skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's blatently obvious that it's not about songs. It's just about which countries like other countries. Particularly all the Eastern countries vote for each other.

Most of the votes could be and were predicted by Terry Wogan.

The best reason to keep the Eurovision though is as a stark warning to what would happen if the UK integrates any further with Europe.
Business Development in a Web 2.0 World
How, Why, Using Technology to Network
So you're telling YC to be less efficient for the sake of the iPhone...is that a good thing or a bad thing?
I can also recommend Magister Ludi, or The Glass Bead Game. Wonderful book.
I'd recommend to start with Norwegian Wood for Murakami. Didn't like Sputnik Sweetheart at all, and many of his other books tend to be too esoterical for my taste. But NW was esoterics-free, if I remember correctly.
When I come across a non-business blog that hasn't been updated recently, I assume the person lost interest in whatever interest they were pursuing, rather than simply losing interest blogging.

Losing interest in a hobby happens a lot. However, when I find a company blog that hasn't been updated recently, I assume nothing is happening.

Even if nothing is happening and/or something is happening and it can be divulged, I feel the company blog gives me a behind-the-scenes into how the business is growing. If nothing is happening, why not write about other companies (in other industries) like SmugMug's Don MacAskill does?

Two fresh blogs
http://blogs.smugmug.com/don/ (business)
http://www.throughth3wall.com/ (non-business)

Two stale or "dead" blogs
http://www.startup-ceo.com/ (last update 7/2007, business)
http://mightymo84.blogspot.com/ (last update 2/2006 did she succeed?, non-business)

Making of follow-up to dropsend.com
http://www.barenakedapp.com/page/8
From a theoretical perspective, what you're assuming above is that you apply a social filter and then use collaborative filtering (i.e. Amazon, Netflix and similar's method). In fact the two supplement each other -- collaborative filtering using the entire customer database and then do a weighted merge of that with an algorithm ranking things based on social graph traversal.
Portable Sinks
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No, its definately rigged, and I doubt the votes are taken from the user sms... Because I have been watching Eurovision for about 10 years now, before people voted at home... and which country votes for which has not changed...

It was news here in Spain that Franco (the dictator) bribed another country to vote for spain's entry one year... which happen to be the year that Cliff Richard almost won...

So basically the way I see it as is political voting... which a music competition tacked on...
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Angel Financing: Investor Management
The formal features of natural languages (and their power) are irrelevant, because using language in idiosyncratic ways is almost always bad. If everyone else wrote Java-style code in Common Lisp, you could still write Lisp in Common Lisp. Not so with natural languages--if you care about being understood. It would be more useful to speak of literary/conversational cultures associated with different languages, and those can differ quite a lot. For example, many English-speakers accuse Dostoyevskiy of being unrealistic because his characters routinely give long, elaborate monologues to each other. But this is how Russians actually talk.

P.S.: Which isn't to say that natural languages are "mere conventions", as PG once wrote. In practice, natural languages vary a lot in their power to communicate different kinds of thoughts. But this is not due to any easily identifiable features, e.g. in syntax. Going back to the programming language metaphor: different cultures write different libraries for their language. And only a culture as a whole can write the libraries, which makes them even more important to the individual than libraries in a programming language.
Don't ever ask anyone to do this.

A user once complained that a job was running too long. After some research, I found something like this (SLEEP 10 seconds) inside a loop. I removed it. The batch time went from 7 hours down to 23 minutes. The user thought I was a genius. When I told my client (the IT manager) what I had done, he was pissed. He said, "You should have changed it to a SLEEP 5, so we had something to give him the next time he complained."
Oh, goody: an excuse to link to the "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks. http://quotation-marks.blogspot.com
IT and Nonlinear Time
A Programming Job Interview Challenge #5 - Records Sorting
Social Networks' Sway May Be Underestimated
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Ask YC: Why not incorporate in Nevada? a state that is giving Delaware a run for its money.
Believe it or not, businesses are flocking to the land of the neon lights to incorporate and here's why . . . .

Tax Benefits:

Nevada corporations reap the benefits of some tremendous tax breaks compared to businesses incorporated in other states. For starters, there is no corporate income tax in Nevada. Additionally, Nevada businesses enjoy no franchise tax, no sales tax, no taxes on corporate shares and no personal income tax. Depending on the scope and nature of your business, these combined tax breaks can result in substantial savings that can be invested in growing your business.

Minimal Reporting & Disclosure Requirements:

Another bonus of incorporating in Nevada is that the state has established a system to protect your company's privacy. Nevada itself has minimal reporting requirements. But unlike many other states, Nevada also does not have an information sharing agreement with the IRS. In other words, Nevada will not share your corporate information with the IRS and stockholders' names are not part of the public record. In Nevada, all that is on public record are the names of the corporation's officers and directors. If privacy is important to your business, Nevada is definitely an attractive option.

Small Business Advantages:

Nevada has a number of significant advantages that are custom-built for small businesses. One advantage is that the minimum number of officers or directors in a Nevada corporation is one. That means you don't need to recruit people to serve as corporate officers or as members of a board. You can fulfill the requirements yourself. If your business is new, another advantage is that Nevada requires no minimum capital investment for incorporation. For a small business struggling to get off the ground, that alone makes Nevada worth exploring.

Geographic Flexibility:

What if you want to incorporate in Nevada and live in another state? Can you do that? Absolutely! Stockholders, directors, and officers don't need to live or hold meetings in Nevada. In fact, they don't even need to be U.S. citizens.

Other Benefits:

Nevada has other benefits as well. In Nevada, officers and directors of the corporation can be protected from personal liability for acts of the corporation, provided those acts are lawful. Nevada corporations can also issue stock in exchange for capital, services, personal property, real estate, leases, and options. The determination of value for these transactions is determined solely by the corporation's directors and their decision is final.

Source: http://www.gaebler.com/Nevada-Incorporation.htm
rails. was going to use merb, but got lazy.
There's one rather large difference between Hacker News driving traffic to Techcrunch, and FriendFeed driving traffic to twitter. Hacker News doesn't actually scrape techcrunch or get it's content via an api.

From a practical viewpoint (and this is why I used the word parasite - not to be pejorative, but to indicate that FF is entirely dependent on its hosts), Friendfeed could be shutdown tomorrow by the sources. If they're using APIs, then just about every api out there is for non-commercial use, and if they're scraping, then an appropriate robots.txt, backed up by IP blocking and lawyers, does the trick.
i never knew that you don't even need to be a U.S. citizen ... is there any difference between delaware S-corp and nevada S-corp??
Doesn't work if you live in the US, though, afaik:-)
Very interesting, it's good of him to open up information like this.

Id personally be very interested to hear about people's lives after launching a start up. Even if the success is just to replace their 9-5 earnings and be their own boss.

After all, that's what we all dream of right?

Still it's very inspiring.
An S-corp designation stems from a tax election with the IRS, not from an entity creation.
Wrt to tax benefits: In the US, you generally are supposed to pay taxes where you do business. This usually means that if you incorporate in Nevada, but do all your work in CA, you should be paying taxes in CA. So unless you plan on doing all your business in NV, i.e. actually working there, a lot of the tax benefits really go out the window.
i guess i read that "S" is meant as a sub-chapter and it is same for all corp no matter where they incorporate. it gives dual benefit of sole proprietorship and corporation.
I knew this one guy who liked telling old jokes, but pretending it actually happened to him. But he's dead now. He walked into a bar and broke his skull.
Everyone uses Delaware because there's a countrywide understanding of their business laws, lot's of precedent and it's fast to get things done. So why change?
can you explain what is meant by "doing all your business in NV" - do you need a physical office in NV? or do you need to sell your stuff to NV customer?? or do you need to live in NV?? or all of above???
From Seth: "The web is nothing but a system, a bunch of (largely unwritten) rules regarding search, linking, promotion, etc."

Seth rarely goes deep on his succinct this-is-an-idea-I-have posts, but the question of what are the rules on the web is making me wonder...

Since paulgraham.com is linked, maybe we can reverse-engineer what these rules might be - establish your unique voice (essays), build and nurture an active discussion (news.YC), have a real-world event that dovetails with your mission (e.g. Seth's Purple Cows gatherings in cities or better Y-Combinator), create something that people will use and/or argue about (essays, Arc, Seth's controversial The Dip [e.g. quit if you can't handle it])
Samsung Develops World’s Fastest and Largest Capacity 2.5-inch 256GB SSD
Evolta robot climbs Grand Canyon cliff
The Magnifying Glass Gets an Electronic Twist
PayPal Apparently Costs Merchants Thousands of Dollars By Not Commun
Twitter and FriendFeed: Let it be
I know what book I am taking for my week away next week: The Ultimate HitchHiker's Guide - 5 complete novels and 1 story. This is an awesome group of stories that are really fun to read. If you haven't read them at least once or have only read the guide to the galaxy, you should definitely check it out.
"Randall Munroe, the 23-year-old creator of xkcd, a hugely popular online comic strip (at least among computer programmers) where the sandwich line appeared."

I enjoy xkcd as much as the next guy, but sudo make me a sandwich has been around as long as sudo itself.
Parsing's not just for languages anymore
Familiarity With Web Making Web Users More Selfish And Ruthless 
According to an annual report of web habits by usability guru Dr.Jacob Nielsen,
"People are getting more ruthless and selfish when they go online."
Emacs undo is horrible
Lisp-Unit-Tester — a portable unit-tester for Lisp
AS3Wrapper - Import Flash virtual machine API into Javascript
I submitted this to see the thread of whomever already did. Apparently I'm the first.

Another weird coincidence is that I'd never seen this before, and it's really good. Possibly one of the best essays I've read. Or at least one of the most informative.

"Startup founders are naturally optimistic. They wouldn't do it otherwise. But you should treat your optimism the way you'd treat the core of a nuclear reactor: as a source of power that's also very dangerous. You have to build a shield around it, or it will fry you."
Starting Salaries but New York Tastes
They're all wrong, in different ways for different sites. I wouldn't trust any of them for more than an order-of-magnitude estimate.
Charge me five bucks a month, and then let me choose however many sites I want for that money to be divided up among.

Now that actually could work, great idea. It makes tipping "free", since you have already committed to handing out x per month. Also gets you guaranteed income for Tipjoy, since there will always by 3% of $5 per user every month.
The Website Design Contract
In the last few months I’ve been seeing a common occurrence. It’s either a freelancer complaining about a client or a client complaining about a freelancer. I suppose a little friction isn’t all that uncommon, especially if the people involved don’t have a good understanding with each other. Most of the time, the problem can be traced to a simple fact: The client and the freelancer do not have a contract, or have an incomplete one.
Demo of iPhone Earth
All my web apps use Blueprint. Never had a problem with it whatsoever. YUI seems good but doesn't have the simplicity and elegance of Blueprint imho.
You sir have good taste.
Check out D.J. Bernstein's TAI library http://cr.yp.to/libtai.html and his specification of the TAI64, TAI64N, and TAI64NA time formats http://cr.yp.to/libtai/tai64.html.
I suppose these articles are inevitable, but man, they can be stupid. In the recent past, I've lived on less than $2k/month in New York in a decent apartment and eating--whoa!--three meals a day. I think I could get down to $1500/month or so without too much trouble. And my rent isn't much less than some of the numbers mentioned in the article.

But cutting costs means I'd have to drink less! The horror!
Speed is not the solution. A better interface for mobile devices is.
If you haven't already heard of the News.YC iPhone web app from Buxfer (YC Winter '07)

http://buxfer.com/yc
Microsoft Should Know Money Can’t Buy Love
Sounds like a problem for the Stephen D Levitt -like people of our world.
He probably shouldn't have asked the bartender for duck food, then.
Just in case you don't know, bugmenot is very easy to use. Even easier than creating a login, in fact.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6349
Memo to a Young Leader: What Kind of Boss Are You?
That can work, for some tasks. Lookit this article for more info:
http://www2.hursley.ibm.com/decimal/decifaq1.html#inexact

Many languages have built-in formats for decimal data, so unless you have a really good reason (space/speed), just use those.
Studios Should Look to Trent Reznor for Future of Distribution
You did cover it, you're right :)
I find alexa most acurate for trends, but I agree, all pretty useless.

Quantcast being the exception as you can add some js to your site so they actually measure the figures.
It was amazing. As a blurb, I could describe it as an insight into the mind of an autist. On a personal note, I'll say it was a trip through the mind of an almost ramen.
You're spot on. Let's not forget that Le Meur has a lot of contacts, and a lot of weight in the Valley, and people just love to jump on these kinds of bandwagons.

Creation of needs and all that.

Not that I'm saying it should be put down to rest, just that it won't go anywhere in the mainstream. People that aren't in this horrid social media bubble just aren't looking past Facebook.
This just seems like a personal attack to me. Let the man say what he wants to say?
Thanks for that. I had forgotten about koans in GEB. I guess that means it's probably time to pull it out again-- always a fun read.
It's at the bottom of the article, but the author of the paper was interviewed on NPR's Science Friday:
http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200805234
>The best reason to keep the Eurovision though is as a stark warning to what would happen if the UK integrates any further with Europe.

We run the risk of winning and have to host the thing?
Yep:

"The places where NASA scientists have used Java for this mission is all on the ground side right now."

http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/media/features/mars.html
Ask YC: Hosted App on AWS and Hardware Access
After developing a web application, which is hosted using Amazon web services, I now want to add an SMS messaging feature to the web application, since i dont have access to the hardware i.e. using a GSM or GPRS Modem, how do i go about implementing the SMS feature? My target market is not the USA or Europe and i don't want to use email2sms. Any tips on what to do will be highly appreciated.
Would You Want This Job? Hard work, middle of Kansas
Anyone got a plausible theory as to why it is taking PayPal so long to fix this one?
The end of SEO, powered by Google
"It’s staggering that PayPal has not fixed this most basic payment issue immediately."

Have you ever tried to get customer service from eBay or PayPal? Enough said..
Wow. Amazing site. (I mean, "amazing" site.)

Thanks for that.
UFrame - making iframes respectable?
1. take typing brakes (xwrits, workrave)
2. exercise -- specially try to make your shoulders, forearms, and fingers stronger (in that order)
3. stretch -- yoga can help, take a class
4. get in better shape (run, bike, elliptical, ...)
5. don't type more than 4 hours a day (workrave can help here)
6. DON'T GET SURGERY!!!!! quit first, and reassess things.
Hey, will your mate take an English speaker with no intention of working legally, who doesn't want to pay tax, with no intention of staying longer than a year?
He was joking :) However the idea is good if its implemented with a javascript SetTimeout. The usernames and other infos can show up a bit later.
Politically, if we hand over more power to europe, we will end up being outvoted on everything by the Eastern European countries, who are numerous, and tend to stick together.
This is not really a problem with Tipjoy so much as a problem with the general idea of gratuities. They always end up as more of an obligation.
The Biggest Drawing in The World: Created With the Help of GPS and DHL
Hmmm, nope.
I haven't experienced any issues using the YUI css stuff; although I haven't tried to do anything beyond the common use cases. However, I think it's worth using if only to leverage the cross browser testing they've done.
Whatever it is you're missing I'm missing too. There seems to be a massive lack of value-add considering what's already out there.
Of course, it's not only about the songs. That would be a gross simplification.

However, it's also a gross simplification to say it's just about which countries like other countries.

For example: I'm writing this from Norway, which finished (they tell me) the best of all Western European countries. Now, Terry Wogan would argue that this is because of "Scandinavian Bloc" voting, but the fact of the matter is that you could remove the points given to Norway by Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland, and give them to England, and Norway would still be far ahead of England in terms of points.

In fact, England is a great example of how Wogan's theory breaks down-- of 43 countries voting, only 2 chose England's song to be in the top 10 of 25 options. Every single country involved liked some one or more Eastern European song better than England's, independent of geographical location or political alliance.

So, let's not pretend it's all political-- some of it actually appears to relate to the music.
Congratulations and welcome to the club. I was rejected too and to be honest I think they made the right decision. When I applied 5 years ago I definitely wasn't the academic they were looking for.

Anyway my point is just that I wouldn't put too much stock in the fact that just because these institutions are filled with arguably the brightest people in the land that this will automatically propel you upwards. I personally feel that the value of a university is very closely tied to its curriculum, not its resources or people.

(anecdotal evidence: I know some people who went to universities with more stringent entry requirements and left there only knowing how to program in Pascal. In my university they now teach Haskell, Prolog and Java in year 1).

If you still feel very strongly about the benefits of networking in Oxbridge you can always apply to do an MBA.
I am in the same boat as far as being technical goes.(although I have some programming background).

One of my ideas is to create a better networking application. By that I mean a better version of linked-In (which I think is a total waste since those connections at best are mostly superficial).

If you are interested, contact me. (see profile)
I'm sorry, I don't get it. Please explain.
Ask YC: How much would you value Twitter at?
Out of curiousity, how much would you value Twitter at today, and why?
The point of view seems wrong. You may want these things, but why does a user want to work this way?

The "good places near new house" service doesn't seem all that compelling. If I want a skate park, I'm a skater and I'll quickly meet other skaters. How am I going to know about it anyway? ("welcome wagon" appears to be dead.)

And, you're competing with the "city" sites. They've been trying to do this for years and failed. (They've failed so miserably that it's understandable that you've never heard of them. However, you still need to understand why they failed. I can't see any difference.)

The travel thing is neat, but is it a biz or a feature of a travel site? (Yes, it might be the feature that makes a travel site.)
New York Times API Coming
Unfortunately there are weird structures in the human brain that cause even smart people to believe in this crap. I suppose it has evolutionary benefits in the management of complexity. You focus on the actions of yourself and your prey, everything else is the province of the sky God. If you spend too much time brooding over how Aunt Judy got eaten by a saber-tooth tiger then the wildebeest you're hunting might get away.

It's frustrating that these weird beliefs are so widespread in modern society, but it looks like the world is slowly moving away from it. It gives me higher self-esteem to be secular now when I am ridiculed for it than in the future when most people believe like me.
Innovation Advice from Procter & Gamble CEO A.G. Lafley
Hmm...using search dominance to make sure they get all of the paid link business. Sounds similar to using desktop OS dominance to corner the browser business. It smells.
I doubt that the lack of pitch refinement is an issue. In fact, too much refinement may be an obstacle. (Beginning song writers often pitch songs with recordings that are overly produced. This makes it hard for the artist to see how she'd do the song.)

Unless, of course, you're just looking for contract programmers. They'll do exactly what you want, but they want cash.

It's important to realize that if most of the payoff that you're offering is equity, folks expect to contribute as well. If you want to pay folks like founders, you have to treat them like founders. If you want to treat folks like employees, you have to pay them like employees.