skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Great rant. I'm just a little reluctant to throw the baby out with the bath water. This is a GREAT TIME to be in the IT business if you know what you're doing, understand your market, really care about your customers, and are able to implement modern technology where it's needed in a sensible way.

We already know lots of lame start-ups will get washed away. Let's wish those people better success on their second try.
"Pick up a book on economics, journalism, the environment, history, etc."

Er, no. Get a job. Do something in a living breathing organism called a "business". Learning x 1000.

"seems like it would be easy to spook Angel investors"

Don't need no stinkin' angel. It's 2007. It takes about $500, a little knowledge, and a lot of sweat to build an IT business now. Find a customer, an angel who doesn't get equity or pay back.
trollporters
I like that it seems to focus a lot on usability, ie giving people what they need most. I only wonder about the quote from the article: "a huge number of people who feel overwhelmed and frustrated by an ever expanding inbox". If that is the case, I wonder if technology is the right approach to solve it. Maybe if the Inbox is overflowing, something else is going wrong (messed up processes etc.). Especially if it is a trend that continues, even with tools like Xobni the information processing capabilities of the human brain can only scale so much.
IBM Launches Free, Online Office Applications
iPhone coming to UK on O2
I've heard that each Mnesia table is limited to 4GB. That sounds like a pretty serious limitation now-a-days. Not sure if there are any ways to work around that.
"I think that one of the things that makes us different is the ability to edit presentations between a group of people in real time."

I'm pretty sure Zenter was already demoing this feature, as well. You've picked a hard target to top. ;-)
"pandr: A social networking site for bears."

Or politicians. They can get their campaign manager to help them use the Internet.
Agreed. If you approach an Angel investor with an actual plan that explains how you make money, they will listen. Just jumping up and down yelling about how quickly social networks are growing isn't going to cut it though.

I was actually told last week by an investor that they had heard a pitch the previous day for a social network that was basically that, just inflated user adoption numbers. We have a much better chance at the funding.
The Shoutfit guys were, last I heard, working on BuyThisLook, but it's also non-existent. So they died twice, I guess.
You may be overestimating their speed. MS has very long cycles. If the features aren't already being developed, then they are unlikely to appear for a long time. Meanwhile, Xobni will keep getting better.
I have been running it all day today and want to share my experience and thoughts.

First, our company is about 60 people. And every person I click on is "connected" to everybody, I suppose simply because at some point he or she emailed to the entire company. That makes the entire panel kind of useless.

Same happens to "Previous Conversations with Joe" panel: it contains a bunch of emails most of them I did not even read, because they were announcements and both of us happened to be on the list.

This is a general problem a lot of corporate email users face: we get tons of shit. You are tired of reading it all, because most of the time it is not relevant to you. Stupid announcements about stupid meetings, garage parking crap, financial results and what not. I only want to focus emails that were sent to me or maybe to me plus 1-3 other people. Everything else (well... in my case) is considered to be noise.
Completely unrelated observation. If you want to really offend someone try to be specific. Like when my friend called me a jerk I used to brush it off, but this one girl I met recently called me a <insert-my-favorite-food> eating jerk. And you know what. It worked :( But still this one just seems to be funny.

"Look, you little Bay Area-dwelling, public transportation-using, podcatching, bespectacled too-cool-for-cool circlejerk pricks: calm the fuck down. Chill the fuck out and read a computer science textbook."

Probably because I do read Computer Science text books. Meh..I am gonna brush it off.

(Just to set the balance, I have also been called a God aside being called a jerk. So don't judge me yet)
Investors Reap Returns on Clean Energy
Not all of their investors use Outlook :)
Eh, the line about 'forgettable names' is pretty easy to refute. Anything successful on the net has a strange name. Yahoo is the canonical example. Heck they even made commercials about it. I'm sure Viaweb was easier to remember than interactivestorebuilder.com would have been. All the names of startups on Techcrunch seem pretty memorable to me. Heck I remembered buxfer like a month after I first read about it, without even having been to their site before.

I think he had one decent point in among all the confusing incoherent thoughts... the 'do stupid shit faster!' part. I for one, welcome any web application that makes the 'stupid shit' in my life easier to get out of the way, so I can focus on shit of the non-stupid variety.
People already use Outlook, its an easy (read, frictionless) way of aquiring users. Since there is no ability to create a Gmail plugin any other web based solution would have required a behavior shift from what people are currently doing online. Outlook is definitely the prime target for reaching the enterprise market.
Alright then! Think it'll be a while until we get a Gmail version?
He complains about shitty over-hyped products that can be easily copied by a 14-year old over a weekend. He complains about sea of companies that make stuff that nobody wants because nobody is paying for it.

One thing for sure: over half of "products" announced on TechCrunch is less work than a typical graduate CS class project at UT (Texas).

Downmod me all you want, but Twitter is a joke. And FaceBook is not a "six billion dollar company". And "millions of users" who are not paying for your services do not translate into sustainable business just because of the "millions" word.
Showing the plug, not the cable
TV-links is far from horrible, click the show you want and start watching.

Torrents are a non-starter for regular users. Download a .torrent file from one of many tracker sites and open it with the client on your computer is simply too many steps and it's too different from the experience on limewire etc.
Hmm, looks pretty cool.
Definitely some nice features in there. Im not sure if any of these features have been implemented elsewhere, but I like the fact that it automatically scrapes contact info. That is something I am always to lazy to collect, and end up searching through thousands of emails later to find it.

Also, the stats could be useful. I never use it unless I specifically want to talk to someone, and that would be nice to know when I could expect to find them online.
I know riya well (they are in my competitive space) and agree completely. Best of luck and keep us posted on your progress!
That's weird. Are you opening the presentation in a tab?
I'm trying it in Ubuntu and Windows XP and it works as it should (no bar).
No one accuses Bill Gates of being socialist and he made more of his employees millionaires by sharing than almost anyone in business history.
I have no idea why the above was downvoted, because it's absolutely true. The more that smart programmers like the language you're using, the more smart programmers you can hire. So if smart programmers hate PHP, there will be less of them to work on a PHP project.

Paul has a whole essay on this exact topic: http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html
The design can sell the product, if you find someone great at laying things out and generally providing a look and feel that makes you want to use it then it would be worthwhile to retain that person.

I believe that you can give equity that vests over time, so if you need to let the designer go he/she isn't tied in too much, only gets a small amount of equity.
People from the 'top-tier' schools are shooting for a multitude of things besides entrepreneurial success. I graduated from UChicago, and it seemed as if a massive majority of my fellow students were going after law, banking, or academia. At my five-year reunion I was one of the only people I met not pursuing one of these paths. In addition, many students at these schools have some kind of anti-business ideology or another, so subtract them from the picture as well.

I agree that there are probably more great teams from the technical universities and high-end state schools than from the ivies and famous private universities.
Reminds me of http://www.extortr.com/
Xobni beta users - if Xobni makes you happy, please help us out by voting all 5's at http://www.techcrunch40.com/2007/presenter.php?presenter=27

We really appreciate your support
You can add table fragments to overcome this limitation. However, keep in mind that Mnesia isn't designed to store very large datasets. It works best with data sets that fit in RAM.
Isn't yahoo pipes just rss feeds?
The google game was kind of fun. Another unoriginal example would be using RTS games for real wargaming. I haven't come up with a good characterization for the general case though.
As #4 lite, it'd be cool to have a subreddit here for people to submit ideas. Then all us slackers can feel useful, and maybe make some money.
That's better. Trollporters it is.
I think the more important thing is depth and rigor. To have truly original ideas, we need to understand the underpinnings of our current civilization. Otherwise, many 'innovations' are merely going back down the path we came from.

I had an undergrad education like this. We went through the main books of the Western canon, and instead of being lectured at all the time, most of what we did was creative and rigorously scholarly. We'd read a couple classics a week, with a couple class debates/discussions concerning the works. Then, we'd have to write a thesis every semester. Finally, we were highly encouraged to do important extra-curricular activities such as acting or music. Probably one of the best educations you can get in the US.
Ok, I'm sold. Where do I get a referral code?
I'm not sure its a bad sign per se. It should just be a wakeup call back to reality (a good thing!). I (temporarily) bailed on the startup world for graduate school because most of it was uninteresting, unproductive, cutesy cruft. It may take some time, but eventually I think others will get bored with the web 2.0 gravy train and get back to real, productive innovation. Put simply, next time I talk to a VC it won't be any novelty widget or web technology, it will be about something that will make the world a better place. If meeting that criteria makes it Something 3.0, so be it.
"Do you have any idea how much time an average Joe spends in front of Outlook?"

I'll second this, and could provide some hard data if I cared to run the reports.

At RescueTime (my startup-- a tool for measuring exactly how you spend your computer time), communication tools (Outlook/webmail and IM) ALWAYS rank in the top 2 or 3 apps.

If Xobni can demonstrably reduce the amount of time required to effectively use Outlook (or email in general) by 15 minutes per day, what do you think that's worth to a company with 10,000 information workers?
I'm not sure if I would use it long-term myself but.. every ceo/cfo I've ever had the pleasure of working with will love it.
FORTH is programming language with RPL. Look forth.org
Ask hackers: Other good online entrepreneurial/business communities?
But RAM can be substantially larger than 4GB these days.
"Rah-rah" HR articles are just another form of marketing for the company.

I used to pay attention to the "Canada's Top 100 Employers List" until I noticed McDonald's was on it.
St. John's?
"Get ready for some seriously boring stuff". I hope their "smart search" was a joke.

The activity distribution is a neat idea, just as much as it's useless.
I believe they're headed in that direction -- the sooner, the better!
Clearly you interpreted the grandparent comment differently than I did. :-)
That is a limitation of the 32-bit OS ... If you are using a 64-Bit OS that is no longer a problem.

I have a 64-bit Xeon with 8GB of RAM and I have created tables lareger the 4GB as a test ... to make completely sure ...
Awesome Image Resizing by Seam Carving Video
tv-links isn't a horrible experience, but the quality is horrible compared to the dvd-rip and hd-rips that are available abundantly on torrent sites.
Access and Excel vs Web 2.0
Working as a Java consultant, so far I have never had a contract request for a Web 2.0 application. The bulk of (boring) projects that are being conducted in the industry seems to be transferring old processes based on Access and Excel to Web Applications, so that some company or other can have a distributed workflow.

So, inspired by the other post about the impeding crisis of the web, I thought I'd put forward the idea that if the IT industry has been relatively healthy lately, it was not because of a boom of Web 2.0 startups, but rather because of said Access to Web exodus. However, that will only be a finite source of new work, as eventually all Excel sheets will have been migrated (or switched to Google apps). Hopefully by then Web 2.0 will be the job motor...

On a related note, is Excel perhaps the most overlooked "Virtual Machine" out there? Here is a business idea I just remembered: a platform for sharing special purpose Excel sheets. For example you want to create a business plan, might be nice to have a trusted source for looking for an Excel template (ie social network like, rated by users etc.), rather than having to Google for it and download it from weird sources. No idea how to deal with the danger of viri, though.
Heh, the same principal restricting the mnesia database to 4 gigs on a 32 bit system is restricting the ram size to 4 gigs on a 32 bit system. (Some OS/Hardware magic can get around this but for the most systems this is true).
Wall Street Journal Will Likely Dump Paid Service
TechCrunch40: Kaltura Wins People's Choice!
You gotta give them credit for scaling and marketing themselves.
This is fantastic but can you try and get it working properly in Opera and Safari? :D
How to Get Other People to Do the Work for You
Try out Pod Clod. It's a game I made. Do you find it addicting?
I like it, good work, but there should be a 'close window' button on the final slide.
You really need to try using Apple's KeyNote. I haven't stabbed anyone to death ever since I discovered it :D
Does Apple use Microsoft .NET on their website?
It reminds me of an urban legend I heard about a Porsche dealer who held a "buy one car, get another free" promotion, thinking he'd make it up on volume.

People who introduce the crufty products that the author rightly complains about focus too much on short term trends. Two prescriptions that help: 1) Read "Fooled By Randomness". 2) Avoid TechCrunch et al. like the plague.
Or you can change it by building more compelling products, which is what the author (in his own, angry-to-the-point-that-it-hurts-his-writing kind of way) is wishing for.
good catch!!

Thanks.
This is a fantastic idea. I may try and implement it in the next few months (depending on how much work there is to do for my college classes) :D
True. However, the reason Mnesia is better suited for in-RAM data sets is that its disk-only storage engine, dets, requires a potentially long repair process if the VM crashes and a dets table isn't closed properly. This could keep your table inaccessible for a while after you restart the VM.
How is Pandora for classical music?
You should checkout Cofoundr.com
Seems like a great idea.
Very nice work. I tried the editor and was impressed.

+ I love the way the font size changed as I mouseover'd.

+ ALL of the text in the front page graphics looks like its messed up. I guess it was some effect that was supposed to look nice, but it just looks blurry/jagged to me.

+ It wasn't immediate obvious how to "try it".

+ I do not like the fullscreen popup "Try it" link. I would much prefer a new window or just the same window.

+ I created a little presentation and then clicked "Publish" which gave a weird blank window (because I'm not registered I assume). Then I looked elsewhere before finding "Show". Maybe I'm slow, but that was confusing and I almost gave up before seeing what my presentation looked like.

+ I want an account with a sub-domain "rep", so I can login at http://rep.prezentit.com/
and set theory leads to the fact that the axiom of choice is independent and unprovable. But most mathematicians accept that axiom of choice is true. The same is true for the continuum hypothesis with a smaller majority accepting that as true. Similarly most in comp sci accept that P does not equal NP. One does not need to understand turing machines to understand the concept of time and memory for computers. It is just a way of formalizing the problem. Nice to know that the problem can be formalized but not necessary to be taught. I never said that turing machines where not important. But I am equally sure that you did not formalize your algorithm into a turing machine to show that it was np-complete. The author's point is that the same is true for set theory although he likes to phrase it in a very provoking way that I wholly don't agree with. Mathematicians use the general concepts of set theory not the formal one. Comp sci/programing uses the general concepts of turing machines not the formalizations.
or Cofoundr.com (yeah, shameless plug)
Mammoth dung, prehistoric goo may speed warming
If you guys had any sense at all you would see that what is being installed is from http://www.umediaserver.net and is a legitimate video player certified by microsoft.

There is no malware in it at all. What TVByDemand authors are tyring to do is give you guys free videos of local events in the philly and NJ area and provide you with news pertaining to almost every topic that means anything for free with no annoying ads or anything that lines thier pockets. It is truely one of the last FREE sites that doesn't try to take over your computer or use your personal information.

Before you call something "shady" try doing at least the tiniest bit of research.
TVByDemand doesn't have ANY spyware on it. do your research before you start throwing around the "SHADY" card. the active x viewer is microsoft signed, and comes from http://www.umediaserver.net a real one of the few no names mentioned ("flash player", windows media player) that does not record anything more then the ip address that it is sending the video to.

If you would have done one iota of research before running off the accusations you'd see what the truth is. Unlike Google video, Utube, msn, aol, and every other advertisment based free service TVByDemand is actually run out of the operators pocket and not with your personal information.

It's a sad world we live in when someone puts something of some value out there for free for the public to use and a few nobodies accuse it of trying to steal something from you.
I was a Xobni-skeptic but I'm not to proud to reverse my opinion. Things are looking up in Xobniville. Congratulations.
What language is it written in?
tell that to YouTube, del.icio.us, flickr
It seems like a cool game, but it became unplayable once there were around 20 pods on the screen.
Better: Paul Graham invented the internet.
It's really not. Trollporter - some big green dude who carries bags, or a futuristic way for troll folk to travel instantly. I suggest Journatroll, it rolls of the tongue a little better than Journotroll. As a plus its fairly easy to work Journatrollism into a sentence where you would have said Journalism.
That's definitely an asp.net error. What is even more mind blowing is the fact that Apple deployed this with debug output turned on.
There is NO Malware on TVByDemand.com, do a little research before you start calling something malware that is not.

thier video player is from http://www.umediaserver.net, it is a freeware media server, it only runs on the windows platform and it is microsoft certified.

Those guys have setup this website at thier own expense, approximatly 750.00$ a month out of thier pockets. They get no money from thier users, they do not collect any information other then basic information if you wish to post in the forums, but the videos are free.

And as far as calling them spammers, how is a legitimate stroy posted on a site that requests you to post legitmate stories considered spam?

The whole internet has gotten sop paranoid of the little guys who run thier site out of thier ockets for no money that your ready slander them. But then you'll log onto yahoo, aol, msn, hotmail, utube, google etc etc. download thier spyware apps to your computers and think your informaion is safe.

I guess your the same people who think the patriot act is good for this country.
I think the site looks really cool. The only thing that is stopping me from using it is that I have to enter my banking credentials to allow it to access my banking info on its own (nightly). I may decide to sign up in the future, but I am curious as to other people's opinions on that one.

I've seen a lot of discussion around asking users for their login credentials just for their email (see this recent YC posting for example: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=55660), and this is obviously more extreme than that.
looks like C# from their website
Isn't one timesink enough?
Agreed. I was incredibly disappointed that zuckerberg "thanked" his developers at the end of the f8 presentation, but neglected to have a slide with their names.

This is one thing the film industry has right... it's nice to say to my friends and family "hey, if you sit around til the end, you'll see my name".
They have some details on this page: http://mint.com/safe.html
Which kind of suggests that the future of every planet with life on it is runaway global warming, doesn't it? So what, we should stop trying to regulate our emissions because we're facing certain doom anyway?

Well, according to the article, it's surfacing now because the permafrost isn't so "perma" any more... something in which humans are directly implicated. So gee, it might well be too late for us now - but it wouldn't have been 50 years ago.

...Oops.

Perhaps everyone of any influence in world affairs at all since World War II needs to get together and figure out precisely how best to say to our generation, "Sorry about your planet".

edit: Turns out the 500 billion tonne figure is a one-off, worst case release. Not an annual figure. Remind me, what's 500/7 again? And why exactly does "thanks to human development, mass extinction might suddenly leap one lifespan closer" mean either "it's not our fault, really it isn't, nature is evil and killing us all" or "see, there's nothing to worry about, humanity is barely having any effect at all"?
Startup Weekend Toronto - My Two Cents
Hmm, maybe journatroll is better. A lot of these people aren't really reporters, more editorial writers.
There are a bunch of old people (relatively speaking) that would disagree with #3.
I believe playing a 30 second clip is considered fair use.
Aiming the pods is quite fiddly.
What books would you recommend reading?  Why?
definitely. another friend suggested a facebook app that helps you find drugs.

i have some sketchy friends.
A search for "facebook" does not yield any voted results, because, the only person who searched for facebook, failed to vote! anyway the query itself does not clearly indicate the intention of the user imho.
The last time I checked the site in IE, it seemed fine, I will test the site again in IE when I am at work. BTW, what version of IE are you using?
that's definitely true.

though part of what i like about it is the idea of two people using a computer together. the internet is so bizarre in that it connects you to others who are far away, but simultaneously isolates you from folks who are nearby.
Old Media Meets New In Minnesota
That's part of the challenge!