skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The protection there is investment. If your 90 day to profit business needs a $30k investment and your competition can't raise the cash, then you effectively have no competition.

In any case, I think the reason for his posting is just to get people moving. It certainly made me feel pumped up about the idea I got this morning!
I definitely wasn't disappointed. In fact it was refreshing; I didn't realize how hard of a problem other people considered Continuous Deployment (and in fact, how little other people had considered it at all).

I also didn't mean to rag on news.yc, on average the responses here are better than the original posts which is an unparalleled level of quality.

I left the technical issues unspecified in my first post on Continuous Deployment, and the comments on that post already had started discussing the path of solutions we ended up building ourselves!

I still have another post to write about this, because we also ship a native windows client. We ship daily prereleases of it, and roughly biweekly full releases (offered to all users). That's close to, but not quite as impressive, as the update system that google chrome uses. Google definitely still has us beat in certain categories.
The idea is great and will certainly work. But what I do not like is that Google knows everyting about you at the end. What do you search, read, where do you live, your work, where you go on vacation, who do you call, send mail, and now also where you are at the present time.
There are plenty of options for viewing and mapping your energy. Without the intervention of your energy supplier our Google.
Why not improve your entire view of consumption such as gas, water and electricity.
Without the interference of Google and energy companies using the information for their own purpose.
Soon, Google becomes the energy supplier?
The criticism is indeed fair, but I don't think it really sinks Shirky's key arguments. Shirky may have shortchanged professional ontologies and glossed over some details, but at the end of the day professional onotologies are expensive to create and maintain. With the explosion of content on the web, there's clearly a huge gap between free-text search and professional categorization.

The interesting part of the article for me (4 years later) is that it points to the promise of data mining tags, which we've only just begun to scratch the surface of.
IMHO, the best thing they could do was keep this thing secret while they figured out a way to solve the problem. Not that I think the whole problem was fixed, but this specific problem was fixed. Had the general public been aware, the problem would have been much worse, and John Q. Public would start pulling money out, and shoving it in his mattress, because he didn't understand what was happening.
That's why it's called a Panic.

Also IMHO, a lot of the current economic problems have to do with turning on the news every night and seeing "how bad" the economy is and "it's getting worse." Seems like a self-reinforcing problem to me. That's what happens when you make the public aware of the "problem," when they don't understand all the gory details.

As far as the Bush-bashing, and the information not being able to inform current decision making, that's crap. The people that need to know, do know.
31 fart apps in 90 seconds
Embarrassing Server Meltdowns that Cost Companies Millions
Mmhm. They said this about store-based retail, too. "Stores can operate more efficiently on the web, and will take over because they don't need the bricks and mortar!" What happened?

The difference is that the newspaper industry is quite evidently dying a slow death, because people aren't reading paper - at least at the same levels that they used to. (I read paper all the time to be honest, but less than my parents did - I don't have a weekly subscription - and more than my gen y colleagues do.) You can't ignore this fact.
Thanks a lot, this is pretty much what I wanted to know. Looks like there is not too much overhead and the results are amazing.
vnc all the time... if you hate yourself
I think that there's merit to his criticism of purely hierarchial classification, he just completely fails to acknowledge that to cataloging professionals this is old news.

(The "gee whiz, tags solve everything" hype has been sufficiently deflated elsewhere, IMHO.)
This post was down-modded so far I shouldn't even respond, but I'm going to anyway. While you seem to blame Republicans for every thing that ails you, keep in mind that the "loosened regulations" on mortgage lending which is what caused this problem in the first place were initiated by a Democrat, Barney Frank, at the urging of a Democrat, Bill Clinton. Now go put your head back in the sand.
My post was a rebuttal to onmouse's insinuation that MooTools didn't already have a mature, fast, & functioning CSS selector. Valerio's post quite clearly stated that, at the time, there wasn't a measurable performance improvement. Regardless of his misunderstandings about the contribution process, he wasn't ready to trade his team's control and design philosophy for dubious performance gains. That seems perfectly reasonable to me.
I use Google Reader to keep track of approximately 300 feeds. These days I mostly only read everything during the weekends. This way I avoid procrastinating during weekdays.
I don't know about 'they,' but if you build it I will come.
Stuff that was Cool
That's true, he does aim some low blows there.
>government can always print more money rather than defaulting

That's not all powerful nations governments can do. The militaries of countries are not only there for defense, they have always been to guard the "interests" of countries as well as their people. Everyone seems to forget this (and it would seem immoral today to use military to further interests beyond life and liberty, yet history shows that has always been the case).
When FreeBSD was released, at 27 Feb 2008, Kris Kennaway posted a nice slideshow that includes some PostgreSQL and MySQL benchmarks:

http://people.freebsd.org/~kris/scaling/7.0%20Preview.pdf

Database-wise, they should be still considered recent. PostgreSQL features impressive scaling there.
Cognitive Computing Project Aims to Reverse-Engineer the Mind
Auntie Em! Auntie Em! Where are you Auntie Em!
Meaning even the most altruistic person will have to get over the fact that they won’t be doing all that much good with this.

Perhaps not, but it will help THAT person. Meaning that now there's one more person (and his/her employees) who are not on the unemployment rolls.
Just because an idea doesn't save the world doesn't mean it's not a good idea.

And for those of us who come up with multiple ideas each day, and are not particularly attached to any of them, it's a great way to possibly get funding if needed.
Personally, I think that ID, like creationism, is blasphemous: it's calling God a liar.
As a general thing for toy OSs it's a good idea, but a big part of the sell of BeOS was high performance media and filesystem, and the benefits of these would be reduced as a VM OS.
Pretty could mean a lot of things.

Like pervasive multithreading, a 64-bit journaling file system. a kernel written in C++... beauty is relative.
Real estate listings. Only limited information on a MLS is viewable without a broker. And getting your house information on one can cost 200 to 500, or up to 6% of the price. There are already free internet listings, but those can lack listings and information on houses.
I used half.com all the way through college (ISBN makes it quick), but it would be much easier if the chosen textbooks were announced earlier (like you point out). Most of the time I was without a book for the first week to 10 days.

The lead time issue could be fixed simply by changing University policy, requiring professors to disclose required textbooks X weeks in advance of the first day of class.

One loophole I found near the end of undergrad was that the campus bookstore's website had the required books posted for each class well over a month ahead of time (so you could buy them online and swing by to pick them up). I just looked up all my classes there, copied down the ISBNs and hit up half.com or Amazon. Of course, this breaks down with last minute changes or additions made by professors.
And with that line of thought, you're going to see a lot more gray markets open up for things like that, especially if the trend of protectionism continues its course.
Tip 18 of 20: Presentation Charts That Don't Suck
> Being a connoisseur of rap...

Well, what do you think about the stuff I listed?

> Take the whole song 'Just Lose it' where he satirically shows he can create a catchy rap song with nonsense.

A lot of "satire" going on then. I took a look at the video on Youtube. Just like the Wikipedia article explains, there are lots of references to things, but so what? Michael's nose might come off, Beavis sometimes turns into Cornholio, and some songs have a "break it down" -part. Where's the big revelation/insight though, or the implied moral higher ground?

> This song made the top 10 single on charts across the world[1], with just a catchy beat and nonsensical lyrics.

Right. That happens a lot to songs with catchy beats and more or less clever hooks.

Did "Just Lose It" become a hit because it's such a profound satire on all shallow, soulless, formulaic, mass-produced rap/pop music that gets on the charts? Or was it just because lots of Eminem's fans bought it? Maybe they're all the butt of a diabolically clever, circular/meta joke!

He's up to a lot of tricks, it seems.

Some other artists just concentrate on making music. A handful of them have even become hugely popular by writing, composing, arranging and performing it. Music that's completely made and performed by themselves. That handful includes people like Prince, Stevie Wonder, and Michael Jackson. Suck on that, Eminem.
You're making the classic techie mistake of assuming that any given niche can only support one business. Except for a vanishingly small number of historical anomalies,that's just not true!
NBA, NFL, MLB, NASCAR, Broadway:

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/basketball/nba/2008-10-13-nba...

http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/28141796/

http://bats.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/08/layoffs-at-mlbcom/

http://www.newsobserver.com/business/story/1297679.html

http://www.ticketnews.com/Broadway-ticket-sales-remain-slow-...

The real test for concerts will come in the summer.
I guess there are always apocalypses (apocalypti ?) hanging around. Killer bees, asteroids, sudden catastrophic climate change, killer cosmic rays from a supernova, some freak of physics, accidental nuclear war (or deliberate), some big volcano and so on...

Of course the real danger for a personal apocalyse: getting in your car and driving. We live with it every day. No big deal.
I submitted one of my (many) ideas. If anyone's interested, here it is:
http://blogmaverick.com/2009/02/09/the-mark-cuban-stimulus-p...

(feedback more than welcome)
If true it certainly highlights the paranoia of the day. Keep in mind, the DOW lost approximately 800 points in the three days preceding Sept 18th. Were investors in such fear of a banking collapse that they chose to divert funds from "secure" money markets to the insanely volatile stock market?
I think I rather have $10 million in cash than $65 million in facebook stock.
A lot of the proposed solutions here seem pretty complicated. The one that makes the most sense to me, while definitely not perfect, is to start by limiting new posts to accounts that have existed for a certain interval (maybe even just 30 minutes). That should filter quite a bit of spam and even though it's still easy to get around, at least it will require more effort. It's also very easy to implement.

Then you can experiment with other methods, but I doubt we'd miss many meaningful posts with this kind of limitation.

The other bucket of accounts created for spamming would need a little more sophistication, like maybe a queue limit per day. Still not too crazy.
I thought the conclusion was this:

>> As a LBS start-up, you need to think about adding distinctive value for users

which, afaik, is true of any type of business (especially start-ups). In that aspect, I definitely agree with the author.
Power harvesting shock absorbers increase mpg by 10%
> A government run investment firm can have a much broader view of success than simply 10x returns on capital investment.

Yes, a govt run investment firm can look for opportunities to
(1) grease the right palms so that a specific congress critter is re-elected
(2) Make sure that a congress critter's friends make money.
(3) Employ said congress critter's idiot cousin.
....

And, the folks running said investment firm won't take a hit if none of their investments make sense.

And, the "investment" money is provided at the point of a gun so whether or not you think their plan makes any sense, you get to pay for it.

Never confuse intent with effects.
I've used Craigslist for a car sale and wasn't impressed. I ended up paying a fee to AutoTrader and sold it fairly fast.
Drawing Board to the Desktop - A Designer’s Path
Ask HN: PRD/ERD online creator?
Is there a good online tool for making PRD and ERD type of documents? This is more for my personal use to formally document my own projects, but I'm open to stuff made for use by teams.
A world without iPods is not a world in which I could permit myself live.
Agreed, but requiring karma be wagered on a submission I think turns it into even more of a game
> the fact that you have to work harder, even with amazing sources like Rhapsody and Pandora (which have a cornucopia of indie music) to find good music means we're in a rut? In the '90s you could just put on the radio.

That's my experience too. In the 90's, lots and lots of really good music was selling really well too. You could just turn on MTV (or the radio), and you'd end up hearing it.

I haven't been following new music for many years, because somewhere along the way all that changed. The last time I happened to hear the stuff playing on a popular radio station, I was taken aback by what passes for a hit these days.

But I'm practically a grumpy old grandpa now. I bet people who grew up in the 70's bemoaned the lack of good music in the 80's or 90's too.
No. One or two combinations here and there aren't enough to flag your site as adult.

I don't have any proof of this, by the way. But I think it's common sense, or the way I would flag a site as adult. If it has images of nude people, if there are links from known porn websites, that kind of thing.

name + playboy is quite common. "Playboy" is also a synonymous for "bon vivant".

On the great algorithm of things, a couple ocurrences of naughty words are statistical noise.
If adding new users is easy, then you don't have enough information to do targeted rate limiting.
Wow, Quantcast/Compete estimate their monthly users to be 6-9 million. Their AdSense account must be quite healthy. I wonder how they got granted access to the data from the first few sites they index.
It isn't even slightly surprising that the MooTools guys would react to Sizzle this way.

In short (quoted from the article):

> If a developer doesn’t do [what I think he should do], he would probably be yelled at by myself.

That pretty much sums up the typical attitude of the MooTools community.
The Trough of No Value
The problem here is that you can aim a "web hook" at any other HTTP endpoint, which may or may not honor any "web hook loop avoidance" protocol you come up with, and if that endpoint re-triggers the activity that generated the hook update, you have a loop.

HTTP is stateless, so the "url stack" idea is going to be tricky to implement.
Top 10 Algorithms of the 20th Century
Pro Publica (not-for-profit investigative journo outfit) hires hacker-journalist
Posting a classified ad is only as useful as the number of interested parties who read it.

Your new site would have to be pretty fickin' special for me to post my ad there instead of to a massively larger audience on craigslist

Also, you can't exactly undercut them -- Craigslist is free for most categories and pretty reasonable for the others
"The $65 million is presumably an estimated value of the settlement, which was paid in a mix of cash and Facebook shares."

Because Facebook's valuation is completely stable and accurate.
Websites To Sharpen Your Business Skills
Google account not letting me log out. 
So I usually develop in FireFox on Mac, but keep Safari (3.1.2 at moment) open for occasional browsing, HackerN, googling, gmailing.

Today I notice that I cannot log OUT from gmail account from the main google.com page in Safari. Clicking "sign out" just refreshes the page. [ Everything like Javascript is turned ON; no add-on ware to Safari. ]

Next I went to Firefox, and I could log in - and then log out, no problem.

But not from Safari. I could track down the cookie and delete, but I'd like first to figure out WHY google should be glitching. Doesn't this strike others as a strange state of affairs? Ever had it in any browser?
Should Everything Have A "Share This"?
Individual events (or venues) can do this already. For example, ticketleap.com
Law Firm Blunder Reveals Value Of Facebook Payout To ConnectU: $65 Million
More than just "doesn't suck" -- you need to be able to save people money from pretty much day 1.
Ticketmaster + Live Nation: Meet the new boss
How To Turn a Netbook Into a Net Jukebox
I'm not sure that 'identity' can carry all the weight for why 'non-academic' discussions devolve into arguments. Unless you mean identity with the group and not some nefarious identity that is contained within the individual's psyche.

I'm thinking that people sometimes enjoy being right about something.
They enjoy having an opinion that has merit and that can benefit others. Sometimes expressing an opinion can be just to 'one-up' the guy who is castigating some poor bloke in a forum who failed to articulate his position well and who is now being bullied. Sometimes the expression of an opinion can be meant to come to the defense of another. Perhaps it is those unspoken elements of human communication, the binding and unbinding of groups, that are being transgressed, or which we mistakenly believe so, and not our sense of identity, which gradually raises one's ire when their opinion is being criticized, tested or what have you.

One of the reasons we communicate our positions is to ally ourselves with others. We find common ground and can then feel apart of. People get upset when they risk losing this common ground. When the matter is not so crucial, such as the preference for an x or y programming language, their chances of losing affinity with the group is less and so they tend to be more easy going about the expression and consideration of their /preferences. That's my 2 cents :)
Most of the publishing industry, esp. books. This is somewhat contingent on the success of ePaper/eBook technologies like (but not) the Kindle. They still need to develop for a while (2yrs or so) so the displays will be fast, have good contrast and be able to display color.

But even before that, we might see a lot more authors going online and developing new patterns of writing that are based on shorter publishing cycles and still lower revenue expectations.

I don't know how this will play out, but I'd bet that the RIAA/audio industry would make an embarassingly good model of what this very conservative industry will go through.
How about gliffy?

http://www.gliffy.com/
This is difficult to tackle if you don't already have a serious presence in the mobile industry.
Gov Grants Information
Want to get a few free grant secrets? Go to the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance if you want to find out about all the different grants that are available to citizens of the United States and its territories.
The Growing Army of Angry Men
Ask YC: Non-US founders
I am from Russia and would like to apply to YCombinator. As far as I know, you can get to work in your own startup in the USA only if you

- are a student (J1 visa, not even sure if this works),

- plan to invest $100K in the US (E-type visa),

- can be considered an "alien of extraordinary ability",

- a US-based company that has an overseas office transfers you from there to US (O-visa)

As far as I know, the founders of YC-funded companies who came from abroad used one of the above methods.

Neither of the above is a way I could go (not a student, don't have $100K, do not qualify as alien of extraordinary ability, don't have an established company in the US).

I assume that it is impossible to start a company and work for it without a work permit in the USA, so YCombinator would not even consider my application.

So, are there any other ways to get to YC for foreigners?

And on a related note, what countries are more friendly to foreigners and have a startup community at the same time? I've only heard of Canada.

Thank you, really, for any advice!

--Nikita
Tangentially relevant:

8 Stupid Frat Boy Business Ideas
http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/8-stupid-frat-boy-...

"NO BOOK EXCHANGE HAS EVER REALLY SUCCEEDED. I HATE TO CRUSH DREAMS BUT PLEASE FORGET ABOUT THIS."
The newspaper industry is dying mainly because impression advertising is worth less in the age of the internet, and partly because "free" offerings on the net have under-sold it.

The former problem is probably inevitable, but is at least a surmountable challenge with better technology; the latter is a symptom of unsustainable business practices in the technology industry that will eventually have to resolve. We (tech companies) can't keep selling content at a loss, and hoping to make it up in volume.
I don't see it as a middle ground. I see it as a genre of news. You may not need daily news with any analysis, but that still doesn't put NYT on the same continuum as TechCrunch and the Economist.

Granted, Economist is probably closer to NYT, in terms of scope, but I still don't see how NYT sits between the two as the optional "middle ground."
Lessons Business Graduates Learn May Include Cheating
You could call this the NPR/PBS model. They create some interesting news programming as non-profits. (And of course the BBC, and probably numerous equivalents in other countries.)

Is there something about newspapers that makes the non-profit model not work as well as it does for broadcast?
I always thought this was a petty/trollish lawsuit, and never bothered to follow it, but does this say that there was merit behind ConnectU's lawsuit?

Ok, downmodded, now does that mean yes, or no? A mere click is a bit too abstract.
It feels good when your higher-quality, smaller bandwagon starts to overtake the giant, rickety one.
> You wouldn't get the guitar virtuosos of the world - and they're better now than they ever have been in history

Prince, anyone? :)

But seriously, have you seen him play?

I agree that music has become more complex along the way. For example 50's music just feels too.. primitive for me. 60's mostly too.

To me it feels like "real" music started emerging in the 70's with the advances in recording technology etc. Starting from the 70's, they could just put a lot more stuff into a song, thus making them feel a lot more "solid".

In the early 90's, music went through a period where some of it became too soulless because of their excessive use of computers for everything. Real instruments still work wonders, but computers led to songs becoming more and more intricately crafted.
I like this comment: ”Great. We have a system that cant be saved and cant fail.”
Robots make copies of cars.
Just like computers make copies of music.
Is there any mechanism stopping the sale of stock right now? If they feel like selling, there should be somebody willing to take it, no?
A whole day? Why, I'd certainly kill my neighbors to avoid even 18 hours without nourishing my children. One dead neighbor isn't worth even a quarter millimeter of the stunted growth caused by a day without food!