skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Your issue regarding the appeal to authority is present in real life to a large degree, and not limited to websites.

Correct, which is why I mentioned the current situation works if you want a model that reflects typical human judgement, including bias and errors.

Removing humans is just a labor-saving feature. If you don't mind spending the time, then human editors can do a good job of it, just like with peer-reviewed journals. Make the score independent of the site's userbase size: e.g. from 1 to 10. No -47s or +581s like on reddit. Comments can also be kept in a useful range, instead of something blindingly obvious getting 80 points and something controversial getting 0 (+20,-20).

The key is always the editors themselves. Quality reflects the average of the editors, which is why you see a regression toward the general population's mean when everyone is imbued with editorial ability. I would be a very good editor for a few subjects and not good at all for most others; multiply that by a million and the overlap gets you the current situation with various social news sites. Pick editors randomly and you get Slashdot. Pick editors carefully and you get Science or Nature.
For better or worse -- better, IMHO -- Buchheit's spec on his blog entry rules out Java. Quote: "Unfortunately, Java applets don't actually work, and after 11 years of not working, I'm not expecting that to change."
My experience is contrary to that. I've deployed applets to the general public with success. (No, not 100 percent, but the same can be said of javascript and flash.)

Try out the link for yourself, though.
Ah, well good luck then. Tallyho!
Not sure why this guy's getting modded down, because he's right. If "matters" is defined as startup success, then code beauty matters nil. If it's defined as "get people to use your programming language without corporate influence", than it matters a great deal.
Hmmm ... I guess I'm not the general public, but I'm running a fairly generic install of Firefox 2.0, and the page comes up with a big grey box with a red X in it. I'm not actually sure why this is, as I'm sure I've had some Java apps working in the past.

Update: Oh, the Java console shows something about an "UnsupportedClassVersionError".
Didn't seem that useful to me. Some slides were incomprehensible (no. 17 ?!?)
Yes, I admit to being a Facebook stalker because of my lack of RL friends and a Zuckerberg hater because of my own insecurity as an technical entrepreneur.

What else do you want from me!?!
A startup in Jenkintown?!? Awesome, I'm in South Jersey (Sicklerville).
Very good comment. I would give it a 9.5 if I could. ;)
My job sucks because I am not the founder and owner of the business.
Who would hire a tech consultant with an AOL email address?
I'm in Melbourne, Australia, but my main developer is in California. We communicate with Skype.

I think user-oriented sites need good communication between designers and coders, so having a native English speaker was a top priority. Additionally I've generally been impressed with US coders. I also needed someone with a good knowledge of multiple programming languages (rather than a 'solve everything with Perl' guy), and AJAX experience which is surprisingly lacking elsewhere (check out the development history of all those Indian and Hungarian companies on eLance - they might be a fifth the price, but they're generally pretty terrible).

Somewhere after public beta I'll head to SF again for a few months, maybe permanently. When I do, my dev team team will already be there.
Noosphere Networks - we're early still. PVD has a small, but burgeoning startup scene. www.providencegeeks.com
Between having Brown U., RISD, and being in between BOS and NYC we have a lot of good ingredients.
I'm also working on a startup in Providence. Do you go to Brown?
No, moved here a couple of years ago from NYC. You?
De Chardin, cool. Noosphere.cc? I'm a Brown grad with some connection still to some Prov. based startups, so if you are needing some connections plz ping me.
Well, not really a startup. And I don't plan to stay long. But still awesome!

:)
I just graduated from Brown. Ive been out in Palo Alto for the summer, but ill be going back to Providence in September. Whats your email?
What was the community for college kids? Usenet?
Harvard's Most Popular Course? Self Improvement
The Entrepreneurial Attitude
My girlfriend works at a little coffee shop called "It's a Grind". Recently a Starbucks moved in right across the street. The owner, John, tacked a letter up on the wall. I thought it was so great and inspiring that I took a picture and decided to share it. Here it is:

====

To: TEAM GRIND

From: John

Guys,

We have had a lot of questions from customers and friends about Starbucks going in across the street. Here are some things you might share with customers, assuming that you agree with them:

1) Starbucks WILL be competition. Will Starbucks get some of our business? -yes. Will we get some of their business? -YES. Our drinks taste better than theirs, our store is nicer and more comfortable and our staff is more friendly. I get a lot of positive comments about our staff-it's doubtful that Starbucks does. These things will keep us competitive in spite of Starbucks brand recognition. An important thing to remember is that many people relate to locally owned businesses. Large international companies like Starbucks have the bottom line (stock price) first in mind and a lot of people don't relate to that.

2) We are doing well with speed of service at the drive-thru. This is important because Starbucks is good at that. We need to make sure we keep it up and maybe get a little better.

3) Our regulars will stay with us-we have a great core of regular customers that know us and this is important. Our core of customers will grow as the area grows.

4) Food-this will be key in differentiating us from Starbucks. We are in the process of getting our menu set up. This will be in place before the end of the month.

5) Every business that I've ever been involved with is competitive-that's the way life is. People who put their tails between their legs and pout never succeed. People with positive attitudes that stay focused almost always succeed.

6) We will not only succeed but we will be thriving 2 years from now. That's because we have a great crew, a superior product and competitive prices. If somebody comes in whining-"You can't compete with Starbucks"-that's baloney and they have a loser attitude. Keep your chin up and don't be afraid of competition!

John

====

One reason this is so great is because John is in his mid-50's. Even at that age, he still has a startup mentality.

Another thing I like is he's rolling out new tactics and trying new things.

Don't be afraid of the competition guys! Get things out there and make them work.
Nope. It's real. I know the guys at Ecamm and they're very, very much for real. One of them knows the ins and outs of Apple's Quicktime vid capture code at least as well as Apple. And no, he's never worked there.

I've known and worked with these guys for years. They're completely above reproach. Scrupulously honest and kickass coders.
That's a good point. There is a big distinction lost on a lot of people between "importance because I like it" and "importance because others like it". The DJ who plays the Electric Slide at your wedding because he like it is the typical example of a guy who can't see outside his own opinions of the world.

I'm not sure how I feel about facebook either (from a technical standpoint, I feel the same way every developer I know feels: "[homer voice] doh! I could have done that in a weekend!"). But given the way its become the sharing medium for a whole generation of college students, it deserves a lot of respect and attention no matter how you feel.
That happens when you try to run a Java app that was compiled with a newer compiler on an older VM. Most likely, the demo was built with Java 1.6 and you've still got 1.5. It's working on my browser.

...It's also slow to load and incredibly clunky. Why, Swing, did you have to reimplement every native widget so that none of them look the way we expect? I think Paul's "no Java applets" remark is on the money here.
Good advice for those of us striving for levels 3-5 (as the vast majority of ycnews readers probably are)...

Stop and imagine how pretentious such advice will be to those - the majority of the population - who are still trying to achieve level 1 and 2. "Follow your dreams" is great advice for those of us who aren't in immediate danger of starving; the worst that can happen if we fail at achieving our dreams will be that we have to settle for a job we find boring and unfulfilling - not a job that's low-paying or dangerous, and definitely not in danger of ending up on the streets.

Not disagreeing with the article, just a bit of perspective... I personally am grateful that I have the opportunity to aim for the top of the pyramid, but many people don't have the luxury to be picky about how they're putting food on the table.
floats your boat
The article is just speculation from an admitted non-coder. I skimmed through the code and I doubt there is anything in there that ConnectU would be interested in.
part shanghai, part silicon valley =)
Spock sign-up flow demonstrates how to scare users away... (by Jeremy Zawodny)
Thanks - I'm pretty hooked in as I'm active in trying to grow the local scene, but am always interested to learn about other new startups around here.
BTW, how do you ping someone on this system? Thanks.
Any good security tips for Rails? :p

(speaking of which, I keep seeing requests for php files in my server logs... bots looking for php apps with known vulnerabilities, I'm guessing... kinda interesting to see).
The founder of Second Cup (a coffee chain in Canada) told us what happened when a Starbucks opened across the street from a current Second Cup.

"The lady was furious. She had invested her entire life savings into the Second Cup, put so much energy into getting her store off the ground, and now when things were finally looking up, Starbucks moved in."

What ended up happening according to Sean O'Dea, the Professor giving us the lecture, was that her Second Cup sales WENT UP 25%. The extra competition somehow begot more coffee sales for both parties.
I'm also in Chicago.
THIS IS TRULY A GLOBAL PHENOMENON. And what we see now is just the start of it. Loving it man.
Christchurch, New Zealand
Makes sense:

When the line at Starbucks is long and yours is short, people come to you.

When people want variety, they come to you. I don't go to the same restaurant in my neighborhood each time - I mix them up. People don't necessarily want the same coffee every day.

Because there are coffee customers in the neighborhood that aren't already yours, you have an audience for your specials and sales that is relatively easy to reach. People won't go five blocks out of their way for a one-day, 20% off sale on bagels, but they might go five feet.

Starbucks marketing is so much more effective than yours that they will attract customers that you never could. Once they're in the neighborhood, these customers are much more likely to come and taste your coffee - after all, if your coffee sucks, they can always spit it out and go back over to Starbucks. If your coffee doesn't suck, some of those customers will become regulars. Many people prefer local shops over chains... if the effort to switch is low, and if you make it easy to switch back.

I remember reading that this is why specialty shops often tend to cluster in specific districts of a city. You would intuitively think that the best spot to open a new store is an underserved location far from existing shops . But, in fact, you're often better off opening a store one block away from your competitor, where there's some pre-existing traffic that is happy to do some comparison shopping. I once talked to a computer store operator who had deliberately set up shop across the parking lot from a new Micro Center, and he told me the same thing.
It's funny that his tag line is "leading through innovation."
Founders at Work - Demo Day
http://www.snopes.com/glurge/chush.asp
You are such a wet blanket! ha ha
SWFUpload has worked awesomely for me:

http://labb.dev.mammon.se/swfupload/
Just in case readers would like the formulas in a simple spreadsheet, I posted it as a download from my server:

http://www.nosnivelling.com/Paul Graham equity formulas.xls
My apologies -- here's a version with a better formatted URL for the Equity Formulas spreadsheet:

http://www.nosnivelling.com/Paul-Graham-equity-formulas.xls
Yes, but who's going to pay the intrepid journalists to go out to Iraq? That's the part of the model that I can't quite figure out yet. If the AP can't sell their content, who's reporting in Angola? Who's covering the un-sexy stuff in Nevada elections, etc.

The other is the issue of aggregation. It might just be that bloggers are the new journalists and Techmeme/GoogleNews are the new New York Times, so maybe it's not a huge problem, but overall, I think most people aren't interested in building up and filtering RSS feeds to find the news they care about.
Close competition validates a business sector. "This intersection has four gas stations--let's stop at one now, like everybody else has."

In fact, like the manager implies, it's more likely that Second Cup will be stealing business from Starbucks than vice versa!

It's very simple. Almost every local and visitor who notices the two coffee shops will automatically think Second Cup must be much better if it's surviving against a franchise setup across the street! Their curiosity will get the better of them. The only way Second Cup can lose is if they have a pessimistic attitude with the customers, because word will spread. The local newspaper will write an article about the coffee business in three months time--it will either say Starbucks is a welcome addition; that they're hurting small businesses; or, in the best case, that both businesses are doing well. It's free publicity in any case.

I think Second Cup will see an increase in out-of-town visitors. A lot of visitors will have already tried Starbucks coffee elsewhere, and when they're asking for recommendations, the locals will recommend 100 Coffee Street where Starbucks and Second Cup are, than Trevor's Coffee at 23 Vine Drive where there's only one option.

But Second Cup won't only benefit from out of town visitors. The locals will respect Second Cup even more for being the little guy. (Remember, until paired up with the big guy, they were just another small business, like a Laundromat.) Next, anybody who wants coffee is now much more likely just to drive down that street, and make up their mind on which business to visit while driving there (customers know they don't have to make a decision until they get there, and if one is closed or busy, the other one will be open.)

Third, businessmen have a safe bet on taking clients to a coffee shop, as well--whether the client wants a Starbucks they're familiar with or a local flavor.

Finally, anybody who runs errands to pick up coffee for a group of employees can easily pickup coffee ordered from either place.

The true business that would be hurt in this case would be a 3rd, lonely coffee shop in that town.
Sanjay Anandaram: 19 Must Read Great Articles for Entrepreneurs A
I once suggested on some blog that the death of newspapers would be tragic because bloggers are almost all writing editorials (and often much better than editors do) but almost never peform reportage. Of course, I got flamed. Of course bloggers are reporters.

But "Reporting" isn't blogging. It isn't even "writing". It's going out, learning about a foreign subject in a day, driving/walking/tramping all over the place, interviewing multiple people, establishing government, police, underworld contacts, getting double and triple confirmation on key facts, adhering to rigorous journalistic ethical standards, etc. That's reporting and it isn't fun, and almost no bloggers do it--just like almost no open source writers write accounting software.

The first fatality will be local news. God knows why anybody subscribes to local papers, but they do serve the purpose of keeping an eye on local politicians, who have a tendency towards corruption. Once the local rags are gone, I dread what will happen to municipal governments...

Does the average blogger want to sit through the Lions' club chicken dinner every Sunday in order to hear the latest about councilman X. Didn't think so...
That's pretty sweet! Good link -- I'll keep that in mind. (Though it doesn't do two of the things Paul was after: open a better file-select dialog, and do local data processing on the file before sending it.)
What are you talking about? PHP5 has some sick OOP features. You gotta take a 2nd look at it friend :-)
Sorda socialistic, don't you think? Oh well,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6cOp6EDFlI
sweet, brett you're my hero
it would be significantly different if you went to college in the facebook era
heh, that is funny!
I'm in St. Louis also, check out this startup weekend we're planning, http://imthere.com/events/557-48-hour-startup

I'm also mostly giving up on St. Louis and moving to the Bay Area on the 18th.
> When the line at Starbucks is long and yours is short, people come to you.

That runs counter to the theory that "no one wants to eat an empty restaurant". Maybe it's different for coffee though?
Here's what I think:

People need to understand that when traveling through life--whether by car, aging, networking, degrees, promotions, dating)--it doesn't matter where you actually are. At all. It never has, and it never will. Those photos you took are pointless. If pictures are worth a thousand words, then people are worth a billion photos. A few photos a day just can't capture what you're thinking, the social context, the general mood, your thoughts and feelings, the state of the economy, foreign relations, what you just did 5 minutes prior, what you just ate, what your friends are up to off-camera, if the person next to you smells like they're drunk, the charge on your cell phone, your status with friends and family, etc.

Photos give the illusion of defining you at a point in time, but they are NOT a virtual machine or an environment like Squeak--they're just a screen shot--and not what the person's doing, either, but what what's visible for that split second of time.

The big problem, then, is that people judge themselves by what they would look like if somebody were to take a photo of them, and not by where they're going. In fact, people are doing everything they can to impede where they're going--buying anti-age cremes, spending money so they don't have to take the responsibility of saving it, which might otherwise make them feel older. So, people are always focusing on looking like they have never made any progress in their lives.

However, when traveling through life--whether by car, aging, networking, degrees, promotions, dating)--it doesn't matter where you actually are. At all. It never has, and it never will.

The only two things that matter are the direction and velocity. Therefore, you always have to make the best choices you can for your life, when buying things, socializing, and business. Look at what's stopping you, decide your options, and pick the best overall choice, and if you really can't see a better way, then do the option that is easier. Then move on. Life is better than any video game because you have infinite choices in infinite areas. The key is to hurry up and make a choice, and move on to the other 230 trillion choices you have.

If you know you like a shirt, and the fit and price range is good, but you can't decide between red and blue, pick one randomly and move on. Who cares what it will look like when somebody takes a photo of you?
in the Cloud!
Facebook Grows Up: Can It Stay Relevant?
Anyone willing to chat?
Just looking for some smart folks to chat and share some ideas with...

email is: kbeshay@gmail.com
AOL/Yahoo: hybridxaos
I think Netflix is built in Java (at least part of it), because:

1) When you log in, you will get redirected to a .jsp page

2) Netcraft identifies Netflix server as Apache Coyote, which is the Tomcat connector (Tomcat is Apache's Java-based web server)

http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=www.netflix.com
I've heard video capture on the iPhone is possible, but only at 4fps. So if these guys are getting better than that I'd be interested to see how...

Regardless, this is very impressive if true. No doubt programs like this are starting to put pressure on Apple to make an official move with an open SDK.
> One reason this is so great is because John is in his mid-50's. Even at that age, he still has a startup mentality.

Wow! Even at that age? I'm surprised he's even still alive!

Seriously, this is a weird bit of bigotry. I'm mostly surprised when I see the start-up mentality in anybody; it's rare in all age groups, not just the AARP-ready.
In what way is the older version better?
How many folks here have organized or help run a BarCamp?

We're planning another for Phoenix at the end of this year (though there's little chance this will be a true round-the-clock sleepover deal).
"... 'Reporting' isn't blogging. It isn't even 'writing'. It's going out, learning about a foreign subject in a day, driving/walking/tramping all over the place, interviewing multiple people, establishing government, police, underworld contacts, getting double and triple confirmation on key facts, adhering to rigorous journalistic ethical standards, etc. ..."

Great points. This is one reason 'serious journalism' is threatened. Reduction of news teams, outsourcing of news bureaus, foreign correspondents mean the tasks you mention are not done to the same level. WIll the profession bounce back, adapt? Of course the next generation ( http://www.holovaty.com/resume ) are already at it and there is always the BBC, CBC and ABC.
Here's the quickie test: Do you tend to position things as binary options (e.g., Ninjas & Pirates), trinary options ( Ninjas, Pirates, Zombies), or some further set of choices?

There seems to be some difference between those who tend towards the X vs. Y view, and those who tend to see more than simply two options.
a/s/l???
13/wookie/nova scotia
That is his obtuse way of saying you don't have to use an RDBMS. You will still use some sort of database of course (Filesystem, BDB ... etc).
The death of the dot-com IPO
Gent, Belgium
Scoble booted from PodTech?
Did Robert scoble really get fired from PodTech. One thing is that PodTech did revive under him from the boring website and a startup company.
melb ~ au
Facebook does it that way, too. Everybody does it. I don't like it, though.
I don't get it either. Probably a sign that I am older than I think. A few years back it was pokemon and WWF which my younger brothers were crazy about. Now it's Facebook. Getting old was never supposed to be easy, I guess I need to face up to it now.

I get linkedin. Don't use it much, but I get it. Don't get myspace, it's like my daughter's messy room.

What depresses me is that there is a whole range of ideas that I will always overlook. These are to do with people unlike me. I just don't seem to have a appreciation for what they need.

I find it hard to start solving problems that don't impact me personally.
The future of C++, according to its creator
I care about it in the sense that it's a privacy nightmare. That's why I don't use it.

They are getting people to voluntarily do what they couldn't compel them to do through legislative means: build dossiers on themselves and submit them to a corporation; and thanks to recent anti-terror acts of dubious constitutionality, government will be able to look at that information when they want to. Combine with Twitter for play-by-play of your whereabouts and actions, and Loopt to geolocate you everywhere you go.

It's a surveillance society that the innocent invited upon themselves uncynically.
chicago... kinda
Hamburg, Germany
Is Glam the Boo.com of Web 2.0 or Worth a $1bln ad deal?
Book by an author who has the most popular class at Harvard
Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting

(via the Daily Show)
Portland, Maine (seriously) and SF/Mountain View, CA.