skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
well, what do they say the benefits would be? ask them to give solid reasons, and explain it until you are convinced! and they ought to have a plan for how you can do it before being sure it's a good thing for you to do.

also they should be open to the possibility that they are mistaken; the conversation ought to be able to go either way.
Air France KLM scraps Alitalia bid
It may seem like a strange analogy, but this sounds alot like Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. He "freed the slaves" to take the moral high ground. Any chance the Confederacy had to gain a European ally was blown away in an instant. How could they side with the enemy of freedom?

Same idea with a vendor who is beloved by its customers. His enemy is their enemy.
"There have always been people on here criticizing YC and YC-funded startups"

And so there should be. Disagreeing on merits, and doing so in a good tone makes interesting conversation and broadens everyones minds. There's a lot of great disagreeing on YC news.
This headline is not accurate; XP is a rumor.
I regret that you've had this experience here. For some of us, the success of startups is quite understandably an emotional issue, though that doesn't excuse bad behavior like insulting your photo.

For the most part though, we primarily value respectful rational discussion and I apologize again for catching some of us on a bad day.
He said this because the original title of the post described it as the opinion of a "UK VC." Since most of the readers of News.YC are American, he knew they'd naturally be curious whether you were a well-known one or not.
I'm pretty sure he said getting 500 paying customers is still pretty hard. Just not as hard as getting the millions of customers needed to "be the next Facebook."
The basic point is that I'm narcissistic and need to be brought out of myself. I say I don't really know, because I can't see it myself. But, that's par for the problem of narcissism:P
Who Are The Biggest Users of Amazon Web Services? It’s Not Startups.
Ditto.

One of the things I noticed at Startup School was that people were so busy talking about substance (hacking, business, etc.), that there was little time for fluff.

In any large group there are outliers. You found a few.

OTOH, I noticed you referred to us as "groupies" on your blog, but omitted that sentence in this reply. I'm guessing you knew it would be inflammatory here.

Nerds. Geeks. Weirdos. Bipolar obsessive compulsive basket cases. Fine.

But groupies? (Throws pocket protector at pg on stage.)
You did too +1 for you!
That is not what he meant because if OS X were just a traditional Unix-alike with traditional Unix-like GUI software consumers would not buy Macs.
"Namely, it scares me that we're so willing to just assign the high ground to one group, and say that they trying to dislodge them is not "being good"."

You've misinterpreted my intent (and are easily scared). If you knew me, and the way I talk about competitors of Virtualmin and VM2 (who, generally, are not doing good by their users), you'd know that I don't have a problem with taking aim at competitors. But, it's an issue of mindset and morale, which is a core part of pg's talk. If you decided you have to "beat Wufoo" in order to be successful, every day that you aren't beating Wufoo is a day that you've lost. As another speaker at Startup School pointed out (in a different context, but it applies here) losing all the time really sucks. So, if you're thinking "I've gotta beat Wufoo" and Wufoo is thinking "I've gotta make an awesome product for my customers" you will lose and by losing you will find you feel more and more drained every day. While your competitor that is thinking "I made my product more awesome today and users loved it!" is going to feel great. They will come back the next day ready to do it again, while you'll come back the next day thinking, "This sucks."

That's all I'm saying. No one has a monopoly on "good". But, if a market already has a product that clearly meets the definition, it might be wise to pick another market. Nobody is saying you can't possibly beat Wufoo...but, pg said he wouldn't want to try. You, or anyone else, are welcome to go against that advice, but you may find it's a harder row to hoe than you expected.
I think the answer is to be found in Darwinian natural selection:

Women are looking for a mate that will be able to give her offspring a good chance of making it into the next generation, thus what she is looking for is someone with abundant resources who will secure her home and future. This is also why old but rich men are attractive to women. Men, on the other hand, are basically looking for someone young that will be able to bear a child, and this ability degrades with age. Which is why men of all ages like young women.
All Non-Strongbad games: DELETED!
I agree, lack of karma shouldn't say anything negative about your inclusion in the community here. The info is free, so it's not like only major contributors belong.

In fact, if it were the case that only the high karma belong, there'd be nothing to contribute to and no high karma. People like kashif and the thousands of other lurkers are why this community exists in the first place, much more so than nickb or any of the other leaders.

Speaking for myself, I have a high karma because I'm a slacker. I consider it an inverse metric of my worth.
Small story:

I was investigating wufoo.com one day, and was mightily impressed - so impressed that I sent them an email nitpicking some extremely minor issues (the first and only email of its kind that I've sent).

The grammar issue I raised was fixed almost immediately, and fixed by completely replacing the problem word and all of its various forms.

The searchbox alignment was changed perhaps a week or two later, probably with an unreasonable effort to benefit ratio (good old HTML/CSS issues).

Their response showed me that the wufoo guys care, and that they know how to debug problems instead of just superficially fixing symptoms.

That search bar still has some minor flaws though. I get a hand pointer over the search icon, but clicking it does not illicit a response. And I also get a hand pointer over the right corner of the search bar, which is a little weird (clicking there also does nothing).

I don't know exactly what it is, but there is something about that website that resonates with me (I actually have never used the service), and it drives me to pipe up with crap like this, which is not typical of me.
update: in response to many suggestions, there are now 2 additional packages that are cheaper but limit certain features.

http://corduroysite.com/pricing/
Minor problem on first use:

1 Search for song "Concord Dawn Morning Light"
2 Click on first song title
3 Click on Play button on lower right, as I'm used to from every audio device and program since I've been born.
4 Uh, nothing.
5 Double click on song.
6 Nothing.
7 Oh, I have to click Play Song, or that cryptic little control on the right of the name.

Should be an easy fix I'd guess.

Nonetheless, pretty cool.
Email marketing?
does email marketing refer only to cntacting existing customers?
i mean otherways it would be spam ldo?

also, is this a forum or meant for posting links to interesting articles/blogs etc?
I totally disagree. The best way to judge if a post is "spam" and if someone is a "spammer" is based on the content. I downvoted your post because it both is a poor form of reasoning and it is needlessly alienating to others.

I don't downvote often, and I don't have anything against you, but it is important that everyone, especially the lurkers, feel welcome here. My downvote is to show you don't speak for all of the community, since this response and my karma means your comment is self refuting.
The interface brings to mind a cross between iTunes and the iPhone.
Yeah, same reasoning with me. All I wanted was to change the top bar color. Then I started getting close to the leader board and I suddenly need to grind points:D Vote me down to save my soul from the karma!

- EDIT -

I want to add that my most recent submission that did get me a lot of karma was not posted for the sake of karma. I genuinely am curious and I appreciate all the responses.
Wait till you get close to the leader board. Then there will be a challenge again. It's insidious.
Perfect! This one must be a Lisper:

Apr 21 - (((((((((((((( So eXXXciting )))))))))))))))))) - w4m - 30 - (excelsior / outer mission) pic
Yeah, I'm not a groupie. pg has said time and again how he doesn't want us to be groupies and I don't want to disappoint pg!
Step 1: Publish external habits to all internal users with no user approval.

Step 2: Profit.
A Toronto event has been added for the Torontonians out there:
http://toronto.startupdrinks.com/
I still use LookOut which solved the search issue 4+ years ago. Ironic that Microsoft should buy LookOut. Bury it. Then look at buying a company that solved the same problem again, even after not integrating the previous acquisition (which mind you was fast and never slowed down Outlook).

Unfortunately, I saw the attachment lookup as the only thing useful.
Now reddit just needs to get rid of the trolls, spammers, and clueless commenters :)
I think it is because America isn't meant to produce smart people. It is meant to make an environment hospitable for smart people. Cynical as it may sound, this means a consumer based worker population, which entails dumbing down.

Our economy runs off of mass production, so the products need to meet the greatest common denominator. You get a big common denominator by leveling society.
John Warnock's Interview
Hacker Redirects Barack Obama's site to hillaryclinton.com
A lot of people, especially from Silicon Valley should read this quote repeatedly until it sinks in:

"the Web's chattering classes tend to be overly engaged in the "Internet elite experience." They actually care about the 'Net for its own sake, and go gaga over new ways of showing maps. In contrast, average users just want to complete tasks online. They don't particularly like the Web, and they'd like to get back to their jobs or families as quickly as possible."
LOL, that's the sort of advice that's sure to frustrate anyone who actually needs the advice.
Top 10 Reasons to Avoid the SimpleDB Hype
Could you get rich animation from using transparent PNGs? Graphic elements could roam free on the layout...
> We democratically have fixed the age at 21 (for most states).

Well... sort of. The federal government stopped giving highway money to states that didn't follow its demands to raise the drinking age. I guess they didn't do anything illegal, but bribery seems unethical to me. If we are really concerned about democracy, we shouldn't tolerate the trampling of states' rights like this.

Actually, I think all this happened before I was born. I can still be mad though :)
As a software developer the main thing I have against Microsoft is their documentation blows.
He was definitely making it out to be "obviously" way easier. It's not.
keyword is "quickly".

Content based filtering is extremely expensive, just look at email. Reputation based filtering is quick and easy both for people and computers, but it has its own drawbacks, I agree.
I can't imagine a better answer.

The good news: I feel better already because I have always been extraordinarily dedicated to my users.

The not so good news: I'm so dedicated that I'm often afraid to release soon enough. Just last week, a customer accused me of being a perfectionist and said, "Just give me what you've got." Ewww. I have to find a happy medium.
That was my first impression too. Xobni is LookOut, only more social. LookOut used Lucene to index the email's and allow flashing-fast searches. Too bad MS killed them.
I've criticized Xobni before here, and been upmodded for it. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=51982

Incidentally, I think I was (probably) wrong then. I'm still waiting to see how it turns out, but their subsequent releases have been much, much more impressive than I expected them to be.
What relationships does Xobni uncover? How does it do it?

I was thinking to make a web app where people could upload their cell phone records and it would find relationships, but I'm not sure what to look for exactly. Any ideas?
Encyclopedia Britannica Now Free For Bloggers
Yago - A Core of Semantic Knowledge
You could generally get 100 million free users for every 2000 40/month customers. Price curves, check them out!

Very, very, hard. See my 1% comment.
Did they ever respond to your email? When I sent them nitpicks their reply was all snippy about it.
By community I thought you meant the normal readers, not the moderators. For normal readers, it is easier to read a post.
Feature 1: 1 day work<br>
Feature 2: 1 week work<br>

I used it for a few days and removed it later because it provided no real value, except for my coworkers asking me what I had there in outlook. I don't need a person ranking or the amount of emails sent by that person at a certain timespan. I just want to organize my email.
Yeah, from what I understand it was buried to avoid competing with windows live desktop search.
People don't just hate Microsoft because it's "cool" or because they're "the leader". They have plenty of data:

- They have always played unfairly, offering to "partner" with potential competitors, then driving them out of business after seeing their IP.

- They flaunt their monopoly while overwhelming law enforcement officials with lawyers. How hard can it be to stay one step ahead of attorneys general? Not so hard with enough resources.

- They blackmail their hardware partners with unethical, and probably illegal, conditions (Bundle Office or lose your OS discounts.)

- They hold their end users hostage with undesirable upgrade paths and "service patches".

- They stifle innovation. (Imagine going to Walmart and finding TV sets that only get Channel 7 - that's what the PC market has been like for 20 years.)

Oh, and one more thing...

- Their software sucks.

We hate the Yankees and Patriots because they are fun to hate.

We hate Microsoft because they have earned our hatred.
They don't particularly like the Web, and they'd like to get back to their jobs or families as quickly as possible.

That's a description of the average 40 year old user. The average 18 year old is much more interested in talking to their friends on networks than they are in their job or family.
I would start with very trusting people. The kind that would be gullible enough to upload their private phone records.

Seriously though. This is just like what Facebook tried to do with the purchase history thing last fall. It didn't go over too well. There's good reason that some things should never be made public.

The problem I see with the social networks is that in order for them to capture any truely valuable relationship data they have to tread on First Amendment rights. Google can luckily stay in the annonymous territory and reap the rewards. The social networks aren't going to be as lucky.
Feedback on our startup: a personal shopping service
Google tops Microsoft, Apple in brand power
Webware 100 Awards 2008 - Winners
Life-changing books: recommendations from 17 leading scientists
Reverse Engineering Muxtape with a 5 Line Script
[code]

#!/bin/bash

ARRAY=( `curl $1.muxtape.com | grep var | grep Kettle | sed "s/.\+Kettle//" | sed "s/\[//g" | sed "s/\]//g" | sed "s/;//g" | sed "s/'//g" | sed "s/(//g" | sed "s/)//g" | sed "s/,/\n/g"` )

let num=${#ARRAY[@]}/2

for ((i=0; i<$num;i+=1)); do

wget "http://muxtape.s3.amazonaws.com/songs/${ARRAY[i]}?PLEASE=DO_NOT_STEAL_MUSIC&${ARRAY[i+num]}"

done

[/code]

use it by typing ./muxtape.sh username

or use my online version: http://nopq.net/muxtape/
There's a big difference between courting small businesses (which is what DHH was talking about) and courting individual consumers (who are preconditioned not to spend money on webapps). Depending on the sector, people won't even use your app unless you charge for it.
nice reverse engineer there mike. let's take bets on how fast it takes muxtape to change something like their JS array so that this doesn't work, and let's take bets on when muxtape gets shutdown for being.. illegal
"Pretending to work is far more exhausting than actual work."
I find it somewhat amusing that pg suggests in the footnote that Microsoft ought to recommend their customers switch to Mac OS X.

The problem with that is that there is one supplier of hardware for Mac OS X: Apple. And they charge a significant premium for that hardware. Kinda like IBM back before Microsoft pulled a fast one and licensed their OS to all comers and (benevolently) changed the face of personal computing. pg recognized the evil that was IBM, but fails to recognize the same evil in Apple, because the facade is so much nicer to look at.
Someone at startup school said that my responses tended to be more like full on blog posts, so here it is: http://iamelgringo.blogspot.com/2008/04/if-startup-doesnt-ne...
Microsoft, Yahoo moving into endgame
VC confidence plummets, does anyone care?
Putting Founders First
I presume they mean english muffins? the type you toast?
Not all computers are bought new. There are very inexpensive Apple machines: used ones.

A Powerbook G4 like the one I use for everything seems to cost around $500 on eBay, and I suspect that offers a net better experience than the average Vista user gets.
your christian rap genres are all messed up. I was playing around browsing and you gat pranked or something. Christian Gangsta. Hahaha.
A well-written article. I enjoyed it.

I think the message has been out there for sometimes but it took a group of credible messengers (especially DHH) and a visible forum (Startup School) to drive the point home.

The following is my own experience on how VC's can be an entrepreneur's worst enemy. I have posted it a number of times in this forum already and I apologize in advance if I have over-done it. Thanks.

http://www.lovemytool.com/blog/2007/10/vc-worst-enemy.html
Just a hunch, but they probably ignored it because of who it was sent from.

I'm kidding, seriously.
As you saw its simplicity in your process, the goal wasn't specifically to prevent everyone from doing this. The idea was to make it abstracted away just enough to not be obvious (maybe legal reasons or the general case scenario?).

I'm sure the author knows that anyone half-competent can get those links, but as the link asks to not steal music, I'm sure he is just betting on the good will of people.

Publishing these little "reverse engineering" (quotes for good reason) instructions for layman how to rip music from a good service is morally wrong, imho.
"...of awkward self consciousness, and feeling ashamed about said self consciousness"
"...can't connect at the small talk level. I have an easy time talking with people like xlnt about abstract ideas and philosophy..."
"but I strike out with anyone my age"

those express exactly (exactly!) as I feel. Let's see how much more we can relate. Do you also:

-Think that you are quite a weird yet funny individual, and wish you can show that to the people you know, but somehow can't?
-Also, you are often feel "closed-out" when another exuberant person comes on scene. Also, you have no problem chatting, emailing, etc. and can express yourself without limitation that way.
-Speeches are easy because everyone uniformly has their attention on you, but when you are in a casual group situation and have to vie for attention it gets intimidating (and you will undoubtedly reprimand yourself for later).
-You also find it hard to come out and say something once you already start a pattern of not saying anything, as you begin to become over-anxious about people's reaction to your change.
...

this list can go on and on...if you're not looking at this thread anymore, yters, at least i got to spill my guts out which doesn't feel that bad. If you want to continue the list, i'd love to hear other people's situations as well, we can treat it as a fun little game.
Well 125,000 in base 11.5 number system is pretty close to 250,000 in base 10.

...

Yeah, that's all I got.
Not working for me. Ubuntu 8.04. Firefox 3 beta 5.
The interface works, but the song doesn't play.
This is so impressive. It has some really obscure music too.

By the way, was this made in Adobe Flex?
This is pretty interesting but if you think about it it kind of makes sense. The larger companies probably have a lot more data intensive tasks and probably account for dozens of startups.

It's surprising that it is banks though, not really sure what they are using AWS for and how they are handling privacy issues.

A comment on the post also mentions a good point: AWS presents a much better cost savings to a big company vs a small one so it's a no brainer that they are using AWS.
The only problem was the "play" button.

Otherwise, fracking awesome.
There were used IBMs on the market, as well. Does that invalidate your argument about IBM? One of your premises is incorrect. Which one is it?
Technology Fear Factor
lame. yes, everyone realizes muxtape is at risk, but that doesn't mean you need to hurry along the eventual shutdown.

muxtape is doing something very cool, and I think eventually some smart record label will understand that and release something like it. The future is here, its just in a grey zone legally (muxtape) or struggling and handcuffed (pandora, last fm).
I chuckled.
Hell is Other People's Code
Running a spreadsheet in a browser on the OLPC XO
which author are you talking about, the one here or the muxtape guy? the don't steal music thing is actually embedded in muxtape itself.
Gimein's troll-baiting....

The 2000 census shows that the US has more unmarried females than males. However, the Census also divides unmarried people into three groups: never-married, divorced, and widowed. [http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/phc-t27/tab04.pdf]

Looking at the data, we find that widowed females dwarf males (presumably due to females living 8 years longer on average while the average marriage age delta has been stable at 2-3 years), and that males remarry easier than females (or females don't want to remarry ;).

In the never-married category, males dwarf females. Running the numbers by state, we find the ratio of males to females as:

State/Non-state	Never-Married Males to Never-Married Females

District of Columbia	0.96

Maryland	1.04

Delaware	1.06

New York	1.07

Rhode Island	1.07

Massachusetts	1.07

Louisiana	1.08

Mississippi	1.1

Pennsylvania	1.11

Connecticut	1.11

South Carolina	1.13

Alabama	1.13

New Jersey	1.13

Illinois	1.14

Ohio	1.14

New Mexico	1.16

Michigan	1.16

Missouri	1.16

Virginia	1.16

Vermont	1.17

Maine	1.17

New Hampshire	1.18

Georgia	1.18

Indiana	1.19

Tennessee	1.19

Wisconsin	1.19

North Carolina	1.2

Utah	1.2

Minnesota	1.2

Iowa	1.22

Arkansas	1.22

Texas	1.22

Kentucky	1.22

West Virginia	1.23

California	1.24

Nebraska	1.24

Florida	1.24

Kansas	1.26

Oregon	1.26

Washington	1.27

Oklahoma	1.27

South Dakota	1.28

Arizona	1.28

Colorado	1.3

Idaho	1.31

Hawaii	1.33

Wyoming	1.33

Montana	1.33

North Dakota	1.36

Nevada	1.42

Alaska	1.45

The Census does not account for geographic clustering of sexual preferences, so assuming Gimein's observation held up with additional data gathering, he may live in a sexual-preference skewed location and/or Alaska.
Already spoke to him a few weeks ago, he gave some great advice.
It's a relatively light course, worth 1/3 the units of a regular course. It's meant to give people a taste of something, and isn't a full-fledged course.
As I commented there -- I hope this makes them change provider.