skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A hypothetical ideal business in this segment would find a way to profit off of attracting people interesting in sampling new businesses for long-term patronage rather than making its money off of the price sensitive. The idea would be that you would find a way to make the proposition most appealing to people who are looking for a new... hairstylist/florist/gym/supermarket/whatever, and either avoid targeting offers at people who are likely to sample at a low price and move on, or make the offer less appealing to them.

This has been a key part of the mailing list business for many years -- lists that target people who have recently moved, gotten pregnant or had a baby, gotten married, and so on. Special offers with unusually good deals are then offered, because the chance of converting a percentage of the recipients into long-term customers makes it worth it.

If this kind of business model has been translated to online effectively, I'm not familiar with it. Certainly some of that effect can be achieved with the right search keywords or the right websites to advertise on (e.g. baby name sites), but businesses like Groupon and Living Social have brought in many more price sensitive customers than actual long-term business prospects, which is one of the big reasons why they are not more successful.
I wonder if they can do a write log to the spinning rust (sequential write, pretty fast, slow on the SSD) and then periodically resolve the deltas. I played around briefly with a system which put metadata in a RAM disk (battery backed up to SSD) and actual data blocks on the disk. There was a huge benefit in that system of splitting the metadata i/o's from the read/write I/Os, really helped overall performance. I look forward to seeing the whitepaper on this tech if they publish it.
Except that it makes getting on the plane and seating yourself extremely efficient, which saves Southwest money, which saves you money.
I won't be buying an Surface RT, for the same reason I won't be buying an iPad: it's just too limited, and I don't want two devices that do similar things. I'm extremely interested in the Surface Pro though. If I can dock my Surface Pro to my keyboard, mouse, big screen and speakers, it could replace my current laptop, while being much easier to bring with me.

In the end, it will probably be between an Ultrabook like the Lenovo X1 Carbon, or the Surface Pro, with the Surface having a slight upper hand because I can use it as a tablet as well.
Quip writes (26:45)
Thanks for participating in this demo of Quip. Click the next video (part 2) to keep watching the debates. Sign up for the beta if you're interested in getting Quip on your site!

Anonymous writes (26:54)
Poop

Unfortunately, about as much as can be expected from anonymous comments.
What others have said, plus: I don't trust you to stay in business at $3/mo. You may deliver an awesome product, but I simply don't believe the economics will work at all for $3/month. At best, you'll cut corners and your service will start to suck. This makes me much less likely to put you in the critical path of my business. So charge more and make everybody happy!

Suggestion: segment on the complexity of the product tour? Maybe by the # of steps included? Or (better) allow me to add audio/video to my tours and charge me more for that.
Louis vuitton purses
BTW, I am not only talking about web apps, but all the other stuff too... Apps, Solutions, Architectures... My direct question could imply that, how a large company like IBM depends on JVM, can a rising star, a new company or a small buisness can invest its time on the JVM?
In this video https://training.kalzumeus.com patio11 describes how building product tour's can increase sales by 20-100%. Taurus.io is definitely worth more than $3/month and could be priced far higher.
Not only that but there are plenty of options that are still better than Unity. Well, the newest Unity is even good enough for me to leave as default on my non-main machine. Cairo-dock, Docky and Plank (Docky's less functional successor) are all more configurable than Unity and more similar to what people expect from Windows 7 and OS X.
Why we buy into ideas: how to convince others of our thoughts
"It's so crowded nobody goes there anymore."
Their help library CMS is probably restrictive...
But it still doesn't make sense to compare HDDs without optimization to tape drives with optimization. Data centers are going to use every affordable optimization at their disposal, so if we want to know "will tape drives be competitive against HDDs" we can't handicap HDDs by comparing mirrored arrays of tape drives to straight, un-optimized HDDs.

With that said, I outlined in another comment[1] why a mirrored array of tapes would have pretty huge drawbacks regardless. Even if you have an expensive array of tape drives (as opposed to one drive with many tapes), a mirrored array will drag your write seek performance toward a constant worst case as the array grows. The same is true of RAID 1 for HDDs, of course, but the worst case seek time of an HDD is orders of magnitude less than that of a tape drive, so HDDs still win.

In any case, if you look at the details of the situation, the answer you come to is pretty boring: tape drives can compete with HDDs in a small slice of real world cases (often when used in conjunction with HDDs), and higher density tape drives will slightly widen that slice.

If you have a situation where you are writing a ton of data, but almost never reading or erasing, then high density tapes will play well to that situation (sans mirroring).

If you have a situation where you are writing a relatively small amount of data over a long period of time, reading it back comparatively frequently, and never erasing anything so that your total storage needs become very large, then maybe a mirrored array of tape drives would make sense, if it were behind a sizable HDD array. But it's a stretch.

[1]http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4690877
StorSimple, 3PAR, etc. all appear to be appliances. What I am trying to get as is subtle so I will try to be a little bit more explicit.

StorSimple can dominate the appliance it is made out of to provide its services. Fusion Drive cannot dominate the owner's machine.
This is great (and flattering). We're definitely going back to the drawing board in regards to how we price this thing.
ZFS uses a log-structured filesystem journal, and in my experience can do a little less than twice as many 'random' writes to a spinning hard drive than that hard drive is capable of. Of course the random writes are actually sequential.

If you have a SSD log device configured, writes greater than 128k (IIRC) are sent directly to disk for performance reasons. This behavior is configurable and probably should be higher for modern SSDs... but anyway it's a neat idea that has been used in practice.
My brother works there as a QA, and he's enjoyed every minute of it. There is a reverence and appreciation for their users that trickles down from the CEO into the rest of the company that seems to be the exact opposite of the situation at Zynga.
In Japan it's actually illegal. Your broker won't even let you do it.
Feature request that will make this much more valuable - relative adjustment, if you can create a tooltip that will stay near a selector (regardless of browser resizes) and will be responsive (e.g. size and font will adapt based on size) then you'll have something worth not 3$ but 30$ a month easily.

I like that you demo the usage of the tool rather than the end result, but for some people it might be too cumbersome, at least make the demo login automatic

By the way, a solution to both issues - use your own product to tour your own product.
If you're multitasking on a single monitor, all you have to switch between tasks is the taskbar, or alt+tab. Alt+tab switches between windows, but most tasks require a collection of different windows. Eg right now I'm stuffing about on HN and some other sites (1) while waiting for my code to compile (2) after which I'll be executing my app and testing it (3) while checking my mail and real-time IM (4)

Ideally I'd have four dedicated monitors - but on my one work monitor I'd settle for four virtual desktops that I can cycle through similar to alt+tab.
So what? If he's the sociopath everyone makes him out to be, who already has more money than God, what's the big deal?

My point is that "good vs. evil" style commentary is useless. It automatically lowers the commenters' mean IQ by 15 points.

This, of course, is the reason discussing politics (as opposed to policy) is generally a waste of time.
In this case, the letter seemed to achieve the desired aim just fine.
Disney Unveils New Home Page With Entertainment Focus
Oh it absolutely was against policy to short your own stock for just those reasons. At the time I had a restricted stock grant (pre-owned but you 'vest' over time) and ISO options, also vesting. If I had a been a bit more clever I could have sold a 'put' option on all those shares. Not worth as much as actually selling the shares would have been of course.

But really there are two points here:

1) People with a lot of equity in a single company will sell it when they can to diversify their risk (not evil)

2) People who end up with a lot of equity in a single company that is worth a lot of money are 'lucky' not necessarily 'good', 'smart', or 'evil.'

I certainly felt it raised eye brows when Pincus and other officers dumped big chunks of stock in a pre-arranged sale, but note that had Zynga continued to go up in value nobody would have blinked, but since it so spectacularly has crashed they are reviled. As bad as that looked I felt the Groupon folks turning down Google's $6B offer and instead selling their own stock through a private placement was a lot further down the scale toward 'poor judgement' than Zynga's moves.
I disagree--I learned something.
Also twitter has adopted the JVM to write its backend services in Scala. (It has dumped RoR). Also, now We are not stuck with Java 6 anymore (there is definately a development going on). Could we see a JVM Renaissance in the future? How about a JVM whose name is no longer JVM, but something different? I am doing clojure, so I name it ClJVM ;)
I don't get the whole "not enough apps in the app store" critique. What are they expecting? The tablet is not even out yet and they expect a million apps or what? Obviously this is a problem with a new operating system... It's a valid critique in a way but there is nothing Microsoft can do short of hiring ten thousand developers to just make apps for it before launch.
Let N=(1000 items of unique information)
Let W= (2000 items of unique information)

2(N) does not yield W, regardless of cost to copy (N).

To get W, you will need to do something more. This will not be cost-less. That's the more general case.
He's basically stating that the Surface has "version 1.0" issues (in hardware and software) that he hopes will go away with the "1.1"/"2.0" release of Surface..
There is no end to this debate. We both can write tons of explaination about each platform, but it doesn't matter. Both companies are here to make profits and they resolve their legal disputes like this. There is no other way.

And about this very article, it is just not correct. Invalidating patents take years. Article like this surface the internet just before any big apple event.
Just because it has a full sized USB port does not make it a PC, it can't even run PC applications. Overall a good review, a lot better than expected. Seems like TechCrunch are upping their writing standards to compete with TheVerge which have really shown just how bad other sites like TC are when it comes to reviews and reporting.

I want one of these Surface tablets, they look nice and I really do like the appearance of Windows 8. Give it time, the surface will be cracked and you'll see people running variants of Linux on these things before you know it and then I'll be more inclined to buy.
It has an awful lot of affordances to make it look like it might be a laptop replacement -- the keyboard covers, the desktop mode, Office. It's obviously not suitable simply as a laptop, nor is it a very credible straight-up replacement for an iPad, at least at this point.

So if it was going to succeed at something, the most likely outcome would be as a good-enough laptop replacement and a good-enough tablet replacement, even though it would be a compromise as either. Instead, the reviewer came to the conclusion that it was more of a "neither fish nor fowl" product. Having not had a chance to use one myself, I nevertheless suspect that will be my conclusion when I have a chance to try one out.
Link to read the review in a single page: http://www.anandtech.com/print/6385
Could you please expand on that, or give a reference. What are the newer theories that do not possess the nonlinear characteristics ?
I find Mark Forster's FV (Final Version) to be a great synthesis of structured procrastination as well as a way of creating the feeling that I got stuff done. Plus it's so minimalistic.

http://markforster.squarespace.com/
Does Linux run well on touchscreen type devices these days? I haven't really kept up with developments there lately.
This is not evident from your demo. Can you include the tooltips to show up by default in your demo page? I am guessing most people would first want to see how the tooltips come up, before they get interested in editing/authoring them.
Ok, so a lot of people are commenting you are charging too little and your general reply was you felt you didn't deliver the value to justify a higher price.

In that case, I think you need to search for value. What can you do to make a higher price worthwhile?

Here are my thoughts:

- Analytics! What are people viewing? Plug it in and tell me what is working and getting mouse time or clicks (or conversions)

- Split testing! I'd love to test out two tours to see which converts better.

You could make the current version free, to a certain point of traffic and make all the new features points of value to charge a better price.
Ask HN: How to learn Clojure
I come from a Rails background and I've caught an interest in Clojure. Seems like a great way to scale rails.

How do I best get started with Clojure? Can anyone point me to tutorials/videos/books and such?
Your sidebar is going crazy on me. I see like ten php warnings and one fatal error, all with php paths and a stack trace. You shouldn't have those settings on in a production server.
On the other hand, I really enjoyed the post and the slides.
UltraHD, the TV Technology Formerly Known as 4K, Gets Ready To Hit Store Shelves
A bit of an editorialization on the title there son... Something I wish I learned earlier on is how to delay gratification. That would have been a nice skill to have when I was poor.
I did an instant quote with Sunstone. They charge $479 tooling.

I am wrong about the costs for small batches and prototypes - you don't need all the production aids and you can get very good, rapid, product now.

But don't compare hobbyist costs (sub-standard material, limited use etc) for tiny quantities with industry costs for production size runs (http://www.photostencil.com/products/electroform-stencils-hy...)
Well, there seems to be a market for Chromebooks. I can't imagine they're intended as tablets since they don't have touchscreens or anything, so I guess they'd have to be laptop substitutes.

Of course, Chromebooks start at half the price of the base Surface RT.
This might be oversimplifying a bit
- How about keeping all OS files, app files etc on SSD. No auto-tiering of those.
- Then some equivalent of a 'cron job + filter driver' combo that moves data files to and from SSD to the 1/3TB disk? When I say filter driver, I am thinking of Windows file system mini-filter driver. Linux equivalent would be VFS I guess.

How difficult is it to implement some thing like that in a pre known 2 tier configuration context? And what would be the effectiveness of such a solution?

In Windows filter drivers have been used effectively to implement file tombstoning for archive purposes and utilizing reparse points/extended attributes to store the remote URI (for recalling file contents from remote archive upon intercepting a read request). It's not too hard to write a mini filter driver in Windows and use it in conjunction with reparse points to implement tombstoning in filesystem.
Photoshop and Lightroom aren't available on Linux; Linux is generally still considered a viable option as a Desktop replacement by a lot of people. Anything that used to be Win32 only and is now on OSX or Linux was also "written from scratch", and any product that has had the demand has been able to do it.

I'm not going to get a Surface, but to be clear every singe app that I currently use on Windows is definitely going to be available at launch on Windows RT, assuming you count Chrome and IE10 as interchangeable (which non-experts do) or if a version of Chrome launches (like the version on iOS). It's going to launch with a browser, a chat client, a media player, and a random set of games. There is nothing else that I run on Win7.

Anything intended to be used on a touchscreen device needs to be written from scratch. Any application intended to be used by a mouse used on a touchscreen is an absolutely awful experience (I used a WinXP laptop with a touchscreen display about 6 years ago, totally fine laptop but the touch screen is useless because the usability in apps is not there). You can't expect to just run Lightroom on a touchscreen and expect it to work well.

I had never heard of Lightroom before, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like it is targeted at professional photographers or hobbyist photographers who have $1000+ camera equipment. I dual boot Ubuntu for development, and I recognize that is esoteric hobbyist usage, and I don't expect Windows to start supporting all the tools I want for development out of the box. I can't imagine who really thinks that level of usage should be supported by a low end consumer device.
For one-off jobs such as logo or web page design I have used 99 Designs (http://99designs.com) and have been very happy with the results.

Whenever you come across a designer you like they are usually more than happy to perform further work outside of design contests.
Startup revolution in Indian campuses
Indeed, neither authoritarianism nor free markets are effective when deep rooted corruption exists.
The Idiot’s Advantage
I used to own a small company in Kansas that, among other things, sold North Face jackets to ski teams and groups of mountain climbers. I liked the product and enjoyed selling it. It was cool. One day I called them up to place an order only to be informed that my account was no longer active. I was being terminated as a reseller. There was a local retailer in town that had been with them longer so they cut me off.

Five minutes later I got a call from a customer wanting to place a fairly sizable order. “No problem,” I told them having no idea how to fulfill the order.

My search for an alternative supplier was fruitless. Patagonia? No. Columbia? No.

I didn’t have a retail storefront, I didn’t have an established catalog and the Web didn’t yet exist. I was a young, inexperienced college student and I was turned down by pretty much every supplier I called. So, when my client called to add a few more pieces to the order I again said, “sure, no problem.”
Back in Kansas, when I was passing out promises to deliver outerwear to my customers I had no idea what it took to design a new clothing product, let alone how to manufacturer it. So, armed with a total lack of understanding, I opened the Want Ads to see if I could find a used sewing machine (not that I knew how to actually use one).

Soon I found a truckload of equipment from a retired tailor, I found a woman who could sew, I found several bolts of fleece material and I was given plenty of zippers, grommets and those little spring-loaded bungee-chord gripper things (I still don’t know what they were called). I was now in the outdoor clothing manufacturing business. It took less than a week and I had no problem filling my orders. This is the kind of thing you can accomplish when you have no idea what you’re doing. It was easy, but if I had known how difficult it should have been, I never would have tried it.
Having a small business or startup business with tons of decision to make is mind bubbling brain-wreck, but I tried reading the Book Slicing pie Mike Moyer and it all made sense, in his book he emphasized the startup equity by providing an example; also talked about splitting equity using the-grunt-fund-calculator grunt calculator and dig in to details on equity structure founders equity equity compensation, and differentiating your choice on salaries or equity. http://www.slicingpie.com
If that were a normal assumption, we wouldn't be seeing otherwise decisions in the real world so frequently.
I am genuinely excited for Microsoft. The surface is rather refreshing. I generally am not a big tablet user. I find them kind of clunky for getting any real work done. But I do think there probably is a tablet out there for me...I just have to be willing to accept some tradeoffs.
This was originally in our plan for beta launch, but we yanked it to get something out faster. It's definitely in the pipeline. :)
The "PC is dead" line is usually referring to general consumers. Obviously it doesn't apply to power users (which are a very small %). For content creators, a PC is still a necessity. For content consumers, mobile or tablets are suffice.

The only argument OP makes that applies to general consumers is gaming, and that can be moved to a console.
Android is Linux-based, so... yeah. It runs pretty well on touchscreen type devices.
This article serves as a perfectly timed confirmation of my plan for what I'll do next, once I've achieved everything I can where I am right now.

I've been planning to apply to YC and start a hardware-focused startup in the home-automation space.
I think at every workplace, where PCs aren't the main thing workers interact with while working, but rather only assist them, tablets will eventually replace PCs (for example hospitals, schools, workshops or retail). But if the work consists of mainly interacting with a PC, tablets are by design inferior and won't replace the PC.
Turns out there is a crowd-sourced alternative with a thriving community:

http://www.findagrave.com/
"Search 88 million grave records"
I liked this one: http://www.4clojure.com/
I can confirm that there is a serious lack of time spent working on hands-on projects in EE curriculum (at Cornell, in my case).
You'll have to raise more money, of course. Currently, all YC companies are offered $150k automatically and companies that look promising to investors are able to raise a lot more. I believe it's possible to get most good ideas to the stage of "promising" on $170k.