skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I personally wouldn't do porn.

As for whether I'd do business or be associated with someone in the porn industry: it depends a lot on circumstances, and the particular organization I'm working on behalf of. As a programmer, I don't care, and porn might actually be a plus on your resume because it tends to get high traffic and give you experience with scaling problems.

But if it was on behalf of an organization like FictionAlley or the Flash games site(s) my startup was trying to do, I'd stay far away. Because these are largely aimed at teens (and tend to get lots of pre-teen visitors as well, even though COPPA in theory should keep them away), and it's not worth the PR disaster that'd come from any association with porn.
I hope things work out for you without you having to start a porn site. There are enough of those already. Plus if you "frankly dont want to be associated with porn" maybe you shouldn't get into porn business.
I would also like the API to allow me to provision profiles so that I can create them for my customers then pull out the data with the API and integrate it into their dashboard.
He just explains the pairwise equal division of the contested sum as a social custom.

In some ways it makes sense if you want to maintain the best pairwise relationships in a small community.

If you did it without pairing, the person who is owed the least might resent the people who received more.
Interview with Craig Peterson of the Beyond Compare file/folder comparison utility
You should judge this using the same criteria you use for judging any other business idea. Do you feel passionate about it? Do you have something new to contribute to the market that you feel excited about giving to users? Will you be proud and happy working day and night making your product the best there is? If yes, why not porn? If no, then why bother?
Yeah, but the OP asked about Google Analytics.
I don't normally get sentimental, but that brought a tear to my eye.
A few observations:

One: Glad you liked the writing.

Two: Please do not think like this:

The accountant tribe and the engineer tribe will never form an alliance, they are evolutionary enemies.

You need to refactor those tribes. Because, in fact, every engineer should know something about accounting. One of the things I regret is that nobody in my youth ever found a way to make accounting seem compelling enough that I was convinced to learn it. It turns out, though, that modern economic life is a big game played according to complicated rules, and accountants are the referees.

Most engineering decisions cannot be made without an accountant. If money were no object we could solve many website scaling problems by buying one server for every anticipated visitor -- or, alternatively, by only allowing one visitor at a time into our sites. (Let them stand in line!) These are not silly ideas: People used to have to stand in line at major universities to use scientific calculators, but now we've made them cheap enough that we can just give one to every math student. The thing which makes many obvious solutions silly is: They cost too much, or they don't make enough money. And to answer the questions "how much is too much? how much is enough?" requires accountants.

Finally, please don't call this thing I've just written "a hypothesis". That makes me wince. I'm having fun with the metaphor, but it would be a mistake to reify it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reification_(fallacy)

The metaphor is fun because I really am related to monkeys (well, chimps, technically), and because many human behaviors really do make sense in chimp terms as well, and because it's quite possible that this is not entirely a coincidence, or a case of convergent evolution. But let's not go too far. It is only a metaphor. I'm built out of chimp parts, but I'm also built out of distinctly human parts.

For example, it would be bad to argue like this: Early humans lived as free-ranging nomads, so a better office design would be one that forces us to live like free-ranging nomads. That idea has been tried. And it turns out that one of the hacks that make the modern world possible is personal collections of artifacts: piles of papers (with the most relevant ones on top) and post-it notes to cue your memory, photos of your family to regulate your mood, egg timers to remind you to take breaks, vastly complex, expensive, and personalized suites of hardware and software to help you write code, the custom-adjusted chair that keeps your back in working order, etc. In other words: Having your own office makes you more productive.
Sodomy, including heterosexual oral sex, was illegal in many places in the United States until the Lawrence vs. Texas decision in 2003.
Register via whois proxy and don't tell anyone...
If somebody sues you your name will be outed anyways.
How do you single-handedly prove wrong a statement like "it helps a lot to have a cofounder"?
Geek social fallacy #4: friendship is not transitive.

Most people "decay" social relations as they get farther away. Presumably, you want to like everyone that you associate with. But if one or two of the people they associate with is somehow objectionable, you kinda write it off as bad taste and tolerate them as best as possible, as long as you're not invited to the same dinner parties. And most people don't care at all who their friends-of-friends-of-friends are.

If you believe the 6-degrees-of-separation theory, this is a very good thing. Otherwise, we'd all be connected to some serial killer, or traitor, or banker. Heck, if you go out even 2 degrees of separation, I'm sure there are people in my social network that I find rather detestable.
I guess this is a good place to mention Britney Spear's toxic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9S4O974qQo

I find it hilarious because of the total mismatch between the music and video.
The restaurant "divvying up the bill" example is a classic managerial accounting issue. What the classic solution (separate checks) fails to take into account is the fact that it can sometimes create quite a bit of hassle for a single server, esp. when people can't make up their minds! :)

Yes, I spent many undergrad years in the restaurant business: serving (waitressing), hosting, running the register . . .
Certain religions do. To tar all religions with the same brush as the Wahabbi Islamic terrorists is sophomoric (to be expected from Dawkins).
Because of how you feel about it, you should not take this route.
"Parks on fire" by digital artist Scott Pagano
Here is my picks :

- more vars (pageTracker._setVar, currently only 1 allowed)

- credentials for specific reports

- more goals (currently 4 allowed)

- mouse movement capture (see http://www.clicktale.com/features/watch-your-website-visitor...)

- api

- real time at least for the pages/views etc

- its corollary : notifications on alerts (spike, %more, %less)

- form analytics (see http://www.clicktale.com/features/form-analytics)

- automatic outbound links analytics (right now you have to do add some javascript manually to every link)

- remove data

- have a desktop version (like for adwords)

- have a better tracking of the adwords/targeted content network

- link google website optimizer to analytics (currently only with goals)

- navigation heatmap (show us visually the most common webflow used)
Porn is not some magic industry where all you exchange is your willingness to be associated with it for riches. You're going to end up working your ass off to be successful whether it's porn or not. If your other startup attempts targeted consumers try switching to doing something that goes after small businesses. They're actually willing to pay money for value and on average they're wiling to pay a lot more than people will for porn.
BeyondCompare has succeeded despite ignoring much of the conventional wisdom for commercial software: competing in a market with lots of free alternatives; going 6 years between major upgrades; re-writing from scratch; releasing a Linux version; and having an extremely generous trial policy. How have they succeeded?
Military to use virtualization to reduce separate classified systems
Don't do it. Porn degrades the people who perform it (especially the women) and the people who use it (mostly men, who are conditioned to see women as body parts for their own enjoyment).
Are you saying that porn programmers hired to work on teen-oriented web sites might accidentally go Tyler Durden on you and do a "changeover" inside your flash games?
You didn't answer the question. There are other types of explosives and incendiaries. Like atomic explosives, none of them are intrinsically military. Hiroshima was especially vulnerable, being essentially a medieval shantytown of wooden huts. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=458599

http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aglasstone.blogspot.com...

Hiroshima: it was not 'vaporised by 6000 °C within an instant': all the wood-frame buildings burned down in a firestorm that developed 30 minutes later
This is futile, since they can keep previous versions of your data. In fact, this is stated explicitly in Facebook's privacy policy:

"When you update information, we usually keep a backup copy of the prior version for a reasonable period of time to enable reversion to the prior version of that information."
Yes, same here. It is amazing that what you'd think is gross actually turns out to be helpful and therapeutic.
I agree: don't do things you're ashamed of.

Meanwhile, while it may not fit the quick-buck model implied here, I suspect there are many untapped opportunities in classy or mainstream pornography or erotica.

Having just read the long and rewarding Playboy interview of Steve Jobs from the mid-80s (currently on the HN homepage), I'm reminded that the world is waiting for a new generations of what might be called respectable pornography.
I interpreted 'resign' to mean that iamdave would quit his job at Facebook.
LaunchBox Digital application now open
"still gets tons of traffic...basically, Traffic is not enough to make any real money."

What sort of traffic are we talking here? And what sector? If it's the right traffic, you don't need much to make lots of money...
or - it's hard to cook when you're watching TV.
I asked my friend, who is a former Singaporean police officer, and he says that oral sex law isn't enforced. Same goes for anal sex.
I think that in ten years porn will be much more mainstream than it is today. Here in Scandinavia, the first place in the world to legalise porn, it is already becoming socially acceptable with ex-porn stars becoming main stream talkshow hosts, etc. The US. is probably a few years behind in this trend due to their strange take on religion and sex.

My point is that I would just go with it, I know people that are in that businees, and to my knowledge they have never had any problems. Neither socially nor in business.

The social norms may be stricter where you are from, so take this with a grain of salt.

For inspiration on how far you can take it if you choose this road look at Private Media Group liste on NASDAQ: http://finance.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3APRVT
From my perspective, porn varies from positive and affirm to degrading and disgusting. I think that is some sense, we are our actions. At least they long outlive us. Make sure that your actions are consistent with your values, and not just a quick way to turn a buck.

From a practical perspective, I doubt that you have a moral outlook to make much money doing it. There are probably easier ways to make money: a tax on your feeling of self-worth and morality is expensive to pay.
Funny story: when I first decided that I wanted to work for an "internet company" in 1996, nearly all of my interviews were with porn companies. I was a young kid with very little formal experience, so it follows that folks closer to the fringe would be more willing to take a chance hiring me.

One of my most memorable interviews was when a company took me through the cubicle farm in a SOMA warehouse where the "live on webcam" girls and guys were performing. (To tell the truth, the setup was a bit depressing.)

I ended up taking a job at an ISP, not because I had any moral objection to working on porn, but because it seemed like I'd be working on a lot more interesting stuff and had a lot more potential for future advancement.

On my first day, my boss gives me a project to work on: get the streaming porn working for his side business.
Hard to tell if you're being sarcastic, or truly believe this‽
Did anyone else here feel the same way when starting their first company?

Yes. I'd go on a limb and say that everybody feels that way when starting their first company. I'm on it right now and feeling it most certainly.

I convince myself by reminding me that I believe in the business model and in my skills, I honestly think I can pull it off.

In the beginning make sure you believe in your thing and try to be realistic about your planning. Base everything on pessimistic assumptions. How long will it take you to launch something, how long until you can realistically expect your first $1 of income? What unknowns are there and how will you deal with them? Write down your most important figures, juggle them around in excel, make sure to have a good feeling for what you're getting yourself into. If the figures say you can't do it then re-think your idea. If the figures say you can do it then try again with more pessimistic assumptions. A good business model looks promising even under most pessimistic assumptions. You definately want one that's robust enough to still work even when many factors turn out less than ideal.

Also make sure to realize that it will be much harder than you can possibly imagine. You definately need persistence. Easily more of that than you've ever needed before in your life. Stuff will go wrong, people will tell you that your idea sucks, work will overwhelm you. Be prepared to handle that without losing focus. Never panic. Don't torn yourself apart by trying to do everything at once.

If you think you have enough discipline to manage that then, by all means, do it. Remember you don't have much to lose. You can stop at any time and the expiriences you gained will help you either way.
Is Vonnegut there trying to imply that the non-atomic firebombing of Dresden (and Hamburg and Tokyo) never happened? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slaughterhouse-Five
We have notifications for this kind of scenario built into statzen.com. We will be launching in a week or two.
As a kid I helped a friend’s dad start a porn site (on the technical end) and I’ll tell you two things about it.

1. As someone with a decent reputation I get asked to a lot of meetings with people to discuss the "big ideas" of non-programmer types. In those meetings big numbers are always thrown around as to how much money can be made. The one porn project I’ve ever done is THE ONLY time I actually ended up with the big number that had been thrown around ($200,000 for 6 months work in case you were wondering)

2. Working on that site was one of the most fun projects I’ve ever had (and not because of the pornography). From a technical perspective porn pushes the boundaries more than any other area (except maybe pure research). It involves everything from telecommuting (allowing performers to do their jobs from home) to content delivery networks (my first experience with delivering a high number of quality video feeds) to social interaction (porn is more about an emotional reaction than anything else which requires studying how to create an immersive experience). It really does push all your skills.

I mean, in honesty, I wouldn’t do it now that I have some money behind me. But I don’t think there was anything wrong with it and I don’t feel bad about the experience.

As far as hiding your identity, it’s called a shell corporation and it’s not that hard. That said, you aren’t going to be able to completely hide your identity. Some people are going to have to know (you deal with a lot of vendors in that business). If you are going to the trouble of creating a new HN account it probably isn’t for you.
Your maxim seems overly simplistic. I don't see the connection between how well you execute something and how it jibes with your ethical convictions.

I can think of a few things that were done well, but for which the perpetrators ought not be proud. Consider the Banco Central burglary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banco_Central_robbery_at_Fortal...). Beautifully executed, but the burglars' selfishness cost the people of Brazil a fortune.

In the extreme, consider Hitler, who was tremendously efficient at terminating Jews under the Third Reich. Should that efficiency exonerate him from any shame?

My examples are ridiculous, but I'm only trying to make the point that how you feel ethically about your work is a function of what that work is, not a function of how well you perform it.
I have to disagree with you on the personalised work areas. As the sibling poster pointed out, having those types of effects and environmental settings in a space that is definitively yours is highly conducive to productivity, a sense of organisational inclusion, and overall satisfaction and comfort.

No, I'm not saying that people that have personal effects in their cubes are all eminently satisfied; the point is that they would be even less satisfied if they were crammed into even smaller and yet _more_ generic spaces, or in spaces of which they could not claim even a provisional kind of ownership and which did not have any qualities of (semi)permanence.

I've had several jobs where the business owners didn't really want to spend money or time setting up any kind of meaningful barriers, even something so rudimentary and otherwise disheartening as a cube farm. Everybody basically got to sit in a large, contended, noisy and alienating open space at some kind of rickety, smallish plastic table. It was not feasible to define one's "space" in such a setting. Everyone felt like a temp. I don't think it helped anyone's morale, ability to concentrate, or productivity. It's a terrible idea; "open spaces" do not mean "open companies," to paraphase Joel Spolsky's biting criticism of open-area interior design thought in corporate circles.

In the jobs in which I and almost everyone I know has had, there is a clear and identifiable positive correlation between the amount of privacy and personal space in which they got to tailor their work environment to their preferences and the overall investment they felt in the company, its culture, and of course, the work. While, of course, environmental attributes cannot smooth over a crappy place to work, they can make an enormous difference in the level of psychological investment an employee has in a place that is -- by all other metrics -- decent.

I think the one exception to this may be in that I definitely think there is a market out there for creating workday "hubs" for freelancers and WFH employees to get away from the house (and small children, if they have them) and other environmental obstacles and show up with their laptop and set up shop. It could be something as simple as a glorified coffee shop whose table arrangements and interior design lends itself better to that than the average one. Make data ports and power abundantly accessible and you've got a winner. (Of course, you've somehow got to persuade these people to keep buying something all day, which is the problem coffee shops typically run into with students, freelancers and other people who spend all day there with their laptops. Perhaps there is an opportunity to charge a decent membership fee for a cool, happening freelancers' "club" of this sort. I'd pay $100/mo to be able to go somewhere close-by and ambiently pleasant with my laptop and partake of great bandwidth, numerous power and data ports (then I could bring a little SIP phone), and coffee and other beverages on tap or heavily discounted.)
I also work in alternative energy. My cofounder and I are physicists and the third principal is an electromechanical engineer.

My cofounder has management experience and technical/mathematical chops, and he's been a joy to work with. He has sort of taken a management role, ensuring that tasks are scheduled coherently, keeping the lines of communication open, and pinging sources for funds, parts, advice, etc. But we all have, to some extent.

So it can work. However, bringing in outside managers, especially at an early stage, can be hugely problematic. My advice is to nominate the best of you to take on that role, and grow into in gradually. If you're over your head for a specific reason, then bring in a manager, and measure their success by that metric.
True, but it has recently become almost as cheap as Iceland ;-)

http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=GBPUSD=X#chart2:symbol=gb...
"This is futile, since they can keep previous versions of your data."

They could assume that any changes made to data just prior to canceling an account are suspect. So wait. Or don't ever cancel, just stop using the service.
I'm not sure it's possible to determine whether something is of negative value or not. You don't have to look far to read Kranzberg's Laws of Technology, one of which says "Technology is not good, nor bad, nor neutral."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kranzberg's_laws_of_technology

I'm not denying that explosives and incendiaries cannot be used for good purposes.

Like religion, science and technology have good and bad sides. But to assume only one is not looking at the whole picture.
The problem is that at the early stages, the "business" guy will likely have nothing, or at least far less than the hackers, to do.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales#Chicago_Options_Ass...

[Wikipedia founder Jimmy] Wales undertook was the creation of the web portal Bomis, which featured user-generated webrings and that, according to The Atlantic Monthly, "found itself positioned as the Playboy of the Internet." For a time the company sold erotic photographs, and Wales described the site as a "guy-oriented search engine" with a similar market to Maxim. Although Wales is no longer connected with the company, his involvement with Bomis has been criticized
I don't think Facebook's plan here is to be as good as Gartner. In fact, I suspect that using the phrase "We could be as good as..." at Facebook is seen as socially unacceptable.

I'm not sure any of Facebook's competitors have the number of users, or the kind of brand loyalty, that Facebook can offer. It's also easier for Facebook to be a social network that does market research (and more..?) than for Gartner to be a market research company that does social networks. Social networks are just a great foundation for a lot of other businesses.
I don't see anywhere in that quote where he references those events at all.

Not mentioning something (time is finite, emphasis is important) is not the same as claiming it never happened.

Strange interpretation.

BTW, I've read Slaughterhouse Five about a dozen times or so.
I'm not trying to prove that it doesn't help to have a cofounder. In fact, I'd agree that in most cases having a cofounder helps.

It's more that I'd like to demonstrate that there are exceptions -- and so far I can't think of a single instance where having a cofounder would have helped me.
You could say that about a lot of things that people spend a lot of time on. "Hard to cook when you're coding." "Hard to cook when you're playing soccer." "Hard to cook when you're decorating the school gym for the homecoming dance."

I'd actually argue that cooking while watching TV is pretty easy to do. I know plenty of people who do that. In fact, I'm about to head to a Super Bowl party where we'll be BBQing while watching the game.
The crucial information is in the small print though:

"(The index is based on cost of living expressed in US dollars. Therefore, if the dollar weakens against the local currency of a city, the city becomes more expensive and moves up the index, even if prices expressed in local currency remain the same or even go down.)"

London is now over 25% cheaper in dollar terms than in the summer.