skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You're comparing an insanely popular mobile phone and a general-purpose computing platform to an Xbox. While they are both mobile devices and both can play games, neither is really mobile gaming hardware per se. I mean, you're obviously not wrong that making the iPhone is good business, but iPhone owners are not primarily gamers -- not even casual ones -- so counting every iPhone sold as a "game hardware" sale at this point is pretty misleading.

Most importantly to the point at hand, there is no evidence that iPhone is stealing many sales from Xbox and PS3, nor that it will start in the foreseeable future. I very, very much doubt that many people find themselves wondering whether to get an iPhone or an Xbox to play games on.
Dosent work . Shows Loading Soundfont indefinitely ..
Do you have the entrepreneurial mindset?
It's a few years in your 20s working on an interesting and very difficult project. Don't worry, you'll still be able to retire at thrice that age.
Learning and thinking are different processes, and it's conceivable that one person can have different learning and thinking styles. The way you've capitalized LEARN and italicized think leads me to suspect that you're restating a simplification that I've heard from some friends, and I thus assume is taught in introductory college psychology classes as one of those "lies we tell children."
Once your startup actually fails and is behind you, here's the surprise:

You will feel an immense sense of freedom and lightness.

It's pretty obvious why: a weight is about to be lifted from your shoulder. Where your path was a narrow funnel leading to one specific destination, you will now have the infinity of all possible and reachable paths ahead of you. You couldn't do anything but worry about the startup - now you can do anything you want.

The end of a start feels very dramatic before it happens, but once it's done, you will feel a whole lot better. Trust me.
Let's see. Extra-length comments that always say all the right things, something to nod along appreciatively, just what the public ordered. A metric ton of life experience, filled with an insight to the brim and a story to tell for every situation.

Sorry, but this sort of comments don't feel genuine. Like something that was written with one goal in mind - to be upvoted.

So "scared off HN"? Right, right, but no. I think it's far more complicated than that.
And we've just re-invented loyalty schemes.

(I know at the budget conscious end of the cafe/coffee business, the "buy $n, get the $n+1th coffee free" cards do pretty well around here. Not so much in specialty coffee places though, most of them do a good job of giving free coffee to their regulars pretty often. I rarely pay for espresso shots at any of my regular cafés if I buy them at the same time as a latté/piccolo/cappuccino…)
I mostly do that too, but I can switch. For example, to trying to process everything visually, perhaps wandering through familiar places in my mind (or listening to familiar voices/songs).

Or you can turn it all off and focus entirely on your senses themselves. This can be interesting when, for example, you imagine something in contact with your body as a part of yourself. Do that to your car, for example, then you start to pay more attention to exactly how your wheels grip the road and you have a more intuitive feel for where every part of the car is in relation to you.
I'm going through this same process of admitting failure right now, and it seems like everybody gives people in our position the same advice: "Don't worry about the investors. They knew what they were getting into." In our case, this is simply not true, and we can't be the only startup in this position.

All of our funding so far was raised from my personal friends and family. None of them ever invested in anything even nearly as risky as an early-stage startup before, but they trusted in me enough to take the leap. I dread the day I have to tell them that they aren't getting their money back just a few months after sending optimistic status update emails telling them all about our user acquisition efforts and new product developments. It is very difficult for me to not think of our failure as a betrayal of their trust. I intend to pay all of these family members and friends back with my own money, but until then I can't imagine escaping this guilt.

Has anybody else gone through a similar thought process? How did you deal with it?
What marketing venue currently works for you and your competitors as far as new customer acquisition?
One small comment, black on white pages tend to read a little better.
My company has a really good chance of succeeding, but I still face these doubts every day. Here are some of the things that make the game worth the candle for me, even if we end up failing:

* I'm proud of the product we've built. Even if it doesn't take off,
nobody can take that away from me.

* I'm incredibly proud of my engineering team. We're "a bunch of kids"
who've built something incredible. Even if the company ultimately
doesn't survive, we will have done really well.

* I love my work and I love the people I work with. There are
conflicts, sometimes I have to deliver bad news, deal with stress
and monotonous work, firefight problems, etc. but in aggregate the
work I do and the people I do it with bring me joy. I will always
remember this time fondly.

* When I started, I was a good engineer and a terrible product
manager. Now I'm a good engineer and a good product manager, which
makes me 100x more valuable. There is a bazillion other things I've
learned, but this alone makes everything worthwhile.

* Facing doubt every day made me face the darkest corners of my
soul. I stopped being an obnoxious cynical windbag and started
appreciating the nuances of life, people, art, poetry, strength of
human spirit and true magnitude of human dignity.

* We're taking a real shot at building hard, sustainable technology
that has a good chance to change the world. Even if we fail, I'll
never regret taking the chance.

* I met hundreds of people on my path. I dismissed some of them, but
in retrospect I've learned from them all. I appreciate humanity a
lot more now, and I understand where the dark parts of it come from
much better.

* Perspective is worth 80 IQ points. If you start a company you gain a
lot of perspective.

I could keep going, but I hope I've made my point. I'm not trying to sugar-coat anything -- failing may very well be the worst thing you've ever experienced emotionally to date. But keep everything in perspective and don't get cynical. You might still change the world in a big way. You might still change it in a small way. It doesn't matter. Enjoy the people around you. Get into adventures. Try to do something meaningful. Do the best you can -- things may not turn out how you wanted them to, but they'll probably turn out ok.
Out of curiosity: If LivingSocial files for bankruptcy and fails to pay merchants, are those merchants still required to honor any outstanding deal vouchers?
This product already exists, in at least proof of concept form: http://www.firefoxwithbing.com/

I think this is sufficient to show that they're at least thinking about it.
So going to Ubuntu Software Centre and clicking Install on Tomboy is too hard?

As far as I remember, the problem was that the Mono libraries took far too much space on the CD to justify it for one or two applications...
I really hate using LivingSocial/Groupon because it seems like the business owners always HATED taking these deals. I always feel like I'm being treated differently because I'm not paying the actual price. One time when I used one of these deals, I even heard the employee say to another employee "... another #$#@$#@ groupon deal....". If they didn't like people using the deals, why bother signing up for it?

I can't wait for these daily deal business to go away because I don't think it benefits anyone.
Absolutely shitty chart, it must have points for weeks not days (because of the obvious weekly cycle) and be log scale.
I don't hear anything on Chrome for Android.
The investors are adults. They made an educated decision, and as long as you acted in good faith you have upheld your end of the bargain.

They took a risk, and my sense is that they are probably more aware of how the game is played than you do yourself. How many startups have they invested in? How many do you think have failed?

This is probably incredibly difficult to internalize in the moment, but it's true. Remind yourself that the guilt is irrational.
now if only I could save/upvote stories on HN. Does anyone else have this issue?
get up start and start working.
be optimistic .
FTW
That's nice! I use the same thing which i accidentaly push :( But since I got SSD-disks, we're up fast again! :)
Or how about a free product once you buy 9 of similar value?

Punch cards are the original loyalty program, but I'm not sure how well they work for new customer acquisition.
The point "they created a whole different product that they kept marketing as the original thing" is valid, but pretty much everything else you wrote was wrong.

The system could only be left alone if none of their customers grew and they didn't add any other customers. RapGenius alone may have grown enough to necessitate architectural changes.

The poor (no?) communication about the changes is the only thing they did wrong.
Sup.

What you've said is something I understand and its a nice angle on an issue I haven't seen in this particular way in a while.

I'm on the opposite side of your stand. I've seen far too many people "Help". In all cases, the damage they cause casually is far greater than if they just said "you need help, get a doctor!"

So (1), in general saying "hey you need to get to a professional" is the least bad thing people can say, and for the sake of the sufferer, this is all I can hope for.

I've spent, or once HAD spend, an inordinate amount of time listening to people, both with and without unusual issues. I Listened in the way I learnt I would want to, with focus, concern, and no judgement.

I would still tell people to go get to a doctor.

But, I would never let it come across as a shut down or a brushing off. "hey, this is a question I can't answer for you. I believe someone with training and experience would be able to help you with this better than I could. The last thing I want to do is say something and make your life harder."

(I believe this can be put better, preferably without any of the "I")

So it comes down again to the kind of person listening on the other end. From what I can tell, this will always be someone who isn't cut out for the job, especially if you are depressed.

In all practicality saying "you need to see a doctor" is the average least bad thing that can happen to them.
Consistency applies because a least-conns load balancer requires state: it needs to know how many connections are open for each node. A distributed least-conns load balancer requires distributed state.

This is problematic because the convergence times for state like "connection counts" between load balancers in different datacenters could be significantly higher than the rate at which that state itself is changing, and the cost to getting that state wrong is significantly higher latencies. That's where you start having to make CAP and latency tradeoffs.
That may be true, but students at top schools still tend to come from more affluent backgrounds. Yes, there are "homeless to Harvard" stories out there, but generally speaking Harvard students were able to dedicate as much time as they wanted to school and extracurriculars and exploratory learning in high school because they weren't distracted by a difficult home life or forced to work just to help provide for their family.

I realize this isn't exactly what jmspring meant, but it is still true, in a certain sense, that not everyone can afford a top school. The difference is that the costs come before you even send out your applications.
This is why I am so terribly excited by the underground cult hit console, the Open Pandora.

http://openpandora.org/

I find it just wonderful that a bunch of enthusiasts can get together and make their own game console, and accessories, all the while struggling under the economics forced on them by the broader consumer electronics market .. yet still build something that is just plain FUN to use.

If there is anything to be learned by the mainstream, it is that parts of it get too big, fall off, die and become the new old-thing. This happens in minor localities such as the Pandora project too, but nevertheless for one who wishes to participate in construction/usage/culture of an open, well-designed, affordable, powerful device .. with its own people .. the DIY hardware markets are lucrative. Sony going down like this, as its peers too, reminds me that new new-things are the new thing.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2813519

practicing what was called "the mushroom theory of management." It was an old expression, used in many other corners of corporate America. The Eclipse Group's managers defined it as follows: "Put 'em in the dark, feed 'em shit, and watch 'em grow."

"For everyone else - look straight at industry"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushroom_management
Looks useful for development. Does live editing also work with Xcode?
Unfortunately not as they contain sensitive information (financial contracts).
Azure overtakes Amazon's cloud in performance test
Maybe they, in contrast to their own FAQ, actually don't want users to turn their computers off. My parents always power off their laptop completely, because it feels natural to them to power off an electrical device when not using it. Then they complain about the long boot time.

This might not be the best solution since it causes confusion. But since so much is changing anyway, they might take the opportunity to change everything they don't like about how users interact with Windows.
Yeah, the Open Pandora is awesome! I pre-ordered (fully paid) mine back in early March 2009, before production had even started.

Now, almost four years later, I'm still waiting.

I'm sure it will be awesome, but of course the hotness (relatively speaking) of it specs will have cooled off a bit during these years. Any day now ...
You seem to be saying to contradictory things:

"Equity is worthless, never work for equity, always demand cash up front."

"Those darn investors and founders keep all the equity for themselves and get rich off your back!"

You can't have it both ways. Either the equity is worthless or it isn't. Are the investors, who get no salary and only equity, even bigger suckers than the employees? What about the founders who usually take big paycuts when they start the company?

It seems like the real message here is "Make sure you get a BUNCH of equity" not "Don't take any equity at all". Which I can totally get behind. If you're an early employee at a startup, working for equity, make sure you're being compensated appropriately!
Does this include the hacker news api? Since i'm using my phone a lot to checkout hacker news.
Very nice, and the soundfont sounds a lot better than the stuff that comes with most operating systems
I'm pretty sure the "inner voice" is just a metaphor to describe a concept.

I have both a strong inner voice (which is not perceived as a "voice of God" but more like speaking without uttering) and a weaker mind's eye, and a mind's ear (I can listen to songs I know with what seems like perfect reproduction, though it's definitely perceived as internal rather than external in origin). I also have peripheral awareness of other inputs into my thought process. I sometimes have ideas present themselves all at once, as though several words are silently present in the back of my consciousness, or as abstract notions, or as connections between components in a system. In the end, though, my thoughts don't feel "official" until I've serialized them into a linguistic stream, or at least given the mental images a good "look". This makes reading slower, as I have to read the words at roughly a spoken pace, but I still experience vivid imagery, and occasionally wonder how I ended up back in my house when I take a break from a really good book ;-).

For me, writing is definitely slower than thought. When I first attack a problem, dozens of concepts, edge cases, and other considerations will "come at me" from all corners of my mind. For me writing my ideas down isn't about brainstorming, but calming the storm.

I'm curious what my mental model of my mental model looks like in terms of neuronal connections. I'm also curious how many people are curious about their own thought processes. This discussion thread on HN has been very interesting, as we've seen comments from many different types of minds, all capable of expressing in verbal form their different ways of perceiving thought.
What is their path to making a "shitton" of money? I don't know, I am really asking.
He sounds like the worst employee ever as well as the best worker ever.

Look at this person, using the word "employee". Obviously the suffix -ee is always passive and deprecating, and -er always active enhancing. Employer and employee. Trainer and trainee. Appointer and appointee. Payer and payee.

Which is why people who create wealth, workers, call themselves workers. This person uses a more derogatory, passive term, "employee", who I suppose should thank the heavens that "employer" is a job creator. This says more about them then about you.

Karl Marx said in the Communist Manifesto that "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles". With unemployment at highs it has not seen since the mid 1980s, with wealth being drained to the wealthiest heirs of the 1% while the people creating wealth get nothing, this hubris and contempt will backfire on these parasites in time.
I find it really easy to power off once you know where to look. I think they moved it so people without a mouse/keyboard could still turn off Windows easily. Call me crazy but I find Windows 8 to be really solid even on older equipment.
Automating EC2 Deployments
13 IT security myths debunked
A gaming PC that can run these games on a better resolution and framerate costs a lot more than a PS3
Your investors were grown-ups. If you did everything legally, they are "qualified investors" (meaning they have wealth &/or high income); they signed a bunch of papers that explicitly say they have a good chance of losing all their money; and if they are at all professional, this is part of their business, and in fact believe it or not they are much more likely to invest in your next venture than some random investor you never met.

A startup is a venture. If the venture fails, it does not mean you are a personal failure for all of time. It just means that idea, with that execution, did not succeed in the marketplace at that time.
Perhaps I'm missing something here -- people criticize group deal sites for taking too much of the money in a deal (50% of the revenue). The marginal cost for LivingSocial on this is 0... why aren't they making tons of money? Where has the near $1 billion dollars gone?
Clownspace
I'm not saying they all suck. I'm saying that they change how people communicate and in an decreasingly meaningful way.

So much context and depth and therefore meaning is lost the moment you remove physical emotion from communication. People slowly get used to this shallow existence until one day they are left without their smartphone for one reason or another. Then they realise that they need it to remain socially adequate. They end up burned out emotional retards with compulsive behaviour issues.

they have the same characteristics as some drugs and you merely sound like an addict defending his or her addiction.
That the masses don't care about open source is reason to work really hard to educate them; not reason to not care either.
Does "FOIL" (first outer inner last) or the distributive property make more sense for your understanding of the expansion of (x+h) * (x+h) in algebraic terms? One thing I love about math is how there are different ways of representing the same concepts -- geometric, algebraic, etc. I wonder if this is because different mathematicians in history had different thinking styles, and paved the way for us modern folk to learn math in the format that works for our own unique minds.
You failed, it sucks and it wasn't your fault.

Investors saw an opportunity the same way you saw one, that's their game, its a numbers game for them. They invest in lots of promises, they win some, loose more but the wins cover the losses so don't worry about them.

You did your best and that's all that matters; the rest was beyond your control.

People fail like you every single day. In fact, almost every successful entrepreneur has a CV of failure much longer than you would have guessed, but no one ever talks about these failures; by the time they hit their big win, the failures are long forgotten.

Only the successes ever make it to TechCrunch and hardly anyone ever gets there on their first try.

So stop beating yourself up; get up, dust-off your shoulders and get to work on your next gig. When you reflect on this experience as you work on your next startup, you'll be able to see just how much you've learnt from this failure and maybe even be able to appreciate it.

Keep tossing the coin and your win, your success, will come soon. You haven't failed until you quit.

Best of luck.
All Carpets Cleaned, 45 Stockport Road
This is true, but I personally find that the tools available in decent statically/strongly-typed languages--C#, Scala--can do a fair amount in encouraging the Right Thing in ways that dynamically typed languages (especially dynamically weakly typed languages) can't.

I'm even becoming more and more fond of C++ because of the constraints that you can work in with proper use of templates; my only beef there is that the error messages when you do the Wrong Thing are often not conducive to understanding what the Right Thing is.
I guess I don't understand. In many ways, I consider myself addicted to the Internet. That having been said, I don't text my friends. I hate calling them. I'd love to go get a beer. I seriously, rarely ever text more than "Meet me at X" or "Want to do lunch?".

It's frustrating that you make a huge set of presumptions about me based on me... pointing out that your all-or-nothing stance is needlessly reductionist. And almost diminutive or offensive.

It's not hard to own a smartphone and not keep your nose glued to it. I love having it when I'm waiting in line. I love having it when I need directions (I'm directionaly challenged to put it nicely). I love having it when I need to look up someone's number on FB to text or call them about a project. I love having it meet other single people interested in a date in my area. I love having it to find the ISS overhead to point out to my dad.

And, yet, I don't like texting. I don't like away-facebook messages, (IMs are okay, nice for when I've just graduated and moved across the country from most people I know).

Calling me a drug addict would be much more apt than trying to use it for a boring allusion. I mean, drugs are great.
It's Klout for Students...
You're assuming it costs LivingSocial nothing to enlist a new business willing to offer a deal. I'm sure this is a huge cost for them, especially considering this is a "land grab" phase where there is fierce competition from other deal sites.