skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
reddit has never had 'explosive' growth, always steady month-over-month. The monday before digg v4 we had about 700K uniques and the monday after we had about 900K. In the grand scheme of things, digg v4 helped, since our chief competitor self-destructed, but the site has since far, far outgrown digg's highest numbers.

I think you'd be hard pressed to find a company that triumphed over a rival without some help from said rival's poor decision-making.

The useful bit of advice I took from the whole thing was how important it was to be aware of competitors, but not actually give a damn about what they were doing.

Thanks for redditing :) all is forgiven about that earlier digging business.

Oh! And a question for you - what kept you from redditing those years before? Were you even aware of it?

edit: One more thing, we also owe a ton to digg for educating the market on 'social news' as a concept. Sadly, they also taught them awful practices, like that it was OK to game the system, so that we're now cleaning up the mess and explaining to publishers that it's not OK to try and game reddit: http://www.dailydot.com/news/reddit-ban-the-atlantic-phsyorg...
Some people prefer to actually parent their children, no matter what time of day it is.
The thing is, I don't think it's necessary. This guide doesn't aim to add anything that Pro Git or Git Immersion don't already provide. I've tried to avoid adding additional noise to the mountains of Git documentation out there unless I feel there's real value being added, which I hope is the case with my own series of Git-related blog posts (http://pivotallabs.com/users/khicks/blog).
At least they're not reusing names, that's a start.

iPad, iPad 2, iPad.
I'd like to echo this. I know it's off-topic, but we've tried "graduated extinction with parental presence" (i.e. I sit in the room next to my son's crib after I put him down but do not pick him up) and it really DOES work if you've got the stomach for it. The problem is that once the grandparents visit for a week and spoil him, you'll need to retrain all over again (which we're doing now, sigh).

But seriously: it really does work. It's hard for the first 2 nights or so but gets exponentially better as time goes on.
Thank you, was wondering if anyone was going to make that connection.
Here are the results of pngnq which does exactly the same thing as this tool. It created a file size of 46K, (which I was then able to reduce to 41K with pngout followed by advpng).

http://i.imgur.com/VPc2k.png

http://pngnq.sourceforge.net/

256 colors may simply not be enough for this image.

(Incidentally I was able to slightly reduce your image to 46K with pngout.)
Use it after downscaling not before.

If you have a good downscaling tool it will create a larger number of intermediate colors when you downscale and you'll actually end up with a larger image!
Interesting -- what other apps use the remote control API? I have never been able to control anything other than "Music" with either of my cars.

Aside from using the phone to make calls, of course.
Build a "To Do" App with Sencha Touch, Sencha.io, and Facebook Integration
Video of the demo here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxmbbtuRszA
Looks nice. I have been using a shell script with some of these common commands (even does a git pull). Something like this might be more flexible for cross-platform.
If there's anything the internet has taught me, it's there's a niche for everything.

See: Rule 34.
Valve's new animation tool gives users their own (free) studio
Well I can't sign up as Webkit inspector's console is throwing "Attempted to Google SSO before it was initialized." when I try to signup/login via google
The power to be marketed to is the power to have mass create Music, TV, and Movies that you like. Just compare the amount of TV designed for 10-15 year olds with TV designed for people in the 95-100 year old demographic.
"Currently we're in double stealth mode (the public doesn't know what we're building and neither do we)."

+1. That's excellent.

I did a google search for desks from South African railways, and didn't find anything. But you can get desks made with salvaged steel from American railways.

"The Telegraph Desk features sections of salvaged 70-pound Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad steel sliced into 1" and 4" sections to create "dashes and dots.""

http://www.railyardstudios.com/categories/desks-tables/sub_c...
One thing that struck me, and in my eyes is the worst, is the response from Colgate. Just starting with "Dear Applicant" makes it seem like they don't care. Granted they may have already finished the search but they could still at least address the letter to an individual person and not a generic person.
SimCity Social is a collection of dirty tricks pretending to be game play
It'd be interesting if it was a larger view and the parts that the wearer isn't currently looking at is merely blurred out. That way you'd just have the in-focus viewport changing and updating while still having a larger sense of what was previously looked at.

Not sure how that'd work for the camera-wearer actually moving around... but yeah.
Inductive charging sounds cool. I'm kind of over my stupid connectors breaking, or my kittens chewing them to smithereens.
> OMG so boring. Google needs to learn how to put on a show.

They need to hire the TED guys as consultants and institute the same sort of preparation that Apple puts into their conferences.
Zynga Looks to Build a Gaming Social Network of its Own
How do you count "getting spam"?

My gmail spam label accumulates about 14K messages a month (mail labelled spam gets automatically dropped after 30 days. I can't possibly guess if there have ever been any false-positives) I have another filter that I set up with certain key words like "unsubscribe" or "opt-out" that seems about 98% accurate in catching spam that gmail would otherwise push to my inbox, and that accumulates about 400 messages a month. Still, after all that, I'd guess I get about 10 pieces of spam in my gmail inbox every day.

I have a very common firstname.lastname@gmail.com style address that I've had since April 1, 2004. I pretty liberally publish my gmail address (it's posted on my resume and on facebook, for example) but I tend to only give it to very trustworthy app/website developers for account purposes, with a first.last+identifier@gmail.com. Some of them still sell my address, despite claiming they won't. I never sign up for marketing or contests or anything of that sort, yet I'm still about ready to walk away from gmail due to the spam. I think my biggest culprit is other people with the same name who can't remember their own address; I know when someone else goes insurance shopping, car shopping, home shopping, etc, based on the random influx of mail.
I definitely wouldn't say non-functional. Hipster? Maybe.

Check out their new Sutro model. Amazing engineering.
I dont see why everyone is interested in sleep aide devices. I don't really give a crap about how much I roll around in my sleep, nor some BS about circadian rythms
Yea, I came in here to say this. While commenters below bring up good points about how to sustain your business being a big problem, I have to say that many of us do not derive our pleasures from just making a big company - we need to achieve something for humanity or we can't stop thinking about something.

For me - it's passion first, and then "how can I make this into a business"? Fortunately, if you're passionate about something, you tend to find things that need solving because you hit the wall with the current system.

Sure, Star Wars figurines aren't a huge market, but what about making figurines/toys in general? What are we pursuing the creation of big business for if not solving real problem? If you want to make ::millions:: selling marked-up HDMI cables with TVs have fun not changing anything...
Reddit-Like Website For Military Personnel Arriving In July
Fine, let's all just agree to fault Android as a whole and move on.
Deepak Coder
Not really. First of all, free/open source software is not really "alpha/beta quality software from untrusted source" and suggesting it is, is pretty much trolling. Second, Google is not the only one manufacturer (in the borad sense) that keeps it's phones up-to-date, for example Sony recently released 4.0 upgrade for it's 2011 models. Third, I know it tends to be pretty common in the US, but if you are buying subsidized phone from your carrier to save money, you do save money, but pay a different price, be it slow upgrades, disabled tethering or something else. And no one coerced you to buy chaeper but crippled phone, you made that decision yourself.

But most of all, the platform fragmentation, I mean in the sense that even this instant some OEMs are selling Android 2.3 devices is the price for cheap phones being available at all. Sure, Apple does update it's phones (though not really old models so people still have to upgrade), but for a price of iPhone, you easily can get three or four cheap Android devices. This is because they can use old software that has lower hardware requirements and because reusing software has little R&D costs.

In the end, saying "I want no Android fragmentation" is pretty much saying "I want smartphones only for rich people" and I don't think that's worth it. Even if, maybe, in US, people can buy iPhones all the time and it would not be a problem for them, there are other parts of the world too.
http://www.isup.me/github.com
It's not so much 'not missing the human element' as it is 'finding your mojo'. It's the first part of that whole keynote in which Google actually was itself instead of trying to mimic Apple's keynote style and approach. Immediately felt better (and more convincing, too)
I think the first point is pretty suspect, and definitely not a trait of the "average user" (who, on a tablet, remains a techie early adopter). You get content the same place you get apps. You're saying that the "average user" can't download an app, either?

I tend to agree that "Play" as a brand is a terrible name, though. But then I feel that way about most marketing, and find my intuition there routinely wrong. So I won't judge.
According to Microsoft, Surface pricing is "expected to be competitive with a comparable ARM tablet or Intel Ultrabook-class PC" (paraphrasing from the original presentation.) It's pretty clear that's closer to the $800 mark than the $200.

If they want to compete with the iPad, they'll need to get down into the $500-$700 range, but I doubt they'd be giving that kind of price guidance if anything under $400 was remotely possible in Microsoft's own view - their estimate is probably a "best case" outcome given how incredibly fuzzy they were about it. (Arguably they could deliver at $1000 and claim they're still "competitive" with an Ultrabook.)
Not alone; I'm in the same boat, although I haven't done as much to get my address "out there"
Interesting. Thanks for clearing that up for me. A 200k visitor boost is hefty, but not as much as I guessed it was.

I was aware of Reddit, and checked it out briefly. Amusingly, the interface/design is what turned me off. It's amusing to me because nowadays I highly prefer it over Digg's design, and even back then I generally preferred minimal interfaces. So I don't know why I didn't like Reddit from day one. I guess I was just used to Digg.
Another cool thing would be to actually look at routes on runkeeper for instance before heading out to get a grip of vegetation and climbing distance etc.
Why would they bother selling ads on a device that they just got money for giving to you?
I've only tried one image so far, but the one I tried showed impressive results. I've always used http://punypng.com, which has always done a great job, but I just ran a file compressed down to 131kb in PunyPNG and TinyPNG took it down to 42kb!
Have you used the Galaxy Tab 2? That's what I'm referring to, and it's really poor in a straight comparison to an iPad 2. Perhaps I've been unlucky and picked the worst of the bunch. Above poster suggests the ASUS tabs are considerably better and it's Samsung at fault here and I'm inclined to take him/her at his/her word.

Edit: That said the difference is so vast, that combined with these announcement details I'm also inclined to believe no to-date Android tab is as smooth as iOS prior to this release, otherwise there would be nothing to improve on and make the above claims about being "Faster, Smoother, More Responsive" which is why I'm excited about this and have high hopes for Jelly Bean.
SQLite3 is great. Had a few questions that were not directly addressed on the linked page.
1) Will the SQL implementation be identical between SQL3 and SQL4?
2) Does "I/O is direct to disk" indicate the same sort of locking that exists in SQLite3 (the database is locked DML which makes its application as a web server db somewhat limited).

My guess is yes to both...
Did anyone ever predict Saudi Arabia would actually reduce the price of oil as a method of economically attacking it's enemies? Because the USA recovery is about to be greatly helped by that.

Oil would last a lot longer if car makers would provide the 60mpg cars they have in Europe, here in the USA too. Instead they just stop advertising with the average mpg and switch to only advertising highway mpg to make the cars seem better, while city mpg remains horrible.
Gentoo Linux on the MacBook Pro 8,2 (late 2011)
Tutorial on how to get Gentoo Linux up and running on a MacBook Pro
Can anybody list any truly significant scientific or technological advances in the past 40 years? Say, starting from late 60-s, the time when ARPANET was developed?
That show is amazing. I feel like the name turned off a lot of potential viewers. The POV-style filming isn't even that central to the show. After an episode or two, you become used to it.
$300, and all it will play is media I bought from Google and YouTube? Seriously? I can get the tablet and an HDMI cable for $80 less and play everything.
We used the latest stable versions (as mentioned in the article). It's now updated to include the exact versions:
MongoDB 2.0.6, MySQL 5.5.25, MemSQL 1b
"The default built-in storage engine is a log-structured merge database. It is very fast, faster than LevelDB, supports nested transactions, and stores all content in a single disk file. Future versions of SQLite4 might also include a built-in B-Tree storage engine. "

Faster than LevelDB, and in a single file? Interesting.
In this case, Brin gave his product <puts on glasses> airtime.
The Trouble With Gift Economies
Google announced a hiker version of streetview earlier this month pre-WWDC.

http://thenextweb.com/google/2012/06/06/google-announces-tre...
I knew something was up with that email from MiLife+ this morning.

They're website was an awful Godaddy generated site (http://www.milifeplus.com/) and the video had a creepy audio narration http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCZQvguYTqg

Plus the wristband looked like a 5 minute CAD job with not effort.
The official dashboard is http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html and has been updated fairly often - maybe once a month or so - since ICS released.

According to that chart, about 84% of devices that have accessed Google Play are on Froyo or Gingerbread, and another 7% are on ICS.

Pretty much all of the phone market is concentrated in Gingerbread and Froyo. I think fewer than 10 types of phone are on ICS.
I have three questions:

1) WTF?

2) How close is pg to this whole mess? I'm guessing this is no longer in his sphere of influence, but it would seem that given that Wakemate is a YC company he should probably clarify YC's position on this debacle. I realise this is more a question to pg than to you, but I guess you might have an opinion.

3) Do you think the problem that ultimately killed the company was a mismatch between the founders, or did that evolve as a result of the multitude of problems that the company encountered? I'm getting a hunch that all these mistakes by the company could have been the result of lacking a clear direction/leadership.
Google Tries Something Retro - Nexus Q Media Player Made in the U.S.A.
There used to be a time where you'd look like a dork for carrying a cell phone, too.
I really hate the 2 WakeMates I bought.

I was given support up to a point, and then nothing. First there was app problems, then I got stuck with two devices with not enough battery power to last a night.

People shouldn't release weak beta products.
Why is this valuable at all? Has nothing to do with anything... Is this what people think is good blogging?
But if you had bought Xperia Arc S year ago, you would have official ICS on it now. Some OEMs do care. And some don't but no-one expects them to, because when you buy Huawei or ZTE phone, you either don't care or are willing to get updates from modaco.

With Motorola, it's just sad, but after encrypted bootlockers and soldered everything to make their phones unrepairable and unmodifiable, I would say it is to be expected.
Adding to the toolkit: an exoplanet’s atmosphere reveals its orbit and mass
Even David Mitchell hates the name and says the late night time slot didn't help with peoples assumptions (see his SoapBox series), but says he's come to accept the name over time.
Yes. This is precisely the reaction that will hurt, if not destroy, Android unless it is addressed.
You're not the CEO - You're the Fucking Janitor
and if my memory serves me right, the bonuses were allegedly allocated based on how accurate the data entry job is. Um, how do you validate that without knowing the answer? Conversely, if you have the answer, why do you need data entry monkeys?

Further, if this is a trivial batch script, why don't they grab a random programmer off the street, describe the problem and live happily ever after.
It's interesting to see him use the YC brand to launch his new company -- are they associated? Can he just walk with the WakeMate IP?

Also, why does he seem to be whispering in the video? It's freakin me out.

Update: Even more interesting, it seems that Greg had been tweeting from @wakemate even after leaving...shady shady shady
(re)Introducing OS.File
But, Google's Play is not just for tablets; Play is the market for ALL of Google's apps, from Android to Chrome (browser) to ChromeOS. Chrome is already heavily used for commercial purposes, and ChromeOS has the potential to be (and might be used for such already). That's kind of where I was going with that.
I like my Zeo because it lets me know when I actually got to sleep, and shows that REM happens toward the end of sleep, which is why an extra hour in the morning is so seductive every morning. The "wake in between REM stages" feature is actually pretty nice.
The Emotional Roller Coaster
You mean like http://developer.android.com/tools/extras/support-library.ht... ?
>I'll never buy Apple until they have replaceable batteries.

Then you'll never buy Apple.

Non-replaceable battery means a much better device. Going back to replaceable batteries would be a huge step backwards. Replaceable batteries on portable devices are going away. Sorry to break the new to you.
Not entirely true. There are many cases where someone joins the business but then leaves after a couple months, before any of their equity even vests.
They are, with the Android Support Library: http://developer.android.com/tools/extras/support-library.ht...

It provides support for features from Android 3.0 (namely fragments) for all versions down to 1.6. IMO it's essential for Android development.
Phones are different from tablets/laptops in terms of battery use case, of course. An iPhone's internal battery can quickly charge to 75% in your pocket (60 minutes) from a spare battery, and then be good to go for another 12-18 hours.

A Single Extra Hyperjuice Battery in your pocket will let you go 7-10 days with an iPhone without having to recharge from a wall socket.

The problem with the iPad is that it's battery is so high-capacity - that you can't do the same kind of trivial charge in your pocket trick. Also - the batteries take about 5 hours to get up to a 75% charge.

So - the battery problem has been mostly solved for iPhones (just recharge them from a hyper juice or like spare battery) but iPads have yet to come out with the same convenient solution.
Why San Francisco really is that bad: Postlude
Dart is looking very interesting if you want to check it out!
You are confusing b/w software and hardware. But that's understandable since Google has primarily been a software company. Ads are only needed in software. Google's revenue will come from selling the device. So no ads needed. Do you see ads in Windows or OSX or iPhone/iOS?
Ask HN: We need video production enthusiasts/hackers to help us
Hi guys,

We are a small team working on a video pre-production management and creative collaboration Web app (in private beta). We are looking for some technical users for functional testing who have worked with general video pre-production tasks like script writing, storyboarding, client interaction etc. If you think you can help us with testing and feedback, then please drop us a message at info [at] hatchvid.com

We'll really appreciate your help!
Many serious pieces of software are crusty and warty.
Hacker Panel updated (bookmarklet to pull up HN discussion on any web page)
Hacker Panel was previously broken due to using an outdated HN API, but now it's fixed and works excellently. It lets you pull up a panel containing the full Hacker News thread for any web page with the click of a button.

Check it out and get the latest version here: http://chetan51.github.com/panels/hacker/
And the video mentioned the project was on Kickstarter when it's actually on some other random crowdfunding site.
Looks like another overpriced Google TV. I already have one, and it isn't supported very well. Never again.
Clickable: http://chetan51.github.com/panels/hacker/
The problem is that websites are the most accessible way to deliver an interface for humans. But nobody else can do anything with the tech, and you're limited to the one workflow that the creator had thought of.

If this were a library or a command line app like pngcrush, web services could be spawned from it in days, easily. Or desktop apps. Or editor plugins. But in the current format, it's inextensible.

(disclaimer: this isn't always true, but it's true in this case)
Perfect Meals Cooked Simply - Nomiku: Sous Vide for Everyone
Yes it is. It's stupid, shortsighted, and it is going to cost them money in the long term. They are still doing this.

But I don't understand about you not having option of buying phone. They won't allow you to use different phone with your sim or anything? You can just drop to a store, buy unlocked Galaxy Nexus, Galaxy S III, Xperia S or something, and use it right?
Why Kickstarter 'can't' and won't protect backers once a project is funded
I thought it was wakemate which "was".
I've had to wear glasses since I was a kid.

Can't say I like the idea of glass in general. I'm going to be getting PRK surgery this year to finally ditch the glasses, hopefully this isn't a new fad of wearable devices. I know some family members that have been in the air force aren't huge fans of hud type technology as its too distracting.

Who knows maybe i'll be proven wrong.
You can sign up for MSN messenger with any email address.
Fireworks is not the only program that can create those files. I've never even heard of fireworks and I create indexed pngs with transparency all the time.
reddit raised $82,000 -- that's investment. You can google around for the sale price, the Internet has the range pretty much figured out, but reddit is indeed profitable today (and not at the expense of users!) thanks primarily to self-serve ad platform.

Savvy advertisers have done a great job using the tool, which admittedly needs work, but it's making us money. http://www.reddit.com/ad_inq/
So what is this new DB for? General use?
I actually disagree. All I've ever gotten from LinkedIn is recruiter spam.