, and really didn't get the feeling that it was anything remarkable - though it could be because I wasn't searching with whole sentences. Thats the reason I don't see something like Powerset ever taking off - people don't want to type an entire sentence when they're looking for something specific, and I'd say thats 99% of my Google searches.
There is an interesting Reddit discussion talking about the man:

http://reddit.com/info/6ivyk/comments/

For those who don't know who Grothendieck was, he essentially pioneered how we do modern mathematics. What Weierstrass, Riemann and Cauchy did to formalize the calculus, Grothendieck did to modern algebraic, topological and analytic notions. With the exception of Godel, I can't think of many mathematicians in the same league as he is (or at least was).
what he doesn't address (and perhaps wasn't briefed-on) is the rate at which they can crawl and process pages. i have to imagine that the per-page computational costs are fairly high. if that's true, then it might not be appropriate for anything other than restricted, well-bounded domains (which can still be a huge market, but not a google-sized market imho).
Sell.
YC is not the be all and end all. We all have rough rides at time and fall down. Pick yourself up, learn from the experience and keep moving forward, don't stop.
Wow, just like the old Evil Microsoft. They forgot something, though: Apple is no longer a negligible force. I wonder if this move will ultimately backfire.
Removing Friction at the Bottom of the Pyramid
> When I tested the service I had something very similar to the “Aha!” feeling that ran through me the first time I ever used Google. In short, it is an evolutionary, and possibly revolutionary, step forward in search

Google's search engine wasn't revolutionary either. It was only moderately better than AltaVista and others. Most of all the visual design was cleaner. Google's main accomplishment was imo the introduction of AdSense.
Why Ballmer Bailed on Yahoo
fwiw, Harvard still teaches Scheme in its introductory sequence.
do any social web apps use disqus?
These Ultra Cheap PCs already have these limited capabilities... thats why they are 'ultra cheap'. Sounds like a non story...
If I had a ULPC, and I really needed to run Windows software on it, I'd be tempted to try running Wine.

http://www.winehq.org/
Internationalization: What's Wrong With Turkey?
Does your brain have a mind of its own?
Why sell? Why doesn't anyone have enough courage to try something big and take on the big boys? Google did it and why can't Powerset?

Come on, someone please COMPETE!
We have 1 national supplier for fixed line internet access in South Africa, it's a 39% government owned Monopoly called Telkom. Although things are getting better this is our only option for now.

This is from their website:

"Does DSL give me a fixed IP address?"

"No, at each login a new dynamic IP address will be assigned to you. Your DSL connection will be reset 24 hours after the last login and a 60 min idle timeout has been implemented."

And the way that they implement uncapped/ capped connection is by separating them in to IP address blocks. So your DSL connection is forcefully disconnected every 24 hours, when you reconnect you get a new IP address and dependent on your usage limit you'll be capped or uncapped. (When you're capped you don't receive any data).

I hope that helps to clear up your statement about our bandwidth limits not been enforced daily.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telkom_(South_Africa)
Yeah we all know that!! Its called 'Windows'
User Experience Review: Petco.com
Because if you are going directly at Megacorps lunch, they kill you. Google did not build an os or office suite, they built a product in an area where MS was not looking, which is the same play MS ran on IBM. I'm not into business gurus that much but Clayton Christensen codified a lot of how those patterns play out; one of his conclusions was that going directly at an established cash cow of a large company is not a good idea unless you intend to sell.
If you need a "tutorial" on how to be a man from some guy claiming psychic abilities, you're surely not a man...
The lack of touchscreen interoperability will be a major limitation which will encourage open source adoption.

Unfortunately, current client trends are counter to Microsoft's strategy. Firstly, people are buying laptops rather than desktops. Both are getting cheaper. Secondly, Microsoft follows the classic monopolistic tactic of racheting prices. Successive versions of Microsoft software a typical more expensive despite initial costs already being re-couped. These trends create a situation where the cost of an operating system and pre-installed applications take an increasingly large share of the retail price. This creates a third trend of laptop manufacturers who opt-out of the "Windows tax" and only supply units with tailored open source software.

In two years, we'll probably have a device which is a mix of laptop, mobile telephone and Nintendo DS. It would be a clamshell design with two 11 inch screens with the bottom one being touch sensitive. You cannot rely on Microsoft to support such a device. Nor would it be viable to include Windows. So, such a device would mostly be used with open source operating systems.

This design has already been tried. Unfortunately, it was quite a few years ago and it was a commercial failure. However, since then, the technology has improved, the cost has fallen and the volume of people who only want to run open source software has grown significantly. This would make a similar attempt much more likely to succeed.

It is understandable that such a trend would adversely affect Microsoft. Therefore an attempt to steeply discount Windows on limited hardware has two benefits. It creates an artificial divide between premium hardware and almost disposable devices where Windows is viable on both. Secondly, it reduces the inclination for low cost manufacturers to abandon Windows.
This story keeps getting recycled every 6 months or so. If you read into the details of the situation it's not as incredible as you might think.

People with hyperthymesia tend to obsess over their lives, reinforcing the condition with things like diaries and journals - it appears there is a link to obsessive compulsive disorder. Also, Jill can't remember everything - in testing, her short term memory is no better than the average person's.
Microsoft Appeals 899 Million Euro Fine to EU Court
Sadly, the onky consequence that springs to mind is that there will be no devices above the spec. As much as the hardware makers may want to sell devices, they will want to maximize the number of units sold and the simplest way to do it is bundling windows.

Again, it's Microsoft againt progress.
"The European Commission in February said it is had fined the U.S. software giant 899 million euros for failure to comply with the EU executive's antitrust decision against the company some four years ago." [1]

899 euros = $1.4 billion.

No matter how much you hate Microsoft, this is ridiculous.

[1] http://www.forbes.com/afxnewslimited/feeds/afx/2008/05/09/af...
You really need to work backwards from the value of the customer. If you have something that directly monetises then you can calculate value of a register user and of a visitor. Back out your marketing budget from there.

However I am assuming you have a consumer app where it is very hard to calculate the value of a visitor/user. In that case you are looking at viral, social media, SEO and paid ads. Viral works if your product is intrinsically viral product (send to friend doesn't count). Social media works if have rich content (how to's, great photos, recent news). SEO is what you do if you can't do the first two (I know of one of the world's biggest travel social networks who never paid a penny on SEO). The problem with SEO is it takes a lot of time to build up traffic.

That brings you to paid advertising. I think paid advertising is great for getting everything kick started but the business model for paid ads doesn't stack up for free consumer apps. Hope that helps.
I used register.com for a domain and let me tell you: when you want to transfer a domain away from them, they follow the, "If we make it damn impossible and frustrating for users to move away, a lot of them will give up during the process and we'll keep them!" way of thinking.
On the front page? C'mon this is kindergarden stuff! I thought this was Hacker News. :-)
We've been looking at adding CoComment to our site which I think is very similar. I have been using it and I like the way it records all the comments I make which I can then go back and refer to. However, it feels like we provide them with new customers and we don't get a ton back in return.

Anyone implement it or Disqus?
Would Yahoo Be Smart To Pursue A Google Handout Now?
Scan Your Face, Not your Thumb, for PC Security
In the beginning, what was revolutionary about Google was the experience, not the search results. A lot of that has to do with visual design. But mostly, in Google's case, I think it has to do with the extreme focus they have on search.
I'm back for some, plus or minus your karma.
At tefflox.net I insult hackers like no one's business, while making pleasant web pages my own. Open 23/7, check me out.