skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm not sure if it's pleasant, but I can be fairly sure it's a ronery place to be.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xhve8_team-america-im-so-ro...
How Big is Facebook?
Personally I would experiment with different sources and different types of adds. The main thing to do is find out if the adds are working.

If you are advertising online there is always the big two - Google(Adwords) and Yahoo(Overture). I would also have a look at some online comics. The two bigest ones focusing on gaming are:
* http://www.pvponline.com/
* http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic

There are about 50 other comics that focus on gaming. Each one focuses on different types of gamers. So if you can try different comics.

The most important thing is to make sure you know how well your campain is going. If you haven't set up a marketing funnel I would probably try to setup on of those first:
* http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/01/understandin...
* http://brianwong.com/blog/funnel-visualization-with-google-a...

If you have a revenue model you can even justify spending more money on advertising. Even if you are just trying to BUY market share it is worth know where you will get the most bang for your buck.

Nathaniel Brown - http://www.adinobro.com/
Does anybody know what time the Sunday demos actually start?
While there are always exceptions, I'm guessing most startups that are around the 10k user mark have plenty of free low hanging fruit left in terms of improving a user's experience or getting more traffic in general. Whatever you end up doing, you're going to get a lot more bang for your buck with a more optimized flow.

Personally (and without knowing more about what you guys are doing), I'd spend the $2k exploring different avenues to get a better idea of what kinds of things do and do not work. It's hard to know what may or may not work sometimes without trying it, at least a little bit. Seemingly similar startups may have very different levels of success with things like untargeted Google Adwords, targeted Google adwords, other methods of product placement, etc., and while you can't always get conclusive evidence from $2k, it's a start.
Will your application scale?
If anyone needs to bisect an intermittent bug, I have written a bayesian version of git bisect. It can be found at: http://github.com/Ealdwulf/bbchop/tree/master
Open Source Shooter Nexuiz 2.5 Released
Nexuiz is a free open-source first person shooter that runs on Windows, Linux and OSX.
I'm on OS X and downloading it now, looks awesome. Can't believe I hadn't heard about it before considering the first version was released May 31st 2005.
Having used stumbleupon ads I'd have to say that the quality sucks. YMMV but for our main site and our news site StumbleUpon didn't add anything for us.
I also do a lot of Python development and a bit of HTML/CSS work. I recently had to toss up the pros and cons of an MBP versus a Dell XPSM1530. The 1530 won on the grounds that it was £700 cheaper than the Mac, more powerful and a better screen. The related cons (Vista, being a Dell) aren't so bad and I'll upgrade to Win7 when it comes out.
One Thing Google IS Doing With Twitter
Are the websites/games free or paid?

If it's free and you're really after eyeballs, you might considering utilizing methods that give you a higher reach. I'd think about websites with a low CPM/PPC rate that reach your demographic. I'd also consider spending that money on developing a good FaceBook integration.

If you games are paid, I'd consider spending a little more on PPC/CPM rates to get a high quality audience.
I like the simplicity/extra screen space of Chrome. It's like browsing Firefox in full screen (which I never actually did). No toolbars, extra security (even because it's still new and not very popular), and great startup speed.

Overall I think it's the bias towards usability in favor of facilities that does it. Even the speed is a symptom of this.
It doesn't even need to be on your site - there is a certain digg user (I forget his username) that always does a bait & switch with content.

Basically he sets up microsites that look well designed (it's usually a very simple single page design) and have relatively funny content aimed at the Digg community.

He then submits that content to Digg, pushes it, waits for it to frontpage and then changes the page to have a "sponsored by" or similar message at the footer or header, but so it looks like it's part of the actual original design.

He does this often (perhaps twice a month?) and the cost is very minimal to him, but sends several 10's of thousands of users to his main site and each of these microsites provides Google juice for his main site.

He has also managed to pickup additional traffic from bloggers looking for content via Digg.

Since your main target is teen-20something females, I'd probably start thinking up comedic microsites related to various celebrities? They always seem to be a fairly easy to hit target.
If you use Amazon S3 or Amazon CloudFront services I suggest that you use CloudBerry Explorer freeware product to manage them. http://cloudberrylab.com/
Don't feel like it is a commercial I am a bootstrapped start-up like you and I just want to spread the word about my product.
Most, if not all, of our elementary and middle schools do have "friendly" names, and as far as I'm aware all the high schools have and go by actual names.

Examples: I went to PS 230 and 217, the names of which I never knew nor can remember now, then to Cunningham IS 234, and graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School.

And, having gone through the public school system in NYC, I can tell you first hand that the right district can make all the difference, mostly because of the environment. A smart student will always be a smart student, but a smart student in a poor environment might well end up incredibly bored when he is unable to move beyond the level that the school teaches at. The largest problem facing the NYC school system has been, for years, the high student to teacher ratio. When I was in elementary, the number was something like 32:1, at one point I remember having 36 kids in my 4th or 5th grade class. The benefit that 'good' schools and districts have are that they usually don't have to abide by the same standards as the rest of the city in teaching and course material. So, while class size might still be rather large (it's gotten better I'm told), teachers are at least free to teach at a higher level and hopefully make a bigger impact.
It's not the pressure, it's the fact that you're on your own. You're the man with the highest experience all around. If you make a mistake, or much more common don't put your efforts in the most efficient direction the only feedback you get is the market. Which while honest is definitely not gentle.
Unfortunately, there's apparently an ongoing patent dispute between these guys and Ceravision, both of whom claim to have invented the technology.
Amar Bhide "In Praise of More Primitve Finance"
Behind the Scenes: The Business of the Ballpark
Core Proposal:

Let’s revive the radical idea of narrow banking and tightly limit what banks (and any other entities that raise short term deposits from the public) can do: nothing besides making loans--after old-fashioned due diligence--and simple hedging transactions. The standard would simply be whether the loan can be monitored by bankers and examiners who do
not have PhDs in finance.

Anyone else: investment banks, hedge funds, trusts and the like can innovate and speculate to the utmost, free of any additional oversight. But, they would not be allowed to trade with or secure credit from regulated banks, except through prudent loans whose collateral and terms can be monitored by run of-the-mill bankers and examiners.
I'd go for a Mac. If it's too expensive Linux computer would do. Windows use a lot of resources (IMO) which would be very necessary in web-side development.
I was very surprised first time I realized scientific research is a lot like... work. Not so much thinking as I imagined, and a lot of other stuff. So I'm not surprised to find out somebody took a domain where the work can be automated and did it.
Heh.

This sounds like the story-telling of a bitter old woman whose age prevents her from stepping out of her cocoon to learn how to operate technology.

I usually approach situations with the mindset that I might just find that doing something differently might prove to be better than my current methods. Buying an iPhone and learning how to operate it was definitely one of those moments.
The power of a tiny picture (how to improve your social network brand)
Internet marketing videos with Frank Kern, Jeff johnson, Jeff Walker...
What's your site? A link or name would help us understand your product better. It's always easier to give advice when we see the product rather than blind.
Ubuntu is as low maintenance as it gets imo.
You missed http://tagz.in . Yes, Tagz is a bookmarking site, but it also gives a short URL. I had suggested the developer to add the Short URL facility to all pages, but is unfortunately available only on the user's own saved page. If enough people ask, the developer might give the facikity for all links.
Also consider that if you write your app with a little bit of "code responsabiliy", usually when you need to scale, you have so many users that you can afford to rewrite your code thinking about scaling.
This is just more of the "edgy", baiting-headline fluff that newspapers are resorting to more and more - probably because it can be served up by anyone with an opinion (as opposed to a reporter or editor with an capacity for meaningful analysis.

Even NY Times has to troll the waters of the lowest common denominator.
If you're asking government to act as your agent to put limits on behavior for your own benefit, that seems rational.

If you're asking government to act as your agent to put limits on behavior for my benefit, why not mind your own affairs and let me mind mine?

I don't claim that all commerce is allowed.
I do claim that government ideally gets its power from the people's consent, rather than the other way around.
Since so many pros and cons have already mentioned, I'll just add that the Mac keyboards are not so super for coding (at least the german ones). It doesn't have "Home", "Page Down", "Page Up" or "Del", other keys like "~" and "\" require weird keyboard combos ("\" = alt+shift+"/"). Probably not an issue if you are a whiz with Emacs or Vim, but I tend to not remember many keyboard shortcuts, so atm it still bothers me occasionally (I am fairly new to OS X).

The MacPorts package manager works surprisingly well, but I still miss my Ubuntu when I have to install other stuff than the Unix things.

Also, the preinstalled programming languages on OS X might get in the way of the ones you install with MacPorts. Another case where I prefer Ubuntu, because it reduces the number of "app managers" messing with the system.
I use virtual desktops and use multiple screens. I find it much easier to glance back and forth between two screens (or three, or four) than to switch virtual desktops and locate something. (This may be a training effect though)
(Just wanted to say that Chrome for Linux/Mac is still definitely in the pre-alpha stage, and that current appearance/flakiness is hopefully not indicative of the final product. I switched to Chrome for most of my regular web browsing, and I hope you will revisit it when its ready ;))
You can physically fit 42U in a single rack, but you can't run that many servers off the regular per-circuit (which is often per-rack/cabinet) AC power limits most datacenters provide. Each circuit is usually 16-20 amps, this is in my experience about 8-10 2-3U servers (your hardware should have wattage and amperage documentation). You can get higher power density (and sometimes cheaper prices) if you use DC powered hardware. You can get more circuits, but they often charge incrementally more because as the servers per square foot ratio goes up, cooling requirements go up also (you pay for cooling as part of the price for the physical space), and the power limits are a way to help keep that under control, predictable, and homogenous across the datacenter.
Mostly agreed, but beware that the UNIX layer on OS X is BSD-based rather than GNU/Linux-based, so it's not exactly the same as Ubuntu or Debian etc.

The biggest win on OS X for me is all the slickness of the desktop (Ubuntu doesn't even come close), and adding easy virtualisation to drop into any OS you want (my choice is VMWare Fusion, but Parallels or Virtual Box work too). Best of both worlds.
What software are they using for this voting thing?
Ext Core 3.0 vs jQuery, a comparison
Desktops are a matter of personal preference. I am a Linux Mint (Ubuntu with some additions) user. I have used other people's Macs occasionally and I dislike the desktop.

The advantage Linux has is that if you do not like the desktop you can switch to another.
What Sun means to IBM
Microsoft has released a program called "Web SuperPreview". It enables you to compare pages both in IE6 and IE7/8.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=8e6...
As someone who is doing programming nearly 90% of my working hours, and someone who used all three major systems (OS X, Vista, Linux), I would suggest you go with a computer that is giving you highest raw metal power for the buck.

If you are really working and not playing around with desktop cpu monitor gadgets or trying out hundreds of time organizing schemes instead of doing some actual work, you will come to the conclusion that it's not that much about the editor, or the OS you are using, it's all about cpu and memory cycles you wait for while compiling, debugging, testing.

Since Macs aren't actually known for their "bang for the buck" ratio (in hardware terms), I'd go with a PC and install either Vista or Linux. Mac OS X simply doesn't add that much value to justify the price difference (plus it has its own quirks and wtfs).
Bah! Reading all the bickering on this page about a blog entry about bickering has been a huge time-suck, including formulating this response. If you have come across this comment please leave before it's too late!
I hate counterproductive articles like this which make it that much harder for legitimate gripes about the iPhone to be taken seriously.
If you think skype + screen -x is a replacement for Mac OS X screen sharing you should really try it. It's more like Skype + VNC, but a VNC that works much better.

This is the working pattern, you and the other side both see the same screen and can type and use the cursor at the same time, while doing high quality voice chat. So you have for example a terminal with vi opened and code while talking, then open Firefox to reload and check what happened to the application after the modifications and so on.

All this very fluid under a common DSL line. It's almost like being on the same room.
Right. I ran to read the docs, I had thought there was a possibility that they could allow users to choose if they want to wake apps up as a setting, but no, seems not.
So, instead of employees crying about their salaries they are crying about their level.

Humans are this way. We are a jealous and want-it-all-even-if-we-dont-deserve. It's not a problem of salaries or level, it's a human problem.

Said that, I say that Joel's method seems a better to me.
It should be ExtJS, not Ext 3. I don't know how a linux filesystem can battle jQuery.
Okay, so apparently he is now working on something called uwiki (pronounced micro-wiki, because the u is actually a symbol that looks like u)

http://www.flownet.com/ron/code/uwiki.html

I am trying to analyze his choice of Python.
Python in my opinion, is a practical language, not a fun language.

Perl, Ruby and Groovy are all in my opinion more fun and interesting to work with than Python.

Perl is my opinion, hardcore and the Perl community is again in my opinion by far the most interesting.

Ruby, well, its hip! I guess, and all the girl developer are using it.

Groovy combines Java's practicality and the fun of using a dynamic language with advance feature, like closure! or Groovy's definition of it

Python, well, yea okay they have Django and TwistedMatrix, other than that I believe Python can destroy more careers than Java, C++ and Visual basic combined, the community is so dry and the language is so boring ... which I believe makes it an effective deterrent to any free-spirited individual

Python was one of the first languages I tried, and I have to say that it knocked me out! and I am still recovering! The Python community just killed my enthusiasm to be a programmer.

What I believe killed Ron's career, is that he never cared if Programming was fun! And it seems he still don't!
Lisp is smart, intellectual and intrigues you to think, but not very usable and the brackets thingie, its annoying.
Python is not thought provoking at all but very usable and practical.

Perl, Ruby and Groovy are both!
Executive Summary: AT&T's service is poor in her area. The author was not able to get comfortable with the virtual keyboard.

The title is link-baiting. But, the article is actually a fairly well-written short story. It is personable and does a good job of describing one person experience with an iPhone. The author also does a good job of personifying the iPhone.

Generally, people who love the iPhone love it because it is a cute device that brings them joy with every shiny icon, round corner, and animation. Generally, people who are frustrated by the iPhone are tormented by things like the virtual keyboard and dropped calls on AT&T's network.

The real take-away is that for a product to be successful, it has to be functional, but it also has to make the user "feel good". It has to be delightful. And what is delightful to one person may be frustrating to another person.
I've already replied to this thread but I thought I would add another anecdote about using ads. This is just my personal experience, but I think can underline that you really need to be creative.

Personally, I think online ads are mostly a waste of money unless you get a good, measurable conversion from those ads.

Using Adsense for mostly branding or signing up free users is, in my opinion, the wrong approach since everyone is doing it. It ends up a war of attrition with who has the bigger budget, with the only winner being Google.

That's not to say you can't do very interesting things with online ads from a branding perspective. I've used online ads to great effect to create notoriety, the ad units themselves didn't increase traffic, it was the word of mouth associated with what I was doing with them.

Last year when I was spearheading the campaign to get Rick Astley the Best Act Ever award at MTV's Europe Music Awards, a bit of a rivalry occurred between the Tokio Hotel fans and the Rick Astley fans - I used this to my advantage.

Essentially, I leveraged Google's Adsense to plaster simple flashing (annoying) "Vote 4 Rick" ads all over other fansites around october 20th when the site's traffic was flat.

Post's below contain screenshots that blog readers were sending in of ads in action.

http://www.bestactever.com/2008/10/20/please-stand-by/

http://www.bestactever.com/2008/10/23/this-oozes-irony/

All up, I think the ad spend over a 10 day period was about $20 .. it was around that, I don't remember it costing me too much.

You can see the traffic increase to the site as people became interested again with what was occurring and telling their friends of the pranks that were happening.

http://files.marklancaster.org/images/bestactever_traffic_oc...

In one case, I managed to embed a rickrolling flash ad in a certain Tokio Hotel Fansite, belonging to a critic of our efforts. She got so angry that she actually disabled advertising for her site so that I couldn't get ads in there.

http://www.bestactever.com/2008/10/26/unappreciated-gift/

I also started targeting certain fansites directly, specifically one fan fiction site because they used Project Wonderful and the Ad unit was relatively cheap.

This is the message that the admin of that fansite sent to me via project wonderful. I found it to be highly amusing and this is the first time that I have made this public. I literally had every ad spot on their site filled with a flashing "Vote 4 Rick" ad which cost me the minimum $5 for project Wonderful and lasted about 4 days.

Hello Mark Lancaster,

Darcy Gilmore has sent you a new message! The message is:

---------------------
Subject: Your Ad on our TH Site

I love that you're advertising on our site, it's ingenious! Keep up
the hilarious work, it's making all of our douchebag members foam at
the mouth, and nothing pleases me more than that.

So, I guess the overall message is get creative. Create Purple Cows. Nothing beats word of mouth dollar for dollar.
CSIS Agent Canada: Front Man
This is an old article from 2004. I was watching The Good Shepherd and after some googling ended up here. It's a good read. A personal story of a Canadian spy.

Hope you all appreciate it.
Did you read the entire article? The author says jealousy wasn't really a problem after all. The bigger problem were to keep motivation of the highest ranked people, and the mismatch between this system and the rest of the company. I found this very interesting case study.
The Little Handbook of Statistical Practice: http://www.tufts.edu/~gdallal/LHSP.HTM

It's the best stats resource I've come across, particularly for the stats behind split testing and multivariate testing. I've used it as a reference while building an A/B testing system in the past.

For considerations in building a system to perform split testing and using such a system, the folks working on Microsoft's Experimentation Platform published an incredibly helpful paper: http://exp-platform.com/hippo.aspx
The os doesn't matter as much as the tools : text editor, programming language, etc
I did read the article. Just because the author says 'jealousy' wasn't the main problem I will not think otherwise. My opinion is that it was. Only masked.
Villagers block Google Street View
Changed it to Ext Core 3.0, Ext JS is the foundation.
Froo, you are absolutely right. He was also very involved in the audio animatronics for Disneyworld creating the robotic Abe Lincoln driven by magnetic tape. and the multi-plane camera was an amazing invention for its time (the shots still hold up too). I was just surprised about the trains because even with those inventions you mentioned he was the "idea" man and the quality control czar. With the trains he was actually turning the handle on the mill. Great comments, and thanks for the links!
We shoot for that much, but scaling has taken time away from just straight up feature development. One way or another, it's a great time.
You can also try free http://www.virtualbox.org/ from Sun.
you might also like Tremulous - it's got a rather original gameplay (for a FPS)
To me, this sounds like the virtual equivalent of evacuating a whole neighbourhood because of allegations that someone is doing something illegal there.

The people who have been force-evacuated should sue the pants off the FBI and Verizon/AT&T. If they can't, then the law in the US is really quite ill-suited for online businesses. Perhaps they should look for their hosting needs in other countries.
I used to use Parallels but I've switched to VirtualBox. It's free, open source, and works at least as well as Parallels: http://www.virtualbox.org/
Why don't you make a list on http://listable.org? It'll automatically organize the list into more useful data formats.
he was the "idea" man and the quality control czar

Not to mention the taskmaster. Disneyland was built in a year from groundbreaking to opening day.

There is a quote I've read (which I'm essentially paraphrasing now because I can't find the exact quote) where a journalist asked Walt how they managed to construct Disneyland in 365 days.

Walt simply replied "We worked all of them"