skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The point was how accurate the prediction has been, with craiglist becoming so popular since the article was written in 1997. Had Google seen classifieds as a 'search problem', they would have likely allowed users to submit things sooner. After all, aren't most social network sites classifieds (rentals, events, tickets, movies, belongings, personals)?

I agree that NewYorkTimes.com could have easily captured the market by 1998 if they offered users a free service to post all those things, and later the ability to contact each other in private, and later have user logins with a picture profile. But newspapers wanted to continue to sell paper ads and magazine ads, and classifieds and subscriptions. They didn't fathom that simply by doing this, tons of users would visit their site, upon which they could sell all sorts of new types of ads.

That's what some startups are doing now--trying to get as many repeat users as possible, not knowing exactly what their app will be like a year from now, but knowing that they will have an ecosystem of users, whether or not competitors think it's cool or not. If Disco clubs are stupid, but somebody opens one that fits 100,000 people who keep coming back, it doesn't matter if other businesses think the model is stupid or not. You have your own ecosystem. And, the users aren't at somebody else's site, at a certain tv channel, or another place of business.
Does this almost weightless material really 'negate' acoustical energy transfer, as mentioned in this link? Considering the current cost and engineering effort required to build an upper floor recording studio with decent drummer insulation....... Sounds like startup material to me.
Constraints and Software Development
It seems like it ought to be easy to fool the user's unconscious processes that determine fixation while still making clear at a conscious level what is and is not an ad. For example, match the color scheme and typography of ads with the rest of the site, but clearly label them as "sponsored links". While it's possible that you might annoy users this way, it would be a real stretch to call it unethical.
Gotta inflate those "average # of connected users/day" figures somehow.

I wonder if Skype's infrastructure will wind up recapitulating half of Erlang's runtime system in a very depressing Greenspun's Tenth Law kind of way.
Fantastic, all that nice data ready to be forwarded to the NSA for illegal "mining!"
not sure.. i guess i'm in some bad period (after five months of hard work) when i'm not sure of myself.. :(
The margin of an "i" in the phone
a startup is your life buddy. Anything else you do is considered as an escape from that life. Some escapes are nice (like when you have sex or go for a walk or drink) and some suck (like when you go to your day job)
We now need a comment from one of the Xobni team for completeness. Brezina? Adam? Gabor?
This is the brilliance of the facebook platform. If someone comes up with an innovative idea and releases a facebook application that proves valuable to users, facebook can just build its own version to kill it and then build off its success. Its almost like free R&D.

Walled gardens are great.
They scare me, just like how google scared me when they started. I think they are unto something. Google better watch out for these guys.
YC next batch. Could one submit an "already-launched/private beta" *up?
My intended question was by what method the required curriculum should be decided. But I think that's clear now: what you consider "basic". What you are proposing is to set up a ruling system that permanently entrenches certain ideas (such as math lessons). No disagreement is allowed: the unwilling should be forced, not tolerated.

I think this is a step backwards. In the USA we have moved away from Who Should Rule? and Which Ideas Should Rule? and the focus is more on how should disputes be decided. Force is not a rational answer to that, and we have embodied this in our tolerance for queer and strange people/ideas, even disagreeable ones. The main feature of our system of Government is also about how disputes should be decided: it is responsive to changes in opinion of our citizens (via voting): when many people change their minds about an issue the government is changed correspondingly -- even about basic education. So disputes can be decided by persuasion instead of force.

It's worth noting that basic math or reading education are not presently required in some States, so requiring them would reduce freedom of choice relative to real life today. For example, in Kansas, there are essentially no requirements for home schoolers, including no record keeping, testing, or required subjects. http://www.hslda.org/laws/default.asp?State=KS
OK... You asked a question, I answered, and you tell me my response is invalid because I don't have any power. This should make your responses similarly invalid. One of the assumptions in this thread was that we did have the power to make changes, otherwise all we could talk about was whether to vote Republican or Democrat.
I've been using a 30" (2560x1600) monitor for over a year and I'll never go back to anything smaller. I only like laptops for traveling. You do have to take into consideration the other screen sizes and resolutions when designing. But you can always approximate any config on a larger monitor.
I doubt it. Fossil fuel based flying cars are even more unsustainable than our current cars...
Hard things are sometimes good, but could you sidestep whatever it is that's holding you up? Maybe look at the problem from a different angle. Keep fighting!
The answer is yes. That replacement of star with an asterisk might be seen as a bug...
Can we start downmodding posts that scream "Reddit!" ?
it's a chain reaction. one thing affects the other one!
Compete Launches Search Analytics
Reading is a very important skill we have for functioning in society, though screenreaders make it easier to be illiterate than ever.

Math is a fundamental truth of the universe. I don't think any argument exists against the required teaching of these two subjects, other than stating libertarianism is always better.

If I was the dictator of the USA (or Equatorial Guinea), I wouldn't actually write the curriculum myself and force it on everyone. I'd get a board of experts and outsiders with qualified opinions to write it. Then the people would pass it by referendum, to give them that nice illusion of choice.
That deserves to be lumped in with Javadoc and POD and the like.
Oftentimes, working/thinking about my startup consumes my attention, such that my wife thinks I don't care about anything else... I find it hard to understand why other people just don't "get it" when it comes to entrepreneurship.
The only one I can think of is Oakland, and the parts of Oakland that are not expensive are not places I'd recommend to a Bay Area newbie. If you can think of others, please list them, and I'll politely let you know why you wouldn't want to live there.
Microsoft Emerging Business Team helps startups build partnerships
The plausibility of a prediction of a future breakthrough drops exponentially with its distance, and the base of that exponent is a heck of a lot smaller than three years.

That said, this really would be the holy grail of biology and I'm rooting for my alma mater to be the one to discover it :-)
More Startup Commandments
Thanks. and my bad on the star.
There are a lot more posts on the front and new pages now... can I have the option of viewing 60 or more posts at a time?
Your views are shaded by your socioeconomic class. The "bad parents" I refer to are the urban poor that depend on the government to survive and have more children than they can afford. The government is preventing natural selection here, but the alternative is to let our class of urban poor die off. Maybe it would work, but it's politically impossible.
"Having a life" is overrated.
Just keep going. It is hard but you must keep going. Good luck!
Documentary: The History Of Hacking
Fraudproof anonymous voting protocols from mathematicians
I use the real one, and it still doesn't have enough coverage to just use it and not look back. I would advocate using it for a default string, though.
TechStars Demo Day
Indeed. If I ever build a platform, the only circumstance I'd ever make someone else's work native to the platform is if I had their full permission, and even then I'd give them full credit.
This reads like a cut and paste of the other TechStars summaries.
Yes! Wonderful. Thank you, whomever made this.
Erm.. It's bad that the data is in an easily accessible format?
"Marshall gave a talk at WebmasterWorld Pubcon 2004 where he laid out About's whole seo strategy that had made them so successful. The ppt was on the conference CD. Unfortunately I've lost mine but I'm sure you can track down the talk. You need to see that deck."

Anyone have this?
BBC Olinda digital radio: Social hardware
The real site is http://www.whyfirefoxisblocked.com
Scribd get cloned in german!
Seriously, we've talked about this so much in the last few weeks - i think there is a need for a german localisation service for US startups.

Any german speakers on here you should get involved. Tichy? Gabor?
I know the feeling. You may feel like shit, but wait until you stop working and you will soon feel dead. I rather feel shitty than dead. you know that songs that goes like "don't stop. believe it....."
Wow, the most impressive part of the article is the eye heat map.
xkcd: No, the 9V battery hack is not a hoax. I just tried it -- here are my notes
What sites block firefox?
yes, my partner feels all i do is work work work. Always telling me to plan other things like vacations, or dates out. This has been a real drain on the relationship. However, i'm noticing that if i communicate more about what i'm working on every day, it smooths things over, and the same goes for friends and family.
Some background:
http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2007/08/dear_whyfirefoxis...
> I suspect evolution dealt with 'bad parents' long ago.

The whole thing about evolution is that it never stops. However, evolution's definition of bad parents is brutally simple: those who have few descendants.
Sorry, Lisp. I tried.
"Without database access, sockets, threads, POSIX, or a portable FFI (which I could at least use to write many of those features), my programs can't talk to the outside world, and that makes them basically useless."

I'm embedding it so it's going to talk to my C wrapper for everything. How are you using it?

Also see: Using Python libraries from Lisp
http://common-lisp.net/project/python-on-lisp/
This site redirects firefox users
http://jacklewis.net/weblog/
Windows Live Offers Web ID Authentication: Will this Hurt OpenID?
> "Without database access, sockets, threads, POSIX, or a portable FFI (which I could at least use to write many of those features), my programs can't talk to the outside world, and that makes them basically useless."

I'm embedding it so it's going to talk to my C wrapper for everything. How are you using it?

Also see: Using Python libraries from Lisp
http://common-lisp.net/project/python-on-lisp/

From Reddit a comment: "cliki.net/asdf-install and sbcl would have got him just about all he asked. SBCL does posix and threading, cl-sql, cffi for db and ffi, and I am pretty sure sbcl does sockets too."
Forums Guide: 70+ Resources for Creating a Forum
YouSwop Looking to Build Idealistic Swapping Community
Comments say that only 400 users will have to get new numbers, and nobody is being disconnected from the service. It sounds like the other users on the problem provider's service were able to be switched to another one transparently.
None of the above (but still what you asked for)!

FTFA: "Now you can enter a friend's email address into the To: line ..."

Uh oh, Facebook just reinvented SNDMSG ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNDMSG ). I'm shaking in my boots! :)

I'll definitely still use "Email me instead".
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40479
The Fresno Bee had an article about this recently, suggesting Clovis:
http://www.fresnobee.com/263/story/99048.html

It gets a little hot, and it's about 3 hours from Silicon Valley.

If you just want to live in a cool place that's startup-friendly, Portland rocks. It's also much less expensive.

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

Open Source Development Labs/The Linux Foundation is here, too, and so is Linus.

There's free wireless all over the place, and Portland was the "Most Unwired City in America" in 2003.

http://map.personaltelco.net/

Oh yeah, and there's no sales tax. A lot of people move just over the border to Vancouver, Washington (which has no state income tax) and shop in Portland.
GetConnected...No More! Local Web Startup Shuts Down
A friend of mine dropped the Boston Business Journal on my desk today with news of the GetConnected.com "dis-connection" late last week listed on the front page. The Boston-based web 1.0 startup (that I shared some incubator space with back in the day) was originally started as a way to help consumers source phone, internet and cable service in a better way.
As soon as I saw this headline, it made me think

IM IN UR IPHONE

INTROSPECTING UR SQLITE CALL RECORDS

I need to get out more.
On the profile page, break out the components of a user's karma.
Upvoted for this mathematician's-gauntlet-throwing snippet near the end:

"I sent an e-mail on 21 October 1999 and again on 2 December 1999 to my department's
most comprehensive e-mail alias, which includes faculty, staff, and graduate students, requesting
information on pet dogs. The responses were compiled and checked for accuracy on 6 December; a
notarized list of the 24 dogs, including each dog's name, date of birth, and breed, and the caretaker's
name, was deposited in my departmental personnel file on 21 December 1999. Gott's rule predicts
that each dog will survive to twice its present age with probability 1/2. For each of the 6 dogs
above 10 years old on the list, I am offering to bet Gott $1,000 US, at odds of 2:1 in his favor, that
the dog will not survive to twice its age on 3 December 1999. The reason for weighting the odds
in Gott's favor is to test his belief in his own predictions: given the odds, his rule says that his
expected gain, at $1,000 per bet, is $6,000; moreover, the probability that he will be a net loser
(by losing five or more of the six bets) is 7/64=0.109."
I don't understand why this guy has taken offence. Whats the betting that it's from someone at MS?
The fire marshall comes in handy there. "Max Occupancy: 301 persons"

That's probably what I'd do -- "hey, how much space we got?"
>>The surprising thing to me is that they have any classified ad revenue left.

Everyone doesn't use the internet.
linode.com
Okay, far enough now. Yeah, it would be great if Skype acted like your little brother, starting out with "Sorry.." and looking down at the floor. But they gave a great explanation and admitted that they screwed up (even if they didn't say it in so many words). Why are people getting mad at them?
That's still stupid, and it still doesn't do what Xobni's app does. This just lets you spam non-FB users from within FB. I want my damn FB messages to go to my inbox, not a note saying "you have an FB message waiting for you if you log into FB"
Email me instead was just a weekend hack. I made it because I was sick of getting "you have a message" emails. This update from FB doesn't change that.

The only thing that annoys me is that they ask for comments on their blog, but they don't publish them. Is it even a blog then?
Are You Really an Entrepreneur?
Spock case: Massive Media coverage is not enough to promote such a startup
This is why Arc (or Otter or whatever else) is a great idea. If the implementors can create a system similar to RubyGems where people can write drop-in plugins for things like MySQL access and whatever else then Lisp could become hugely popular.
One good thing about developing and making products yourself is that you can give those ideas time to develop. User feedback is key, I find if I just keep on doing what the users asks for then the product just gets better. They think of ideas I never would have.
I'm from Montreal in Canada so it's impossible for me to be found on hackrtrackr!
Is the net effect of health care zero?
Don't Text Message While Crossing Train Tracks!
Discussion with Wikipages Founders, Benjamin Horst and Tracey Donvito
This is only a good deal/hack if you need AAAA batteries; these are artificially expensive because of price fixing in the retail battery industry.
No, I'm just suspicious of AT&T.

If Apple would open up the iPhone to third-party apps other than web apps, you could probably do neat stuff with it.
Hey, this is Mac. I was interested in emailing you about our Synthetic Biology seminar lunches, but your email address is bouncing (kovasb@gmail.com...) what's the best way to contact you?
"I don't think any argument exists against the required teaching of these two subjects, other than stating libertarianism is always better." - rms

Two competing schools of thought about how to treat the best ideas we have today -- the ones we feel most certain of, and have the hardest time imagining a reasonable person could dispute -- we might call the School of Certainty and the School of Fallibility. The first believes our best ideas are the ultimate truth and wishes to set up societal institutions which best embody those truths. The second believes that it is important to remember we might be wrong and our vision is limited, so we should set up institutions with a focus on error correction, which means openness to new ideas and approaches, tolerance of differences, and not using force in the name of sanctioned ideas. The first school is more concerned with creating a good society by present day standards. The second is more concerned with creating a free society where people live by their own standards.

The School of Fallibility is often ridiculed. Certainly we aren't all wrong about common sense opinion X, it's so obvious. Why do we have to be so careful and cautious about even the most basic things? That's a lot of wasted effort, and it allows people to make huge, unnecessary mistakes and ruin their lives.

We live in a period of rapid change. Many mainstream, traditional, long held, obvious, common sense opinions have been thrown out in the last century. This story is well known for science, and civil rights and many other issues. But still people are complacent. We changed. We got better. What remains obvious today must be even more certain.

So, rms, perhaps I can surprise you away from complacent certainty by presenting an argument which you did not think existed.

I know a lot of people who don't like math, and who actively avoid using it in their lives. One can have a successful life today even in the extreme case of irrationally avoiding all math. Consider the adults today who dislike and avoid math: forcing childhood math lessons on them did not turn out to have helped. Now they have a grudge against the subject fueled by deeply unpleasant memories. It's harder for them to actually learn math now, should they find a use for it. Therefore it would be better not to require math lessons, and instead to let people learn it themselves on their own initiative if/when they find a reason to want to. We might call this approach Just In Time Learning.
Text and Banner Ads on Amazon: Has the World Gone Mad?
haha great question.

I had a great situation early in the summer. My apartment has a great deck and we would have parties 3-4 nights a week. At that point I was working on my startup, well, not very much.

In mid-July they started doing construction and we can't have any more parties for now. So I went in full time startup mode. My "life" is definitely on hold for a bit, but hopefully it is the jumpstart that I need to really get things moving.
A life spent creating is preferable to a life spent consuming.
My experiences with Lisp are similar. Given an infinite amount of time, I would love to write everything I needed in Lisp and have a blast doing it.

But in reality everything is a matter of time, and to build fast and achieve realistic goals I need to build off of established tools as much as possible. But maybe this can change with a wider adoption of better Lisp libraries?
Handy iPhone binaries for Apache & Python 2.5: http://iphone.natetrue.com/
The subject being discussed is better-known as the Doomsday Argument, btw:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument
The fall of the startup evangelist CEO
I work in the Plug-n-Play Tech Center and I haven't heard of this yet. That could just be because it's 2 months away and I'm not on the mailing list, though.
A close call for the Darwin Awards...
I'm not sure how much my experience can relate to yours,but after thinking about your question for a while I personally found there's nothing I'd rather be doing more right now at the age of 22 then working on my startup.

I guess to answer your question. Its impossible for me to not have a life because of it, since right now it is my life.
The Interrupt-Driven Life (Aaron Swartz's Raw Thought)
Yes. And "having a life" is overrated, as was noted already. I work 4-5 hours a day on a startup project, and another 4+ on a "real" job to pay the bills.

However, I still find plenty of time to spend on things other than work, whether it be personal project/hobbies/self-improvement, or hanging out with friends. So I may or may not have a life, depending on what standard you're measuring by. But I'm happy.
Several years ago I decided that I wanted to find a language that was more powerful and elegant then anything I had worked with before. Having read much about the benefits of Lisp from Paul Graham, I obviously wanted to give it a try.

I personally found it more difficult to use and the lack of standardization and libraries made it unusable for me. I gave it several weeks and tried to solve the problems I was having using it, but I finally started looking for something that had the power of Lisp, but better libraries.

I ended up using Erlang (http://erlang.org) and I've never been happier. Lisp was part of the inspiration for the language, but the libraries that Erlang has built in was the real selling point for me. In fact I'm still finding gems of undocumented functions in the source code that take days off of my programming time and I've been programming in it for more then two years now.

So if Lisp isn't want you want, give Erlang a try ...
I've been working on a startup with a friend while we're both interning at different companies in Seattle. It's definitely been hard because we basically work for 8 hours, then come home, eat, and work for another 4 or 5 on our startup.

Honestly, though, that's what I want to be doing. Seeing this thing come together actually makes me happy and gets me excited. It's been a rollercoaster though, some days are awful--like when we don't make any progress.

We make sure to take breaks often enough. We usually play a level of Halo on legendary or go see a movie (Superbad is hilarious!) when we need one.

All I can say is never give up. You will regret it more than you can possibly comprehend.
Jeremy Zawodny: There is no Web Operating System (or WebOS)
How about a keyword based search.
20/20: "Stupid in America"
In hopes to keep this on topic, I'll ask a question: what would a startup that is disruptive to our education system look like?

Automated education sounds good. But in practice systems could be much, much better. Most teaching programs I've seen are found in the bargain basement bin at Staples.

Why?
What's the point? We developed a money economy for a reason.
YES! This freaking rocks.
So if Lisp isn't want you want, give Erlang a try ...

I agree, Erlang has some great ideas, especially with respect to messaging and parallel processes.

I'm still more comfortable with CL (by dint of experience), but Armstrong's book (http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Erlang-Software-Concurrent...) has been a great read so far.
Has Google Blundered with the Gmail Beta? (Aug 2004)
ComScore qScore Tallies Well For Google
And I really need to finish doing something with iminuriphone.com