skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I take issue with the graph coloring. "Bad" should have the same color in both graphs and should be on the same side of the graph on both. He uses red for bad in graph1 and blue in graph2.

60% of businesses who try groupon like it enough and may use it again?

That's great for client acquisition for most types of businesses.

67% of businesses who ran a promotion made a profit during that promotion? That's great.

Lots of times you run promotions at restaurants to make less of a loss. Every day you have a restaurant, your interest on the loan you took to buy your equipment, every day you pay rent, you're in the hole. Every your kitchen is open and staffed you're in a hole if those seats done fill, but you're in less of a hole than if you stay closed (as long as you have some customers). Some restaurants open on Monday and Tuesday to lose less money then they would if they were open only Wed-Sun. Some restaurants make money every day they're open. Many do not. Most "live" for the busy Thurs-Sun afternoon.

This article/statistic keeps coming up: I think it shows how well groupon works.

33% of businesses lost money during the promotion, 40% of businesses didn't like using the service/had a bad experience. What are the numbers for the restaurants prior 3 weeks?

Those numbers are not bad at all.
Probably because they're off to the right, easily ignored. If I had ads in my news feed I wouldn't exactly appreciate it, but it'd probably be more effective.
I am founder of Nodejitsu. Nodejitsu and Nodefu are not related in anyway, although based on reading these comments it looks like NodeFu does use open source software we wrote, which is great to see

http://github.com/nodejitsu
http://github.com/indexzero

Node to win :-D
There really isn't anything we should do. It's not really a problem. The entire thing is a rant about how he doesn't like the style. He makes a couple vague references to build quality but that's beside the point of his main rant. Nothing good came come of legislating aesthetic values.
I think that's what dangoldin was saying. Poorer communities will be jammed with cheap software and computers rather than great teachers.

The software teaching method definitely has merit, but it's not a solution to "we have overcrowded classes." It's not yet ready for that, and there doesn't seem to be anyone credible claiming that it is.

This is just the outgrowth of bad policy and not enough funding.
The Groupon CEO is saying that businesses have a chance to make more bulk sales. I can't see what's wrong with that.

Distributors will normally set a hefty markup to cover the costs of goods not moving. If you have a semi-guarantee that they would move, that markup can be lowered.
When Teaching Restrains Discovery
> I would happily pay $30 or whatever for each major update if it motivated the vendor to have an interest in keeping it up to date.

That would just be a different user-hostile incentive. The path forward is for Android to actually become consumer open source (GPL3). Let device manufacturers concentrate on shipping hardware and adding any new device drivers to a public repository. Updates can then be directly applied by eager users, or eventually pushed out by carriers with minimal integration effort. Proprietary "value adds" like SenseUI can still be done through the package system.
The word is "asocial". I think she (his girlfriend) just mixed the two up. Many people do.
Microsoft launches OneNote for iPhone. Rest of Office to follow?
Just as one aside on this, it's pretty clear by now that it isn't simply a matter of doing a source control get and the vendor's work is done.

Aside from simply having technical insight into the individual ROMs, you needn't look further than the disaster that has been Sony Erricson and Dell's Android entrants to see the truth in this -- those vendors came out with devices running dated Android versions, turning possible winners into catastrophic losers, eviscerating sales of the Streak and X10.

If they could have just done a merge and they were done, obviously they would have.

So now we're getting to the point where it seems that makers like Motorola and HTC have started to build up a significant Android talent pool, and that bodes well. Despite the constant incantations that Android is free, I wouldn't be surprised if the in-house development costs rivaled or exceeded what something like Windows Mobile cost to license.
Select Country; Select Language: Developing a user-friendly global gateway
Does that apply to executables? For example package with GPL2 and GPL3 executables?

(But even if it does, nothing stops you from splitting the package in two, and providing two packages, rather than one).
No Formats, no Format Wars
As an old teacher of mine use to say, "Don't let school get in the way of your education."
Pirates, pirates everywhere!
More like a take on the Superman insignia.
I like the name... nothing wrong with it.

And congrats for the initiative !

Learning some Ruby now but next step is Node.js, then I will try it out.
"The team had always been dedicated to listening to users. But as they added new features, their conversations with users had changed - they became more narrowly focused on new features and whether each individual change was usable and useful. Somewhere along the way, they'd stopped observing the entire user experience, from end to end."

An excellent demonstration of the overarching importance of overall user experience.

I can easily see how a startup would begin to ignore such a measurement; after all, they are only changing iteratively. Eventually, however, so many iterative changes would have been made that the experience would be vastly different than it was initially. A step back, at least once in a while, seems to be well worth the trouble.
Relational Cloud: A Database-as-a-Service for the Cloud
My fault, I just approved all the comments I received, even the ones that disagree with me. I'm so happy to have had such a response to this!
Just to add to the list, there's also nodeJsCloud: http://www.nodejscloud.com/
That is cool, because NodeFu sounds much better than either of those names. It is a pretty cool name.
Yes without a shadow of a doubt. These are the most important metrics to look at in fact. It will be helpful as well to identify a (one) core super metric unique to your business as an overal measure.

E.g.
Blogger - Number of blog posts per day
Flickr - Number of photos uploaded per day

After that once you start breaking down into AARRR, you can start defining more mini metrics to watch and optimise at each stage of the process.

Be careful with data overload. Less is more. Is finding out the number of users with a personalised profile picture meaningful to your business RIGHT NOW? If not, shove it and move on to the next metric.

Less is more!!
The A3000-UX was too little, too late. By the time it came out, m68k UNIX workstations had been left in the dust by RISC.

You could get a low-end SPARC for roughly the same price, and have 2x the CPU power. If m68k was enough power, you could get a used Sun-3 for half the price of an Amiga, and have 10x as much available software.

It couldn't compete with the low-end, either: you could get a i386 UNIX for under $500, and run on any hardware you chose. (SCO, BSD/OS, Interactive, Coherent, AT&T SVR4 all ran on PCs by this time.)
Sigh. I find that so frustrating.

Having one unified term makes popularizing the technology so much easier. How to label books (etc.) which deal with HTML5 and HTML5 only is honestly an edge case and the editors of those books can certainly come up with creative solutions. That’s a compromise (not a very bad one, either) you will have to live with.

Umbrella terms have existed in the past (like “Web 2.0”, …) and they were usually distinct from the actual names of the standards (I think because the standards had names that sounded very technical) but that is just not the case with HTML5. That’s the status quo. Thinking up a different umbrella term now, in isolation from actual usage, seems counterproductive.

It may not be the most elegant solution but that’s where we are. It’s not as though the W3C can decide how people will use the term. W3C picked the realistic common sense solution.
Ask HN: System and programming security
Looking for recommended reads in regards to system security and programming security.
US Patent Office Grants Massively More Patents Than Ever Before
The model 16 series were not really workstations for a single user. They were explicitly intended for multi-user, multi-terminal applications. They had practically no graphics capability.

Apollo was arguably the first "Workstation" vendor, selling affordable 68000-based systems, before the 68010. (If I recall correctly, before the 68010, in order to handle a page fault, you had to set up a system with two 68000s. Only one would execute at a time. In the event of a page fault, one CPU would halt, and the other would begin executing.)

By 1982, with the advent of the much-friendlier 68010, there were a number of UNIX workstation vendors. The notable survivors of that era were Apollo, HP, SGI, and Sun, but there were others. Even AT&T had a line of UNIX workstations in the early 80s.
But that’s not how terms are coined. “HTML5” (the term) has too much history that the W3C can’t ignore. They can’t realistically change definitions by fiat, not at this point in time.
I prefer the stock UI, which should be available for all phones. I don't have a Galaxy S phone, so I don't know if TouchWiz is available with any of the custom roms for them. Either way, that info should be on the xda-developers website.
It looks like this story made it to Mashable! http://twitter.com/#!/chrismatthieu/status/27435153945010176
I interpreted it the opposite way--that schools in poorer districts will gradually find it necessary to implement such classes due to financial concerns. The software will be drivel produced by the lowest bidder, who will probably use various shiny features to distract the buyers (who probably won't have spoken to an actual student any time this month).

Students in these classes will struggle to have their questions addressed, and if they are confused, nobody will be able to help them. That's if they aren't disillusioned already by the fact that their school isn't even providing them with a teacher.

Schools in wealthier districts, meanwhile, will choose to actually pay teachers.

Now it is possible that these classes will work out well, but I'm not optimistic. It's certainly something that should be implemented after controlled experimentation to determine effectiveness, not blindly chosen because of poorly considered policies.
Why do these facebook account deletion articles always have to be either "addiction" or "deletion". Regarding the article, its kinda stupid to generalize that we are all living in the world with rules set by Mark, if I take that generalization much further we are living in the real world with rules set by people higher up in the chain. But thats not true as you can see that lot of people around you behave/act differently to these things.

Biggest takeaway for me from the article is that enormous amount of time, thought spent on yet another communication medium in evolving world. I have to wonder how scared people were when they first saw email!!
I'm already using localstorage (with userdata fallback on IE7) to avoid server roundtrips for data that's only relevant to the client. It's the best technology choice for local state, and it falls under the HTML5 umbrella. Marketing technologies to developers that may be better suited than their current technologies (die, cookies, die) isn't a bad idea.
Yelp Launches Daily Deal - Problem for Groupon?
Can you explain that analogy? Secondly, Apple is an established company, why does it need an entrepreneur at its helm?
Facebook's real potential is getting their ad platform on other peoples websites. It's advantage is how easy it is to target specific demographics.

They have already started getting their code onto other people sites with the Like button and all the share buttons; the next logical step is a Facebook ad platform like Ad Sense that can target specific demographics. This will make lots of money.
Remind HN: RTP Hackers & Founders this Friday in Raleigh
Hey guys, just a reminder.. the RTP Hackers & Founders group is having a meeting this Friday, Jan. 21, 2011 at O'Malley's Tavern in Raleigh, NC.

Anybody with an interest in hacking, founding, or hacking & founding is invited. Please RSVP at

http://www.meetup.com/RTP-Hackers-Founders/calendar/16046955/
That would just be a different user-hostile incentive.

How so? It aligns interests in virtually every way.
How I Found a Co-Founder, Built a Prototype, and Raised $5M in Less Than 4 Weeks
Clickable link: http://www.meetup.com/RTP-Hackers-Founders/calendar/16046955...
Facebook thinks twice on giving dev access to phone, address data
It does make sense to use it in isolation, because the HTML5 parsing rules are much more robust against errors, without suffering from the catastrophic failure mode of XHTML. You can use the HTML5 doctype today, and you can validate your code as HTML5 today, and it will work across all common browsers.
Show HN: MadPattern: explore the 17 planar tilings with vector art
I'm not sure what you've read but you can have regular "stock" functionality (minus Sense, MotoBlur, TouchWiz in most cases) in a custom ROM. It's really up to whoever puts the ROM together what theme or differences it has. Some are good, some are bad.

In CyanogenMod's case, you can have the stock feel with more options.
I'm currently working on a project that requires quite a bit of manual text file manipulation - I am literally removing words from a 125k word dictionary that I "don't like".

To pass the time while I do this I have been watching some old TV shows in the corner of my monitor. Normally I'd listen to music while coding but having something familiar and amusing to half-watch while I crawl through this text file is working for me.
This article is of negligible value and not sure I found any "dirty secret" contained, but the title did make me click.

Summary:

(1) Marketing tactics are not always effective. Groupon is a marketing tactic, and like other marketing efforts, it is not fullproof.

(2) If you give 50% off to customer and 25% to Groupon, you may not make money.
On the same line of thought, we're working on http://www.erbix.com which provides Server-side JavaScript hosting (and a browser-based code editor) using the open-source Rhino engine.

To help SSJS in getting main-stream adoption, we've coded some apps, Erbix Forms and Erbix Blog, written completely in JS, which we've open sourced and launched in the Erbix App Store ( https://secure.erbix.com/marketplace ).

If you have any feedback let us know.
Sounds like he's pretty much saying "Groupon is a great tool for a specific purpose, but don't use it without thinking about it." Which is good advice.

Specifically, it will attract a lot of customers, but runs the risk of reducing customer perception of the value of your product. Sounds like a good match if bargain-seekers are your target market -- your promotion ends, and you're still among the best deals.

But it sounds like a terrible thing if you're selling the equivalent of a Lexus or Acura in your market -- luxury products defined by the perception of their extreme worth/status.
1. Try to switch to work from home.
2. Get more efficient at your day job.
3. Slip in more moonlighting time once you get more efficient but don't let your 9-5 company raise expectations.

Essentially the short version of 4-hour workweek.
I just think that because the primary motivation is cost cutting the focus isn't on improving education. This may lead to the purchase of software that doesn't improve education but looks good from a cost perspective.

I also think a lot of the maintenance costs are underestimated. Someone will need to be doing the IT support for them and I'm sure the computers will have problems just based on the number of kids using them.

I think they can serve well in a supporting role by providing additional instruction and examples after a teacher presents the material as well as identify the students who need additional help that cannot be provided by the software.

Having the same software will make reduce the impact of teachers but that's just going to improve the performance of the worst students at the cost of the best students. In the future I imagine this type of software to be linked to a great teacher and having a remote tutoring model.
we have a 6'x4' giclée print of one of these patterns at Hunch:
http://twitpic.com/3r89h7
This is a very unhealthy trend for Android. Development will be much more costly and difficult if the user base is split across many different API levels. This article contains some insight (if you can get past the bs title...): http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/17/ios-android-breakdown/
Don't make pointless bitchy comments.
To contrast with the $500 i386 Unix: if you had a non-UX Amiga 3000 and wanted to get a copy of Amiga Unix for it, the price was $1,000. But this was for a version that would only allow two users to be logged in simultaneously. This included "users" like root, uucp, etc. If you wanted unlimited users, the cost was $1,200.
Interesting that the comments so far (69) are mostly a comparison of value vs risk.

If you get enough value out of Facebook, it is worth the risk, otherwise it is quickly discarded.
The engineering sophistication is significant, but not in your face. Instead of cramming more electronics into the box, they work hard to reduce the parts count and increase battery life, among other things.

The engineering that went into the A4 is quite significant, but you wouldn't know it was there - except that the UI is very responsive, the unit runs cool, etc.

So you are right in a sense: people don't buy Apple products for the engineering - it's the design. But the engineering makes them not crappy. So they keep Apple products because of the engineering.
I stopped using it around a decade ago because it was too slow when my mailbox got really huge, and it didn't have indexed search.

I'm curious how it's improved, but gmail is good enough that I have a hard time imagining wanting to go back to a desktop client.
3 Things to Avoid When VC Fundraising in Los Angeles
Entrepreneur Ryan Born Offers 3 things to avoid when fundraising in Los Angeles including a rant about the Tech Coast Angels and a quote from the movie Boiler Room.
Zadie Smith is one of my favorite authors. She has a jaw-droppingly gorgeous prose style. It would be nice (for someone) to link to her article (so I will) that prompted this dude to delete his account. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/25/generat...

Her insights and arguments really needs to be read by everyone of our generation in full, and I mean that in all sincerity. It articulates all the misgivings and worries I have about this phenomenon that has always left a slightly bad taste in my mouth and felt vaguely repellent.

In addendum: I pray for the day I can convert my thoughts into words as judiciously and compellingly, verily I would sell my soul for that knack.
This was painful for me to read, because the author clearly doesn't understand the roles played by different types of avionics in building situational awareness (SA), and the whole analogy he tried to build on top of this misunderstanding was therefore deeply flawed. I think he may be on to something with his dichotomy between "conflation" and "discrimination," but it doesn't really apply to the example case he used to introduce it (avionics), which makes the whole thing give me a headache every time I try to think about it. I wish he had just left out the whole cockpit analogy and this post probably would have been much better.

The fact is that U.S., former-soviet (FSU), and other cockpit designs all include elements that are "dashboards" (instruments, really) and "radars," (sensors, more broadly). The difference betweent he "wall of dials" and the glass cockpit is simply a difference in how this combination of elements is displayed. The glass cockpit, if executed properly, can be far better than even the best steam-gauge cockpit, and either style can be executed so poorly as to become a net drain on SA. The Indian pilot in the story preferred the steam gauges for one reason more than any other: it is what he was used to. It may also be the case that the only glass cockpit he was ever exposed to happened to be an especially bad design.

Glass cockpits are actually better for "management by exception:" you don't have to ignore irrelevant or unimportant information because it simply is not displayed. All of the same gauges exist virtually, with a computer monitoring them constantly in the background. The things you need to see all of the time are shown all of the time, except with more real estate dedicated to them. The things you don't need to see most of the time only pop up when they leave the range of numbers which would have been green on an old-fashioned dial. Not only does this free up more space for the stuff you need to look at frequently, it also is more likely to catch your attention when you do need to look at it.
You can also find assignments, tests, lecture notes, lab notes, example and other course material to compliment Brian Harvey's course here:

http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs61a/su10/

(This is just one semester, you can find materials for almost every semester for the past few years with-some Google-fu)
I'd figured they perceived themselves as something of an underdog in the past

They don't. Samsung is an 800lb Gorilla in the CE space. They are the biggest seller of HDTV's in the US (though Vizio is closing fast) and the second largest manufacturer of cell phones worldwide.

Samsung is also starting to throw its weight around a lot.
Another "side-by-side" route is via virtualization. I like http://vagrantup.com/ a lot for this. It allows you to share folders between the host + the guest OS. I'm interested in this route. Engine Yard is sponsoring Mitchell & his virtualization work to help it get more traction as part of a standard development toolset.

Either way, these are more convoluted "getting started" or "test drive" solutions. A 50Mb one-click installer that "just works" will hopefully help new Rails developers fall in love with Rails first and foremostly.
I might pay $30 for a major update but simply going from 2.1 to 2.2 or 2.3? Absolutely not. There aren't enough new features to justify this. The idea of mostly paying for bug fixes is totally unacceptable to me. I'll throw my SmartPhone in the garbage and go back to whatever free-with-contract junk phone they offer before I get held hostage for security and bug fixes.
My opinion of them is based on very public rude comments and inappropriate tweets at twitter.com by the GitHub staff.

If they want to come off as jackasses, that is fine. But it seems unprofessional to me. Their reputation is hard to ignore.
Cool Startups to Watch in 2011: Hipmunk (YC S10) De-Agonizes Flight Search
If your economics correspondent reckons there is more money to be made by not being in your newspaper then you have to start thinking about your business model.
Keep in mind that HTML5, the language, was designed to be compatible with existing browsers, already; a core part of the effort is to completely standardize all the edge case behavior, etc., related to simply parsing HTML. So there’s no real risk there. See also: Progressive enhancement.
Digital Music Renaissance
Cloudant (YC S08) Has Found the Answer to Searching Big Data
Cocktail Colors Seen Through the Microscope
Why do you think that opportunity cost is specifically applicable to this situation? If it's "just in general" then I don't believe that opportunity cost is a good argument for continuing the meme of "How much is your time worth?" in these kinds of discussions. If it is applicable, it would have to be on a case-by-case basis to even make sense, no?