skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Thanks.

How Dennis Miller of him/her.
Where's RMS?

Where's Fake Steve Jobs?!
The other side of the coin I've been trying to preach. Left and right you see Facebook making some kind of big marketing maneuver, some new ad partner.

Maybe I'm naive to this new wave of web based business, but how has Facebook managed to partner up with Microsoft, and all of these other ad providers and not raise a single dime?
I can agree with that.

At least we both like South Park :).
I would be shocked if they hired a celebrity for this post. That said, because it's fun, I'll handicap:

* Lessig and Felten are dead in the water; while I mostly agree with them, they're ideologues on topics that will make them Senate-unconfirmable (is this position Senate-confirmable?). Also, neither of them have applicable management experience.

* Schmidt isn't leaving Google.

* Bill Joy doesn't have any management experience, although he's clearly campaigning for the spot.

* Ballmer and Bezos seems plausible; Ballmer might take it as life raft from Microsoft, and Bezos seems open to random ventures. By the way, I'd be thrilled to see it be Bezos.

* The three non-celebs (Genachowski, Shah, Gips) seem like they're shortlisted.

I think we're probably paying a lot more attention to this CTO title than the transition team is, given our biases.
>Gross profit does not include the costs of selling advertising (10% of sales), marketing, product development (Hulu's platform), or management or administration salaries

Sorry, what? Is this some new definition of profit being used here?

Let's stick to calling revenue revenue, and profit profit.
> They carefully calibrate the laws so that most people are breaking some of them at least sometimes.

Explain this please. My grand conspiracy detectors are malfunctioning today.
Let's also examine both sides of the issue here, I don't see any numbers on YouTube's financial metrics.
I don't mind when people use 'u' or I'z, or anything like that. But affect and effect are two different words entirely. People who say 'U' don't mistakenly write 'Me'. It's not a spelling error, it's a meaning error. You mean to say one word, you say another. In my english accent, 'effect' and 'affect' are pronounced completely differently. This may not be the same for you, which is why you make the mistake.

The same with 'of'. You picked another word that means something different and put it in there - you didn't just misspell it.

There is nothing wrong with bad spelling - I'm not very good at spelling either. But it's confusing if you substitute words with other words that mean something different, but in your accent sound the same.

The way I speak, those words don't sound the same, and your sentence becomes very confusing. It's only because I've seen this mistake a few times on the internets that I know what is meant.
I normally really like this blog, but this post is puffy and superficial. You could replace "Entrepreneur" with "Eagle Scout" and, apart from TJ Watson, the post would still make sense.
>Hulu has fewer than 1/10th as many users as YouTube and serves an even smaller fraction of streams, so that is entirely possible.

Hulu also markets to a completely different crowd. YouTube is user-generated content. Hulu is a user-focused service. That's not a hard dichotomy to perceive, so on that front alone it's pretty obvious to know that numbers will be different.
I'd imagine that's because their P&L is firmly on the "L" side of things.

Hulu has a margin at least that they can work within to be profitable. I'm not too sure if YouTube can say the same, but to be honest I have no idea.
A writer is someone who writes, not someone who goes about telling their friends that they are “a writer”. The same is true of entrepreneurs.
American gladitor is what the lowest rung rubes watch. More sophisticated rubes watch more sophisticated shows that program them the same way to think they are better then the other rubes.

If I can get you irritated at me by what I say, what makes you think your not being programmed along the same mechanism targeting other emotions, by your literature? The economist writes more words then me. They can hypnotize you and make you react more then I can. If I can change your emotion a little, so can they, and they control you at this point.
IIRC prosecutors are not allowed to selectively enforce a law. For example, if Asians are forbidden from being within Boston city limits then the government can't prosecute only Yao Ming to keep him from beating up on their basketball team.
One should keep in mind that engineers also produce some of the world's most dramatic failures.
Here's another reference to various economic indicators that appeared in the Boston Globe back in late October.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/10/26/...
Your point is well taken. Not every post on the site is a "How To", which I tend to like better as well.

Some are more inspirational. I do agree that this one has less 'meat' than some of the others, but I still like the description of the characteristics shared by many successful entrepreneurs.

Maybe there is a strong correlation between Eagle Scouts and Entrepreneurs?!

Thanks for the feedback.
if you want to read people with this change in their language, you'll learn to adapt.

When I watch british humor, I don't always get it, but I don't expect them to change to be more like me.
The BDI lags large macro economic trends like growth in China. And it doesn't reveal anything more specific then booming growth in trade with China.
More laughing than irritation so hopefully it continues.

Anyways, I actually don't subscribe to the Economist; it was just an example.

Regardless, they're probably controlling me anyway.
Wikipedia:

[According to SCOTUS] "A selective prosecution claim is not a defense on the merits to the criminal charge itself, but an independent assertion that the prosecutor has brought the charge for reasons forbidden by the Constitution."[1] The defense is rarely successful; some authorities claim, for example, that there are no reported cases in at least the past century in which a court dismissed a criminal prosecution because the defendant had been targeted based on race.
I wrote the article, and I found your comment about the three non-celebs to be quite interesting. Do you think their government/Washington experience be seen as an asset, or a hindrance in an Obama administration?

I also wonder how sharp billionaire tech entrepreneurs would fare running a federal bureaucracy and dealing with Congress.

Anyone?
Ask YC: What Do you Want out of Facebook?
In another thread I made the comment that I saw absolutely no value in Facebook. I should clarify that statement before the floor is opened for comments:

I see no monetary value in Facebook because Helxis made a very true statement: I don't want my friendships monetized, someone else profiting because I interact with people I care about is a sickeningly greedy idea to me (read: to me, if you disagree share with us).

From where I stand (somewhat of a purist when it comes to how business affects people), Facebook is changing for the worst. Partnering up with tons of ad providers, and most notably Microsoft, I have a very hard time believing Facebook can't raise a dime for it's own end. More and more features are coming along that almost seem to separate people:

Biggest example of this was the redesign. Some were for it, many more were against it and while I remain on the side of "pro redesign", I think this proves that Facebook is growing more detached from it's users. Over a million people petitioned to bring back the old design; sure it was probably difficult to maintain but those are things you fix, things you work on. How can we keep the old design, or at least build it from the ground up and make it more user friendly and developmentally efficient?

I'm of the opinion that Facebook is growing detached from it's users and is just looking for a buck right now before they become irrelevant entirely. While it's expected that the entire purpose of business is to make money, this is coming entirely too much at the expense of user satisfaction.

I'll wrap it up to ask you: What do you want out of Facebook? Me? I want more user-centric integrity.
Can I flag articles that are not strictly spam but are just reeeeeeeeeeeeeealy crap?
My inner geek cringes, since the sides of a lever move in opposite directions. His inner geek need not cringe, a crowbar is a kind of lever where the 'sides' move in the same direction. Voilà!
Can any amount of intrigue make you want to play a game that literally makes you sick?
Yet another post about it, and more recent:

http://www.contrarianprofits.com/articles/the-baltic-dry-ind...
I wonder why it's necessary to write articles like this... Are there a lot of people out there who may have thought they were entrepeneurs, but needed to be convinced they're not via a list of traits they need to possess?
What a horrible list.
Good lord... stop .... with the lists!
It took me less than two seconds to figure out how to use two companies to get to 100x, or three companies to get to 1000x, etc, etc.

Thinking as a libertarian, the key is to eliminate the government prop for the losers. People involved get the implied government/judicial prop of bankruptcy protection if they need it, but otherwise, let them fail, let the failures cascade as they will, and get on with the healing/repair/rebuilding as soon as possible.

Sure, I agree that it sucks that someone might have an employment agreement that suggests they are owed a stream of the future profits of a company in the form of a private pension, and if that company fails, they won't get that pension payment.

So what? That's like me betting my buddy a billion dollars on a coin flip and then the winner trying to collect the bet from a third party (the government is nothing more than a series of third parties acting collectively). "But I had an agreement and I was counting on that money to live in retirement?" True, but not the problem of the taxpayers that you wagered your retirement on a poorly managed company, whether it's a bank, brokerage, or in the case of GM, a retiree health care and pension company that happens to build cars with a portion of its efforts.
Your stance is quite interesting, by my understanding you shouldn't like sending mail, making phone calls, sending text messages, or using the Internet either for the cost of postage, bandwidth, SMS fees, etc as that is the government or corporation profiting from your relationships.

I use Facebook for the relationships. It allows me to remain in touch with friends from highschool, college, past jobs, and other social groups I am a part of.

Could I do this outside of Facebook? Yes but it would require a lot more work on my part to keep in tangential contact with my hundreds of friends.
The Wolfram Atlas Of Simple Programs
it's a service. it either has to be paid for, or it has to generate revenue through other channels (read: selling ads).

as it stands now with it being free, it has no obligation to cater to its community in any way. i say, don't look a gift horse in the mouth.
Interview Question Exercise

Draft five interview questions that you would ask someone in order to determine if they are an entrepreneur

1) What's the most interesting idea you've had or thing you've thought about in the last week?

2) If you had to write The Great American Novel, what five themes would you consider essential to touch upon?

3) What books have influenced you the most? Who are your favorite bloggers?

4) What's an example of a time you've hacked some non-computer system to your advantage? (paraphrased from the YC app.)

5) What's an example of something you've made that people have wanted.
GitHub and Git: Sharing Your Code Without a Begging Entry into Open Source Communities
"sending mail, making phone calls, sending text messages, or using the Internet"

The difference between these things and Facebook is that the latter is a tool of convenience. The others (with the exception of texting) are matters of necessity to contact people. Could a person go completely without post mail, cell phones or email? Sure if they choose to live completely off the grid and live off the fat of the land (like my father does). Could they go without if they plan on keeping in touch with people? Not without a couple hundred homing pigeons.

But Facebook is just a convenient tool that centralizes a lot of those services; and like I said I understand the point of business (make a buck) but I think Facebook can find a way that doesn't destroy user satisfaction.
Also the index fell by 90% recently
Good find. The only time I've really ever heard this defense ever discussed in the mainstream media is with regards to the Linda Tripp case.
I want to own and access my data any way I feel like without FaceBook getting in the way.
Which brand of rube are you?
Maybe we should ban articles with "top [0-9]+"i in their title.
Is there a Machine Learning Curve?
The Jaguar Can't Quite Catch The Roadrunner
Facebook DOES have utility and value, it just is for the users and not the advertisers.

It is a self-updating white pages, and college organizations use groups in place of their own websites and mailing lists to great effect. When I want to invite 20 people to a poker tournament, text messages or facebook are the way. These things are all valuable to me.

But that doesn't mean that advertising is the right revenue model. Getting those guys to come over and pay $10 to play poker is about all the money you will get out of my group of friends on any given friday night. $5 is often the buy in as we get deeper into the semester.

I really think start ups need to stop being so adverse to charging money. The freemium model works. I don't buy a damn thing from the advertisers on facebook, but I paid $25 for the Remember the Milk app for my iPod because it is so valuable to me.
Phones used to be an item of convenience too. So did post. Social networks are too new to be considered a staple but for many of my generation they're a major tool of life.
do u like pepsi or coke more?
I observe the same thing with Facebook's local analog in my country. People who doesn't know what the Google is (it is hard to imagine but there are such people) are actively using the online social network (status updates, photo uploads).
This isn't about quality of eyeballs.

And college students are a great demo to market to (they buy all sorts of things).

This is about Hulu coming out of the gates with ads, and having a big pile of salespeople who know how to sell ads for TV shows. The players involved all have existing relationships with entities who BUY video advertising... They have a fully-baked business model from stage 1.

Youtube is JUST starting to experiment with it (and trying to build a more innovative model than the existing "just toss in commercials" option.
Not really. Generalizations are just... you know... generally true. One counterexample doesn't necessarily disprove them.
Could you tilt your hat a little to the left? All that tinfoil is blocking my view of reality...
"... It's also possible that he's (Mark Cuban) innocent. ..."

Yes, until proven guilty.
apples and oranges, Hulu = premium content that you'd want to watch. They produce their own content so they can monetize it better(advertisers actually want to pay for it). Youtube = amateur content(crappy quality), which for the most part sucks.
Yeah, I read that and was unable to understand how this was un-intelligent. Announce something, change plans without committing any work in exchange for payola. Sounds smart to me.
Suckers And Transparency: Preventing Another Financial Crisis
I'm the kind that's tricked himself into aspiring to represent the place incompleteness or relativity breaks down the structure of embedded systems of thought so new paradigms can emerge more continuous with 21st century scientific knowledge.
I bet a good percentage of the people reading entrepreneurial blogs have great ideas, but haven't actually leaped into the void. I'm in a startup, but its not MY startup, so I don't consider myself an entrepreneur .. yet.
Sounds good--thanks. :-)
Was hoping for pics too =/
That's not a careful calibration, it's an unplanned equilibrium. Laws that most people don't violate will be elaborated and made stricter until the pushback creates equilibrium.
On Teaching
Aside from the timing of the trade and the fact that the calls took place, everything in that report is based on the word of the CEO of Mamma.com. I honestly don't know if that matters, I'm not a lawyer and I don't play one on tv. But if it does matter, if the line between legal and illegal is whether the other party told you that you were receiving private information, then it's pretty shitty that you could be found guilty based only on that other party's say-so, don't you think?
Sleep helps people learn complicated tasks
Does this mean if I want to be my own boss that I can't just work on something for 5 minutes and then spend the rest of the day on Twitter and playing video games?
The End of Instant Messaging (As We Know It)
"I'm very unhappy about what's happened to my company" under Elon, says Eberhard, who still owns about 3 percent of Tesla. "I think he's a terrible CEO." Elon Musk responds that "Martin is the worst individual I've ever had the displeasure of working with."

Wow, don't hold back guys.
I'd suggest someone -- perhaps you Mileszs, start an anyvite invitation or meetup page and send it to people here.

Either way, please post back here (or somewhere) about the success/failure of this event, as I'd definitely like to come in the future.
These are Great questions.

I especially like the "Great American Novel" question. If answered thoughtfully, it would provide a nice window into the soul of the interviewee.

The "favorite blogger" question is good as well, as it also helps the interviewer understand what motivates and excites the interviewee.
That is the precise definition of gross profit: the revenue of one widget sale minus the "materials and labor" cost of producing one widget. Gross profit does not include fixed costs, backoffice costs, overhead, etc. You are thinking maybe of "net profit".

The difference is basically that if you have gross profits, you can get to 'net net' profit just by growing your market share. If you are not gross profitable, selling 10-cent apples for 8 cents, you are screwed no matter what your other costs are.
OLPC's Give One, Get One Deal: This Time For Sure
World of Warcraft coming to the iPhone?
There's some controls I can't get at on the bottom right =/

Is 1024x768 considered totally obsolete by some?
Huh, that's weird. I typically receive emails at this address. Please try aduston at gmail.
Speaking of, you could speed up queries in general by avoiding Select * .

See here: http://wiki.lessthandot.com/index.php/Don't_Use_(select_*),_but_List_Columns
Identification Is Not Security
More interestingly, where is John Doerr's other recommendation: Danny Hillis -- another broad thinker about society and technology.
There is a correct way to spell, and there is a wrong way. You, my dear sir, are doing it wrong. Don't expect the world to come round to your way of spelling anytime soon.
Goldberg
Startup tries to meet Obama's green ambitions
"Maybe there is a strong correlation between Eagle Scouts and Entrepreneurs?!"

For the record, I'm an Eagle Scout, one of my co-founders almost was, and one of my other few friends who is also starting a company is also an Eagle Scout. Anyone else out there?
Is the person who coined the term Wantrepreneur the same person who coined the term Web 2.0? Did Godin have something to do with this?

You're not an entrepreneur unless you own/owned a company (the rest of the details are very debatable). I hate sales jobs that describe themselves as "entrepreneurial" in nature. You're still taking orders from someone else.
Mmm a paradigm rube.
The sycophantic comments on his blog are nauseating.
The comments section is for your comments, not copy/pasting portions of the article verbatim without quoting...
Email Stamps to Solve Spam
Same reason people ride rollercoasters or race yachts.
I like the term "Wannabepreneur" better. It better captures the essence of the issue at hand.
Until the day i can install MacOS X on a virtual box or on my pc i remain an apple anti-fan boy. Oh and theres also that closed source thing, but i can live with it, just let me chose the hardware i want to run my software on!(and i don't mean the color of the MBP), Ill pay for it too, i promise!
Why did you not consider Burt Rutan? He is a genuine pioneer (i.e. he doesn't just do stuff with computers, he's out there risking his life) and he has plenty of experience of working with government.
And you've just described why I hate the definition.

>The difference is basically that if you have gross profits, you can get to 'net net' profit just by growing your market share.

How many more companies must flounder under this logic. I know it makes sense, but in reality, "gross profit" is just a way of making a situation appear better than it is.

Profit is the difference between all revenue and all costs. There are many variables than can be adjusted on either side of the equation.

To throw out a few costs, and they recalculate your "profit margins" is like calculating the inflation rate without using the cost of food and oil ~ fuzzy accounting, designed only to obscure in order to prove a stated position.
I was assuming that your measure of badness was "the more people who know this secret, the worse kept it is". By that measure, the limit of a poorly kept secret is exactly public information.

I'm having a hard time coming up with any other continuous measure of "badness" of secret keeping.
You have to be kidding me. The TSA has a whole set of secret laws that you can be arrested for violating, and no one even knows what they are.
a classic Silicon Valley product—it's late and over budget, has gone through loads of redesigns, still has bugs and, at $109,000, costs more than originally planned.

Ugh. Is that what we're calling "classic" now? The real classic is still two guys in a garage with no schedule and a drop-dead budget ceiling in the thousands.
What to do with an ad-based site? 
My current company created an online tutorial site that gets 1.3 million page views per month, and 65K unique visitors. Unfortunately, that only translates into about $500 in AdSense income.

Some friends and I are starting a new company with a biz model based on paid subscriptions, not ad revenue.

At an ad broker's $5 CPM rate, the current site's traffic translates into $7000 a month, but brokers won't touch it (it's tutorials, not editorial/blog content) and we don't have the time to sell our own ads.

So, what should we do with this site? Can we sell it? If so, where?
Ejacs has something to do with Javascript, which has something to do with browsers.
A top list of top lists?

Chock and disbelief
Why Companies Fire People, Not Fancy Snacks
Very nice.

It looks surprisingly close to the blog system I had stewing in my brain. But hey... now I can just hack at your's. Only thing you're missing is comments, but perhaps that's what HN is for...

Now I just have to learn Ruby.
I started using a Netbook over the weekend, with a screen resolution of 1024x600.

Wow. There needs to be some real UI work done to make the web navigable at that size.

(Ubuntu + Firefox, I need to find something more conserving of real estate.)
Wow, it's been a while since a pay-to-send email mechanism has been floated about. They all seem to fail long before implementation, and for many of the same reasons.

One of the biggest reasons is that you can already get 99% of this effect for free today. There are a number of services and options where any email that comes from an unknown sender is quarantined by a system, which sends an email to the unknown sender. This email contains some instructions, perhaps to click a link, or solve a simple math problem, or some other such gating factor that makes it near impossible for the common spammer to invest the effort to circumvent the system in any reliable way.
My (soon-to-be) co-founder and I are both Eagle Scouts as well.
I second the Anyvite idea ;-)