skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
* Still trying to improve the http://mediawombat.com crawler

* Working on better pre-caching scripts/SQL for http://mediawombat.com search results

* Working on how to charge a company that wants to use the http://mediawombat.com API

* Coming up with ideas for a back-end for a new auction-based concept that my friend and co-founder has come up with

* Coming up with ideas for mixing/matching data when Google releases their RSS feeds for google searches

* Trying to master CSS and transparency to make pretty boxes and stuff. I'm not very artistic. :)

* Writing a play-by-email and play-by-web strategy game

* Coming up with a way to keep a linux configuration on my laptop so when I do a fresh-install of Fedora 10 next month, I don't have to re-create all of my custom configurations from scratch (again)

* Thinking of cool ways to use the WiiMote

* Setting up my father's website (has an idea about improving K-12 education)

* Keeping my older kid from injuring my younger kid

* Keeping the wife happy

* oh, and my actual paying day job :)
I've actually met a few people (and some customers, actually) through Twitter, and one person so far through Hacker News (davidw) - I think a more organised/rigid approach would just be weird. But then I probably wouldn't use an online dating site either if I were single...
Are they still trying to force that open id stuff onto the web? The people said no already, many times and with conviction. Give it up, Open ID has already failed. Nobody likes it, we don't need to be 'educated' on it.
One option would be to buy cheap shared hosting plans (I've seen as low as $6/mo) and use them only for email. Not always perfect, and things like SSL might be messier, but cheap and easy and these days you'll get as much if not more storage as Google Apps. One drawback to a shared plan is that you might be on the same IP as some spammer and you might get blacklisted. SPF records are easy to set up and can really help with that.

I used to manage an email server and it was not very pleasant for someone who just wanted to hack. :-) If you do end up running your own mail server(s) you'll want to be sure you have good spam/virus filtering or users will start complaining. I had really good luck installing Postini a couple years ago -- reduced spam by nearly 100%.
Can Yahoo Find New Searchers Through An Ad Campaign?
Every source I've seen -- including the linked article -- describes it as a "glass multi-touch trackpad". This does not imply that it has tactile feedback, beyond the clicky noises (which aren't tactile).

Where did you get your information?
"I also hate real buttons I guess."

First Steve came for my right mouse button,

but I was silent;

I did not need both mouse buttons...
Woha, you have a spec - I figured there wouldn't be any of that on Hacker News.
I agree that the ROI of the investment is more important than the idea that someone should be punished for passing on a cheaper acquisition - that doesn't take into account the higher risk of the $20m purchase. That being said, I'm not so sure companies really hold people accountable for even ROI and forecasts. For example, I know of a company which made a $200m acquisition, ran the product into the ground, and then paid even more for a second acquisition in the same space. Sure, a few middle/lower managers were moved to less influential positions, but the people with the overall responsibility got promotions.
Website reloader
Good point. Title changed. s/Conf/Ruby conf
1/10 of the global market is pretty damn good.
I'm currently working on a system flexible to play the card game Mao and every reasonable rule that could be made for it online. I'm also working on a nice, comfortable, abstract way to create Turing machines in Arc, with the ultimate goal being to have one simulate a von Neumann machine (namely by having it able to interpret a sizable subset of the machine language for a modern processor). I've taken a long break from both to work on my college applications, though.

To cut down on my total workload (and so my mother wouldn't complain when I worked on these projects), I'm using both for two different projects for the IB diploma program. As a result, I have to do the Mao-playing system in Java though.
Redfin doesn't have a real business model that works. There are more obvious solutions needed for the real estate industry that would be less likely to fail.
Not entirely true. USB 2.0's "peak" speed is 480Mbps, but it actually performs worse for large transfers than firewire.

From what I understand, it's designed for short bursts of data at very high speeds.
This was encouraging!! We are on it Mr CEO, Thanks!
480 Mbps is theoretical speed. Most things don't reach that. In real life usage, Firewire 400 tends to be quicker than USB 2.0, or at least that's the case from my experience.
If the hardware bothers you that much just get a Dell and install Mac OS. Steve Jobs isn't going to send the FBI to your doorstep.
Well, that might be. But in this context I wasn't even talking about running full Silverlight apps, just having a decent browser-independent, cross-platform Python runtime.
Archive Is a Paperless Office a Pipedream or Really Possible? «
"...and we actually don't hate the all-clicking trackpad much at all. (If your thumb muscle memory makes you click at the bottom where the button used to be, it works and feels pretty much the same.)"

It /feels/ the same as the old trackpad thus it has tactile feedback. The entire trackpad clicks.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/10/14/apple-macbook-aluminum-an...
Excellent advice!

I jogged and lifted weights for years.

Then I got serious and started a program like this.

Try 500 of these Hindu squats:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPSVpo4mzNI

Then 100 of these Hindu pushups:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcW61Bb8uOo

Add in a chinup bar and some 5 Rites:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APzA1W68y1E&feature=relat...

and you're set.

You chiropractor will thank you and your joints will thank you for the next 60 years or so.
Hey...can we please stop with the moderation flogging?

I asked a question in good faith. Why all the down-voting?
Yes, it's a glass trackpad. It's also a physical button. This was made clear in the presentation, in the description on Apple.com and in a video also on Apple.com. Here's the video, you can see the button go up and down:

http://www.apple.com/macbook/#designvideo
True - but pretty cool that you can get direct reponses within seconds from a minister like this: http://twitter.com/MaximeVerhagen/statuses/959259446
Thanks for the encouragement. It's something I'm passionate about, and I've received a ton of good ideas. If you have any suggestions, feel free to email me (see profile for address).
Silverlight 2.0 released, support for Eclipse included
I dig too :)
'Testers Are Idiots' Revisited
Firewire 400 is pretty well known to generally be faster for high bandwidth data transfers than USB 2.0 despite USB's higher theoretical speed.

http://www.usb-ware.com/firewire-vs-usb.htm
http://www.barefeats.com/usb2.html
The description on the apple site is less than clear ("the trackpad is the button"), but thanks for the video link.
http://www.apple.com/macbook/

Watch the video. 3/4 of the way in, they introduce the trackpad. You can clearly see that the trackpad gets recessed when you click on it.
Wouldn't know from the post.
Ex-Tesla Motors CEO complains about Roadster coolant pump that won't turn off
You can have any color so long as it's aluminum.

Nice turn of phrase. The irony is that Ford made everything black because it was cheaper. Jobs is making everything aluminum because it acts as a distinguishing factor, so it lets him charge more... I imagine we're only a few years away from hardwood computers.
"hate to break it to you, but jesus is not a real person"

Irrelevant. Jesus is the archetype for "humble," but your description doesn't fit your description of humble, so your description is incomplete.

You are saying that being "low in rank and importance" is humility? Complete nonsense. That only applies for people who ARE low in rank and importance. Does that describe the President? The rebel leader who defied the most powerful empire in the world? Some guy who started his own religion?

This is in no way a religious discussion. You're not addressing my idea, you're taking potshots at religion and repeating the self-critical nerdy sentiments I refuted in my hypothesis.
"re-write of something on Google's blog"

Matt Cutts works for Google - I think for many SEO types, Matt Cutts IS Google.

I agree that the title is complete linkbait, but the tool itself is useful to know about.
"every source I've seen" you said, and you didn't even check the Apple website?
What sources were you looking at???
Thanks - I got fed up of listening to all the reasons why we shouldn't be working on startups. This is our time to shine!
Why Apple’s New Laptops Get Their Own GPUs
They are clearly a superior product to the others.
If you're after a low cost computer, don't buy Apple. Simple. Just like if you're after a low cost car, you don't buy Porsche.

Just think how often you use your laptop, and how important it is. When you think about it, all laptops are very very cheap considering how much we rely on them these days. So arguing about a couple of hundred dollars spread over maybe 2-3 years, to get you a significantly better laptop for all those years.....
I <3 Google
Network Topology Drawing Tips
IMHO, original comment (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=332526) should be modded to slightly negative, because it's false, even if it's an honest mistake. (I think you could stop the bleeding by acknowledging the error with an after-edit.)

Followup question about sources is fair, but still seems to advance an erroneous impression based on "every source I've seen". So slight downmodding (perhaps just to zero) doesn't seem clearly abusive to me.

(I've only downmodded the original false comment, while upmodding those providing true information and details.)
Ireland delivers gloomy budget
I'm sure they already do assume that, but an eastern european browsing off of his neighbors wifi and 7 proxies probably doesnt care that the fbi is running the forum as long as it works.
Quicken Online is finally free
And here's an article about the guy who didn't win:

http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/2008...
1) a new/obscure music blog - www.audioindie.com
2) a data tracking app for medical stats
3) clinical trial data management
4) getting my car ready for a DE event.
Great question :)

Mostly working on Stitcho.com (http://stitcho.com)

Stitcho is a desktop notification widget
for your website, with support for Windows and Mac. Add desktop alerts to your web app in less than 30 minutes.

Also, trying to build an Erlang community in the DC area (search for Erlang on meetup.com)

Finally, putting together a presentation for BarCampDC this Saturday.
Advanced High School Math
Everytime I hear this guy's story, I get more impressed. He was actually one of the guys I had in mind when I wrote my post on why its a good time to be in a startup. Talk about capital efficiency!

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=332527
I did check the apple site, but hadn't seen the video. The linked article didn't really describe it, nor did any of the half-dozen other articles I've read.

The copy on the apple site is ambiguous -- saying that the trackpad "is the button" could mean a lot of things, including that the trackpad acts as the button (which is how I read it). It isn't an unreasonable interpretation.
I'm also at the concept stage for a site providing some tools to help UK residents manage their finances with emphasis on debts.

I have considered this idea a few times over the past couple of years as I work for an organisation that gives me a great deal of exposure to people in debt and the methodology typically used to assist them to address those debts.

In the past I have ignored the idea as I considered it technically uninteresting but I have now found myself in the position where I am (a) wanting to jump into the startup game, (b) have relevant industry experience, and (c) it's the right time (credit crunch).
I changed the wording around. Thanks.
What makes me very angry is many people like that mean to go over the limits. That involves to lie, trick, and scam others. Truly disgusting and worthy of Gordon Gekko or Frank T.J. Mackey (Tom Cruise in Magnolia.)
Fundraising for NewsCred! It's actually fun and not as depressing as all the blog posts make it out to be.
Though I understand why some commenters are interpreting this as made-up bravado, Stewart Alsop is a longtime journalist and investor from whom such a second-hand report is credible.

(That is, I have no doubt that he received such an email from a trustworthy friend, and that the email is accurately describing a real person.)
"... but once again, nobody needs to exercise for 90 minutes a day. That's just a little crazy ..."

Generally you are right but I've never heard of a person who regularly exercises this much to be unfit. 30-45min/3-4 days a week is a bare minimum. What I've tended to notice is you really should aim for 6 days a week for about an hour but not be totally fanatical especially when injured. This allows for days where for some reason cannot do pt, some rest.
Sure, but that would be seriously lame.... "The trackpad is the button" meaning 'you can still do tap to click like you have been doing'?

I guess they could make it more obvious that the trackpad is actually physically a button...
I have a web application that manages agile/scrum projects for large organizations. I've beta-tested it at a large corp, but they're not going to be able to use it for a while due to legal reasons.

So right now I'm finishing up version 1 this week and deciding whether to 1) start marketing version 1, 2) start on version 2 and then market, 3) wait for large corp to come around so I can continue usability testing and making the product better (it's clunky now), 4) Look for a partner and do any of 1-3

I'm not sure which way to go, to be honest. Anybody got any ideas?
Startup Zen: Top 5 Ways to Approach the Downturn
I enjoyed your videos . Keep it up !
Or at least get your server to return "moved permanently" and redirect to your home page.
it (really) feels like someone else?
If you're looking to learn in the start-up trenches. We're looking for a LAMP programmer to to work with our existing code. We need help to integrate media-handling code from Symfony based project into a second PHP codebase. Must be willing to risk time on a consistent basis for a stake in project's revenues.

Here's what we're developing:
We are a community site to prescreen and prepare businesses for Venture Capital. We improve the pitch and probability of funding for startups while saving VC's time and money sitting through unprepared pitches.

I'll provide the details if your interested.
Ping me donna (at) genuus (dot) com
India and the credit crisis
huge geek karma, but i suspect bound to fail

this is basically a consulting gig...i doubt they intend to try to compete head-head with the major web cos with their giant colo farms. and who would fund a new massive server farm after famous flame-outs like cuil?

what is the market? those companies technical enough to know hadoop exists, know they need it, yet incapable of implementing it while being cash-rich enough to pay someone else to do so. are there even five potential clients?

i love hadoop, its awesome...but my guess is that like mysql, apache etc, people will just look to redhat etc to do the integration on private networks, or just use it as a service on something like amazon's platform
Anyone know where I can find more information on the SSD they offer? (e.g. MLC or SLC?)
Good news, but a lousy article, doesn't really add anything. Direct link to Quicken Online: http://quicken.intuit.com/online-banking-finances.jsp

It's in JSP! Ok, well at least that page is. As a java web developer, it warms my heart ;)
tumblr.com - it's slow going finding cool people, but they are out there. use the explore page.

other blogging sites with location services might be helpful as well.
Sounds cool. How will you sell/market it?
Publish and be wrong
That's a pretty cool idea. I'd like to hear more.
How will you find the customers for it?
The difficult decision that would change our son's life
Working on a place for hackers and artists to find short gigs: http://gigbayes.nfshost.com.

I aggregate all the gigs sites I can find e.g., craigslist (all of them), sitepoint, elance, etc, and then use Bayesian filtering to bring the most relevant gigs for you to the top.
I do not quite understand why people build hadoop and lucene with java. Is a python & c++ implementation of mapreduce a better choice?
this will be just as successful as the drug czar. Won't solve anything, but in the meanwhile will screw up many people's lives
Ask HN: Cost of servers & bandwidth 
I am curious the infrastructure cost of running a streaming audio site with 50K to 100K users per month. Users would be uploading files to server and streaming them.

Does anyone know of a link resource that details this type of information or able to detail their experiences? Does not need to be specific regarding stated monthly users.
Still using desktop software eh? ;)
Er, OK. I'll take coach Zorn's advice and "stay medium."
For some reason it looks like an old circa 2004 dell laptop to me. It's the black keys with the silverish case. I haven't seen one in person but that is my immediate impression.

I'm a proud owner of a black macbook - which I love. And I think the previous macbook pros look good. Maybe I just need to see one in person, where I can see all the "detail".

That, plus the permanent glossy screen, is a deal breaker. I won't be upgrading anytime soon. Maybe the next revision will give it a new feel or look.
Monolith Toolkit - MySQL DBA tools released
Committed bandwidth can be had in many datacenters these days for around $50/Mbs ($50 for every 1Mbps of committed bandwidth). Or you can do 95th percentile burstable bandwidth as well (or combine the two ($100/mo for 2Mbs plus ~$100 for every 1Mbs over 2Mbps, billed 95th percentile)).

About $400/mo for a half cabinet and some power. You're in the neighborhood of probably $500-$900/mo.

Why colocation instead of some shared or pseudo-dedicated server some place? Because (IMO and IME) you're better off with any site that is going to do streaming and potential sustained throughput in colo facility with fixed costs. Places like Rackspace just love when you go 10x over their pitiful limits and your $200 monthly plan is suddenly $4000. Kind of hard to budget for.

Of course, I'm also biased, having an interest in a colo facility :)
That's not just any "political site". It's far right, especially now. Shoot, Buckley's son just resigned his column there because he had the audacity to support Obama. What would they have done to the father since, as a reasonable conservative, I can't see him endorsing Palin?

The case against Krugman from those niches of the far right is almost entirely political. That link is a good example of the genre.

This is better and back when NR had something worthwhile to say:

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NmQ4MzY0NGVjODdmZmY2ZGQ...
* look.fo (http://look.fo) / str8.to (http://str8.to) - a sort of insta-tinyurl that uses Google search results to create on the fly links. For example, see http://look.fo/hacker-news and http://str8.to/hacker-news).

Q: Isn't this just a shortcut for (http://www.google.com/search?q=hacker+news)?

A: Absolutely, but the shortcut makes it viable to create on-the-fly links to search results (or use str8.to's I'm Feeling Lucky option) in IM conversations, or on twitter, or in emails (I recently told a client to http://look.fo/how-to-use-ftp) without having to go look up a good answer.

Stuff like that. Anyways :).
I find this startup rather disturbing...
you can write hadoop client tasks in any language you like, afaik
I find it rather inevitable. Seems like a killer business model, and it's probably 500 lines of PHP (or whatever). Pretty much just coin-operated at this point, nice steady revenue stream, wish I had thought of it.
Nameo: Single-Button Business Card Replacement For The iPhone
They actually need to freemium the business model. X views for free before charging.
Is this the result of that cyprus trip?
A tag aggregator for blog/rss content: http://www.seeksift.com/
the reason USB 2.0 is more common in the marketplace is that it's cheaper than firewire. Firewire, or IEEE1394, requires a license from Apple (this could be just if the company wants to use the term "Firewire"). Each firewire device has its own controller, which relieves the CPU from having to manage transfers, thus a real-world faster transfer time. I routinely do large transfers (4gb) from CF cards and having a firewire card reader is really great. I tried a USB 2.0 reader at a friends house and it was much slower.

On-Paper standards are interesting. Real-world performance is more interesting.
good to know. I've yet to try that keyboard. The Air is a pretty nice looking notebook computer.
In all matters dealing with a foreign culture, remember the Heisenberg principle - by your very act of being in a situation, you are subtly altering it. Americans in technology have a lot more experience with foreigners arriving in America than each kind of foreigner living in their own land has with any American. That's just the way the numbers work.

Asians, in particular, are good at acting deferentially, particularly in front of foreigners. The most extreme case are the Japanese - they are the easiest to underestimate race in the world (and the West did underestimate them). As you move west from Japan, you can progressively reduce the deference factor, crank up the self-confidence factor, until you arrive in California, perhaps the most self-confident place in the world. That deference - self-confidence dial works to a very good first approximation :)
Having to accumulate over 80-100 million votes waters down the candidates and their policies. But the closest alternative would be a prime minister and right now that slot would get filled by Pelosi or Reid. That's far worse, especially since before that would have been DeLay or Hastert.

The masses seem to do a pretty decent job in that light.
Some interesting take-aways:

1) On paying attention to your competitors:

I think that you can't control the competition. The competition is ever-changing. If you can't control it and you can't really put your finger on it, then there's really no point worrying about it. You need to deliver the product that you think is good, that your customers want, not what their customers want.

2) How they do PR:

So we've just chosen to teach and to tell a story about who we are and what we believe in. And I think when you teach people, you get a lot of attention. And when you share things a lot of companies would share, you get a lot of attention, and the media seems to have liked that a lot.

3) Best advice he's ever gotten:
The best advice I've ever gotten in business is actually Jeff Bezos who is one of our ‚ I our only investor in our company. He said, you should focus on the things that don't change in your business, which I think is a really interesting way of looking at it. Think about the things that people are going to want today and ten years from now. That's what you should be investing in.

4) On the benefits of laziness:

I mean I think laziness is a good thing in this sense. In that we don't really want to solve hard problems and do really hard work. We want to find out what the simple problems are and solve those, because I think most people's problems are pretty simple. So all this detailed integration
work with other products and third-party stuff and Facebook and all this other stuff, that's actually kind of a hard thing to do. For us at least, because that's not really what we're focused on doing. So we don't get carried away by that.