skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm another huge fan of OpenID, but after being the only one arguing for it the last couple of times it came up, I've gotten sick of speaking up for it.

Personally, I would love it if almost every site out there would let me log in with an openID. I'm apparently in the minority here, but I'm sick of having to make a new account every time I want to check out some site or forum that looks like it might be interesting.

While there are issues in the implementation, I am very much unconvinced that there is anything particularly more difficult about the concept than that of current logins.

When I ran non techie friends through it, the biggest complaint was usually that there were too many different screens they had to click through, and there was some confusion about where to go to get an openID, but as far as I can see these are all things that can be improved without sacrificing the core concept of OpenID.
For example, it doesn't take into account the fact that current e-ink displays are really slow.
Sarcasm doesn't transfer :/
CEO Change At Twitter: Ev Williams Back At The Helm
Fail Whale overthrown by Recession Hessian
> The economic situation is apparently so grim that some experts fear we may be in for a stretch as bad as the mid seventies.

Eh? Every expert I've heard lately is fearful we're headed towards a repeat of the great depression. The one during the 1930s... not the 1970s.
So...you are suggesting Apple sell a computer for less than the average profit margin on their current line of computers (or about there, I'm guessing).

And this will help them how, exactly? What's the break even point for them to get to their current level of profit? Do you even know if it is possible to make a profit at all selling a $200 computer capable of running OS X? What kind of hardware are we talking about here?

A just as likely scenario from selling $200 computers is Apple going out of business, I would think.

Apple's strategy is basically to skim off all of the best customers from their competitors and make lots of profits by doing so. Meanwhile, the rest of the industry need to walk a tight rope between small enough margins to sell a larger volume than their competitors, but not so small as to be negative.

Judging by the profit growth Apple has seen in recent years compared to their competitors, I think it's working pretty well for them.
I won't use it because I'm in Kansas City. Also, it looks like a parked domain.
Don't forget WebTV @ 400 million and god knows whether that was a success.
My life involves hooking up various bits of image processing software into a semi-unbroken workflow that can scale to massive (10^5 pixels edge length) images. So I get lots of error messages at different times.

I will try to remember this option the next time I get bitten; but, my usual approach is to type a unique chunk of the error message into Google.

This works pretty well.

The value that others could get out of me having solved this error is, unfortunately not something I care that much about right now.

However, I work on my own, most of the time. I could see this service being taken up in cases where a group manager can dictate, or encourage, his team to use the service, in the name of the greater good.

Other things I noticed doing a little bit of clicking around at http://bug.gd:

The big "bug.gd" logo is a link. Curious, I clicked it. It caused http://bug.gd to reload. That's useless.

The "solved bugs" link should be more prominent, so people can see exactly what you mean by error message. You take it for granted, but it took me a little while to understand what your site was getting at. A screenshot of an error message, with a link to the solution, wouldn't hurt either.

The "solved bugs" page is pretty silly. A long list of uncategorized bugs with solutions. At the bottom, a list of links to at least 1319 pages of additional solutions. Why would I ever click on one of these pages? The chances that it has something interesting to me approaches zero.

A search field at the top of the "solved bugs" page would be immediately useful (without me having to sign up, etc.). Categorized or tagged solutions would also be useful.

HTH and good luck.
Newzbin Prepares for Litigation
I wrote a message queue server that uses the memcached protocol (so I could use memcache client libraries to connect to it), similar to Starling/Sparrow. Starling and Sparrow kept falling over from the volume of connections, so I decided to write my own in Erlang. We've been using it in production for about 6 months now, and it works great.
BTrace == DTrace for Java
Google announces 2008 3Q results
instruments in Xcode is based on top of dtrace and is awesome.
Microsoft starts distributing open-source Drupal
"the users tried to log in using the site’s main login, rather than the OpenID login. Users don’t understand multiple ways to log in"

There's the first problem. If your site only accepts OpenID you won't have that problem.

Also, I don't know of a single site that is using an ID selector with history sniffing, which should be a much better UI.
Time to wake up to the facts about sleep
I wrote a few Erlang tutorials was I was learning: http://20bits.com/tag/erlang/

The public documentation for the language is awful.
That's FUD to sell Credentica, and many of those problems cannot be fixed if you assume an unmodified Web browser.
Are More Programmers Using Ruby or Just Window-Shopping?
I think it's great, but don't see it as a viable option for some products.

I also think micro-payments can be an option one day when someone gets around to making it less painful and more available. I think this will probably involve cellphone companies but I digress.

In any case, I think selling ads can be a very profitable route for others.
"Be profitable"

Guess that does miss your finer details, but is closer then the orginal.
Found slide 13 particularly interesting!
Scheme Is Love
... then move.
The same, but appended 'Beta'...
Yahoo Search Integrates Citysearch and Zagat - Slowly Gaining Back Market Share?
make it a facebook app - no joke - just add the friend score
My problem is rather that I don't trust it enough. Maybe because I don't understand good enough how it works. But by keeping passwords to myself and using different passwords and usernames for different sites I don't have to trust anyone beside myself to keep that data safe. And also I have no trouble creating as much identities as I want to have.
Iminlikewithyou present their new developers platform
Pachube - real time sensor data from objects, devices and spaces around the world
Beyond the Flickering Screen: Re-situating e-books
Software Technologies that I MUST Learn
"To those of you all excited about buying on the dip"

http://www.winterspeak.com/2008/10/japan-experience.html
Interesting take. I wonder if this is isomorphic to programming team size. If we get rebuild the management culture around spreadsheets and process so we are not dependent upon the key manager, we can scale revenue out. But do we end up with mediocre products and wind up with another me-too consumer electronics company?

Very interesting conundrum if you're on the board...
Guy's whole portfolio of sketches is pretty interesting and worth checking out: http://petitinvention.wordpress.com
When I join a Google Group, Google asks me "What nickname do you want people in this group to see?". I pick something and I'm in. End of story.

Why can't I do this with every other site? I'd like to be able to go to foobar.com, click on Register and be taken to a Google page where Google says "What nickname do you want foobar.com to see?". The default is my gmail username but I can change it. I'm in. Foobar doesn't see my email address or a password or my address book contacts or anything else. Can people poke holes in this suggestion?

I think Joe the Plumber would love such a scheme.
I don't own a copy of Delicious Monster, but people who do would probably fit your demographic very well. Don't know if there are enough of them to justify import functionality.
Amen. There are a few groups working in this area:
http://www.deshawresearch.com/
http://forums.nvidia.com/lofiversion/index.php?t60817.html
i didnt mean anything bad by it at all. i feel having design skills on top of development is huge. especially since im sure there will be plenty more apps down the line - design costs can add up quickly. plus if you do the design yourself you can constantly change it when you want which i find to be really important.

spending a few days looking over simple css and photoshop tutorials can go a long way. most web graphics dont require much photoshoping - just basic techniques.

thanks for the compliments. tweako is hidious - it was an overnight design. streetread is nice but check out the homepage to get the real effect.
There is about to be a whole raft of federal packages for small plumbing companies; that is the real reason to get started. Apparently you don't even need a license.
Dan Weinreb explains what this list is about further down in the comments:

What I mean is, my friends and co-workers come up to me and say, oh, Dan, you’ve just GOT to learn about XXX! I sigh and add it to the list; if this guy said it’s cool and important, then I suppose he must be right, since I respect him so much. But when on Earth will I find the time?
the form is prominent on the front page of the site and a captcha would make it look ugly.

Plus the reasons stated above, such as validating that the person submitting the email address actually owns it.
Can you point to one essay where he uses the phrase "make money" or some variant thereof?

More to the point: To me, a startup isn't about money. It's about freedom. That's where I've found much to like in his essays.
They already sell a small, just a bit over $200, portable, small display OS X computer: it's called an iPod Touch.
A few days ago, I was looking at this presentation on Erlang presented at one of Google Tech Talk. This was my first introduction to Erlang and I found it very informative.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=240707194662243675&#...
Playing By the Rules is For Saps
And yet they remain problems that are unsolved. The phishing one in particular (send the user to a fake login page that just facades the real one and steals the password) is a showstopper all by itself.

So while it's true that (short of doing stuff like RSA & PKI in Javascript) you can't fix these problems with browsers as they exist today, that doesn't mean that a solution that ignores the problems is a good idea.
I wrote a clone of Amazon's dynamo. It really helped speed up development vs. trying to do it in a language like Java or C++. http://github.com/cliffmoon/dynomite
I wonder what their US market share in computers priced over $1000?
OpenID does solve a problem, and it's even a problem that average-Joe users agree is a problem - once you spend 10 minutes explaining to them just what the hell the field that wants something called an OpenID URL is supposed to do.

The name isn't the problem, the expected action is the problem. People expect to enter a password to log into things.
Agreed. This amounts to technological masturbation.
Wow. Very surprising!

That said, I think it makes sense.

Ev has much more experience in this space. And he seems much more approachable than Jack.
You have to create something of utility that would need something like this in the first place. Until it has enough utility, it work get popularized and it wont catch on. Look at the bit-torrent crypto arms-race between government and clients. Actually, something like an extended bit torrent would be the thing that would catch on.
Scientists Find Gene That Makes You Good at Halo Also Makes You a Premature Ejaculator
The opportunity of a lifetime: An experiment
I'm in the unique position to offer someone who fits my profile, possibly the opportunity of their lifetime. Here's what I'm looking for. Please upvote this so that it gets discovered by some recent grad/someone who fits the profile. They'll thank you for it!

Conditions:

- Must live/move to San Francisco
- Experience not required at running companies
- Demonstrable leadership skills + examples an absolute must - you'll have an entire team under you
- Dabbling with running companies/making money also a huge plus, even if it was part time/just for fun
- Doesn't need to be a programmer/hacker, but can't be clueless about technology either (MBA's, stay away)
- Must be totally cool with working very hard, 6 - 7 days a week, and always be on call
- Be willing to make a commitment and pour their heart into this operation

The need for this individual arises as the "CEO" spot at one of the companies I work with opened up recently. Instead of sifting through a thousand "qualified" (MBA types) applicants with a "track record", resulting in lots of wasted effort on my part and ultimately, their inability to really make this "their baby". I've been down this road before, and I know that that doesn't work. What will work is someone who is hungry, understands the internet and has the fire in the belly t do this well.

Am I willing to bet this whole thing on that assumption? Yes.

Isn't it a little naive to give so much responsibility on instinct and a hunch alone? Probably.

Is the pay competitive? Is the equity substantial? You will have no complains if you meet the criteria. This is after all, the best deal you will see all day.

What's the catch? I doubt I can find the perfect candidate I want here or anywhere else. But it doesn't hurt to drop me a line and find outanyways.

How do I apply? Email me why you fit the profile @ zaki (at) xuqa.com. I don't really want a CV if you don't have one. I'm looking for more a short answer to that. Leave a phone number and email and I'll get back in touch.

Some more background: the startup, XuQa.com, is a social game with 1.6M players. It is one of the largest such networks in many parts of the world, including Turkey. It's been profitable for over 2 years. I.e. its a real business with actual metrics. XuQa is part of a larger company (which started off as a side project within the network), which the original founders have moved on to, making this spot available.
I remember the article on why Apple doesn't make conceptual phones. This article reminded me of that.

Apple's magic isn't that they have ideas of beautiful things. I'm sure every company does. Apple's magic is that the beautiful things they imagine come true.

(And I'd guess that's why a lot of people are Apple fans, myself included: because Apple seems to spit in the face of the idea that you can dream but it'll never come true. It's almost a giddy feeling.)
When that gets boring, they can add a reward for speed.
It's not quite that simple. Often the richest consumers are not hit as hard by recessions and keep spending. And even if they are hit with a glancing blow perhaps instead of buying another house, car, boat they might seek comfort in more modest luxury purchases.

I saw this first-hand during the post-bubble recession when I was an engineer at a luxury consumer electronics company-- we made lots of money while much of the industry was hemorrhaging.

Supposedly sales of Patek Philippe watches actually peak during recessions. [1]

[1] http://www.brandchannel.com/features_effect.asp?pf_id=104
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_stations
Marshall Simmonds or Tina Brown?
Yes, and directors/actors ;)
Global Talent Index
Tin Foil Hats and Rubber Ducks
It's in the FAQ, we are using the MusicBrainz database.
It's already there. We should probably make more visible, but if your browser has the RSS detection built-in - you can already subscribe.
DevCentral Weekly Roundup Episode 59 - iRuleing The Ocean
Google Appengine now supports HTTPS
This is why you're not in charge of MS. They make tons of money on their existing, if problematic, products.
Recommendations are available through Last.fm API, we are working on this.
"stronger" your reputation? :)
Yikes. At this time either use the appspot.com domain for your URLs or, perhaps in the future, use a technique implemented by only the most modern of browsers (but excluding Safari at the moment). I'm sure that'll work for some people out there. Others, like me, are out of luck. :-(
Earlier this year a 17 year old in New Zealand became the second Tim Cederman to exist online. Hopefully nobody will get confused though, as his presence is anything but professional...
It's cute how the phone includes Apple's modifier keys.
I have to admit we need to re-work the logo. Others suggested that it reads "Musty"

The name comes from MUsic and SPY.
Sleep is for the weak and the lazy. Fact. Sue me. Now let the downmodding commence you weaklings.
More coffee....
Resumes Are Mostly Useless
I haven't gotten 7 hours in a night in a long time. Apparently, I am in fact sleep-deprived.
> they have a great intuition about which frustrations are worth pushing through

I agree that keeping a global view while working on the local is a great ability to have, and a lack of it will create nightmarish frustrations as projects become larger. But you're saying that great hackers still have frustrations, which is what I took issue with. Your "mediocre" hacker also seems to be extremely capable, when working in the local.
Or for buyers?
Oh, completely. There's already designs and implementations of such things, but unless they're coupled with a useful service, they're not going to see adoption.

The internet has been relatively unencumbered so far. Now that the governments are taking notice and looking to censor it, the demand for useful services based on privacy is only going to grow.
You need an out-of-bound communication to retrieve password and authenticate the account. If you can weather users not being able to retrieve their password, then by all means take out e-mail activation, but if you want to build a robust application, you should keep it in.
The cofounder issue is also why I'm not starting another company (yet). I thought about going to grad school, but now am looking more towards getting a job at one of the big tech companies in the Valley. That at least will get me into the right geographic area, and with any luck I'll find some smart coworkers or friends there.
Ruby on Rails please.
"investors tend to be less willing to invest in bad times. They shouldn't be. "

Angels probably should. Many of them just had a 20%+ decrease in their net wealth. Investing is an activity for them, like golf, not a profession. They shouldn't make themselves feel uncomfortable financially.

There's a difference between which action has the highest EV and which one you should take.
not sure why it would make any difference. What decisions has twitter staff ever made without Ev being in on?
The answer lies there: http://virteal.com/ThePerfectLogin

Item 1 of the "check list" is titled "Optional registration"
That would be different companies. With different strategies.
Fine article, but it seems to credit the technology companies of the 90s with the massive wealth creation.

They deserve plenty of credit, but it never would have happened without core investment in science and engineering research in the 60's, 70's, and 80's. Much of this research was funded by the (gasp!) government.
One thing this is useful for: security testing. Get your web application up and running under OpenSolaris, OS X or FreeBSD, then run a "web fuzzer" like Burp Suite or WebScarab against it, while watching the queries in the backend. It'll give you a quick and dirty way to see how user inputs are being passed through to the database.
However once the general populace is accepting that the government records all of their emails, the next step is to vilify encryption and move towards banning that.

The counter of course is to put email encryption in the hands of the general populace so they feel empowered against such snooping in the first place (hello major webmail providers. time for opportunistic encryption yet?)
"Mars" canvas demo in 256 bytes (View source)
One of the important reasons why email should be entered in the comment form is to let the blogger know who commented on his post and if if blogger wants to get back to the commenter, he could with the help of mail-id. If you actually think about it, comments are the only thing which actually connects the blogger and their readers. With the help of mail-id, connection only becomes more stronger.
As a user of Newzbin, this makes me sad. It's the easiest/fastest way to download TV shows. I hope their legal team knows what they're doing.
This was done really well. It kind of reminds me of the presentation done with the PS3 game Little Big Planet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uToBarLr_U

Charles timing was a bit better than the Sony presentation.
also, if you do know someone else who might fit the bill, please point them this way.
We are definitely going to add Last.fm import.
"Constantinople fell to the Ottomans after two centuries of retreat and decline."

More to the point, after cannons were invented.
How to Write Injection-Proof SQL
From the Alexa top 20 global (http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=global&la...):

Yahoo - users before revenue, success

Google - users before revenue, success

YouTube - users before revenue, undecided

Microsoft - revenue before users, although their internet properties consistently lose money. Not really an internet company.

MySpace - users before revenue, success (MySpace is profitable already)

Facebook - users before revenue, undecided

Blogger - users before revenue, probably a success although google doesn't release numbers so it's hard to say how much money they make on it

Orkut - same as Blogger

RapidShare - users before revenue, success (very profitable freemium model)

Baidu - I'm not sure. I presume they follow the same path as Google did, but with an obvious example of how to succeed already in place.

QQ - users before revenue, success (virtual goods turn out to be a great way to monetize a free chat product in China)

eBay - revenue before users; they didn't make auctions free

Hi5 - users before revenue, undecided

In addition to being the biggest internet companies, these are among the most profitable. Several of the top 20 were acquired by other companies, making it difficult to judge how successful they would be independently. Several are still so new it's hard to tell. There's exactly one which took money over user growth (eBay).
> Linux on a laptop has never worked out well for me ...

Then you need to try out an IBM/Lenovo T60. :) This is what I've got (bought it cheap second hand, it was a great buy) and it's rock solid running Debian Lenny, everything works, and works well. ThinkPads in general are great for Linux compatibility.

But thanks, I will definitely take your words under advisement when upgrade time comes around.
50 Excellent AJAX Tutorials