skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Surprised to see no mention of the website Criticker. Been using it for a few years now (ever since I cancelled Netflix and missed the recommendation engine).

Criticker's rating system is out of 100 points but for each user it scales ratings into tiers (deciles) 1-10. So for someone like me who watches lots of movies that I sort of know I'm gonna like (thanks to Criticker!), most of my ratings end up in the 70 to 100 range, but I still have 5 tiers in that range. The wide range allows the system to adapt to a user's biased view of the scale. Also plenty of users simply keep their rankings from 0-10.

Criticker gives recommendations in two ways. First it predicts my ranking for a movie. So I can just browse unwatched movies and filter them however I like and then sort by how Criticker expects I will rate them. It is actually scary how predictable I am.

The other method of recommendations is to browse users who have very high correlation to my rankings and see what movies they've ranked highly which I have not seen. This might be the best way to find movies. It also seems to be the key to how the expected ratings I mentioned above are computed.

No doubt one of the things that keeps Criticker running so well is a community of serious film buffs. It makes it easy to find movies I would have never heard of otherwise (foreign, limited release, shorts).
I don't think this is going to kill off PopCap, and I agree that layoffs are a part of business. My point was that, for every PopCap laying off some employees, there are 10 sub-par studios going to be forced to downsize or close due to the same market conditions.

Then again, I don't think anyone who followed this space closely didn't see this coming. The industry is maturing.
Science is constantly failing us. I remember when I was taught the basic structure of an atom and all I needed were protons, neutrons, and electrons. And while quarks can be chalked up as an expansion pack for an high school teacher so can many of the changes that religious people make.

How many scientific theories are proven not to be accurate models for the data? Is that not a failure? No, because it is just a failure on that particular scientist right? There is a perception that science does not fail. It does, frequently.

The problem is that science was BUILT to fail. It is BUILT to be expanded upon. Religion, according to many was not. That is the fundamental failure in Religion. They want to appear to be constant and unchanging while they are not.

Religion does adapt, and grow, and find failures. Much like science does. It takes a certain amount of faith to wake up every day and say that this world is the real one. It makes logical sense yes, but that doesn't mean it's the whole picture.

TLDR; To be staunchly of either belief and NOT have any doubt THAT is illogical.
“On PC it’s only around five to seven per cent of the players who pay for F2P, but normally on PC it’s only about five to seven per cent who pay anyway, the rest is pirated. It’s around a 93-95 per cent piracy rate, so it ends up at about the same percentage,” [Ubisoft CEO Yves] Guillemot said.

Their customers convert from free-to-paying and from pirate-to-paying at the same rate. Releasing a game as free-to-play doesn't cut into their revenue stream, since it'll just be pirated anyway. The same number of people will pay for it, either way. Essentially, DRM is a pointless expense for them.
> - Higgs was the goddamned particle, which was censored to 'god'. In any case it was just a joke

The article is not about that at all, but how the physics and mathematics surrounding it is so abstract that no one but a theoretical physicist can at all have any meaningful understanding of it.

For anyone else it's just a matter of faith.

Personally, I think there is a big difference between a myth passed down as tradition for thousands of years, and a discovery peer reviewed in the scientific community.
That isn't always an option - there are no real alternatives to the official Facebook app, or the official Spotify app, and so on and so forth. It tends to be these really big apps that commit the sin of cloning their iOS interface on Android.
Too bad that Free2Play will almost always inevitably lead to Pay4Fun. I've see
few games where this wasn't the case (the first few years of GuildWars being an
example, I don't know about the current state of affairs). More often than not,
it doesn't become "cashing in to get a better experience", it's "requiring money
to play properly at all". And I don't trust the major publishers with their
history of retarded DLC to do any good in that regard.
It is amazing that the porn industry (for tech stuff) and drug cartels continuously push the boundaries - many times more than the "normal" businesses out there.
Also how does the author presume Google forces developers to make apps the way the author wants them to make apps? As far as I know, the biggest draw of Android over iOS or Windows Phone is that the market is only curated at the very most basic level necessary to keep it functioning. Is there an approval process for Google Play apps before hitting the market? I don't think there is; if I'm wrong, I'm only slightly wrong.

iOS and Windows Phone are popular among their respective users because of how well-integrated and tightly controlled the experience is. Android is popular among its users in no small part because of how unrestrictive the system is: you can do just about anything. Asking Google to force a design paradigm would just push Android into competing in the same market as the iPhone. It would alienate its fans and destroy the biggest reason Android is so popular.
It could be that a lot of customers buy the boxed product, then install the warez version because it doesn't have any DRM associated with it. This doesn't clarify how they know the games are pirated.

Ubisoft is one of the worst offenders lately when it comes to treating their customers like criminals. Even products bought through Steam have all kinds of added on DRM and CD-Key nonsense.
I don't see any reason why windows on arm users wouldn't be willing to pay for a casual game 3d or otherwise on their device. The smaller market size might be a hinderance along with any app vetting fees but if you can do a port of an existing unity based app for a relatively low cost you would probably come out ahead.

Also keep in mind theres a lot of xbox/win phone interop stuff going on there so theres at least a few gamers on the platform.
The problem that XKCD gets at is simply translating/scaling the results; the article is solving a different problem.

Early on in the Netflix Challenge, I was able to get myself (very briefly) a leaderboard score with nothing more than analyzing every user's ratings; re-centering them by their mean, and re-scaling them according to their standard deviation. The by remembering their translations and scales, I could put a globally-predicted score back into their own language.

So just some very basic statistics is sufficient to erase much of the bias toward higher numbers, as well as halo effects and the like.

(I was pretty surprised that Netflix's own algorithm apparently wasn't doing anything this simple)
This makes it sound like PayPal's proxying through Discover; building within their platform. I don't see any potential way this could backfire when Discover decides it wants to do it's own mobile payments. None at all.
Because "rewatchability" is not just useful to judge how much people like to watch a movie again -- it's also useful to judge how much people like the movie, find it deep, and connect with it (over pure mindless fun).

So rewatchability roughly translates to "emotional connection + quality".
So I'm curious, what would you define a job? True, running a startup requires you to make some concessions with your private time. But when you have what you describe as a job, assuming there is no need to excel (i.e., prioritising, pushing), seems a bit judging. Aiming to be good at what you do, doesn't that hold for anything?

So with that argument turned around again on startups, if you need time off, vacations, private me time or whatever to get better at what you do, you should take it. Excessive stress does not make a better person, nor a better life.
I'm on the 'founder' side of this. I'm a lone founder and would dearly love to bring in a 'co-founder' or employee to work with.[1] The problem is that i have worked for a long time, progressed a lot, and have a strong vision of what i want to end up with[2], there is no way on this earth i would give up 50% of that to someone because they were a great programmer/EE (and i don't know anyone personally who i feel would be able to add significant value, or i would have brought them in earlier). I also have the vision of what the business could become, far beyond the first product, so i value it a lot higher than any outsider would[3].

So what choice does that leave me? I can't imagine anyone willing to work 1-on-1 for a significantly minor steak. Opinions here consistently make it clear that a small stake is considered almost worthless[4].. so it seems to me the only option is struggle on alone, and eventually give a salary[5] by whatever means possible, perhaps preceded by an intern if i find someone interested. What does HN think?

1. there is a reason 'co-founder' almost supersedes the word founder around here.. working on a big project on your own is an absolute bitch.

2. working on a product, with HW and SW components, not 'just a website'.

3. which is also why i haven't sought any investment yet.

4. you may be thinking '99% of startups fail', but i am thinking 'i know i will suceed'.

5. i need a competent programmer to free up my time for other things and bounce ideas off, not a 'superstar'
S. Korean researchers find new way to watch 3-D movies
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I'd like to know which magic hat the 95% comes from as usual.
I pay for most PC games and so do my friends. I highly doubt we're in the 5%.

Feels like a classic "the subject is not the percentage" in order to make everyone comfortable with "95%".

I also highly dislike DLCs. Usually they're required to keep up in online games (else you're at unfair disadvantage), or they're just fixing bugs/adding stuff that should have been there from the beginning. Plus games usually cost $50 .. then need $15 DLCs (3, 4 of them).

F2P generally need $50-$100 of stuff overall as well.

Make the game $5, I'll buy it and so will everyone. Heck, I buy all phone games for that reason. The price is reasonable, and pirating it is more hassle than just paying. (ofc, if you put horrible DRM restrictions on top, $5 or not, the pirated game is generally easier to get)

Note that I'm not requiring games to be $5. I pay for $50 games today. I just reckon that they'll probably get more money if they sell them cheaper.
Here is an article from a developer that provided information on piracy numbers (and claimed 70 - 90% on a DRM free game): http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2008/11/acrying-shame-world-of...

edit: source of the 90% (or revised 82%): http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/ (sorry bsphil!)
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It depends on what you consider a player, in my opinion.

I admit that 95% of the users who open a PC game may not be playing a copy they purchased, but in all likelihood most play it for about 5 minutes. Just as with pirated iPhone apps, where it often seems people install 400 apps and never open them twice.
So it seems that recessive traits, like blue eyes, will likely be bred out of humanity in relatively short order.

At least until full blown reproductive genetic manipulation comes into effect.
I guess anyone who can't write code but earns more than a programmer ;-)
I haven't seen the new Hulu yet (blocked by corporate proxy), but their old design was only good when I was logged out. Once I logged in, the "popular shows" list was removed and replaced with "your friends recently watched...". That option may still have been around, but I never found it.
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I think the bigger hurdle to Scala adoption isn't language complexity, but tooling. It's not as mature as Java tooling, and compilation is dreadfully slow. Typesafe is actually putting some effort in improving Scala tooling, so hopefully the additional funding will help them move the ball faster in that area.
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So the failure of science is...its inability to perfectly predict the future?
If that figure is true for Ubisoft games, they fully deserve it.

In other news, Steam and GOG are doing just fine.
Because the rewatchability rating doesn't just tell you how rewatchable a movie is, but also how good and "timeless" it is, i.e mainly how deeply it resonates with people.

This is not about picking a movie to watch again after you have already seen it once: this is about picking a movie you haven't seen but that is so good that other people like to watch it again and again.
Aside from the number being pulled from their asses, Ubisoft is continuously one of the worst publishers in terms of utilizing harsh DRM. I wouldn't be shocked that people go out of their way to pirate Ubisoft games.

I know I haven't bought anything Ubisoft in a long time.
I see this genre of writing as less about practical business advice and more about a certain kind of evangelism: leave your old ideas behind and join the new movement! It can be startups, or something else. The general template is an aspiration that a new life awaits you, if you dive in and commit to it, but only if you really treat it as a new life, not just a new job.
The problem with a religion-oriented attitude (no matter how progressive the religion) is that it acts like a pacifier for the human inquirer.
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What's the point of minimizing a server-side script anyways? It doesn't need to be transferred over the wire. Silly.
Thanks, I'll look for some better-looking deals to feature. Do you have any suggestions? I don't really know what people are looking for/would be impressed with.

As for the technical problem of distinguishing between X and X accessory I haven't had much luck in this department yet... as you saw :\. I'm working on it though! Sadly the first result for a LCD TV (queried from Amazon using their API) is for a mount too!

I don't do any product prioritization, I only sort by date posted (deals come and go fairly quickly). Would you be interested in a sort by price feature?

Thanks for taking a look and your feedback!
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I imagine that the global amount of piracy would be very different than, say, the piracy rate in the U.S.
Maybe there is some lingo I don't understand, but I'm going to assume these words all mean what I think they do. If so:

This is an extremely neat idea that, if legit, would make billions of dollars and many people happy.

Unfortunately, it has a zero percent chance of succeeding. How on earth do you think you can pull this off?
Probably this guy http://www.cbs42.com/content/localnews/story/Former-Alabama-...
Arguably, yes, because you haven't really broken your data down as much as you need to; but this is a fairly contentious issue - just see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_normal_form#Atomicity. If you are frequently needing to query inside data, you may well gain from moving that 'prefix' into a separate column, or more drastically rethinking your data model if that's appropriate.
> That's why everyone alive in the Holy Land at the time of Jesus would have been able to claim David for an ancestor.

This really threw me for a while, as it seemed to be an obviously false statement. Until I realized the author had switched contexts on me: Jesus claimed male ancestry, but this statement is including ancestry from both male and female lines. So it seems overall believable, however I still see many provably false assumptions in this article.

* The population of the Holy Land was a constant 1 million people for 35 generations. Assumes no population growth. (false)

* No imigrants (false, see next bullet)

* No intermarrying with other cultures (false, because this intermarriage is often cited in the Bible as a reason people turned to other gods)

> More specifically, imagine the simplest case of a population of a constant size - say a million (the approximate size of the Holy Land at the time of Jesus).

I'm just quoting this to show that the author asks us to assume a constant size population

I'm certain that there were thousands of people in Palestine that could have claimed an unbroken ancestry from David. But based on all the flaws in this article, I don't trust the assertion that everyone in the area can claim an unbroken line (even including female ancestors).
Which is also a completely unsourced number.
Yes... T-Mobile coverage at MIT is almost non-existant. Once I walk outside of the main campus, I magically get reception again.
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I think I understand what point he is trying to get at, in a very round-a-bout, incorrect premise type way (ha, God particle). Do I know we went to the moon? No, but I can do enough research that shows there is more evidence we did than didn't. Do I know that the LHC actually works? No, but I could do the research to find more evidence that they did than they didn't. Do I have time to do that research? No. Does that mean I've put 'faith' in scientists that it does exist? Hell no, I've given them the benefit of the doubt. In my mind that is two WILDLY different statements. 'Faith' that the higgs exists suggests I've done give up trying to find answers and will simply take the word of others as fact. Benefit of the doubt means the people in charge have built up enough credibility that I'm willing to believe them for now, but I'm never going to stop reading every bit of information on the topic I can until I can form a proper opinion. Faith in the sun rising tomorrow means I won’t stick my head out the window and look. Benefit of the doubt means I'll have a good night’s sleep, but I'll sure as hell be looking out that window in the morning.
plnkr.co appears to be offline
There are lots of things that might be true, that you can't prove. String theory, some math problems, the lady or the tiger, whether you can trust your own senses, etc. For any given fact, chances are you can't prove it so you will have to take it on faith or forgo belief.
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> Repeated username/combo requests over HTTPS produce patterns over multiple requests that can make cracking the encryption easier.

Interesting! Do you have any references where I can read more?

> As for proxies, I'm talking about someone with physical access to a device and network

HTTPS really does protect against someone with physical access to the network, by encrypting the data streem and preventing man-in-the-middle attacks (except by attackers who can subborn a trusted root authority). It does NOT protect against someone with full access to the "device" where the client app is running -- someone with such access can, more-or-less by definition, view all values that the program sends (including credentials).
I didn't know about the wheel morse code - that's pretty awesome. I'd loved some technical detail about what exactly the beacons are? Javascript, images, special characters...? The CloudFlare page isn't exactly informative in that regard.
Leon Lederman did not want to call it 'The God Particle', just the opposite 'Goddamn Particle'.
"the publisher wouldn't let us call it the Goddamn Particle, though that might be a more appropriate title, given its villainous nature and the expense it is causing."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_Particle:_If_the_Univer...
We don't throw away useful models, even if they're incomplete.
What's stopping you from using a current online radio service with all of those features through your iPhone?
It's interesting to note that 20% of the companies have been working on their business for over a year (source: https://www.statwing.com/demos/yc-s12 ). Between that and the fact that YC is on record as looking for more clear-revenue companies, I think this shift will be more pronounced.

Another interesting note is that every major win (or apparent major win) for YC so far has had a very clear-- and very early-- revenue model (Dropbox, AirBnB, Heroku, OMGPop).
This is one thing I don't understand. Do the modern day followers of various religions not realize that they were founded by borderline drunks and psychonauts?

These people don't just "talk to the gods" while completely sober; they're railed on a whole plethora of wonderful psychotropics. If any single follower of any religion wants to find out where it came from, eat a handful of mushrooms.
Some semi-constructive criticism:

- Try to get a video up, or at least a couple of actual screenshots (and not an obviously fake/photoshopped one), so we know a little more about how it looks and reacts.

- Give some more information on the product. An FAQ and small support page, more info about the company, etc.

- A privacy policy is also pretty critical (where does it say you don`t monitor or record conversations, for example?)

- From the screenshot it seems like you have the ability to reply to a certain person directly in the chat. I'm not convinced that can work in a quick chatroom like this, especially if you start nesting stuff.

- No download required? So you work from a browser and are either using a plugin or certain specific browser functionality. Without knowing what they are, how can I know this is going to work for me?

- What's your end game and business model? Whether or not the video streams go through your server, you still need to pay for your bandwidth, I don't see ads. Tell us how you are monetizing this, or will in the future.
great question, thanks.

i call a 'job' something that has a stable job description, clear career path and predictable roadmap. vacation becomes just another item on the calendar then, which is perfectly fine.

you can and should still excel in those conditions, but the project won't be jeopardized or stalled if you take time off. and when you come back, chances are that the specs of your project didn't shift yet.

there is a surprising amount of people working in jobs, even in technology sector, but they are not founders or employees of early stage companies.

and yes, if you feel like you need time off, you need time off. but planned vacations in this environment I just don't see plausible. I've never been able to even book a plane ticket more than a week in advance, because plans always changed.

best, b
Reminds me of this thread that I read here earlier today: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4414567
It's risky yes, but VCs do some of their own analysis of likely monetization strategies, along with potential acquisition value of companies. In some areas that revolves around userbase and data: is there someone who would buy the company for its users and the data it's accumulated about them? If so, it may be worth investing in, regardless of revenue.
This is another article that makes a bunch of assumptions about its precise definition of a "Startup", then defines those definitions, then restates them as its conclusion.

But it doesn't mean you need to fit any of those definitions to be a Startup. Except in the mind of the author.

I run a successful little software startup that has as its first and primary goal: "Maximize Jason's vacation time". Every decision I make is made in that context. So profitability is important, as is low customer support requirements, as is technical simplicity (so I never have to cut a trip short because something breaks).

From that standpoint, articles like this that make it sound like a startup should consume your life and thoughts seem a bit silly. No it shouldn't. Not unless you want it to.

That's the cool thing about running your own business. You get to run it any way you please.
Can you use that with the iPhone?
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