skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Umm..do any of the people "in the know" as you say, have a technical background other than computer science? Ive heard plenty of people in CS refer to a cool programming language as a new "technology". That may be a technically correct use of the word. But when I hear the word technology I think of faster CPU, smaller ram, more powerful jet engines, a new way to design drugs, etc....

In this particular case of streaming video...i would think smaller more convinent cameras with better bandwidth and easier access to the internet.
What's wrong with TechCrunch/Mashable/starting your own?
Beautiful images of the world's subway maps, compared at scale.
Screen Shot of Truemors: Guy Kawasaki's Rumor Service
Hey sure, will do.
HOWTO: Be more productive
Non-Programmer's Apology
Their success speaks for itself in this case.
What hard-disk latency looks like
This video reminded me of the paul's blog post from a while back - http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/04/problem-with-conventional-databases.html

I found it pretty cool that you can actually see the latency.
Aaron discusses how he was fired from Reddit
It's probably not good form to crosspost from Reddit, but the post
clarifies in detail (from the parties involved) a lot of questions, theories etc, discussed here ~ http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=20219
The importance of uptime to a web startup
"WFP, 'interface that doesn't such'"

refers to this article ~ http://www.paulgraham.com/fixrazr.html
Data Says 2.5 Million Less Watching TV
Could the internet be the reason? (They don't even mention it in the article - very curious.)
We didn't have commenting back then, so these were all link submissions. We basically stopped using these accounts after that first month or so -- once we started getting traffic.

For us, there didn't appear to be a major ethical dilemma. We used these accounts simply so that new users would see a front page of links instead of a blank website (or one with only submissions from 'kn0thing' and 'spez'). For a site like reddit, it seemed to be a key part of showing new users how the site worked. Once we got traffic (from places like YC and PG) we stopped needing these accounts and thus stopped using them.
You're assuming anyone will read it. I'm afraid this is far from given.
I'm talking about PG etc saying that they have extra technology, and lookalikes are just fakers. In the know means in this context that people know the justin.tv'ers and know what's going on.
If nobody reads it, you're out the 30 seconds it takes to post. I'll take that bargain...
The blurb reads, "Authors Tim Ferriss (4-Hour Workweek) and Marcia Alboher (One Person/Multiple Careers) give an hour-long talk at Google about how to retire immediately or have multiple careers simultaneously."

My question is: given that their talk was one hour, what did they each do with the remaining three hours of their work week?
can someone plz hook me up with an invite? nicholas.s.barnes at gmail

thx!!
Yahoo Closing their Auctions Service
Mac share of surfers doubles in 8 months
Is this SEO Google rocks?
ok so CS people only.
You don't consider software to be technology?
If she's walking around with a camera on her head like Justin then you won't be seeing much of her boobs unless she has some kind of weird obsession with them. But we can always dream!
How is this site any different than a typical forum?
Three comments.

First, I think Henry Ford deserves a lot of credit for recognizing that manufacturing workers are people, not servers. He was the one who discovered the benefits of the 40-hour work week. I'm not sure how Unions factor into that, but treating workers like people does make economic sense (even if many managers even today still do not recognize this).

In any case, in addition to working for better conditions, Unions grew to combat corruption. Blacklisting, for example: One manufacturer fires an employee for trying to organize workers and puts him on a blacklist, preventing him from being hired by anyone else. This is a fear tactic that has a large destructive power in an economy where collective bargaining is not protected.

Recently, I heard from an acquaintance. He is a manager at a corporation that was putting on presentations about preventing Union organization. During the presentation, they shared a list of reasons employees form unions, and salary was _dead last_. I don't remember all the reasons, but mostly the issues were related to blatant Management disregard for(or mistreatment of) employees.
Does JavaFX Spell The End Of AJAX?
ThinkFree Docs releases new beta... challenges Scribd and SlideShare
"When we wanted publicity, we increased our version number on the site... issued a press release... like Windows software guys."
Sun goes after Adobe Apollo, Ajax, Silverlight
I'd pay 100$ for a really good one that describes one of my sites in a non-limiting way, and has ALL of the good qualities that a domain name should. I am just nearly certain that all of these that consist of any keywords that describe my sites are taken.

So, last night I registered for a similar service for 50$. But feeling guilty for spending money that I don't really have without exhausting every other option, I wrote a program to use letter/letter combination frequencies from a number of various data sets to find the best available names consisting of pseudo-words that are left.

It's man against computer, and this time I'm betting on the computer.
startup 2.0 - european startup competition
sent... remember to post your invites here when you get them.
I'm told that it's awesome. Vote up to substantiate this assertion.
Poly9 FreeEarth is a cross-browser, cross-platform 3D globe which does not require any download.
I'm blown away this article, it is contrarian yet so logical. He comes across as extremly humble yet super smart, driven, and clearly a big winner despite his "good luck." I also love the concept of "knowing what you don't know", as entrepreneurs
we must always be aware that we don't have to have the right answers just know how to get to that answer through others.
I'm jazzed!
Does it? Blogga, PLEASE.
RobotCoop Hardware - great guide to buying hardware for a rails site
Stardoll on TechCrunch again: it sounds silly but it's really cool!
wow, am i looking at a socialmoth/overhear.us competitor with extra sending facilities?

perhaps this vindicates the business model based around instant gossip. for those who haven't seen it before, check out boredat.net. it's like socialmoth for colleges, albeit it significantly predates socialmoth.
Wall Street 2.0: I love Gordon Gekko!!
Y Combinator startup Scribd raises VC and creates secret jobs page just for news.ycombinator readers
So the deadline is over. It'll be interesting to see how this goes.
i really hope this is a repost.... if not. lawl
Stardoll: a successful service for 10-17 yr old girls; different from our typical target audience
I read this news first on news.com.com. I'm surprised this isn't considered big news: it's not on TechCrunch, news.google etc. A major #2 player in a major industry (eBay is a $6B company) has thrown in the towel. Much bigger news than Google Answers closing shop IMO.

We should also discuss failures like this on news.YC: there's as much to learn from them as from successes. Yahoo had a good product, brand, etc. but just couldn't compete with eBay's network effect. eBay had a huge first-mover advantage.

Luckily for Yahoo, Yahoo was the first mover in Japan, and it has much larger market share than eBay there.
The Perl Job Market Blues - O'Reilly ONLamp Blog
I posted this as a counter-example to the "design products that you need yourself" mantra. While designing a product you use yourself is certainly easier (you know how it will be used) and more satisfying (you get to enjoy using it; your friends use it), it can result a large chunk of the potential market being untapped. One thing I liked about YC startup socialmoth: most of its users are female. Most web users are still male 20-40 somethings = same as the average developer.
Website Signup w/o Confirmation: Any Problems with That?
What is Facebook Worth?
How do you expect to differentiate yourself from pickydomains.com?
So Reddit doesn't require email confirmation, just a username and password. PG definitely prefers that style, as I've read. I bet other YC sites do the same thing.

Aren't you asking for trouble, though? Isn't that too easy to abuse, especially for a social-voting site liked Reddit? Help me understand why these sites are not worried.
How Start-Ups are Sold
Why invent a new language instead of using Javascript?

The goals of JavaFX are the same as the goals of Java ME and Java SE. Java ME and Java SE have basically failed to live up to their expectations. Why not fix Java ME and Java SE instead of inventing something new? And, why should we expect that JavaFX will succeed where Java ME and SE have failed?
The thing that protects you the best is obscurity. If you have hordes of determined bad guys targeting your site it's probably not so bad -- it means your site is very popular (or stores credit card numbers).

Generally, IP addresses are a much more limited resource than email addresses. Although open proxies and botnets make them less so. Reddit probably fights off abuse primarily based on individual IPs and entire address blocks. IP geo-location can help a lot in certain cases too.

CAPTCHAs really do the most to slow down the worst kinds of abuse.
There are "Director" accounts or something on YouTube and they have higher limits.
This is a great opportunity for someone. Scribd has lots of potential for getting very big and it's still so early.

I think it would have been more hackerish if they made their normal jobs dynamically display alternate text for requests that include a news.yc Referer.
The phrase "too little, too late" springs to mind. Also the phrases "crippling hubris", "halfhearted sop", "internecine bloodletting" ( http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/04/26/HNflair_1.html ) and "hat-trick" ( http://www.blinkenlights.com/classiccmp/javaorigin.html , http://www.noodlesoft.com/blog/2007/01/23/the-sun-also-sets/ ). Now it's quite likely those horrible inklings are wrong. Maybe JavaFX is a clever spoiler move to take significant momentum out of Silverlight and Flex at minimal expense to Sun; maybe it's a stalling
manoeuvre while Project Flair condenses. But then again ... oh man, yeah, Sun.
Email confirmation isn't a CAPTCHA: If you can write a robot to sign up for reddit.com, then surely you can write a robot to send a "HTTP GET" request for every link in your email account.

There are three obvious purposes for email confirmation:

- Users often forget their usernames/passwords. Usually the only way to remind them is by sending them email. If they used an invalid email address (purposely or accidently), you will end up with support emails saying "I forgot my username and password but I don't have any evidence that it is actually my account!" Email confirmation ensures that you can communicate with the user on a side channel.

- When raising money / selling advertising, how many users' email addresses you know is a big deal. People use this metric to judge how "engaged" the user in the site.

- It makes it difficult to have multiple accounts. Again, advertisers/investors look at the number of unique users when deciding to fork over money.

If the user will be storing any important information/money solely using your service, you should go through the confirmation process ASAP so that they don't get locked out of their data/money. If your site is a "waste your time and hopefully click on my ads" service, then:

(1) Have a page where the user enters his proposed username/password, with no email field. This makes it look really simple to sign up.

(2) When the user submits #1, bring up a page with the email address field. This page should already show the user as being logged in & show/hint that the user has already unlocked whatever functionality requires an account. The big print on the page explains why you are asking for it and your amazing privacy policy. The fine print tells the user that it is optional but highly recommended, and remind about your amazing privacy policy.

(3) If/When the user submits their email address, send the user an email. But, unlock the account functionality without requiring confirmation.

(4) In the email, provide a brief explanation of confirmation and provide the confirmation link. Automatic password reminders can only be done after this initial confirmation link has been requested.
news.ycombinator.com already does this, passively.
How transparent should a CEO be with his board of directors?
While I think the internet has helped a decline of television generally (simple math: people only have so many entertainment hours to spend, and those they spend online are coming from somewhere), I don't think it's specifically to blame for this rapid decline (unless internet usage statistics have shot up this spring, which I doubt).I would probably agree with the article that the most significant part of the decline is people moving to TiVo, bittorrent, DVD, streaming video, On Demand, or the myriad of other ways to get your shows at non-standard times that their numbers weren't counting.
Signs point to no.
The coming battle: Google Search + Google Desktop VS Scribd :)
I just don't like the confirmation email. It's such a hassle. You could still add an email field when signing up, but only for the sole purpose of giving the user a chance to get his/her password back in case he/she forgot it.
Sam Altman of Loopt interview
Hopefully this will end the horror that is writing Java GUI's in Swing, but I am severely skeptical of this somehow knocking out AJAX. It'll probably do well in the corporate world, where people actually use Java and where its "no code needed" approach seems to be targeted, but I can't see serious developers flocking towards it.

Of course, opinions can change when I actually see the damn thing, rather than just hear Sun guys blathering on about it, but I doubt they will.
Creatures from Primordial Silicon
Bugmenot does disposable email addresses
even better is http://mailinator.com
Great replies.

On the subject of CAPTCHAs: I'm seeing a lot of variations of this lately, like "what is 2+3?" in a graphic, or "click on all the ducks" next to 6 photos with 2 ducks. You get the picture.

I think CAPTCHA is on the way out. If we have to prove you're human, there are better ways than "try to interpret this blurry, distorted graphic and type it here". Opinions?
bad link [fixed now]
What's better about it?
Why should JavaFX work if Java applets don't work? All those new frameworks are completely useless because they require the installation of plugins or executables on the client.
worksforme
eBay Close to Acquiring StumbleUpon for $75 Million
I agree. Obscurity is fine in this case, because if abuse becomes a problem, it will be new accounts that are the problem. So you can just add confirmation, captcha, etc. on the fly when the time comes.
Scribd _is_ obvious google-bait. Google's "all the world's information" bit makes something like scribd almost irresistible to them. Of course, google may try (and/or succeed in) rolling their own, first.

But kudos to the scribd guys for delivering a simple twist on Napster/Flickr/YouTube (share music/photos/video) that no one else had done. I expect they'll do very well out of it.
there are a couple ways of thinking about this, but i certainly don't think captchas are on the way out. (well, one way out is something like OpenID)

since captchas are based on feature detection in domains where humans are still far superior to computers, the ultimate captcha would be something based on faces.

the problem is the permutability of the variables in the captcha means a lot more overhead for more variables graphically produced. i mean, to produce a string of text is far easier than to produce 10 faces. and in picture captchas are you left with pass/fail for every picture, so it leads to much less permutability, compared to text. in this regard, i think text-based captchas still have a place and will stay for quite a while.

and the newer "what is 2 + 3" is so bafflingly breakable that i can't believe it is actually being used.

a method i think worth exploring is by tracking mouse clicks, like show a banner-sized picture and ask users to click through items in a certain sequence, like "mouse, truck, building, blah blah." then you calculate the deviation from the hit-zone. however this cannot be done without a mouse. to make it keyboard-friendly you'd probably need to present a bunch of icons and ask users to select those icons in some order. in fact, i imagine this to be a good password replacement scheme (but again, as a password scheme you'd need 26x2 + 10 icons to match the permutability of a d+w password. hence the mouseclick)

but in any case, captchas are fairly distracting when they appear, so the captcha idea i wrote above is something i would do only when i have enough time to play with.
ReadSpeaker is an on-line service for speech enabling website content
Aaron Swartz attacks and takes down REDDIT ! plot thickens
Scribd is SEO Spam ;)
http://tinyurl.com/36pw6k NNow Aaron teaches how a fired employee can attack wired
http://tinyurl.com/36pw6k aaron swartz brings down digg/
http://tinyurl.com/36pw6k Aaron swartz attacs Reddit brings it down
http://tinyurl.com/36pw6k Fired Aaron swartz attacs Reddit brings it down
Basic accounting - what do you use to keep track of expenses?
Since I'm going to be doing things on my own, this too is something I need to take care of. I won't have a lot of money coming in or out at the beginning, so I can start simple. I could probably even just use a spreadsheet, but I thought I'd ask around a bit first. The big requirement is that it needs to run on Linux.
Voting/Experience System of The Highly Successful Perlmonks Community
The CIDOC conceptual reference module: an ontological approach to semantic interoperability of metadata.
Cycorp, Inc. (Attempt at Common Sense AI)
This is a project that's been going on for over a decade at a very high RD cost. Their basic epistemology for their conceptual model looks hopelessly flawed. Not only is there ambiguity between instances of concepts and concepts, they even have circular definitions (see the definition of concept on their free browser: http://opencyc1.cyc.com:3602/cgi-bin/cyccgi/cg?cb-start.)
They admit to extensive contradictions in their system and try to solve it with contextual focusing, but the results seem very unpromising. They also admit that adding new information to the db gets increasingly hard because of the web of contradictions. I think the only hope this project has is for a system with a conceptual model more closely following the human conceptual model scanning their entire db for useful information and creating an entirely new hierarchical structure.
Triadic Implosion: The Great Paradox of Social Networks
I think the point would be to use this to make the web app more interesting, and it would have to be an integral part of the experience.

I am not sure how exactly it would work either. Seems that similar things already happen in forums where you need certain participation to get badges and access to certains threads...
complexity that could only come from the mind of a perl coder.
Read the italized subtext below the title.

I also got caught by the May 2007 date at first. It might be intentionally misleading.
I haven't heard anyone mention this aspect: what did Aaron Swartz's "whiz-kid" status contribute to the acquisition? It had to have helped. Four co-founders that includes a genuine "whiz-kid" from Stanford is worth more than two unproven guys from University of Virgina (at least to the suits that do acquisitions for media companies). Wired has even written about Aaron.
The parent is spam.
Without writing comments it is probably Ok for me as well. Voting is still somewhat about faking other people's opinions, but there is obviously a large grey area here.
"2 + 3" and codinghorror.com's "ORANGE" CAPTCHA are 99% effective.

There are many (mostly unpopular) sites without effective protective measures against SPAM. For attacking these sites, botnets are effective.

Almost all popular sites have some effective protective measures. For these sites, coding and deploying a constantly evolving botnet to keep up with this arms race is just not effective. It is more cost effective to hire third-world (or even first-world) labor to attack them.

There was an article on news.ycombinator.com a few days ago about how posting a comment on TechCrunch is more effective advertising than AdBrite. Go look at the comments on TechCrunch and pay attention to how many of the frequent commenters link back to their sites. (The kewter.com guy sticks in my mind the most, as that domain name is hard to forget).

With that in mind, imagine paying a few US college students $6.00 an hour to read+comment on weblogs, forums, and social networking sites for hours at a time. Tell them that they are to carry on educated, intelligent, and intriguing discussion. For each post, they need to include a link back to (their profile on) your website. You could even hack together a few tools to make it really easy for them to participate in dozens or hundreds of discussions per day--for example, build an email-confirmation sidebar widget for Firefox and some collaboration software that allows human-net to collude.

How do you stop this kind of attack?
I don't think it's very complex at all. The implementation may involve a small amount of math but it's very light and done by the system, to users it's all transparent.

The site quite accurately increases the influence of users that fellow users feel are good contributors. The Perlmonks system has evolved over almost a decade and produced one of the best online communities I've ever seen.
Usernames: allow, require, or forbid users to user their email address as a username?
(a) The user's email address should be used as the username.

PRO: The user doesn't have to remember yet another username for yet another site.
PRO: Email addresses are more or less unique.
PRO: Entering the email address does not require any new thinking on the part of the user.

CON: A lot of pain when the user changes his/her email address.
CON: If the user can share his username publicly on the site, he will get inundated with SPAM and other unwanted email.
CON: "Email address:/Password:" prompts mislead users into entering the password for their own
CON: It is easy to guess a person's account, and determine if they are a user or not, and even impersonate them if they use the same username/password for the site that they use for their email.

(b) The user should be forbidden from using an email address as a username.

PRO: Email address is kept private.
PRO: The user can change email accounts without disturbing his identity on the site.
PRO: Users who want to use their email address for convenience may be missing some of the subtle security problems caused by doing so--you are kind of protecting them against their own ignorance.

CON: Nice, easy-to-remember names get taken fast; the user is likely to forget what username he used.
CON: Users' anonymity often causes as many problems are it solves; this is why Amazon.com has the "Real Name" feature.
Right, I saw that, but I read the article (thanks to jkush's submission) on the 8th, and the article's date is May 10. Anyways, it's not important, just a pointless observation.
'... complexity that could only come from the mind of a perl coder. ...'

Complex maybe but the results are very noticeable. You can't do things you have not earned the privilege for. No more spam from single accounts created 5 minutes ago. No more down voting by 30 points because someone feels like it.

The discussions are moderate in tone and things get done. Compared to slashdot, reddit even news.yc, perlmonks is hands down a more even tempered place to ask questions, solve problems and discuss things programming.

But I don't think it will ever really be built at news.yc. Different culture and founder dna.
How to Talk to the Press
"The Change Function: Why Some Technologies Take Off and Others Crash and Burn" (Or is it so simple? A skeptical review)