skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You're speaking as if that hypothetical person in Iran actually exists and is immortal.

The Iranians in 1953 are not the same Iranians today.

The situation today is that you have a sabre rattling theocracy that funds terrorism trying to get nuclear weapons.

What possible concession could the West make to get Iran to stop striving for nukes? Nothing. Iranian leadership wants nukes before their rule is overthrown by the people in favour of a democracy. Before the hearts and minds of a sufficient majority move for change away from totalitarianism.

It's very important to stop them from getting nuclear weapons. 1953 has no bearing on this situation 60 years later.
The one with the "family bed", who refused the stroller. Not that I have anything against that; to each their own.
So what should I take away from this?
That businesses should focus on customers using Windows first?

If the team is small and the product has some value to you, it only means the team focused on the right featureset.

Personally I'm grateful if an AIR client is available, because that means I can use it on Linux, my OS.
> The web site is easy to use and a great resource for beginners.

Yep a great resource, for wasting a ton of precious time in which they could have learned how to do things right instead of using techniques from ca. 2000.

> ...interested in the actual tutorials.

Which are still the worst part of the site.

Example (just clicked on one of their JS tutorials):

> JavaScript statements can be grouped together in blocks.
> Blocks start with a left curly bracket {, and ends with a right curly bracket }.
> The purpose of a block is to make the sequence of statements execute together.

Pure BS. JavaScript has no block scope. {} aren't needed for "executing stuff together".

Another thing they tell people is that "var foo = 2;" and "foo = 2;", are equal, more BS.

> If table based layout invalidates a site...

There is a difference in using a table layout because it's a good choice (Google doesn't validate in any way, the just want to cut down traffic, which makes sense for them) and just using it because, well... because one has no better idea.
>But this doesn't stop Iran from getting nukes, it only delays them.

Eating doesn't stop hunger, it only delays it.

"Stopping" something is inherently temporary. You can say the exact same thing about stopping anything.

Exercise doesn't stop obesity, it only delays it.

Delay is exactly the goal.

Eventually the Iranian public is going to overthrow their theocracy and create a democracy. Then they will probably stop striving so hard for nukes because the leaders will turn to creating prosperity rather than attempting to achieve a false security through apocalyptic weapons.
+1, but I'd stop mentioning it after the first time (unless of course you're just doing this as an experiment and aren't really interested in selling the stuff)
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Watch Jersey Shore Season 3 megavideo Snooki trademarks, like fuzzy slippers, flashy jewelry and giant sunglasses, will kick off the line, with denim, sportswear, lingerie, handbags, personal care, beauty products and home goods hopefully to follow, Stephen Goodman of SRG Ventures told the paper.
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This may just be my circle of reach, but I am yet to discover a programmer with decent vision or initiative. Most have really poor business ideas and tend to focus too heavily on the technical problems and pitfalls of an idea rather than thinking of how to solve them and extrapolate the idea further. Programmers are horrible people to attempt to brainstorm with (even when you yourself have a passable grasp on coding).
Most Japanese dislike to join fb simply just because it is still English sns, as you don't feel good if you are in mixi, fully in Japanese.
Then I'm curious, why we Japanese love Twitter...
Are Consumers Tired of Forced Viral Marketing?
Clowning helps IVF patients become pregnant: study
>It was an accident, though.

Does anyone really believe this?
Anyone know how the buzzers work? It's my impression that they are disabled until a moment after the question has been read completely, and then the first to buzz in gets a chance to answer. I wonder if they took steps to ensure that the computer doesn't have an edge in buzzing in first.
All the educated Persians I know hate the crap out of the Iranian government and are happy about Stuxnet
That's the point. We increasingly can't control the information about everything we do, but we trust and have the right that the neighbor who accidentally saw us does the right thing.
There is no such thing as bad publicity, as someone once said. Now, that's not strictly true in general - but for a startup a bad piece of press does at least get your product/service out there. It also gives you a great opportunity to show that you listen to feedback by iterating on your offering. Fix the things people don't like and then put up a blog post saying: "Hey, we fixed it!"
I have been thinking about this as well, but the problem is that but the problem is that people how are completely clueless probably also need some consulting, which would make it scale badly.

So I though maybe, as long as Google is the only player, the best way in the first place is to focus on the 'smart' developers and later set up almost sort of franchise system, where people create services for specific applications and my start up provides the infrastructure.
Would Muslims abstain from killing civilians in a world war?

Moral arguments are pointless. We need results oriented thinking.

Is it better or worse for everyone if Iranian leaders have nukes?

I think even most Iranians would agree that it is worse. Their government is not exactly popular.
That doesn't change the fact that it's very impressive, even at 'less than half that'.
Let me elaborate, then. The list is dubious. There are some solid arguments against making such lists in the article I linked to. The web is made of links, people, companies, bots and more. What's a "genuine organic" link?

> Exact match keywords are an absolute killer when it comes to ranking

Where are these keywords supposed to be? I'm guessing exact-match domains. I don't think they matter much but that's up for debate.

> For the same reason, have no follow backlinks as well.

I think that's supposed to be "no nofollow". I dislike nofollow a lot. Some of your links are bound to end up in places that use nofollow, no need to worry about it.

> Backlinks from .edu/.gov sites

Spammers have been after those since at least 2005. I'm sure Google knows better than to place a lot of weight on those.

> Metatags are still important, even if Google doesn't care about them.

Meta keywords are dead for sure. Meta descriptions are the oldest standard way to provide a summary of your page, so you should use it. There are also many non-standard meta tags that can prove bad for your site (nocache,noindex,etc).

> PubSubHubbub is excellent to get your site noticed/indexed by Google

Dunno about that, is it any better than a regular RSS feed (and maybe a good old blog ping)?

> The number of indexed pages on your site

If you have enough "positive factors" you will have more pages indexed. How can that be a signal in itself?

> Make your content unique.

How do you measure the uniqueness of your content? Besides that, there's many types of content where uniqueness does not matter and is not expected, for example: lyrics, recipes, press releases, syndicated news and more.

(Duplicate) Content can be aggregated, filtered, commented on, mirrored, reorganised, reformatted and so on.

> A public whois record

Why does that matter? Whois obfuscation is offered by most mainstream registrars, lots of people use it. It's an effective tactic against all the unscrupulous people that mine whois records. Also plenty of ccTLDs do not expose anywhere near as much information as .com and the likes.

> A domain registered for more than one year
> An aged domain name

That would be a great way to provide stale content to a lot of search queries. The rate of website creation is surely rising, why do we have to trust their content less? And with many people buying old websites in order to exploit this presumed signal, the noise has certainly gone up.
ASK NH: how to build GUI in python.
i want to know how to build GUI in python, i have came across lots of thing but which one will be relatively easy to learn..
OP here. Just to be clear, I'm not Josh, just saw this in his twitter feed and thought it would be of interest to HN.
This blog entry was just an unnecessarily inflammatory excuse for "journalism". Why?!
Congratulations-- you did a nice job of deriving some useful lessons from this experience. And, as you no doubt realize, none of the lessons have anything to do with TechCrunch at all, but are things all start-ups should always be keeping in mind.
Sounds like a facebook app worth making. Rent out rooms to people that are at most 3 hops removed from you on FB?
The Behavior Grid: Fifteen Ways Behavior Can Change
Trust is not easy.

If you were the Prime Minister of Israel what would you do?
All I'm saying here is if we should be afraid of one country, it's US. They are the one involved in most of the wars in the past century. They are the one actually used atomic bombs killing people. They are the one hit a air plane full on civilians (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655)
Another great quote from w3schools:

> JavaScript can be used to validate data - A JavaScript can be used to validate form data before it is submitted to a server. This saves the server from extra processing

Sure! Always trust the client :)
While probably somewhat true, I don't see how your links prove that being associated with Stuxnet development puts ones life at risk.

Both are talking about iranian nuclear scientists being killed!
So many books are not lendable! What is the criteria I wonder?

The only lendable book I have is Jessica's "Founders at Work" which I don't want to lend cause I haven't finished it. I'm still on the Adobe guy.
I second that, Uncanny Valley is exactly it. It was the same a few years ago on the web when web apps tried to duplicate native functionality (think filebrowsers etc.), it never worked right. In fact, Dropbox (however much I love it) still has that problem in their web UI.
Could this be confirmation bias, because only liberal iranians would talk to a Westerner?
Infographic: Chinese, the new dominant language of the internet
This is interesting, but could it be against the TOS?
serious question - have you done a lot of linkbuilding? because i've seen probably 80% of these matter.

what does it matter if google makes 400 algorithm changes/year? you seem to be saying that this means there are no fundamentals to SEO and it doesn't follow.
"The site is horrible. Period."

w3fools.com isn't relatively better (compared with web development best practice at it's release, with the web development prevailing wisdom when w3schools.com launched).

There are a litany of errors and mistakes in their own markup, so their quote of "W3Schools should both hold itself to, and be held to, the highest standards." is ironic - w3fools.com don't hold themselves up to these highest standards.

Also ironic is the statement that W3Schools.com don't link to the "specs" (they mean W3C Recommendations, which aren't specifications or specs) - yet looking through that long page there's no obvious link to the very same Recommendations. Surely that's not a difficult or time-consuming thing to do?

Their markup needs a good polish and refactor. It's littered with examples:

* lack of accessibility appreciation,

* non-understanding of descendent selectors in CSS,

* the difference between emphasis and strong,

* ignorance of CSS pseudo selectors,

* lack of properly thought-out heading structure,

* lack of appreciation as to what role="main" means,

* marking up a series of paragraphs as an ordered list,

* hiding asides and further information in HTML comments,

* misunderstanding of what is and isn't UTF-8,

* editorial changes to cited comments not marked up,

* blockquotes lacking proper citation (in either of the two possible semantic approaches),

* code fragments not marked up with code tags,

* use of accesskeys,

* lack of consistency over how an ellipsis is added to a page - they are using 4 different methods in one page,

* using markup for a presentational effect instead of using appropriate logical markup,

* lack of appreciation of "fragment" in document fragment identifiers.

* And 2005 just called, they want their clearfix class back.

As an example of best practice, their one page site falls below an acceptable level.

Their message is useful - as is parts of W3Schools - but they are repeating the same mistake.

Plus the overbearing righteous indignation that comes across in the largely copied and pasted mailing list isn't the right tone or approach. It's quite easy to pick apart nits in a site, it's quite another to demonstrate the ability to correctly explain the better ways of developing.

This is no better than the anti-Internet Explorer rants. A negative slight at things because it's cool.

The best way to usurp w3schools from the top of Google results is to write better content and share your wisdom. That however will involve bringing together a community focused on providing constructive and positively instructional material - that's something I'm unconvinced that the people behind w3fools.com can accomplish. There's already too much negativity and indignation in the site itself for any of it's creators to improve their credibility.
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These are people who are very skilled...in their field

At the very least, they can follow process and act responsibly around breakable or dangerous things. That gives them huge advantage compared to offices and homes.
Reminds me of the Ghost Sniffer equipment from the Ghostbusters movie:

http://ghostbusters.wikia.com/wiki/Ghost_Sniffer
Scala levels: beginner to expert, application programmer to library designer
Wow! I always wanted to do something similar for this community and had also started putting content together. But I understand, it is not a one-man job! Bravo guys!!
Are you talking about outdoor use in sunny Scotland? Both direct bright sunshine and wanting to spend time outdoors might both be limited by the local climate.

And "they've sold a lot" is an incredibly weak argument. It applies to most things Apple has launched in the past five years yet they seem to keep improving them anyway and indeed selling more of the newer ones.
I think that's how it works (they only get enabled after the question has been read, while you get penalised somehow if you buzz in too early. I imagine they built in some random delays so the computer didn't always buzz in at the millisecond.
Hi guys,

Thanks a lot for your feedback and comments.
Am thrilled with all the response. I will be very happy if the post is useful to you guys.

Josh
I'd much prefer there was one place to go when you need to buy something. One directory where companies would place their announcements about their products services with full descriptions and current prices and cathegorize it in all ways possible. Directory would be diligently moderated and flaws of the system that could give some people unfair advantage would be fixed daily.

It almost already happened for used goods. If you want to buy used good you go to ebay. If you want to sell used good you adertise it on ebay.
I didn't mean criticizing w3schools - I meant, I always wished for a better, refined and more practical oriented alternative.
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No, lending is a part of Amazon Kindle. [1]

[1] http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&...
They're vetted by the hotel, there's regulation, command structure, security in the hotel, they have an incentive to not do bad things (They'd get fired), they're (hopefully) trained, etc etc

Additionally, if the hotel is a big chain, there's a certain standard of service you can pretty much be sure of across hotels.

So IMHO, people working for a company who are trained and employed to serve the public, are quite different to 'random people'.
All tech entrepreneurs are hoping to get coverage from TechCrunch. It is the best way to get early adopters, early traction and recognition. It gives you a sense of pride as well. Once your start-up is covered by TechCrunch, you feel you are finally a proper tech entrepreneur.

Can I suggest caring less? You can take external validation from many places. Users are a good option: they pay money, care about the space, are less jaded, and are friends with people like themselves.

TC is not a good place to recruit early users, unless you are building an app for poor geeks with short attention spans. If you are, you have bigger problems.
Unlikely that it is that low. I rarely see a room on AirBNB for less than $80 at least in big cities. Wouldn't be surprised to see a higher AVG.
its a joke with an awesome straight face!!
Examples of Poor Project Management - Not Seeing the Woods for the Trees
> All tech entrepreneurs are hoping to get coverage from TechCrunch. It is the best way to get early adopters, early traction and recognition. It gives you a sense of pride as well. Once your start-up is covered by TechCrunch, you feel you are finally a proper tech entrepreneur.

Rubbish.

Get users, get revenue. Ignore bad reviews/haters.
Exploiting Software Defects for Profit is Still Illegal
Autonomous Exploration
and 900 thoroughly average developers.

Call of Duty: Black Ops credits 60 artists. It's very clear, watching Minecraft, that they have hired zero artists.

Making a commercial game is not merely about hiring 900 average developers. Frankly it's becoming clear to me that many people posting here have never been involved in a large creative project, even something as common as stage crew in your high school musical.
Thanks for all the comments.

Yes, I agreed that TechCrunch is not the place or only place to get validation. Probably it helps you to get the attentions from echo chambers. But, users are the real judge to decide if you are building a solid business or not.
I'm not so certain which ones are the fools.
Instead of glasses, electrodes hooked up directly in the nerves that control blinking, sync'd with the video stream :)
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Not to be confused with Uni-Form, the "framework" for HTML forms which serves a slightly different purpose.

http://sprawsm.com/uni-form/
Ask HN: Review My Startup: Skinnyo - Weight loss challenge community
Hi All,

I'm looking for feedback on a startup I have been working on for many months now...

Skinnyo started as a simple platform for creating challenges for friends and colleagues to motivate each other into losing weight but has grown and could now be considered a small social network with user reputation and updates of friends activity and support.

The site opened in late October and since then we have had over 4500 users join (many of whom through the chrome webstore) and around 800 are active regularly...

I am particularly looking for feedback on potential business models aside from advertising. The users we have so far seem to appreciate that the site is kept clean and simple unlike everything else in this space. And I am also interested in ideas for sustainable growth.

Any other comments would be great, and all feedback is appreciated.

Cheers

http://skinnyo.com
Clickable: http://skinnyo.com
Re: mobile websites -- I guess there's an "early bird gets the worm" problem here. About ten years back the story was that Japan was rushing ahead of the rest of the world because everyone had amazing mobile phones that could browse the web and process micropayments. The latter's still kind of cool, but perhaps delaying mobile internet adoption until regular HTML worked has helped other countries in the long run.
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Nice to see someone forging ahead instead of throwing in the towel and saying they failed fast. A startup is a long series of ups and downs, and bad reviews will be part of that.
Airbnb is the only YC company I've ever recommended to family. My aunt and uncle own a cottage. Previously they rented it out via personal connections (when not in it themselves) and it sat unused better than 330 days a year. Airbnb pretty much instantly makes their lives better. (n.b. I'm not sure if they've started using it yet. Interest was high but, well, you know conversion funnel math as well as I do.)

I also think they've been very generous with how much they've shared on the subject of enjoying good PR. I think they're the best company I'm aware of anywhere on that -- honestly, if they didn't explain themselves so often I would have become convinced that they had a picture of a NYT editor caught in a compromising position with a Fox News anchor and were blackmailing both of them at the same time.
I really like the design, it's very clean and looks highly polished. Also I like the fast signup process. Business models might be a tricky one here. Can't think of one atm.
Even if this is true:

> In other words, you are saying African-American culture is the sole reason for all the problems blacks face in the U.S?

Why---apart from needless snark---should the following thought be necessary?

> I'm sure that's helpful to the 6 year old child when he is given the book that explains the two different culture choices he has in life, and that he should select one, and it will automatically become his.
I haven't seen the context of the original quote, but what you've quoted here is a valid statement and doesn't really have anything to do with what you're saying.

I'm in no way advocating client-side-only validation, but form validation on the client side to clean up mistakes can save a server round trip and a page reload, and so could save server side processing.

EDIT: just to clarify, I don't mean to turn this into a discussion with further nitpicking. I just thought your quote and comment were representative of some of the W3Fools content; picking a quote and interpreting it to mean what you want it to mean, and then criticizing it on that basis.
If buying patents proves nothing, what proves Zuckerberg invented Facebook?

What, in your mind, proves anything?
I second the praise, however you could really use some kind of tour that presents the functionality of the site without the need to signup first.
How do you measure what and how much it matters?

I'm saying making lists of ranking factors is not a good idea. Not that all SEO advice is useless.
RightJS 2.2 was just released with lots of fancy new features
Don't go to Vegas—tales of a journalist's first CES
So the h.264 codec was obviously a concept that occurred pretty much simultaneously to a whole bunch of people across the world?

Just because somebody got around to patenting a concept first doesn't mean that many others didn't think of it at the same time.

Correct, however, the party that owns the patent, decides who can and cannot implement that concept in real life.
We already have wavelet codecs like Dirac, which are quite exotic compared to MPEG4 / VP8 / Theora.
I agree, it's very nice. Who did it?
I know this is sort of not relevant, but can someone comment and compare/contrast South Korea to Japan in terms of the parent's comment?
This is the reason for the scare quotes.
Business model suggestion:

Sponsored Competitions by gyms/weightloss companies.

Hypothetical situation:

Virgin Active looks 5kg Challenge: Any one who passes the challenge gets 50% off membership dues.

Affiliate advertising: It is simply straight forward :)

Goodluck man!

Let me know when you launch 'MuscleV' ;)
[Citation Needed]

Actually, this says nothing. Context matters greatly. Who cares if the issue is getting hired for a geology job in Houston, but the population of Bollywood stars is exploding?