skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Sure there are (many) problems -- but where there is a will there is a way.

Eg South Africa produced Thawte which at one time had > 40% of the world market in SSL certs. Bought by Verisign for $500m, allowing its founder (Mark Shuttleworth) to become the 2nd paid space tourist, to create an early-stage VC called HBD, and to move on to things like Canonical (Ubuntu Linux). At the time, played differently, it could have been Thawte that bought Verisign (but Mark did not have an interest in that).

IIRC he is based from the UK these days (in part because of tax reasons), but very much maintains his ties to Africa. And Thawte is still based out of Cape Town.

Arguably, all the "negatives" actually have an advantage, and African hackers can actually get to be really good -- because the environment forces them to innovate and be creative. (Which is why they can do things like build LEO microsatellites for under $5m -- eg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SUNSAT).

There are of course several cases of (ex)-Africans founding successful companies in the USA (Paypal being a notable example) -- which is admittedly a little different.

Arguably environment is just another "tool" in the entrepreneur's toolbox -- some will gain advantage by changing environment, others by exploiting uniqueness in theirs and finding ways to deal with the challenges.

An interesting comment made once by Mark Shuttleworth, was that if a fashion company establishes in Paris (or a financial one in New York), it is immediately a challenge to be more than just average in that domain, to "stand out" as it were. He claimed this was a significant advantage for Thawte at the time.
What about usability though? If the navigation was on the right side, it would make it much more convenient to select menu items since the user's mouse pointer is (most likely) on the right side anyway for scrolling purposes. This is what makes blog design themes so popular. But I agree that each has its own place for the type of website (business, education, etc.)
It is, in fact, going to be a wonderful environment in which to take risk, because there aren't going to be any excesses.

I certainly agree with this, but I wonder if we'll actually see any more posts than usual that say "@#$% my job, I'm doing a startup."
Does anyone know of good tutorial on django and flex integration. Also, something about javascript and django. Couldnt find any good tutorial. Thanks
Nerdcore Rising: The Movie
Dan Weinreb's review: http://dlweinreb.wordpress.com/2008/04/28/nerdcore-rising-a-...
Nielsen talks about eye tracking studies and appears to make the argument that the menu should be on the left because of the way we (westerners) read.
So what about languages like Arabic and Hebrew? As I understand, these are right to left written languages. Would his study find people tracking on the right?
The problem with this meme is that it ignores the fact that success = log(quality). To build a business that has 2,000 paying customers is probably 85% as hard as building the next Google. To the extent that becoming the next Google is more unlikely than that, I'd say it's because once you max out the quality the rest is basically flip-a-coin.
Agreed that there are risks here. I'd be interested to hear from anyone with specific knowledge of the Symbolics situation -- my email address is patrick#collison#ie. I've tried to contact David Schmidt (the listed contact at symbolics.com) a few times, but without success.

Note, though, that Symbolics machines shipped with the source code (I own one, and have been reading and editing bits and pieces for quite a while). Using this emulated version of Genera is pretty much an orthogonal issue: to the extent that reading the Symbolics source causes IP issues, you're just as screwed if you read it legally.
The short answer is no. Google, Microsoft, Apple. (Does Facebook deserve to be listed here?). These are huge multinational companies that require huge educated talent pools simply to exist. But thats just one reason. The real question is why is the U.S. such fertile ground for companies like these.
I beg to disagree, web2py is quite good, at least in my own impression much better that webpy, at least when looking at it from the angle of code documentation and cohesion.
We use http://www.merchantplus.com

Low rates, authorize.net compatible API. Haven't had any issues with them and support is resposive.
Correct. I have no idea why the Gimp designers didn't go with a GUI that is more like photoshop. Someone had a fork called GimpShop but I don't think it's had much maintenance.
Press the power button?
Xobni secret project leaked
Uh, so you're saying that the reason Ubuntu doesn't ship with Flash installed is to inconvenience users so that they will better appreciate free software -- because it <i>did</i> come installed unlike the evil proprietary Flash player?

Just as Ubuntu now has "restricted drivers" it should also have "popular non-free apps", and a screen should appear on the first boot that lets the user install flash, skype, etc.

It seems silly that a hard line on a few small apps is making it so nearly any windows or mac user will get scared off by Ubuntu in the first 10 minutes.
Africa isn't completely befeft of large scale corporations - there are the big mobile phone companies Celtel, MTN, plus Naspers (Pay TV, newspapers, internet in SA, interests in online companies in Eastern Europe), the big mining operations, De Beers?
Mxit.co.za is probably the worlds most successful mobile social network in terms of getting critical mass
Ok then, my questions would be:

How much money do you think you'll make from this (to see how they evaluate their chances and worth), do you want to sell or remain and make a salary (to see what they are building the company for - longevity or a quick flip, not that either are bad), and what do you see your retirement like?
Other ideas:

- check the user-agent and only scribd for Windows (since that seems to be the only platform where people still use, and hence complain about, Adobe Acrobat Reader)

- make a greasemonkey script to auto-scribd any PDF (so people who like it can do it everywhere and the rest of us don't have to bother)
holy crap, is there a cliffnotes?
Are you still upset with web2py because I did not include your package. Com'on. Grow up.
web2py is a project grown in a university, it is all but marketing. Unless free good documentation is called marketing.
Here is the latest draft manual: http://mdp.cti.depaul.edu/examples/static/web2py_manual.pdf
Here is a preliminary comparison with other frameworks:
http://mdp.cti.depaul.edu/examples/static/web2py_vs_others.p...
(please correct me if I am wrong)
"make the experience a lot more friendly for people who use Microsoft Windows extensively"

should be

"make the experience a lot more friendly for the 99% of the population who use Microsoft Windows extensively"
Thank you aitoehigie. :-)
Management References: The Ethics Test
Poynter's Eye-tracking Follies
Also, getting DVD support to work was "challenging" to put it mildly.
It's certainly part of the story. But even after using (and mostly loving) Gimp now for years I still dislike the way it opens each image in an own window, especially when working with lots of open images. I can't just hide all gimp-windows in the background when switching tools - I have to hide each image one-by-one. Usually it's easier hiding all desktop windows and bringing up the other application I need afterwards. What irritates me even more is when I have to hunt for the tools-window of gimp
behind some of my images.

But I don't know if Photoshop would be nicer in that regard , I haven't used that in a long time.
Maybe I'm missing something, but I've never viewed computer usage as a militant adherence to a single software pricing model. I view it as using the best combination of OS and apps that suit my needs, in combination with offering the best cost to usability ratio.

Who cares if the software is free or paid? OSS or proprietary? Find what works best for YOU, and go with it. Note that the best answer is likely to be very different person to person.

Fanboys of any denomination are all equally annoying and blind.
>I know that important applications for parallelism exist—rendering graphics, breaking codes, scanning images, simulating physical and biological processes, etc. But all these applications require dedicated code and special-purpose techniques, which will need to be changed substantially every few years.

Interesting... not that it pays to go against The Knuth, but surely this is the same argument that's been made countless times before when it comes to hardware advances?

It seems to me that someone will come up with a compiler/code technique to present a uniform interface to these "special-purpose techniques", the way OpenGL did for graphics, or MapReduce for multiprocessing or TCP for network access, or.. and who was it who said that essentially every advance/new technique in CS comes from indirection?
Proprietary software is not evil, is just bad for society. Or at least not as good as free software.

I don't like that kind of behaviour from ubuntu, such as offering restricted drivers and suggesting for the user the installation of proprietary codecs -- I've been told it does that, I might be wrong. That's supporting the use of proprietary software, which I don't think shouldn't be the goal of any GNU/Linux distribution. In that sense I only wish ubuntu has less support for proprietary software, not more.

The thing that should attract people into GNU/Linux is the free software philosophy. If they're going to use GNU/Linux without even worrying about what free software is, then I don't care at all if they are using it or not. Why should anyone involved in free software development care about people who doesn't care about free software? Why should I care about someone who doesn't even make an effort in trying to stay away from non-free software, unless they have absolutely no choice?

Ubuntu doesn't ship with Flash to the convenience of the users who want to use free software -- so they don't have to uninstall it (or worse, use it without realising it's non-free).
The single most important thing you must do to improve your programming career
The template engine is intentionally designed so you have to move any major logic or 'business rules' to the view and out of the template. This can be a different style than other web languages in the beginning, but trust me you will be thankful in 6 months when you are adding a new feature that you don't have to touch the templates (or not much).
We installed Ubuntu on all the machines in the computer lab. Apart from the students who already used Linux, who just argued over which distribution, the CS students who'd only been exposed to Windows unanimously expressed they hated Linux. I asked them why, what was wrong, and it always came back to the fact that it was unfamiliar. I'm not sure how you fix that, because in effect their gripe was that it was not "exactly like Windows". It's yet another bad effect of the Microsoft monopoly - people believe that Computer == Windows, because they don't get exposed to anything else.
If you're willing to part with a little cash, you can find some decent ones for not very much. I didn't pay over $40 last year for vjot.com
Okay. I have a few.

First question: why? You guys are smart/energetic/young/etc -- why do this? Why not join BigCorp or become a priest or something?

Second question: What do you worry about the most? What keeps you up at night?

Third question: If you could only pick one thing to validate your reason for forming a startup, what would it be? In other words, what would be the single biggest indicator to you that you are doing the right thing?
Yeah, free or otherwise, software should be a pleasure to use, and I think the linux guys are missing a big part of the market share because of issues like the ones covered in the link. If a average(non programmer/linux literate) person can install ubuntu/linux and start using it full swing without having to jump through hoops and pull out some hair, thats when will linux get its fair share of the market.
Yeah, but due to the unfortunate DRM restrictions I don't see how that could be solved currently. Well, except by offering more comfortable torrent clients to avoid DVD's completely ... which is done already ;-)
This is true to a point.

The cost of hybrids needs to come down (or reintroduce tax rebates for Toyota with plug-ins in two years) for hybrids to hit a faster break-even point than 5 years unless gas skyrockets to $5-6 / gallon. A good portion of current of the hybrid market doesn't really care about breaking even or saving that much on gas - they're more concerned with the social factors - reducing pollution and dependence on foreign oil. In order to really push the rest of American towards alternative-fuel or electric vehicles, the cost is going to have to come down.
TechCrunch UK - European VC investment in tech is actually going up. But Seed funding?
Your view is different then mine. You see, I take care about the consequences of my actions. Sure, it's much more convinient to use adobe acroread, using MS Office is probably a lot easier than OpenOffice. But by using such software I'm contributing with ideas that are not so good for society.

This essay explains a lot of my point of view towards software: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html

I think finding what work best for me is just too selfish, I rather find what I think is best for everyone. Also, I realise that, althought proprietary software may be the best thing for me in the short-term, in the long run, free software will be much better for me. It will give me more freedom.

Now, I was hoping to have a serious discussion, but you call me a fanboy (althought for some reason people are downmodding me like crazy). Are you want to troll me?
As an elisp developer, I would like people to stop using XEmacs also. But the thing is, it seems like most of the more experienced extension developers are using XEmacs. I'm not really sure why, since I'm only active in the GNU emacs community... but there must be some reason. (I bet not having to sign copyright papers for every 10 line patch is one.)
Firefox started its ascension by systematically eliminating any reasons users had for using IE, until it was similar to IE, but with more power, less suckage, and a better interface.

It certainly doesn't mean Linux should jettison things that rock, like throwing out package management in favor of Windows-style installer chaos. But at the very least, we should expect to help users coming from different paradigms understand what package management means and how it's different. Any novices who are remotely sane will love the little Add/Remove Programs widget in Ubuntu.
Enjoying History
I have two major gripes with GNU emacs right now. THe mandatory signing over of papers and the lack of dynamic C library loading.
1. What have you learned?

2. How have you changed since you started?

3. What key skill or experience did you lack when you started that has caused you the most problem?

4. What has been the biggest surprise: what was one key assumption you made, perhaps even unconsciously, that has caused the most grief?

5. What development, event, or new understanding since you started has had the most impact on your original plan? How has your plan changed in response?
I don't know what you call a "linux guy". Nonetheless, I consider myself a "free software guy", GNU/Linux is just one of the possibilities when you are looking for free software.

We are not looking for as many people using GNU/Linux as possible (althought that's sure much better than people using nothing but proprietary software). We are looking for many people supporting free software. So, having tons of users who don't contribute or care about free software doesn't make me happy. I'm not saying we should drop usability, it's important, it's nice, but we shouldn't confuse lack of proprietary application with usability, that's all.
looks cool... would be even cooler if the xobni guys worked at one of these big companies and could fully integrate their ideas instead of hacking together ie addons

somebody buy these guys please
Getting customer feedback
I think it all depends on your definition of success. Many of the hackers on ycnews seem to want to make money so they can do something else. Becoming financially successful is just a step towards allowing them to concentrate on a passion without worrying about monetization.

In which case it would seem logical to make x million the quickest and easiest way possible. I think many will agree its easier to do that building "mundane, income-producing businesses" than trying to create the next Google. In which case, keep the mundane apps coming...
Why I Like Perl
The only other company that I know that does this is Whole Foods Stores. Each store has all the salaries listed up for all the employees to portray a completely transparent display of trust.

However, i'm not quite convinced that it works.
((( No KLAXON needed here, just try it out privately, because the only way to have some kind of possible resurrection of these beautiful machines is getting your hands on it, don't you think? )))
>> ... would be even cooler if the xobni guys worked at one of these big companies and could fully integrate their ideas instead of ...

Unlikely. It because they are a small bunch that they have the flexibility and drive to crank out things so fast. Once they are part of BigCo, the risk is that they might end up as a milestone on the roadmap to Outlook 2010.
Will you piss off clients with your blog?
Will you lose clients if you disclose your likes and dislikes in your blog? What if they don't believe the way you do or have differing opinions? What if they're easily offended? All the answers are here.
Whatever awards they pass out for blogs, I'm voting for Marc. He seems to be in an ideal state of disinterest. He isn't concerned about blog revenues or "access" and he has strategically valuable information and experience. Yet somehow he writes the blog anyway. Maybe because he still self-identifies as a hacker, and educating the internet by posting is still part of his value system.

(That said, you can't trust much of what he says about Ning, but it is unclear how much of this is pride and how much is spin.)

Also, he can afford to do crazy things like ask a few lawyers what the likely endgames are. But you would think that the SJ Mercury would have done the same thing, and yet their article over the weekend wasn't nearly as good. Compare: http://www.mercurynews.com//ci_9073065?IADID=Search-www.merc...
Designing better landing pages
The challenge with a VC investment is that it comes with a 5-7 year shot clock, after which they need to liquidate their investment: they don't want to return a minority holding in private firm to their limited partners. Bootstrapping or Angel investment allows you to be more patient about success. Also, the competitive landscape for a $1M revenue firm is very different than one earning $100M, it's much much harder. Very few larger firms care about a $1M market, or even a $10M market, especially if they view it as an unprofitable segment from their current revenue. But they will find a $100M market much harder to ignore.
Realize that is who Ubuntu is aiming at, converts. I know Unix has many superior features and I'm for it, but the Ubuntu people want to make the transition easy and have already made a lot of changes from other distros. If they are going to go in that direction, they should go all the way. Then if those people get interested in trying slackware or something else more Unixy the difference is su vs sudo not oh my god what do you mean the command line?
Twitter: Where Nobody Knows Your Name
Exactly, his complaints are mostly "Why didn't they make this little thing slightly clearer for the uninitiated" i.e. call it Brasero CD/DVD burner instead of just Brasero. That is hardly throwing out the baby with the bathwater and copying Windows.
There are still some okay 4 letter domains out there, too, in .COM.

The best I managed to grab recently was 1FTW.com.
i would say decidedly not. a lot of ink has been spilled regarding silicon valleys ascent to its cemented position as the number one place to start a high tech. likewise, people question why silicon valley has excelled over other places in the us (boston, new york, austin, etc.) then broaden the your net and include europe, russia, israel, brazil and asia and you have to conclude that the last place it will happen is in africa.

i think africa has to get the basics down first. then we'll see. by no means am i saying that they lack the individual brilliance. in short, what they lack is the institutionalized backing of a solid higher education system, vc and, oh ya, general infrastructure (transport, food, electricity, telecommunications, security, etc.)
Amusing that the leak comes with invite codes, I can see Xobni was really annoyed about it :P
I hope this comment doesn't sound trollish -- but it's a question that has been buggin' me.

So where are the geeks who are excited enough to update a piece of open-source software to help newbies out? I mean, if I were contributing to the greater good and all, seems like it would be with something that I personally had a need to do. While I'm sure that most contributors think of the noobs, where is the cohesive push for simplification of user experience?

It's always seemed like to me that FOSS was great for geeks who wanted to keep adding cool stuff and sharing it, but the motivator is -- excitement. It's still an economy going on, it's just about emotion. I just don't understand how people get excited about stuff that seems archaic or strange to them.
This is not an either or thing. If you get people to use 99% free software and 1% not, that is a lot better than 100% not. As more people jump into the ecosystem it makes the manufacturers take it more seriously and you will see more and more stuff get opened up. If you want 100% free software there are many distros for you other than Ubuntu, Ubuntu aims as being easy not being perfectly free. Just because it uses GPL software doesn't mean the project has to agree with Richard Stallman. I would say Ubuntu falls a lot more in the Linus Torvalds idea of practicality and if you want the Richard Stallman approach Debian is probably a better alternative.
> Why should anyone involved in free software development care about people who doesn't care about free software?

Sometimes the end justifies the means. I'm sure that many of the Firefox converts didn't switch because of their love of free software. But it forces web developers to think about standards and not limit their web pages to Internet Explorer. So more users benefit you directly.
I agree they should be very careful, otherwise they could be looking at a mass exodus. However, I think that with how popular they are, they could get away with a reasonable fee.
There are a lot of things that attract people to GNU/Linux, philosophy is not the one that got it this far. Philosophy got you Hurd, practicality got you Linux. I jumped into GNU/Linux because I use it for robotics and I could develop and deploy on the same platform, free software came later after I appreciated it, and now I contribute to several open source projects and work for an open source company. If I had been turned off by these difficulties early I wouldn't be doing what I am today, that is what Ubuntu is for, not the purists, it is for an introduction.
There are still good domains out there. I just bought nect.us, for example (so I can do con.nect.us)
I was most intrigued by the thought of code editing as a serious part of Firefox. I don't know much about XUL, so I will need to read up, but I thought it would be quite sexy if I built an editor which binds to Heroku using the API. A local code editor extensible via javascript that works directly against the remote in-cloud data would be a pretty swift alternative to the Git approach.
That works on Windows too.