skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The only thing that really troubles me about exit-focus, to be honest, is the extent to which "a successful exit" can sometimes be conflated with "a successful track record." This definitely happens, and not just in the Bay Area. It's true that the ability to take a company from nothing to exit, and the ability to take a company from nothing to success in the marketplace, are correlated to a degree. Maybe even a large degree. Those skill sets overlap. But they're not perfectly correlated, and sometimes spectacularly not.
If the problem looks like memory management, then perhaps something that looks like garbage collection is the answer?

Of course, it doesn't map trivially, since there are no existing references to goroutines. But, it may possible to determine if a goroutine cannot communicate with anyone - it is garbage - if there is no one listening to any of its channels. The one exception to this rule I can think of are daemon-style goroutines that would interact with the system through external calls. Such goroutines could be labeled as such at the creation site, indicating that the goroutine manager should not manage them.
It seems to me that the passage you quote could as well have been offered to support my point as to contradict it.

Though as long as we have it here, it's pretty self-refuting that she treats all "cloud based enterprise solutions" as being effectively identical. That would be like someone writing an article a few decades ago and treating all startups making silicon chips as effectively identical.
Looks like micro templating; see http://ejohn.org/blog/javascript-micro-templating/
You say clone, I say refined. You say derivate, I say enhanced. etc.

Sure, on the surface most things are clones or derivate in nature, but that's just the surface. Is the iPhone just another phone? Is OSX just another operating system? Is MongoDB just another database?

Well sure, they are, but a "solved problem" doesn't mean we should just call it a day and pack up. If we did I'd be writing this comment on my Window 3.1 "super computer" :)
Neither an LLC nor liability insurance will stop your business being destroyed and years of your life being wasted if a troll decides to target you.

Would you suggest an LLC for each product so that they can only be attacked individually?
What you're pointing out doesn't really discount her point. There can be countless Groupon clones and photo sharing apps that blow hard and still be gems like Twitter and Wordpress.
But there is a reason: to provide a free / open-source version of a useful and successful product. This software commons may lower the value of competing commercial products but it provides value to everyone else (who can use and build on it without cost or permission).
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Looks like this: http://ejohn.org/blog/javascript-micro-templating/
Ah, I'll mention this could be cleared up. It's the top 3 people get the 1/2/3 prizes mentioned. The raffle is run amongst everyone who plays at all. So even if you just tweet or like the thing, or take the minimal amount of time to enter, you are elegible for the raffle. So you don't have to be anywhere near the top 10 to win a javascript ebook.
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Tagore (2003) Telugu Mp3 Songs Download
In my experience, people used to the famous IRC client mIRC do know how to copy&paste in PuTTy in a natural way. Those who didn't waste hours @ IRC back in the late 90's not :-)

Also, I get complaints of my coworkers because I configure SecureCRT to behave like PuTTy, they say it's dangerous :-/
> Use over 250GB? Your internet gets slowed down to molasses until the start of the next month. Customers will notice and adjust.

This is how most sane ISPs deal with it. I really cannot see how disconnecting your customers completely is a better solution - there's certainly no technical reason for it, given that (IIRC) Comcast already have throttling measures for BitTorrent users.
Not sure if this is a right. The fact that ISP limits the data cap is ridiculous but it is only for the good of others. This story I think only applies to say less than 1% of normal population. Ok, 250GB/month is not that high, may be making it 500GB/month is more appropriate.

What ISP could do is still put the cap on and charge extra for every 10GB after that with a small fee. I think most people dont want to pay extra even if it cost several dollars a month. This models the way we pay for gas, power, water too.

But the points are:
- Increase the cap to 500GB for example
- Don't penalize, charge for each extra 10GB
IDA 6.1 Leaked From ESET by a Russian Crew RDW
Thanks to both responders. July 2008 -- I'm only three years behind the times. Catching up. :-)
I like they idea, but I don't see how it reduces the risk. If someone has a valid patent, you're still in trouble.
Yeah, the piece she seems to be missing is that it is sometimes hard to tell what will be a game changer in the long run when it first appears. (If it were easy, this would be a very different kind of industry!)
On the plus side, at least you won't get sued.
Happens to me all of the time - it's pretty annoying. It would be great if HN used pretty URLs (e.g. http://news.ycombinator.com/news/2), or at least URLs that didn't expire.
I know people who, if they were for example taking a long cross-country trip, would split up gas, hotels, meals, etc., down to the penny. I even heard of somebody who hounded one of his friends for $1.72 after the trip was over. This app sounds perfect for them. Still, I can't believe there's much of a market for them, since anybody who's cheap enough to care about $1.72 from a friend would never pay for this sort of app in the first place.
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I investigated Comcast Business Class in my area, and the contract I was offered was totally outrageous. The worst clause was early termination, where they claim 75% of the cost of the service for the rest of the contract (1yr, 2yr or 3yr) even when the service was terminated. I re-evaluated my needs and realized with cheap VPS proxies and smarthosts, I could do just fine with one dynamic IP. My contract is simple month to month. From my research, it seems that Business Class has a soft limit of 750GB, too, though apparently not enforced. If you want to have some fun, take the standard Comcast Business Class contract, find the Comcast URL that they include by reference about terms of service and bandwidth usage policies, find the 800 number referenced on those pages to obtain the actual documents, and enjoy the totally blank response you get from the drone that answers that phone number. If you have ever actually obtained the Business Class policy documents referred to in their contract, I'd love to get a copy. (Yes, I actually read their 14 page terms of service. The few, the proud...)
Sporcle now owns PicPlz
Oakland has had huge budget cuts, directly affecting police. The irony is that (perceived or real) high crime in Oakland is one of the main reasons few businesses move there (here, sadly); Pandora and Oaksterdam are the only new ventures I've really seen. Other than that, it's mostly legacy companies like some big insurers, the Port, etc.

I'm sure if you were actively watching a crime, 911 would be accepted, but trying to move everything else to an online report seems like a reasonable cost cutting step. If it were possible to take the report online and keep 1-2 cops out for an extra hour, it's probably worthwhile. There should be an exception process for "come in to the station and file on paper", and for in-progress crimes, and for more serious/life threatening crimes, but as a step, this isn't that unreasonable.

Of course, if someone broke into my house here, I'd probably be calling my attorney before I called the Oakland PD.
I used to be one of the WaPo Django guys. Jobs was a separate team on entirely different technology stack on different hardware, though probably in the same data center. I know they happened to use Java (and probably still do) but have no more info (nor did I want any - c'mon, Java).
I can't complain about this not working, because it clearly does. And I can't complain about the technology being used to do it, because it looks great.

The types of companies trying these sorts of things nowadays surprises me though. It's like the sweepstakes that were everywhere online in the late 90s. This time, essentially they're cashing in on lots of other people's social capital (with a game or two thrown in) with the negligible cost of a few prizes to the most ardent promoters. Nothing wrong with that if people know what they're going in for, but it seems rather inelegant for the likes of O'Reilly.

Nonetheless, if it works, hats off to everyone and perhaps I'll be forced to give it a go one day! The standards are clearly changing when it comes to encouraging retweets and Facebook likes of your business.. :-)
Exactly my point. YC says that's what they're looking for, but YC startups tend to look more like this little "social calculator" web app then a company that will invent a new operating system, programming language, and personal computing paradigm.
a) whenever i comment on something on the internet I do not want to think about what legal implications it might have for a hypothetical legal dispute tht I might get involved in the future
b) We are assuming that the prosecution will be smart enough to figure out that samyzee on hacker news is in fact me.
c) To Hacker News: Please add a feature that lets me delete my comments!!
All tier 1 ISPs have peering agreements where most pay nothing for traffic transfer. The real costs are the equipment, ISPs use statistical multiplexing to maximize the value of their lines and switches. Data caps only affect this indirectly, it is bandwidth that matters. If an ISPs' equipment can only handle 10Gb/s of bandwidth without degrading that is the real limit, the total amount of data a month is mostly immaterial. Simply put if everyone used up their data cap on the first day of the month the ISP could not handle it even though no one went over their cap.
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Startups often seem like clones (of Groupon or whatever) when you only get the one-sentence explanation of what they do. But there's always a much deeper difference in goals, strategy and tactics when you get to know them. I don't know any Groupon clones. Groupon's operation is complex and subtle, and there are lots of related things that are also promising.
MBA from Stanford: $60k

Bootstrapping your startup: $40k

MBA in a monkey suit trying to recruit developers: PRICELESS!!
Achieving a successful exit is really hard and the vast majority of startups fail to do it. If someone has done it more than once they have demonstrated that they are exceptionally skilled at this game.
What I am saying is that on that you dont want to think about what you will say to the judge even before building your product....if your product was really that successful tht you got patent trolled you will probably have the money to hire a lawyer to represent you.
Link bait
It's already a US law:

http://www.bis.doc.gov/complianceandenforcement/antiboycottc...
So her argument is that we should try to only make successful products?
The focus on mobile, HTML5 support, and cloud deployment all sounds very handy. Does anyone care to predict when the beta will ship?
yeah the audience is going to burst in applause when the prosecution reads out this comment.
I think that grasping at straws imply you're trolling, not disagreeing with someone else, although more than disagreeing with Tom it just seems like you're complaining...

I agree that both articles have different degrees of technical completeness, but really getting snarky because you believe that someone doesn't have the 'stripes' to write an article that ultimately agrees with the former article you're comparing it to seems to me like a waste of time. Specially since both articles basically come to the same conclusion. It gets worse when you pull two quotes from tptacek that ultimately don't change neither what he said in the beginning nor the reason he's responding to your posts.
Most people able to launch and configure Amazon AMIs could configure Nginx too. Yet Amazon offers Elastic Load Balancers. There's a huge market for stuff like this -- just because you can muddle your way through configuring an instance doesn't mean you want to be in charge of configuring and running all the moving parts.
Yes, you are correct. Filing the RCE after filing a notice of appeal with the BPAI is the same thing as withdrawing your appeal and filing the RCE.[1]

More than likely, we can all look forward to a final rejection by the examiner sometime around October, at which point IBM will likely appeal to the BPAI once more.

[1] 37 CFR 1.114(d).
The 1-click was granted in 1999, which I can't remember anyone doing for shopping carts back then.

1999 was still the hay days of the internet and merchants weren’t really making the checkout/buy process easy.

The 1-click is a good example of maybe an obvious method being patented rather than ignoring prior art.
Don't be so sure. Death doesn't always stop them.
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MapReduce with MongoDB and Clojure
yes, it may technically be illegal, but that is why we have trial by jury. unless the story sounded made up, i can't really imagine anyone convicting someone that smashed a window or broke down an apartment door to save someone's life.

but really, who would vote this guy guilty of illegal access to a computer system when he was clearly helping phishing victims? and who would press charges against him in the first place, the hosting company where the phishing site was hosted?
Its interesting, and now that I understand the game it makes sense and is cool.

But it literally took me a few minutes to figure out why male 'C' liked woman 'b' better, and I kept thinking "what am I missing?". Its the order of the bubbles on the side, and as an educational game it would be useful to describe this
The "can't squeeze blood from a stone" defence is probably your best bet if you're a really small operation, but as you say you'd just better hope the patent troll is behaving in a rational manner & not trying to make an example of you. I would assume that a rational troll would only harass you if you were getting noticed & making a profit, but who knows what kind of reasoning goes on within the lizard hind-brain of your standard patent troll types...
Your point does not address what you replied to. Your parent was pointing out that skill at exiting is not necessarily the same as skill at marketplace success, as an exit does not necessarily equate to marketplace success.
Yes. If she's right, she's certainly better than me at picking winners. I thought Airbnb was a bad idea when we funded them.
...and I was feeling reasonably good about reaching #18 efficiently. But don't really have the time to burn to claw my way up another 15 places. I was hoping that the raffle would be weighted by the number of points you have...oh well. Time to just hope I'm lucky.

By the way--thanks for babysitting this thread and responding to everyone.
Alas, I suspect you have not read your contracts with these companies. These are known as contracts of adhesion, as there is no negotiation, no crossing out things you don't like, and no power balance between the contracting parties. I was handed a set of contract documents for Comcast Business Class Internet. On the "Starter" line was an X, and a price of $64.95. I read every line of every document, and nowhere was "Starter" ever defined. There was the clause that reads "data rates are not guaranteed", but I was hoping that the contract itself might hint that there was some specified difference between Starter, Preferred, and Other. With this contract, the day after you sign up, your data rate can go to 1Kbps and you are still locked into an up to three year business contract.
exactly....the current system was not built keeping software innovation in mind!!
The two arguments I still see against pay-for-usage models:

1. ISPs will structure the rates so that everyone ends up paying more.

2. The early adopters and developers that push technology forward are often at the high end of bandwidth usage, and in exchange for bringing new technology to the masses, the masses should be okay with 0.1% of their bill paying for the early adopters' bandwidth.
This makes me think of ridiculous derivative startups like BankSimple. We've had banks for thousands of years. Why do we need another? Everyone knows Bank of America is innovating daily in retail banking, especially in customer service. Plus, think of everything subsistence farmers are doing with Windows Mobile phones!

Oh, wait.
Here's the anecdote: "How much are you spending on marketing?" If the number is too low you won't even pass the retail gatekeepers.

There was a period earlier in the timeline(the late 70s and the start of the 80s) where one might succeed in breaking into retail without a large spend, but between then and the rise of cheap web apps and app stores, the market for independents was in shareware mail-order and downloadables, which have much higher purchase friction, and thus lower conversion rates.
Playing sports has the side benefit of making you fit. While physical activity may indeed be a "repetitive basic need", fulfilling that basic need regularly will still make you a happier, healthier person.
> There does seem to be a worrying shift towards games with ongoing revenue streams like WoW, which inevitably shifts the company's focus to gameplay mechanics that are addictive as much as they are fun.

The problem is that ongoing revenue streams are so much more profitable. As a game I prefer StarCraft to WoW, but Blizzard probably makes more from WoW in a month than they've ever made off StarCraft.
Cool! I use a version of haml-js that's been modified to work well in the browser. (https://github.com/wintondeshong/haml-js). Jammit allowed me to set the template function as Haml and it just worked, by passing the content of the jst files to the Haml() function. Is there an equivalent in sprockets?

UPDATE: As much as I like Haml, I think I'll just switch to eco, since it seems better integrated for now, and... CoffeeScript! Now all I need is haml-coffeescript / eco-haml. Well it turns out this does exist: https://github.com/9elements/haml-coffee. But I don't know how much work I'd need to do to get it working with the sprockets asset pipeline?
Not just Toronto. Out west we get our power from BC Hydro. Covers the whole province.
This article makes a good point. The problem is not that startups are derivative or solving trivial problems. The problem is that the whole startup process has been manufactured and scaled to the point that it has lost its intrigue and stifled its innovation.

Apple, Google, and Microsoft were outsiders when they were startups. Current SV incubator teams are more like elite in-crowd communities, safe and insular.
That would be true if your investing structure were the only variable. I think Aloisius is talking about the YC culture. You have said that the idea doesn't matter nearly as much as the personalities of the founders. The implication is that founders are laborers with special skills who can produce a valuable commodity: start-ups.
Boulderdash. It completely depends on the kind of software system you are building. Do you need formal methods? Do you need complicated mathematical tests? Do you perhaps need to acquire patents or 3rd party software? Extensive domain analysis can take months, even years. Complicated systems can take years to design, implement and deploy.

It all depends on what you are making. So far, the startup world seems to be in a goldrush with devestating results (both for investors, as well as participants). The article is right: why are these developers not making better simulation software? Why are they not creating the next iteration of mission critical control systems? Two words: gold rush.

So, if you talk about 'a software system', you should specify the bounds. Failing to do this, I have no choice but to diagnose you with yet another case of Silicon Valley gold fever.
Grumping on the internet about how stupid everyone is because things aren't done the way you want will not produce measurable results.

I know this is a common thing to say, but speaking one's mind is an effective way of producing results. The more people are aware of and share an opinion, the more likely one of those people will have the necessary motivation and influence to "do something" about it.
I agree that we shouldn't stop building stuff because of this worry. Sadly we know by example that not everyone who gets hit by trolls has money for a defense.
Given the roadmap there, I'd say that the wait won't be terribly long. I have been very impressed with the turnaround times on new versions of MVC so far.

The feature that seems most likely to cause issues with a release would be Recipes because of their connection to NuGet. I'd expect to see a pretty feature complete CTP without that first, with the complete implementation being spread across one or two more.

I have no inside line on this, but I've been working with it since v1 so I follow it pretty closely.
To be clear, the US law is very similar, but not quite the same. It penalizes US individuals or corporations by denying them tax benefits if they engage in a boycott against Israel or Israeli companies.

The Israeli law, on the other hand, removes freedom of speech protections for boycotts against Israel, allowing anyone to sue the person or entity engaging in the boycott.

The Israeli law is worse, but both are outrageous.
I believe the inflection point when video games became mainstream was the release of the original Playstation in 1995. Prior to that point, at least in my experience, video games were strictly a pass-time for nerds. The Playstation was very successful at marketing video games to a wider, if not older audience.

People who were in their early teens when they got their Playstation are just now reaching their thirties. Anyone older than that is likely to have acquired a contempt for video games before they became mainstream, and hasn't seen fit to update their opinions in the intervening decades.
The problem occurs when you have to RTFM to your auto-RTFM machine causing the universe to collapse in some kind of recursive logical singularity.
Anecdote in support of your point:
I was a developer who sinned in the creation of a terrible password storage system on an internal web-app that had about 50 users (why didn't I just use LDAP???). It was at a Fortune 500 financial. I was fresh out of college. The company had a large security organization in-house and very clearly documented software best-practices but I was cowboy coding on an Infrastructure team. I was the stereotypically bad programmer at a large company who makes grievous security errors.
I'm not even very comfortable making this confession but I believe I've learned a lot since then.