skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's reasonably likely that a good portion of the 1 star reviews aren't opinions of the app, but are rather expressions of disapproval of the funding/ecosystem/bubble situation.
One morning I noticed that stories had been coming in at over one per minute for an hour, so that the front two new pages only contained about 30 minutes worth of submissions each. The great majority of them had not been voted on.

The stories are coming in even faster right now, but there seems to be more people checking them out.
Am I the only one to think there is some kind of real-time Google Earth stuff going on behind the scenes, supposedly in their labs ?

$41M, I can clearly see how that would fund a face/shape/... recognition engine, reconstruct some 3D models from the images and then play with them.

Frankly the iPhone app just seems to me like a cheap way for them to get a bigger image dataset and begin telling users that all their photos will be public anyway.
I tried both the Android and iPhone version and couldn't take a single picture before it crashed. Tried multiple times on both.
Definitely agree. There are lots of large problems and lots of behind the times applications being used by businesses. There is a lot of room to improve efficiency and cut down on costs.

I have a couple ideas for B2B type systems, my real problems are how to market and sell those applications. I guess I don't really have knowledge in how companies adopt technology. It seems easier (although less profitable) to sell to individuals since it's one person's decision process, not an entire organization.
$350,000 actually seems like a good value for that domain name when you consider how memorable / brandable it is.

I've bought a couple of 5 figure domain names for marketing projects and if you're building around PR / word of mouth or direct response (tv / radio) marketing a great domain is worth its weight in gold.

Smart move IMO and you can see the list of top 10 sales in 2010 here to compare value wise where it fell . . .

1. Sex.com $13,000,000 Sedo 11/17/10

2. Slots.com $5,500,000 Moniker/SnapNames 6/2/10

3. Dating.com $1,750,000 Moniker/SnapNames
DOMAINfest FTL 6/16/10

4. Photo.com $1,250,000 Moniker/SnapNames 5/5/10

5. Flying.com $1,100,000 Pvt Sale 4/7/10
6. Zip.com $1,058,830 Moniker/SnapNames/
DOMAINfest Europe 10/27/10

7. Poker.org $1,000,000 Sedo 2/23/10

8. Credit.fr €587,500 =$851,875 Sedo 1/12/10

9. Guns.com $800,000 Moniker/SnapNames 3/10/10

10. Ringtones.com $750,000 Sedo 12/15/10

21. Color.com $350,000 GoDaddy Auctions 12/8/10

via http://dnjournal.com/archive/domainsales/2010/2010-final-ytd...
Random pics of the day. Virginmedia van, Mac crash & keyboard filth
Preconceived notions about personal computer security
>These devices will help either Chrome (for Android devices) or Safari (for iOS).

Or, possibly, Firefox, which does run on Android. It still needs work--I have it, and it's a little slow, and still keeps burning CPU even after I leave the app--but I expect it'll get usable eventually.
Am I correct in my opinion that people following option A tend to be, though perhaps not universally, driven by a certain kind of greed that promotes cold, unfeeling non-authenticity? These effects ripple throughout our society at a deep level.

Some superficial examples--Zynga, advertisements for female facial creams, etc. But I feel it goes much deeper. It's like an emergent phenomenon, a parasitic infliction upon our society. Imagine where those dollars and energies and attentions could go.
Excellent, thanks for the feedback - appreciate it.
Have you used the app? It a terrible first experience. I used it last night and had no one around me. In New York City. During dinner time. Most people probably open the app, don't get it / don't see people on it, and never open the app again
They do, it's just not what you'd expect. For example, here in the UK, Volvo are big sponsors of the Twilight franchise. How does that make any sort of sense!? Well of course it does, because Twilight's core readers aren't teenagers at all, they're 30-something women. Same demographic that're buying all the Kindles.

Any ad you see that you don't understand, any product you think is irrelevant, someone must be buying it or it wouldn't exist. So, pause for a second and think, this is not for me, who is it for?
That does not a bubble make. Hackers are hacking a lot != we're in a bubble. A bubble is a stock market bubble based on mass amounts of over-investment by VCs and the public.
OK, that's great, thanks. If those points are pitched on the landing page all the better to convert customers I am sure.
Meditations on Bad and Good Code
I've got $70MM to spend on a house I don't have any plans to live in. Any suggestions?
you may be better served by ScummVM for that: http://scummvm.org/
This is a serious contender in the shortest joke contest :)
The Half-arsed Agile Manifesto
Yep. I was thinking specifically of a lonelysandwich style video like Adam did for Everdyday. Or even one of those animated paper ones that Google used to do.

Have your web site evangelize your product better at launch, for the users benefit. Don't just ignore it because you're already getting funding and press.
great story and great advice.
Anecdotal over-investment on the part of three VC companies != a bubble.

A bubble is a stock market bubble based on massive, irrational over-investment on the part of VCs and stock market investors which, after implosion, will hurt the US and world economy.

"Hey, those VCs are making some stupid investments" does not translate into an economic bubble. VCs frequently make stupid investments, because they're human and they're in the business of taking risks.

Please, I urge you to read a history of the actual stock market dot-com bubble of the late '90s so you understand the word "bubble" in context.
Same here. It's crashed three times on my iPhone right after prompting me to take a picture of myself, with no option to skip.
Hillary was also the key note speaker at pycon this year. Her talk and slides - http://www.hilarymason.com/blog/conference-pycon-2011-keynot...
What I learned when I read this was that most rich people's lives are defined (just like most others' lives) by money, which is a depressing thought. A starving person's life will be defined by food-- organized around getting access to it, with constant intrusive thoughts about it-- but for most of us, it's not. We only think about food when we're hungry, we eat, and then we think about something else.

Most people who want to be rich want escape from money's grip, and it seems like that rarely happens. Either that, or freedom from money is not a monotonically increasing function of one's allotment and these people have overshot some sort of "sweet spot" at the level of the middling wealthy.

The grand takeaway was that living in a society ruled by money sucks even for those who have a lot of it. I wish the world were more like college in the sense that, when I was in college, I had no idea whether what my friends' grades were, and people weren't stratified into socially insular tiers based on GPA. The difference between a 3.9 and a 3.2 wasn't socially divisive in the way that the difference between $20 million and $7.50 net worth is.
agreed, some color themes would be nice. wish pagent could pass sshkeys to it as well. would love for a Chrome extension though
Folk Models of Home Computer Security [pdf]
redis-rb maps redis commands into the ruby namespace.

redis-objects is built on top of redis-rb and creates objects that are backed by redis, with operations like push, pop, etc. cleanly mapped.

In other words, it's a more ruby-like API.

I recommend reading the github README for redis-objects, it goes into a lot of depth.
AromaPersona - How it launched and made sales in under an hour
I just want to correct the title!
It's a 'state-driven' attack.

http://www.gmanews.tv/story/216096/technology/iran-based-hac...
Six men locked inside building for 520 days, rehearsing for Mars
It sounds like they're still investigating and will update the page when they have more details to share. It's interesting because Play.com suffered a similar breach recently (a third party company was the target, if I remember correctly)

That being said, "It affected a portion of our membership" is the least useful answer to "How many members were impacted?" that I have ever seen.
Thank you for one of the few decent comments on the subject. I much prefer people trying to deconstruct things rather than just dismissing them.
Speed-to-Value
When I was younger, all I wanted to do was make video games. But as I got older, I found I had writing business apps was more fun (especially when I picked the language).
The app actually is crashing phones. It turns out that it's quite possible for apps to crash most Android phones, either by making the phone so unresponsive that a watchdog kicks in, or by using so much RAM that the OOM killer goes to town.
Investing 25 Million in something that isn't an issue or a need? Google brought an organised and simple search engine for the whole web... I don't get the Color app. We'll see how it evolves and grows because right now, it's just another funky mobile app.
Sorry folks - it looks like server is down ... in the mean time read about the E-mag here:

http://blogs.forbes.com/michaelhumphrey/2011/03/24/think-qua...
Thinkery now has Bulk-Edit
I fail to draw the same comparison, but that's not unique my friend. :)

On the road, "frontier" "unused" "common-good" land delivers benefit to the general public by way of open spaces, natural resources, scenery, production of oxygen. On the internet, unused domain name provides very little in terms of benefit and/or detriment to the general public. To the professional domainer, an unused domain represents a potential market derived from a commodity who is waiting for the cost of production to be less than the inherent market value.

As domainers branch out from type-in-traffic, product category, lead gen asset purchases into generic/future brands, new TLDs, etc less and less of the commodity will be available for the general public.
Neither of the incidents on that post made any sense to me. I think they are some sort of joke that I am too dense to understand.
Causes for MySQL downtimes
"They have so much faith in this product, that they’ve pumped 41 million dollars into the company . . ."

I think the right assumption is that "they have so much faith in the team."

Chief Scientist @ LinkedIn, Founder of Lala, Founder of BillShrink, etc
> Either that, or freedom from money is not a monotonically increasing function of one's allotment

Well said. Freedom from money is a combination of factors: how much you have and spend in the present, and how much you expect to make and spend in the future. As people get more money it's very easy to ramp up your lifestyle and expectations to put more pressure on the future (instead of less). On the other hand, I know people who by focusing on what's important to them and adjusting their lifestyle feel fairly free without having millions of dollars. So (once you get to a decent threashold of earning) a lot of it is attitude as well.
I Really Wanted to Hate 'Color' But Here's a Use Case...
$70MM house in SV? What's that got, like 4 bedrooms?

Seriously, this really reinforces (yet again) the meaning of "location. location, location." I have a neighbor who has a 12,000 sq ft house on top of a hill on 30 acres of really pretty land. Views are fantastic. The asking price when it was for sale? Around $3.5MM!

This isn't Silicon Valley, but it still boggles my mind that someone could buy 20 such properties (it's a really nice house!) for the price of Yuri's.
But we were so close this time. We even had demos at a game conference!
Re: Customer 2: How can we reduce inventory by $300 million?

I'm wondering if anyone has explored the outsourcing of inventory? In other words, would it be viable to establish a giant warehouse of all things that people could use as their own personal warehouse... like co-locating a server.
"We've identified the vulnerability, shut it down and are vigorously pursuing the matter with law enforcement."

Is a pretty clear assertion that they are aware of how the attack took place and know how to patch the issue.
Who cares if we're in a bubble? The only thing that matters is "how can I make money from it?"
Ask HN: Accepting Credit-card Without SSN# on Startup
I am trying to figure out how our startup can accept credit cards. Both founders are not from US and company is incorporated in US. We do not have Social Security Numbers and that seems to be blocking all applications.

I have not found any trustworthy merchant account provider that accepts us (being startup no track records and no SSN).

Any suggestions?
Sorry, but this is really terrible logic. I have first-hand experience with watching VC's pour literally hundreds of millions of dollars into a company that I was certain was never going to make it (and which has since been sold off for pennies on the dollar). All along, people kept arguing that I must be missing something, because people wouldn't invest that kind of money unless success was assured.
A Remarkable Invention Of Its Time: The Shirt Collar
My criteria for deciding to get a top tier domain:

1) It doesn't eat into your runway.

2) It can later be sold at roughly the same price or better.

They easily hit #1 and #2 is likely. Smart move.
Band Sells Name to Internet Financial Firm
Wow I can't think of a faster way to make me hate a company more. Just because I unsubscribe, does not mean I do not want to visit the website. It usually simply means I do not want emails. If those were the ONLY options for 'unsubscribing', I would be an unhappy bunny.
The bubble or the pop?
Agreed. That doesn't mean they're going to publicly disclose all of the details of the breach, especially before they've established its scope.
Some positive articles about Color:

http://battellemedia.com/archives/2011/03/why_color_matters_...

http://blogs.forbes.com/bruceupbin/2011/03/23/color-a-twitte...

http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/20110323/with-41m-in-han...

http://www.fastcompany.com/1742209/lala-founder-unveils-41-m...
Can someone point to resources that outline what the web developer community can do to speed up the general transition to IPv6? Are there any startups that today make their services available via IPv6?
Incorrect, the historical origin of the @ symbol was a symbol this "at the rate of" use.

The proper pronunciation is the one that matches the use you're using it in. So reading off an invoice from "Back in the day", you might say "at the rate of". Saying it in a user name or email address the proper way to read it is "At", as that's what people will understand.
Signed ints are easier to range check at runtime. Given an unsigned int, it's difficult to detect an invalid result from combining or comparing signed and unsigned ints.

Google's C++ Style Guide discourages using unsigned ints to represent nonnegative numbers (like sizes or counts). It recommends using runtime checks or assertions instead.

http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/cppguide.x...

Unsigned ints make sense for bit twiddling, but you should probably use a fixed-size uint32_t or uint64_t to ensure the results are consistent across various architectures.
Custom-Made Spotify Box
Startup Offering a Virtual Girlfriend on Facebook
Step 1: Define your perfect girlfriend. Step 2: We bring her into existence. Step 3: Connect and interact with her publicly on your favorite social network Step 4: Enjoy a public long distance relationship with your perfect girl.
See: http://i.imgur.com/efj7m.png

"Data provided by MS Academic Search"
Mneme: Scalable Duplicate Filtering Service (Ruby, Redis bloomfilters, HTTP)
I'm not saying that the "good reason" will result in a proven product. I'm just saying in their perspective they have good reason to spend that amount of money. And also it's Sequoia and they're not stupid.
Of course. If it ever gets released, it will be a giant let down. Nothing they release now, no matter how good, will live up to 14 years of expectations.
Automattic's VideoPress now on iPhone, iPad, and HTML5 browsers
Time and Materials is dead
I do not like the pronouncability of that: !cpeterso would be pronounced "bang cperterso", hopefully only something that special someone in your life does.
Memory Analysis for Android Applications
Ask HN: I made $1M - what now?
I'm single, in my mid-20s. For the last few years, I've worked on a variety of my own projects and managed to strike it lucky on my latest one.

I've lived very comfortably on $30K a year and I'm not interested in making any more money- I intend to invest and live off what I've made. But I haven't got a clue what to do with my life!

HN is by far the smartest and most helpful community I've ever found, and I'd love to know thoughts, ideas or suggestions any of you have - what now? What would you do?
Well, if you invested $25mm, saying such a thing would be perfectly reasonable.

Also, keep in mind the context of the quote.. it's not referring to the current state of the product. There's probably a lot more we haven't seen from this article.

"They told us that every 10 years or so a company and a marketplace and an opportunity come together that’s transformative"
A) Make a million dollars a year doing something you hate that nobody will know about or care about

If you got million dollars paid for the thing you built, that is million times "know about" + million times "care about"

B) Make no money doing something you love that your friends think is cool.
I will almost always choose B, and I think most hackers will also always choose B.
I would go as far as saying that choosing B is one of the defining characteristics of a hacker.

One can find the golden path to make something one loves, something his friends think it is cool and yet, something which million people will find it worth paying a dollar a year.

Doing cool things, things "friend think it is cool" is nice, but you cannot go to the grocery with, nor pay your bills with it, right?
Besides, that cool thing, will soon loose it glory to something cooler unless it will be maintained and evolved. Money is a great way having one stick to a project and keep it up and running.
Is Color’s Team Worth $41M, Even if Its Idea Isn’t?
> Firefox 4′s success is evidence of the fact that consumers are still looking past Microsoft when it comes to browsers.

Or evidence that:

* People who care enough about their browser to download a new version when it comes out are more likely to be excited about Firefox than IE; or

* FF4 is available on every platform and IE9 is only available on Vista / 7.
Business Secrets From a Cambodian Tuk-Tuk
That's right, and I suppose you don't give a lick of credit to the Chief Artist inside your television sifting through that data and drawing the picture on your screen, do you.
Great post by Shawn Crowley on managing scope and budget on client work.
I'm an astrophysicist at a world famous institution - hence the dummy account.

I just feel strongly about a corporate CTO deciding to upgrade himself by calling himself "chief scientist" - mind you it's not as bad as how my colleagues in the School of Engineering feel when the man who connects your new washing machine calls himself an "engineer".
After a thoughtful analysis I've come to the conclusion that the only reason they invested such amount of money is because of patents, not the shitty photo app. If Color Labs patented a way to show the strength of social relationships (with colors, or whatever) using mobile devices, then that alone might be worth billions in the future. At least for facebook.
Tell me a story: Why we'll care more, if you tell us a story
Why Color got its launch strategy wrong
Exactly. If it's starting from scratch, I have to download the scheme source, build it, resolve all compile problems within my environment before I can use it.
Please, please, please name it Alfred.
No, actually it's not public domain. The 19th edition was printed and released in 2005. Pearson looks like it actively tries to protect it's copyrights to the series as well: http://www.foo.be/docs/TCPIP-Illustrated-1/
They also acquired colour.com, which must have been near the $50K range.
In your position, I'd either keep working or go back to college/university.

I'd keep working only on something I'm really passionate about, and do it for fun. I wouldn't do 40-hrs a week or something stressful. I'd work on something I love even if I can't make a lot of money out of it.

As for studying, I don't know what I would study but I always love learning more stuff.
The only question your startup needs to answer: What’s your one thing?
Detroit Grows Faster Than Silicon Valley in Tech Jobs
Core inflation is not the main measure of inflation used by the Fed, so your previous statement is false. But you don't have to take my word for it--read the article you yourself linked.

Nevertheless, overall inflation remains quite low: Over the 12 months ending in December, prices for all the goods and services purchased by households increased by only 1.2 percent, down from 2.4 percent over the prior 12 months. To assess underlying trends in inflation, economists also follow several alternative measures of inflation; one such measure is so-called core inflation, which excludes the more volatile food and energy components and therefore can be a better predictor of where overall inflation is headed.

The takeaway is that core inflation is an "alternative" measure used when volatile components are obscuring long-term trends. The intent is to get a good feel for what the real inflation number will look like in the future. This is a big difference from "using" core inflation as the primary measure, and I don't know what you gain from confusing my statements about the PCE/PI with core PCE. I never claimed that core PCE was the most general measure.

Anyway, this is far from the original point, which is that you have some silly conspiracy theory about printing "rule-the-world money", and you won't tell us what it is. But at least I got you to stop citing MarketWatch.
After college, I went to the University of Chicago for math grad school. (I didn't finish the program--the Northwestern math department was too easy in those days, and my study skills were shot.) Three of my classmates had not finished college, and one had not finished high school either. That one had gone to MIT.
Microsoft Seeks to Pay $7.5 Million for Nortel’s IPv4 Address Block
AT&T working to enable Amazon apps on Android phones
Nobody Needs a Tablet. So Why Are We Gobbling Them Up?
Jobs doesn't like apps to say how much Radiation you are receiving.
Maybe, if you could trick the server (64-bit FreeBSD) into connecting to sockets open on 32-bit FreeBSD machines. I can't think of any common services that would be susceptible to this (they would normally be susceptible to being tricked into opening other kinds of long-standing connections, too, which is just as good for DoS).
The team at zferral is amazing. Best customer service ever.
Am I missing something here or is there a typo? The first sentence says:

> Color Labs Inc. founder Bill Nguyen visited the Dow Jones office in New York last week to talk about a big new idea backed by a $14 million round of funding.

Later, the story says:

> With Sequoia’s $25 million, $9 million from Bain Capital and $7 million in venture debt from Silicon Valley Bank, Color has closed a $41 million round of Series A funding before its product is even available in an app store.

Per TC yesterday & the WSJ in the same article, it's a $41M round.

[edit]

The author writes in the comments:

> Ty McMahan wrote: @Frank – The had secured only $14M as of last week. Sequoia came in with an additional $25M and SVP added $2M more.