skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
My web company http://www.campusassassins.com was recently featured in the USA Today, but the article is what you might call 'negative.' It warns people not to engage in the activity that my website organizes. Do you think that negative PR is still good?

Here's the article

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-04-24-student-assassin-game_N.htm
I wouldn't exactly call that negative PR. They didn't blame you, or come out and call you a monster. It was more of a casual reference. If my company was featured that way in a large publication I'd be fairly happy.

As a side note, nice idea for a site. Every game I've been involved in was run by hand. I'm not sure I'd be willing to pay $2 a person to organize it though. Have you considered having an 'unlimited' account or the like for $100 or so?
Does SATA / CF have any advantage over a pack of USB drives?

I am not sure what out-of-the-box solution can you use to read/write packs of flash memory in parallel, but I'm pretty sure there exists something (you could do it on the application level as well).

Edit: USB RAID-0 array benchmarks here:

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/flash.ars/8

http://www.bigbruin.com/reviews05/thumbraid_5
No we haven't considered it directly. We've had a lot of trouble figuring out how to price things though. An unlimited plan sounds like a pretty good idea.
David MacKay is one of my heroes :) Google him, and you'll find a beautiful book about information. Highly recommended reading.
Well, don't forget that it does not really matter anyways: http://www.maximusklein.com/2007/04/20/why-ycombinator-is-a-waste-of-time/
If you're not familiar with the onion, I'd recommend taking a break from whatever important stuff you are doing at the moment and browse around for awhile. You'll find articles like these:

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/scientists_create_largest_novelty_atom

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/itunes_to_sell_your_home_videos

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28660 (No Jennifer Lopez News Today)
I ran the test with 1,000,000 INSERTs (taking 200 seconds),
with the innodb cache size set to only 200,000 bytes.
So there's a fair chance it updated the b-trees on disk.
I think you would be better off charging $20 to host a game of up to 50 people. $2/person just seems really high to me. It's gotta be relatively cheap for the organizer to take money out of the pot and put it towards your site.

edit: Read the article... you seem to be getting a decent amount of business, maybe it's worth charging significantly more for an unlimited option. It's certainly a hard service to price.
It's certainly worth sending your summary to CRV to see what they have to say.
Parasites joining other parasites... oh well.
If some user of your site is mistakenly killed by an over zealous police officer, you may have some liability issues. I'd probably get a lawyer to write up a strong disclaimer at least.

As for the PR -- I'd say it's a win. People who are going to be interested will find out about you and the controversy makes you interesting.
Steve Pavlina Modified
It's somewhat amusing, but also mildly depressing, to see these remarks despite the fact that I explicitly stated (in bold, even), that "I'm not advising you to ditch your database!"

And yet somehow that gets translated into "get rid of that database."
Bandwidth and storage costs could easily get into the millions over a year or two.
Quickstart or otherwise it would still seem like better idea to figure out how to get an introduction. I could be missing the point of the program, but my guess is that an unsolicited email to a VC firm is still an unsolicited email to a VC firm.

Do you, or anyone, have experience to the contrary?
A bigger issue with RSS: it's designed for updates rather than archival. While XML may be a good idea, I don't think there's any reason to go with RSS.

I just took a look at studystickies after a few weeks. It's coming along great!
> They also just secured $10 in funding:

Ten dollars? And I thought YC lowballed...
It's another option, but my personal feeling is to stay far, far away from anything called a loan.
I totally expected that to stand for "Yet Another Plane Ticket Application."
Maybe, but I can read 10X faster than I can produce material to teach it.
I had a flash from biology while reading this: they say that two specie can never occupy the exact same biological niche. One of them will always have a higher growth rate, which will drive the other to extinction. If that applies to business, being consistently second would be leading to bankruptcy...
JRuby performance tests
"Interpreting the feedback youve sought on your idea can be scary. Here is a simple yet totally unknown logic to entrepreneurs: when everyone tells you Yes on your startup idea, you probably shouldnt do it. Your idea is either too late to the market or not unique enough to have an edge. On the other hand, if you hear a No a lot, dont get depressed or defensive, pay more attention. This might be good news."

This excerpt is quite confusing...kindly explain in laymens terms please :-)
Ruby is actually heavily influenced by Perl and Smalltalk and parts of LISP. There are some syntactic similarities to Python, but I think it borrows less from it than the previously mentioned. Matz however did find that reading Python code helped him develop Ruby.
Excellent article, by the way; reminds me of the old Reddit.

Not terribly surprising, considering how many of the people on the leaderboard are refugees from it.
Great site you've built, and that's really great PR for you.

I think a lot of players understand that they let terrorists/fanatics win if they decide to stop playing and having fun because of those crimes. True, people will understandably be more sensitive to this and go through a respectful down-period of mourning. But ultimately, the bad guys can't be allowed to suck the fun and joy out of life forever. They can't be allowed to win, and your site does a good job of preventing that ;)

On the business side of things - $2 does seem a bit steep for college kids. I know a lot of folks that would just do the game by hand rather than pay that much per person. That doesn't mean you have to lower your list-price though. In fact, you shouldn't. What would be more viral and fun (and educational for your pricing) would be to give out discount codes or to have a special discount assassin week. Then you could play with the pricing - $1, $0.50, etc per person and see how much more demand you get at different price levels. The goal of course is to maximize total revenue. That would also be a good way to introduce new users to your system that otherwise would avoid it and also create more viral spreading for your site.
I think it's a great Idea! I've been at Metalab quite a few times now and it's a great place with great people.

Last friday they hosted the first "Startup Freitag" (Startup Friday) to bring people interested in startups together. As Paul hasn't talked about YEurope on friday, I guess some opportunities emerged from that first get togehter.

I'm eagerly awaiting the next one the 5th of May. I left the last one after a great chat at about 3am (if I remember correctly).

While I do understand why people don't like the YEurope copycat from YCombinator, I think the reasons why they did it is obvious: attention and getting the message out fast. Most people interested in startups know about YCombinator and most of them will asume YEurope is doing something similar.
(time might also have played a factor)

I personally know Paul and if you have a look at Metalab and on what he (and the others) achieved there, I think it's a good point to have some trust in YEurope.

Many will agree that one of the great values of YCombinator are connections and bringing the right people together. That's exactly what the Metalab is trying to do and has done really well so far.

(I first wrote that comment on TechCrunch and then copied it over here)
The good news is that, last time I checked the map Vienna was in Austria...
lol more like $10million
TechCrunch: Y Combinator's Unauthorized European Clone
-- We applaud the initiative. Perhaps a different and less confusingly-similar name would have been a better choice.

I know this has been done to death in the other thread, but that's what annoys me too... If they had come out right at the start and said, hey, Y Combinator is doing a cool thing here, we love the idea, we are going to work at it and try to offer the same opportunities to people in Europe but in our own way, it could have been a really cool thing.
Install powertwitter [http://tinyurl.com/2g5a7c] or use jaiku instead?
What IDE is best for someone new to  Python ?
How Not To Write a Technical Book
The More Competition, The Easier it Gets
How does a beginner start becoming a web design expert?
:) I see what you are saying, but it is also a matter of appreciation for the author of the idea. After all, nobody stops you from implementing an idea that's already "taken". Even better for the author.
Great release from google. I have just started working with databases but i think these features are great
Love to, but your email isn't on your profile. Perhaps leave your email here, our you can email me your email?
I'm not a web design expert (or any kind of expert) but I would think:

1. Read/observe.

2. Design web pages.
SPE IDE - Stani's Python Editor

http://pythonide.blogspot.com/
I used IDLE when I was learning Python, but I like PyScripter now:

http://mmm-experts.com/Downloads.aspx?ProductId=4
"... nah, on second thought, I'm gonna sit around and drink beer and play video games."
Thanks for your feedback everybody!
Expertise in any artistic en devour, whether it be painting or chess is best learned by studying the masters. So find the website designs you like and take the time to try recreating them. If you need an design application I recommend the GIMP.
Wrong speed but yeah, that's the ballpark. I used Crucial to price the RAM.
Task-focused programming with Mylar
Ugh... the only way to "make money from blogging" is to blog about making money blogging. And there are only so many ways to do that without getting boring.

It's a waste of time, in my opinion.
For many database applications, I don't think the transfer rate matters that much.

Regardless, the DDR-ram solid state solutions have faster transfer rates than a 4 drive raid0. The only drawback is that they cost about $100 per GB.

Oh, and the onboard battery will only let you unplug your machine for 8hrs. After that, the state is lost.
Don't be depressed. You started something that's spawned (as of now) 28 comments. Great thread.
A good way to start is to find some templates on http://oswd.org & modify them. Then, once you can swing it, start building stuff from scratch.

Oh and find a copy of photoshop or a comparable graphics program. Gimp is good (and free), but if you can find PS for cheap, go for that.
Truly inspiring. I thank you for posting this link. Wonderful way to start a morning.
I agree with Sam. I've long since decided that while I'm keenly interested in how to build clean and very usable sites I just don't have the skills to provide the level of polish I want.

If you find out that you don't have the eye for design, don't waste tons of time (like I have), use an open source web design and focus on what you're really good at doing.
Ars Technica reviews Photoshop CS3
I've used Komodo at http://www.activestate.com/products/komodo_ide/ and it's very good. ActiveState has also released a free Editor at http://www.activestate.com/products/komodo_edit/ that looks promising.

I'd encourage you though to do something simpler. If you're on a Mac go buy Textmate at http://macromates.com/ and get acquainted with the command line.
I have only just started using it, but it looks very promising. From what I understand so far: you activate tasks and from then on Mylar remembers what files you touched while working on that task. This enables you to quickly filter for files relevant to the task. With Java it even works on Source Code basis (what methods are relevant to the task) - planned for other languages besides Java, too. When submitting to subversion, you can also bundle all the filters for a task. Mylar also records the time you spent on the activated task.

Pretty neat, I think.
One tag at a time?
The results are pretty much predictable though.

Not at all. Almost every demand curve is downward sloping, yes, but that doesn't mean every demand curve is the same.

If Joel's graph is accurate, and the Y axis starts at 0, this demand curve is VERY interesting. It's one of the most elastic curves I've seen. A 15% drop in price from 65 pounds to 55 leads to a 500% increase in volume. Of course the data isn't perfect, this is assuming consumers will purchase at the same rates as businesses.

If Joel wants to maximize profit, where profit = (Price-Marginal Cost) x Volume - Fixed costs, then the ideal price should be around 55 pounds.

This makes sense. For software development firms, cheaper is usually better. If you can reduce your price by X%, and increase your volume by more than X%, then go for it. You want to do this because software firms almost always have very low marginal costs (bandwidth), and very high fixed costs (development).
Sorry it's mildly depressing. Unfortunately, any thoughts you bring up related to a polarizing issue are going to end up being framed in terms of the polarization. That's just the way it is; some things will never change.

On the up side, you are going to learn a lot about essay writing, and about how concepts do/don't get through to people. These are very valuable skills.
I like it. The name is good too. Don't worry about school administrators. If people want to play, they'll find a way to play
While Textmate is indeed the shizzle, this app isn't really playing in the same space.

Textmate is a code editor (and a very nice one). Coda is a web design tool, like Dreamweaver (integrated preview pane, built-in GUI support for CSS mangling, etc.). Coda looks to be a lot cleaner than Dreamweaver. I like it -- but I'm not sure I do enough web design to justify switching. It has more to do with the time to learn a new app rather than the cost; while Dreamweaver may be nasty, I've been using it for a long time. If I found myself needing to do a lot of web design, I'd definitely consider a switch. Coda seems elegant and intuitive.
I've often wondered how much of the explosion in web creativity can be attributed to the transparency of HTML -- you can "view source" any page and find out exactly how the designer created that cool effect. By comparison, Flash is opaque. Yes, there are tools that let you dig in to the ActionScript and whatnot, but you don't have the immediacy of seeing it right there in your browser.
I do not "shamelessly self-promotes". Rather, I shamelessly promote juwo. The software, that is.
One word, in the place of your last 3 lines:

Nazi-ism: selecting out the superior strain. Or rather, what the group considers to be superior.
I am definitely not "extraordinarily smart", So perhaps by your saying, I am "extraordinarily stupid"!
every article???

http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=16631
Because of the blatant plagiarism combined with an actually desperately needed program in Europe, YEurope is now managing to get increasing attention. What is interesting is that not only are they getting a spotlight, but YC is getting publicity too. Is this media savvy, or simply a way to save time by copying?

I have to give YE credit for addressing the concerns of YC. Their site is no longer the same color scheme as YC. They've added the following text to various areas:

Front Page: " This site is inspired by, but not affiliated with YCombinator.",

FAQ: "Are you affiliated with YCombinator?

No, we're not. YC's program is quite revolutionary. We think of YC as akin to something like the first University, and we hope to bring that concept to Europe. "

FAQ: "Couldn't I just go to YCombinator?

If you have the opportunity to, you should! I'm sure it is a great experience. Some of us don't want or can't move to YC, either because of Visa Issues, or simply because they prefer to stay in Europe."

And they explain their name as "Why Europe" instead of YC's which is based on "The ``Y-combinator'', which is sometimes also called fixpoint combinator, was discovered by H. Curry. With its help it is possible to handle recursive functions in the Lambda Calculus." A very nice derivation for Y C is available at http://www.ececs.uc.edu/~franco/C511/html/Scheme/ycomb.html .

Should they change their name anyway? My answer would be only if YC asks them to, which they haven't (at least not in the public threads to date) because "Why Europe" as a name really makes sense as it is not the place people would normally go to start a startup given the intense regulatory environment there.
Far from it. I am not talking about "introspection nor emotional experiences". If Jesus is real, then he will show that he is real, to you, if you ask without an attitude.

It will not always be in the same way.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts%209:1-6,%207-20&version=31;
Yes, it will still do that seek when it checkpoints, but I seriously doubt it will do one seek pert transaction at that checkpoint. Still, I doubt 100,000 tps can be achieved with PostgreSQL.

As for being wrong, that's one of the privileges you lose with celebrity. Everything you write in your blog is going to be preceded by "The guy who wrote gmail says..." When you say something that looks like it might become a popular misconception, guys like me will jump up and down, scream, and tear at our hair. Or maybe we'll just post terse, cold, unfriendly corrections. We still like you, though.

My main issue with your post is the way it comes across as saying databases are overengineering for 99% of web sites, but mainly deals with a performance issue that won't matter for 99% of web sites. I would have no problem if you framed it as high tps vs low tps for certain classes of application, not as simplicity vs overengineering. Using a relational database is a fine default choice for web apps today, just as you expect to have an OS on your server by default.
IDEs don't matter much for beginners. I'd say: use whatever you can get working in the shortest time, and start coding. IDLE (shipped with Python) or text editor + interpreter are the two prime contenders for that.
This is a poor article from Paul. I don't know why does he engage in this sort of stuff. Anyway Microsoft is maybe "off the spot" today in some popular stuff, but being "off the spot" is hardly equal to being dead. Microsoft acumulated so much value in their products/services today (built by them and assisted by the whole industry) that it would be crazy to think they are dead. And don't forget that lots of those smart emerging engineers from India, Pakistan etc. end up at Microsoft, soon they will produce interesting results. They have the desktop and without the desktop no browser can run, and they have a large part of the server too and server is where things really matters today, plus development tools & environments. Time will tell...
It looks very impressive, but for me a bit scary. They use some of the exact same concepts we are using for our startup for business in general: Focus on the context around exactly what your are doing. What I didn't notice was whether or not they had built in a system to automatically prioritize tasks for the user based on creating customer value. Without that, it will get overwhelming with a growing number of tasks like any generic task management system does.
Read A List Apart's articles, it's dedicated to people who make websites. This is, "A Guide for New Readers":

http://alistapart.com/articles/ALAprimer
Is justin.tv trying to influence its alexa rank?
Just saw a big yellow banner saying "Go download the Alexa toolbar. It rules!" on the top of their home page. I guess they're taking sides in the statsaholic/amazon fight.
Researchers break Internet speed records
TextMate, or Emacs if you know it.

No, they're not IDEs. But I bet you'll find them to be better than IDEs.
Justin trends down as Ustream begins its ascent
Why does that bother you so much? Most people (89.4%) expect and accept that 73.8% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

(I think all their percentages are too high.)
Yoy may want to watch http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8158216898634409900

I am a Vim + iPython user ... not power user mind you :P
http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=16631
see http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=16631
Oh noes! I have to watch commercials! The pain, the pain.
that is funny!

juwo used to stand for "Julie's World", a 6 year old orphan in Mother Theresa's orphanage in Bangalore, India.

see http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=16631
you are right about, "people in general are mean, or at least they are often different from you. While it can be frustrating, maybe it's better to know the truth than to live on in an illusion."

until you are a success.
EQO (Mobile VoIP and IM) Gets $9 Million Series B
The advantage is that you're not going through the USB bus. The spec says 480Mbit but in real life it's much much lower. Does your rackmount server have quality USB2.0 (heh) or the cheapest 1.1 crap the manufacturer can find (likely)?

On the other hand I don't have hard numbers, just some bonnie tests on random flash sticks I had lying around. Check out the newer USB sticks that are "Readyboost Ready", such as Corsair. They might be quick enough.
Well rms I am from India. Mentality right now is against startups. Working for big companies is considered very
smart and only options out here.
But things are changing out here too. One of my friend quit his job to join a startup.
I do not have the right credentials otherwise i would have setup a YC clone here too.
Make a web page and iterate your design. Go through about 10 cycles of "read stuff about design" and "re-design". Then try another type of website. Different types of sites have different goals. There are business, blog, news, social networking, etc...

Software: I recommend Inkscape for drawing logos, Gimp for manipulating images. Photoshop is much better than either of them if you have the $$$.

Edit: Whoops, meant to reply to the parent thread.
A couple of good books to read too:
1) Don't make me think
2) Designing interfaces (by Tidwell)
3) Defensive design for the web

Anyone have additional books that they've read?
People actually have a pretty good track record of building companies from loans. If you don't know how to make money from your idea then it sounds scary but if you actually have a way to get revenue then it's not. I would guess not having faith in your idea would keep someone away from taking a loan, but if that's the case why are you looking for any kind of funding?
5 Dumb Pickup Lines Entrepreneurs use on Investors
Google is biggest says comScore and Google most powerful brand says Millward Brown
Emacs. Use CUA-mode and tabbar-mode if you aren't familiar with the Emacs keybindings. That's what I do.

I'm also fond of Wingware, but it's a commercial product. I found it wasn't quite enough of an improvement over Emacs to be worth paying for. Also, like many IDEs, it takes a while to bootup and requires a fairly large screen, both of which were annoying on my 1024x768 VMWare-inside-a-laptop instance.
And some wonder why most marketing sucks
The usual acquirers buy whole companies, including the programmers (which are actually the main thing they want). They don't buy just software in asset sales. So the fact that Justin and Emmett didn't want to keep working on the calendar meant that a normal acquisition was out of the question.
Practical advice for growing (not building) an online community
He's joking. He's saying that Poland is to Vienna as Massachusetts is to Silicon Valley.
Google surpasses Microsoft as world's most-visited site
I saw the "Go download the Alexa toolbar. It rules!" banner an hour ago, but now it seems to have been removed.
There's no doubt in my mind that Justin.tv has benefitted Ustream tremendously.
Blinkx, a Video Search Engine, Going For An IPO Via An Unusual Route