skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask YC: Mac software for organizing startup documentation/research?
Hi,

I'm trying to find a desktop software program for Mac OS X that will help me organize the information in a few large investment projects I'm working on. Startup related. I know that mindmapping is a topic that has been discussed on YC before, and a few people have been kind enough to give me recommendations off-site already, but I wanted to get the 'wisdom of the crowd' about which tool might be best and also how others use these tools effectively. I looked at Circus Ponies' Notebook and a few other notebook apps, but now I'm thinking that mind-mapping software might fit my workflow better. I don't want a web-based solution, because some of the data is rather sensitive. The most desirable features for me:

1. The ability to ATTACH files (PDFs, URLs, .mpgs, etc.) to map branches...linking files would work in a pinch, but I would prefer to actually embed/attach documents in the map itself.

2. The ability to Show/Hide certain portions of the map when making a presentation. ("Here is the 30,000 foot view, and here it is in more detail.") Some apps call this subgraphs and some call it filters. Some apps seem to feature this as part of a more coherent "presentation" mode.

3. The ability to link BETWEEN different maps, so that huge map files can be broken down into smaller maps and I can "drill-down" into more detailed maps from a 'high-level' map.

4. Some type of outline mode, in addition to the map mode.

5. The ability to export to HTML...WITH the attached/linked/embedded files.

6. Stability and speed. No crashes/data loss/poky apps.

I'm currently evaluating ConceptDraw MindMap, Omnigraffle Pro, Novamind, and Mindjet Mindmanager. Java solutions include: FreeMind, XMind, iMindMap, etc. I would prefer NOT to use Java-based software unless it is REALLY superior, because I've had bad luck with Java on the desktop (see 6 above.) Any big fans of a particular application out there? Any other suggestions for organizing a mountain of research notes and documentation?
I'm very interested in something like this because I create interactive artwork for events (just got back from yuri's night) and would like to be able to customize the form factor of my hardware. Cutting apart a mac pro just seems so wrong...

Do any HN people know of a good resource for figuring out how to install leopard on alternate hardware?
Showing the complete range of choices in a grid
Expectations of Free and Beta/Alpha Services
because he communicates and talks to us
Venture Voice-- The podcast for entrepreneurs
From what I remember, Digg first became popular when Paris Hilton's phone got hacked.
They were one of the first sites to break the news with the leaked phone numbers.
Ask PG: And we're back...What happened?
The outage, I mean.
Go back in the archives-- there's some amazing interviews with some pretty high profile entrepreneurs and executives.

One of my favorites is the interview with John Vogel of The Vanguard Group. Pretty insightful guy.
This is such a classic troll. Not even a subtle new variant, but practically a 1980s Usenet troll. I was going to ask if people minded if I killed it, but a forum just can't let itself be pwned by trolls this blatant. So...
I know I'm repeating what other people have said but the fundamentals are simple:

- make it compelling
- manually invite a core group
- take note of feedback, keep improving, keep advertising

In my first project (from way back in 2001), it involved 6 months of hard work in advertising, telling everyone about it, getting people to sign up. It was 50% selling, 50% content. And then bam, I didn't have to do anything anymore. After that initial push momentum took hold and that was it. Any additional advertisement increased numbers, and stopping the advertisements dropped traffic, but the core numbers never diminished.
I've read about this bit of the book in other articles. The cheating was not on the books/10 commandments, it was on a math quiz (that afforded cheating) which followed the listing.

For those that listed books, some would cheat on the next bit. For those that listed commandments, they wouldn't.
Wow harsh ;) must mean something different to everyone LOL.
Clock Ticking On Pageflakes?
It's obviously multi-platform as it lacks that applesque aesthetic.

As an aside: It's hard to overstate the importance of learning to use your chosen SCM from the command line irrespective of the GUI you pick - the GUI tools invariably go MIA when the repository (or your local copy) gets pooched.
"
She felt herself screaming silently, at times, for a glimpse of human ability, a single glimpse of clean, hard, radiant competence. She had fits of tortured longing for a friend or enemy with a mind better than her own.

Most of the people who end up on here, or in PG's orbit in general can find themselves in this quote"

I guess I am in the minority then :-)

I "glimpse competence" all around me every day. And while I am bright, I don't have "fits of tortured longing" to meet someone with a better mind than my own. :-).

I enjoy meeting other bright(er than me) people, sure.

But "tortured longing"? No ! :-)

Yes I know you said "most" and "in general", but that Ayn Rand quote is (imo) purple prose (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_prose) . It might make sense within whatever novel it came from, but as a description of people who hang out in news.yc I don't think it really fits.
There's a problem in the server software. When the load gets high, it fails catastrophically instead of gradually. Robert and Patrick Collison are investigating, but they're still not sure what the problem is. My guess from the external evidence is that it's related to garbage collection.

Killing the server process fixes the problem, at least for a day or two.
Ask HN: Lead generation? (consulting)
I'm recently on my own consulting wise (to pay for the startup(s)) and I'm wondering how most people get their consulting gigs?

So far I've relied on my network and former clients, but there is decent money in the consulting side and if I could get some other people working "for" me then I could focus less on the consulting work and more on my other projects.

How are you finding your consulting gigs?
http://www.osx86project.org/
Some specific feedback:

Make it easier to get information about the stories. It's very hard to browse.

The "related similar save hide report" menu is terrible. It looks like a tag cloud or keyword highlighting. Don't forget usability heuristics!

When trying to get critical number other than conversions, don't make people sign up to use features (like the stars).

Keywords aren't as interesting as a snippet.

When people click on a link for registered users, make the default a signup form rather than a login form.

Don't fall for the hype of the current Web 2.0 square boxes and olive green look. It will look like 70s fashions in a few years. (okay, that is extremely subjective). Make the page, or at least the header more compelling.
Disemvowel.
Asking why someone is special is not a thoughtful question. This is a rare case where a troll has managed to spawn coherent anecdotes. If you read over the comments, there is no real discussion, there isn't even a topic. It's just a bunch of biographies from people professing pg to be their personal jesus. It reads like an infomercial.

Ignore the trolls. Start a proper discussion because topics like this get killed, like this one just did.
Can you tell us in two sentences what your site does? other than submitting links? I have problem understand the niche compare to others similar sites?
Are you running MzScheme on OS X? Maybe it's an issue with the background threads... If it's FreeBSD then scratch that.
> We used some "unconventional methods" (that I won't mention in detail) to attract a few initial users.

That sounds like you used some "morally questionable" methods.. ?

Maybe you'd care to elaborate?
Interesting. Are they investigating by load testing a dev environment, or some other method?
pg hath spoken: "This is such a classic troll. Not even a subtle new variant, but practically a 1980s Usenet troll. I was going to ask if people minded if I killed it, but a forum just can't let itself be pwned by trolls this blatant. So..."

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=162876
I think this has the potential to be pretty huge. EC2 is becoming almost the ideal disaster recovery environment for us. All it would take is a simple bridge between our internal messaging platform and SQS and there we go.

This is an incredibly powerful paradigm even without persistent storage, and now with the addition of persistent storage, serving numerous small files just became much simpler than in the S3-only world.
Probably some kind of "legal spam". You'd be surprised how many startups do this.
Patrick managed to reproduce the problem by writing something to replay server logs, but he's not sure yet what's causing it.
sometimes telling the difference between a troll (usually bad) and a devil's advocate (sometimes good, sometimes annoying) can be difficult
That's pretty awesome. I think Amazon is doing the right thing, and keeping things open, unlike Google's closed system. I have been trying it out, and I don't like the idea of building an app so closeley tied to one vendor.

The only thing that Amazon needs is a good online system for managing their offerings. I guess scaler and rightscale try to solve this problem, but amazon could provide some better system managing themselves.
Is this site gonna make it?
> But then I realized that some people may want these products, even though I would never pay for one.

I feel the same way. This is essentially in the same category as products like those Computer Professor cd-roms that will "teach people ebay" or basic Excel skills or whatever. Not for me at all, but I totally get it.

That's not to say I appreciate what this guy is doing. If he's selling "how to research this topic on the internet" he ought to be up front and put that in the title or at least display it prominently.
Their Passion Is Windows XP
Blog. When you do, link to other blogs in your segment, they'll link to you. Comment on other blogs, become a valuable member of the community.

Then convert traffic from your blog to your network.
For those looking for a more Mac like interface I recommend ZigVersion. Also here is a direct link to the SVN client discussed in the blog entry which is sparse to say the least: http://www.syncrosvnclient.com/
I have no idea how they claim to reverse this condition, but it seems at least plausible that it can prevent it, as the stated goal seems to be to mitigate swelling which is symptomatic of Alzheimer's.
Pageflakes Acquired By Live Universe
The question is, what is an “obvious troll”, and when has it achieved its ends? I would argue that the purpose of “trolling” is to derail an otherwise fruitful discussion or forum, causing it to devolve into pointless flaming. Given that this discussion a) stayed respectful, and b) was generally insightful, I'd say that at best, this was a completely ineffective “troll”.
absolute first thought that popped in my head: holy shit.

second thought: the oreilly ec2 book i bought is now double outdated. first it was elastic IP/availability zones, now this.

edit: rightscale tested it out first-hand.. here are the thoughts from a developer's POV
http://blog.rightscale.com/2008/04/13/amazon-takes-ec2-to-th...
Scientists Construct Traffic Pattern of the World Wide Web
Thanks for posting this - we've decided to use Git on our project, but there's still a lot we don't know about how to use it. For instance, finding out that we can send Git updates by email is welcome news!
The Steve Sleeve
Interesting.

I'm assuming it's traffic-related, because I've run had ASV running on my server for weeks on end without real issue (I don't get much in the way of traffic).
Does Your Company Need a Chief Blogger?
So she will actually go down in history for some noteworthy event :-)
I wonder how long it takes to back up a running virtual machine of, say, 2gb of ram and 10gb disk? At 1gb ethernet that would be over a minute best case, and the VM image would (presumbly?) have to stall while the copy takes place. So unfortunately running a single machine and doing hourly backups would probably be impossible, which is a shame - that would be amazing.

Great news, though!
Facebook gained its initial user base by recruiting a huge percentage of the Harvard student body:

“Today, two weeks after its inception, thefacebook.com has blossomed from about 650 members early last week to a network of over 4,300 student, alumni and faculty subscribers as of yesterday.”

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=357543

“‘I have no idea why it’s so popular,’ said thefacebook.com creator Mark E. Zuckerberg ’06. ‘I was pretty surprised.’”
The website looks alright. The concept seems interesting. Just wondering, who are the key competitors in this space (i.e. combining and creating a stream of online videos).
this is yet another step in the right direction. amazon is clearly listening to their target consumers. can't wait to try it out.
Ah, good. I still use OS 10.4
The best pieces of advice for successful startups
this doesn't really have anything to do with backing up ram or necessarily the instance's main disks - it's a volume you can mount and format to your taste, and this volume is now available to multiple instances and can be snapshotted into S3 on-demand.
“I was one of the first couple hundred people on Facebook (and one of the first 30 people at MIT on it).”

I hate to rain on your parade (and this is admittedly extremely nit-picky), but those two statements are incompatible, unless you had email addresses from both institutions. Something like ten thousand students from Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, and Yale had joined the site before MIT was added.
Seems clever, but I don't think it would actually make a difference. Especially since it'd be dead simple to detect when you'd been deleted.
In my experience (and I should mention, I have a LOT of it) delete and ignore. They'll give up eventually. At some point they have to realize each attempt at trolling takes minutes of their time to write and only a click or two for you to delete.
instance to s3/instance speed is 250MB/sec so just under a minute for your 12 gig scenario iirc.. but yeah this is a mountable volume as others have mentioned
Looks like it can handle dual monitors!
It's provocative, but gets to an issue at the core of YC and HN. If you lead with the quality of your ideas, which I believe that you do, then it's a useful conversation.
Hey, we can really use your feedback too (link in my profile)!

Our site has not reached critical mass yet, but we're pretty close. Same space, different approach. Would be very interested to hear what you have to say about us.
Ah, I see. Thanks for clearing that up.
Sometimes, ideas improve in the back of your mind, or emerge in a new form when triggered by new external stimulus.

But other times, they rot, or become an unhealthy source of false comfort with inaction. This show from ZeFrank -- when he answers questions a bit of the way in -- really nails the danger:

http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/07/071106.html

For example, he observes sarcastically:

"If you don't wanna run out of ideas the best thing to do is not to execute them. You can tell yourself that you don't have the time or resources to do 'em right…No matter how bad things get, at least you have those good ideas that you'll get to later"
Yes, and my bag doesn’t fit the 15" laptop. Because my bag is more portable than your bag. Alternately, I can find a bag that fits a 20" iMac in it, with the keyboard. That bag fits any of the three. What’s your point?
A New Operating System
Overview of Phusion Passenger (a.k.a. mod_rails)
Long flights work well too, if you can find a way to ignore the in-flight service. You're just stuck. Might as well do something...
I don't agree with this comparison. Rand has always struck me as an ideologue, someone who was rigidly attached to a system (and the inevitable movement to go along with it). I don't find this kind of ideological rigidity in Paul Graham's writing, which is both unpredictable and miscellaneous (it's about whatever the author happens to be interested in). If there's a common pattern, it's mostly a desire to figure things out and move on to the next thing; basically, curiosity. This is hardly reminiscent of Ayn Rand. That being said, I think I can understand why someone might read PG that way. He tends to put things in absolute terms. Some people see that as fanaticism. I don't. I think it comes from a desire to hit the nail on the head. It's more like trying to get a high score in a video game than like telling other people what to do.
Same problem here, and my project isn't even social - it's a clone of MS Photosynth. I'm having a very hard time determining why they aren't coming.
it might make it... to /dev/null
"Added the knowledge that you can whisked away to Guantanamo Bay, and have no recourse in courts whatsoever..."

To be fair, that can happen to you anywhere.
Honestly, if that's one of the methods one chooses to get a startup off the ground, I have no problem with it. It's a small moral price a startup has to pay to get some momentum going, and without initial momentum, you really can't go anywhere. Sure, it's an annoyance on the user end, but if it's a truly useful service, I see no problem. Every user, especially in the initial stages, is valuable.
Yes, let's chat. You can email me at hashbucket@10gic.net
For the work I do in lab (testing anti-inflammatory drugs in in vitro neural models) I did some research into etanercept when the first paper was published.

Etanercept works roughly by cleaning up that TNF-alpha which is plaqued around in Alzheimer's. It was FDA approved as an arthritis drug which (and I don't fully understand this part) allows doctors to attempt novel treatments using it without much further FDA approval.

Etanercept really does appear to cure the symptoms of Alzheimer's, quickly. The real issues are long-term effects for this sort of treatment and whether cleaning up the TNF-alpha actually does anything for fixing the causes of Alzheimer's.
No, I don't think that is what he is saying at all. He is saying that standard economics treats the two as being the same, because it reduces things to their dollar value. The experiment identifies an area where standard economic assumptions breakdown, which means that you can't use standard economic theories to determine the result.
Could it be that you're just scarred from trying to do branching with cvs? I've heard svn is much nicer regarding that.
They did publish something. I can't link the actual documents, but if you have access to the journals it's:

Tobinick E, Gross H: Rapid cognitive improvement in Alzheimer's disease following perispinal etanercept administration. J Neuroinflammation 2008, 5.

There's also a commentary paper,

Griffin, W. Sue T.: Perispinal etanercept: Potential as an Alzheimer therapeutic. J Neuroinflammation 2008, 5.
Getting to critical mass is the issue with social sites,
so you probably should have thought about it before you
built your field of dreams. Three basic ways:

The honest way: Find a way to deliver value to the user that
doesn't require them recruiting everyone they know before
they are able to benefit from the site. WHY ARE YOU UNIQUE? Start small and think about each individuals experience vs.
big numbers.

The usual way: Seed the site with fake profiles and activity
then spam the hell out it. Can be effective as long as you
are offering something unique. (not Tagworld)

The probable way: Fail like 99% of the social sites out
there. Path of least resistance baby.
I can't imagine a better way to promote your services than through word of mouth. Might be worth it to offer discounts/rebates if your customers recommend new leads.
IT Facts Blog by ZDNet
Working at night is great. Trouble is, you pay the price the next day when you're downing coffees just to keep from falling asleep on your keyboard.

I'm guessing at least some here have made that trip out to the parking garage around lunchtime while simultaneously setting their cellphone alarm for +20 minutes for just a quick nap. Extra points if you keep a blanket in the back seat. :)
Which Web Browser Works Best?
Thyroid-stimulating hormone,among others, are released prior to sleep.
The thyroid controls how quickly the body burns energy, makes proteins, and how sensitive the body should be to other hormones.
So it may be that you get a burst of energy just prior to sleep(to make you feel tired enough for a good night sleep).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thyroid_gland
I dunno, that sounds a little like "electric light bulbs will be nothing more than a novelty item for the rich, they are just not practical for everyday use".

Put another way; There are economies of scale for mass production, but $120/bbl oil to truck those things to people might just make those advantages disappear.
I buy Apple hardware. You've been able to install OS X onto other machines, with compatible internals, for some time. The reason I buy Apple hardware is partly because of the design - it really is much more thought out - but also because this is where Apple makes its money (I know, I know - ipods make the most!) and therefore the hardware sales allow Apple to create the great software. They're really a software company and their OS is lovely.
Well, it is the only operating system that "just works" on a wide range of PC hardware. Pop an XP disk in any system made in the last 5 years and you're up and running in no time. People don't appreciate how big of a feat that is.

If you don't want to shell out for a Mac, are wary of Vista's compatibility and resource issues, and don't want to spend the next three months installing Linux in your free time, XP is the only option.
Do startups work well when managed remotely?
I've had limited startup experience. I do primarily design and LAMP development. Currently doing JSP (new to MVC architecture but making the change fairly smoothly, usually I script and do front-end design).

I joined a startup just this past summer that received some funding from a popular VC firm and worked there as an intern over the summer. I'm accustomed to being in the incubator, and being in the presence of the co-founders, while I work.

However, in my current position, everyone works remotely from their own locations. There is office space, but it's out of the VC firm, there's not really dedicated incubator space for us. The product is already developed for the most part, we're just focused on growth.

The entire team (about 6 and counting) operates this way. Can anyone chime in and let me know what your experience and opinion on remote work on a startup is like? Do you feel it's effective?
Maybe a better title would have been "If you want to be a phone company, you can't go dead without being restarted by your supervisor" ;)
Ee-yowch. Didn't expect that one to turn into a karma burn. Just saying that Paul attracts a certain kind of person that has a strong tendency towards technical competence. These types of people often like to hang out with others of this type and so it has less to do with the man himself and more to do with finding people of like mind.

As for tortured longing, well, might I just put forth that some of us still work in some pretty dismal offices. Purple prose to be sure, but then, its hard to quote Rand without that particular hue!
You should change it to "honest and the most painful" way. I'm going through it right now, would not recommend it to anybody looking for a quick return.
Yahoo Tries Out Google Ads, Teams With AOL
Is this a good way to run a software company?  [13 min vid]
Wow, this is amazing.

Money quote:
"Your decisions are strongly prepared by brain activity. By the time consciousness kicks in, most of the work has already been done," said study co-author John-Dylan Haynes, a Max Planck Institute neuroscientist.

Most of the work has already been done, eh? So long, free will.