skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Professional Plus Human Ear Edition?
Noah Kagan: Explaining the Basic Viral Model
I would venture that most of us visit for insight, not repartee.
Some of these suggestions are awful.

This explosion of companies named phoodcaphe.com and this dropping the e is not a good trend. It's cheap knockoffs of a few successful companies and products that did it well, like iMac and Flickr. You will not get the same advantages is terms of uniqueness and descriptiveness unless you do it well, which, if you're using nameboy, you're not.

Also, if you aren't inclined towards verbal skills you really should delegate the decision to someone who is. You need a visionary idea that distills all the hard creative and technical work you did down into a word or two. Harder then haiku or poetry, and the result of that decision is going to be the lens through which the world views your technical work. A bad decision here could cripple your company, and a good one could make everything from funding to securing partners to advertising easier. Take it as seriously as any other part of your business.
It really depends on what you want to measure on an Ajaxy webpage. If you can discern metrics you can sell some form of ads based on that. Also, consider making the ads iframes/includes and refresh that at a given time interval.
I didn't have to log in, I thought they were doing away with content behind logins anyway, also I can't fault Ebay for suing if they were getting devauled in the deal with no returns; This move makes Ebay look evil
* Compared to Chicago, Seattle, Portland, Atlanta, or Boston, San Francisco is filthy, both in a "civic pride and basic hygiene" sense, and in a "methadone clinics spewing out mentally ill homeless people contributing to a desperate humanitarian crisis" sense.

- I agree with that, I guess. SF is pretty psychotic.

* What areas are walkably friendly got that way by gentrifying and bleaching out the culture and neighborhoods from the city. Live in San Francisco? When was your last block party? Can you name your neighbors?

In my neighborhood the block party is in September but the SOMA block party is in a couple of weeks. I know all the people who live in my building (there are only 5) and three of my good friends live on the same block.

* Strong indie music scene? I guess it depends on what you like --- you could caricature me as a Pitchfork fan. Admittedly, comparing to Chicago, most other cities save New York and Seattle are going to suffer. But go read JWZ's blog about the DNA Lounge and form your own conclusions about how vital and diverse San Francisco's indie venues are.

- JWZ is grouchy because he was hoping to open up an industrial club but instead has to cater to asian gangsters coming up from Daly City. The scene he is into (industrial dance music) was never big enough to support a club the size of DNA and pretty much died out entirely 10 years ago. Everyone who was into it is now 40+ and doesn't go out anymore. I will admit that I don't go to many shows but the bands that I like (Autechre, TV on the Radio, Cornelius, are a few shows I've seen) seem to play here as often as anywhere else. The LOCAL music scene isn't that awesome, IMO. Most people are trying to be DJs rather than be in bands.

* If your friends all work at startups, a big chunk of them live in the South Bay, which means you will rarely see them, because facing a 45 minute commute (that's without 101 traffic) at 12:30AM is a strong deterrant to an impromptu night at a bar.

I guess that would be true. However most of the friends I have at startups work at startups in the city.

* Your office on Howard Street --- presuming it's a real office --- is not cheaper than what you'd pay in Chicago. Let's compare notes. You first.

We pay $8850 for 9000 square feet. Pre-wired, server room, and physical workspace in the basement (part of our product involves creating physical prototypes)
Why The Money Will Follow If You Do What You Love
AJAX changes the CPM (cost-per-1000-impression) advertising model, so you'll need a different type of ad network. The more mainstream ad networks haven't really addressed the issue for smaller sites, despite the fact that AJAX's popularity is peaking.

There's something called CPI (cost-per-influence) advertising, which isn't based on pageviews. Only one network comes to mind (Coudal's "The Deck": http://coudal.com/deck/) but maybe some Googling may lead you to some others. The Deck will pay you with a predetermined sum that is not pageview based.

It seems like it might be an opportunity for one of us here. Definitely and interesting project idea.
Startup 101 Metrics at Web 2.0 Expo
i'd consider trying to solicit sponsorships for lengths of time. i.e. a banner that maintans a persistent banner ad for a month for the monthly sponsor or something similar.

this would make you independent of pageviews and clickthroughs. you might not make as much $, but you'll not be as open to traffic changes and higher tech folks blocking ads.
Flamebait. From a guy who's barely ever been here. From a guy who grew up in an ugly place with lousy weather (Denmark) and moved to a place that's remarkably similar to that.

DHH generalizes wildly in this rant -- usually an indication of anger and jealousy rather than reason.
Use A/B split tests to increase X and Y - even a small increase in either can make a huge difference.
It might not be another investor...it could be that Craig and co. didn't want to earn revenue in a manner that eBay would have liked.
I think that -- by pointing out that there has been only one successful startup in Chicago (37Signals does not count; it's not really a startup, just a small business) -- that you just underscored the argument for the Bay Area.
we don't have an "oppressive, unjust" government. just cause it has a flaw doesn't make it bad. it's a good thing. it helps us. it's much, much better than nothing. it's also the best in the world. the best that ever existed. i just want it to be even better and don't agree that taxes are like dividends.
I feel like there is a lot you should do to solidify your network, your resources, your outlook, your team, your understanding of markets, and your philosophies on product before you even build one so I think he is spot on.

Sitting down and just building something cool without the above is generally a recipe for disaster.
Java's java.util.Random isn't random at all...
"Winter in Chicago isn't that bad."

In the words of 37signals -- and Dr. Phil -- get real. Winter is hell in Chicago, summer is a pressure cooker, and fall and spring are tolerable for a few days.

"Isn't that bad" is relative. Weather in the Bay Area is amazingly good. One of three mediterranean climates in the world. There is no comparison.
Wow thats awesome. Thanks.
I have found the same thing. The Heisig method seems to serve mostly to bridge the gap between learning a character and learning a word that uses the character. While I can learn character meanings with the memorization technique, the really don't stick until I've got vocab to go with them.
My inner Cynic says: "especially if what you love is writing spammy, feel-good articles about making money"
Ask YC: Are you building a cathedral?
Depending on your point of view, a cathedral is either an emblem of grand purpose or a colossal waste of time; the artisans are either applying their humble talent to some important end, or throwing it all away on someone else's fantasy.

Which way do you see it, and, more importantly, what is your cathedral?

Or is your current project its own small edifice?
Also, go through all the domain suffixes you can register and look for ideas. Sometimes you can get a memorable domain name that way. Sites like last.fm have done a good job of this.

Free (unregistered as of this writing!) example: stepinsi.de .
Second reply: another interesting use of spaced repetition, in a somewhat different context, is the AJATT method: http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com. It uses complete sentences as the cues, thus ensuring valid context all the time.
Sun wants to free up rest of Java, have it shipped as part of Linux
http://www.scribd.com/doc/20232/-surely-youre-joking-Mr-feyn...

on page 22. Surprisingly relevant to this discussion.
The potential of implementing a C2C and C2B transaction system over streaming video (especially live) are pretty incredible.

Concerts, sports, niche live events... Once the system is ironed out you're adding an extra revenue stream to anything you plan. Build this into a set-top box and you've got streaming video's killer app.
On the surface this appears to be one of the best things ever posted here. I'd like to see some other references.

The article says the forgetting point is different for everyone, and is different for different sorts of info. Does the software somehow find the right point? Or is the variance not enough to worry about?
You Walk Wrong: How We're Wrecking Our Feet With Every Step We Take
Absolutely.

However, a video taped portion of your life contains memories encoded in many different modalities (as opposed to, say, information on flashcards, which is, for the most part, factual). This mixture of memories makes an algorithm specifically designed for a certain type of memory a suboptimal one. That's not to say it's not useful, but there is a lot of improvement to make in this area (and I would very much like to be a part of it! :-) )
Do what you can to launch ASAP. Then when your competitors launch, there's a greater chance that any write-ups on them will be bound to include your product - which gives you more publicity.

You're also smaller and more nimble - teams mean meetings which KILLS productivity. So don't fret. Just iterate.
something else i've learned is multivariate testing is very effective. google optimizer can do this for free. services.google.com/websiteoptimizer/
I got one where the clue was, "People who annoy you".
I think that this is a good route.

I'm also looking at taking the tech "pluggable" and be able to resell it as a component for some larger sites.
If your target path is VC and then acquisition, I'd say proximity to Google is a pretty good idea, wouldn't you? Throw in Yahoo, Ebay, and the many other big players who like to buy companies as a bonus.

The point is-- It's way easier to get funded in the Valley (I'm raising money in the Valley and Seattle right now, so I'm speaking from a bit of experience).

And the data seems to show that it's easier to sell your company if you're in the Valley (which is the only realistic path to liquidity for founders/investors). Even if the data didn't confirm it, it makes SENSE, doesn't it?
This issue is so much less important than other matters - and heavily context dependent. But I find the ability for two reasonable and diametrically opposing opinions interesting.

I just moved to SF from Boston. I think more people understand startups in the Valley, making hiring with equity displacing cash more of an option.

I also think my startup's success will heavily depend on distribution and business development deals. That makes moving to a concentrated area more important.
"The Board at Merrill Lynch Enronized their company by promising to pay Stan O’Neal roughly $50 million per year if he made some numbers look good. One of the numbers that they wanted to see improved was Return on Equity. O’Neal managed to improve it by using the company’s cash to buy back stock. By reducing the amount of equity in the firm, whatever profit they managed to earn in a given year would be a larger percentage of the remaining equity. Unfortunately, for a company that faces risk, reducing the cash supply inevitably means courting disaster."

You get what you pay for! Isn't life great?!
As opposed to creating one stimulus-response association, correcting a wrong association would involve two (or more processes). One, reinforcing the correct association; two, not enforcing (or inhibiting) the wrong association.

Reinforcing the right one can be spaced, but breaking the habit is harder. One study involving OCD patients achieved this via a staged process. I forgot the details, but essentially, you train yourself to use your bad habit as a cue for another behavior, which diverts yourself from the result of your bad habit. Something like, if I wanted to stop washing my hands obsessively, I would put a message on the faucet that said "take a walk!" Then, every time I get the urge, I would take a walk, etc. It's obviously not this simple, but that should illustrate how reshaping old behavior is different from creating new ones.
Cool site, but not quite in the space I'm going to be in.

My wife used to be an ad manager for a huge site (ya'll would all recognize it) but it's been a few years and she's amazed by how everything has changed.
I think they stopped consulting base on customer demand for BlinkSale... But I obviously don't know their costs. I'd wager they're profitable, or are sacrificing profit at the alter of growth in the near-term.
Camgirls + live streaming + chat requests + payment transaction...
Comedy: Ubuntu Restaurant?
Oh, blogga please.

"Public transportation in the Bay Area is a shambles". Well, you have me there. On the other hand, it sucks in most other large metro areas as well. NYC is the only real exception.

DHH meant the Bay Area and the SV, not San Francisco proper. "San Francisco" is what outside people call the Bay Area because they don't know better.

Housing has been spectacularly expensive everywhere in the US for some time now. We pay a premium for living in a place unlike any other, chock full of natural beauty, culture, and iconoclastic innovation. We also get paid more, and it more or less balances out.

"you are going to be 45 minutes to an hour away from anyone you want to visit" -- that's called life in any big city.

Taxicabs? Say it with me: Bay Area. Not "San Francisco."

"There isn't one good place in the city to see a show" -- the (world-famous) Fillmore, the Great American Music Hall, Slim's, Bimbo's 365 Club, Bottom of the Hill ... that's just off the top of my head, and only in the City. And why would your favorite band skip a metropolitan area of ~13 million people?

"Weather? Choose between 'brown' or 'wet'" -- you know that is not true. Not even close. SF has some of the most amazing, mild weather in the world.

"Streets? Laden with human feces and garbage. Am I being hyperbolic? No." Actually, you are indeed being hyperbolic. There are places in SF, like every major city, where you will find homeless living. There are places in SF where I would be willing to eat off the sidewalk. And we're talking about the Bay Area, not SF alone.
Use a CPM company instead like ValueClick where you get paid per impression, regardless of click.
What Top Hedge Fund Managers Make A Year... 3.7 BILLION
You know, this already existed for 6 years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MyRichUncle

They had to change their business model because they became way too popular.
My solution Vibram Five Fingers. I've never had a more comfy pair of shoes. Altough they aren't great in bad weather.
Chicago winters make you appreciate the summers, just as the smaller Chicago Web-dev scene makes you appreciate the startup folks here, just as the lack of web-2.0-echo-chamber-ness makes you pay more attention to Normal People who don't know what Twitter is. Balance is good!
Who cares? That's my first thought. If you don't have competitors, then your idea probably wasn't that good.

That being said, if your idea depends on a network effect (like Amazon), then you've got a bunch of other problems and you should read this: http://www.changethis.com/8.StrategyLetter.

If you're building a company where you charge a price and bring in revenues directly from your customers, and you don't have the need of a network effect, then you will have competition throughout your life. But don't worry, they will just keep you on your toes and help you to produce the best thing possible.
Besides the fact that most of your complaints are less than valid, you left out the fact that San Francisco shares, year after year, the status of top restaurant city in the US. (NYC is the other.)

Oh, and there's that wine country about 45 mins. north.
I remember this from 8 months ago but forgot the name. It's good to see you guys have kept at it.
All-electric car set for U.S. sales in '09
Mic-Troll FTW!! Thats the first reference I've read about the guy - I was a few rows behind him and yes, he was literally sleeping through presentations until Q/A time.

Mic troll, if you're reading this, take it as constructive criticism. Instead of pontificating your point, ask a quick, concise and relevant question.
I remember in the Masters Tournament a few years ago when Mickelson won it all, he birdied the final hole to win.

His approach shot on 18 landed in almost the exact same spot as his playing partner's. The guy he was playing with gamely took his putt first, allowing Phil to see how the putt would roll (which direction it would take, how hard to hit it, etc).

After having seen this guy try almost the exact same shot, and miss, Phil was able to learn from his partner's mistakes, and hole his putt.

My point is that there's something to be said for watching someone else make the initial blunders and capitalize with a better product. There are plenty of market share leaders that weren't first to market, but perhaps came slightly afterwards...
Sony Buys Gracenote for $260M
cough - f'ing duh - cough
I'm hosting an Ultimate Frisbee game this Sunday in El Cerrito
Hi everyone,

I'm hosting a game of Ultimate Frisbee this Sunday in El Cerrito at Fairmont Park two blocks from the El Cerrito Plaza Bart station. Any hackers who'd like to play can meet us at noon. Beginners are welcome. Please RSVP either in comments or by emailing me at arramsabeti@gmail.com

Map:
http://tinyurl.com/4wqnde
Mic troll was definitely cringeworthy.
Didn't they buy that stock from an ex-employee, not craigslist directly?
What is he angry and jealous of? I'm pretty sure he can afford to move there if he wants to.
I don't have investors yet. Don't care about the money.

If I get rich, I want to do other creative stuff with the money. 15 million is an institute for music composers, with access to staff, instruments, and state of the art music labs. 50 million is a non profit to design next generation nursing homes and non profit business models that improve care by spending more on staff and being endowed. 100 million is a center for the study of consciousness, to patronize great thinkers, and provide the resources for any kinds of interdisciplinary collaborations the smart folks need. 250 million is a center for the study of space and time, where philosophers and physics could work together to address fundamental questions with no academic requirements and many resources.

I'm not giving up my chance to build up a google size company and do all that other stuff for twenty million.
This puts an interesting twist in the debate.
Pretend you are in a rock band or own an ad agency that pretends it's a rock band. Give yourself a non-sequitur of a name that doesn't attempt to communicate your already in-definable style.

If you're stumped, take an adjective and a noun that don't go together; combine. Strawberry Frog. Velvet Underground. Zeus Jones. Led Zeppelin. Rick James. Got the hang of it?

Now check to see if your name has a .com yet? It does? Eliminate all vowels and check again. Still stuck? Put a few of them back in. Got it? Good.

(If you STILL can't get a dot come with no vowels, consider making your app a mobile one and get the oft-ignored .mobi address. People will make fun, but stick to your guns. You're an innovator.)

Let's walk through a demo, just to make sure we're all on the same page:

1. Adjective: Tasty, Noun: Shirt.
2. TastyShirt.com? No. TstyShrt.com No. TastyShrt.com Yes.
3. Profit.
Pragmatic classification: The very basics
Investors put $184 million in 23 virtual worlds in the first quarter » VentureBeat
java.security.SecureRandom should be used for anything even remotely important.
Do You Want To Become A Great Developer?
I once read this suggestion and was very surprised by the result when I applied it. My 'equity valuation' of someone was often in direct contrast to my 'general appreciation' of them as a person, and to such an extent that it was difficult to keep two such incongruous ideas in my head at the same time.

What was surprising was not the overriding tendency to appreciate people for economically unrelated traits, but the gross effectiveness with which I could evaluate someone as soon as I viewed them purely in terms of financial opportunity.

I was reminded of the experience I had had with the Socratic method. When first presented as an idea---"You just ask questions"---the Socratic method is comically simple, almost ripe for derision, and easy to dismiss. But applying it, and seeing it applied, you notice that it has a powerful effect. The thoughts we arrive at on our own are immeasurably more meaningful than the thoughts pressed on us by others.

By the same token, this method of evaluation was unexpectedly effective. As long as I was thinking critically about who I would buy stock in, I had a clear picture of who the most valuable people were. But just as soon as my own assets faded from consideration the ordering became very different.
I like to go to tdnam.com and click on 'Closeouts' sometimes there are really good names in there
IBM's Webbie World
Fuzzy dates for times > 30 days. For example, instead of "126 days", say: "4 months".
The worst part is that his claim is totally, absolutely, positively false.

http://www.google.com/search?q=outlook%20crm%20integration
I think that's what used to be called design.
Remember pg saying recently that Craigslist is sitting upwind of a lot of potential revenue? eBay wants it.
This doesn't solve his problem. His problem is that he only has one page--CPM means less return in his case, because if someone stares at the same ad long enough, they're probably more likely to click it than if they only see if for a few seconds. CPM would be good if he had thousands of pages and thousands of page views. And, I'm pretty much certain that ValueClick has terms of service that prevent him "solving" the problem by reloading the ads on the page periodically (since that's a tactic that would be very easy to abuse, and I certainly wouldn't buy ads from a company that charged me for multiple views on a possibly unseen page--what's to say the guy using the app didn't go to lunch or go home for the night and leave the app loading new ads every minute...that's an awful lot of wasted impressions).
Where does creativity hide? (video)
On "Be Good"
I'm sorry, but Jessica Livingston is a babe.
The Importance of a Good Name Is Often Overlooked By Startups
+1 for portland, its a great place to live
if a startup is not a small business, what is it?
Does it matter? I would think that all the relevant rights and responsibilities to shareholders would be the same no matter who the stock was bought from, but I'm not an expert in the matter.
Yahoo Profit Tops Expectations
EBay sues Craigslist over alleged stake dilution
From Developer to Technical Manager
GTA IV & Forgetting Sarah Marshall - Connecting the Industries
Whatever. You know my theory about fine dining cities? I know you want to. Once you get past a critical mass of high-end restaurants, it stops mattering. Arguments about San Francisco versus Chicago versus New York for restaurants are irrelevant, because unless you have an absurd budget for eating out, you aren't visiting all of them.

So, yes, you have French Laundry (if you count it), and NYC has Per Se, and Chicago has Alinea. Panise vs. Masa vs. Charlie Trotter. If you're a normal person, you're going to run out of places to get 7 courses prix fixe in the Bay Area before I run out of them in Chicago.

Everything else is subjective. You have Mission taquerias. We have Frontera. Yank Sing vs. Arun's. Anything in San Francisco vs. Hot Dougs.

Call whatever city you want "the top restaurant city in the US". Nobody is moving from Chicago or NYC to San Francisco for the food.