skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm quite happy with NeoOffice, personally.
In the real world, if you try to pull yourself up by the bootstraps, you fall flat on your face (try it if you don't believe me).
Maybe you could market it in a way targeted to anti-consumerists ?

You would probably want a directory or search engine which covered the people who had signed up. You could promote it as an "ad-free search engine" to bring traffic to your customers.
the problem with micropayments is that you need to invest a ton of money into making your average person use it casually.
The statistic that 95% of pirated music would not have been purchased, had piracy not been an option should be mentioned more often. The fact that someone violates copyright by pulling down the complete beach boys does not suggest that he would have purchased a $100 box set. The ease of piracy is the impetus. He would have happily gone without the product.
The problem is that the credit fueled series of booms and busts that started in the 1980s might end here...credit and money supply growth hugely outpaced productivity growth since the 80s.

Bingo. This is more than just another downswing in the economy. We've reached our limit for credit and leverage-fueled growth and it will NOT be the same level of growth as experienced the past 20-30 years. The U.S. is in debt up to its eyeballs and the bills are starting to come due.

Just looking at this basic chart here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:US_Federal_Debt(gross).JPG

Shows that since 1980 most of our growth has been on the back of an insane amount of growing debt, which is now to the tune of $32k per PERSON! The bills are coming due, this is a fundamental correction in the economy and it's not going to be a quick little recovery back to growth of the 90s.
How many script kiddies have taken down Yahoo or eBay?!

This is a classic case of someone hustling. He got caught and now he's saying he's just someone who used someone else's tools and is just a nobody who played around... all to lessen the blame for the crime he committed so he gets a lighter sentence.

Don't believe everything you read.
Harsh economy is biting: Loic Le Meur’s Seesmic lets go 7 employees
Darn that global warming ...
I don't suppose this is real-time, with continuously updated results? It seems you run once the SVD algorithm, store results in a spreadsheet, and then greasemonkey pulls the data from this static file.
Numbers don’t add up for U.S. girls
Idea would probably need to be sold to paypal, or even a credit card company, maybe integrated by google, firefox, or IE to gain mainstream use.

Incentives like "tip over $20/month and enjoy an add-free web experience" for a browser add-on.

People are too lazy to add money to an account in order to tip.
"Adapted from "Remix" by Lawrence Lessig, to be published by The Penguin Press on Oct. 16, 2008. <i>Copyright by Lawrence Lessig, 2008. Printed by arrangement with The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.</i>"

Holy crap, irony overload. Publishing this remixed adaptation required Lessig's publisher's permission.
1) Loving what you do will definitely make it a whole lot easier to stick with your project and reach your milestones. However, it says absolutely nothing about how great a business your idea will make. I am sure a bunch of kids loved making a tool to throw sheep at their friends at Facebook... does that make it a good business idea?

2) Same thing, it will help execution but it says bupkis about how well your idea is suited to become a successful business. I am sure we could find at least one person willing to pay for throwing sheep at their friends, does that say anything about greatness of the idea? Try starting with 20+ customers.

3) It's getting boring, I know, but the same thing applies here. Your execution will go one heck of a lot easier if it's dirt cheap, but it says nothing about the quality of your idea.

4) Hardly any great business is build by a single person or started with a great team in place. As ideas mature and evolve, so do the people executing the idea.

"You can’t have a hope at success unless you either know how to run your business or have people who can do it for you."

What happened to "learning as you go". As your business grows, so do you and so do the people around you. Granted, do you need to do your research before getting into a certain industry, but having it all figured out from the get-go is unrealistic and will put a serious brake on execution.

What happened to being cash-flow positive, having good growth, having an active and growing user-base?
They may also find themselves poorer in the future, which is an indication that they need to understand more about the present to successfully invest.
It's kinda funny when laying off 7 employees is news. Does anyone remember the first dot-com bust, when you could check FuckedCompany.com 10 times a day and each time it would announce "Webvan lays off 150. Kosmo lays off 200. Value America lays off 500"?
That headline overreached analogically.
Also... Joan of Arc? Really? I don't remember it working out well for her.

Luke Skywalker did okay, but only because his dad was willing to bail him out.
I think we've seen this before.

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=12823
I think it was Hank Williams (blog: "Why Does Everything Suck") that pointed out that advertisers can not afford to buy ads on sites using this kind of model. The customers that micro-pay out of seeing the ads are exactly the small minority that the advertisers were hoping to hit in their blanket campaign. So the remaining traffic is worthless to advertisers- so better just to run it as a pure subscription site (which also has not worked well).
Authentication Setup with Merb Auth and Merb Stack
Are you sure about that? If you pull yourself up by your shoelaces, you'll certainly fall on your face; but I think if I tried to pull myself up by my bootstraps, I'd probably end up falling backwards.
Denmark JAOO Programming Language Conference: Anders Hejlsberg
See also:
http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Charles/Anders-Hejlsberg-and-Guy-Steele-Concurrency-and-Language-Design/
http://projectfortress.sun.com/Projects/Community
http://research.microsoft.com/fsharp/fsharp.aspx
ILoveSketch: As-natural-as-possible sketching system for creating 3D curve models (+amazing vid)
If I were you, I will never work on ideas that involves transactions of money. It really involves too much security problems. But, I am not discouraging you. Your idea is cool. And, I could see the future of it if everyone is using it. And, I really believe that many people prefer ad-free internet. But, I am not sure that whether people will pay for an ad-free internet or not.
Affordable workflow product
If you are trying to find a good BPM product for your company you might like this one, I did. It`s simple to use and their sales guys are great.
Indiana and Michigan Home Improvements
Offering home improvements in the Michigan and Indiana areas that are great for your home and the environment.
Wait, who owns the Web 2.0 trademark? Who holds a Web 2.0 conference every year?

This is sort of like the pope telling people to stop being Catholic.
This is an age old discussion:

How do I create the incentives I think are needed to get people to put money into the things I think are good, in a way I think is good.

If you're wrong about what good is, you can make a big mess. Very big. Even if you are reasonably confident you know what good is, you still have the impossible task of making sure whatever you suggest is not having any unexpected consequences as tax implications become a more prominent effect of this, that or the other, then normal market effects.

This is the tool we're used to using to deal with these kind of issues. It's a fairly blunt utensil.
I wrote this article over a year ago -- glad to see it's still making the rounds.
nanite is for individual application where you know every part of the system is allowed to talk to one another. Vertebra is for wide area networking and assumes hostility so does a lot more security isolation.

Vertebra is for controlling clusters and clouds at large while nanite is for building scalable backends for individual apps.
History is a poor predictor. I think that, if you really looked at the common reasons for collapse throughout history you would see at the top of the pops, "Invasion by Mongols", and "Invasion by Puritans", and "Invasion by Bantu", and the like. I'm not worried about those, howsoever historically relevant they are. You list corruption and discontent. I'm also not worried about those....

What we really have, on the ground, are a few fundamental facts:

1. China (among others) is subsidizing the American economy on a grand scale.

2. America, China, Japan, and Europe are all facing recessionary demographic events. America and Europe are facing potential respective Brazilianization/Islamification.

3. The massive productive capacity (agricultural combines, robotics, and computers, for instance) compared with earlier economic depressions will mask the worst effects of your typical crisis such as mass refugees, starvation, etc.

There is, sorry for the cliche, a "whole new paradigm" in this instance. Nobody knows what is going to happen, because the facts are all historically unique.

...

ADDENDUM: This is the movie I'm watching right now. See if you can spot all the differences between now and then (great movie if you haven't seen it)

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9022016584178907197

Best line of the movie:

"One"
Its a great idea, but I'm not sure its feasible.

To subscribe, browsers have to go out of their way (interrupt their normal browsing experience) and join in. There's a better user experience by simple installing AdBlockPlus. And if you ARE willing to go out of your way, just use TipJoy or a similar service to donate to the site - PayPal would be better, actually, given the number of people who already have PayPal accounts.

The parallel is with music, I'd think: You're looking to launch a subscription service when most people will just download the content for free or buy what they want to support off of iTunes. Only, your case is even worse: Napster/Rhapsody are doing moderately well with subscription models, and to get the rights to those subscription models, they have deals in place with the 4 major labels. The blogging (even the A-list blogging) community is much less consolidated - you'd have to strike an incredible amount of agreements to make your service universal.

But you're thinking in the right direction.
Regardless, if piracy becomes legal & socially acceptable, it will remove an reason to buy a $100 box set at any point. You may still have your 95% rule, but you'll just have an average person 'owning' 2000% more music then they would have otherwise with 0% of the cost.
I don't think it hurts that much, by seeing what others are doing you can see what does and doesn't work
Full Video MSNBC Keith Olbermann’s Famous Sarah Palin Hypocrisy Rant |
How about leaving the web as it is and not trying to make it do things it shouldn't and doesn't need to?
"If there's gold in them hills..."
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Thats why you build these things before you build your product.
Location-Aware chat system?
The Bell Now Tolls for Social Networks
ASK HN: How to deal with journalists?
Last week I mentioned in a comment on here that I was going to change the world by getting Rick Astley an award from MTV for Best Act Ever.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=323248

Well, in the last week the site has gone viral. I've had over 120k unique visitors (up until yesterday) all supporting a unifying idea (which to me is the most amazing thing about the whole thing, that so many people have come together to collaborate on the project).

So far, Rick has gotten the lions share of the votes (according to an insider at MTV), we (the Internet) managed to get him invited to the event within 5 hours even though he wasn't invited in the first place. It's been truly amazing.

I've also done a couple interviews with the likes of Wired, the LA Times, The Age here in Aus and now Channel 7 here in Australia want me on TV. There are a couple more inteviews in the works right now.

Basically, it's moving at a blistering pace (from concept at 6am to article on Wired in less than a week) and I'm looking for any tips anyone has on how to deal with all the media attention from a hackers pov?

Cheers
Three decisions to make on virtual goods (if you're starting a new company, especially)
I agree, it's a great time to invest, but remember - the market can stay irrational longer then you can stay solvent.

It may take 15-30 years for the market to "recover", can you wait it out long enough without being forced to withdraw money from the market at a bad time?
Panic Resets Oil Prices
Firms Try to Shore Up Incentive Pay
Lightbulbs Could Replace Wi-Fi Hotpsots
Except that his starting point was that there are two kinds of currently established "startup" businesses: profitable but indirectly dependent on capital for growth, and not profitable but growing and dependent on capital for life :) This eco-system discussion does not include extremely young businesses who would not be in a position to be profitable or dependent on credit markets yet (that's addressed elsewhere). Note that he's talking about profitable businesses who may not have intended to be sold, discovering that while their runway still looks infinite, it may appear now to need extra money to repair and maintain that they can not easily find anymore.

For the not-yet-existent company, you still need to become profitable -- and generate an outsized ROI relative to a big company desperate to continue to grow. If you can do that, at any time, you should do ok.
Comparing JSON modules for Python
Hmm, with the Brady Bill and all that, I'm not sure I can get a shotgun in that amount of time. There really should be laws allowing for looser gun control whenever Zombies are a near-term possibility.
That's probably true, but I'm just not feeling a slow impending downturn in investment dollars makes it wrong for people to have fun on vacation.
How do people feel about banning Techcrunch for a week on an experiment basis? Afterwards - Vote. This is what happens when dollar signs get in the way of building something fucking cool or useful.

Complete speculation, but I feel that newer people tend to vote up Techcrunch articles (regardless of topic) because they've heard of it before.
I don't really agree that a "project" is demeaning, if the person creating that project properly recognizes it as such. Some things are businesses, some aren't. I've worked on tons of "projects" in the past which had no real business potential yet were still very fun and rewarding.
I agree, but nobody ever said life would be easy. Baseball bats, golf clubs, these things work in the meantime. I mean, sooner or later your neighbor with a shotgun is going to get his face eaten, at which point you can grab his. Pistols work too (.45 or high caliber recommended) in the short term.
YES

I've had roughly 30 jobs in my life and this is easily the best one. I would do another startup in a heart beat - hopefully I won't have to.
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Whatever you do, just do it slowly and mostly in dividend issuing companies/money market funds/cash generating investments. World diversified dollar cost averaging portfolios are hard to beat.
Yes good point, but its really going beyond what most people should care about. Of course, if it was easy to setup, and the work was not expensive in power/CPU, why not !
Well, the subset that doesn't do looting at sea, aren't.
Almost, right? :)

Theoretically, AdSense for Search revenues. But it really is more of a hobby; you're right. Do you use IM? If you do, take a look - no registration required.
Yeah - it is pretty flakey.

Part of the power is all the macros you can put in, but it becomes so complex that it approaches cranking out HTML...

So the confluence wiki quickly got full of these complex pages that only the author could edit without breaking - sort of went against the point of a wiki.
Don't expect it to last. Don't expect special treatment. But if you can consistently provide a service or genuine analysis then let the world come to you.
I'm not sure that's right.

Amazon Affiliates: get people to buy something they wouldn't have otherwise considered buying. I'm reading a book review and thinking about buying it, perhaps. But if I can be referred and the entire process takes two clicks, I'm much more likely to do it. Why pay? To give reviewers motivation to it; plus, that's the marketplace. You think Barnes & Noble don't have an affiliate program?

Affiliate code for inc: That's a tougher one. I doubt Joel actually gets paid for the viewers he brings to Inc, more likely there for traffic purposes. Paid affiliates to news sites kind of scare me, yeah.

2nd page: yeah, as a reader I LOATH this, especially now that NYTimes.com has removed the 'single page' button. Not really an incentive issue, though, is it? More of a trade-off between making money and pissing off the audience.
On their view of the law, she is liable to a fine of up to $150,000 for sharing 29 seconds of Holden dancing

My biggest problem with these piracy disputes is the amount of damages involved. I realize that the record companies are claiming that they missed out on sales, but imagine this: You run a red light (breaking the law) and hit an executive on the way to a big client meeting. Are you liable for his missing out on a multimillion dollar contract?
I apologize for being nitpicky, but you shouldn't abuse the tuple assignment syntax. I had to expand out msum2 to be able to read it reasonably.
Actually, how about this:

Integrate with AdBlockPlus. If you pay, there are no ads ANYWHERE. Then, collect donations for EVERYONE. As a blogger, I don't need to have signed up to you, the money is being collected just the same.

Then, begin contacting bloggers and letting them know that they have X in an account with you, and they'd probably want to collect it. That would work. That would work and it would be best done by the AdBlockPlus people.

Edit: AdBlockPlus is (from what I gather on their website) OpenSource and currently lacking a business model. You could probably start working from there on, like AdBlockPlus, Good Samaritan Edition or something
Credit Card Scams
An informative and detailed analysis of Credit Card Scams
Do we want to compete with others or ourselves?
Sometimes

Piracy = Marketing
I have to disagree: the world has changed. It is not merely a financial crisis. It is a fundamental economic crisis. The last two weeks brought the crisis to full focus, but we have been building up to it for several years.

Here are a few things that happened in the last 10-20 years that have brought us to this point:

1. Debt became fashionable, even prestigious, world-wide. The most storied names in business became debtaholics. This includes the financial players like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, but industrial-companies-that-became-financial-companies, like GM, Ford, GE and so on. This level of comfort with debt is unprecedented in history, and the historical parallels are dark.

2. The most prestigious nation on earth piled on debt, and other nations copied.

3. US savings rate dropped from 10% in the mid 80s to near zero today, and it even went negative for a period.

History teaches us that such toxic debt episodes are followed by a prolonged hang-over, followed by a social aversion to debt and eventual recovery. The patient has just passed out - the hanger over hasn't even started. It is way too soon to talk about a recovery.

So it is very appropriate to be very concerned and fearful for our collective futures. What can we do as individuals? Swear off debt, live very frugally, lower our expectations.

To paraphrase, just because a lot of people are panicking doesn't mean we shouldn't be really afraid!
I think it may settle at illegal and socially acceptable, much like driving faster than the speed limit - punishable in rare cases. And people will feel about as much shame for having done it.

I'm not arguing that piracy should be legal, but that it should be just about as illegal as speeding.
aka "be opportunistic"
Current Market Capitalization < 10 x Quarterly Revenue/Sales of the Company.

Everything beyond is either irrational or manipulation or bubble.
One piece of code I found particularly useful was the old tftp. It's small enough yet very instructive.
The world *has* changed: Why we should be afraid
This is a sort of rebuttal to optimists, who believe "it will blow over". I believe the world has fundamentally changed. It is not merely a financial crisis. It is a fundamental economic crisis. The last two weeks brought the crisis to full focus, but we have been building up to it for several years.

Here are a few things that happened in the last 10-20 years that have brought us to this point:

1. Debt became fashionable, even prestigious, world-wide. The most storied names in business became debtaholics. This includes the financial players like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, but industrial-companies-that-became-financial-companies, like GM, Ford, GE and so on. This level of comfort with debt is unprecedented in history, and the historical parallels are dark.

2. The most prestigious nation on earth piled on debt, and other nations copied. US Debt/GDP is at 320%, much higher than even the great depression peak. Derivatives further magnify the leverage - as an example, AIG went down because of the magnified leverage not captured on their balance sheet.

3. US savings rate dropped from 10% in the mid 80s to near zero today, and it even went negative for a period.

History teaches us that such toxic debt episodes are followed by a prolonged hang-over, followed by a social aversion to debt and eventual recovery. The patient has just passed out - the hanger over hasn't even started. It is way too soon to talk about a recovery.

So it is very appropriate to be very concerned and fearful for our collective futures. What can we do as individuals? Swear off debt, live very frugally, lower our expectations.

To paraphrase, just because a lot of people are panicking doesn't mean we shouldn't be really afraid!
I think we should stop banning sites as a solution to moderation.

All this TC backlash is getting somewhat ridiculous but at the same time it is what it is. There's plenty of tech news sites out there but they all report on the same news because they all read the same feeds and have access to the same scoops. The only way to differentiate is to editorialize the news. It's much the same as 24 hour cable news.

But choosing to write 746 word blog posts or pounding TC with all these comments or upvoting these things to #1 is the real problem HN has. I really wish people would just let these minor things go.

Stop upvoting LAME stories. Stop upvoting whiney blog posts ABOUT lame stories. A bit of self control is a lot more powerful than censoring websites.
Who owns the West? Federal land as a percentage of total state land area [Image]
It should be noted that simplejson is now included in the standard library. Reference: http://bugs.python.org/issue2750
CarTel personalizes commutes by using WiFi to network cars
radiusim.com was one of the few players.
As a reporter, myself, most of these people are looking for two to three sentences from you, max. Some might print more, but basically, they're looking for sound bites.

The shorter and sweeter you can condense your message, the more you can control it when you recite it.

Also: make sure you get to meet Rick Astley and go to the MTV awards, yourself! It won't last, so get something out of it now!
Too bad the karma leader-board/system doesn't really encourage self-control. Not that I'm in favor of banning anything, but I do think something is clearly not working when this is the top-story on HN.