skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I highly doubt comscore is claiming to be tracking embed/widget traffic. Those numbers are supposed to be for the site itself.

They are quantified, and quantcast shows the vast majority of their traffic is to their destination: http://www.quantcast.com/scribd.com

see scribd.com vs The Scribd Network
Since no one knows who you and your friends are, you could easily be the NSA, right? It seems to me that when launching a security/privacy service you should make an effort to explain why people should trust you.
As someone who was close to the situation, let me clarify some obvious errors in this article:

- Dave Maestri was never employed by SGN. He worked for Freewebs (www.freewebs.com)

- Dave never ever worked on any game or Facebook related product at Freewebs.

- SGN is not an "iteration" of Freewebs, it's a spin off. This is like calling Frasier an iteration of Cheers.

- Dave left Freewebs, not SGN.

- "Maestri will pursue Zynga..." - This is not ever going to happen.

On a different note, this comment is a great summary of the game, if you haven't played it: "$1m/month in revenues… incredible for a game I used to play on the TI-83. Seems like everything old is new again, except when add in a little social spice it becomes insanely popular."
Evolution doesn't try to balance anything - evolution is not a person, and it doesn't think.

There is a slight difference in the swimming speed of XX vs XY sperm, which accounts for the difference. Also I believe females have a slightly better survival ratio, the reasons are complicated, but include the fact that all fetuses start as female, and then are modified by testosterone to be male, i.e. female is the default. Plus females have XX so some genes are doubled which helps them.

It's pretty much impossible for a father to make just one or the other because of that way it's produced.

The father has XY cells, which split in half to make sperm, one half become a male sperm the other female. So sperm is always made in pairs.

There can be differences in the mother that affect one or the other differently though (PH for example, and the sperm are not the same size).
What would Adobe do with it if they bought it?
Thanks for the kind words about the site. We're excited about the convergence of food and technology, and would love to connect if it makes sense.
True, so people are linking instead of embedding. But the point is the same... If one person makes the decision to link to scribd instead of the pdf, and 100 people follow that link, it doesn't really mean 100 people value the service.
Scribd is a cool service run by cool people, and I'm happy they managed to scrape together enough funding to keep going for a while longer.

But then possibly I'm biased, because without them we'd be forced to roll our own pdf/doc/xls/ppt viewer to stick inside of Twiddla. As it is, Scribd is just about a perfect fit for us off the shelf.

But you're right. They've got a bit of an oldskool business model that sort of relies on Google buying them at some point. I hope things work out for them.
"Menlo Managing Director H. DuBose Montgomery says the 1999 fund “has not completed its performance cycle and has several promising portfolio companies with large revenues, which are still private.”"

If this is true, maybe part of a solution is for fund investors to not have to wait for an IPO or acquisition in order to start receiving a return?
Screw scribd. Give me something that converts pdfs into straight (x)html, and I will be happy.
Have you ever thought about using flash for your web chat service? I'd actually prefer it over standard javascript, especially because it would have a real socket connection.

Also, flash has pretty good support for text rendering. You can embed any font into any swf file, and it has anti-aliasing and effects. There was a presentation about the new flash 10 text features recently - http://is.gd/ejKj
or you can allow the goal to inject your present reality with new hope, enthusiasm, and motivation. Even though it seems like you’re setting goals for the future, you’re really setting goals for the present. The better you understand this, the more easily and enjoyably you’ll achieve your goals.
- http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/08/how-to-set-goals-yo...

Alternatively, any of you setting 30 day trials for January 09? - http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2007/12/start-the-new-year-...
Except for number four this list could have been written a year or two ago.

Is it surprising a CEO of an ad network thinks ad networks are the next big thing?
I don't know. I'm not saying it would be a good buy! :)
"Sometimes the user data is sold off to the highest bidder."

Do you have any source for this, anecdotal or otherwise? While the paranoid part of me wants to think that happens, the logical side is having a hard time believing it.
Yes. I have a friend who has shipped an iPhone game developed on a hackintosh.

That said, I've personally found them to be problematic over time. We're a 6-person Mac-based game developer, and we picked up a Psystar hackintosh out of curiosity. We had an intern work on it for awhile, but it had some weird quirks. The biggest problem is updating must be done manually and carefully. The longer you have it the more work you're creating for yourself, if you want to keep current, which is pretty much opposite the goal of using a Mac (less work/maintenance over time).
IPhone Developer's Cookbook review
About the speed issue - how is a 20 MB reader (Adobe Reader 9) plus the cost of downloading the entire pdf faster than a 200 kb swf file and having the document streamed? That makes no sense.
$1.0 in "worth" does not mean $1B in cash. Also, the administration of 10,000 separate investment? How would you mentor the founders? Staff the boards? Would it be worth your time or your investment?
New "Requester pays" Option for Amazon S3
"This will enable you to provide other developers access to your buckets without incurring their access costs, and even use Amazon Web Services to sell data for a profit."
Branford Marsalis’ Take on Students Today
will a google search query increase page rank?

for example if i search "ycombinator startup" then google (PR10) will produce links (no rel=nofollow in <a href>)

i think that will increase search volume index in google trend, but not sure about page rank
it wasn't worth the effort of formally appealing the grade

If the question actually asked to demonstrate that a solution existed, any professor worth her salt will give you credit for doing that if you point it out to her. It's quite possible you weren't given full marks because your exam was one of hundreds that needed to be graded that week.
Front-end performance is a compound problem. You need to consider everything that sits between your customers and your data because it all has an impact on the actual and perceived performance.

In regards to browser rendering performance, YSlow is a good place to start: http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/help/. The 13 performance rules is a succinct and accurate list of things to look out for.

Steve Souders (creator of YSlow, but now works at Google) does a lot of great work in this area:

http://stevesouders.com/cuzillion/

http://stevesouders.com/ua/report.php

http://stevesouders.com/blog/2008/09/30/hammerhead-moving-pe...

Some more good stuff:

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/average-web-p...

http://wtr.rubyforge.org/

http://seleniumhq.org/

http://sahi.co.in/w/
Sorry, I should have been more precise - sure, everyone uses the word "hacker" with criminal intension sometimes, but people know there are other meanings, also.
From a user point of view, why do you care if it has a real socket connection, or a emulated connection that does exactly the same thing? I'm not sure any user anywhere would notice the difference. There is no noticable difference in terms of latency, negligible difference in terms of bandwidth. I have thought about the possibility of using it where available, but I don't think it'd really be worth the effort and potential issues.

Fair enough for text rendering, but html is getting better font rendering also. I know which I'd put my money on. I can't even select the damn text on scribd.
Screencasts aggregator
Wishes? Do those work?
So, why 37signals? 280 North likewise makes web applications well and their Objective-J model is better for making applications (vs. web pages with ajax) than 37signals' model. 37signals is great, but they don't make competitors for things like Visio or PowerPoint. 280 North is in that arena.

And Objective-J wouldn't be hard to swallow for Microsoft. They'd have to replace the widgets with less Apple-esque ones, but it wouldn't be too hard. And it would give them a base akin to Google's GWT.

Microsoft probably does need to get into the webapp world, but 37signals doesn't compete with Microsoft's lineup and Rails really isn't the toolkit to create a Visio-killer.
That's great. So much of startup success/failure is due to like & timing and it's exceptional to see you give it another try almost right away (and it seems to have worked!). Better than getting a real job right :)?
*policy
Ask HN: Most stable MySQL version?
I need to complete some unfinished work for a company which doesn't
have a regular dba and it appears their developers are working with
different versions of MySQL from 5.0.33 to 5.1.28.

I've been working with PostgreSQL for a long time but haven't done much with MySQL before and know relatively
little about the overall stability of different MySQL releases.

Counting the open bugs for each version at http://bugs.mysql.com
leads me to believe 5.0.33 is the most stable but I'm curious about
what people with a more solid background in MySQL think is
the most stable?
I recently made the choice - PS3 or Xbox. I bought the Xbox. My main reason though was that I just didn't want a useless bluray player for the extra cost.

I just wish sony and ms would do gaming, and do it well rather than foray into "taking over the living room", videos, media etc etc.

Agreed about extensibility etc though, the xbox seems to have got that one right. Guitar hero was one reason I bought my xbox.

I still feel slightly dirty having things with "microsoft" written on them in the house though :/

Maybe with the next playstation they'll just go back to making a good games console instead of trying to push bluray.

Shame sega and atari fell so early on though.

Just realized I'm writing in weird disconnected sentences - I'll never make a blogger.
No New Language In 2009; New Habits Instead
The very possible privacy issues are enough for me to form an opinion, let alone that this policy would be no better than a gas tax, and arguably worse, at reducing emissions.
There is a nice demo that lists types of corp that will suit you try out :
http://mycorporation.intuit.com/why-incorporate/index.jsp
&
http://mycorporation.intuit.com/help_me_choose/index.jsp
I wish it had been so when I wrote the SAT.
Agreed, while I definitely do not support a system that allows the government to track the citizens at all times, I do think people miss the fact that things like roads aren't free and need to be paid for somehow.

As awesome as fuel-efficient cars are, if they are cutting down revenue from gas tax then the state does have to look for alternate tax sources.There is no way around it.
Who is 280 North?

I think you're missing the point the author is attempting to make. 37Signals is a well-founded company which has several applications, each generating revenue. It's also well-known. The points which the author purports would make 37Signals tempting to Microsoft do not apply for 280 North.
So far, is there anything to justify this Android bullishness? Cringely seems optimistic too.

To me it seems about as likely as Facebook getting unseated by Bebo.
Python 3k adds a new keyword, nonlocal, which actually lets you print out x that way (you'd declare nonlocal x before printing). Check out PEP 3104: http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3104/
> soffice -headless -accept="socket,host=127.0.0.1,port=8100;urp;" -nofirststartwizard

> java -jar jodconverter-cli-2.2.1 yourpdf.pdf yourpdf.html

Happy now?
You know, I use my Xbox every day, but usually not for games. I canceled cable, and now download all of the shows I like via Bittorrent (through RSS, so they come in automatically) and stream them. I use PCs in my other rooms (especially the exercise room) so all of my content is accessible anywhere. I'll also use the Xbox to spin tunes when we have people over or I'm cleaning or whatnot. So yeah, I love the media streaming features.

I also occasionally watch the MSNBC in the Media Center part, but man is that an awful experience. It's really buggy at times, and I have an insanely fast internet connection. I can't imagine what it's like for the average user.
Get sued for having acres of copyrighted content and pockets deep enough to justify the lawyers' fees?
Our privacy policy is now up.
Needs anti-aliasing.
The Western provinces have lower tax burdens than many states in the US. I compared a few income and family situations with my California income, and there's a 5-10% savings in taxes. Add in the free healthcare and the option to get a 15% rate on small business and British Columbia is looking really good. If only the weather was good.

Canada Tax Estimate Calculator: http://www.ey.com/GLOBAL/content.nsf/Canada/Tax_-_Calculator...
How Sony inadvertently helped a competitor and lost position in the videogame market
there's something honestly enjoyable for us in providing a free service that is useful to people. besides the point already mentioned (that it doesn't cost us that much), we're genuinely happy that we can help people and make their lives better. if at some point you help us generate revenue, that's great, but even if you don't, we're happy that we could make your life easier -- that's our perspective.

why do you think of it as "giving it away"? it's not a physical good that we ship that we're "giving away", it's a utility with a small marginal cost per user, and it's a useful, free service for most people.

how many people have argued that file sharing should be legal, or that CDs and paid music are on their way out? it's the same concept, and you have to eat your own dogfood, to some extent.
The Year of the Sports Fan
The traffic isn't just from people following links. What about the people uploading 50,000 documents every day?

Source: Scribd says so, according to washingtonpost http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12...
The problem with HTML is there's a decade lag between when the new font rendering is introduced and when you can rely on it to be accessible to all of your customers.
Fair enough. On a slightly tangential note, I think that the idea of "uprooting from homes" is a bit of an unfortunate cliche. In reality, it is home ownership that shackles people to jobs they hate, etc. If you rent, you can move whenever you want. If you own a home, you can't move if the job market declines or you find a better offer elsewhere unless you hire a Realtor and go through a major home sale project... and if the local economy is in decline, you're probably not the only person trying to sell your house and so you may end up selling it at a big loss (as was the case in post-industrial Flint, Michigan).

I realize that landlords have been vilified in the past, but who is really benefited by suppressing the mobility of the population? It's businesses (whose workers can't leave), it's politicians (who don't have to worry as much about people packing up and leaving in response to bad policies, corruption, etc.), and it's banks -- most people pay at least the value of their home in mortgage interest, and are effectively enslaved to the bank, an unrelenting landlord who can inflict the equivalent of modern-day debtors prison in the form of foreclosure credit destruction and confiscation of any equity earned since purchase.

How many people are tremendously afraid of losing their job because they might lose their house (their biggest investment)? How many people put up with unfulfilling, soul-sucking work just to make that house payment?

Consider how this has all changed -- how many more debt slaves were created -- when the housing market tanked. Home ownership is not the American dream, nor is being part of a community for the long term, nor is having the same job for 30 years and then retiring with a gold watch and a pension.

True freedom is in being able to take a better offer and being able to reinvent one's self whenever one wants. But our entire financial system, it seems, was based on the idea of encouraging long-term debt (mortgages) and the stasis that accompanies it.

So I think the ideal that you are striving for with not uprooting people from their rental apartments is not only illusory but destructive. Price changes contain information, and preventing price changes simply hides information, keeps people in the dark, etc.

Maybe being uprooted will (metaphorically) allow the plant to catch flight and land somewhere better... Maybe rental real-estate prices are so high because tons of rich people are moving in and they all plan on sending their kids to private school, leading to the destruction of the public schools -- this is the case in SF where most people with money would never send their kids to SF public schools even though it costs $2K/month to rent a dumpy 1BR apartment and so objectively it's a "rich" area.
How about the 50k documents uploaded every day? Can you really question that Scribd is a product that a lot of people want to use?
Interesting article, but unfortunately lacks references.

I wanted to find out more about kinetic muftis but according to Google Ramachandran is the only one to use that pairing of words. After that I realized that many claims were being made with few details and no references.
Half of the "documents" seem to be either plain text, or a plain image (porn).

The most viewed "document" on scribd of all time:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/26896/SUING-FOR-TOO-MUCH-SEX

Do you think it's sane to "stream" that document? What the hell are these people thinking??? They're wrapping plain text inside flash. One can only imagine their warped mentality. Why not convert plain text to a video, upload it to youtube, and embed the video. It'd make about as much sense.
An interview with Giles published today: http://www.rubyinside.com/top-ruby-presenter-of-2008-giles-b...
Exactly 10%-20% isn't that much. An company should be able to fire the worst at the bottom, hire new people to take their place distributed evenly across the spectrum & come out net ahead.
Security starts at home. Twitter avoids the security pissing match all together by not providing remote keys for users to give to third-party sites, encouraging the distribution of passwords, which should be private.
I remember a study, can't find it at the moment since I'm on the phone, that showed that slower sites have much higher engagement than fast loading sites. Fast loading sites also have a larger bounce rates than slower loading sites. I have no idea why that is but the data was conclusive. So maybe fast loading sites are great for transactions (shopping etc) where the speed is important but maybe not so when you're loading someone's profile. My best guess is that by waiting, people are investing time into a page and they want to check it before they hit that back button. (ping me if you want the source and I'll dig it out).
I don't see how they can get a return if there is no IPO or acquisition. The main assets of a startup is the technology, the IP, the business plan, the executive team as well as the staff, consumers & customers, which are not liquid. I've heard about specialized stock exchanges for startups (there's one in ontario), but apart from that, i don't see any solution.
This is the modern version of people emailing each other Microsoft Word documents with photos in them. I never understood that either.
Do both. Learn new languages and new habits.
Because people like gibsonf1 won't stop posting them here.
Gates No Longer World's Richest Man
That article appears to be a shorter version of his book. The book is well worth the $10.85 you'll spend on it.

http://www.amazon.com/1491-Revelations-Americas-Before-Colum...
I'd much rather this for insurance purposes. I drive very little (350mi/month maybe) but pay the same to insure myself as I would if I drove around all day.
The real place I could see Flash being great for mibbit is it would allow you to build an embed that could be used on sites like Myspace which allow Flash but not Javascript content.

Let me know if you ever want me to show you how to get a sane Flash dev environment set up - I have the war-wounds from writing most of Justin.TV's Flash code ;-)
I'm surprised this has gotten positive responses. This really is an idea that seems to run counter to a lot of progress in the industry. The notion that repetition improves performance is absolutely true, but that doesn't mean that you can neglect your continued education just to repeat.

What's more, learning new languages is repetition of the process of learning. It's learning how to think about a problem differently (assuming it does, you may not learn so many new concepts going from Ruby to Python). Learning to turn over a problem and attack it from a new angle is an essential skill.

There is a terrible temptation that we as engineers all face: to stop learning. After all, our skillsets are broad enough and it's hard to justify all these skills we may never use professionally. But that's a dangerous negative feedback cycle, because all these computer linguists build on other concepts. Once you fall a generation behind, you the have that much larger a gap to cross when pioneers have carved out a market that you do want to enter.

Finally, there is this kind of hidden belief in hacker circles that functioning but inelegant code is somehow worthless. Of course it's preferable to have elegant, extensible code... but in a space where there are no alternatives any functioning code is better than no code at all. Even if you can't make beautiful code with a skillset, working code is 1000x better than no code at all.

P.S. Also, the reader should care what Zed Shaw thinks of their code? Facile understanding of the history of mongrel detected, captain.
Never happen. I call complete bullshit on this prediction.
Fascinating. I wonder what are the implications for AI research.

It may be not so hard after all to create artificial conscious mind, in fact in may be even easier than getting right the "intelligence" part.
True, although I think things are speeding up. Chrome, firefox, safari, emergence of the iPhone as a browser...

HTML5 is definitely heading in the right direction though. WebSocket will be awesome when it arrives, making comet a thing of the past. <video> and <audio> tags will pretty much put flash out of business, etc etc
Ping. Submit it.
True, although I'd guess a fair amount is webmasters trying to cross promote their content. Seems like if you own a porn site, you may as well post some "tasters" to scribd with your web address on, etc etc
From a quick look at the "most recent" page:

20 docs per page, 50 pages covers last 18 hours.
=1,000 docs in last 18 hours
=approx 1,333/day

Maybe that page isn't showing every document, but I don't see why it wouldn't. And sure, it's new years, but even so...

Also you can't deny its used by webmasters promoting their websites....Posting endless tips etc with their link at the bottom. Take a look at some of the recently posted docs.
Does anyone have any concrete info on what similarities the Cell and Xbox 360 CPU share, besides the fact that they're both by IBM?

I was under the impression that the 360 CPU is based on the old PowerPC designs that IBM already had in-house, and is a far more traditional CPU (albeit with 3 cores) than the Cell.
Insensitive clod? I prefer to think of myself as some sort of pioneer, boldly heading into the future before [most of] the rest of you. If I were to find things here too terrible, I would have posted warning you all not to follow.

But it's all good. C'mon in, 2009 looks fine.