skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That's not true at all. Look at the WSJ versus your local paper. In the WSJ they advertise Bentleys. In your local paper they advertise the local sporting goods store.

Ads don't need to be relevant to content. That's the ultimate mistake with adwords. Ads need to be relevant to readers. WSJ readers are, with high probability, richer than the readers of other papers. So they want bentleys, no matter what they are reading about.
Mississippi bridge falls, government was warned - TvByDemand | Forums | News
yeah, it's all flash. But couldn't an RSS generator at least check the date the page was updated from the headers?
Why work at Facebook? "Pre-IPO" is the right answer (Video)
A Founding Family Fractures
It's insane how much you can accomplish with Rails now, and with these new changes it'll be even better.

Yeah, Rails suffers a syndrome of "You can only do these predefined things, in this way", but they're covering more and more ground in terms of what you can do.

I predict faders will be a big thing in the near future. People fading colors from one state to another state depending on the context, and fading expansion and contraction of objects on a page, instead of sharp, sudden transitions. Implementing them in Javascript by hand is not fun, so the addition of that to RJS will be great.
Malcolm Gladwell rarely says anything too revolutionary, but he always says it in such an engaging and fascinating way as to make what we already know seem amazing. The 'tale of a user who doesn't know what he wants' always reminds me of an old Simpsons episode where Homer gets to design his own car. Perhaps that could be a definition for 'popular science': that which is suitable for consumption via the Simpsons.

Still, one of my favorite anecdotes from Blink is the tale of the identical ice cream: the same ice cream was wrapped in two different packages, one plain, the other fancy, and taken around to the public for taste tests. People actually reported that the ice cream in the 'fancier' package _tasted_ better. What's great about this story is that it's an excellent way to explain to someone the value of beauty to usability. Given two functionally identical products, users will believe that one is _easier to use_ simply by virtue of it being aesthetically pleasing. I once saw a presentation at a UPA (Usability Professionals Assoc) Conference where a study showed just that - a product with identical information architecture was run through two usability tests: one where the product had a rudimentary look and feel, and one where the look and feel had been touched up by a graphic designer. User data showed that people felt the prettier version was easier for them to use, even though it took them the same time to complete tasks in both versions. Now, as an interaction designer myself, I would hope this argument is never used to dismiss the importance of interaction design and information architecture. We can't use aesthetics to 'put lipstick on the pig,' as one of my coworkers is fond of saying. But if you've taken the time to make a really usable product which meets a user need, imagine how much people will love it if you ALSO make it beautiful. That, for me, is the definition of a "delightful experience."
grandfather clauses?
7 Years of paulgraham.com (via archive.org)
What do you want a lawyer for and where are you located?
Firehose: Slashdot Launches Digg Clone
"if you have a hard time deciding whether to do one thing or the other, always choose the harder thing. That way, you rule out being lazy."

This has always made me uncomfortable. There is no inherent value in doing hard things. The basic argument is that doing hard things prevents you from doing easy things only because they are easy.

However, this strikes me as being very similar to the Monty Hall paradox. Let's say you have a billion options to choose from. To expect that the hardest option would be your best bet would be absurd. So why should it work any better for choosing between two options?
http://advertising.wsj.com/audience/index.html

Print subscribers' average net worth: 2.4M.
Facebook isn't AOL; it's Visual Basic.
What's the name of your mentor?
The meaning of life is to do everything you can to make sure the people you care about love you back." X Warren Buffet
Well, our creator is at least a type 4 civilization that is exploiting the existence of our universe to generate energy in some way. I think the ultimate purpose of humanity is to trigger the big crunch so we can exploit the infinite computational power you get from a contracting universe. Plus it would be pretty cool to be reunited with all the other matter and energy as one.

Or we're the biproduct of an axiomatic system like our mathematics.

Either way, I strongly doubt the entities superior to us, inside or outside of our universe, care about or even notice our worship. But hey, if it makes you feel better, it doesn't bother me, as long as you're not telling me who I can or can't marry or holding back fundamental scientific research.
eBaum's guy was the biggest thief on the internet :( Sad to see him rewarded.
Creating Web 2.0 Buttons in Linux with Xara Xtreme
Good heavens. Maybe this is why they don't seem to care that their subscriber-only articles are invisible to the rest of the world. I thought they were just backward, but maybe the WSJ is in effect a luxury product.

Come to think of it, though, those numbers could as easily imply that their average reader is very old. So maybe they are backward.
I thought that it was interesting that they didn't even mention Meebo (instead they mentioned AIM Express, which sucks) Just shows you what you are up against in gaining mainstream adoption.
"ANSI Common Lisp"
Is there a bookstore in or near Cambridge where I'm likely to be able to walk in tomorrow and find a copy of ANSI Common Lisp? I expect I'll have to order it online, but I'm feeling impatient.
Never wake a sleeping child. It's never worth it.
[New YC startup] Listen To Your Music anywhere on the web with Anywhere.FM
Is this Federated Media's new conversation? 
Over the past few months, we have debated the campaigns that Federated Media has run. The buzz today is about WebbAlert, a daily video show by FM publisher Morgan Webb. It seems most of the blogs discussing the show are FM blogs and most of the links from the show are also to FM blogs. Should there be disclosure on the video blog noting the links?
Though it takes a fair amount of time, I've found that a blog is a good place to recruit (as it provides potential recruits some insight into the company).
Xobni's Facebook app replaces Facebook messaging with email
It's not about updation date. It's about content. The RSS generator will "scrape" indexable content, viz HTML. It cannot read Flash content (because its embedded in a non-standard format), just like a search engine bot (Google) can't.
OMG! OMG! This is, like, the best thing ever.
An NPR story I heard the other day brought up a related factor in their stubbornness to go free: unlike most other newspaper subscriptions, most WSJ subscriptions either get paid for by an employer or are written off.
Very cool, and very simple... I wonder if Facebook will appreciate it though ;)
great work guys. my comment on TC got blocked (they must have our IP on some spam list or something), but it basically said: awesome.
Cool. Is legal precedent such that this is definitely legal?
There is always an economic incentive for violating the law. It takes a certain amount of bravery or lack of risk aversion to skirt the edge of legality. Someone has to push the political agenda of the Pirate Party and the more money they have, the more they can change the world.

This artificial scarcity of media doesn't make any sense. Why should something that I can get for free cost money?
Interesting. I remember their office being vandalized and the war with another site (YTMND?). eBaum does have a lot of stolen content, but guess who got the last laugh?
Yelp Creates an API for Domainers for the SEO value
Amazing site, beautiful interface. Great work guys!
If you are trying to decide between two things, a good trick is to flip a coin. Assign one choice to heads and the other to tails. You'll find yourself subtly "hoping" for one choice over the other. Decision made.
Looks great. My one complaint so far is that I can't just choose a directory to upload. (yes, I know why this is impossible with browser features, but it's what I expect from a music player) Oh, and it only seems to accept .mp3 files -- I've got a fair number of .ogg, .wma, .aac, etc. That's probably my computer's doing, though, since it wouldn't be a very good iTunes clone without insisting on .aac.
Wow, this is really sharp-looking stuff. I like Flash for this kind of one-window interface - very responsive. Certain other sites have a UI that's like slogging through mashed potatoes. Good work.

Say, I'd like to experiment with Flash stuff but I have to admit I am totally Macromedia-illiterate. Does anyone know what tools are used to build apps like this?
Actually, upon further investigation, it doesn't seem to let me upload anything at all. The response seems to vary between remaining at 0 progress indefinitely and crashing firefox. I'm guessing this is another no-linux site for now, probably because of flash.

Oh well. My laptop goes everywhere, anyway.
Netvibes Launches Facebook Widget, Challenges Lock-In
The advice wasn't "always choose the harder thing". Obviously that's not correct, even generally speaking.

Note the part where you're supposed to do this _when you have a hard time deciding_.
Adobe Flex.
The first suggestion that comes to mind is to automate as much of the process as possible. I rarely use social bookmarking sites because, 1) they waste more time than they save, and 2) I don't have the patience to sort through the details of URL submission.

See if you can develop a heuristic to determine a user's favorite sites based on their browsing patterns. Convolve that into a set of browser extensions and expose the user data through a web front-end. Make personalized suggestions based on user history. Auto-generate site summaries by looking at page markup (size of fonts, page title), that sort of thing.
See, I didn't even know that -- you can tell how ancient I am for even referring to Macromedia. Thanks.
How Google Reduces Complexity A
I wonder whose credit card is on the Amazon S3 account. They must be very brave.
This must be (by far) the most interesting and unusual piece of text I've ever seen on ycombinator.
Matchmaking for VCs and Startups
All receive advice. Only the wise profit from it. --Syrus
I am in love. this is making my life better. thank you.
Get Your Business Online for Less Than $200
Note that they use "average" instead of median.

I'm sure more super-rich people read it than super-poor people, so this average is a bit aliased.
Self-employed lead bankruptcies
Agreed. Reminds me of a rule of thumb I have. That is, any sentence starting with 'I think' involves no thinking.
Really slick CSS positioning debugger as a bookmarklet (for Firefox and Safari)
Mother reunites with son via Facebook
"... A total of 59.8 per cent of small businesses with a turnover of $50,000-$200,000 and which were founded in 2003, were bankrupt three years later, according to the Bureau of Statistics study, Counts of Australian Businesses ..."

Misleading in a way. Australian small businesses don't really count as tech-startups. But startups do go out of business quickly. The key difference between the US and AU is the real stigma attached to failure is AUS compared to the US. This is one are I really admire about the idea behind US entrepreneurship, "you fail to success". In AUS once you fail you are written off - such is the backwards conservative nature of business (lack of understanding, avoidance of risk. Fear rules.)
Open Laszlo is another choice.
I hear that The Wisdom of Crowds has good reviews...
heh ;)
That group enemy link is really insightful. Mod parent up :)
Same problems using The Linux, which is my desktop and laptop. Although I'm happy to have it finally Flash 9 for The Linux has all sorts of issues. Adobe's to blame.
"Fortune favors the brave" and all that. They're setting themselves up to be wildly popular and in a deep financial crisis at the same time. I guess it beats obscurity.

Let the VC gods lift up their countenance upon them!
I agree. The terms are way too restrictive for much use in a mashup. I wish they would revise them because I would love to develop some cool services using the Yelp API. I understand the need to protect ones IP but as an API thier current terms are not very conducive to development and developers needs.
Yup, file upload works in IE6 under wine, though. I used IEs4Linux, which you can get at http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/page/Main_Page . I also use this for web development work, and it's great, besides the obvious.
Web4.0 -- The Semantic Web
He's missing the point. User reviews are as much about the reviewer as they are about the object of the review. All the same it's important to remember that there are many people like this guy.
Seems like a good strategy for raising money quickly. The Techcrunching certainly doesn't hurt. Of course, the site is down as a write this.
Amazon's Flexible Payments Service -- move over PayPal?
That's easy: the meaning of life is doing cool stuff, and not doing stuff that sucks or is lame.

It's funny because it's true.
Market research survey tools
I haven't played with the sandbox or signed up yet, but from the docs it actually looks really good: send and receive money, support for a kind of micro-payments, significantly cheaper transaction fees than PayPal in most cases ... hmmm, cool.
Long time reader, first time poster..

Does anybody know any good (free) online market research tools? A site that allows you to create a market survey with a dozen or so questions, and then send it out to your friends/colleagues/long lost acquaintances?

n
If a Web startup makes money with AdSense it means people are visiting its website. The delivery of content that people want is a business model, regardless of where the money eventually comes from.
It seems like the author would find traditional, client-based applications more useful than server-side Web applications. The whole point of the latter is to use everyone's data to make software more useful, and if he doesn't care about everyone else's input, there's no need to connect to the Web.
Youtube for high quality video (plug-in install required)
Also see http://www.joox.net which is an index of particularly good videos from Stage6.
Some of the example applications he gave kick ass.
One of the techcrunch comments said that the itunes UI is patented.[0] Any thoughts on this?

Anyways, it's very cool and useful. grats.

[0] http://v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?IDX=WO02061563&CY=gb&...
Looks amazing. And not a single negative comment on Techcrunch?!
Perl advocacy, smells like blub.
Any1 working on/has a "hardware" tech startup?
Plaxo Prepares To Launch Pulse Social Network - Will Users Trust It?
Docstoc Says Big Round Of Funding Coming (competes with YC-funded Scribd)
99% of entrepreneurs are working on web apps. Is there any1 here whoz tech startup involves building hardware.
Not one, but many "gPhones" in the works
But the time factor difference is huge.

Suppose you bootstrap a company or take a small amount of investment with the goal of creating an on-going business (i.e. the exact opposite of "built to flip").

You need to focus on making money sooner rather than later.

OTOH, if you're acquired, not only do you have more time to figure it out, but you have more resources at your disposal.
"Why should something that I can get for free cost money?"

Are you for real?
Oil is something that is truly scarce... there is only so much oil to go around. Same with food and water. Our economy is based on the scarcity of energy.

An MP3 only has artificial scarcity. The energy it costs to copy an MP3 is infinitesimal. The point of the artificial scarcity is to allow the artist to make money by selling his information. In an economy with no scarcity, this doesn't work. The artist needs to make money by selling something that is scarce, like a live performance.
Buxfer + Amazon = Transfer money online (Free till Aug 31) 
With Amazon Payments, you can accrue balances in an online account (similar to your Paypal account balance). Transfers involving Amazon accounts are instantaneously processed as well.

You can read more about it at:
http://www.buxfer.com/blog/2007/08/03/buxfer-amazon-settle-y...

Regardless of what this means for Buxfer, we think it's a good step forward in challenging the Paypal monopoly.
(book) Essentials of Programming Languages
What is the difference between what you are saying and a simple web form that emails you the answers, or even simpler, just putting the questions in an email?
wufoo.com?
So when you're done making your web app everyone can have a copy of the code ... right?
I don't think it's a very good comparison. Everyone can "view source" and see the html code used to display the site. They can't get the actual code that creates the app's functionality, in the same way that you can't decompile an MP3 and get the instrumental tracks that make it up.
Yeah, this seems to be the only question. The interface is wonderful and it's instantly useful to me, but I can't imagine this will be allowed to stand as is.

Though I would have said the same thing about YouTube...
Yahoo Should Dig into Bank Account to Dig Out
Web 2.0 Means User-Driven
A lot of companies find themselves in the position of having forums, discussion groups and developer communities that are not sponsored by them or hosted under their domain. A lot of them probably don't take these networks seriously. This is wishful thinking. We've always known that word of mouth and independent opinions are more powerful than formal marketing programs. Web 2.0 is just the latest reflection of that reality.
Slow Down to Increase Office Productivity
We rush so fast we miss it all. Everyone knows how busy we all are nowadays. The TrackSuit CEO wants to shoot for the stars and still spend his life with his family, and somehow this seems to me the most reasonable thing in the world. How to achieve this?
My take on the article is that what he needs/wants is a web 2.0 application that would save him time, like a business productivity app.
Startup pace: Go Fast, but Don't Hurry
My team is sure to crack a smirk every time someone asks me what our timeline is. They smirk because they know exactly how I'm going to respond. I say, "we like to go fast, but we don't hurry".
Before I resigned, I used to work in a hardware startup: i-conserve (i-conserve.com) that I founded. Basically, i-conserve is working on a wireless sensor suite using ZigBee to measure, control, and conserve energy.

Why do you ask?
Taking votes on Anywhere.FM
So I just visited the Anywhere.FM beta site which is funded by Y Combinator, and I must admit I was pretty impressed with what I saw. Their concept is pretty simple, have users upload their music, then be able to access it from anywhere. When I'm not working on the next big thing I work as a consultant for military companies, and I'm not allowed to bring in items such as camera phones with music players, or anything that can store sensitive data.. i.e. music player with USB interface. I always enjoy listening to music while I work, and Anywhere.FM has created the perfect solution for me and probably alot of others.

I'm putting my money on the guys at Anywhere.FM (nice job)

what's your thoughts?
probably just the music store -- and probably just some small part of it.

there are plenty of good interfaces
Web Design: The Human Approach
Things to do:
-Support other media formats
-Open a long-tail store, i.e. letting people upload and give out their work
-Make a better uploader (mine seems to be blocked at work)
Hey guys - This is Sachin chiming in from the Anywhere.FM team. So we are a legit service. There are several digital music locker services that allow you to upload your music and play it anywhere. This model has been followed by all these companies and is allowed because you are playing your own music online. In terms of the sharing and Friend Radio features, we are actually paying radio station licensing fees to the music industry.
Perfection is difficult
oh i absolutely love this app. fantastically well executed.

i had implemented a version of this - nowhere close to as pretty - for our internal use at CMU (our group still actively uses it), but i am going to switch now. please, please allow bookmarking of songs soon (just noting the metadata of course.) cause there's lots of quality stuff to be discovered soon!
This is something that was mentioned in the wsj article as well:

>As you would expect, Google is not ready to become a cellular provider just yet. Even if the company succeeds at the 700MHz spectrum auction, it will be a long time before it can compete with the likes of Verizon or AT&T as a carrier. Infrastructure can't be built overnight.

Here's a theory: if google wins the 700MHz auction, they just buy one of the carriers for their infrastructure. Is this feasible?
I was referring to all your code, not just the HTML. Which, of course, you wouldn't want people copying no matter how easy or hard it is to do. After all, your app will be the result of months of your hard work and effort. The same is true of music.
Your Executive Summary: Overview of Funding Status
Are There Holes In Your Network?
Apple playing 'chord' patterns with future devices?
One of the startups we funded this summer is working on hardware.
I understand his point, but I think he supports it poorly. Of course a product that has 1 review is not likely to benefit greatly from that single review. But when I buy a product, or book a hotel, I look at dozens of reviews from other people and I get a good sense of the pros and cons of what I might buy. I can then gauge those perspectives against what is important to me. And I find that overall they are almost all correct -- in aggregate.
For me this had the opposite of the intended effect. Before I read it all I was thinking was "You don't hear as much about Perl lately." Now it's "Perl seems to be sinking."
Crowd-buying a sports team (awesome concept)
i work in a startup that has hardware components. that said, we're not "building" hardware, we're mixing off the shelf stuff.
It's been tried before, unsuccessfully so far: http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9909/28/love.the.jets.idg/...
Plaxo's Pulse To Get Going On Monday (Plaxo's new Social Network)
This is more realistic. They dont need $500 million (as stated in your link) to buy a team. If you look at the numbers involved it is much more attainable.
I think it's less to do with the amount than post-sale management/operational issues.

Imagine the debate over whether or not to sign a particular player, e.g.

Still, it's an idea with appeal: it would be great to be a part-owner of my favorite teams.
I found cromatic's article fairly weak. It's basically impossible to get past the amount of uncoolness Perl has collected and not really worth trying. But I use it and enjoy it tons despite the snide remarks I must endure. A small price to pay in my opinion.

It's obvious to anyone being honest that the main reason most people don't like Perl is for the same laughable reason they don't like Lisp: the syntax looks scary at first. Few people really get past that point without coming to at least respect its power.

For web development I'm using Catalyst[1] DBIx::Class[2] and Template Toolkit[3] combined with CPAN[4] it's an unstoppable combination. Most of my work is plugging modules together cleanly. My code is small, efficient, and rock solid.

I've dabbled with Python and Ruby quite a bit but I just don't find significant advantages and missing CPAN always hurts. It's good that there are lots of people writing Python and Ruby code now. In 5 years there might be enough libraries to make them as useful as Perl is today.

1. http://search.cpan.org/dist/Catalyst-Manual/lib/Catalyst/Man...

2. http://search.cpan.org/~mstrout/DBIx-Class-0.08003/lib/DBIx/...

3. http://template-toolkit.org/docs/manual/Intro.html

4. http://search.cpan.org/