skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
this was good too, i think i found it on YC. Heading out to buy flaxseed oil right now

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2008/01/27/relax-like-a...
Usually you don't have that time for a nap! It's the day before exam and you still have to read those 200 pages. No time for naps, it's coffee.
It would be interesting to get an older business co-founder who was once (or still is) a programmer and knows both how and how not to manage programmers. A Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt or Paul Graham type character, someone who doesn't get in the way but still knows what's going on.
simple argument: huddlechat

37signals should be (and apparently is) afraid of simple integration with the Gmail/Google apps suite by Google.

They would eat 37signals lunch.
i know that there are some companies that set up contracts to, basically, buy them on the cheap, come pick them up in a van, and then go back home and sell them on ebay.

i've also seen huge storerooms full of old monitors and boxes. some companies just packrat it all away.
I do. Not because it makes me feel special to have a lot of it (I don't have but a handful of it) but because it serves as a measure of how you're contributing to this community.

A downvote should be a warning that you've wasted this community's time.

An upvote tells you your contribution was appreciated by at least some members and that you've contributed something useful.

Wanton upvotes (aka "karma whoring") simply tell you that you've figured out how to game the system.
Bebo founders' next step after $850 million sale? Birthday cards.
Yea, I was thinking the same thing. Discourage people in general from working hard in order to discourage potential competitors from competing with you? Too far fetched. Too funny.
This article comes so close to telling us what we actually want to know, and then doesn't. Why no numbers on how many people are in each (bronze, silver, etc) tier?
Microsoft is currently developping 10 different applications to do the same damn thing
Here's a better plan:

1. Find a new submission with no upvotes or comments that is interesting to you

2. Make an interesting comment for that submission

3. Upvote the submission - if it's new enough it should get bumped to the front page, and if it's interesting enough it should start getting upvoted, as well as your comment

4. GOTO 1
Bee species outnumber mammals and birds combined
One big concern you should have is this: Can you recognize a talented and driven non-technical person?

Just as one great developer can do ten times the work as an average developer with far less problems, the same holds true with marketing, business, etc.

So, it may be more of a challenge than you expect finding someone, and determining their skill level.

I also catch myself minimizing the value of certain business issues and maximizing the value of technical issues. I think that is a natural tendancy, so make sure you keep that in check. Best of luck.
All things considered, I think what I've picked up from the books and articles like 'founders at work' is to go with whoever you're really comfortable with, and trust, on a personal level. Someone that you "go way back with". (Yes, that's a catch 22 if you're looking for one now:-/ )
The next most easy option is to delay submissions by an hour or so. If two or more users submit the same URL in one hour then no-one gets credit. This would ensure that two or more bots monitoring the same blog would cancel each other. More generally, it would encourage more diverse content to be submitted.
Instant karma's gonna get you

Gonna knock you right on the head

You better get yourself together

Pretty soon you're gonna be dead

-John Lennon
His twitter history seems to indicate he's at Graphing Social Patterns East, where Google presented on AppEngine.

(I went through Google's slides for that presentation and they make no mention of supporting more languages.)

Make of that what you will.
I think it looks like a slick app, but it is decidedly a different app than RescueTime... Near as I can tell, it's timesheets with some spruced up data entry.

On a related note-- from the splash site to the app, these guys are taking some serious cues from 37s (from language to layout). Not a bad thing-- it just really jumped out at me.
Piper Jaffray Mint Announces Apple App Store $1.2 Billion Commemorative Coin
It might be true, tried to find the gross revenue per unit for an iPod (unable to). However, during my investigation I did find this interesting blog post.

http://daringfireball.net/2008/01/aapl_q1_2008

The author makes a few interesting notes about Apples Q1:
* Mac sales and iPhone sales were equal
* The gross revenue per iPod was $181

Also, apple made $808M on iTunes.

There is one interesting bit of foretelling in the post (written 5 months ago)

The market for third-party software for the iPhone and iPod Touch is already big, and I expect that by this time two years from now, there will be more iPhones/iPod Touches in use than Macs. (Imagine the unit sale numbers for a $199 iPhone two years from now.)
I don't think non-hacker types even know what an interpreted language is. It's simply part of his explanation as to why flash would be an end run around iTunes. Even if he made a minor technical gaffe in calling Java an interpreted language or whatever (he also called Flex a language and a framework, when the language is action script right?) it's entirely irrelevant.

Anally nitpicking at that sort of thing does nothing to further discussion, and I hate to see it here so often.
A submitted article has high visibility and has no risk to karma. Contributing to a discussion has low visibility and risks karma. An RSS reader and a bookmarklet makes article submission semi-automated but insightful discussion takes more effort. Perhaps there should be more points for discussion.
Despite the 37s backlash, I think this was a good post. I had heard of lots of hackers using Git but not any companies. The fact that a well known company like 37s is using it gives it more credibility and exposure, which will help get more users, which will provide more contributors, documenters, etc.
Mostly because of my paranoia. I've seen too many friends lose sensitive data to XSS attacks and the like. Flash vulnerabilities too.
This all assumes that non-hackers are to blame. I haven't seen any evidence that this is the case.
I meant that he hasn't given us much value but is liberal with criticism about 'how things are'. But looks like he was just joking.
Microsoft: What Cost the Vista Fiasco?
Great use of italics!

Anyway, the reward of getting from karma 1 to karma R is greater than from R to R + hogging. If a user is past R karma and then decides to hog, then they're a moron and we should do something about that too.

Any ideas?
WordPress Security Issues Lead To Mass Hacking
Is it so hard for people to accept that the reason 37s, Joel, pg, Atwood, Maroon, Raganwald, etc became popular is that a) they wrote a lot and b) people liked it? All of them (well, Maroon is more recent) have been doing this for 4+ years, with several hundred to over 1,000 posts. These heavy producers are responsible for a disproportionate amount of the good written content on the web. Sure, there are other sources of good (maybe even better) writing, (Moserware is a current favorite of mine) but they haven't been writing for long and don't write much so they get seen as often. How many things on the top 30 are more than 2 days old?

This is just like saying "I'm sick of hearing about all those startups in Silicon Valley - I only want to hear about startups from other places."
next time take your guess at how long something will take and multiply it by 3. Sounds like a joke but I've been surprised at the number of times this has worked out.
I don't know. Google is very good at making well-programmed apps, but they don't make them enjoyable to use. They're usually fairly cluttered visually if not in terms of features, and their stuff is minimal to a fault.

Campfire, I think, is still a much better app than Google Talk, partly because it gives the chat so much space to breathe.

And I don't think all PROGRAMMERS care about that, but a significant number of DESIGNERS do.
I think you'd have to read the ACNielsen report to get that number (if it was published). The fact that they have a number like "X people derive primary or secondary income" suggests that it isn't even in the final report.
How To Generate Sexy Temp Passwords with Ruby On Rails
See YC poll from a few days ago:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=211630
Ask YC: Client work development workflow
I work in a small custom dev shop. We do drupal hacking, wordpress bits and some zen stuff. Then custom when we can't leverage open source.

We're looking to revamp our work flow from, build, test, deploy and then remote edit through ftp, hoping we don't screw anything up to svn controlled, locally developed, staged and then checked out of svn to a live server.

We're not sure the best approach to take and if there is software or resources out there to help us out?

Thanks.
Analyst: There’s a great future in iPhone apps
>Licensee also acknowledges and agrees that PunkBuster software is self-updating, which means that future updates will, from time to time and without any notice, automatically be downloaded and installed as a normal and expected function of PunkBuster software. Licensee further acknowledges and accepts that PunkBuster software may be considered invasive. Licensee understands that PunkBuster software inspects and reports information about the computer on which it is installed to other connected computers and Licensee agrees to allow PunkBuster software to inspect and report such information about the computer on which Licensee installs PunkBuster software.
Hey, beats Techcrunch! ;)
Hilarious site that I just found. These guys are funny.
Ask YC: Patent before launching startup?
I have an idea that might be patentable. I'm a one-person startup and boot-strapping the business.

Has anybody here launched a startup and later got a patent for their idea?

Did you file a provisional patent first before launching your product?

Thanks.
This isn't Hilarious News, this is Hacker News. You know, entrepreneurship, hacking, code, technology, startups?

Come on.
You would need to back up that claim, especially since middle-clicking DOES open a new tab in both Windows and Mac. What other shortcuts? And how is it klunky?
You are right, of course. I took a shortcut because I knew my result would only be off by a small margin, but I failed to mention that.
I watched a demo of a video call on NTT DoCoMo's WCDMA network in early 2004. Yawn.
Kevin Kelly - Out of Control
You need to play more MMORPG's. It's amazing how much people care about integers in databases going up.
huddlechat=campfire and was made on Google App Engine in like a week or something.

37signals IS successful because their stuff is minimal, which, again, is why Google would eat their lunch.
I disagree. Campfire is an ok-ish webapp, but it doesn't seem to be in development from what I've seen, or growing.

It sort of fills the minimum requirements for webchat.

I think if google decided to put some effort into chat they could create something pretty cool, hooked into all their other systems etc.

Huddlechat worked pretty well, and it was frankly amazing they took it down IMHO.
Yes, but I feel like we are losing it though.
Don't joke: as sad as it sounds, this truly was a huge innovation. No phone device anywhere had ever had a GUI interface to voice mail messages before. At best, it was a clunky front end to the button-activated service we'd been using for 20 years.
Furthermore, you've only got to find one example where P=NP and you can reduce many other problems to this case

Except that the answer is quite likely P != NP. Rather than characterizing the rewards in financial terms, IMHO the more important thing to be gained is knowledge: the answer to a fundamental question in complexity theory (perhaps the fundamental open question).
100% agree. The "advice" coming out of 37 signals is completely ridiculous. Don't hire overachievers. Only work 4 days a week. Take 6 weeks of vacation.
Marketing and funding can be a connections game. in my opinion, it's best to substitute years of sitting on a project with no connection to funding with giving a cut to a connected person with previous startup funding experience. Saves time and headache...
... 37 Signals is eating 37 Signals' lunch for now.
Ask YC: Buy the iPhone or wait for Android?
The new iPhone becomes available in a few weeks. Is everyone rushing out to get it or waiting to see what Google does with Android? Why?
This comes across as a rant from someone who doesn't understand how 37Signals became successful.

They seem to practice what they preach. It may not be the right approach for everyone, but it definitely works for them.

How does having only 10 employees after 9 years not count as growing slowly?
http://searchyc.com/patent
Just had to jump on this: 640k was no more an "artificial" limit than 4G is. The 8086, like all CPUs, had only a finite amount of die space. They chose to implement a 20 bit wide bus, because that fit the problem space of a contemporary minicomputer (the biggets PDP/11 had 4MB). But they didn't have space for paging or mapping hardware, so the operating system needed to reserve some space for hardware (video framebuffers, etc...) to use. So thus was born the 640k/384k memory mapping of PC-DOS. It made perfect sense given the limitations of the hardware.

Now, IBM could have chosen a different part like the 68000, which was a bigger and more expensive chip that had an internal 32 bit architecture. But they didn't, for some pretty justifiable reasons (like the need to compete with computers like the Apple II which were under $2k).
Would love to see some official word on this. The languages are certainly ranked high on the bug tracker:

http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/list
The one thing that will be interested to see: will they require those languages use a framework like the current iteration of AppEngine?
Really?

I don't own an iPhone - so I guess I have no right to criticize. As much as it is an improvement over regular voicemail, I thought their touting that it was an amazing feature was a bit silly, though.
An interview with EA Maxis’ Lucy Bradshaw on the making of Spore
37 Signals has sustained revenue. They are not a startup in the same sense as YC or Silicon Valley thinks of a startup but they have the linchpin of a healthy business -- and every healthy business dislikes competition.
Linux hardware support is about to get much better
Android still has some way to go. Google was talking about delays to Q1 2009. After that they have to convince a manufacturer to produce an Android device; customization will surely take some time and it might not be as good as iPhone UIwise. After that comes acceptance tests. And then they have to find operators to subsidize the device. Then comes the sales and penetaration into market.

I know Google has the power to push these things but they still take time. So don't hold your breath for an Android device yet.
You can use whatever framework you want, not just webPy. I am using Django.
In case you are curious, this is the guy that developed ParaKey, which was apparently bought by Facebook.
I don't think non-hacker types even know what an interpreted language is.

That was actually my point. When someone doesn't know the technical meaning of a phrase, they generally assume the literal and broad meaning of it. The target audience for the original blog post presumably falls mainly into that category.

And just because something is not of particular interest to you doesn't make it anal nitpicking that "does nothing to further discussion."
That's actually not true. You can certainly be a startup and have sustained revenue. In fact, most investors/VCs won't even talk to you if you don't have any kind of revenue. Getting that first customer is a must if you want to even get a meeting with an investor. This was iterated by 12 big NYC investors/VC companies last week at NYC's Internet Week event 'Financing Your Startup'.
99% of my posts are serious, and about hackers/technology/coding/startups. But entrepreneurs have lives too. I might be wrong and I apologize if its outside the terms of service, but when I'm working my ass off, a break everyone once in a while is nice. Not forcing you to read it, but it does bring a smile to my face. Thats not that bad is it?
The second comment is a really good response: http://metajack.wordpress.com/2008/06/11/the-problem-with-dj...
Agreed heavily with the latter. Everything from the layout to the font selection and the yellow highlighting.
Algorithmic Ink in JavaScript
Since when is competition something a business should foster? They should, in fact, do everything within their power to make competition as hard as possible. This typically happens with things like patents, trademarks, copyrights, exclusive agreements, etc.

But it doesn't really matter because this blog post is a statement, not an argument. It is equally as persuasive as an entry which says the exacty opposite ("37 Signals loves competition") since the blogger gives no reason for his position.
How to Write (in a thousand words or less)
How Bloggers Can Use FriendFeed Effectively
A startup can be a healthy business with revenue -- of course -- but 37 Signals is not a startup. 37 Signals is a business in the traditional sense; they're focused on generating revenue instead of an exit.
A "lifestyle business".
Why Do Web Startups Die? Lack of Alphalpha
> every business dislikes competition.

Not true. A struggling business dislikes competition. A healthy business likes competition. A competitor validates your market and frames a choice. With a competitor, a customer doesn't just have the choice of buying from A or not. A customer now has to consider buying from A or B (or buying nothing). When you've got dozens of competitors, you've got a market.
HTC, LG, Samsung and Motorola are members of the Open Handset Alliance (http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/) so the manufacturers should be there already.

A HTC Dream (the rumoured Android-phone, supposedly the one used in the Android-video below) + Android combo would be my iPhone killer. The Android interface seems good and the HTC Touch Diamond is just as slick as the iPhone. And with Android being much more open than the iPhone, that's more or less a strike!

Android: http://www.everythingdream.com/android-demoed-all-sorts-of-i...

HTC Touch Diamond: http://www.everythingdream.com/htc-diamond-videos-from-htc-p... – it is running Windows Mobile, yes, but the interface, TouchFLU 3D, is largely a work of HTC.
How do you beat the lurker factor ? Got 1000-1500 uniques a month. Feels like two people.
Google Analytics tells me I have 1000-1500 unique users a month. But it feels like I'm talking to myself.

Am I boring people to death ?
No ideas, for the simple reason that I have a basic pessimism about trying to use carrots and sticks to create behaviour that is beneficial to a social group.

"We don't teach people to be nice, we hire nice people" --Leona Helmsley (sp?)

I think we can punish egregiously bad behaviour and we can moderate things, that eliminates outliers. But fundamentally our approach should be to encourage nice people to join and discourage trolls so that they leave.

It is not clear to me that karma is a good mechanism for that... if there is a game, some people will play for the sheer pleasure of winning.

I think the number one way to encourage nice people to use a social site responsibly is to swiftly and severly punish trolling. Nothing sends a message that you prefer signal over noise like banning noisemakers.

JM2C, doesn't really do much about bots.
Your bank account is just a float in a database.
great response from someone at the center of the django universe.

the django devs have said it over and over: django's release schedule isn't determined by an urge to increment version numbers, but to make sure things are ready for release and won't cause any backpedaling down the road. you don't publish a news article before the 'i's are crossed and the 't's are dotted, so why treat software the same way?

#2070 has been seemingly sitting around forever, but given the major changes that just happened with the queryset-refactor and whats going on with the newforms-admin branch and other major undertakings, some things can, in fact, be relegated to the back-burner. i can understand why people think its been sitting around for too long, but consider the priority of what else is on the stove before focusing on getting it out of the kitchen -- especially when the development trunk has such a fantastic track record of stability.
Google’s Marissa Mayer: Social search is the future
Here's how to solve your problem:

Get both. iPhone now and/or in July and Android whenever they come out in 2009, 2010, or 2011.
i want an iphone, but am waiting for android for one reason: adding my wife to my tmobile plan = contract += 2 years.
and i pretend that the poor reception i see everyone else get (t-mobile rules in chicago) matter, too ;)
Competitors do validate your market. That doesn't mean you like them (e.g. http://www.apple.com/getamac/ads/).
Ironically, the way the submission system works, if you submit a story that has already been submitted, it simply registers your submission as an upvote.

So think about it. If there are 20 HN readers out there with your rss submitter, then everything from 37signals would instantly have 19 points. This would most definitely instantly catapult the story to #1 on the front page, garnering it a lot of exposure and opportunity for more upvotes.

So really it's a self-fulfilling prophesy. Twenty people all trying to submit the same story the instant it comes out results in a karma lottery for whoever randomly submits it first. The other 19 people will see the instant karma and try even harder.
History Being Made: Mom Wants An iPhone
ITA Software's airline fare shopping engine
HTC, LG, Samsung and Motorola are members of other Linux alliances as well. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they will commit to a product. Productization needs a big investment and giant manufacturers take a bit of time to decide. HTC seems most likely to jump the gun.

Demo and real life products are light years apart in handset business.
Of course. But sustaining a business isn't really the same as creating or growing one.
I had thought that this was only available to travel agents. The interface is so much more powerful than Orbitz etc. To see a description of the syntax, click "Help" (at top), "The ITA Route Language" (on left).

The tricky part is booking the flights it finds without talking to a travel agent.

Edit: An old email about the implementation: http://paulgraham.com/carl.html
At least they flipped around take a tour and sign up free.
It doesn't matter what kind of adjective you put in front of the word "business", they're still making money.
Forget karma. The real question is whether or not the articles submitted bring value to the community. I submitted two 37 Signals articles because I found them interesting, and on topic for the community.

I think it is instructive to consider if most of the negative commentary regarding the 37 Signals submissions would disappear if the source was different (eg, they came from author X instead).
I would have thought that Blake is probably better known as creator and lead dev of Firefox, rather than Parakey.
You're doing it wrong if it becomes a grudge match. See http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/03/the_art_of_driv.html

(Yes, I am aware that Guy Kawasaki marketed the Apple MacIntosh at launch.)
For the iPhone 2G it is rumored that Apple gets a monthly kickback from AT&T.
For the iPhone 3G it is rumored that Apple gets over $200 upfront from AT&T and nothing after that.

But as someone else pointed out, if you make money on the razor and the blades it's not the Gillette business model.
This is a fundamental lesson in quality testing. Nothing new, but always good to be remind of. Plus, it will be more interesting to study the human biases that often mislead us, and create a paradigm that minimize such biases.