skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
this is actually kinda boring - just big media brands. would love to see that analysis completed for fasted growing sites, or split across a few categories like shopping, financial services, search/info, social network etc.
Yeah. Way to fail completely at your job, Keyes. This is a guy who can't imagine anyone using his product in a way different from the way he uses it. Fail.
A small JavaScript library capable of reading ID3 (v1) tags from MP3 files.
USB 3.0
I work at Yahoo! and... no, it's not. It's objectively slower and the results are subjectively not as accurate.
This is a prototype: "Mozilla's Vladimir Vukićević has developed a working prototype which demonstrates the viability of the plugin approach... There are still some missing pieces, however, including support for several drawing functions. It's still largely a work in progress, and development is still at a somewhat early stage."

"Mozilla might drag IE into the future with Canvas element plugin" would be more apt.
Brilliant. What are the solutions then?
If I am wrong why are you getting so agitated? But if I misunderstood you then I did not mean to.

Definition of diverse: different; unlike; dissimilar; distinct
Common, we all know what s/he was talking about and it was not differences between people who think PHP is better than Ruby or the hackers who work at night as opposed morning, because all those things make them "diverse" too. Right?
Within corporate only Apple TV is considered a flop. Mac mini had great demand but not important enough for more focus, the same with MacBook Air.

People also tend to forget or don't know this but Apple only has 26,400 or so employees and it caters to consumer, enterprise, and government/school on a global scale. Dell and HP and IBM are running around with hundreds of thousands of employees. And the size of the company is impacted entirely by the managerial abilities of one Steve Jobs. It's a mixed blessing.
Mac vs PC: Does it matter anymore?
Google launches white space offensive with new web site
How does one get a top CEO job and is just clueless?

There are lots of these types of sentences by CEOs that just show they don't understand their target market...
Serialized continuations stored in the browser
And more than half of those employees are in retail, not development/business/management/etc.
I signed up for .Mac about 18 months ago and it continued to work well for me even after the transition to MobileMe. I would never use that email address as my primary one, but then again I don't need all my email pushed to my phone. Having GMail forward my important emails to my .Mac account has worked out well. What I really like about MobileMe is that my contacts, calendars and bookmarks are automatically synchronized so I no longer have to worry about docking my iPhone.

Not quite sure what kind of problems people are having with MobileMe but as long as I keep getting free extensions from Apple I guess they should keep complaining.
He might know what his customers want, but the problem is his customers are becoming Netflix customers. The market has changed, but his target customer hasn't.
The Twin Cities and Madison, WI both seem like good prospects for this endeavor to me.
"I love that damn phone, and it will take a lot more than lost apps and dropped calls to get it out of my hands."

As long as stuff like this (and you can see a lot more of it here on HN) is the prevailing wisdom, Apple has little motivation to actually do anything to fix their problems.

The hype around the iPhone is particularly telling - people put up with developer draconian restrictions, they put up with unstable software and poor reception that most other companies would be ashamed to release.

I've had an iPhone for about 3 weeks now, and I still don't get the hype. Have iPhone owners never used a smartphone before? Did they all trade in their Nokia 5110s before buying the iPhone?
Reminds me of how the GOP is "attacking" Obama by ridiculing his popularity.
Maybe NFLX should buy BBI and fire Keyes! Heck, it is only slightly over $2 a share! It's amazing the arrogance Keyes displayed in the interview and how folks like this are able to stay in power even though BBI stock has been tumbling since mid-2002.
Startup Teams: Why Capability Doesn't Matter Without Trust
IPhone 3G in Japan has 55% share of new activations despite "cultural barriers"
Elgg 1.0: Roll Your Own Social Network
Dude, you're a geek and you married a non-techie? I'm sorry :(
Lots of iPhone users never had a smartphone before. You can think of them as the AOL of smartphones. Considering that, maybe the draconian babysitter policies they have over apps make sense.

EDIT - iPhone users I know:

Me - programmer, but no longer an early adopter. Had a Palm V awhile back, but found it annoying to have the additional device. 1st time smartphone user.

Fellow musician - singer, engineering student. 1st time smartphone user.

Veterinarian. Her husband's a Gentoo developer though, and he bought her an iPhone for her birthday.

I also know of two coworkers who are early adopters who also own an iPhone.

So of the 5 people I know, only two are early adopters. Two of them are female, and both of those users prize the iPhone because it's fun to use and it looks nice.
This was good too: "Why would anyone want to watch anything other than new releases"

And this is why Netflix's share price is a good 15 times higher than Blockbuster's right now
Download Numbers for #2 iPhone App: Brain Tuner
just for interest
Another clueless CEO: Ed Colligan's Head Seems to be Stuck Somewhere
The title's some kind of mixed metaphor about medieval weaponry. It's terrifying.

What's wrong with fraying? It would have worked better anyway.
The article makes mention on several occasions to the perceptions of customers (i.e. quality/value, small/large payments, etc). While it's good to try to understand the way a customer perceives your price, I caution people against trying to play too many tricks with their customers heads. From #6:

Think QVC (the shopping TV channel) offering items for 4 easy payments of $29.99 which is more appealing than $119.96.

I would much rather pay for something advertised as $120 than "4 easy payments of $29.99", because the latter seems like they're trying way to hard to trick me into paying a price I don't want to pay.
I agree. My understanding of REST has became a little more clear after reading the article. Glad it was posted here.
Is Mac vs. PC becoming irrelevant because of the maturing of the internet as a platform and cloud computing?

What I find very interesting about this is the possibility that it cuts both ways for Apple. If the two are interchangeable, you can buy based on price and features, which can be an advantage for Windows, since there are many manufacturers who can offer a larger variety of form factors and feature combinations.

But the flip side of that proposition is that if there is no Windows lock-in forcing consumers to buy Windows, so they can also choose Apple based on good design, Apple branding, the iPod halo effect, and perceived security.

Personally, I think that there is a big difference between saying that there are no factors forcing consumers to purchase one or the others and saying that the differences between them don't matter any more.
$2000/month minimum from the best service provider, mBlox. MO (from a cell phone) is free and actually pays you revenue share from carriers at volumes above 50K/mo. MT (the "spam direction") is 2.5-4 cents each.
Premium SMS is a shady armpit of telecom. Non-profits actually can't do fundraising over premium SMS because the carriers take a 55% cut of revenues and are ashamed of it (they say they don't have a reliable process for certifying non-profit campaigns). They made an exception during Katrina. Our answer is to let people send a text message to pledge a donation at a live event, and process payment a different way later.
Seconded. The whole verb/noun discussion played into my Linguistics background nicely. Now I... get it.
Wait, you just said you'd pay $120, so how are they tricking you into a price you DON'T want to pay? Do you think its a bad practice because it increases the conversion rate, or because it might convince people to buy something they can't afford? After all, its the same price, just presented differently. If you would buy at $120, paying 4 payments doesn't matter. If you wouldn't buy at $120, but can afford it, and are convinced by 4 easy payments of $29.99, its not like you can't do math.

At what point does a psychological trick become dirty? That one seems pretty basic, any idiot can add up the payments and know what price they're paying. Should we yell at gas stations because they convince dumb people to buy at a penny more by pricing it 1/100 of a cent below a higher price?
Free the Airwaves
I'm hoping he won't forget UIUC :-/
I think it still does. I use both a mac and a pc. I tend to spend a chunk of time inside a browser. Desktop work on the PC is Outlook and Excel. Desktop work on a mac is mostly spent inside Textmate and a shell. All computing/web hosting is done virtually. I can't wait to get a mac from work so that I don't have to use the PC. Now that is personal preference, but IMO the experience on your host machine does make a difference, regardless of your preference.
A couple anecdotes of broken machines does not make a trend, or a commercial failure.
Ask HN: how to get tough
Do you have any good ideas about how to consciously get tougher (without necessarily working on a successful startup).

In pg's latest essay, he mentions toughness as "a quality you need to win". He also has mention how many of the founders have got a lot tougher since they began to work in their start up. So I'm guessing there is something you can do consciously to get tougher.
This is a guy who can't imagine anyone using his product in a way different from the way he uses it.

There is really a different problem here. It's probably true that most people want to see new releases. The problem is that Netflix has new releases and old movies also. So if you go with Blockbuster, you are stuck with only new releases. If you go with Netflix, you get everything. Why bother with Blockbuster?

Also, I guess there is an agile-ish mantra like "design products for yourself first". He is doing this, and is proof that it doesn't work for everyone. :)
I just found it hilarious that to paraphrase he said 'My Macbook Air couldn't stay connected to our office router so we took it apart for another project.'

Wait...what? You realize that there could be many reasons for that - and many solutions.

Follow that up with his 'high end' black Macbook had a problem...wait just because you pay 200$ more for a different colour doesn't make the laptop high end.

Yes, quite an 'expert' able to judge how a company is doing by his folly with devices.
Even if the Internet is the "killer app", it still matters how you get there. Is your preferred client available on the platform? Does it work well on that platform?

My web browser, E-mail client and terminal of choice, for instance, are not available on Windows; and no, I'm not using Apple's Safari or Terminal. So when I pull up these applications, I'm seeing what is (to me) a superior Internet experience. Even Firefox on Windows, or PuTTY, just don't quite deliver what I like most.

And cross-platform applications are still platform-dependent. For instance, I love Thunderbird on Linux...it works well. On the Mac, however, despite using Thunderbird for months, it always felt a little clunky (e.g. emulated UI appearance, doing everything itself instead of integrating with OS services such as Keychain). In the end, the combination of platform and application made Apple's Mail more useful to me.
unexceptable

Is this a new word meaning "unable to make an exception for"?
I find pricing mechanisms fascinating. I'm at An Event Apart right now, which (with a price tag of $949 for two days) CLEARLY uses the Prestige Pricing strategy. Interesting stuff!
> Lots of iPhone users never had a smartphone before.

This statement may be technically true, but I highly doubt it's true among the writers and commentators like Arrington that we hear so much about the iPhone from.

In fact, most of the people I know who have iPhones are early adopter types. People like my mom -- a prototypical AOL user -- wouldn't have a clue as to what to do with an iPhone.

Arrington's willingness to put up with the bugs, flaws, and "draconian" babysitter policies is a less a statement about Apple as it as about the rest of the smartphone marketplace, which frankly stinks.
Blog post from Hank Williams in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...
Lie under a coconut tree, and have a friend climb up the tree and drop coconuts on your abdomen [1].

References
[1] - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZxGYtOXUP4
Only in so much as Macs are popular enough now that I'm almost never forced to use a PC. On the (thankfully) rare occasions when I am, then yes. It matters a great deal.
YC startups are often technology companies; I'd argue Justin.tv, where we wrote our own video server software from scratch, would count. The ones who file patents tend to be slow burn, and are still under the radar.
The Inversion: Easier to raise money when private
Buzz and NewsCred: two different takes on social news
Well, I wouldn't worry about share price so much as their overall worth. It's heavily reflected there, though: Netflix ($1.8 billion) has nearly four times the market capitalization of Blockbuster ($472 million).

The fact that the CEO is confused really is obvious in the market as well as in the interview.
"I just don't believe that PG & co are capable of separating the potential winners from the losers based on a short application and a 10 minute interview"

In poker, if a pot is very large, calling a bet (ie investing some money) can have positive expectation even if the probability of winning the pot is quite low.

Similarly, YC's filtering ability only needs to be "good enough" to generate positive expectation, which can happen even if their predictive ability for selecting winners is quite low. Picking winners at a slightly better rate than the competition gives them an edge, even if they're not actually good at it. ie being "barely competent" at something extraordinarily difficult can often be enough to achieve considerable success.

Of course, I don't see any reason to believe that they aren't actually quite good at choosing winning startup teams -- it would certainly be interesting to be able to measure that. It will also be interesting to see if their hit-rate goes up over time.
And to prove that the plural of anecdote is not data, today's news is that Apple has once again topped the PC industry in consumer satisfaction scores [http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10019711-37.html?part=rss&...] and is the only company in their class whose satisfaction rating actually increased since the last survey.
Well, to their credit Netflix's market cap is only 4x that of Blockbuster. ;)
I like the concept. SIGPLAN goes back to the papers from 10 years before and decides which one was the most influential. I would say that is a prestigious award indeed.
A latte at Starbucks has a higher perceived value than a basic coffee with cream.

I'm not sure that that's the reason. When I pay for Starbucks what I'm paying for is the infrastructure that allows for a consistent coffee/muffin experience wherever I am in the world. I can walk in and describe my drink according to the protocol and get it. I'm happy to do that but the coffee itself is just coffee.
Don't know about you, guys, but I find their website completely unappealing and off-putting. The actual technical stuff is quite interesting, but their use of consumer-style marketing techniques does an excellent job of killing any desire to learn about it. Trademarked buzzwords, a video of CEO discussing "key values", a "blog" that reads like a marketing presentation, etc. It's clear that they are trying to target suits rather than developers, and that's quite unfortunate.
wow. He should be fired. Immediately.

Just saying those comments should be career suicide. His PR person is probably freaking out.

Why would the board of directors just wait around for a clueless leader to drive them into the ground?

They lost the battle. Time for an aggressive plan B to stay in business.

Attempts to sell consumer electronics in blockbuster stores are pathetic and have failed over and over again. First radio shack, then circuit city. Putting up a shelf with electronic gear will not move it.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb6695/is_200201/ai_n2...

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.

Show new movie releases. Always have free popcorn!! It costs virtually nothing. Have a kids night. Let local managers be more creative.

Still rent movies and games, but change the 'browsing' process. Have large screens and use a wii type remote to navigate a virtual store with slick graphics. Show what's popular, ask what type of movie they want. Make a game that promises to find you the perfect movie. Navigate through actors or scenes. Remember what they have seen. (how miserable is it to walk to the other side of the store with a movie and your wife says 'seen it' over and over again)

Make it so people don't say "do we have to go to blockbuster?" when they are in between movies in their netflix queue.
It's staggering to think that the idea of putting boxes of discs on shelves and letting people walk around aimlessly picking at random is
3 Things Multicore Programmers Need
Are Determinacy-Race Bugs Lurking in Your Multicore Application?
The notion that this needs to be a plugin is mistaken. There are several apps out there that built a compatibility layer on top of VML in JavaScript and do it with plenty of speed. The author himself notes Google Maps. 280 Slides does the same thing.
You're right the price is the same - my gripe is how they attempt to obfuscate the true price by breaking it up into installments. When something is priced as X payments of Y (as opposed to the actual price, XY), there's an underlying assumption that I wouldn't purchase it at 1 payment of XY, otherwise why bother with the "installments" mindgame at all? Maybe I'm a overly sensitive to these sorts of indirections and concealments, but having to constantly expend energy to figure out how much something really costs can become wearing.

And yes, I do find the fact that gas stations price at tenths of a cent to be very dishonest - especially when they ALWAYS round up to the nearest cent.
It totally matters. Just ask any Mac or Linux diehard. Personally, I use all three of the primary operating systems: Windows XP, Mac OSX and Linux (Ubuntu in this case). I have separate uses for each and can't imagine getting rid of any of them.
I get the feeling that Yahoo! doesn't want to be seen as copying Google. They have the unenviable task of trying to innovate without looking like a me-too competitor of a very innovative company.
No, its more of a statement to the power of Apple's marketing and trends.

The BB Bold vs. iPhone 3G is pretty telling - the Bold was announced a month before the 3G iphone, but is only to be released a few weeks from now. Meanwhile, Apple went ahead and released their product with piss poor battery life and according to many users, unstable software, often unresponsive UI etc. When the Bold comes out it won't have these problems.

iPhone users have made a pretty clear choice: looks above ALL else.

> "statement about Apple as it as about the rest of the smartphone marketplace, which frankly stinks."

I'd really love to see you try and back that statement up
It works well when other people also like what you're designing for yourself. The solution is not for this guy to start doing something he doesn't understand, but for Blockbuster to get a new CEO.
I went through several Palm Treos before getting an iPhone. The Treo made me almost give up on smartphones; I was considering going back to a non-smartphone, but decided to give the iPhone a try, as I like Apple computers.

I was very happy with the iPhone, far more than the Treo. I haven't noticed dropped calls, lost apps, or, really, much of anything significant. The interface seems sluggish at times, but overall it's a net win for me.
Actually I'd argue that the most important thing is to understand the big ideas, not minutae of "correct" usage.
Question for PG.
Are you ever inspired to start something on the side? For instance, you come across a project that isn't a good fit for YC but you like the project anyway. Or maybe you dream up something cool and you want to launch it. Does this ever happen to you, are you working on anything besides Arc?

Please forgive me if this has been covered, I'm a bit green.
Start a fight club but don't talk about it
Solution: deal with MySQL in a separate process and talk to that process asynchronously from your app. A hack, perhaps, but if you need to use threads and Ruby, and Ruby can't call a C extension from multiple threads... this will fix the problem with about 20 minutes of development work. It would of course be better to fix Ruby, but that might take longer.

The least helpful thing to do, though, is to whine about it on your blog. Complain after you've fixed it :P
I'm curious what you use Windows for. The only things I can imagine myself using Windows for are gaming or testing in IE.
Quest for the Holy Source - Ian's trip to Harvard
Nobody Thinks They're An Enterprise
Hack Your Wii for Homebrew Apps and DVD Playback
If you can find a copy of On Lisp (I know it's available online but I just can't read books online).
my opinion on demo is that $18k is $18k: a lot of dough for a startup to spend to get the word out.

I don't think its a waste for all becuase lots of successful startups have come through DEMO, but I've always dismissed the notion outright based on the upfront cost.

Startups come in all shapes a sizes and many are blessed out the gate with a big VC check in the bank, if thats you, go ahead and spend, but for the rest of us, $18k is a deal breaker at the startup stage, so TC50 is a welcome entrant.
Using Google Insights to Track Linguistic Communities
Everything I do is on the side. But between writing, YC, and Arc, I already feel like there's too much stuff I'm neglecting, so I'm leery of starting anything new.
It would be cool if e-books made it easier to read in foreign languages. In a language that I mostly but not entirely comprehend, I very often want a translation or explanation of a word or passage. Reading a real-world book with a dictionary at hand is a huge pain.
As a student (and founder) at UW-Madison, I can honestly say, we are still very much lacking in financial resources necessary for a web/tech based startup. Most of the VCs around here are interested in Biotech/bio based businesses and the angel networks are also heavily skewed toward that type of investment.

That said, both Google and Microsoft are opening offices here and the CS dept. is accepting more people into their program.

We've also recently gotten a Kauffman grant for UW-Madison, and student orgs like the UW Entrepreneurship Association and Collegiate Entreprenurs' Organization have been gaining popularity to allow for lots of different types of business ideas to develop if you're not looking for web based software. That's not to say there aren't any (We're one), but there are definitely fewer than SF/Boston/Twin Cities.
Why English speakers dominate sprinting events
This is a good catch. I imagine that the vast majority of requests coming into a given Rails app cause the controller to perform some kind of synchronous data access to MySQL.
I'm a bit confused by it too. What does Netflix have/do that BB doesn't?
I wouldn't recommend hanging out on #lisp for a beginner. In my case it set me in a passive mode and I'd ask a flurry of questions that a little research in the HyperSpec and other appropriate reference documents would have answered.