skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Thanks! Yeah, we've gotten a lot better since then. On the zero-click info (what is x?) we use lots of sources now beyond Wikipedia (e.g. Crunchbase) as well as have a bunch of new features (http://duckduckgo.com/about.html). We also have both an iPhone app and an API :)

iPhone App: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftwa...

API info: http://duckduckgo.com/api.html
I haven't managed to sell a business, yet, but when I decided to give up and get a job last year, I got a less intense (and probably less long lasting, though it's still going on to some extent now) version of this. The lack of stress after 7 years of never knowing if there was going to be enough money next month was palpable.
Less UI in your sense can indeed lead to user friendlyness. One example: I use a plain textfile as my PIM. Why? Because data viewer and editor are the same. Not even a mouseclick away.
Who says big ideas are rare?
When does a non-technical startup require a CTO?
I have been interviewing with an e-commerce startup that just raised some VC and is looking to expand their technical team to start building out an architecture which can sustain their future growth.

The business was began by Ivy League grads who are business savvy but know very little about technology. Due to this they have had an interim CTO making all technology decisions for them from the opposite coast. They are eager to hire a CTO and are very uncomfortable making any decisions about platforms and solutions without the opinion of someone who has a track record in e-commerce . . . however their own business model and business philosophy are based on the idea of changing the status quo and building something new and exciting. Therefore every CTO they have brought in has not been a good fit.

My question is this: At what size does your startup need a CTO? For a clothing e-commerce solution with two full time programmers and no other technical staff, is adding a CTO to the mix complicating the political structure? What would be another solution then hiring a full time person to make the non-technical Executives of the company feel more comfortable with the technical decisions?
Could you get any more pretentious sounding?

This sounds like a good thing. Google knows where its success comes from and doesn't shy away from that.

But it does sound like there's a bit too much bike-shedding going on in terms of design.

These people have less taste than Microsoft, previously the low-water mark.

Less taste, really? I highly doubt it. I've found all of Google's interfaces to be clean. Microsoft's stuff on the other hand...
This is Nate, Andrew, Becky and John's talk, John was not the only panelist nor was he the only one worth listening to.
Our ramen was rice and beans. In fact the rice and beans I used to make during Viaweb became the basis of the dishes we make for founders at YC dinners. (I say we because we now have a cook make the dinners, but I made them for the first 7 cycles.)

Rice & Beans For 2n

olive oil or butter
n yellow onions
3n cloves garlic
n 12-oz cans Goya white beans
n cubes Knorr beef bouillon
n teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
3n teaspoons cumin
n cups rice, preferably sushi rice

Put rice in rice cooker. Add water as specified on rice package. (Default: 2 cups water per cup of rice.) Turn on rice cooker and forget about it.

Chop onions and fry in oil, over fairly low heat, till glassy. Put in chopped garlic, pepper, cumin, and a little more fat, and stir. Keep heat low. Cook another 2 or 3 minutes, then add beans (don't drain the beans), and stir. Throw in the bouillon cube(s), cover, and cook on lowish heat for at least 10 minutes more. Stir vigilantly to avoid sticking.
Computing is a field where integration matters a lot and bottlenecks (many of them in the human-machine interface) are often not even recognised as such, but seen as "the way things are". I mean there are a lot of good ideas that nobody has found the way to implement with enough usability so people wants to use them. Was YouTube a new idea when it "exploded"? I don't know, but I believe that it represents an innovation, maybe not in the idea, but in the right way to implement it. I guess there are a lot of innovative ideas in the "implementation pending" state.
He's not insane. He's an anarchist.(Or seem to be one)

You would do well to understand an anarcho-capitalist's position regarding the incentive of government insitutions versus market based insitutions. Than it become less shocking to read his work because well, you understood where he's coming from.

As for me, I am an anarcho-capitalist myself so I am not shocked. Figures.
Applying sandbox around Safari with a single click
There are also hybrid models. A "market place" startup might introduce individuals to other individuals or companies to individuals. In this case there might be a per transaction cost or the startup might charge one party and not the other.

In this case, the startup might grow horizontally with the freebie crowd and obtain a large market share, then sell the audience to an interested party for a fee. That's what my startup is doing :-)
Hi - Interesting concept.

My first reaction was that the initial page is too wordy. I mean, I'm in software and I found it a somewhat difficult read. (I know it's not about the frontpage, but that's where I came in).

I think you need a simple byline - e.g. "20:20 is all about X with Y"... Better yet, see if you can express this without text at all... Or have the minimal text, but have some images that invoke what you mean.

I think the video is great, but I think some more fleshed out examples (not necessarily in the video) would help.

Otherwise, I think it's an intriguing idea.

Good luck with the concept!
Surprise! Egotistical CS Assholes and Affected Designer Douchebags will always antagonize one another.
This was my biggest beef with Vim when I started using it. gVim just doesn't have the ease of configurability as Textmate either. Syntax definitions and highlighting in Textmate is also easier. Aside from that, I'm happy in Vim-land.
It's more than that. It's about connecting with a customer. Even if someone isn't paying you (Twitter), anyone who uses your product or service is a customer.
Do something interesting. My project consumes the whole of me. I go to bed thinking about it, sometimes I get ideas in my sleep, and I wake up eager to implement or research whatever I "dreamed" up :-)

It also helps that my girlfriend is on a different time zone and calls me early in the morning for her good-night kiss and chit chat.
"Rails seems far better positioned than PHP for future growth. This means PHP will peak and Rails will surpass it eventually."

If this comes to pass I will be completely and utterly stunned. I don't expect to be stunned.

You do know that PHP usage has continued to increase, all throughout RoR's rise to prominence (and subsequent fade in prominence as Django, Erlang, Haskell, Scala, etc. shuffle in and out of the spotlight), right?

There are more PHP developers today than there were three years ago when Ruby started getting folks attention. Book sales are up for PHP while they're down for Ruby, etc. I'm not at all suggesting that RoR isn't awesome or that it isn't alive and well or anything of the sort. I just know the reality of the market. We have thousands of web developers using our software...and I can assure you that the vast majority are working in PHP, despite the fact that we went to great lengths to add a nice RoR environment a couple of years ago (we also added some Python niceties, but it aint exactly mainstream, either). In fact, I'd probably even go so far as to say that more new PHP developers came into existence during the rise of RoR than new Ruby developers. So, not only do I think Ruby on Rails won't surpass PHP eventually, I think it's been falling further behind PHP all along and will continue to do so, just like most languages in the web space.

I don't have to like PHP to recognize this. Believe me, I don't like PHP. But, I'm not going to bury my head in the sand and pretend like it is anything but a massive phenomenon. It's simply the unstoppable juggernaut of "worse is better", when it comes to web software development. Will PHP eventually die? Sure. But it's not going to be killed by Ruby on Rails.
This is very similar to my own experience of working with people who prefer Ruby on Rails. The technology is fine, but the culture seems to attract the worst people to work with.
Apparently it matters to those willing to pay for them and those wanting to provide them. In the grand scheme of things I would say this matters just as much as anything else.
There are a couple other points, though:

- Chrome is only available for Windows ATM. Windows boxes are apparently more difficult to crack than Macs.

- Chrome runs in a sandbox, unlike IE or Safari, which adds some security as well.
I designed a Lisp dialect in Arabic, there is Arabic C called Jeem:

http://www.jeemlang.com/index.php?page=examples
This is what people mean by "it just works", because if it doesn't you give up immediately.
You can either submit a link, or you can submit text. If you put both in the submission, only the link will go through.
> PHP will always be better for the "web designer turned scripter" set

Funny, I think the same about Ruby/RoR, it just seems like a perfect crowd/match for "web designer turned scripter" mindset - looks like it is marketed to the same crowd too. PHP mostly marketed itself to "script kiddies", albeit not on purpose. It gained a huge following, and with it came lots of inexperienced kids that could "do stuff" easily. Mainly installing phpNukes, at the time, and modifying phpBBs etc. To say that Rails requires more programming skill than PHP is a moot point considering that developing web application, whatever the nature, could be done in both Ruby/Ror or PHP (with from scratch work or some framework) - thus it relates to the same problem set. Why would solving the same issues in one language/framework require a larger skill set then? It is as if you are saying RoR programmers are l33t, PHPs aren't - which doesn't make any sense, because I believe there are many great programmers and programs written with both.
I swear by this concept:
http://www.homedics.com/products/soundspa-sunrise.html
Even just a simple timer on a lightswitch or lamp works for starters. I find the natural sunrise effect to be less jarring however.
I used to use an X10-type system as well, controlled by a server to dim lights at night and brighten them in the am. This was ideal but X10 was flaky so I'm using the SoundSpa Sunrise until I can upgrade to something more reliable.
If you want to work on Windows support, well-tested patches are usually accepted.

Why use a non-POSIX os?
Looks interesting :-) the problem with giving away ideas like is that exposure of your current interests and daily life. A quick glance and I know a bit of your daily life :-)
The description by niels_olson is thorough and in large part amounts to "how to get to sleep earlier". The pg comment simple cuts to the point and says "get to sleep earlier" without the medical explanations of "how and why".

The are both very useful and correct answers to the OP. I don't think it needs to be funny. Its simply correct. Most of us have far too much to do every day and end up working too late. If you want to wake up earlier, you have to stop doing that.

I'll leave with this one (also not meant to be funny):

"Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise."
Thanks, I didn't know that, seems an odd choice though.
I forgot to mention...for those occasional must-get-up-very-early mornings, I drink a coke before bed (usually I'm tired enough it doesn't phase me) and sleep with the light on. 4-5 hours later, I'm up.
I would be personally irritated if I was this guy's manager.

Who cares about some middle manager's opinion?

Offering this in the spirit of advice. I've been hiring people in the valley for 10+ years. I used dejanews to screen applicants prior to google... today yes we will read your tweets, find your blog, and skim it all to get a sense of who you are. Be thoughtful about what you post.

It sounds like you are looking for people who will shut up and churn out mediocre code for 8 hours a day. There's certainly a market for that, but I doubt the author of this article is interested.

If I write a blog post about how much I hate cleaning up toxic waste, that will limit my opportunities for employment cleaning up toxic waste. But who cares, I would never do that anyway.
certainly combos also can include free and premium service.

with scale model -- you better have a landmark vision and the ability to execute exceptionally well.
why would you choose a web framework which requires you to change your operating system? That's asinine.

Your desktop operating system != your server operating system.

There are no "windows web frameworks" and that's not a coincidence.
If you're serious about bringing something online then your first step should be to learn the proper tools anyways.

Insisting on a windows-platform only because that happens to be your preferred desktop OS, now that would be asinine.
Online game gets banking licence
King Camp Gillette - Inventor of 'Freebie Marketing'
No blog at the moment. I'm trying to save all the big ideas for my startup's blog; the more immediate and/or irrelevant ones I might throw them out to the public here.
I've had a very similar experience, but I have been wanting to see how the more current versions hold up.
For people stuck on windows who would like to try a TextMate-like editor, check out http://intype.info (still in alpha at the moment, but quite usable).
He may be targeting Windows users (since there are an awful lot of them), or want to tie in to some Windows-specific functionality, or a host of other reasons.

Of course, JRuby on Rails (Rails on the JVM) is also a very viable option, and comes with a few nice features you don't get in Rails (Job scheduling with Quartz being my favorite), at the cost of having to deal with the complexity of the JVM (GC tuning is a pain in the ass).

The framework and language you chose are only a part of your company strategy.
It's all a matter of context. The New England Journal of Medicine makes the Symposium read like Tom Clancy.
Yeah, I have to be skeptical of the idea that the "Aspergian geeks" (to quote a linked post) are crushing the designers. If that complaint were true, Google stuff would look more like Jakob Nielsen's design aesthetic.

How significant are the designer departures? How many designers does Google have?
"One day I would love to hear about these disasters." - Have you read F@W?
This would seem to address some of the concerns about Safari that are being discussed along side the recent Black Hat conference. It was mentioned earlier that Chrome had been the only browser not to fall due to the sandbox method of thinking. Seeing as Chrome is based on webkit, it is basically "Safari in a sandbox".
Boy with 176 IQ is 1 in a million
Textmate has huge marketing... NOT
More specifically:
skype-profitable, but hemorrhaging money for ebay, ebay $1B in the hole
facebook-not profitable, needs new investment
youtube - not profitable, hemorrhaging money for google
digg - not profitable, can't find a buyer
reddit- acquired for a pittance, can't find advertisers
delicious- don't know

See a pattern here? Other than the big search engines, I can't think of very many startups that are cash flow positive. Unless you're selling something or licensing, simple mathematics will tell you it's very hard to make millions from ad revenue alone.
Facebook Goof Cripples Controversial Homepage Poll
I agree that there is certainly much more to learn. However, I feel that running my own few companies over the past 6 years (on the side) has taught me much more (and much more quickly) than employment has to teach. My recent elevator pitch contest wins and entrepreneur of the year award are also good motivation for me to go ahead and take the plunge. I think it's time for me to have as much confidence in myself as others seem to have.
"I think the same about Ruby/RoR, it just seems like a perfect crowd/match for "web designer turned scripter" mindset"

And that is probably one of the greatest strategic weaknesses of Rails - it will be used by those who shouldn't use a web framework, who will make every silly mistake and that could tarnish Rails reputation beyond repair.
"Probably most people who read this site can write reasonable code. So what is the problem?"

Business is not just code. Ask yourself these two questions: if ICANN or the FSM yanked your domain and the cloud/linode/dreamhost/datacenter went belly up tonight, and nobody was able to reach your website, will you still be in business? that's the difference between a website and a business.

The other question: if you invested a few grand and flew to a conference and paid all your expenses to industry cocktail parties, how many actionable contacts are you able to bring? a business idea can be realized off-line.
While not only delicious, one reason Rice & beans is preferable to Ramen is that it is a complete protein[1], "a source of protein that contains an adequate proportion of all of the essential amino acids for the dietary needs of humans" [2].

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_protein
[2] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_and_beans
Is Facebook's new design a failure?
3rd Int'l AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media
I understand that he has to eat. But making enough money to eat is not that hard.

And it isn't just Apple's problem (or just Microsoft or just Google). It's my problem, too. It's my mom's problem, too.

Think about the case where a user's data is compromised.

With great power comes great responsibility, and whatever other cheesey statement you want to make. I would feel personally responsible if I found an exploit and later that exploit was used to compromise someone's bank account or private correspondence.

My conscience is more important than my stomach. I can find other ways to eat.
Yeah, programming is the easy part of execution. It's naive to think that's the only part of execution. Getting customers is execution. Scaling your business is execution. Monetizing effectively is execution.

Why do you think so many startups fail to get any traction? It probably has little to do with the quality of their code.
These are actually my 3rd and 4th companies. I know that roller coaster well, and I love every minute of it. Unlike the droll monotony of mid- to large-company employment.
Even when I want to I have a hard time going to sleep early (like before 3am)

I partially blame the computer, since it seems to energize me. If I'm tired and I start using the computer I am no longer tired.
I've read the original post, and this is something I've given serious thought to. Is there a good health insurance solution though?
PG seems to have done pretty well with viaweb, even though it was a fairly brief part of his life.

In any case, though, I would take issue with the idea that 'profit first' is necessarily a 'lifestyle business'. That seems to be comparing apples and oranges.
I think the point he's making isn't about the correct way to choose a shade of blue, it's that real design work encompasses far more than picking colors.
Yeah, I went back and forth about linking to Joe Clark's post b/c he goes over the top more often than not -- but there's also truth behind his hyperbole here, so I included it.
Yeah, this is actually an issue we've encountered with Tripeedo.

As a UI element, the calendar widget seems clunky and outdated -- yet if you don't know the exact date of your travel, it's nice to have a visual prompt. So there are cases where text input alone might not be sufficient. The user might need or want more guidance.

It's a challenging task to try to integrate both input mechanisms at the same time. We're exploring it though.
Samsung i760 Verizon CDMA
Samsung i760 Verizon CDMA has come out with very much suitable features and functions with amazing view which attracts you and your friend. The i760 offers business users a full-featured device with messaging capabilities, various wireless options.
I'm starting out of the DC area with very little expenses. I would move to SV in a heartbeat just to be around people who I can talk to. Being "groked" gotta be worth something.
Not necessarily. As you can witness, PHP attracted lots of "newbs" and guys that generally don't have a clue, or are just installing drupals, joomlas and whatnots while proclaiming or being proclaimed as PHP gurus. It did get a badge of being a shit language to php, like visual basic (which rightfully deserves so IMO - php does not), but it did fine. Culling of the masses that don't have a clue happens spontaneous, and usually follows them being hoarded into a separate camp - compare to the "normal" hard working php guys and joomla, drupal stuff.
One of my main problems with Google's design isn't how plain it is, it's just that it looks half finished at times - it doesn't need more, but it doesn't look like it was well thought out.

This could very well be intentional.

Take speaking a foreign language as an example:

1) If you're a novice, a native can tell right off the bat and cuts you some serious slack.

2) Even if you speak their language at an intermediate level, a native can still tell it's not your first tongue and, depending on your demeanor, cuts you some slack.

3) You speak their language fluently and can be considered by any native speaker to have mastered their tongue. However, when you (confidently) mess up in the slightest, you can very well look quite retarded to the natives.

In Google's case, that half-finished look could be very intentional and can look a bit humble, as in "I'm sorry I haven't had time to clean up the place, but please come in and make yourself feel at home".

You can feel a bit better knowing you don't have to be constantly alert as you would around the presence of perceived perfection.
On dispute, dereference your word->concept pointers: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/02/taboo-words.html
Do you know about generic views?
http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/generic-views/

...and ModelForms?
http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/forms/modelforms...

In my experience, "simple CRUD" often gets complicated by permissions or other special cases, but generic views and modelforms are useful tools for hammering out a lot of the basics very very fast. Both of them allow for some degree of customization, but should be helpful in achieving what you want.
Not that I've seen (maybe in a plugin?) That being said if you use scaffolds to create your models, some of this functionality will be there (CRUD actions on models). You still would need to add a navigation wrapper around these (pretty easy) and the authentication.
Is there a way they could test improvements without pushing them on 150 million users? I have to imagine they already have some internal testing process.

What's a good practice?

Also, Matt, love the new site theme. I think I've been convinced to finally give up white on black (Except for my terminal. It'll be a cold day in hell before those design nazis convince me to change the colors on my terminal).
If your question is sincere, read http://bit.ly/q2Sp
Thanks a lot for the helpful comments!

I removed some unnecessary sentences from the frontpage, but I guess it really needs a thoughtful rewrite to become easier to read. English isn't my first language, so I always feel like my English writing ends up contrived and doesn't quite grasp the natural flow of the language...

The idea of using primarily images on the front page sounds really good, I'll ask the graphic designer to think about it (but it naturally depends on how soon she wants to spend her free time on this project again).

Of course, if any of you native speakers feel like coming up with some better copy for this software, I'd be absolutely relieved to take your help :)
Biz Stone downplays SXSW as cause of recent Twitter glitches