skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I like the fact that I can reach 1000s of investors instantly. I know this isn't a substitute for a real relationship and networking but the cost/benefit IMHO is pretty good.

It's like posting your resume on monster.com. Sure, you will have a better chance getting a job from people you already know and have a relationship with or by going to job fairs but does that mean you should post on monster.com?

FYI: As of right now, 16 investors have looked at my application on angelsoft and I got 3 thumbs up and 0 thumbs down. Whether all this translate into actual investments or not, I don't know. But stay tuned, I will report back. I will even come back and post the results here, so you don't have to visit my blog :)
Search should be much more prominent. I have a set of product names with a common keyword and I always am on the lookout for good domains with that keyword. Search should be the first input box I see on the page, not tucked away in the left sidebar below the fold.
That's the nicest compliment the site could have received. Appreciate it --
I tried it... I'm still wearing pants.
Wow... I thought I was posting something useful for other startups and entrepreneurs, but for some reason, I am getting crucified in here :) Whew!!! tough crowd.
What about Washington? :-)

(Ok, technically Washington didn't live in the White House, but you get my drift)
When the site has 100K domains rather than 10K domains, I'll definitely make it more prominent. Right now most search results will be 'No domains found' which is why I don't want to showcase it too much.

Also, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I'll eventually add a feature that finds unregistered domain names based on your keywords. Domain Pigeon will go hunting for your domains and show you what's available. In time...
Someone just got campdeal.com too :)
Me too - I suspect it does though. I hate to admit it, but there's definitely a part of me that likes to see call us now 1-800.... on the top right of online stores when I'm browsing. Or how newegg has a contact page that lists a phone number with hours of operation

Now does that actually mean I buy from newegg more often as a result? Who knows ;)
Don't get me wrong, I love hacker news. I just wish there was a way to integrate this great discussion with my article. Wordpress hacker news plugin anyone?
yeap, I got it! thanks mate :)
Put the search at the top, next to the sort.
Put the login at the top.
Five letter 'sort' is a filter.
Make the sorts reversible with a second click.
Add registry links for available sites.
Good luck!
Through enhanced confidence. Many consumers like to see a phone number on the site (especially for companies/services they are not familiar with) even if they have no intention of calling (at least in the purchasing phase).

It is psychologically reassuring to think you will be able to call if you have a problem.
unregistered domain locator
would be better if it were $('.drink').imbibe();

:-)
You know, someone should really, really make a widget that a blogger could add to the bottom of their posts that automatically picks up the HN submission link for that post and displays the current number of comments on HN.

HN is "stealing" the conversation. And that's just the way it is. But surely someone could create a little JS that would help bloggers point readers over to where the conversation's actually happening.
I literally hate it
This will be useful to a lot of us, I'm sure.

Just nitpicking here, but you have the words "Click a domain name to begin" that shows up no matter what page I am on (including the registration page). Feels a little out of context there...

Maybe its just me. Great job.. Wish you the best
They're slowly getting there. But I think Bulk Data operations are a lot more important than background tasks, and it's sad that there's still no progress there.

Until you can do "delete from Stapler where color='red'" or "update Building set onFire=false where isMine=true", AppEngine is still basically unsuitable to the task of hosting web applications.
Unfortunately, Joel is so provincial that he doesn't know how to spell "dynamic typing", spelling it "variants".

Paul Graham is so provincial, he doesn't know that "variants" is one of the most powerful features of static typing.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Haskell/Type_Declarations#data_...

http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/manual-ocaml/manual003.html#s:...
"Dense" is generous; you could go as far as "unrigorously terse". Sometimes they just don't make sense. But he got results.

A good collection of his presentations is at http://www.d-n-i.net/dni/john-r-boyd/ and there's low-quality video of his "Conceptual Spiral" on YouTube.
"Assuming the salt is known"

Look.

For the last time.

I'm assuming there is some secret information that is not known.
I shall stop posting to this thread because that bit doesn't seem to be getting across well :)
I think its similar to having a domain name (and a nice, simple one). It shows that you've committed to the business by investing in a domain, phone number, nice sign, etc.
I realized after you grabbed this that the color calculations were also including registered domains, which it shouldn't have been doing. I fixed that so now that you grabbed campdeal, which was by far the most heavily clicked domain, everything is a lot more colorful.
lol well i got owned.

but seriously, you need a better looking site that's more appealing to the eye. the key features should be highlighted and easier to read, especially the introductory paragraph.
You're correct that the claims are what matter.

The article, unfortunately, sensationalizes a bit and looks to the specifications to show how Palm designed around Apple's patents. But Palm didn't need to design around the specification. Palm only needed to design around the claims. They did this as well, it turns out, but the article doesn't highlight that.
Joel on Software: I am not having any problems with Google
I agree with you. I think it would increase confidence as well. But I like to back things up with numbers.
I frequently watch full-screen movies on my 15" MBP while laying on the couch 7ft away. In fact, I don't watch (or have) a TV, so it's really my only option. Then again, I have really good eyesight and I grew up without a TV in the house, so maybe that's why. :)
<i>analysis of historical battles</i>

I'd love to see a book of this nature concentrated on the Civil War.
It seems to me that the text in the header should be "Domain Pigeon helps you find unregistered domain names for your websites." These are the first words you used yourself in describing the site and I think they work perfectly.
The company I work for designed and built a new e-commerce site for one of our clients in the first quarter of last year. Although it's been a huge success, there are still customers of theirs who will ONLY place orders via the telephone.
I've experienced this firsthand (last startup I worked for did the angel cartel thing). Don't get your hopes up.

These angel cartels work in phases -- you start with a big pool of hopefuls, then if they "like" you, they start to require that you give more presentations, and attend more parties and whatnot. At each phase, the time investments get larger and larger, and ultimately, you have to put in a lot of effort for a relatively small amount of money.

Meanwhile, you'll find that you're competing with "startups" that aren't startups, or that are in completely different fields (some of the top-rated presentations at our sessions were for real-estate investors!) Very few people get funded by these things, relative to the starting pool, and those that do get funded tend to be "startups" that have relatively conventional business models (like the aforementioned real-estate people).

My impression is that angel cartels are gathering places for modestly rich people who want to get their feet wet in angel investing. Given that you really want your first investors to be experienced and helpful, these things probably aren't a good match for an early-phase tech company.
I liked that you used Animoto for a promo video, but I found my interest waning after about a minute and I eventually switched it off (the quick cuts don't work well with longer vids)

I think if you concentrated 1 or 2 ideas into each video and instead created several videos it would have more impact.

Just a thought :)
Virtual Patching: What is it and why you should be doing it
I read some interviews with van Creveld a few years ago. The guy sounded very smart.

I keep meaning to look up his books in a good library but I got distracted. Thanks for the reminder!
I was actually trying to figure out where my window was on the outside of an office building I work in (5th floor). So I started with 0 which would have meant I would be looking at the 6th floor, not 5th.
I think your site is great - could use some synonym heuristics to suggest simillar domains and, ofcourse, an easy way to buy domain through you as a reseller.
Twitter is a Cash Cow in the Making
Great suggestion. I tend to lose interest after a minute or so as well - damn ADD.
Yeah, that's smart. Done.
Live chat will help out those programmer dorks who want to "stick their toe in the water" and talk to customers yet not talk to customers...
Huge pet peeve. I think less of a person when they use "literally" improperly.

Why can't they just say: I mean her hair was _figuratively_ on fire!
It really depends on what kind of customers you are serving. There are many industries where it is the norm to call a vendor if you are interested in their product.
Keep telling yourself that.

I will. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that you probably don't know the meaning of the word "lady". It's often an abused word, used interchangeably with "woman". A lady is a highly refined, intelligent, and cultured woman with strong moral values. Ladies, using the word correctly, are very rare in the US.

Since ladies value love highly, they tend to eschew casual sex entirely. Since they demand respect and equality in relationships, they expect the same from the men they will marry.

If you're into "experienced" women, you can have all the casual sex you want, rack up a monstrous number, and still get what you're looking for, but if you want to marry a refined lady some day, you're going to have to conduct yourself as she would.
Does your website have to be uber-ugly too?
This one kept me up one night: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cannae -- and I almost never read history/military books.
Until staffers can use IM in the white house, it is still a ways to go.
Just when I was getting comfortable... Never thought I'd say it, but I think I agree with Mark.
> Putin speaks english more or less

But does he grok the difference between "help" and "aid"? :-)
Never really was fond of the idea of a people search engine. Albeit facebook has become one, but at least that's a search engine where you are actively taking part of supplying them with data.

As a science experiment fine (indexing etc), but commercially it just freaks me out.
Ouch... I was busting my ass karma-whoring here. Now I fail to see the point of it all.
$2.99 Printed PhotoBooks Now Available On Facebook: HotPrints
"Browser technologies are too limiting."

Sometimes, this is a very good thing! The current browser technology model is somewhat of a funky, broken, incomplete technology stack, but has an interesting set of side effects. I firmly believe that creativity is born from constraints. The browser is a set of constraints that has proven For example...

1) Modal dialogs, typically an annoyance or "UI smell", are hard to implement
2) Base functionality: back/forward
3) Base functionality: window management
4) Base functionality: collaboration via URL sharing
5) Forced to either be ugly, or do a bunch of work and thinking. Desktop apps get away with arranging the native components into a pattern that looks like crap.
6) Can't steal the focus from other apps
It follows the same logic as why its really easy to get your license back after a DUI in america: There's a reason to stay within the system and play by the rules. Which is cheaper than the alternative of you driving w/o a license or registration (or insurance) and seriously injuring someone and fleeing the scene.

Welfare/Social Aid/Safety Net programs add value in the same way. By allowing an unemployed programmer to continue paying his rent, you prevent him from using his skills for evil. Or something along those lines.

Likewise, there is "the law of unintended consequences" where we are finding that people born into welfare tend to stay on welfare. For their entire life. And bear children in welfare. Obviously that cycle is a problem.

I think the safety net needs a through debugging and re-tuning to make it both more effective and more cost efficient. However, I still think its cheaper than the alternatives and their intended and unintended consequences.
It's a discussion of an outline of a book, but it's better than that sounds. For example, if you are selling something on line also sell a premium version. The comparison with the premium version raises the perceived value of the standard version. Another: free shipping is far more compelling than very cheap shipping, works with my GF, People who masturbate while shopping make irrational decisions. Probably not generally applicable.

Most of the items are worth thinking about, especially premium product placement.
That is your prerogative of course, but your understanding of what a salt is is flawed.

It is not an encryption key. It is a layer of defence to frustrate automated attacks, and is almost always stored right next to the hash in the same table. In security design, it is assumed that if the hash is known, the salt is also known.

I am kind of scratching my head trying to imagine what kind of setup you are envisaging. If the salt isn't stored in the DB, where is it stored?! Maybe a sysadmin, manually entering the secret password from memory on every request? ;)
Thanks and good point about the click message. It now only appears when the user is within the domain controller.
I'd be curious to learn more about how you plan to make money as well... The home page reminds the visitor no less than four times that the site is "free" -- that's setting up a pretty big mental adjustment for if and when parts of the site turn out not to be free... Curious how you guys plan to handle that.

Review-wise: It's not immediately evident -- from just reading the front page -- what the gameplay consists of. I get that it's about taxis and on real world maps. But what do I do? How do I win? Or at least rack up some sort of higher score than my friends? What's my goal? Or is this purely a sandbox?

The page tells me that I can "Build things," "Run [my] company with friends," and even "drive on a real map" but it doesn't make it clear how do I any of these things or why they'd be fun apart from any initial novelty...
Can I get that with a ".com" please?

@OP, how about "Get a great .com, .net, .whatever right now!"
They mention on angelsoft that only 5% get funded. Take a look at these stats http://angelsoft.net/industry/index.seam
> I think less of a person when they use "literally" improperly.

I catch myself thinking like that sometimes and I think it's a mistake.
This is a well-known psychological bias, though I forget the name of it.

Blaming external factors on your failure, but blaming internal characteristics on the failures of others -- conservatives seem to be guilty of this more often than others, but everyone does it to some extent.
I grew up in Houston, TX which has always been an ultra-conservative city, full suit and tie in the middle of a Texas summer.

I've never been one for clothing fads which is why I stick to button downs, sport coats, jeans, and nice leather shoes. During a recession it's more cost efficient: my leather shoes polish up a lot nicer than tennis shoes and last much longer. I have button-downs from 2001 that still look great. I also save a lot of time by receiving a lot better customer service when I'm eating out, shopping, or running errands. People respect a well dressed man, there's nothing superficial about it.

I'm not saying you can't wear a shirt when you're coding, but the moment you're representing your company and it's people — you should look (and therefore feel) very proud. Toss on a sport coat over the designer tee, it won't kill you to look nice. And not to mention, when you congregate a bunch of designer-tshirt-wearing coders in a room, are you really expressing individuality anymore? :)
or it looks like I wasn't fast enough when I bought the domain even though I was charged, weird. :D
Top jQuery plugins for Form Usability
Build Something You Are Passionate About
Our quick list...

github, lighthouse, AWS, Broadband, wireless broadband, Vonage, 1 server off amazon...

that is about it for us.
1. start backend. Prompt operator for salt, he types it in, it's stored in memory (Yes ok, ok, who knows, maybe the government can go in and ask for a core dump or something, or torture the operator).

2. backend starts, saves hashed IPs someplace to provide some sort of protection against abuse.

Starting to wish I hadn't started this ;)
Does anyone know of a company that this could be outsourced to?
... this. And the misuse of "irony" which is slowly beginning to mean anything remotely humorous.
What's the cheapest way to get a toll free number?
5. Should every employee have a browser?

Making a decision about your technology platform based on how easy it will be lock down your employee's freedom to access information on the web is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard.
Shoring Up The Online Advertising Biz
This (ab)use of literally doesn't mean its opposite, "figuratively". It's a sloppy shorthand for "without exaggeration".

"Without exaggeration, I got my ass kicked on the exam." = Right.
"I literally got my ass kicked on the exam." = Wrong.
Ask HN: What's a good general seed list for a web crawler
I'm developing a web crawler on top of a large distributed computer. As part of the testing process, I want to keep a background job running to keep crawling the web over and over. I was wondering if anyone had some ideas of a general seed list from which the crawler could reach a wide variety of links. It would be great if the links it traversed were a good representation of the Internet as a whole, taking into account content variety, frequency of updates, and other variables.
A language maven tackles the use of "literally." I confess, I love this kind of article.

My pet peeve usage: "allegedly", for convicted criminals. After the trial there is no more allegation; they've been convicted. Their participation in the crime is legally a fact.
GE to spend big bucks for "smart grid" ad on Superbowl
You've only shown dollars having no value for one person; this is not true of all people.

For example: property tax. Not everyone pays it, but many must. These people need dollars, so they are willing to do stuff for them. The stuff that they are willing to do provides the value of the dollar -- regardless of what the non-taxpayers think or do.
When I first saw this one of my friends pointed out that several passages are lifted straight from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turritopsis_nutricula
ringcentral.com
My GF actually sent me a link to the blog the other day ;) http://dabagirls.com/ Its a great day to be a software developer in NYC, maybe I should head down to some bars in the financial district ;)!
"What makes Pipl different?" leads me to:
Unlike a typical search-engine, Pipl is designed to retrieve information from the deep web, our robots are set to interact with searchable databases and extract facts, contact details and other relevant information from personal profiles, member directories, scientific publications, court records and numerous other deep-web sources.

But much of the "deep web" isn't indexed because indexing either involves ignoring robots.txt or explicitly going against a site's Terms of Use. For example, take Amazon, which Pipl holds up as an example of a site that has "deep web" content. Amazon's Terms of Use, available here http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=5... say:
license does not include ... any use of data mining, robots, or similar data gathering and extraction tools.

How does Pipl index the deep web then? Have they gotten permission from all these companies? The TechCrunch article notes "[t]he folks at Pipl were hesitant to discuss their “secret sauce” with me" and only provides vague details, but even those details seem to point towards some sort of automated crawling of parts of sites that those sites' Terms of Use usually forbid automated crawling of.
I agree with others. Putting a service you don't know is worth paying for on a list called "services worth paying for" is misleading - and yes, most people skim long lists.
Great news, I have been waiting for this. GAE still has a long way to go, but this is a feature that I'm sure a lot of developers were waiting for.
A manager's main responsibility: good taste
Looking toward EveryBlock’s future
Agreed, it's what sold me on at least 1 web-based service (rsync.net). I didn't call until after I had subscribed for quite some time... to get voicemail that was apparently ignored.
Or just syncs them. It's funny how many times a person will manually leave the same comment both here and on my blog.

That would be an awesome feature for Disqus.
Patton - "Rommel, you magnificent bastard! I read your book!"
Attitudes towards work.  Can't? Or won't?
The real loser in this scenario is the small disruptive company which wants to break into the big leagues. They don't have the nukes so they don't get to play.
I definitively believe that there is a future for webb apps.
Looking at icloud.com, a "web os", you'll find that there is a potential for many apps to migrate to the web.

We have seen that browsers are getting better at rendering JS, i.e. Google Chrome and Firefox 3.1, meanwhile functionality such as Canvas introduces possibilities of creating more elaborate apps that might require photo editing etc.
Analysis and Synthesis Study by Bernhard Riemann
http://tollfreemax.com
Users can "view" a domain name repeatedly to make it look more popular...should assign 1 view per domain per ip
I use Firefox 3.0.5 on Linux.

I have 10,000RPM drives in RAID 0, so my computer is always faster to open a local app than to open a webpage.
We have my number on http://tipjoy.com/aboutus/ even outside a sales context.

It's been used by press and users both. Some people just want help putting tipjoy on their blog. That kind of user research is really interesting actually. You practice explaining things to people who have no idea about the web.

Also, if you don't like talking to people, keep in mind others are like you. The calls have been very infrequent. And if it gets annoying, just remove it.
New App Store section for premium games?
I changed the words around to make it a little clearer. And btw, I have no affiliation with them.
Also, "Web 2.0 Greed Culture"...really?

There are a lot of faster, easier ways to make money if you're greedy. Before the crash, I'd say go into finance and become an i-banker.

Web 2.0 start ups -- especially one seeking seed money and boot strapping -- are seeking more responsibility than they are wealth. It still has that "selling t-shirts on the internet" feeling: a) Everyone is doing it. b)It feels like a good idea. c) Its not really known if people can make money from doing it.
Never understood the obsession with Delaware Corps. You have to register where you live anyway (presumably that's where you make $$$). So what's the big deal with Delaware?
Bush versus Obama.

Appearance versus substance.

Let's make it seem ok, versus let's actually move things forward.
If prorating your service is an "administrative nightmare" you have issues.
I will never use it. I take as my enemy any site which supports and enables the crimes-against-humanity naming scheme of modern Internet startups!
Positioning and pitch decks for startups