skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Just Launched, now what?
We're an entirely self funded (just about out of money, about to start looking for contract work) startup from Australia, we're two people who have built PangurPad.com in 4 months (use #beta1 as a promo code if you'd like to look about inside). It's a distraction-free writing program for authors/writers.

We really cant stand ads so our model is subscription and giving away free trials, we think that Authors will respect a paid (therefore troll free?) community of peers.

So, my question is, we've launched, we have some friends using it.. now what? how do we dig up subscribers? We believe our product has an edge over others in this category, it has some great features but people cannot see those until they get in the door and try it out. I've added a tour out front, and am thinking about some sort of interactive tutorial that can be launched from the same place?

Where does a small self funded startup go to find users, without taking on a 'business' partner who wants to take a big % of the company just to offer advice and make connections?

I'm our SA/designer/dba/developer/UI/accountant/kitchen sink, surely I can add marketing to my skillset, I just need some pointers.

Kind Regards,

Pomke
He was responding to posts on the original thread. I asked this same question there.
Good insight. I would just add that the concentration of wealth has a lot to do with fractional reserve banking and the Federal Reserve. Since these are highly regulated institutions, it's not as simple as saying the concentration of wealth created the central planning. The central planning also created the concentration of wealth.
This is definitionally backwards. It assumes that it can be known ahead of time who the "best" are.

"Picking better technocrats" is impossible a priori. We don't know who the best are until they have been selected by the market. It's like determining ahead of time what the best species are.

"Best" is not defined, it is discovered. Until then, we don't even know the meaning of the term.
Why is it so hard for people recording screencasts to have the window fill the entire viewing area? Was it necessary to see so much of the guys background?
Yeah I was mainly responding to the parent which suggested that these techniques are going to be relevant for UI designers.
"Unfortunately things are a little more complicated than that."

When it said that, I thought it was because of http://coinnovative.com/the-mechanical-turk-experiment-how-i...
The poster is complaining about the lack of specificity in jobs adverts while broadcasting his availability for work. Since non-YC companies cannot post their own advertisements, it is either this or waiting for the monthly "Who is Hiring" thread, which most people miss.

I wouldn't upvote the post in normal circumstances, but it isn't off-topic and downvoting it only makes it unreadable.
Ask HN: How hard should I try so that one day I can work in Silicon Valley?
I want to work in the Valley and that is my goal since day one at University. However a few years after finishing my CS degree, I'm still not there yet. My question for HN: what does it take to
We could define it, if you define what you want your outcomes to be. For example, if we want to scientifically manage steel production in a way that maximizes steel output per given cost, then we need highly skilled statisticians and logistics supply-chain people in charge. Presumably it's possible to develop objective tests for someone's skill at statistics or supply-chain management (that's why we have technical education, right?), and then put those skilled people in charge, rather than someone like Brezhnev. Or, if you want to develop electric cars, then put the country's top engineers on the project, rather than someone who happens to be the brother of the oblast governor's wife.

(I'm not sure I actually believe that. But I'm not sure I believe the market answer either, since on the scale of large companies, there are so many factors involved, that luck and timing more than skill tend to be huge ones determining who ends up in top management positions of successful companies.)
Update HN: Amazon has thankfully removed my free ebook
Just an update from yesterday (though, I guess for a lot of you it's the same day) regarding this post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2876637

Amazon has de-listed the book. Shortly after the post appeared on HN, someone from Amazon contacted me and told me it was being taken care of. A couple hours ago I got an email from the copyright group responding to my original notice saying the item was being removed and it might take 2-3 days. But it seems to have taken a lot less time as it's now gone

I've asked Amazon if it's possible to make the process more visible and suggested any content with common licenses (searching for a link to creativecommons.org for example) would be wonderful.

I'm obviously very thankful, but I do wonder what the outcome would have been without the visibility HN brought to my litte issue.
You have read so much on HN about how hard it is for a non-developer to hire a great developer, and how hard it is for an office culture to survive the loss of a great leader. Why do you think any other field is different? How could Stalin dependably hire the world's greatest ag planner if he is not a great ag planner himself, and even if a great planner was chosen, how could he reliably ensure his office remained great after his tenure there?

That's not the only problem, but it's the main practical problem, and a serious one.

Edit: and that's even assuming a qualified person exists to fulfill some of these dreams -- definitely questionable.
FWIW, you can disable Steam Guard for your account in the preferences.
I was trying to be clear! The book is ballpark 1000 pages, and early parts of the book claim that it is trying to be unusually comprehensive. So, 'introduction' in the title conflicts with the breadth but is appropriate for the depth.

Maybe if I wrote twice as much as I did, then people would just find other objections, e.g., with length!
The slower rate of TFP growth occurred before the concentration of wealth, not after. So it's hard to argue that it is related at all to the phenomenon under discussion.
I actually don't mind 16:9 on laptops so much because I tend to do a decent amount of movie watching on them -- that and the shape of the screen has little to do with how effectively I can use the interface.
If the BART police go around calling themselves "police", carrying side-arms and shooting people, they better be under the state. Plus, they have a ".gov" domain name.

Despite the Republicans wet dreams, we aren't at the stage (yet) where private companies shoot people who don't obey orders or resist.
Fake Watches
Anyone who links against (or depends on software that links against) libpython*.so cares.

Here are two examples of products that ship python. You can't just "swap out the interpreter".

http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/nuke/
http://usa.autodesk.com/maya/
Umm, this "central planning" theory always comes after a great economic boom period. It's just a collection of wealth at the top that will take a lot of political might to break up and distribute more evenly. I think we all hoped Obama was going to be the president to do it and unfortunately we will just have to wait for the next guy.
There is already too little competition in carriers (and telecoms in general). Even completely ignoring the document, I can't imagine who thought public good would have been served by allowing such a merger.
Simply put, the primary purpose of bart is to run a train service and maximize availability of that service. Cell service is a non essential (and until a few years ago, nonexistant) enhancement of that service.

The theory here is that if they allowed cell service to continue then protesters would have disrupted train service. So then the more pressing issue becomes getting people to the airport, not cellphone availability.

So yes, you missed your important call, but that's better than others missing their important flight.
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/04/first-ten-.h...
Yeah, you shouldn't. But it happens.

For what it's worth, I don't think I'd be as shy this time 'round.
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I prefer "trained monkeys".
I don't disagree, but monopolies are generally unstable. HP and Microsoft are hardly dictating terms anymore. Their ability to erect barriers to entry is weak, unless they are getting help from the gov't. See telecoms & utilities.

Antitrust is often ineffective in practice. Sounds great in theory, but it is also a form of central planning. The best the gov't can do, in my opinion, is reduce the barriers to entry that it itself erects. Highly regulated environments, for example, usually protect incumbents.
Move there, apply for jobs?
Offer HN: Legal advice over Skype for startups in California
I am a practicing startup attorney in San Francisco, offering relatively brief consultations (~20 minutes) for startup-related matters over Skype. For example, employment contracts, corporate entity formation, IP matters, and so on. I have advised many startups, and am doing this to help out and build some relationships.

This is intended as a service for pre-revenue, pre-funding startups.

If interested, please email hnlegaladvice@gmail.com. Look forward to hearing from you!
In theory, that is indeed an issue with natural monopolies.

In practice, however, the only areas I can think of where actual monopolies exist are areas with government granted monopolies, e.g. telco/cable or patent trolls. I'm sure there are a few natural ones, however.

But you did catch me - I'm not a laissez-faire capitalism purist. I just think it's a pretty good first approximation.
Comprehensive for an introduction. It's supposed to be a student's first exposure to the material.

If you were more succinct, people would probably object to your writing less. Your verbosity clouds your meaning.
Pressure, or perhaps just UPS/battery installations...
I agree when it comes to the headline enforcement actions (breakups, etc.), which are done in a pretty haphazard way with questionable effectiveness. But I think the existence of the body of law does discourage the most egregious types of monopoly-protection activities. For example, few companies will do things that look too much like outright dumping, stuff like giving your product away for free for 12 months in order to crush your new startup competitor who's secured 12 months of funding.
As the man in orthopaedic shoes said ... I stand corrected
Routine DNA Collection by Police Spurs Backlash
There is some research in thorium reactors, but they work in a very different way.

The thorium reactors are fission reactors. The process is a little more complex, but eventually the atom split and gives a lot of energy. It doesn't need any heat to produce the nuclear reactions. (Some projects uses molten thorium salts, but it is for mechanical reasons, not for nuclear reasons.)

There is also research in fusion reactors, for example with deuterium or tritium. It is a very different process. They need a lot of heat to make the atoms collide and produce the nuclear reactions. (Some models use laser to heat and contain the atoms.)

The two types of reactors are very different, and the fuels can't be interchanged. So it's very strange that they use lasers to heat the thorium.
The biggest pain for me was the uploading process. Once they're on a website (like flickr) viewing and selecting good ones is easy and relatively quick.

If you can become a target for an EyeFi uploads (I think they have 20-30 built in so that doesn't seem like a stretch for them to add one more), I think that'd be a good consumer story and would decouple the uploading (the real pain) from the culling.
C++ 11 Approved
That's exactly how we use gerrit. The most recent change in our gerrit install is on its sixth revision:

http://review.couchbase.org/8560

I pulled this one arbitrarily, it just happened to be the top. It's got a dependency and they change together. It works flawlessly and almost entirely transparently as long as you have a Change-Id (for which there's a simple hook to generate).
As you say, this doesn't excuse any of the participants. I find it disappointing, however, that this experiment failed to account for a very probable outcome.

Please don't get me wrong. I love the spirit in which this experiment was conceived. At the same time, it's a shame that such an obvious miscalculation scuttled the whole thing so soon. It isn't easy to keep a good thing going.
I have no idea - but as a guess: work as hard as you can? (ie, without killing yourself or making you hate your life)
Thank you that is fantastic advice, especially given we don't have any budget for a big marketing push. Do you think that basic advertising (google adwords etc) is worth doing at all? Or should startups stick with only this kind of personal, one-on-one sales pitch to customers they know will go and evangelise their products?
On Becoming a Resilient Individual
I actually liked some things in the "YC S11 Company Seeks Rails Architect" post. Not the hyperbole and fluff, but the details on growth, trajectory, culture, current team, etc. I'd be more specific, but since the post was deleted, I can't reference it.

The "Summer 2011 YC company seeks CoffeeScript drinking frontend engineer" post seems very generic to me. It's nice that they mention the industry they're working in, but otherwise, I didn't pick up on much differentiation in the job description from other companies looking to fill a similar role (and the post nearly admits that itself, at the end).
Deregulation is not the problem. The financial industry is highly, highly regulated. The Federal Reserve, a corrupt union of government and big banks, controls the money supply, which is always used to bail out big banks. To suggest that "deregulation" is the problem is to ignore the corrupt regulations at the very heart of the financial system--and indeed the entire free market in the US, and even the world--in the form of Federal Reserve Notes.
You might consider a "micro-continuity" style website. The user pays like a membership site, but it is a fixed number of payments, and they get new content fed out in increments as they pay. So if you can split your content into 6 modules for instance, you could see it for 6 equal payments over 6 weeks, or something along those lines.

Pro -> Less up front commitment than a membership site (assuming recurring billing as long as you are a member), gives you reason to contact users over and over again for the duration of the mini-course, potentially creating opportunities for subtle upsells.

Con -> Cap on earnings, potential for users to cancel before the course completes to try to get whatever guarantee is offered, users have to follow the pace you set, also a little harder technically to setup.

Your call, just wanted to give you another option. As to the choices listed, ebook prices seem to be watered down. If you are very good at writing sales copy, an ebook may still be worth doing, but IMO, if priced right a membership site should give you a better return.
Well, I think that the most objective test is a market. Efficiency only matters if we know what the goal is, and we don't. Why are electric cars the correct outcome, a priori? Our choice of electric cars as a goal is instinctual.

This is why we have ethanol subsidies. We "knew" the right outcome and tried to make it so.
Thank goodness. This was always a terrible idea and I'm obviously glad this document has come to light. Let's not forget the Bell System divestiture.
BART Disables Cell Service To Disrupt Protests
Oops, forgot the other main pro -> no need to update content unless you are updating to keep it current as users don't expect anything more than the content you sell, where-as with a membership site users generally expect continual updates.
Offer HN: Free Tax Help from a CPA
I'm offering free monthly office hours for anyone that needs tax advice. Also, I'll be around nwc (new work city) coworking space if you want to meet me in person.

You can ask me anything accounting, partnership, corporate or individual related.
I have been using this for a while and am waiting for full Amazon S3 support, versioning and backup/upload any file (not just in AeroFS folder). I liked how I was able to talk to the creator the day I installed it. He seemed very optimistic. I see a lot of potential in this but as of right now dropbox has it beat. I am looking forward to more updated (soon!)
Every industry in the US is highly regulated. The worsening economy has correlated with more regulations and bigger government. I don't think this is a coincidence. It is the decrease in capitalism due to an expansion of government that is creating our present problems. Capitalism is not the problem. Government is.
Cool idea. Its similar to a site http://RideHack.com that launched recently
That example doesn't bother me too much, though there are plenty of smart folks who would disagree. I don't like IE's dominance, which dates back to exactly what you describe (vs Netscape).

But the outcome is that the Internet became a mass phenomenon. I don't think it would obviously have been so if Netscape and MS charged for browsers. Heck, companies used to charge for TCP/IP stacks. Dumping looks pro-consumer in this context.
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hahaha okay props for an awesome idea (:
The spaces that lead from this user base are pretty crowded though, personal photo sharing/storing wise.

I guess they could go further down the print path and look at high quality mail outs like wedding invites. I'm not expert in the area but I haven't seen anyone really using a fully online service to do those kind of invites.
Spoilers: his password got hacked.
How have you been promoting the site? Looks great!
> So in effect the main problem with the Soviet system was that the wrong managers were in charge?

Just one of the problems. The other problem is that managers did not have knowledge that is available in a free market, because of what they were expected to make decisions about. If you fix the price of something then it's harder to know its real market value.
I believe just the underground repeaters - probably just in San Francisco proper. I had one bar on the east end of the embarcadero station (Verizon), probably from outside, but I couldn't successfully send a text or call. After getting on the train, I figured out they'd shut down the cell service on the platforms/tunnel (no signal until I got above ground at 24th). This was around 4:30pm.

I'm guessing the AT&T customers just figured it was service as usual in SF. :)
Anybody with a room for rent in SF?
Looking for a place to live here in SF as I will be here for a year as an exchange student. Ideally the place would be furnished as I don't really want to have to buy stuff and sell it again when I leave.

I've been searching around for the last couple of days and haven't been having any luck. The rental market in SF is disheartening to say the least.
Actually, the noun one can be a verb, roughly meaning "cause" or "produce". Thus the XKCD grammar-nazi trap "Did this effect (cause) the situation?"

Unfortunately, I can never remember which one is usually a noun. I just think "affect starts with an 'a', which is a noun, but I'm always wrong so it must be a verb".
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Ways to Make Checkboxes, Radio Buttons Easier to Click
> they'll just find a new revenue stream

I find it interesting to model gang violence as a market. If drugs are made legal, the demand for thugs will go down. If the supply of thuggery is elastic, then former gang members will leave gangs and find other work. If it's inelastic, they'll find other revenue streams.
Which doesn't require NaCl. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=644389
Hi, yes these were just published on the MSDN site. There's some material from the book, and some new content. For additional background, here's the author's post:

http://tomasp.net/blog/real-world-book-msdn.aspx
Great feedback, definitely constructive; thanks for taking the time.

I suppose I'm not 100% decided on which market I'm trying to serve:

1. Site owners interested in users going to the wrong URL.

2. Domain speculators wanting to get data on how many people are typing in a given URL.

3. The common man, wanting some stats on traffic to different domains, whether its for curiosity, reporting, or some academic reason.

I imagine #2 has the most potential for paying customers, #1 the most under-served market, and #3 the largest potential market but probably a low potential for profit.
Infiltrate those communities where people write their own fan fiction thingies about Harry Potter and everything else.
Then again, if Countrywide and Lehman and many others are allowed to make many million fraudulent mortgages, which end up blowing up trillions of dollars of wealth, it really hurts a lot of people. Unregulated markets, and the uses fraudsters can put them to, can really screw over an economy.
I'd hustle and follow Seth Godin's formula first. It will tighten your pitch and increase your understanding on how people use your product. With this information, your Adwords campaigns will be so much more effective.
Samsung, I am done with the Galaxy Tab 10.1
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was asking because the parent wrote "Also AFAIK the four generations of iPhones can all run the same software, which in a way makes it equivalent to a single console lifecycle, since consoles are never forwards compatible." I didnt believe that statement :)
I don't know that the technical details factor into this -- BART admitted that their intent was to prevent speech and to interfere with communications, therefore it's possible they ran afoul of the First Amendment and/or the FCC. I don't know that we'll find the answer unless someone takes it to trial.
Experimentation isn't sufficient justification. The boundaries of Jonathan's experiment were already set, and this doesn't honor those boundaries.
Additional related articles where a lot of this was sourced (3 of them sourced from each other):

---------

Unredacted AT&T Filing Shows $3.8B Price Tag

By Maisie Ramsay
Thursday, August 11, 2011

http://www.wirelessweek.com/news/2011/08/unredacted-ATT-fili...

---------

AT&T Letter Damages Case For T-Mobile Acquisition

Rue Liu, Aug 12th 2011

http://www.slashgear.com/att-letter-damages-case-for-t-mobil...

---------

AT&T’s “Ooops” Damages Their Biggest Argument In Favor Of T-Mobile Takeover

By David, Managing Editor August 12, 2011 4:10 pm EST

http://www.tmonews.com/2011/08/atts-ooops-damages-their-bigg...
Ah, yes, silly title. I meant to add "toolbar" at the end of that title, which makes it make a lot more sense. Will fix that shortly on the blog.

As for the viewing area, There is one point where the menu goes off to the left side, so I couldn't crop it further (I wanted to keep the window in the center of the video, as well).

Anyway, let us know what you all think of the API we are proposing! We really want to see this take off.

(I'm the author of the blog post/video btw, in case that wasnt clear!)
On rvm's *cd* script
My next step is to extend Remembary to be a Universal iPhone/iPad app, and to build a cheaper 'impulse buy' iPhone version with only a few of the key features. I'll definitely be writing a follow-up with the details of how that goes.

I just need to find some time to actually build these versions!