skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That's just one method. There are numerous successful blogs that post much more rarely, much weightier posts. E.g.:

http://www.stevepavlina.com
http://www.randsinrepose.com

To name but two.

4000 words might be a bit hard to digest for a blog post, but there's a happy medium in 1000-2000 words which you don't need to publish every day (or even several times a week, as Rands has shown), so long as it's worth reading.

Daniel
Few people can succeed with a blog that merely parrots back information that came from elsewhere. I would suggest spending those 4 hours a day actually doing something that you can write about.

Browsing news for 4 hours a day isn't really research, more likely to be procrastination.

Daniel
I have 23 extensions in total.
> maybe yahoo has something up their sleeves. like a new social network or something

Hahaahaaha... OMG you are a blast. A new social network? And that would help them how? Is that what they really need?
Please stop drinking the koolaid. Oh, and they do have Yahoo Profiles, kinda of a social network.
Physics for future presidents; entertaining, fun, educational

http://muller.lbl.gov/teaching/Physics10/PffP.html
>They should have dumped their stock when the offer was first floated

It is not their responsibility as shareholders to do that, but it is the responsibility of the company to offer the best value to its shareholders.
It's the same here in Finland. There are lots of different organizations, programs and places to get help(I bet goverment funded), but actually they should just make the process more simpler.
So where do you think the "design" comes from?
If I know the wizard book by heart - is that considered cheating?
Doesn't anyone remember, back in the day, when HTML was "just fine" and javascript was 'clunky', 'unusable', and had a multitude of accessability issues. Cross-browser javascript problems, anyone?
Now, of course flash also has its issues, but believe it or not, they are, much, much fewer and smaller than javascript/ajax had when it first started out, and even, dare i say, now.

The accessability issues, associated with flash are usually (as always) because the developer didn't know how to fix them, or didn't care to. There simply hasn't been a "killer app" like gmail, to show all the world that it could do thing much better than is generally asumed.

For example did you know that you can make a flash site change it's url as you navigate through it, enabling you to link/bookmark a specific section or a page of it (also allowing you yo use back/forward buttons)? The accessability issues have also long been solved, giving 'no-flash' users a striped down, yet fully functional/accesible site (as is the idea of javascript behaviours, if I recall correctly). (Take a look at this site http://www.rizn.bg for example of the two above - I know it's not english but the important thing is the concept)

And flash in itself has much more potential than javascript/ajax. 3D animations, build-in optimised compression algorithms, easier server integration, video/audio streaming, webcamera support, better file upload, etc, and it's all build in, on a single platform, with a quite nice and consistent api on top of it. Actionscript (the flash language) is a quite nice blend of java and javascript, minus the java bloat, complete with classes, inheritence, true C-like data types (insane performance), clusures. And it's all a lot more cross-browser friendly, than any other competing tehnology.

Now, i'm not suggesting we all jump in, because it does have issues still (font rendering, os integration and of caurse performance, to name a few) but there are quite a few places where it is a very good alternative. Just because most of the flash we come in contact with are useless splash screens and tacky animations, it doesn't mean that it can't do better. It's a hugely undervalued platform in my opinion, and we kinda have to 'wake up' and talk about its benefits instead of "it'll never work, its better to stick to what you know".

As for the original question - maybe because when it started out, flalsh was not good enough (pre flash 9 time), and by now they already have an infrastructure in place. Maybe if they create something radically new, they'll try to adopt flash, otherwise they'll stick with what works for them now.
Ask YC: Robot walking algorithms
Let us say that, hypothetically, I wish to build my own Dexter or Monty. I can imagine there is a large reading list.

I saw the ZMP paper and was piqued. What about other papers or research?
I think most people don't use mod_python directly, but instead use it as a means of running their web framework. So, for example, django comes with support for mod_python (http://www.djangoproject.com/documentation/modpython/).

mod_wsgi (http://code.google.com/p/modwsgi/) is rapidly becoming popular, it's an implementation of the python wsgi spec which has a plethora of toolkits and libraries available.

If you want to go low level I'd recommend mod_wsgi + a library like webob. Otherwise I recommend django on top of mod_python (or mod_wsgi).
Ask YC: learning to draw
Hello fellow news.yc'ers, I need your advice. The problem is this: I am a competent programmer, but have no skills, talent or natural inclination for drawing and graphic design. Lately it's been stopping me from doing some interesting things with my projects.

How to get a baseline skill level at drawing? How long should it take? Any experiences with online lessons? I'm quite willing to make a time investment comparable to learning a foreign language, about ten hours a week.

Thanks in advance for all advice!
Yahoo’s Smorgasbord is the Problem
They have a ton of social networks. Yahoo Answers, Flickr, etc... Or would those be classified as "communities"?
It only crashes when I try to leave gmail, and then only about 10% of the time, so it's not a big deal. I think I disabled Firebug when on Gmail. It only started when the latest version of Gmail was introduced, so I suspect it's a bug at their end, but tracking it down could prove awkward.
100% of the stuff on my publicly-visible CMS (not a blog!) is stuff I think I will need again one day. All of those handy one liners, administration commands and the occasional longer piece go there - every time I have to look something up or do a bit of research I try and make a note of it.

The reason being that there is almost nothing worse than having to, 6 months later, do exactly the same research over again because you can't quite remember how you figured it out last time :/

The publicly visible bit is just because, well, I am documenting it anyway so I might as well let google index it. I always find it slightly amusing when I'm searching for an answer and one of my own solutions comes up that I had totally forgotten about.

As a result readership is very low (about 10k users/20k pages per month) but I'm not really bothered as I'm not selling advertising or looking for revenue or fame :)
An indirect reply: Managers usually favour large reserves for it gives them more power and they do not have to beg for capital. Shareholders do not usually want to have cash layin around more or less idle.
Have to say, I heard that 3 years ago. And 6 years ago... Mobile is going to be big!!!
Ungodly returns? Christian social network raises $30 million on a $150 million valuation
Scientists discover why plague is so lethal
I play Diplomacy. That's already a lot of text (i.e. negotiations) to write.
Would you pay for a web 2.0 service that provides value?
Like most writing (including code) I think running a blog requires a fair amount of hubris. I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, but ...

I used to be very optimistic ("global village", etc) about the Internet, newsgroups, blogs, but now it seems that most of the time, communication drives people into irreconcilable factions. Too many people bring limited reading comprehension skills with them, and end up violently agreeing with each other or creating conflict for absolutely no reason. Most discussions seem to descend all too quickly into name-calling ("fanboy", etc) and I personally fail to see the value in it.

The best blogs start with some simple questions: do I have anything of value to contribute? Am I an interesting person who has achieved something noteworthy? Do I have unique insights or am I just recycling the zeitgeist? For most bloggers, I suspect the answer to all those questions is "no", and (although they can keep going if they like) there's precious little reason to actually read them.
+1 Great advice.
"... I write it mostly for myself and to polish my English ..."

I use my blog to 'try' and polish my ideas.

Funny things happen when you write them down. The ideas that sound great in your head suddenly appear trivial, less substantial. That's why working on them in blog format is a good idea. You get to throw ideas around for others to read, comment. Shred. Some work, others get shot down or in the process you find better ones. The ones that work can attract comment. This is where you can make improvements or just kill them.

Ideas can be polished far easier under the wear of others scrutiny.
Search text of videos
Twitter Can Be Liberated - Here’s How
It seems to me that you ignore creativity. You don't want to put this in a process.
Also have a look at DansGuardian http://dansguardian.org/. Blacklist files are available here: http://urlblacklist.com/

I'm not sure what you are looking for in terms of safe for work data; maybe technorati tags?
It's already society-changing big, but it hasn't quite converged with the internet and when it does Loopt will be there.
Omnidrive CEO Nik Cubrilovic: We're Not Dead. Again.
You mention a well-know process for designing a house. There is none that I know of, other than the word "design".

My approach is to consciously absorb as much of the problem at hand as possible, then let my subconscious crunch on it for a while, the length of time depending on the complexity of the problem. Coming up with the big concept for a large design, both building or software, can take a few days if its revolutionary, or a few minutes if its not. The key is to have a process that helps you leverage the power of your subconscious. Trying to force a solution in your conscious mind on a harder problem can be both painful and a waste of time.
Why I’m Pissed Off At Omnidrive
Posting your thoughts here is a virtual blog.

And you have company.
My experience investing in Nik Cubrilovic and Omnidrive
I agree, things might be better if it were simpler. But I don't like this "company.gov" idea if it gives the feds any regulatory power.

Currently, most corporate details are regulated by the states. In the article, it's mentioned that incorporation costs over $900 in cali. In NJ, it is much cheaper, and Delaware is particularly nice (YC does all it's paperwork through Delaware, no?).

If the feds get this kind of power, I'd be worried that the whole nation would look like California rather than like Delaware.
On Blue-Collar Languages
Minimize Code, Maximize Data
Or, the next gen iPhone could just have gprs and expose that to javascript. In which case webapps could have all sorts of functionality included.
JavaScript Compression using Canvas and PNG-embedded data
http://www.changethis.com/

Samples on a whole lot of interesting subjects to get you to buy the whole video, but just enough the get something out of.

Short, too. Perfect for ironing.
Mosso Launches CloudFS -- Real Amazon S3 Competitor?
Nice overview of why Microsoft's development environments suck, but not a whole lot about Apple and Cocoa. Maybe in part 3?
"Grand Theft Auto" simplifies song purchasing
Print code? Not since the early '80s.
Hi
I am a corporate programmer drone and yes, you are right, someone like Mel would not be very suitable. But that doesn't mean todays software building is any easier. Yes, I don't need to know numeric codes of the machine instructions, and I don't write code which modify itself. But the challenges are not lesser - we need to think about how to meaningfully build those layers of abstractions, how the pieces of software will communicate efficiently to each other (sometimes asynchronously), how to build the modules to be both maintanable and expandable, etc. etc...

When I was a student, I played with machine code and assembler and cracking etc., so I have some knowledge of all the layers, but I don't think that qualifies me to be a so-called Real Programmer. ;-)
Too bad the date the article was written is missing. You definitely can't rent an excavator with an operator at those rates this decade.
I hope the carriers eventually allow full IP access without extra extra charges, but I don't think they're ever going to give up the text messaging revenue stream. It's a tough problem, because they don't want to have to compete with VoIP providers on their own cellular networks.

And eventually we'll have the new network on the old TV frequencies that's open.
>It takes more time than is reasonable

True. For me at least I spent somewhere between 5-8 hours on each 500-800 word post. This seems to be pretty standard among top bloggers from what I've read. Most people decide to hit the back button in less than five seconds, so your first couple paragraphs especially have to be almost unreasonably well written and polished.

>in the average case nobody else really notices

If your blog is good then people notice surprisingly fast. You'd think that guys like Scoble wouldn't start reading your blog until you had 10,000 RSS subscribers. But in reality it's the guys like Scoble who spend eight hours a day reading blogs who are the first to find and link to your blog. There are some strange forces at play that I haven't quite figured out, but for whatever reason your first 250 RSS subscribers are pretty much guaranteed to be (on average) more intelligent and successful than you.

>once in a while it will propel a (partially-random) someone to fame and fortune.

While it's pretty difficult to get people to recognize your name, it's also really easy to get people to recognize one of your ideas. Getting on the front page of Hacker News isn't that hard if you are writing good stuff. Whether you make the front page of Reddit and Digg is mostly random these days, but if you consistently write good stuff then it will happen a bunch of times, you just can't really predict when.

I'm definitely going to start updating my blog again eventually. But I'd much rather post nothing than post stuff that isn't insightful. For some reason bloggers who write frequently gain a disproportionate share of RSS subscribers. This is really unfortunate and in many ways represents a huge failing of RSS. But because your first few RSS subscribers are going to be the most important for your career, it seems worth it to stick with only posting insightful stuff even if you occasionally have nothing to say for weeks on end.
Academic Exercise: Estimating Cost of Bandwith and Colocation Services for Startup
I'm putting together a business plan for an internet startup as part of a management class, which requires a complete budget and balance sheet. The planned site is a subscription based fashion advice service, looking to attract ~10,000-17,000 users in the first year (stifle your laughter, I'm in a group with a bunch of fashionistas). Clearly a large portion of operating expenses will come from bandwidth and server costs. This seems like such a basic question, but I'm having difficulty finding resources that could provide a rough ballpark figure for what such a site would cost on the server side. I've been away from IT for several years and really have no idea what this might require. Could someone point me in the direction of some rough numbers?
Cory Doctorow's new young adult book, the intro is a great distillation of his beliefs
i agree, argh, but i have a few other things that i need to get out the door that i should b releasing to opensource. RegAPI stuff for SecondLife, a jQuery SettingsManager for OpenSocial, and a possible XUL extension for FF. When I get to GAE, i will post it, but for now its going to have to wait till a lull
Microsoft-Yahoo: Translating Ballmer’s Letter
Most of the entertaining things I could write would be bad for my general reputation, so I don't write them.
Intriguing article about the future of US. Should we consider startups in India or China?
No time for promotion.

But I do post every once and a while.
"Ha, the old chop the relevant half of the sentence out and argue against the remainder technique."

Isn't that exactly what you did to me, Matt?

I started this thread questioning Microsoft's leadership trying to be all things to all people instead of focusing of their core strength. As any shareholder should. I cited a half dozen examples. You and others chose your favorite example and drilled into it. How is that different?

What has made this thread so interesting is how many downvotes AND upvotes I keep getting. Microsoft's pretty polarizing, huh? I wonder how many of their employees visit this board.

"Always a classic in internet debate."

Second only to "That's not fair." Welcome to the world of Microsoft.
There should be no paperwork at all.
Google for amazon monthly calculator . If you can estimate a web page size, which is pretty easy, the calculator will give you a good ballpark number.
Killing Twitter Before It Can hurt Us
Malcolm Gladwell: Who says big ideas are rare?
TED talks: Yochai Benkler on Open-source economics
Easy URL rewriting with Apache
URL rewriting tool is an online tool that generates entries for your .htaccess file. All you have to do is enter your ugly URL with all its arguments and the tool generates a pretty URL for
Because a personal weblog probably should be most interesting to friends and family, people close to the writer.
http://mitworld.mit.edu/

"MIT World™ is a free and open site that provides on-demand video of significant public events at MIT. MIT World's video index contains more than 500 videos."
"Shabda: ... with a budget of 10000 ... to make a kick ass product ... spend 5000 for making a so-so product and spend 5000 on marketing[?] What would you recommend?

Bob Massa: Spend $1,000 building a kick-ass product and $9,000 on marketing. Marketing NEVER takes care of itself."

That seems a little extreme.
I would rather be outside, away from my computer, participating in the community that's around me. nothing beats human contact.
Exactly, he throws around "curing a disease" and "designing a house" as if they were easy. News flash, architecture is a 5 year program just to begin the apprenticeship to get your license, and you need a doctorate before you will start working on a disease. All that time doesn't teach you HOW to do your job, it teaches you the information you need at a minimum to start learning HOW to do it. Computer science on the other hand can be learned on your own or its a 4 year program, and then you get to that part of learning. Don't mistake the fact that there is less material to learn for saying it takes more intuition. It just takes less time to learn the material in a discipline that has been around for 40 years than one that has been around hundreds or thousands.
I see my blog as a resume, portfolio and a networking activity rolled into one. Resumes and portfolio do not tell others how you think, or what interests you nearly as well as a blog. And a blog is social and sharable, so it helps you make new contacts.
Oddly enough Django was actually originally written as an easy abstraction layer around mod_python - partly so we didn't have to work with the low-leveal mod_python constructs, but mostly because back in 2003 we weren't 100% sure mod_python would work for us, and having an abstraction layer would make it easy to move to something else if we needed to (this was before WSGI as well).
Anyone who has tried to start a company in most other countries (where starting a company can take months and thousands of dollars in fees or even bribes) would never write something like this. The US is on the easy end of the spectrum, definitely.

Also, what the author seems to be suggesting is really just a "Company Corporation" or a "MyCorporation" (both large companies that do most of this work for you for not a ridiculously high fee), rather than any real change of law. I also did a google search for "incorporate", and the first few google ads were big companies that streamline the process for you.

A final small note- I would prefer that we keep a small toll charge for incorporation. It does cost the states money to process applications and keep track of filings, and it allows people to create a limited liability shield (not something I think we should be giving away for free).

This is similar to the logic that makes me think we'd be better off with a very very small "penny black" type of email tax (like 1/10th of a cent or less), just to discourage spammers.
He is a marketing Guru. Of course that would be his opinion. :)
At first glance i thought this was about VIM magic...

http://www.vim.org/htmldoc/pattern.html#/magic
I like the idea of giving back...if you write a blog you give back. However, if someone doesn't think they will be able to add value with what they would give back, don't do it. There are so many sources of information out there that it actually does get tough to weed out the bad stuff. If you think you can produce good content, write a blog, if not, don't. Very simple.
Congrats, guys. I had to uninstall you last night, though, because it did slow my Outlook to a crawl. I may not be the best test case, though, since I have gigs of archived messages.
Fairly obvious, I guess. It's always surprised me as well why no one has made Twitter into a protocol of sorts with a web app that you can host yourself instead of a centralized service.

(the reason I haven't done that myself is that I have absolutely zero interest in Twittering or Tweets or whatever that stuff is called)
GitHub Badge for your Blog
I just started my blog (its been work in progress for over a year now). I agree with several others that it takes time, and commitment to keep good content flowing. I spent almost all day yesterday putting out two posts. But if felt good. And its because its my way of giving something back. Some of the best information I gather is from blogs. Whether it be someone detailing the inner workings of rails routes to a one liner that saves you an hour of work. And they have helped me, so this is my way of helping someone back.

One of my blog posts details the issues I had trying to get Console2 to work the way I wanted it to. I wrote my experiences with it, and can hope that someone out there is having the exact same issue that I had, and benefit from it.

Creating new content is hard, writing well is even harder. A blog gives you the ability to work on both simultaneously. But on the flip side, who says it has to be brand new content? Write what you think is useful, maybe only to you. Treat it as a journal of thoughts, a repository of solutions to problems that you came across, a bank of opinions on things that matter to you, a list of articles that reverberated with you, it does not matter. What does matter is you being the authentic you.

Those who think most blogs are bs, yes, most are. But seriously, are you telling me that you have never come across a blog that worked for you? If yes, why couldn't that have been your blog?

I agree with Daniel that one should write to make things clearer to others. Putting an idea/suggestion/article under public (???) scrutiny is like cleaning up your house when your parents are coming over. You are forced to clean up your act, maintain focus and continuity and ensure that everything is its place.

In conclusion, blog if you feel the need. Blog if you think you have something useful to say, or add to a discussion, or even "retweet" (or reblog, in this case). I have had several people begin following me on twitter, probably because I retweet a lot. I act as a news filter/trusted source for those who dont want to have to read everything @techcrunch puts up. And if you don't want that, unfollow, or unsubscribe. But it takes time, it takes effort on my part, and it may detract you from what you should have been doing.

Hopefully I answered some questions here.