skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Great question. I've been outlining an essay on "The boring way to success." Ha!

If I'd be more thrifty, I could stop working more than a few days a month. But I'm easily bored, I enjoy growing my business(es), and I really enjoy spending my money. Ex: my husband and I are about to get a second apartment, in another country.

My (first) bootstrapped SaaS is pulling in ~$140k/yr now based on monthlies, with 4x growth year over year, and I expect to do that again in the next 12 mos -- or possibly better, as network effects start to pick up. (http://letsfreckle.com -- you can't get less glorious than time tracking, on the face of it.)

Right now, my husband and a freelancer are in the other room, massaging the codebase to get our second SaaS up and running in dogfood mode. (http://charmde.sk)

I've combined a couple programming learning products (ebook, scripted workshops) and that adds another $130k or so a year of gross. I've also grossed about $65k in 2010 from teaching my fellow geeks how to create their own boring, but successful, products. (http://unicornfree.com/30x500 - now sold out)

Next year, I think I'll try to double the learning product numbers.

In short: I'm 26 now. I figure I can keep on building & have a small product portfolio that grosses $2m/yr by the time I'm 30… and I'll be able to call all the shots.

You might like my blog post on my income breakdown for 2010 so far:

http://unicornfree.com/2010/i-made-216668-from-products/

The thing to realize about "the startup media" is that they are, essentially, tabloids. They cater to what people want to read, and what people want to read are fairy tales.
otherwise wouldn't they just sell unlocked phones with no particular carrier association?

No, not necessarily. Apple will sell more iPhones on one carrier priced at 200$ (+ subsidy) than iPhones that work on all carriers for 750$. So I suspect that AT&T doesn't even pay close to the actual price difference.
Seriously. In my lifetime we've had two popes, five presidents, and eighteen Japanese prime ministers.
Amusement parks are filled with people that are there solely to get a thrill out of taking large (albeit simulated) risks. The last time I was at Cedar Point I had the crap scared out of me, even though the logical part of my brain kept reassuring the rest of me that the rides are safe.
Now that Microsoft is playing catch up, they cannot afford not to adopt standards.
I meant the human species as a collective has no single consciousness. And also that individual humans do not have metaphysical consciousness.
The thing that has really worked for me is disabling all the "procrastination" sites (Hacker News, Reddit, BBC etc) on my work machine and keeping a netbook / ipad in the living room for browsing.

This is a light version of the advice that PG gives here http://www.paulgraham.com/distraction.html, for those of us that actually need an internet connection to work.

The other one is a fixed work day. It's a lot easier to allow yourself a "quick check of the news" at 3pm when you say to yourself that you'll be working until 10pm. That's very different when you've only got 3 hours left.

Central to all of this is getting started. Normally if you can avoid giving into the craving to dick around and get started with work, within a couple of minutes you will be into it. A trick there is to say "I'll work for ten minutes and then check the news" rather than the other way around.

There is also a question of managing brainspace. There I found that the first thing I do in the morning has a huge influence on what preoccupies me for the rest of the day. So I try to resist the temptation to start my day with email or checking the news and make sure my first thoughts are dedicated to productive work.
He used the superfluous "going forward" three times in a short piece. Sorry, just wanted to gripe.
What's the opposite of risk? Most people would say safety; but I would say boredom. Stimulation becomes repetitive if there's nothing at stake. It wasn't for the expected gain of money that I bet on games during the World Cup last summer; it was to make the games in which I had no personal stake interesting. I don't know where you are, but internet betting is legal where I am.

I don't think appetite for risk is sufficient for entrepreneurial activity; but I do think it's necessary. So I don't think it's a red herring.
The karma system discourages duplication and it is worth its weight in gold just for that. Imagine if the 50 people that agree with a comment felt the need to chime in. Whereas with karma you upvote and are done with it.

To a newbie, karma voting patterns have huge instructional value (at least they did for me)

HN without karma wouldn't be HN.
I never saw it. I never got an email. I never even knew the paid option existed.

Drop.io obviously choked to death because it was too afraid that gesticulating its agony would be embarrassing.
What a horrible thing to do by Microsoft. either they're naive enough to think people won't ever read email outside Windows, or, more likely, clever and arrogant enough to deliberately degrade the experience for non Windows recipients.
I think the OP's point is that there's likely hundreds/thousands of sites that aren't directly 'quantified', but get more traffic.

Saying 'it's a top 500 site' is only meaningful if all websites in the world are quantified which they aren't.

The absolute stats for quantified sites are good and accurate, but when you start saying 'top 500 website' you're on very shaky ground.
Using PostgreSQL and MySQL databases in R 2.12 for Windows
That's awfully rich coming from someone posting under a carefully-maintained pseudonym.
This article is a flaming piece of crap, like most of techcrunch, designed to do little more than inflate egos and rouse people to come back to the profiteering gluttons that, by the way, make up most of his "circle of friends". You want to see a better rallying call for change, try this: http://goo.gl/hMH8
One thing I personally like about HN is that, in general, I can read the comment and form an opinion about it before I read who posted it. If the username was 'in your face' it would be harder to not let that colour your reading.

For example, there are several prominent members here who post very reasonable and thoughtful comments that I often agree with, but sometimes disagree with. I think it would be harder to judge their comment on its merits alone if it was very visible that it was <prominent user> who posted it.
I don't think you are applying the statistical notion of survivorship bias completely accurately.

The original comment questioned the accuracy of the statement "they don't build them like they used to", which I took to refer to building standards 2000 years ago.

Consider the following two scenarios:

A. 2000 years ago, all buildings were shoddily engineered except the Pantheon.

B. 2000 years ago, 90% of buildings were well engineered, of which the Pantheon is one example. The rest were deliberately torn down for one reason or other.

Survivorship bias does not allow you in itself to distinguish between A and B, which is the interesting question. It just allows you to disprove C:

C. Since the Patheon still stands, all buildings 2000 years ago must have been brilliantly engineered.

Which nobody is arguing for, I don't think.
commercial doesn't mean proprietary, though a lot of people use the terms interchangeably. Whether something is commercial or not is irrelevant from a proprietary / free point of view.

if you meant to say 'ubuntu is a proprietary distribution' then yes, that would be correct.
No need to make it that complicated — just require a one-time $5 fee to create an account.

Metafilter has done this very successfully for the last 6 years.
I think the problem is lack of a clear data element that captures what you need. The current vote up/vote down system blends a lot of factors together, which is valuable for some calculations, but not the one you're looking for here.

I suggest a "flame" flag for every comment, which can roll up into a user's rating as a "flamer." The flag would only be available to HNers with a low flame rating themselves and a significant history of comments.

By default, no one would see comments that have high flame ratings. Users that accumulated flame points would get a time out from commenting, leading to a permanent ban if the behavior doesn't stop.

The site is wonderfully minimal at the moment, but using a UI graphic such as a fireball or flame could draw attention to the importance of civility.
This is especially annoying if you are among the minority uses Gmail in your company where everyone else uses Outlook.
Not really. For VC's perhaps that is the case, but for angels: $1 MM raised at a $3 MM pre, 2.5 years of work, and a (let's say) $12 MM median sale price? I think everyone is decently happy.

This model fits with the ever-shrinking capital requirements to launch a tech company. Conversely, portfolio strategies that rely on huge exits (and huge investments) are increasingly threatened.
Messages like "I like your latest work, j/k"?
Ask HN: Best light-weight bug tracking tool, more robust than TRAC?
Looking for the best light-weight bug tracking tool, more robust than TRAC?
nope. i just love hacker news :)
hit me an email if u come here in KL
I still don't get it: why is that smiley face added there in the first place? The mysterious J appears in emails from people that certainly wouldn't 'sign' their email with a smiley face.
> I meant the human species as a collective has no single consciousness.

Neither has an AI species, but that's not the issue. The point being made here was that a danger could arise from a very efficient and powerful automaton that has neither self awareness nor recognizes other beings with minds as relevant. From that I argued the threat of it happening is actually low because by its nature this kind of AI would probably lack the means to instigate an autonomous takeover of our planet.

> And also that individual humans do not have metaphysical consciousness.

Ah, I finally see where our misunderstanding comes from. Science doesn't talk about consciousness (or metaphysics) in the spiritual sense. The question whether people have metaphysical consciousness or not really depends on your definition of those terms, so arguing "for" or "against" isn't really gonna do anything besides getting you karma for oneliners.

As far as practical AI research is concerned, the definition of consciousness is the same for humans and non-humans and while there are different degrees of consciousness possible, there certainly is an agreement that the average human has one.
Except that they have found archaeological evidence that shows that ramps were used to build some pyramids, such as the Great Pyramid of Giza[1].

And from your wiki page: Most Egyptologists acknowledge that ramps are the most tenable of the methods to raise the blocks...

1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/great_pyramid...
> People are good

I can't emphasize this one enough. Travelling is a great way to restore ones faith in humanity.

> Many people travel with their own supply of water and an industrial vat of hand sanitizer.

Germs aside, you should still carry a bottle of water. Dehydration is not fun. Also, hand sanitizer kills the bacteria that make you smell which is handy when you can' t shower as often as you might like.
I find this kind of things extremely handy in my everyday job. Especially in meetings, since often you are forced to do mental arithmetic to estimate the magnitude of a parameter, etc. Abusing the calculator can put your brain in poor shape, just like muscles!
HDMI type B is dual-link, and supports the same resolution as Apple's largest cinema display.
Inherit or Compose..
Be careful: That article talks only about revenue, not profits.
I am going to suggest JIRA. I think it is pretty lightweight. You can either run it with the built-in database or let it talk to MySQL or PostgreSQL. It runs without the use of an app server. Just unzip and run.

http://atlassian.com/starter/
Anyone have experience with fogbugz?
You're almost there with your "reply time delay". Just take it all the way...

Limit the number of times one person can post in the same thread to once (or maybe twice), either from the top node or a sub-node. Example:

PersonA says, "blah blah blah..."

PersonB says, "You're an idiot because blah blah blah..."

PersonA is locked out from replying to PersonB.

This will do 7 things:

1. It will eliminate argument strings between 2 people.

2. It will remove the incentive to flame because your flame can't turn into an argument.

3. It will encourage people to think through what they have to say, anticipate counter-arguments, and address them in their original comment (or with an update in the 2 hour edit window).

4. It will foster a greater sense of community by encouraging people to stick up for each other. (PersonA made a good comment, PersonB trolled, PersonA can't reply, so I will.) PersonB will get the message much better when confronted by the community instead of PersonA. (Of course, if no one sticks up for PersonA, then maybe they really were wrong.)

5. It will encourage 2 people to take their legitimate discussion (of little interest to others) off-line.

6. It will reduce the length and indentation of threads making them easier to read.

7. It will encourage everyone to slow down and think a little. Those who don't will stick out (not in a good way). Trolls will get more satisfaction somewhere else.

(This is already working by accident. I have gotten so busy that I only visit hn in short bursts. Often, when someone challenges me, I don't reply because I have left and returned much later. But others have replied for me. The resulting thread is invariably better than if I had replied myself.)
But then what's the incentive for good submissions? If it's gotten to the point where essentially every article from certain sites (eg Techcrunch) gets submitted by karma gold-diggers, it might make sense to just have them auto-submitted so no one gets the karma, but they can still get discussed.

EDIT:
Another thought: Only allow submissions from people above a given karma. That way you would always have to earn your stripes through commenting. Downsides: Wouldn't allow sensitive anonymous 'ask HN' posts from throwaway accounts, and we would lose all the good submissions from new accounts.
The problem is: Are all 499 sites above them measured the same way? And all the ones below?

The answer is no, of course. Most sites don't run the QC tracking pixel. That makes any ranking they give fairly questionable, in my mind.
Since it's only for that particular item, it doesn't offer any reason to leak it and not just the item content.
Not malaysian, but Singaporean. Haha, KL sounds good for a short break, will email you if I'm dropping by =)

Thanks for the offer! We must introduce our food to the HN community.
High Priests Of (Climate) Science
Scaling has been cheap, and fun.

Read about our newest data center: http://blog.serverfault.com/post/1432571770/stack-overflows-...

Read about our SQL Server hardware:
http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/database-upgrade/
The Controller Rants: is insanity in the eye of the beholder?
Good point. I keyed into the method ("For example, start with 432. Split into 43 and 2. Subtract 4 from...") more so than the theory of the original article. It reminded me of these wacky (ingenious?) shortcuts for doing basic math that I recall reading about. Sorry no reference on those. As far as I remember, they involved some form of shifting numbers around, transposing digits, drawing grids, etc. These were before calculators (er, phones) were in every pocket. I think calculators were just starting to show up on snazzy watches at the time I was learning these math shortcuts.
Why not explain why you're against it, rather than getting angry? To me, HN is a place for debate.
http://desksnear.me/ - Would this help you?
Keep going!=) You might want to try exercising regularly (running, basketball, swimming..) and hanging out with friends who are not necessarily doing startups. It helps to keep you rooted to the rest of the world who are not interested in startups.. =)
SANs are one way,

Agreed, if you include fast interconects like SAS and exclude the network[1] requirement of SANs.

sharding/distribution across multiple nodes another.

I disagree, for the sam reason that doing so with iSCSI over ethernet isn't: too much added latency.

Infiniband may help, but I have yet to try it empirically.

[1] Switching/routing, multiple initiators, distances longer than a few dozen meters.
CSS3 - A Practical Introduction
App Giveaway Win a copy of MorningReport
Earlier this week we were lucky enough to interview Josh Guest of b2cloud. Josh was very generous and provided Mobile Orchard with several promo codes to give to our readers. If you are interested in getting a promo code for this app please leave a comment and we will give these codes away until they are gone.
6 Types of Halloween Costumes Analyzed
Isn’t it great when that holiday comes around once a year where people step out of their normal clothing routines, allowing you to completely judge a person’s hidden character by what he or she is wearing?
The reason is that it's incredibly, fantastically expensive, and in a lot of places there's water down there.
How to market a public-private partnership
Downvoted comments are bad for the community. They are literally negative. Remove downvotes. Anything that truly deserves downvotes probably deserves flagging/deading, too.

Downvotes change how you think about reading comments. Instead of "was this helpful?" you're thinking "do i love this or hate this?". It's polarizing, and as the number of users increases, it's easy for a comment to hit -4 in a couple minutes.

People feel bad when they get downvoted (often because they feel the downvotes are unjust), and some of them turn to trolling or flaming as a defense mechanism. This spreads across threads and infects the whole community. Emotions are contagious.

Also, add the ability to undo your upvote.
Whilst in Barcelona, I saw more than one ATM with a blue screen or an Windows NT logon screen. That freaked me out way more than this video.
My wife always tells me when I'm "programming with my eyes". She says my eyes get this look and she can tell that, even though we are having dinner or a discussion, that in my head I'm looking at code. She's almost always right.
The counter argument (to my snide calculator comment) is that we become overly dependent on helpers.

There's a story about a young person standing next to their locked car in a shopping center parking lot. The battery in their key fob had gone dead. Seemingly locked out, the young car owner called dad for help. Dad sighed and said to use the damn key.
In my experience, women on the internet tend to be less likely to indicate that in their profiles/avatars.
I'd worry that it also eliminates the opportunity to have those tremendous back and forth type discussions where people help each other and make incremental improvements to the idea they're working on. That's a lot more rare than two people griping back and forth - but what price would you pay for the sublime?

You would really lose the 'discussion' aspect of things by turning it into a 'say once' system.

People in complex situations almost never behave exactly as you'd expect them to. An artificial limit to discussion might have terrible unintended consequences.
What about the problem of someone asking a question in their comment.

"Hey, wait a second, what did you mean by X?"
[I'm sorry you're prevented from replying in this thread]
Transparent CSS Sprites
I don't follow you on the jump from unfounded to religious. Not every statement which does not include a scientific footnote is religious in nature.
Redmine is awesome: http://www.redmine.org/
This wouldn't work with a lot of cars. It's often the case that if you lock with a fob, you must open with a fob, but if you lock with your key you can open with either the fob or the key.
> otherwise wouldn't they just sell unlocked phones with no particular carrier association?

Not if Apple has contracts preventing it.
I agree, Redmine is nice and simple yet handles a lot of project management stuff if needed.
Ravelry.com?
I absolutely love Fogbugz. I find Jira to be a bloated, complex mess. I've also used Trac and Bugzilla, both were clunky and lacking in creature comforts.
Thanks. Sounds too high to me for the small Air, but what do I know!
I was going to ask for some kind of evidence, but it seems I missed this episode: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1353050

So yeah, on the face of it that's some quite scummy behaviour.
He isn't saying one is better than the other. He is merely stating that there will be certain things you won't be able to identify with that entrepreneurs can.
Good point. (I guess I wouldn't have been able to say that if we adopted my suggestion.) Maybe a one reply limit instead of a zero reply limit.

I know the time delay thing was a good start. I just think it needs to be extended. It seems that threads lose value as they get deeper.

Oh, and I just thought of #8: It encourages you to get back to work since you won't be replying. That's something everyone needs to consider.
Plus the occasional GC. But you can do this while idle.
Georgia's Amendment One,  Scary Stuff
Yeah, the only works of his that I've read are The Dark Tower series and the Shawshank Redemption; but I definitely found that his shorter works were much better. It seems that as he's gotten older, he's gotten simply too successful for any editor to trim the fat of his weightier novels (I've heard the same said about J K Rowling).
This should make it a lot easier for developers to code a sense of design, a bit like AS3 for Flash.
I find rxlist.com contains essentially the same (straight from the manufacturer) information as a PDR, without the bulk, expense, and latency of paper distribution.
I really love SO. The thing that really got me started using it was the article I read (on here) about a guy who got headhunted for a job interview at Google off the back of his stack overflow score.

I thought - holy geez, I'd better get working then!

I've not actually been to quantcast before but it seems an interesting site. I usually grab my rankings data from Compete and Alexa

Top 300 sites worldwide and US in Alexa
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/stackoverflow.com#
Top 11,000 in Compete (maybe it's a bit better if you have their PRO ranking)
http://siteanalytics.compete.com/stackoverflow.com/

Actually... Quantcast looks like it might be fundamentally different from Alexa and Compete. I wonder how much it costs? Maybe I could use that to find my audience.

One thing I found interestedin on quantcast the location dropdown and see how the site ranks in other countries.

Out of interest, I pulled Canada and saw that we've got Stack ranked as 105 instead of 500 ... which must mean we're 5 times "techie-er" than the States. BOO YAH! Then I switched to pulling the other dropdowns and realized we're both getting our butts handed to us by the UK, Germany and India. Probably just means all their OTHER sites suck eggs. :)
the main market for the coffee shops turns out to be drug
tourists from abroad

That's not true. Although a number of coffee shops in Amsterdam and in cities close to the borders with Germany and Belgium primarily sell to tourists, there are many more coffeeshops that just sell to the local users.
Free Online Computer Science and Programming Books, Textbooks, and Lecture Notes
Async, Await and C# vNext
Are you factoring in the SQL Server licenses when you say it is cheap?
Try Biotech for Blockbuster Startup Opportunities
Perhaps further replies could be allowed only if the comments are upvoted/not downvoted?
case in point, we (http://minecraftforum.net & http://minecraftwiki.net) have 60m page views per month (as Stackoverflow does -- according to Joel) and we're nowhere near the top 500 according to QC.