skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
TapZilla, Optimizely, and CarWoo were all in different batches - Summer '10, Winter '10, and Summer '09 respectively.
I've seen many a business plan fail using the "we'll just hire some college students" strategy.
Wow! Am I reading this correctly? 8.5 BILLION shares pre-IPO? Maybe I'm missing something but with that setup they're going to either wind up becoming an instant $100 billion market cap company ASAP or wind up a penny stock. I mean for a company that can only figure out how to make a billion revenue off of 500 million users, that just seems ridiculous. Even during the dot com craze something like that would have seemed odd.
It's almost always going to violate the site's TOS, so if you're a business that depends on regularly scraping sites without permission, prepare to change your business model or be sued. (eg. Octopart vs Mouser and Digikey)
Facebook caters for non js people by directing them to the cut down mobile version of the site. Which is not a perfect solution, but it is much much better than simply telling them to go away.
Yep - had a fun time with that one - check out the underlying math - could make for an interesting follow-up post on your blog ->

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

It's not a perfect system, but it's amazing to test things like USAToday.com vs. The New Yorker written for high school vs. college level readers . . .
Sure, the assumption that I need a full tank every day is pushing it, but that's partially balanced by the fact that I used a fuel-efficient car for a baseline. Someone who drives 100 miles a day with the electrical equivalent of 15-20 mpg would need significantly more. My point is that a fully-capable vehicle is an aggressive target for solar energy. Our houses use much less, so let's start by aiming there.
That's actually another good way to say it, and is sort of what I said. But, not everyone has the same risk tolerance so it can't be the sole cause otherwise people would have done it sooner than 2009. Another contributing factor is corporations taking advantage of the commons. Combine the two and you get our current situation.
I think the points were:

- The original logo was broken, just not nearly as broken as the new one. So the decision to change the logo wasn't bad- the new logo was.

- They appear to be having some style issues (not meeting customer expectations more recently). I didn't see any backing data for this or for the fact that people are now spending more than they did. In fact, I'd bet that people are still fairly cheap currently, due to the economy, which has not turned around.

- They appear to be having some brand/marketing leadership issues (e.g. telling customers that they might change logo background to red for "Holiday" after saying they'd switch the logo back to the original, obviously trying to get feedback on whether that was a bad idea also, right after customers said they didn't want a logo change).

- Paying attention to social media and switching the logo back was a smart move, because of those that knew of the logo switch, more than half said it would or might influence their decision to buy Gap products (in a bad way I assume, but that wasn't defined).
Even though it's really cool to have all these symbols available in fonts, I can't really see a reason for them other than decoration. I mean, no one writes in hieroglyphs do they?

It would be really interesting to hear what people actually do with these glyphs :)
Remember kids, when interviewing at private companies which offer stock rewards, always get firm answers about percentage owned and dilution. Getting 1,000,000 Facebook shares might sound good on an offer letter but without knowing the percentage that could be worth 6$.

Edited to remove comment about par value.
You are correct, the more variations, the longer the experiment will need to run to reach statistical significance. Estimating how long it will take to finish is a great suggestion and something we plan on doing.
Edit: Oops, looks like a (better) map has already been made, I missed the link.
That is the thing that mystifies me about this lawsuit so much: it seems totally frivolous. Someone Facebook's size must be batting down inane lawsuits like this continuously. Why is this one getting so much attention?
Thanks for reaching out. I just sent you a bit more info on TapZilla
I do not use Debian. I have Ubuntu on a laptop to support my user base who use Debian, but I run ArchLinux, Fedora, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OSX on all my other computers and servers. I also don't make money on these systems, or I pay for them, and I contribute back extensively. So don't compare me to the likes of Meebo and Twitter.

I also consider Debian to be exactly like these companies who take my work, butcher it, then pass the support costs and blame on to me. Considering I am a prolific contributor to the open source cause, and I've never butchered a Debian package when they've butchered my software, I'm completely justified in criticizing them for their actions.
Try http://hckrnews.com
No, you should do it via SSH, just try to do it as soon after standing up your server as possible.

The only place I know of that gets this right is Amazon, who stands it up with a key (admittedly one of theirs) that they force you to download before you can connect the first time.
Awesome stuff Pete - even better than I expected it to be and the video's really good.

Great to see you guys out in the wild!
Hey,

I'm the co-founder of Weezic,
Thank you very much for your feedback.

The definition of the product we are trying to explain on our landing page is actually: for each work = scores + accompaniments + your interpretations.
That means on Weezic, in addition to the score you get all customizable mp3 files to play your part of music, whatever your instrument is (just like you would do with MIDI generated formats but with a much better quality).
In addition to the video we have a demo on the landing page: you get access to it by clicking on the 3 right menu items (I'm not sure you've seen it, it's not particularly highlighted, which could be a mistake in our design).
Convenience is a good word for our starting value offer, but "Enhanced experience", although less precise, would actually be a more exact definition of what we are offering: "You're a musician and you want to play a work? You'll find it easily on Weezic with all the ressources you need to enjoy playing it: Scores, Customizable accompaniment files in high mp3 quality and other musicians to share it with".

I hope this answers your questions about the offer.

Regarding the business model, people will have to pay to access our content (scores + accompaniments, etc.) but the user-generated part will be free of course.

If you're interested in the project you can contact me at: nicolas@weezic.com
If you're in Paris, why not have a beer and discuss it in more details. Thanks again for your feedback!

ps:
I hope my reply is in line with this forum's rules as I am new to this forum and new to the web dev community.
Please also forgive any mistake in my english as I am French.
There's one on the page:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&#...
I don't think that word means what you think it means

"Many common stocks issued today do not have par values; those that do (usually only in jurisdictions where par values are required by law) have extremely low par values (often the smallest unit of currency in circulation), for example a penny par value on a stock issued at USD$25/share."

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Par_value
Inside i/o Ventures: Tour The Central Perk For Code (TCTV)
I thought stackoverflow was more of programming problems ?
If you read the article, I'm saying the rise of consumer internet companies who don't keep up the contract is one of the causes. Just because your company does maintain the contract doesn't mean there aren't 100s more who are doing the wrong thing.

And yes "our" enthusiasm (since I'm one of you) has waned. We no longer have community like in the old days, we have a series of fad driven social ponzi schemes where 10% of the people hope to make money and the other 90% are dupes thinking they are.
I'm willing to open up to a very unlikely XSS attack in exchange of a better user experience.

Do you know many people who say: "I won't run C applications because they are vulnerable to buffer overflows."
try to stop thinking in terms of SQL, if you can - although they call it GQL it's only superficially similar. One particularly big gotcha is that you can only return keys or whole objects in your queries, and if you return an object it has to deserialize all the data associated with that object, so think twice before storing binary data against a frequently queried object - look to the BlobStore (this is NOT the same as a BlobProperty) or a separate object to hold larger chunks of data.

This is something to consider at the get go, you'd be surprised how quickly performance degrades (ie a hundred or more items, not thousands)
I definitely share that feeling with ya. If there were a hardcore use case of AnyBots telepresence bots, it'd be for this weekend. AnyBot-YC-startup-roulette anyone?
10. Working somewhere that values looking more then doing. I have never felt less creative then when wearing a business shirt.
Not to be a jerk, but I'm super bummed that people who knew they couldn't come applied anyway, taking the spaces of people who could have come but didn't get in.

I got accepted, so I'm not being bitter or anything, but I'm sure lots of people who were able to come but didn't get in would have loved to have your place.

Maybe next year admissions to Startup School could happen on a rolling basis?
The pronounced acronym is appropriate for academia. It contains both words that come to mind.
What Everyone Made From The Ngmoco-DeNa Deal
Probably better to send the friend list as JSON down the wire with the page otherwise you'll double the number of requests (not something you usually want to do when trying to scale).
"Could the argument be made that the minority who surf with Javascript disabled don't necessarily have to be catered to, since they will enable Javascript if they trust the site or find it useful?"

That's certainly true for me. I don't care that a site requires scripting, but I do care when there's nothing to indicate that I'd be better off if I allowed javascript.

This is especially true for sites that let a user begin some set of actions (write a lengthy comment, or fill out a multi-step form), and then simply fail at the end because scripting is disabled.

It is trivial to add a "This site requires JavaScript" message. Leaving it out says you either don't give a shit or don't know what you're doing.
Exposing SQL and the database schema on the client is a good idea, in that it keeps all your code in one place (on the client). The server layer is thin, not dumb. It allows for restricting what queries run under a given database role.
Sourceforge? Ohloh collects stats and information from all over, they even have a Mongrel2 project page and I've never set it up. I'm pretty sure you're mistaken about the kind and quality of data they collect, but who knows. Their blog seems to say they track git, cvs, svn, others?

http://www.ohloh.net/blog/new_subversion_downloader

That's also why I mentioned github, they could provide other data (if they weren't too busy inflating their numbers by counting every commit, gists, forks, and duplicate projects as a "project").
Hmm I don't see a denial of the "Very few source code comments" analysis... ;)
It's interesting to read about the internal workings of EA, but the reason WAR failed was because it was an awful game.

Poorly built, buggy, and not fun, unless waiting for an hour next to the mail box to get your mail is your definition of fun. The in-game bug report tool, which we were urged as beta testers to use to write bug reports along with steps to reproduce was limited to <256 characters! When I reported that as a bug, I was told it wasn't a bug.

But, I think it is wrong to put all the blame for the outcome on EA's execution. I think an additional problem is that Warhammer really wasn't that great an IP. Warhammer is a very dark place and an ugly place. I don't think that is what most people want in a fantasy world. That doesn't mean there wasn't a niche for Warhammer, but it's a smaller niche, and if you also alienate people with poor execution, maybe too small a niche for an MMO to be successful.
alright, cool. I live in SF so I'll probably visit some of the SF ones, but I was just curious.
Yahoo buying AOL or AOL buying Yahoo?
Vertical farms could help feed cities, save land and reduce pollution
par value != market price
2010: the year Skynet awakened.
Facebook Confirms They’re Testing Big Commenting Upgrades
Most frivolous lawsuits against Facebook do not contain prima facie evidence of an 84% ownership stake in Facebook that Zuckerberg signed. (eg. they are not claiming $25.2 billion). The issue at hand appears to now be, what does the contract really say, and what does that mean within the context of the jurisdiction it will be tried in.

Both parties must know that there is something about law in one of the jurisdictions that adversely affects Facebook/Zuckerberg.
This ignores vectors like say, ubuntu/debian having an insecure keygen due to their own crappy custom patch to ssh, which was actually the case for quite a while.
I'm currently an engineering masters student, and the code I've written is available on github, if not properly licensed (I'm seriously considering slapping the CRAPL onto it now that I'm aware of it). I don't really care too much about polish, since, I mean, it does what I want, I have the excuse of working around other peoples' software, and at worst someone finds out that I did something wrong, and we all benefit. Plus, having it on github makes it really easy to work on it from different locations, and version control helps me document just where all my friggin' time went.

The biggest concerns I've heard from other researchers (ie, professors) has to do with being beaten at a publish. I think that as long as your paper itself isn't easy to find pre-submission, then you're okay, especially if nobody will really understand what you're doing anyway. So, I'm not too nervous about the prospect. It's just code for now.

Unfortunately, even if scientists release their own code, it's often just a small part of the big picture. In engineering, at least, MATLAB, Mathematica and commercial Finite Element packages are everywhere. My own project uses MATLAB and COMSOL in tandem, meaning that what I wrote only really serves to glue a bunch of completely closed algorithms together. Personally, I'd love to see a completely open, usable and documented FEA stack (which would ideally include an adaptive mesher, some FEM algorithms, a post-process visualizer, and both a gui and a not-shitty scripting API).
Facebook is blurring the line between "personalization" and "social recommendations." The first tailors to your tastes. The latter influences your tastes. Clearly, the latter is more powerful from a marketing standpoint because it attaches a recognizable face to a product, rather than an explanation (or no explanation) of why your seeing x result.
Your sarcasm is wrong, because you are claiming the converse of what pmjordan claimed. Its a common logical fallacy.
Of course you are right, but the point remains, it is important to understand the percentage of equity that you own/will own and how that will change with future dilution.
Bullshit. They may promote some illusion of quality, but having seen both internet startups and massive banks I can tell you they're huge liars. They're all about the illusion of quality and selling it, and not any actual quality.

Banks collapsed because they had crap IT. This is why Bear Stearns has a 20000% increase (yes, percent) in failed trades in the last two days of their life and didn't know about it. Bad IT also let them create these derivatives and have no idea how much risk was actually in them, hell, how much money was in them.

Startups are going to go through the same thing. They're lack of attention to detail of the total product quality while promoting their "full stack" as if it were high quality is already starting to bite them. I know a lot of these exits you're seeing would have been higher if they had better operations than they do.

So this myopic view that it's all about sales at any cost and "user experience" only does nothing for the industry.
Yes, I meant the latter. I see what you mean, now.

Edit: And my bad, for mis-reading "feet square" as "square feet". Sorry!
I've wondered if startup school / yc applications shouldn't have a nominal fee to offset non-serious applications – maybe $10. i.e. nothing that would put a serious damper on folks that really wanted to apply, but enough to keep folks from saying, "What do I have to lose, I'm only wasting the time of the folks evaluating applications..."
Well then thank you. I mean it's not my project, but it helps other people.
Looks like a good solution; we have to make a decision re: billing soon so we would also be interested in others' experiences with this.
Why don't you put your blog url in your profile?
All that work just for the water! Impressive. That's also helpful for when it comes out on Mac: I'll know what to disable first to cut down on power usage when mobile.
The rails-core guys would frequently hit a site, and then pull down the rails logo they silently dropped into everyone's directory. That or they'd look for Mongrel headers. Also, eventually all the employees at these companies leave and then you hear about who's using what because the employees tell you.

That's different than say a web server or chat protocol where you don't have to say at all what server it is, and it's usage is just about configuration rather than daily coding on it. With infrastructure nobody should really be talking to you if you've done your job right.
You have access to a number of different data points -- cookies, IPs, language accept sets, etc. The difficult part is deciding what you want to pivot on. Also helps to know the limitations of each of those methods (e.g. IP addr isn't always accurate, especially not withing 15 miles or so, but it's decent at guessing countries).
Om Malik: Silicon Valley's Talent Crunch
Of course not. That's what you see on the surface but dig in a little bit and you'll find that there are still lots of 1st generation and 2nd generation immigrants with a wealth of unique cultural identities. I lived for years abroad in Europe and Asia and I can tell you that the US, Australia and parts of Latin america are definitely unique in that way. the rest of the world (the old world) is much more culturally homogeneous.
And who is talking about race here other than Stonemetal, here? Culture has a lot more attributes than those related to gender and race.
What a great site! Thanks a lot.
I can't imagine this being cost effective, but I like it anyway.
At first I didn't get the name, Weezic. Then when I loaded the site I realized it was a play on the name Music. I think the name is clever and catchy. Also I think that the index page looks professional enough to release to the public at this time. You guys did a good job with the looks of it.

Classical music online seem like an overly narrow a niche market, so I would say even though you guys enjoy classical, with such a catchy URL as Weezic it seems like you could expand it into other genres as you iterate.

I think your URL name right now is more valuable than the site. I think you can build a good business around it. Maybe tie the business in with Winamp somehow. Winamp /Weezic kind of works for me.

Having a musical note as part of the logo might be a positive also.
A "NoHype" virtualisation architecture
It might not be laziness that you don't support that 2%. It costs real time and money to add and support fallback content and functionality. There could be better uses of that time and money that create more value for the business...which is something your investors should understand.
Your analysis is way too conservative. An analysis by Tesla Motors some time ago calculated that if you drive the Roadster an average of 35 miles a day, you need about 105ft^2 of solar panels to produce all the electricity for it, assuming 18%-efficient solar panels. [1]

The Tesla Roadster has an area, when viewed from the top, of 72ft^2. [2] That means if you were able to cover it with solar panels that were 27% efficient, you could power it just from the power it produced.

As far as your last point, I agree: I'd rather put the solar panels on the garage roof, where I can somewhat control how much sunlight it gathers, than on the car.

1. http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/electric-cars-and-photovolta...

2. http://www.netcarshow.com/tesla/2008-roadster/
I was glad that I was using openbsd with pf as my firewall when that came down.
You could use the client-side store (supported in a bunch of common browsers) as a cache.
Smart. Still, the db request SELECT name FROM friends WHERE source = %(source) should probably be pretty cheap given proper indexes, and could be done inline, whereas lookups for each person are likely much more expensive. You could still send the JSON in the same request by composing the cached page with the dynamic friendlist. Now all we need is for someone to make it happen.

*Pardon my broken SQL, I don't actually know the language.
FCC to present 'bill shock' rules
Who ever thought of that little scheme should be applauded. That is opportunistic marketing at is very best. I don't think there is any real controversy, after all, they did need sunglasses and they didn't charge for them.

I have to say I noticed the glasses earlier but sadly am not fashion conscious enough to have noticed the brand until I read this. A little free advertising for Oakley on USAToday must be a little extra bonus!
I've never found myself wishing for bindings on the iPhone. Maybe when I'm using Core Data, but thats not too often. And even then, its relatively easy and quick to abstract it all away.

I want GC on the iPhone. Not for the GC itself, just so Apple will make NSPointerArray, NSHashTable and NSMapTable part of the public API.
Idea to ($0.07) profit in 7 hours
No, unfortunately it wouldn't. The google juice is completely concentrated on the stackoverflow domain — I constantly find insta-moved SO questions at the top of the search results, with the moved question on SF or SU nowhere to be found. Yet another defect of their asinine community silo policy.

They don't do a 301 redirect — how would google know where the real question is?
To reply to the point raised by several people: yes I know about CMD-Space (this is what I meant by Spotlight but I guess that can mean more).

Somehow it just doesn't seem as good. Maybe it's the single keypress. Maybe it's that Start also has pinned and commonly used items on it (CMD-Space is just a box you can type in so really it's half the functionality of Win7's Start button).
I think, neither of that.

It's more like Alibaba and Softbank are buying out Yahoo's Asian assets, then private equity firms take over the rest of Yahoo. After that they can merge it with something else or leave it alone.

Btw, a day ago YHOO was 14.58, today in after hours it was as high as 16.91.

(I am at Yahoo but have no insider information - this is just how I understand the press. Can be completely wrong.)
I know people who increase (>= 2x) their hourly rate if they're expected to do the same amount in half the time because of a deadline. Who's to say that Iconfactory doesn't do something similar?
Does it handle dunning?