skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There's a good lesson in here -- if one moves beyond knee-jerk criticism of the CEO for blindness/idiocy.

To him, Netflix is a marginal player lurking in a "tiny" $5.6b, while Blockbuster is the giant, going after the $27.2b. From this point of view, narrow as it is, he's not really crazy at all. And obviously some investors agree. There's a lot of money here that Netflix isn't even trying for, and Blockbuster has a foothold in.

Yet Netflix is worth 4x Blockbuster. Why? I'm not sure that the CEO has really followed this question to the end. He seems overly focused on the size of his market, rather than on how profitable it is.

Put another way:

Netflix is worth about 32% of the market it's playing in ($1.8b market cap, playing in $5.6b market).

Blockbuster is worth 1.7% of the market its playing in. ($472m market cap, playing in $27.2b market).

Physical presence seems valuable, so that's what he goes on and on about -- nobody can compete with Blockbuster in the physical realm, that's their advantage. But maybe that's because nobody wants to. Stores cost too much for what they give you.

Just because there's money being spent, doesn't mean there's profit to be made.

(all numbers taken from the CEO's own chart-graph of stagnation, at http://www.flickr.com/photos/13736953@N00/2762004788/)
The science I've read on metabolism is based on lab rats/mice, and it's still an open question about if that applies to humans.

I'm very aware that eating has a significant pyschological component, but, again, if you're going to say "ex-atheletes are often very overweight," I'd like to see studies.
I'm actually talking about dealing with management. I'm thinking it's time to omit them.
Mac vs PC, not really. OS X vs Windows, totally.
Microspaces: Playing With Nested GUIs
MD5 is giving you a 128 bit random number. That's an AES key. The character set isn't going to make the password weak.
Summary: "iPhone has restrictions on kind of apps that will be in the app store and Apple is not always upfront about them".

This is getting tiring. We've heard you the first 10 times, enough already.
Faulty reasoning and crap evidence. If what you say is true why is the tiny island of Jamaica vastly dominant instead of any of the MILLIONS more west Africans in west Africa?

Further more natural selection is rarely as neat and tidy as described. Why didn't west Africans evolve superb night vision, to see the men painted black? Why didn't they evolve supreme hearing, to hear the sneaky approach?

While it may be possible west Africans are faster due to genetics, your evidence and theories are bit too neat.
Somebody probably already has.
No leases on brick-and-mortar stores.

No retail employees.

A first-mover advantage in the online space.

No history of charging late fees. This is a really important point - in my mind, the name Blockbuster evokes the image of a scolding librarian who sells used cars on the side.

And, of course, Netflix also has a different CEO.
There's http://supertech.csail.mit.edu/cilk/cilk-5.4.6.tar.gz and it appears to have been last updated in Oct 2007.
A business reselling French sailor shirts (one of the examples in the book) would not require long hours or a co-founder and you would be able to outsource pretty much everything.

You see, Tim Ferris does not talk about startups, he talks about what he calls "muses" - small businesses that generate income with as little input of your time as possible. A web-based shop that resells something seems to be the exemplary muse.
I use Connect360 (http://www.nullriver.com/products/connect360) for OSX->360 and I couldn't be happier. The only annoyance is that it won't stream drm'd content from the itunes store. I think that SUCKS. Otherwise, it couldn't be easier to use and it's quick and clean.

No connection to them other than I'm a happy customer ;)
The point of those late night "here is my yacht, here is my house, here is my trophy wife. Call now and be like me!" infomercials is that they're making money from selling the money making system, rather than from real estate or chinchilla farms.

Skim less, understand more. :-)
Has nothing to do with stupid sheep or Apple in particular or my world view. It's about sound methodology. The reason the IQS metric is the gold standard in the auto industry is because marketing ensures that quality (from the reliability standpoint) and customer satisfaction are two very different things.

One was being used as a proxy for the other here. Apple products could be somewhat unreliable yet still score high in overall satisfaction, apparently even given the methodology they used.

Also, since it specifically mentions that the 3g iPhone is not included, that probably means that the older version and iPods are. Is it fair to rate Apple against HP when most Apple customers have used only their portable media players? Do HP's printers count in this?
Oh, I get now. I agree.
Incidentally, one of the languages it has influenced is Sun's Fortress, which is growing in popularity. The 'work stealing' behavior pioneered by Clik operates in the background, making implicit parallelization fast and practical.
I found it funny when half way through the book I realized what I held in my hands was a product of exactly what was described in the book.

Whether you liked it or not, it sounds like you read it and I'll assume paid for it so that's proof that the theory can work. Even with skeptical people! ;)
Predating this is 'A Pattern Language', by Christopher Alexander. It seems that teams of < 8 are universally more productive, with ~5 being optimal (at least in Japanese Culture). 'A Pattern Language' is intriguing and useful because it uses real data, and sociological results, to deduce a theory, and makes specific suggestions for architecture and the usage of space. For example, it's suggested that people use converted homes for workspaces, due to the large variation in room size and privacy, and the presence of places to work, think, cook, eat, play, and relax. It also points out that smaller meetings and workspaces are more productive, and supports this by showing a graph of '% of people never to say anything' or 'ideas not expressed' versus participants in a meeting).
Yes, and not DOM manipulation. Its the anonymous functions, closures, functional programming, scopes and contexts, etc... pair it with Rhino and the power of "dynamic scopes" and shared scopes and you have multi-threaded programming.
In this case doing better than the competition doesn't mean doing well. It doesn't even mean acceptable.
I don't use any apple products and I don't really care either way, but saying that they're better than the competition doesn't mean anything.
I think I have accidentally downvoted you to zero points. Could someone correct my mistake?
LG Dare compares to Apple Iphone
LG Dare is the latest introduction with user friendly and latest features you can easily drag and drop icons in order to make your own customized shortcuts on the home screen.Its all about to wave out the apple iphone's blast.
That's a weak counter argument. Natural selection happens only when things happen on a grand scale. Like during wars. Africans generally have better vision than many other ethnic groups, but there are no vision olympics.

Jamaica is more dominant for cultural reasons - the people there are more likely to have the opportunity to train for the olympics than in West Africa.

How do you want to account for Natural Selection then? There are no animals left in the world which are capable of killing humans in quantities that would favour one trend over the other. There is no disease that selects for Speed. There is only one predator that can cause the natural selection for speed among humans - and that is other human beings!

West Africans are distinct from other African groups when it comes to genetic specialisation - take a look at the wikipedia page on sickle cell anemia for example. Also take a look at language families as some data to cross reference with.

My evidence is speculatory, but it's realistic, I believe. My reasoning is however logical.
Cilk++ is a considerable upgrade to MIT Cilk: support for C++ (rather than just C), for Visual Studio (rather than just GCC), support for loops (rather than just recursion). It's considerably more transparent to the developer.
But aren't you skeptical? Sure, those infomercials are selling the system, but if you'd bought it, you'd expect the system would explain how to do it, right? I'd expect the book to explain how to do it too.

But I found it very conclusory. It never really explained how. It seems like almost everything I read was "I saved more money and did less work, thats how i did this." But there was no explanation exactly how he did it. Most of the examples I read did not fully explain the nuts and bolts of how to do it. Sure, if you want inspiration, go ahead. But you don't need a whole book to say you work less and earn more. He can say that in one line and be done with it. I expected more, and I found it lacking. To me it was the equivalent of writing a book on stocks and filling up 300 pages with "I bought high and sold low, thats how I'm rich."

I'm quite confident my skimming did not result in a lack of understanding, but more. I skimmed a lot, and each part I skimmed lacked substance. If it consistently lacked substance, it told me not to waste my time.
"My plan B for them would be to change store format entirely. Build a nice home theatre that can sit 20 people and have showings of new releases. The catch is they use equipment that is in the $1000-$5000 price range, and it's a great experience that you can 'take home'. Delivery is free. Installation is extra."

This is brilliant! the Brick and furniture places try to sell you the entertainment stuff and throw a movie in there as flashing demo, but no one ever feels good about watching a 2 hour film while commissioned sales people peek over your shoulder. But put the emphasis on the movie and make the living room set "optional", and it may work. And for crissakes Free Popcorn, how cheap and good is that!
What I'm interested in is how well the touch keyboard works with SSH. To anyone that has an iPhone: is it good enough to use for anything but the simplest commands?
Not Hacker news.
As far as I know, they already play clips of movies or even full movies (though they are older movies usually).
An Event Apart, Day One
Physical presence is valuable if used properly. Most stores aren't very inviting and it's hard to shop around for movies when you can only see the cover of the movie. The movie packaging doesn't tell you much.

Hm. An interesting idea is to have reviews of movies stickered on the cases.
I saw "perceived security" and actually physically winced, bracing for the mac fans' incredulous "how DARE you"s
Image Disembodiment - the end of photographic prints?
"...saying that they're better than the competition doesn't mean anything."

How does that statement even have a basis? How else can you benchmark anything? You need SOMETHING to base your placement on.

Past performance even, which was considered in that article. How can we award gold medals if there is no competition to base that award upon?
I only realized that Songza pulled from YouTube yesterday. Clever.
Ferris likely made a lot more money from his book than from his "dietary supplement" business he is very vague about -- in the same way the "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" author skims over his own business results and sells a lot of books.

They are both easy sells -- not working much and generating tons of money -- but I would like to see examples of businesses that do this in the real world.* I work 60+ hours a week on my app (work I enjoy). I am convinced it is impossible to outsource and not put in the hours without competitors eating your lunch.

*plentyoffish being the only example I can think of.
1. curvy corners are coming in css 3. -border-radius: 5px;

2. vertical-align: center; ?

3. i dont have problems with this

4. never had this problem

5. whatever happened to <input type="image" src="bitmapurl" /> or styling <button>'s?

6. css3

7. You must be a rebel, because it's not that hard to follow simple rules for writing out an X/HTML doc.

8. I completely agree!

9. Sure why not?

10. I've already got a mustang.
Offline files. The only thing I still use XP or Vista for.
I agree -- I'm just finishing up helping design a retail store for a new brand here in Calgary. With the right product/market mix, a retail store can be very profitable.

(Which is why it's good that Blockbuster is trying to change their retail model to something else -- "We have a physical store network that nobody can match, now let's figure out how to make money off it." It's just a shame that they haven't been able to take their eyes off those stores, so they've missed other opportunities..)
For Number 29) with TeamPages (www.teampages.com) amateur sports teams can create a team website in less than 4 minutes where they can post their schedules, news, scores, photos, videos, and documents. Please feel free to send me a message to mike.tan@teampages.com for more information.
At the heart of it, I think the "new release" is a market strategy rather than a consumer goal. Creators want consumers to believe that they should forget everything in light of the "latest and greatest". The creators' strategy is to attempt to drown out all other consumer thoughts with marketing. Consumers just want a good trade-off for their time.

In the past, information was substantially easier to find on things that were new. Finding good movies in the so called "long tail" of a video store involved book research, knowledgeable friends, or lucky guesses. You could choose what had been recently marketed to you or the devil or the unknown box. Modern information networks have changed this reality largely in favor of the unknown box.

The truth is that a large percentage of new creation is not really worth your time. The biggest advantage the new stuff has is frankly that it is new. As information systems progress, people will have an easier time separating hype from substance. This will effectively make older quality creations more desirable.

It is probably fanciful, but I'd expect his statement to be exactly wrong in the long run. The reality may become "why would anyone want to watch new releases"?
It's fair to be irritated by the search engine listings.

I'm going to disagree that it's equally fair to swipe content that you find to be helpful from a subscription-based site without paying for it.

I guess I see it like this: I'm irritated that there's a Starbucks on every corner of the SF financial district; but that doesn't mean I go in and grab a cup of coffee off the counter when no one's looking. Regardless of my irritation, if I'm going to consume the coffee, I pay for it -- or else I can take my business to a different coffee shop or go to city council meetings and try to stop Starbucks from getting approved to set up shop on every corner.

I know a lot of us here have the skills to find workarounds to lots of business models, whether it's paying sub fees or viewing ads or whatever. But a lot of us are also trying to build our own businesses. And at some point, we're going to want our potential customers to play within our business models and do a fair exchange (of cash or ad views or whatever) if they get value out of the goods and services we provide. So it just seems like good karma to not go taking things you don't pay for from other businesses.

As for EE's tactics, a more constructive way to get them to stop is to let them know you don't like it, let others know, and let Google know.
I chat on IRC with mine quite often when out and about, I find it fast and easy... Although some of the 'corrections' are funny. Apple corrects "twitter" to "twitted" for example.
What is with Hacker News' obsession with Apple minutiae?
I had Blockbuster's Netflix-like service. At the time I canceled (to switch to Netflix) something like 17 of the 22 movies in my queue were unavailable with a "long wait".
Yep, it almost works but that just means it's only slightly broken.
Judge lifts gag order on DEFCON trasit presentation
Good stuff, will put it to use.
I was being serious -- do you really believe what the market thinks of Netflix vs Blockbuster (ie. suits on Wall Street) or what the reality of the business is (my chart vs your chart, if you may :-)
"Watch for Bikes" Sign Not So Helpful
WTF Michael and Scoble ?
I find the "cure" (endless threads about things not being hacker news) much worse than the disease.
Sure, but if you attend any demo type of conferences you'll see a lot of entrepreneurs who brag about how they are growing their team out to 20 people over the next x months. There's no justification offered as to whether those people are actually needed... just the general "we're going to become a huge company". It's like the startup equivalent of a penis measuring contest is staff size (and don't get me started on funding raised).
Today we launched a new game called treewala on greenwala.com. Just by answering multiple choice vocabulary questions users can help to fund the planting of trees and fight climate change.

There is an ad at the bottom of the Treewala game that changes when you answer a question. Each time you view a new page, the banner ad switches. That change is worth a tiny amount of money to the company sponsoring the ad. To start off with, every 20 correct quiz answers results in a tree being planted in Columbia, South America. Here’s why it matters.

The project we are planting trees with is called Las Gaviotas. The community’s leader Paolo Lugari and his colleagues have created an economically viable community that runs on solar and wind power. In a place where little grew in 1984, there is now an 8,000 hectare polyculture rainforest with more than 250 species represented. The community has a vested interest in the health of the forest because their income depends on it and is derived mainly from the cashews, jatropha, palm oil and Caribbean pine resin they harvest.

Sustainability is about more than planting trees to stabilize our global climate. It’s also about finding ways to elevate more than 1.1 billion people worldwide out of extreme poverty while restoring the ecosystem so future generations will be able to thrive. Gaviotas is a perfect example of how we can do all three, a particular challenge in a country torn apart by civil war.

Las Gaviotas only has resources to plant one million trees a year. That’s why we are talking to other non-profits that work with developing economies in Africa and Asia to plant harvestable polyculture forests for sustainable development. We expect Treewala to be a great success and exceed our goal. Please invite your friends to play the game, post it on your blog, tell your mom about it and help us plant millions of trees and fight climate change.
3 Unconventional Blog Marketing Tips for Newbie Bloggers
Put walls between people, and you'll need to hire more people to coordinate them. Dirt basic common sense, yet one that most organizations have a hard time with. That's a cultural issue. Everyone's allergic to working on tables.

Someone once wrote a comparison between DB2's architecture and Ingres. Both are the exact same kind of application built on similar kinds of machines at around the same time. Yet Ingres was built as 4 separate process. The Ingres team was organized in 4 separate groups.
But is he really "confused" or is this a sarcastic attempt at badmouthing Netflix?
Does the spell-checker learn, if you correct it manually?
Ask HN: How do you meet a hacker to start a startup with if you are not in college?
What do you suggest for meeting hackers?

* Go back to school and learn a new programming language.

* Collaborate in open source projects.

* Go to startup conventions.

* Other.
I think like any book or 'plan' that you should take from it what works. I've read this recently and it kind of works if you're single, but if you've a family or other responsibilities then there are a couple of elements that just don't work. Take from it what you can and adapt to suit your needs. I also enjoyed the book The e-myth Revisited as that told me about systemization and also Rich Dad, Poor Dad for being an 'investor'. I actually like to work, though I have a few businesses that generate good regular revenue (www.sourceguardian.com, www.europeantenders.com and www.ukscrap.com) and I hardly touch them. What they enable me to do is experiment with other 'stuff' and to build other businesses without the concern of paying the mortgage, food bills etc. Oh, I outsourced nearly everything 8 years ago and built the above using outsourced programming talent (who I subsequently made partners in the venture after we launched)
The rules are not for a startup. The rules are if you think of your real 'life' (like travel) as outside work and would hence like to spend as less time as possible for work and enjoy life for the rest.

In a startup your work is the biggest part of your life, and many would have said that it should be done only if you are absolutely passionate about your 'work' to not mind its taking over your 'life'.

Specifically incase of a startup:

1. You do need to work long hours.
2. Startups run best with atleast 2 founders.
3. Cannot outsource the most critical parts. More often than not almost nothing at all as money is scarce.

The books is nice though but refers to a different lifestyle. The only things that work for also for a startup life are his thoughts on GTD - handling email etc.
It's quite disturbing to discover that it isn't just Rails that has the hobbyist-level db implementation.

In fact, there's no point for Rails to improve its lock-happy db adapters, since doing so will just reveal the Ruby bottleneck described here.
yep it does. You only need to correct it the once as far as I've seen
TinEye now in open beta
An astronomer, a physicist and a mathematician are on a train in Scotland. The astronomer looks out of the window, sees a black sheep standing in a field, and remarks, "How odd. Scottish sheep are black." "No, no, no!" says the physicist. "Only some Scottish sheep are black." The mathematician rolls his eyes at his companions' muddled thinking and says, "In Scotland, there is at least one field, containing at least one sheep, at least one side of which appears black from here."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_joke
My plan, if I were CEO of Blockbuster, would be simple (if undignified): compete on price.

A few years ago I lived near a Blockbuster -- I had a card but I hardly ever used it, because with rentals going for something like $6.50 (compared to $9 in the cinema or maybe $10 to buy the DVD outright at Walmart) what was the point? Then I moved to a new place, where my local video shop was an independent shop where DVDs rented for $3 a night. At three bucks a rental, I found myself watching a lot more DVDs, and of course spending a lot more money than I had previously.

(Oh, and then I moved away from the cheap video store, so now I have Netflix.)

If Blockbuster cut its prices to $3 per movie per night, it would get a lot of people thinking "Wait, am I _really_ watching enough movies per month to make my Netflix subscription worthwhile?"

This would, of course, only be a stop-gap measure, while they work on getting a good online-delivery system going for the long term.
"The reality of the business" is that in the past year, Blockbuster has lost $70M, while Netflix has made $60M.
Game On Emily is Not Real: The End of "Real" Actors?