skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2012/05/17/curt-schillin...

Schilling is a self-described conservative with a disdain for big government, which he considers intrusive and overbearing. He is a big believer in people helping themselves and solving their own problems.

A couple of lines from an old post on Schilling’s blog, 38 pitches, sums it up:

“If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation.

“A liberal wonders who is going to take care of him.”

Now Schilling is back with his hand out at a time when Rhode Island is dealing with double-digit unemployment and an economy so bad that many of its communities are in grave financial trouble. State officials are facing bigger problems than Schilling’s 38 Studios.

Christ what an asshole.
It depends on what the users are using. I think it's extremely hard to get people on a platform to socialise* and then get them to do something else that generates revenue. With the exception of purchasing game credits etc, there's no easy way to do it.

* blanket term for status/photo/video sharing
That image looks really derp-a-derp if you ask me. I follow his advice most of the time, but I don't want to remember that image, it will make me laugh.
I find it very scary when people do things like this. You don't really know if they're being serious or joking.

For me the disturbing part is the large photo that makes it look very messianic, which is ridiculous in my opinion.

To me PG is a smart dude with a boat of experience who's made some clever observations over the years. I don't think you need to elevate it beyond that.
Yeah -- https://twitter.com/#!/duckduckhack/status/20357162271887769...
The question for many investors isn't in the current figures so much as what are the future figures likely to be and how that compares to the current figures.
Buying stock is generally about what you think will happen in the future, not what has happened in the past.
Facebook buys Karma
> I think I just found my target demo.

Startup idea! /s
That's it. First hit.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3787375
I have a comment that I thought about since I read this in the morning but could be perhaps interpreted as negative, but I'm really curious as to what people are thinking about this:

I think this news is great, the quicker innovative editing tools like LT appear the better. But I have an uneasy feeling about an incubator (even though YC is the best one, IMO) or a VC scooping up projects from Kickstarter. I always thought KS was a way for the intelligent nobodies to bypass the whole incubator-VC-whatever system and to appeal directly to the masses. How to put it, there's a sense of Olympic amateurishness (in the original sense of the word) in KS projects. When they are picked up like this it sorts of negates that sense.

What do you think?
Wow, didn't see that coming. Just last episode Dan & John were talking about reviving the movie review series with Hitchcock. I wonder if it has something to do with bringing Dalrymple on full time on Amplified, or Dan's persistent admonishment of Gruber's use of wifi during recording, or maybe Monteiro poached him with a paycheck. Yeah I know it makes me a bit of a jackass to speculate like a celebrity gossip writer, but this is infinitely more interesting to me than real celebrities.
19-year-old girl in Egypt invents a spacecraft propulsion device
Why Facebook Never Fell Below $38 Per Share
because "in theory" that's where it closed yesterday.
First I would ask what this SEO consultant has done. Maybe some black hat tactics? Or maybe you are victim of changed Google algorithms (panda/pinguin update)?

As a side note: seeing the little content you have and the use of https/http and www/non-www and only 19 backlinks (according to backlinkwatch) and missing html tags, I am surprised you even were PR2.

And to answer your question in the subject line: yes, Google punishes websites (black hat, links on farms, hidden text, ghost pages, etc).
So effectively, Microsoft wants to create an OS that abandons their core revenue base while going after one that has rejected them repeatedly.

Exactly. There may be some precedent for a successful OS built on a bifurcated strategy like what MS has outlined for Windows 8, but at 43, I'm not old enough to remember it.
It used to be "the sky is the limit". Now it is "the floor is the limit and the floor is $38". The Facebook baby bird broke out of its egg today. Next week, it must learn to fly out of the nest on its own. That should be a dinner and a show.
>Every hacker, every entrepreneur, every creator should derive inspiration and uplift from Facebook's story. It's a rare bright day in the middle of the worst economic environment since the 1930s. It doesn't matter whether the company will grow into a $100B valuation.

Here's the problem: Facebook doesn't have time to "grow" into the valuation. They're worth that much to investors now. They need to prove that they are worth that kind of investment money. They need to prove that they can make the kind of money that $100+B companies make. Facebook made a TON of money today.

The size of the IPO is simply way out of scale with the actual company. Facebook had a net income of $1B last year. Companies that have market valuations around $100B make that much per month. Now, if Facebook's market cap was around $30B or $40B, I think everyone on HN would be celebrating their success, because that's a good valuation for a $1B/year company.
OK now, this is a whole new business model and I like it. Early supporters pay for the demo and get a t-shirt. Later supporters pay for the continuing refinement of the demo and get a t-shirt. Later supporters pay for the demo and get a t-shirt a mention somewhere.

When the demo is awesome (but not open to the public) and also the market can be assessed based on early support, someone (who saw the latest demo and the early support) pays for the rest, but what they get is a cut from any potential future cash flows. Now, this, is, neat!!!

Incidentally, this is the problem with Kickstarter - if you want money, don't give me a t-shirt, give me a part of your future profit. Then people who back bad ideas suffer and people who back good ideas profit. As opposed to the current model, where everyone gets a cheap shitty t-shirt and the world gets another worthless r&b record that nobody wants.
Some of the previous discussions:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43842 : 4 comments

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99568

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=552821 : 23 comments

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1635094

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1637968

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1654310

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1866486 : 45 comments

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2523005 : 3 comments

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2734040
DNS Changer Check-Up
Ok, I think that makes sense. Just to make sure I understood, the problem isn't the text itself, but what happens when the destination surface has an alpha channel or is transformed?
Top 5 Tips for Getting the Most Out of Thailand
Object Oriented Programming is Inherently Harmful
Try and overstate it as an exercise for yourself.
True but it's also true that if MZ or any other shareholders choose to sell some of their equity, they will convert that paper money in to real money. Assuming the current share price holds long enough, that's a lot of real money.

But I take your point that there isn't really a strong connection between stock price and effort expended (although maybe there's more of an implied connection at the initial IPO price versus the share price a few months after trading). If I think about it a bit more, MZ and team are effectively bystanders in all this. It's not as if they got to decide the IPO price (if I've understood the process correctly i.e. the banks recommend the starting price?). Unfortunately, that's where my knowledge of high finance stops. Sometimes, I wish I'd taken a finance degree just to be equipped to understand the real game that's going on.
What will it disrupt exactly? Example? As far as I can tell, it is merely a device that affords convenience.
If time is wasted driving, is building more efficient cars really the solution? I would venture that technology that makes the world a lot smaller and puts information at your fingertips, e.g., tablets, phones, social networks, etc. will be a much bigger disrupter in the way we live our current lives. Maybe in the future we won't have to drive as much since we can just get things done without having to waste time in cars.
Wouldn't cars be the domain of Detroit or Tokyo, not the Valley? Why would it? Perhaps the technology behind some of it would come from there, but doesn't that start from consumer electronics anyway?

He's being a bit too forward-thinking, decrying the absolute cultural sea change social media represents for almost all walks (and aspects) of our lives, relationships, and ways to do business. It's, IMO, the biggest revolution in the truest sense since the invention of the Web itself. That it came from the Valley is just a testament to the mindboggling creativity of that small patch of sand in the US.

We'll get to driverless cars and rocketships with HAL and novel cancer cures and all that soon(ish?) enough; but it can't all come from the Valley and (as he correctly posits) alot of it may come from Asia. Yet it won't be because Asia has the inside track to those innovations, or because they poached Valley talent away (Wall St. does enough of that with quant trading); it'll be because the money is so very fluid there and doesn't sit in VC silos to be doled out to the MIT-Stanford-Harvard-Berkeley idea factory.
If true, it's funny that John published another post a few minutes after the main one saying this about the new Mule Radio app: "The interface is simple and beautiful"

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/05/18/mule-radio-app
It appears it's not a joke: http://www.pgsays.com/about
So what about the cancel/change orders being stuck in limbo the entire day? I was unable sell $fb because of this. Tried to dump them at 41.50, but because one cannot "trade with oneself" I couldn't. Heads should be rolling at Nasdaq by now...
Who is to blame is the wrong question to ask, the questions to ask are "why is government money being doled out in such a fashion", "what problems are the programs involved intended to solve, and how are they failing to solve those problems" and "what level of corruption is involved".
Never heard about this before today...apparently this virus triggers on July 9th?

http://www.dcwg.org/
Can someone please explain the whole story from the start? I do not understand anything.

5by5 has an app, only recently released. Why would there be another one? Is the app 5by5 has the same as this Mule one? What is this Mule thing? Is it completely new?
In general, I think people put too much weight on the degree. You should hire people because of their skills, background, promise and personality. If they have an MBA is a credential not a reason to/not to hire. I also know a bunch of devs with JDs, but that's not important to whether they can code!
The Talk Show Leaves 5by5 · ichris
My favorite:

"The problem with object-oriented languages is they've got all this implicit environment that they carry around with them. You wanted a banana but what you got was a gorilla holding the banana and the entire jungle." -- Joe Armstrong
If it stays there, then $38 is the market view of the present value of future business models it thinks FB will be able to create. It's not just what they do now, it's "the unknown" things people think they will be able to do (which is just speculation).

GOOG investors are speculating that there's less potential for that.
It beat the market. Not saying it will over the short/long term, but it went up on a day the majority of the market went down.
But isn't the future based, at least in part, on what's happened in the past?
Wasn't there a sense of tension in like half of all episodes?
I think this caught Dan by surprised. Dan got the Talk Show shirts made up and he seem pretty excited when he announced them during the last two minutes of episode 90. Gruber didn't seem to care at all.

I'm sure Mule offered Gruber a lot of money to bring the podcast to them. Got to support the family right?
Facebook acquires Karma
Dan was talking about iOS app for long, long time - it was (presumably) nearly finished, but never released - app that was released recently is new project/rewrite of the old one.

Now we know what happened with that version.
One, you presume that advertisers are incredibly naive and don't measure returns. Obviously cleanly measuring advertising returns from fb is hard, but it's still being done.

Second, fb can put up the first credible alternative to adsense since they collect browsing info from their fb login and other widgets. In fact, they can do better than adsense: fb can mix in very accurate demographics alongside the page context. Adsense makes google nearly $10B/year and I'd bet fb could eat half of that. And many pubs that lean heavily on adsense are desperate for a competitor. So I'd say fb is -- at bare minimum -- a $5B/year company. Plus another billion or two from taxing every bit of money that flows through social gaming. Plus it seems like zynga will be able to do poker for money now. Plus I don't believe all the ads on fb proper are worthless, so roll that into the mix.

Finally, from your comments below, you seem to think advertising in general is worthless. If you think companies (US only) spend $400B/year because they're stupid, then I'm too dumbfounded to formulate a response.
It is equally within a person's right to say "please leave", as he did not like the comment.
The pitch sounds alright to me up until the B above middle C.
Is storing energy against the rules? for example pedaling for an hour or two to store up say mechanical energy in a flywheel, spring tension, hydraulic pressure or other means then just put the rotors in gear to lift off?
The only reason I would buy an automated car is so that I will have more time to play with my iPad :)
"With regards to Curt Schilling, you can't blame the guy. He's personally wealthy... and Rhode Island was foolish enough to not do due diligence."

Let's stop apologizing for Curt Schilling. Blame is a pretty deep well and there should be more then enough for both him and the RI government.

The idea that it's fine for the wealthy to capture the government for their own uses if they can is as farcial as Curt Schilling whining about how working class folk need to get off the government teat while angling for a $75 mil loan guarantee.
And all during that time/process people will be trying to sort out how much of the success or lack of success of their peers reflects on their own success or lack of success. As folks work through that process they sometimes become enlightened, sometimes bitter, often cynical, and ideally wiser.

As someone who will be facing his 5 year college reunion, do you have any tips to deal with this floodgate of emotions? Personally, I'm planning to embellish my accomplishments by saying I have sired 5 kids.
I just puked in my mouth.
Speaking as someone with an MBA from a non-Ivy League, I got a second Masters to help differentiate myself from the 10s of 1,000s of MBAs with no tanigble skills or benefits to offer companies.

I think I also learned more in the Masters in Entrepreneurship in Applied Technologies than in the MBA. The teachers in that program were far more versed having worked or started several startups each.
Considering many recent tech IPOs have ended up much higher on their opening day, AND Facebook was highly anticipated, it is surprising that Facebook barely gained anything on its opening day. In fact, if not for the underwriters, it might not have gained anything at all.
Mule Radio was started by Mike Monteiro who used to do the Let's Make Mistakes podcast on 5by5. Not sure what that means but it might explain why they could've originally been building a 5by5 powered app and then switched to a different thing.

EDIT: As I suspected there's nothing shady going on, but my guess as to the ownership was wrong. It's explained here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3994053
I think based on what is happening with Facebook, YES, it is time to hire MBA's and put more emphasis on monetization. Having 900 million users is pointless if you don't know how to monetize them.
What great world we would live in if all stocks increased that linearly.
Private organization stakeholders aren't usually dealing with their own money either, with similar results depending on the org. You know how much multi-million dollar business gets done over a few grand worth of Yankees tickets?

This was a case of garden variety corruption, where the gov wasn't even getting kickbacks, he just liked the Red Sox, Schilling's a hero in New England, and he saw him as a fellow traveler conservative. If Schilling was going to George Clooney's fundraisers, this deal doesn't happen.
I hope he's not actually putting his retirement money on the line here.

It's not about the quality of the ads, which he argues will get better with more data. It's about intent.

When I search on Google, my natural next action is to click a link. That link can be organic or an ad. If it's an ad Google stands to make money.

When I browse Facebook, my natural next action is not to click a link to an outside service/store. It's to continue to read status updates and browse around. Clicking an outside link is unnatural and unpleasant in this context.

This is the same reason ads on other Google properties such as gmail do so poorly - they may know exactly what you're likely to buy and could therefore present you with the perfect ad, but the activity you're engaged in does not naturally lead to clicking on ads.
Still, this isn't necessarily a negative for Facebook. They optimized their take, and Zuckerberg won't be needing the market's approval or capital again for a while.

Technically, but the minute you go public you have to worry about the stock price. If the stock drops (IMO, it will drop here) expect a deluge of doom and gloom stories from the media questioning their business model and everything else in between. Then you may have unhappy employes due to the stock drop, harder time hiring, higher expenses since the stock price isn't rising and so on. Bezos did it so far, but it isn't easy. Zuckenberg sold a nice chunk of his $100 Billion company, buyers will be vocal if the price drops.

FB will have to do everything right for a few years just to justify the $100 billion price tag. It's not easy as ads can drive people away.
I think you're vastly overstating the disruption potential of the iPad. Most people who use tablet computers use them as internet-connected televisions to stream videos. A TV that can play Angry Birds isn't a disruptive technology.

Most people in the world don't have any use for a computer, and a computer you consider dirt cheap is impossibly far out of reach for people who're wondering where their next meal is coming from. And even if they can afford the hardware, who do you suppose is going to pay for the wireless infrastructure, and why?
You may "believe" in Maslow's hierarchy, but whether it is truth is certainly up for debate. Even the "Criticisms" section on the Wikipedia page you link has plenty of legitimate debate. As with most psychology, it is a soft science at best and pseudoscience at worst.

Through your own missions work, you must have certainly met plenty of people (or at least heard plenty of stories) of people possessing far less on that hierarchy than the average American who were far more content and held an "actualized" attitude about life.

The very highest definition of love (Greek - agape), often denotes self-sacrifice, something that certainly goes against the grain of an ego-driven desire for personal happiness. I'm sure you know it all too well as a parent and the many sacrifices you make for your kids =) I think we live too much of our lives worrying with an inward focus when the real answer is to take that energy and turn our focus outward to others. Self-centered may have been a harsh word, but it is what it is.
I don’t understand what you mean. I’m even more confused now. How many different 5by5 apps are there?
I think it's a bit of a leap to attribute the Arab Spring to Facebook's contribution. It was long overdue and it would have happened with or without facebook.

Would we blame it on facebook if the spring failed to lead into summer? If not then it stands to reason that we can't credit facebook with the success either.

The Arab Spring and all the good that may come out of it belongs to the Arabs, to those that laid their life on the line and to those that stood up to oppression.

Connecting humanity is an important thing but we have a very large number of ways to do that, facebook is but one of those.

I'm with you that connecting peoples lives in such a way is beneficial, but I'm not quite sure yet if Facebooks net value is positive or not if you factor in the massive privacy violations that have already happened coupled with those that are surely to come.

No social network has the potential for good as much as facebook does at the moment. But at the same time that potential needs to be realized and that needs to be balanced with a healthy respect for the privacy of the users of that network.

For a good read on the Arab Spring and the online movements:

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/09/so-was...

The telephone, the internet in general, twitter, online news media and yes, Facebook all played a minor role. But in the end it was the people that made the change and they would have found a way to communicate. Possibly not as effective but there have been revolutions all over the world that pre-date the invention of the telephone so a new piece of technology is likely not an enabler but simply one more line of possible communication.
PayPal? Really??
Ex MBA, consultant take:
Hire people - not MBAs or PhDs or whatever. Most MBAs have a lot more going for them than their last degree.
Don't expect to find the best from the bottom of the class at any school or consulting company.
Keep the overall number of any group of non-core employee down. Too many MBAs/consultants ruined eBay.
And, the saying goes, short any industry where the majority of HBS graduates are being hired in to.
Depends on how you define smarter. Apple has made the computer smarter because you no longer need to be smart to use one. By "dumbing down the computer" from our point of view, the computer itself is actually smarter. The operating system and the programs that apple has written don't necessarily anticipate the user, but they handle some things in the background so the user doesn't have to. Or at least that's the idea behind it anyways.
He is lamenting the number of talented high school kids playing baseball, not who won the World Series.
Considering they have been working on the Copernicus MMO since 2006 and Kingdoms of Amalur in parallel, they have probably burned through a lot of money.

Copernicus sounds cool, but I fear it will be another Daikatana.
The more interesting thing is: "It didn't plummet like some people were expecting!!!"
Stocks can often pop on the first day after IPO, if there's a lot of demand building. There was a time when companies doing IPOs would consider a 100% increase ("shooting the moon") a realistic possibility. LinkedIn went up 117% a year ago[1]. I don't mean to indicate that these events are positive or a good expectation, just that it does frequently happen.

[1] http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/19/technology/linkedin_IPO/inde...
6 Reasons Why the Facebook IPO Fell Flat
Don't open the page with an iPad. It keeps showing js alerts non-stop and you have to kill safari to fix it :)