skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
LiveJournal is a pile of crap (actually it's not, there're some things that LJ does right that FaceBook etc. still haven't gotten) and easily copied and yet...oh wait, Friendster ate them for lunch.

Friendster is a pile of crap and easily copied, and yet it...oh wait, MySpace ate them for lunch.

MySpace is a pile of crap and easily copied, and yet it...oh wait, FaceBook ae them for lunch.

FaceBook is a pile of crap and easily copied, and yet it...oh wait, Twitter's eating them for lunch. ;-)

Network effects tend to be strongest when they connect people who have never interacted before and would not interact without the service. For example, E-bay buyers and sellers don't have prior existing relationships - they need E-bay to find each other. If you're a buyer, you go where all the sellers are, and if you're a seller, you go where all the buyers are, and you can't communicate with a whole mass of buyers at once to say "Let's go somewhere else." Same with Microsoft: developers go where customers are, customers go where developers are, and neither know who or where the others are until they put out a product on Microsoft's platform.

The problem for social networking sites is that they've largely just codified existing social networks, which all have plenty of backchannels to use instead. So if something clearly better comes along, they send a mass message to all their friends (or just talk about it in school - remember that the public school system is a far bigger social network than anything online) saying "Hey, I found this great website, everybody go check it out."

I've got a bunch of friends I met online through the Harry Potter fandom. When I met them, everybody was like "Are you on AIM? How about LiveJournal? Here, let me get you an invite code." Then in 2005, when FaceBook came out, there was a flurry of friends-locked posts saying, "Are you on FaceBook? I'm Full Name @ College" if they were in college, or "Are you on MySpace? I'm ScreenName there" if they were not. Now, my friends list looks like, "Anybody on Twitter? Send me your screen names so I can follow you!" followed by a bunch of "Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter..." messages.
Is this a serious question? Internet Time was a marketing gimmick by a watch company. It's like asking why "Bat Time" didn't work.

Me, I'm still holding out for this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_Calendar
To correct for the problems sins of loaning money to people who probably couldn't pay it back, he's loaning money to small businesses that probably can't pay it back?

I guess it's a relatively small amount.. so I'll still continue hating his policy mostly for the decision to tax my charitable donations.
Because 1000 units in one day is simpler in concept than 24 units in one day. A hour has no solar equivalent, unlike a day or year. It is simpler, _less_ arbitrary and parallels most of the world's measurement system. It sends the time zone concept to /dev/null and makes changing clocks for daylight savings unnecessary (though to honor DST, it might be a PITA). The end result: it is explicit without any additional context.
Why mercury is forbidden aboard airplanes
You have to understand that some aspects of the work stuff is covered under NDA :)

HOwever..

The personal project is a social network site (still under development) - I built the scalable back end because we secured some funding and were thinking of launching until other factors caused us to re-evaluate. We built the architecture because it is running an evolved version caching server I wrote at university plus some other parallel applications (my thesis was in these areas) I wrote to load balance the Databases :)

On the work front the smaller cluster is essentially a massive cache cluster (like BigTable) I wrote based on my previous work that we use in office for storing the large fast-access tables we use. We process & access numerous pre-generated hashes daily (upwards of a billion). The software can scale as we add / remove nodes. If it needs extra storage it can temporairily grab one of the other servers used for other purposes. If this happens a lot it notifies us we need a new addition: commodity hardware, 64Bit OS with jack lots of RAM and voila :D

The second setup is the hash generation system. The server side of this is a distributed storage system (again custom written). It does work closely with the hash database too.
I cant realy talk about the client side of the above :)

Coding in the scalability was the hardest part of all 3 exercises.

EDIT: and if that sounds cool, well, it is. But it is also a lot of headaches too :)
Two reasons:
1. There's no GOOD reason for this change to happen. It's change for change's sake. Sure it's more logical, but standards of time or measurement aren't changed for just that reason, they get changed when they're shown to be BROKEN and while our current time system is less than optimal, it's far from broken. Blame the Babylonians.

2. Establishment.

Dethroning a company, which has marketing, and products, and such is one thing. But to dethrone a concept requires a great big change, cataclysmic in some ways. Ignoring the first point, Internet time could have succeeded if it only reached critical mass.

Imagine if Twitter decided that starting today they only showed message times in Internet time. Would that be enough for people to quit twitter? Possibly. But would they lose that many people? It's really more about the here and now, so people shrug, call it eccentricity, and the geeks go about educating people trying to make them understand the merits of the new time system.

If it and Twitter hung on, more and more people would come to understand it. This is the first hurdle now behind us.

Many of us Americans understand the metric system, but the government still uses miles, feet, lbs, gallons, etc. So the people then have to begin calling for the social change, and dealing with those who didn't want the change. This is the second major hurdle. Even if a loud and vocal group advocated the change, it would require a great deal of reason to enact the change.

Consider all the clocks that would need replacing. The epic sweeping changes to the clock and watch industry. They would fight tooth and nail to avoid such change. The costs would be astronomical. Sure they'd see a surge in sales from those who adopted the new system, but I doubt they would see much profit after the change to marketing, production, etc.
Picoblogging: for those who don't need 140 characters.
Build your own slide rule with R
Honestly, apply, and make the decision when you get an interview.
I agree that this type of question isn't helpful because it's so easy to memorize the 'tricks' instead of thinking about the solution, but I find it fairly simple to deduct the reason for manhole cover shapes:

First, determine the requirements of a manhole cover (strong enough for semis to roll over it, movable for access, big enough for most people to fit in the hole) and the possible issues (theft, wear/tear/destruction, falling into the hole).

With these requirements, it's pretty easy to design an acceptable manhole cover:

1. The manhole cover must be at least 2' in diameter to allow people to go into the hole.

2. The manhole cover should be thick metal, both to increase life and to prevent theft (some manhole covers weigh more than 80 lbs).

3. The manhole cover should have a hole/catch mechanism in it to help open it.

4. The manhole cover should not be able to fall into the hole, so should be a shape that can't fall into itself (circles are the only shape I know of that follow this).

In the real world, many manhole covers do not follow all of these requirements (I've seen triangle-shaped ones), but this design outline describes the manhole covers near me pretty accurately.

I would argue the 'spirit' of the question (determining whether or not the applicant can use deduction to find an answer to a tricky problem) is still extremely important--it's just that this type of problem (and especially the manhole cover example) has been gamed.
It will be a "New Kind of AI (tm)"
FriendFeed can't compete with a service that they integrate with. Should Twitter close doors, FriendFeed loses functionality. So they can't directly compete at all effectively.

And FB: they have about a billion more users than Twitter, but their recent redesign shows that they certainly think of Twitter as a competitor.

No it doesn't. Facebook's been moving in this direction ever since they introduced the status update. Perhaps Twitter inspired their changes - and it almost certainly did - but Facebook isn't trying to take Twitter users away. Why would they both competing with Twitter? It's miniscule. It's where Facebook was three years ago. Facebook has its own niche.

"Closed" vs. "open" isn't a point of competition? You don't think to yourself "I'm going to take the next 30 seconds to tell people about what I'm up to, do I use FB or Twitter?"?

Of course I do. I act differently around friends than I do around complete strangers.
Well the financial math is simple, no $5k is not enough for you both.

The relationship math is simple as well. After five years of dating, you're probably getting to the point where you are going to get married or break up. If you think you are going to get married, why would you uproot your life with a full time job when you are in debt?

YCombinator is not a silver bullet to start up success. Work on something from home in your spare time. Find out more about your talent for this type of thing.
Do you think that Dreamhost should be expected to hold data longer because there's a chance that some parties might have poor termination procedures and long stretches where they don't check their site or their emails?

Most of the other hosts that I've dealt with delete data from terminated accounts immediately.
Is there any reason you couldn't just sign up for another account? Different credit card? Not the same as getting another year for $10, but you'd have unlimited bandwidth and disk for a year for ... $10.
My situtation is a bit unique, because I'm using EC2's for Windows server hosting.

I tried using something like Web Faction or Slice host for a while. And, while they were fine, my *nix admin fu < Windows admin fu. So, it was taking me five times longer to set up a Unix server on slicehost that did what I wanted it to.

I was frustrated, so I tried to set up a Windows server on EC2 running a WAMP stack. I had my site up and running within a few hours. I looked around for other Windows hosting solutions, and about my only other options were to get a dedicated box at 2x the price.

It's been running flawlessly for a month. I'm really happy. I really don't see my self using anyone else for hosting right now. If Azure starts looking ready for prime time, I'll check it out, but right now, it's EC2 for me.

So, not only is EC2 more convenient for me, it's actually cheaper than other Windows hosting options that I found.
The article makes some good points, but unfortunately is based on 0 firsthand knowledge.

Yes, machine learning+semantic web "sounds like" like oil. But neither of those technologies are very relevant to alpha.

Yes, prolog had an algorithm for making deductions. But the point of alpha is not to make logical deductions, but to run computational models and analysis based on a vast dataset and human input.

The idea that alpha "answers your question" is something that wolfram implicitly put out there in his blog post, but often its more like a computational version of wikipedia.. you enter an entity and visualization-heavy page is generated to explain and explore it.

Hand-curating data and algorithms may sound silly to someone who hasn't built something as big as Mathematica, but the world of important/relevant data and algorithms is ultimately finite in size (if very large and complicated).
Also new the single run queue bottleneck removed, single node will be able to take advantage of more than 8 cores.
Repeat after me, more programmers is not the same thing as better programmers.
Didnt know there was an IRC channel! Does anyone have the channel and the server?
Facebook Flyer PPC Campaigns
I find it odd that Facebook is able to perfectly meet budgets on the flyer ppc campaigns. This is essentially saying that they're willing to doctor the going rate for a click marking it up or down in order to hit a specific number. Does anyone know anything where they can expand on this? Google, Yahoo and MSN ppc have the caveat of going a certain % over your budget because of the market. Facebook's techniques seem shady here.
That's a fair enough reason to dislike something. I hate curriculums to begin with. They limit a teacher's freedom in a way that I dislike.

There was such hype over a kids book and in my free time I was reading many of the sci-fi classics, and when I finally got to reading Harry Potter it was just an extremely campy version of Ender's Game. I believe even Orson Scott Card (who's a fan of Harry Potter) pointed this out when J.K. Rowling targeted her own fans for the Harry Potter lexicon for 'stealing her ideas'.

To be fair, Rowling reminded the world that writers can be superstars given the right context. They reminded a lot of serious writers that literature isn't necessarily dead.

As for the Ender's Game comparison: Harry Potter is far superior. Ender's Game is better-written on first glance, but it does a lot of things I really dislike. As I get older, I like Card's writing less and less.

OSC himself is a hypocrite. He praised Deathly Hallows as one of the greatest moments in modern literature. Once Rowling called Dumbledore gay, OSC, who's devout Mormon, took every chance he could to insult her for that decision and tried as much as possible to show that he wasn't a Harry Potter fan after all. He completely about-faced. The man has a decent writing style, but his opinions are pretty messed up.

(I'd argue with you about the maturity of Harry Potter's plot, but I doubt you want a long diatribe about a book series you're not a fan of, so I'll clam up.)
Why doesn't the world speak Esperanto?

That question is well answered by Justin Rye's FAQ about Esperanto:

http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/

The short answer is that Esperanto is much harder to learn than Esperantists claim it is, and thus it has never had many speakers, and thus it provides lousy return on investment for learning it. The total number of all Esperanto speakers in the whole wide world (at any given level of proficiency you care to define) is less than the number of new speakers added by English or Chinese in a single year. There will always be much better return on investment of time, money, and effort to learning any of the top dozen or so natural languages than to learning Esperanto. And that's why Esperanto is the language for which tomorrow never comes as to it being widely used as an auxiliary international language.

Studying Esperanto is a fine hobby, and one I have engaged in, but it is a poor solution to the practical problem of communicating with more people who don't know your native language. I say this as a person who has learned multiple languages from multiple language families.
Depends on what you consider "thinner".. The Dell would fit in a 3mm smaller slot but won't cut cake as well.
You said your GF is in school right now. If that's so, how will she move with you to SF? She won't be able to go to school (unless the school allows 100% telecommuting or she decides to take a semester off).

Remember that the $5,000 +$5,000n is an investment in YOUR COMPANY, not a paycheck. That money is meant to cover the founder's living expenses during the YC round. I think you will have a hard time using that money to live off of and support your GF.

If your GF can get a job and support herself (either while still going to school or by taking a semester off) I would say go for it. But if the only way is to send money back to FL then you are hurting your chances of succeeding, and I would find another way.
That's a very nice way of saying the Air is for idiots who have too much money and are more impressed by shiny stuff than by real merit.
Did they pass that limit on the charitable donation write-off?
IPhone 3.0 has copy/paste, subscriptions, micropayments, P2P, maps, push, MMS, etc
An important question is whether the retention rate will sustain along with the rise of enrollment.

I'd be wary of the motivation of those now suddenly deciding to pursue a CS degree who in a different economic climate would have chosen a different path (e.g. investment banking, financial services, etc.)

I have a suspicion that these folks that do follow through with getting a CS degree are really grooming themselves to hold positions in tech management versus jobs that involve actual coding and engineering.

We saw the reverse effect at the end of the dot com era. Those that had no real passion for technology dropped out leaving those who truly care about the craft of programming to remain and to innovate.
New iPod Shuffle: What Could Have Been
It's in my opinion a much smarter version of the new Shuffle, yet it doesn't diverge much from the original design.
Why not? Dell sells Ubuntu laptops.
I don't interview alone. We used to do interviews alone in sequence but realized we were just wasting time.

You also skipped out on something I explicitly mentioned, which is that there are times I go over when it is called for. (Recall that the median interview result is "obviously no".)

Also bear in mind when I talk about "wasting time", I'm also concerned about the candidates time. Spending 8 hours interviewing someone that you decided "no" on in the first 30 seconds is doing nobody favors. That people defend this practice boggles my mind. (I don't know if you're defending that or not, but I've seen it defended elsewhere.)

(Also note I did not say you should turn them out in 30 seconds, that's not respectful either. They should have a chance to convince you you are wrong. It's rare, but it happens. But the third hour vs. the fourth hour is unlikely to produce any changes.)

Time is money, and that includes the candidate's time. The idea of flying people out for a two-day interview cycle actually sort of angers me unless they're planning on compensating me for it, and I mean with more than a few free meals and a hotel stay.
The Morality of Drones
freenode #startups
Ever try and cut metric threads on an engine (non-CNC) lathe? Hope you didn't disengage the half-nut...
If you're accepted via phone you have to respond right there. If he puts this decision off until then, that gives him only 30 seconds to decide. I think it's better to think this through beforehand.
Banned hyperlinks could cost you $11,000 a day (Aussie Censorship)
Great timing, I was just wishing there were a way to ensure that all advertising be unrelated to things I am interested in.
Actually, I do. Not indefinitely, but 30 days would be a little more reasonable. (And I do recognize that most of the fault was on the client's end.)

Here's the thing: even at the ISP level, drive space is cheap. If they don't want to deal with drives themselves, there's always S3. Or nightly backups with an intelligent retrieval system.

And I'm not altogether ignorant about the ISP side: I worked for a small local ISP (http://spiral.com/), and they have some pretty long-term data retention that doesn't cost them anything and has occasionally made a customer really happy.
FriendFeed can't compete with a service that they integrate with. Should Twitter close doors, FriendFeed loses functionality. So they can't directly compete at all effectively.

That's just flat-out wrong, you can post short messages directly in FF just like with Twitter. If Twitter closes its doors, FF is probably in the best position right now to be its drop-in replacement.

but Facebook isn't trying to take Twitter users away.

No, they're trying to keep the users they already have. You don't think competition includes keeping an eye on the up-and-comers and trying to keep your advantage?

I'm pretty sure this back-and-forth is getting pointless, I'm done.
This is a rough correlate with intelligence testing. There's nothing wrong with that. The problem most people keep bringing up with these things is that you will miss some good people that they have worked with who couldn't have done these problems. That may be so but the real fear should be of people you hire not of people you pass up. Hiring people is much easier than firing people. If you can get someone who's good at puzzles and is good in other ways you've only gained something not lost. I think the other reason people are offended is because they themselves are not good at these problems and take it as an insult.

On another point, you can't just get 'good at puzzles.' It's really not possible. Even if you are learning tricks and techniques for piercing these things that type of thinking can be applicable elsewhere. It doesn't even have to be algorithms. Working your brain is a reasonable thing to do. Just signaling that you are willing to do so can be of interest to an employer.
Phone Apps Hit 800 Million Downloads
just to be amusingly pedantic:

- The manhole cover should be thick metal - in some third world countries this is actually a problem because the heavy manhle covers have a substantial value as scrap metal, and thus get stolen. The heavier they are, the more cash they will bring in.

- circles are the only shape I know of that follow this - a reuleaux triangle can't fall into the hole either. Incidentally this is also the shape used for the turning part of a wankel engine. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuleaux_triangle)

:-)
It's the equivalent of 'shut up and get it done.' I partially agree. It's great to think things through, but things have a habit of happening when you are in the act of doing rather than thinking of what to do.
I think I've found and fixed for hnacademic.com, thanks to the wonderful details here.
A tip of the hat to St. Pat, Erin Go Bragh = Ireland Eternal
A Geek and Musician's Notes on SXSW
You also skipped out on something I explicitly mentioned, which is that there are times I go over when it is called for.

I didn't ignore that, I was thinking about it when I suggested people taking a variable amount of time to perform an interview.

Spending 8 hours interviewing someone that you decided "no" on in the first 30 seconds is doing nobody favors. That people defend this practice boggles my mind. (I don't know if you're defending that or not, but I've seen it defended elsewhere.)

I am absolutely not defending that practice. If, for example, you plan to have six people do consecutive interviews and you also give each person a veto, there is no reason to have person two through five do the interview if person one votes "NO HIRE."

On the other hand, if your policy is to have a discussion after each interview where the interviewer raises concerns that subsequent interviewers may wish to address, then person one might terminate their interview but persons two through five might feel it's still worthwhile to continue. Or perhaps not.

The idea of flying people out for a two-day interview cycle actually sort of angers me unless they're planning on compensating me for it, and I mean with more than a few free meals and a hotel stay

I think you are mixing your strategy for getting hired with a discussion about the best strategy for hiring. I always try to remember that it is not my job to hire myself, therefore when putting together an interview process it may make sense to do things that would cause me personally to decline to pursue the opportunity. To give a very simple example, I personally do not like writing code in an interview. I strongly dislike trying to "Guess the coding style the interviewer is thinking of." I never know if what I write will be not clever enough or too clever, especially when given something ridiculously trivial to implement. I feel a lot of pressure.

Nevertheless... I have had very good results asking candidates to write code in the interview process. Oh well!
Other interoperable phrases could be

"Toughen up Tinkerbelle"
"Grow a pair, son"
"Who wears the pants in your relationship?"
"Just do it" (proudly swiped from Nike)