skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
But AFAI understand before the IPO you can't buy anything, even if the shares are valued some value in some company to company transaction. AFAIK it's not about company being sold, it's only once it's on the market (and other conditions you have are met) that you can execute your options. Then you don't have to worry to even have the mentioned 10K USD, you'll be able to get the difference between the real price of that number of shares and the strike price of your options.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strike_price
I don't see the point of this. Yes, mustard was able to be improved and managed to have multiple flavors.

Ketchup didn't see enough improvement and ended up with still only 1 flavor.

Spaghetti sauce was something that could sell in many flavors and so they do it.

There is no conundrum. People simply don't want ketchup that isn't ketchup.

And for the record, Grey Poupon may technically be mustard, but it's used differently. If you're making a sandwich, GP is a great flavor. If you're making a hamburger or hotdog, GP doesn't taste right and regular mustard is better.

And finally, can we learn anything from this as developers? I propose this:

Listen to the market. If you can't convince people that your product is better in some way, then it probably isn't.
It's trivially easy to burgle a house. It's not so easy to get away with it. LBS seems like it would make things easier for burglars, but by Amdahl's Law, it's not much different from before. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law
You should have the text field do autocompletion if you hit tab
He knows the plans for future servers and high-end storage that will compete with Sun's lineup.
Interesting article, but I'm actually more interested in what effect having started your own startup (and failed after, say, a year) has on your resume.
How to create a searching script in Javascript
Perhaps, other things equal, it's better to have a big-name company on your resume. However, consider that you'll probably make more contacts doing a startup which may be useful when you need to find a job later on -- you'll never be sending your resume "cold" again.
I actually dropped out of university because of work. I started making $35k/year plus freelancing (usually another $10-20k) when I was 18, and while I tried to keep going to school for awhile during work, it was too hectic and I wasn't interested in class anyway/anymore. I was already working in my field of study and felt I learned more on my own.

Sometimes I'm bummed out I never took some lower-level, nitty-gritty CS classes, but I don't miss university in general, and I've learned a lot of the theory/low-level stuff you don't just "pick up" through teaching myself and learning from other programmers at work.

Four years later it seems like the right choice, as I'm making a lot more than I did at 18 as a full-time, salaried employee at a small startup-ish company.
The Stack Overflow guys seem to be building a healthy, if modest, business around Q&A based on an advertising + services (job boards, etc) model. Granted, I'm not sure this could grow into a billion dollar business, but it may be profitable.

It also seems that Quora is aiming squarely at Stack Exchange, and both companies seem to be holding their long-term strategies close to their chest. Perhaps they see some monetization strategy that the rest of us are failing to grasp?
IAC Finally Kills Off Bloglines
"It makes no sense to worry about things you have no control over because there's nothing you can do about them, and why worry about things you do control? The activity of worrying keeps you immobilized." - Wayne Dyer
Their initial GSM offer may be iPhones (which sell easily), but I believe they will gradually migrate to GSM-only at some point in the future.
Ask HN: Use WePay instead of Paypal?
We are about to launch a product and were originally planning on using paypal for taking payments (until we get our own merchant account). However, with all the recent posts about paypal's draconian policies, we began to check out alternatives.

Is WePay a viable alternative to Paypal?
i don't think i've ever ran out of ideas of things i wanted to do with a machine. i still have Commodore 64's Gary Kitchen's Game Maker project ideas, and i haven't messed with that in 20 years... i've always been on the software side of things perhaps, and besides doing too many different kinds of things at once which really require different, dedicated machines, i don't think i've ever used a machine to its fullest potential
I think that Quora's advertising model could be similar to Google in that there is potentially a high degree of purchase intent associated with asking or even browsing certain questions. It will probably never achieve the same scale, but I can see their CPMs being comparably high.

One of the big reasons I think investors are excited about Q&A is that the model can be seen as a better replacement for search engines for long-tail, high-expertise questions. This is probably the reason Quora is trying to keep question and answer quality as high as possible. So far I think they have succeeded, although this will always be a tough thing to balance with growth.
Hmmm. I'm pretty sure I learned all of those methods in school as a child (20 now). I stick to doing the traditional way typically.
Something about that article is very disturbing. College kids with no desire to protest or even keep up with politics. And these are the ones who will be running the show in 20 years? I dunno. I don't like that.
If anything, "mainstream" computer users are trending toward the exact opposite of this. App Stores for your desktop are the logical next step here.
What happens if a liquidity event occurs within the first year, before the cliff? Do I still have my options, and am just unable to exercise them?
Twitter, You’re DMing It Wrong
Messy Is Good
Sounds like the newest in agile techniques - pair programming for one. Write a book and start your consulting career now.
Ask HN: After 6 months, did we succeed or fail?
After being out of beta for a little less than six months our first attempt at a startup (bitspaceapp.com), a music player that lets you upload your music collection, has around 800 users of which only a handful are active users and 25 are paying customers. Did we succeed or fail? Is it too early to tell? Right now we are asking ourselves in what direction we should take our business, if any at all.

The idea for the product was simply born out of my own frustration of loosing my music collection in a hard drive crash and my nerdy need for having a neat and nicely cataloged and index music collection. We didn't set out to create the most original product or to revolutionize anything. We simply wanted to create a good product that did something mildly useful and that could attract a lucrative niche of users (record collectors). But it's not like there is no competition in the music player market, rather the contrary. With competition from products like Spotify and Grooveshark that offer on demand streaming from a wast library of licensed music -- something we would never be able to offer -- its hard to make yourself heard in the marketplace.

So the question really is: We think we have created a useful and well executed product. But how do you know if your business model will work? When can you reliably say that it is a success or failure? 6 months? A year? 5 years? And what measures of success should we consider?
This is going to be overrun by spammers and botnets in zero time flat. I bet it will be shut down in a few days.
I saw a slight division where the startups/small companies seemed to place less emphasis on the brand-name employers than the larger/traditional orgs would. For both, it's just one more data point. Is it just me that read it that way?
I've never understood the point of these marketshare prediction pieces. What does it matter if some form of Android runs on more phones? Who actually cares? I know that emphasizing the horse race drives up page views, but is it actually worthwhile news?

Market share numbers for Android have to be interpreted differently. A phone can run Android without using any Google services, or running any third-party Android apps. This will become more common as Android becomes more popular on low-end devices, as this article predicts. If a phone doesn't run Google services, then it's not generating any more revenue for Google than a non-Android smartphone. If it's not running third-party apps, then it's not relevant for developers deciding which system to invest in.

On desktop systems, we have a clear idea of what market share means. A higher Windows market share means more revenue for Microsoft, and a better return for their investors. It also means a larger market for third party developers. The same can be said of Mac OS, and even Linux, to an extent. It doesn't work for iOS and Android. I think we need a better metric than market share when evaluating the mobile market.
But curated directories didn't end up working for the Web and they won't end up working for mobile application discovery, either

This sums up my thoughts on the issue. Does anyone have a good reason why curation works better than search for mobile apps, but the opposite situation holds for web apps?

Couldn't Google give every app on the marketplace a website and just use the regular PageRank as part of App search? I have always felt like the Android app discovery process should start at google.com, and I think links from friends and online forums would immediately become the most common way to find good apps. Why pay people to do what the web could do for you?

Also, I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be possible for someone to create a "better" (louder / faster / more sophomoric) fart app than what already exists on the App store. Is Apple ceding those farts to Android? Or would they make an exception for a really good fart App?
About.com (acquired for $410m). Last.fm was all advertising supported until last year (well after the $280m buyout). Hulu has done really well with advertising. Demand Media. How Stuff Works ($250m). Pet Holdings (Cheezburger Network). Etc etc. Plenty of web companies do just fine with advertising dollars.
Does it make a difference that Hurd got a $33 million payment as part of the exit deal that included the non-compete? I believe the policy reasons behind prohibiting non-compete agreements is that (1) they are usually essentially forced upon the employee due to the great difference in bargaining power between the company and the employee, and (2) an employee could have a hard time making a living if he is excluded from his normal field for a couple of years.

Neither of these reasons seem to apply here. Hurd didn't have to agree to the exit package they offered. He could have simply quit like an ordinary worker quits--walked out the door with his last paycheck. The $33 million he got makes it so he has no need to "make a living" for the next two years.
Google Checkout is always recommended, as is WePay. The issue is that PayPal is the convenience/compatibility elephant in the room. The naive see them as "trusted", and they're as universal as a payment processor can come. "a viable alternative" is where your issue lies -- there is no viable alternative for the industry standard at this point.
Someone's a quitter. :(
And the Small Computer you Carry With You Everywhere is the new Desktop so in the end Linux will get there.
Oh, come on! Not everything has to be pragmaticized (is that even a word?) to the n'th degree.

It's one thing to get an Art History degree if that truly is what you're interested in. It's quite another to assume that it has to be expensive.

Sure, someone spending $200k like the poster below mentions for an Art degree is probably not showing good judgement. OTOH, someone else who lives with parents during college, works part time in a printshop and gets the same degree owing minimal student loans is in an arguably better position both financially and in terms of real-world experience.

I'd much rather hire someone with an Art History degree and a passion for the subject than someone else who cruised through CS coursework while having no interest in it beyond its moneymaking potential.
Twitter by the Numbers
uh. no.

Because, if I so wished, I could post on FB places that I'm "at the movies with <whoever>".
Apple can't win regardless of what stance they take. But I think they've made the right choice .... the 1000s of clones that emerge whenever anything is popular are stupid, and having your app/game surrounded by unpolished garbage, whether from an amateur or veteran, is also stupid.
Upvoted because its a good starting point for discussion, but I don't know if I necessarily agree with the premise. Why should anyone go into a productive industry (by which it sounds like he means anything in which there is an end product) as we move into a service economy and production continues to be off-shored? Or maybe I'm misunderstanding/missing the point. It seems like people at all levels should go where the money and jobs are.
Google has pretty much proven that making searches have more features is not the way to improve them. Before Google, every search engine allowed you to specify things like words that had to be included, excluded, and more. Some used multiple text fields and checkboxes and radio boxes and it was very complicated.

Google initially did the same, but simplified the interface a bit. Now, there is just 1 box and 2 buttons, and a lot of those options (like + for requiring a keyword) don't even work the same. (It now seems to give the word higher weight, but not require it.)

I agree that letting people know why things appear where they do in the list is a good idea, and maybe even change the sort order. But more options just means more frustration and there's a breaking point.
I think the $99/year fee is a pretty clear indicator that "amateurs" are welcome.

I would imagine that the expansion of Ping into the app realm will do more for small developers than some filtering that will inevitably serve big. deep pocketed companies.
These fears seem to stem from the illusion of control and detectability.

Ask most folks if they would be able to tell if their child is depressed or suicidal and you'll get a variation of "Of course I'd know if my child was suicidal" or "My child isn't depressed!"

Ask then if they could tell if a school sniper is going to target their school or if a terrorist attack was going to happen. You won't find a similar confidence in the detectability of the outcome.

And that produces fear.

Unfortunately, car accidents, abuse, and suicide are in fact more prevalent because they have false detectability. The very same human factors that contribute to people answering with confidence about their child's emotional or mental state also cause us to overlook subtle warning signs.

That's in part why people so often express surprise when there is a suicide attempt or familial abuse. You don't often hear parents or relatives say "yeah, I saw that coming." It's more often "Johnny tried to kill himself? What a shame, I would not have seen that coming , he was always such a bright/happy/etc child".
Adwords CPC Dips: Google Instant and Ad Pricing
It may help if you at least let people know the problem you are trying to solve with your startup or at the very least the problem domain.

The reason I say this is because a good co-founder needs to be passionate about the problem. They need to be really interested in solving it to contribute meaningfully and come up with innovative solutions.
Quick note: in California wage secrecy is illegal.

Section 232 of The California Labor Code prohibits employers from:

* requiring as a condition of employment that any employee refrain from disclosing the amount of their wages [Section 232(a)];
* requiring an employee to sign a waiver of their right to disclose their wages [§232(b)]; or
* discharging, formally disciplining, or otherwise discriminating against an employee who discloses the amount of their wages [§232(c)].
Isn't a decent chunk of what goes viral on YouTube amateur? I hate the idea that I could write an app which could make me (and Apple) a chunk of money, if only they'd accept it in the first place. At least Android is getting to equal footing with iOS.
His parents are somewhat loaded so he/they paid over 300k which is ~3x what I paid. Plus he did not work for 2 extra years so toss another 100+k in lost wages and interest over time period.
Just a few off the top of my head: Any major blog (TechCrunch, Mashable, Gizmodo) or media website, Stackoverflow's entire network. Most well-trafficked websites take advantage of advertising in some form and support a number of employees.

However, Quora probably doesn't have to stick with "pure" ad models -- and I don't expect them to. Just because they say they aren't focusing on monetization right now doesn't mean they're completely blowing it off. The Quora team is full of some pretty smart people who I'm sure know a bit about what they're doing.
Getting over the fear of MVP
"...because they haven't seen THIS fart app! BRRRAAAAFFFFFFFFFFTTTTTTTSSSSPPLSH!!!"
How Apple plays the pricing game
you may want to check http://www.builditwith.me/
It helps if you are not large enough to support both platforms. Even though yesterdays relaxation of the app store rules goes a long way towards making it possible to run the same app on both (that will never be the 'optimal' solution on either platform though).
For me it just shows the local weather...
My sons play MW2, so they're well well trained in handling sniper attacks. They're also well versed in fending off campers and noob-tubers, in case either of those are #6+ on the list.
This is neat for the explanation of griding and chunking alone.

- Gridding is how I casually multiply things in my head already. I read left-to-right, so I usually start multiplying with the leftmost digits and track the zeros, then add things up until I've reached the desired accuracy. Really, it's just the traditional method in reverse -- this 10-slide explanation is much easier for teaching the basic concept of multiplication, though.

- Chunking is division explained as "how many portions does this make" rather than the traditional problem of "how big would each of these equal-sized portions?" -- which is great for two reasons: (1) physically performing the alternative -- measuring out a fluid into N equal-sized portions -- is hard! (2) it's more like how computers work, and makes the modulo operation trivial to explain; this kind of quotient clearly ignores the issue of remainders in the initial problem, and then later it's clear what you can do with the remainder to make a compound fraction.

But it's unfortunate that memorization has become taboo in Western education. Sometimes you actually need to memorize a table of facts and be able to recall them quickly, as with single-digit multiplication -- if you have to add up seven eights each time you encounter 7x8, you'll just be too slow to keep up. Know how to confirm what you've memorized, but also know that 7x8=56 as a basic fact.

(It's not that hard if you take advantage of spaced-repetition learning, as in: http://www.mnemosyne-proj.org/ )
I was in exactly that situation a couple of years ago. It definitely closed some doors for me. At every single interview I was grilled about my desire to start another company. It definitely cost me a job I really wanted. They freely admitted that I was well qualified, but their concerns over my bolting for another run at my own thing kept them from hiring me.

Of course, they were right. I was out on my own again within 6 months:)
How the “focus on first” helps hide Google’s relevancy problems
I came to say this same thing. As a parent, I really don't worry about 1-4 on the "shouldn't" list, but drugs is a real issue, especially in a family with evidence of a predisposition towards addiction.

There are also things I can do things about and things I can't, and that impacts what I worry about. I can't control a drunk that decides to cross four lanes of traffic, so beyond driving defensively, I don't worry about that.

On the other hand, I can teach my kids simple things in a way that doesn't have to panic them to keep them safe from unlikely chance they run into "stranger danger". We live in a low crime area, yet there have been a couple of very creepy incidents involving adults following/bother kids walking home from school.

I do wonder about where they got that list, though. I've never heard a single parent I know (and I know a lot of parents) who has said "I sure Johnny makes it home from school today and that the snipers don't get him." WTF?
If and when android tablets are going to be sold in numbers the 'small computer' may not even be all that small.
There's an important point buried in here - AppBrain and similar is something that is allowed and encouraged on Android, whereas any app that duplicated or encroached upon market functionality would not be allowed on iOS.

If AppBrain or similar takes off, Google can just buy them and roll it into Android - an easy win for them. By allowing others to come up with these systems, Google are effectively allowing Natural Selection to produce the best App search system.
Can't one problem solve the other? I know Google Answers flopped, but people were paying for research. What if instead you had to pay for membership like Metafilter? Granted, I don't think that would end up being a huge business, but it's one possibility.
can you elaborate on this passport issue? are you in a foreign country?
My experience: I've built about 3 sites using Drupal 5, and played around lightly with Drupal 6.

>> "is there a better solution to Drupal?"

Yes, definitely. I think a lot of the problems I had with Drupal 5 was due to the limitations of PHP. It felt like there was a lot of "magic" happening behind the scenes, and you had to cater to that magic to make things work.

You didn't have nicely defined classes like you do in other languages to handle the MVC components. So you'd always be passing around these cumbersome associative arrays that are nested 3 levels deep to make the framework behave as expected.

I think Drupal is a great choice if you're using PHP, since the community is so active. A better question would be: why are you using PHP?

I switched to Python and started using Pylons and Django for all my web projects, and I never looked back.

Python is a beautiful and productive language, and allows you to build stuff really quickly. It's very explicit and opinionated, and there's not too much magic happening.
It's all in the presentation. If you write 'programmer for xxx.com' on your resume that's one thing, if you put 'CEO of startup xxx.com' on there then that's quite another.

In both cases you do the same work but the first is not going to raise too many follow up questions.