skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Depends. I don't typically target the links toward anything, because my readership is so varied in interest that I'd only get a few (less than 5) sales on a book, and that's maybe $2-3 total.

I can link to virtually anything on Amazon and tee it up in a way which I'll get, say, 100-200 clicks. If I talk it up, I can get 400, maybe more. (I have one today which is at ~350 and there's a lot of time left on it.) Because of how Amazon's affiliate tools work, I can get 2-3c/click on those (at scale), even if the clicker doesn't buy the item. But I can't do that more than once a week, if that.
I've been trying to do what you are doing just a month ago. I actually flew over to US to meet with potential candidates. Some of them needed base salary, some were willing to work on % basis.
I would advise finding guys that really know what your business is about. If your startup rocks, sales people will start knocking your doors.
It wasn't a root certificate that was compromised, was it? Unless you consider the breach at Comodo to be a compromise, in which case, axe Comodo's certs (and suffer 10000 SSL cert warning dialogs).
I agree. However I have learned not to mention the B word on HN - as I did recently in response to a large funding round for another service startup - lest I be downvoted into oblivion. I upvote this!
I've considered it a few times, but I don't really like asking my readers to become my advertisers. (Among other things.)

But I grant that I may be overly stupid here.
So much of this is caused by unsigned types. They are evil; avoid them wherever you can.
I also am subscribed to the RSS feed, and scan based on topics. Unfortunately, some titles are just not very informative or well-written. I wish titles were more descriptive.

What inspired this question?
I'm working on bringing em-hiredis up to spec. If you want a similarly non-blocking ruby alternative. https://github.com/koudelka/em-hiredis
Hype. If they say it's big it must be so. $41mm funding announcement and the fanfare with it, they need a lot of early traction fast. And it seems this is how they are going about it.
So, uh, has this been fixed? Or should I start dialing random Nevada phone numbers? :)(
People-focused businesses can scale with more people, but they're trying to get more people to use an app.

If they keep getting killed in their App Store reviews, no amount of employees or money will speed up adoption.
You guys are a security consulting firm from what I see. What products did you create for that?
If you resolve the abstract humor, I am critiquing the investment as a swindle which is a good example of the bubble that we are in. This is in line with the tongue-in-cheek critique that the item I'm responding to skillfully displays. My apologies that replies to my comment don't evoke the humorless, dry discussion of the merits of startup investment that you obviously came to this thread looking for; I'll do my best to comment without humor and without requiring a bit of thought as to the meaning behind my messages from now on.

The constant, incessant, unstoppable bitching that Hacker News is turning into Reddit makes me kind of wish that it will, just so everybody will shut up about it and get back to discussing news. You should have completed the trifecta with a "Flagged." on a line by itself.

Irony that a community founded around Y Combinator finds its greatest fear of evolving into a Y Combinator success.

Edit: Oooo, a pass! Is it single-use, or can I save it for my next almost-insightful comment?
1. Gather some stats on who your readers are (ie., country, language, profession, interest, gender, etc).
2. Look for a sponsor who will give you $100/month to sponsor your newsletter. In return they get some kind of ad space in your newsletter. It could be tasteful, like some kind of sponsorship banner or something.
I thought SearchMe and Mahalo were suppose to be the next Google?
WordPress Adapted for iPad – Show Them How Good it Can Be
Here's an idea.

There is Follow Friday on Twitter. You can do a Sponsors Friday, where you can send over offers related to your blog, topic, and its readers.

You need to track the CTR, etc. Put a decent infographics. If your CTR is good, and your topic is niche, approach folks into affiliate marketing or affiliate managers, they will be able to tell you what offers to run.
Early optimization and all that.
Honestly, "a little blog post and paragraph" is a lot more than I'd offer. But you should look into http://hackernewsletter.com
Jack Dorsey & The Golden Gate Bridge (video)
Sorry but with the exception of the basic idea that if you exert yourself physically (in this case by standing on one leg until you're tired) you may sleep better it is complete nonsense but it is also very obviously intended to look as if his experiment (his word) it has scientific and statistical merit which it does not.

If you don't think he's intending this then you need to explain away why he uses the phrases "experiment" and "a randomized experiment" several times (and indeed the language throughout is clearly intended to convey scientific rigour), outlines an experimental methodology (which he contrasts with his mere anecdotal data), fills the pages with graphs showing the mean and error bars and uses language that imply statistical significant ("one-tailed p = 0.02"), uses the "results" to draw a conclusion beyond "any doubt" and then seeks to explain what has happened in scientific terms ("to allow the signaling molecules to be regenerated" - I'm struggling not to giggle at that incidentally).

Normal people don't talk like that unless they're trying to sound scientific.

The intention here is clearly to imply some level of authority in his results based on something which is either intended to be or intended to look like scientific method when it is, in scientific terms utter nonsense and proves nothing at all.

I have no issue with him suggesting his theories to people, I do have an issue with him, either as a result of ignorance or intentional deceit, dressing it up as in any way authoritative.
Poll: What drugs have you used?
This article http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2364425 argues that more "intelligent" persons tend to take more drugs than "less intelligent" persons.

"People – scientists and civilians alike – often associate intelligence with positive life outcomes. The fact that more intelligent individuals are more likely to consume alcohol, tobacco, and psychoactive drugs tampers this universally positive view of intelligence and intelligent individuals. Intelligent people don’t always do the right thing, only the evolutionarily novel thing."

I´m going to make a generalization and categorize you all as "intelligent people" and ask you to vote for the drugs that you have taken as I am curious about what drugs "intelligent people" tend to take.

Also, if you guys would write a line or two about why you use/used drugs or why not that would be swell.
Amphetamine
Benzodiazepines
Cannabis
DXM
Extacy
Heroin
Magic Mushrooms
Mescaline
Meth amphetamine
N20
Opium
Drugs are bad, mkay.
I don't care how much a great lawyer is worth.

I care how much it costs to get the legal services that I need.
has nothing to do with scale, its about speeding up the future. not possible, regardless who's giving you the money.
How I am Learning Python from Scratch Part 2
We seem to be approaching self-satire here on HN.
Going to offer an answer to my own question: where's the next bubble?

My boring answer has always been: commodities. Yeah, ordinary people can buy and sell precious metals now. But wouldn't it be more convenient if you could just directly buy a nicely packaged product online (with no service premium) that represents whatever arbitrary commodity or commodity future (or whatever it is you trade) you desire? I'm sure this would do wonders for oil prices. All those gold trading services that advertise on cable seem to be a niche example of the phenomenon.

However, I just came across something which may offer a more interesting answer: bitcoin, or more generally, currency. I going by what I was just reading here:

http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/g7zlw/google_en...

I don't fully understand what bitcoin is. But I'm sure that will only be part of its charm if it ever goes mainstream. At any rate, just an idea.
Do you know anything else about your audience other than that they enjoy "daily facts"?

The more relevant your affiliate ads, the higher conversion rate you should have, so target with that in mind. Obviously, the more you know about your audience, the closer you can target.

It seems like something like this could initially go after books with trivia info, mental floss, etc. But I wouldn't get too caught up with this step. It's a daily email, so you could try out 365 different things each year and see what works.

Your best bet is to just play around with products, measure everything you can (obviously MailChimp clicks, but you must also measure conversions after they click, revenue, etc).
As a technically lay person who does care about this, what are some tools that I can use to write web copy with typographically correct apostrophes and quotes (or convert it afterwards)? Am I supposed to use the html code or special key combination every time?
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2364758
A poll to see what drugs "intelligent" people like.
I have some intro text in each email, a personal message from me type of thing. I could definitely use that space (and have) to promote things. The question, I guess, is sourcing those deals.
Affiliates. If you write about Abe Lincoln, link to the best biography about him.

If you always write about surprising stuff, find books that map to that: http://www.amazon.com/Never-Shower-Thunderstorm-Surprising-M...

Sponsors are good too but require a bit more hustle.
Iran's best option after Stuxnet is a spectacularly blatant and strategically negligible caper on Yahoo Mail?
I hate nano with passion. The key bindings makes absolutely no fscking sense and resemble nothing else. Just learn vi and emacs basics.
Related (not duplicates):

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1186156

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1394623

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=631275
Too many people, like you, are hung up on "proof". Yes, we should be aware of the difference between hypothesis exploration and a solid demonstration. But that doesn't mean that hypothesis exploration is pointless!

An experiment like this one is entirely appropriate when trying to decide whether a hypothesis is worth exploring further; setting up a more elaborate study would have been premature.

So when you say "his experiment proves nothing" I think you are judging it by standards it was not, and should not have been, intended to meet. Don't focus only on the results of science; without the process, there would be no interesting results.
Thanks (x2)! Hadn't heard of Kehalim -- will look closely at it.
I'm curious: What impact did that have on your servers/infrastructure? Do you use some sort of elastic resource like EC2? Do you manage your own server? How did the server handle the load?

Thanks a lot for the information, and congratulations on your product :)
One more drinking from the firehose here... just come to the "actual" site to read whatever comments the other readers left. I normally enjoy 49% the articles linked and 51% the opinion of the fellow readers here at HN!
It's a simplification, like any analogy. It's also a version of Brooks' Law[1], in case that wasn't apparent to all.

Businesses can certainly scale with more people. But this isn't a business, and to loosely paraphrase Andy Bechtolsheim at startup school this year, throwing money at problems is lazy, you should be throwing minds at problems. $41M in the bank will almost certainly be harmful at this stage of Color's development.

Also, even $41M is not going to (noticeably) speed up the surrounding ecosystem.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brookss_law
The gurus are imported from the future. I.e. the gurus already solved your problem and now help their past selves.
That's a very good question, it may have to do with time of day or overall business of HN at the time the story peaked. For instance - my story held that position for that long with a little over 100 votes IIRC whereas the submission in this story has well over 200. Naturally one would expect the 200 vote submission to get more traffic despite having a similar frontpage lifespan. It seems as if position isn't the only determining factor in pageviews, time of day is also significant.

All of this is fairly obvious when you think about it, but nice to see data to back it up.
Don't let it stop you. Understand going in that there will be noise in the feedback, and to sort through it to extract the valuable feedback. Its not personal, because the judgmental don't really know you.
Does Google's Magazine Make It a Media Company?
I hope not because that would imply that way more people is so biologically screwed in the head than I'd like to believe.

I think it's just because children are so precious that people get all irrational and panicked.
Typically those kinds of things would happen once every year or so, twitter (I still don't fully grok their business model), facebook and so on.

Don't understand Twitter's business model? Promoted tweets have the ability to become AdWords for social. Millions of pieces of content are shared everyday giving insight into user's pleasures, dislikes, and lifestyle. This user data, when analyzed, has immense value for companies interested in purchasing. That information is worth a ton.

Bubble or no bubble, I sure grok their business model.
To be honest, I posted this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2364399

It never made it to the Front page, but has been close to the top of the second front page, and even after falling off the "New" page it still garnered the occasional vote. That suggested that people either were clicking through, or had marked it as "Read Later" and then did so.

I wondered how many people saw it at all, and hence the question.
That speaks to my "Related Reading" idea in the OP. It's actually pretty easy to do, too. Definitely going to consider it highly, even though it won't work every day.
I use a firefox plugin that automatically loads the next page of sites like HN automatically as I am scrolling to the bottom, thus making a seamless transition. No issues with that.
"Yet very few startups seem to target these areas."

Perhaps you're seeing an artifact. Generally the startups you hear about on HN and elsewhere are trying to generate 'buzz' and 'raise awareness' to get to 'closing a funding round.'

As you yourself demonstrate when one starts a company to solve a problem for which there are already customers in pain (and thus willing to buy the product), they can generally, if they execute well, get started and get profitable early on and then grow organically by expanding out from their customer base to adjacent markets. All without any big funding round or 'buzz gathering.'

Solving known problems well, gets you a steady paycheck, its not 'sexy' and its not usually 'disruptive' and it is very very rarely even brought up in places like this.

Because the problems are known it also means are are usually several players trying to get to the same dollars and margins are limited right from the start as people compete to be the chosen solution out of a variety of solutions.

Disruptive changes on the other hand, take a market with a reasonable capital flow and shift it all to a single player. Depending on how long that shift lasts, the return on investment for that player is 10, 100, even 1000 times higher.

The other problem here is that if you are a VC fund you can't leave the money you've raised in T-bills forever, you really really do need to invest it. So there is pressure to put it out there and get it working for you, and if its been getting 2 - 3% in T-bills and your clients were expecting 20 - 30% then the longer its been sitting the bigger a pop you want to spend it on. A very strange but measurable forcing function.
It's not fast - but you can tune what/when it scans

Just did a test, C drive with 40Gb of Windows + program installs, a default settings initial full scan on a reasonably good machine.

----------- SCAN SUMMARY -----------

Known viruses: 925205
Engine version: 0.97
Scanned directories: 17693
Scanned files: 99960
Infected files: 0

Data scanned: 15352.83 MB
Data read: 15506.05 MB (ratio 0.99:1)
Time: 2863.965 sec (47 m 43 s)
Your web design looks VERY similar to: http://www.olark.com/
Why Color’s bad first experience will always “color” this company in app stores
Early reviews in the android market are not looking so good.
About 20% of my readership comes from an informal deal with Mental Floss, so I assume that their demographics match mine well.

I try and measure as much as I can, but I'm a part-time one-man band.
If they flip or IPO this joke before it all goes wrong they'll make money. Doesn't mean it isn't a mockery, it just means they're riding the bubble.
You're missing part of the Turing test - the humans involved need to have an incentive to prove they are human. A bot that's indistinguishable from a typical youtube commenter doesn't clear that bar.
New Skype 5.1 for Mac OS X Available to Download - New Features And Bugs Fixed
Very funny. I especially enjoyed the wheelbarrows of money slide.

I have one lagging question I can't seem to find an answer for: Where can I register a .xxx domain?
"Not since Google have we seen this"

I'm sorry, but this is the biggest line of bullshit I've seen in a while. Here's the thing: no one saw Google early on. Google happened, more or less, organically. They implemented a better algorithm and gained a lot of users by providing better results.

Color appears to be Instagram + location awareness. Awesome. I can't wait to use it, but to call it "Google" is just ridiculous.

I'm skeptical that this product is even going to be a success -- if I'm 150' from someone, why not just walk over to them, snap a group photo, and post it to my Twitter/Facebook/Whatever -- and even more skeptical that someone like Facebook won't clone the idea, roll it out to their 500 million users. Instagram already supports location detection. How long until "near me" shows up as a feed option?

Here's the real rub. Currently, there are 143 one & two-star reviews in the App Store. There are 49 four & five-star reviews. That's not good. Anyone claiming this is the next Google is either straight up lying to generate interest (It's the Next Google!™) or has no idea what they're talking about.
The other issue with domain knowledge, at least in my experience, is that it takes a significant effort to become sufficiently knowledgeable in a new domain to discover and solve the real problems faced by people working in that domain.
This sounds awesome. I would love to help you out. Yet, I am myself in a predicament ... I'm looking for some actors, could you help me out?
http://vimeo.com/1449435 (Dead Parrot Sketch with Nigerian Scammers ;)
Kind of disappointed in the lack of Porn in the pitch, that is at least a multiplier of 10x. Having said that: Where do I sign up?
Sorry for the accidental downvote! I meant to upvote you.
Meet Zynga's Power Users: The Prophets Behind the Profits
Not really, the premise in this instance is that saving the life of one child is a positive worth more than the negative of many people being threatened by allegations of producing and consuming paedophilic material (some of whom many not be paedophiles). In this instance there's the accompanying assumption that a child's life is worth more than numerous innocent adults' freedom, which you're of course free to argue against - "if MANY adults are deprived of their freedom for something UNCERTAIN TO ACTUALLY WORK".

Obviously these perfectly reasonable rhetorical devices also assume that law is framed in terms of utilitarianism rather than inviolable principles[1], and unlike Gaiman assumes that one can do so because those enforcing the law are capable of using enough discretion to determine whether the sentence does more damages than the alleged crime. Either way, I don't think Gaiman's "they used to ban X and even Y on similar grounds, and look where that got us" is a more sophisticated argument.

[1]I think even people defending "icky" things on the basis of "inviolable" rights or principles have a threshold of "ickiness" where it starts conflicting with other inviolable principles they believe in. Presumably most of those who defend objectionable fantasy on the grounds of freedom of speech and expression don't consider the principle so inviolable it cannot be curtailed it when Creepy Uncle Dave moves into teen chatrooms to freely voice his opinion that teens should freely express themselves on webcam for him
Thoughts on Enlightenment WM?
They linked to jaquesm's blog. Good for him.
I've got a web app that's used by mostly women, but for some reason I'm not swimming in cash. But I wish it was true!
For me the biggest takeaway on this is the fact that putting something out there early and often. Once it is out there the market can judge it for its value that it presents. In the case of fresh desk that appears to be huge. It is amazing what a few simple blog posts can do. It always amazes me all the opportunities that present them selves when you put something high quality out into the world.
I just listened to the Richter Scales' "Here Comes Another Bubble" last week. I would repost it as a thread, but I'm not sure how well it'll fare, so here it is on all its glory.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6IQ_FOCE6I

When was the song released? December of 2007.
From the FT: Cheap China goods era over
If true that would mean the era of low inflation/low interest rates is coming to an end as well.
Slide 10: "locquanintances"
I think this can be addressed by really thinking about your users and their profile. If these people tend to like to be informed about unique or little-known facts, they are probably fairly inquisitive. They might even like brain teasers, quiz games, etc. I think you should test this out by including one or two featured links to products that your market might appreciate.

For example, when talking about the Abe Lincoln/Secret Service example you might include further reading about Abe Lincoln with a link to the book Team of Rivals. This is a good example of an obvious subject-link related to the little-known fact. However, you could also include links to trivia games on Amazon, or general knowledge books like the World Almanac of Presidential Facts. I would include some humor in your links as well.

Take your best ideas and include a short survey in your email to get your users' opinion on the options.
> Steve Jobs was still running NeXT when Duke Nukem Forever was announced.

And xkcd has a "a list of things that happened since the List of Things That Have Happened Since Duke Nukem Forever Was Announced was written", but that was in 2009. http://blag.xkcd.com/2009/05/07/duke-nukem-forever/ So it's almost time for "A few things that happened since 'a list of things that happened since the List of Things That Have Happened Since Duke Nukem Forever Was Announced was written' was published."