skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Geek Gift Guide
Feedback request for FlashcardDB
This is a project I have been working away at for a few months. If this is not something people want that is ok since it is something I want. FlashcardDB is an attempt to build an online flashcard website that doesn't suck.

When I had decided it was time to tranfer my thousands of flashcards to a webapp, I just could not bring myself to use any of the existing flashcard sites on the web. Some are awful. Some are old and tired. One or two look good but they were just not what I had in mind. I wanted a dead-simple user interface and the Leitner System built-in -- with a cool graph! You know the rest. I decided to do it myself.

The first iteration of the site is at http://FlashcardDB.com

If anyone feels like checking it out I would be happy to hear your criticisms.
Of course, but I would not call it "Web application" anymore. Perhaps brain application?
Twittories and the art of writing
Hi, you should look into air-roasted coffee. Most coffee is drum- or surface-roasted, resulting in the typical sour, stomach-gnarling liquid that most pass for 'coffee.'

Air-roasted coffee exhibits more body, complexity, aroma and isn't nearly as hard on one's stomach.
"I'd rather use 5-10 really useful apps than 40-50 marginally useful ones."

You answered your own question. What this means is that if you are serious about your start-up, you should shoot for nothing less than being in the 5-10 "really useful" list.

It is not easy by any means and pg has said before that as more and more start-ups launch, the difference between great ones and average ones would become more apparent.
Thanks very much. If you know anyone who does have interest in this subject, please send them the link. Thanks once again.
Still amazes me you can get patents on such things.
If you touch a screen with 2 fingers, and draw them outwards or inwards, what other thing could they conceivably control other than zoom?
Amazing :)
Asiajin - info on startup scene in Asia (mainly Japan)
I'm having an impression that lots of web startups in Japan provide services in Japanese only and not much visible from English-speaking area. This blog seems to attempt to fill the gap.
Some Thoughts on the Opening of the Facebook Platform Architecture
I agree. I've done some research on how to develop all kind of Microsoft Surface related stuff, and no doubt there are a lot of alternatives to create a similar effect in a much cheaper way. However, I haven't seen anything this versatile... this idea and implementation is absolutely fantastic.
There are many alternatives to do this with webcams and related stuff... however as I was saying above, this is probably the best option, and the more versatile tech I've seen for this effect.
The problem is, does every need generate an interesting market? Are the interesting markets unlimited as well?
"how to fix it"

Vote for Ron Paul. He'll fix everything.
I agree with you, to a point. But lets not ignore the drawbacks of paper voting: a bunch of old ladies counting paper ballots can have error rates approaching 1%.

Better electronic systems are possible.

In NJ, we have an electronic machine which is just a bunch of buttons and lights: push a button, a light in row 1 goes on, push the commit button, and "Row a, column b" is recorded. A translucent paper ballot indicating the meaning of "Row a, columnb b" is placed on top of the lights/buttons, so the machine doesn't know which row/column corresponds to which candidate.

Using a machine like this, and physically randomizing the rows/columns machine by machine on election day (which isn't done in NJ), software fraud would be difficult.

Of course, none of this will stop fraudulent voting (which is very easy), zombie voting and other old fashioned trickery (google the washington governor's election, seattle district in particular).

I voted under a phony name in 2006, due to bad handwriting. After I discovered this, I called up my old roommate, who voted under my name (rather than his) in my old town. Vote totals were unnaffected, but only because we were honest.
market = need
Undo Made Easy With Ajax
No. I can have needs I'm not going to pay for. Or I can have needs whose solutions are too expensive. Or many needs can come from people who have not too much money so not all needs are an interesting market.
ta, I feel a bit of a donut for looking there :p
Adobe Announces Open Source Technologies for Enterprise RIAs
Programming in Scala - (Beta Book from Artima)
What is an "interesting market"? It's a non distinction.

If you aren't going to pay for a solution to a need, then it isn't a need. If you can't afford it, that is a technological issue. There is no such thing as someone with "too much money".

[edit: there are certainly things that money can't buy. Though I'm sure you can mail-order a lovely bride, a Zen Buddhist sensei fresh from Japan, and adopt some children in need to give your life meaning]
Sorry if I didn't express myself correctly. I'm not a native English speaker.

I say: you can have a need, but you can have not enough money to pay for a solution to that need. For example, you can say that as there is so much poverty, there is a big need for food so there is a big market for food right? But probably, the sector that is suffering poverty wouldn't make an interesting market, as would not have money to pay for the food you might offer to it.

That's an exaggeration, but the same can happen with other stuff. There are lots of human needs you can point to, but the segments that would pay for solutions to these needs are, as I think, more limited, for many reasons. Maybe your solution is expensive for them, maybe they don't want to use credit cards online, etc...

About "too much money"... that was where my "non-native" English came along. I meant: maybe the people that have the needs have not enough resources (money) to buy your product/service, making that an uninteresting market despite being an unattended need. I was not saying you can have "too much money".
Idea: Embedding RSS comments in a content RSS feed. What do you think?
Facebook apps, the Facebook trap
Could a morbidly obese goalie shut out an NHL team?
This article had a strong positive impression on my development team. If you like it, I recommend the other article it mentions at the beginning.
http://vocationvacations.com/
Brain grown from rat cells learns to fly jet
How the Boston Red Sox Keep BlackBerrys from Striking Out
Story about how the Boston Red Sox's tech support team keeps it BlackBerrys up and running.
Each individual mainstream user might have a finite number of needs, but the number of needs of users in aggregate is effectively infinite. I agree that I'd rather use 5-10 great apps than 40-50 marginally useful apps, but why do you think the 5-10 apps you find most useful would be the same 5-10 apps someone else does? No one webapp has to appeal to the entire market to be successful, it just has to appeal to enough users to provide an income to cover its costs.

This reminds me of Joel Spolsky's take on the 80/20 bloatware myth. The idea being that bloated programs like Word are bad because 80% of the users only use 20% of the features. But they don't all use the same 20% is the problem, so you can't just remove 80% of the features without pissing off a sizable group of people. I think the same applies to web apps. Nobody needs every one of them, but the right set of web apps for any given person probably isn't identical to anyone else's.
dude, if you post a link with a title like that, you should know it will be edited
The significance of Google's Android
I posted this here on Monday (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=87885)... I guess you have to have youtube next to your link for it to get voted on.
Xiph.Org Statement Regarding the HTML5 Draft and the Ogg Codec Set
Thomas,

It took me about a week to get a prototype, two weeks for the first version which was deployed on facebook and about 3 weeks for the version that you see now. Bare in mind that this was a part-time/evening project. Had I done it full-time my guess is that it wouldn't have taken more than 1,5 weeks to complete.

As for your suggestions you are spot on. Many people have asked for mouse interaction. And the reflection thing would be cool but I am not sure if it is feasible... I'll have to check.
That sounds a lot like http://www.idrive.com/ or www.evault.com/ and or several other systems out there. Building a secure system is a hard problem and even if you build the best system few people can judge how well your doing. You could market it as "The only 4096 bit system" but you end up with a tiny market segment.

I would suggest starting with a secure chat system with good logging options. That way you can reasonably target teenagers, bankers and the truly paranoid. And you don't need a huge backup infrastructure or a 50$ / year price tag to compete.
Also - the cost of servicing that marginal niche is now so low that it's economically feasible to build a solution just for them. To use the kitchen example, most people want gas & electric ranges, but a few might want eco-friendly solar-powered cookware. This product doesn't exist (to my knowledge), but it's because the cost of designing, tooling up, and manufacturing it is above what people are willing to pay. In software, a niche solution could probably be coded up by just a couple programmers. It'd have more economic value than the code they wouldn't produce at their day jobs, so it becomes economically feasible.
Random 1% error is easily dealt with. When the election is close they do a supervised recount.
I always hear people talking junk about openID, so I figured I should wait until the next standard comes along. But per your comment I'm going to look at it again with hopefully an open mind.
Opera files complaint - an open letter to the Web community (wants to force MS to support standards)
Haha, this is something I've been wondering for a long time.
This approach is too simplistic to be useful in a multi-user environment.

Adds, changes, and deletes MUST be done immediately and cannot be queued without bottlenecking the entire system.

Undo's MUST be examined for every possible ramification. What if you change something and then want to undo it AFTER someone else has changed it again? What if you want to undo an add after someone else has already changed it? What about undoing a delete after someone else has added it anew?

Also, distinction must be made on how to handle a client side undo (simple) versus a server side undo (could be complex).

I agree with the writer that undo is a necessity, not a luxury, in a serious web app. For industrial strength apps, however, more thought is needed than what this writer has provided.
Facebook to do over $1 Billion in Revenue in 2008
Amazing. Facebook has already hit Yahoo's predictions for 2015 size. Predicted: 52 million Today: 58 million now. Now look at he expected earnings based on 52 million active users. I can see why there is so much FB Koolaid now. And for the skeptics, remember Google had 2002 revenues of $240 million. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.02/yahoo.html
I'm no fanboy, but I have to respect them more now.
The Universe IS my kitchen.
"Club Facebook" has more people and a wider demographic than any other club I've ever seen.
That sounds neat. I'd like to hear more.
That means that someone who can reduce the cost of meeting that need has a market and can be successful. Voila!
That's where market-making comes in. People didn't know they needed to search the web until they found out it was easy. They didn't know they needed a computer they saw games, spreadsheets, etc. They didn't know they needed a dishwasher until they saw this amazing machine that washed your dishes. People (the market) might not think up the things they want, but they sure know if they want something when they use it.
Actually, it's probably because no one knows how big that market was. If you produced market evidence that there were 1 million people that would buy a solar powered stove in the next year, there would be product rolling off assembly lines in less than 6 months.

Read Seth Godin's book Permission Marketing if you want to learn about market creation and demand-driven design.
10 Reasons IT Departments Should Not Support the Apple iPhone
Forrester Research says iPhones should not be used as corporate phones for these 10 reasons.
Me too, that sounds awesome!
blog.pmarca.com: Quote of the week, bonus edition: Jack Warner on standpatters
There are certainly no problems with supervised recounts. Look how well they go:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_gubernatorial_electi...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_elec...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._presidential_election,_200...

I'm not saying electronic is definately the way to go. I'm just saying that paper ballots also have big problems, and that one can protect reasonably well against pure software hacks.
Also, don't just limit your thinking to consumers. Consumers might need the next huge improvement to consider switching. Something to replace Google would probably need to give you a well researched and balanced report on your query, as opposed to just a fairly accurate link to something someone said somewhere. That's a HUGE leap.

Businesses on the other hand (rational ones anyway) will buy anything that exceeds a certain ROI, provided it meets certain requirements. There are so many ways to do this, but they aren't technologically sexy in the way consumer startups are. For instance, find a way to improve measuring their ROI! Then they're not guessing, you can point to exactly how much money they'll make/save. Improve something by 15%, then multiply that savings times the thousands of corporate users for one buyer. Viola, an upgrade license. Joel Spolsky is a master of this: see http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000052.html There will always be more of a market for things like this.
hey, you try writing encryption software in Brainfuck. not a walk in the park by any means.
12 things I learned from pitching VCs this past week
Not sure what exactly you're looking for, but have you checked out Alice? http://www.alice.org/
I don't know....I think these kinds of articles don't really offer any new insight.
Scala's Java compatibility is pretty nice. Just realize that using an imperative language's libraries when you're programming in a functional style doesn't lead to beautiful code. The whole rigamarole of

val blah = new SomeLameJavaClass
blah setSomething ...
blah setSomethingElse ...
blah yetMoreFuckingSettersUgh ...

stands out like a sore thumb in code where you're otherwise using a clean functional style.
How about deforming?
Unrelated - but funny:

Cthulhu for President. Why vote for a lesser evil?
Google's wireless chief, Sacca, leaves to become angel investor
A couple of quotes come to mind:

"Well done is better than well said." -- Ben Franklin

"The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something. It's as simple as that. A lot of people have ideas, but there are few who decide to do something about them now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. But today. The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer." -- Nolan Busnell
People have been rating reddit articles for over two years -- and the recommendation filter still doesn't give good content.
Opera Files EU Complaint Against Microsoft
Article does not claim $1B 2008 revenue. It does cite a Yahoo projection of $1B revenue by 2015.

Actual 2006 revenues were $50MM.
>For example, Internet Explorer is the only modern Web browser that does not support Acid2.

Um, no. In fact I think only Safari and Opera support Acid2.

I fully support the guys at Opera in furthering web standards, but they should make sure what they say is factual.
> one meeting that ran 30min over- the VC was deferring calls from his wife who was waiting for him in the parking lot

Nice guy:-/
He claims that nobody goes to myspace anymore.

But last time I checked myspace was still getting
1.5 BILLION page views a day...

Still ahead of facebook...
"After Voltage shipped its first product -- email-security software -- in early 2004, its revenue jumped from $3 million to $9 million in 2005, says the CEO."

...

"Mr. Krishnamurthy says Voltage now has more than 400 customers and is generating cash, though it remains unprofitable."

$9MM in revenue, and you can't turn a profit?

This seems to be a case where the VC's ambitions are lessening the chance of the company succeeding. Maybe customers would be less concerned about the company going under if it was making a profit.
Hey, why not an Siamese quadruplet? I might actually watch, then, or at least take a gander.
Much of this article seems like good advice about pitching in general, not only to investors. I like it.
Microsoft should file a complaint to force Opera to support javascript properly.
I just ordered an industrial-size vat of Crisco. See your future, be your future.

Traditionally it was "the fat kid" who played goal, since anybody who could skate would rather put the puck in the net than get whaled in the nords.

I believe this changed when modern netminders brought more skill, athleticism, and even dignity (really) to the position. Plus, people love all the cool-looking gear.
Enhance your blog posts with Yahoo! Shortcuts (only WP for now)
Zoho Show Is Why You Need A Dual Core CPU
When I first visited the site I didn't understand how to use it. After I played around a little bit and I viewed some of the flashcards - I clicked study and now I get it. It's simple but cool. That being said, maybe a how it works feature or suchlike. And one other thought - your logo is hard to read....
I created eight flashcard sets at Quizlet early this year and felt it was entirely adequate and quite easy to use. It does not suck.

I guess the only major difference is that FlashcardDB uses user verification (the oddly-labeled "I was" buttons) rather than text-entry verification. I prefer the flow of text-entry verification myself, but I can see how your taste may differ.

FlashcardDB looks okay, but I still greatly prefer Quizlet.
OK, time to give Coding Horror the xkcd treatment. Jeff Atwood has repeatedly said he's writing to the 80% programmers, the kind that don't read programming blogs (especially not Hacker News). Unless there's something exceptional (like the FizzBuzz firestorm), please just let us read it on RSS.

Repeated from my comments at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=88817

We get it, [Coding Horror] is [Informational]. Enough [articles] have been posted that people who didn't know about it know about it now. Not every single [article] needs to be posted - that's what RSS is for.

Thanks, and I do appreciate you making sure YCNews readers are aware of [Coding Horror]. I'm a subscriber and a fan, so please don't interpret this as criticism, just the kinder side of a social news site.
Being Canadian, we had this discussion many times.

You just couldn't get a goalie who was big enough to fill the entire net, so the increased goalie size would limit his mobility and make him worse.

It is nice having a 6'8" defenseman who has a longer stick than normally allowed though.
Err, yeah I guess just the new comment box is in the iframe, but obviously most web crawlers aren't going to execute the JavaScript that displays existing comments.

It sounds like your API addresses this, but as someone mentioned, what about the problem of Google penalizing sites with content showing up in multiple places?
True - lots more talented people would benefit the world. But you have to consider opportunity cost as well. If web application development required genius level knowledge, then you'd have to convince one of the best minds in some other critical field to switch over to it. Suppose the only person who could write webapps is also capable of engineering a sustainable and pollution free source of energy. The world might be better off with no webapps at all.

A lot of people have pointed this out - it actually takes quite a bit of talent to write reasonably unbuggy code that updates payroll from the eight different departmental database systems. It's just terribly boring, and not especially well paid, so the people with this kind of talent either do other things in the software world, or don't work in software at all.
56 types of geeks (image)
Some are awful does definately not include Quizlet. Quizlet is very very well put together.

What I personally wish for there is (a) the ability to create richer flashcards - especially flashcards that need more than one line or richer formatting and (b) the Leitner System. With Quizlet once you mark a term 'correct' it is correct forever (until you manually reset your set).

I am planning a text-entry verification method and maybe multiple-choice. But for more complicated flashcards you need to have manual verification to start.

Thanks a lot for your thoughts! They are greatly appreciated.
Replace "Google" everywhere with "YourCleverDomainNameForAnAccountingApp", and this becomes the elevator pitch for a YC application.
Great to hear. It was kind of a shame that Chris was The Google Guy delivering The Google Pitch at the first Startup School. That is, he seemed like a great guy to get some advice from and hang out with, but he wasn't speaking so much on his own thoughts during the session and he was quite predictably mobbed with founders and wannabe founders outside of the hall. Glad to see he's getting back into the nitty-gritty startup stuff again.
Splashup reviewd by a User Interface blog. - It's pretty rough
Not trying to pick on anyone. It's just good to hear honest feedback, especially about an interface.
Definately. The how-to-use parts of the site are pretty bare-bones right now. Thanks!
I think the Web may be less like the kitchen, and more like television. Shows come and go every year, so there will always be a need for new ones.

In an attention economy you're fighting for eyeballs. And there's a smaller group that's always looking for what's new and different. If you want to pursue this demographic, and the larger, lagging crowd behind them, then you have a chance at capturing attention.

I share many of your concerns, and personally use very few Web applications--basically maps and mail. I often ask the same question: what can I build?

Perhaps it's better to choose a pre-existing category/market and try to win through better execution. I also think success is more likely when building software as a product instead of a free service.
Did you just say a $25MM A-round is a tiny amount by today's standards?
But those are four people, already :)
The two of you have a disagreement, but it's not here, this is just conflicting names for ideas. Putting words in your mouths:

You: if people don't know how to make something cheaply enough it's not a market.

Ivan: it could be a market if you solve the technological problem of making it cheaper.

You: making food cheaper isn't a market because the poor have no money.

Ivan: making food cheaper isn't a feasible market because nobody knows how to make it happen.

There, now you can return to the interesting question, continue arguing about what fraction of the needs you can think up are technologically feasible :)