skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think Nokia will once come out as the winner in this. Instead of putting all their eggs in one basket they try to diversify their lineup. While a lot of other companies focus on Android they work on the next thing. Sooner or later consumers will shy away from Android because "everybody has one" or whatever reason they might have - Nokia will then step in and cater to these people.

Nokia, especially in Europe, has a lot of satisfied customers(The dumbphone market). If they manage to create a good blend of smart and dumbphones they will have the market.
Robot Avatar Brushes Cat Remotely in Virtual Reality 
[Kinect, Wii, HMD, Treadmill, NAO]
It's All About You (New Social Functions For Our Node.js Hosting)
Mirror: http://www.alexpeattie.com/nyan-3d/

(Couldn't find one elsewhere, so uploaded files from this repo: https://github.com/canuckistani/Nyan-3D-Firefox-fix)
I don't want to beat up on you. I admire your tenacity and entrepreneurism. You also have a good idea with Grooovy.

But I gotta tell you man, the copywriting on the website is bloody awful. Some of the worst I've ever read.

Nonsensical cliches like "breaking barriers" and "in the driver's seat" look amateurish and discredit your app. You didn't think to get a Copywriter's opinion?

Rewrite the page, or better yet, contact someone who can for a decent rate.

My email is in my profile if your interested (I'm a copywriter).
This, I find interesting - it would seem to me that gender equality to some extent is in the interest of business. If before, only men would be working and provide for the entire family, nowadays, you can hire both the man and the woman, because otherwise they might not be able to support themselves on a single salary. So you get roughly 2x the labor power of a population, while increasing wage competition, driving wages down.
Using the 37 signals line you quoted. The key word you missed was solved. Like you worked out this doesn't solve the problem because there aren't enough users using it. That's another problem to solve.

The best advice from the thread already target a specific city. Lock down that city then move on (I wouldn't choose SF as already so many geo mobile startups targeting it, also SF users maybe don't represent the broader market).

Also leverage existing API's. Or hell become an API combining all other sources and let other people build the apps (seems to me the real problem, billion people connected to different networks). If I look on meetup maybe I'm missing out on great events from other sites, but I don't have time to search them all.
Seeing how things are going, I predict there will be a real revolution within 2 years in US

I'm assuming you don't live in the US, since you refer to Americans in the third person.

This prediction of yours could not be more laughable. The people who actually care about issues such as these are a small minority. Most US citizens are content with privacy and freedoms curtailed in the name of "security". If not content, we're mostly unwilling to make a big stink about it.

There would have to be some vastly negative policy changes in the next couple years to incite revolution, and, even then, law enforcement and the military are far too strong and well-trained (and far too willing to take action against fellow citizens) for any kind of revolution to take hold and be successful without a level of organization that is likely beyond the citizenry.
If you don't agree with the terms you can,

1) not develop for Facebook
2) break the terms and accept the risks involved
3) come to an agreement with Facebook with different terms

Plenty of people have taken each of these routes
besides, how can one memorize if the questions are unknown?
I love how you can edit the effect and see how it changes.
A response has come from the author and panel members on Chessvibes, see the pdf links in here:

http://chessvibes.com/reports/controversy-over-rybkas-disqua...
Seeing how things are going, I predict there will be a real revolution within 2 years in US

Has there ever been a revolution over free speech or anything similar? It seems like the vast majority doesn't care at all. Can any revolution be attributed to something other than how much you can buy?
"are they an A player that just doesn't get as much mindshare?"

I think so. Via @mikko: Mobile web access marketshare changes in 2011: iOS: 25% -> 23% Android: 15% -> 22% Symbian: 30% -> 34% For real.
Great insight on founders needing to think more like investors. Something that may help in thinking this way is: If you had $100,000 to invest in an idea (and would not be personally involved beyond that), would you do it, or is there another idea with a better risk / reward profile? Use that as your emotional anchor while you factor in your excitement for the idea.

You're right about traction - it can get you excited even if you're in a mudane industry. That's much better than doing something "cool" that never gets off the ground.
Organize interesting information on subjects that you are not immediately working on. Use a product like Evernote and to organize the different pieces of information into groups on the same topic. They when you are done with the current subject that you are trying to get you head around you can move on to the next one and pull back up all those old interesting bits of information on the subject.
Business opportunities are like buses, there's always another one coming.

- Yours truly, Richard Branson

;)
Show me a non engineer who creates web-pages by writing raw html. And even if they did, wouldn't they be better off if the browser gave them helpful error messages to help them fix their html, rather than just silently rendering nonsense.
Rebrand as the others have said. If you really want to segment users you can rebrand by city, that is a new app per city. This would also afford you another means to A/B beta test features.

Personally anytime I see "social" I stay away. Other than the one or two surprise apps that come out a year the space is beyond crowded.

Good Luck!
Could it possibly be a talent acquisition? After all, they have demonstrated ability to put FB and Twitter on a feature phone. Furthermore, one of the problems with Symbian is entrenched management issues. By getting rid of the entire Symbian team, they get another shot at getting feature phones right. In any case, running a Lisp allows rapid iteration. This is great news for developers.

Have a look at their video channel. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPjjU_Ftd2Y&feature=mfu_i... Its scrolling is silky smooth. Better than my android.
http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1999945
Hunh. Most of these fail to compile for me, and i'm running Chrome on a mac. Anyone else having similar problems?
Not sure if I agree with the rebrand idea. You don't want to lose whatever awareness you worked hard for by changing the name and logo again.

Move forward. Get localized and make it work in one city first, then move to the next city.
This problem can trivially be solved by introducing a new doctype. <!doctype newhtml> - strict parsing, otherwise sloppy parsing. I honestly don't understand why the web community doesn't adopt it.
> I quickly can spot the fads

I'm 44 and this is a very under-rated skill that older developers bring to the table. And one that only experience can teach. The grand-parent posted mentioned it as well when he talks about younger programmers bashing other tools and languages but rarely know what they are talking about.

I love hiring older developers for this reason. The problem is finding an older developer who 1) wants to continue to write code, 2) has kept up-to-date with their skills and 3) is looking for a job. That is a rarity indeed. Having just gone through the search for a new hire I can tell you there were plenty of older developers who applied that didn't have proper skills and none who kept up with technologies.
> Being rejected after two weeks of work doesn't look good on anyone's CV

Why would someone put this on their CV?
One of the most important lessons that we have learned from the past years is that you cannot look at a country's standard of living in isolation. You also have to look at the debt levels to see if it is sustainable in the long run. Japan has the highest government debt-to-gdp ratio in the world: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_pub... (higher than Greece!). I suspect that they have a huge hangover coming their way.
Teach Hacking in High Schools
I have the last gen of the core-duo MBP 17, it has the 2.8 GHZ processor, 8 Gigs or RAM and a solid state drive. For me the answer to your question is no. I would imagine that with the new MBP it would be better but with my set up. I really only have waits on VM boot-up and a lag when I have not used a running VM in a while. Other than that it feels just as responsive when I am actively using the VM. I mainly use it for a windows VM though because I do, do .NET development from time to time. I use my desktop VMWare software to virtualize development OS'es for server VM's I have a server box that runs ESX server, which runs server like the Oracle stack, a VM that runs the IBM stack and one that runs the windows stack. Another note about my setup is that I use VMWare Fusion I used several other products and VMware just seemed to be the most responsive under OSX.
I could relate to how you feel.

I think your original idea to find new people is novel and not yet clearly solved.

I think failures are part of a startup.

There should be no reason why you should feel "frustrated" and "pretty useless". If not for anything else you would be in a very good position who could solve the problem of meeting new people with all the learnings that you have now from grooovy.

Its only your approach to the idea that failed. Not you.
I think the only answer is technology. A communication network that can't be controlled governments and which is anonymous by default (unless you communicate something which deanonymises you like "My name is x").

I don't believe that a practical technology exists that would allow such a network to materialise. When I look at the technological advances that have happened in the last hundred years though, I can't help but believe that such technology will be developed during my life time. And if not, soon after.
They have a uniquely high level of internal debtors, the government bonds were bought by Japanese people much more so than other citizens buying their countries' bonds. I didn't understand why this made a difference though.
Maybe you should get one upvote and one downvote per election.
How is this any better than just looking for candidates who have created or contributed to other open source projects? I suppose there would be some good candidates that came from bigger companies and maybe don't have much of a GitHub portfolio, but surely the vast majority of people that would be considered by tech startups would already have some work online.
I need to make at least 200$ a week. I could do probably about 2-3 sites per week (depends on sites too).
How many dollars worth of goods has this application steered users away from?

That sounds like the SOPA promoter's "how much money did piracy cost us" considering each download as one missed/lost sale. Please do not fall for that yourself.
At least you are out there hustling, which deserves a ton of respect. Dont feel bad, because you have come further than most other people wishing they had it in them to push so far.

Never a failure, always a lesson.
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I actually switched back to VMWare Fusion from Virtual Box. I was having a lot of issue with the performance of VirtualBox. I will readily admit that I did not try to optimize it but out of the box, I found that VMWare was far more responsive than VirtualBox on OSX.
you can track replies to yours at

http://hnnotify.com/
Have a goal based learning approach. Tie your learning directly to a project that you are intending to finish. That way - your learning has some end goal and does not become an end in itself. Also, aggregate what you want to read before hand and sort them into related things and read them together.
You could look at http://notmuchmail.org/ which builds on top of maildir.
Do you actually believe this claim?

I would imagine that murderers would still murder & those who don't like to murder wouldn't murder. Laws don't enforce themselves, people still break them & sometimes get away with it. That is no reason to repeal them.

I couldn't fire her when she comes back either...

What would be the point of saving her job for her if you're allowed to fire her immediately upon her return?

So I would have to fire the one who's been working instead of her for the whole time.

So long as it's clear that the job was a temporary fill-in position, I don't see a problem with this.

When a woman would come back from the maternity leave I would be legally forced to increase her salary to the present level in her position...

Like you would have to offer any other employee at that position.
I remember a recent article on the same wavelength, here on HN - but I can't find it.

Anyway, I agree that GDP shouldn't be idolized, just like no single metric should be.
Indeed. That helps them postponing the problems but it doesn't make the debt-levels any more sustainable. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-quUyId2WZ0
I solved a test problem for a company once (gt 500 LOC), but it was after a pre-screen and the stated salary was 130-140k base, not including generous bonuses, in the Midwest. It was also when I had a lot of downtime, so I didn't mind.

Now, I have a hard time finding enough time for my own projects, much less for contributing something to a company just for the chance to interview.

Since you're offering single digit equity, it might be worthwhile, but for the vast majority of companies, it would warrant a pass.
Twitter bootstrap turned blue. You could have at least been a bit more creative than creating an almost identical clone.
I'm sorry, but you've still ducked the question. Why does a white/asian guy with a 3.5 GPA have a lower future potential than a black/hispanic guy with a 2.6 (all else held equal)?

Even if you assume that the statistical distribution of black GPAs is lower due to culture, it does not logically follow that the black guy has higher potential.
Cutting the Cord on Cable
We need a government censorship engine for child pornography, and if you disagree, then obviously you are pro-child pornagraphy and can be ignored from public debate... Brilliant strategy. These guys are playing Chess. We need to be equally cunning.
This is the most interesting "Tell HN" I've seen in a while because it touches on many issues.

(1) A lot of us are attracted to SEO, app stores, and free and freemium business models because we don't want to do marketing. It's clear that you need to work hard at marketing if you're trying to sell an enterprise product that costs $10,000/seat/year, but people forget that a "free" website supported by advertising or a $5.99 app needs just us much work (and sometimes expense)

(2) For a long time I've been cynical about "hyperlocal" because it usually seems to mean "San Francisco and Brooklyn". Put any thought of those two markets out of your mind, because (a) you've got tough competition from VC-backed companies and (b) people who really think will think you're just another sheep. You should target some second-tier market, say Denver or Boston or Chicago or Washington, DC. San Diego is probably OK.

(3) As for geotargeting, there is a wide range of "old school" marketing channels that can be geotargeted. These include advertising on local cable TV, weekly newspapers, radio as well as fliers, stickers, and the like. You can also buy geotargeted ads on platforms like Facebook and Google.

(4) To saturate a target market takes more effort and/or money that most people want to spend. If you can't afford to hit a second-tier market, go for a third or fourth tier market. I know of people in Ithaca NY that have been blanketing the downtown area with lawn signs and fliers to promote a new site -- this is a small enough market that a person can put up 500 fliers on bulletin boards on foot on a weekend.

(5) To drive your marketing campaign you may need to rustle up some cash. Find a way to do it.

(6) Success in a target market can lead to you rustling up more cash for over markets, getting publicity, etc.

(7) 75 miles seems like a really long distance to me to hang out with people I don't know unless I share some kind of exceptionally strong interest with them.
I'm really happy to read you're inspired by these thoughts. Quite stoked actually. Thanks for being inspired, and thanks for your contributions to the blog. Especially the critical ones concerning big brother ;-)
Great advice.

"Then go and build a paid application that solves a problem people have and that isn't being solved by anyone else."

Sometimes that's not always the best approach. If no one else is solving it, it may be that the people with the problem won't pay, hence no providers. If there's solutions out there, it does validate a market/problem/idea.

The trap I see some people fall in to is what you just advised - trying to come up with something "totally new/unique", when often there's no demand. And when they see demand for X, they say "oh, XYZ is already solving that". The trick is determining how well they're solving it, finding customers they won't/can't serve, and going after that.

But yeah, don't make a social app, don't give away free stuff, etc - all your "don't"s - great list. And yeah, making money is a good feeling. It also gives you a much stronger position to explore new ideas from, rather than from a position of "oh crap there's only 4 boxes of macaroni left and I'm late on my rent".

EDIT: the 'great advice' really was meant to be 'great advice', not sarcastically spoken. I think pretty much everything in that post was great, except for the one line I called out. :)
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Yep that is what I was thinking, integrate with some data streams to get the data. Use those providers to solicit new users by making your app work with the workflow of those applications. The twitter idea is a perfect example. Foursquare would be another one, pick up checkin data, use it to find people that may be interested in meeting.
Onion: "Facebook is part of the CIA"
One idea that popped into my head - perhaps look at targeting the business traveller. I'm by no means a frequent business traveller, but on the occasion that I have done some trips, it would be great if there was a local whom was interested in sharing a meal with a stranger. Sure beats eating alone in a restaurant or room service.

Perhaps you can get some tie-in with conventions - ie sign up with this app and find people to share a meal with whilst on convention.
iamjonlee, You've got my sympathy; I can understand your anger, but it's not productive.

I checked out your twitter feed, and you appear to have 3 whole posts all of which sound like marketing blah. Your HN post is much more interesting, and gives me a reason to "follow" you and your app (I don't have an iDevice so ordinarily I'd completely disregard your app). I suggest you write a blog with fairly frequent posts updating your progress. You can put more detail in a blog. At least, update your twitter feed more often, and keep it real so there's a personality behind it, not some marketing robot.

BTW to the people complaining about the fact that the app is only available at itunes, keep in mind these guys are strapped for resources.

People have suggested rebranding... I guess another option is to port to android and launch it there with all problems solved. Don't know how realistic that would be given they're low on resources.
Gradiator - CSS3 Gradients for Linux
Let's look at one metric that supersedes all (in my opinion):

According to, Japan's unemployment rate has been no higher than 6% over the last 32 years (1980-2012).It's currently at 4.5%[1]

Compare that to the US, who's unemployment rate has been at worst 10% over the last 32 years (1980-2012). It's currently at 8.5%[2]

Why does this supersede most other stats? Because we simply need to keep people busy "doing things", otherwise (as you're seeing in the US) riots/protests break out, crime goes up (crime is largely a result of poverty), and people don't have the means to keep themselves healthy. What more do you need from a society? I understand people will say "but we need growth". I ask why? What is the end result of growth that makes societies "better"?

[1]http://www.tradingeconomics.com/japan/unemployment-rate
[2]http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/unemployment-r...

edit: 32 years...doh!
TTL for news.ycombinator.com A record is 20 minutes. Such a small value doesn't lend it's self well to DOS attacks against DNS servers. Useful if you need to change your DNS records quickly though.
You cannot eliminate determination of race in college admission (or nearly any other application process).

Sure you can. Just don't show the admissions committee real names, inform the committee only of a school ranking (not the specific school), and blank out specific extracurriculars that give away racial information.

Even better, you can just use a point system where everything is objectively measured. Strangely, many colleges dropped point systems after the supreme court ruled you cannot racially bias a point system (but you are allowed to racially bias a non-point system).

AA is specifically intended to discriminate against non-minorities in order to counter balance the discrimination that already exists against minorities.

If this were the true intent, you would expect that the college grades of AA beneficiaries and normal students would be similarly distributed. Do you believe this to be the case?
Or if used localy, go all in and install XMonad or Awesome. And get ALL your apps/windows tiled !
Legality of Marking Money
Legality of Marking Money and Where's George
You have just learned what marketing is all about! There needs to be a way to get people to find out about your app. I suggest spending time figuring out how to get people in your local area to start using it, quickly followed by getting people in your local area to somehow pay for it.
I should have mentioned that I'm an org-mode user and that this is only a subset of the features I expect my time management system to do.
Looks to me like they have made this acquisition to give them a talent pool and OS for the new featurephone strategy once they have offloaded the Smartphone biz to Microsoft?
Top Ubuntu Software Centre app downloads for December 2011
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I loved the guinea pig and the hairdryer!

I'd imagine that to sell them you'd have to package them up in a rectangular box, and build them to be automated. You'd need to find creative ways to keep the water-pouring systems hydrated. If you made a backing board with a ball-run inside it, along with a lot of ball lifts, you could build something that could repopulate it's balls back to their original places. It'd be as much or more work than designing the original though. And chemical reactions and hamsters would be right out.
Looks great fun :-)

I've been involved with Meccano for years and there's a popular family of models that are sort of perpetual versions of this sort of thing, sending balls on endless loops.

The best ones are a bit functionally dense to really appreciate except in person, but here's one I saw a few years ago:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf25bYSjD9M