skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
they may beat Google in that market, but I doubt they'll impact Google's current behemoths(Search/Adwords)
For business and professional development, I pay for the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) digital library, which includes a lot of material including a couple of online books selections: One large run by Books 24x7 and a somewhat limited subscription to Safari Books Online.
rsync.net (solid backup)
.mac (hey, it has a few uses)
motionbased
itunes
Fantasy football real-time stats on Yahoo!
Looking at the last quarterly reports, Sun's not doing so great.

What are they missing?
My bet is that it will be at least an order of magnitude more than google since a combination of mobile + apps + search/Adwords will have:

1. more information about you (location, etc.),

2. relevant & time based local ad inventory (e.g.: 3 pm you are in a mall near an ice-cream store and hence a free 2nd scoop coupon advertised to your phone)

3. much higher click through rates since it's more actionable and more importantly, useful i.e. ads that even hackers click on

4. In some cases might result in much higher CPM's, and a huge increase in ad volumes even for lower CPM's

So, companies like Loopt are better positioned to take on Google than say Cuil, but hey, what do I really know.
Responding to Rejection
Zune Phone announced by end of 2008?
Surprisingly, a large chunk of my friends are civil attorneys, and you know what? They all really care about serving their clients, and view themselves as champions of justice. Sure, there are scummy lawyers, just as their are lousy programmers, but I can't think of a single attorney that I've ever met, who wants to screw his clients over.

Especially in corporate law. If they do a good job at drafting your contracts and defending you in court against copyright infringement suits, you'll come back, and recommend your other business-people friends to that attorney's practice.

Of course, your attorney will want to disembowel the opposing side, but that's what you want.

If you're worried about an attorney, look at their track record; unlike a lot of other professions, you can get all of it from the courthouse in the district where they practice. If you don't know where to start looking for a lawyer, call your local bar association, and ask them for a referral.

Or, if you've got very little money, look at Pre-Paid Legal Services. Yes, yes, it started as an MLM company, which looks pretty scummy, but they actually do provide a very, very useful set of services, and the total cost is less than twenty bucks a month.

It just makes me sad to see lawyers catching all the flack for the problems in our judicial system, when it's our elected officials who created the whole nightmare in the first place.
Some follow up thoughts:

1) potential users need to be able see the all groups, and what ads are in the groups, to figure out where they belong

2) Is there a need for private groups at all ?

3) In your faq you mention the startup problem -- everyone starts with 0 points, so they can't show their ads, and no one can get points because their are no ads to show. If you see all the groups and ads in a group, you will get some clicks just coming through people examining that page, and you can assign those credits and get things started that way.

4) I think you need to allow one account to be in multiple groups

That's all, I hope your project takes off.

Is there any way to make money from this at all ? Other than have another money-making site that is promoted via admates, of course.
Perhaps you should try shitting indoors.

(Sorry, it was there, I had to...)
Don't trust me. Ask a lawyer. :)
i pay for a slice at slicehost, and a pay for supportive subscriptions to some community-based forums/sites. oh, and skype.

thats it. i'd pay for other things if i had more disposable income and/or profitable startup, though. i'm making do with what i have, for now. i'm considering paying for something like an automatic cloud backup system, too, but am not currently.
There are two ways to subvert the laws. One way is to take a rule that arbitrary parties would agree to in advance (e.g. "If a car belongs to A, B can't just drive off in it without being penalized"). The other set of laws involves taking some government program (whether of the 'shoot at people in the Third World' or the 'write a check to people who are doing some particular kind of good' variety) and subvert it to maximize profits.

You don't stay in business very long if you violate A, and you can only do B when the government is rich enough to rob.
There's something seriously wrong when the article about Disqus is deleted for not having reliable sources, and a search on Google News for "Disqus" shows articles from the Washington Post, CNET News, Mashable, and VentureBeat, all on the first page.
I'm going to limit myself to online services, as opposed to more mail-cataloguey applications.

Video Games: Xbox Live Gold Account, Xbox Live Arcade Games, download tracks for Rock Band, and FFXI (think WoW.)

Movies: Netflix

Hosting: In the very near future, Amazon Web Services

Finance: Credit score tracking
http://hackit.slinkset.com/
I pay for hosting from linode.com. I freely host a project with google code (java chat client/server xkasperx.googlecode.com) so I don't need a pay service like github. With the $30 I pay a month to linode I can host and write most of the software I need. Google seems to have something for everything else.

I'm a cheap ass I like to call it being practical. :)
Pay incentives in the tech industry
It's crazy how many of this type of post are showing up everywhere. In the past couple weeks I've seen 4-5 posts on what founders did wrong or right with their companies.

It must be nice to be past all that and looking back on it to glean the lessons. Can't wait to get there.
Consumer: iTunes, Club Penguin (for my daughter)

Business: CVSDude (VCS hosting), Highrise
Honestly? Nothing outside of the everyday stuff, but even Amazon I only buy books every now and then.
Skype

I used to pay for the Zune Pass but the service became so utterly worthless plus my Internet connection times out quite often here in Kuwait that I just said forget it. Back to torrents, which will automatically resume the download, when my connection wakes back up (without locking up the entire system, might I add).
Lawyers, like most well-paid professionals, have strong incentives to act ethically. They generally have more business than they can handle, so they don't need to rip you off, and getting caught doing so (which would happen the minute you spoke to another one) would have seriously negative consequences, up to getting disbarred.

Of course just like doctors, it cannot hurt to get second opinion, because lawyers are of course not all ethical or infallible.
Flickr, iTunes, a backup service, host/server/domain monitoring
Right, so the Samurai, who would randomly cut the heads off of people they didn't fancy, knew they were doing something wrong, and yet were totally okay with it? Beheading a few peasants was, after all, the right way to test out a new sword... there's even a term in Japanese for it: Tameshi-giri.

Plenty of societies, both ancient and modern, have legalized, or even encouraged, what we define as 'murder'.

And note that I'm not arguing that murder is acceptable; rather, that the definition for it changes so much between societies as to make the statement "Murder is wrong in all human societies." a completely meaningless phrase.

A likely explanation for the prohibition against the killing of other humans is strictly pragmatic: Societies where members can kill each other freely will self-destruct. This has nothing to do with 'murder being wrong', as much as free homicide not being a very stable evolutionary path.
Most people are ethical, and most highly paid professionals who have more clients than time with which to serve them are even more so.
[...] you just need to get one or two great ruby guys (who will probably cost you a lot) and find a bunch of smart people to train. You'll end up with an awesome team of scalable rubyists ;)

Sounds like a good strategy for many endeavors.
consumer:

flickr

tasks (by Crowd Favorite)

business:

Highrise

Quickbooks online
"I agree, but what is a "legal question"? Only lawyers are qualified to answer that!"

I don't think you need a lawyer to know what's a legal question. Should I incorporate and if so, what type of entity is obviously one. What should be in my terms and conditions? Etc.
Search hacker exposes Olympic age scandal
A newly-minted MD is just as useless as a newly minted JD, only more dangerous. Which is why MDs have to go through rotations and interning, because the medical system recognizes that a doctor with zero experience should not be dealing with patients without a few years' worth of supervision.

Law firms often work the same way, with junior lawyers spending a few years 'learning the ropes' before they get put in charge of anything truly important.

I think I'm supporting your post, but I'm not sure. :)
The page is actually pretty crappy, IMO.
Microbranches in Mercurial
The fact that several imitators of YC have since popped-up seems to me to make the original notable.
How can you be sure that any question related to your business doesn't have legal implications before first talking to a lawyer? You just gave examples of questions which obviously do require legal counsel, but what about examples of those which obviously don't?
Amazon S3 & UnBox.
Google Adwords.
Playstation Network.
GoDaddy.
Tivo.
Well, they should be using the criteria set out in WP:COMPANY -- I don't think they're quite there yet. Some notable companies are unlisted, and some not-yet-notable companies are.

Not every company is notable, and certainly not companies at the two-guys-and-no-revenue stage (compare to your local dry cleaner, who is probably actually profitable).
Skype, NetFlix, Rhapsody, Peapod

Used to pay for VirtualPBX, Experts Exchange, and Wall St. Journal
Calling a lawyer only makes you look suspicious to the lawyer you called, who is legally prevented from doing anything about it. Also, he's probably seen worse.

Let's say you ask your friend, he says it's ok (which he is absolutely certain is true) and you go ahead with the deed. I mean, she was totally hot, and looked like she was at least 20, so I understand. Then you find out the hard way that your friend was wrong. Now you're a registered sex offender (which I think is B.S., but that's beside the point). You spend the rest of your life paying dearly.

Even if you were to assume going in that your friend is most lilkely right, the small possibility that he is wrong multiplied by the truly disastrous outcome makes it well-worth having just spoken to a lawyer. I don't know about you, but I'd gladly drop a couple hundred to prevent even a 1% chance of becoming a registered sex offender.
Besides, is it really that hard to stay "indie" developing iPhone apps? I don't see where the need for capital comes in the first place.

Especially if you can't even find one person that you want to hire.
You can't, and it's clearly a judgment call on your part. I was referring more to the obvious legal questions, which are the ones I generally see here.
How about something like 'all web pages are on the iphone' instead of 'all parts of the internet are on the iphone' as this is patently false.
Who provides what in the cloud -- a guide to what the key companies offer
I'm reminded of a woman's description of what it was like to live in LA. She said it was like "being an ember in this big, blazing bonfire."
it's no good saying 'people' - the problem is which ones. Plenty of people were driving aorund in nice cars during the last bubble, having 'taken to the bank' investors' cash; but the whole setup was totally unsustainable and the people putting in money weren't getting it out. Is it so different this time around?
How Simple Web Design Helps Your Business
For a while Wikipedia had such a complete list that we ourselves used to refer to it. Then some wikipedian decided to "improve" the list by deleting most of them. Since then it has always been a more or less random subset of YC funded cos.
PicWing Out to Simplify Photo Sharing on Digital Frames
A Photobucket Bonanza, for Insiders: Web-Site Bet Was Lucrative For Venture Firm, but Not Its Investors
Here is the ASA Verdict page on the topic: http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/adjudications/Public/TF_ADJ_44891.... (via Daring Fireball)

"All the parts of the internet" is clearly wrong, there is no support for VoIP for a start. So, yes, good call.
I don't think it's unreasonable to say, "We're having trouble finding one great programmer". If a programmer is pretty good at what she does, then odds are she's already got a secure, comfortable, well-paid job. The VC might have suggested that extra money could attract a great programmer, but he didn't.

I think it comes down to Ambrosia versus Microsoft. The author would prefer to produce software the way Ambrosia does. The VC prefers the Microsoft way.
The worst examples are, of course, things companies would not do. Like your grocer not selling you food, or your landlord not renewing your lease.

Which should tell you something: the worst people say about governments is that they behave the way they do -- the worst thing people say about corporations is how terrible it would be if they didn't behave the way they normally do.
Yeah. The fact that these things are being found -- things that deal with people's actual money -- indicates just how incompetent the average ITer is when it comes to security.

I wonder how long hackers have been exploiting these things _without_ announcing them.
They want revenue for their site, and ad placement is commonplace and well-understood, but ...

"Hi, we disrespect our own content so much that we'd like to distract you from it with all these glittery ads. Have a nice day!"
Ask HN: Any payment processing advice?
I'm in the process of building a simple website for my grandmother to showcase her artwork online. Right now, if someone sees art they would like to purchase, they send her an email and arrange a check or money transfer. However, I'm concerned about the risk of accepting checks and am looking into credit card processing systems.

So my questions are:

- Is there really a risk to accepting checks, or am I just being slightly paranoid?
- Should I go with PayPal, or should I look into alternatives?
- What information do I need to keep for each transaction?

Thanks for your advice!
If you can afford a highly paid professional, sure, it is no problem to ask a lawyer all the time. Operating on a shoestring, the decision comes a little bit harder.

I did not even mean to knock lawyers, maybe they all mean well, but they might be used to a different kind of level for their operation.

Not that I had so much experience with lawyers so far, but so far I found it hard to find good ones. I just happen to have no connections in lawyer circles.
It's a sign of this guy's inexperience that he treats VCs as if they were all the same. In fact one of the most distinctive things about the VC world is how much variation there is in it. Partners at the top firms are clever and honest and expect to make money mostly from the fund's returns. Whereas the bottom half are basically in the business of generating management fees.
It's a personal entrepreneur's list of what to do (or not) and I find them useful.

Taken as a whole, it's cliff notes for entrepreneurial hackers.
JungleDisk (for backup via S3), hosting (Dreamhost for shared, Slicehost for more power), Amazon MP3 for music. I've been trialing Pingdom for site monitoring and will probably sign up once trial is over. Netflix.
The article is about YCombinator, so I'd expect to find all of their known investments listed, 'notable' or otherwise.
1) a safe policy would be to accept checks by mail, but hold shipping until the check clears the bank and you have funds in your account.

2) http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive#t...

3) depends. some of the things in the link above touch on that. for the most part, though, keep as much of the "safe" (non-CC, check, routing, etc. numbers) information that you feel like you need.
Why a New Browser From Microsoft Matters
Study: Scrapping Fuel Subsidies Can Help Fight Global Warming and Boost World Economy
No, Silly, Piracy is Theft
Still significantly better than cliches such as "looking for rockstar..."

We've gone over this. The hip new term is now "code barista."

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=255668
I don't know if I would call google apps a market leader. I don't think Gmail even has MAPI support. Maybe they're working on it.
Download IE8 Beta 2
The one-time problem of this specific article being nominated for deletion has been resolved, but the larger issue of the Wikipedia bureaucracy preventing good content from being created and viewed is certainly still around.
Simpler URL: http://www.GetIE.org/
I would be pissed if my $10k ad was now below the fold! putting that middle column for the top third of the page, that shows 'active' comments, crunch board jobs, Tech crunch 50, and video comments is such a waste of real estate. For this redesign to fly the new 300px IBM ad must have been signed for a long term contract.

also the navigation is weird - web2.0, gadgets, mobile, crunchbase, more \/ ... then 'about, advertise, archives, contact tc50 and jobs, then.... subscribe, email, crunchbar, rss and twitter....

add that to showing 15+ stories now instead of 5-10 and the major attack on content vs ads, I'm sure now I will only read TC in my feed reader.
Their point of view: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deletionism#Rationale_for_del...
Keep in mind that this happened in the late 1990s. The major players in online poker (PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker) have millions of dollars to lose if someone discovered a flaw in their random number system. Accordingly, they have invested a lot of money and time into ensuring that their systems are secure to avoid something like this happening agin.

That being said, there are still problems.

Several months ago the 2+2 poker community discovered people using "superuser" accounts on Absolute Poker, which could see everyone else's holecards. Fortunately, the perpetrator wildly abused his powers and was discovered in time.

And who knows, you could discover some zero day exploit that gets you the same thing. All you have to do is spend thousands of hours attempting something that you probably won't succeed at and even if you did, you'd probably be discovered quickly because of inconsistencies in your play.
I am reminded of the poem by Matsuo Bashou -

古人の跡を求めず、

古人の求めたるの所を求めよ。

kojin no ato wo motomezu,

kojin no motometaru no tokoro wo motome yo

Seek not to follow in the footsteps of the wise;

seek what they sought.
Amount spent personally = 0.

Amount spent through business = 0.

Amount that could have been earned if I had been billing instead of on hacker news > 0.
11 Things I Learned From Speaking and Networking at Gnomedex
1. Freshbooks for time tracking and invoicing clients

2. Flickr Pro account for easy photo management

3. Dedicated server with LayeredTech for hosting projects

4. EasyNews account for newsgroups

5. Netflix for movie rentals and streaming
Were those sources actually linked from the Disqus article?
Right price is key. e.g. clearly it's not convenience per se, but convenience for 99 cents.

But I'm puzzled at 37signals: their products were developed quickly (as they boast), but there are no well-known competitors. What's going on here?

1. 37signals is an effective geek PR company - or, thought-leaders for agile, rails, etc. They blog, they keynote, they give. They teach a lot of useful and interesting stuff (and I like it). They are cool. As a result, who knows about their competitors?

2. Pricing - starting at $24 per month ($288 pa) for basecamp. For a business, the monthly charge may be attractive for cashflow and tax (deductible), but neither are an advantage over copy-cat SaaS competitors. They host it, which justifies a higher price for you - provided that the hosting is a valuable benefit for you. They maintain it, and add features, so this is like a maintenance charge, which a business would pay anyway.

However - if they retain "simplicity" (key to their philosophy) and not add features, what's to stop competitors from catching up?

3. They add features in the form of new products (which they have done), and the older ones get cheaper and cheaper til it's "normal".

4. They have passed (or will) a special threshold of economies of scale, such that competitors cannot catch them. With so many customers, their profit margin per customer can be too low for competitors to enter. Their competitors, offering a comparable price but with fewer customers, would not be able to break-even. They'd need to grow their customer base much bigger. But how long would that take? How much would it cost? What's the chance of success (risk)? (37signals has other strengths, to make it harder) What's the prize worth (reward)? 37signals isn't a madly profitable company, so why go after them?

These arguments apply to a for-profit competitor - but what about a non-profit competitor? i.e. open source? I'm really interested to hear other's opinions.

I'm not the first to wonder this:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/07/06/bascamp-faces-competiti...

http://wisdump.com/business/being-37signals-for-free/

EDIT "By Jonathan Barket on April 7, 2006 5:24 am" makes some good points (search for him - sorry, no permalink)
This paragraph is a real nugget:

> In most organizations the developers are some of the highest paid employees. They get paid well because their skills are scarce and hard to reacquire. This leads to entrenched “senior” developers who produce little, but “know” (and therefore get paid) a whole lot. It also shifts the emphasis to stability and away from being quick, nimble, and adaptive. Over time this turns your development teams into an occupying force rather than a fighting force.

When this process is unhindered a company's right brain starts to wither and die.
UUorld - Next Generation Data Visualization
Strengthening the study of computer science
YES!!

electric guitar riff
Once bit, twice shy. They charged a mint through the 90s and into the early 2000s and a lot of companies got burned paying off those contracts after the cash flow tightened up. Many of them refuse to do business with them.

They're also really banking on parallel processing (i.e. with CoolThreads) which will probably catch on with cloud services rather than directly with development houses. It takes a totally different mind-set to develop for 128 simultaneous threads.

They have some killer technology though. DTRace still blows my mind.
When you execute a program twice in a row, the same results are expected each time.

When you execute a legal document twice, the same results both times would be fall-out-of-your-chair unexpected.

Even simple, clear-cut legal documents like wills are at best, probability functions.
This seems like a great short-term incentive, but impractical long-term, like in http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Defect-Black-Market.aspx

He said that, in that week, the code base was reduced by 90%, which probably accounted for a fair chunk of the bonuses. Odds are, the code base won't be reducible by another 90% any time soon.

Now, doing something similar another week for test coverage, or some other way that the code base is lacking, makes plenty of sense. But it doesn't seem viable as a long-term bonus strategy.
If you record your vim input to a macro (q key), you can paste the contents of the macro to see what you typed. Unsurprisingly, mine look like line noise -- vim macros are very much write-only.