skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I would have guessed that if you wanted to create a paypal for the next ten years you would want to go the opposite direction on the technology >> people friendliness continuum.

There is a lot to be done on making payment online painless & friendly. There is lots to be done in making accepting money easier and friendlier. There is even more to be done in making managing money cleverly easy.

I'm not sure how much work is still to be done on making those things safe & fraud proof. That happens less publicly. Could be a lot to do. But I suspect that the projectile in the other direction.
I tried implementing GTD but it didn't stick either. However, there are tons of useful things you can pick up just by reading GTD-the-book, going through some of the methods and seeing what clicks with you. For me the two-minute-rule and concept of breaking a task down into actionable steps really changed the way I do things.

Another thing I picked up from GTD was 43 folders - although I don't use it as gospel, the concept of sticking things that don't have to be done yet away in a folder for when they _do_ need to be done saves me so much brain-bandwidth (I use RTM to manage this).

I recommend the book to everyone, really; even if you don't end up a GTD-lifehacker, I'm pretty sure you'll find a few things that work.
Ahhh, but we do know. The Wikipedia article also says:

"..at the Harvard Business School in the early 1960s, suggested that the Marketing Mix contained 4 elements: product, price, place and promotion."

And then:

"Product: The product aspects of marketing deal with the specifications of the actual goods or services, and how it relates to the end-user's needs and wants."

Market research has been a subset of marketing for over over four decades now - modern textbooks will give you the exact same information I quoted above. While I'm sure the market researcher was a lovely girl, she's no substitute for reading up on the matter.
This is why people don't have money. 40,000 people in Europe pay $7.42 a pair of socks?

1. Collect socks

2. Figure out how to get people to pay 5x retail for something readily available everywhere.

3. Profit

who has time to shop for new ones?

Hmm, it is time consuming. I mean, the whole grabbing a package takes forever.

There is nothing that is less satisfying to me than going to a store to buy socks.

Yeah, it's just so difficult and disappointing. I guess she's got a really hard life what with her sock problems.

--

The article compares them to Netflix, but Netflix is different - they're offering a service at lower cost with greater variety. This company is offering less variety at higher cost. This is why people have trouble with their finances - they start spending money they don't need to be spending on services and products they don't need. Yeah, everyone needs socks, but they don't need a service to sell them socks at way above retail. How hard would it be to bookmark socks you like on Amazon and order them when you need them? Or go down to the local store and purchase them?
Web 3.0 Conference...
Why not just do symlinks in /usr/local/bin?
Old news; the article is from 2008.
Yes. You can be a dignified person and not be entirely stiff and formal and boring. Dignity doesn't mean you can't be rude at times or have a sense of humor. It means that you know when to be what, and you treat things you deal with with respect.
To be honest, when I read something like that, what I hear is "techies are rude, antisocial, lazy and obstructive". Then you get images of guys with bad beards and no girlfriend. Because that's the inverse stereotype.

Brand is really important for an Internet startup. Perhaps more important than many traditional business -- because you're handing money over to someone you can't see, for product that you can't touch.

I'd say their brand is one of the Google's most pivotal assets. A bit hit to Google's brand would absolutely impede their ability to do business, and to subsequently make cool technology (coincidentally, there are threads about this on HN right now).

Either way, the thread's about 200 people getting fired from Google marketing. I hardly think I should get emotive on the issue, but certainly not something I'd ever feel like crowing about -- and not something I think is an "us and them", which is what this thread is really implying.
How would other investors react to this? It seems an obvious case of letting one investor in at valuation A & another at valuation A+B with anchoring in the relative value of the company at these two points.

Is the socially correct in the investment world?
That's so wrong that it hurts.

There is no legal obligation to file in the Defendant's court. US law allows a lawsuit to be filed in (1) the plaintiff's home court, (2) the defendant's home court, or (3) the home court of the jurisdiction where the events giving rise to the lawsuit took place.

Forum selection clauses ARE NOT BINDING UNLESS SIGNED IN WRITING. Most courts will not honor forum selection clauses between consumers and corporations due to the unfair bargaining power in the relationship. The other primary justification is that the corporation can afford to travel to a city where they willingly do business (i.e., provide goods or services.)

CHOICE OF LAW CLAUSES ARE BINDING. That simply means that the the court hearing the case may have to apply the law of a different state.
You don't run a $100M business like you run a $1M business.

In the $100M range (and before), you start obsessing about gross margins, tax issues, renewal business, reduce on-going discount practices, etc.

When you are in the $1M range, you are focusing on gaining your first customers and it doesn't really matter if the deal is profitable or not, each sale makes you grow by leaps and bounds.

If you are detail-oriented, you'll enjoy the $100M business. If you are a born-entrepreneur, you may prefer the 0-to-1 adventure. I know where I stand.
That's so wrong that it hurts.

There is no legal obligation to file in the Defendant's court. US law allows a lawsuit to be filed in (1) the plaintiff's home court, (2) the defendant's home court, or (3) the home court of the jurisdiction where the events giving rise to the lawsuit took place.

Forum selection clauses ARE NOT BINDING UNLESS SIGNED IN WRITING. Most courts will not honor forum selection clauses between consumers and corporations due to the unfair bargaining power in the relationship. The other primary justification is that the corporation can afford to travel to a city where they willingly do business (i.e., provide goods or services.)

CHOICE OF LAW CLAUSES ARE BINDING. That simply means that the the court hearing the case may have to apply the law of a different state.

TALK TO A LAWYER. Don't trust random comments on an online technology discussion board, especially where those comments claim that you don't have legal rights.
Here is the unencumbered and original link for that:

http://www.newartisans.com/2008/04/git-from-the-bottom-up.ht...
PChart - a PHP Charting library
googles sales are pretty low touch
For the most part-

Except for enterprise sales that includes their search appliances, apps and gMaps API's. The sales folks were pretty top notch and always got me the info I requested in a timely manner. Plus you get a phone number that will get you to a real, live, breathing human. Really! :)

Though, IMO, laying off 200 folks globally is not that huge considering their total head count. (I say this loosely as those affected certainly are not happy about losing their jobs)
Terespondo.com. Comically tiny team compared to Overture. Yahoo/Overture bought it in 2005. At our high point we handled search advertising for 7 out of the top 10 sites in Latin America: UOL, Buscape, etc. Even MSN became a customer.
Dependency Injection Container in PHP
As I posted elsewhere, that's just wrong.

FORUM SELECTION CLAUSES ARE NOT BINDING ABSENT A SIGNED WRITTEN CONTRACT. EVEN WITH A CONTRACT, ALMOST NO COURT IN THE US WILL HONOR A FORUM SELECTION CLAUSE BETWEEN A CONSUMER AND A CORPORATION.

Think about it: if forum selection clauses did have legal effect (between consumers and corporations), you wouldn't be able to sue most companies unless you were willing to go to Delaware (where roughly 90% of naitonal US corps are headquartered). The reason we have lawsuits everywhere is precisely b/c you can file anywhere, even despite a forum selection clause.

ONLY BUSINESSES NEED TO WORRY ABOUT FORUM SELECTION CLAUSES.

Choice of law clauses are different.
Offtopic: why is there an 'apps.ycombinator.com' mirroring 'news.ycombinator.com'?
AIG probably also has a higher percentage of physics PhDs than Google.
Perhaps most people have the thermostat on their water heater set higher than it really needs to be? On the other hand, as a bachelor, I concede that my hot water usage pattern is not the same as an average household with a family of 3 to 5 people. I typically do use 100% hot water for my showers. The only exception to this is if I run the dishwasher or the washing machine a few hours before taking a shower, which will result in 100% hot water being too hot.
I don't know why he wouldn't have. Google analytic really pushes everything else in the market out just because of the price.
October news: "Pumpkin Sales up 1000%"
November news: "Pumpkin Sales plummet"

Month on month tells us nothing (in this extreme example). Year-on-year (ie, Oct 09 v Oct 08) give us an indication of strength or otherwise in a market, without seasonable variations.

Having worked with 120+ Real estate agencies (in Australia - US cycle will differ) I can tell you that every year Jan will be 'down' from Dec, Feb will be up, September will always show an increase over August, and Dec will usually be bigger than Nov.

Reporting just those figures would look like the 'housing market' was an unpredictable roller coaster - up one month, down the next, when will it end, think of the children!?

Sure, in many instances (your business cashflow, for instance) both data points are useful. But year-on-year removes more variables and is therefore more important.
Facebook Is Hunting for More Money
and it doesn't really matter if the deal is profitable or not,

Um, it matters more, if anything. SV mentality is not the path to success. The faster you get profitable, the better your chances overall.
"Facebook board member Peter Thiel told BusinessWeek the company did not need to raise any more money and had sufficient cash to continue at its current growth rate."

The last journalistic quotation I saw from Peter Thiel was this gem: "Thiel won't say precisely where he values the company other than to say, 'It's worth more than people think it is'" (also from a Business Week article). Where do I get a financial officer like that?
I personally avoid tools like these out of respect for my users' privacy. Log analysis is fine, having their data absorbed by Google is not. Also, using GA creates additional lag. Many times have I waited for a page to finish loading with the Google Analytics URL in the status bar.
Not only medicine undermines biological evolution. Evolution works in such a way that those who make more children become dominant. 'Many children' is not one of the values of our society, so people whom our society values most do not drive the evolution.
Demystifying Interaction Design
Unix Philosophy in Application Architecture
Replace Google with most large Co's out there and the argument is still valid.
In most ways, I agree with you, and the comparison to Netflix as a value discussion makes no sense.

Clearly, though and if we trust those numbers, this is a service with a demand. Part of that may be the value it delivers - I mean, if I'm earning $2M pa that's about $1000 / hr, so going to the store or even jumping onto Amazon isn't going to pay off for a while. Even hiring an assistant to buy socks regularly mightn't be worth it.

There would still be a cheaper way, and using hourly rate math is fraught with danger, but this is pitching itself as a premium service. I'm guessing they're nice socks, and it's hassle free. So I'm putting it down as yet another idea I wish I'd had / implemented.
I have undertaken that same task; working at it for about a month. It gets easier. (http://dailymis.com/?p=55)
Twine - organize, share and discover information around your interests
New drawing feature added to Google docs
When is Adderall going OTC?
Alexa says (for ycombinator.com, of which 95% is HN)

USA - 52.8%

India - 12.3%

UK - 5.3%

Germany - 5%

Canada - 3.5%

No, I don't claim it to be accurate :)
I know a lot of people will think this is ridiculous, but I would pay for something like this. I hate shopping and I seem to perpetually be short on socks and underwear. Unfortunately, I never remember when I'm actually somewhere that sells them.

Actually, I take it back. Socks are consumables, but they're not perishable, so it would seem to make more sense to just buy 100 pairs every five years or something.
Not-so-crazy alternative to more finanacial regulation
I love this idea even though it is expensive. I would never pay these rates, but I think they are missing out on revenue gold. If all the socks you get are the same, like the article says you gather a lot of socks. But if you throw in variety to the sock it is inevitable that people will lose one.

This makes it so that your customers become life long customers as they would always have to replace the mismatched socks. This eliminates customers dropping out after 4 years.
Your mental leap from "They don't want to partner with my company" to "They don't want to make money" is a bit off.
Network Visualization of Contributions to the 110th Congress
Using recently published data on campaign contributions collected by the Federal Election Commission and aggregated by the Center for Responsive Politics at http://www.opensecrets.org, our visualizations track large money donations to members of the 110th Congress over the 2003-2008 window. Entities that receive TARP bailout money are highlighted.
Google seems to generally ignore customer support altogether.

My company used to pay $750/yr for their anti-spam enterprise scanning package they sell as a separate product from Google Apps. When I contacted them, via email, about a bug I had found, they said email support was only available to customers that spend $1000/yr or more. They sent me a link to their Google forums...
Enginocracy?
Google searches for holy grail of Python performance
Doesn't Google even use script.aculo.us themselves?
I've been doing something like this for a couple of years -- Picked a popular/long-lived brand of sock, and that's all I buy. No more pairing, no more pairs lost due to losing one, or one getting a hole.
When people quote financial figures, especially anything to do with real estate, I actually assume the opposite unless they explicitly state "month over month." It may be a bit counter-intuitive at first, but it is the convention of financial reporting to be implicit this way.

As JacobAldridge points out, it is used to account for seasonal variation; an article that looks to month over month figures would seem anomalous for this same reason. But it takes knowing some of the nuance of the industry and how it is reported to understand the what and why of the convention. I'm not a realtor, nor do I work with realtors; I just find that sector interesting to read about, enough so that some of the nuance rubs off. :-)
the founder CEO can become caught up in the initial “vision” and stick to it regardless of external market input that would indicate changes to the initial value proposition are needed to capture broader market adoption

This bugs me like the idea that public companies are legally obliged to maximise shareholder value.

Aren't you supposed to build something you want? Build something you're passionate about? Isn't the current economic collapse and markets overflowing with a slurry of average products a symptom of companies focused on growth and money and market capture instead of doing a good job?
If you're posting a bizdev email, I would just assume you would respond, even if it's with a "Sorry, we're heads down on other stuff" response.

3 weeks without a response makes me think they don't even bother reading it.
Sorry, it's a totally crazy proposal. What he is proposing is moving liability beyond a certain point to the stockholders. Try this scenario on. Your 401K is invested in a mutual fund which holds some portion of AIG, maybe your equivalent is 10 shares. AIG holds some significant percentage of the $60 trillion in derivatives out there. Are you prepared to pledge your assets to cover your share, say $100,000? Thought not. (Lloyds of London works that way. That's why they dont let us join.)
Saul Griffith: An Engineer's Approach To Climate.
Was this a reply to karl11's comment? [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=534333]
"It might have been predetermined, but there's still an act of choosing, a weighing of possibilities, a judgment between them, and action. And those judging them later will too be able to judge their judgment, their character, and make decisions based on that."

And that would all be predetermined too.

Someone came up with this before me: you should believe in free will because if it exists you're right and if not you couldn't have done otherwise anyway. It's like Pascal's Wager, except not stupid and wrong.
PayPal killed lots of accounts to fight fraud, pissing off lots of people. I think payments makes for an adversarial business, making customer support harder.
Upvote for accuracy. This is the best solution to many problems. Liability should only be limited between two parties through a contract. It's ridiculous how by paying the government a higher percentage of your profits you better protect your own assets if your company hurts a third party (ie pollution).
This would easily be the easiest way to solve many problems, as the author points out, but it is also the only time I've had to grant credence to the argument it leading to a race to the bottom. Usually you only hear left-wingers say that when they complain about free markets or sweatshop labor abroad, but this is a reform that might actually drive out business abroad. I don't even think America has the economic clout to make this an effective measure when the status quo is so widespread.
It's a great idea, but at a time of psuedo-protectionism taking hold in and each territory at local and state level trying to carve out their own economic niche industry, it's as politically nonviable as it will ever be.

One more thing: Don't assume that they could go after all you're worth, either. No one would associate with an investment, that, if gone awry, would ruin them financially. The point is that liability would be determined on the market between individuals, and there wouldn't be a one size fits all LLC. There would probably be enough to discourage irresponsible behavior, but not so much to make investors fearful.
PHP 5.3.0 Release Candidate
If they want to reply with the fact that they don't want to partner with us, that's fine. We simply wanted to add the feature to our enterprise application and were ready to pay licensing for 2000 users (and growing daily). The problem is, they didn't even respond with that - so my assumption is the bizdev email is being forwarded to /dev/null at the moment.
2008 UserDriven Hall of Fame and Shame
Take 10 seconds right now and think of the one thing (product, service, website, software, gadget, whatever) that really works for you, that's so elegant in its design and operation it must be the result of a good feedback loop between the product designers and its intended users.
Does anyone have this kind of data? I think we lack a standard definition of what a hacker even is, let alone usable metrics. Prove me wrong if you can, it would be incredibly interesting.
I also just want to chime in and say that I absolutely HATE websites that feel like they're been over-designed.

perfect = hackernews

horrible = digg.com

I feel like the "uses webframework python $buzzword, javascript $buzzword $buzzword $buzzword" speaks to this. SOOO many websites have got too many distracting buttons and things to click on, and no actual <i>content</i>. Look at something like craigslist...its perfect. It's clean, and it gives you only the information that you want.

Look at hackernews...same thing, nothing but content...yes there is some of that web2.0 (i hate that term) sauce on it, but it is a compliment to the content, not the main attraction of the site.
I don't think it's that crazy, just totally different from what we expect. It would make sure that those who make the risks actually PAY for the risk should it sour. The type of leverage that you talk about is irresponsible when it is associated with bad assets, like sub primes.
Don't assume that they could go after all you're worth, either. No one would associate with an investment, that, if gone awry, would ruin them financially. The point is that liability would be determined on the market between individuals, and there wouldn't be a one size fits all LLC.
It could be taken as a reply to both. To karl11's comment, it could taken as a caution not to read too much in MoM sales figures. Some of (a lot of?) the variation seen could just be seasonal variation, or even insignificant noise.
Not directly, though karl11 and ellyagg both made similar points about the author's criticism of month-on-month stats.

Ellyagg also said "This post's headline is needlessly provocative and misleading." , which prompted me to respond.
Terminal Emulator Security Issues
Although I am new to HN I have tried to contribute in a positive way and have not, until now, left a negative comment.

Being a founder is about getting things done, busting walls down and doing, often, the unthinkable in terms of effort and brainpower to prove your thesis correct.

Based on your question, you probably aren't ready.
Quite old, and my understanding is that they don't do this anymore. Anyone have an updated info? A google search on Roderick Vosburgh find nothing recent.
Solution: Stop caring if your socks match.
Reason #4 That You Need File Virtualization
It's Time to Drop the 'Expectation of Privacy' Test
You know you've got a Hacker News problem when...
Might be a fun list...

I'll go first:
Someone shows you a new site and the first thing you say is "where is the business model? That'll never work!"
Real estate, same store sales, car sales. Pretty much all purchasing varies year to year, not month to month.

I actually can't think of any sales figures that are relevant month to month.
See where I said "usually"?

http://www.scselfservice.org/small/plaint/smallplantfiling.h...
I would agree with you completely. I would point out that for a media and public concerned with the current state of our economy, a year over year statistic is useless. Everyone knows that housing prices are down significantly from the same time last year. A month over month increase sparks hope. An argument about whether or not month over month numbers are valid is one I'm not educated enough to make. I am merely stating that it makes perfect sense for the media to report those stats the way they did, and it isn't because they can't read data.
No, unless the attorney is defending himself/herself or is a general partner in a law firm being sued:

116.530. (a) Except as permitted by this section, no attorney may take part in the conduct or defense of a small claims action.

(b) Subdivision (a) does not apply if the attorney is appearing to maintain or defend an action in any of the following capacities:

(1) By or against himself or herself.

(2) By or against a partnership in which he or she is a general partner and in which all the partners are attorneys.

(3) By or against a professional corporation of which he or she is an officer or director and of which all other officers and directors are attorneys.
Microsoft Announces SuperPreview for IE Browser Testing