skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
it is disappointing news, maybe if people quit calling it the rust belt that we be a nice place to start.
It really depends on what you're doing.

The disadvantage with platforms like decktrade is you have a different set of rules from traditional CPC networks like AdMob. As it is a direct exchange, you're typically dealing with fill rates that can vary wildly and a CPC/eCPM that fluctuates.

That isn't to say you shouldn't use them - I actually prefer to use our own internal ads instead of AdMob and others, with DeckTrade being higher on our own priority list. Use AdWhirl or another mediator to set up your serving list and then your own house ads to make sure you have a max fill rate.

Now, as for ballpark figures I have to say it rather depends. Do you know what your average CTR is on ads you're testing in your apps/sites? If you need, set your estimate at about .08% to 1% CTR; conversely, average earned CPC depends on platform. I'd give it anywhere from $0.03 to $0.05. With that you'de be averaging somewhere from $0.24 to $0.5 eCPM.

As an example of what we get, for our ads on AdMob we have a $0.43 eCPM form our highest impression sites which have a CTR of 0.71%. DeckTrade skews a bit higher at $0.74 and 0.94% respectively. Internal ads we run way outperform all of them however, but our fill rate for those is much less.

Before you begin estimating however, you need to look at your apps/sites and see how related any ads may be. Remember to categorize well and look into how you can maximize the relevance of ads to your own apps. If you have a game, you know people are often playing for a reason - figure out what works and you'll earn more from that.

Ping me @kzorz or something if you want to talk further. We're doing a lot with mobile ads and I'd be happy help anyone out here on YCHN.

<plug class="shameless">We also have an alpha of our internal ad network that we are looking for testers for</plug>
Then it just goes to show that when the propaganda is home grown, it sinks in a lot more. This explains why the U.S. was generally more supportive of the Iraq war than most other countries. The benefit therefore of an international coalition is that you'll get a much wider distributed group of people to accept the propaganda (and referencing TomOfTTB elsewhere in this thread, this points to the "wisdom" of Obama's scheme vs. Bush's scheme).

Of course, this assumes the only "humanitarian" portion of this current situation is the label of the fabricated excuse. Which must be true, see: Ivory Coast.
I don't know, if someone randomly asks me to tell them about programming, I'd reply that it's the ability to make the computer do what I want it to do by speaking a language it understands. That'd shut most people up while giving them a basic understanding.
This is all well and good, until the day when you decide to learn something on your own from a book, and encounter concepts defined in epsilon-delta form that make zero sense to a mind trained on intuiting concepts from graphs.

Visualization will not get you beyond 3 dimensions, nor will it get you understanding systems in terms of Lagrangians/Hamiltonians, nor will it give you the ability to read texts geared toward actual mathematicians.

Speaking for myself, it was surprisingly difficult un-learning the "slope of a tangent line" type of conceptualizing in order to understand math with sufficient rigor to be able to actually read math texts correctly.
do facebook apps make money? yes, some do. how? same way as normal web apps. some charge subscription fees. some use ads. some will be or are using credits to sell things. etc..
That's actually kind of a relief, especially considering all the news you hear about 10000 users in 72 hours, it seems like if you don't explode onto the scene you're a failure.
Link is dead or down, I can't wait to read this!
This reads like linkbait to me. The author doesn't really have a coherent argument: he spends the first half of the article talking about Firefox's relatively slow* release cycle, but never bothers to explain why that's a death sentence.

Instead, he jumps to another argument entirely in the second half: Firefox's lack of an "app ecosystem". This is truly delusional. Firefox has just as much of an app ecosystem as IE: it runs code on websites you go to. It's true that it lacks Chrome's app store (which right now amounts to little more than a glorified link directory and alternate bookmark system), but if that's a disadvantage it applies equally to IE.

* Relatively slow only with sufficient handwaving: call IE's platform previews equivalent to Chrome's full releases, then dismiss without justification Mozilla's new accelerated schedule for Firefox.
It seems like the two-party rule applies to video only if audio is captured.[1]

[1]http://www.citmedialaw.org/legal-guide/massachusetts-recordi...
I believe if Firefox dies, it will be because it did not learn from the Netscape Navigator it was born from.

I switched from Netscape to IE when I realized the application had become bloated beyond recognition. I didn't need an email client inside of Netscape, I didn't need a news reader inside of Netscape, I didn't need all of these things.

I'm seeing shades of this in Firefox. Specifically, Firefox Sync.

It's a great idea, for some people. However in my scenario my tabs and bookmarks in one location are completely different from my tabs and bookmarks in another. I don't need the ability to bridge them. It would be a neat add on, but I don't need it built into the core.

That is what made Firefox great in the first place. Add ons. That's why I've stuck with Firefox. Add ons. Features like Sync are cool, but in my opinion they should be optional add ons.
Both of which are true, but irrelevant to the comment I made.
I believe they still do this in the United States. At least, they did last I lived in north Florida.
In the US this is covered under the laws r.e. Personal release rights. So, yeh, you could be sued for doing such a thing. We have a reasonable amount of trouble with this on Wikipedia.
Years ago we reported a stolen vehicle to the police. Not just a laptop, mind you... and ENTIRE CAR. About 2-3 weeks later, I found that car. One of the first things I did was call the number the police had given us.

The officer said, "If we followed every one of these calls, we'd never get any actual work done."
I would pay a few bucks to take ads off of pretty much every single Android app I use.
What's being solved are not just abstract mathematical problems, but equations that have implications on the whole system?
When I was in graduate school taking my qualifying examination, I stood in front of my 5 advisors answering their questions one by one about my dissertation project (pre-defense). The first time I failed. They questioned me for 2 hours on every detail of my project and grew impatient every time I gave them a hand-wavy answer. The second time I passed. The questioning lasted 15 minutes. I had spent the previous 3 months since the first failure reading every single book on my domain atleast twice. I was also angered (as were they) the first time when they asked simple questions and the answer just didn't bubble to the top of my memory. I think the second time around, they were almost freaked out by my eagerness.
To put it concisely :)

A demonstration of empathy that translates to real communication with the particular lay person you are engaging with regard to your domain of expertise shows mastery rather than mere proficiency.
BW is basically zero. I am looking for a development/tutorial machine that is simply accessible from anywhere. Something I can SSH - would be great to RDP to it so I can have a rails dev box with CLI IDE and a browser.
You may not think so, but it's how most "quotes" you read in newspapers and magazines work.
Not sure what happened, sshing in to the server and poking around.
How do you prepare for this? How do you practice answering these questions? I feel like I can never know enough about the business.

So I would ask, for any of you who have pitched to investors / YC, how do you go about preparing and practicing?
Are you checking out the US Imagine Cup entries
EuroPython 2011 Call for Presentations ends in 2 weeks
Getting talent to the region isn't really that much of an issue, its keeping it. There are tons of Univeristy of Michigan grads in the bay area that have started amazingly successful companies, most notably Larry Page. There will always be a strong flow of talent from U of M, its just a matter of convincing some of them to stay in the area.
This. My personal prediction: It will go the way of auth, where known trusted companies become the custodians. I'm willing to bet Facebook, Google, Apple, MSFT, and others with large subscribed bases are nursing at least one, possibly several, entrants into this space, but are waiting for evidence that people actually grok micropayments first.
Fraudulent Digital Certificates Could Allow Spoofing
The subject line is so tempting, I upvoted while waiting for you:)
DD - going to the trenches.

Well, you guys are not the ones that are responsible for doing the due diligence if you are getting bought out.

But, if you want to know some of details needed then I would have all of this information ready;

Financials - past, present, future projections
Detailed company information - revenue drivers, strategy, marketing strategy, how are you getting customers (paid / not paid ), how much revenue per customer, lifetime revenue, lifetime of a customer
Revenue driver margins, future revenue drivers?
Competitor analysis - what keeps you ahead/behind
Growth areas for your industry/business
All industry info - qualitative and quantitative
Porters 5 forces would help with getting to know a startup
Management team background
Advisor background
Current stock ownership, options, ect
Laws surrounding your product - what is the legal landscape, any pitfalls or shifts that will negatively/pos impact your biz?
Economics of the biz - costs, expenses, variable costs, ect
Operating plans
Critical risks
list of assumptions

Thats a bunch off of the top of my head - some of those categories hold a bunch of topics like 'fin statements' make sure you have balance sheet, cash flow, income statement, valuation model, ect.

Hope that helps, there is more..
Being a for-pay service can be a feature in itself if your business is based on storing user data. People are naturally risk-averse when it comes to their bits. Profitability reassures them that you have some kind of plan, and the fact that money changed hands reassures them that they'll have some kind of redress if you screw it up.
Oh, I definitely am! I have a nice long "Seinfeld streak" going of days I have been teaching myself coding and dev. I started the wireframe for one of my ideas/projects this afternoon during lunch. I have gotten myself some good contacts in the local start-up scene and was just this week was asked to do some (part time, off hours) work for a very promising one.

I knew the "release early" mantra, but I am still getting momentum and knowledge behind me. It's starting for me, I am excited.
One other comment: mobile affiliate networks are still in their infancy and many are just shady fly-by-night companies. In general, do not trust them.
Tell HN: An Italian court sentenced Yahoo to remove pirated links
Italian article here: http://www.repubblica.it/tecnologia/2011/03/23/news/basta_link_a_siti_di_film_pirata_una_sentenza_inibisce_yahoo_-14012819/?ref=HRER2-1

The gist of it is that Yahoo is expected to remove pirated links from its results when a copyright holder demands it. Google and other search engines are expected to be next.
Don't put up an emotional barrier or add all that thought to something you haven't ventured into yet. Just jump into it.
You would be considered stupid if someone told you you have a 5% chance at every kissing this girl, yet you decide to spend the next 3 years of your life pursuing her and her only.

If that girl is worth more than 20x as much to you as any other girl, a 5% chance is worth it.
Don't fret. I can't see why people are getting so upset about this. Seems they are more in defense of the "suspects" rights then the fact that he blatantly stole your laptop in the first place.

Personally I found what you did to be hilarious and a perfect example of justice and (quite possibly) the best deterrent for this criminal to change his ways.
It's funny that he warns against describing your startup at "The X of Y"

and then Harj said this the other day:

http://twitter.com/Harjeet/status/49007424711049216
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Education News
No one will pay for Twitter. That's their problem.
I don't directly remember any new numbers, but I know how the DTMF sequence for the number is supposed to sound when dialed. I could always work back from that to get a human-readable phone number if I needed it.

Like Jebdm, the only numbers I really know are those that haven't changed in a few decades and my own cell number. But I also prefer face to face conversation over telephone, so I'm only likely to call you if I can't find you. (And then I'm more likely to just text or e-mail....)
> Just to test this out, if anyone is staying quiet about their project for fear of attracting competition, could they please reply to this comment and say so?

Um, now that you've asked, the most important part of any secret is knowing the existence of a secret (or phrased otherwise: you don't ask questions about stuff you don't know the existence of).

So: no, you can't really control for this sampling bias.

But thanks for asking, we're fine :)
I wanna work at Instagram
Have you read Crossing the Chasm? Going directly from nothing to "standard consumer" is rough and doesn't typically happen. Your first users have to be more open to new things (making them early adopters). The average consumer won't try things their friends aren't already using.
Fact is: Firefox had 4.6 Million downloads in the first 24 hours after its launch, IE9 had 2.3 Million downloads in the same period. The previous IE versions have continuously lost ground.

I expect better researched articles from ZDNet.
IronPython 2.7 released with VS integration, full Python 2.7 support
Having a Racket with Pictures and Continuations
Pakistan allots land to women in an effort to end a cycle of debt
App Turns Your Phone Into a 3-D Scanner [video]
From a generic, non-specific, automatic mail on behalf of the company? Which everybody gets? If it was private between me and her you'd have a point.

She included her name, I didn't, and I don't see harm in repeating the mail verbatim.
(full disclosure: haven't pitched to investors/YC)

Just talking about your product with colleagues, mentors, friends, etc. can help you get prepared. Most likely they will ask you questions and it can be like a mock "interview".
"They switch to a philosophy major."

This comment seems odd to me, as philosophy is another subject where a failure to sit down and really think about the topics at hand will leave you hopelessly lost, if the class is taught to any degree of rigor.
You can arguably get by or contract out any of these three roles, but your startup will have a weak leg.

Related HN Post: http://spencerfry.com/startup-vs-company
It's actually a Virginia/UK thing too. If I tell anyone that I'm a software engineer their first answer is "eh? money is good huh?" with a wink and a nudge.

As far as social cred---we don't get as much as doctors since we don't save lives, but we have at least as much as lawyers.
Well, that's easy to say now that people are competing on price, but apparently nobody has been able to until now, or if they could they inexplicably weren't.

edit: Point being, maybe I'm just being pedantic, but it seems like they were right to say what they said.
This doesn't make much sense. Why not just sell the laptop, instead of allowing it to be stolen?
I wouldn't want them to. Police have more important things to deal with than stolen laptops.
To my eye anyway it always looks like Google got the developers to do the design as well (even though that's probably not the case), whereas Apples' designs have a little bit more of an "artistic" feel to them
Google Cache Link : http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sclient=psy&...
Parents could decide who qualified to teach, instead of bureaucrats.

This already happens via elected school boards. And you get people teaching intelligent design instead of evolution. I see the point you're trying to make, but think you're being wildly optimistic and over-simplifying the problem to boot.
Ask HN: Is Twitter selling private email addresses?
Today I got an unsolicited email from peoplebrowsr.com asking me to look at some link they're spamming around. My twitter account is private. How did they get this address?

@handle,

To celebrate the opening of our San Francisco Command Center and the 75th Anniversary of The Advertising Research Foundation in New York we commissioned a brief cartoon history of social networking.

It's really fun! Thought you might like it.

BTW - it's trending on slideshare at the moment.

Jodee

This email was sent to realname@domain.tld. If you are no longer interested you can unsubscribe instantly.
cool. will look at it. lets take this on github
I wrote this comment only to make it clear that the stats required to figure out if something is "really" encrypted are trivial. They take significantly less than a second for a Ruby program to perform. You'd just always run them.

Sorry I wasn't more explicit (or if you already realized that).
Chrome Web Store is not a link directory, that's as much FUD as you accuse them of spreading about Firefox release cycle (which I agree with).
> I expect better researched articles from ZDNet.

I cannot think of a single good reason why you would.
I think it more about Oracle wanting to sell more Sun boxes than HP boxes.
I was assuming that they were asking you to teach them to program, or at least give them a comprehensive survey of the field. What you said is the obvious short answer for people who are just asking to be polite or to get an idea of what you do.
I think most teachers would say the same thing about the students they've taught. It's pretty hard to impart insight and understanding to someone who doesn't care and doesn't want to.
I'm sure there are many brains behind Cocoa, but Ali Ozer has to be the most unsung hero at Apple. Seems like it's been his core vision for all these years that has kept things coherent.
Thanks for the info. I think you may be thinking of the wrong Deck though. I was referring to http://decknetwork.net/, which is a network that only shows only a single ad per site with a limited number of advertisers and publishers. For example, on Daring Fireball (http://daringfireball.net/). Fusion (http://fusionads.net/) does the same thing. I'm not sure how much that changes the numbers, but I believe it's a bit different from the typical ad network.
In formal writing, the inserted word or phrase is supposed to be enclosed in square brackets to indicate that it is not the original source speaking: "he wanted to go to [the] circus".

The slightly more obnoxious "sic" can be used when you want to leave the grammatical error in, indicating that the error is in the original source: "he wanted to go to circus [sic]".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sic

A good journalist will adapt their own language to make the unmodified quote fit in where possible. Being misquoted is a sign of sloppy journalism.
Exclusive Data On Groupon’s U.S. Revenues And February Falloff
I'll be the first to say... Thank you for putting the vowels back in your name. "Twttr" looks horrible.
I'm confused. Are you saying that U.S. juries and judges are likely to overlook this in name of an, uh, ethos?
The Internet Is More Fun Than Your Friends
There is no such thing as bad publicity! Kudo's for turning lemons into a viral blog post! Although, if I understand correctly, you were reusing passwords and storing them in plain text! This is an ABC123 computer security nono. Thank goodness it was just some young script kiddies and not someone with malicious intent!
MinWin is not a "cut-down version of W7" - it was never productized, only a concept demo. Regardless though, Vista had started and W7 continued better separation of layers in NT. Maybe Vista was a percieved disaster, it was a necessary step nontheless.
I agree with the referenced article, the term has been devised to be derogatory. In the past these sorts of businesses, with no VC ownership, were called software companies. Now they are called "lifestyle businesses", a term that calls to mind a precious hobby, but one that is not taken seriously by customer, the market, or even the owner. Hearing that the business is not a serious one but just a means to leisure, customers get the message that when the owner tires of his hobby he will move on, and customer support is at the whim of his leisurely schedule.

I don't use the term. I call it a software business. Call it an independently owned small software business if you like, but lifestyle business is definitely a derogatory term carefully chosen to make independent software companies seem non-serious.
The Chrome apps he's talking about get downloaded to your machine then run in the browser as if they were a webpage on the net. I'm guessing that Internet Explorer 9 has a similar feature but Firefox doesn't have anything like this on the roadmap.
We're working on a Linux port for use server-side but that's not to say our current framework is not headless. We developed this branch to be completely independent of any windowing systems (and have even coaxed Flash and Silverlight to render correctly in such an environment)-- check out our HelloAwesomium sample in the SDK, it runs straight from the command-line and outputs a JPEG.
It is if the only selling point for the chip was it's advanced capabilities if you used the custom compiler.

If people are only buy Itaniums to run legacy x86 code THAT is significant - it would be like Apple announcing sales of Macbooks but admitting everyone just used them to run Windows
Could someone please explain this one for me?

As far as I understand, all the things Sony have done so far, were to enforce jurisdiction in California. What is so special about California? Any big corporation (or at least any of them named Sony) instantly wins every court there?
If you sold a bunch of laptops like this, and every buyer gets their bank/credit compromised, you'd be found.

Allowing them to distribute via theft gives superior untraceability at scale, though it means the people receiving the laptops might not be as 'fat' targets as people who buy laptops through traceable transactions.
New class-based generic views are awesome. This is how it should have been from the start.
6 Of The Best Unofficial iPhone Twitter Apps
Chrome apps get downloaded to your machine. They are not links.
Good point. Putting aside the tech persona and wearing the shoes of the less-technical is a challenge.
For that matter, you could ask the same of Google and Firefox. Google clearly thinks that being the default search provider is worth the cost of a browser (or two, in this case).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Notable_eve...