skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I read all the "contract updates" I get in the mail, as they rarely announce that the services are getting better, cheaper, faster, etc.

After receiving this update, I opted-out my mobile numbers immediately.

Note: if you have multiple mobile numbers on the same bill you have to opt them all out individually.
If their traffic drops a little more, can we finally stop talking about facebook? :)
I have a mashup (http://mappeo.net) that does something similar on the browser with google maps; searches for geo tagged youtube videos.
BTW, anyone has any suggestion on improving the site?
Very cool! Can't wait to have Turku in there ;) <http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&t...;

What I was immediately missing was better keyboard navigation -- how about copying something like Doom (or whatever the kids are playing these days)? I mean a way to at least "turn your head" and go up/down directly from the keyboard.

Maybe it's just me though -- might be that people prefer mouse navigation.
Am I the only one that finds irony in the fact that there's a newspaper article trying to make parents feel anxious about how anxious their kids are?

Isn't this too much cow bell? I mean, what's next? A TV report about the number of newspaper stories that try to make people worry about things?
Coding Horror: A Visual Explanation of SQL Joins
Al Gore & IPCC win 2007 Nobel Peace Prize
The Man In The Arena
I needed this.
Not sure about the intro, but when I found the secret key combination to skip it..... WOW! All my dreams came true. I shall use this site every day.
Wow you must be fun to work with
PG FOWA Video, Q&A, and Ryan Carson's Rebuttal
Sorry about making you all download the veoh player, I tried Vimeo and Google Video and neither worked and at about $0.06 a download I didn't really feel like putting it up on s3 (the original was 273MB)
A good book to re-learn php?
Sorry about making you download the Veoh player, I tried Vimeo and Google Video and neither would upload right and for a download 273MB download I didn't really feel like putting it up on s3.
I have occasionally used php over the years, but not lately. Soon I will probably have to take up project with it again. So I wanted to go trough a book or two. But everything I found have rather bad coding style, just the one for what php if famous for. What would be good source to learn more advanced features and good practices of producing quality php code?
Another favorite Roosevelt quote:

"Far better is it to do mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight which knows neither victory nor defeat"
I'm sorry, but the Amazon SLA is nothing but a slap on the wrist if their service level drops to 'shocking' status. It might be true of a hosting only company that downtime would drive them into unprofitability with an SLA like that, but AWS is just a side business for Amazon. If that, even - if a hosting company got 90% uptime, their customers would leave in droves and not use the 25% credits anyway, which would be exactly the same result that you'd get without an SLA.

The point that Amazon made earlier - that they didn't believe a SLA was important because their internal customers are demanding and hold them to strict accountability - was, I believe, not just a cop out. That guarantees their services far more than some 25% refund for horrible services SLA would. Unless, of course, their internal customers get priority.
I love this. I also needed it.
Awesome. We need a collection for startup entrepreneurs.
Company allows access to multiple virtual worlds through browser interface
The idea I have now is the one I'm pursuing full tilt with a cofounder. At least I have learned something!
I found a couple of minor bugs in virtual forum space, but other than that, it was a very nicely done app.
Nice tutorial. I was already fairly SQL proficient, but that's a handy link to send to someone trying to expand their SQL knowledge beyond simple DML commands.
( Silly meta-discussions: I think it's sort of useless to vote people down below -1 unless they've come up with something that's just blatantly awful, mean spirited, and so on. I don't really like this comment either, but no need to beat up on people too much. )
Oracle wants to buy BEA
Blind Search Test Results
Ten strategic technologies for 2008
I won't try to disagree with the advantages mentioned about Silicon Valley. However, I think there are equally important reasons to live in the UK or in Europe: namely, the quality of life, the way the cities are designed, the public transportation, the people's attitudes. I am an American who prefers Europe and I hope to move over there one day. Silicon Valley is a wasteland. Try riding your bike somewhere. Try strolling around the town center (there isn't one.) If you are going to actually get rich, then it may be worth it to live in Silicon Valley. But if you end up being simply middle class, then quality of life should be considered.

I lived in Fremont for a couple of years, and I can't tell you how much I hated it. Urban sprawl. Nothing to do.
Crazy Web valuations
I just took a stab at figuring out what's up with some of these seemingly crazy Web valuations and buyout deals, from $10 billion-plus for Facebook to (and I really can't believe this) up to $500 million for RockYou.
I agree. The purpose of voting is to separate relevant from less relevant content. There is no such thing as negative relevance. There are negative opinions, but opinions are better expressed with words.
The Irony of Raising Money For a Startup
'm going to guess that this has never happened before. I recently left my day job to spend more time on my own startup, and to spend more time raising money. About the same time, another local web startup contacted me and offered me a job. It was a pretty good offer.
Inheritance is evil, and must be destroyed: part 1
That seems too random -- even by Internet standards...
Djangogigs: Find Developers. Find Jobs.
The book seems interesting: http://bdm.cqpress.com/
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks this is unnecessary. I agree that the 3D looks quite cool, but doesn't fit with local search/events. When I want to explore my local area in 3D I look for a pair of shoes, not a Java applet.
I read this and for the life of me couldn't actually find mention of the New VC model mentioned in the title. Anyone care to elaborate/speculate?
Highly available distributed hash storage from Amazon
The way the author uses the common implementation reminds me of Ruby mixins. One of the things that takes a bit of getting use to in Ruby is that classes aren't types, and object hierarchy is used to share implementation, rather than enforce type.
Having just put a screencast online, I wonder if there is room in the video world for a thin layer on top of Amazon S3 to display & embed video.

While creating an account might be a barrier, you could just charge slightly more than Amazon does for their storage.

Also, you could solve transcoding hell once, and sell it part and parcel as a EC2 module.

A thin layer on top of tools like this Flash Video Player would make it a complete package:
http://www.jeroenwijering.com/?item=JW_FLV_Player
Rite Paul. I agree with you on every aspects. I just have some doubt. I operate in India and run my own startup with two other co-founders. We also tried to pitch to the silicon valley but found a lot of issues and we found it not worth enough. What will say in regards of the same.
It gets a tad repetitive after 4 hours or so..
Ask PG: How many applications?
Unlike other cycles, Y Combinator has recieved a lot of publicity lately.
This has changed somewhat the number of applications? How many have been received?
Information wants to be free, and music is no different.

Freely available music with a mechanism for direct fan support (disc boxes, art, shows, straight up money) is the future. Aggregation of free content with intelligent and/or community based recommendations are also important for discovery of new interests.

Some related thoughts here:
http://www.tipjoy.com/our2cents/2007/10/the_future_of_media_...
Breaking news - Google just bought Zombo.com for an undisclosed amount. We are few lucky people who got to see the home page.
We're not quoting numbers anymore, but more than last time.

It was over a year ago when we started to get a lot of press, though.
That's funny this popped up here today. I submitted this in my application last night (about 4 hours before this was posted) as the something funny or interesting I had discovered. :-)
I hope he's right b/c I'm stuck in Kansas City (Not really stuck, I just love it here.)
I submitted last night, but I just heard about Y-Comb two weeks ago. My founders and I have been working on our project for a few months already.
Usually about a third of applications are submitted on the last day.
MCL (Macintosh Common Lisp) going opensource!
I think this is right on. Users come first and everything else will fall into place. (I'm not saying to ignore everything else, but making users number 1 and letting everything else fight it out for number 2 seems like the best way to work.)
Idea Week, Day #5: Full resolution online video, on the cheap
I posted these thoughts here:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=66828
Wikipedia Hits Mid Life Slow Down
Wikipedia edits apparently declining, peaked in early 2007
Indeed. If an employee of mine ever said to "save this funny crap for April 1st," I'd fire them on April 1st, and tell then that I was saving it.
I wonder what this means about the amount of available human knowledge combined with the minimal interest with pure moral payoff needed to make an edit.

Topics that fill books are given a few pages on Wikipedia. Niche content sites like MathWorld are usually much more in depth, but targeted at experts.

But I think it's important the point out that a peak in rate of edits doesn't mean the content stops growing.
Forget YC. I'm willing to give the founder of Zombo.com $10000 just for being great. It's a testament to mankind's true potential.
I applied to YC once before. It's kind of funny, the idea I submitted this time is something I included in the "What cool things have you built?" question last go around. Anyone else end up doing the same?

As an aside, Media Temple is screwing us over right now. We submitted our application last night around 9 PM EST. Around 4 AM MT took their service down for upgrades and our site has been down since. We're freaking out and still waiting to hear back from them.
> We're not quoting numbers anymore

I'll be blunt and ask: why not?
A Bruise or Two on Apple's Reputation
Interesting. My slant is more to game design, though, and I've never been able to find a web community specifically for it. Something like The Forge (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/), but with video games in mind instead of the Pen and Paper sort. Heard of anything?
I'm guessing it would discourage potentially good candidates from trying if the odds look too long?
Not a judgment, just an uneducated guess: Perhaps it's because Jimmy Whales and some of his people are focusing on Wikia, Inc these days?

I don't think it'd be hard to get more contributors to Wikipedia. Even after all these years you still have to be a geek to really use it, which is a total disgrace IMHO.
Q&A: Foul-Mouthed Blogger Ted Dziuba Tells Why Most Startups Fail
Web 2.0 IS Google
I think you're probably partially right on this one. Most wikipedia articles are fairly shallow compared to treaties dedicated to the topic. That's not a bad thing, as I usually use wikipedia articles as an introduction to a topic I'm not familiar with at all.

However, that means for those topics, people will have to start learning more in-depth things to contribute, or the experts will have to start contributing.

I don't think there's a limit to human knowledge. It might just be an indication that there's nothing new going on recently. Once a new field or topic opens up, I think we should see another explosion of edits.

In the meantime, it'd be interesting to see the edit rates for the other wikifactions, like wikitextbooks, wikiquotes, wikitionary, etc. Maybe the activities have just moved over there.

If this talk on lexicography is any indication, there's still a lot of work to be done in other knowledge domains. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/161

One of the points of the talk was that dictionaries need to be updated in form--it's been the same since Queen Victoria I.
http://www.confusingwords.com/ was a related website that I stumbled upon soon after. It'd be interesting if wikitionary would be able to incorporate not just meanings of words, but new connections between words, besides just being related in meaning.
My very vague recollection is that it's because there are lots of YC competitors/clones now. Not wanting to get into a pissing match over the number of submissions or something?
Paper prototyping: IT's best kept secret?
Patent Infringement Lawsuit Filed Against Red Hat & Novell - Just Like Ballmer Predicted
The Scientist and Engineer's Guide to Digital Signal Processing (excellent free book)
McCarthy: Programming - You're Doing It Wrong
Coding Horror: A Lesson in Control Simplicity
Write less, do more - a quick introduction to jQuery
Legal advice every startup founder should know (with Fred Greguras of Fenwick and West)
Why is it that the quality of every new social news goes down so rapidly?
Thanks for posting this. It always surprises me how much work people put into organizing meatspace gatherings and then fail completely at preserving it and distributing it to a wider internet audience.

Unfortunately, the Veoh player download requirement leaves me a poor stranded Linux user.

/me mumbles something about download software being archaic and skulks away into the corner.
LinkedIn Plans to Open Up in a Closed Sort of Way
Now I just hope he runs for president.
Undisclosed because it was zero...
Henry Blodget says Zombo.com is worth more than $500 per share.
Wow, this site has been around since the last dot com era. It's good to know they've managed to not only stay in business, but positively thrive, since then. Surely they are on the road to a Google acquisition.
Handshake, a contract system for Ruby
The declining number of edits isn't the biggest problem, but rather the declining number of intelligent edits. Intelligent people flock to whatever the most interesting thing going on is. In ancient Greece, intelligent people flocked to philosophy. In the renaissance, it was art and humanities. In early US history it was politics.

The problem is that people get bored and move on. The most intelligent people in society are no longer interested in politics. Which is why politicians today suck.

The most interesting thing going on today is tech, and within tech for a couple years it was Wikipedia. A couple years ago if you went into the Wikimedia IRC channels it was a mix of famous VCs, bestselling authors, and 14-year-old kids who spoke a dozen languages. Today it's just a bunch of bored librarians. The core community is off starting companies and writing books and whatnot.

It wouldn't surprise me if a sizable chunk of former core Wikipedians were now reading this site instead of making edits.
Ask news YC: Your best sources to learn about design & usability
Hey, what are the best blogs/websites you read to learn more about good design and usability? I'm sure this could help a few of us here.
I feel compelled to play devil's advocate on this one: not all popular sites wind up with happy endings (http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/06/figuring_it_out.ph...).
Unfortunately, the Veoh player download requirement leaves me a poor stranded Linux user.

Me too.

Is there a service akin to keepvid.com which will let me download the flv file instead?
I don't (and won't) use PHP, but I'd suggest starting with an O'Reilly book like http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/progphp2/
I'm guessing their player is p2p streaming which might make it hard to download the whole file. It's probably designed to lower their bandwidth usage and get some software installed on your computer at the same time.

Stage6 might be a good option. I'm happy to do the uploading (and/or transcoding) if anyone makes the video file available. Really fast connection standing by.
Kathy Sierra's, Creating Passionate Users.
http://headrush.typepad.com

There you can find a lot of great posts about user experience.
"Under the surface, there's nothing noteworthy going on."

So what? It's about time for some of these bloggers to stop dealing with details and start focusing on issues.

The promise of a good web app is not how pretty it is on the surface or how much technology is under the hood, but the value it provides solving someone's problem.

(By the way, his filthy language scores 0 points with serious business people. If I want to listen to know-it-alls spewing forth f-words, I'd just go to any <local bar>.)
I can upload the vid to s3 tonight and can link a few people if you won't pass the link around. If you're on linux and really want to watch this email me (addredss is in my profile)
Here are a few links from my bookmark folder on the subject, in no particular order:

How to use contrast to your advantage-
http://www.gomediazine.com/design-tip/rule-three-contrast-co...

Use colors that have varying intensities, not just differnet colors. Focus on how it looks in greyscale
http://www.gomediazine.com/design-tip/becoming-a-master-desi...

Visualizing Fitt's Law
http://particletree.com/features/visualizing-fittss-law/

Software Has personality.
http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/2007/09/lightrooms_g...

Copy sites you like, such as:
http://orderedlist.com/articles/single-line-css#comments
or http://www.joyent.com/

How to make your designs suck less:
http://jimwhimpey.com/blog/2007/simple-ways-to-help-your-des...

Load faster, by doing a low-res version first.
http://www.wait-till-i.com/index.php?p=464

How to do sound design
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/why_is_that_thing_beeping...

More on Sound Design
http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/2007/03/22/how-to-make-user-...

Use smart color pickers
http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=6434

Whitespace Matters!
http://alistapart.com/articles/whitespace

You can make a UI feel responsive, by minimizing the number of clicks
http://tantek.com/log/2007/02.html#d19t1813

Write Production UIs, never use placeholders
http://a-simian-mind.blogspot.com/2007/03/user-interface-is-...

A gradient Tutorial
http://9rules.com/blog/2006/08/a-gradient-tutorial/

Aza's tips
http://ajaxian.com/archives/death-of-the-desktop-by-aza-rask...
I suspect that the founders and early investors of both Skype and YouTube were reasonably happy with their endings.
Good find nickb. I implemented several audio systems including a Noise reduction filter for a voip provider, an MP3 duplicate detection engine just by reading this book. I had no prior DSP experience. This has easy to understand 'feynman' kind of writing. I highly recommend this if you are digging around DSP or just want to understand signals.
require 'open-uri';
(1..34).to_a.each{|x| open('http://www.dspguide.com/CH'+x.to_s+'.PDF'){|u| File.open("CH#{x}.PDF","w"){|f|f.puts u.readlines}}}
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivor_bias
He has consistently denied that he will run but you never know. After all he is a politician!
And digg is some sort of super incredible technology? what about facebook in the beginning when "under the surface [there was not much] noteworthy going on." This guy is a loser, although any press is good press I guess.
one problem that i have with inheritance, especially several layers deep is that it hides code from the developer and it makes it hard to get an idea of what is going on. A sequence of calls needs to be traced across several class definitions. Sometimes inheritance makes sense as an abstraction mechanism but i think it's often overused, especially in Java
Patent trolls hit harddrive manufacturers too
Universal Music Takes on iTunes
can someone tell me how to access this site (send a link other than homepage). I keep waiting forever, but nothing but the voice
I'm loving these posts kn0thing, thank you. We've heard comparatively little about what it was like building and selling Reddit and it's probably the one I want to know the most about.
It's strange they're surprised he's only 23. It doesn't surprise me. The facile "you suck" is the hallmark of the Beavis and Butthead 15 year olds on Digg.
I think they're going the wring way with this. Instead of approving specific companies to to development they should open the API, let anyone develop and then approve specific applications.
That's one way to render the Peace Prize meaningless.
"TD: We want to build machine programs that can learn things from information that's out there on the web. In the first application we'll come out with, you tell us things that you're interested in, and we'll continuously go out and find stuff on the internet that's related to that. There's a positive feedback loop where you tell us what you like and don't, so the machine gets progressively better in learning what you like."

That's extremely ambitious. I've seen so many implementations of what he's talking about and the results have always been abysmal. Biggest problem for these systems is that you need a lot (and I mean a LOT) of training data to start making predictions/recommendations that make any sense.

Their scope also seems way too broad.
Intelligent people didn't just flock to art and the humanities in the Renaissance. They also flocked to math and engineering and finance. The reason we now think of Renaissance people doing art is that their art is better than ours and is still the big draw in museums, whereas they don't have anything to teach us about engineering.
Our initial idea launched (by someone else) this past weekend. Luckily it forced us to come up with something a lot better by the deadline.
Excellent point. Do you think the basic premise, that intelligent people flock to intellectually interesting things (but that those things change over time) is reasonable?

It seems to me that when our system of government was new it really was the most interesting thing going on so it attracted a lot of super smart people. Now, not so much. Of course part of it is that politicians have figured out it's easier to get elected if you pander to the lowest common denominator, but that still doesn't explain why a good percentage of them don't know how to use email.
www.obmoz.com/obmoz.swf

feedback wanted!!!
Yes. And more precisely, anyone could inflate their numbers by encouraging large numbers of weak groups to apply (e.g. college students during the summer), knowing that they were going to reject them.

So if we quoted numbers, competitors would be tempted to do bad things in order to get higher numbers, and then we'd either have to the same bad things ourselves, or look as if founders liked us less.
PG says it's cause of the competition. The comment is "pre-10K-era", so it doesn't seem to be available on news.yc, but you can see it here:

http://nycs.bigheadlabs.com/search1/?q=disclose+application+...
The old items are back. They were only gone for a couple days.

The problem is bitrot in that search app; they use the old url. Try http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9066
Did you worry about them looking at your demo before it was ready? We were pretty much done with the written app awhile ago, but worked until the end on the demo.