skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
By 1990 or so, there was a company in Ohio selling books on the Internet. They had the books.com address - until web browsers came along later, you just logged in through telnet on a 'curses' capable terminal. It worked OK, and they shipped books on time with low fees, internationally. They had good word-of-mouth on Usenet.

A couple of years later, amazon.com came along claiming "a river of a million books". I think the books.com address was sold to Barnes&Noble around 2000.
The Best Way to Get High Quality Web Traffic
EBay plans Skype IPO next year
EBay plans to spin off Skype via an initial public offering (IPO) because the Internet telephony unit doesn't mesh with the company's two other businesses -- e-commerce and online payments.
Google search referer changes
Interesting posts. I actually wrote this over three years ago, but somehow never got around to actually publishing it on my blog. It seems kind of cliche now, but I thought it was well-written enough to be worth posting.
http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html - over 25,000 ips per day

http://ycombinator.com/images/2yeartraffic.png - Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but does that image show 300,000 pageviews per day?
This quote is not about introversion, but about despair (depression?), isolation, and a poor definition of self.

http://www.google.ca/search?q="have+just+now+come+from+a+par...

The dash should also come before the word "but".

But then, a quote's whatever you interpret it to be, no?
Maybe adding the golden ratio would be a plus... I am not that great at web design either, but I hope reading articles like this and practicing bits of the recommendations will be like working at keeping a smile on my face - It lifts my mood.
If we could learn not to reward people who are essentially better liars, it would be great!

One step removed from that is to just admit what you're thinking to yourself. You can leave a facade up for other people if necessary, but at least stop trying to fool yourself.
Whoops, my bad. read that as 24 GB RAM instead of 12 GB RAM (which made me wonder why they would need so much memory)

The server should come out to a little over $1000 per month then?
I suspect your hardware costs are a bit off.

Just for an example, you can rent Xeon 5570, a rather nice 2.93 Ghz machine with 12GB RAM, and 2 TB of monthly bandwidth for $724 from Softlayer and others.
I did screw up the quote, and I know it is about despair (different than depression, I think) but it popped into my head. I should have been more rigorous about getting the quote right. Sorry 'bout that.
* Full Disclosure: I am Gary Vaynerchuk's brother.

Not sure why this video of Gary made it towards the top of hackernews. He has done a lot of other videos that fit more so with the entrepreneurial aspect on this site.
You're right. My math was off. I read it as 24 GB RAM, instead of 12 GB RAM.

I was actually checking out Mediatemple's nitro server. Low on the memory and speed end (2.33 GHz and 8 GB RAM) but it seems to be getting glowing reviews for it's customer service.

I'm going to also check out softlayer.

Any other suggestions?
How big does something have to be and how fast does it have to grow to be deemed a success? I and the rest of the 700 members of the Life Scientists room think Friendfeed is already a success.

Don't confuse growth rate with absolute size.
If Hacker News is anything like my site, both of which basically need to serve up little bits of text to lots of people, then hosting is cheap.

I bet you could serve 20,000 people a day on an HN-like site for well under $1,000/month on AWS, assuming you are smart about caching and you don't thump the database with every request.

So, even if you were totally clueless about ads and just ran random ad sense, the thing would more than pay for itself.

It's incredibly cheap to run a site that doesn't need much bandwidth. Basically, if you are serving no pictures or media, you should be able to build a website at super-scale in your garage, or using some Cloud Service.
Given how sure you are of it, I assume you have a quote from Roddenberry that backs up your statement.
I still think it's amazing that we live in a world where we can store 25,769,803,776 bytes on a computer that we entrepreneurs can afford!

It's causes a huge change in the way people look at Databases- In the past, you needed huge database servers so that you could keep everything stored on disk, and intelligently cached.. Today, I'd imagine that 99% of companies data can be kept entirely in memory.

Stunning, really. It entirely changes how you think about data storage.
I don't think so. You can build out that Linux box for just a few thousand total. Check out System76 if you don't want to build it.
I think he's referring to how much it would cost if you paid for a server like that through a hosting provider.
Only 3 percent of newspaper reading is done online
absolute sincerity and respect

The tough situation in life is only being able to be sincere when expressing disrespect, because the other guy deserves disrespect. What do you think about this? (I'll treat your honest answer as a respectful answer, whatever you say.)
It'll certainly be interesting to watch. I'd like to move to SV, but it's not really practical for me for a variety of reasons. So I'll keep plugging away out here; I don't really need investors (yet), but the idea of having so much technical talent in one place is really what makes Silicon Valley so unique in the world.
Not to mention (or maybe you are implying) providing compelling reasons to frequent HN.
Why Amazon Didn’t Just Have a Glitch
Finding BlackBerry apps: 3 App World alternatives
The reviews of App World have been less than favorable. Does that matter? Not really. What other options do you have for getting applications? Well, as it turns out, we do and have had some options for a while.
If it doesn't require intent, would you consider Batesian mimicry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batesian_mimicry ) "lying"? Or does it have to be in the form of behaviour to be a lie?

(I'm not trying to argue a point here, just being curious. I'm not sure how I'd answer these myself, but I find this interesting to think about. Thanks for making me think :) )
MapReduce vs. SQL: It’s Not One or the Other
as an educational platform it's nowhere near dead

That's an interesting point of view. To refer specifically to the example you gave, what is it about computer science that can best be learned (only be learned?) in college? Does showing that lack of college study of computer science is correlated with lack of basic programming knowledge (which I would believe, for the sake of discussion) the same as showing that lack of college study of CS will CAUSE, inevitably, lack of basic programming knowledge? Can't anyone who desires to improve programming knowledge self-educate through multiple channels in today's world?

After edit: It appears that the reply to which I am replying has now been deleted. I'll open up the questions to everyone else reading the thread.
Unlike reddit, there aren't as many people on here. Sometimes I see things with 2 upvotes getting front paged
Coral Transplant Surgery Prescribed for Japan
Tonido keeps cloud computing local
I say this, find me a business with out competition and I will show you a business without any customers.

Every business is going to have competition. If you didn't then your area of business is likely something no one wants.
Physicists see the cosmos in a coffee cup
Great post from a couple weeks ago on Josh Kopelman's blog on stuff like this in the search engine business: http://redeye.firstround.com/2009/03/pivoting-and-yogi-berra...

Summary: Don't give up.
Robotics other than military, industrial, and medical is really nonexistent at this point. Japan's robotics are cosmetic and hardly taking over anything. With something like robotics it is difficult to weigh who will end up funding you. The answer today is probably the government, not VCs, so location is irrelevant.
Too funny!! Lunix!
"In order to get rid of it, you will have to send your computer back to the manufacturer, and have them fit a new hard drive. Lunix is extremely dangerous software, and cannot be removed without destroying part of your hard disk surface." ----you've made my day!
Take advantage of this situation.

If they fail, why did they fail? What will you do differently to succeed that they did not?

If they are successful and service becomes popular you now know there is a market. Take your idea, take their good ideas, and combine them into your own better than originally planned idea. Take some of their market, make some of your own market.

Think of it as competition. If you know you can do better go forward and nip on their heels. Your product will be better (theirs might too).

However, it almost sounds like you are trying to make an excuse to give up. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.
The problem is that the value of certain computer science concepts, such as big-Oh notation, may not be immediately obvious for someone self-educating. They can skip over these mathematical/CS concepts in favor of more 'practical' software engineering study. You don't need to know lambda calculus or even basic sorting algorithms to write business logic apps -- and so these things get ignored.
The complete headline should end in "by people who read newspapers"

I think the market for newspapers still exists. It may always exist. Some people just like the tactile feel of paper. The real issue Newspapers' have is that it doesn't exist to the point where it will support their bloated staff.
A good A/B test is often "sticky" (usually using cookies); once you're in a certain bucket, you stay in that bucket. So a different browser could conceivably make a difference.
I love how big-Oh notation is the default example of what you need college for in every single Reddit/HN discussion of education.
Good point. That's partly what I'm trying to figure out.

My internal argument goes something like this: on one hand, if the behaviour is the same how can you claim the intent is different? But on the other hand, how do you define deceptive behaviour without intent?

Here's a thought experiment: suppose someone had no short-term memory but had a dog who was trained to ask (as dogs do) for his meal each day. If the dog decided one day to ask for an extra meal, is he lying, or is he responding to a reward? And if the answer is that he isn't lying, because the dog doesn't differentiate indicating he hasn't eaten (which would be a lie) and asking for a meal (which wouldn't), isn't this true of any way that a dog could "lie"?
Is that realistic? Running random AdSense + 20,000 people a day = "more than" $1,000 a month?
Sure looks like it to me - the peaks on the graph are too close together to be going by months.
If the idea is so exciting that people might jump on it even if there are 1 or 2 competitors ahead of them, then you'd better be confident in your ability to execute. Because as soon as you launch more competitors will come.

On the other hand, I implemented a blindingly obvious idea for photo sharing that is so clearly the right way of doing things, I thought for sure tons of other sites would be doing the same thing in no time. Four and a half years later it's still unique.

Just ship it and see what happens.
Under a $1000 a month? I'd hope so! That would pay for a couple extra large instances which is way overkill for a simple site like this. It could be hosted on a simple VPS for $50 if you wanted to (well with a different architecture, hosting it all in memory makes a VPS not very efficient).
Very nice. Looking forward to the iPhone app.

One issue: on the 3rd most zoomed level no markers show up.
Another case is that of EzGov and govWorks (see the documentary Startup.com) As I understand, govWorks started in 1998 (not sure which month), EzGov started in April, 1999.

EzGov appears to have survived and grew to be acquired by ChoicePoint in 2005. govWorks filed bankruptcy in 2001.

So as others here say, there is a lot more than just the starting date at play.
Gary's entrepreneurial videos are awesome and they get a lot of votes here -- usually many more votes than this one has gotten.

I submitted this particular video because it busts myths around a subject that's exotic to a lot of people. I found it really interesting and I guess some other people liked it too!
Okay, let me rephrase that:

ASSUMPTION A1: There are no smart women who are attractive

OBSERVATION O1: Tina Fey

Assumption A1 has been disproven by observation O1, and thus it follows that assumption A1 cannot hold, thus disproving your claim.

Or: Oh Please.
I'm very intrigued, and I hope to see more from this. I really like the licensing set up on this too, more libraries should do something like this (it's not a crime to ask for money if you're making money using someone's library).

It would be nice if this eventually grew to add a drag and drop gui creator. As a programmer/artist who hates boring interfaces, count me interested.
Same thing happened to me. Someone beat me to it. But I just kept working on it (still not done actually. hehe). They are making money, so this confirms that my idea will work. It is more of a reassurance than a threat/de-motivation to me.

And the other guy could use a little competition. I jsut have to "up" my product a little bit.
I found the process of coming up with the estimate just as interesting as the conclusion itself. It is described at http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/04/print-is-still-king-only-3-... (linked to by the original article)
Absolutely.

20,000 people a day is definitely worth 35 dollars per day. That would mean, if your ads were impression-based, your CPM of $1.75.

You pay $45 CPM for eyeballs on a site like backpacker.com, which actually has a tight audience, but you're gonna get $1.75 unless your site is just spam.

CPM means cost per thousand eyeballs. I'm talking about impressions here just to simplify things.
"only 3 great universities have emerged."

Do you mean Oxford, Cambridge, UCL?

Oxford & Cambridge are not 1 university, there are a lot of different colleges.
Oh where do I begin?

First, I disagree with the premise anecdotally: most girls I find attractive are smart.

Second, I don't agree that the relationship between nerds and popularity is isomorphic to the relationship between intelligent women and attractiveness. Nerds, practically by definition are not popular; the same is decidedly not true for smart women and being attractive. Additionally, popularity is typically an extrinsic measure, relative to your peers (i.e. it wouldn't make sense for everyone in your high school to be considered one of the popular kids) while attractiveness is an intrinsic measure (in theory, everyone in your high school could be considered attractive).

Moreover, I disagree with the conclusion in both directions. It's not clear that being smart is a cause/excuse for being unattractive nor is it clear that being attractive is some sort of excuse for being unintelligent.

Finally, I disagree with the idea on principle. I don't think adult men or women should get into the habit of blaming their intelligence for their supposed unpopularity or unattractiveness. A lot of smart people (understandably) used that as a coping mechanism for teen angst in high school, but by adulthood it's about time to let go of that sort of destructive, zero-sum approach to life.

I think it's abhorrent to tell smart kids being anti-social in general or smart girls rejecting their femininity in particular that their behavior is some sort of badge of honor. It's not. It's not good, it's not bad, it just is.

The older I get, the more I understand that intelligence is a multi-dimensional thing. There are many types of intelligence. If you're great at math but you can't write, are you smarter than your neighbor who's a brilliant essayist but can't calculate an eigenvector? And where does the person fit who can magnificently work a room but is only average at writing and math? Intelligence isn't an axis, it's a plane, er, multi-dimensional surface.

If there's something you'd like to change about yourself, change it. If you're happy with yourself as you are, even better. People should accept themselves, flaws and strengths alike, but I'd hate to see people going around muttering under their breaths that more popular, better dressed, or better made-up peers are only that way because they lack intelligence. That's a pretty juvenile conceit, to be honest. And I'd like to think we're all too smart to fall for that sort of self-deception for very long.
Which part?

Just as an example, let's say a school teacher uses her computer for email, web browsing, managing files, photo editing, and maintaining her second grade web site. Gmail, (some browser), dropbox, snipshot, and splashup/weebly would be all she needs.

If all these websites were somehow organized in a way that said teacher can easily find them, then I think a 'startup revolution' would be more likely: people could go to a central website to browse for startup that meets their needs.
Well, he shouldn't call it hardware costs then :)

A hosting provider gives you lots of services too.
I dunno. I'm not sure there's a bright line between Batesian mimicry and behavioral lying, but I haven't thought about it much.
On the side note, I wouldn't mind if HN place a tiny link ad somewhere. That would be a good experiment.
$50 for 20k users a day? Good Luck. I don't think 512 MB VPS with any architecture could do that.
Koko the Gorilla seems to lie intentionally.

'She lies when it suits her. "Who broke the kitchen sink?" one of the staff asks her. Koko indicates another staff member, whirls about and starts to laugh.'

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1252/is_12_131/ai_n85...

Even Alex the Parrot seemed to intentionally give wrong answers to questions when he was bored with a task.
Unless things changed in the latest version, Jekyll's not git-powered per se, it's just a website generator that Github has hooked up to a post-commit hook on users' pages repositories.
Maybe try Zend Framework. take a look at that components. http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/
One should learn to sail in all winds.
We're constantly reminded of the people who are productive coders without a college degree so the counter-example is well established. I don't think you'll get anyone to go along with "lack of college study of CS will CAUSE, inevitably, lack of basic programming knowledge".

In the general case however, a majority of people who start college degrees (there are exceptions, again, such as MIT but those colleges put out a very small percentage of graduates) don't have programming experience. Surely you wouldn't want someone like who I was before college, just a regular guy who would chat a lot online, sometimes play video games (but not much), had written some mIRC scripts and a web page (static HTML with dreamweaver), installed linux a few times but didn't like it much, could build a computer from parts bought separately, did most of the extended family's tech support and took a VB class in high school (your average pre-college geek) to be coding the software you do your online banking with.

The great benefit of college is to show you just how much there is available to know. The field is huge. College orients you in every direction and, if you let it, guides you a few steps down the path in every way. Which path(s) you ultimately choose to follow are up to you but at least you know they're there, have a solid grounding to work on and know how to go about getting to your destination. Some people can get there on their own. Most wouldn't have a clue where to start.
I can't believe CNET pays for this crap. Remind me to set their domain to 127.0.0.1 until they stop paying for drivel written my innumerates with no apparent understanding of the application of statistical methodologies to test hypotheses.

If you're going to write in support of or, in this case, detraction of a set of quantitative results, you'd better damn well offer up your own alternative logical inference chain.
I haven't logged in to explore it yet, but the front page is nice and uncluttered. I do have one critique:

Tighten up your front page to really make it stand out.

I viewed it through a 20" iMac, so I've got plenty of screen real estate. First time visitors shouldn't have to scroll to get to the bottom bar and the /places/all resource is hidden below the scroll as well.
Headline should say, "...according to wild guesses". From the article:

In the absence of any remotely accurate research, he estimated that the average print reader gives 25 minutes of his or her daily life to the newspaper. And 35 minutes on a Sunday. He also estimated that the average print reader looks at 24 pages in that newspaper.

These seem like pretty high estimates to me.
The day before one of my portfolio companies launched, a stealth competitor launched. And it out-shadowed ours. Two months later we've compiled, (i) more traffic, (ii) more revenue.

Put your shoulder to the wheel and grind it out. If you don't, you'd probably of failed anyways.
RapidSSL
An intersting lack of success relative to the amount of legacy COBOL out there. Thanks for the info. I am reminded of the quote (recently popularized by Spolsky), "where there's muck, there's brass."
"Things got bad when credentialism surpassed education as the primary function of college. If you want evidence of this, consider the criteria for the US News & World Report college rankings: Peer assessment, student selectivity, faculty resources, graduation and retention rate, financial resources, alumni giving, and graduation rate performance. Notice anything missing?

Are colleges not ranked in order of how much students learn because that would be impossible to measure? Or is it because no one cares?"

if you think about it, this doesn't make sense. the us news college rankings are used by high school students and their families to select colleges to attend, not by (most, i assert) employers to select employees to hire. they list credentials of colleges, not college graduates. so they are not evidence that "credentialism" is a function of college at all.

employers care about the difference between schools in regard to what their students learn---and these differences surely exist---and they assess schools with this criterion using empirical data they gather from interviewing and hiring people.
Could do a Breadth First Search. Add a memo table to make it faster. The memo table key would be the vector changed into an int i.e. (2,1,4,5,3) -> 21453. The memo table value would just be a bool... true if we've already seen the current permutation of the vector, false otherwise.
Scientists warn of Twitter dangers
Yeah, like Boston, "the intellectual capital of the US and probably the world."

-- http://www.paulgraham.com/revolution.html
Evernote + Twitter = Instant Memories
Is your concept search? If yes, get back to the drawing board.

Seriously though, if you aren't going against a company that whose name is used as a verb in the common vernacular, I think you should stick with it. As mentioned, the fact that your idea has been implemented is a validation. If you take it as a defeat then you lose.
"the us news college rankings are used by high school students and their families to select colleges to attend"

That was my argument. Students don't choose their college based on how much they think they will learn. And so colleges have no incentive to make sure they do.

No one cares if students aren't learning, not the students, not the colleges, because learning is no longer the point.
Data Visualizations: Social Media Videos
Quantum Theory May Explain Wishful Thinking
I think the server costs around $350/mo. I don't like to think how much time HN actually takes up, but when I was traveling recently I found that checking in for about 30 min a day was enough to keep things under control.

On a weekday we get about 350k pageviews from about 30k unique ip addrs.
I thought MapReduce and SQL were totally separate tools to solve totally separate problems...
No it is not illegal. Defamation, even if it exists, which in this case looks pretty doubtful, is a civil tort.
NASA takes Ethernet deeper into space