skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't know if this is a geek thing or something the average user would do, but I'd really like to see more, full-sized screenshots of the app before I sign up. Not being able to see more of it means I'm more inclined to click away from the site.
Another Voice Warns of an Innovation Slowdown
What you're talking about is being honest with people regarding feedback. I respect that and agree with you.

But it is possible to be tactfully honest. You're not.
I think that was the most objective critique one could ask for a startup like this. He got right to the point of each topic and didn't beat around the bush just too say something.
Sell the problem _and_ the solution...
Denmark was the only occupied place where Jews didn't wear the Star of David and almost none was sent to concentration camps. They have a lot to be proud of.
Not when the answer is seductively wrong. "No answer" means "keep on looking".
You can always skip some questions, which IIRC is stated upfront. Or if you don't mind it leaving a cookie you can submit partially filled survey, and return to it and fill the rest of it later (which was stated in the message after filling and submitting the survey).
a virtual keyboard should work for most surfing...
I've used it as a replacement for our ancient bespoke directory system. So far it has been pretty good. Most of the issues I had where in trying to reproduce some aspects of our existing site such as urls. We haven't gone to the next phase where we try to take advantage of it to introduce new features like user voting yet.

The documentation is a little on the light side and you have to learn the language of 'drupalese' before some things start to make sense. The fact that most of the core developers of Drupal don't speak English as their native tongue might play a factor

I've found there is pretty much always some sort of hook to add you code to change things to work without having to mess with the core source code which is nice. Some of the modules may need some code changes but of course nobody is forcing you to use them.

I think it is easy to underestimate the amount of work required for a project whether you are coding it from scratch, using a framework or using something like Drupal. With Drupal (or to a lesser extent a framework) you probably won't notice all the time being saved by having the 'basics' taken care of.
First of two small corrections:

* The 'parc' (Xerox's computer, with mouse and GUI) was built and shipped and actively used, just never sold commercially.

* Apple is BSD-based, not linux based. being BSD-based is most certainly not innovative ;-)

Most of the 'innovations' you mention are rather successful implementations of existing technologies. Apple ships good products but none of the ones you mention solve an entirely new use-case, like the mouse did, or the photo-copier, or the walkman. First you weren't able to listen to your music while walking on the street or commuting in the subway, then suddenly you were.
Thanks for the correction, and sorry for being a Noob :-)

Your comment spurs me to address the question: what is innovation? I would say that innovation is about successfully bringing a technology to a mass-market that has previously been unaware of it. Note that according to this definition the innovator doesn't necessarily have to be the same entity as the original inventor. I think Skype, Amazon, twitter, etc. are innovative even though they didn't invent their core product (except for Amazons patented one-click shopping system of course ;-)) they just brought it to the masses.

I think that being an innovative company has a much broader scope than simply being an inventor.
I think the site is supposed to be for very specific technical questions, in which case there is less likely to be a 'seductively wrong' answer. Unfortunately most of the questions don't fall into this category, and either can't be answered objectively or leave more scope for 'bad' answers.
I'd hypothesize from your post than your experience with drupal is relatively limited.

If by 'lot of crap' you are referring to things like a user account system with a detailed permissions, a flexible taxonomy system (categories, tags..) or perhaps the wide rage of modules that are available then I'd have to disagree. I personally have reinvented the wheel enough times to believe that coding up yet another user account system isn't an efficient use of my time.

I'm not sure what your problem is. But I say Drupal is a viable solution to a high percentage of web site requirements including many social sites.
1) Cyber-Ark sells security products. Any security-related "facts" coming from them are suspect.

2) Everyone takes passwords with them when they leave, what am I supposed to do, erase my memory? I bet the "survey" was worded to include this...
The End is Not for a While
I still haven't seen a good implementation of Internet video yet.

YouTube is great for the one offs, the funny things that people catch on camera. But as Google has discovered, it is difficult to make money out of that stuff. Only live streaming is available, too bad if you're on the train on the way home. There is little support for following a 'program'. If you want to see if a content producer you like has done something new, you have to visit YouTube.
On the plus side, YouTube has made it fantastically easy to publish work, and to embed stuff in other web pages - most of my viewing of YouTube clips is done because I see the clip on some other web page.

Hulu is only available in the US, and it only offers live streaming. Again, too bad if you want to watch somewhere when you are out and about. After all the effort that we have put into time-and-place shifting our media, this feels like a big step backwards for me.

Podcasts allow you to watch offline, and they allow you to easily follow when new episodes become available. But there is no service offering impromptu YouTube-like serving of clips - you see a cool episode of a show that you want to share on your blog, then you're out of luck. From the Content Provider's perspective this is a problem too - having people embed your clip on their webpage is the best advertising you could wish for if you want people to subscribe to your podcast. The whole subscribing thing is important too when it comes to obtaining advertising dollars - you'll have much more success negotiating a price for ads in your podcast if you can show that you have a large audience already subscribed.
Okay, I'll try to be nicer next time while still staying honest.
The risk is not installing packages, it's that there's no vetting of people (and their code) joining the community, as there is with something like Debian.
Brussels Sprouts is completely determined: it doesn't matter how you play, the winner is a function only of the number of spots.

Sprouts is not; one can play it well or badly, and it makes a difference.
Dots-and-boxes is a game with real strategy to it, too. See "Winning Ways" or Berlekamp's book that's just about D+B.
Wanting to eat healthy food is the mark of a right-wing lunatic? Rrriiiigghtt...
I was really annoyed that I did not even see screenshots of the app and you were already asking me to pay for app. Why are there no screenshots on the frontpage?

And you really don't need more features, it seems already a bit full right now.

Very frankly, this is a tool for a real mom & pop store, and not for a web business. Put it in adobe air or one of those offline browsers and you can sell it for 300 pounds a piece as CD software. It will be more profitable than trying to convince people to use it online.

Personally, it's just too complicated to be useful to me. But I know that such software usually looks that way (like all those old school VB software).

I dunno, I'm not really qualified to judge as all I need for my accounting is just a simple 3 column spreadsheet.
That was a uniquely pointless article.
Think the design itself is quite good. Like you said, "bit rough around the edges" for example clicking a new tab should not center the tab on the screen. Your using vertical-align: top; but it still is centered. Maybe its just Firefox 3??

Also its very responsive which is good.
Apple is BSD-based, not linux based. being BSD-based is most certainly not innovative

http://www.google.com/search?q=apple+osx+nextstep

"It would be an understatement to say that OS X is derived from NEXTSTEP and OPENSTEP. In many respects, it's not just similar, it's the same.
1. I tried clicking all over the screenshot bits before signing up, but it went nowhere

2. Got a bit confused by the shares bit. I set up 1 share of value 1 pound, and then ended up with a balance of -£1. Actually, this now makes me realise that I should have paid £1 into my account for my share... so it's correct, but still a little confusing, perhaps a "why" link would be helpful.

3. There were some visual glitches with the help box in Firefox on Mac while adding a Sales entry.

4. I have my own numbering convention for my invoices. I should be able to enter my own invoice number, particularly when entering historical invoices.

5. When adding several line items to an invoice, it should automatically duplicate the tax status of the item above.

6. When there's only 1 account set up, the "Cash paid into account:" field should default to that.

7. I forgot to select the customer after typing it into the "add" box (I forgot to click add, basically). 1) the error should be more visible, 2) the field should be highlighted when i've typed something and not clicked add, so that I know there's still something to be done there.

8. The help is quite annoying. It should be hidden by default, I reckon.

Good so far though! I'll be coming back to continue setting up my accounts there. I've been looking for something like this. I'm not sure about your pricing, however... I would just keep the single-user account and print things out to send to my accountant, so you wouldn't make any money from me. However, I also wouldn't pay for it in its current state yet, so it may be worth keeping it like this for the time being until you figure out a better pricing model (or perhaps you'll find that people will sign up for it as is). Maybe you should base the charge on the turnover of the company? Free under £50k of yearly turnover... £5/m between £50-100k... £10 between 100/200... etc.

Hope this helps!
I remember playing this as a kid about 35 years ago. It was described in a book called The Indoor Games boo, published in the UK. The same book also introduced me to the rather fun 'Nine Mens Morris' - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Men's_Morris
... in the US. This is partially due to what Zakaria talks about in his "Post American World". As we move forward, we'll see innovation happening in a much more flattened distribution across Europe, Asia, etc.
... not for at least a few weeks or months. (I'm actually serious. I think we're heading into a nasty storm economically and politically in the next six months.) Not exactly HN material, but interesting.
It's a surprising article from Ars. Apple is a massively successful and profitable company. They don't need to commoditise OSX. They're not trying to compete on market share. They're trying make money by making better computers. Something they are doing very well thank you very much.
'Easy solutions' is such an easy target.
Mail Onlines
8. Update your site's content often (at least show it's been reviewed recently).

"Updated June, 2002"

Typographical errors and broken links hurt a site's credibility more than most people imagine. It's also important to keep your site up and running.

"The domain www.webcredibility.org which you are trying to access is currently unavailable."
Good point, but no - XOR is clearly better. It is simpler and its constant factor is less than the constant of a Radix sort.
Diet Pills That Work
Are you tired of trying endless weight loss pills that are available in the market? Do you feel cheated by the empty promises made by the weight loss pill companies about the results that their products are supposed to produce? Don’t worry, you are not alone there are thousands of people who are going through the same thing. Well, you might say that having thousands of people with the same problem is no solution to your problem.
Thanks for understanding the problem space. Just one addition: the Mac competes in some markets for market share. Just not for overall PCish OS installations world wide.
Companies Who Make Money: Virtualmin (YC winter 07)
ForeignObject: Hey, you’ve got HTML in my SVG
This is absolute rubbish.

The Daily Mail only prints rubbish - the idea that anyone with an interest in the posts at HN might want to read any of this junk is mind boggling.
That is the least convincing video I've ever seen.
I think somewhere in the "drafts" of blog posts that never made the light of day is one about "programming by isomorphisms."

One of the greatest intellectual feats we have is to look at a problem and realize that it is isomorphic to some other solved problem.

A lot of "Aha" programming challenges either test for the ability to recognize these isomorphisms (or more likely, they are culturally biased towards people with a lot of social exposure to older programmers).

I suspect this kind of thing might be a test for a specific kind of intelligence. I do believe--in general--that all other things being equal, the smarter programmer is the best hire.

But gosh, I admit to fearing this kind of actual code in production. It looks like exactly the kind of thing that breaks--possibly in subtle ways--when one of the underlying assumptions turns out to be false or is changed.

Of course, changing assumptions are never part of the tests, so it might be "fair dinkum." So the follow-up question probably ought to be, "when would you actually use this device?"
awesome feedback thanks. i dont agree with everything but just saying i appreciate it.
Scientific Researchers and Web 2.0: Social Not Working?
Cheap Discount Cigarettes of All Major Brands
Order cheap and discounted high quality cigarettes from Adobe online cigarettes store and save your money and time. We have major brands like Marlboro, Camel, Newport, Winston and more.
The user doesn't press save in #1 -- the user exits the app. If the user pressed save, they would be met with a save dialog, which is something completely different.

What the article discusses is a dialog the user didn't expect. Something pops up and they have to figure out what it is. Now you can make the user read the message, or you can make the window scannable by sticking actions on button labels. Reading the buttons is much faster than reading the sentence above. Sure, you're gonna save like 2 seconds of the user's time, but these 2 seconds are going to be multiplied by thousands in the course of the user using the app or OS. Little touches like this help make a good product.
Yep, the experience is very close to what you get on the desktop — especially with the ability to click on anything you want directly. I use it all the time — however, I wish Safari would stop crashing :/
Cosmic crash unmasks dark matter
Tough sell: I just don't feel compelled to sign up.

Sign up is free, right? Why not shift to gradual engagement - let me play with the app, enter a few invoices, add a few clients etc. and then when I want to save my work have me sign up & make an informed choice about package.
I know in the podcast Spolsky and Attwood have discussed making a "community answer" a feature.

As I recall there were some issues around community answers in general, because of the wiki-like behavior of allowing others to edit answers there needs to be some threshold where an answer belongs to the community rather than the user who originally posted it.
I like the concept & the brightkite integration.

I was going to comment on Di fara pizza, but when I clicked post comment nothing seemed to happened. Only something did happen - post comment button is below the fold, but the login/register layer appears above the fold. I found it after clicked 5 or 6 times, giving in, and scrolling up to hit the site id for home.

This is in webkit, btw.
1-on the main page, you should reduce the text. The headings are self-explanatory

2-sign up for a free account should be slightly distinguished from other screen shots

3-it would be nice if the user is taken straight to home page rather than selecting the package first

4-rather than medium sized screen-shots, it would be great if you can add a demo
'What if your new rock group appeals to fans of the B52s?'

Then it's going to appear in the 'Customers Who Bought Items Like This Also Bought' section when I'm looking for B52s stuff on amazon.

'If you have a massage service that is the perfect complement to customers of a personal training service down the street, why not give that trainer a dozen intro gift certificates she can use to thank her best customers?'

Vouchers and free gifts? Hardly a new idea.
If you like open source development, you'll love Mac OS X. This fully-conformant
UNIX operating system—built on Mach 3.0 and FreeBSD 5

--http://developer.apple.com/opensource/index.html

[edit better source]
Free Remote Data Backup | TechJaws
If GOOGLE 'dies' ...
Destroying the enemies satellites would more than likely damage your own in the process.

That is, in fact, what the article says, if you read the whole thing.
Here's an answer that's worse than no answer (a classic):

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/4c95766a8b...
Never send my password to me via email.
What utter gibberish. The patent system is designed to work like this:

1) You invest time and money in research and come up not with an idea but a concrete implementation of that idea.

2) You patent it

3) The patent gives you the exclusive right to use that implementation but ALSO requires you to divulge everything to the public. That bit is crucial. If someone wants to use your patent, they license it off you. Before that everyone had to keep everything secret in order to justify investing in the research in the first place, which really did harm innovation.

4) When the patent expires, it becomes public property. You HAVE to go on innovating if you want to make a living in intellectual property.

Now the patent system at present is a little broken, but the author of that article has fundamentally misunderstood how it's even supposed to work.

I don't think many people, who think of themselves as tech-savvy, really comprehend that because something can be copied for little or no cost, it cost nothing to create the first time.
That's quite an exaggeration. It only takes fifteen or twenty minutes, unless you write short essays whenever a textarea appears.
The map here is sort of useless:

http://www.weheartplaces.com/places/108-jumbo-pass

It needs the zoom controls, and you should probably use the terrain mode.
Except he says that languages should be designed to make it easy for big systems to heal.
Must be true if it comes from allfacebook.com
Editing a wikipedia article (which people will subsequently edit back) hardly amounts to shaping the flow of information. For a more effective use of the strategy, see: http://www.newseum.org/berlinwall/commissar_vanishes/vanishe...
Searching for the perfect Netbook
Sounds like somebody ought to touch base with the DirectedEdge folks....
Yay for PR companies! They even write the articles for you.
Didn't sam altman of Loopt work on this project early on?
A New Model: Open Source Software After It's Acquired
The point of view of the article is very personal, but it is true that UNIX smells text, and I like this feeling when I'm using Emacs or vim, org making a script with awk, grep and the rest of the family.

I'm not a programmer at all, I use the computer to do science, and I feel quite comfortable with the UNIX toolbox. I don't know why, but it just sounds right, even though it might be quite arcane. Yesterday I did, quite fast, some nice figures using, basically, grep, awk and gnuplot, and a little bit of dc to do some calculations. But it is true that this figure could have been done with python, IDL or anything else.

The article point of view might not reflect reality, but I liked its love for words.
BarCamp Berlin 3 Registration Open
So, to summarize, Slashdot style:

1) Identify the most likely consumers, and then give them the product for free.
2) ?????????????
3) Profit!

It reminds me of the sales guys at one of my previous jobs-- "Sure, we'll lose $10 on each sale, but we'll make up for it in volume!"
The caste system in India is truly shocking. It makes the old Apartheid regime in SA pale into insignificance. I can't understand why there isn't horror in the West. I can only assume it's because it doesn't polarize as easily into white/black.

There's a Ghandi quote in which he says Western civilization "would be a good idea". But wasn't he a Brahmin, top of the Indian social tree?
An interesting low budget guerilla self marketing tip. It goes beyond just giving a few of X away for free, and it's really about the targeting/pre-selection of your audience to maximize your 'advertising' budget.

Seems smart, and might get things done...
1. Have your parents write you a check for $1 million when you start your company.
Download Scrubs Episodes
If you still haven't watched Scrubs you are in luck as there are sites on the net that let you Download Scrubs Episodes Free and some of these services even let you Watch Scrubs Episodes from the main site!
Download Chuck Episodes
There are services that let you Download Chuck Episodes Free or even watch them online. There are hundreds of people using these services to Download Chuck Episodes Free so they can keep their favorite episodes.
Help Somebody Save Our Files
I hacked together some stuff to get the feed to post Growl notifications:

http://tlrobinson.net/blog/?p=48
I wouldn't even start picking on the answers but I don't think that there are a lot of quality questions on stackoverflow. I quickly browsed through the ruby section and it was mostly questions that could be answered by googling or reading the documentation.

Maybe this will change after the beta is over..
I think this is a pretty good idea. There's certainly a market out there for easy-to-use accounting services. You can get a sizeable revenue stream by offering some kind of consulting service where you help small organizations with their accounting tasks.

Only thing is there may be a problem getting people to store information about their businesses etc online.
Sun Makes History: First Spotless Month in a Century
Future's 5 hottest technologies
Samsung unveils MacBook Air rival
They are using fb for internal communication. This is cool, but I don't see fb as a general intra-company communication platform, even with the right apps.

Does anyone imagine how such a thing would work?
Some of these objections seem dated. For example, accessor method overhead is optimized away now, and has been for a while.

I'm not a big fan of Java, but I do use it for work. For the kind of applications we write (large, long-running, thousands of users with lots of state) Java's memory management is one of it's strong points. That's why I'm excited about new languages based on the JVM such as Scala and Clojure.
>What a shame that Amazon hasn't figured out how to provide this as a useful service. Amazon knows who buys a lot, they know <b>who reviews a lot</b>... why not ask those people if they want a free prize now and then? An <b>influential person</b> would earn the right to a huge number of free samples.

The idea is that people who might influence other people to buy something would get it for free.
Totally Agree. ;) The simple ratio: Tell your users what is going to happen after his or her action. This minimizes misunderstandings and frustrations.
It's things like galaxies with quadrillions of times the mass of our sun colliding that make me remember just how small a piece of the universe we are. It's awesome that they got to see that... And identify some dark matter in the process!
Just so you don't ignore it, I second the idea that you should make users sign up later rather than earlier. This was my leave-point for the site - "ooh, that looks nice, let's add that. Bah, not nice enough to sign up for anything close"