skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This was a fun mental exercise, and a trip down memory lane...

Salesforce.com had raised over $50M by 2000, and is very successful today. PayPal raised something like $225M (remember getting $5-10 free for signing up?) and is the shining star in the dying eBay galaxy.

I'm sure I'll think of others...

Edit: Also, eHarmony, which raised well over $100M and is supposedly profitable and happy now.
Wow, $5000 for a blog design. I have the wrong clients.
Yahoo's 1994 playbook is to add features early and often. Their 'answers' feature is an example of this. Their long term strategy is all about content, or pages with aggregated content/links that help people find the content they need.

It's actually a great idea, instead of relying on Google's algorithm 100% to serve the right results, Yahoo in 1994 is employing people to aggregate the content.
You just increased their pagerank.
3D on 2D HTML Canvas
Just WOW. Miku (demo 2) is my fav.
rel="nofollow"

Nope.
Rule one: Rules don't always work.

Rule two: Follow the rules.

The challenge is to know which rules to follow and what "works" means.
I think you and I are in agreement. The feedback mechanism of the republic is broken because there is no punishment. You are correct when you say, "most people over the age of 30 know better." However, I believe that people under 30 understand that too. The difference with making data publicly available is that we can _quantify_ how systemic the problem is. Punishment to our representatives is difficult the same way it is difficult to punish most white collar crimes--it's easy to perform complected book cooking in ways that most can't follow. Making the data available will allow people with those abilities to monitor activity in the public. Or put another way, "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow."

I think once the hard evidence is in we'll see less and less of the party support mechanisms because the corruption can be so easily proven that congress critters will scatter once a little light is shown on their dirty deeds. Then new (possibly younger) data-driven representation will take their place. In my rough back-of-no-envelope estimation, this will take at least a generation.
its interesting that that is how search engines began -- directories, we've got toward algorithms, and now we're pushing back to "manual" content assignment.

Is this because no one can do it as well as google, so we're having to provide different methods?
The Bentonville Mafia--How to fix Microsoft
Canvas for a Text Editor?
Junior Golf Clubs
Either way the prosecution can add more evidence in an appeal.
I don't agree at all.

Microsoft needs to appreciate design. Web design, hardware design and UI design.

Microsoft needs innovation rather than imitation.

Microsoft needs to be introduced to the web, they don't get the web at all - they're software engineers, its fully ok to not get it -- make some acquisitons and really embrace the web.
Does (startup) Location Really Matter?
Along with creating a sitemap, you should also add your site to the Google Webmaster Console/Yahoo! Site Explorer to monitor any errors and last crawl date etc.

Also, along with checking different browsers/resolutions you should also view the site on multiple PC's as colors tend to vary dramatically. Keep in mind that not all consumers use high end monitors/pcs like we developers do.
Tumblr Boots Anonymous Blogs
I agree with the fact that we are in a "D-process", but I'm skeptical about the "long" part. Something new is happening with the widespread availability of information through multiple channels, and I think because of this our economic cycles are "compressed".

My prediction is that the rate at which businesses change/modify/adapt (especially in the financial sector) will be readily reflected in the information that is spread through multiple channels, resulting in a compression of the time frames of the current "D-process".
What I've learned about selling (as a developer)
For me, learning how to sell was simply a matter of survival.

Twelve months ago is about when I started my company, and I now alternate between coding and selling. I consider "selling" anything related to marketing (I know there is a distinction), lead generation, sales calls, product demos, quotes, contract negotiation, etc.

The most important lessons that I've picked up so far are:

- Get good at networking. Events are a big part of this.

- Networking is hard if you're not doing anything interesting. If you are, then it's quite easy.

- If you're doing something interesting and start meeting a lot of people, then leads seem to come your way.

- Leads are your lifeblood, so getting your network to provide a majority of these for you vs. you going out an hunting them yourself is critical.

- Most developers I know (including me) are a bit rough around the edges even if we're not dicks. We just tend to be more straightforward about almost everything. You have to learn how to smooth that over, but most of the smoothing process just comes from screwing up by saying the wrong thing at the wrong time and then not doing it again.

- A corollary to being a bit rough around the edges means there is probably a lot of subtext that you are missing. It took me several months to pick this up, but executives and sales people who are used to interacting with high-octane clients seem to read a lot into slight gestures, certain phrasings, etc. that I previously would have thought nothing of. As it turns out, quite a bit hinges on these subtleties so it behooves you to pay attention.

- Acquiring the skill of situational awareness (also related to above). When you walk into a new client's office, there is a lot that you don't know. Your job is to learn as quickly as possible about their business, pick up their vocabulary, listen for the subtexts, discern cliques in the customer's team, and more. Beforehand, you can learn a lot about your prospect by reading their financial statements (if they're public), website, executive bios, social profiles, LinkedIn Profiles, etc.

My own situation is perhaps a little unique as I went from being a developer / development manager in San Diego to an entrepreneur in Japan in less than 30 days, so I've had to do the above in Japanese, which has its own complexities, of course. But in some ways, I really appreciate the Japanese market because prospects are generally very courteous and interested in ideas / technologies from the West.

I'm still quite a beginner in sales and probably not that good but I love it and, well, I'm still here. :-)
First step; stop writing blog posts about Twitter.
The Absurdly Artificial Divide Between Pure and Applied Research
Good question. :-)

My answer turned out to be a bit long, so I just created a post:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=485701
By the way, I was chatting to Jason the other day about the tipping/bounty feature:

"So far the tipping results in 2-10x the amount of response... so clearly it works. Give it time! :-)"

Maybe it was worth re-creating Yahoo's service just for that one extra feature, we'll see! (Though it won't have been if search engines penalise them for cheap tactics like this.)
"A snarky cathouse where everyone tears down everyone else anonymously "

Doesn't that describe the Internet in general? Seems that regardless the platform there is a lot of negativity due to the perception of anonymity.
Well, if identity is just a shortcut to forming exclusionary, co-operative groups in the competition for scarce resources, then keeping one's identity small (i.e. not identifying with many groups) is not necessarily good advice. There's a lot of interesting literature on this spawned from studies of supposedly ethnic conflict in areas such as Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.
Business programming simply isn't that hard
Ok, I feel like an idiot. When it says "source this into your .bashrc" what does it mean?

I know where .bashrc is, but simply pasting it into the file seems like .. the wrong way to do it. Couldn't really find an answer on Google
Jones Day v. BlockShopper: A case that threatens the right of Web sites to link freely.
He isn't arguing against classical mathematical proofs. He is arguing that informal computer assisted proofs should not be held to a higher standard than informal human created proofs.
> The solution begins with the removal of homeownership from its long-privileged place at the center of the U.S. economy. Substantial incentives for homeownership (from tax breaks to artificially low mortgage-interest rates) distort demand, encouraging people to buy bigger houses than they otherwise would.

He's right, but getting rid of that those deductions is a political non-starter. There's no way it could ever pass (as he mentions, home ownership is 70% of the population, good luck with that).

If anything, politicians seem to be doubling-down on homeownership in this recovery, trying to prop up prices in order to recover.
With cloth animations too! (demo 1)

Quite impressive... does use up a fair bit of cpu and is still quite slow.... and doesn't work in IE7.

I think Flash still has many happy days ahead of it, but this is still rather cool.

For the record, it appears to be using a javascript version of Papervision, the fairly widespread 3D library for Flash.
How to Save New Brain Cells: the more they are challenged, the more they flourish
it would be churlish of me

And yet you managed :)
It got to major newspapers and even some TV. One Facebook protest group made over 70k members in one day.

Facebook can lose the grace of the masses in a matter of months. There are many websites ready to fill in.
Knitting, Reading, Computer Games may delay Dementia
troll alert...
That sounds like quite the conspiracy. Do you have any evidence, anecdotal or otherwise?
I guess no one has come up with a better way.

If you introduce a new system, it has to be at least as good as what we have now: no one would want to sacrifice relevant results.

It is wrong to think about pagerank as a single algorithm: it is a family, the common things being that these algorithms analyze the global link graph (yes, I lumped the HITS algorithm in the same family).

The problem is, if you don't use the link graph, there is not much left. There is the content, but this is not enough: before Google you could often steal someone's high ranking by just copying his content verbatim or maybe tweaking it a little. So, pagerank is actually a big improvement over what was out there before.

Pagerank can be thought as an estimation of the traffic a website gets. Suppose you can measure the actual traffic (e.g. by forcing all sites to install google analytics). That would be a pretty well gaming-proofed system, but you would introduce so much inertia - every new site would have a huge chicken-and-egg problem to overcome.
Well, right now if you want to move quickly and often, the hassle of moving in and out often makes it not worth it to mobilize, and hence you choose not to take a job that is somewhere else but utilizes your skills more effectively (allows you to produce more output in economic terms).

Don't know if a good solution exists... housing is a very messy optimization process because people want vastly different things in their homes. I guess you could focus on niche groups so you can get some standardization going.
From Zuck's response, I understand what they were saying. Their legal department said, "Look, if users quit you have to delete their content too. Unless you change the TOS." So they changed the TOS to allow the messages and shared photos, etc to remain.

The problem arose because it's a major change with no introduction or explanation, and the TOS had no language to qualify it as such so they were giving themselves carte blanch in terms of limitations on this power.

What they need to do:
1) Carefully construct the legal text to not appear so far reaching and easy to abuse.
2) Warn everyone that change is coming.
3) Implement said change and monitor feedback.
Being the guy who spent 4 years in Wyoming doing a startup before moving to Chicago last year, I'd say yes.

Not so much about the location, as much as it's about the support system you have in place and accessibility of people who you can have around to help you at the different phases of what you're doing that's critical.
If we are going to count on hope and virtue to get us out of this mess, then we might as well give up because it will only be an exercise in wasting time.
FYI -- it's significantly faster in Chrome than FF3, work a look.
Add Page Rank Button In Google Chrome
Google Chrome doesn’t support toolbar or any other such kind of features, for viewing page rank. But you can add page rank button with the help of JavaScript function.
I'm a bit in the same situation, altough after only seven months. I had a case of buyer's remorse after a few months, after being very excited at the beginning (company logo as background and all). I soon realized the only new thing I learned is not to put on lightly-colored tshirts under dark pulls. And some PHP, which I tend to consider a negative asset.

I'm now looking into PhD too, for the same reasons. And being in Europe, I think the lifestyle change (young software engineer -> PhD student) won't even be that big.
blip.tv ?

This is a tough question because as long as a company is in private hands it is very hard to get figures.
Cell-phone chargers to be universal by 2012 (will use micro-USB plugs)
I think this was a really poor move on Facebook's part. TOS are often worded and seem a lot worse than they are. By putting this supposed screw up in front of all 175 million members, they really made the issue a lot bigger. Before that, most people who cared were Alpha Geeks and privacy nuts that like to whine about any issue.

If they ACTUALLY sold your data after you left, that might cause a huge uproar. I don't think they would be dumb enough to do that. Also, how valuable is the data of a user that isnt even there anymore. Yup, I can see advertisers really seeing value in selling a product to a user that doesn't exist anymore. Most likely, the real reason for keeping some of that data, is to keep it as part of the overall data they can mine / use algorithim's with.

Drafting a bill of rights seems like a good move. If anything they should have used this opportunity as a chance to talk with everyone, gather some valuable feedback, and then change the terms of use. Jumping the gun and reverting back just doesn't make sense. Imagine if they did this with the Newsfeed back in 06.
Also he points to BoingBoing as having a substandard design, but really it has one of the best blog designs out there. Whoever designed it has an excellent understanding of typography and spacing.
This is a very good article. There are way too many articles that take some "interesting fact" and then misinterpret into something earth-shattering. "Magenta isn't a color? HOW CAN THAT BE!?"

The original article should have said, "some colors are a single wavelength of light, others are a combination, thanks to how your brain works." Fortunately, this article was written to make up for the inadequacies and sensationalism in the original.
Top Ten Ways The Best Entrepreneurs Interact With VCs
This reminds me of the beginnings of the webcam project, I had a silicon graphics box with a camera attached to it pointing at a 'mobile' with a bunch of paper birds, a fan and a light. You could control the fan and the light via the internet, a simple cgi program would change the state of two output lines, a couple of relays and it was done.

For months I would receive messages that would roughly fall into two categories, those that thought that it was really neat and those that thought it was fake :)

Now, as for this robot, imagine two of them in an arena!
Unblock blocked calls -- see the number even if caller id is blocked.
It's been a dream of mine (currently beyond my hacking capability) to build a really simple 3D CAD app using JS on an HTML canvas (optimized for Chrome, since V8 compiles JS down to bytecode). This, along with several other 3D Canvas implementations, are a good step forward.
There seems to be some kind of "all other factors held constant" clause hidden here, correct?

The idea seems valid, but I paused to think why it didn't jive with the employment recovery rate plots.

http://www.williampolley.com/blog/archives/2009/02/employmen...

It seems the most straightforward explanation is... actually, I can't think of one, but I have three factors that seemingly count against your theory. 1. increasing income and purchasing power disparity. 2. changing attitudes and/or culture; then we can expect a new kind of "equilibrium curve" due to new consumer behavior. 3. age of previous buyer's generation (unsure about this one).

Also, speed of information is unbalanced with speed of physical processes; you can make an order and track a package of food with millisecond accuracy, but you will still remain hungry for as long as the delivery truck can drive.

Someone more knowledgeable, say something if you will.
not a conspiracy -- if your entire startup is focused on essentially ensuring your pages are top of google results, and you're a killer networker like the Mahalo CEO, you'll ensure you have someone you can call and whine at if you suddenly get blacklisted.

You honestly believe Google would ever blacklist a prominent startup like Mahalo?
5 tips for improving wordpress seo
slow as molasses but impressive all the same.
Studying Nanotech: a Preface
Animated ads should be based on canvas or svg, not on flash or gifs.
Facebook can lose the grace of the masses in a matter of months.

Or even in weeks. That's the crucial issue. It's easy to bail out of websites and go elsewhere. The user experience has to be friendly, or a competitor has an easy grab on market share.

Now whether Facebook or anyone else can really monetize a social networking site is another question. "The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent," so maybe Facebook will go broke before its customers bail out. But in any case, the customers can bail out if they don't like the overall experience.
But using FB or Tw for company purposes is not free... there are significant costs in terms of company time. Companies are aware of that: witness those that essentially ban (most) employees from surfing there.

Since to use either effectively requires dedication of staff time, whether they would pay should correlat with how willing they will be to using their or a staff member's time. ...and thus relevant to how much we expect to see businesses getting dependent on either site. Zuck has recently said that he invisions FB as "how people will communicate" in future. This article just argues that he needs to keep Twitter's business plan on his radar.
Twitter is the current example that comes to mind of a company that has raised a few rounds and has no revenues, we'll see how that works out...
Live Twitter Coverage of Atlanta Startup Riot
tumblr doesn't even allow comments. So this isn't all that surprising.
This was only intended as an alternative, not a replacement -- dir() is still extremely useful. see() was made for quickly inspecting objects interactively, hence "for humans only".
This is an improvement over the earlier submitted post. Wikipedia was always in the background

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_vision

ready to correct many of the errors in that post. "A range of wavelengths of light stimulates each of these receptor types to varying degrees. Yellowish-green light, for example, stimulates both L and M cones equally strongly, but only stimulates S-cones weakly. Red light, on the other hand, stimulates L cones much more than M cones, and S cones hardly at all; blue-green light stimulates M cones more than L cones, and S cones a bit more strongly, and is also the peak stimulant for rod cells; and violet light stimulates almost exclusively S-cones. The brain combines the information from each type of receptor to give rise to different perceptions of different wavelengths of light." The issue is not so much one wavelength versus more than one wavelength mixed, as it is an assignment of "color" to a combination of cone cell responses, subject to further processing by the brain. Farther along in the Wikipedia article it is noted,

"Chromatic adaptation

"An object may be viewed under various conditions. For example, it may be illuminated by sunlight, the light of a fire, or a harsh electric light. In all of these situations, human vision perceives that the object has the same color: an apple always appears red, whether viewed at night or during the day. On the other hand, a camera with no adjustment for light may register the apple as having varying color."
What on earth would make anyomne think that some ex-J-school student knows enough about this subject to make a judgement. It's the dead tree version of link bait.
Yes, because most mail readers don't come close to any sort of rendering compliance.
It's never really too early to think about performance. All you have to do is try not to act early on that. A lot of architecture ideas we have (sane URLs, caching servers etc) are rooted in performance considerations.
>> "Lead investors in Mahalo.com include Sequoia Capital's Michael Moritz, an early investor in Google"

nice connection there
Facebook backs down, reverses on user information policy
A more humane way to measure progress
The previous installments in this 'series' were so far off the mark that I can't even honestly say I'm disappointed by this one.

I fully agree with the third point you are making here, microsoft - even today - does not get the web, even though plenty of people are using microsoft products to access the web.

They did buy hotmail, which was at the time quite ahead of the game, but then they fell by the wayside and when google launched gmail I think it was more or less game over for hotmail, integrating it into msn has only further degraded it (msn being mostly synonymous with failure).

I think - and at some level I hope - that the web is the end of microsoft, I'd be even happier if the web would be the end of large corporations being in control of critical components of our lives but I think we're still an iteration or two (and maybe one full fledged disaster) away from that.
FB needed to cover themselves, but the outcry was much ado about nothing. But meanwhile, the whiners will think they won.
dupe: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=485460
i'm looking for past trends to prove this method works (as a way to generate profits evenutally)
Raising Money in 2009 - StartupNorth
Dear Apple: Please Steal Features From Nokia’s Ovi Store
already on the homepage:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=485460

oh, and you're duping yourself!

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=485716
And what do "social media leaders" know about running a profitable business?
This would be good popped in to a pdf.

(I could just print as pdf but that includes all the comments/etc that I don't want.)
search google for 'how to play guitar'

mahalo is the first result, there are other very popular queries where mahalo is on the first page. So they get a bunch of relevant clicks and then they put ads on those pages so surely they must be making decent money.

I doubt they make enough money to cover all of their employees but eventually they can just fire all of their employees and live off of the content revenue for a few years or sell the site to somebody who will.
I think what is referred to is bash's source command: when you've modified your .bashrc and you want the changes to be reflected in your current shell process, you do

source .bashrc

or, equivalently

. .bashrc

which runs .bashrc in the current shell, as opposed to in a forked subshell as happens if you did ./.bashrc ; and hence the new functions/aliases/variable settings you've put in .bashrc are now available in the current shell (as opposed to only being visible in a forked subshell and disappearing when it exits).
Do you really want to fix microsoft?

Fire Ballmer!
Maybe you could replace "FREE" with "free"? That word in uppercase is often a bad sign.