skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
sarvesh is correct. I would consider what you need, and at this point if things are going well, you might be able to be managed by an advisor familiar with your field (and hopefully previously successful in it).

If as engineers you are progressing the business as a whole (not just the product and what you think it is), then you might be fine to continue on, but a bit of outside guidance can't hurt.

If you guys are struggling with lots of issues (related to the product or not), then you might want to bring in somebody who can manage those areas (manufacturing, partnerships, marketing, etc).
I LOL and i still remember their name, so money well spent.

Super Bowl Ad (2000) E*Trade - "Out of the Whazoo!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0_tfoTTGOQ
The problem, though, is that "off-topic" (as judged by the guidelines page) stuff can get voted up. My argument is that if something gets voted up here (legitimately) then it's de facto on-topic, but that other poster disagrees and is wondering how to give feedback on that without breaking the rules.
I personally think adwords tool is the best freely available tool right now. Spyfu and wordtracker are other options - paid. More expensive Hitwise reports, can't beat these in terms of depth and accuracy.

You should also check out google's new Search Insight at http://google.com/insights/search
I sell my own advertising, yes. I find I can get a better rate that way. Blogs such as TechCrunch and ReadWriteWeb do similarly, I believe.
I've just been keeping a time log for the past few days. I'm not sure how long I will keep doing it, but right now it works so I just my cell phone for the time, and a piece of paper to write down what I'm doing throughout the day.
Seems to give logical numbers from what I've seen, How accurate they are I don't know, but they seem to be in the right sort of ball park.
Pick up freelance clients in the UK, then work remotely in SF for 3 months on the visa waiver? (This is the gist of something I'm considering right now)
Berlin's fun, cheap and is a moderate startup hub. You can't compare the startup activity here to the valley, but well, you can't compare the Valley's music and arts culture to Berlin's.

Plus, as has been mentioned here several times, you can't just up and go to SFO without the appropriate paperwork. You could spend three months there, but that's really more like an extended holiday than really moving.

As for English in Berlin, it's definitely doable. Socially I really find it worthwhile to put effort into learning German since otherwise you're often stuck being the odd-man-out when going out in a group or hanging out with other foreigners.
It isn't that simple it will break binary compatibility. 64 bit systems should be fine as but older 32 bit will be a problem and there is a lot firmware, embedded systems that won't be updated on time and that's where most of the problems will show up.
Geoff, you should really add an email address to your profile. My startup isn't bringing on new contractors right now, but when we are you're exactly the kind of person we'd be looking for. Virtually contact-information-pimp yourself out more :)
This requires one of those "yes and no" answers. Sometimes cells auto-destruct and are replaced by new cells. Other times, they heal. Both strategies can be useful, depending on the situation.
UPDATE: Looks like either my IT overlords removed the block without my asking (the official Change Request Form is still pending), or WebSense removed it from their list.
I completely agree with you. The name isn't the best it could be if thinking ahead.
That's a good one!

"Does your husband have insurance?"

"Insurance? He's got money coming out of the wazoo!"
But they are in fact stable. Just the equilibrium point isn't quite where the engineers intended.
How's the Berlin startup scene these days? I visited the place around 2005 - it was a great city and had thriving culture, but seemed to be lagging behind Hamburg or Munich as far as startups. Has it changed since?
Now that you mention it. Am I the only one seeing this?

For the past month or so, Google has been less satisfying in their search results for me. I've been an avid Google search addict since 1998, I really sense a palpable drop in result quality since before the holidays.

Maybe it's a bad index refresh? Maybe they've got some little issue? Maybe it's my discomfort with the invasion of the top search results with "Did you mean BLAH" results?

Or I'm losing my mind? Or maybe they're losing a bit of their touch?

Recently I had 2-3 technical search results that returned much better hits from Yahoo and Live than from Google. This almost never has happened for me-- certainly never before did I start to think "maybe I'm missing out by using Google exclusively".

For a business perspective, I believe this might be adding to why we're seeing increased traffic for our error search engine (http://bug.gd). Our search results differe substantially from Google's because we optimize for errors across our own web index, our community results, and BOSS. Google used to do a better job of finding these errors in haystacks, too.

Is anyone else feeling this drop in Google search results quality lately? Or is it just me?
Good Bank, Bad Bank; Good Plan, Better Plan
That's the nice thing about firefox. Once I visit a site a few times it comes up in a list when I start typing the site. And if it's not in my list, I can just google it right from my address bar.
Not everyone may want to work from home? Really?

While, admittedly, I've met some people that consciously or unconsciously value the social and possibly collaborative aspects of working in an office with others, they tend to be the kind that just get their social needs fulfilled at work without doing a whole lot of actual work. There are some exceptions in passionate people who are also extroverted and aware of the extrinsic dimensions of what they do, but they are not common enough to be statistically meaningful in my experience.

Can you elaborate more on what kind of person you think wouldn't want to work from home? I've hardly met anyone who wouldn't.
It's not a law thing; it's just that others would start demanding it more aggressively.

You can say no and keep the house of cards up, but it's just adding tension to the employer-employee relationship with all the other staff.
America's economy delivers its worst quarterly performance in 26 years
What does it mean for a human-constructed system to be 'natural'? In most tribes of the world, the income of one person is not considered the property of that person, but is divided according to customs about the distribution of wealth in that society. Tribal communities are about as close to 'natural' behaviour as you can get, so what is unnatural about it?

I also don't understand the term 'contrary to reason'. How can a set of conventions be rational or irrational? They can be beneficial, harmful, fair, unfair, moral, immoral etc, but how can they be contrary to reason?

Also: taxation is as much a part of capitalism as it is a part of socialism, especially taxation for expenditure on police and law.
Yeah, I think regular get-togethers are pretty much a must for the reasons you mention.

Can you elaborate more on the people that were good performers in an office environment and turned to sloths at home? What sort of qualities or peculiarities of their character made them do that?
> As others have mentioned, visa requirements make this sort of travel impossible

No, they just make it illegal.
It is very interesting to see how people in different parts of the world do things differently. You would think that of all things, we would count money the same way. I think (then again I am not HN spokesman) that it is on topic.
Yeah I've used Google Trends and Insights a lot, just wanted to see what everyone else out there is using.
School Recess Improves Behavior
It only really becomes a problem when you add a column to a table and want to fill in values for all the existing data. Or when you want to truncate a table.
Betfair Gives Steelers 69 Percent Chance of Winning Super Bowl
Check also other videos from the Saqoosha (I presume it's the author, the one with a funny hat):

http://vimeo.com/saqoosha/videos
Thank you. I've been using them, Google Trends & Insights and Exact Report (for rankings).
Not to mention that doing different forms of electronic accompaniment has been around for 40 years, and algorithmic composition for quite a while as well.
"May not be a good idea if you're a breast man." Comment of the thread!
we slaughtered [the aurochs] into extinction

Humans also created a similar replacement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heck_Cattle#Controversy

Heck cattle are considered by some the most suitable cattle breed for low intensity grazing systems in certain types of nature reserves, due to their ruggedness and lack of need for human care. Heck cattle today are propagated in some places to fulfill the role of extinct megafauna in the ecosystem.

A replacement was also created for the extinct tarpan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heck_horse
There's a negative stigma about "managers" in the startup world because the word manager is associated with pointy-haired bosses and TPS reports. A manager can, however, be a very positive force when the technical leads on a team are spending a lot of time on management related tasks like meeting with investors, doing financial projections, and revising the business plan. A manager can do these things to free up the owner-developers' time.

In general, I like to think about hiring a manager the same way most startups think about hiring a designer. While all programmers can do some UI design, many startups realize that they're not going to do UI design as well as they write code, so they hire designers. The same principal can apply to hiring management, hiring lawyers to handle patenting, etc: You can do it all on your own, but it might make your life a lot easier if you hire somebody who loves and excels at the specific challenges you're facing.
JSINQ - a complete implementation of LINQ in JavaScript
Fixing Flash for Mac would be even better - it's sloooow
Corr - very good resource! Thanks!
Ask HN: What do you wish Google Analytics would do?
I think a lot companies get to a state where Google Analytics just isn't good enough, what do you guys think we could all use for analytics/metrics?
Rapid game development with (J)Ruby
Duck it, duck yourself, go ducking - I bet something will stick.
WordTracker has a great free too: http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/

Also SEOBook has a decent tool: http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/

But yes, AdWords tools is among the best to find search volume. No one else has the data to offer the same information.
I think a StartUp needs management from the beginning.

Maybe its because I'm a business student, but I think if there isn't someone with a perspective on strategy, finances, marketing and management in general the StartUp will fail because of lack of direction and the costs involved in changing direction later on (and I'm not saying it needs to be someone who has an MBA or something similar)

You ask what someone with management experience could contribute to your company. I would suggest that someone with a business perspective can help you to get a new perspective on things which might be quite different from your technical point of view. Also, as mentioned in other comments, a manager can ease the workload and help others to focus on what they are good at.
Sony, SanDisk working on 2TB Memory Sticks
Sounds like you're drawing the distinction at "primarily browser based" and I was using "primarily internet based".

As such, I think Outlook/Exchange is not web-based, but Outlook/Hosted-Exchange is web based (because the Exchange server is "out on the web" somewhere out of sight, out of mind).
Thanks for using our widget! There is also a similar profiles one: http://duckduckgo.com/profiles.html

If anyone needs/wants any help getting it set up (doubtful on HN), or, needs/wants other services added before use (more likely), then please let me know...
If you think so, please flag instead of commenting.

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Do you not have the qualifications needed to apply for TN status? My understanding is that you can get TN status at the border.
Songs off the charts (turning data into music by Songsmith)
Why of course. You can come stay in the closet of my studio apartment. I'll feed you and clothe you until we can find just the right opportunity for your brilliant mind!

I know we're supposed to be "nice," but this is absurd. Go back to school and NEVER say about yourself that you are "dashing" or "charming" - no matter how tongue-in-cheek you try to make it sound, you just come off sounding like the exact opposite.

Upon reading more of your responses, I'm further convinced that you should stay where you are. Nobody cares about your fancy "cross flights." Right now is certainly not the time to abandon everything and come to California.
And it would have been worse, were it not for the inventory component:

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/01/30/economists-react-p...

That'll change in Q1, so expect a really, really bad quarter.
Review of Algorithms in a Nutshell book.
Please don't get personal like this. If you don't want to help the guy, just don't say anything.
Moving Towards A Self-Hosted Cloud
I do now... http://thisisnexttime.wordpress.com.
I went looking and see they've basically shut down - parts for v2 are no longer available, they're in debt and they can't afford to develop v3 and that was a couple of years ago.

There are none on eBay.com or .co.uk active or recently completed, or any on Froogle either.

Shame; I never thought they looked brilliant, but quite liked that they exist.
It's worse in past tense: "I googled it" vs. "I duckduckgoed/duckduckwent it". Not everything has to be verbed though.
This could have been in beta by 1995.

Sure, but the key innovation here is YouTube. Cats have played piano for as long as there have been cats and pianos [1], but only now do the folks sitting around at home have the opportunity to turn their piano-playing cat into an international video superstar with ten minutes of work.

As a subject for academic papers in music or electronics, Songsmith doesn't rate. But as an amusing social media hack, it's just great. I can't wait for the advent of the next new genre: "pieces that were supposedly written by Songsmith, but have secretly been painstakingly assembled by actual musicians". Will that cause a Milli-Vanilli-style scandal, only in reverse? [2]

---

[1] Trivia fact of the day: Did you know that the novelty piano tune Kitten on the Keys was copyrighted in 1921? http://www.perfbill.com/covers/kitten.htm?a

[2] I published this, then suddenly realized that Milli Vanilli is nearly twenty years old, and some of you might not have been born yet. Thank god for Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milli_Vanilli
To whomever thought they needed to downmod that, I recommend a study (or review) of elementary static Newtonian physics. I'm hardly making stuff up, this is Physics 101. My comment was deliberately drawn in parallel to the discussion of normal force that everyone should get when they first forget to include normal force in their force diagram, but remember gravity; if that was true, the object would fall through the table (or whatever surface), therefore clearly there is a normal force. If the forces on a building didn't stabilize it, it would therefore fall over. It sounds simple when you say it, but it's not so simple the first ten times you hand in your force diagram and get a big red mark on it, until you learn.

(Looking at the downmod pattern, though, there's someone who isn't liking the idea that regulation may not be perfect, and expressing that with downmods. Interestingly, my real point is that it can't be perfect for mathematical reasons, which is actually a completely different argument from whether or not it can improve things. But you do need to set out from a policy perspective with the goal of improving, not perfecting, because plans based on perfecting things always cause more trouble when they go wrong. The plan has no slack left over.)
I suspect you could get away with it, but that's probably illegal. Ask a lawyer if you want a real answer.
Nokia might have threatened to leave Finland unless it gets legal access to email.
What Is My Favorite Forum On The Web?
Internet forums can drive lots of quality traffic to a website. With thousands of forums on the web - how do you know which one to choose?
I'm at a plateau in my learning curve with Vim; I grasp all the basic concepts but find it difficult to fit more advanced commands into daily usage.

Lately I have a Vim cheat sheet next to me (PDF: http://www.digilife.be/quickreferences/QRC/VIM%20Quick%20Ref...), regularly dig through :help and idle in #vim on Freenode.

But I still find it to be a steep learning curve even after I think I understand Vim.

Any other suggestions on what to do to keep the learning process going?

Edit: Also, looking through other .vimrc files is extremely helpful - http://dotfiles.org/.vimrc
I tried to remember how I count them, then realised that I've never had a wad of bills.
Real-time stats, that's really something I miss a lot!
Esp. considering that it's available in other stats tools...
I just want to point out that while I haven't had a recess since middle school, I recently found out that the middle school I went to has eliminated its recess on fridays. I remember loving fridays because we had an extended recess. I am unsure how the current students are managing.
Ask HN: First startup / cold feet. Any advice ?
Hi fellow hackers,

I have been thinking about doing my own startup for a while and I've finally gotten to the point where being really bored at my job at one of the Big Internet Companies, I quit.

Now seems like the best time to start something on my own since I have some money saved up and don't have a lot of responsibilities in my personal life. However, although I do have an idea, albeit not the best one I could think of, I am getting cold feet thinking the following :

- No safety net
- No income ... maybe higher expenses
- What if the company fails ? I would have lost this time.

Did anyone else here feel the same way when starting their first company ? How did you convince yourself that you should go do your own thing and not go work for another BIG firm with the security and lavish perks etc ?
1. I'm not after a freebie, I clearly stated that I'm happy to pay

2. I don't need a personal job-seeker, I'm more than capable (but thanks)

3. I wasn't being tongue-in-cheek - I am, in fact, quite dashing and can be quite charming. But never make a show of it.

4. Are you speaking on behalf of the whole nation? Or just arsehole club?

5. I don't understand why you're on the offence? To be honest, I was pretty impressed with the discussion that come about from my post. Since I posted my initial question some pretty good resources have been mentioned. For instance, Berlin and their scene, then discussion around language barriers.

OK, 3's a joke. But lighten up.
I love the product ad, lindked from the article. Sucks so much that I love it :D.
And also: Is than an apple notebook??
What would be the use for you in real-time stats?

IMHO you use Web Analytics to optimize your Website and to monitor success of different aspects of your site. I don't think that real-time data would help there much and I don't think that Google Analytics would be the right tool to monitor load on your servers.
Prepare for the Robot Wars: Six questions for P.W. Singer, author of  Wired for War
I also was thinking, "This should be a kids site". I like the idea of a search engine for kids. You could concentrate on indexing only "kid safe" and "kid related" content. What a perfect name for that.

As for the length of a name, and if it "verbifies" easily, these are things I agonize about a lot. Perhaps we're taking too much upon ourselves. The users will find a way to talk about it easily, if they need to talk about it at all. "America Online" -> AOL, "Treasury Inflation Protected Securities" -> TIPS, "The Federal National Mortgage Association" -> Fannie Mae, etc.
In every successful startup, even ones founded entirely by engineers, someone wears the pointy-headed hat. Unless one of you wants to take on that role, recruit a pro. A pro will cost you more, and there's no guarantee they'd be better at it than one of you, but you get to focus on the technology that way.
“It could be a symptom that you’re leading an inauthentic life,” he said. “You should take a look at the goals in your life and say, ‘Is this what you want to do?’ ”

Sounds like a good indicator, and exactly why I am about to quit my job and move to Tampa for something a little less well-paying, but much more interesting and, for me, fulfilling.
This isn't a regular researcher.

This is a researcher in the "social sciences".

...wherein the word "social" works to invalidate the word "science".
Looks like the whole site was designed by one of those hipsters in Brookl... Oh.
I'd like a simple way of looking at individual visitors.

Every GA report I looked at has it aggregated somehow.
I'd have to agree, that's honestly a waste of time for a serious company. Technically, you should have better things to do.
Knows of a reasonably priced room going, or has a spare room

You want http://airbnb.com
You just got on the front-page of digg, reddit, slashdot, or someone linked to your post and you want to know now instead of 4 hours ahead, because you want to update your post, stablish a conversation, activate static page cache, whatever. Or someone posts on a forum a link to your site telling how the release date of certain game is wrong, writing "bunch of lazy editors on site X" and you want to correct and post on the forum that you did.

Saying that Analytics is not for these kind of situations on a "feature request" thread is a little harsh, isnt? :) And the parent post did say similar services do provide this information...
I think it's not so much a question of whether you need management or not- it more about assessing the core competencies of the founders and then determining what's missing. And also whether a new hire fits in with the team - not just in terms of what knowledge they bring to the table, but also whether their values and ethics are a good fit.
Here is a post by Linus:

http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/2009/01/fantastic.html

Billy Idol's "White Wedding" he mentions is indeed hilarious:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlCWo1qdTdE
The tech that makes the Super Bowl super
Disagree?
Honestly, it's just not intuitive enough for me. That said, some suggestions (technical feasibility disregarded)

* Show me referring URLs, not just domains
* Click a day on the graph to see that day rather than having to reset the time period on the drop-down menu
* Weighted averages: sorting by Bounce Rate is useless; I have lots of these one-off 100% Bounce Rates from one-time referrals. Weighted data so that I can see where my Bounce Rate sucks (or any other metric/Goal) only by those sending some useful level of traffic would be a godsend.
Have an API so I can pull the data out and use it elsewhere.
Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings.
You will fail, especially if it's your first time. Many of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world failed 6-7 times before they figured it out.

The best thing about failing is learning why you failed. If you're afraid of failing, you should give up now because you're not cut out for this thing.

Depending where you are in life, you'll need to assess your risk. It's going to be hard if you have a wife and kids.