skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't believe I have ever clicked on adwords. In fact, I generally have an aversion to them.
do it now. when the money is on the table they will get greedy and this may potentially keep you from funding. ie legal issues.
News Search Results for siri | Reuters.com
Seattle has a nice one going (hosted by Andy Sack, CEO of Judy's Book). I haven't seen any actual VCs show up (other than an angel or two, maybe).
I've been researching widgets/gadgets a bit and the Netvibes API allows cross-platform widgets...which removes their monopoly power, and insures that even if they replicate your functionality, you can refocus on other sources of users.

So, if one were to abstract the Facebook API into a "social networks" API of your own, it'd be a sane path. Then, if Facebook launches an exact duplicate of your app, you just refocus your efforts on MySpace, Xanga, LinkedIn, whatever.

Of course, this assumes that the others follow the lead of Facebook (which I think is a great idea business-wise--APIs are great for business and good for your users...but not good for your "partners", if you have a habit of picking the winners and killing them with your own implementation).

So, I'm definitely not saying folks shouldn't make use of the Facebook API. But think about using it to add value to something already valuable, rather than just building tools that live and die by involvement with Facebook.
No more invitations to Spock :-(
Leave your e-mail and you'll be on your way to Spock goodness
I'll try it out : my username @ gmail

Thanks!
Yes there are a few inaccurate generalizations here. Another gem is: "Only a disproportionately minute number of discoveries traditionally came from directed academic research. "

Having said that the essence of the article is quite interesting.
Yaw, I agree that the home page is more difficult to digest. I'd collapse it.
Lessons from Flipping a Small Web Biz
#8 wins.
This looks exactly like Perl's CGI.pm or CGI::Simple to me.

That's not a bad thing. Most folks working other languages would do well to pick the most popular CPAN module for a given area and re-implement it in their preferred language as a way to get a jump on development. As some folks have done with Template::Toolkit for other languages.

But, I'm not sure I see what's interesting about UCW, other than being written in Lisp.
Actually, 90% of crap is crap. The rest is diarrhea, which is latin for "flavored water".

(Can't find the quote on the web right now)
I probably click on 1 ad a month completely by mistake, and maybe another one just from curiosity, and then from searching something I have a good idea of where it is but I'm lazy to look it up, and when I see the link on top (sponsored) I click it just for kicks...

I'm probably not the average user, but if you multiply that by a few million people, it can def. add up

When was the last time you bought something after clicking on a google ad? Or at least, when did you bookmark a website you got to through AdSense? Two simple metrics that I bet most people have never done through googads
reCaptcha: Stop Spam, Read Books
After they discover Firefox extensions?
As others have pointed out, the UI is ornery at Startupping. There's just a lot of random crap on the front page...some crap down the middle, some crap on the right side, oh, there's some more crap down the right side.

If it were my site, I'd:

Kill the big posted on date box beside every item--the way it is now, the date looks like the absolute most vital piece of information on that page. I'm pretty sure that wasn't the intent.

I'd shrink to title down to just the title. The author, the category, "no comments", needs to go away or to the bottom of the entry.

I'd reduce the size of the summaries

I'd probably shrink the content area width...I have a hard time scanning it quickly.
nospzg.6.integer@spamgourmet.com
RMS Talk on The Free Software Movement
If that is what you did, from your short experience on the site, did you take anything positive or informative from it?
kbeshay@gmail.com :)
i sometimes register .org and .net. But I think these are overrated. everyone and their mother thinks ".com". that's it, end of story
Would you "spam" to get big fast?
I'm not referring to those blatant buy-a-mailing-list-and-spam kinda process. I'm talking about the more subtle invitation "spam" executed by the likes of plaxo, hi5 etc.
I've built a business solo, and I'm now building one with a co-founder. I can say, without hesitation, that the latter is better. I'm a lifetime loner, stupidly independent, and I don't play well with others, but having a co-founder is still a major net win for me. I'm lucky in that I've been working with my co-founder for years (I used to hire him for UI development work when I ran my previous company), so I know that our various skills and our personalities mesh well.

If you can't find a founder that fits well with you, and that you can trust not to screw you at the first opportunity, then going it alone is the only option. But, I'd recommend trying to find a co-founder. Sure, you can build a successful business solo...but it gives you much worse odds.
I personally think AdSense sucks. I was really fed up with those clingy, annoying ads and started using FireFox extensions. I even personally suggest my friends to do so. I'd prefer DoubleClik's banners instead. At least they have some aesthetics and creativity ( very few of them though.)Google has successfully fooled the advertisers. Don't you think so?

Its not just the stupid-looking ads but my privacy is also in their hands every time any Google Ad shows up on any website. I am assuming that you guys know how Google Ads work!

I don't think they will be able to make much money out of it in coming years. And,users will definitely rise up against Google to regain their privacy.
I would advocate spamming even if its cringeworthy.

Bebo and MySpace would be nowhere without a) birthday alarm traffic and b) a mailing list of 500,000 people respectively. Similarly facebook spammed all of harvards mailing lists.

In business you make one decision - which is to make it big or die. Even if spamming hurts - if you have a compellign enough service go for broke. Even spamming counts.
Reminds me of the story by Charles Stross, 'Tales of the Dangerous Coffee Club'

Just remember, no genetically modified superior coffee.
How does teenwag spam every single site with an ounch of visitor anyway? They seems to have spammed USENET, digg, reddit, this site. Do they automate it or hire cheap labor to do it manually?
She moved to Silicon Valley to start a dance school? And she's getting meetings with VCs? Weird... Is there something about this that I'm not getting?

She's got heart...
Facebook Launches Facebook Platform; They are the Anti-MySpace
It all depends on the definition of the "spam".
the only question I have: How are the developers protected from facebook launching similar products when their product proves that it makes money or draws a lot of traffic?

Edit: Fixed
Vaild point, but no need to shout! Theres always a risk when using a platform. There are some ideas that you can do which facebook itself are unlikely to eg mosoto
Your answer made me risk a second look. I think what really hurt my eyes was the "contents" page - the combination of unreadability and not knowing what it is all about made my eyes hurt. I clicked "contents" first because I hoped it would let me figure out what your page is all about (english not being my first language, I didn't realise that Queensspech would be a journal about/for homosexuals).

I clicked on article links now, and I think they are acceptable (some finetuning of the colors wouldn't hurt, though). The layout reminds me of the time when I still read Wired (but I hated their layout), but more happily, of the 80ies, when school magazines would still be created with scissors and glue.

I am still not sure what the "contents" page is about...
Why feature creep is so hard to stop.
This makes no sense to me. He's only doing a service for himself and those that advertise through him.

If I want to start my own online radio station (I know, it's been done), onlineradio.com seems like a good place to start. Except of course that it's being squatted on, so I can't pay the "public domain" price that I should be able to, but instead I have to pay one of these bosos whatever they think it's worth. The fact that he bought it didn't help me come up with the name... it's an obvious name, and that's why he bought it in the first place.

So where's the service again?
UCW is based on continuations and allows you to code your web apps in a manner more like a desktop app. It was originally like a Lisp verison of Seaside, although I think it has evolved into its own personality. It's nothing like CGI.pm.
I think I got here from programming.reddit, saw some interesting links, and added the RSS feed to GReader.

The connection from a community I already know is more important than the self-advertised topic of interest for a news aggregator site. I trust reddit and my homies on del.icio.us more than some site that claims to be all about some general topic of interest like startups. If such a site has something worthwhile, someone on reddit or del.icio.us will probably link it anyway.

I suppose for others, they could have a similar feeling about slashdot, or digg, or something else. At some point, I think users just get comfortable with a reasonable amount of signal to noise on a site and stick to it.
Good point too! To me this feels like signing up for a franchise instead of starting your own business, you have control, but not full control. For some purposes or ideas it's a great.
1. I think the news.ycombinator.com crowd is a really poor proxy for the 150M Americans on line.

2. People's ad blindness depends, at least in part, on the situation. Some sites hide context sensitive ads for registered/regular users, because they know that such users aren't likely to click on them. The users who are most likely to click on them are people who are actively searching for information, such as people who arrived by clicking on a search result. If they don't find the information they are looking for, they are going to move on. If the ad displayed is relevant, it presents an attractive place to move on to.

For my part, I usually completely ignore all the paid placements on the Google search results, but when I'm shopping for something, I'll click on the ads if people seem to have what I'm looking for.
Just a quick warning regarding this service. After playing with this, I've noticed that about 20% of the words that were displayed were completely unreadable. If you're a startup that doesn't want to lose any potential users, I'd advise against using this service. If you're an established company that is getting hammered with spam, well, maybe you can afford to use this.
Theres an interesting quote in the gigaom article:

one company even telling us it was considering transitioning its current million-plus-user application into being purely a Facebook application.

Sounds like a crazy plan. Is this hotornot possibly?
Which python framework are you using for your projects?
Don't want to start another language war :). Just want to see what others here are using and why?

Sorry if your are a ROR(or...) fan.
why are people saying "Facebook are..."? Just listen to yourselves.
Now, that would be crazy. How do you make money with that?
I have always been amazed at how few people end up creating a new product where there is a need.

What must it be, 1 in 100,000?
The 80's / ZX Spectrum / 'Scissors and glue' look was intentional, but we take on board your comments about the 'contents' page. I think we need to work on this page a lot more to make it more usable, and of course understandable, but hopefully still retaining its 'edgy' visual appearance.

The contents page is meant the be hub of 'what is exciting and new' within QueensSpeech (like a magazine contents page) - only the highest rated and most read articles by our community appear on the contents page.

We also have an RSS feed available which lists all new content submitted ( http://feeds.feedburner.com/queensspeech ).

I'm really happy that you spent time going through the site again, and hopefully next time you visit you will be able to experience some of the improvements we have planned!
I'm there now.. this is a really amazing set of ideas...
It uses things called components which are like objects but represent either a page or portion of a page. It's really easy to prototype in it.
Who will Google acquire next?
Do you work better if you're working for free?
I got the same types of questions (interviewed there a while ago)! I agree it's a little ridiculous...
Apparently they're 14-year-olds, so they have a lot of time on their hands. Either that or they've figured out how to implement those trendy captioned photos with real cats.
From GIGAOM: "Now Zuckerberg says you can serve ads on your app pages and keep all the revenue, sell them yourselves or use a network, and process transactions within the site, keeping all the revenue without diverting users off Facebook."

This sounds interesting.
RED HERRING | The New VC Way?
FTFA: "But I piss on whom I please, and say what I want, and Rasmus has to just shake his head and take it. (Hence the irony in WWRD?âget it now?)"

He is a clown.
well, although it seems a lot of people here don't like ads the truth is that they come in handy at times. For example if I'm looking to buy business cards online I will likely go with one of the advertised choices and rarely bother to even look through the search results. I might check out several of the posted options if they look attractive and then decide which one to buy but I would say that the advertising component works out well. I can say the same about buying phone cards, searching for web or email hosting or other services that I don't use often. If I need to buy books I know to go to Amazon, but for a lot of other things I'll check out Google and click on ads. I have a feeling a lot of the other people that use the internet for services do the same thing.
I can't wait until it launches tonight - I've been strung out since the announcement @ 3...
Facebook F8 Live - Facebook Platform Launch Details
Altruism and social causes on the Facebook Platform
Facebook f8 Platform FAQ
I'm on startupping's rss feed, and sometimes I might peek at an article.

But YC.News is really useful. For one thing, we're a collection of very like-minded people. But most important, the community-voting means that most of the articles that rise to the top are worth reading -- sometimes worth studying carefully!

It's usefulness that matters to me most. I hang out here because I like to be around bright, motivated people. (And no, I'm not karma-whoring.) ;-p
The list of partners is interesting. Twitter? Scribd? There are a few other I know of that arent on that list too
Getting Started With Zen Cart
If I was trying to make a site that will last, then no, because I'd feel dirty -- and it's a dirty way to start out.
The service is that he's making onlineradio.com available to you, for a price you both agree on. If he didn't, and someone else took it who wasn't a squatter then you would have no chance of getting it.

He's selling you a second chance to get the domain name, and a service of preserving the good domain names.
This is going to be unpopular, but it irks me that people say that GPLd software (not LGPL) is free as in speech (liberty). It's a little less free than speech, since I can't take GPLd code and combine it with my proprietary code. I understand why people might not want me to do this, but then you can't very well say I have liberty to use that code. It's limited freedom.

Don't get me wrong, I love GPL software, it's just not the last word in freedom. I can imagine freer software, LGPL or the Perl Artistic license for instance. Infact I wonder why free software needs a license at all? The ultimate freedom would be source you can do whatever you want with. With no license to tell you what you can or can't do with it.
"UnCommon Web provides developers with the illusion that web pages are nothing more than function calls"

This sounds more like CGI::Application to me.
How about not letting people post comments for a week (or a month) once their karma falls below a certain amount? Such as this guy above.
Wow, Zuckerberg is genius.

I remember everyone (including myself)criticizing Facebook for not taking the Yahoo deal.

If this works, they might become the first truly great and useful portal.

Google, are you guys paying attention?
You work better if your primary motivation isn't a salary but say, the prospect of providing people with something they want.
Yah, I thought he was an idiot for not taking the Yahoo deal. I'm humbled by the announcement today.
Even if you don't use facebook's platform, they can still launch similar products. The bigger threat is facebook discontinuing the platform or restricting what you can do, though I doubt they'll do either.
Looks like I talked too soon about mosoto. One of te facebook applications is box.net integration which kind makes mosoto redundant.
The teenwag spammers just reregister new accounts after making a few postings. Ticking people off is not the best of ways to get traffic & users.
Money for Nothing
AJAX: Selecting the framework that fits
Graphic Objects
'... A graphic interface bypasses the verbal and appeals directly to the visual ..' ~ pg, AI Expert, October 1988

Nice article about graphic interfaces, graphic objects, dynamic graphical representations using lisp.
dupe of http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=20515
Facebook Video Launches: YouTube Beware!
Poor vimeo, this could be troublesome for them.
Didn't see that. It seems theres no way you can check the urls when the one I submitted ( http://www.ddj.com/dept/lightlang/199204122?pgno=1 ) and the one you refer to is at ( http://www.ddj.com/199204122 ).

Thanks. Might not have submitted if I had been able to search. Better to have search check for similar titles (with urls) so I can check for multiple urls pointing to the same article before submission.
Firebug as dev model
A user interface issue indeed. I suppose the best we have for now is Googling within the domain, and adding comments with links to previous discussions if we remember any.
The Valley's impoverished imagination - "entrepreneurial talent is drawn to increasingly marginal mashups"
"if you can write down in sufficient detail your idea so that 'a person of reasonable skill in the trade' can implement it," you have in fact implemented it. Your approach is just less efficient; in most areas a whiteboard is not an effective way to be sure your design works, that you have considered all possibilities.

You are persistently ignoring all the execution that goes into nuclear weapons, GPS, etc. If you think implementing nuclear weapons was trivial in the 50s and 60s (50 years after the theory was in place), talk to israel. In fact the huge difference in times different applications have entered the market is an indicator that the theory of relativity is not the bottleneck. Something else is: the engineering constraints. Why have science fiction writers consistently anticipated new technologies? Because thinking up the idea could happen before it was practical to implement. Should those writers receive royalties for geostationary satellites or submarines?

Lots of theories go into each new application, rather than one theory spawning lots of new applications.

Not all ideas are worthless. But until you have shown there are no subtle deal-breakers (think fusion reactors) there is no reason to assume your idea has value in the current historical, social, economic context.

Valuing ideas may be right in the entertainment world. Do you want to move?
Best Buy's In-Shop Fake Web Site Scam
I noticed that a reference to parakey ~ http://www.parakey.com popped up today ( http://www.parakey.com/jobs/summer.html ) and looking at the intern requirements and development model ...

'... Parakey is both a platform and a set of applications. The platform, written in Python, C++ and JavaScript, offers a means of building applications that merge the best of the desktop and the Web. Like desktop apps, these apps work offline, offer more privacy than pure websites ...'

Firebug is an open source development tool and is probably the basis of their browser client (controls + data store) with a server component doing the business logic (assumption).

I'm wary of any browser based solutions. It's either give away the UI as plugins or re-building Mozilla (think flock). is this a reasonable approach to solving the we don't trust you with our data problem yet still using a web based API?
Creating a successful startup is like finding a needle in a hay stack. So why are you trying? Because you know it's not an independent random event. Perhaps you have the same level of control over your fate in finding a partner? Think about it as another problem to be hacked at.
Guess I'll try that. I just missed reading that article. Would be nice if pg added a simple google search box hack with something like site:news.ycombinator to do this automatically. Certainly kill this problem. Wonder how regular google indexes the site? Because even then, as new stuff is added the lag in crawling & indexing the problem persists.

We need dynamic search. Could baysian classification be used ~ http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=24189 to suggest dupes?
"you have in fact implemented it."

false.

"Lots of theories go into each new application, rather than one theory spawning lots of new applications."

both happen.

"But until you have shown there are no subtle deal-breakers (think fusion reactors) there is no reason to assume your idea has value in the current historical, social, economic context."

???
Visit the New Facebook Platform Here before others have a chance
We came here because of Paul Graham (peace and blessings be upon his name).
??? yourself. Explain your reasons for disagreement, and what you didn't understand. Reread my scifi writer example.

Should these receive royalties?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geosynchronous_satellite#Geostationary_Satellites (Arthur C Clarke)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine#Submarines_in_fiction_and_games (Jules Verne)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter#History (Leonardo da Vinci)

Since you didn't say ??? to it, did you understand my argument about bottlenecks?
Web 3 is like a group hug
Documentation for the new Facebook platform
"where did all the "ideas are worthless" phrases come from?"

Perhaps from other people who contracted a phrase because they understood what the context was? How'll you know unless you read the original source?
We Are the Web
The next Cultural Revolution, from China.
Unto us the Machine is born
Why do we still have big questions?
What Technology Wants
Test drive it here: http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=24516
The web runs on love, not greed
Artifact Networks
When Answers Are Cheap
I don't like Startupping.com's ui. Your stories are at the forefront, and not the ones we want to pick
notice how everything with facebook requires a "login first". No freeload reading here. Everyone's a member. Like it nor not. Even though I have an account it still is a waste of time typing in the un/pwd combo.
Please tell me why you think they are if you disagree.
Uh, they should probably do one more edit pass over the docs before opening it up to the world... =P

from http://developers.f8.facebook.com/documentation.php?v=1.0&doc=fbml#mockajax

"PLEASE CHANGE THE URL IN THE EXAMPLE: ... clickrewriteurl="http://www.mancrushonmcslee.com/metaconsole.php"
Why I don't want Zooomr.com to relaunch
Here is a non-stolen link with pictures: http://www.inc.com/magazine/20070601/features-how-to-kill-a-great-idea.html