skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The comments pro or con are irrelevant; the submission and ranking (currently the #2 story) are my concerns.

We're giving free placement to a company that is (1) rich enough to buy our attention, if it needs it; (2) arguably 'dead' as an animating force for our industry (as in PG's 'Microsoft is Dead' essay).

Their desperate-but-cutesy ad campaign does not deserve to be our 'news'. Voting up this goofball lowbrow crap makes us into Microsoft's tools. This is spam.
Not sure where your disagreement is.
$30k b-plan/PROTOTYPE comp.: deadline SUNDAY, free flight to Boston
Too flat for Magnolia, could be out in Kirkland or Bellevue.
Definitely innovative, though I wonder if not lifting fingers from the screen helps all that much.
"Flickr done right"? For any X in "X done right", X better be "twitter".
Ask HN: Free-to-Premium business models. Any working examples?
Just like 'ad supported,' I get the feeling that a 'premium accounts supporting free accounts' model is thrown around too freely. Something that can be thrown in later in the game, after you're popular, to generate revenue. How many examples do we have of this model working out? I'm not really referring to the high price-per-unit premium services (customised/B2B), I think they're an independent category. I am also not referring to services where the 'free' version is essentially a sample. I think the free version would need to be useful in itself to qualify for this category. So I'd naturally expect the majority of users to be using the free version.

I think this is an natural in context example:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=302142

My immediate thought is that unless the service is immune to competition, a service with virtually 0 marginal cost per customer, is a bad fit. From that I'd further speculate that using premium-only features & ad removal to differentiate free from basic is not the best route to take. A premium service that costs the service provider something (eg storage) is probably preferable.

One to watch is naturally Google Apps Premium Edition. Interestingly Google Apps uses all three selling points - more storage, ad removal & additional features to upsell. Considering the resources that have gone into these apps over the years & their level of success in the free end of the market, it's a high bar before you could plausibly take this as a case study in the success of this particular business model. Maybe 1/2 - 1 million paid accounts ($25m - $50m per year) could be called a borderline case.
http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/admins/editions.html

So. If anyone has interesting examples please share. Info on how they're doing, as well as stuff like what the free/premium ratio is like would go down well.
Hold down the power button and hit the button on the front once - you'll get a white flash and a screen shot will be saved to your photos folder.
Doesnt belong here in hacker news. Lots of things may be interesting to hackers, that doesnt mean you put them on the tech/startup forum. So keep that crap on digg/reddit and let their community fall apart not this one.
Babson College is hosting an open business plan/idea competition. I'd be right up there with my plan - but my prototype (sadly) isn't ready yet. So I'm hoping that one of the Hacker News teams can come in and claim some glory. Right now the competition is very light on technical teams, I think a HN team could have a very good chance with a good prototype.

Here's the dirty deets: 23 companies/plans right now, $75 entry fee (it's a legit contest, legit school: http://www3.babson.edu/Newsroom/Releases/BabsonForumthis-yea...), $30k award: $20k cash, $10 services (I presume this means with Highland Capital, which is helping judge), US residents 21 and older.

THIS IS WHAT YOU NEED: a good prototype (not necessary, but after checking out the competitors, you'll need it to get into the top 3 for the free flight + presentation in front of VCs), a very short, basic business plan (executive summary, business model description, competitive advantage, management bio).

Good luck!
I meant that you can keep COBRA if you have any pre-existing conditions that a new insurer will not cover cheaply.

What's a disaster plan? Google was not too helpful. It sounds like what I'd want.
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Doesn't need to convey a message, its just to get you all talking about it. Its working.
I think that's it too. I was just talking to someone the other day who was with IBM back when MS kicked their butts in the battle between Windows and OS/2. OS/2 was technically superior in many ways, but he was saying that at conferences it was a bunch of old guys with sore feet at the IBM table, and hot women with loud music and lots of giveaways at the MS booth. Where would you rather be?

MS isn't perceived as exciting and new and hip these days, and needs to bring back some youth and fun, which Mac seems to have plenty of at the moment.
Microsoft Open Source inside Google Chrome
Chris Anderson's article on Free in Wired is six months old but probably a good reference if you haven't seen it:

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free?curre...

I guess his book isn't out yet but it looks like he's blogging about free @ the long tail:

http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/
Y Combinator’s firms mostly heed ‘go West’ advice
Cute. Exploits the fact that the maze is divided in two parts (two connected components -- a left and right wall) by the path through it. I didn't understand the technique at first and had to stare at it for a few minutes. If your maze is not constructed this way (i.e., the entry or exit point is in the middle of the maze, or there are any "bridges"), then it will probably not work.
It means that if high risk is required and/or the world in which they operate is about to turn upside down, the structure of major companies doesn't put them in the best position to take those steps.

BTW, it's not just execs that aren't holding stock for 100 years, its shareholders too. At least those that influence stock price.

But I don't think it's impossible to change course completely. IBM famously turned things around. But they had some things going for them. The industry grew around them so they could go from being 50% of the industry to being 6% of the industry (made up stats) and still grow in absolute terms.

But recording Companies are recording companies. Even if you buy the claim that you can the industry can shift to selling t shirts, concerts tickets & personalised albums & still make the same amount (I don't), you can't walk away from that simple fact. Their whole world depends on a reality that no longer exists.

1.It's expensive to produce a recording. (they'll fund you)

2.You must have economies of scale. (Gotta cut at least 100k)

3.You have physical control over distribution via limited channels (copyright exists, physical objects are worth money)

The current world simulates that reality to keep record companies in bread. Why the hell do you need a record company if you can record an album for a couple of grand, promote it on user generated radio where things are spread virally out of the control of record companies & distribute it in the same way the Rolling Stones do? The Wal Mart model has room for record companies (if your not one of the top 50 or top 100 your not there. The itunes one does not.

Even if the execs were to take longer term positions, they would have incentive to keep this up. The future doesn't include them. Keep it away.
That, and the fact that the article is horribly written. It's like the editor went "Holy &#!! it's 9/11 coming up! Quick, someone write an article!" half an hour before going to press.
Statistical language processing is a good way to go, but he must have enough data for it to be useful. I'd recommend to start by gathering the data.
We'll see. I'd love to see a massive groundswell in music. But so far, we still have junkie 'hits'. Most peoples itunes playlists are essentially like the other guys' itunes playlist.
I'm not sure about streaming. But they do have some evidence that keeping hits off of itunes for some big names can improve album sales enough to make it worthwhile. Short term & silly. But there is reasoning.
You should add a link to your main site on your blog. I arrived on the blog from the HN link having no idea what Dropbox is or what it does. I had to manually edit the url to get to the main page to find out what it does. Lots of users would be too lazy to do that.
37Signals stuff, Wufoo, BlinkSale, Flickr, Freshbooks, RescueTime, Harvest, etc.

If you want some good data, you'll really want to read this:
http://particletree.com/features/web-app-autopsy/
I wonder if they got the name "tineye" from the Mistborn fantasy series:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistborn

Tineyes are allomancers who can burn tin to enhance their senses.
When I worked in Mexico it was that way with beer. In northern Mexico every little pueblo was either all Tecate or all Modelo Especial. The residents would let you know their undying loyalty to the brand. "!Aqui somos tecateros!" The only exception I can think of was a remote mountain town loyal to marijuana instead. Locally grown, of course.
Actually, I liked the first one as well. Maybe there were some old geek sentiments involved, but for me it was just a good watch. I liked it more that the pc-vs-mac ad.
I believe what Joel was recommending was that you place the physical encrypted PasswordSafe data file on your Dropbox account. You still need to have the PasswordSafe utility on your computers to access the encrypted data file on DropBox AND use your PasswordSafe password to decrypt the data file. Your PasswordSafe password is what becomes the crucial piece of data - without it, no one should be able to decrypt the contents of your PasswordSafe data file.
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> If it gets block scope [...]

it has block scope since Javascript 1.7 (which is of course only supported on the client side by Firefox (FF 2) and I think Webkit) and on the server side it's supported in Rhino 1.7R1 and of course Spidermonkey.

block scoping overview and examples (search for let statements, let expressions, let definitions):
http://developer.mozilla.org/en/New_in_JavaScript_1.7
What kind of application is it? How you would compete depends a lot on the nature of your audience.
They should have used iMovie!
In the book, that falling man was the kids father? I read it awhile ago and can't really recall the exact details of his father's death.
He's talking about storing an encrypted file on DropBox - it's useless without a master password, which means that should DropBox be compromised for whatever reason then your passwords aren't in danger.
I heard there was a back door.
Why not ask the Dalai Lama? He probably knows a bit more about karma than anyone around here.
Unboxing the new Google 3D mouse
Why the XScreenSaver password dialogue doesn't use gtk+
43Folders: the new mission statement
Actually, I had read that article but forgot about it. It's probably where I got my description of the model. It's a good article. Gives you a feel for the context of all this. I totally agree that free services have gotten a major upgrade as part of the economy & that it makes sense.
But on the incentives to service providers, they just list a few: advertising, cross subsidy & freemium.

Advertising is an old one. We know that one from the TV/Radio/Magazine world. We also know it's not capable of funding every type of popular free web thing. (Great on Search, less great on Facebook).

Cross subsidies - Also pretty straightforward. Real estate site provides tools, Google gets people to like them etc. etc.

Freemium, on the other is not as well trodden. Especially if your strict about excluding free samples from the category.
I don't feel that way.

I particularly liked this paragraph:

There was no terror or confusion at the Associated Press. There was, instead, that feeling of history being manufactured; although the office was as crowded as he'd ever seen it, there was, instead, "the wonderful calm that comes into play when people are really doing their jobs."
Smugmug is a pioneer in this.
More broadly, what does it take for a startup to outlive its founders?

A very interesting question. All I can really give is, it probably has a lot to do with the popularity and recognizability of said founder(s) not to mention their stories, their time with the company, and numerous other factors that all together make it a lot easier for the company to outlive its founders.
If you are screwed because somebody beat you to the punch - then you were screwed anyway. Sustainable companies have a lot more going for them than just being a few months early than the other guy.
Terrorism, you'll know when it works...they'll be talking about it 7 years later.

This is definitely the most concise version of my very long rant about the mere premise of this article. Please, for the love of god, let. it. go. I know we gotta go with the whole culture of fear thing, but it's time for a new platform already.
No (at least I didn't get that impression). I think it was just used as a symbol for everyone lost. The kids father did die in the WTC.
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Girl Talk Performance at Yahoo Hack Day!
Learn Networking and Cisco
Great new blog, learned so much things about home networking, networking project, cisco, ccna, network devices, etc. With a lot of improvements in the future, I'm sure it will be a hit.
They seem to be describing double-buffering.
Sweet! And since you get to pick your implementation for server-side work, you don't have to remain in the IE ghetto. But, obviously, I haven't been following JavaScript all that closely.

I guess they had to use a different keyword instead of var (much like Perl introduced my because local already meant something strange in Perl 4, and for sort of the same purpose...though my became the new right way to declare variables anywhere, since the goal is always to get smaller scope for variables, and it doesn't look like that's the right idea with let).

JavaScript still doesn't have namespaces or a package/module concept, though (right?), so it seems like there'd still be some pain points in building large modular software. Of course, it's a pretty flexible language, and I've seen some interesting usage of closures to replicate namespaces and packages, so I guess standardizing on a library that provides those facilities is all that's really needed.
would be much funnier if they gave Gates some jokes.. how bad can he be?
Thanks for the link.

Wufoo & BlinkSale are interesting cases. I was surprised to see their conversion rates so transparently out there. But services like Freshbooks, RegOnline, RescueTime & 37 signals stuff are not really what I'd call part of the 'Freemium' business model. The free version is either limited in time or functionality to the point where you can't be a 'real' user (like you can with Gmail or Dropbox) without being a paid user.

Even BlinkSale is kind of borderline case. Serious users would 90% of the time need a paid account. Wufoo is also near the 'sample' end of the spectrum though it looks highly usable with a free account.

Nothing wrong with that of course, non one says you can't sell services.

Also they're all in the business tools arena. That's definitely an area where paid tools are likely to succeed. But it's an area that (as you can see from those examples) it's pretty straightforward to sell software subscriptions. But they really don't get us anywhere near a facebook premium.

Flickr is potentially a good example. It's consumer oriented & I'd guess the great majority of users are always going to be free users. But is it earning it's salt this way yet? Or is it still in the wait & see category with Google Apps Premium?

BTW I downloaded dropbox today & I can see myself paying for the service, but also see myself using the free version.
Can you elaborate? I see Start your 14 day free trial. Is there a usable free version?
Yeah but we talk about microsoft all the time anyway. Who else is it reaching?
I didn't know about the original software.

But I was talking about the point when the alternative devices were just as good but with no advantage other then price & a software disadvantage.
I am very glad you made that last point. That's a major shift my company is about to take, we're focusing on non-profit organizations and government institutions that need to refocus and establish goals around evolving technology requirements and enhancements.

In the next few months we're going to be on a campaign to find as many pro-bono developers, designers, consultants and experts to fill the void between non-profit and relevancy.
When in doubt go to the source of the ideas, to see who got the labels wrong. C#, VB.Net, Java, and even C++ are nowhere near the source on OOP (and they are all in the same lineage...while JavaScript shares far more with Scheme and SmallTalk, and is thus on a quite different road).

One should be careful about thinking "different" means "wrong".
Wish you the best!
Forgive me for being thick-headed, but you have a password to access dropbox, right? Presumably one that, since you have to remember it, someone might brute-force, just like any other password you have to remember.

If they get your data file, then they can just offline brute-force that, and again, since it is protected by a password that you have to remember, this should not be too hard, right?

So we have 2 memorable-length passwords, one of which the enemy can brute-force offline. So we really only have the protection of 1 memorable-length password, the one to get into the account itself, which is slightly harder to brute-force.

So how is this any more secure than just memorizing one strong password and using it for everything that is important? Any service that isn't trustworthy enough to get that password is also not trustworthy enough to get your personal data in the first place...
It's 128-bit AES. I haven't had a problem yet.
> though my became the new right way to declare variables
> anywhere, since the goal is always to get smaller
> scope for variables, and it doesn't look like that's the
> right idea with let

well, it's a bit different than local/my in Perl: variables declared local are dynamically scoped, variables declared my lexically (with block granularity). Given the choice, most of the time the lexically scoped (my) variant wins hands down.

With Javascript, it's a choice between lexically scoped and lexically scoped - the only difference is the granularity: var has function level granularity, let has block level granularity. So in many cases it doesn't really matter, I think. At least the benefit of let over var isn't nearly as strong as it was in Perl of my over local.

Having said that, there is no particular reason why you shouldn't make let your variable declaration keyword of choice.
"Sometimes you need your files on the run, and we were amazed that no one had made it easy"

What? Never heard of offline files, briefcases, SSH/FTP/SFTP/Web/WebDAV servers, Sharepoint, Groove...? (or any of millions of online file repositories?)
Hey no apology needed - I count all the regulars on HN as friends, so everything taken with a grain of salt!
What do you mean "of its kind"? Windows Offline Files and briefcases actually work. Volume Shadow Copy actually works. WebFolders actually work.

They're just not as well connected or cross platform.
Thanks for the tips. I like where you're going with this. We might give that a try!
Dude, I know its sounds eager but I've been burned many times before over tiny things like this. Some people take it very seriously, and I'd rather tread safely than piss people off.
Maybe just call it "Cred"? or Creds? Credits? Also, you should allow users to transfer them back and forth! I keep waiting for one of these karma systems to actually become a reputational economy.
What about privacy ?
Data is stored in clear text ?
Where is it stored ?

How about making it possible to setup a private server ?
www.connectivelogic.co.uk, it's all over google!
"Each jumper, no matter how many there were, brought fresh horror, elicited shock, tested the spirit, struck a lasting blow."

That is a seriously overwritten article. There are few things worse in journalism than people who think they're making a big statement, just making the statement bigger. As if they needed to explain what 9/11 did to us all.
For example, it doesn't even mention that OpenBSD's priority is security and NetBSD's is portability, and that that is the reason for the fork.
Weird issue with the website: On this page: http://www.getdropbox.com/install?os=linux if I move my mousewheel while the cursor is over that ascii dropbox on the right my cpu usage jumps to 100% and Firefox hangs for a few seconds.
Using Firefox 3.0.1 on Ubuntu 8.04.
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Awesome. Didn't know about that one. Thanks a lot :)
more dropbox pandering!!!
I certainly hope this dropbox thingy is actually easy to use as advertised by SO MANY!!!
But seriously, the ONLY thing it can offer is something easier for shared file storage. Something that's been done many times over...now we get to see if dropbox has done it well enough to attract a long term user base.
But Joel's post is OVER THE TOP in pandering!!! Does he have equity in this thing?
actually, I may trust dropbox more than Bank of America ;)
Yammer? I barely know 'er!
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This is one of the most disturbing things I've seen in a long time.
How do they do it? That's what I want to know.

It really does work - and even finds rotated images.
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You may want to include GoogieSpell into it ->
http://orangoo.com/labs/GoogieSpell/

It's open-source and you can either use Google or Aspell. I am the author of it.
The fact that both ads have been understood in so many different ways (here, on the blogosphere) shows that the message isn’t clear and in marketing that means trouble. Thus, being funny (for some more, for some less, for some not at all) or being talked about isn’t going to improve Microsoft’s image or sell more licenses (in particular of the problem child Vista). Apple, with the Mac vs. PC campaign, has a clear message besides being funny (not to me, but many like it) and being talked about.
Did you actually read the post?
Should this post be flagged? At very least, I think it should be marked: dead.
McDonalds and Kentucky Fried Chicken Support Reckless Teen Sex on TV
I have the opinion that the 'misunderstandings' largely consist of either preconceived notions of what the ad campaign would be like or, more commonly, anti-Microsoft sentiment repeatedly raising its ugly head and any Microsoft advertising campaign would not please those people. I think the ads are generally quite strong - kooky, memorable, unique and a talking point... if not particularly funny (FWIW, I didn't find Seinfeld funny either) and a little long. I think they do the job they set out to do well.

So, I would ask you (and, as an extension, the Hacker News hivemind):

What would make a good Microsoft ad campaign that the collective Internet would have actually liked and not heaped scorn on? Note that this pretty much precludes mentioning Vista positively in any way anyhow...
Wait, I can create buzz by creating something bad and gradually making it better? That sounds brilliant - suddenly a lot of my projects have gained a new perspective...
What's up with those Microsoft ads?