skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Microsoft Launches Equipt - new software subscription service
There are too many SEO cowboys out there trying to make fast money for little/no work, and most people do not understand what good SEO involves. Hence many have bad experiences and the industry as a whole gets a bad name. This is unfair as there are some SEO practitioners, but even from my limited experience they have been few and far between.

We have to remember as hackers, startups, or computer/web literate people, we should be doing most of this ourselves, but for most people (SMEs or mom & pop with their website/ecommerce store) this will be foreign to them and hence the market for (good?) SEO practitioners.

Whereas bad SEO practice (using link-farms, link-baiting, paid-for directories) will certainly harm your site (Google penalize against sites that do this and there are many cases of sites paying for SEO only to see a early rise followed by a sharp fall later), good SEO at the basic level can significantly help.
Being an Aussie, I've always found the natural way to break the ice at American social events is to walk up and to give out a simple "Gday" with my accent - you guys always get a kick out of it. Combined with an offering of my hand for a handshake, it works for me. Think about what might work for you.

Expanding on number 4 - Body language is important, if you want to give the idea that you're open to communication (for mingling) then people need to visually see that.

One of the things I do is make sure I have some 'canned' conversations in my head before I approach someone. This helps me keep my confidence up, because I know that I at least have something interesting to talk about. Try and keep it contextually relevant and appropriate for the function you're at :)
I can't see detailed information about the loan listings until I upload €15... annoying, but I wanted to see the loan listings enough that I uploaded €15.

My money is going to Faith Masaba who wants to buy more equipment for her restaurant/catering business, like a microwave. I get 13%. Faith is borrowing €700.00. Faith says her TV, refrigerator, and furniture are collateral. So this is really like a more exploitative version of Kiva that has done away with the pretension of being a non-profit and instead is copying Prosper's model. Go capitalism.

My prosper investments all bombed when the credit markets collapsed, Africa is (bizarrely) probably a more stable place for p2p lending than Prosper. You also get the advantage of working in the Euro.

Faith Masaba
Local Restaurant
[Uganda] Uganda
Faith owns a local restaurant and offers catering services as well. She
would like to purchase more equipment like food warmers and a
microwave. This will enable her to serve a wider client base.

Total Amount:	€700 (Issued in: Local Currency)
Wanted Interest Rate:	13.00% p.a.
Current Interest Rate:	13.42% p.a.
Transaction Cost:	36.77%
Total cost for Business:	50.20% (APR) / €117.38
Payback Period:	9 months
Provided by:	FED
Lender:	CMC
Entrepreneur:	N/A
Bidding ends:	02.08.2008 10:37 CET *
* The Provider reserves the right to close fully funded Businesses with
24 hours notice.
Investment Status:
Multiple Investors
16% has been bid. You can still bid up to €585.00
Provider Statistics
MyC4 Partner Since:	31.05.2007 12:16 CET
Businesses Funded:	€1,475,691.00 in 1169 Businesses
Repayments Received:	€361,285.99
Defaults:	0.02% of repayments until today
€356.85 in 1 loan(s) defaulted
Can you not screenshot Flash then?
Exactly, do what you love doing. For inspiration, watch Steve's speech at Stanford.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA
>Limit the amount of votes per person.

There are more subtle ways. Raising karma needed for downvote, better as a function of site size. Making downvotes cost you karma. Giving "objetive" scores to certain comments so voting them has an effect on voters' karma. Hiding comments score so you don't get influenced by others' votes. Delaying application of karma so you have to behave instead of probing how to game the system.

One thing that I've seen that doesn't work is to use simplistic algorithms that operate automatically based on karma and agreement. That method results in groupthink and, if the site is popular enough, people gaming the system for profit. Other times it generates two confronted bands. It seems that an external human feedback is needed peridically to inform the system what's undesirable.
Smashing has recommended the silk set numerous times in the past.
What is the obsession with karma? Should we not up-vote the things we like and down-vote those we don't without having to worry about karma? Is it not supposed to be a measure of the value we find in things rather than with these political connotations?
Math and Computing as Art
Virtual Hosting With Proftpd And MySQL (Incl. Quota) On Ubuntu 8.04 LTS
My back hurts no matter what chair I use. It's quite limiting to my productivity.
Hacked the FARC - Ingrid Betancourt rescued
Social engineering at work, and great news for the world.
Ticino 360° - Church of Negrentino 854m
>> Why is trying my site to rank better evil?

It depends on what exactly do you do and don't do.

For example, if your site has poorer content or less usable service, but you used various tricks to rank higher as sites with better content or more usable service, then that's somewhat despicable, I'd say. You might have wasted other people time, because without your "SEO", they could have been served better by SE. I would not use the word evil, though.

But if you just provide sitemap or use the <title> tag correctly, that's ok.
that's an interesting idea!
Does Microsoft + Powerset Beat Google?
Also to give modding quotas, so one only receives a fixed number of mod points that can be applied before having to wait to receive more. That would make each user have a similar impact on the board, whereby an upper limit is placed to curtail people from going on an unthinking modding binge.
Because many hackers don't understand marketing and think they are going to compete in a level playing field.

Checkout some of the advanced techniques listed on http://www.bluehatseo.com/ and then reconsider your SEO plan.
How do you make money with this - AdSense/Ads? Surely there's no "Subscriber Only" version.
No, "fuck you money" is a reference to the Neal Stephenson novel Cryptonomicon.
By giving people random user names, you force them to do more work long term.

Step 1: Click the one button and get my user name
Step 2: Go write it down somewhere
Step 3: Cookie expires/is cleaned - now user forgets the random user name or email.
Step 4: Go look it up, enter info

Repeat steps 3 & 4 ad nauseum.
20 great Windows open source projects you should get to know
eheh... any chance you can elaborate on that? Give us a few more details?
Creative way to get your resume noticed
This is where CodeMunch can help you differentiate from thousands of resumes. When you actively participate in groups, start intelligent threads, respond to others queries. One is not only becoming more technically savvy, but one is also proving to the world that he/she can tackle situations and get the said job done.
These are not the algorithms but an overview of the formulas.

For example the HN algorithm is outlined in several places e.g. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38704 and on the pg Arc site, and the reddit algorithms is

def hot(ups, downs, date):
s = score(ups, downs)
order = log(max(abs(s), 1), 10)
sign = 1 if s > 0 else -1 if s < 0 else 0
seconds = epoch_seconds(date) - 1134028003
return round(order + sign * seconds / 45000, 7)
Success of Y Combinator startups?
Is there a review of all the ycombinator startups somewhere?

I think I have seen such data before, at least about how many of them were still businesses out of the total number of funded companies.

(Btw is it Firefox or Hacker news that is correcting spelling?)
Lazily loaded would refer to the fact that it's only loaded when needed. In other words, when he restarts the server, he doesn't load up any data for the users. Instead he just creates a reference to the filename that contains all the user info and creates a data structure to hold all that info in. Then, when someone attempts to login, he searches through the file and finds the credentials, and if successful pulls all of the users information into memory.

Before this change, he stored the information for all users in memory, even the ones who no longer use the site, as soon as the server restarted.
Judge Protects YouTube’s Source Code, Throws Users To The Wolves
If you use the pdf creator software from adobe that may be the case, but that includes DTP software. I've been using pdfcreator ( http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/ ) for years now. Works like adobe's distiller and does the job great.
I love to collect icons :) Thanks.
It's not Hacker News correcting spelling, and Firefox obviously did a poor job.

What do you mean by "review"? TechCrunch "reviews" many of the YCombinator funded startups when they first launch, so you could search there. I remember seeing a large list of the companies and their "status" (e.g. acquired, funded, etc). However, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y_Combinator is the only list I can find at the moment which isn't very comprehensive.
Agreed - with things like usernames and passwords, you want to make it feel like they're being involved in process, which helps create a connection. It also helps with the 'stickiness' of your website.

If I were to give 2 real world examples, imagine a conversation between 2 people.

In conversation one, Person A is constantly talking at Person B, not too, but at - Person B doesn't feel included in the conversation, so probably loses interest and tunes out at some point.

Conversation two is a simple exchange between 2 people, with information going backwards and forwards. This conversation is more 'sticky'

If anything, I would work at ensuring that you have minimal information required at signup - username, password, email address, simple and interactive.

To take it one step further, one could argue that this is infact the perfect configuration for signup information because you are requesting 3 pieces of simple information which is perfect given the human brain's natural affinity to the number 3.

Example 1) Comedians usually deliver jokes with the punchline as the third part of the joke, because it has been proven to be naturally funnier...

Example 2) Lots of marketers like to highlight that their product takes only "3 easy steps".

Thats not to say that thinking outside the box is a bad idea - kudos for giving it a try dude :)
Maybe they should warp it to look like a CAPTCHA AND put it in Flash with a camouflage background.
My latest project was based on 1.1, which is actually a stable version. And it does handle more than three requests per second ;)

But I have some doubts about cake 1.2 now. I believe we should wait for stable 1.2 release...
The "compelling" reason for most people seems to be Twitter's lack of stability. Personally, I've decided to accept and deal with it for now and give them a chance to catch up. However, two of the people I follow decided to jump ship, and it would be dumb of me to stick around if none of the people I followed were around anymore... Hopefully that doesn't happen.
Where did I misspell?

Anyway I ment measuring the success. How many are actually making money(I mena not just having revenue but revenue > expenses).
Unfortunately there are lots of people who do use shady tactics to promote their sites - and simple grassroots whitehat SEO practises are really all one should focus on.

Google and Yahoo can, and do change the rules of the game all the time by changing their algorithm, so just make sure you have your bases covered with the things that you cant get pinged for.
I think there are 2 main reasons:

1) Because SEO is today was HTML was in 1995: A simple and basic concept that almost anyone can master, but is portrayed as some high-level mystery "language". I think most hackers get upset when simple ideas are over-hyped and blown out of proportion. In many ways "SEO" is nothing more than quality/standards-based site design and relevant and current content. Maybe something like AP English for the web: not mentally tasking, just a lot of rules to know

2) (Perhaps the bigger reason) Because SEO disrupts the natural food chain of the web. If someone is passionate, knowledgeable and committed to their site or the business underlying the site, they will tend to naturally rank high in SERPs. This would likely be because they put the time into making sure the layout is clean and orderly, the content is accurate and up to date, and the site is overall valuable. In exchange for this, users who are interested in whatever niche that site serves reward them by referencing other users to the site in blog posts, forums, etc.
Now, you get someone with an inferior site who puts their effort in SEO and not The Site and wants to jump to the head of the line in a way that they didn't earn. Now users who are trying to find quality content or products in that category are sidetracked by this high-ranking but overall less valuable site that came up as results #1, #2, and #4 in their search for "widgetA". Most hackers despise this blatant manipulation of the servers and algorithms that are impartial and on a more level playing field will yield the correct results to a query. Maybe we don't like SEO because it exposes the flaws and frailties of our system :)

To answer your question: trying to make your site rank better is a good thing, especially if you do this by making user-centric improvements to the site and content. Trying to make your site rank higher than it naturally deserves to is equated to Spam.
> Because there isn't that much to SEO so it's not really worth talking about. Let me know if I'm missing anything. To do SEO ...

Programming is nothing but learning a few keywords. Let me know if I am missing something ...

1. Use waterfall model and programming best practises. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_model

2. Mix for, while, def and class keywords in appropriate quantities.

Advanced programming methods:

1. Build some rectanges and lines called as UMLs.

2. Learn about some libraries and mix them with the for, if, def keywords.

Sorry to be so snarky, but what sites have you SEOd for?

(Oh and I am a programmer, BTW)
YouTube Ordered to Give Complete User Logs [usernames, IPs, and videos] to Viacom
Simple answer 2: many people don't know or care what's a browser. For them using the internet is clicking the blue e icon that is there by default.
How long do you reckon would it take learn the commands? I wouldn't mind being good at that...

Edit: I am suddenly intrigued to learn Vim. Is there a mode for editing MZScheme? Or what is the best way to program MZScheme with Vim? Ruby on Rails would also be of interest. JavaScript?
Posterous: Minimalist Blogging
It's the shoes, Jeff! It's the shoes!
Dismal idea.

At least you tried, though.

Therein you have the explanation for all of my failures and all of my successes. A large number of dismal ideas combined with a willingness to try again :-)
Really? With 200+ karma you wouldn't be willing to knock someone down every once in awhile... ya know, take one for the team?

If certain things cost karma, karma becomes currency. You earn it in order to spend it on stuff you want to do. Like downvoting.
Suggestion: give a max limit of downvotes per user per day/week/month, this way they will think twice before they "spent" their downvotes.
Short answer? No.

Given the fickleness of a lot of the users on some social media sites - the results can and probably will get skewed.

For example, if I were a young girl and wanting to look for information about proms - I wouldnt want to be faced with the prospect of seeing this guy.
http://imagebackup.net/images/wwckh7rbdngcggmrtmjb.jpg which originally came from http://digg.com/people/Prom_ya_digg

I think at last count, that had around 20,000 Diggs.

Then if we were to search for someone looking for a computer, using the Digg analogy again, it would have you believe that the only computers left are Apples.

I like Apple, dont get me wrong - but fanboyism is rampant on social media sites - so the results will always be not a true representation of the people of the Internet, or even close to it.
Ask PG: How was the honeymoon?  
Where did you guys go? Im sure you all had a wonderful experience. Hope you are willing to share!
"Success"
The Disadvantages of Direct Server Return (DSR)
Ada.... gah... I shudder at the thought of Ada.

I still remember my professor at my first year of university in 99 who was claiming that Ada was the 'next big language' which was going to 'make a big impact on the Internet'

When I quizzed him on what institutions use it, and I will always remember his answer because it gives me a giggle to this day.

"I think the Spanish Airforce use it"....

If I ever choose to learn Spanish, move from Australia to Spain and then join their military - I'm all set. Until then, I think that was a just a few hours wasted.
got it. thanks very much,
meant to say "This is unfair as there are some good SEO practitioners..."
Not good.

I understand and respect Viacom's need to protect their copyright, everyone should have the right to be able to profit out of their intellectual property - but this hard hitting approach is over the top.

All this action does is promote a virtual 'arms race' when it comes too copyright violation.

The media companies shut down Napster early on in the game and in the process, opened a pandoras box. Better technologies have emerged with every subsequent shutdown.

At least with Napster they could have contained the problem, but instead are just shooting themselves in the foot.

I guess this is the price they pay for their heavy handed approach.
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Building a Better Mousetrap…or Not
That creates a strong bias for people with lots of time on their hands which I reckon tips the voting bias towards people not actually running a startup.
personal and private?
I miss a few: Inno Setup (very good installer generator), eMule, Putty, Privoxy, Wireshark... it's strange that only Thunderbird is mentioned from Mozilla's offer.

In Windows there is also a lot of good freeware that's not open source: all the utilities from Sysinternals (now bought by Microsoft), Colin Wilson's resource editor, 7-zip compressor, Foxit...
IPhone 2.0 Software Trickles Out, 'Very Good' So Far, Exchange Email A Bit Flaky
I think that XML is better used for machine-consumable
processes rather than human-edited ones. The wealth of tools
available mitigate the need to roll your own data format
and help ensure that your output will be usable by anyone
with a (ubiquitous) XML parser.

That's a false dichotomy. The choice is not between XML and yet another home-rolled data format, but between XML and every other data format currently in existence. When compared against JSON, YAML, or s-exps XML always seems wrong for machine->machine communication.
Ask PG: Is this where the name 'Arc' came from?
"We live in the 80's extended into the 21st century. The only thing that's changed is the size. Windows XP has 70 million lines of code. It's impossible for Alan to believe that it has 70 million lines of content. Microsoft engineers don't dare prune it because they don't know what it all does. Cathedrals have 1 millionth the mass of pyramids. The difference was the arch. Architecture demands arches."

This is from a paraphrase of a (great) Alan Kay talk, here:

http://www.windley.com/archives/2006/02/alan_kay_is_com.shtml

Not asking if the quote was the direct inspiration, but if the reasoning was similar?
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Can you patent the idea of recommending contacts in a social network?
I haven't yet found the stomach to watch the video

You're in for a disappointment, the video is a lot less frightening than they make it seem. It would be laughable, if the topic wasn't so serious.
"Fuck you" money is also a myth. Just look at Jerry Yang, for example. In life there is always a price to pay for everything, and more often than not it's not money. It's natural for people to fantasize that their life would be great if only they had X, because we all need long-term motivation.
However, the judge granted a Viacom motion that records of every video watched by YouTube users, including their login names and IP addresses, be turned over to the entertainment giant.

That can't be good.
There's a list here: http://ycombinator.com/faq.html
But you don't have to do a 9-to-5 job or consulting work ever if you don't want to. You are working on a startup now and you don't have millions, I presume. There are endless possibilities for earning money in this world that are not mindless 9-to-5 jobs.
Ok, now I'm really going to get flamed... I had better stop.

He's a skillful writer, is very opinionated, and has a hobby of arguing well against fashionable opinion - Mother Teresa, for example.

One person here likes him, another doesn't? That's not much of a shocker...
http://www.paulgraham.com/arcfaq.html
Doesn't sound like punditry to me!

Sounds like Christopher Hitchens, one and only :)
Doesn't the flag feature make downvoting superfluous and meaningless?

The automatic ranking systems (Google, Flickr, etc) usually only calculate positive points, or otherwise they simply ban irrelevant/offensive content manually. You're either good or irrelevant - that's the philosophy and it's very positive in all respects.
Of 80 we funded prior to the current cycle, 55 are still operating, 6 were acquired, and 1 merged with another YC-funded startup, meaning 18 have died. I don't know details of all the live ones' revenues.

There are 22 in the summer cycle, so the total funded is 102,
representing roughly 250 founders.
At the time that I clicked the 'Source' link, it told me they run the unmodified Laconica code, and directed me to the Laconica site: http://laconi.ca/Main/Source
Actually it's not the "clothes" as much as the "content" on the conversation.

One of my most interesting memories from Startup School in April...

I had 2 days where I was totally in my element talking about cool stuff with cool people the whole time. This rarely happens in my regular life. The time flew.

On the flight back, I sat next to 2 women who were reading "People" and emotionally discussing it's content. All I could think was, "Welcome back to the other 99% of the world."
I was going to have for the rest of my life

I hope so. That's what I thought when I switched to yahoo mail.

But when you start missing emails because you're getting thousands of spam per day, it's time to move on.

You'd think someone smarter than me would have fixed this scourge by now.
Scary how true that is too me.

But I most of all want to create something to help people and I get very satisfied by solving problems.
The point of a big score is not to retire.

It is having the privileige of not having to worry about money and being able to do exactly what you want.

If I sold a company for 200 million dollars I'd give half of it to charity, keep 10 millions as my own money and then put the rest in some big hard interesting project.
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