skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I have no problem with the post itself; it's in your blog and it's totally relevant to your company. I just don't think it added much value in this forum without giving it context.

If the subject was "How to use real-world data to sell your startup's products", the context would be totally appropriate because readers would have a differnet mindset going in. Spin, baby, spin ;-)
Assuming that ignoring another is a morally bankrupt action. I would argue that that is far too extreme.
Raising money is a time-consuming process and it took me longer than I expected, but that seems to be the norm for first-timers. IIRC our agreement was 7 or 8 pages.
Owning real estate is more like taking on a part time job than a passive investment.
afaik, in the case of bankaholic, it wasn't about primarily about obtaining the readership or revenue model, it was more about obtaining the quality content.

i could be wrong, though.
All except the look-and-feel bit. Mac users want apps to have the Mac look-and-feel, though perhaps Windows and Linux users aren't as adamant about it, so maybe a Mac-ish look-and-feel can be the common denominator. Also many users wouldn't want to install the AIR runtime.
Git works on OS X and Windows, but it isn't quite as fast (many of its speed optimizations are coupled with aspects of the Linux filesystem), and its maintainers are placing low priority on portability. I never said it didn't work, just that it isn't especially important to them. That raises a lot of red flags for me.

I work on amd64/i386/sparc OpenBSD at home and Windows at work, and I think version control systems are one of the tools that should be especially platform-independent: How will you port your project to another platform if you can't even track patches for it there?

I'm not saying that it doesn't work, just noting that so you can make an informed decision based on your priorities. I hear a lot of buzz about Git, but hardly anybody mentions this, and changing VC systems with thousands of commits can be extremely painful.

Where Git is written in a mix of C and sh scripts* , Mercurial is written in Python (except for a few parts written in C for speed, such as its diff algorithm), and its design seems far less coupled with any particular platform (and much cleaner overall, IMHO). I spent an afternoon importing a very large project (40,000+ commits, 10+ branches) currently using perforce into monotone, git, and mercurial repositories, and compared them. (This was on Windows.) The git interface seemed in many ways too rough around the edges to me, and while it was very nearly as fast as mercurial (and a bit faster than mtn, even with cached inodes), the database also needed to be re-compacted. Mercurial was much, much more straightforward to use than either mtn or git.

* $ grep "#!/bin/sh" /usr/local/bin/git* | wc -l ===> 23
I'm thinking right now of a comment made by one of the Wright brothers on the train home after a failed flight attempt: "Man will not fly for a thousand years."

And yet... they kept trying.

It's not always the right idiom for ordinary problems - but for impossible ones, sure.
They're both morons in a sea of moronity, although I find it hard to believe that someone would sue techcrunch for press exposure. That is exceptionally dumb.
Edinburgh,Scotland
He was able to generate highly-valued sales leads from his audience.
Ugly Betty 3.03 Crimes of Fashion
When a horrible accident occurs, everyone at Mode becomes a suspect. “Crimes of Fashion”, the new episode of “Ugly Betty” will witness the search of the guilty one that causes pregnant Christina to fall down the stairs.
CSI NY Promo for S5E03 Turbulence
Click here for more information
World's first double arm transplant patient delighted (video + article)
Google is trans-national with development done worldwide

Boeing is trans-national with production worldwide

Ford is trans-national with production worldwide

Microsoft is trans-national with development worldwide

Apple is predominantly US based but trans-national

Nike manufactures in China or anywhere sufficiently cheap

Levi is the same

McDonalds gets its meat from Brazil and is trans-national

Coca-Cola is trans-national - in WWII Coca-Cola in germany was scarce, so the local franchisee developed Fanta as an alternative which made its way back after the war.
Props for regex.
Fair Use rights: Money matters more than law
Mercurial also has cheap local branching, though to my understanding it is easier to close out branches that have been merged back in / abandoned on git. The mercurial developers are working on this, though.
Under what OS, hardware platform, filesystem, project size, etc.?

Not knee-jerk arguing, genuinely curious. When I compared them on Windows and OpenBSD, I never had a speed difference of more than about 5% (not counting git db repacking), even with a project that had 40,000+ commits, 10+ very active branches, and about 2 GB of code + data.
is there a way of sorting Wii games by price (ascendenting) ?
"A lot" meaning all of them, because that's the norm.
Very true. You probably need some legislation to get around that. For example, taxing emissions is a step towards it, but only if that money actually is spent covering the cleanup costs of the environmental damage done by the company. Other externalities should also be charged for, of course.

Besides unhiding the hidden costs, I'm not sure that more government intervention would be a good thing, but I know for a fact that I'm not qualified enough to suggest solutions.
I agree that Rails developers will probably still have plenty of work in the downturn. But, then again, Django & PHP developers may also.

However, I'm not sure I buy the argument that the work will come from corporate IT projects.

FTA: "First of all, while we fully expect some CIOs to delay or cancel some internal IT projects."

I agree–you'll see a lot of canceled and delayed projects. But, I think it takes quite a bit more to convince a corporate CIO to outsource the development AND hosting of an internal project.

Maybe I've been out of the corporate world for too long (it's been 8 years), but in my experience, a CIO would rather put a project on hold than a) get up to speed on Rails, b) put a project out to bid, and/or c) worry about the perceived risks of having corporate data on external servers (especially in the case of financial, healthcare, or edu entities).
I've written a shareware app with a good GUI. I am not interested in working on it or any desktop app. Xobni is the only YC company I've heard of where the primary product or solution is a desktop app, so I think YCombinator also prefers web based apps.

By the way, I've always wondered--is there a feature in your product that monitors how often you mention RescueTime on news.YC and elsewhere? If there's not, or if it's not automated, you should add it. That way at the end of the day, you could see how often you've namedropped your product (as a measure of success). I'm only half-kidding. :)
I'll try throw something in the mix, there is a matter of fashion. Back in the 90's C++ win32/MFC development was the highly regraded, I guess I should note that VB6.0 was very in demand as well, The technology and the market trends have changes so also the developers.

I for one don't like to write web applications (mainly because the technology fragmentation), and I prefer to use client application whenever I can.

Having say that I can't see myself writing Win32 API as a day job in the near future, for all the reasons mentioned above.
Sweet! This is exactly what I needed for a little project I'm working on right now.
I think he meant the Micral (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micral) although I'd accept the Altair 8800 (which predated the Apple II by two years) as the first Personal Computer to run an operating system that was familiar enough to users for mainstream PC use (by which I mean IMDOS, a stripped down CP/M implementation).
Sure.

It's just another marketing/sales numbers-based decision. If I had an app that targeted MS Office apps, for instance, I wouldn't have a bit of a problem writing it on the client.

I'd take it a step further. If I had an app that took a minute to load the first time over the web, I'd seriously consider just targeting the client and getting more bang for the buck.

The reason some folks stay on the web is that people don't want to wait to use anything. If you can show them a working app they can play with in under 5 seconds, your click-through and sales go up. You can't do that with client apps.

Nothing special about web or client, it's all just a numbers decision (or at least, it should be)
We were using svn for a while, but micromanaging the individual files turned out to be too tedious for me to introduce to our group.

git add .

git commit -a

yes, it's two commands but in return git will automatically find new files, internally delete files you have deleted, and even automatically find renamed files (under most conditions).

I don't have a great argument about why we chose git over mercurial, it seemed like the right choice. But I can tell you that git is a lot better than svn for our purposes.

I find it somewhat funny about the complaints of git being difficult to use. Personally, our team found svn difficult to use due to having to micromanage moves adds and deletes.

edit: also, not having a bunch of .svn directories peppered all over your directory structure is nice, just one .git directory at the top. You can move directories in and out from other locations without worrying about anything.
Except Linux doesn't need you to buy new hardware.

Although I concede that if the user in question is not technical then Vista is probably the way to go ;)
Are The New Woot Ads Funny Or Just Offensive?
If You Don't Have Passion - Get Out Da' Kitchen
Real time? I might ditch Google Analytics and Statcounter (using both, mainly because statcounter is near real time, you just have to know when you're linked by Slashdot or Digg!)
for Yahoo if it works great. Will give it a try for sure!
I have been biking everywhere with an old school speed bike for the past two years - faster than cars downtown, save $$, environment and feel great man. Cars are for suckers.
Top 5 Ways To Make Fundraising Documents Operational
That's a deep throating if I've ever seen one.

I posted this before, but I'll do it again:

Weird, I use my iPhone for everything but a phone, because, frankly, it sucks as a phone. Which is good, because I let it disrupt me less and am less likely to disrupt other people because I don't want to wait for it to unfreeze and then another 30 seconds it takes me to scroll through my contacts list and then thumb the fucking thing and then click on call.

And, shit, I don't even use it for email because it sucks for that too. I can't search. I have 5 email accounts for various things and I have to click 15 times to check them all, instead of a single view like the blackberry. Oh and I can't search. I mentioned that. Did I mention that? Yeah, I can't search. And when I click on a message I have to wait for the fucking webkit view to load before I can read it. I can't copy and paste addresses, I can't forward emails as sms's, I can't save attachments. SO awesome.

So yeah I use it for everything but email and the phone. And maybe SMS messaging too I do a lot less of because it's another slow cumbersome process that zaps the joy out of semi-realtime conversation. I love it when it craps out, and how it can't send in the background and those wonderfully stupid chat bubbles. I am not 12 years old.

So I don't really use it for anything other than browsing the web, tracking poker stats and playing Wurdle. I love Wurdle. I can play it until my thumbs cramp. I hope those guys make millions.

So yeah the iphone is the greatest piece of something alright.
Writing clients is fun; writing cross-platform clients even moreso. Each platform has its own design philosophy, and I find it engaging learning each platform's intricacies, and coming to understand the psychology behind each platform's demographic.

I believe the greatest measure of an application is the user's productivity, and I believe most of that productivity is inherent in the design of the user interface. The users of each platform have different expectations of their user interface, however, so I believe it's my duty when developing cross-platform applications to be mindful of these expectations.

The work may seem unglamorous to most programmers, but if you can't get the human half of the interface right, any gains on the computer half of the interface are moot. That being said, I think most YC hackers do have an appreciation for this logic, it's just that client software is overkill for their requirements.
Short and informative overview of different threading models
But does that mean they're sorted. People still use owned materials for their own little videos. People still upload snippets from tv shows (especially interviews). The content producers may be involved. But they are certainly not in control.
I always knew github wasn't as good as its cracked up to be.

I never understood why you need a single site for distributed code.
[video] An Introduction to REST
Peering Inside a Mobile Phone Network
Better, use Sphinx with MySQL (easy to set-up!)

http://www.sphinxsearch.com/

If you are using Rails, check out ThinkingSphinx:

http://ts.freelancing-gods.com/
Google unveils AdSense for Games: Example Ad Placement in Word Challenge by Playfish (vid)
Overture made a big step (ppc). Adwords made another step. It's very possible they wouldn't be where they are without Overture. But Overture didn't take the process the whole way either.

Dynamic bidding based on click through rate. All sorts of little innovations to improve relevance. Training advertisers to focus on ROI (which conveniently is closely related to relevance). Introduction of specialist tools used by the most sophisticated advertisers on Overture & making them available to everyone (Conversion tracking, Analytics).

adwords is still innovating a bit at a time. It's slowed a bit though.
MyAnalytics puts Google Analytics on your iphone
I disagree. The concepts may have been new or not. But Adwords (search) works. 50%+ of businesses can find a good use for it. It is useful to advertisers.

Adsense is still broken. But it is neither a good way for publishers to make money or a good way for advertisers to advertise. It still works because of scale. But it's not working yet.
great list. Well worth the read.
I envy Denmark: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/opinion/10friedman1.html

It's tough to ride a bicycle to work with so many cars; It's dangerous when the sidewalks are small and crumbling, and there are no bike lanes. The problem is every dollar you spend on infrastructure supporting cars means more people will use cars. Start diverting money to public transit and biking!
Merb Sprint has Begun
Show your support by reporting or killing some bugs:

http://merb.lighthouseapp.com
Google to Offer RSS Feeds for Web Search Results
is it just my connection or is the site down?
Digg’s Recent Bans and the Limits of Crowdsourcing
Venture Investment Likely to Fall Short in 2008
"The best long term strategy"

Ignoring the fact that you made a baldfaced assertion with no factual backup or even logical argument. Why worry about long term if in short term it's possible to make a killing and retire rich by corroding morals?

And regarding ideal as in "ideal free market" ideal is euphemism for fantasy.
They don't even look vaguely similar.
Economy Stalling Your Small Business? Shift Gears.
"educating your customers" may be possible within certain domains. But is it possible in a free market structure which must include all people?

Does the definition of "transparency" also imply that all mechanisms which emerge in a free market must be "understandable" by all participants? That is, even if you fully disclose financials, but the transactions and risks are so complex the average "customer" can't or does not have time to make sense of it, is it "transparent".
Since they make a repo mirror every time they pull, why don't they have a backup? Do their developers never communicate with each other? (Why are they using github as their build repo?!)

> Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that git makes hosting your own public repository absurdly complicated (http://weblog.masukomi.org/2008/03/11/sharing-a-public-git-r...) compared to other tools (http://weblog.masukomi.org/2008/03/11/sharing-a-public-darcs...).

With mercurial, you can just run "hg serve" or "hg -p [port] serve", FWIW. (That's for a read-only repo, though. There's a bit more setup involved before people can push to an http repo.)

With monotone ("mtn serve", done. Auth is taken care of at the repository level) and darcs it looks even easier.
Big props to Lyricfind here. Lyricfind actually subletted their office space here on Yonge Street in Toronto. 5 promising tech companies now share some pretty sweet office space in Toronto's mini tech section (Yonge/Eglinton).
Well, people have stopped spending: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/14/business/14spend.html

The irony of your statement, for me, is that just yesterday my local newspaper ran a front-page feature on some local businesses worried about Christmas spending: http://www.theunion.com/article/20081007/NEWS/810079993&...

Even McCain has reversed his stance on the economy (according to his website).
He knows drama like this makes for a good story. I love MA drama.
"For instance, burning fossil fuels for energy obviously is only sustainable on a decades-to-centuries timescale, but that doesn't mean we need to stop; the question is whether it will keep us going for long enough to develop good alternatives."

That only applies from the peak oil perspective. From a global warming perspective, fossil fuels might have been unsustainable yesterday.
Arrington is probably paying them to sue TC.
If you find your self with directories like "v1" "oldv1" "updateD!!!" you need version control :). Subversion has GUI clients integrated into file explorers so you don't even notice the overhead.

I wrote more about it here, if you'd like convincing:

http://betterexplained.com/articles/a-visual-guide-to-versio...
And you have to wait like 20 seconds until you see the results...
With all the data last.fm has to play with, I never would have thought to introduce lyrics, yet it seems like such an obvious move.

This is an example of staying true to your roots. Keep your features basic and simple. You don't need to spend time developing an automated social graph combobulator engine to add value to your app.
Google Confirms RSS For Web Search Results
Facebook Continues to Sail Its Own Little Web
Change.org moves from social media to blogging in order to raise cause awareness
PDF version of iPhone developer's cookbook available
Try searching for, "Detroit urban decay", "Detroit empty lots", or "Detroit vacant".

I'm sure Detroit's residents will be happy to know that Wikipedia gave them a sound bill of health.

If you'd like to buy some property in Detroit and tell 'em yourself, you can get it reeeeeeeaaaally cheap: http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/022350.html
Not only that, but if you only invest in CDs, your real rate of return (interest - inflation) isn't going to be impressive and may actually be negative since the government tends to soft peddle the actual inflation numbers.
Antisocial: 3D in Canvas with Sound
Scouting the Blogs of Internet Icons
There are a lot of old bikes collecting dust in peoples' garages. Cycling for transportation really doesn't require a new bike, just one that works and is the right size.
Do you want to ban all collections of related information, or just articles that tell you how many items there are in the title?

This is silly, not only essays are useful.
Opera’s New Version Adds Conveniences «
I/O in Google Chrome
Anecdotal point: I've tried really hard not to jump on the Vista-hating bandwagon, but last night I needed to copy a couple of gigs of data to a flash drive, roll that computer's OS back from Vista to XP, and copy the data back.

Copy time under Vista: approximately 35 minutes.

Copy time under XP: 90 seconds.

Nothing special on the system before or after that should have affected the copy. It was a fairly new Vista install.
This is some really slick hacking.
JQuery Bookmarklet
Size, weight and expense of replacement. It's a great computer, don't get me wrong, but netbooks are a whole other level of portability.

Low replacement cost is a really good feature for a mobile and helps me appreciate the small size and weight more. For example, if I go somewhere with my MBP it stays with me at all times. That's a huge pain in the ass sometimes, the last time I was in Vegas I had the MBP on my shoulder for 4 days straight. But if I go somewhere with my Aspire One I don't feel bad about leaving it in the glove box or whatever.

I wouldn't make a netbook my main computer until they get a bit more power (especially VRAM), but it makes a great accessory. I have used it a lot more than I thought I would. It's quite popular when I have people over too, which is nice because I don't have to worry about what's running on my main computer (shell sessions and what not). If someone wants to drink and YouTube there's now a laptop sitting on the coffee table at all times.

Probably not for everyone, but a very high percentage of people who have used mine expressed interest in getting one. Wouldn't be surprised if a few already bought one.
Does it really matter where you incorporate any more?

From what I understand (which may be wrong), most companies that incorporate as Delaware corporations, do so in part because DE has a solid business law system in place.

At the top of the complaint it shows that both defendants are incorporated in Delaware, yet whoever filed the complaint tried (and succeeded) in making a case for whatever goes down to take place in IL. Is that even reasonable?

While I'm sure it won't hurt TC or Loopt to take a road trip, if another startup wound up in a similar bind, I can definitely see the cost of fighting an out-of-state battle putting them over a barrel.
Except that the European Union is not an integrated economy, it is a federation of inter-dependent economies that share a common currency, as the clusterfuck regarding how it will respond to the current crisis is showing.
Aluminum: Canary in the Tech Mine
I want to know what he said in the AI box experiment to be let out.
Yes. There are 10 reasons why I hate list-style posts. I plan on blogging about them later and posting here.
This posts neglects to mention a few key points about the FULLTEXT search....

1. You have to use MyISAM tables which dosen't support transactions like InnoDB tables do.

2. You need to make sure you adjust the FT MAX LENGTH parameter which I believe is 4 by default meaning you can search on 3 letter words like say "USB" for example
Well, taking a look at how long it took the new delicious to get out, I'd say Yahoo doesn't mess around when it comes to building large scale services like this. I quickly warmed up to the new delicious, but fwiw, it's been rock solid ever since it (finally) came out.

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.
That was the biggest selling point for me as well. Up to the minute results is huge when it comes to things like running blog promotions or campaigns.
Why Criminal Hackers Will Love Adobe AIR
Gmail, sadly.
Practical Beginner’s Guide to OAuth
True for me too. I like GA but the delayed results can be really frustrating.