skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'd say it has a high chance of being c. At least where die == level off/decline.

I see a lot of parallels to formspring, whose pagivews/month graph looks like this: http://www.quantcast.com/formspring.me

So you either want to sell as it nears the that peak, or you have to be ready to stick out the trough of sorrow and invest a lot of time into finding a way to grow and monetize it.

So if you have some great vision for how you can turn this into something awesome, super-popular, and monetizable and you want to invest the time in it, you should go for it.

But if not, you're probably going to get some very good offers over the next few days--especially compared to how little time you've invested. If I were you and wasn't totally in love with the site, I'd get out while the offers are good and invest that money into your other businesses. Then when your next site goes viral, you'll just have to wonder how to get it back up ASAP, not how to afford doing so :)
Facebook certainly.
The iPad's storage would've been adequate 10 years ago? I'm pretty sure I didn't have a laptop with 32-64GB of storage in 2000 and I did just fine.

My current laptop drive is about 100GB (SSD) and it's pretty roomy (considering I store my big media on an external 1TB USB drive).
Flash2Android - Create Android apps in your browser
I was 16, this was 6 years ago, and I saw a friend program something in QBASIC. I was in complete awe - and I saw my future scroll past in front of me. Within one hour, I had written my own keyboard controlled piano by tapping into the PC-speaker. Now I'm in a computer science program at a university and working full time as a .NET developer (quitting to go back full time to school after the summer.)
You're missing the point. Both you and Sebastian are tragically self-centered. You shouldn't even be entertaining the thoughts you're having, if you had an ounce of decency.

Friends treat each other as equals even when they aren't. This is a lesson I've had to learn and seeing the flip-side, I'm damned glad I did.

I'll take humility and genuine friendship. Blogging crassly about how great I am and how hard it is to be so much better than the people I know is obscene.

If you lack the discretion and discernment to recognize the vulgarity of this, then we have no common ground and can leave it at that.
though it's probably the case that there will be more of them

Someone pointed out below the issue of time investment in order to be an intellectual. The internet makes searching, information retrieval, access to experts, etc. so much less time consuming, that it becomes perfectly reasonable to work a full time job, have a family, and still slowly build a repertoire around a subject. So that does mean more people can become intellectuals.

And that increase in numbers can build momentum, but what I'm suggesting is to not just bank on that as a natural occurrence, but to actively work towards a culture of public intellectualism.

Others down below let their skepticism get in the way, and that's exactly one of the problems I think we all need to overcome. Of course, it's difficult, a lot of people have grown up in a culture of anti-intellectualism, of ideological stubbornness, or of passive acceptance.

Think of it this way, the first step in changing a culture is to no longer accept that a culture must be the way it is. It doesn't mean that everyone will suddenly become Noam Chomsky, but instead of simply accepting the goal as impossible, take it as a challenge: How do we get from here to there?

If you want to learn physics, reading all the physics blogs on the internet is probably not as good an approach as picking up the best 20 or 30 physics books you can find and reading them cover to cover.

Sure, blogs aren't great, physics books are much better, but we now also have MIT OpenCourseWare, Connexions, etc. I can almost completely get a full MIT education, sometimes including lectures, without ever having to get accepted into MIT.

But the most important thing is that books and lectures aren't everything, so the next step isn't just about people taking the initiative to self-learn a subject, but to actually build free institutions where people can meet with others working in the field, hobbyists, etc.

In past popular intellectual movements, that has meant something as simple as a coffee shop. LUGS are a good example of that kind of common interest organizing. In the future, more structured places of intellectualism will be necessary, much like universities, but explicitly free of charge and without any purpose of degree or accreditation.

But hey, let's take it a step at a time. :)
This is a better attitude to take to the matter.

Just keep working, don't blog about how great you are on the blog whose main purpose is to tell other people about how great you are.

What kind of stuff do you work on? (I'm a programmer as well)
What does MVP stand for?
Btw, this is one of the areas where Yahoo! has a lot of success. Yahoo! Research in its current form exists for around 5 years, but it has already surpassed MIT.
The Joy of Stats - Now Available (on youtube)
Google SEO
Search Engine Optimization is the process of optimizing a website to offer it enhanced Search Engine Visibility. Some even used to say it as the art of optimizing or creating a quality site for expected Search Engine ranking. Experts use the term natural search engine rankings to purely differentiate SEO from the purchased, or sponsored search engine rankings.
I voted 11-16, but I started dabbling around 7 with TI-BASIC on a TI-99. It was mostly playing, though, at that age. Then in HS, I started writing simple games in GWBASIC. We didn't have Internet access at home then, so it was about all that was easily accessible to me. When I got to college, I started getting into web dev languages and that's when I started getting serious about it.
I haven't forgotten about this. I need sleep (exhausted and have been in bad health lately). Will get back to this soon.
When is selfishness the best reason to cooperate?
You know people who always help others for no apparent reasons. You also probably know people who care only about themselves. I tell you the truth about selfishness and cooperation. I also explain why is it that helping others and doing is a clever business strategy. You know that doing good is clever, and this talk will finally give you a rational reason to do good! Learn more about what I do here: www.seeducation.org
disclosure: i'm not a chomsky fan

disclosure++: i'm less a fan of lies or mudslinging or false conclusions or character assassinations

with that said....

chomsky doesn't "cheerlead for hezbollah"

chomsky doesn't deny the holocaust

chomsky isn't an anti-semite

the "criticisms" are similar to what the interviewer here keeps repeating (and constantly ignoring his answers):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BM7IFBIfQ1M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uZ33Z483yo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSBFt-xtpBY
This is great! However, if I click on the 2010 one (edit:any), I get to a "purchase this article". Is this what's expected?
I remember back in the day, my first very own computer (Pentium 2, 266Mhz) had a 6.4GB drive and I could still put a bunch of games & applications on it without worrying about disk space. These days, a single game like starcraft 2 requires around 9 gigs of disk space.

It's crazy to think that 10 years from now, your average application will require 100GB of disk space, which will still be nothing compared to your 10TB drive. Maybe future games will be packaged in their own virtual machine since everyone will be running a hypervisor normally.
http://gopollgo.com

I'm creating a consumer/social polling website set to launch in about a week or so. On a consumer level it is basic. But we're going to offer advanced reporting, etc for bigger brands to connect with Twitter followers / Facebook friends, website visitors, etc.

If anyone would like beta access, feel free to shoot me an email in my profile.

/shameless-promo
Search Engine Optimization and Its Role in Search Engine Marketing
Internet marketing has rapidly grown over the years. Businesses big and small are trying to reap the benefits that an online presence offers.
Assuming a linear model, and that compression won't improve.
I grabbed a hacked version of Skype that works over wifi and mobile data connection regardless of carrier from an Android forum (I need it because I'm on China Mobile and it's not available in my app store at all). If you want the apk, please let me know and I can email it to you.
You may dislike Chomsky for whatever reasons and that is your prerogative†. However, putting to one side that you have issues with the messenger, what do you think about this one particular issue? Do you agree with the sentiment?

Besides, I think you may be veering off-topic and just using this brief chance to get the boot in. That type of opportunism is unhelpful, distracting and poisonous.

I personally believe that this topic (the responsibility of intellectuals) touches upon an issue that troubles me a huge amount. Assume that one isn't an intellectual but that you have gone out of your way to discover the truth about the world around you and how your government and other governments act. Assume that you have developed a layer of cynicism, skepticism, mistrust, and now have a healthy wariness of propaganda. If you do not act on this knowledge, how culpable are you with respect to the actions of your representatives? Do you donate to just causes that try to prevent or undo the harm done to others in your name? Do you sign petitions? Do you write your representative? Do you organize meetings to talk about these issues? Do you protest on the street? Do you write articles and books? Do you run for office? I do none of these things and I _hate_ myself for it. I feel that I have done the easy part, I have made myself informed - it is our responsibility to get informed and I have done that part. But the responsibility must go further or society won't change - we get a nation of informed but glassy eyed proles. I am that prole and it saddens me greatly.

† but I'd sure avoid chatting to you at a cocktail party :) haha, joke! No I'm sure you're a lovely person really.
Strange, after a certain amount of time (20 minutes ? more ?), I just don't receive skype calls anymore on the iphone, even when the app is in the foreground.

If I make a skype call, I can now receive calls/IM for some time, even in the background.

Is that a normal behavior ?
Would my actions be "tragically self-centered" or "crass" if I did the same to people I did not know previously? Are you saying that hiring people and turning a profit from their labor is inherently evil? or is that only so when there is a pre-existing relationship?

edit: moved this from another comment of mine, as it really is a response to the "crass and vulgar" statement:

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not as refined as most people here. You could certainly call me vulgar, in most senses of the word. I certainly lack good breeding and taste. I never went to college.[1] Hell, I spent half my childhood in a mobile home park.

But I don't see what's wrong with offering someone a better job than they had before, even if that someone is friend or family, even if I turn a profit on the deal.

[1]I am both proud and ashamed that I didn't go to college. Proud, because I am able to earn a middle-class salary without going to school, but also ashamed because to be truthful, I didn't go because I couldn't cut it. My math is pretty abysmal, and there's no way I have the willpower to hold down a full-time job /and/ do homework, and that is something to be ashamed about.
Also, it doesn't require dangerous procedures that could brick your device to add the ability to hack on it.
I can sympathize. Right there with you buddy.
One guess is that the online-education route in CS more often just bypasses degrees entirely. If you're not going to go to a meatspace university and attend classes, the online-only alternative in computing is usually to learn a bunch on your own, start participating in projects and building up a portfolio, and then try to get hired on the strength of that.
Maybe, but this happened on his site, and Google withheld the money from the Youtube ads, which constituted the bulk of his revenue. That's just not fair.

And they continue to run ads next to his Youtube videos; they simply stopped giving him his share. That is even less fair.

Maybe the lesson is: have multiple accounts with Adsense so that if one has a problem then the others are unaffected.
- you can do voice only calls, which means your iPod Touch is now a phone
Not to mention Allen still probably owns a large amount of Microsoft stock, which would probably not respond well to major patent litigation, especially if MS lost and had to not only pay out damages but re-implement in a non-infringing way.
According to what metric?
Fortunately, the average computer user doesn't know how to find and/or used cracked software. Personally, I wouldn't worry about this much. Almost all well-known software has been cracked. That didn't seem to stop them though.
I have a very close group of 3 friends that I have known for at least 6 years each. We all come from immigrant families, went to a competitive, top 100 high school and all did well and went to good schools. We're all 24 now and two of them are busy hopping from job to job to find the biggest paycheck, bragging about their $160k base salaries (consulting/private equity) not including bonuses and how they quadrupled their savings with margins trading. Then there's me and my other friend in this group.

I've only ever done startups and the closest I've been to a BigCorp job was a yahoo internship. The aforementioned two friends just don't understand the world of startups and think I'm wasting my time and setting myself up for financial disaster. The other friend is on his 7th year of college. He picked majors because they were highly regarded and he saw that we were doing similar things, but did not interest him. Over the years he looked at our relative career success, did not think he possessed any real skills for the workforce and became suicidal, attempting to kill himself twice. Saved the first time because of a malfunctioning old handgun and the second because of a goodbye email he sent to the 3 of us. I check my email way too often and saw the email first and called 911 and then kept him on the phone.

I'm not quite sure what the moral is, but it seemed relevant and I wanted to share. I wish my friends did what they loved and not what their peers thought was cool or society deemed worthy. None of them love what they do.
I more or less agree with you re Chomsky.

I'll take a couple of examples of where Chomsky and the left wing position (that I've read) is strange. (Any reader might want to skip to "And so on.")

The condemnations of US foreign policy is weird. Consider that countries (including democracies) implement realpolitik. And all (I know of) lie about it.

It is ridiculous to condemn a group (US) for playing a game where their lives are at stake and acting like the other players. Instead, note that the game is bad -- and how it could be changed (implement more democracies).

For a second example, I'll take Israel. I'll compare it to Bangladesh.

Even with an extreme description of Israel in 1948, the treatment of Hindus in Bangladesh has been much worse for much longer (the Hindus are also citizens, not in the middle of a civil war without an existing country. Etc).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vested_Property_Act_%28Banglade...

No one cares! (Well, the Hindus driven away care. And the ones lynching them.)

Israel can be condemned on some issues (which is natural, the country is under an existential threat). But to demonize only one side in a conflict when the other side arguably is factors of ten worse?! (Even with antisemitism in their state controlled/censured media!)

And so on.

On the other hand, Chomsky is for me like vim. People whose intellect I respect use vim instead of Emacs. Hence, there should be something in Chomsky.

What speaks against that argument is that even the intelligent followers tend to be idealists and believers regarding their political opinions. (-: Like, well, me and Emacs. :-)

Edit: I should note that I have to run some errands now and probably won't read answers until this evening.
Specifically what I was referring to was power being used with little foresight and little wisdom. When it is used without the foresight that it will someday disappear, that's when the rude awakening can happen.

As you say, really it's no different than any other undeserving attribute that can disappear, it just needs to be used wisely and seen for what it is. Money, looks, power - it can all be a gift or a curse depending on how you handle it.
> It's crazy to think that 10 years from now, your average application will require 100GB of disk space

Doubtful.

Outsite of games, "your average application" is still mostly in the 10~100MB range, and generally on the lower end of the spectrum. And I'm talking desktop: on OSX, Acorn is 35MB, Address Book is 20MB, Adium is 73MB, Camino is 48MB, Colloquy is 22MB, Delicious Library 2 is 42MB, Divvy is 3.7MB, ForkLift is 25MB, Handbrake is 15MB, iCal is 53MB, mail is 77MB, Reeder is 9.3MB, RipIt is 6.6MB, …

Of course on the other hand Emacs is 133MB, iMovie is 256MB, iTunes is 158MB.

But really, games and multimedia (video and audio) are the eaters of disk space. In no small part because games are full of multimedia data and multimedia files are simply huge as they're continuously increasing in quality.
What is your specialization? I can send some survey papers your way. (I already tweet them as I find them.)

I go through 2-10 papers a day, nearly on PL research, semantics, type-theory and implementation lore. There are a bunch of us on HN, some I correspond with via email, others twitter.
Book Review: Leading Lean Software Development
Minimum Viable Product http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product
Mark you just started 2011 for me. Very inspiring/smart what you do! Congrats!!!
It's interesting to compare this list to Citeseer's "Most Cited Computer Science Articles":

http://ksuseer1.ist.psu.edu/stats/articles
Here is at least one metric. In that link, scroll down to the bottom. Yahoo Research has 7.6 "points" while MIT has 5.8.

Lifshits is a research scientist at Y!R.
I found donation-based software does not work very well. However, I suppose it could work like a champ if you have millions of users. You're most likely to find that it'll create an increased need for support since you'll have more users. That might not be the best thing for you right now since you still have a day job. I'd suggest you go with a 30-day trial. The next best thing would be a version with minimal features, and a fully-featured pay version.
>Nope.

Do you believe that you can not have a friendship when there are economic factors at play? That is an understandable belief, though I disagree, and if you believe that, the rest of what you said makes sense; in your mind I would be throwing away a friendship when I hired a friend. Of course, that's not what I believe, but that would explain our disagreement.
Source? Because in France depending on the site/boutique it can be as low as $58… including VAT [0], though the lowest prices are generally ~$70 (again, including a 19.6% VAT) [1] [2]

[0] http://www.rue-montgallet.com/prix/acheter,wd-1to-s-ata-ii-8...

[1] http://www.materiel.net/disque-dur-3-5-pouces/hitachi-deskst...

[2] http://www.ldlc.com/fiche/PB00095581.html
In the early 1980s my dad brought home a 5mb hard drive. It connected to our Atari 800 through the Atari's four joystick ports, and cost $5000. A lot can change in 25 years.
Try searching CiteSeerX:

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/

A google search of the site is sometimes more productive. For instance:

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fcites...
check out the documentary on chomsky "manufacturing consent". this is partly addressed there.

all these things are toys and distractions. it's up to you to choose what to follow: the false prophets or the real ones. the issues that actually matter or the ones that actually don't.

the main thing i have found is that it all feels impossible/insurmountable in the beginning. but as with anything else, it gets much easier over time as long as the work and effort is there. e.g. "programming is too hard". but in reality EVERYTHING is "too hard". nothing is easy. nothing is black and white. etc.
Mom, this is how Twitter works
make fun of twitter, and you get down-voted. I know, I know, Google will buy them for 4 billion in 2011, but that is the only exit strategy they have. No biz model there, sorry.
South Korea gets robot English teachers
Not really. Intelligent acts are everywhere. Academia is usually the last place I ever encounter anything intelligent.

For example, a lot of people find TED vids stimulating. Or the Discovery channel, etc. Those aren't what one would consider "academic".

Further, Chomsky tends to dismiss "academia" as not being relevant to the "real world" whenever he uses the phrase "academic exercise" for something that doesn't matter and is just mental masturbation.
After all the books I've read, after all the time I've spent on learning, solving problems and exercising my brain, after all the self-help/marketing/how-to blogs I've gone through, after all the effort I've taken on becoming a better person, after all the sacrifices I've made by going out of my way to help other people to make their lives better, I have found that there are many people who are better than me in many ways I cannot even begin to imagine, not because they try to be, not because they are more intelligent than me, not because they have any incentive to be, not because they are better educated, but probably because they just are, probably because they grasp the beauty of life better than me on a scale that I am not able to comprehend, probably because there is more to life than being successful and being better, whatever that means, or probably because of some other reasons I will never understand.
The signup graph pretty much tracks the traffic graph. We added about 9k users in three days.

I'm writing up a technical blog post to go with the graphs, for people who are curious about what we did to keep the site up.
A very mixed bag of responses in the comments. It appears to me that the writer may have inadvertently asked his users to click on adverts, because it helps him generate profit. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but Google does, and it explicitly says that in its Adsense contract.

With that being said, Mr Winter deserved a human voice at the very least. A discussion, not a computer generated decision. Perhaps the adsense account for the personal website should have been ceased, but doing so for the youtube one too, is petty. Of course (assuming) a computer can't tell the difference between these outlets a human voice would have helped in this matter.

After reading some of the comments, I really think pulling down the youtube videos and throwing up 30 second 'previews', with a link to the full version on Vimeo, is a great idea. There's no doubt it will generate less income, but you'll get your cut.
Have zero in the bank: can't afford to be a patent troll.

Have a few million: can afford, might even make financial sense, assuming you are ok with it ethically.

Have a few billion: why be a patent troll? You have the world's biggest yacht -- do you need 1000 more?

Boggles my mind.