skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There is a lot of competition in this space[1], and as someone who has a side project that is in this space I feel like I can give you some advice. (I should really write a general blog post because I seem to be giving this advice frequently)

I can't help much with the mental aspect. My service started out very similarly, the premise was someone that had some free time and wanted to find a tennis partner, a concert buddy, someone to practice their french etc.

I "launched", and the immediate feedback was basically 1) There isn't anything there, so I'm not compelled to post anything. 2) I don't really want to meet strangers on the internet.

You've run into 1) and you say your beta users didn't have the same feelings as 2). I'm worried you selected the wrong beta users, and you didn't catch this problem early enough.

I "pivoted" by scrapping the self post idea, and becoming an aggregator. I aggregate events from several social/local event services[2], and now that people are using it, I'm getting feedback that they'd like to be able to add their own events!

To summarize a lot of great feedback already, I think you should launch in a few metro areas and seed the events with events from other services. I'd also study the competition (and there is plenty of it, which is a good thing) to see what works, what doesn't, what sorts of features are expected for applications like this, etc. I'd also consider kicking the native apps and going html5. All the features you need for a social/local/mobile app are built into browsers, so why not develop once and make everyone happy?

[1] Swerve on ios, upout.com, GatheringPoint, brom.ly, Everyblock, my own service impromptudo.com

[2] meetup, eventbrite, active.com, yahoo! etc
QLXchange | Onex.me Landing Page
QLXchange | Onex.me Landing Page
BINGO!!!

Good point colinm,

I briefly checked and didn't see a phone app there, so maybe they could use your idea!

They even have a "we're hiring" link. That might be your vector to getting their attention. Better to buy than build.

You might even get them to buy you out...
Dunno about oracle (i heard about XE edition or something with limited memory?), but MS Visual Studio has Express edition, which is free
Sadly the support for it is directly connected to where they get their money from (For democrats and republicans).

Here is Bachmann's top sources of donations:

http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N0002...

Notice no Movie/Music Industry in the top 5

Then here is Franken's:

http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N0002...

Time Warner is his number one supporter. I would imagine that they are for it.
With one job I would like to know the rapidity of answers, and maybe "best deals" or "best savings" or somesuch. (Not sure how to measure that.)

I was an estimator for a sub-contract electronic engineering firm. I'd have a parts list, and I'd have to contact different suppliers to get prices. Getting quick responses was usually good. Getting good prices was sometimes good, but it's better to price high and buy low.
It reminds me of my first time visiting South Korea. While there I observed people who's job it was to wear a cute uniform and bow to cars entering the parking garage at the local department store, people hired by companies to stand in the aisles at the local supermarket holding packs of coffee or shampoo or whatever and dance to loud techno music (usually young women in short skirts and thigh high boots, bizarre to see families shopping for vegetables, fighting their way around scantily clad 20 year olds in the middle of a dance routine around the cabbage aisle), and other similar, "keep people busy" type jobs. I'd be highly surprised if these folks made more than $3-4/hr, not even remotely a living wage.

- checking on the numbers, the minimum wage in South Korea for 2011 was about $3.75. I'm guessing when I first went there in 2003, it was even lower.

- in 2006 I visited and remember having to make my way around a gauntlet of guys in doorman uniforms, who's job it was to bow to people entering the hotel, and another guy who's job it was to push the "up" button to request an elevator. That's it, that was his entire job. For eight hours a day, he stood outside of the elevators, waiting for guests, and pushed the only button to request an elevator (there was no down button the hotel I was staying in).

So yes, while the unemployment figures were pretty good, the actual "work" that people were doing was essentially meaningless.

I've never been to Japan, but I'd be highly surprised if there weren't similar analogues.
Be your user
it looks like it's the same problem color.com had - sparse users (geographically), thus making the app "useless"?

I didn't check the app (and groovy.me is a parked domain), but couldn't you bake in any feature that would ask for people to bring in friends/spreading virally?
Exactly. Just imagine the cash flowing from the Movie/Music industry directly in their pockets. With that happening I don't see how it can be stopped. They will just keep trying.
I quit cable around 10 years ago when I moved out of my parent's house. Really, I hadn't been into it for some time even then and found it generally to be a time-sink and of little value.

I enjoy some of the content that's on TV, but the medium just isn't right for me. I don't like commercials, and I'd rather just have the option of paying more to not have them. I want what I want when I want it. I rarely care about realtime information from a television (I have the internet for that). I also like being able to watch most of a series in a short period of time. I like movies better than shows. 99% of of the content on TV isn't something I'm interested in.

At this point, cable TV just seems to be an annoying novelty to me. Its background noise when I'm at someone's house with it. I'm frankly shocked so many people still subscribe to it. Even if it was given to me for free, I wouldn't use it.
The intended use case for stackoverflow is that you have a problem, you google for it, you find a stackoverflow question that covers your problem and click it to find out how to solve it because you know that stackoverflow search results are usually useful for that sort of thing.

If they allow other kinds of content, interesting as it may be, it will dilute that and turn stackoverflow into a discussion site or a place where people just post funny anecdotes or assorted programming trivia. That's not inherently bad but it makes it harder to use the site for its intended purpose.

(Disclaimer: I have like five karma on stackoverflow and don't necessarily know what I'm talking about.)
The problem you are facing is that very few people are familiar with your situation and so they take what they understand from their country or what they see in the news about some other country on the same continent as yours and they apply that view to your post. So it's no surprise that even with so many comments, very few have anything to do with what you wrote.

I don't understand Fidesz - or their motivations. I don't have the context (I'm rather new to living in Hungary) but it looks to me like they think they can tax their way out of the hole the socialists left behind. The fact that we have the highest VAT in Europe now seems to corroborate with this view.

The problem is - it doesn't work. People just find ways around the taxes. They have to do so. People need to eat and live and if they do everything above board they will not make it.

So as I read your post - I was bemused, trying to picture this Hungarian who pays all his taxes.
International Conference on Cyber Security (ICCS)
Beautiful Wallpapers Calib
Dos & Don'ts Upon Taking a New Job
Thank you very much for your advices.
This example also stress the importance of checking assumptions as fast as possible. With a really badly done prototype, you could have found this problem 5 months 1/2 before. I think this is a huge lesson to learn from that. And if you did, you're on your way to start a great startup.
I think at this point, my primary (and perhaps only) reason to stick with the traditional TV delivery paradigm is HBO. That being said, I would be ecstatic if they introduced an HBO Go-only price plan.
Yeah. After seeing this, I'm pretty sure SOPA will pass...
Just checked, and Time Warner is on the list of supporters of SOPA:

http://theoriesofconspiracy.com/2011/11/list-of-major-compan...
I'm on my iPhone. In bed with a bad cold. I also don't do work for free (unless it's a charity I have selected).

I appreciate your suggestions nonetheless.
Please, just because Slashdot uses a biased headline, we don't have to copy that biased headline here.

Should be “Leaked Memo Says RIM, Nokia, Apple, Etc Provide Backdoors To Governments”.
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> Where did all of that money go? I remember seeing a single TV ad at WP7's launch, and nothing more.

Remember the "Really?!" campaign? I saw this ad at least 50 times last fall.

Here it is in glorious Silverlight: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/showcase/details.aspx?uuid=b8...
7 steps to SEO a Blog [Infographic]
https://news.ycombinator.com./

Chrome doesn't accept the certificate when the trailing dot is in the request.

I bet if you configured your site to redirect to a URL with a trailing dot, it would break a lot of badly written robots. I'd be interested to hear about how it affects the major search engines before I'd want to implement it on any important sites.
Thanks. Interesting point.
Very very interresting, you make me doubt of my answer...

But I finally continue to think that a player don't have to go first (if the barrel is spined once).

First: for n=1 chamber, it is obvious - the clue.

If we extend the n=1 case to n>1, we can feel what will happen: there is intrinsically the time in the game rule: you have to be the last. Then acting on this rule shall make a difference.

Let's take n=2 chambers. The payer don't know where the bullet is. Then, from her point of view, she still have to let her opponent try the first one XD from the player point of view, the die is not cast, the fact that the barrel has been spined is virtual: the fact that the variable's drawing has been pre-made or not for each probability system is not relevant

So, in short, when the player press the trigger, the die is casted once like in each probability system - but becareful, here, the die is changing after each try since the rule is that the barrel is spinned once=) Great great problem, I like it=)

And so on for n>2.
They strongly dislike poll-like questions.
Personally I've found TV watching to be borne out of some sort of inertia. There was a point where I paid for all the pre-requisite packages for the privilege of being able to add The Speed Channel and watch my Formula 1, ALMS, etc. I watched a fair amount of TV, and already had some pricey packages, so what was a bit more?

However, the time came along where I didn't have as much time to watch racing anymore. I had a TiVo, but even then, I just didn't have the time to watch the recorded races. Eventually, I pared things down to the "Expanded" package. However, the few shows of interest went away. So when I moved, I pared down to Basic, only because if I didn't, I would only save $0.80/mo on my cable bill since Internet service would cost $10/mo more without a bundled television package.

I think the television was on about 12 hours last year, in terms of broadcast programming. Yes, twelve. Why? I fell out of the habit of slouching in my lounge chair and sitting there for a few hours every evening. My routine changed, and there always seems to be this large amount of inertia to overcome to change my routines. Unless the content producers come up with compelling reasons for me to park myself in front of the TV again, it will probably remain a tremendously expensive paperweight.

Granted, I do occasionally play video games, and stream content from YouTube, or my transcoded DVD library to an Apple TV, but I don't do that all that much.

It's like getting someone who lives in New York City to get excited about and buy a boring midsize sedan. They ride the subway, buses and take the taxi. You'd have to overcome their inertia of not using a car, and get them over the fact of what a car would cost them. I look at TV now almost the same way (though I live in Boston) -- there's this tremendous amount of inertia you have to overcome to change someone's habits, especially when there's viable alternatives that are nearly as good and cheaper.
I have some friends who don't travel internationally and who have totally bought into the propaganda that the USA is better than any other country using any metric.

Love of one's own country and mild forms of nationalism are good things, but they should be tempered with a realistic view of the world. In the USA we have a clear and present danger to the economic health of our country: spending too much money on "defense."
It is easy and popular for westerners to romantacize Japan - but it has serious and structural problems. When analyzed on its own (instead of comparing it to the USA) it becomes readily apparent.

I will just say a few observations which show that the picture the article paints is not quite accurate.

Firstly, yes there are many people with fancy clothes. What the author does not say is that a lot of those people live with their parents - and their whole income is expendible. I don't know if this phenomeneon started after the bubble economy, but it is quite shocking.

Then there is the fancy cars - what is the percentage of car ownership?

About employment - finding permanent employment for young people has become almost impossible. Many young people now have short term contracts or do so called "arebeito" (extremely short term work with hourly wage). This is clearly not optimal and is a new in this generation.

Japanese health care is a joke. They spent a lot on the last years of life (everywhere you look is AED machines), but nothing on the quality of life. Japanese dental care is below third world country! The majority of people do not get orthodontal treatment even when clearly necessary. Take a look next time you walk around.

Another example of the quality of health care - I've spoken to two dermatologists (from national health care in Japan) and they don't even know about ruaccutane (isotretonion). This surely is a basic treatment that in some cases are necessary?

Japanese banking is pathetic. It seems they do everything by hand - which is nice but inefficient. With my non-japanese banking I get internet banking for free and ATMs are open 24/7. Good luck getting that in Japan.

Typed on iPhone so sorry for typos.
Amazon has been the wal-mart of the internet for a while now.
It makes it sound as though you need 3D to shrink the chips. I don't think that's the case. I don't like calling a 3D component a 3D chip design, either.
"Social responsibility" produces a better overall society? How? By (hopefully) raising the lowest members of society out of poverty and poor education. Society here meaning "the group", not touching on any sense of morals.

Assuming that your "social responsibility" taxes are only intended for poor unwed mothers is a gross generalization regardless of your personal background.
Virtual Machines: Thin Hypervisor
Why does it have to be a problem no one else is solving? Of course competing with an existing service is hard, but sometimes thinking of something no one else is doing is harder. In many cases, especially in software, the competition is not as far ahead as you might think. In many more cases, their marketing is not that far reaching. And if there's one thing we can learn from this whole ordeal is that marketing is key.

Regarding the failure of this launch, this should not have come as a surprise, the marketing solution to this should've been in your business plan from day one. And maybe, if you _would_ have surrounded yourself with founders maybe one of them had actually paid attention to the stories at HN and warned you about the launching deficiencies in your plan.
I think it's too early to stop now, even as it feels you've lost your only chance. You build a product people actually want and you've only tried launching it once thus far.
What’s the worst thing that can happen?
Alan Watts: The Game Theory of Ethics [audio]
Kamus Bahasa Sunda
One could do both: Spin off some experimental new brands and try to rehab the existing brand.

The codebase is there. The infrastructure is there. The company has exercised the whole stack from prototyping through to delivery and maintenance. New brands or brand variants aren't cheap, but they might be a lot cheaper than starting over.

These folks can, in theory and provided it fits within the limits of human endurance, build a dozen variants on the idea. They can release the app that specializes in three major cities and the app that is targeted specifically at golfers looking for golf buddies and the app that's targeted at meetups among beer aficionados and throw more marketing spaghetti at the wall for the original app.

(Though obviously I have no idea if any of these things will yield profits or not.)
Apps available: $1.5 million Arizona Innovation Challenge
Headline is incorrect. Article is about "codecademy", a Ney York based website, not "Code Academy", a Chicago based code instruction program.

These 2 really need to differentiate their names more though.
I pay $40 month for ESPN in HD. I love football, and more importantly, the majority of my customers and important contacts love it more. $500 year for an easy and relevant conversation starter is a steal.
GNU Screen allows you to do something similar using its setenv command. For instance, to update the value of $DISPLAY to a new ssh session's value you could run "screen -S foo -X setenv DISPLAY $DISPLAY" before running "screen -r foo".

I have a wrapper script that reproduces tmux's behavior of automatically updating a set of environment variables. It goes a step further and also updates them in your running bash shells. For this to work you have to register a signal handler in your .bashrc that sources a file with the new environment. The script is available at https://github.com/sciurus/splatbang/blob/master/rescreen
"We need to throw off the myth that software development requires advanced math and science – as it doesn't! In my 13 years of Web/software product management, many of the best software developers I've worked with don't have engineering degrees at all."

They may not have degrees but this doesn't mean they are not engineers. I basically agree with the post but this "be fluent in one programming language" thing is just stupid. Languages come and go, the principles and the math stay.

Anyway, Bootstrap is a nice project in this field, based on Racket (Scheme).

http://www.bootstrapworld.org/
Don't forget ExecutorService and the whole concept of sending chunks of work back and forth across synchronizing queues. Best way to write concurrent code in any language IMO, analogous to go's channels/goroutines and erlang's whatever they're called.
Free book: The Medici Effect. Including how to find ideas and how to take risks
No, they made it possible to port XNA games to the platform. Except that XNA != XBOX SDK.

XNA is a .NET-based game SDK that some people have used for Xbox Arcade games. As far as I know it hasn't been used for any disc-based games. Games like Modern Warfare are written in C++, top to bottom, with potentially some Lua for scripting.

Lack of C++ is a huge issue on WP7, ask any game developer you know who is working on the platform.
Press books and download it in pdf
Gerd Gigerenzer would suggest that this article contains too many percentages for regular people to make sense of.

> For women in a control group given no treatment, the rate of cancer recurrence was 20 percent,

> Peoples said. Among patients given the new drug, he said, “we cut that rate in half.”

This is clearer than many papers would have reported, but people still risk making a mistake here.

> while Herceptin only works for about 20 percent of patients, E-75 worked for 60 percent.

People will get confused here. 20% of what? 60% of what?

It's much better to use real numbers.

> In a group of 10,000 women who've had breast cancer but who are not given further treatment approximately 2,000 will go on to get cancer again. In a group of 10,000 women who've had breast cancer but who are given E-75 approximately 1,000 will go on to get cancer again.
Wish there was a way to view who funded them more, basically ($TV|Movie) - ($Online|Internet)
Hidden features of C#
For sure, but there's a big difference between "factory" and "military factory".
I'd like this too - but I imagine part of the reason why this hasn't been done is that the recommended libraries are still in flux. Text is a very recent library, for instance.

Personally, I'd think Hackage getting some kind of support for popularity metrics would go some way to solving this problem, by helping create a consensus of what packages used the most by the Haskell community.
The author claims he cut cable yet pays $340/year to get NFL Sunday Ticket on his PS3 - really?

The only reason I still have cable is for ESPN. They have live sports that are exclusive to ESPN and the only way to get ESPN is to have cable.
The most interesting part is the discussion about Guile vs CL for GNU Emacs in the comments.
I went from "Terminal" to "screen" to "tmux" to "stumpwm". Baiscally, what I really liked of tmux is the way I could frame my terminals logically or fullscreen easily. I also really enjoyed the fact that I had multiple "workspace". Basically, my WM was just not appropriate for the way I liked to work. Stump fixed that. It's dynamic, I can hack it from emacs and it has everything I liked about tmux. Obviously, I'm talking from my desktop perspective, if I'm working somewhere else remotely it's a different story.
Yep. Go-only and an MLB.tv without local blackouts and I'd be completely happy. Nearly everything else is extra baggage I don't want. I just don't watch enough TV outside of those things to justify the monthly cost.
I think it is Economics in one lesson you should begin with. Its available for free here: http://mises.org/books/economics_in_one_lesson_hazlitt.pdf

It's a classic and easy to read.
"Consider" paying them?
You have fallen for the fallacy that there's a fixed amount of "work" in the economy. That's been disproven time and again, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy

Rather, employment is a dynamic pie that can grow as more people add skills and put those skills to work.
In my experience, employee #1 gets "a pretty nice salary" and little to no equity or they get a 20-30% equity split that pays nothing until launch.

There is no way to secure a major role after funding. I have a couple friends who "wrote it into the contract" and in one situation the VC just brought in "an assistant director" that was paid three times what he was.

Sounds like you are getting a good deal, but I would be upfront about your desire for a future role.
Google Chrome Extension: 2 Pane for Gmail
Hey Guys,

Happy New Year 2012.

Please try my new Google Chrome Extension for Gmail. It's a very simple extension but I believe It will be useful for Small Display.
I notice the lists are mostly games. I wonder if that shows Linux's lack in entertainment compared to other platforms.

The lists also don't seem very diverse, which is probably due to the store being so new. It's good to see people able to make money selling software for Linux. It has traditionally been difficult compared to other platforms.
Only in very recent versions; on most distros it means compiling from CVS.