skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Startups are not exactly the sum of their current business frozen in amber. For example, at the moment they're tied at the hip to Orbitz and get very, very little of the value created by a ticket purchase. I bought a roundtrip to DC with them for ~$300, and they probably saw $3 or so from that. However. If they prove in micro-scale that people buy more tickets through their interface than the interface of competing providers, then the carriers have a huge, huge incentive to deal with them directly and cut Orbitz out of the loop. And then its like "Hey, we're 1% more efficient than the current leader of a multi-billion dollar market which has no switching costs." I wouldn't regret being in that situation, because there is a range of predictable next actions and almost all of them result in good stuff for the founders.

And if they can't sell tickets with all the gnarly fulfillment and credit card processing done by Orbitz, great. Learn the interface paradigm doesn't add value now before you spend several million on building out the company to support it. Their core source of business risk is the hypothesis that demand is not extrinsic: that you can increase the number of tickets sold by making the process suck less. (The working hypothesis in the travel industry is that the economy offers exactly X trips per year, X is both unknowable and cannot be altered, and marketing/pricing merely distribute X among the various providers. This is what the experts think. If the experts are wrong, Hipmunk walks away with money hats. If the experts are right, they're not necessarily sunk.)

i wouldn't consider a large base of online fanboys to be a significant competitive advantag

I'd consider that virtually a license to print money in a high-value vertical with an SEO that knows what they're doing.
Samsung Galaxy Tab Carries $205 Bill of Materials
How Did Shakespeare Originally Sound?
You're stuck in the echo-chamber. I tweeted[1] two ideas earlier that you might find relevant:

"developers need a driving principle, a prime directive: to serve, and enable human creativity, to make tools for domain specialists"

Take a step back and be the computing ambassador for a neglected community. If I had the time, I would pen an open letter to all university professors and TAs asking them to tell us about any unsupported software they still use. There is a bucket-load of DOS and Unix software that is no longer maintained, but heavily depended on by academics, researchers, and small businesses. I wish I had the time to port those stuff to modern machines, or at least organize CS department students to write them. There needs to be more cooperation between CS and other departments, specially humanities. We can be their tool-smiths, and they would happily give us insights into other fields of study and other industries.

The other tweet is more juvenile, but you will appreciate the sentiment:

"Programmers will never have the luxury of collaborating with their idols, or pay homage to them like artists do. Programming != art :-("

P.S. If you just want to escape computing and take a few weeks off, get yourself a book called "Musimathics" and meditate ..

--

[1] I don't usually tweet ideas, only rants.
Drupal Founder on Why Open Source is Good for Business
Thanks for the chat, guys. It was great to meet some of you and get to hear about your startups.
Zarf Goes Independent: Hadean Lands
I love JSON because it provides for one and only one correct way to serialize a particular data structure. With XML I always have to decide whether to use an attribute vs. content vs. child node for a particular piece of data. There's an enormous "impedance mismatch" between XML and pretty much any programming language, whereas JSON just feels natural.
Soy tu Duena capitulo 141
Soy tu Duena capitulo 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 to be continued
Programa de televisión del mexicano del tu Dueña Capitulo 141 de la soja”
Soy tu Duena capitulo 141
Sure you can use a keyboard to hammer in a nail, but it isn't exactly the right tool. It's all about using the right tool for the right job.
Really excellent article. A launch is way more than just pushing a site from dev to production.
Interesting that he specifically calls out their PR firm as being good. Seems that most of the advice I've seen lately goes in the other direction, eschewing a PR firm entirely in favor of more guerrilla-style marketing.

I think in the end, like most other things, it depends on the type of company you're trying to build. In Blekko's case they're trying to build a search engine, so they want to get as much mainstream press as possible. Someone like GitHub, for example, with a much more technical and focused user base, did just fine by going to conferences and buying developers free drinks.
Ask HN: Where to start with User Experience Design?
When building a good web site or service that people are intended to use, where is the best place to start with the user interface and interaction design? Even if your site has a good idea or sophisticated technology behind it, if this part is done badly then the site fails to be useful for anyone. Alternately, superior usability trumps even the poorest of aesthetics as attested to by both stack overflow and News YC.
However, since good design doesn't come out of thin air, what resources would you direct me towards or what advice would you provide?
This is actually pretty fun even just for sharing real-time feedback on startups. Is it a terrible idea to have an always-on YC chat? Or maybe something like this already exists and I'm simply behind the times...
btw, when the WSJ broke our embargo, I was on my way into the office. We were planning to get there around 3-4pm for the 9pm PT launch. Some folks were already there and turned the site live since the first press had gone up.

But techcrunch has a policy of not posting their story if an embargo is broken, so we didn't get the TC story that we had briefed them on.
The cynic in me suspects that before doing this they looked at their receipt records and determined that in most cases this new rounding method would favor the store, and if customers accept this, it will spread to the rest of their stores, and will result overall in a good bit of money gained by corporation.
You Can Now Follow The World Series #SFRiot On Twitter
This will definitely work against anyone who is expecting to die in the process of carrying terrorist activities.

Ah, I see, so we should break them by sweating them over a water bottle that's slightly too big. Really, if the terrorists are too smart and too hardened to be scared by real consequences, can we shake them with groundless harassment? If not, then what's the point of being a jerk to people who merely have "suspicious" cultural allegiances (e.g., having a book about Islam and having some funny souvenirs) and who break minor rules in ways that clearly don't pose a threat?

It isn't some clever attempt to smoke out terrorists. They're policing our respect for their paranoia and profiling-based hot buttons. Showing a flagrant interest in Islam (even one that doesn't show any seriousness, as in this case) is, to them, the same as singing "Ba ba ba, ba Barbara Ann" in the security line -- it's a really rude abuse of their poor nerves! -- except that for some weird reason it isn't against the law. The main thing is for travelers to go out of their way to avoid making them nervous, and to be apologetic if you actually do make them nervous. Then they know your heart is in the right place. This guy could have put his "Muslim paraphernalia" in his checked baggage, or just left it at home. The fact that he didn't showed disrespect for their prejudices and their blood pressure. That's why they yelled at him; to restore his respect for their authority.

The bottom line is that the bullet is the only thing he was carrying that was actually an infringement of the rules, but they mostly yelled at him for his interest in Islam and a few Islamic countries. And they actually asked him if he found Pakistanis friendly.

Rudeness and prejudice -- our greatest tools in the fight against terrorism!
I read through the whole article, and I must say I'm really impressed with what Simon's done in the few years after graduatiion. Question, though: (Simon, if you're reading this) are you planning to go to university, say in a year or two?

I'd imagine it'll be worth the experience!
I love s-expressions.
MOODLE TRAINING|MOODLE VIDEO TUTORIAL|MOODLE VIDEO TUTORIALS
Just 2 hours from now you'll be able to produce your own Moodle websites quickly, easily and completely stress free.
Potatolicious, believe me, if I had the power to fix this, I'd do it. But as an American whose blood pressure regularly rises when re-entering my native country, only to be questioned for my loyalty by the lowest common denominator, I have absolutely no say in this matter.

For what it's worth, CBP has always been cock-ups. I returned from Japan in 1988 once and that guy was a cast-iron jerk. I swear they consider every American who travels to be a traitor.

To be honest, though? Since Homeland Security, CBP has actually gotten more professional. I know it's hard to believe, but in my experience, it's true. (Of course, I'm older now and presumably less scary for Customs now that I have kids, so perhaps a single data point is insufficient.)
why do search engine launches get such enormous press attention?
So what's the news on how/why the WSJ broke the embargo? What was their excuse?
Who was their PR agency and what is the ballpark fee to coordinate a launch like this?
My other car is a car.

Damn you CDR-coding! selling out our jokes for petty cache.
I would argue that smoke is, by definition, a pollution of the environment, even for smokers. So I should have omitted the 'else' and just left it at 'everyone'. If people knowingly volunteer to expose themselves to it then it should be their right but they do not have the right to impose it on anyone else.
Clearspring - Your Content. Everywhere.
i think he counted the dark edges only, but if you include the resolved cases on this list, then it is HTC
They want to make the idea of "running" irrelevant: to the user, it's active or inactive. No need to manage a list of running programs if what is actually running is made invisible and unimportant. Makes it simpler.
PR makes me yearn for the simple, honest world of SEO.
I am getting goose bumps all over again. For me it's just like waiting for the graduate school admission results all over again :)
Tiny Go Runtime
As a journalist who agreed to Blekko's embargo, I'll give you my take. Very few companies can get journalists to agree to an embargo. Most startups don't have the luxury. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Zynga, Foursquare can do it. It's a question of importance and dilution. When you agree to an embargo, you don't know how many other sites you are competing against and you judge whether it's important enough to cover even if you don't get much interest in your version of the story.

Blekko, as a well-funded entrant with great tech cred trying to bust into a very interesting and nearly monopolized field, clearly counted.

If you are smaller and don't have that buzz, you don't have that luxury. Depending on your size and market, you don't need a PR firm (a good PR advisor is worthwhile). For many companies, it's better to figure out the place and writer you really want to cover you and offer an exclusive. You can then get follow-on press from other places by offering them untold angles -- especially ones that that writer or place would be interested in.

As a journalist, I hate embargoes, even as I understand why and how they are useful.

But the best advice I can give is not to think of blogs/publications as simply places to exploit. Writers can smell that from far off. Learn to cultivate relationships. Be a source. Critique our stories. Suggest trend stories and cool stuff other people are working on. Ask to talk off the record when you meet us at events and conferences. Learn to speak openly and honestly on the record.

In turn, you'll likely find writers you like. Writers will tell you things off the record (things we can't print) and are people who may write about you not just in this venture, but in your next. Writers are, like you, part of the tech ecosystem.
Hawala?
Sutherland Gold, a small boutique agency that represents, among others, TheFind.com. No idea on their price.
I've been building GWT projects like http://beste.st/ entirely in Java, so I can share models between my client side code and server side code.

While this way of working is elegant and very powerful, especially when you have lots of shared state and complex server-client interactions, writing everything in Java is quite frankly, a bit of a pain.

This might be a great excuse to finally stop using Java for these sorts of applications and switch to Python.
The trouble with your idea is that you could reverse it and it would make just as much sense. (Being able to get injured and still be able to succeed, etc.)
Ask HN: Unique domain or subdomain?
I'm wanting to launch some micro-sites that cover niche topics, and am trying to decide if I should get a unique domain for each or just run them as subdomains off my main site. The only difference would be the URL, as the sites will all be running on WordPress 3.0 multisite. What are your thoughts on this? Any difference for my main site and the new sub-sites with SEO on subdomains versus unique domains?
That is the origin of the word, but I don't see why there is anything wrong with using it as the original poster did: "to cause great destruction or harm to" is a perfectly valid meaning of the word.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/decimate
Second this. I'd love to switch to openoffice full time. I'm a heavy, heavy MS Office suite user and even with the UI changes in 2007 / 2010, it's still light years ahead of openoffice in terms of workflow (at least in my experience).

Additionally the MS home use program in my workplace lets me stay current with the Office Pro suite for $15 bucks a release...pretty hard to justify switching.
1. Search is hard and fascinating.
2. There's built-in conflict. Google is a huge near-monopoly. Journalists and their readers love conflict. It's the heart of any good story.
3. Most of the time, building a general purpose search engine requires a really substantial amount of capital and technical expertise. That means there's big risk involved. This ups the drama quotient. See #2 (DDG being a very big outlier here).
Shooting for 100k words on a fantasy novel with a working title of The Hand of Power. Already sitting on 3270 words after a full day at work too, so making good time towards the 100k mark.
Does Your Mouse Act Strangely? Windows Xp USB Driver Updates Might be a Solution
Once in a while each one of us faces several issues with the mouse or card reader either they behave in an improper manner or stops functioning automatically.
Gift experiences
Experiences, adventures activity days out. Over 550 experience gift vouchers available now! Perfect gifts for all
Ah, but the fact that those people don't use Buzz doesn't correlate to the success or failure of Buzz. I suspect there may be good reasons the Google Executive board does not share on Buzz.
Mobile website creation has never been easier, this is the way to go.
Comparable chart for Android:

http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/Activity....
I have a feeling this book will change my life. Thanks for posting the link.
Thank you for the feedback. We have already fixed main menu bounce and manage screen on/off buttons for the next version. We'll work on other suggestions too.
Going to sleep nervous and anxious like Christmas Eve when we were young.
Hash function efficiency
GDP might be not that meaningful but you can, for example, look at what share of humanity is still starving (thus getting a handle on poverty), how many people can afford a bike, a washing machine, a TV, a car, holidays on other continents and so on. That would give you a more realistic view on economic progress. GDP was my (probably ill-advised) way of saying that the economy has massively grown in the last hundred years. We can produce more things at a lower cost.
Ask HN: Accessories for MacBook Pro?
I would like to buy a gift for a friend who has a MacBook Pro. What are some great accessories? (Cases, external hard drives, stickers, addons, etc?) I am looking for something unique and creative.

Many thanks for your suggestions!
USB Flash Drivers - OEM USB Flash Drive
Android faces critical security study
People are sleeping?
The Most Dangerous Drugs? Alcohol, Heroin and Crack — in That Order
What are you doing now that earns $200000/month?
power napping in order to attempt to stay focused and productive at work while waiting
Did you see discussion? Once the case is finished, you can go to the discussions screen. The ideal treatments are described there and you can share your thoughts via comments.
I suspect there may be good reasons the Google Executive board does not share on Buzz.

I agree. In-fact, that's exactly my point!!

I'd note that more that one of them use Twitter, so it's not a legal, policy or commercial problem. My theory it that it's too much work to keep the profile clean on Buzz.

However, all those listed on http://www.quora.com/Twitter-company/Who-serves-on-the-Twitt... as members of the Twitter board do use Twitter.

I'd love to hear a better explanation.
They could have done more with automation though, like Rise of Nations has superb automation and controls.
Exercise 'can prevent a cold', a study shows
Don't forget the institutional imperative: Google is a competitive threat to people who buy ink by the barrel. Anything that takes them down a peg is newsworthy. See also Facebook, who do not have the "we're do-gooders, leave us alone" PR shield that Google assiduously cultivates.
love the xdr on this link
While I agree that the degree mills are ripping people off and creating a market of hacks, HCI is a subset of Human factors which is a subset of IO psychology. As a UX professional, if one does not have any grounding in psychology then they do not even have the qualifications to offer advice on the proper education for UX design, many of these schools offer UX design as a tools lab and do not broach the deeper psychological aspects of HCI. Humans use machines in predictable behavioral patterns just as they do tools. Understanding the thought processes that take place allow a designer to understand why a user will opt for a certain path based on reward mechanisms, propensity of choice and other human factors.

I love the nuevo UX movement armed with OmniGraffle, Silverback and arrogance handing out bad advice like candy. The fact of the matter is a reputable university is in fact the best place to learn about the human mind, because it does not change that much over a large period of time and UX design is all about how humans interact with machine and has very little to do with boxes on a screen. Watering UX design down to wireframes, A/B testing and some user prototyping is disingenuous to both the practitioner and the users. The degree mills do it, and self proclaimed UX professional do it.

I have never seen a field so devoid of professional practitioners in my life. Worse yet a field that is nieve to the fact that there is a broader scientific field of study that has proven data and techniques based on scientific method. If you ask 99% of practitioner how IO psychology relates to usability, you will get a blank stare, in any other field the lack of such basic understanding would be viewed as gross negligence. But some how, in UX design a batch of tools, some photoshop skills, and trial and error makes everyone a professional ready to dispence advice.

I tell this to everyone I talk to on the subject, if they do not have a background in HCI, Human Factors and IO psychology they are not a UX designer they are a hack using trial and error to come up with passable work patterns. I don't believe that someone has to posses a degree in psychology to be a UX professional but if they are not studied in the body of work, they are most assuredly a hack. One just can't understand the core workings of the mind without that grounding and without that base of knowledge to draw upon, they are just flinging crap onto the wall and seing what sticks.
I think most, if not all, of the answers you get will be opinions. While clearly a unique domain would be ideal for identity, I think the SEO benefits are very little if any.

Look at the number of successful services that give you just a simple subdomain, including Google services like Blogger.
LOL...this thread is HILARIOUS.

That's EXACTLY how I feel. Stomach in knots.
I will be launching http://churchofturing.com - a resource for autodidactic learners from all paths that lead toward the nerdery.
So we need someone with capitol, someone with attorney and tax skills, and someone with web-design skills and someone with backend and systems arch skills to build Scott's idea. Oh, and servers. Let's start refining the details and come to an agreement everyone is happy with.
Early today I was calm and collected but now I am perfectly anxious in anticipation! As my mentor once told me, if your not nervous for moments like this, then you don't care!
Ask PG: Given that there will be more interviews, will there be more spots?
More interviews makes me more nervous that there is more competition.

Or is the competition the same as last batch, because a proportional amount of spots have been opened up?
PalantirTech.com or Palantir.net? Two very different companies...

In 5 years, would you prefer to say:

I worked at Facebook for 5 years.
or
I worked at Palantir for 5 years.

Plantir doesn't have the same brand recognition as Facebook. I personally think Facebook will look better on a resume.
>i wouldn't consider a large base of online fanboys to be a significant competitive advantage in an industry where your competitors are 10 years established and have revenues in the billions of dollars.

And who would have thought launching a search engine in 1998 would have paid off?

The entrenched travel sites are established, but painful. If Hipmunk can add a few more features and further refine their site, they can easily claim a chunk of market share.

I'm not sure what their funding model is, but they might try looking at advertising a lot more than they did with Reddit. Look what it did for Priceline, travelocity, etc.
A scifi-ish novel set in the slums of Jakarta and ranging over the rest of a near-future Oceania. 3200 words in, pretty much on target for the 50k month, but that probably won't be the end of the novel.
(I'm posting a comment I initially was privately drafting for ryan in an email.)

I posted the article - and included the embargo paras, which my co-founder and I nearly cut - because I thought the backstory would be useful/interesting to the folks there, who seemed to be unaware of the pr process during the prerelease of blekko. I wanted to open that up for them.

Your comment was spot-on good advice for the ycomb co's though. I voted it up.

Really irked that wsj broke our embargo. Irritated that I wasn't in the office when our site went live after 3.33 years, irritated that we didn't get to do the last bug-fix push to production, irritated that I knew TC wouldn't post, irritated that other journos would be irritated with me, irritated that it flatted the temporal curve on the launch pop. And for what?

Time-sync on stories is actually a good thing for the news stream. I don't see why journos don't get that.
The author doesn't seem to understand the birthday paradox. Any hash which gets fewer than ~12 collisions (for his dictionary and hash size) is doing so by pure luck, and there is no logical basis on which to recommend the algorithms he identifies as having "minimal collisions".
I haven't yet had a chance to work with SG, but they are great people and would be my first choice if I were hiring a PR firm.
What is the Hand Of Power about?
Fewer features, anarchist phd dropouts, a home page with less stuff