skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"More than a feature." - My guess: [Forward Looking Statements]

Xobni is able to be integrated into 'all' email clients.

Lots of people do this because its FREE and provides some immediate benefit (enhanced information, etc.).

When you use Xobni, your 'information' is synced back to Xobni's servers. From this they create a social network-like thing that is sort of a hybrid between Plaxo (contact management) and LinkedIn. [Even if you only try out Xobni, they still extract your 'email social structure' to add to the big picture]

Suddenly Xobni is a Social Productivity Network riding on top of Email that is super useful to businesses and that people are willing to PAY FOR to get enhanced networking capabilities, productivity tracking, spam filtering, mobile directory[People include their cell phone nums. in emails all the time]. It requires almost no effort from people to establish 'connections', email is ubiquitous, blah social, blah networking, blah aggregate, blah circle jerk.

Profit.
Why would Apple want to buy Adobe in the first place?
Hi, I'm Dan.

We just got accepted in to YC Summer 2008 this past weekend. Before this past Wednesday, I worked as a financial analyst at a small due diligence firm where I could wear what ever I wanted to work, had relatively flexible hours, got paid pretty well and loved my coworkers.

Let me take you to that Wednesday: Bossman called me in and said he was pleased with my performance since December and gave me a promotion (essentially a 10-20k raise). He also added that some final details needed to be worked out before it would go in to effect.

After nodding and saying thanks, I told him to hold off as I had just received early stage seed funding and would be moving to Boston June 1. He was at a loss for words ...and so I was. It was awkward/hilarious. After what seemed like a minute pause, we started a conversation. He shared with me his regret for not trying to make it as a major league baseball player (he was a stud ballplayer at a Division I University) while I shared with him how much I had enjoyed working at his firm. At the end of our conversation he gave me his full support and definitely understood why I was doing it.

Dissimilar to many of the people out there, I don't hate my job or loathe my coworkers, I just wanted to try something different - something I'm excited about every time I wake up in the morning.

Trying to launch a startup while having a real job (and in my case another side business) is just too much. I was spread too thin.

So I guess to formally answer your question: the urge to try something different and work for yourself regardless how good (or not so good) your current situation is.
But Americans don't want the jobs that the "unskilled, poorly educated" people are here to fill. They want the jobs which the H1B visas are meant to fill.

Not saying I agree with that rationale but there is a difference in the minds of many Americans.
Having been a struggling entrepreneur for the last fifteen years and having my share of spectacular failures and some occasional modest successes, I have learned to live by one simple rule, Conservation of Single Malt Scotch, which has served me well ... "If I don't drink too much on the way up, I don't need to drink too much on the way down."

Like many who have been entrepreneurs, I have learned quickly that entrepreneurship is the great equalizer. Everyone has an equal chance to success and equal chance to failure, irrespective of their age, education, family wealth and of course, cultural background and race.

In fact, the more that people tells us that it cannot be done or that it should not be done, it seems that the more enjoyable is the journey.
This article has little to do with Steve Jobs. It's about Apple's purported attempts to sell its professional media software businesses (Aperture, Final Cut, etc.) and, according to an existing Cringely theory, the use of this sale to enable Apple to acquire Adobe without without developing a video editing software monopoly.

I don't see any reason to believe apple is doing more than spinning off some niche businesses. They're trying to grow iPod Users into Mac users rather than invest more in strengthening the loyalty of the traditional art/media demographic. And an Adobe acquisition just seems absurd, both limited in its potential upside for both companies and highly uncharacteristic of Apple, which seems to prefer acquiring cool new technologies (e.g. touch-based controls) and developing them into its own product lines rather than merging with major stodgy companies.
The answer is simple, AT&T is a potential sponsor of their site.
It's lame to pretend the reactions of potential clients aren't important. Even if there is a jealousy factor, a good founder would take it into account and act accordingly.

"But isn't xobni just an outlook plugin?"

Clearly people have that idea in their head. Now what is xobni going to do about it?
Because when you wake up in the morning, you don't say "Damn, I do want to go to my 9-5 job". That's a sign for you to jump.
Dual-licensing is unfair and community debilitating
Even if you don't get paid, look at the grandparent/aunt/uncles' position: have some fun with the baby, change some yucky diapers (ok not so fun), but in a short time you will be handing responsibility back to the parents, who will have to wake up in the middle of the night, night after night...
Confirmed: Facebook Apps Are Useless
I think Subversion's scalability is a red herring. Subversion is good for decent-size projects with decent-quality developers, a common situation in The Enterprise, but that's not because it scales better than a distributed system. Subversion is older, and therefore has more tools built for it already. Consider: TortoiseSVN, RapidSVN, SVN plugins for Visual Studio and other IDEs, and the various commercial SVN GUIs, project management systems, etc.

Git, bzr and Hg have some crutchware in development, but it's not as straightforward and widespread as the stuff for Subversion. It'll get there, but right now they all require some initiative from the developer, confidence on the command line, and an occasional RTFM.
I get the point, but live performances by musicians are a pretty weak example. A performer can only do one performance at a time like a masseuse, but unlike a masseuse, a performer can service a very scalable number of people simultaneously.

i.e., a performance musician is merely selling concert tickets rather than CDs. Tickets are less scalable than CDs, but can be sold with a much higher profit and don't need to be as scalable.
"Owning Flash and merging it with QuickTime would give Apple near-total dominance of Internet video, furthering the advantages of iTunes and shoring up in the process the iPod franchise. They'd be giving up a sports car in Final Cut Pro, but end up effectively owning the road instead."

Cringely supposes that Apple is trying to dominate the internet-delivered media market. Being in control of Flash media would give them a further leg-up in that dominance.
My parents have US passports, which means I am in the 8 year queue for a green card (2 of which is a wait to get a slot number!). There are no modifiers for education on this one, so a masters and other post grad qualifications don't mean much.

I wish I could get an O1 visa, for no other reason that being _officially_ an alien of extraordinary ability would be well worth the effort :)
The reason I left a cushy, high-paying job was that I think I can always get another cushy, high-paying job even when I'm older. On the other hand, my mid-twenties are years when I can afford to take (calculated) risks and do all the things I know I will have regretted not doing when I'm in my 30s and 40s and have more responsibilities.

I was also surprised how many people at and above my level in a big company seemed envious that I'd go to a startup.
Tax the Rich, Buffet says
Here is what I do
- I keep 2 months' worth of income in a high-yield saving account (a la ING) This amounts to about 5 months of living expenses for me, so it is a good safety net.
- I stash away a small majority (say, 60%) of my long-term savings into index funds and relatively safe, stable stocks
- Since I am fairly young (27), I invest a sizeable chunk (but still a minority; say, 40%) of my savings into riskier stocks with a potential to be a home-run down the road. I only invest into companies and technologies that interest or excite me. This makes research a pleasure rather than a chore.

The ratios will tip towards the conservative side as I get older.
ends always justifies the means
(off-topic) JumpBox reminds me of BitRock (www.bitrock.com)
And don't forget survivor bias! For any given "success trait", you can probably find more failed founders with it than successful founders. We just don't read about it.

See: Fooled by Randomness, one of my favorite books.
This is something that I love to hate: when people think Facebook is the new platform for web applications.

Newsflash: it isn't.

The goal of the Facebook platform is to be an application userbase and interaction system that allows people to be social and connect with each other. There are some non-fun applications like Files, but those are auxiliary ones that are use-it-when-you-need-to applications.

I am tired of applications that have nothing to do with being social being created.

However, one thing with the article is that it doesn't take into account the number of applications that are made by spam applications (read: quizzes and forced invites.) Would be interesting to see how it turns out after that, but it would probably be similar, with a little less in the Just for Fun category.
Can you mention a company whose official strategy is to have their software pirated by one group of users under the theory that they will make it up with increased legitimate sales? Yes, companies love having students using their software which is why they give huge discounts on the fees.

Paying tuition does not mean that have "paid to use" Matlab unless your institution has actually bought licenses for you to do so. If you are saying, "We were using a floating license paid for by the university and therefore did not need to purchase an additional license." Okay, fine. If you are arguing that because the physics department bought two licenses for lab machines that you somehow have the right to pirate copies without a license then you are mistaken.

Bottom line: I support the good guys, the companies that respect me and help me to do the best work I can. The Mathworks is one of those companies, in my experience.
Your counter-argument has merit, but I'd like to add that, at least in my case, failure adds a small amount of regret, but not trying adds TONS.
Tech's Top-Paid CEOs  - Forbes.com
Guess you look at it differently when it happens to you.
It's fascinating how much more anthropomorphic it seems when it seems to have desires-- when it's trying to get into a box, rather than just rolling around shaking hands with people.
Nick Carr: Is Office the new Netscape?
As both a repeat startup founder and a repeat parent of infants, I'll attest: the diaper-changing aspects are similar. You're doing it for love, not money or enjoyment. =)
Part 1:
I have been thinking about the dominance portion of this for a while, and you put it into words. Thanks!

And, adding another segment to it, in terms of market-share IBM was/is the #1 in mainframes, msft is the #1 in operating systems and google is the #1 in search (#1 in terms of market share), and none of these companies were beaten, by going head to head.

IBM's hardware was beaten by Microsoft's software, which was beaten by the Internet and google's search.

Part 2:
The dominant technology company in a generation reaches its pinnacle at about half the size of the dominant company..

How do you define size? Is it purely a function of number of employees, in which case it would not be fair, since productivity, computing power, technology and frameworks have all grown as well.

Part 3:
I like Rich Skrenta's take on this as well, the view is different and well worth a read, "Winner-Take-All: Google and the Third Age of Computing"
http://www.skrenta.com/2007/01/winnertakeall_google_and_the_...
I think success as an entrepreneur has to do with the number of failures one encounters, because the more you fail the more you learn about the user world. :)
Nouncer Founder Discusses Failure and The Lessons He Learned
I highly recommend the Agora Financial Group and their various newsletters.

Back when I had a little money to play with, I was following a couple of them (Penny Investor and another), and was able to gain 40% in a year (someone else was doing the actual work for me). But that's just anecdotal evidence.

I also like their whole philosophy; they've had several NYT #1 bestsellers, 'cause it's both commonsensical and also exceedingly contrarian at the same time. (Addison Wiggins and Bill Bonner.)
More interesting is the lower paragraph which discusses objections to creating a friendly transhuman AGI, given that it is possible to create a transhuman AGI. I am aware that singinst thinks a lot about these issues..is anyone aware of any other organizations working with these things?
go to vanguard and invest your money in several different, diverse, low-cost funds. index funds are great, but you can't buy only index funds and be diverse. buy some REITs, some bonds, etc..

spread the money out, no more than 20% in any single fund unless the fund itself is diverse.

sit on it for a long time.

thats it.
New Relic: A New, $3.5 Million Funded Player in the Rails Application Monitoring Space
Bill Gates doesn't support piracy, but if it's going to be pirated it might as well be Microsoft software:
"Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though," Gates told an audience at the University of Washington. "And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."

http://www.news.com/2100-1023-212942.html
BusinessWeek examines Mac inroads in big business - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)
I don't buy the QuickTime + Flash = video monopoly thing, but there are some good reasons.

If Apple owned CS3, Flash, and Reader, they would have enough control over the Mac app market that they would have the leverage to start an app purchase/management system where you could buy your apps over iTunes or something similar, and they were automagically installed and updated for you. That's a big step forward in both usability and control, which are two of Steve Jobs's three favorite things (along with design).

It would also allow them to push forward their strategy of using high-profile cross-platform apps (currently, iTunes, QuickTime, and Safari) to build awareness of Apple among Windows users to try to encourage them to switch. Flash and Adobe Reader are surely among the top 5 most popular non-Microsoft apps on Windows, and Photoshop has a lot of presence as well.

Buying Adobe is potentially an enormous win for Apple.
CiteRank: Pagerank for scholarly articles
Excluding Next has Apple ever bought a big company?

All the acquisitions I know of have been small and medium size companies and the technology has been something strategic; like coverflow.
Everytime SQL injection comes up everyone says how easy it is to prevent with one line of code, and then no one ever shares that one line!

From Wikipedia:
Using Parameterized Statements
Parameterized statements use parameters (sometimes called placeholders or bind variables) instead of embedding user input in the statement. In many cases, the SQL statement is fixed. The user input is then assigned (bound) to a parameter. This is an example using Java and the JDBC API:
PreparedStatement prep = conn.prepareStatement("SELECT * FROM USERS WHERE PASSWORD=?");
prep.setString(1, pwd);
Basically the same thing as what Taleb mentions in "The Black Swan"

Some careers are easily scalable and others aren't.
http://www.xobni.com/

"Drowning in Email?
Find Email & Attachments Instantly"

"Xobni is the Outlook plug-in that helps you organize your flooded inbox"

It looks to me like they're focused on reaching people who have a problem to solve, and aren't concerned about being viewed as "just an outlook plugin."
The job market here in NYC for financial techies is not as you described. You clearly believe too much in startup tech centers because the risks involved with finance are as risky as start up tech careers. Riskier in some. Not as risky in others.

Why do you think Bernanke and Paulson had to get involved when Bear collapsed..?
Hmm. For the pen example, isn't it true that the pen manufacturer has a limit on their income? If they have a small shop that makes pens by hand, and you order a million of them, how are they going to fulfill the order? For CDs, same deal with the company that actually presses them, even if the musician providing the content is already done.

If you sell a physical object, someone somewhere in the supply chain has a limited income, even if it's not you.
this almost feels like a reason to post a blog entry and link back, answering the question, "Why are we entrepreneurs?"
What %s do you suggest in particular across the various asset classes?
Don't you worry about them getting rusty or having an insufficient understanding of the code base?

As an architect, I relinquish the bulk of the coding to our other programmers, but if I didn't do some of it, I would lose touch with the realities of the code base.
Because when I die I want to know I tried. Sure I might make mistakes but the feeling of just sitting there not trying is worse.
Does your advice depend on how much money you are investing, i.e. 100K vs 1M vs 10M?

In my case, the bonds and cash are mainly for capital preservation. I set aside an amount for that, and invested the rest in the various asset classes.
Robots are neat.

I wonder, does anyone have a suggestion about how a proper self-taught "curriculum" would look like?
Are those the asset allocation % you use? Also, what about commodities, real estate, infrastructure, and other asset classes?
Embedded SQL is poor programming period!
COMMANDS FOR TEAMS:

Search Engine: Simple, accurate & useful. Innovate & release.

Office: Web & desktop access, track feature usage, cut unused features, online storage

Windows: R&D stands for Release good stuff & Drive industry.

Win Server: Diamond strength reliablity. Easy life for admins.

Zune: Make deal with studios for unlimited free music for $50 per zune. Do it now! R&D on UI methods. More social!

XBOX - Beautiful. Social. Fun.

SQL - Simplify.

Visual Studio - Gemme new flagship product in half the code as VS. You've got 2 months.
There are ways to mitigate the risk of starting up, as well. The process of starting your own business is exceptionally rewarding.

(Edit - I see you've done some of that. Maybe you're jaded with startups, I'm jaded with BigCo :)
> The job market here in NYC for financial techies is not as you described.

I suspect that this will be a short term effect based on so much upheaval due to the mortgate securities collapse.

Then again, if I were in your position right now, I doubt I would find that particularly comforting, so I understand where you're coming from.
I'm going to respond to this by pointing out that my company's offices are at 44 Wall and in the Loop in Chicago. I'm not a financial techie; I just get paid by them.
With that title, I was half-expecting this to be a Hank Williams "Why Does Everything Suck?" blog post. :)
From Bloomberg, AAPL Acquisitons since 1990:

Date * Type of Action Summary

2/ 4/97 Acquisition Target: Next Computer Inc

9/ 2/97 Acquisition Target: Power Computing Corp

4/11/00 Acquisition Target: DVD authoring software

3/14/01 * Acquisition Target: PowerSchool Inc

7/ 9/01 * Acquisition Target: Spruce Technologies Inc

4/ 4/02 Acquisition Target: Zayante Inc

7/ 1/02 Acquisition Target: eMagic.com LLC/Germany

12/ 4/06 Acquisition Target: Proximity Corp

4/23/08 Acquisition Target: P.A. Semi Inc

Even better: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Apple_I....

Contains prices - biggest one was NeXT for 400M and then PA Semi for 278M
What are these ways of mitigating the risk that you speak of?

Also, tell us more about what you found rewarding about your startup. I think: winning is rewarding. Being fully exposed to wins is rewarding. In a BigCo, closing a $100,000 deal feels good. At a startup, closing a $100,000 deal feels fucking awesome.

But: losing feels really fucking bad. Flirting with debt feels even worse.

Who's to say where it ends up on balance?
I would bet on myself (I know more about that subject)
Fair enough. The job market is really screwy right now for financial techies. I'm on linkedin and my phone rang like crazy the day Bear collapsed. It's been ringing with people from UBS looking for staff. I've been told people are running out of UBS like crazy. The computer security market will probably get a boost from this actually. JPM's security has been boosted as they take over Bear's stuff and attrition potential isn't clear.

Come to think of it... you might want to cold-call JPM and see if they need help!
Right now we are seeing (more) simple desktop apps (Word/Excel) getting competition from web apps like google docs. If MS would have sold off the Office franchise 4 years ago it may have been genius.

With Aviary, Photoshop express (?), apple may be looking long term and realizing these properties are at the height of their value. Could Final Cut have legitimate competition on the web in 5 years?
I'm sorry for being snarky about the NY-FI market. I can see why it's scary right now. I was reacting to the "irrational faith in startup tech centers". Startup tech centers are a scam. It's 2008! You're building web technology! You really think your location matters?! UR DOIN IT WRONG.
A Gentle Introduction To Learning Calculus
I want them reading the code base, and performing code reviews, but not necessarily writing production code. I'm afraid that if they had to write code for production, it would negatively affect their priorities.
I turned on showdead. Everything recently killed appeared to be spam, duplicates, or incoherent crankery. Your allegations seem groundless.
What do you do with the money you're not spending?
I always have time for a well reasoned argument even if it contradicts my own view. These arguments are not well argued and they contradict my view. I regret reading that article.
From one new yorker to another, you've got that right! I live here because I love the city. I work in financial tech because I like the excitement of working as fast as possible to solve problems. I also dig the bonuses. :)
I do see that happening with friendfeed. It must be hard sometimes to find useful feedback when there's all this noise from random bashing.
That's a perfectly valid excuse for running Windows and I applaud your efforts to introduce open source whenever possible.

Part of my current job involves trying to figure out how to help midsize companies leverage open source technologies. I'm thinking of putting together a list of common questions and misconceptions companies have about OSS and the respective answers and clarifications. I'd love to hear your thoughts on what roadblocks you have encountered in trying to pitch open source solutions.
> Right now we are seeing (more) simple desktop apps (Word/Excel) getting competition from web apps like google docs.

The core profit center for Office is businesses, especially large ones. My guess is that Google Apps is having negligible impact on the profitability of Office at this point.

The people who are using Google Office are mostly people who would have been candidates for pirating Office 5 years ago.

In the future, Google Apps may be a real threat to Office, but the profit stream generated by Office is so immense that Microsoft investors would actively revolt if they even publicly considered selling it off.
"Success Is Just One Wish Away"