skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: What would you do with a profitable software company?
I have a company that sells a few (old-school desktop/server -- ie, not web-based) software products. The company makes about $700K/year, with just me and one employee.

The products are already quite competitive in their niches, and I have a ton of ideas about improving and making them best in class. Also, not a whole lotta marketing is happening.

There is a few hundred $K in the bank as a cushion (I'm paranoid and low risk -- don't want to lose my house, or ever work for anyone else!)

What should I do? Get VC money so I can grow faster? Borrow from a bank? Risk the cushion and hire? Get a marketing agency involved so I don't have a long term commitment with a marketing employee??

Right now I'm doing it all, and it's working, but slow -- only so many hours in the day.

EDIT: Thanks for the feedback so far. I guess I want to grow the company to 10-20 employees and create a great place to work with a good work-life balance. To me that also means growing the company to $2-3 million/year. Also, I want to create some awesome software that customers will love.

Guess I'm not quite sure how to get to the "next level".
Scrybe: Android keyboard that uses Google Scribe for autosuggest
Ideally, kids should drop out of college because they found something better to do with their time, not the other way around.
Disruptive Competition
If push comes to shove in a 2 person company, the company is already dead, regardless of the equity split.
I tend to think that intellectualism in America is the label on a box called college, this box is then traded to companies, without being opened, in exchange for the ability to buy a house, fill it with crap, and park a nice car out front...

I think you're right actually. I actually had a lot of European friends in college because they were far less superficial than most American students.

I think we're coming to a time in the US, and the perhaps the world, where smart / creative people can find each other and find their passions without needing much school. The industrial revolution brought us this system, but now we need something further evolved. I think FabLabs, the Khan Academy, Open Courseware, etc. are all part of this new genus of educational species.
A few classmates of mine knew more about the subject in 1st year than I did when I graduated in the 4th year. I received the same First Class Honours classification that they did.

That's one messed up ramp.
Impressive. It seems like an implementation of the "tablet shell" idea discussed in a recent Hacker News submission.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1861119
SAS under pressure from Pentaho
Looks like they have an official blog with more details at http://iphonetable.blogspot.com/
There is no perfect system and it is always very difficult to find the right incentives for everyone in the company.
Yes, does this also mean that I should call a driver a "car"?
Really well done. Would you care to share about the tech behind the implementation.

Adding search suggestions for movie names/actors will give a more 'instant' feel. Also, wouldn't it be better to have a 'no image' thumbnail instead of a plain black image.
at 33 now, this is by far the fondest memory I have of my dad. I looked forward to it every month. I would sit there, fall asleep there, I was brought dinner at the C64. We had a cassette player so I could save my work. I still remember when I started planning out my own programs. My dad bought me a box of dot-matrix printer paper and I went to town planning out my "apps"

Now with my own 12 year old son, He is writing iPhone apps and plotting his timeline to becoming CEO of Apple.
I feel instantly at home on this. Just what I've been looking for too, and has huge scaling potential, features wise.

One thing, not sure about the rating system, it's not granular enough. Visually it's confusing and a little clunky and practically it's a bit to brutal to review films on just four levels of appreciation.

I've always wanted to have an online "bookshelf" of the books I've read, and ditto a video library. If you could embed your film collection on your own site with this and even choose a presentation template for it, it'd be amazing. And think about revenue you could make via netflix or amazon partnerships.
When iTunes clashes with the open source GPL license
Do you mean an engine without a car? It seems like you mean sawzall is only useful for mapreduce.
Were they duly impressed or was it "wrong"?
My company, Crossies.com is developing a media marketplace to help consumers find and buy music and movies at low prices, and let them sell media they own when they are done with it.
Best Job in America: Software engineer (2006)
R. Pike was involved in both projects, if that's what is meant by lineage. I am basing this on the author list in the sawzall paper, I am not working at google.
What you've already done has provided you with enough income to make almost any option work. The question really, is what do you really want out of your life?

You could make some key hires, and manage them and the company to become even more profitable. Is that what you want?

You could outsource some key marketing initiatives (buying adwords, competitive analysis, targeted marketing, etc.) and drum up extra business that way. Is that what you want?

You could dive into the products and make them even better, or even more useful to your existing customers (via upgrades or whatever). Is that what you want?

You also could angle for a sale to a larger company, take the money and live whim by whim. Is that what you want?

All of these options will "work", but you live with the consequences of each. Having employees isn't a cakewalk. Increasing your interactions with your customers may not be as pleasant as it initially sounds. Dealing with a new aspect of the business (marketing) may be more frustrating than you'd expect. It's really up to you. What do you want most?

If I were in your shoes, I'd outsource some marketing initiatives. You have good odds that it produces more revenue without the possibility of needing to maintain employees or modify your existing products and business model.
"You keep these bees from stinging by paying them money. More money than they know what to do with. But that's less than you might think."

I remember thinking this in my 20s. The novelty of making more than your parents wears of relatively quickly though. Having a mortgage in an affluent area pretty much blows that all to pieces. That being said, my feeling is that being in the industry as a worker bee often does not pay equal to what you are worth = the money you are bringing in. But isn't this true of all professions where you work for someone else?
I applaud Thiel for offering this alternative to ambitious students.

What I don't applaud is this myth of the genius college dropout who changes the world. That just doesn't happen enough to make a rule out of it. I think it gives students the wrong idea - especially those whose never managed a business.
Clifford Stoll has explained this far better than I could [1], but aside from the sheer intrinsic value and altruism of taking time out to be an amazing teacher for some students, it can also serve some really practical benefits: if you want the next generation of adults to have a firm grasp of science and technical issues -- whether they later operate a cash register, enter a career in politics, or build the next Amazon -- then it makes sense for us to find the time to teach these skills to students.

If you want open source software to take over the world, teach programming to kids. If you want sensible social policies where science and technology are concerned, then teach science and technology to kids. If you want more rational discourse in the future, then teach logic to kids.

Saying, "this is somebody else's job" -- even if you're also saying that it's a valuable job and they should be compensated well for it -- is not just self-serving, it's short-sighted.

[1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj8IA6xOpSk
I think techstars has turned Boulder, CO into a small software startup hub.

Also, Innovation Works (though that's closer to a state-funded VC) has done the same (to a lesser degree) in Pittsburgh.
If you like this kind of puzzle, you might enjoy "Thinking Physics" by Lewis Carroll Epstein. This one is right on page 10 of the 3rd edition.
The Cult of Universality in Machine Learning
I like to believe he's out there, using some new pseudonym (or many) and still contributing in different areas.

Even if he's not, there's a lot of good people who still are.
Mark Zuckerberg believes in a future disrupted by “the social experience”
Considering they have to prove it was unsuitable for purpose and intent I would expect just proving unsuitably for purpose is their fall back position.
He apparently refused to do so...

>> When I graduated, Chess Club had $500 in the bank. I considered holding one last tournament with massive prizes, but ultimately decided to leave the money for future generations of Chess Club.
Forbes names Steve Jobs as #17th most powerful person in the world
There is great political pressure in most countries to "improve" the education of the population. This runs into other political, demographic, and scientific realities and produces some ironic consequences. For example, in the US, we have a higher and higher percentage of the population entering college each year. That means that the average IQ of those entering college gradually declines. (It wouldn't if the Flynn Effect still functioned, but gains from the Flynn Effect in the US ended 20-30 years ago.) The top 10% has a higher average IQ than the top 20%, which is itself greater than for the top 30%, etc. The higher the percentage going to college, the lower the average IQ of college students, and the colleges have to adjust to avoid an embarrassing rise in drop-out rates.

I saw statistics a week or so ago showing a gradual rise in the percentage of students who take calculus in high school, a gradual rise in the percentage who take Algebra 1 in eighth grade (instead of in 9th, 10th, etc.), and other stats that would seem to imply a gradual increase in math ability for any given age cohort. Yet, within a day or two, I also saw stats showing a gradual decrease in math ability for high school graduates entering college. In 1995, the College Board could no longer continue with the old SAT and had to "renormalize" it to get the mean score back up to 500. They had to dumb it down, in other words.

I've seen stats and reports from other countries (including Japan) that show the same trends. People demand that the schools do a better job of getting kids ready for college by, for example, having more of them take algebra in 8th grade. So, it happens, except that they aren't really any better prepared than before, so to prevent the embarrassment of rising failure rates, the course has to be dumbed down. The apparent increase in math ability is achieved by a relabeling of what they do, not by an increase in how much they learn. There is now a growing trend in Illinois for students (I assume from Chicago) to take calculus in high school and then end up in remedial math in college. They're not learning anything, but for political reasons they are given classes labeled "calculus" to show "progress toward social justice". I assume Illinois is representative of many other places in many countries.
I think this blog post will be relevant: http://blog.sigfpe.com/2006/12/evaluating-cellular-automata-...
I used to write BASIC programs with my Atari 400 (flat keyboard, flat fingers) when I was a child. I never got further than primitive text adventures...I was into Choose Your Own Adventure books at the time if I remember correctly. Saving and loading programs from cassette was very frustrating. Unfortunately that was the last computer I had until the mid 90s or so.
The New New Andreessen
Interesting, I actually didn't like Woz's all that much. I know a lot of the story so it wasn't all that new to me and I found his style of story telling to be rather dry.

Out of curiosity, what makes you like it so much?
Somehow I doubt he's looking to invest in people who would starve to death if their company failed. He asks rhetorically in his response whether college is worth going "a quarter of a million in debt" for, which gives you an idea of who he's talking about when he says college might not be the best choice for everyone.
right on about self-awareness for learning/improving. though i like sports as a pyschological indicator because of that too - can't expect to be an awesome basketball player, a great programmer, or an expert chess player if you suck at monitoring yourself and you're not constantly evolving.

no one-size-fits-all obviously like you mention though
This is definitely something with a lot of potential. I can see this being useful for the Big Screen via Google Tv, Boxee, etc.

Besides the netflix integration that's obviously going to follow, I'd love to see trailers. Kind of a ytinstant for trailers integrated would be cool.
While I think _why added something great to the world, and sad to seem him go. I like to think he left behind his imagine on top, and not a fat elvis. Same reason I miss The Show, but recognize that someone who is dedicated to creativity is always seeking a new way forward and a new path. _why as a character seemed to no longer provide that vessel.
I just bought the book after I found out while reading parts at the store that I lived 2 buildings over from his house in Florida (Tallahassee) while in college at FSU.

Dirac is a legend there not only does he have a library named after him there, the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at FSU is on Paul Dirac drive ;p
Not if they are contextual and demand the host script to be in the top level document. (and this is against the terms of use of many advertising services)
Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy. People hoot and holler over Don Draper, but Ogilvy is the real deal.
I work from anywhere in the world and can move to most large cities and get a job! Life is pretty cushy and safe.

Irony is I reject this security for starting companies and working for no pay.
Yea the manhole stuff was on google video, I think it may have been:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3164300309410618119#

Or something linked from there.

PS: "Tuva or Bust"

Edit: Sorry, I am having trouble finding it. There are several interviews that video is based on but they don't show the whole video.
He says offhand that Google is a better place for engineers to work than Apple, but as far as I can tell, Apple makes none of these five mistakes.
Of anyone I've read or seen (in person or from videos), Feynman has the best fundamental grasp of meta-knowledge. By meta-knowledge, for lack of a better term, I mean understanding what it means to know something.

mhartl has already posted this excellent video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMFPe-DwULM, where he explains what the word "why" means in scientific inquiry. When we answer a "why" question, we don't really explain a concept in its entirety. At best, we're able to remove a layer of skin off the onion, but no one has ever really reached the center. I suppose science at it's heart is really just the elucidation of intermediate cause and effect scenarios.

For the question "why did the ball fall?", "Jimmy dropped it" is a perfectly valid answer. So is "Jimmy's motor neurons passed an action potential threshold, causing the muscles in his wrist to contract". So is "the ball moved along the curvature of space caused by the earth".

How far do we go?
Build a Killer Customized Arch Linux Installation
It's not the time and money they invested, which is a sunk cost, but the prestige they keep on deriving. Paying people to stop out of college is an attack on the prestige you think you're getting from your college degree.
In AU, my first year in my mechanical engineering degree was a complete waste of time. They call it a "common first year" where you do little bits of every type of engineering. It was a complete waste of time and money.

In theory it sounds great, and I was quite excited about doing some electrical engineering. But in fact it was just a 6 month long, highschool physics course on electricity, drawn out more than I thought possible. Spending an entire week on Ohm's law in University engineering is stupid.
Marketing ROI Calculator
The problem with that is Apple is a consumer-facing company, and one that targets a subset of early-adopters in VALS known as "experiencers."

This specific psychographic is well known for spending money on products with social cache. This social value is partially driven through the "wow" factor of Apple's secretive product release cycle, meaning that developers who don't like it can go lump it and head over to developing for Microsoft or Google's platforms.

When you say they sacrifice "users," you're right, but those users aren't priority #1.

EDIT: Parent comment was deleted. Was about how inconsistent product release cycles and roadmaps degrade user experience.
Watching that was a very worthwhile 10 minutes: an interesting set of ideas, brilliantly presented.
Singularity Institute founded by someone who went autodidact after eighth grade...
Having recently completed the IB there are some things that are not really great (they may still be better than the A levels).
I can only comment for the subjects I took.

Physics- too much emphasis on theory and step by step problems. I think solving a complete, complex problem shows much more understanding of physics, than the present state, where you can spend a month learning the theory by hard and then solve quite basic problems with lots of guidance, and pass the final exam with a decent grade.

Maths - great, I liked, even if it was hard. Much harder than A levels

Languages B (there a A and B, A meaning that it is intended for native speakers)- they could be a bit harder. It is unnecessary to study to get a decent grade. One can get a 6 or 7 (grades are up to 7) by just attending class.

Languages A- awesome. We didn't lose time learning much about history (there was just enough) like I would have to in the national baccalaureate system in Slovenia, but learned to write and speak. This includes blogs, journal articles, essays, political speeches, presentations...

TOK http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_knowledge_(IB_course)
The way it was taught at our school it was a waste of time. Apparently the professors were not well trained to teach it. This subject could be of great use if well taught.

Geography was nice and greatly taught, but I think its similar to the national system and the A levels.

What is the outcome of the IB for me?
Now I am studying Computing at the public university where I get to meet people from all backgrounds, schools and educational systems. I can tell that I have a much deeper understanding of maths and physics than everyone else who didn't do the IB.
Many students don't even understand calculus, complex numbers and vectors. Not to speak about physics.
Some went to CS high schools before, but apart from some programming knowledge they lag behind by much.
The result is that I am bored in class. We've spent the first month revising what I did in the IB, and we are still gonna do it for quite some time. Plus we learn LESS than in the IB. We don't go as deep.

So yes, I think the first year of university/college is quite a waste of time if you were an IB student and you were quite good.

The first year of university seems to me as a catchup for the 'bad students'. We don't build on what we learned in high school, but instead relearn it with less insight into the principles of the subjects.
Implanted chip 'helps blind people detect objects'
that quoted line is in the interview w/ peter thiel

but regarding sports... the title of chapter 6 in kevin o'connor book, "The Map of Innovation" (http://amzn.to/atJrRi), is: "The Right People: Hire Smart Athletes"

he defines athletes not as jocks per se, but as people who have a high pain threshold, a fighting spirit, and a fear of losing. he also says that dwight merriman, his co-founder/cto at double-click, is one of the best "athletes" he's ever known.
People would have been miffed, and left with a iPhone that still worked (just like owners of the first generation iPhone).
+1. If we only listened to people whose views aligned perfectly with our own, just imagine what a mess the world would be.
I know this is a bit of a tired phrase, especially from me, but more than anyone else in software, _why reminds me:

"Do not follow in the footsteps of _why, seek what he sought."
This is an excellent blue-print on how to handle a VA. I've been thinking to hire one but I'm afraid I'd spend more time giving him stuff to do than doing them myself.
Ideone.com pastebin now supports executable SQL
This is spot on, and in theory, it's why standardized testing was implemented in the first place: to get at normative ways to compare knowledge in a given subject across schools and learning environments. It was social engineering, really: by convincing schools that their students would be held accountable to universal standards, those schools would in turn up their games and make sure students were learning the real deal.

Of course, what actually happened was twofold:

1. "Teaching to the test," i.e., narrowing a broad subject area like Calculus down to whatever aspects would be covered on a standardized AP exam.

2. Following from the above, a reduction in foundational and principle education in favor of problem-based education. Kids would learn the what of the formulas, but not the why. Kids could calculate a derivative, but they couldn't tell you what it meant or why they would ever need to do so.

The result? A vicious cycle. Subjects narrowed and became divorced from their foundational purposes, which accordingly made them more about rote than about thinking, which made them less engaging subjects, which in turn discouraged student interest, which in turn led to declining scores. And the cycle repeated itself.
Just finished Shantaram (best book I've ever read)
Beet Juice Boosts Blood Brain Flow In Older Adults
The AngelList Blog
Zero History, William Gibson.

I am reading it very slowly and savoring it. I felt I read his last three books too quickly and found myself wishing I could read them again for the first time.
I like the move to summer classes. It hampers the classic 'work part-time during the school year, full time during the summer' for people bearing the full brunt of their educational bills, but otherwise I think it's a good idea. Summer, to me, is just a waste of time in which to forget what you learned.

Coincidentally, I have not taken a summer break from classes for 3 years now.
Houston voters reject red-light cameras by wide margin
Algae for biofuels: Moving from promise to reality, but how fast?
Beginning The Land of Lisp, as a totally lisp newbie. And finishing the reread of that wonderful trilogy in six parts The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and waiting on the line "The Annotated Alice" by Lewis Carroll , Martin Gardner and John Tenniel (a spanish edition).
I love these evidences of _why's embrace of humanity. He truly understood that software is about humans.
I like how it lets you slice the results. It'd be nice to integrate the review feed alongside the browsing interface.

I feel like it should be recommending things to me more as I browse.
That's unfortunate if true. His older books are really good.
Google@School Philippines 2010
PayPal app has huge security flaw, update rushed to Apple