skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Doesn't seem incredibly hard to pull off -- we also run a pretty large-scale network with a small team. Here's some thoughts:

- They may not be counting support staff/abuse monitoring staff as employees (they might be contractors). Even if they do, it's possible that 10-15 people could do the job, depending on their support volume load.

- Probably very little management overhead. This also increases productivity across the whole company, as there is a lot less communication overhead. Let's give them 4 management types, including Craig, Jim, a CFO and an engineering manager (if that's even necessary).

- They don't do much feature development, so they might only have a few engineers. Let's be generous and say 5.

- Running their network operations probably takes quite a few people, but with a relatively simple website, it can definitely be done with a small, efficient team. Let's say 3-5.

- Let's throw in one office manager/executive administrator, to make everybody's lives easier.

That totals 30, even with support, but there's still some wiggle room. If support staff or abuse monitoring staff are contractors, there's more than enough room to work with.
This meme is based on a few isolated and misinterpreted quotations. Let's take an earnings call, where we would expect him to be showing his true colors as someone who purportedly doesn't care about privacy:

Q: How does Google think generally about leveraging user data, both to better target ads and how to stay competitive with those like Facebook and Microsoft and Yahoo that are leveraging data possibly more so than what Google is today? And I think this is particularly relevant for using search data for your display business but, would love to get your thoughts on that.

Eric Schmidt: "We have a pretty strong opinion that we're not going to do very much of it. The reason is that we take our end-user data privacy incredibly seriously and the trust that people have with respect to giving us that information, both their search histories as well as other pieces of information, they get very upset, very, very quickly if we, in their view, misuse it.

"So, what we typically tell people is we're not going to do the kinds of things that you could do with this, in particular use it to generate sort of strange ads against your history and things like that, without your explicit permission. And we probably, in many cases, won't do it forever."

--Q3 2010 Earnings Call, October 14, 2010 http://www.123jump.com/earnings-calls/Google-Q3-Earnings-Cal...

This kind of quotation doesn't get press, but it's essential if you really want to get a balanced picture of what Eric says about privacy.
I appreciate the openness, but I would be careful about saying "Our Competition Sucks" when your video mostly highlights good features of your competitors.

Plus saying, "they suck and we won't" isn't the most convincing argument to sign up.
Let's be careful not to start an atheist / non-atheist flame war (boring...) but to say Harris just took 7 paragraphs to dismiss religion isn't fair. He's written several best-selling books on the subject and has partaken in several debates with religious leaders. For him to answer this Edge question with a rehash of his arguments on atheism would have been redundant and boring. I'm sure he expected most of the readers on Edge to understand his point of view on the subject and to kick off from there.
Botnets on Android phones
I'm afraid most companies have no idea how much their legal departments, with all of the bullshit they pile on everyday business transactions, cost them.
why hasn't anyone suggested this: els[i].addEventListener('click', new Function("","alert("+i+");"),false);

it works fine and it's much shorter and easier to read than nested function declarations
I like the concept and the blog is great. For those without experience in a small start-up environment, it's facinating to see this stuff happen in real time on a hyper-compressed schedule.
A lot of anxiety that I had apparently suppressed over the years came to a head, which was anything but pleasant

I obviously don't know you or your situation, but is it possibly a good thing that these suppressed things are coming out now? In the long run, perhaps you can work through them and you'll be in a better place at the end?
I was searching for the words and now I don't have to, thanks.
When I run, I no longer listen to music and I just let my mind wander. My layman's theory is that it's a form of meditation. At the end I'm full of mental energy and new ideas.
>So the question for you is, why would you expect or need more?

I don't think you need more. But why do many other companies have more?
I found vipassana to be useful (www.dhamma.org). It definitely helps in dealing with adverse events in life...
I was hoping the BlackBerry patent issues from a few years ago would prompt our lawmakers to finally fix the problems, but even then they ignored it.
Then you need the sorting, again. You can't have your cake and eat it, too.
yup -- there's a thin line between "Don't be evil" and "Do good"
Start saving your time before, during and after meetings.
No harm done.
Surely bloggers do not only always outperform Wall Street analysts, but there are certainly scenarios, such as this one, where they do get it right.

s/bloggers/chickens/

Seriously, if I have a bunch of chickens pecking at labelled buttons to predict corporate profits and I only bother to report those cases where they happen to be right then my chickens are gonna come out looking pretty good as well.
Thanks, I've been looking for a good tutorial on this for a while. Going to try to implement this in Minecraft (it's funny how Minecraft has incidentally made circuitry easier to get into).
No snark intended. I got the joke. Just trying to reply in the meta and recursive spirit of the article. Like yours, my title is the joke. Nothing more to add.
Maybe it's just me, but I'm not quite sure I follow how they "almost" got it. Perhaps if they were negotiating numbers and figures and it just fell through -- I could see that; but just because the initial meetings didn't go so well or were hung up on NDAs? I don't get it.

EDIT: It is, however, a cool story to tell...
Actually, the answer turns out to be... yes, it does! I need to update the article after a comment from Ryan Dahl that was left to the blog.
I'd love to see this take off. The number of SaaS products is only getting bigger and it's hard enough already to pick the best one for what you need. Good luck!
Thanks for the feedback. As opposed to meaning individual companies suck, we wanted to say, "the way to find the right online services today" sucks. It's just not simple. In the video we tried not to be too harsh on any one solution - we're all startups at the end of the day.

As for "they suck and we won't", I'm afraid our pitch there isn't even that good. More like, "they suck and we might not." All about testing hypotheses and seeing if we can solve the problem better (and make money doing it).
Thanks for the great feedback! :)

The main thing that makes it stand out from all the other price comparison sites is the clean, uncluttered approach. Perhaps you noticed: no ads! something we're pretty proud of (and hope to keep it that way).

We're constantly working on speed. So keep your eye on that one!

It's still early days and we've got loads of big ideas. Thanks for trying us out and be sure to keep coming back as we start crunching through hundreds more shops and millions more products!
Imprisoned Blogger Becomes Tunisian Minister: This Week in Online Tyranny
I highly recommend checking out IFS (Internal Family Systems): http://www.selfleadership.org/node/7285. It's really helped deepen my meditation practice.

Awareness by Osho is also a great book on meditation: http://www.amazon.com/Awareness-Living-Balance-Osho-Insights...
Slava (coffeemug) has some excellent thoughts on this subject: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=455008
8 guys, voyeurism and wide open kimono (for three whole weeks, aieee!) add up to about the most unappetizing blog/product/startup pitch I've read the headline of in a while.
I think it was pretty clear he was not talking about graphic designers. Why would a writer or musician make a good graphic designer? They may or may not, which is not the point. What makes your artist types good at front end are the things that come with the practice of any art: rhythm, composition, juxtaposition, etc.
it's great to see people finally starting to get it 20 years after initial Plan 9 development :)
RAM might matter more for news.
I've a little bit periodically over the past few years.
The most I've ever done is 20m at a time, but every day.

I've had the same reservations as you, is it doing any good, how can I tell? It is trivially easy to be wrong.

I do like something I see in the people who are more advanced practioners and I keep being drawn back to it.

My latest thinking is that since I can not for the moment find anything longterm to measure, I'll do it for the immediate enjoyment I get directly from the session - from physically relaxing if nothing else. This has now made my sessions very short, just a few minutes at a time before I stop enjoying it.

I'll add another recomendation for "Mindfulness in Plain English", I like it a lot. I'm slowly consuming it, reading a few paragraphs before each meditation session.
Simming through the comments, it seems that there is noone who actually had bad experiences with meditation or at least decided that it was waste of time/lacked any significant effects. I really would like to read that kind of opinions (to get fuller picture of this activity), however most topics (sites) about meditation are full of people who actually do and 'like' it or who want to start. Can somebody share that kind of stories (or point to them)?
A while ago I was having a lot of trouble being productive in my life, and was considering using some of the anti-akrasia techniques posted on HN to keep myself in line. But I also had a nagging feeling that there was more to my procrastination than just laziness, and that I needed to get more deeply in touch with my own motivations so my work could be harmonious rather than a constant struggle against myself. Honestly I didn't even really know what I wanted.

So instead of resolving to stick to a schedule for pursuing a particular project, I resolved to meditate every day and let the rest sort itself out. I have meditated sporadically for about 10 years, and always appreciated it, but recently had gotten out of the habit.

So far it's been pretty good. The productivity is coming more naturally, albeit in somewhat random bursts, but mostly I'm just more at peace with myself, which I think is more what I'm really after than anything.
What device(s) would Apple even stick the PrimeSense technology in? The 12 watts [1] needed to drive the thing only really makes sense on desktops, and for what - a weird experimental Minority Report style 3D interface?

[1] http://www.joystiq.com/2010/11/04/kinect-teardown-two-camera...
That's the idea, and dealing with this kind of stuff is part of most of the spiritual traditions that I've investigated over the years. I definitely think that meditation has been and continues to be a worthwhile pursuit, for this as well as the relaxation aspects. I did have an idea going in that the benefits would all be of a calming nature, and was somewhat surprised to find that, at least for me, this was not the case.
Apparently it wasn't considered dead enough early enough:
http://www.win.tue.nl/hashclash/rogue-ca/
When I was a kid, my hero was David L. Heiserman. http://www.beam-wiki.org/wiki/Heiserman,_David_L. His book "Build Your Own Working Robot" (ISBN 0-8306-6841-1) I must have read a hundred times.

It wasn't quite as low as transistor logic, but it was designed from discrete logic gates.

I also remember him writing "How to design & build your own custom TV games", which was basically NAND to Pong, without a CPU.
Here's the referred Google Tech Talk - saw it took, liked it a lot:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nwwKbM_vJc
I've gone back and forth with meditation. Generally if I feel that my emotions are negatively affecting my actions, then it's time to sit back and analyze it. Clearing my head through breath meditation allows me to attack my problems one at a time.
I like the image of the self-driving car he chose as an illustration of who drives Google.
How Word of Mouth Marketing Works
Freudian headline?
I've used the site in the past and its certainly better than most real estate search engines that seem to be stuck in the 90s.

I did see a need for a more collaborative/organizational tool when apartment hunting a couple of years ago while looking for apartments with my fiancee. So worked on building http://www.mapthatpad.com.

Would love any feedback from the HN crowd!

EDIT: typo
This achievement doesn't up my gamerscore!??!
It isn't meditation, but it is similar. I've started journaling as a sort of auto-psychotherapy, and it seems like it can really work if you start digging into issues. I'm not sure I'd recommend it to people if they don't already know something about mindfulness, as it seems like it is easy to get yourself stuck in an emotional rut if you're not careful.

This is actually part of the treatment that a book prescribes for dealing with RSI. I'm giving it a shot, because I can only learn more about myself from the experience.

Every hacker-type should experiment with mindfulness. Creativity flows out of knowing thyself.
This looks promising. A lot of people post "Review my startup" threads here and most look pretty half-assed. This does not. In fact, it looks like you've put a lot of effort into making your startup look very professional.

I don't have a lot to critique about the actual business, but hopefully I can give you some constructive criticism.

On the pricing/signup page I noticed that the background image you're using for the pricing table is gigantic -- 122kb (http://static.ma.rs/application_assets/site/images/prices_bg... 122kb). I'm on a fairly fast connection here (16mbits/down) and it took a noticeable amount of time to load. I'm assuming that it's a 24bit png, but since you're using a white background behind it you won't need the alpha layer and it seems like (based on the colors used in the image) that you could get away with an 8bit png and have it look just fine.

Also on the pricing page, "limited" and "full" don't tell me much about what I'll be getting. Maybe have the ability to mouse over that text and get a little description of what you mean?

I'll append any additional thoughts to this comment as I check it out, but so far you have a really great looking startup on your hands. Not to mention a kick ass domain name -- good score.
Well they would have played with a javascript simulation of a half-adder, or at least seen a youtube video of a powerpoint presentation describing it - that's good enough for CS these days.
I doubt that Woz will be interested in that.
No, I haven't developed with Objective-C, so I can't really compare. What I can say is that Corona makes it extremely easy to get something on the screen and start going.
I generally agree with the ideas, but I'm not sure our culture is as toxic as the tone of the article.
I recommend a little more dynamic and holistic practice like Ki-Aikido which still focuses on clear mind but it happens in harmony with the body.

Mind and body live together and should both be coordinated and exercised. You'll get also breathing exercises, person-to-person touch communication skills & such.

Highly recommended for geeks. I've been doing it for last 15-years as my only mind and body exercise.
Gates was CEO from the beginning of Microsoft until he became Chief Software Architect prior to his retirement. Ballmer became CEO after Gates. There was never a gap between founding and CSA where someone else was CEO of MS.
Are there any questions that I can answer about Corona development or the app?
You can't connect two browsers directly via websockets, you can only connect to a server. A browser can't serve an incoming websockets connection.
Completely agree - I would be offended by such an email, regardless of my technical knowledge.
it seems you forgot that you created your 100th job not all by yourself but with the help of 99 of your previous employees.

so I applaud all 101 of you "job creators"!
Sorry, I was confused. I thought 'hubbub' was a drop-in replacement for RSS. Apparently, it's a meta-protocol built around RSS.
So a Java applet can listen on a port? Interesting, although not very practical.

Adobe Flash is also supposed to support some form of p2p connections, but I don't know anything about it.
"it sounds like you have MzScheme facing the open internet?"

Yep. The arc webserver runs directly on port 80, for which it needs to run as root. To avoid all sorts of security headaches, it runs:

(setuid 2)

soon after startup.

The whole thing seems hacky.
"the Scan-First-Ask-Later library project and settlement process" that move was pure genius in my book. Evil genius maybe but asking for permission in these type of things leads to stalemate. Google to a huge risk but a calculated one. I think it's defensible more than just business-wise. At the end of the day, publishers have always tried to put sticks in the wheels of anything new in the book world. Google's move is good for man kind in a way and I think it was also helpful to groups like the Internet Archive.
If you can set aside 10 days during which you are completely cut off from the outside world, check out Vipasanna. I found it tremendously valuable. It teaches you to filter less of the info your senses are continuously delivering to your brain, and be more aware of every sensation.

What's the point, you ask? Well, beyond the obvious benefits of being more aware of physical sensations, in the process of disciplining your mind, you find out a lot about yourself -- what issues in your life are constantly distracting you from the task at hand, etc.

This only works when you starve your mind of new distractions -- hence, no talking, writing, reading, or even eye contact during the 10 days. It's a lot of time, I know, but for me it was well worth it.
Does Corona still compile the code on their servers?
Whether it's fair or not, I got the impression that Top10Reviews and their ilk were pay-to-play affairs. Their "site search" is really a Google web search so it's hard to find reviews. The product links all seem to be affiliate links, so they are making money off referrals. Is it possible that their recommendation has something to do with it? Would they review a product where they couldn't be an affiliate?
We Bought NYC Telco Hub for Office Space, not Dominion Over the Internet
I built a similar site (which I think pre-dates PadMapper): http://cribq.com

The iPhone app ( http://cribq.com/go/appstore ) is by far the most popular part of it.

The website hasn't been updated in a long time, although it still works well. I built the site because housingmaps at the time was not up to date enough, was very incomplete, and didn't allow drill-down into neighborhoods. I also added things like streetview, and the very cool Microsoft bird's eye view. My goal was ultimately to add all kinds of data to help people move, similar to what the YC startup Movity was doing.

According to Craig, he only goes after sites which cause too much load on their servers. I base that on a few comments he has made on Quora. Evidence points more toward him going after heavily commercialized sites, or mixing data with other providers.
OSI and FSF Send Joint Position to Department of Justice
I'd hardly say Apple "almost" got it based on that anecdote.
What incentive is there for someone on the Supreme Court not to interpret the Constitution as saying, "Supreme Court Justices can randomly take everyone's money for no reason"?

Integrity.

I know we talk about the 24 hour spin cycle and how all politicians are just mouthpieces for the MPAA, but some of them probably take a few minutes out of their term to think about how to make the world a better place. A few of them even try to do so.
Larry And Sergey Didn't Always Tell Eric Schmidt About Google's Acquisitions
Woz would be terrible as a CEO.
The Hip-Hop Word Count Counts on Language to Understand the Reality We Keep
16 Questions For Better SaaS Companies
Schmidt was previously an Apple board member and had to resign due to conflict of interest but he is capable of restoring stockholder confidence once Steve Jobs steps down.
He would still have to resign from Google if he took the position (which his current statement doesn't support) but I don't expect an equally capable product guy to replace Steve. Schmidt could also help facilitate strategic relationships between the two companies again.
I meditate regularly. I fear losing my ambition or competitive drive, and I suspect that this will hold me back from making real "spiritual" progress.
The Visa Issue - Being a Foreign Internet Entrepreneur in Peru
For the last few months every morning I brew a cup of coffee and then sit down in a chair for ten minutes and stare at a dracaena plant across the room, coffee in hand, taking an occasional sip. I try not to let my mind wander and just focus on the plant and my breathing, and make sure to relax when I notice muscular tension anywhere. That's it! That's meditation, as far as I'm concerned. Totally worth it! My ability to notice stress and shut it off during the day has gone way up. When I get flustered at work I conjure up the dracaena in my mind's eye for an instant and get everything under control.

The bit of literature that turned me on to the "meditation" practice is this:
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/06/meditation.htm...
Google Will "Feed The Winners" And "Starve The Losers" -- Like Wave
I think one of the two founders just wants more face time...
Nice site, but there seems to be a few little rendering issues for me (Chrome on Linux-see here: http://min.us/mvbopEU )
It is unfortunately accepted nomenclature, but still off and there exist models that are truly "group buying". This model is quite popular in China. Hundreds of people will show up in front of a big store in China in the morning and demand a 10% across the broad discount or else none of them will go in the store. That's group buying.
It's good to know that this situation will lead to improvements in jQuery.

However, I'm disappointed in how twitter, or more accurately, Dustin Diaz handled this situation. They identified some performance issues. Narrowed it down to a jQuery version but just left it there.

jQuery is open source so they could have done some investigating on their own and tried to narrow down what changed in that selector. Especially since this change was blogged about (as mentioned by John).

Not to mention various people helped out twitter by finding some pretty obvious flaws and made suggestions. Twitter has a lot of resources and I'm assuming a lot of talented Javascript engineers. This is a situation where they could have used their resources to contribute to an open source project instead of the other way around.
American deficit reaches $14 trillion
http://ma.rs/ clickable

lipsum text present in some pages... I've seen that negatively impact almost everything except design sites.

the bottom of each page seems a little low contrast to me - in some cases, unreadable. Your logo in the bottom bar appears to be transparent, but, expecting a white background which looks odd on my browser.

As far as the idea goes, I like it. I think you've hit on a very good product and should be able to get the online marketers working with you. You might want to have a 'why would I do this' video that would explain to your target audience why they would use a QR code and what it is. Getting this in front of the right people, and, having it understood by those people is going to be the key. While the actual deployment will be left to someone probably more savvy, you have to sell the businessman (or businesswoman) that may not be as technically literate, why he would do this.
Exactly. In my opinion, meditation is a state of mind, so if you achieve it running, swimming or sitting it doesn't really matter.