skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think it's been doomed for a few years now, really. Steve even neglected to mention MySpace in his presentation -- he compared Ping to Facebook and Twitter.

Maybe it's just me, but I've almost completely forgotten about MySpace when I think "social networks".
But it has no economic significance. People thought the earth was flat a long time ago, and that theory has the same amount of scientific basis.

Seriously, economics is a science and it is easy to demonstrate that a unit of labor time, like and hour worked, does not create the same amount of value.

Specifically, ignoring the power of capital, the labor theory of value would say a carpenter can create as many cars in an hour as a laborer working with a factory of robots.

The reality is, the capital to build the factory changes the value of the labor, thus disproving the labor theory of value.
IPod Touch now with FaceTime
It is more powerful than the follows in Facebook & Twitter for artists as it leads to direct buy $$ from their fans. They will definitely pay attention to Ping. I bet it will open up to movie stars, actors and authors in future.

If I'm not wrong, Ping could be just HTML pages within iTunes, as with some iTunes contents. So it is not difficult to be a standalone web app if Apple choose to.
Totally agree about having to still sell and marketing. The point was that a great product, supported by web-based, social strategies for selling and marketing are more cost effective and more amenable to Canadians.
Yes indeedy, how about the other side of the pond, hmm? :)
Admittedly the parent post is somewhat fanboyish, but it's true that the macbook (and imac) sleep functions are light years ahead of most PC laptops. They sleep very quickly on closing the lid, and resume fast too... I've never found sleep to be as effective on Dells given to me by work.
I've heard that it's possible (not easy) for statistics Ph.D.s to jump directly to faculty positions, but I think this is becoming less common. I think that economics Ph.D.s also often jump directly to faculty positions.
Why does Apple care about Last.fm? Does Last.fm make hundreds of millions of dollars a year? Because that seems like the minimum action to move the dials for them now.
Great to read this. I too am a socialist and frequent Hacker News and work in startups. I'm a member of the International Socialist Organization, http://socialistworker.org/, if you happen to be in the US and interested in a group and not yet part of one.

I see you ended up getting people to argue definitions when they don't understand them anyway :).

Like lionhearted, "means of production by violence". Violence is only necessary when those with the real rights to the means of production (the wealth they created) are attacked... So no, that is not part of Marx's theory.

Marxist brand socialism is the healthiest place to be if you are for freedom and the end of oppression!

It is sad how little people care to learn of Marxism, instead happily believe the lies they are told.
> All physical property is the same, you exchange labor for it.

This is overly simplistic. Locke was a cool guy and all, but not everyone subscribes to his worldview.

> Basically, at some point, you're advocating taking property away from people ewho have up earned it by creating it or by trading their labor for it.

No, I'm not.
Whenever I see these "Japanese people do the weirdest things" stories, I always wonder if the Japanese read stories that are along the lines of "Americans/Europeans do the weirdest things".
As would I. I'm working on starting a BYU Hackers Club (in the Engineering department.). (I need a better name though... I don't think it will make it past administration.)
Apple unveils new line of iPods, revamped Apple TV
Bribing maitre d' to skip the line
The republicans are socialists as well.

This is a truth that, unfortunately, seems to elude people.
Google Chrome Turns 2 : A Brief Flashback
I think I'm more likely to pay for a service like Dropbox on the server than on my desktop.

Reliable backups are a big deal on a server, and maybe not as much on the desktop. I mean, I'm not too fussed if my mp3 collection gets stomped by a hard disk failure (I just download it again from emusic), but if tens of thousands of forum and ticket tracker posts are lost, I'm gonna be devastated. And, having it in a shared location that makes it easy to copy the database and website to a development machine might be cool. (I'm kinda talking abstractly here, as my own products provide tools to solve all of these problems in different ways, but they're things I've had problems with in the past. And, if Dropbox had a server product, we'd probably add it as a backup target option.)
Is the past predictive of the future in venture investing?
Every application is going to be different, so comparing to other sites is only moderately useful. The more important question is whether your % of active users is increasing over time. That's way more important than how it compares to everyone else.
Timeline driven JS animations
I think you have certain ideas. I'm fine with your opinions just as they are, I honour you for that. However, in an essay where I start by saying that I'm erroneous in describing myself as a Socialist and end by saying that I'm a socialist for sufficiently libertarian values of socialism, what are we to make of my quoting a generic definition of Big S Socialism in the middle? I stated what I believe quite clearly. What I suggest you do is carry on arguing against Big S Socialism. Nothing wrong with disputing it. And if you like, you can say things like "Reginald quotes Wikipedia as saying that Socialism is ____. This is clearly a bad idea because _____."

Now as to "standing by my opinions," ask your friends in the neighborhood about me. They will tell you I have no problem standing by my opinions, even when they are unpopular. But I should make something perfectly clear: This essay describes what I like. At no time do I claim that you or anybody else will be better off if things go this way or that way, just that I will like it.

So really, there is very little value to your trying to persuade me that the world will be worse off if Health Care is nationalized or what-not. I am not writing an essay about how to make the world a better place, just about how to make my world a better place.

I believe the best you can do to oppose my views is to convince me that I personally wouldn't like working on small, self-organizing software teams. Have at it.
You're only saying that they work in NYC because you're taking for granted all of the failures. For example, how many times have you said "where's a cab when you need one?"?

because of all the regulations, which can only be enforced because the cabbies have something to lose

You think that the loss of the "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval", or "UL Certification", or the like is nothing? Don't you think that potential customers would quickly learn to look for that emblem on a cab?

If there was no government interference, cabs still wouldn't

Nonsense. You're just making stuff up, without the slightest evidence. Do you really believe that cab customers would turn away paying customers just because they're not white? And even if they did, that would just open an opportunity for a minority-catering company to make a killing.
Wrong. Oh so wrong. Please read Marx. Violence is only necessary due to the violence from the rulers. There is no reason to take up arms against them if they do not take up arms against us, and they already do. If when the workers take the wealth that is rightfully theirs they are not attacked then there is no reason for violence.

And thanks for letting the oppressed and exploited know what is morally right for them to do.

You claim he is not a Marxist, yet if you read Capital you get this:
"Socialists advocate a method of compensation based on individual merit or the amount of labour one contributes to society. They generally share the view that capitalism unfairly concentrates power andwealth within a small segment of society that controls capital and derives its wealth through a system ofexploitation. They argue that this creates an unequal society that fails to provide equal opportunities for everyone to maximise their potential."

I am a Marxist. And I am not a pacifist.
Apple Ping - social network for music
I wonder why Apple's different.

From what I read, their average salaries are much lower but their loyalty is much higher. Besides, you don't hear of too many Apple employees quickly leaving for other places, at least not as much as Facebook/Google.

Why?
The Roman empire became like this later on in its history: people with muscles and swords made a lot of money off everyone else by taxing them.
For example, how many times have you said "where's a cab when you need one?"?

In Manhattan? Never. (but I've never tried to get a cab in Harlem or north of that)

You think that the loss of the "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval", or "UL Certification", or the like is nothing? Don't you think that potential customers would quickly learn to look for that emblem on a cab?

Are you serious? The only thing people look for is if the cab is yellow.

Nonsense. You're just making stuff up, without the slightest evidence.

I'm not just making stuff up, those are all things that cab drivers used to do until the city told them to stop doing those things.

Do you really believe that cab customers would turn away paying customers just because they're not white?

Yes.

And even if they did, that would just open an opportunity for a minority-catering company to make a killing.

Do you live in New York? There already are car services, livery cars and gypsy cabs.
Shouldn't the links within the tweet be clickable?
It's very good, but if there's a way to expand the time range for search, it's too hidden. If there isn't, there needs to be.
inotify is also unable to inherit handlers.
after a "mkdir -p a/b/c/d" it is very likely that "d" is untracked.
therefore lsyncd is useless on real systems. :(
My experience has been that there's some of that. 'Engrish' is usually good for a cheap laugh among native English speakers, but Asians will laugh at the random Chinese/Japanese characters Americans tattoo on themselves.

That said, there are plenty of Japanese people who will find this virtual dating behaviour weird.
Marx's socialism is a society where democracy instead of profit guide production and resources.
Congrats kn0thing!
I'd rather live in a successful rich country than a failing poor country.

Having strong companies in your country grows the economy in your country, which helps make your life better. More money coming into the economy means

1. Higher wages
2. Better public services
3. Lower taxes

More than that, having strong companies attracts better talent, which means better role models, peers, and opportunities to explore your own dreams. Silicon Valley is what it is because it built a track record of successful startups.
I was hoping to find some resources on the "zipper" - The article that you reference in your comment has cited this one - http://www.st.cs.uni-saarland.de/edu/seminare/2005/advanced-... [PDF Link] which seems pretty relevant too.

Thanks for the pointer
I never use the slideshow feature on my Apple TV now because I'd have to set up photo syncing with my computer, have all my latest photos on it (of course they're by far the most likely to be the ones that I'd want to show and by far the least likely for me to have already synced), etc etc. But if I could just whip out my iPhone and a couple of taps later be showing some photos from it on my TV... well, I might use that. Once or twice, at least. :)
Me and my friends make a startup, we make lots of money. You want to tax it? Do you want to force us to hire employes on terms that you dictate?

These are sincere questions-- what effect would your socialist system have on our little voluntary startup? If the answer is none, how is it different from capitalism? What if we got big?

If you want to force us to hire certain people, pay them a certain amount, or prevent us from getting big-- all policies advocated by various socialist organizations-- how is this not an end of freedom and oppression?

Meanwhile I don't care if you form a collective, and you have whatever socialist policies in your collective, so long as all the participants are voluntary.

I've yet to meet a socialist or a socialist organization that would extend the same courtesy.

Because letting people be free from oppression means letting them pool capital, which is generally a problem for socialists, isn't it?
"Making" to me tends to refer to profit, not gross revenue. In operating revenue, they made a few tens of millions last year on less than 1b gross. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/infotech/internet/Facebo...

That's impressive, but they will have to double their profit several more times to warrant a 100b price tag.

Google has a PE ratio of 20. If you extend that to FB, they'll need to make 5b in revenue to get to 100b. Assuming that last year they banked 20mm, they would have to double their earnings eight times to get to 5b.
The very idea of a startup is that you create something that you can sell to people - because they value it - for more than simply the value of the labor you put in. Are you against that? For an American, I'm somewhat to the left, but I think that Marxism in the 20th century has been an abject failure and have to wonder a bit about how anyone, in the face of such evidence, could still espouse such a system. Want to talk about Sweden vs Singapore vs Canada vs Hong Kong? Fine, but Cuba? USSR? No thanks.
Say goodbye to IKEA (video)
> The labor theory of value has an old and distinguished pedigree:

It's funny how you imply that the socialist concepts are neither old not distinguished.
Basically yes. But more specifically, graduate students in American universities will have had 2+ years of courses and have performed 4+ years of research. My understanding is that PhD students in the UK just finish at the end of the third year. In the US, you are basically done, when your project is completed.
Well, maybe they're expecting 1/100 of 1% or less, which would still net them several million, which is a lot more than Google's counteroffer.
Will Alexis' ambassadorship include Canadian hubs like Toronto, Montreal, Waterloo, etc at some point?
Did Apple just shot Myspace in the face? execution style?
"In our opinion, the NoSQL decision to give up on ACID is the lazy solution to these scalability and replication issues."

They had me up until they called NoSQL "lazy" and claimed NoSQL solutions "give up on ACID". They aren't lazy and a lot of them support ACID, or most of it.

From that point on this veers away from logic and moves towards a self-justified argument. Tools are just tools. If you need immediate consistency then go for an immediately consistent solution, if you don't then you should feel free to take advantage of the performance gain of eventual consistency.
Is this a joke or irony? (The blog seems to be down right now).
Anarchism is inherently capitalist, because without the state, there would be nobody to stop capitalists from deploying capital to do startups. There would be nobody ot impose your socialist values to make everyone act the way you dictate.
> I'm definitely not like that.

That's fine. On the other hand, most people will continue to wish their family and friends well and hope they succeed.
Great story on innovation.
Generally, the longer your co-founder remains a stakeholder, the longer he/she is going to be an 'asset' to your company, even if they are not actively involved in the company.

At the same time, not allowing them to cash in for a very long time, could backfire as they may become frustated and start being a pain.

A good balance might be to have a staggered vesting period for different percentages. example: if their total stake is 35%, then let them divest, in increments of 5% (max) each year, starting from end of year 2.

End of the day, you have to figure out what is the best and a reasonable configuration (for both parties) that will sustain your company while rewarding those early contributors.
Facebook is about baby pictures, girls/boys night out, kids soccer results, and "how the hell are you". This is no facebook killer, but it may bleed off X% of discussions that deals with media.
The title may be a little broad (his concerns are mostly in certain use cases, not in general) but he definitely raises some real concerns.
http://www.businessinsider.com/guy-who-stole-goldmans-doomsd...
Join a financial institution and get very well paid before finishing. This is the easiest way to fail your Ph.D.
No longer a hobby? $99 Apple TV drops storage, integrates Netflix
Let me be clearer - the link does not load for me. http://blog.pagerduty.com is dead here. http://pagerduty.com loads fine though.
"a great operating system, lacking only a decent editor"
Because it's just music, I feel like I might use it more, too. I'd feel less self-concious posting my thoughts on music I've listened to, etc. when that's the whole reason why people are there.

This vs. on facebook where people are wary of TMI and people who spam their feed, this is all about doing that.
Probably, couldn't get everything done in one night :)
About 1,000 per week miss their fees. (In contrast 2k+ are granted each week.)
A canvas app that you can play with explained using jsfiddle
That was my first thought. Myspace Music is dead, it's not really about Facebook.
Search 100 million UPC, EAN, ISBN, ASIN and MPN identifiers
Zimbra's open source edition's WebDAV sharing works well once you get the URLs figured out. You get a lot more fine grained permissions. It's cross platform, there are shared folders, etc.. if that's what you're looking for. You can make folders public to share with others, and so on. With bandwidth as fat as it is these days DAV's heavyness doesn't feel so heavy anymore. Am I the only one that shares these sentiments? Did I mention it works on MacOS 10.6, Linux, and Windows 7?

If you're using Dropbox to back up some of these other solutions might make more sense. Crafting up a script using hard links and rsync can give you daily snapshots of any filesystem at only the storage cost of the delta (which can be easily turned into a cron job) .. here's a decent resource for that:

http://www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots/
I'd suggest that you do a little more reading on this topic, because you're grossly misinformed. Wikipedia is a decent intro, and "An Anarchist FAQ" is a very long and thorough discussion of the topic: http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/index.html
This was one of my prediction in the "What can kill Facebook" thread.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1604211
If you could use a cname for your MX record, what are the benefits of using ELB over what's already in place (weighted mx priorities, with the ability to relay mail away automatically on failure from AWS) ?

Also there's additional cost involved in using ELB.

I would prefer having a good dns provider, low ttl, EIP, nginx w/haproxy.
I was a little kid at the time. I haven't had enough fixating books since then.

Thankfully, I don't think children are especially susceptible.
And yet, without the freedom to won the software you create, you cannot give it away. Open source s capitalst because it is based on the presumption that the creator owns the sotftware and can determine the license to it.

If stall man really believes nobody can own software, then stallman believes that all programmers should be slaves, unable to profit from their own labor.
For the users it's obvious that streaming is the way to go, Spotify is golden. But for the producers? I think it's possible we might see the streaming model completely abandoned.

An interesting thought is whether they'd experiment with the rental model (pay per play) for iTunes music. Not just interesting economically but in terms of how appreciation of music might change.
I ran across this fiddle last night when I (accidentally) checked JSFiddle's Twitter account:

http://jsfiddle.net/zalun/5evBx/8/

I've recently been noticing that people who make experimental canvas apps often don't add significant comments that would help other people understand what they're doing. So here I added comments for every major action and I also added a bunch of stat trackers (like the current absolute x and y velocities) that I thought some stats people would like. If you want to add more, you can adjust it and hit "update", or you can just fork it to a new fiddle and start from scratch.

Have fun...
the labor theory of value would say a carpenter can create as many cars in an hour as a laborer working with a factory of robots

No, it wouldn't, at all, not even kind of.

Depending on the version you took, it would either say that the "real" price of the car coming off the factory floor would be set by the value of all the labor put into producing it (including the cost of the labor of building the factory itself, all the way on back), or that the price would simply be the value of the labor it would save the purchaser.
I've enjoyed the hackers and founders meetup in mountain view. I really do enjoy how unstructured it is compared to Launch Up and the Web Startup Group.

Another good group is the CTO Breakfast hosted by Phil Windley at the Novell Cafeteria http://www.windley.com/cto_forum
SEO Techniques explained in 1 Minute
It would be a pretty crappy Facetime device if it didn't.
Never mind that VMs are as old as UCSD p-code.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UCSD_Pascal

edit: Interesting voting here, would someone please explain what's so bad about UCSD p-code being a primitive byte code interpreter + associated VM ?
blockbuster also offers flat-rate subscription services.
You are right, of course. I was using HTML5 as it is commonly used as an umbrella term for everything new and standards related on the web these days in my snark comment. Interestingly enough, I tried with VLC to no avail. I liked that new nano, seems like something we ought to have in the year 2010, straight out of future.
I live in a capitalist society. I make do by working in startups. I did not say that startups adhere to socialist ideals.

All those countries you list are not Marxist. Especially not Sweden, Singapore, Canada or Hong Kong. USSR I give you from 1917 to 1920s it was but it was also under constant seige. Cuba made its own form of "socialism" after their revolution. Che grew fed up with the bureaucracy there and left.
yes. I can rent 9 tv episodes per month for the price of netflix's most common plan.
"It is a numbers game"
http://gigaom.com/2010/03/26/case-studies-in-freemium-pandor...
http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/04/19/babbel-turns-a-profit-af...
And you're not even mentioning the $500k retention bonus... Something seems off here.
As a fellow Canadian I have the same set of beliefs. Sure, I want people to succeed based on merit too, but I can more easily relate to people based on the similar path that they have had to take, especially coming from the same place. I don't have that same relationship with people from the United States, for example. One prime example is how much "easier" (I say that lightly) it is to get funding in the US. It's far more difficult to get funding coming from Canada, especially from American investors. You can't say the same being an American entrepreneur looking for American investment.
Indeed. I could see this getting used for a lot more than just music. Especially since it's so tightly integrated with something I already use a lot. And there's no privacy issue.
I only skimmed the paper pointed to by the blog post, but one quote jumped out at me:

"Hence, in an era where disk
reads caused wild variation in transaction length, allowing
nondeterministic reordering was the only viable option."

In other words, when all your data is in ram (possibly distributed across a cluster of machines connected by a relatively fast network), the performance tradeoffs are very different than when your data is on rotating mechanical disks.

I don't know that I'm convinced that their approach is better, but they've certainly given me something to think about (and re-read in more detail later).