skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Does anyone else find this completely hackneyed and uninteresting?

In general, I find these type of posts very interesting if the author is someone I respect or someone who is working on an interesting project. But when "Joe Blogger" writes the millionth article about how founders never sleep I can't help but role my eyes.
Please advise on when erlang is good for production. They have a bit more frequent releases, it seems, an I'd expect.

Is it feasible to install R14B and stick with it until R15B? Or do i need to be installing the -1 ets as well?

Also, is there no autoupdatable ubuntu package so that I can at least install security patches?
Based on this logic, assassinations are 'fair game' so long as you don't get caught. Would I be an 'innovator' if I developed a way for corporate-directed assassinations to become a reality?
Soon: renegade geneticists develop bacteria that produces cocaine.
Steal this presentation
This might be slightly deceptive... but you could try adding affiliate codes to all links to product websites (Amazon, NewEgg, etc.)

edit: URL shorteners might make this difficult, but still possible if you can keep the widget responsive enough while following links server-side.
People are only looking at a twitter widget to catch tweets though. If your design is any good, and it seems it must be, then the widget is clearly shown as listing tweets (I can't think what else it would do). Getting people to notice the widget and not then discard it as "just twitter" or use it as twitter and follow the line the tweets send them on seems like too much of an ask IMO.

Adding back links to affiliate pages and selling something using your promoted position in the SERPs seems the most probably model to me, just unfortunately quite scuzzy too.
Ask your users if they'd mind you including VigLink or something like it in your widget. It monetizes outbound hyperlinks that are already on the page by rewriting them to be affiliate links when there's a relevant program. It doesn't change the behavior of the site and doesn't overwrite any that are already affiliated. If your users value what you're doing they shouldn't mind you harnessing a little potential that they're leaving on the table. I'd definitely recommend disclosing it though - people will get pissed if you do it silently. Upside is it's totally fire and forget.
Love it. Keep up the good work. I've invited a small network of Python geeks in Reykjavík Iceland. Will report back how it works out.
Passion fuels the fire but make sure you're camping in the right forest.
I don't really understand your comment. I watched the clip you linked to and the sleep schedule she states is ideal is 8pm-midnight and then 2am-Dawn(3-5hrs). This comes out to 7 to 9 hours a night for my area, depending on the time of year.
Ooh, can I play?

1) Both prices are hideously underpriced. There is no difference whatsoever between $5.99 and $9.99 to anyone who has to type in a credit card, so repricing that would double post-fee revenues almost instantly.

2) You critically hit gamers -- who have the attention spans of ADHD squirrels hopped up on crystal meth -- with a wall of text just to get them to make a purchasing decision. You can check this with analytics, not one gamer in a hundred will actually read this argument.

3) The availability of software at $3 compromises any notion of it being valuable. You will not sell software to poor Africans. Do not price to be affordable to poor Africans. (If $6 is too expensive, $3 is not affordable anyway.)

4) Cost-based pricing. Don't mention it. Don't even think about it.

5) Sales work because they are scarce, time-limited events and they effectively segment customers who want the game today versus customers who want the game at the lowest possible price. Its a reverse auction, just like book publishing, AAA games ($60 ~ $70 on release day, $20 in a year), MMORPGs (pay for the box on release day, it will be free within a year), etc.

6) Showing your customers being penny-pinching lameos gives people social license to be penny-pinching lameos. It is like the broken window theory (evidence of anti-social behavior causes anti-social behavior), and you're breaking your own freaking window! If you wanted to highlight this, you would do something like I suggested for the Indie Game bundle here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1318841 -- give people options and highlight that the correct option is most popular without dwelling on how many people make the wrong choice.
The Joy of Clojure: Learning “The Clojure Way” (A book review)
That sounds like a huge amount of work to set up.
This formula is almost useless. It gives an estimate 50x too low for craigslist, 10x too low for google, and even 2x too low for wal-mart. What use is a metric that's no better than a wild assed guess?
Uh, since when is Emacs mythical? This article is a bunch of noise. Yeah, Emacs expects you to play finger-twister sometimes (and I'm not convinced that's a good thing), and yeah, it's extensible as hell (which usually makes up for the awkward keybindings).

If you want to learn Emacs, quit fetishizing it with articles like this and just do it. Install it, start it, then hit alt-x, type "help-with-tutorial", and hit enter. Work through the (brief) tutorial. It's not that hard. I'm sorry if xkcd never told you about this.

Flagged.
Sorry for the language, the iPad is onry about changing my words on me!
"The first person to create a pleasant end-to-end system for programming JavaScript web applications wins the next five years of web development, period."

That's the point which always got me going the first few times this language appeared on HN. A future developer with HTML5, video and audio, a library like sproutcore(note the recent news about Katz) in coffeescript matched up to a Sinatra-like base in CS running on node.js is going to be able to work like grease lightning. That world would be quite profitable in terms of the hosting opportunities (herokuish?), consulting and book deals. Much of it applies already to the node.js stuff I suppose. It's a pity Ruby or Python isn't in the browser as it would have the same multiplying effect (and add Python's vast libraries in other domains, at least on the server-side).
He sold his stock because he thought that Apple stock without him was worthless. He was right.

Now, Apple is trying to convince the market that the new Apple can function without Steve Jobs. People want to believe, but it's far from certain.
Only that packages ending with 'A' are supposed not to be production ready. Every 'B' version is advertised as good for production.

There should be backwards compatibility between two major releases, but not more. You could likely go from R14B to R15B, but optimizations and bug fixes usually make it worth it to upgrade in certain circumstances and setups.

I can't help you with Ubuntu, though. That's the responsibility or choice of the person in charge of the packages.
I know that the Centos and Ubuntu AMIs don't know anything above /dev/sdp, but I haven't tried any others. I have tried /dev/sd1 through /dev/sdd15 and /dev/sde1-4, and that works fine on Canonical's official 10.04 AMI.
I think this might be the best way, for the widget as is. There might be a problem in that most of the search terms don't typically include a affliatable link.

I think the best way might to go to the premium model, the only thing is that by restricting the number of features might just get people to run to another service.
Lots of people do and lots of people don't. Saying someone who can't go with less then 8 hours sleep shouldn't start a business is like saying someone who can't survive on one meal a day shouldn't, or people with one leg.

I do quite a bit of physical activity. Anything less than 7 hours would soon burn me into the ground.
This post was rubbish last time it appeared here too.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=960662
> the fewer teenagers with access to thermite, the better

Don't know about that, there have been a lot of famous scientists who got their start by fiddling around with dangerous chemicals in their basements when they were teenagers.
I think that it probably is a combination of factors. However, I was responding to your initial comment:

> "My guess is it's all about trained muscles [...]"

[all about] != [combination of factors]
That's a good story, but it's about problem solving (informed by physics), not programming as such. Still cool, though.
The site seems to be down. You can use my cache: http://viewtext.org/?url=http://untemplater.com/business/ent...
It's not a pageview, it's a widget view. Only the lowest-quality advertisers will pay for that quality and it won't be $1 CPMs. The OP could try putting a (non-compensated) ad on there and measure CTR and how many times the ad even is in the viewable pane (a lot of widgets are below the fold and are never even seen).

The SEO angle won't work-- JavaScript widgets aren't seen by spiders nowadays. The SEO hackers who did what you're referring to added links below the javascript in the code they provided. Downside of this is that if the OP wants to go this route, he can't retroactively add a link to these current users. Unless the link/anchor text relates to widget, Google will ban your ass. The guy who did the online dating thing did in fact get slapped HARD by Google. You can read about it here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/widgetbait-gone-wild
Maybe inefficiencies may play a part in getting a lack of sleep, but I think being under-resourced plays an even greater role, and that's not something you can always help. I mean, for all those people who have built a business from scratch and working all nighters to meet deadlines- it's probably not within their means to be paying people that easily, and hiring people is not always an easy task
A thousand times this. I have clients who are site-wide IE6 to this day. Ironically, Firefox worsened this problem, because all those clients also allow you to run Firefox (because IE6 barely works), but have apps that require IE, so (a) there's little incentive to upgrade (just use Firefox!) and (b) it's still likely that your first visit from a user there will be from IE6.

IE7 is also much easier to work with than IE6, having had the semirecent pleasure of getting a jQuery-ish Rails app working on both.
If you come up with a generic way to run show and list functions in front of Couch in node, that will be useful to many people.
I suppose we'll need to include a captcha if we start to see a lot of crap sites being created.
I read the 'Start now' button as 'sign up' on a first glance too and was then confused by the 'no signup' text below it.

Maybe choose a word that doesn't begin with 'S' and doesn't have a shape like 'Sign Up' ... I like the 'jump in' idea, but maybe that is not culturally neutral enough.
Wasn't memory allocation errors, stack overflows, and code injection implied sufficiently by the words "in C"?
I suppose it came to mind because to me it felt exactly like debugging.
Meta: why would anyone upvote a comment that suggests there might not be any vehicle for savings and investment outside of "fireproof safes" and "compulsory government retirement contributions"? I say this as a proponent of Social Security.
Announcing Spry Fox (happy new company)
I don't like Chrome's developer tools at all, well I do like some of it, but I almost always prefer and use firebug. Maybe I'm missing something?
Just be glad you weren't "yen cost averaging" in the Nikkei 225 which is currently 70% down from its 1989 peak: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikkei_225
Andrew Mason reveals Groupon’s secrets (video)
I've actually tried this on the main site, but it was not so successful. Mostly because the links are shortened, and I don't have the capacity to unshorten every link (most computation is done client-side anyway), and programs like VigLink don't look at short links either.
their success is probably more because business owners are willing to provide a massive discount to get the Groupon exposure, $120 million funding and an enormous subscription base.

their copywriting is quite lame.
If it's a typical sidebar widget ignore the 'talk to an ad network' suggestions. If standard IAB banner sizes aren't right for your widget (and I really don't see how you'd cram one into a widget), then ad networks have nothing for you.

Don't price this by the impression. If your advertisers are thinking CPM they'll rapidly start evaluating what this untargeted, run-of-network inventory is worth, which is likely close to zero. You won't get a $1.00 CPM if you price it by the impression. You'll be lucky to get a $0.20 CPM.

Instead, I'd try and sell a few sponsorships, Deck Network style, each sponsorship granting a share of the traffic for at least a month and for at least a four-figure sum each. The audience is looking at a Twitter widget, so your natural audience is Twitter-related businesses. Develop an unobtrusive text-based ad unit, something like the promos for Twitter clients that Twitter itself runs on twitter.com, and then pitch it to every Twitter-related business you can find.

Remember, high prices for a big share of a really relevant audience and do whatever you can to keep them from thinking about the inventory in terms of CPM, because five million ad impressions is not a hell of a lot when rationally priced. You need to do a lot of hand waving and sprinkle a lot of fairy dust ('reaching key influencers', etc.) to sell such a small amount of inventory for a meaningful amount.
You're right, and it's actually kind of interesting that Prop 19 has opposition in Northern California, because it's widely accepted that its passage will severely bring down prices, and thus profitability.
Definitely. I'd bet a lot of good mechanics would have the knack for debugging, too, if they learned the programming stuff. (The bike shop mechanics I've known certainly have the mindset.)

Problem solving is more general than programming, that's all. I'm all for sharing good problem-solving strategies, but focusing on programming is a bit narrow. (I get a lot of inspiration from House and Berton Roueché's writing, personally, but I'm a medical history / epidemiology geek.)
I like this one best - ads are probably not an option because widgets have limited real estate.

To eliminate the deceptive part, just message all yours users first before changing it. Be candid about money issues (ala reddit). Start with just Amazon maybe.

"Hey guys, this thing has blown up and we can't afford the hosting cost. To keep it free, we've got to try something. So starting in 1 month, we'll automagically insert our Amazon affiliate code into any tweets than contain an Amazon link. All other links won't be touched. We really didn't want to do this but it is either this or shut down the widget (or start charging for it). Thanks for bearing with us as we run this!"

You might lose 10% of freeloaders but this is a good thing.
Minimizing context-switches and exploiting caching sure helps get housework done a lot faster and with less hassle (be it doing the dishes, sweeping the floor, doing laundry, or tidying up the place). Also sort-then-process (which can be n log n if processing is linear) is usually a lot faster than sort-as-you-go (which can easily go to n²).
You don't get enough from the new page to make it worth the effort it in my (rather limited) experience.
Twilight Eclipse DVD Release Date Announced....Will Be Ridiculously Successful.
A Ruby program that generates an AVI animation which prints itself
Ahh, yeah hadn't thought about that....you'd have to unshorten and then re-encode every amazon link. Still though, seems like it might be possible.
Consistent, short, engaging; writing and video are the most undervalued part of any consumer facing company. Good copy reinforces a "brand personality" which leads to a feeling of connection.

Whenever I consult I always tell companies, a company cant and never will be considered a "friend" by any consumer. A company wont help you move places, go drinknig with you, or give you personal advice. The goal companies should aim for is to make a company/brand feel like a "familiar acquaintance." If people feel a companies brand personality is consistent and they are comfortable with the company existing some place in the web of their life to be called upon in a limited number of scenarios they are doing the most you can do.

See: Virgin, GroupOn, Google
"Groupon’s approach was shaped by its constraints..." It's all about the constraints. "Constraints shape and focus problems, and provide clear challenges to overcome as well as inspiration. Creativity, in fact, thrives best when constrained" Points for whoever can name the author of the quote.
If not enough links are present, one could also create a map of keywords and appropriate products and create links where none exist today. (I have no idea if this would break Twitter's ToS.) Heck, advertisers may even buy certain keywords directly from you... advertisers like me. ;-)
premature optimization: rather than order and sort bills and receipts into separate folders, i just toss them into a big pile. why waste time on the INSERT when you SELECT from it so rarely?
You wanna make money but don't wanna work for it?
It's interesting to note that Arrington is removing comments that point out his own incompetence for not having a contract with an offshore company.

If he were a fresh out of collage entrepreneur, I'd feel sorry for him, but he used to be a big shot at a name brand Silicon Valley law firm, so it's pretty weak for him to play victim when he displayed such incompetence and a lack of basic common sense.

Never mind that the product was DOA before it was born. It reminds me of the Henry Kissinger quote to the effect of "fights in academia are so vicious because the stakes are so small".
Jeff Clavier Tips on Monetization
Can You Run a Company From Jail?
Looking For a Spy Job? Try Craigslist
It would be nice if eventually there will be an option for groups to be public so people can discover new things.

That would make the service Meetup like, but Meetup's privacy settings fail worse than Facebook so I think there is a space to fill.
No, that was me. I changed something without testing it : / Fixed though, I think.
Review my startup: venturesocially.com
Hi All
My start up is http://venturesocially.com, It’s a site to help Startup Founders who are looking for VC publish their pitches.

As an avid HN reader and a follower of all things tech/startup I decided after reading 37 Signals latest book to stop dreaming and actually finish a startup. I have tried in the past but I have always given up too early, so this I promised myself that I wouldn’t give in and would get it finished. So here it is, a beta version of my application, please be gentle many hours of my life were spent hacking away at this site after hours!

The founder logs in, creates a pitch, adds some video and then publishes it. They can send it directly to people or they can make it public to the whole world. Once someone sees a venture they can then bid on it, right now we do not offer anything but notification. The legal work still needs to be carried our separately
Please let me know your views and opinions, very eager to understand and make this site better!

Thanks
VS
perhaps put a flattr link on it?

https://flattr.com/
What is Footprinting? How Footprinting Done?
I only added the Google Analytics tracking parameters only for geek irony... The referring URL is sufficient to track HN viewers.

Thanks for reading!
Sunspots could soon disappear for decades: study
If you're working all-nighters to meet deadlines, it means that you're poorly organized, not that you're dedicated.

If the deadline can be met by working an extra sixteen hours on the night before it's due, it just means you should have set the deadline two days later.

I've worked all night precisely once in my life, and it's not an experience I plan to ever repeat.
Why not just accept the GA id in the settings page and inject the code at the right place yourselves?

Though simple in-house page view stats would probably work better for 99% of your target audience than having to sign up for GA.
Carries?
Home wiring as an antenna: Discovery spawns UW startup
Cool editor -- definitely consider making it licensable.

A minor quibble: when I create a table it would be nice if 'tab' moved between cells as in Word/Excel rather than adding a tab within the cell.
Good point Alex. If TC's real objective is not so much to recover any money but to make it clear to the world that FG screwed TC over (as well as issue a warning to everyone else not to mess with TC!) then I'd say: mission accomplished. No need to rack up even more legal fees unless there is a good chance of recovering both any damages and the costs of the lawsuit.
Does anyone else here find it ironic the book is really a compilation of then available US government published information at the local library, and then copyrighted and sold by the publisher with the author losing all rights?

And Amazon allowing the Author of the book (who has no copyrights to said material) to 'advertise' his desire to stop publication and sale of a book Amazon sells?
Setting up an ad network that charges advertisers, targets ads and then compensates site owners is not a fun way to monetize a widget. It's recreating AdSense from scratch. Think of the tax issues alone!

If you could build that ad system, coming up with 5 million impressions would be the easy part.
I think I shall make "Python geeks in Reykjavík" my new canonical example of "niche".
Not sure how this is a discovery. I've seen devices for sale that use devices you plug in to boost radio reception, and its also well known old Walkmans with radios used the headphone wire as an antenna as well.

They just repurposed a 20+ year old technique.
Laptops get stolen more frequently than desktops?
Maybe you should also look into reducing the bandwidth cost: check your expiration headers, smaller html/images/css/Javascript, etc. Use Google App engine to get some free traffic, etc.
Bull. I was a sysadmin. I have worked with untold numbers of sysasmins. All of them were united in being human beings with moods and occasional lapses in judgements. All of them worked a job that involved the manipulation of symbols and abstractions for the purpose of assisting other people in their jobs of manipulating symbols and abstractions.

Whatever is my point? you are surely asking yourself. It is this: good system designers engineer their systems around the assumption that sysadmins might screw up, and mitigate the damages.

Sometimes that means explicit confidentiality measures in logs, or in obfuscation or outright encryption of user data. More often it means that the only way to even access logs or spools is to stage through a management server (for instance via SSH forwarding) that is heavily audited. Some people have "two key" systems that require admins to cross-check each other before potentially coming into contact with hazmat.

This is what we should discussing. We shouldn't be talking about how to hire sysadmins who "self-censor" themselves; it's hard enough to hire for technical competence at Google's scale.
Here is a nifty little trick to make money online with legitimate affiliate marketing. It requires almost no technical skill.

A lot of people ask for buying suggestions on twitter like "Where can I buy $productX ?" or "Which digital camera should I buy?".

You can find them using http://search.twitter.com/search?q=where+buy+%3F

You can try pairing this query with different keyword combinations like http://search.twitter.com/search?q=hdtv+buy+%3F and http://search.twitter.com/search?q=laptop+buy+%3F

Looking at the search results, it seems like such questions pop up every second on twitter.

You can make money by helping those people to make buying decisions. Suggest them a good product or deal, and give them your affiliate link to buy it. If they make the purchase using your link, you'll get affiliate commission for the sale.