skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm no MSFT fanboy, but Silverlight does seem to be a real step up from Flash, which is the next closest thing out there. I agree that it's extremely premature for anyone to say something like "Silverlight will be the platform of choice for developers who build rich Internet applications", but it would not surprise me if Silverlight gains wide adoption (as long as it truly is as cross-platform as Microsoft claims).

Of course, it's possible that the APIs and development tools suck despite all the hoopla and good features. I haven't looked at the beta SDK.
That's not what I'm saying. I agree that Digg shouldn't censor it. My point is that the original poster shouldn't have posted it.

Clearly, the intention of this particular number is to steal. It's not enough that pirates steal, but they have to publicize their behavior and tactics and encourage others to follow them. It's this type of publicity that fools people into thinking that somehow digital piracy isn't equivalent to walking into Best Buy and shoplifting.

I can only hope that one day these characters get caught and have to face the MPAA in court.
My guess its the latter. I can't imagine big companies acquiring for the sake of it without doing some serious research.
Dayum this is useful! thanks!
It won't be long before they bundle it with IE and then start adding features that only work with IE. I don't think microsoft has the patience to do it any other way.

Also it's now becoming clear why microsoft was never interested in putting support for SVG in IE.
Digg Surrenders to Mob
'Cool kids' of the tech world
Great hand-drawn map of social network world
Diggmob is what makes Digg,DIGG.
Why do hackers buy Macbooks even though they really suck? So are they really hackers,even Sergey Brin uses a Windows XP pc...!
Do you use Google or Live or Yahoo! What does it tell about your personality
Wow, this is huge. I honestly think we might be witnessing a turning point in the history of the web - it almost reminds me of the french revolution. The masses are rioting, and torching the digital property of the elite. And those hex numbers have become this movement's rallying call.

What we know is that with 2.0, control over online content has been handed to the users. What we don't know is how the users will decide to wield this power, and the effect it will have on the likes of digg/youtube/etc.
Does anyone know what Diggmob.org is all about ?
I'm not sure I'd put it up against the French Revolution, but I'd say it's a nice reaffirmation that it's all about your users. You have to be very careful when it comes to enforcing rules and restrictions.
The point is, the act of dating is all about getting social.Dating is a subset of getting social.Hence, dating and social networking cannot really be called two different industries.
our idea is connecting tons of teens all over the world

http://teenwag.com
I'm reading promising things about Silverlight. Blowing it off because it's from Microsoft would be a mistake, though it'd be wise to be wary considering failed promises of the past.

I want to read more on hands-on SDK experiences before I think any more of it.
At Google, it's all about location, location, location
HeardOnTV.com - Music from your favorite TV shows
Revolution is a bit strong, after all they're just sat down clicking away at a digg button. It is however interesting to see so many people object to DRM & DMCA. I'm curious as to the legal outcome, after all its just a number being shared.
Equip your server with cheap 128+GB RAM that preserves application state upon restart
Invite to "Launch: Silicon Valley 2007"
Just got this email, sent to our site's contact address.

Since it says "Please forward this invite to others who could benefit" and is probably of interest to people here, I'm including it below, in its entirety:

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Launch: Silicon Valley 2007 - Your Gateway to Funding & Beyond
Date: Wed, 02 May 2007 16:53:53 +0530
To: info@seeksift.com

SVASE and Garage Technology Ventures

Co-present

Launch: Silicon Valley 2007- Your Gateway to Funding & Beyond

Create the Buzz; Raise the Money and Build your Business

www.launchsiliconvalley.org

June 5, 2007

Microsoft Campus in Mountain View, CAI

If you think you have developed a cool technology and want the world to discover you, this is the time to do it. SVASE and Garage Technology Ventures open the doorway to success for you -Launch: Silicon Valley, (www.launchsiliconvalley.org ), Bay Area's premier launch event, on June 5th at Microsoft campus in Mountain View, CA, presents the most keenly awaited event by VCs and investment community. This event is designed to give you an opportunity to meet, network and showcase your product to all the Movers & Shakers of not only the venture world but also the corporate world and the Blogosphere.

Business Benefits:

By attending this event, you will have the opportunity to:

a.. To make a presentation directly in front of VCs, Angel Investors, M&A Executives, Senior Corporate Biz Dev Executives, Bloggers, Press and potential business partners.
b.. In addition, the CEOs of the companies voted "most promising new company" in each of the six sessions at the event will also receive invitations (for two) to attend the prestigious Ernst & Young "Entrepreneur of the Year" Gala Dinner on June 29 at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco.
c.. To showcase products and services
d.. To be recognized as one of the most exciting startups

Please forward this invite to others who could benefit. Thank you.

Please submit 2 page executive summary before May 3rd, 2007.

Launchsv@svase.org
Voting is the core concept of any Democracy. Voting is Democracy in action.If Clicking Digg button sounds silly , thats because we are living in a pretty advanced world, although we don't care.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman
Ack, I want in and no one I know is in.

Can someone invite me please? joost@zemaj.com
Why Did Friendster Fail?
We want a developer to come to YC with us
There's a funny line where a social networking startup has a meeting with a VC.

The startup guys claim they're going to the next MySpace.

But the VC isn't impresseed, he retorts "Tell me why you aren't going to be the next Friendster" !
I like your color scheme and your design a lot. There is nothing bad about it, except perhaps giving the text in the box more room to breathe. This must be a trick question, because the design is so good.

So please send me an invite. :) (hoan@ton-that.org)
You have to be open and honest with your users rather than "careful".
YouTube Shocker: Chase Bank Records Found In Trash
How the Internet took over
Vista-Based PC Games Could Blow Consoles Out of Water
Defense Department Working on High-Tech Lie Detectors
MySpace Launches Beta Version of Chinese Edition
Here's why the business relationship with consultants is upside down
But will they open source it, like Adobe did with Flex?

Making it cross-platform (in the short term) is a great strategy, because then, if it gains acceptance, they can force you back on Windows in the long run (assuming it stays closed during that time span).
YouTube adds Active Sharing feature to videos
I think this could be the future of dating...
Thanks RMS. I signed up.
Google re-branding personal home page, adding widget maker
So you control the entire server as root, you get 1 TB of bandwidth, and it's $50 a month?

Wow, that's the best combination so far... they do skimp on RAM and HD size, compared to some of the others.

Is it too good to be true? What disadvantages or problems have other people seen?
HP touts new mold for the chip industry
So the lesson is that every single developer should rewrite all of their complicated code (the code which uses closures and circular referencing) so that the major browser developers can avoid writing a good GC algorithm?

It reminded me of this story from the Jargon File:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/koans.html#id3141202

So we should believe that browser developers are no more advanced than students from the 70s?
I got this as a comment on my blog. Is this the beginning of startup spam?
Webby Award winners: Mentos, ninjas, and 'The Office'
I've been looking for a reason to leave Chase ever since they bought out Bank One. I had no problems with Bank One, banking with them for several years. I then got a credit card with Chase that was attached to my checking account, and after one payment that was a day late, they raised my APR from 0% (intro) to 24%. Calling them and mentioning that I had been a long-time customer did no good. Now that I've paid off the card and seen this submission, I'm at the point where I'm ready to end my associations with Chase altogether.
Why they think Friendster failed: the mostly non-technical board of directors did lots of bone-headed things.
I think it just reflects how hard it is to get attention these days.

I didn't mind it because it was fairly novel (mail we get to that address is usually either a feature request or a user complaint), and seemed legit.

But if tons of other groups start advertising their events this way, it could get tiring, fast.
I still don't understand how startups without hackers work.
Interesting read. Sadly, the article's chart takes figure distortion to new levels. (is that even deliberate?)

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2006/10/14/business/15friend_Chart_ready.html
You may say the DMCA is a bad law. I'm inclined to agree. And if you choose to violate a bad law and risk the consequences, you'll be in some heroic company. But demanding that someone else, like Digg, violate the law and risk the consequences in your place seems a bit low.
But even Flash for Linux seems like a low priority -- the latest version (9?) for Linux was released long after the Windows and Mac versions were done.
The author writes, "I am a long-time developer."
The guy says he's a developer, so maybe they just need another one?
I don't think Second Life is anywhere near as big as Warcraft, and perhaps not even as big as some other mmogs. It just got tons of press and positive exposure. The game seemed to be unusually interesting to journalists, politicians, and other high-profile people.

The most recent estimates I've found put regular users somewhere around 310,000, which does mean it's growing pretty fast but it's also not even in the same league as WoW which had 8.5 million during the same timeframe. In other words to compare the 6 million figure given by Second Life, it might make more sense to compare box sales.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199203108&subSection=All+Stories

http://mmorpgchart.com/
Hmm, never noticed poor disk performance. I'm not doing much with the server besides web and SVN right now, but it's something to keep in mind. Thanks.

Good guys though.
Whats the best option for customised Web analytics? (Ruby on Rails or otherwise)
Looking into doing some more detailed analytics and I was wondering what methodology people use.

I find Google Analytics a bit too limiting and would rather just have the raw data. Was considering just writing to a table, that I clear and analyse overnight (in the appl. controller for the ror's among us), but my business partner is worried that would not scale.

Feels like something everyone must come across although I can't find a library for it or a good article on what options the best. Maybe I am overthinking the issue.
FeedLounge Says Goodbye
Because as far as we know, an arbitrary sequence of digits will eventually show up in the decimal expansion of pi. So if you can copyright a number, anyone who can calculate pi is a criminal.
Digg and Elance seemed to turned out okay despite being founded by non-hackers
Hi Guys,

I am the author and also a developer. Doesn't mean there isn't enough love for more though ;)

Peter Nixey
Silverlight on Linux? We're in, says Mono founder
Microsoft piles on tools for Silverlight in Adobe rivalry
More than an open-source curiosity (Mono - .net on Linux?)
Thanks for the feedback on simplicity. That's the main thing I'm working on. It started out as something for me, and I'm massaging it into something for everybody.

About your botanical garden photos -- I don't expect to compete with flickr for that kind of situation, where several hundred photos are from one event and thus don't really need organizing. Several hundred photos that could be organized for you by date is the kind of need I address.
How much stock are you offering? $50K is a very small salary for a developer in Boston.

EDIT: What I was really trying to ask is whether they are looking for a true co-founder or just a paid developer. My original question came out malformed, in retrospect.
Sorry about the 5 duplicate comments - technical error, apparently.
edgeztv - here is a chance to join a YC funded startup building a kickass product and be pretty much employee no: 1 ie a cofounder and you are cautious about salary.

Grab this kind of opportunity with both hands - pete and his team are a smart bunch with an awesome idea. Salary considerations ahouldn't be in your head when you are assessing the opportunity. Isn't $50k nough to live off?
I don't care about the salary - I care about the stock, which, if you read carefully, is the focus of my question :)

I would be happy on 50k if I had say 10-20% of the company. I would not be happy with 50k, however if it was 5% or less.

(Of course this all also largely depends on the idea, which I don't know about yet)
Even worse, pi contains a (binary) program that hacks DRM, so Mother Nature is with us!
If you're interested in applying then please do get in touch and tell us more about yourself Edgeztv.

Sumon, thanks for the kind comments :)
Anatomy of the Digg Crisis
FeedLounge shuts down
Digg and Elance were both founded by very technical people though, even if they weren't technically coders. Same thing with Squidoo (Seth Godin was actually a CS major in college IIRC).
Check out techmeme http://www.techmeme.com/070502/p5#a070502p5

cant help imagining how much press coverage Digg has got on this issue
One day we'll have the ability to copy physical objects just like we copy files today, and it would be as cheap. In fact we may see that technology in our lifetime. At that point, the whole concept of "stealing by copying" would be challenged as never before, and I believe it will surrender. All ethical or business issues aside, it will surrender for two simple reasons: (1) it would be practically impossible to prevent copying and (2) it won't actually do any serious harm to the author who considers herself to be "robbed" through copying.
Employees: A Threat to Your Business?
Screwed if they ban (community leaves, crisis, etc). Screwed if they don't (DMCA). They made the right choice: It's better to be taken down by the MPAA than to take yourself down by antagonizing your users.
The Mid Life Entrepreneur Crisis
Startup Comedy 101 (1m18s video, via Veoh.com)
You would get tired of VCs and Angels giving you opportunities to pitch? Blogga, PLEASE.
5 Ways to Avoid "Founderitis"
Totally agreed, I think Kevin Rose made the right choice. Banning the stories at this juncture would have been a suicide.

The users threatened to move on to Reddit, but this does not mean Reddit would have been a beneficiary, it would have to either allow this or show the users door once again.
Joost Launching Today
This is great.

Really? It seems like a lot of extra work for no additional benefit.

Think of it from the girl's perspective: if she doesn't like you, it's easy enough to blow you off or give you a bogus number; conversely, she can just give you her number if she likes you.

The same principle applies to any kind of networking with new people.

So why go through the whole registration process (leaving your personal details on someone else's server), then have to remember to carry around these special barcoded cards, etc.?
Burning Bridges: East Coast vs. West Coast
It depends who those VCs and angels are; pitching to just any old investor is not a good idea.
Prediction: Silverlight will turn out to be something like Frontpage.
(1) Java is dead.
(2) MS recognizes Firefox and Safari - really good news.
(3) MS is not dead.
(4) MS should thank Anders Hejlsberg for not being dead.
(3) Adobe is f...ed.
(2) I hate numbering, it looks like a Basic program.
(1) Is Lisp on Silverlight possible?
old wine in new bottles

No, it's the difference between Turing imperative (e.g. C++, Java, etc.) and Lamdba calculus (lisp, erlang, ocaml, etc.) which is significant.
Russian Exact Copy of Facebook
It's written in Russian, but pretty much everything is the same. From the "Wall" feature, to posting of pictures, Groups, ETC. They did add a little bit of new features, but not much.
So far, mainstream coverage has been sparse. Forbes has an article, and some of the British papers do, but the Washington Post and NYT don't have stories. If I had to guess, I'd say that this is huge news to people who know what Digg is, and that it won't attract the attention of anyone else.
so where do I get my Modafinil?
3 Reasons Why Wanna-Be Entrepreneurs Never Start Their Own Businesses
How helpful are mentors?
Frankly, I don't like Ubuntu, but I am still happy about this decision. Ubuntu is the most Windows-like distro from what I've seen, and this should allow users to migrate somewhat comfortably from the Windows world to the Linux world.

The thing that I'm really happy about, however, is that I can now buy a Dell Ubuntu laptop with the knowledge that I'll be able to replace the Ubuntu install with a Gentoo one and still have all the necessary Linux drivers. No longer will I have to be months behind bleeding-edge hardware in order to ensure that everything will work in Linux. Of course, this might take some time to occur (for a while I'm sure that they will only release well-supported hardware), but if it's successful, hardware producers will eventually be compelled to release Linux drivers alongside Windows ones.
I'm fairly certain it isn't revolutionary, it just shows the rampant immaturity of Digg's user base and their mob justice that has no respect and knows no bounds. It isn't the first time they've done this; it is the first time they've done it directly to Digg.

Seriously, is this what social media is about? Complete chaos?
How to Test Whether or not to Take on a Partner
A lot has already been said, but I want to participate as well:

For those who think Arrington likely didnt took money from MSFT, for the past couple of months I was seeing MIX ads on the top banner, below the first post and on the sidebar. Is this not giving money albeit more subtly ?

For PG If you were in his position, having an exclusive interview with Ray Ozzie, a high profile lunch and ten hours of selling to go with months long ad campaigns on TC, I am not sure you would have done something different.

But I havent said here that you would have wanted to be in this position, that's a totally different thing.

I cant really understand this statement of Arrington "it blows away native Javascript routines - without exaggeration, Ajax looks like a bicycle next to a Ferrari when compared to Silverlight"

The other reason for writing this post I guess is that the previous post from Nik didnt got enough page views "Nik wrote a very long post yesterday afternoon on Silverlight, long after the initial news broke. From a pageview standpoint, the post was a loser for us. We would have been far better off doing a one-paragraph post at 10 am announcing the news, and by the time we wrote in the late afternoon the buzz had worn off somewhat."
While the article certainly emphasizes that the non-technical board was a detriment to the company, I think that the fundamental problem is revealed in the quote We completely failed to execute.
Their product didn't work well, and this problem existed before the influx of money and board members. Blaming it on the board is conventient, but even the best board can't make a company successful if their product is broken.
Sorry if my previous question regarding the 50k salary & stock came out inelegant. What I really meant to ask, is whether you're looking for a co-founder or a paid developer.

I'm employed as a developer right now and I'm almost ready to quit to start my own startup. I have a few projects that I've been working on in my spare time, so I'm not sure that I'd want to join another company unless I really like the idea and would be a co-founder.

Hope that makes sense. Once again, sorry if my previous posts sounded like criticism. I did not intend it that way!
PG cliff notes: Investors are like high school girls
I think the articles real focus is avoidance of bad partners, not that partners are bad.
Somewhat ironically, the people I want to partner with have very similar skills to my own (programming, design, etc), rather than trying to find complimentary skills. Other than another programmer, who would a tech entrepreneur want to partner with?
China has at least two copies. of those I remember, faceren.com and xiaonei.com.

one of them was sold for around 5M iirc. The concept works, the entry barrier is low, being copied is inevitable unless you move very fast.

This isn't a bad thing imo though; the local dev teams understand local culture better. faceren and xiaonei both looked like carbon copies of facebook when I saw it on TechCrunch (or something). If you look at faceren now it's completely different.
What I really meant to ask in my previous post is whether they are looking for a co-founder or just a paid developer.

In retrospect, phrasing it in terms of salary and stock was the wrong way to frame that question.
I wonder what the mindset is of someone who duplicates--exactly--not only the functionality, but everything down to the layout and color scheme.
It doesn't seem that this kind of venture is going to penetrate very far, especially outside of Russia. Then again, the recent article posted about Friendster mentions they are focusing on smaller Asian countries (Malaysia, etc). I guess this is the web equivalent of a niche company: trading potential success for potential market safety.
The World According to 37signals (6 min video interview with Jason Fried)
Joyent Slinghsot Released today
Pligg released beta version 9.5
Dudes, unless the silverlight demos was pure smoke and mirrors, and all involved blatant liars, this is pretty cool stuff. Especially coming from a bunch of dead guys :).
This is something I have been hoping for from MS for a decade: website like ease of app delivery combined with a non stone age client programming model. MS is the only one with the size and reach to have any kind of shot at pulling it off. Nice to see they are finally taking their 'monopoly responsibilities' seriously. Supposed monopoly or not, size really does matter when it comes to providing us little guys with assurances that decent codecs and runtimes are present on our target market's computers ( and phones, gaming consoles etc. ). How any developers not in direct competition with MS can not like being able to do rich clients in .net + assorted tools instead of the current mix of hacked together technologies is beyond me. This doesn't mean every app has to utilize a rich client, just that for the ones that do, we can build them in a modern development environment and expect modern runtime performance.
Now..... arc.net? Orders of magnitude faster than JS...
A Greener Apple
Software Startups: 7 Signs The Industry Is Doing Well
Sounds like Google has a terminal case of founderitis.
Employer Waiver of IP Rights related to an employees new venture
I don't think they are looking to penetrate other countries that don't speak Russian. Although USA and other non-eastern-european countries are available to register under, you still need a Russian connection somewhere for it to be useful.

I also have issues with handing over too much of my info to a Russian company, as their track records aren't that clean.
Can anyone help with a small but important issue I'm facing. I need get my current company to sign a waiver on the IP rights new business I'm creating and want to present a legal document for them to sign. If anyone can point me to a resource, please post the link here or contact me at:
hasan (at) promoterforce . (com)

Many Thanks!