skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I can't seem to find the exact reference. Though I clearly remember making a mental note of it.

See previous post on the topic.

http://apps.ycombinator.com/item?id=2333475

See charlie4real comments.

Finally, all my friends who rent space in their residences do so with VRBO. Across the board they say that after using and comparing both services, VRBO is a superior service than Airbnb for those wanting to have short term rentals in their house. So while this may not be representative, it sure seems informative.
This looks interesting and obviously is a ripe market. Right up front though I'd like to see how I can make it secure and why its better than sharepoint.
So true, especially re: presenting your startup not as just another new service but as a facilitator increasing (or with potential to change) people's quality of life and/or in contrary to existing solutions, showing how it differs. One need to stand it to get noticed really.
It makes sense to me that a person only has time and attention potential to manage a certain number of relationships. However, the number depends on the person and how deep those relationships are. Twitter is not a medium where it's time consuming to interact with someone, and the relationships, while revealing, are somewhat shallow. I don't think the Twitter reference makes sense.
German Twitter co-creator's new startup: "Amen"
I agree with tintin - it's not that the wrong problem was being attacked, it's just that the methods of solving the problem weren't very good. It's another example of protopying, and iterative and agile development beating BDUF.

Here's a great video on that:

http://www.ted.com/talks/tom_wujec_build_a_tower.html
I skimmed this.

Insistently trying to relitigate all of Javascript on HN in response to an IE news story is trolling. The first such comment was just annoying, but when you pushed the point with someone who clearly wasn't interested in your orthogonal argument, it crossed the line.
Certainly better than the reverse, isn't it?
Totally agree. Ultimately the only test for your startup idea is market acceptance and resonance - and experience repeatedly shows that no amount of prior experience and knowledge helps in predicting correctly what the next big thing will be. After the fact, it is easy to look back and rationalize and attribute certain factors for all the big successes - but no matter how many times this happens, we always miss the next big thing. Market resonance is very hard to predict - since there are so many parameters for success.
There's more to being polite than setting your signature to "Thanks!" In fact, it's more likely to come off as inauthentic fluff than actual politeness. Which is more polite?

If you frobulate the widgets one more time,
I'll kill you.

Thanks!

Or:

I know I'm being a pain about this, but could you
please not frobulate the widgets anymore?
How to manage things and run a successful company
Be both. Check who e.g. Elon Musk is.

Edit: It might also be added that Skylon is cool -- but it looks like a too big and expensive project; a shuttle in the making. It would probably be better if they bootstrapped by building a two stage unit, first. The build in stages-strategy has worked better for most large space projects (including SpaceX).
Submitted this because I think it's kind of funny:
A website for strong opinions called Amen.

Could this be this bubble's pets.com?
So when you say "describing" you don't actually mean "describing", you mean "running the simulation"? That's alright then, but still leaves you with an entirely unjustified conclusion.

As to your second point, you brought Tiki bars up. I don't think Tiki bars feature prominently in the definitions of beaches in the scientific literature but that doesn't really matter. What matters is that the distribution of Tiki bars (and other properties they might have) is accessible to the scientific method. You can't claim that your definition of "beach" which apparently includes Tiki bars is not accessible to science (at least with the examples you gave for extending the definition).
A bit, but so much for me ended up being generic browser usage (I also use a web-based browser) that not all that much was useful. I think it might have been a bug in RescueTime that didn't always capture the information on the site visited in the browser.

Anyways, I don't think about it much, I don't use it, and I don't miss it.
As a side effect, Chrome extension "HN Sidebar" is not working.
I can't help but ask "so what?" I know the media likes to fascinate themselves with facebook, but adding websites does not really make the bog standard concept of not-yet-released products news.

After wondering why they're reporting on this, I assumed that they might be drawing some conclusions or commenting on what this actually means. They have 6 months of code in the pipe, are they still testing? can't handle the volume of change? think their users can't handle the volume of changes? or just are happy enough in the market that they're comfortable sitting on a few things that are ready to go live? Anything?

Nope. The story came across with the voice of a schoolgirl giggling "he he he, facebook mentioned us." With trite reporting like this, who can be surprised they've implemented the level of control to blind techcrunch at will?
couldnt agree more. It kinda reminds me about open source and how the power of many is greater than one. With their restriction of what can be developed with their api, i havn't seen it as a forward moving action. 3rd party developers can make or break your product. It's always nice to keep them happy and would definitely explode your business
I think you miss the point if you rate the market leader by customer satisfaction rather than revenue or customer base. I just did a few searches of smaller US and UK cities, and found 5-40x as many listings on Airbnb as VRBO.

For example in my nearest city (Cambridge, UK, which is both highly techie and touristy), Airbnb returns 38 results, VRBO 0. I tried various US and European cities and got a common pattern.
Unbreakable Encryption Scheme
Do you mean: http://www.searchyc.com ?

Also try: http://www.google.com/#q=test+site:news.ycombinator.com
After the uncertainty and FUD TwitPic created in the minds of a lot of people, I think this decision is going to receive a lot less backlash than it originally would.

Personally, though, I still don't like how they are pushing out third-party developers, but I see some understandable motives for the decision.
You must mean http://searchyc.com - yes, it's down, and has been for a while, and many of us would appreciate some news.
List of guest blogging sites
Top Ruby on Rails Hosting Recommendations for Rails Apps of Any Size
TechCrunch finds another reason to talk about TechCrunch. P.S. TechCrunch.
Yes, the security concern with the WebSockets protocol has been resolved.
This contemptible approach turns your rightful marketing costs into negative externalities for everyone else, filling a formerly efficient market with nonexistent bullshit. I'd love to see the FTC nail anyone guilty of this, though they probably can't afford to keep up. Maybe we need a blacklist.

EDIT: some of the examples involve actually providing the service you're advertising, albeit in an unscalable way, and that's perfectly legitimate. Just don't promise something you aren't at all ready to deliver.
Apa: The Forgotten Anniversary
Thanks. Interesting data points. Surprised VRBO has nothing in Cambridge!
Does Airbnb have yearly revenue of a billion dollar? According to the article 1.6 million nights have been booked through them, if they are a "billion dollar" business than average booking revenue will be $625.
VRBO is awful.
Hi tsunamifury,

thanks for your feedback. To answer your question:

1.) Within the next week I'll be introducing 256-bit SSL encryption across all accounts, I also have spent a lot of time ensuring login system etc. are hack proof and I have a backup system in place which backs up users files every 12 hours to to a secure location. Hopefully this will give peace of mind to users.

2.) As for it being better than share point. My goal was to make a simple document manager for small to medium companies and even photographers and such. Also cost, I tried to make the cost as competitive as possiblt to attract small commonalities and start-ups.
This, combined with a polite [EOM] tag, makes subject-messages much more rapid than writing a full email. I have much more rage at people who type e-mails with nonsensical subject lines that are just as long than their body content.

Would you rather have someone email you with:

1) Subj: Can you print an extra copy of the Excel for 10AM? Thanks! [EOM]

2) Subj: Quick request for you before our meeting today
Body: Can you print an extra copy of the Excel for 10AM?

Personally, I much prefer the first.
This, combined with a polite [EOM] tag, makes subject-messages much more rapid than writing a full email. I have much more rage at people who type e-mails with nonsensical subject lines that are just as long than their body content.

Would you rather have someone email you with:
Subj: Can you print an extra copy of the Excel for 10AM? Thanks! [EOM]
or
Subj: Quick request for you before our meeting today
Body: Can you print an extra copy of the Excel for 10AM?

Personally, I much prefer the first.
Activist Amazon couple silenced by gunfire
How your social network can protect your credit card
> Food on the Table did the tasks for their early customers by hand. Rather than creating web software, they implemented the service in person.

I tried this on a project, and then ended up with the by-hand parts as a millstone around our necks. My partner and I couldn't agree on how to automate the service, basically. I realized at some point it violated Derek Sivers' advice, "Work on on your business instead of in your business.". So, if you're going to do something laborious by hand that should be done by computer, make sure you are going to be able to automate it later on. I'm never starting another business where everything isn't self serve, automated and done at the beginning.
API Forums Using Get Satisfaction
You will be able to ask the user for more than 5MB.
Ask HN: GPL software works but what are the cons?
I appreciate the Open Source community and all the positive things its doing for people and places. For instance, the GPL makes it easy to enter the market without a huge time investment into product development.

That being said, what are some cons to using Open Source code when developing applications for the masses? For example, is building a social network or designing a template using a GPL software package a bad business plan?

I just want to know where to start. Maybe the question I should be asking is something like this... What type of software is the Fortune 500 using and why?
I have a database of all comments and posts that I use for http://ihackernews.com and http://api.ihackernews.com I could make it searchable, but I feel lazy :-(
So, your reactor was just turned into a burning pile of radioactive rubble by having something like 150,000 lb of mass smashed into it.

And you say radioactive material will not disseminate?
Please don't e-mail me my own password in plaintext when I sign up. Other than that, looks pretty promising :)
These are very creative ways to fund a business. Angel investments and venture capital is not always the best way to go because it is hard to get funding here. However, a little creativity can go a long way.
Besides link shortening and photo sharing, what are examples of third-party Twitter applications that the "bottom" 80% of Twitter users have widely adopted?
I personally wouldn't use tumblr for a less personal, more professional blog. Tumblr feels like blogging meets something like twitter or facebook, which is nice for personal blogs, but a lot of what tumblr offers (the dashboard, non-text posts, reblogging, liking and following) seems kind of wasted on a more professional blog. If you're mostly just posting text and looking for a place to host, I'd probably go with something like wordpress (self-hosted or wordpress.com).

Just my two cents. Tumblr arguably does have the benefit of allowing people to find your posts more easily through hash tags, I guess.
http://indextank.com/

Go forth and whip something up. Or just use http://www.google.com/cse/ and be super lazy.
The UI of your start-up very rarely makes or breaks it if you iterate and keep it clean. This is a great article about increasing user retention from x% to x+y%, but like A/B testing and everything else, it will not make a bad product good or a good product bad. Just keep moving forward and listening to your users, they'll tell you what they want and then once you have a customer B, you can A/B test to your heart's content.
You can still reply via the 'link' button, though.
If I understand your first complaint, it's that short-term rentals increase the cost to buy real estate in a touristy location.

I believe a more accurate way to phrase this is that the short-term rental market provides a more accurate valuation of the property.

High prices are complaint only for the buyer; the seller will be glad that his condo is now valued correctly.
Thanks a lot. That's a really interesting way to go about it, which I hadn't considered very seriously. I will go buy some Thinkpads. I might also experiment with Dell. I've had an inspiron for a few years and like it.
I believe that Google uses a similar development methodology with Chrome to separate the channels out. Everyone works on the Chromium trunk, and features are enabled/disabled depending on which channel they are appropriate for. Single trunk development makes a lot of sense when you make a product which doesn't rely on distinct version releases.
Did you read the headline?
This is pretty mild as "calling outs" go. I would summarize your first two points as "there is tremendous demand for this concept".

Your first point is that this basic concept has been so successful that governments have felt the need to regulate it to combat its adverse effects, which is a risk Airbnb is pretty well aware of. In fact, all of the adverse effects you list are true of hotels as well, except for "shorting cities on their hotel taxes". If municipalities eventually decide to force Airbnb to charge hotel taxes, that would diminish their appeal but probably not destroy the business. Hugely successful companies like Amazon are facing similar problems.

Your second point is essentially that the idea of providing an online marketplace to remove inefficiencies of brokerages is not a new one, and therefore Airbnb should not be "overly" congratulated. But we're not congratulating Airbnb for the novelty of the idea, but for building a business which is apparently worth a billion dollars. Many hugely successful startups have ideas which might be obvious.

As for your third point, there might be something legitimate there. I don't know anything about VRBO vs. AirBNB in terms of traction and customer satisfaction, but it appears from one of your other replies that your only evidence is anecdotal. My personal anecdotal evidence is that everyone I know has been very happy with using AirBNB.
First read:

http://rdist.root.org/2008/10/24/quantum-cryptography-is-use...
Would you mind doing a comparison between the two? I have an 06' 350Z with around 30k on it right now and while I love my car, I tend to "oohh and aahh" when I see a sporty Infiniti driving by. I came across one for sale the other day, same year, roughly the same miles for a decent price. I just feel like if I found my way in one, I'd then start "oohhing and aahhing" over the 350Zs driving around. Was thinking maybe someone who had owned both might understand and could offer some opinions of the differences between the two.
Make, Games, World of Puzzles
I get annoyed by people that are so anal about email. I don't disagree that these rules help. It's just that It really seems like these kinds of rules miss the forest for the trees.

The ultimate criteria of a good email should be if the recipient can easily read and understand the email, not whether you're quoting people properly or using bullet points rather than paragraphs. Sure those things help, but it's possible to write a good email that breaks all these rules or a bad email that follows these rules to the letter.
Thanks mgl. The idea of the colorful plot is time on the x axis and intensity on the y axis. This will be dynamically generated based on an input list of experiences/skills and some drag and drop.

Good point about the linkedin import - that's going to be very important. I'll add it to my list.
On the contrary, it could be their easiest route to profitability. Create an API anyone can use, let anybody build products on it, and cherry-pick the most profitable verticals by acquisition. It's a win for twitter, and for the developers of at least one product in every vertical -- or even more than one, as Tweetie and Tweetdeck show.
For clarity: the domain is searchyc.com, which is not expired (valid until 21 dec 2011.)
How is a one night/one week rental a 'more accurate' valuation? I don't get it.
Obviously that's a strawman argument. If I'm mistaken about calling Airbnb to the table, address my points, as I will address yours.

1. They haven't build a billion dollar business, they are only valued at that. There's a bid difference.

2. Ordinary homeowners have and had many other options to rent their properties - Short term rental brokers and VRBO are just two of them. Craigslist in another one. Airbnb alone cannot take that as their success.

3. Perhaps they have provided better accommodations than their competitors. Do you have anything to support that?

4. The internet itself is destabilizing the entrenched markets.

5. And here's the reason I responded, because I am most interested in the work that they are doing to address the social and local government issues. Please provide something to support that. Google doesn't have anything..

http://www.google.com/search?q=airbnb+address+local+issues&#...

Nor does Airbnb themselves

http://www.airbnb.com/help/search?q=local+government
Not on a comparable scale.

Besides, reactors are a small target that's mostly underground. That should limit the damage.

In any case, may I remind you we're discussing a very hypothetical scenario ?
I'm still unsure how everyone feels about blocks. I love them myself and it's changed everything for me. I'm not sure the entire community is sold yet though. Apple's variants of GCC and Clang have them, but last I checked, no GCC variants on the lastest Linux distros I've used have them yet.

Although Apple's changes are released under the GPL, since Apple is no longer doing copyright assignment back to the GNU for it's fork of the GCC it maintains (it doesn't have a procedure in place to do it anymore according the LLVM guys), the changes will have to reimplemented again by someone that can assign copyright to the FSF/GNU or the FSF/GNU guys will have to make an exception to their rules to accept the code (which they will probably never do).

However, blocks are available IIRC to Clang should work under any Linux distro that has made the switch.
In one of his interviews, John Mackey pointed out that there are legislative reasons for this as well. America isn't allowed to have in-house unions like those of Japan. The present laws predispose unions to antagonistic relationships.
Airbnb joins a long line of startups that became big in spite of initial rejection. In fact, it almost seems that a necessary - though not sufficient condition that your idea maybe the next big thing, is that it is initially rejected by everyone you pitch it to!
Writer urges Internet junkies to 'switch off' and think
Wouldn't that reduce security?
When only 1% of current miners contribute would it be possible for someone with control over a huge GPU cluster or botnet be able to attack the system?
Thanks for the feedback, Password is now starred out when sent.

Cheers
This would have been a savvy move from Twitter about say, 4 years ago when it was clear people were going to be sharing a lot of images.

As regards developers, their message is to not build "client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience". However, the mainstream Twitter client experience may at any time be expanded to include whatever you're doing already. That's always a danger when building on someone else's API like this, but the 'inflection point' comes when a company actually starts replacing 3rd party developers' tools with official products.

That should help developers decide what to do next... In my case, it's more clear that I don't want to have anything to do with the Twitter API.
Good points. Well stated. I clearly have overstated the VRBO vs. Airbnb customer satisfaction. I've changed it in my original post to reflect that correction.
Given Twitter's valuation, it's hard to back out Twitter client profits to numbers that make a dent.

On the other hand, it is clear that Tweetie (for Mobile) and Tweetdeck (for Desktops) give Twitter far more control over the user experience. Twitter can now (for instance) choose the default photo sharing service used by iOS, PC, and Mac, without convincing third parties to make changes.

I think it's easier to accept the idea that the client acquisitions are about user experience than it is to accept the idea that Twitter is going to realize return on investment by continuously acquiring businesses with (at best) low 8 figures revenue.
'06 350Z Enthusiast coupe. It's the closest to new I've ever owned (bought it 2 years old with 7,000m on it) and a blast to drive. I'd love to put some money into it and see about taking it to the track, but I just don't have that kind of expendable cash.

If I was well off, but not rich, I'd probably get a GTR or an R8.
I did a totally new landing page here:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/443080/design/index.html

Any better?
Vinicius Vacanti: http://viniciusvacanti.com/category/diy-technical-co-founder...
3Taps API Review
From Toilet Seats to $1 Billion: Lessons from Brian Chesky
http://siteanalytics.compete.com/vrbo.com+airbnb.com+homeawa...
Sounds about right. Twitter seems happy to be one of the best ways to add a social component to otherwise standalone applications, but doesn't seem to care at all about facilitating applications that do nothing but "enhance" Twitter itself.

Building applications that are nothing but Twitter enhancements is probably not a good bet; at least, not if it's your only bet.
>I'm never starting another business where everything isn't self serve, automated and done at the beginning.

Isn't this the exact point which the article argues against? Perhaps the problem was really that you couldn't work out a good methodology to automate these tasks with your partner, a problem that would've occurred even if you'd tried to automate it at the beginning.

I think the real takeaway here is just the same "fail fast, fail early" we see everywhere, but taken to the next level. Get Real urges you to ship your product as early as possible, but this is saying that you don't even need the product to get started.
Not terribly surprised this didn't get funded.

The idea to redesign a braille watch is not a bad one, but I could think of better uses of $250. Braille watches are available for half that price with a more universal design (just simple dots and extra dots to denote 12/3/6/9) right now. That is a big deal, since Braille literacy is fairly low.

Plus, there are some devices out there that do so much more to improve quality of life that it seems almost criminal to buy a watch for $250 when you can spend that money towards something like an iPhone instead and have a screenreader, GPS, email, web, clocks, phone, music, and more in something that fits in your pocket.
I guess the formula works something like

Max friends = (max message length) + 10

At least, it would make more sense than a number Dunbar pretty much pulled out of thin air.