skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If charging per user encourages companies to have fewer user accounts, then certainly charging per project encourages companies to enter fewer projects, which is even worse (given that managing projects is the whole point).

However, I should rephrase my complaint. I'm not opposed to per-project pricing rather than per-user pricing, I'm opposed to tiered pricing in general. It's ridiculous that there's a 150% price increase for adding one project. Then, after adding 29 more projects for free, there's another 100% price increase for adding one additional project. I don't see how that can be considered "charging based on how much people are actually using your product."

Tiered pricing isn't simple (my customers tell me this all the time), it isn't predictable (my costs just increased by 150% because an employee started working on a new project!?), and it incentivizes all the wrong kind of behavior. The only good thing about it is that it's a great way to get some companies to pay for more than what they actually use (why do you think the cable companies don't have a la carte pricing?)
The time it takes to adapt is directly related to the magnitude of the difference if it takes six months to from 1.006% efficient strategy to a 1.007% efficient strategy it's not that important. The goal is to find significant wins quickly and any strategy that focuses on micro optimization will tend to find local maxima not global ones. If the top two strategy's are close enough this greedy algorithm will tend to bounce between them and that's ok.

As to diminishing factor you diminish both the numerator and the denominator for a bucket every time you test that bucket. If you want something next to perfect try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_statistics, but that eat's a lot of CPU and is harder to code for minimal gain.
from the janitor to the CEO.

It's cool to hear that, too many people forget that the janitor's, maintenance crews, and other misc jobs that most people would see as beneath them are all extremely important.

How much work would get done if every day you had to go dump your own trashcan? Getting you out of whatever grove you might have been in before? Or how demoralizing it would be to go to a workplace that has sticky floors?

(to anyone who might think I'm being sarcastic, I'm being sincere. Too often these positions aren't looked at as important to the working of the whole company, when it couldn't be farther from the truth.)
John Carmack working with 'Oculus Rift' HMD prototype, Kickstarter soon
Evernote Hello for Android is Here
The story I heard was that Alexis and Steve went to PG together with a somewhat different idea, and PG suggested that they make reddit instead. Steve was the coder, and Alexis was the community manager - a fairly important job when the business is to build an online community.
Agree. You're only getting screwed because you're willing to get screwed.

You should always make sure you're getting what you're worth when entering any business relationship, and make sure that any gravy (stock options, bonuses, etc.) is exactly that. Gravy.
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Tim Cook on D10 [video]
Of those, Visual Display of Quantitative Information and Beautiful Evidence are my favorites.
If you can afford to take a $50K/year paycut, then you can afford to just invest $50K/year of your current earnings.
The pricing seems reasonable, free and then goes up to $200/month once you've gained decent traction. Though it's more than double the cost of a VPS that could support 1 million requests and a 1GB database, and that could make all the difference for an ad-supported app with razor thin margins.

https://www.parse.com/plans
An old reporter adage: news is something someone doesn't want to hear.

In that regard, I don't think reddit is really news in a hardcore sense. It has cool shit, fun articles, hilarious threads, party facts for days. But news? News, and obviously this is a big generalization, is inherently uncomfortable to read.

Reddit is a feature factory, not a newsfeed. You can learn a lot from it, but I'll politely disagree about the usage of news--not that your opinion is wrong, mine's just different.
The link's not working at present:

"Our systems have detected unusual traffic from your computer network. Please try your request again later. Why did this happen?

IP address: <removed>
Time: 2012-05-30T17:25:52Z
URL: http://blog.jgc.org/2012/05/london-to-brighton-by-bike-at-ni...
Very cool Kevin! I just checked out the site. I think with sites like qstartupapp.com (I am biased I helped work on it :)) and companies Founders Network, people with ideas can get through the feedback loop even faster. As I am sure all of us have learned this journey can be discouraging at times and having some help does work wonders.
Just plain silly. People who see a big user base and jump to the conclusion of "payments!" as a future business don't have the slightest clue what they're talking about. Facebook isn't competent at tackling that problem, they don't have the expertise, experience, or relationships.

It makes about as much sense as looking at facebook with their billion users and saying "You know what all these people have in common? They eat food!" And concluding that facebook should become a grocery store.

Payments is a non-trivial business to enter. Paypal has a nearly 15 year headstart, 100 million active accounts and does a tremendous amount of business in a great many countries, yet it is still only a $4 billion a year company.
High Drive Travel
Reddit isn't required to make "your" front page. Personally... I just go into my browser settings and change it to whatever website I want.

More seriously, iGoogle is pretty good after being customized. I personally have email, calendar, and reader placed prominently (among others). I'd really like a hackernews synopsis too, perhaps something like hckrnews: http://hckrnews.com/
Our service may not be for everyone. If you are not concerned about a reward program, than most likely you would not use it. However, we do our best to connect our members with excellent Realtors in their marketplace, who are extremely knowledgeable in regards to affordability, what's on the market, etc..
And what diseases are these? If you are thinking of the classic diseases of civilization, that isn't a problem with agricultural crops.
Yeah - so dissapointing - the article is just a link bait with no new information beside what was already revealed in the original story on HackerNews a few days ago.
75% of the surface area is covered in water. The volume/mass of the earth is more than just the surface area.
Android is a success. It is the new dominant commodity operating system.
"I think I'm more likely to take advice from someone who appears successful in their field."

Problem is he's not giving you advice tailored to your specific situation. He is giving general advice. And with any general advice it's hard to account for all the nuances and judgement that might change with knowledge of specifics.

General advice might be "marry someone with a good education" or "marry a doctor". But a Kennedy might have good education but they also come with a host of other issues (and benefits) as a result of their fame and family name. With respect to the latter I'm sure Zuckerberg marrying a Physician is less important then it would be to someone else who could benefit from the stability and income that occupation brings.
Interesting, haven't heard this before.

My point was that there was far more cooperation going on in the space exploration area, despite of the Cold War.
Yeah, he gave a humorous, somewhat tongue-in-cheek speech to aspiring founders (the speech was pretty controversial on Reddit, for obvious reasons). Paraphrasing what he said since I can't remember the exact words, he basically told them to come up with an idea, get it funded, hire some rent-a-coders, and relax on the beach with your profits. His expressed, slightly sarcastic view of founding a web startup was to do what you do as the architect and let the construction crew do what they do.

He actually made many good points, if you can sift through what his many jabs at the programmer types.
FB has now shed more than a quarter of its IPO share price
I agree with you. I'm busy at the moment, by I think I'll come back later to see if it gets better. The editor may have had Hylton write a catchy, but inauthentic hook to draw readership.
Also check out "Now You See It: Simple Visualization Techniques for Quantitative Analysis". Another great one.
Had a similar idea for this - We'll probably play around with this at Kout as soon as we've sorted out our payments infrastructure - Here's a mockup I made a little while back using Twitter - http://bit.ly/Kd0ugW

= Inital Idea =
You're perpetually logged into a social network, why not pair up a payment method and leverage that connection. Always be connected to a payment method/global checkout - authorised by a 4 digit pin.

There's an array of pro's as cons for this.

= Issues for Facebook (and Twitter) =

The hurdles to get setup as a Payment Service Provider, and have the capability to preform cross-border, cross-country transactions, dealing with multiple currencies, as well as boarding merchants outside of the US, is a complete bitch.

It would be completely out of Facebook's internal focus to build and maintain this - outsourcing/partnering is a different story.

= Facebook's Cut =

Facebook takes a 1/3 cut from developers for FB Credits. They can't take a 1/3 cut from credit card processing.

They'll realistically take 2.75 - 3.5% and that would just piss off their developers who are being charged a 1/3, unless FB reduce their 1/3 cut - which I doubt they'd do.

Facebook would (probably) make more cash using FB Credits than processing credit cards - The margins are rediculously low with card processing (varies on card type) - It's game of volume.

Unless you're PayPal who charge you 2/3% for sending money between PayPal accounts. When all they're doing is ACH transfers between "dynamic bank accounts" they've setup, which costs them under 5 cents to preform.

= The trust factor = with Facebook (Guy/Girl's in Social Commerce take notice here).

Consumer's/Users whatever you want to call them simply would not trust Facebook with their super sensitive data (Credit Card & Billing Information). They don't have the best reputation when it comes to users data.

They might experience some success and sign up a few tech savy users - but ultimately - even if they sort out all of the technical & logistical issues they will constantly face this one.

This is why social commerce isn't full circle, or shouldnt be. When was the last time you entered your credit card details into a Facebook app? would you?

Social Commerce is really the discovery of products, but when it comes to facilitating the transaction, consumers need to be out of the ecosystem where "public" data is flowing, their friends are talking to them, or irrelevant social data is distracting them.

Consumers feel incredibily uncomfortable entering sensetive data into a platform which they use with the mindset of "sharing".

Unless of course it could be masked under a "Pay by Facebook" option which doesnt require the user to type in and sesntive information - ha.

Those are just my thoughts, and of course you have risk, disputes, charge backs, being the ultimate target for russian hackers etc.

I could be completly wrong, but I think a third party needs to step in here.

Facebook and a Dwolla/GoCardless partnership - now that would be intresting - you can fake a credit card but you cant fake a bank account.
Right this is usually how it works, and if said consultancy saves the day then the existing management at the company assumes that that consultancy walks on water and keeps shelling out money for the perception that problems will not arise. If they do the process is repeated. What consultancies are selling is an illusion, an illusion that management is willing to pay for so long as the perception is that all is well.
A bit ironic that I mis-counted in the URL, I know. Sorry about that.
Sorry, was on an iPad.

Most or all of the points suffer from:
* is that actually true?
* does regular a/b testing not also face that issue?
* was it suggested that you must "set it and forget it"?
* are there no mechanisms for mitigating these issues?
* would using 20% or 30% mitigate the issues?
* are you not allowed to follow the data closely with the bandit approach?

The whole list struck me as a supposed expert in the status quo pooh-poohing an easier approach.
is there something similar for any opensource rdbms, shard all tables by the same customer_id?
The whole approach of Facebook at its core is a disdain for the users, because Facebook profits from users' profiles. They can argue that users are willing to trade off their privacy for the "free" service, but it's just a sneaky way to get users information to monetize on. Given that, why do you think they should have more respect in other kind of interactions?
It wasn't 10, honest. I just can't count. Which is why I use computers and stuff. They count gooder than me.
My father's employer let me dial into their development system and learn my way.

There are "the rules", and then there are people who make sense of them and best use of the resources at hand. Not blind trust, but neither blind distrust.
World's first open source, real time mobile analytics platform goes live
No we don't. We need less sarcasm on HN.
I always cringe a bit when people point to papers[0] when it comes to software that has is supposed to have real world usage. Just because a paper described a system that handles distributed transactions well doesn't mean that this software exists or will be anywhere near usable in the next 5 years.
Even if they are, only very few papers actually talk about a system that is already in production use. The few that do (bigtable, dynamo) usually are great though.

0: http://cs-www.cs.yale.edu/homes/dna/papers/calvin-sigmod12.p...
I said "and you could add something like forced sterilization for people not affording to pay the "extra baby tax" after they've made one", but you could easily add jail time in a society where loosing money is not a good enough deterrent (though when the social services will take someones house and car away and put their children in foster homes because they won't be able to pay the "extra baby tax", I think the deterrent would be enough...)
"every other startup would have given me the same deal or worse"

Not true. I talked to a bunch of my entrepreneurial friends about this when I encountered this situation again and again. Their own hirees were treated more like I'd expect - a clear advantage to taking the offer - lower pay meant higher equity although it was never as bad as this case.

Glad things worked out for you though. There are winners in the industry and it's nice to see it when it happens!
Affordable Dental Coverage, No Matter Who You Are
Affordable dental coverage isn't one of those oxymorons -- like "civil war" or "jumbo shrimp". Instead, anybody can find a dental health plan that meets their needs and fits into their budget.
ya, they do count gooder... but they lack a sense of humor. ;)
You've identified by omission precisely why it can be "wrong" for something to be priced "high". How on earth can I know if $20M is reasonable without knowing what the business is?

We're all sat here, reading about "average seed round valuations" and the like, but that concept tells you nothing about what the next startup you meet "should" be valued at. Claiming that it does means acknowledging that business fundamentals have been thrown out of the window, and what are you left with then? Gambling.
I cannot upvote this enough. Thanks.

edit, with bonus explanation! We need to do a better job helping new(and old) redditors realize the thousands of communities they could be joining for a diverse blend of content that interests them. When Steve and I started reddit, we had no categories because it was simple -- and Steve loves simple. Now that we've got scores of vibrant communities discussing links about things ranging from cute animal photos (/r/aww) to philosophy (/r/philosophy) and many things in between, it's up to us to build a more intuitive UX that guides users to them and helps them assemble a personalized front page.
But isn't the past 5 years a pretty-clear demolition of the idea that bright, well-trained people have a handle on systemic risk?
Google Android Will Win the Marathon
That typically means "scientist is willing to lie to journalist".
Apple Looking To Change IPod User Interface And Change Design
Wow my comment got deleted! Didn't know HN has censorship board.
Progress report from a developer trying to go Open Source, funded by donations
That was a 100% satirical talk.
“Favorite” Is The New “Like”
slashdot, kuro5hin, metafilter, digg, reddit

I'm sure there are many more that fit into the timeline, but they're all pretty much the same thing - an avenue for 5% of the people to have serious discussion and 95% of the people to be idiots and attention whores.
An Experiment with Backbone.js
Is that still on the moon?
I find it depressing when holier than thou hipsters pop up to whine about how depressing popular things are... which seems to occur with increasing frequency on HN nowadays.
Android gui using Python
Improving performance on Twitter.com
Show HN: My First MVP - Nonprofit Grants Finder
Hi HN,

I just launched Nonprofit Grants Finder (http://nonprofitgrantsfinder.com) - a tool that helps nonprofits find grantmakers. I used to work in the nonprofit/philanthropy industry as a consultant, and many of my friends who worked at nonprofits would ask me to find grantmakers who might be interested in funding their nonprofit's programs. I currently provide clients a "Funder Analysis" and collect and analyze all the data by hand.

The idea behind the current site was to launch an MVP to test the demand for my product via online ads (I'm currently testing Google AdWords and have a small amount of organic search referrals) against the cost of hiring a developer to create a tool that would automate user input and analysis.

I'm looking for general feedback on the idea and the site, but could really use feedback on 1) specific design and content improvements I could make to the site and 2) ideas on how to market the product effectively and acquire paying clients. Thanks!
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I'm failing to see the benefit here over the default Android contacts app. It supports pictures too and syncs (with your Google account). The main difference seems to be that Evernote Hello pulls their info from LinkedIn for you, but that may or may not be the info you need (maybe you need their cell phone instead of their office phone), and the person may or may not have a LinkedIn profile. Am I missing something?
Pragmatic Unicode in Python [video]
clickable: http://www.nonprofitgrantsfinder.com
Haha- I registered DemoJS.com in 2009 but let it expire a year later because I never used it. Glad it went to a good cause :)
I'm not sure if you remember the Motorola ROKR, but Apple flopped a couple times before reinventing the phone industry.

Facebook's taken two cracks at it. They've got a massive war chest and one of the most recognized brands on earth plus 2 failures worth of experience under their belt.

Sure, mobile's a challenge - but it seems like you've thrown in the towel already on it. I don't think Facebook has quite yet.
Yep. Steve & I debated just about everything (even business cards) but he actually built reddit and I did everything non-technical from logo doodles to ordering pizza.

I didn't have any input in the article, but I think you'd be hard-pressed to find me writing/speaking about reddit and not also mentioning Steve in the same breath. One of my most-viewed writeups on the subject of 'why reddit won' hopefully indicates the amount of respect I have for everything Steve did: http://alexisohanian.com/how-reddit-became-reddit-the-smalle...

There'd have been no reddit without him -- and it shouldn't come as a surprise that I jumped at the chance to join hipmunk a week before launch to do my part to help with its branding & marketing.
I lurk around #stripe on freenode usually.
Because there is no differentiating factor between a 5-star steakhouse and a fast food joint. They need different logos/stickers to display on the outside window IMO.
Install RES and filter out links to imgur. Reddit immediately becomes about 5x better. There is still a lot of good content, it's just swamped by people using pictures of popular things to get karma.
We do the simplest thing we could imagine. Our sitemap of ~50,000,000 entries is written to static xml once a week as part of a batch job and pushed to S3. Is there any reason to believe it needs to be updated near real time? How often does Google read yours?
What he probably means is that, the small quantities of ice on moon is precious. If some country say US manages to extract it all for itself, other countries like China could be pissed off... But I kinda like such a race ;-) minus the war though...
I found the following interesting:

Lessons from Developed Mobile Markets like Japan ... Mobile Monetization Levels in USA Could Surpass Desktop Within 1-3 Years

The "Monetization Levels" are the advertising revenue. The report states that desktop internet advertising revenue grew from $55 million (estimated) in 1995 to $73 billion in 2011 (estimated). (And advertising revenue per user went from $9 to $49 in the same period.)

However, I have doubts that internet advertising will be as successful on mobile devices. Personally, I tend to avoid ad-supported apps or simply do not "click" on any ads within apps, but that's just me and I may be really off-base with the overall behavior of app users.
Facebook's potential advantage in this space is not that they have a billion users, it's that they arbitrate the identity of those users. And payment is inexorably linked with identity, especially WRT avoiding fraud.

Certainly it is a difficult market to enter, but a few billion dollars can buy you a lot of expertise, relationships, and time to build experience.

The reason Facebook should go into transactions is the same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks: "because that's where the money is".
Hard to not be skeptical about something so positive from someone who played a key part in creating the first tech bubble.
I studied art in college, and one of my professors once said, "when drawing, you should use your eraser as often as your charcoal."

That's always stood out for me, and whenever I hear that Bill Atkinson story, I'm reminded of it.
Thanks for the heads-up. Maybe we could get an early copy of your book to aid us in privacy/transparency?
Yes, more or less. 1 Imperial Gal = 1.2 US Gallons.
I'm unclear on what you mean by "they" when you say "either they work or they don't" - his bugs? Or the way in which those bugs, once released, solve a particular problem? Or once released, those changes are non-harmful? My problem with risk is the attitudes towards proof ( or principle of least harm) in the latter, not a quibble with the previous two. And I think we can take satisfaction of those two conditions a necessary condition for the possibility of the third, right?
Cooksey v. Futrell: Caveman Blogger Fights for Free Speech and Internet Freedom