skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I somewhat agree with his assessment of business models that hinge on freemium or entry-points priced at $0, but I think he (like other seed-stage investors) tend to overlook an ill-conceived strategy that I call the "platform play" common in today's early-stage company landscape.

Utilizing some form of the this strategy - building a multi-level rather than a singular product, i.e. a social network or blogging tool that caters to X, Y and Z demographics when it should focus on X or the intersection of XYZ demographics - is almost doomed to gain minimal viable traction. I may be wrong, but I think "quick riches" founders of startups look at the success of Google (a free business, with a targeted product from the start that later monetized) or Facebook (singular product starting with the Ivy League demographic, built around ads with an impressive $300-400 million revenue stage, minus hype) and think, "I can do the same."

I don't think so. Don't confuse the ecosystem these companies have built (contextual ads and social applications, respectively, worth hundreds of millions of dollars) with how they started. For some, free is an entry-point to using your product (perhaps content, bare features, etc) but for others, particularly e-commerce, free and "platform plays" are short sighted toward revenue and profit goals.

Smart founders and investors see "free" as an integrated component in their company's vision, when applicable.
I have a point of view, I hope you don't down vote it and understand it first.

Most of HN users are web developers. In web developement, MS was a stupid company, they try to make "their standards" and not respect the other standards; which leads them to a big failure, now they are changing (with Microsoft Expression), but their visitmix.com is still missing a lot to compete even products like wordpress.com, also the tools provided their (I tried them) are buggy... So MS needs lot of monetization to get in the right track.

This happen with me also, I didn't learn ASP.net although I'm a dot net developer. I learnt PHP, PHP servers are cheap, fast, simple and do what I need. So why go with the very costing ASP.net and SQL Server??

In Windows Developement, I beg to differ and I consider MS had succeeded. why? Because Dot Net (whether it has good shares or not (and it has)) it a GREAT product. I use Vista and I'm very satisfied with the results.

WPF and Dot net are little buggy, but that's normal for anything that goes big to have problems here and there.
The Dot Net FrameWork is an important evolution in the domain of programming, is there any other competent framework? If you didn't tried it and want to develop OS applications then you should. Yes, Dot Net is for any OS, Windows, Linux, MAC. With the mono project (although I didn't tried it) I think only few tweaks are needed and your application is cross-platforms.

That's for the developers. MS didn't succeded online but did Offline.

Now when I come to the office, Office 2007 is much more advanced than 2003 and worth buying, there's a lot of whole new features to create nice documents (on word) the best feature I liked, is that i can convert my document to PDF and then it can be viewed by my clients whatever their OS!

MS is not good on all things, just few and what's wrong with that?

Is google good on all things? Was google good in his "knol"?? did google succeed with "orkut"?

Every company fail and succeed that's normal and every company is an "EVIL" and try to show us that they are "GOOD" people.

The future:

I think in the future MS will stay a power, but no longer a dominance, Market will be divided between MS, MAC and Google, but as the internet, computers and technology are getting wide spread, there will be a big market for each and no matter each one to work with, just the one you like most
My inference from the article is that Microsoft is at the top of the software industry like GM used to be the top of the automotive industry. ;)
I got my mom a custom-made apron with the name of her food blog sewed on it.

http://tasteofbeirut.com
You were born in the 80s! The only kids you tout is these kids.
These aren't "issues", they are items I specifically think hackers and technology people will find interesting. Perhaps they will, and I'll get up-modded, perhaps they won't, and they'll get flagged.

However, to address the ones you single out, in the first I was asking about favorite places of interest to technology buffs, hence mentioning the Falkirk Wheel, which is a fantastic demonstration of energy efficiency and Archimedes principle.

With regards the Evil Overlords, I and all the programmers I employ found it funny and we quote it often, so I thought it would be of interest to hackers. Feel free to flag it if you think otherwise.

And it's not my call to "let you" do anything. I think it's link bait, and not specifically of interest to hackers or technologists. There are many fine articles on the web about serious social issues, and they aren't necessarily of interest specifically to hackers. If others think otherwise, <fx:shrugs> fine.

Perhaps we should just agree to disagree, and leave it at that.
I think this would be useful but I can count on one hand I've had to do something remotely approaching this. You might say: well, now that it's easier with this tool, maybe you'll do it more often. Well, maybe. It's true that there is a lot of pain associated with emailing documents and search results around. But how often will this be useful?
I would not have known this was a Firefox plugin until I took the tour, you should include this on the front page. Also change "New User" to "Register", and make it look more like a link, right now it just looks like text
Reality Check by Guy Kawasaki is excellent, and covers everything from PR to marketing to legal. Some parts are advice on how to approach various aspects of starting up while other parts are more "nuts and bolts." (on average, the book stays somewhere between those two slants)

http://www.amazon.com/Reality-Check-Outsmarting-Outmanaging-... is e
Also on HN, http://javascript.infogami.com/Javascript_in_Ten_Minutes, is another good article.
Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure: Jerry Kaplan (Jerry is such a nice guy that he answered my email).

Another one, though this guy did NOT reply to my email, is about a publishing (not coding) startup, Burn Rate.
The internet is the thing that distract me most, the problem is that you want to always "keep on the loop".

I can only concentrate, sovle a problem or code when I disconnect, I have a "fear" that every moment something is happening in Twitter, Gmail, Facebook and that I need to be up-to-date.

The solution: I still thinking.....
I had to keep dragging my attention back to the article and force myself to finish it. Sometimes we are distracted because what we're supposed to be doing is genuinely of little (and declining) interest.

Why force yourself to watch the film all the way through?

When I'm doing mathematics, or programming, or designing, or drawing, I have no problem. When I'm reading tedious articles that provide little or no insight, my attention wanders.

I wonder why?
This happen with me also, I don't read text, I just scan it quickly. If the author didn't interest me from the starting that there's a result he wants to get, then I'll leave (and I have done so in this one)
re: Program mode by default

I disagree. If you have good lenses, leave your SLR in Av and use Depth of Field as a dynamic. For most sport you want to leave your lens wide open anyhow.
An offhand comment on the value of positioning as marketing: you'll note that they don't mention Rails at all but its impossible to read that title without thinking a) "I could do that in Rails in 15 minutes" b) "No, really, that isn't just meaningless language boasting -- there's a video" and c) it would have actually worked.

Personally, if I were writing an article about my web framework of choice, I'd eschew the blogging example and pick something where I could leverage some of the massive goodness available on CPAN.

(The more I learn about marketing the more I see it everywhere.)
Why Sync Is So Difficult
I'm sorry, but this sounds like a very contrived analogy that oversimplifies reality for the purpose of explaining what is really a simple concept.

In addition, this analogy is wrong. Over-engineered code is as much in need of a refactoring as under-engineered code.
World Amazing Bike Photos Collection
Pete Rates the Propositions [ California election ]
Check out this film:

WEST RUN (2007)

Directed, Photographed, & Edited by Rajah Samaroo
Written by Rajah Samaroo and Andrew Harrar
Runtime: 43 mins
Genre: cyberpunk thriller

Retired hacker Roland West gets lured back into the game when the headhunter Sebastian find him living off the grid. The stakes has never been so high, as West must outwit a conniving group of business leaders bent on collapsing the world market and US government.
Not fiction, but I'm enjoying "What the Dormouse Said: How 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer"
Goodreads vs Twitter: The Benefits of Asymmetric Follow
Why submit this? I stumbled on Pete's site yesterday, because he managed to hack the California's voter guide. He didn't break into their web site: instead, he was the only one who bothered to submit an argument against 1F. Apparently the window for submitting arguments was just 1 day, in an effort to lock out ordinary citizens. Pete faxed in his argument, so they had to print it.
The article is really about what you can now be done in Rakudo (Perl6) and not about any web framework par se. Web.pm is really just a lightweight "framework" more akin to CGI.pm than something like Rails.

* http://news.perlfoundation.org/2009/02/2009q1_grant_proposal...

* http://github.com/masak/web/tree/master
I'd like to know if the point attributed to Ward Cunningham - that Smalltalk failed because, relative to C++ etc., it was "too easy to make a mess" - is something he (a) really said and (b) meant in the way it was quoted. The idea that C++ programs are cleaner than Smalltalk ones is just bizarre. Edit: I'd be surprised if Ward had spent much time around C++ systems.
Balsillie is quite the hokey nut. When I was at RIM, the co-op committee would organize these talks where senior people would talk about what they do, how they got there etc. They were all pretty interesting, except Balsillie's talk, which involved hokey.

Anyway, I'm no hokey fan, but the politics behind this are actually pretty interesting. The NHL commisioner has been in power for a long time and runs the league with a heavy hand, and his primary push over his time has been trying to expand the game to the southern US, which involved moving teams from places like Quebec City and Winnipeg to Phoenix and Nashville. Of course, there is no base for hockey there and so a lot of these teams have very poor attendance and lose lots of money. Due to revenue-sharing, more successful teams have to pay for the loses for less-successful teams, which irritates lots of team owners, who are also governors of the NHL.

Now, Balsillie comes along and tries to buy a team. First The Penguins, then the Predators. The first time he balks after some last-minute addenda to the contract, while the second time he is judged to be too brash and not respectful enough of the established order.

Now comes this attempt. Clearly the Coyotes are a failure of a business - amongst the lowest sales in the league, massive financial loses every year. In order to survive, Bettman must convince team owners (who must approve any move within the league) that his southern strategy is worth perusing, that Balsillie would be an irresponsible and undesirable owner, and that they must keep subsidising the Coyotes for the good of everyone. Balsillie, OTOH, is using three strategies: first bankrupcy court to where he picks up the Coyotes by offering a very good price for a very bad business, second a lawsuit that alleges the NHL promotes anti-competitive practises (trying to keep Hamilton from getting a team, since its close to Toronto and Buffalo) and lastly, appealing to other team owners' business sense, his this move would make the league better off financially.
Which iPhone app(s) did you make?
Include any app(s) in which you had some role in development (i.e., not just coding, but art, music, etc.).
Limiting yourself to works with a narrative hook in the first few sentences is a mistake.
Be that as it may, one can easily imagine cases where the benefits of creating a positive right would outweigh the harm. Any particular reason to think negative rights must trump everything else?
Cornell "Designing with Microcontrollers" Class Final Projects
Misleading title. A prototype can take minutes. A real app takes weeks, months or years of incorporating user feedback, bug fixes, patching security holes, etc.

All these articles do is fool non-software people into thinking that they can expect someone to build what they need for the cost of a few hours of consulting time and that it will be a finished, full-featured product.
Sing it, sister.

I implemented my own 2-way syncing for ShoveBox and its new iPhone app (wonderwarp.com/shovebox).

I was very thorough in the way I did it, but there are still small issues that I wasn't able to resolve by release time.

I'm going to write a blog post on this soon.
I think they're going to eventually cave in. The NHL needs any success stories it can cultivate. Copps in Hamilton isn't exactly a modern arena and it would certainly leave Glendale with an empty arena with no major league team in it...and I can understand Bettman not wanting to alienate a market that built a facility for his (poorly thought out) southern strategy, but I think Team Canada will eventually prevail in this one, as to the casual fan, there's little reason to keep teams in places that aren't successful.

I hope it's the domino effect necessary to remove a few other teams in bad markets over the next few years. Couple that with a TV deal that actually makes sense or gives the league more exposure and I think NHL could solidify itself back into somewhat of the mainstream.

It's still more popular than MLS and that's the only fringe threat for 4th major sport status and I doubt that'll change given MLS will never be the home to the best players in the world unless a lot of rich people start buying MLS franchises and decide to turn the league into their version of the EPL.
Gee, here I was hoping that pop-psych trivializations of brain hemisphere lateralization would be dethroned this century...
No the author does clearly say that he got it working after 130 minutes.

I think the confusion is that the author is referring to fact he used GET (query strings) for "posting" because POST isn't currently available/working in Web.pm
I've worked in the league offices of Major League Soccer. While it's not one of the big four, all the high executives are from one of the big four.

Balsillie has a number of issues: first, Hamilton's clearly in both the Leaf and Sabre territories. Second, the arena in Arizona is brand new and better than anything in Ontario by a wide margin. Third, even if they were going to move the team, Kansas City has a new arena that's perfect for hockey as well. Fourth, moving a team back to Canada doesn't help get the NHL back on ESPN (which is apparently their "Master Plan" to rebuild the league in the States).

Lookit, as a sports fan, I'm in favor of putting teams where fans want them and can afford them. (i.e. the Jacksonville NFL team is a mistake of incredible proportions.) In particular, it makes more sense for the Coyotes to end up in Hamilton than any of the other teams in the NHL (maybe the Preds). But it's not just Bettman's ego that's keeping a team here in the States. There are all sorts of structural issues at play as well. And we haven't even gotten into the "Balsillie is the Mark Cuban of hockey" argument.
It is actually hard to tell from the article whether the EU parliament recognized Internet access as a fundamental right. The article itself did say that's what it did, but there was no actual quote from what the EU parliament passed that corroborated that they actually said this.

In any case, I think that holding Internet access to be a fundamental right is confusing means with ends. Freedom of expression is a fundamental right. One could argue that freedom to pursue education and better oneself is a fundamental right. Internet access is an implementation detail of ensuring these rights in the 21st century.

Fundamental rights are about principles; something like universal Internet access is about implementation.
Positive rights are very different than negative rights. Right to free speech means no one can oppress your speech, essentially barring action, so it's called a negative right.

A right to a trial by jury is the only positive right in the US Bill of Rights. It's a huge pain in the ass to do jury duty, in part because law mandates we take action.

A positive right to health care coverage or internet access are ridiculous, because it is a mandate for someone to provide service to you.

Instead of people operating in good faith through mutually beneficial exchange, the government steps in and makes people do it. That kind of violence or theft is bad.

I'm all for greater access to the internet. Calling it a right is a bad idea.
The book is pretty weak, I actually read it. How do these people get on Oprah? Just this interview probably sold 10 000 copies.
Discworld's Going Postal and Making Money by Terry Pratchett are worth checking out. They are sort-of about startups; the main character has to re-organize the Post Office and the Banking system.
High quality templates for inspiration
yes i know but when i feel that i'm reading something not useful i will be not interested and then it has no sense for reading it and i'll simply give up!
hey sho, I appreciate the effort at defending me and all that, but yeah, it was totally a rant. I didn't get as far as the first sentence without mentioning my own balls. I aim for a high standard of rationality in my rants, but a rant is definitely the word.
Thank you for the information, everyone. I appreciate it.
The 5 worst drawing teams in the NHL are: NY Islanders, Atlanta (Expansion), Phoenix (move from Winnipeg), Nashville (expansion) and Colorado (move from Quebec City).

http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/attendance

Denver is a saturated 4-team market and a weak link team. None of these teams made the playoffs this year and each has their own endemic problems, but I'd argue that the Islanders probably need a new building, but that's not going to happen most likely. The others suffer from playing non-traditional markets and Colorado is fickle about anything other than Broncos, though they'll support a team like crazy so long as they're winning.

Florida and Columbus are 6th and 7th worst in attendance and both are expansion teams that have had limited success (Florida made the Cup Finals some years ago..but haven't been good since and Columbus get swept from the playoffs this year)

Contraction shouldn't happen, but...moving some teams around to better markets ought to and I think this Coyotes move will open that door.
Why Did M.I.T. Switch from Scheme to Python?
If you find that interesting, study the blog post Atwood wrote about how you shouldn't use images in your blog the way I use images in my blog. This would be the post he wrote about three to six months before he started using images in his blog the way I use images in my blog.
I'm all for moving a team to Kansas City over Hamilton, just given the economics of it, coupled with the whole brand new building in a downtown area thing.
I think the differentiating point is that Tumblr is not an adult website. Adult websites need to stay separate from those which are popular for kids <18 years old or at least have some kind of warning that informs the user about the content. We have the same thing for TV, music, movies, video, and video games too.
Education is obedience, knowledge is power.

There is a big difference.
Miracl is one.
We are working on a syncing product for companies and everything he wrote is spot on.

I would add that file locking issues is also a huge problem even when it comes to a simple conflict resolution.

Throw in case sensitivity issues, among others and yeah, sync is difficult.
This post has been up 13 hours and there are no comments. I guess there really aren't to many of us old farts around who actually used, and still use BSD.

Thank you Bill...
For outsiders of the region, Hamilton is basically a suburb of Toronto. Certainly it is it's own place, but it's fair to say there's a lot of back-and-forth between the two, ie. commuting and fan loyalty. It's also a hour away from Buffalo, so there are ties there as well.
They question is, what effect does giving this area a new team have on the league overall. Obviously there are fans there, but these fans are already probably going to games in Toronto and Buffalo. Are they expecting to make fans in the area? That seems unlikely.
So you are cutting into the bases of 2 other teams in the league for what?
See, you say that because you're analytical and check the facts. That kind of stuff is being exported to Asia. You gotta be holistic and big-picture, man!

He got on Oprah because he targets Oprah's demographic: credulous childrearing-age women. It really boils down to that fact alone, and being good doesn't enter into it.
That's fair enough. Just as you thought your non-hacker stories might be of interest to programmers, so I thought my non-tech story might be of interest to hackers also. Programmers are after all v interested in issues of liberty - your interesting article on UK libel laws being a case is point.

The difference is that I did not go around accusing you of link-bait. But, yes, let's just leave it that.
18 Billion Suns -Biggest Black Hole in Universe Discovered
through "forced" repeated and rapid decision making we tend to pass on the things too fast without much deliberation by considering oneself smart. But stick to some things very well like music/twitter/ etc etc. Its not actually question of concentration; we are trying to cope up with information overload and sifting and filtering is required or at least such requirement is perceived
Can you recommend any good resources/tutorials for this?
All judges make sane decisions all the time? Miscarriages of justices never happen?
Wouldn't building a sync on top of something like git simplify the whole process?
Xbox 360 is doing well against its similar competitor, the Playstation 3. The problem is that the Wii is doing even better - not be being better, but by changing the basis of competition.

That is the one of the few ways that successful wll-run companies can die.
It's tough to program (and doubly tough to do system administration!) without being connected to the internet to search for documentation or solutions to problems.

I have a hard time keeping myself from getting distracted, especially when I'm doing something with intermittent downtime ( http://xkcd.com/303/ , rebooting computers, etc). The only real solution I can think of is to attempt to increase my discipline. Technical solutions all seem inadequate and even silly when you know you can trivially circumvent them.
It's a fanboy rendering, done in Maya and 3DS MAX, just like the credits to the video say.
Promotional Calendars - A Unique Way To Get Your Message Across 
Promotional calendars are the most versatile of all the promotional products that you might be investing your advertising dollars in.
OAuth is a pain to use for desktop applications