skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Immad and Peter: Stop reading news.yc and get back to work on Clickpass. :-)
what makes your estimation any more valid than the other ones?

estimations with data to back them up plzkty.
actually, as the commenter below indicated, according to jackob nielsen's research, I am absolutely right.

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/banner-blindness.html
Summary:
Users rarely look at display advertisements on websites. Of the four design elements that do attract a few ad fixations, one is unethical and reduces the value of advertising networks.

The unethical here is tricking people into thinking popups are system dialog boxes.

The economics of the situation are clear. 100,000 magazine readers is a business. 100,000 web readers is lunch money.
Oh dear god.

Using a package manager or manually grabbing the files and building it IS basically like dragging files to an Applications folder.

You have all your files for an app in one known spot. That's all there is (excluding environment variables). What is non-unixy is installing a bunch of garbage into a registry (did I mention I hate registries?).
Sync up with this guy:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=175649

And get on a jet aeroplane to somewhere where the hill to climb to a better life is significantly smaller.
So true. I have a book full of ideas that I keep. When I have free time I add them to an excel file, write a small vba script to randomize the list then pick the top one and work on it.
I think you need to take a serious step back and actually view his work for what it is. You're acting like the guy deserves a Noble prize for his contributions to society.
There are certainly people who hype network effects and see them as being stronger than they are in some fields. However, imperfect or not, their effects are quite real.

Call them 'positive network externalities' or 'demand-side economies of scale' if you want a different term.
The Fragility of Social Networking
Too much IQ and not enough common sense. When a lawyer tells you not to take the stand, don't take the stand.
I mostly agree with the author, but I also think it depends a lot on the ads that are used.

For instance, I think most people have become very good at mentally filtering out Google AdSense ads. But relevant, attractive, eye-catching advertisements still work occasionally.

Case in point, I have a site that I run mostly as a hobby (shameless self-plug: http://devfunnel.com) that has both Google AdSense and SnapTalent ads. The SnapTalent ads have always fared a LOT better than the Google Ads. I think the reasons for this are 1.) People tune out Google Ads, and 2.) The SnapTalent ads are more relevant to the readers, and often the verbiage on the ad attracts users' attention.

I also tried to make the ads blend in with the site visually.

I've gotten similar results on my blog (I guess I won't shamelessly self-promote my blog). The AdSense ads are largely ignored, the SnapTalent ads get hits. I've removed the AdSense ads from the blog because they were kinda tacky and not making money anyway.

And, no, I don't work for SnapTalent. :)
> The most important barrier is interstellar travel which requires to be able to collect energy somehow during the travel (i.e. from dark matter) or the be able to completely freeze any activity and energy spending on board during the travel (i.e. as do plant seed) and using the destination sun as energy source to trigger to reactivation.

There is also the possibility of wormhole travel/other spacetime exotics...
I agree with the article, but am skeptical of his taking a pass on Knuth-- I think that working through TAOCP is a good investment for anyone serious about programming (given sufficiently large values of "serious").
I would see getting funding in Nigeria as being an uphill struggle unless you have connections, so maybe look for people from there that have made money and are willing to send some back home. Otherwise, move elsewhere, I suppose:-/
It would be nice if a moderator could combine these threads.
Yeah dating is interesting -- if you can solve two problems and get people to know you've solved it (or at least made the situation better) -- you probably have something viable.

First is supply -- just having lots of available people on there. It's a classic network that derives its value from the connections. So you could break down barriers like cost (plenty of fish) or complexity in getting a profile up.

Second is quality. This is where barriers are important -- Christian dating becomes a prefilter that reduces the population but increases quality. eharmony.com actually actively tries to increase quality by returning NO matches for people who 'fail' their personality tests. As controversial as that is (e.g. if a user is a depressed Atheist, then they probably will get 0 matches) -- it serves the community by making the dating pool better for their targeted audience.

The two existing ways in which sites attack these problems is that they specialize for a specific niche and make it awesome for a particular type of person, or just go for pure quantity (which makes sense for an adwords play).

Are there others?
The headline is misleading. If 30% of North American Consumers put a high degree of trust in bloggers in 2006, it's wrong to conclude people don't trust bloggers. We don't know what percentage placed a medium amount of trust.

Figures include respondents who answered 4 or 5 on a scale of 1 (do not trust) to 5 (trust completely).

Base: North American Consumers

Source: Forresters NACTAS Q3 2006 Media & Marketing Online Survey
Mac is equally inconsistent (contrast the drag-and-drop approach with, say, any Adobe installer). And you can't merely remove the App folder from the Applications directory: most applications write many preference files elsewhere.
I read the post, but I don't know what either of the simple ingredients are. Sugar and caffeine does it for me, though ;)
An Open Challenge to Silicon Valley
The end is near: Henry Blodget's index of companies that don't make products and don't have revenues
>It's very complicated to install programs on most Linux distros.

Maybe that's true for MythTV, but for most programs Ubuntu has the simplest install/uninstall process in the world. In fact, its package manager is the "killer app" for me that makes me dread using other operating systems. If I want a new program, I just go to the "add program" menu, search for the program by name or browse by category, click a box, and wait for it to install. To uninstall the program, I just unclick the same box. There are no shortcuts to missing or moved programs, no cluttered desktops, no mystery programs that don't show up in the "add/remove software" menu. It's slick.

Of course, you've stated that you haven't used Ubuntu, which just happens to be the most popular Linux distribution in the world, so you and I can both agree that your experience is incomplete.
Hank's right on. It doesn't matter if they click, because without purpose (intent to buy/find) the click is proportionally worth so little as to be nearly worthless.

As Agent Smith says: It's purpose that created us. Purpose that connects us. Purpose that pulls us, that guides us, that drives us. It is purpose that defines us, that binds us.
LinkedIn Prepares for Lucrative Push Into Europe
The three set push-up routine alone will give you a great boost of energy.
To be fair, they tried first THEN got discouraged. I also suspect that they are talking about different things.
Nice graphic.
Agreed. But remember, this is Jeff Atwood... I doubt his readers do much other than 1) submit his blog to reddit and 2) write Visual Basic applications.

Not exactly what I would consider "being a programmer", but to each his own, I suppose.
I really doubt that the ratio is 10:1, and if it is on most sites like that then there lies the problem to be solved.

Given any sort of relationship definition, I would guess that is never far off 1:1 for women and men interested.

And not all men are interested in finding Jessica Alba...she is obviously attractive but that is only a piece of the puzzle :)
Thanks for the great comment. The following is my very similar observation. YC or not YC is just the means, not the end. Good luck.

http://gigaom.com/2008/04/11/to-yc-or-to-vc-that-is-my-quest...
Hans Reiser, developer of the ReiserFS filesystem, has been found guilty of 1st degree murder
It not about improvement of image search in general (aka visual image search, CBIR etc), but about improvement of Google image search.
site down, heres a cache
http://64.233.169.104/search?hl=en&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%...
I was expecting suggestions on what to EAT for breakfast.
Agreed... I just can't get into this companies products because they keep working with services I don't use... Dang.
He makes several good points about how internet ads are ugly, easy to ignore, not as sticky as print ads, etc. In spite of these drawbacks, internet ads are compelling for providing ROI metrics and targeting abilities. And they are gaining in sophistication everyday.

The next round of ad serving technology being built now will be all digital and medium agnostic - you can push your ad on radio, tv, browser, social networks, apps, billboards, etc all using a single interface with granular targeting, ROI reports and even retargetting based on geography, past history, relationships, etc. Think Minority Report.
Duh! Install PHP!

Kidding.
Very nice! But the site is down.

Speaking of "billions of topological possibilities", where is the Mobius band?!
You make a good point, but maybe the name calling was a little over-much?
FoundRead Finds a New Home, Gives kudos to YCHN
He later happens onto one reason the process makes sense: uninstall just by deleting the application file. He is confused about how to install an app because there is no installation. You just put the program anywhere you want (the Applications folder thing is really just a suggestion) and double click to run. In fact, you can even run directly from the disk image, which Matt did without realizing at first that was what he had done.

So, the reason the Mac approach seems strange is because it makes the whole install/uninstall concept just go away altogether. Perhaps a suitable HN metaphor: it eliminates an onion.
Could Apple be preparing the way for Mac gaming?
'Jujitsu' means gentle art, but it's all about breaking arms and snapping necks. I took Judo as a kid as well, chokes holds are permissible amongst the older classes, and I learned a few as well as some escapes. It's really just a sparring version of Jujitsu and black belt could easily strangle someone who didn't know how to defend himself.

Still, this is a lot of speculation and if he strangled her, where did the blood come from? I think that it is quite likely that he killed her, but not with a choke-hold.
I want to log on now!
"How is dragging a new application into a folder called "Applications" counterintuitive?"

I think the larger point is, if that is the biggest usability barrier in adopting an entirely different operating system, the Mac UI people are doing something right.
I'm not sure what they mean by "hand coding". Certainly the journalists type their articles into a form, press "submit", it goes into persistence, and then eventually it's turned into generated HTML through PHP or something. That's how pretty much everything works. Nobody "hand codes" html. You "hand code" PHP.

To me, "hand coded html" suggests that they, uh, get MS Doc files from journalists and re-type the html in between DIV tags.
Getting a full night's sleep makes a big difference, too. I find I actually get out the door quicker when I get a full night's sleep.
The Endorsement Gap
if PG and co suggest some kind of change to you, you should agree with whatever they say

A lot of people disagree with things we suggest and we fund them anyway. What we care about in this situation is how they respond. Plain yes is as bad a sign as plain no.
"Loser attitude"? Oh, well. My suggestion is: He should continue serious work on his business, and if I throw in an insult with that advice, too bad.
"The window maximizing thing is probably my biggest single annoyance when using a Mac."

I can't tell which people understand the philosophy of window maximizing on the Mac and don't like it, and who finds the behavior just random, so let me explain:

The Mac UI assumes the point of maximizing a window is to see all of its content at once, so enlarging past the size at which all content is visible at once is unnecessary. This can be nice, once you understand what it's doing and are used to it. If you understand this and still don't like it, that is your prerogative, too, of course.
what kind of web app?
one thing I didn't like about the interviews was the instant and final yes-or-no answer

Yes, that is a problem for us too. We'd like to be able to spend longer with each group. But we want to give the maximum number of groups a chance to interview. If we spent more time on each interview, we'd have to interview fewer groups.
I just googled and found that jQuery UI is going to be made ARIA compatible after the 1.5 release too, which is awesome! The AxsJAX project mentioned in the post looks really cool too. Has anyone tried the jARIA jQuery plugin yet?

Accessibility is a post-launch feature we're strongly considering for our app. Are other startups considering accessibility in their apps? If so, what did you do?
Tho voice of Tom is hysterical.
Zimbabwe is not inside SA (its also bordered by Botswana, Zambia and Mozambique). But even if it were, would this not be a bit like Canada being "inside" the USA?

Anyway, by extension of this logic, then also places like Israel, Palestine, and even (in the not too distant past) Ireland, should not be expected to be candidates for such developments either.

I echo the sentiment from elsewhere, that if a few guys in a dorm room could hack together a facebook -- then that dorm room could be situated anywhere in the world (including, say Ghana). And by running on AWS or AppEngine (say), infrastructure is largely isolated from country-specific stability concerns. In fact, users probably won't know or care where the HQ is, and nothing stops any organization from procuring expertise in whatever country it needs to further its aims.

This seems to address the first part of what is necessary. For the second part -- growing the business -- no argument this is more tricky from places like Africa, because of perception issues, African VCs largely being focussed on the largest deal sizes possible (e.g. putting up a mobile phone network), etc. etc. From this perspective, Africans look at Silicon Valley and think how "easy" it all appears. Some move their operations, and do really well. Others find creative ways around -- like Thawte for example (for the growth question & VC environment for small growing tech companies, in my opinion, there is not much difference between SA and the rest of Africa).

But for the most part, many Africans seem to be happy to build solutions for themselves, and don't immediately expect the rest of the world to be interested. From my experience, the main reason for this is physical distance -- many Africans just don't get to talk to people from the USA and Europe on a regular basis to realise there may be broader appeal, and so in many cases you just don't see a drive to want to scale something up to the size of Google.

There is also an implicit belief by many Africans that they are simply not capable of doing something like this. People like Mark Shuttleworth have gone to a lot of effort in Africa to try and address this perception.

Africans hold to a principle of shared humanity -- which is called Ubuntu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_%28philosophy%29). Interesting the resonance with open source principles here. It is not a coincidence that Mark Shuttleworth's Ubuntu Linux carries this name.
"MySpace will give users the option of whether they want to participate in a targeted advertising system that mines their profile's information." And, they'll do this by pre-checking a checkbox, hidden below their privacy policy?
"I doubt his readers do much other than 1) submit his blog to reddit and 2) write Visual Basic applications."

I agree with point #2, and perhaps he does as well. He has said much the same thing, openly, and he has also said that his mission is to provoke them into hoisting themselves up a little beyond that.

I apologise for the terrible analogy, but perhaps Jeff's blog is like a car's first gear. It exists to overcome a large amount of inertia and get an object at rest to start moving, slowly. Other gears take it from there.

I personally wish he would push them to explore towards more free software and tools rather than stay on the Microsoft plantation, but if he can get anybody to read just one more book this year, the essay is a win.

Heck, if it can remind me that I need to read one more book this year, it's a godsend for me.
I don't think you should be voted down (unfair!), because I see where you're coming from. A developer wants to build neat stuff that he or she finds useful. Developers don't want to spend their time doing routine, boring, or trivial stuff, and some of the usability requirements for non-expert users can seem to be just that.

The rejoinder is that wide adoption requires that kind of usability. It must be an integral feature of your application, or your app will remain ghetto-zed and obscure. That may be ok for some developers, but for most, usability must be just as key as functionality.
As someone who was also turned down, my advice is actually the opposite: Do not reapply in 5 months.

It's a mental thing. If you always keep the dream of YC on a golden pedestal in your mind (one that must be reached in order to be successful), you could be setting yourself up for further disappointment and wasting valuable time. I'm not saying that YC is not worth aspiring for (I still think its a tremendous opportunity), just that dwelling on it rather than your product will kill you.

5 months is a long time in startup world. You need to put your defeat behind you as quickly as possible and focus on building your product. Remember, that is what is really the most important.

Hopefully you learned some useful things about your idea and team from your interview. We certainly did, and for that I'm thankful. Its a little disappointing to hear that they no longer talk things over with you on the phone, but at least you got to meet some smart people and got some critical advice during the interview.
Here's a way to avoid those slips: read the comment out loud and pretend you were talking to the person directly, with a straight face (since you're actually typing it, you don't get to say it with a smile and a laugh).
There is actually.

Yahoo Mail Web Services: http://developer.yahoo.com/mail/
Choosing a database for your project
"That's a loser attitude if there ever was one, and I'm going to guess that VCs look for it."

I'd imagine VCs look for it too, but it's important to remember that what people say and what they do often have no correlation, and it works both ways. There're some folks that are all "rah, rah, we're going to take over the world" and then they crumble at the first difficulty. Then there are others that are "well, maybe it'll work and maybe it won't, but if it doesn't it'll look great on a resume, so I think I might give it a try, at least for now", then they keep at it for 8 years and exit for millions of dollars.

I'm reminded of James Hong's "Happiness = Reality - Expectations, so I do my best to keep expectations low" post. Everybody chided him for being so blase and said that if he expected to fail, of course he would. But if you look at what James has actually done, it's clear that he hasn't failed, he just keeps his expectations low as a trick to stay motivated.
Where's PHP?
MorganStanley Internet Trends 2008 Report
What the hell is a 'world file'?

Op, gentoo got the best of me.
"Tech start-ups with an inadequate or none existing prototype, seriously diminishes the chance of being clearly understood and fully appreciated by a potential investor."

Poor grammar and a lack of editing seriously diminishes the chance of being clearly understood and fully appreciated by a potential founder.
How many data points do you have for saying we're not "highly advanced?" I should not have said "highly advanced" and should just have said "sentient interstellar" instead. My discussion is about the future of humanity, not the present day. We are not quite even space-faring yet.

Learning from another species' technology is likely to be a largely one-way transaction. Instead of trading warp drive tips, it's much more likely that the "Xarcon" will have warp drive and we will not. (Or vice-versa.) In any case, if the other side has things like antimatter fueled starships, they may still have the potential to wipe out the other civilization, or at least preemptively cause huge damage to it. Why would another intelligent species give up a potential technological advantage without first assuring the safety of their own species? Of course, there are many ways of assuring such safety. In the case of practical warp drive, one way of doing this would be to withhold warp technology and use the intervening time to propagate your own species. Another option might be to absorb the less advanced species into some sort of confederation. Actually, a really savvy species would do both!
A Call To Arms - alternative funding options
Blizzard's games have played on macs for years. Who plays any other games?

(awaiting SC2)
edit: Starcraft 2
I think Henry did a pretty good job at explaining his methodology. He uses public and private comps for revenue multiples. Cites valuations in the case of private comps. It's certainly better than most of the random valuation speculations I read on Techcrunch.
Priceless quotes:

"Because if there's any sure sign that the end is near, it's the fact that Henry Blodget is publishing an index with ridiculously high valuations"

"Is he not satisfied to have played a starring role in the greatest financial mess of our lifetime? Now he needs to do it again?"

"I'm told Henry Blodget is driven by a desire to redeem himself. If that's the case why doesn't he go do some kind of charitable work in the Third World instead of touting worthless stocks?"

Amen.
I'd also guess that VCs look for leaders who can give constructive feedback without pissing on (or pissing off) the recipient.
Speaking of investing, now that your startup's been acquired have you thought about becoming an angel investor?

Everyone's always saying there's a need for more startup investors who were formerly startup founders themselves. Checking your profile on Fleaflicker, I see you're in NYC; there are bound to be angel investor groups that you could join if you didn't want to do it alone.
> http://devfunnel.com

errm, 404
I installed OpenID on one of my sites to avoid people having to go through any sign up process and still had people complaining about having to sign up to view it.

OpenID is a great idea. But I think it will probably remain as a niche thing used by few enough people that it probably isn't worth the time to implement it properly.
By SC2, do you mean Star Control 2? Probably not, since this retro game has been available on OS X for years now.

http://sc2.sourceforge.net/
Startup Founders – Are You In Rush To Start A Startup?
heh - I just uploaded a tweak to it just moments ago. :) Pretty bad timing on my part!