skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
My concern with the long sales letter approach is how relevant it is to web apps. Mail order books, courses I can see the benefit, but with a web app, why write lots of spiel about a product someone can start using straight away with a trial account. I am at constant battle with my business partner over this as personally I don't believe it is the right way to create a conversion with web apps (How many successful webapps can you name that take the long sales letter approach?), where as he takes a more traditional info-marketing approach based around selling courses/books/seminars and wants to apply those techniques to our startup.

How does a long sales letter form compare to an approach of "Get the user using the product as quickly as possible", with a few bold benefits outlined, a huge "Try Now" button and not commitment to buy. Of course this is something that I should A/B test myself to really find the answer.
CSS3 iPhone
That was an interesting article. I wish more of the media would highlight Natalie Portman's scientific cred.

The last sentence, "You can be a scientist, but if you want your name in lights, you’d better play one on TV." made me a little sad. Eventually, we get what we celebrate; if we celebrate being a cheerleader (or a beauty queen) more than being a scientist, then we'll get more of those. I don't know how much progress a society can make if everyone aspires to be a cheerleader.

On a positive note: I've been watching bits and pieces of Jeopardy's "Teen Championship" and girls are doing very well in that! I hope the finals is an all-girls affair, that would be great.
I thought I'd seen this about an hour ago, but now see that the previous submission has been deleted: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2275503

Any particular reason to delete and then resubmit exactly the same item? Just curious ...
I don't deny that it's an extremely important distinction, and perhaps I should have gone to greater lengths to clarify as much.

At the same time, I feel that the article set up a bit of a false dichotomy by focusing too heavily on the extreme end of the "passion" spectrum. It's not a black-and-white choice between "mildly interested in" and "slaveringly obsessed with." There is a pretty broad spectrum in between those points. "Into" was probably a casually bad word choice on my part, but again, I'd really suggest that we stay away from a semantics debate here.

To re-clarify: I agree, more or less, with a great deal of the article and its broad analysis. At times, however, the author gets too bogged down in a dissection of the semantics and usage of the word "passion," leading him astray.
Jeff could not agree more with #1 - go to as many networking events as you can...as good entrepreneurs will self select. I tend to network 2-3 nights a week in Boston and its quite evident who are the real hustlers and who are the "hobbyists".

I have been networking hard for a year or two and have already identified 3-4 people i would no question invest in starting a company with.
I like that it is in the footer. Could be a little larger though.
Unfortunately, hovering and clicking in menu bar area is difficult for me (the icons there are just too damn small).

Whenever I have a choice between keyboard shortcut vs menu bar clicking, keyboard shortcut always win.

If QuickSend window shows up ala LightBox via keyboard shortcut (with the same UI and all its promises) however...

and if the price is right, I might buy it (but it needs to be able to handle multiple email accounts).
I wouldn't call this a marketing ploy - it's a landing page for an app he designed and is looking to have built. We use "Show HN" to get feedback from our apps, and this is one of those cases.

Is he getting it? In spades!

Is he making money off of it? I don't see how he could, with an unbuilt app.

I see no marketing ploy here, just a clever app that I would love to see come to fruition.
Sparrow already does virtually all of this. The only real differences are the Subject thing (not sure how this saves you time, other than pressing TAB once), and displaying images from the address book.
I get the same checker effect. That, or I see a gradient of blue to yellow. Maybe it's just my LCD.
This is just a reminder of how desperately important good design is. No matter how minimal this effect may turn out to be, we all interact with thousands of man-made objects each day. Improving the quality of those interactions is a cheap way of raising quality of life.
When you can do the proof, you actually do understand; you just may not understand your understanding (viz. the SMBC comic on Polish Hand Math; I think this is it: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1917)
Please note: iOS-Safari (iPad/iPhone/iPod) is limited to loading just the first 6-6.5 MB of images on a webpage. To see all images, please use another browser. Thank you.

I get that there are a lot of images in the post, but you couldn't keep it under 6Mb?
Will OnSwipe be the Publishing Platform of Choice for the New Influencers?
Designers are not the only ones who 'hate' these kind of letters; most people I know would hit back immediately without checking out the page when encountering 'the deck'. But they do work though; I've tried them and people (whom I don't know?) seem to click & buy.
Bachmann is straight up fucking crazy. End of story. (If you ask me to justify this, I'll just refer you to google for some of her crazier quotes).

The Koch brothers supporting someone like her says to me that they're either more interested in profit than sound public policy, or they're fucking crazy too. More likely the first.

Look, just own it. "Conservative". You are what you do. Nothing wrong with it, 45% of the country agrees with you and them.
The long sales letter is the Internet beachhead of the pitch man. Maybe these kinds of sales letters work for some products. But Jeremy knows that he's signaling on Billy Mays (he says so himself), and that people who wouldn't ever buy from an infomercial wouldn't buy from a page like this. I cannot fathom the unhappy circumstances that would have me check "YES! I'd love to work with a copywriter who can make my life EASY and profitable instead of stressful and broke!" box.
Color me unconvinced, too. He brings up the example of the income tax as why the slippery slope argument fails, but it's actually a pretty convincing case study of the merits of the slippery slope argument. The income tax was originally pushed through in 1894 with the argument that a small income tax (only on the very richest, of course) would allow for tariff reductions. Several years later, tariffs were increased again with no corresponding decrease in the income tax. When the sixteenth amendment was being debated, arguments were made for a clause that would limit the tax to at most 10% of income, but the clause was abandoned because no one thought the income tax could or should get that high.
Long copy v/s short "Try Now" approach for webapps would certainly be a an interesting A/B test.

(PS: we have been trying to do such a split test for Visual Website Optimizer homepage. Will post results once we do it)
You mentioned something that i think is really important:

"My age, duration of employment, or who I know shouldn't play nearly as large of a factor as what I'm doing for the company."

I have heard this more than almost anything else recently. The true entrepreneurs and hard workers want to know that if they go out there and kick ass they will be rewarded for kicking ass. Not be rewarded "as a 24 year old should be rewarded".

Love this article. keep it up
Isn't Ireland experiencing total economic collapse at the moment?
A Bad Hire Can Cost You
Hey Europe, selected ladies can attend Founder Institute for free
Edward L. Glaeser: E-Ties That Bind
what do you guys think about covestor.com?

I'd like to play there with some spare cash...
Live Blog from IBM Pulse: How the Smart World Emerges
FYI, I made this convenient scrape of ted.com, providing direct download links and SRT subtitles for every talk.

http://www.the-geek.org/ted/
Creating a Customer-Driven Company
I read your comment and all I could think was "See? It happens to other people, too!" :-) (I'm in Italy too btw)
Of The Social Contract, Or Principles of… Commercial Add-On Development
Yup, broad problem in society, done wherever people can find an opportunity -- visible, short-term, small gain at hard to see long-term, large cost.

But the solution is at hand: In the US, local schools are run by the local school boards, and tough to keep reality from the school board members, including in the "wellbeing" of the students.
"You read that entire article and your takeaway is a theory about why Lisp isn't popular?"

He said 'take' (not 'takeaway'), which I would interpret to mean his viewpoint on Lisp that might be unrelated or even contrary to the article.
Android Users: Screenshots Coming without Root
Check out the book 'The Investment Answer' (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0982894708). Its a great place to start when trying to learn about investing and long term money management. It also goes in depth on how to select someone to help manage your money.
Mobile notifications as a window on your smartphone soul « The Orange View
Again with the diversification: I'd be more inclined to buy several 350k stores than 1 multi-million dollar hotel. The added benefit is you do not need to be as involved as you think, as you can hire middle management pretty easily at that level. (I grew up in a 7-Eleven store, which was purchased by a guy in a similar situation to you, along with several other ones from prior owners).

Second, you can talk to far away yet successful chains and offer to be the "anchor" locally. Find a Vancouver chain, for instance, and convince them to open stores in Toronto, etc.

Also, remember there are tons of chains out there, including ones that don't have offices/aren't mainly associated with their offices. I mean, for instance, stuff like Deco, which is a lot of "on site" window repair (Full disclosure: I have a indirect relationship with them, but I say their name more because I'm an American who knows few Canadian businesses than any particular knowledge of Deco).

I would not be surprised to find out there is a Canadian office of business affairs who'd help point you towards franchise opportunities.

Lastly, you can purchase them from people who already own them (with most franchises). I know that's how my family got out of their 7-Eleven store. In this economy, I'm sure there are people looking to sell. If you look hard enough, you may find one who is doing so due to hardship rather than due to poor performance.

--

All that said: I say all the above because franchises are stupidly good at maintaining wealth. If you want passive and are willing to risk inflation issues, I'd go to with passive.

Also, you may want to buy some USD right now if you're all in CAD. USD swung down due to oil price issues. Oanda is cheap for large currency transactions according to my banker friend (flat fee as opposed to %). RBC also has free CAD->USD conversion for Canadians IIRC.

Then again, this might be permanent, and speculation is never a great way to gain security.
There have been no instances of altruistic people creating a movie valued at over two hundred million dollars, nor would piracy be justified if such an instance existed.
I always thought "tomboyish" meant "willing to climb a tree," with possible overtones of "hair shorter than shoulder length."
we don't have a date set for this on the roadmap

Read: never going to happen
> There's a subtle assumption hiding in here: you must be willing to learn, especially if you're not coming in at an executive level.

Erm... Why should executives get off the hook? They generally manage more diverse areas of the company and should be willing to learn as much as anyone else.
I remember reading a science fiction novel in which a story was recounted by one character to another of a "first contact" expedition to a world. The members of the expedition had been assured that the inhabitants were peaceful because they had no word for war.

When they landed, they were slaughtered.

True, the inhabitants had no word for "war" - that's not sufficiently refined. They had words for

* war because of land conflict

* war because of water rights

* war because of ancient insult

* genocide as retribution

and so on.

But no word for "war".

I can't remember the novel - perhaps some of you can. If not, I just might have to re-read my collection to find it.
"I wish more of the media would highlight Natalie Portman's scientific cred"

Can I ask why? It wouldn't make a difference to her performances, so if she chooses to not use her scientific creds why should anyone feel the need to mention them? It doesn't validate her as a person anymore than if she was a talented actress who used to be a waitress.
Join for all of the reasons given and alluded to, but drop the 'Expectations' part. Or if you insist on having them, go read Charles Dickens 'Great Expectations' one more time (or for the first time) and then ponder...
I can only speculate at the intentions of the grandparent poster; but it's not necessarily their intention to indicate that you shouldn't repost things. It's helpful to link to old discussions of the same post so that interested HNers (like myself) can go read the comments. I know I'm often more interested in the comments than the article itself.
Startup Guys Are Lame
I suspect that a "try now" button would be the death of most products traditionally advertised by a long sales letter.
The copy he writes wouldn't work on you but that's the #1 rule of marketing: don't project yourself on target customer. If you don't like long copy, it doesn't mean your customers won't like it. That's why stress is on A/B testing.
What 3 Job Seeker Types Scare Recruiters Away?
Libraries buy copies, and then lend out those copies. Pirates make an arbitrary number of copies and give those out. These are not comparable.
Questions before building your business on a freelancer
If you were in the market for a, lets say, refrigerator, and you were sent a detailed letter explaining why Brand X Refrigerators keep food fresh longer and save you money on electricity - would you really throw it away?
Your note on diversification reminds me of a video I recently saw from Eric Sprott. In it he said the following.

"I focus in on things. I get deep into things that I like. I dont worry about diversification. I think it was Warren Buffet who coined the term 'diworsification'. I dont belive in diversification. For example on the long side of our funds we are well through 70% into precious metals. For me, I am probably into 70-80% gold. For me it does not bother me because I know that is the place where I have to go."

He is a man of conviction.
Great word: "hobbyists" -- there's a lot of these types who attend events and are curious, but aren't true hustlers.
In the arts, like in any field, you only get better by immersing yourself in it and it's hard to do that when you have to treat it like a hobby rather than a job.

Ask yourself what level of talent you would have right now if there was zero money in coding or designing software, and you just did it on evenings and weekends, when you were not working your full time job in retail or food services to scrape by?

There is just something disturbing to me about this idea that people should be suffering so that others can read better poetry on their comfy 100k tech salaries.
Go, Founder Institute, Go! :)
Matt Blaze: How ACM and IEEE Shake Down Science
Upvoted, because it's a pertinent question.

a. Yes, it's tiring to see the same thing repeated. As a hacker, repetition, and hence wasting time, is something I try to avoid.

b. Yes, it's nice to present classic items to the newer members of the community. That's of value

c. Without reference to the previous discussions the same points will be made over and over again. See item (a) above.

d. There is value in the previous discussions. It would be a shame to see it wasted.

In short, I don't have a problem with things being reposted occasionally, but I'd like to leverage the existing backlog of discussions. Regarding sounding dismissive:

e. I don't have time to word-craft things endlessly, and sometimes I don't get the nuances right. It takes me almost no time to create the cross-references - the time is consumed in trying not to offend people. Sometimes there's not enough time for both.
Your example of 10/400 v 10/100 implies early specialisation if that's to be a realistic scenario, which I confess I'm not a great fan of. If you'd found me at 11, or even 14, I was near enough top of the chart on everything bar sports. Plenty of others were in a similar position to me, or would have been equally flat at a different level. Early specialisation forces pupils to close off options before they may realistically be ready to.

I have no problem with the gap per se - I went to a state funded selective school and I'm perfectly happy that that sort of school has a place in the system. I believe I've illustrated though how school choice as implemented in Britain necessarily impoverishes the schools perceived as poorer - through the inefficiencies and excess capacity it requires to operate while giving anything like true choice, school choice gives less popular schools higher per-pupil expenses for worse opportunities and outcomes. Someone's kids have to go there, they're paying the same taxes as everyone else to fund them, but they're getting a rotten deal.

Like I said in my first contribution - I don't think there is a perfect solution and school choice may well be the least worst option. It is not a panacea though, and we should be honest in appraising its failings.
It's quite possible to write tests that fairly accurately measure the basic material to be taught in the third grade. Well written tests cannot be 'gamed' to any significant degree. People have known how to write good tests for over 50 years and have often done so.

Heck, when I was teaching in college, I passed out copies of tests from earlier semesters. Then the students could study just to the tests and try to 'game' them. Still, had to know the material at least to some degree to do even that. Net, the students had every opportunity to study just to the tests and I was in effect teaching just to my own tests and still the students had basically to learn the material.
I actually haven't snuck into an extra movie. But, to be fair, I have downloaded movies and music.

I just grew up and don't find the need to do that anymore. With services like Pandora and Slacker Radio, and a ton of pay per song models, I don't need to steal music anymore.

With Netflix and Redbox, it is worth a few bucks to keep the artists creating so that I can keep enjoying their work.

People who justify piracy either
A) Haven't grown up,
B) Don't work for a living so they don't understand how important it is to get paid for their work, or
C) Are selfish and feel the world owes them something.

Maybe a mixture of the above.
I bought this a while ago (a year?) and, although it's a great application, the developer seemingly abandoned it not long after.
Thank you - appreciated.
1. I find that NDAs are dated in today's world and in all honesty, few rarely pursue anything if the NDA should be violated. It's a waste of everyone's time.

2. Your a consultant, signing an NDA with something like makes no sense as your business it to talk to businesses. Much like an investor would never sign an NDA, I'd be careful about signing one.

3. If they're pressed on this, and you want the job, ask for a mutual NDA and revise clauses that are more reasonable, and that won't affect your main line of work. Four years is insane.
That's very nice. I don't care who the user is, there's no way humanly possible any person can or will maintain individual contact with 10,000 people over the course of a year. Just trying to remember who half of the people were or when the last time you talked or what about would be ridiculous.

It seems to me this is why there are (for example) sales tools which help track relationships and organize aggregate contact data into a manageable system. But come on. However much of a VC rockstar Brad Feld is, he's not e-mailing or calling 10,000 people. Like most people he'll add everyone he meets to his standard contacts list, but this is not scalable, and there's probably a couple thousand people sitting in the list that either he's never had correspondence with or hasn't for a year or more, making a follow-up unlikely. Of course I am generalizing and assuming based on my own experience with PIM systems.

Instead of just adding people to a contact list and forgetting about it perhaps Brad should invest his time in a system which will provide more features tailored to the nature of his business contacts, and that way Google doesn't have to redesign its infrastructure to support 0.001% of users. That's all i'm saying.
I wonder if the HN engine has ability to merge discussions. It would be nice to flag posts as duplicates, but not have the comments and discussions disappear into oblivion.
This makes a certain amount of intuitive sense to me. I would also like to see such a study.
I see describing something as a 'tabloid' to be setting it apart as sub-standard, below an acceptable level of quality, in the medium of print. As these standards are much lower (or non-existant) for blogs, it seems a harsh comparison.
This annoys me as well.

"Let's not do perfectly reasonable action A because it could lead to completely irrational event B."

How about we just do A, but not B?
I call it a marketing ploy because "Show HN" carries a strong implication that an existing product is being showcased. This implication is being used to drive click-throughs. This is a beautiful landing page and the author is clearly a very capable designer, is it too much to ask for higher standards of honesty in our precious corner of the web? Any of these titles would have been perfectly fine:

Show HN: Help me build QuickSend

Show HN: QuickSend, an app concept

Or even simply, QuickSend
Well, for reference, here's a screenshot of the current KDevelop release on the current KDE release with default settings for each, so people can make up their own minds: http://simplest-image-hosting.net/jpg-0-plasma-desktopud5039

And FWIW, considering that KDE apps do work on and get shipped for Windows and Mac OS X, that "only platform" is a pretty broad one. Actually I can't speak to how complete the port of KDevelop's own application logic to those platforms is as I haven't tried it there, but I certainly happily use apps like Okular and Gwenview on Windows 7. Here are shots of that too, while we're at it: http://simplest-image-hosting.net/png-0-windows and http://simplest-image-hosting.net/png-0-capture24
> it comes off as a bit dismissive

The presentation of previous discussions was as neutral, factual, and to-the-point as I can imagine; I don't see any dismissiveness or sentiment other than what I injected into it from my experience dealing with reposts on forums for a decade or so.

I see the RoG duplicate detection as serving the historian function you touched on admirably, without needing further padding in politeness.
I don't think people on the lower part of the intelligence are necessarily big readers.

With most psychological effects, there's the tendency to say "sure, that works on other people, but not me." The long form sales letter is really a way to put all of the positive attributes and angles for a product in front of a consumer. If you are selling snow to eskimos, I doubt it works. But for people who are on the fence, what is so wrong with laying out the case for a product fully? I think you could argue that someone who needs to see compelling supporting arguments in favor of a product, and who carefully considers a product before purchasing is more likely to be intelligent.

If anything, the long sales letter is less threatening to the notion of the intelligent consumer than the sad realization that changing the hue of a button increased your sales.
Wikipedia compressed, my personal journals, pics of the kids & family.