skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Sorry, I remain unconvinced. If Microsoft thinks that the problem-space that Xobni solves is interesting enough to attempt a purchase, I suspect that if rejected, they would put their attentions to building or buying a substitute. Even if Xobni's userbase grew by two orders of magnitude after the fact, I suspect that once the Microsoft ship has sailed, it won't be stopping in that particular port again. In this case, since Xobni's product is parasitic upon a product of Microsoft's, I doubt that somebody else is going to come along with a more attractive offer in any event.

So: I think for Xobni the time has come to sell, and try to get the best deal they can. And, in the general case, if one is building a product that is parasitic upon a major platform, and the platform vendor makes an offer-- ring the bell, it's dinner time.
I'm only happy when my karma reaches a certain significant number. Like 314 or 411.
I would be lying if I said I didn't.

But I care more for a good conversation.
Digi-Key's strategy obviously diverges from Wal-Mart when we look at profit margins.

You make a good point; I don't think I can argue against what Octopart is trying to do from any kind of good vs. evil ethical standpoint. However, I can understand a business such as Digi-Key wanting to maintain control, and they could easily argue it is for the benefit of the customer. For example, when a customer searches Octopart, are they going to also get a list of complementary parts from each supplier? I doubt it. What about helpful charts, material safety data sheets, and CAD schematics? If someone was just scraping my site and hijacking the search functionality but failing to deliver the rest, I'm not sure I'd want my name attached either.

Of course this is really coming at it from the wrong level. The truth is that Digi-Key can simply ignore you, and it doesn't hurt them in the slightest. And while doing so, they can be sure they aren't reaping any of the negative consequences of being associated with you either.
Of course it isn't negatively affecting Camfire; they had it removed from the internet.
More of a fast slideshow than a video player. Expected video quality goes hand in hand with Moore's law, so this approach would always be two steps behind a proper video player with keyframes, etc.
Hi Paul,
Great essay. The idea of a purpose to business transcending mere "stockholder value" is a powerful new meme, which I believe Forbes has labeled "Capitalism 2.0":

http://www.forbes.com/columnists/forbes/2008/0310/030.html

Here's hoping the idea takes off -- and not just for startups!
Sincerely,
Dr. Ernie
http://ihack.us/2005/10/07/capitalism-20/
I had a karma of ~350 until the software glitch at the beginning of the month. At first, I cared, but then I realized that it's not important in the grand scheme of things. However, I would like to get my #CBDDFF top bar back, and have the down arrows available again. Otherwise, it's no big deal :~).
You makes some decent points but you continue to say things that are a bit ridiculous such as:

"who pale in comparison to people your encounter every day on the job. Why do you think the most important class in any business school is the internship?".

Where do you work that you get to spend each day with the best and brightest business leaders in the world? There are reasons why top management consulting firms aggressively recruit MBAs from top-tier business schools and a lot of it has to do with the people that they were surrounded with in their education.

I'm not going to discount your opinions or Marc Andreesen's opinions but they are just two opinions. I'm sure I could go talk to any partner at Accenture and get a vastly different opinion. I don't really think that the MBA makes that much sense for someone interested in starting their own web company but for many career paths it does.
Haha. I hadn't ever looked at her like that.... now I may have to change it.
Earning karma points is not important to me. I could honestly care less.

However, that being said, I am more a "consumer" of this site than a "poster." I am not trying to be heard, trusted, or accepted by anyone here.
You are crazy. Clorox still has more end-consumer market share than all store brand bleaches put together, even though it is chemically the same stuff and costs way more.
> I suspect this is similar for 21-year olds in the states.

I certainly don't want to call my fellow Americans particularly mature, but it's pretty rare for people to wait until 21 to drink here, so I think the effect is dispersed.
Corduroy: A billing system for your startup (launched today)
It seems to work pretty well.
I can't believe someone didn't realize that you could eliminate so much duplicate data!

see: http://www.nihilogic.dk/labs/jsvideo/video/officespace.jsvid
"I feel that if you are old enough to go to war and risk your life"

which is exactly why public outcry during the Vietnam war lowered the age to 18 at that time. After the war, statistics strongly suggested raising the age back to 21 to dramatically reduce highway deaths. States had to comply or forfeit federal highway funding (a sure way to get voted out of office).

Perhaps the best thing to do is to lower the age to 18 (where it belongs) and make a concerted effort, once and for all, to get all the drunks off the roads, regardless of age.
So, someone reinvented the animated gif?

I hope to see a web stream player that don't use flash or java. But that's not it, not even close. Actually, it would be great if you could click on the link and open the stream on mplayer or vlc. The ads could be on the video itself and around the link. That would be perfect, I don't get why youtube and other sites like that don't take that approach.
Second vote for gotomeeting. I use it a lot and have never had nothing but good feelings for it. Does what it does and does it well.
>In some ways, that seems more sane to me than DHH's pay-only ideology.

Well, first off, there are free versions of all 37s's apps.

Second, RTM isn't profitable (yet/ever?). 37S is. That seems more sane to me.
Probably not.

Keeping the drinking age at 21 doesn't deter minors from drinking, but keeps the legal ramifications severe, especially for minors who drink and drive. Besides, 18 year-olds typically have just 2 years or less of legal driving experience. May be a good reason the driving and drinking ages are separated so far.

The article does make me wonder . . which special-interest group might really behind this movement? Society as a whole doesn't stand to benefit a whole lot by lowering the drinking age. However, I can't help but think of a certain Republican presidential candidate's Anheuser-Busch distributor owning wife and cronies who would benefit quite a bit from the increase in potential drinking population.

Just an observation.
Interesting but - $59.00 per month for the service?
No I don't. I just tell everyone how I feel and when I need to top up on Karma I just post a pg related article...>:)
How to learn Scala quickly and deeply:  learn to use its parser combinator library
Even if you don't need to do any advanced parsing, learning to use the parser combinator library will show you how various elements of the language come together in an elegant and useful way.

If you are more ambitious, you might even want to learn how the library is designed:

http://www.cs.kuleuven.be/publicaties/rapporten/cw/CW491.pdf
I don't care about Karma.

Mostly.

One day I noticed that I had about 180 karma and decided to try for 250 so I could change the colour of the Navbar. After clearing 250 (and changing the color to a nice soothing green vs the default orange), I find I don't really care about Karma.

A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon. - Napoleon
I would say what makes them different is the thing that makes them different enough to pay premium for a laptop/computer in the first place: These people place a value on quality.

Add to that that I'd venture 80% of the windows users have never "bought" software (except games). Windows is either pirated or comes with the computer... office is acquired from work, some other programs are freeware/never paid for shareware.
I believe you've got that slightly wrong.

They sell coffee for $5. Marketing doesn't achieve that. Selling coffee for $5 is marketing.
Ask YC: Liability insurance for a 1099?
Well, this is a first for me. I'm negotiating a contract with one of those we-find-you-work agencies, and while they are willing to let me work as a 1099, rather than a W2 contractor, they insist that I have liability and worker's compensation insurance. This is the first time I've been asked to provide insurance, and a quick Googling doesn't seem to have much in the way of answers.

But, there's lots of smart people here, and likely some of you who do your own contracting, so you get to deal with this all the time, right? Right?

I realize this doesn't fit in the 'startup' category, but six months' worth of contracting income can run a startup for more than a couple of months... and should keep me from having to take any student loans for grad school.

Thanks-in-advance!
Pretty standard puff/PR piece but the "install under Windows" thing is pretty cool.
Laws are not created democratically.
This discussion of whether we are adding value or not seems very hypothetical to me. We aren't forcing anyone to use our site, presumably if people are using our site, it is because they find it useful.
a 1500-invoice package from blinksale (which only does invoicing) costs $49/month. harvest's business plan costs $90/month and is also geared towards projects and invoices only.
Sure, but I don't think the 18-year olds in the UK don't start drinking before, either. I think whenever it's actually legal, you abuse your right to drink by doing so excessively. I might be wrong, though.
Leave your email in our Campfire chatroom, those will be done first.

https://soocial.campfirenow.com/7b5d4
Ask YC: Is passion for your field of work important?
Curious when you are picking projects, is it enough for you to be passionate about hacking towards a great idea or do you also need passion for your particular field of work?

For example, I love travel, so if I came across a project for a law firm enterprise solution, I'm not too inclined to take it on even if I think it makes a lot of sense. I'd rather take on a travel project, even if it makes less $$$.
$59 a year would be reasonable.
Alas, I do not have the necessary resources.
he said pg everyone +1 for him.
Perhaps, these customization freebies only become available at various karma levels because the intent is to get a user to increase karma.If we aren't chasing karma then this stuff can just become available as features.
I like it. But I think the amount of 'karma' that it takes to get on the feed should be raised to 5. There is way too much feed traffic.
User-wise, I'm more interested in a user's average karma per post than their total karma.

Post-wise, I have some gripes with the way karma works, in that your high-value comment can easily go ignored because it starts off at the bottom of a well-populated thread. Which, for karma-gamers, means it makes more sense to reply to a comment with high karma to increase the visibility of your comment rather than starting a new comment thread. And it also means that your average karma per post doesn't necessarily reflect your average value per post.
I think the problem is that the artists need to hear what they are playing so they don't actually want this law to be affecting them.
>How sustainable is the business in the face of cheaper competition?

This is where branding and marketing come in. Ask Apple, BMW, Mercedes, Luis Vutton, etc etc.

These businesses all sell their products for much more than comparable products, and they do quite well. Why? Because there are two types of consumers that are sold by their marketing: those who appreciate high quality, and those that want to be seen as appreciating high quality.

You don't have to appeal to everyone.
"marketing + some pretty interface"

Best description yet of "Web 2.0"!

I feel much the same way, which is why I've been learning Eclipse RCP this year. Not everything has to be a killer website (although RCP apps can be made into web apps with RAP).

There are still many applications that don't quite fit into the "web 2.0" mold. For example, think of applications that deal with data users want to keep private, or share only on their own terms, not through a trusted third party, however benevolent they claim to be.

Instead of trying to convince users they need to trust their data to your web app, bring the application to them!
Consider attending events about things you're interested in/ where the you have similar interests with the people attending. For example, you could go to more alumni events. Go with the intention of meeting at least 5 new people. You don't have to end up with their business card or contact information. Just practice as someone else mentioned. You'll find yourself gaining more confidence and you can start branching out to other kinds of events. This is what I did and it helped me.
There are some pretty amazing algorithms at work every day in the financial markets. If you're interested in that, I can personally recommend Palantir Technologies as a great place to thrive doing just that. They're applying real computer science in problem spaces that desperately need it.

http://www.palantirtech.com/

My profile has contact info if you'd like an intro.
Anyone who's actually looked at the math behind this knows that this simplification only works out when an entire gender are strong bidders. Otherwise, the solution set lies somewhere in between the extremes. So the author's simplification makes his claim. Without the simplification, his claim weakens significantly.
I think passion is very important. Overall, the better your understanding for the application/use of the work you're doing, the better your overall chances for success. Having passion for the application and use of the product will allow you to think about how it will be used, what the users will value the most, etc.

A recent startup I worked at was trying to create a product that was used for audit compliance (SOX, PCI, etc.). The problem is that they really didn't have anyone truly passionate or informed on the subject. The first several versions of the product greatly reflected this.
I would personally play an RPG instead - if I was looking for such excitement. From nYC I want the best submissions. :)
The most interesting part:

"MADD is heading the opposition, .. arguing that the 21 law has saved more than 20,000 lives. Choose Responsibility disputes that figure. Other factors, it says, have also contributed to the decline in deaths, and fatalities among under-age drunk drivers have fallen by only 13%."

And those factors are? I'm not saying the 21 law is responsible but what is the debate here?
A little pricy- push the cost down a tad and a lot more independent contractors would use it. Some I know already use the open source http://www.bambooinvoice.com ok their own servers.
Interesting... Macrovision wants to hire people who love reverse engineering so that they can reverse-engineer the solutions of people who have reverse-engineered their copy protection, so that Macrovision can make their copy protection harder to reverse-engineer.

(Never mind that their ideal candidate is effectively someone who has already broken their copy protection.)
I think karma is a one-dimensional useless metric, and the only reason it seems to have some value is due to the initial homogeneity of a social news site's user community.

I didn't know hacker news added silly features based on karma. How pathetic.
I care. Reddit was destroyed by trolls and joke accounts. They get downmodded quickly, but they keep coming back and spamming every article. Even though comments are the main point of Reddit, you get no credit for posting good ones and no penalty for posting spam.

Slashdot had the right idea when you were limited to one post a day (or whatever) when your karma got to -10. If you can't write content that other people enjoy, you need to leave or adjust your attitude. Karma is a way of making people feel bad enough to go away :)

The more people we can encourage to stay on /b/, the better... 'cause I really don't care to read that drivel, but I do care to read what people think about programming-related things.
Yes. Where he was talking about scaling.
He said per month in his speech. And why would he choose 6.25 (or even 6) as his length of time?
I'll be surprised if this one does.
a. You wrote a crawler, not a search engine.
b. Ferret will bite you in the ass.
c. For a really good off the shelf crawler, look at Heretrix.
Smile :-)
Yes, but Clorox isn't a commercial Unix, unless it was one of the less widely known ones, either...

The point is that you can do that kind of thing in that market sector. Can you in IT? Maybe, but certainly not in some areas. The economics and marketing are quite different.
We want all of out apps to be non-media. I.e. Services without ads.

Bug.gd plans to do it by selling private P2P help desks directly.

We have another unrelated service launching soon that will directly charge users for anything above casual usage.
The problem is not that Digi-Key is ignoring Octopart, but that they are making frivolous legal claims in order to rack up Octopart's legal bills. Digi-Key is acting the same way Microsoft did when they sued Linux for patent infringement.
How is it possible to know whether you fit into a community by looking at your Karma, especially if you are a newbie. If you aren't a newbie then you are already participating or observing the community anyway.

To illustrate another subtle point. Lets, take your karma and compare it with mine and compare mine with someone like nickb. Now what conclusions can I draw about whether I fit into this community.
Which is why I don't go there anymore.
Why SMS apps are failing on facebook platform
sql ledger is free. how does this stack up? I'd rather the product be open source so I could install on my own systems and keep my records. Just a security thing... financial data is important.
Security Engineering - A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems
All I care about is reading great stuff to build great products.
I typically just put them on the Web myself; if they make money I discuss with my partners what to do with it. If any of them were to make a lot of money, I'd probably start an S-corp or something to reduce the tax liability, but it's never gotten to that point yet.
Or at least don't invite that one guy back.
I think its more the fact that you don't have different level packages.. perhaps add a lower one with more limits?
So the issue is: 1) they were putting ads on top of Craigslist, and 2) they were using up too much bandwidth. I expect if you actually wanted to build something useful you could just email Craig and he'd get you a dump.
"Where do you work that you get to spend each day with the best and brightest business leaders in the world?"

I don't. I just believe that we all have a lot to learn from all the ordinary people running the world, a little bit at a time. I imagine the best and brightest business leaders in the world would agree with me.

"I'm sure I could go talk to any partner at Accenture and get a vastly different opinion"

Yes you will! But don't forget to talk to a few of the many business people who despise firms like Accenture. I know they're out there because they're the ones who call people like me (and many others here) to clean up the messes MBAs leave behind.

"I don't really think that the MBA makes that much sense for someone interested in starting their own web company but for many career paths it does."

Yes, I agree.
Right, good examples. But those are all physical products. Can you think of online brands that have that kind of power? I can think of some negative examples, like AOL, that most hackers wouldn't have been caught dead using.

...

Indeed, thinking about it a minute, a lot of my experience with 'branding' online is that small and independent is cool. How much cooler is it to have a @yourowndomain.com email address than @hotmail.com? Remember geocities? Another thing that was sort of the lowest common denominator.

Maybe Google has a positive brand at this point, but I pay for very few things there. I suppose I might pay a little bit more to them for some things in the future to have everything 'tied together', but that's getting away from 'branding'.
your product will be better if you are passionate (or really need it yourself).
I am sorry, I don't understand your point on how Karma relates to spammers going away and 'joke' accounts not being created, especially if they spammers kept coming back anyway.
No, I think the added impetus to ad value to a conversation that karma generates for some is very helpful in keeping the signal-to-noise ratio at a decent level. Karma certainly doesn't HURT in regards to this and it has the ancillary benefit of quantifying, to some extent the reputation of a given contributor, which, for new users is very useful when it comes to understanding who to listen to.
depends on the contracting. All of my contracts were short term, never had more than 10 contracts from one company, which maybe 2k. But that might just be my luck and area. Michigan has been crappy for.... anything.
awe come on... it's a joke.
Hashbucket, if you're interested in applying powerful algorithms to semantic searching within science, including bioinformatics, then get in touch.
Just remember WWAPD: What Would Austin Powers Do?
It's not funny when it's true:)
Monopoly isn't the most technically accurate word, but behaviorally I'd say that Digi-Key is acting like a monopoly. Typically monopolies like to hold on to existing business practices rather than adapt to changing market economies. Regardless of 'good', 'evil' or 'monopoly', it seems to me that it is inevitable that online price comparison will start to become the norm for most markets. Digi-Key's reaction to this is very monopoly-like (in another world, they could choose to work with us and make sure they get the lion's share of traffic from our site).
Okay, but I am not sure how credible such a quantification is. Perhaps an extremely 'credible' contributor posts quality stuff but very rarely. How likely is it that I miss his submission if I was to look at karma as a measure of credibility. My point is that karma equates more to participation than substance - it is possible to have both.
I think drinking and driving and the drinking age are two fundamentally different issues.

There may be a correlation between the two, maybe even some causation, but drinking can and should be solved in different ways, mainly with education.
Campus hosts Startup School
this is a great resource! Thanks for posting about this one!
Joining a startup: the decision process
Independent contractor version that is much cheaper could be useful, and would be necessary to compete with a spreadsheet.

In the past I have used spreadsheets that I export to pdf and send to the clients that look almost exactly like this format, and manually managed them.
no. that's why it IS funny, 'cause it's true.

It's sad too, though.

If pg says anything he gets at least 50 points for being pg. The rest is because pg is actually smart and doesn't usually say dumb unthoughtful things.
chapters for the first book is pdf. I HATE pdf. why can't they be html... sigh bookmarking.
Disruptive Technology: Skype Launches all you can eat phone service for $9.95/month
I take this back. I met DHH at Startup School this past weekend and he was incredibly nice.
The Boston Lisp User group is meeting at 6 p.m. at MIT.
As for brands with power, off the top of my head:

37 Signals

Salesforce

Flickr (picasa is free, and people still use flicker)

expedia/travelocity (not startups anymore mind you)
Cool, I'm willing to take a look. I'm a very happy Freshbooks (http://www.freshbooks.com) customer now though, is this better?