skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think if you ask people if they'd pay, they'll say no every time (unless you're offering to sell trips to the moon). Maybe rephrase to ask if they'd pay 0.99, 1.99, 3.99 --- or where their threshold is? And give examples of what it solves? People pay to get rid of headaches. Good luck!
Apparently Websense filters the site as "Potentially Damaging Content Sites."

I am not saying this thinking that the site is potentially damaging. Websense is pretty dumb about most of the things it chooses. I just wanted to let HNPoints know that because it blocks people from seeing it from behind a Websense filter.
People had no trouble "sharing" media on floppy disks (or email, etc...). The fact that it's been made (deliberately, IMHO) difficult might be part of the proximate cause for the lack of sharing, but I don't see how that refutes the original point about the Overton window: people's perception of what is "sharable" has shifted over the past 20 years.

And that's sad.
I'm having a complete inability to reconcile the reporting on this subject with the patent in question [1].

All the reporting mentions this as a problem for In-App Purchases, but the patent in question seems to only deal with soliciting user feedback. Is there some required rating component involved in In-App purchasing that runs afoul of this patent? [2]

Because I'm missing the part where developers necessarily infringe on this patent as a part of using the App Store or In-App Purchasing in general.

[1] 7,222,078

[2] I've admittedly only purchased in-app a few times, and I can't recall ever seeing it. And I get notably annoyed when apps throw the pop up asking me to rate their app as-is. So forcing me through a rating widget, I'd think, would stick out.
I would love to see information from PG on the following in relation to the recent changes in HN:

- increase/decrease in activity of users with highest karma
- increase/decrease average in comment score, normalized
by time after post of OP
- amount of time the highest rated posts stayed on the front page
- trends for # of flags

Also, it would be great if he put the guidelines on the
submission page.

I've posted this before, but haven't heard anything.
______________________________

< cowsay is the epitome of a unix tool. >

------------------------------------------------

\ _
\ (_)
\ ^__^ / \
\ (OO)\_____/_\ \
(__)\ ) /
||----w ((
|| ||>>
I don't think that's accurate - I want points back because it allows me to see what other people have voted. Because I trust this community I'll be fairly certain these ar ethe comments that will hold the most value for me.
I have seen the typical affiliate style 'how to make $100 a day on autopilot from adsense' e books around for a while and sold via click bank and the like. I take it yours are more mainstream?

Are you then saying that your sales channel is Amazon and selling PDF/kindle books. Any examples your willing to give of one of your titles?
Angry Birds robots under Wi-Fi control
I thought about this, but I wonder if it is legal given that they're not a financial institution.

Alternatively, what kind of margin would they take off? 50 basis points? 100? Interest rates are already low, so a small cut right now looks very big to consumers.

EDIT: posts above suggest BankSimple will offer better rates than industry competitors. Where are the margins, then?
I agree with you. It seems to me that those opposed to visible points are saying that "other people don't vote properly".
Tab-completion via git-completion.bash won't work. I think you can add the following at the end of git-completion.bash to fix it, though:

complete -o bashdefault -o default -o nospace -F _git g 2>/dev/null \
|| complete -o default -o nospace -F _git g
What system couldn't do that?

Religion, for one. Alternative medicine for another. Any fixed mindset philosophy that has no feedback loop between "reality" and "what it advocates".

You know tomorrow is predicted to be judgement day, right?[1] Do you think that guy/group is going to change his/their philosophy one iota when tomorrow is not judgement day? Even when they've predicted it before and been wrong before?

[1] http://search.google.com/search?q=judgement%20day%20may%2021... and http://www.wecanknow.com/ claims "the date of the rapture of believers will take place on May 21, 2011 [..] Study the proofs that God has so graciously given in His Word showing us that these dates are 100% accurate and beyond dispute.". In a couple of days, find those people and ask about their "100% accurate and beyond dispute" claims.
Take a university class. Odds are that your required textbook is not Open Courseware.
Isn't $30 VERY low for this kind of app? Can any of the founders comment how they arrived at this pricing?
Cool :) nice work!

By the way, on safari 5.0.5 inserting the map widget into the iphone leads to a blank page, while the browser widget is unremovable when inserted.
Mike, thanks for the offer. I'm always looking for more advice on how we should market our product, and any additional advice/insight would be tremendous.

Our product: PostageApp (http://www.postageapp.com)

It's a B2B product, and I'm doing a lot of cold calls/email, creating a lot of content, trying to forge partnerships, and relying on our well designed UI and features.

Any critique you may have and/or insights? Thanks again!
US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers raises spectre of second dotcom bubble
The GeoSocial Universe 2.0 [Infographic]
Your software sounds clever. Are you confident CafePress will let you use it? How automated is the process? You're planning to use it yourself, correct, not sell the software? A blog post on your lessons learned sounds interesting, definitely.
http://tweetclaims.com pulls in around $100-$200 per month. If we get big press (like a blog post), we will get a spike and triple that. I literally haven't updated the code in a year. Runs like a champ and does what it's suppose to.

I would love to expand on it or market it more, but time does not permit right now. I've started playing with Google Adwords, so we will see how that goes. We are also working on getting the site redesigned.
I don't think that's necessarily the sensible question.

Aamazon built the kindle. It is their to decide what to do with it. You and I have no right to usurp their product because we want to alter the benefit. If you don't like the DRM or the features, don't use the product, or start a competitor to the Kindle.

Please don't expand my comment to any other industries. There are certain safety and utility businesses that require regulation. I don't think being able to electronically download a book over a propriety network using a proprietary device (that someone chose to purchase) is one of those.
I apologize for the following rant:

1) If you care about accessibility or SEO at all, this tool is not for you.

2) Once you begin an "app" using HYPE, you're locked into their platform. There's no feasible way to maintain rendered animations without the software. I want to be able to bust open my favorite text editor and update stuff on-the-fly when I need to.

3) Just getting off of a project that involved heavy use of CSS animations, transitions and transforms, I can honestly say they're not that hard -- _especially_ to achieve the effects they show in their demos.

4) The types of websites they're promoting as good use cases are the types of sites we all used to be annoyed by when they were created in Flash. Not that this tool forces anyone to create crappy websites, it does enable it though. No splash screens plz.

IMHO, CSS is not meant for keyframe animations. It's not. WebKit might have a @keyframes implementation, and it does work for basic animations. But it just doesn't make sense for heavy animations.

CSS-based effects should be used as added sugar if the browser supports it. Maybe your modal windows opens with a subtle rotation/scale effect, or your slide show has some 3D perspective effects. But your entire website/app shouldn't hinge on a single piece of software trying to solve your animation woes.
I think I agree that in some cases it makes sense to open source things and in some it doesn't. I think when you look at a site like Teambox it makes absolute sense to be an open source product.

To play devils advocate to your point though what about mysql, that's a downloadable product that makes it's money from commercial support or to a lesser extend tools like Phusion passenger. Most people don't pay for them for the thousands of Rails websites passenger hosts. However, for those larger enterprises it's much better to employ the experts for support.

The key is looking to see if you business fits exactly as you say.
I don't think I said we traded up, but it's not like we've lost everything. Here are some freedoms (or benefits)

- freedom from physically needing to get to a bookstore - I know this sounds trivial, but there are many people who have difficulties with access

- the freedom of choice: I can still continue purchasing the physical artifacts and carry on as before

- being able to carry around hundreds or thousands of digital artifacts in incredible. I grew up with Walkmans, and having to create tapes, then moved onto carrying around CDs in cumbersome cases to go with my portable CDman.

Are these trivial freedoms? Possibly. Is my life better - certainly.
I still don't "get" the allure of open source. As a consumer of my product you are not entitled to anything other than the functionality it provides. That's what you paid for. If you want more than that, then you should pay more to get the source code and knowledge that went into making the product.

I just find it striking how people want to give their product (source code) away for free, without limitation. Just seems like such a waste and detriment to the software engineering profession (i.e., why pay someone to write something when you can go get it for free and piece together yourself).
"...and only has internet at his house because I 'borrowed' his neighbors with the help of aircrack-ng and repeated it in his house."

This is superfluous to the primary subject of the article, but I have a really hard time respecting or upvoting a story that opens with a prideful statement that you're intruding upon your neighbor's network, despite their efforts to secure it.

Just because you can defeat your neighbor's deadbolt with a crowbar doesn't mean you should feel free to enter and enjoy the comfort of their home at your whim.
I make about $500/mo in AdSense from http://www.snapspans.com/.
Thanks for this; I've installed it. I don't really think that disabling the public points has lead to better discussions.
Doing what exactly?
Were the early-20th-century carbs the same carbs as today? (Corn and potatoes aren't the same as sugar-cane and HFCS.)
I generate about $700/month from a web-based timeline tool called Preceden that I built in about six months in my spare time [1].

Preceden's been in maintenance mode for about a year now, as most of my free time is spent working on a new web design tool called Lean Designs (formerly jMockups) [2]. Lean Designs isn't profitable yet, but it's getting there. Preceden, meanwhile, continues to grow organically. Lean Designs is more of a swing-for-the-fence project, but I've got high hopes for it.

Plan is to transition to full time sometime in the fall of next year.

[1] http://www.preceden.com

[1a] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1114834

[2] http://www.leandesigns.com

[2a] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2497266
I'm impressed. Super clever, and I dig the website. How did you get the game in front of jungle animals?
Real people
How this differs from Balsamiq? http://balsamiq.com/

[UPDATE] Got it! It would be great if it could import the Balsamiq XML
Install bash_completion (yum/port install bash_completion).

Then in your bash .profile: source /etc/bash_completion
I think a couple of tweaks to the conventional OSS licenses would go a long way in getting source into the hands of more users. While I appreciate the GPL and think it's a great option for those who want to use it that way, the fact is it's far too limiting for anyone with an intent to commercialize the software (the actual software, not ancillary services like support). If someone would tweak the license to make it so that there was no unlimited commercial distribution it would become much more attractive, and hopefully a lot of software that today is just a blob would adopt the license and come with source.
This is awesome, just what I needed. I can see how it's making so much money for you.

I'm curious, what do you do for traffic? Just SEO?
It's a public transit system. Is the goal to turn a profit or provide transit services? For comparison, how far in "debt" is the road system (which costs far more to operate and has zero "revenue")?

I'm always amazed at the libertarians who freak out at the idea of subsidized transit (which is clearly what this is, even if there's a nominal balance sheet attached) as they drive their cars to work on the road system provided entirely at taxpayer expense.
The news reported earlier that reports that Twitter is being sued are incorrect and that they are just having the user details requested from them.

Which will no doubt lead them to a Starbucks on the Old Kent Road, but you have to try!
I don't save time by having non-standard commands that aren't available on all of my machines.
If you were making that much money, why couldn't just move to another country and make the money there? Is it illegal to do so?
Ive used your site a ton recently so hope I've helped!
How would YOU get rid of moral hazard in banking?
I make ~$300/month from a couple of iOS apps. 99% of the revenue comes from an iPad App that came out the day the iPad was released. I'm surprised that the app still makes money, I haven't updated it for a year.
Quick question that is off topic, but did you do the design for that page yourself or did you purchase it off some sort of theme site? Just wondering cause I love it.
I think efields' criticism centers around the fact that Hype packages the animations in addition to simplifying their creation.

I was also a bit surprised initially by the bundling of everything - html, css, js - into a single .js file. Certainly seems like a smooth solution for your targeted user base though. Copy/paste to embed, upload.

I'd be very interested in an 'export components' feature whereby you could export formatted css/html into distinct files/views for straightforward incorporation in larger projects, etc. (I admittedly have yet to try it, so maybe something like this is supported.)

You guys have impeccable timing as well. I'll certainly be picking up a copy!
EFF aside, Apple genuinely has a strong interest in sort this out soon.

Putting FUD on the table for app development is a bad thing for their platform and profits.

I expect Apple to do something smart to aid their developers in this case... I only hope it doesn't amount to paying off the patent troll.

That would be a worst-case for other platforms and their developers, as this would competition blocker.
On naming a startup: Practical advice and (embarassing) first names.
HiRes:

http://jess3.com/media/projects/149/JESS3_GeoSocialUniverse_...

http://jess3.com/media/projects/149/JESS3_GeoSocialUniverse_...

http://jess3.com/media/projects/149/JESS3_GeoSocialUniverse_...
yourPricePerHour * ( hoursSpentInstalling + hoursPerMonthMaintainingTheService * monthsYouExpectToRunIt ) + costPerMonthForServers * monthsYouExpectToRunIt > yourPricePerMonth

If this formula is true, then users will pay for your service instead of doing it themselves. We have seen this pattern consistently.

Our accounts sell at $12, $29 and $99, which is usually much cheaper than setting it up on yourself and running your own server. We even have switchers that used to host their own version and came to our online version.

This is also being the case with many Wordpress hosting sites. Multi-tenancy brings an economy of scale that allows you to keep good margins while being cheaper than hosting it yourself.
I looked you up on the Kindle and didn't find anything. I'm guessing you use pseudonyms? Any reason why?
I'm building a different animation tool will eventually support audio/video sync - I've done lots of interactive e-learning production, and my tool, Edit Room (link in profile) is being built as a more general-purpose web motion graphics tool, with training as one possible market that I'd like to serve. It's not there yet, but the live prototype lets you quickly sequence text and boxes directly in the browser. Check it out and drop your email so you can be notified when that feature gets added...
Running the website in my profile. Buy low, sell high, supply chain management, answer my email, SEO, SEM, the American Dream, etc.
The design is from themeforest.net, with some minor adjustments. :)
How much of the clergy / priests opposed printing presses because they allowed the common masses to access information on a scale unprecedented at that time?

Movable type was one of the causes and main tools of the Reformation and thus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_wars_of_religion , so yes, there were huge consequences with lots of opposition.

It’s complicated, of course. The clergy was not always against the spread of books, and the wars had many causes. But comparing cheap digital copying with cheap printing is pretty safe from a historical perspective.
"The real trick is understanding what rules are not meant for you."
I have been using it myself. I'm also looking into using it for other people as a service. I'm not sure how clever the software itself is but increasing the throughput was fun across as many as 8 slicehost slices. I did discover all of the pitfalls of this type of approach, which I'll cover in my series of blog posts.

My internal process is extremely automated, as in I wasn't involved directly unless something broke.

There is some politics involved also, including Osama Bin Laden stealing my retirement.

I'm working on a new site to sell my designs directly and these blog posts will mysteriously coincide with the launch of that site.

As to CafePress reinstating me: They were letting me use it at lower upload levels and when I got things really going I was a big piece of their API traffic (like half). I'm confident that they will see the value proposition to them, particularly after the projected numbers I worked out yesterday (which I will share in the posts).
Science says that blind crowdsourcing is generally better: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-05/17/wisdom-of-cro...

One could find arguments for both sides, though:

- HN is not a crowd, it's a niche community

- Voting is not blind even now.

- The number actually encourages voting, since it serves to remind that your vote will change than number

- It's good to know whether your vote will have little impact or will move the comment upwards

- The site should encourage more people to vote, the more people vote the better.
We don't yet have any plans that we're ready to speak about publicly, but we are thinking of ways to support audio within Hype. WebKit and Mozilla are also working on some killer audio enhancements that might end up in future standards and browser releases, so we're keeping an eye on those, too.
That just doesn't make any sense. Apple doesn't need any third-party henchmen to do this job. They have their own app-store guidelines that give them unilateral decision making capacity as to what does, and does not, make it in to their App Store.
wow... a linux republican....
Thanks for the heads up; I will see what I can do. :)
A suggestion that has been given (which I second) is to have 'bucketed' scores above some threshold:

-4,-3,-2,-1, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5+, 10+
right? I was about to post some snarky comment about "php is the heroku for php" but then I went through their site and was actually impressed. It would be rad if they had a free tier which turned into a "paid" account if it hit a certain threshold.
"The extra keystrokes aren't going to have any meaningful impact on the amount of value I add to the projects I work on."

Nor will removing those keystrokes have a negative impact on the value you add.

Fear of forgetting the original commands is a reasonable argument against using aliases. It's very similar to the argument against using vim plugins for fear that you won't know how to use vi on servers or other peoples' machines. Nonetheless, most people use the plugins on their development machines which they feel make them the most productive in their day to day work. Same thing for aliases.
I am pretty sure that the press are allowed to know about the injunctions, they're just not allowed to report on them.
Twitter's staff pic on their recruitment page shows a lot of people who have left too.
What's the browsers support for this?
I make close to $1k/month on a few iOS apps and games, as well as an OS X app that I released a few months ago. One is a meditation timer, and the game is an elf bowling clone.

We're working to improve both products and fix bugs. It's not easy to stay on top of it as an indie shop, especially in between consulting gigs and new product development.

I also make another 300-500/month from ebooks and other digital products. Working on some software that I hope will make this number triple.
There's certainly a market for the juicy details of celebrity life, but this is what makes a strong right to privacy more important.
Ha! I've been in Rio for a week wondering why the traffic graph in uTorrent looks like a saw blade. Obrigado!
Around $1000 a month from Android app sales: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.dozingcatsoftware..... (After Google's cut, before taxes). A few weeks ago I applied the common HN advice and raised the price from $0.99 to $1.99, which so far has increased revenue by about 50%.
About $300/month from a GPL script. A PHP class, quite popular, about 7 years old and still going strong. I am surprised nobody in this thread gets recurring income for sharing open source code. I mostly receive donations. I also sell licenses, from a few dollars to hundreds. I publish about three releases a year, and don't spend that much time working on it or supporting it. I shall not forget to mention that publishing this code got me a lot of freelance gigs. Bonus fact: it is rather enjoyable to go to a contract interview where the interviewer has actually used my code.
Pretty much every claim/assumption in this is wrong. Traditional banks make more money by adding fees, but they make plenty of money before fees, too. Interest and interchange revenue -- they are things.
how do you make money? that seems pretty high for advertising? did it go viral or something?
Thanks, Ryan. You guys are doing a kickass job of keeping an eye on this thread for questions. I've sent links to your product and this thread to everyone I know in the educational publishing industry.

I can tell you from an insider's perspective who has worked with educational publishers for the last 8 years that they're all looking for a way to push interactive content to iOS devices that doesn't involve giving a 30% cut to Apple.
I suspect if that really is a possible strategy (meaning Apple's legal team is so powerful that they would clearly beat the shit out of Lodsys's team), then threatening Lodsys with such a move would be a better one. That way, Lodsys would be scared to push too hard on the top app developers, and would back off before anyone gets hurt.

Now, of course, if they actually think they can take on Apple it's a different story. And I don't know enough about how the law works here to know if they could take them on or not.
> Right, there are already good alternatives to consumer-hostile banks, such as the fantastic Charles Schwab.

Do you mean Charles Schwab is the "good alternative" or the "consumer-hostile bank"?
sounds a lot like https://www.phpfog.com/