skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
All these are great resources. I am going through this process right now. So far I am just using the book with Racket and occasionally watch Prof. Harvey's lectures. I also recommend reading "The little Schemer". It had a great influence in me and I really learnt how to think in terms of recursion from that book.

One suggestion I have is to never skip any of exercises. They extend the discussions and are often very thought provoking.

If there are like minded people in your city, it is a good idea to meet regularly and discuss solutions after working through them.
Both responses you got were more or less correct, sorry for the jargon. I'm a programmer by trade and passion so I figured most would suss it out, I'll have to watch how much time I spend around people that work in finance in future.

Some minor details:

I want to bet that Facebook is worth way less than people think it is, as in the other responses.

The idea I had in mind doesn't require any liquid ownership in Facebook, but rather that people would bet against me. (Derivative/future, not equity)

Which I think they're silly enough to do.
Facebook doesn't pause what you're doing right now to show you five minutes of ads. If it did, Facebook advertising wouldn't be worth any money, either.
I would advise anyone who is already at the point of considering reading SICP (so probably some familiarity with programming) to skip How to Design Programs. I tried working through it and found the pace excruciatingly slow to the point that I lost interest and stopped.

I've read the authors' presentations and thinking behind the program's design and I was impressed, but I think the end product they came up with just lacks anything special to recommend it. It's dry, slow, and not particularly fun.

I haven't done SICP so I don't know what a good prereq would be, but I remember The Little Schemer being entertaining and covering the same sort of ground as HTDP at a better pace.
Why Java Developers Hate JavaScript
That sounds a bit like Lee Smolin's idea about natural selection at the cosmological level:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Smolin
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And, also, by selling content to others.

Even the BBC (tax payer funded) has a (separate) commercial arm to make and sell programming.
The Fall of Wintel and the Rise of Armdroid
Comparison of MongoDB 1.8 durability vs CouchDB?
Based on the recent MongoDB single server durability discussions, I am interested in someone who understands the CouchDB mechanism comparing it to the forthcoming MongoDB enhancements.

The Mongo approach is described in some internals documents:

http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Durability+Internals

https://docs.google.com/drawings/edit?id=1iXjXZGz_ru6n-ub3EWMPtXBS424rH623nsyMQx8x4mo&hl=en

https://docs.google.com/drawings/edit?id=1TklsmZzm7ohIZkwgeK6rMvsdaR13KjtJYMsfLr175Zc&hl=en
Hey patio11, thanks for the thoughtful analysis of my article.

Your logic makes sense, assuming in fact Zynga does have sustainable profits, which might be true (although I guestion whether simple web games are a defensible business, competition easily cuts it).

But, assuming that is true and you are right, does that still justify Facebook's valuation if it is entirely dependent on one company, Zynga? I would conclude that Zynga would be worth quite a lot, but that would make Facebook's position quite a bit weaker, do you agree?

Also, the feedback loop is that Facebook's valuation and success spurs people and investors to start companies and then advertise them on FB. This has been my experience talking to many (not all!) would-be entrepreneurs and investors in new york and the valley. I'm interested in learning about different experiences you may have had.
And Apple had A/UX long before OSX. Not great but it made a decent XTerminal.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/A/UX
Giving Hope
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Yea, I got tired of waiting for Heroku and Joyent invitations so I created NodeFu and open sourced it so that others could have fun too! The repo is at http://github.com/chrismatthieu/nodefu
Project Euler #1: Three Solutions, Seven Languages
I'd like to add that there are also people working through SICP on Curious Reef (my social learning website): http://curiousreef.com/class/structure-and-interpretation-of...

It's an easy way to keep track of your work and collaborate with other people.
In that whole thing, there's no numbers or names to back anything up. There's one hyperbole ($100 spent in ads to sell one book) and a bunch of really vague "people I know..." rhetoric.

Also, the author does not know what a Ponzi scheme is. Facebook Ads might be unsustainable, but it's not a bona-fide confidence trick of any sort, just like the VC dot.bomb burst at the turn of the century wasn't a confidence trick.
Why is this down voted? It seems a thoughtful comment that brings interesting ideas to the discussion. This is not the only case, other good comments are below 0 in this thread.
I'm certain I've the this same exact claim posted here on HN before, from another blogger I assume, I'm a bit surprised to see it again.

As before the author offers only anecdotal reasoning. I appreciate that FB ads don't work out well for everyone, but not everyone advertising on FB is selling something that should make a profit, or using the FB ads intelligently.

Edit: And I was right as someone already linked in the comments. In fact, same author he just changed the date of his post (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1293119). Blog spam?
This has been discussed before, 267 days ago:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1293119
I tweeted the fact that my blog about quitting Facebook has been published. So meta that it hurts.

This article amounts to a wisp of air amongst a wind of change. It's a tad late, but better late than never. Some users of Facebook will never quit. It's a realization that permeated Facebook's offices for a long time and these are the users that just don't care period. With blinders on, they will obey the rules, and let their online privacy erode.

What's more important, and the conversation that we should be having: where to go next? What's our collective need that an online network can fulfill ? Maybe it's not online and in fact, going backwards is the new cool. Who knows?
if you selected a different data set of beautiful people you could prove the exact opposite.

Sure, but if you selected your data set, it wouldn't be the least bit valid.
Yawn - seen all this before.
"...Overall, the picture doesn't brighten much over four years. After four years, 36 percent of students did not demonstrate significant improvement, compared to 45 percent after two..."
So 64 percent showed improvement after 4 years? that seems like a reasonable number
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Don't make assertions without support.
There is a difference between antisocial and asocial, it is the difference between being hostile or antagonistic to others as opposed to simply ignoring or ahunning them.

Equally, people confuse being insecure and attention-seeking with being sociable or worse, popular.
Yeah except now it says he posted it 10 hours ago. Honestly, this should be flagged as blog spam.
Looks like HTML 6.
It's perfectly acceptable. I just think it should be the last thing you do instead of the first. If you are Twitter or Facebook caching in the middle is a must, pages are just too unique. If you have some newspapper site, why add the complexity to your app when there are great solutions on the front and back ends written by really smart developers.
http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/index.html
The Design–Content Life Cycle
There’s been a revival of simple, understated website designs that put content squarely at the forefront, eschewing the bold graphics and gimmicks of the past decade or so, similar to the way the first websites placed the emphasis on function and content.
I explicitly state that Google's ad platform is good.

> People go to Facebook to interact with their friends. It is fundamentally different from the ad platform that is Google. People go to Google to find something they need, possibly ready to buy, which a good percentage of the time can in fact be solved by someone's ad. Facebook ads, on the other hand, annoy users. They yield no real value, and thus no profits.
You may want to work on your self-discipline. If you quit anything that is not entertaining enough you are limiting yourself a great deal.
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I think Gruber's honest and sincere in his beliefs. But, even without shares in AAPL, his own business is rather tied to apple's well being. He's the huffington post for mac addicts.

I think Jobs has been engineering a healthy Apple that can withstand his absence for some time now. Still, I don't know many better showmen than Jobs in the tech sector.
Pegasus did age well (if albeit very slowly). Most features you wanted to see in a modern mail client arrived eventually. There was a period of time where development had stopped IIRC because the developer didn't see the purpose in it anymore. Again IIRC he started again after seeing that the community wanted it to be kept alive.

I haven't seen a version in about 2 years now as my last client finally moved off of it due to the desire for 'cloud' style email and Blackberry support but Pegasus never let them down while they were on it.
U.S. Announces 120,000 iPad Users Had Data Stolen
That is correct, except that it puts unnecessary emphasis on perception relativism.

Well, in your mind. :) I didn't mean that in support of a relativistic viewpoint. Perhaps I should have said that we can comprehend. Perception just determines our starting point.
Some galaxy S handsets have Froyo (see http://pages.samsung.com/ca/froyo/English/?pid=ca_home_subba...) others don't, like my Epic 4g. Is it really politics or QA challenges; no official word has been forthcoming.
I think even tying Facebook to Ponzi is insanely absurd relative to what Facebook has done for users. Surely the high valuation is bubble like and I'm not a particular fan of its valuation either, but Mark Zuckerberg's team continues to contribute to the online community with easier way to connect & share, and that's ultimately priceless. In my opinion, if Facebook wanted to monetize, it can tenfold its revenues easily considering the amount of users it has. But the company continues to place users before hand and refuse to compromise user experience for money, and THAT IS VERY DIFFERENT , or opposite if you will, from the Ponzi Scheme. Ads are not suppose to be 100% effective, and that's the foundation every marketer needs to know. They have to be prepared to throw lots of money into a marketing strategy, and accept the fact that it might fail. Facebook ads deliver relevant adds that might interest users to add values for users. It delivers what it promises. The effectiveness is just a downside that all marketer needs to consider when they advertise.
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There's also http://webbynode.com/

They have ready-made stacks with Node.js, Rails and Django.
And Microsoft had Xenix before that!

I've used the SCO Xenix port of MS Word - way before the Windows version.
This is an old article. Looks like the date is wrong, or he republished it: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1293119
Interesting challenger to Atomz.com and the first wave of now dead search-as-a-service players like SearchButton.com. The ability to push content into the index on demand is a nice feature.
And people who can't remember if it's .com, .net, .org, etc will Google "companyname".

This group is only likely to become larger once ICANN start allowing registration of new gTLDs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_top-level_domain#New_to...)
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While I agree with your comment, note the following

All the problems you have mentioned are engineering problems.
The SARTRE project (Safe Road Trains for the Environment)
> someone else is making money (profiting) and able to bid higher because they can monetize the same market segment he was targeting more effectively

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebooks_3rd_biggest_a...
"Cross Platform Play" is in all the titles I've seen, so I have to assume that there's going to be cross-platform play. Newell also talks about game invites, which are part of initiating a game with someone.

Portal should work well in cross-platform play since there's no direct competition: Quake III (IIRC) PC players absolutely dominated Dreamcast players. Collaboration removes the importance of this competitive edge.
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Apart from Groupon, all the services you list are free.
I miss the time when you could buy a computer that was actually different from an IBM PC...
> The $150k bit seems entirely unreasonable.

Fair enough, but what criteria should they use?

Remember - the goal is to increase startups, not to let random people into Canada. (They have other programs for the latter.)
I agree. The arms race of building 'better' copy protections instead of continous improvement of your product won't do you any good.
I think the main key is deciding on the investment. The amount of time put into those things can be expressed in money. So this poses two questions:
1. Would I be willing to pay the given amount to someone else to do it. If not and I still want to do it I should at least admit that this is for personal ambition and not for the product. It's OK everybody likes a challenge.
2. Will it improve my sales? Again the money. What stands to gain from this. How much effort is OK. Perhaps the simple checksum in addition to the common cmp jne check is enough to get a few sales. But that's about it for products with a market where uncracked time is not king. Look somewhere above for the gamasutra article about game releases and the value of time. And I think the time constraint doesn't work for many products.

The idea for one of my projects was to say "if you are able to crack it you can keep it". If someone spent the time and has the ability to do it, it's fine with me. Surely this is no viable solution for most products. But I'm curious how it will work out...
Hi ErrantX, thanks, I hope it's not too verbose. It's actually pretty dense for how many points I cover.

What ends up happening is that people repeatedly bring up the same strawmen, so I try to address the most relevant justifications and opposing viewpoints.

You're right, the fundamental difference between search ads and social ads can be a whole interesting blog post on its own.
"Hate dialing up to DEFCON 1"

At first, I thought you were talking about DefCon, the convention, which really confused me.

Then, I realized you were talking about defense condition.
Writing a PHP daemon application
How about Waterloo? Google has offices there.
SICP really isn't that hard. It's just different. Just stick with it and you'll realize that you actually understand it.
> What about saves? It's nice to have it available to play for both, but if I can't continue where I left off, then this is somewhat less useful.

From the article:

Your game saves can be kept in the cloud to be accessed from any system.
Personally, it gets tiresome to have the exact same conversation, individually, with a dozen different friends. There's no "soul", for me, in repeating virtually the same scripted interaction over and over again when I can just inform everyone all at once and get it over with.

If I'm talking to you, I want to have a conversation that actually pertains to our unique set of mutual interests. I honestly think of things during the day that I know one particular friend of mine would be interested in discussing, and I remember to discuss it with them later. And it's easier, not harder, to have those kinds of personal talks when I don't have to waste time on scripted boilerplate about what just happened in my life.
Flickr might be irreplacable right now, but (if you'll excuse me for crossing the memes) what if Yahoo kills it?
They also had MkLinux. I have used it extensively as a workstation and Xterminal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MkLinux
I am sure there is a good reason for choosing Ruby 1.8.7-p* instead of 1.9.*, but I'd like to know that reason :)
Facebook is a way I can have pleasant conversations with my friends. I post to them links on Facebook security and ad-blocking (with hat tips to HN, fairly often), and we all lock down our privacy settings tightly and ignore ads and time-wasting games. We have fun conversations together, mostly about submitted links, rather like the best comment threads on HN except with a broader range of topics that fits the commonalities that can be found among my diverse group of friends. (The HN participants who are on my friends list have seen examples.)

I can't figure out how Facebook will monetize, long-term, just as I couldn't figure out in the 1990s how AOL would monetize, long-term. AOL has been a dying property for a long time, but it was the platform on which a lot of free riders formed lasting friendships that have turned into real-life, face-to-face friendships. I'm perfectly content to be a free rider on Facebook on the same terms. Monetizing Facebook is a problem for Facebook's investors--it is not my problem. When Facebook eventually dies, as it surely must unless it comes up with an appealing way to monetize, I will move on with hundreds of good friends to the next new Internet thing.
You missed the favicon. Here is a link: http://www.w3.org/html/logo/favicon.ico
They could certainly do many of those things, but how would they monetize them? It's easy to compete with another service if yours is free and their costs money (which is why many casual users I know use Facebook and don't have a Flickr account), but if Facebook charged for improved photo-sharing features, as it seems like it would need to if that was how it was going to support itself, then it might be a more difficult value proposition.

Same thing with Skype-like VOIP services. If you're offering free calls, sure you can get users. But the second you start charging, you're going to be competing with Skype et al on merit (and for the much smaller number of users who are willing to pay a non-zero amount for the service), and they have a big head start.

It sure doesn't look trivial to me. Facebook doesn't have a "natural advantage" versus other players in any of those fields. In fact, it seems like they'd be at a disadvantage, since those companies are specialized -- they can afford to put all their effort into being the best photo-sharing service, VoIP service, etc., in order to get people to open their wallets.

I'm not as bearish on Facebook as the author but I do think they have some significant challenges ahead. Translating users (even engaged users) into revenue is a challenge that lots of other companies have failed at, so their success is in no way certain.
I don't know how recently you've been a college student, but Facebook still offers a large ammount of value to that demographic. I would hate to make 100+ phone calls to invite people to a party, or to spend the money/time making and posting flyers.

Sure I'd jump ship if another platform provided more value, but that's (somewhat) different then a fad.
I completely agree that Facebooks adverts are very badly implemented.

However, that doesn't take away from the fact that it is factually wrong to say that adverts don't work on websites where the users aren't already looking for what the adverts are promoting.
I'm sorry, but this is laughable.

Do people put icons in their iOS apps advertising the use of CoreAnimation? Do they put some kind of Silverlight or Flash badge on their web sites done with those technologies?

It's just a set of useful technologies. Why all the branding hoo-hah?
Maybe you need better headphones. I used to have a pair of crappy ones, and I hated them - and then I splurged on a pair of Sennhausers, and it's gravy.
This is a bit harsh, FB got a good traction and its run by some very smart people. I actually see them as a force in the communication space.
and for a company that has multiple employees, a finished product, and/or is actively looking for user acquisitions, that is a good thing to spend time on -- SEO, conversions, A/B testing, etc.

for a smaller startup that is still trying to develop their product and push out an MVP, their best bang for the buck is going to be hitting the effective basics until they're ready and able to spend more time on more in-depth things.
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This guy could use the same argument that all online ads are ineffective. Why focus on Facebook? Because it's hip to do so?
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Cross-platform play could also mean just PC-Mac. I'd just like to know if there aren't any 'gotchas', marketing folks are prone to these kinds of "soft lies" (remember BF2's 'dedicated servers'?)
Portal 2 doesn't have competitive multiplayer at all -- it only has co-operative multiplayer, which makes it ideal for cross-platform play.
Can Quora be more than just a fad?
Sprint tacks $10/month charge onto unlimited smartphone plans
Except it won't absorb anything if the snow reflects all of the light.

It makes sense to absorb heat when there is little or no snow, but it doesn't at all when snow covers all of the surface.
I agree that your product should be your #1 focus. Lots of users landing on a site that offers a poor experience is a waste. However, the problem with that is that investments in SEO compounds over time. Not only are aged links valuable, but as your rankings increase, you tend to build more links.

Aaron Wall calls it Self Reinforcing Authority: http://www.seobook.com/archives/002033.shtml

A good user experience can also offer compounding returns, but it's hard to test and improve user experience without users. SEO can provide a steady, free stream of users that enables you to test changes large and small at a statistically significant level. That's really valuable.
Actually I don't think TV ads, in the U.K. at least, are annoying.

TV adverts are often entertaining, point me to products I didn't know about and they give you chance to go to the toilet or get a drink.

Also, very often they are relevant e.g. in Motor racing or shows about Houses.

I've yet to see and advert on Facebook that's useful or even just entertaining.
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Ok, I don't have a Facebook account nor have I ever had one. I never felt that I need it. My friends (those that I truly consider to be my friends) have my phone number and they can call me any time, either to ask me to meet them in person, discuss something they want to discuss with me, or just chat. So, what, I'm forcing my poor friends to, heaven forbid, go through all that trouble of dialing my number just to get in touch with me when I should, like any other sensible person, save them the horror of pressing a couple of keys and create a Facebook account? Even though I neither want nor need one?

I don't need Facebook. I frequently meet with my friends. We go to football matches, concerts, or just to a bar to have a glass of beer or two. Even if we don't meet in person we can chat over phone or through msn, skype etc.

So, sorry, no, I don't buy into this 'you're anti-social because you're not on Facebook' BS.
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If its free, who is footing the EC2 bill?

Which gives me the idea: it'd be cool to have a service like this and have it use a user-provided AWS account.

So you could use a service like this to automatically manage the EC2 instances, and then if you need to take control to expand your instances' functionality you just stop using the service.

Just a thought...
Facebook ads perform well for me. So your argument that they don't perform is not true for everyone.
Don’t Forget About HTML5’s “Little Guys”