skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Alex's fundamental point is sound, but his sample reply to the question about the jagged array is too undiplomatic to be of any use to anyone. Having some random on USENET tell me, "you're clueless; go study some introductory texts and don't write another line of code until you have" isn't going to get me to do so even if I'm not sure if he's wrong. Why didn't he just recommend a more appropriate database schema, accompanied by a suggestion that the OP read the Wikipedia page on normalization theory and try to keep his databases in 3NF?
To me, the problem is not that they are taking my gmail password, but that they show me this tricky "spam your friends" screen before I am even ready to know wtf this new service is!

Regarding the sites getting my Gmail/Yahoo passwords, I don't think any site is really happy doing that. (We at Buxfer also do it, but it's tucked inside the site for users who really want to do it.) If Gmail and Yahoo were to open up even more and provide secure access to the addressbooks, nobody would have to do this stupid scraping anymore.
Interactive World Atlas - Okapiland Map
I'll give you ten bucks for it, but only if I get to transfer the karma to my current screenname. I already have more than you do, but the transfer would give me enough of a kick to get me back on the leaderboard.
Office Tools for Starving Startups
Or from The Lunch Club. http://www.thelunchclub.com/
Uh... what's your address?

I'm aguvench on gmail.
Interview with Netscape Director, Tom Drapeau
Ever wonder what supposed Digg clone Netscape is up to? Centernetworks sits down with Netscape Director Tom Drapeau to find out where the social news rating site is today and where they are going. They are looking at localization and internationalization as part of their future expansion.
"To the extent that Apple products have actually infiltrated big businesses, it's been through small groups of enthusiasts--the canonical example being the art department that somehow manages to get themselves Macs"

It's not just the art department anymore, it's now the software engineering department now too. (I'm talking large 10,000+ employee corporations.) This is mainly due to OS X's BSD upbringing. Deployment and general development on Windows is just a bitch when your production servers are nix based. Besides why have a Windows box when Macs themselves can run both Windows and MS Office easily (not to mention IWork is now a viable alternative).
my email is on my profile here - don't see yours. would like to hear from you. thanks.
iWork08 is nice isn't it? I've been using it for a week or so and I'll probably buy it. NeoOffice has done ok but it's time for something a bit nicer.
No discussion of Second Life is complete without an obligatory mention of giant flying dongs out of nowhere.
This guy is the strangest character I've seen in a long time.
I wonder if you could wire up a MUD engine to a simulation environment like breve (http://www.spiderland.org/) with 1000 lines of code in any popular scripting language and have something interesting enough to demo to people.

See what I just did there? I described developing a massively multiplayer interactive 3d environment as trivial! What chutzpah!
Clarification: I'd rather Paul and RTM spent the time to make Arc excellent than release it as mediocre. The title implies that it's a fault that it's taking so long. It's a virtue.
Don't forget the design tools:
-Inkscape
-Gimp
Start talking to my co-founder and start getting new ideas (away from the computer)
Dare Obsanjo has his doubts on Hadoop / Copying Map Reduce
Star Fox 64. (Do a barrel roll!)
I'm already using it on my site. If I used it on news.YC, it would replace news.YC.
It's not so much a virtue of Arc that's it's taking long as a virtue of Lisp that it can survive for so long without a good implementation.
Ten bucks, you insult me!

These 116 points took a damn long time to earn!
hey thanks for the feedback
SF Bay Area (Peninsula)
The real tiger can never compete with the paper one. Facebook and Flickr use PHP; MySpace uses ColdFusion and/or ASP.NET; doing it NOW with crappy tools is scrappy, the start-up way. Start-ups don't wait for the stars to align.
doesn't seem like using tax money is a solution either... I'm not so keen on a welfare system for corporations
New code on facebook secrets
Adobe takes aim at Microsoft and Apple
Change of context: book, film, game, chat... Preferably something that keep the brain ticking over, but allows the 'work' parts to take a rest. Oh, and virtually any kind of exercise.
Former TechCrunch Contributor Launches Rival Site
I need to be more careful with my words. Clarification #2: I'll wait patiently until Arc is ready, instead of complaining about how long it's taking. To complain will just encourage mediocre design. It's great that two smart people can really take their time on something and make it excellent, rather than push something when it's not ready. It's the opposite of the start-up way, and that will inherently produce higher quality results. The aim of a startup isn't perfect quality, but rather better quality than the #1 competitor.

That does not have any correlation with whether or not I'm waiting to do my startup. I'm launching a site on Friday using Rails.
Is this an instance of the Graham-Tiedemann Law?
It looks a damn sight better than TechCrunch. Now to see if the quality is any better.
It sure does look like you're right. I could have sworn I saw .asp pages there when I was a member, but that was probably 4-5 years ago. One less reason to use .net, I guess.
Newsweek wants to talk about how cool Facebook is...
go NYC! go baby! One more here!
who is posting this stuff? and why?
Sure Adobe can make products that work better and look better than Microsoft's current office suites, but arguably Linux has a better operating system, Firefox has a better browser, and that has not caused people to stop using Windows or IE respectively.
Microsoft is just too well rooted in the corporate world.
The User Is Priority #1
Every niche has it's doom sayers that try to exploit fear for personal gain.
Listing 30 "must read" books is great, but nowhere in the article does he state his credentials. Is he part of a successful start-up? If so why doesn't he say so? If not why would I read the same books that have not helped him?
I'm surprised Blogger hasn't taken the site down.

(Cue massive Google conspiracy theory posts...)
Tim Bray: Prognostication
Facebook had a problem last weekend where their web servers weren't processing the PHP code, and instead were spitting it out for anyone to see//grab.
Starting Startups
Facebook lesson: Who Owns the Concept if No One Signs the Papers?
I love PHP normally and I love it even more when it doesn't have syntax highlighting or indenting and isn't even displayed in a fixed-width font!
Second Life's user base has an average age of 32 IIRC.

And yet the maturity level is higher on Facebook. Or does SL just get bad press in this area?
For google, all regional domains are counted separately, google.com, .de, .ro, etc., while for youtube, as far as I know there's only .com that's viewed all over the world.
Also in Atlanta. Interested to hear about how things are "heating up" here. I'd love to chat with some of you from ATL too.
It looks like Facebook and Microsoft like each other. So Google is just doing what any other company would most likely do.
unless of course it's an inside job :-)
It's not maturity, it's caution. People are more careful when their real names are attached.

It's also not a good comparison because the set of options is completely different; it's like arguing whether a trout makes fewer programming mistakes than a human. There are no interactive 3D zoophile sex dungeons in Facebook to use your "free will" to avoid. (Facebook app, anyone?)
PG has to have read 'worse is better'. I wonder what his motivations are for going against 'release early, release often'? Perhaps it's a case of people's expectations being pretty high, and ready to pounce if it's not perfect, which it probably isn't, given that it hasn't been shaken down that much (or at least not by a wide audience).
This ought to be good for a few rounds. I must admit a certain guilty pleasure in seeing someone take them on.
You've got to love the ranting and cussing in the comments. Very professional.
Also, the YouTube.com measure that exceeds Google.com is only 'page views' -- the Alexa 'reach'/'rank' relationship between the two sites is much more similar to the Compete.com numbers that TC thinks is "getting it right".

Perhaps Alexa counts offsite embeds of YT videos elsewhere as 'page views', and Compete does not? Or, Alexa might reasonably count clicks within a single long-displayed page (paging through comments, starting/stopping/replaying video) as multiple 'page views' even without a reload.

Compete's numbers on pages/visit (16 youtube.com :12 google.com) and visit duration (16 mins : 6 mins) suggest YT 'views', if counted any differently, could way outpace its 'reach'.

And while journalists and techies might visit Google dozens of times a day, but YT far less often, I can believe there are plenty of people for whom the relationship is reversed. The TC view -- "this must be wrong!" -- could be inside-the-bubble thinking.

Alexa's stats have issues -- but TC's analysis is pretty flimsy, and could be missing something interesting in its haste to mock the Alexa totals.
It seems to work well enough for 2d worlds, a ka the world wide web.
Here is another option:

http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/pyqt/
which are bindings for:
http://trolltech.com/products/qt
Thoughts about this:

a) I don't want people to give away my email address anyway
b) perhaps it would be possible to create a kind of bookmarklet or browser plugin that would make it easy for people to submit addresses from their address book? For example a "buxfer-invitation-bookmarklet", which people could use to send buxfer invitations to people from their address book?
Munich, Germany
34 More Ways to Build Your Own Social Network
Mashable Launches the Web 2.0 Marketplace: Free for 48 Hours
Fame vs. Fortune: Micropayments and Free Content
isn't the first rule about launching a site to launch with a ton of content? i see two posts on the US tech site and they are more like rants than posts indicative of future content.
I've noticed that everyone that gets on digg the first time seems to write a follow-up post about how much traffic they got. I'm guilty and did the same when I got on digg the first time two years ago.
Well reading the article and the comments it looks as if Feedlounge is a subscription based online RSS reader. Hmmm with the number of free alternatives if looks as if they were going to have a hard time in the first place. I don't think it's fair to put the blame solely on 37 Signals for their demise.
202(c) the anti hacking German law 
202(c) came into effect on Sunday, which states that any illegal distribution, sale, and possession of security tools that encourages to commit a crime such as hacking.
isn't this the guy who used to do Mobilecrunch - if so dont hold your breath - he didnt used to post much and what he did post was dull.
When a company has millions of users among their other services, and they decide to cut one to focus on the others, I don't think that's failure at all.
Ah, since they're both twins, you only need to show one of the ConnectU brothers in the article...
Yes, and an LLC doesn't make the possibility of outside investment easy. The S-Corp is basically a bare-bones C-Corp that can "grow up" whenever you need it to.
I haven't met Metzger, but he certainly has the right attitude about this; here's what he posted to the Lisp NYC mailing list last night:

BTW, for those of you attending: remember, tomatoes for throwing work best if you leave them to rot in the hot sun for a day in advance.
The point is that you must look at the actual numbers - cost of scaring some people away vs. how many new users this brings in, to actually "get it." I've seen this exact technique work extremely well many times before.

Building a successful site is absolutely not about giving users everything they want, how they want it. That line of thinking can be very damaging to your site.
ouch - i'm an outlier.
Have you inspired a B-Candidate to be an A-Candidate?
We have seen articles about hiring A candidates,
who in turn hire A guys or A+ guys. If you hire
B-candidate they in turn will end up hiring B
candidates or B- or C candidates.

In startup scenario, have you seen or have you inspired B candidate to be an A candidate, could you please share stories successes and failures in
doing so?

For example, I am trying to find cases in
startup companies similar to
Seabiscuit(Movie/Horse) which is physically
average horse winning triple crown and its
trainer, jockey and owner are even greater
for accomplishments with Seabiscuit.
Google Seeks Court Time With Stewart, Colbert
Eat, Drink & Breathe like a Startup !!!
In the interesting podcast,you find an delicious recipe to a Startup.They deal with cutting costs on Food & Drink in a startup where they talk about "Ideal(and economical) food for startups".This podcast would definitely bring you smile as well as makes us understand "Every penny is important in a startup"
Luck and the entrepreneur, part 1: The four kinds of luck
Yoomba Reaches 500,000 Userbase in Less than One Month
The Complete Web 2.0 directory (broadband preferred)
A comprehensive collection which seems to be updated often.
>but only when

Easy answer. When they allow OS X to run on regular x86 hardware. Unfortunately they seem to think they're tied to the hardware business when their software is really impressive.
Maybe you are right, but if everybody would be thinking like that, there would be no Linux, only Microsoft.

Some people crave a pure solution. For me, a web site that employs the trick above loses my trust, and I will never really feel comfortable in using it anymore.
A bit nicer? iWork08 blows everything out of the friggin water :D
Just zoom out really far before you move it.
http://thingsilearned.wordpress.com/2007/07/18/unconventiona...
I love it too, but yeah they could do without. I wonder why they're not using PHP 5's OOP features. Could really help simplify things for them in the long run.

Hell I'll be more than happy to refactor FB's source code to fit MVC for equity ha ha.
What's wrong with AOL? It's the internet isn't it?
They do use PHP5's OOP features in Thrift. I'm guessing that the FaceBook code covers a long time period. The parts that have been leaked are core site functionality, which means they were probably written early on. PHP5 was still quite new and untested when FaceBook was developed in 2004.
This is a good supplement if you're interested in the free vs. not-free debate (aka M. Arrington vs. 37signals). The concept of "mental transaction costs" -- the "cost" associated with making a decision of whether something is worth paying for and how much is it worth -- is a useful one. For me personally, if I decide something, particularly an online service, is worth paying for at all, I'd probably just as soon pay $20 as some fraction of a penny. In other words, if it's not free and it's claiming to add value to my life, it had better be adding at least $20 worth and convince me as such. Then again I've never given much thought as to what micropayments would be good for, so counterpoints are welcome.
Yahoo Edges Out Google In Satisfaction Survey
If you search through enough junkyards you might find enough parts to build a nice car, but it'll be unpleasant and you'll get really dirty and smelly. Stupid and probably irritated is how I feel after watching CNN, which is exactly what they were going for. They're trolls (http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/warriorshtm/troller.htm) slowly cashing out a huge pile of respect that took them years to learn.

Most of my friends hardly watch any TV. They're too busy living life. I'm not sure that's the best analogy.
Agreed. The site looks awful too. It's like MySpace for dating.
Could be worse but I don't know why people log on there in the first place. What's Markus's secret?
On Pricing Strategy
I'm working on a business model that requires charging something for a web-based service (not consulting/nothing hourly). I've never known where to begin the process of arriving at the 'right' price. Clearly, there are marketing/customer perception implications to:

1) providing something on a free trial basis initially
2) increasing the cost of a service later
3) charging too little and being deemed insignificant "How could $5/month give me that much value?"
4) charging too much and being seen as a ripoff, leaving room for others to step in.

I know it's easy enough to arrive at or at least be aware of a market price (median/average) if there's enough competition in the space to do a back-of-napkin statistical analysis. I'm not sure how that carries over into concepts with a 'first mover' advantage, or markets where competition is light.

I know there must be theory relevant to this (probably volumes). Can anyone recommend a place to start? How have you dealt with pricing your startup's services?
TV show panel full of experts tells entrepreneur his idea is worthless, he proves them wrong
Never let anyone persuade you your product is useless until you prove its usefulness in the market!
It's all about getting inside your target customers' heads and dissecting their buying decisions. Only then can you hit upon the right strategy. When you have drastically different buyer profiles, then you segment the market. In other words, you need to first answer questions like is this an impulse buy, is this a comparison buy, is it personal or company money being used, etc.

My last startup charged for a web-based service. It was a consumer impulse buy and so we tried to keep the price down for that reason. When we got enough size, we ran statistical tests to figure out the best price point in terms of maximization of profits.

I also have had experience selling an online book. As you suggest, sometimes the demand curve is not a straight line and raising the price can increase volume because prices can of course influence perceived value. I raised it from $9.99 to $24.99 and that is exactly what happened--increased volume.
I know this isn't answering your question, but why would you want to inspire a B candidate to be an A candidate? Isn't that a waste of time when you can just wait for the A candidate?
I've recognized this 'mental transaction cost' for awhile, but never been able to put it into words. The article does a great job of it.
Transitioning from start-up phase to build-up phase
We have been starting-up Architel since late 2001, but I always considered the business to be a 'start-up'. I am not sure why, but recently my feelings changed. Now that we have brought in 'real' operators the business seems to have transitioned to a new phase.
Another consideration is the availability of software. There aren't that many things the average home user does on the computer -- word processing, web browsing, music, digital photography -- and all of those needs are served quite well on the Mac platform right now.

In the enterprise, sure, everybody does word processing, web browsing, etc., but beyond that, all bets are off. When I worked in a banking environment, I supported dozens of business-critical Windows apps, from third-party market data software to nasty, internally-hacked-together VB apps. Abandoning those apps wasn't even close to being an option. Even all the web apps in that environment worked only in IE on Windows. Any other enterprise of significant size is almost guaranteed to have dozens of critical apps of its own. I suppose if you really wanted to get a Mac into such an environment, you could access the Windows apps over Citrix or something, but that'd be a pain.

Even if app support wasn't an issue, most enterprises are already quite tied into the Microsoft stack -- Active Directory, Exchange, SharePoint -- which makes supporting Macs even as a secondary platform challenging at best.

And even if you consider that surmountable, it's still no wonder that Apple is more interested in home users -- they are (if you'll pardon the expression) the low-hanging fruit.
Well, if you've the ability to identify and coach B candidates to be A candidates and assuming that there are lots of B Candidates than A candidates, wouldn't you accomplish same things possibly in less time than A candidates could and may also eliminate time waiting for A candidates?
Google Health coming tomorrow: Electronic Medical Records (EMR) for everyone?
I've consulted with two medical practices on implementing EMR systems in the last few years. The systems that are now available (at least the ones I've looked at) are rather old-technology - not web-based, don't allow for patients to access their records themselves, etc. This new Google service, if it works as well as it might, could really radically change all of this - particularly if practitioners can use it. The next thing, then, is to tie it into the billing systems used by practitioners, etc... opportunity?
Yes, professional investors do make mistakes (as the better VCs will admit: http://www.bvp.com/Portfolio/AntiPortfolio.aspx), so this is something to keep in mind after meeting with potential investors.

BTW, what is David Beckham doing designing toys?
I think I saw two episodes of UK's Dragon's Den from the first season (you can find them on bittorrent sites). It was an interesting show from what I remember. For those that never heard of it, here's what wikipedia says:

"Dragons' Den is a television programme that originated in Japan where the format is owned by Sony. The format, which now airs internationally, consists of entrepreneurs pitching their ideas to secure investment finance from business experts -- the "Dragons"."

Basically, you pitch a bunch of rich people, entrepreneurs and investors and they tell you what you think and they might invest into your idea as well.
Wife got a job offer in VA.
You are approaching this problem from a wrong side. First you need to determine how much your service is worth to the customers, in monetary terms. Then you can base your price on that. Normally you would divide your service benefits into two parts: "commodity" and "unique". You would charge what it costs you to provide it for the commodity part and how much it is worth to the customer for the "unique" part.

Also note that educating the customer about the value (in monetary terms) that they will receive by using your service is the key to make this strategy work.
Pick a price you think is right. (It is random sometimes. Intel said how about $80 for the 8080 chip). get feedback. Sometimes raising the price increases market share ie... wine. For a web service there are no cost of goods or product costs to use as a basis and then add 100% margin.
Unless you are going to turn off all your potential customers at once, which is unlikely, just do it and iterate.seems like it would be easier to lower price than raise it.
I have dealt with this problem before. Even if you are a first mover, you will still have indirect competitors, and customers used to paying a certain price and buying at a certain frequency. Talk to your customers, find out how they are consuming, and position your product accordingly.

Really Basic Example: A skype based cell phone should be priced similarly to comparable phones, with a premium because skype is cheaper than other cell phone plans.

For web products, one trick I learned is to use Google Adwords with different prices and features listed, and observe CTR.
nature vs nurture? In a start up, you don't have the time to nurture an employee. everyone is flat out doing what they do best, with little hand holding. B DNA will produce more B DNA.
Why Did Google Answers Shut Down?
This is pretty weak.

These guys were offering a paid for RSS reader. There are like 400 free ones out there already.

37Signals suggests people charge for software yes, but the don't say that you can simply sell anything your heart desires! If people aren't willing to pay for it, perhaps there isn't a market for it, and perhaps it's not a good idea for a business. (At least as a pay-per-use model)