skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
After reviewing the individual heatmaps, however, we get the impression that the site might have a bit too much going on

Normal A/B split tests have a similar issue. Let's say you have a sales page and you're testing colors. Red buy button, a blue button, a green button. And let's say blue wins overall with a high level of confidence.

Without drilling down (and most systems I've worked with are bad at this or can't do it at all) you can't tell if certain types of user actually preferred other scenarios. For example, visitors from east Asia might convert WAY better for the red button (red being a lucky color in China). And visitors coming from certain sites might always convert better on the green.

Problem is, your split test results show the overall results and so you optimize with the blue.. when your A/B tool could have analyzed the data and suggested segments for you. Does this tool exist (without getting users to guess segments up front)? If not, there's a ton of money being left on the table.
Prevent your Password from Hackers
That's true. GPS will only pin point you to 10m at a maximum.

But the theatre can provide limited WiFi to enable you to pin point your location even without being able to receive GPS.
Rather than row/seat number just have a pictorial representation of the theater seating so they can tap on their general location.
Why are you donating your time? By the looks of things, you're quite talented and can charge quite a bit. Unless money isn't your motivation, which is entirely plausible.
The problem with MySpace wasn't technical.

The problem was, it was a better GeoCities. Vanity blogs for people with internet friends.

Facebook used real names, so it helped people connect with their real friends; even the ones they weren't confortable being "internet friends" with.

I'm not saying this was genius. It was probably just luck. Or the result of Facebook being optimized for a single college, which was a microcosm of the real world - getting everyone to sign-up was only possible using real names.

Of course, it helped that Facebook has stayed small, and stayed pretty close to its pragmatic hacker roots.
Firing mouse events Chrome versus Firefox
I would love a chance to see the Color founders doing office hours with pg! Or even just pgbot. I can see it now:

Color guy: We're building an app that lets you share photos with
your mobile phone, with people within 100 feet of you, but it uses
your social graph to make sure you see stuff you're interested in.

pgbot: WTF?

Color guy: I mean, it lets you share pictures that you just took, and
people within 100 feet of you will see that you just shared a picture.

pgbot: What problem does this solve? If they're 100 feet away,
wouldn't they have seen the same thing you saw, or even taken the
same picture anyway?

Color guy: You don't get it, it's mobile... pictures and mobile,
together. Like peanut butter and chocolate.

pgbot: Who wants this?

Color guy: Well, erm, I mean, erm, that is, aaahhh... um, you
know... like, um, aaaghh... well... uhhrrmmmm... college kids. And
hipsters. And hipster college kids.

pgbot: You mean the two classes of people least likely to either A. have
money, or b. spend money, unless it's on cheap beer, crappy clothes,
or Apple hardware?

Color guy: But, but...

pgbot: Who's going to pay for this?

Color guy: Aaaah, well, you see... aaah... umm....

pgbot: I worry, I worry...
this is an awesome initiative. keep you the good work
Minor changes in the suns output have a tiny impact on earths climate. The vastly simplified reason is black body radiation increases as the 4th power of temperature (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan%E2%80%93Boltzmann_law). And the sun is vary stable when you average over a day sitting at +/- .05% since we have been able to detect it. And unlike earths climate astronomers have plenty of other vary similar stars to directly compare the sun to and they are also vary stable.

PS: Now a gigantic increase in the suns output relative to the norm of say 0.11% = an increase of 1.0011(288K)^4 = (288K+x)^4 = ~0.08 degrees C.
Led Flying Umbrella
Are you still trying to determine what the probability is that you're wrong? Because that didn't make it into your response. I know I'm not 100% certain.

The point I was making about salaries dealt with the size of the vested interests and the financial means of those involved to protect them.

"The global warming people" (???) really? 2 cents to 50 -- are you presenting these numbers in good faith? Anyhow, lots of "them" also think nuclear power is fine too (or should I say "Them", because it's much better to think in terms of nefarious monolithic demonizable opponents, far more productive and likely to lead to smart outcomes). It seems the estimate of "$0.50/kwh was, at the very least, on the high end. Some estimates put solar at $0.12/kwh by 2015 (http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2011-06/10/content_126... -- btw, these citation things are awfully handy. You should really try them out some time. Say what you like about the nefarious "Them", They are pretty into the whole being-scholarly thing.)

Also, I'd say the bulk of climate change advocates think that the best gains can be achieved through conservation. There are lots of ways of living ones life that require way less resources. I mean, it's a pretty arbitrary decision whether to be into NASCAR or the Tour de France, into motor boat racing or sailing, into massive low-pro-tire pick-up trucks or a sport sedan.
I've tinkered with Rails projects on and off since 2005, but it's never been my main gig. I'm sure if I was using it full-time I'd be okay keeping up to date with the latest trends and conventions, but as it stands I wind up Googling before almost every decision to ask "Okay, so how are we doing this now?"

I figure that infrequent users like us aren't who the Rails core is catering for, and that's fine. It does feel like a slow reboot coming back to Rails every 6-12 months for small projects, but I still recognise that it's a great framework that solves a lot of problems.

When making a decision on what technology to use, I often consider Sinatra for its simplicity. Rails feels like a black box to me at times - again, likely not a problem if it's your bread and butter.
Facepad Facebook photo album downloader Firefox add on
I can't see the starting point of the flowchart. Is it just me?

I guess that means I have no hope ;)
Why Can't Computers Just Be Honest About It?
You didn't need 3 guesses. The sum of each partition has to be a factor of the number. In particular the sum of the first partition has to be a factor. Then the second. That already gives you the answer I think.
Some problems are naturally better defined recursively than iteratively; the Minesweeper blank space uncovering algorithm is a prime example of that. "Push this button. If it's blank, execute push button for all surrounding buttons." Yet because the word "recursion" is primed with "hard" in the minds of undergrad students, some of them shut down on the word and don't attempt to figure out the problem. Instead they remember "recursion is hard, we'll cover that later".

Assuming subproblems are solved is a more sophisticated way of thinking about some recursive algorithms, like sorting. I don't think that is quite as naturally easy for most people. But I think the difficulty there is in the layering of concepts, not because the algorithm is recursive.
مسلسل ندى العمر الحلقة 52
I find strawmen to be tasteless and unimaginative. I am not sure their idea has merit, but I would like to hear the supposed merit from their mouths.
1 of 2 ways:

1) Charge each user a nominal fee for download.
OR
2) Charge movie theaters for their participation. Imagine the profitable data we'll be supplying them with on every person that checks-in to their movie theater using Tattlr. They can incorporate their own special promotions based on the ongoing user data they obtain each time a user checks in.

This what I've come up with thus far. I could be totally off-base with these assumptions.
Sequoia should definitely hire pgbot to keep them from making blunders like this.
This reminds me of apps like Shazam. While they definitely serve an amazing purpose (recognizing songs by finding a similar region of sound) what I would really like is an app that could recognize my humming a song--which probably sounds nothing like the actual song itself (different key, speed, entirely different voice, etc.)
Here's the same in Java:

public class dispatch {
public static void main(String args[]) {
long s = System.currentTimeMillis();

int x = 0;
for(int i = 0; i < 1000000; i++)
x += i;

System.out.printf("%d in %d", x, System.currentTimeMillis() - s);
}
}

Just for kicks. I'm not a Java developer but I'd like to get decent at it some day in the near future. Feel free to school me. ;-)
Agreed. Thats even better.
Just left this comment on the post itself, but extremely proud fo you Jonathan and Laura!

So excited to see this take shape guys. Kudos to all the great work to our friends and colleagues out West. You guys will always have a network to come into here in NYC!
Pseudo-anonymity brings out the worst in people, rather. (Or: If there is no risk of being punched in the face or otherwise given a strong physical disincentive, then behavior tends to deteriorate.)
For every $100 of food you sell in a Groupon deal for $50, Groupon gives you $25. At 30% margin, the food costs $30. Every Groupon deal a restaurant does puts them deeper in the hole at those margins.
I would too, and hopefully they'll post in this thread. In the meantime, or if they don't, I find it rather amusing to imagine how an interaction with the Color guy and pgbot would go. YMMV.
Color will burn through it's funding and declare bankruptcy in 24 months or less. Anyone want the under?
It's funny to see this b/c I've been a user of Mixpanel almost from the beginning and built my own stream. I honestly don't know if they allow this now, but back then you couldn't export your data. So as a believer in making data-driven decisions, it simply made sense to save off every single Mixpanel event before sending it over to them.

Customers would call on the phone saying I'm looking at X, and it was kind of hard to figure out exactly where they were on the site by their verbal description. Where they'd come from (if they were referred from Google AdWords, they might have different expectations than from somewhere else). We'd have to awkwardly ask callers for the product ID number, or stuff like that.

To help with customer service, I built a real-time AJAX stream of all our Mixpanel events. (Which was easy since we were saving them anyway.) I found this to be essential for customer service and learning about our users in general. Sure it may seem creepy when you first learn about this, but honestly, what developer doesn't tail their server logs just for fun? With the right intention, it can be a seamless way to be extremely helpful to users. With a real-time stream, you're just suddenly more helpful to people who need it.

By anecdotal evidence, we have found that letting people know you were following them is not a good idea, b/c you may cause them to feel creeped out. But the truth is, it's more likely than not that this is already happening (to you, right now, on this very site). We would never deny it, but we tend to just not bring it up / volunteer the fact. A real-time stream just gives visibility into the data that's always been there.

What was great about having our own stream was that we can pull in any user account data that's helpful. In other words, once a user logs in, you can display any relevant user account info in the stream. How long has a user been shopping? How many products has he/she looked at? Is he/she a return user? Has he purchased before? You can essentially link your real-time stream with your customer relationship management, aka CRM. If you choose, you can reach out to them in real-time on the site, either triggering an event on their next page load, or popping up something like one of those embedded chats.
Where is all the hardware gone? Haven't seen a successful hardware company in a long time?
What if I develop all my hacking tools in an SSH session to a box in russia? Is that illegal? What about VNC?

This kind of thing could well be a legal reality soon...
Sorry for the ignorance but could you please explain what is pgbot? I searched in google but could not find a reasonable explanation.
All joking aside, imagine if pg did try and build a real expert system combined with a chat-bot style interface, that could represent his expertise. He could probably sell access to something like that for a few bucks.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2598026
pg = Paul Graham, pgbot = Paul Graham AI program that would answer like he would in a YC interview
I don't see why you think that's how an interaction would go. Do you assume you have them all figured out, and they have nothing new to tell you that you haven't thought of?
I find it hard to believe that anyone will lend them money in the next 24 months, so I'll take the over.

Seriously though, how is one expected to deploy that much cash so quickly with something so new and experimental? I can't help but feel there's more to the story.
Is it just me or does Arrington sound like he got snubbed by color somehow? Did they not show the proper respect through the usual startup TC story begging or deny him an investment opportunity? I know a lot of the community is unimpressed with color and I'm certainly not some big fan, but to me he sounds as petty and bitter as when they run the "yet another yahoo fuck up" gloating stories.
I think you are spot on describing one side, but it's worth looking at the other side. How do these companies make money? For the hardware company, that's easy. For the service company, that's monetizing your data. Apple cares more about how you access data, but less about the data itself. For Google, they don't care how you access your data so long as their algorithms also have access.

The Kindle example veers off slightly from Google because people pay for their ebooks.
Wait, so what was that billion dollar data center [1] Apple built in North Carolina for?

[1] http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/02/apples-nc-data-cen...
You ate yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that.

Your eating technique is likely not improving, so why keep it up? Same with sleep. Are you getting any better at breathing (actually, you would if you exercised).

I'm not suggesting that you should get back on your bike, maybe biking isn't for you. But I strongly believe that you should find a physical activity that you do enjoy. Too many people slog out in a gym as punishment for no reason, don't be one of those. There is enjoyment in physical activity.

The worst part of working out is when you feel like you have to do it.

A bicycle commute isn't fun, it isn't a game (well, I used to be a bike courier, and I'd play with traffic, so I do enjoy it at times).

Hopefully one day you'll find a sport that you enjoy and can't wait to get out and do. Your body and mind will thank you.

I'd recommend group activities. I run only occasionally, but joined a group run last week and really enjoyed it, so today I'm looking forward to running with the group.

Run, bike, soccer, ultimate frisbee, tai chi, yoga, rock climbing, tennis, squash, handball, etc.etc. keep trying until you find the one that's for you. I suspect if you do, you'll get introduced to many sports that you like.
Tell HN: Another Groupon success story
Following up on this thread (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2654788) I wanted to share our experience with both Groupon and other daily deal sites as to better illustrate which conditions make these deals good for businesses.

To start, we've been on Groupon 3 times (NYC, Hartford & Sacramento) plus on other sites 4-5 times now.

We're an online business, with fairly sophisticated software running our online store (Django for those interested). This means that redeeming 10 Groupons or redeeming 1000 Groupons makes no difference to us. We upload the codes from the CSV Groupon sends us and that's it, from there on, our only interaction with customers is through our site.

Our breakage is about 30% and this seems to be the number no matter which daily deal site we've been with. Even when giving up 50% of the coupon price, we still profit. That's the nature of our business - most aren't like us.

So with those facts out of the way, here's what we've learned:

1) Coupon customers are generally "meaner" and feel they're entitled to more than others
2) You can (and should) negotiate hard with the deal sites. We started out doing the 50/50 share, but learned quickly and now get as much as 82% of the sale.
3) Up-sell hard to these customers, if you can. Again, our business is all online so we offer e-books add-ons, we offer different books to add, we offer a better product (hard cover) that customers can "upgrade" to.
4) We have about 10% repeat customers and about 30% buy something more than what their coupon entitled them to.

Businesses who view Groupon et. al as profit drivers are misguided. Is that Groupon's fault and should they do more to educate customers? That's another thread of discussion. If businesses view daily deal sites as simply another marketing expense and have the capacity to track customers and upsell accordingly, then maybe the cost of acquisition is worth it. For us it is, for some companies by the sounds of it, it isn't.

tldr; For some companies, Groupon is good and their model drives value for the merchant. For other (most?) companies, it isn't.
http://www.halomonitoring.com - senior citizen health monitoring and automatic fall detection
Your analogy would only make sense if 37Signals was actively trying to compete in the Rails startup's space.
The jobs crisis (Larry Summers)
Hilarious, thanks! Sounds like an interesting project to do just for kicks.
That would only matter if Apple was having infrastructure problems. If people just didn't want the product, those claims wouldn't make sense.
Thanks! I imagined it was something like that but I wasn't sure.
I don't know. Burning $40 million for a new venture takes a special kind of ignorance and incompetence when you're surrounded by shaking heads from all corners.

Sequoia believed in them. Maybe they haven't opened the bag of tricks yet. It's too early to write them off.
Who wants this?
+1 to all good tidings.
In 1999 that was normal
Of course not. I think you're taking this way too seriously. It was an imagination of how an interaction might go, with a dash of hyperbole mixed in, designed to both amuse, and make reference to pg's flair for directing people to focus on those important, fundamental questions like "Who needs this" and "what problem does this solve?"

Color may yet turn out to be wildly successful, I don't know... I'm no fortune teller. <shrug />
Louis vuitton Belt - Noble Louis vuitton Belt
Seen any flying pigs lately?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2654918
On Traction - My 0.001 BTC
Apple's proprietary web.

It's true the distinction between networked native apps and networked browser apps is logically arbitrary; but the practical distinction is that the web is an open standard, cross platform, widely adopted, whereas Apple's native apps are tightly integrated with the device, giving them faster response and a better managed user experience. If iOS is everywhere, then you get the best of both worlds.

Can Apple topple the web? If they are better at providing what users want, yes.
>Maybe.

I think it's pretty definite that each one of us will die. The only relevant factor is how, and how much we suffer between now and then.
> "and especially not from a non-attorney blog or a software development podcast"

I can't help but point this out as a direct dig at Marco Arment (and the Build & Analyse podcast) for suggesting that developers consider just settling with Lodsys.

And whilst this settle vs. fight debate is done to death, it's still worth saying that for a small indie developer, fighting could fuck you over more than settling. You might lose sleep over having settled—"[rolling] over without a fight"—but you'll probably lose a lot more sleep when you're in massive legal debt.

The only companies (that we know of) who are fighting back/filing declatory judgements are big ones ("ForSee Results, OpinionLab, ESET, and The New York Times have all filed such actions").

Note that I'm not saying you should roll over, nor am I saying fighting is a waste, but anyone—including Patrick Igoe, who is far more qualified in this area than me—needs to remember that it's easy to talk about the noble path, but it's harder to walk down it.
“Web” vs. “Native”
Actually, it reduces the keyspace by 99.6%.

As to why, I've never encountered a software implementation that precisely matched its design paper. Usually has a lot to do with publication deadlines. Papers don't change, software does.
I could use some help http://gamma.getvouched.com

It is not intuitive, and I need to lead the users into doing what I want them to do (vouch for themselves, import contacts, vouch for others).
Why Rubyists Should Care About Messaging
The freelance design business is great right now, sometimes I get work on interesting projects, but rarely in the startup world. Thats probably the most interesting space to be doing UX right now hence the post.

I have also done this before for Simple Invoices:
http://www.jasonstrachan.com/?p=290