skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Looking at your site, you absolutely must add pictionary functionality. Shouldn't be that hard, since you already have the visual part + I believe the chat, so all you need to do is make some keyword lists and bam.

Separate yourself from other pictionary sites by making more niche specific keyword lists. And throw up a site-wide monthly league for users to compete with each other
Thank you for the insightful reply.
Congratulations! Can you give us a sense of how successfully you've been able to monetize all the users you've gained? What sort of challenges do you face on that front?
Except for RealMedia; I've tried.
true...

Are you following me??
http://trends.google.com/trends?q=heysan%2C+mibbit&date=...

that's just weird...
That's not an argument; it's just circumstantial ad hominem. I could advance my argument against you the same way by saying you sound awfully threatened by women and gay people.

The claim you're citing is surprising not only because it defies conventional wisdom (which it does), but also implies that whole of the American educational system is built on an easily-corrected inefficiency. Why can't you marshall better evidence for your extraordinary claim? Why don't you have a better source than an untenured Swarthmore professor writing in a journal with dubious peer review?
The thing is: the Dabbleboard (vector-based) interface is not optimized for that kind of drawing, which bitmap-based tools (like MS Paint) handle better. Biggest feature "hole" would be the lack of a bitmap eraser.
Side point to define terms: by liberalism I mean the position that we should give people the freedom to do whatever they want. That kind of blind liberalism is unsustainable and helps destroy the institution it is a part of.

However, there is a good sort of liberalism that aims to give people as much freedom as possible to fulfill their potential. This is the best counter to strict conservativism, since it is actually sustainable, progressive, and will produce a new culture. Blind liberalism will merely continue to wage an impotent battle against strict conservativism.
Happy to.

We launched our virtual economy this summer and are just integrating premium (the ability to pay for virtual economy coins). We're live in 11 markets with premium and gradually adding more. People use their phone and something called WAP-billing to pay for the coins. $6.99 buys you 200,000 coins for example.

Historically monetizing users on mobile have been an order of magnitude easier than on the web. Ringtones is a billion dollar business for example. SMS is a $80 billion dollar business. What web services/categories can generate that kind of revenue? And SMS is a pretty poor protocol. The key is the built-in mobile micropayment system called PSMS or WAP-billing.

One of the companies we look at for inspiration is Mobagetown, a mobile web based community in Japan. It's a $250MM company in terms of revenues at just 10MM users.

Our main challenge is to make people realize that Alexa doesn't track mobile web ;)

Gustaf, Heysan
I'm really looking for evidence, or even compelling anecdotes, for why this "kids need men and women" concept is valid. What does a kid get from a male parent that they can't get from a female parent?

Note that seventeen comments after you make this case, when I concede some obscure point about the value of men or women in parenting, I'm just going to come back at you and say that this is really just evidence that we should ban divorce, like Ireland once did. What it has to do with gay marriage, I don't know.

However much we lack strong heterosexual families, we're more awash in mediocre heterosexual families, and far more disturbed by unplanned single-parent families. You will have a hard time saying that a child will do better in a loving two-parent gay family than in the median family in the US.

Is it possible that children will, for a variety of reasons, some of then intrinsic and some of them extrinsic (such as societal pressure against homosexual parents --- the same arguments that might be marshalled against racially diverse couples), do marginally better in the Ozzie and Harriet family of the '50s than in the Ozzie and Ozzie family of the '020s. I concede the last point you just made, up front. But that argument doesn't preclude my argument, which is that availability of loving gay couples to raise wanted children will be a net benefit for society and for children.
No cygwin or anything, but you use the terminal "a lot?" I think I'd kill myself without a proper shell…
All I'm saying is that Adobe can't get Flash to work correctly on my machine, so that means I don't get to take advantage of this. If they used Theora/Vorbis, it would work on every computer made in the last 10+ years.

Is using Windows, OSX, or x86 Linux a citizenship requirement now?
Thinking abuot it, advertising on LinkedIn makes a lot of sense for them: they want business users to move away from MS Office and onto Google Docs, which runs much better on Chrome than Firefox or IE.
Now For Something Completely Different: Cringely is leaving PBS and throws in his name for US CTO
Very cool :)

Presumably though if you add quantcast tracking code they could look to quantcast which seems to be taking over from alexa these days?
how does quantcast get their data?
doesn't google own jaiku? and isnt jaiku just twitter++?
As far as I know, the only reason Passenger disables mod_rewrite is because if they didn't the .htaccess file that ships with Rails would cause every request to use CGI instead of Passenger. See here for details: http://www.modrails.com/documentation/Users%20guide.html#con...

We are using Passenger + mod_rewrite where I work with no problems.
From panels/ISPs,

-OR-

You insert some js in your pages, and it's "quantified". They actually have some pretty cool stats, and exact numbers unlike alexa.
Um, if you were happy with Windows before, why did you switch in the first place?

One of the biggest things that keeps me from using a Windows machine, is the lack of a proper shell. One that exists as a first-class citizen, and not as some bastard add-on hack. Cygwin really doesn't cut it for me, and the only other real option is to run VMWare, at which point I might as well run Ubuntu.
[citation needed]

I've been on rails for 3 years now. http://www.workingwithrails.com/person/7008-aaron-blohowiak
problem 1: phones don't do js

problem 2: phones don't have panels

problem 3: phones don't connect to isp's they connect to carrier wap gateways.

One attempt to track mobile is from Opera but it's highly skewed to the type of people that have Opera on their phones and the activity that's significant for them: http://www.opera.com/mobile_report/
What is amazing is that most Apple users even agree with me that it is completely terrible.

How is that remotely amazing? Mac users tend to be honest about what their stuff is like. Liking an operating system doesn't mean you can't be critical of parts of it.

Although, I like Finder more than I do Windows Explorer. What features does Explorer have that put it leagues above Finder, like this article would suggest?
Wasn't this a User Friendly story arc?
Merb, Rails Myths, Language Popularity and other Zenbits
Q: Advice for Software Startups dealing with Big Customers?
When working with new customers what have you done to help them overcome the perceived risks of dealing with a startup? What experience have you had with things like software escrow?
cool but destined to the same fate as meebo. the major IM players will never backdoor each other with out-of-agreement access to each others' users. if they wanted to, they could have all been doing that years ago, on mobile too. don't try to out-reason things, just accept that even though X and Y could interract trivially with open-source access libs, they would rather sit in a room for six months and do a one-off deal. so unless these guys get their own rev model, they will end up just like meebo...a cool service that is immune to acquisition
That's a good point. Which is why I said that Zed accuses him of lying, and why I said that it is potentially damning, and refrained from making a judgment myself.. and why I look forward to the rebuttal.

Edit: please see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=365020
AIX and Power6 doesn't count for IBM? Surely big blue can get a little credit there..

Agreed though - I'm not really sure what HP do with Servers - more expensive than Dell, and all off-the-rack components...
where is uncov dude when you need him? twitter is another example of a service that is slavishly adored by a microaudience but means nothing to 99.999% of the rest of the world and NEVER WILL. frankly yahoo would make more money acquiring dear abbey, fantasy badminton or more outlandish horoscopes.
reinstall the os?
Immune to acquisition from major IM networks. That still leaves the options of a) everyone else. b) hitting revenue and creating a viable long-term business.
I would think Yahoo is having enough trouble with their own business model. To me, it wouldn't make sense to take on something that's, so far, been almost impossible to monetize.
If you'll read some of the other comments, particularly the ones from the Heysan team, you'll notice that they have established a revenue model and probably don't require your unsolicited advice and proclamations.
Ah presumably most of the usage is via WAP then?
tell me one concrete example where a hard limitation of linux kept you from meeting your goals, yet opensolaris got you across the line
Cygwin is only marginally better than the plain old DOS shell. Too much of an "impedance mismatch" for me to handle.
Alternate possibility: current handheld game console generation is mature. Everyone who wants a DS or PSP has one.
That’s why they constantly pick on little guys like Giles, Obie, and myself

Who's picking on Obie Fernandez?
Twitter has much more mindshare than Jaiku, at least among the people I know.
Luckily the vast majority of our traffic is between Heysan-Heysan users.

On a high level IM is becoming a commodity. I'm not bullish on the long-term survival of MSN Messenger in it's current form. Facebook has just launched a much more relevant IM service than MSN or AIM will ever be.

The fundamental problem with IM remains, it's hard to monetize. As is social networking. With a built-in micropayment system the chances of succeeding there increases. That's why mobile makes a massive difference.
The outsiders: Johnny Marr on the misfits and mavericks who make music magical
Yah Exploring is not for everyone nor is Finder. I think that the tree view in Exploring while still showing the contents of the tree is great (compared to thee sliding panes in Finder for example) and the context menu integration of many apps is also good (eg win merge and tortoise).
It's mobile web yes. most of the mobile web browsers renders XHTML and most traffic is XHTML
updated it - yes I use cygwin :)
I borrowed this from my school library, it goes through language constructs in detail using Scheme. I would recommend it to anyone interested in programming languages.
Of course it's not. Same as how owning a radio wasn't a citizenship requirement when FDR was president.

Adobe doesn't have a business obligation to get Flash to work for minority OSs. They work for 99.9% of computers, and that's pretty excellent as-is.
I mentioned in there the main factor is price. The MacBook seemed like a great deal compared to similar dells at the time. Today the prices are reversed :S

I ran VMWare on the MacBook but it was way too slow.
If you're stuck in windows like I am at work you really need to try MS Powershell. It works great. I'm just as comfortable with it as I am with bash at home. It's object based scripting is quite cool also; you can do COM automation in a very simple manner. I do traditionally file maintenance stuff and more slick MS Office automation with Powershell. Totally recommend it if you have to use Windows.
FYI, our largest devices are Ipod Touch, Samsung Instinct, Blackberry, Nokia N95 and Sony PSP.
A fantastic application targeted at a wonderful niche. Perfectly captures the ecosystem around group chat.
Since when did Winer start whining so much when people criticized him? He used to be a really respected name. Now he's asking like a child.
You're in luck, there's a deep shelter tunnel complex under the heart of London, below the underground, up for sale right now, complete with generators, artesian well, room to sleep 8,000 people...

http://www.agoravox.com/article.php3?id_article=8756
Is this legal?

Page 5:

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or
mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval)
without permission in writing from the publisher.
It impacts me as a developer because this potentially diminishes DHH's credibility in my eyes, and as the Rails BDFL, this has the potential to impact how I approach the platform I use to make a living.

Don't let it.

Put it this way, I'm definitely no unconditional member of the DHH fan club, but his contributions to the Ruby world are streets ahead of Zed's. Whether you think Zed is great or not, none of that detracts from what DHH has done. DHH is pretty direct and a "good guy" (usually - Rails logo idiocy overlooked). DHH has not, in my experience, tended to be passive aggressive - though there are many in the Ruby and Rails pantheon who are.

I concur with tptacek's opinion above - all of his posts in this thread are on the money. On ZS's part, as interesting and amusing as these cries are, he's crying in a showman-esque way - just sit back and enjoy the show. (Don't believe me? Try: The one thing that pissed me off about the Mongrel project was how it destroyed my career path. -- Destroyed his career path? It was a semi-popular project for a minor language - get a grip.)

My qualifications to make these statements? Not as strong as those for some others, but I've been a Rails coder since 2004 and run the largest Ruby blog so I believe I've seen a lot of what's gone on.
* Who cares?
You can make money... if your software requires support/consulting/customization to make it work. If your software "just works", not so much.
Often times, I've shown them not just work we've done but what it did for the customer, why it mattered and how our practices will apply to them. Sometimes even, with a few modifications show them your elevator pitch so they can have an idea of what your bigger goal is, that way they have some sense of direction as they'll be involved in what your company is going to be doing.

Good luck!
Whether "oral rehydration therapy" is copyrightable is beside the point. That aside by the author doesn't weaken his main claim. There are no taxes on copyrights. Yet, my company has to pay taxes on all its other assets. Why shouldn't copyright be treated the same way?
Good on you, mate. I just watched the Dabbleboard video, and was really impressed with what you've created!
Ask HN: How would you deploy a Rails app onsite for a customer?
One of my new projects is a web-app for business (built on Rails). I've been fortunate to make some really good contacts who agreed to be beta testers (large corporate/franchise types).

One bit of feedback I received was that some companies may want their own instance of the app deployed behind a firewall.

Does anyone have any good ideas on how to implement this efficiently? Is there an easy to configure appliance that can run a linux distro and Rails stack? Is there any easy way it could pull updates?
It's hard to track them. They usually lose their internet connections when they're evicted :-)
Introducing: The Facebook Phone
I did a quick writeup of yesterday's launch event and my first impressions of the phone
It's really not that hard to find. Here's the first link after searching: "Influence of fathers". Lot's of
supporting citations.

http://www.civitas.org.uk/hwu/fathers.php

You will have a hard time saying that a child will do better in a loving two-parent gay family than in the median family in the US.

Which is why I'm specifically not saying that. In fact, this is what I said: No, I would not suggest for a second that having a child requires "optimal" conditions.
From the Failure of Zoints to Ownership in Modular Innovation
I'm looking at your Twitter stream and seeing the Sinatra code, but if I'm mistaken, I apologize.
The author claims that with a 2.4ghz/2gb Mac they couldn't run Eclipse... I've been running Eclipse on a similar/lower spec (2yo MBP) for ages - and this is a Java,C/C++/Flex workspace.

No problems at all.... In fact it seems to churn the disk considerably less than my colleague's Vista Dell machine.

So not sure where that is coming from at all. The MBP is almost the ideal Eclipse workstation imho.
I upmodded your post. DHH is an excellent marketer, and we all make honest mistakes -- I'd have to think long and hard about when I switched from SCGI to FCGI to Mongrel to Phusion myself. Zed is clearly inflammatory, which I think is a great detriment to the validity of some of the points he raises. Now that DHH has posted a clarification, he's maintained his credibility.

I've also gone back and re-read the original Zed rant and when he says "That’s a production application that can’t stay up for more than 4 minutes on average", it is clearly wrong (even according to the very conversation that he posted,) and he should issue the retraction, if he has not already.
Much of "influence of fathers" stuff is really talking about the implications of living in:

* single parent homes

* poor single parent homes

* poor and middle-class single parent homes where the single parent works full-time and has less influence over their children

* poor single parents homes in cultures that overtly disrespect fatherhood and implicitly promote weak family structures

I grant you immediately that it's not optimal to be raised in single-parent households --- with the obvious caveat that you have to control for income, culture, setting, and atypically excellent parents that pull it off anyways.

It looks like you & I agree more than we disagree.
I think that the tree view in Exploring while still showing the contents of the tree is great

But that's something that Finder handles, also. The CMD-2 view. Or am I missing something?

Also, what are in Merge and Tortoise? I don't get what context menu integration means.
http://express.engineyard.com/

Use VMWare Player with that image as the base, install your Rails app to it, and go from there. Then you can give your client the pre configured image and they can deploy it however they please.

That image is Engine Yard in a box, and Engine Yard is awesome. You
I see what you are saying now, and agree (especially as DHH has issued the correction.)
My work "PC" is a Dell Insprion 1501 laptop with a blazingly fast (/sarcasm) AMD sempron 1800 with 256M RAM.

Does everything I need it to.
Then again, I run dwm and only terminal apps save for firefox...
Oh Noes! The totalitarian upper middle class is making it harder for you to stick your nose into other people's bedrooms and sniff around. The totalitarian array of beauty shop owners and broadway supporting cast is going to make you have butt sex and loosen your tight sphincter. Your whole worldview is antiquated and dying, and you've probably wasted your life sacrificing opportunities to your stupid dogma. Us younger generation is patiently waiting for you conservative idiots to die off so we can get on with our lives. Most people are monkeys, and monkeys always complain when you take away their right to piss on someone lower in the social order. Bad monkey! Stop peeing on the gays. Evolve stupid monkey!
I've heard people with more paranoida than sense claim that recovery labs (like, say, in the NSA) can 'peel' off passes. Effectively they can view he state of a given drive sector after N writes. If you do complete passes of writing zeroes (or even random numbers), the theory is the spooks can still view your stuff.

To counter this people have written disk cleaning utilities that will write random values to a random subset of the disk each pass. After a few passes of writing randoms to a random subset (say 50% of the sectors) it becomes REALLY hard to know what was on the disk because there is no way to 'peel' off a layer.

Practical speaking... if you're defending yourself against someone with the ability and motivation to do more than a simple Norton undelete there are better options. I believe the standard practice for Defense contractors is to pass a magnetizing wand over the drives then throw them into a massive shredder.

All of this is way overkill for a person who wants to erase their online passwords and letters to mistresses.
Sounds like the desktop app problem in a certain sense, although without quite so many potential installations.
Maybe microsoft can hire him with that 42 billion dollars. 100,000 dollars.

And then buy yahoo for him to run. 12 billion dollars.

And still have 30 billion dollars to burn down orphanages or whatever Microsoft does with it's cash.
too expensive for how much money it brings in. plus, it doesn't add anything to the google experience.

does twitter hold any patents? i read a while back that software patents don't apply unless they are somehow linked to hardware.
Some of my best friends start there sentences with "I'm all for gay rights, but...", but...
I've played with Dabbleboard a bit in the past, and I think that it is a great tool. I have to admit though, I haven't been following it that closely. How are you planning to make a living off of it? I'm just curious. I'll understand if you would rather not answer that.
Setup is hard to do well yet few companies schedule much time for it since users see it only a few times per version.
Console gaming died because you can play little games in your DVD menus.

The iPhone is not killing portable gaming devices. My God, look at Monster Hunter in Japan. It's a lack of good software.
I don't think it has anything to do with SN ratio, but attention. Twitter gets quite a bit of time from each person a month, and therefore it is a valuable service.
Wrong. Slacking is great. You got a brain? Why not use it to figure out how not to work. Work is for people who don't know how to get everything they want without working. Slacking is surfing the path of least resistance and riding it to build up incredible momentum.

One game to play with the few waking hours you have to live is to work hard to get what you want.

I'd much rather not work hard and get what I want anyways. Relax, the structure of the universe will catch you if you do what you want and don't work.
We use EngineYard–and yes, they are awesome. Thanks for this.

Any recommendations on hardware?
Anyone knows of an EEG under a thousand dollars? I would really like to record and mine my sleep with better nuance than simply whether I move/don't move.
since he is starting to think of himself as a small business and not a start up.

Startups are a form of small business; viz. young ones.
The only thing I'd use a dell for is to order a mac from apple.com. Then I'd wash my hands and read a book.
Excellent! Congrats to you! I first used dabbleboard a few months ago, linked through HN, and have gone back many times since. Fantastic and well-executed tool indeed.
from how many people though? i'm willing to bet not that many.
How To Move Your Outlook And Windows Mobile Contacts To Your T-Mobile G1
Instructions on how to import your contacts from Windows Mobile device and Outlook to your new T-Mobile G1. Includes step by step details, pop mail instructions
Maybe yor are running different version of Eclipse? I have a feeling that Ganymede is slower than Europa.

FWIW, I also find eclipse (Ganymede) to be a bit slow on my 2.4Ghz Mac Book Pro (Mac OS X). I think I'll splash out for a solid state disk as soon I find one with good ratings.
That would be a lot. Capacitors are generally on the order of pico/nano/microfarads.
What do you need a terminal for in Windows?

I'm not being snarky, it's a serious question. I'm a programmer, but I use Visual Studio 2008 and I rarely have to touch a command line to do anything that I need to do...