skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is awesome. I was going to build something myself with ribbit.

Think over the pay-per-call idea very carefully. On one hand it feels good to potential customers, but if they are in a real emergency, knowing that each of those little robo calls costs them 1 euro or whatever will start to grate.

Also, pay-per-call diverges the incentives. They are essentially making a bet with you. The better their uptime (good for them), the less revenue you get (bad for you). It's dangerous to build in a divergence like that if you want repeat business. You might want to charge a yearly fee plus a small charge per call.
Great Entrepreneurs Believe in Karma
SeeqPod - The Playable Search Engine - Free Music
One of the flaws of these articles is that they are vastly simplifying the instruments built. From reading, you might think that you understand how to build a CMO or CDO, or to analyze one. I don't, and you don't. I am not actually sure that, after the author of this article's software went into place anyone could. The government has had months to examine the private books of some of our more nationalized-like asset managers, and is still throwing darts. Regulation that requires revealing everything, but does not require minimum standards, is like being able to bypass QA and security reviews by providing access to the source code... to multi-million line programs. Yes, eventually you can work it all out, but not in time to be helpful.
Could you please explain why it is "wrong" to publicly criticize a company that is misbehaving, particularly one that centers its business largely around being a venue for public criticisms of other companies?

This premise keeps being bandied around by GS defenders here and elsewhere, and I'd really like to hear the logic behind it.
we already knew that J.F. likes to approach anything to do with 37S from the angle of highest exposure and maximum cheese, that is disappointing, but I wouldn't let the messenger taint the message, those features of get satisfaction are 100% deceptive whether J.F. said it or not.
"With great power comes great responsibilities"

Taking a leaf from that book, 37-Signals do have great power, with SvN, which is a very influential blog read by many people in the start-up ecosystem. They should then also have the responsibility to use that influence for good, not evil. Viciously attacking another start-up without warning is not a good action.

A big difference between GS and 37S there is that GS can plausibly suggest that this was unintentional, whereas 37S actively published this attack on their blog.

So where intention is concerned, 37S are the bad guys.
Giving up IRIX for WinNT? Well. Death to the unbelievers I say. I never forgot the shock when they had those ads with ther PeeCees in the computer magazines. Up until that point SGI and SUN where kind of the good guys to me.

Now, how could they have done it differently? I'd say: build up the lead in gaming consoles and developer workstations they had ad the time. IRIX/MIPS had also some technical advantages over Linux-Clusters in some niches like military simulations. They could have become some sort of NVidia in our days. Does any one has a more qualified strategy / commentary about SGI's demise in the markets to offer? Thanks.
I think that this whole issue was handled completely wrong. Jason should have sent an email to the company first and foremost, and if they didn't do anything about it THEN it would be ok to put it out there publicly.

You have to give the company the chance to right their wrong. It very well could have been an overlooked detail and again it could have been exactly what Jason claimed. However, Jason didn't give them a chance to make it right before attempting to drag their names through the mud.

Heck, even one of the managers at 37s wrote on their comments section that when they have customers complain, they encourage them to send them emails and not post on some site out in the middle of the ether. That is basically what Jason did, instead of complaining about the site to GS he complained about it on his own site where the GS staff had to go and find it. Hypocrasy much?
This article seems to talk about software in general. This would have to be the hardest product to price. It takes an enormous effort to produce it, but when it is complete, it is almost a public good.

This article really made me start thinking about software pricing:
http://journal.dedasys.com/2009/03/27/software-economics-pub...

I'm not sure how to figure out how valuable software is, but I know it's a lot easier to figure out how valuable your time is, and that's a good place to start.
Really interesting. We were having a discussion in #startups a while back about which is higher risk - advertising revenue, or selling to customers.

This sort of thing makes me a bit uneasy - will the company pay $5, or $500k, will anyone else pay that? It seems slightly more like a lottery to me than advertising revenue. With advertising revenue you have maybe a few thousand advertisers all deciding the correct price to pay. If you're selling to customers you don't have that...

Obviously the two aren't exclusive, and it completely depends what sort of product you're aiming to create, but I'm personally glad I'm not selling to enterprises - I'm not good enough of a salesperson :/
The Real Scoop on Honda’s Brain Controlled Asimo Robot
Index funds based on Dividends are available but are not yet mainstream.

The main purpose of an index funds is that it "aims to replicate the movements of an index of a specific financial market"(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_fund). Since markets are themselves naturally weighted by the largest players in the market, it makes the best sense to weigh the indexes the same way. Example: Swings of Exxon stock will change the market much more than "Jack's Tools."

Index funds capture the market, not beat it. To try to beat the market violates the Efficient Market Hypothesis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_efficiency)
This "bounding box" experiment seems interesting but I think might be more clearly described in this way:

Say "This product is free" to see what roadblocks and bureaucracies are in the way of your client actually using your product to a degree that you may generate a sufficient amount revenue.

- AND -

Say "This product costs 1 million dollars" to find out how much the client has valued your product at (i.e. they think its worth only $450K)

Doing these things avoids you underpricing your product as well as revealing any additional hindrances or costs associated with adoption.
...is also the second rule of conficker
printer-friendly single-page version: http://www.informit.com/articles/printerfriendly.aspx?p=1168...
Programming doesn't require much math per se, but almost all domains in which a computer can help do require math.

If you don't know any math you could waste your time rederiving concepts from first principles when you could just have learned the established theory.
I posted this in the last thread, but the connection here is more clear:

Paul writes in his startup FAQ:

"The one book we encourage startup founders to read is Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. It's critically important for anyone in business."

If you read that you get that one of the central points is: don't put people on the defensive. Guy Kawasaki in Art of the Start has a paragraph labeled "Wait When You Hate":

"Although you should always answer e-mail in under twenty-four hours, there is one case where you should wait at least twenty-four hours before responding: when you're angry, offended or argumentative. E-mail written when you're in these moods tends to exacerbate problems, so delay your response."
Just read "starting from no" by Jim Camp. Similar advice...totally recommend it.
Those "getsatisfaction" people need to be eradicated.

TOTAL rats in suits - I wish I could tell you all who and what, but a person I know (former client) has enough on them to get them thrown in the bighouse.
G-20 about to start
It totally depends on the type of programming. A lot of programming these days deals with business systems (after all, business tends to generate money. At least, I think that's the point). You may not need any kind of complex math to present interesting web applications or generate reports, or process credit cards. However, if you're in the business of developing applications to sell, or figuring the shortest path to send parts down a conveyor, or writing a compiler, you can see how you might need differing levels of complex mathematics. It all depends on your situation.

I do, however, agree with the point that in the general case, programmers tend to be able to learn quickly, and learn the types of things to help them with their current problem. But if you don't have a grounding to even know where to begin looking for answers, you have a bigger problem.

Certainly all programmers do not need heavy math skills. But it certainly never hurts. All things being equal, I know which one I would rather go with.
I am an adherent to the Efficient Market Hypothesis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_efficiency) and thus try to capture the market (through index funds) and minimize cost.

Ideally, the best way to do this is own multiple non-correlated indexes (Example: Gold and the S&P500 are negatively correlated). I own my indexes through Vanguard.

A well diversified portfolio that owns stocks (of all capitalization both foreign and domestic), bonds (treasuries and corporate foreign and domestic), real estate, commodities (Gold, Silver etc) and Cash (multiple currencies) will generally provide positive stable returns continually.

In my opinion the big "to-do" with most peoples 401ks is that they are VERY poorly diversified and way to heavy in stocks.
Which implies that if a sufficient number of web sites cease to work with IE6, such sites will "touch it"?
Tim Ferriss seems way more savvy than Kevin Rose
Thank you, HN. I started to comment on Jeff's post itself, but on the way down I saw so many people agreeing with him that I gave up in dismay. I'm happy to see the HN crowd has better sense.

All I'll say is, if you lack math background, then you may well end up doing things like making mincemeat of trying to explain NP-completeness. Just to pick a random example (heh).
I'm an artist. I could project it in a public space at night, for example. Or incorporate it into a dance performance. But it's ok if you don't want me to use it. Perhaps you could tell me what software I could use to make my own?
For all the complaints about how Jason Fried should have given them a holler and jawed it out person-to-person, none of GS's defenders note that they aren't doing what one person would do upon accidentally wronging another: apologize.

Of course, there's a very good reason for that: saying "Sorry" can be cited as a possible admission of guilt. Really, it looks like GS is trying to establish a public record that they acted quickly to resolve these problems without admitting wrongdoing at any point.

That isn't behavior that's very consistent with "smart, but naive guys at a startup". If they didn't run out and get a lawyer and have him/her start looking over their copy and responses to the blog post, then they're more sophisticated than their defenders give them credit for.
Thanks! :) There are a few API-type options like Ribbit available for those who like to tinker and we actually considered using one of them first for RoboNOC. However the value-add we're trying to provide is both ease of use but also redundancy and security, and so we built our own infrastructure to not be reliable on any one third party.

You have a very good point on the pay-per-call. Going to pay-per-call will of course drastically change the revenue models and forecast, but is of course (or at least looks like) a better proposition for new customers. Combining per-call fees with a yearly charge might be the best of two worlds but will also need careful work to communicate effectively and not complicate things.
Followup to Xinha/Xinha Here! (I forgot these...)

* 2007 Evaluation of WYSIWYG editors: http://www.standards-schmandards.com/2007/wysiwyg-editor-tes...

* List of WYSIWYG rich text web editors from Genii Software Ltd: http://www.geniisoft.com/showcase.nsf/WebEditors
Probably best if you do it all in one go, I wouldn't expect much in the way of repeat custom.

I personally hate it when companies don't have a price list up front and use price discrimination. I tend to assume if there is no price there, we can't afford it - not sure if that's good for business or if you just to talk to the people with lots of money.
I forgot to mention the benefits of Indexing from a personal perspective. It is:

-Cheap (low cost)
-Easy (Set it and forget it with occasional rebalancing)
-Safe (As long as you are properly diversified)
-Low Stress (Some portions may have wild swings, but the negatively correlated holdings swing the other way)
-Good returns (Your investments will never perform below-average)
Some people (like me) have a problem asking for things. "Hesitation" is why Steve Blank suggests considering hiring a "sales closer" when you get to the customer validation stage (the stage where you are asking for the customer's money).

Regarding negotiation, low-balling and high-balling don't make sense in all situations. Especially if you are in a situation where the relationship between the negotiating opponents after the transaction is important.

The best book for negotiation is "Bargaining for Advantage" http://bit.ly/HZwdW. "Getting to Yes" is also great: http://bit.ly/oHSCL.

Avoid any negotiation book with "Power" in the title. =)
Some people must have though, or they would have stopped, and I wouldn't have collected a lifetimes supply of coasters.
I think to fix the education system, you have to fix the employment and hiring systems first. Unfortunately, a lot of people view college as a 4-year job-preparation institution instead of an institute of higher learning.

Then again, you could view the fact that more and more people are starting their own businesses as a potential solution. We're realizing that you don't need to wait to get "experience" or education, so if you can move faster than a traditional job or college, why not do so?
Another C compiler is tcc (http://bellard.org/tcc/) is a tiny C99 compiler that can be used as scripting language.
For iTunes, they do it because it makes them money by selling iPods and music.
A better question to me would be "Why do they make Safari for Windows?". I'm not sure... is it to show different Apple software to Windows users and lure them into buying Macs? That sounds doubtful to me but I might be wrong.

But my question was a serious question: what do you think Apple has to gain from getting the Cocoa/Obj-C developers to write web-apps in Obj-J?
Are you saying you're in Jason Fried's head?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=541696
Looks like an interesting set of applications. Love the site and icon design. Did you design both yourself, hire someone to do it, or do you have a cofounder? If you hired someone, mind sharing their contact details? ajju at hcoop dot net . Thanks.
Yahoo Launches Slick Desktop AIR App For Monitoring Twitter
People keep saying these guys are awesome at PR and are doing a pitch-perfect job of handling this crisis. But the second graf of this letter just shovels more coal onto the fire. If you made mistakes, apologize and move on. Don't ask the people you offended to apologize.
Some UltraDNS customers knocked offline by attack
EBay's crucial app dev project moves forward
6 Software Startups, OSS Shops, and Micro ISVs to be selected for Exclusive Pilot Program
Ruby Is The Future
There's probably young-uns here who don't know who Silicon Graphics is or what they did.

Silicon Graphics sold proprietary unix systems that were very heavily optimized for doing graphics rendering. Their workstations sold from $10,000 on the low end to hundreds of thousands of dollars. They were expensive, but if you wanted to do real time 3D stuff for animation, visual effects, CAD applications, or any type of graphics modelling, they were the only game in town, and you pretty much had to use their boxes.

Their products were amazing in their time, and they pushed the state of the art in computer graphics hardware for years. But, between the ability to create relatively cheap linux based render farms with commodity hardware on the server side, and ATI/NVidia creating great plug in graphics cards for PC's/Workstations, SGI wasn't able to compete. They slowly died and faded away into obsolescence. Some of the last remnants of their technology that people interact with frequently is the OpenGL api.

Silicon Graphics, you will be missed.
Inc: Who are the five most interesting entrepreneurs of the past 30 years?
If you still have to shard with Cloud DB, then yes, Cloud DB is completely useless. But in theory, Cloud DB should be able to take care of sharding for you, and if it can, that'd make it much better than MySQL.
I'm inclined to pronounce it "ahh-mg pop".
Having an employee tasked with monitoring that site is probably a bigger deal than paying, especially for 37s, which runs a really lean, carefully-designed team.
On Customer Development from CEO of RightNow
I'm not sure exactly why there's so much controversy here.

The customers of your website should always come first, and if they use IE6, support IE6. Making them upgrade is a surefire way to alienate them or encourage them to go somewhere else. (not to mention, if you already support IE7, supporting IE6 is not that big of a stretch)
This is good advice if you never have to deal with the person again. In other words, this is the advice used by used car sales people, etc.

In normal business negotiations this is very bad advice. Using tactics that ask for ridiculous concessions paints you as either stupid or manipulative. This type of attitude will get you classified as an asshole, and customers/vendors wont ever want to deal with you again.

Negotiating a single deal with outrageous outcomes is not as important (for most businesses) as negotiating 200 deals successfully with the same customer.
How Tough Is It Today Being a VC? 10 Questions for Two Early-Stage Stars
37 Signals/Get Satisfaction Conflict Resolved
The comment is from Thor Muller, CTO of Get Satisfaction. GS basically implements all of the demands from 37s.
I'm puzzled by the suggestion that this was an angry screed Fried tossed off in a rage and immediately posted.
Non-linkjacked version: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=541658
You use the word "apparently" when you really mean "potentially". You can use a non-free image...

* ... for purposes of education, criticism, or comment ...

* ... noncommercially ...

* ... and only by ensuring you don't dilute the mark by causing confusion about whether the owner approved it.

It is not at all clear that 37s couldn't lawyer up on GetSatisfaction, even after yesterday's cleanup. Of course, 37s probably won't do that.
The comment is from Thor Muller, CTO of Get Satisfaction. GS basically implements all of the demands from 37s.
Google’s Cloud Computing Platform Aims to Fuel Growth of Web Apps, Users, Revenue
YouTube engineers top last year's April Fools joke
PEP 401 -- BDFL Retirement
Newspapers Begin to Use Zillow
so would the corollary be that it's very hard to overprice your product?

Well let's make the rule of thumb more explicit: hackers tend to undervalue their own products. Why is this? And what are some solutions?

1) We have many examples of free services that rely on ad revenue that we feel we are competing with

Solution: realize that only massive sites can get away with this as a true business model. On regular sites this will at most be a lifestyle business.

2) Hackers overvalue money relative to their clients (understandable if you're working for ramen money, the first 24k a year is the most important)

3) Hackers undervalue their own labor because we have fun doing it

Solutions for 2&3: um, stop doing that?

4) Hackers don't correctly value how much labor our product is saving people, and how much that efficiency is worth to them.

Solution: This one can be fixed simply by knowing your demographic really well and putting feelers out. "how much would you pay for x?"

does anyone else have any other reasons?
I personally preferred Virgle from last year ( http://www.google.com/virgle/index.html ).
So I'll actually buy that there are confused 37s customers out there and that a loud blog post will help alleviate that.

But a note AFTER the resolution would have had a similar effect. Something like, "We had an issue with GS-- we thought their language was confusing and, when we reached out, they agreed and made some changes. BRAVO! We've asked them to drop a note to anyone who's posted a question on 37s GS areas to let them know where they can get help if they want to talk to 37s reps. They agreed. BRAVO!"

i.e. do the blog post, but do it after the happy ending.

Does a bombastic blog post get more attention and probably capture a few eyeballs that it otherwise might not? Sure. Would I ensure respect for my newly seeded lawn by savagely beating up the first kid to walk on it? Sure.

Kids and startups make mistakes. Let's be decent human beings when they do.
potatolicious has a point.

In fact, in universities, logic (formal logic, with symbols) is usually taught by philosophy departments.
In Get Satisfaction You have to pay a ridiculous amount of money to remove your competitors from a support page you didn't even create on the first place? HOW IS THAT NOT BLACK MAIL?
Microsoft Underground Research Lab
So? Clearly some of their users are.
"grow out of this eye-for-an-eye, two wrongs make a right crap?"

2 wrongs don't make a right, but the second wrong also doesn't excuse the first.

In other words, no one is perfect but that doesn't mean we don't, at times, have the right to call out other people's mistakes–especially when they overlap into our own lives/businesses.
Twitter Spam is Tweeting Me Off
I plug this every time George Orwell comes up. A Fantastic piece on writing, language, and how language influences thought.

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm
Thanks nameless editor!
Reminds me a little of www.readmytweets.com and a couple other apps. Is it built with Rails? Python?
BlackBerry App World Launches
Regarding negotiation, low-balling and high-balling don't make sense in all situations. Especially if you are in a situation where the relationship between the negotiating opponents after the transaction is important.

I agree that there are circumstances where high/lowballing isn't appropriate: You don't go to a long-time customer and start negotiating for 10x the cost for the same service. But in the case of a new contract, that highballing will set the course for the following deals. You get more at the start, and the following deals will all follow a similar price-point.

Furthermore, by demanding high at the beginning, and then coming down, the person with whom you're negotiating will feel as though he/she "won" the negotiation, due to the huge concessions you made "He was asking a million dollars for a plan and we got him for $250k."

My point is you can highball and still have a solid post-negotiation business relationship.

I will definitely be checking out your book recommendations though.
ESR: Beyond the rhetorical fictions about “free software”
Really interesting in light of the 37Sgnals crap over the last few days. What kind of karma doesn't kicking a startup who made a mistake in the nuts generate?
Actually, that's probably a decently valuable domain name...