skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Congratulations to the author and he does do a good job of negating the horse I'm about to beat to death, within the article itself.

Unfortunately, most people will just read the title of the post; which I wish the author would have spoken more about how awesome their domain knowledge is (or whatever factor he felt really led to their funding) as _most_ can't just walk up with just a story and land this type of money.

The catch-22 about the title is that it gives people hope, when they should not have any hope, if they think they can replicate his funding story easily.
Right, but that's the point of SES and Mandrill limiting you to like 250/day at first and gradually increasing your limit.

Asking you to write an essay telling them what you're using email for is not verification.
Maybe they had to take them down temporarily to install new PRISM boxes.
I use LilyPond when creating the sheet music, and it can take MusicXML as well as MIDI (I'm assuming that MuseScore can output at least one of them).

Alternately, it would be possible to just upload the pictures of the score directly in .png format onto noteZilla.
From the author: Thanks to voxoz, Flynn, and Deis for your support .
Aboard.io — Inspiration board
Aboard is an inspiration board for artists and designers which combines the most beautiful RSS feeds from the Web. You can create your own list, Aboard will remember it the next time you come.
Is it up? is correctly reporting: http://isitup.org/google.com

Same at http://www.isitdownrightnow.com/google.com.html
That was kind of the point though, there is no funding story that's repeatable. Maybe didn't emphasize that enough.
Did you enter the pieces/recordings manually or does it automatically analyze the piece and score?

Either way, it would be cool to see a writeup about how you implemented this.
An ugly omen of dark times ahead. Weird how this isn't making front page.

EDIT: the moderators are idiots.
--- This Music Video Will Make You Trip ---
It was down in the bay-area as well.. (not it's back). It wasn't only Google, it was also Gmail, url-shortner and other services
Because everyone is responsible for everyone else, on some level. This is pretty basic freaking stuff.
it wasn't down in europe
The way to think about this is that they have dozens of people who were already scrambling to fix it by the time you realized. You're not going to build an alternative with better uptime than Google.
New Tweets per second record, and how
WTF, I wish Ben would print up some money and give them to me. I'll only ask for 500k.
It should be written 0.0.1[::-1]
Buffett is an interesting character. From this article, it would appear that he sees himself as some kind of entrepreneur/investor/manager hybrid than as a pure money manager.

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/12/03/for-buffett-the-long-...

If you go on to read anything about activist investors, like Carl Icahn, you get the feeling that the only way to beat the market is to tamper with it.
I'm not seeing any "generosity" on Google's part, at least from the examples you provided.

You certainly seem like a smart guy, working on some cool stuff, so I'm not surprised people are a bit confused (hence the term "brainwashed") by your (pretending to?) not understand the business model of the company you work for.

You are giving your time away, for free, to a for profit corporation. That's so irrational it's painful to hear.

If you like working with google systems and resources so much that you are willing to pay your employer to use them then ok, that's a bit weird, but it's your time. If you feel you need to work 120% time to keep your career on track then ok, that's not uncommon in this industry (but it's the opposite of generosity and it's not sustainable for you).

Framing this as repaying Google for "their extreme generosity" is delusional, which is why I'm assuming it's not the real reason.
As the linked site notes, clients are part of the distributed system, which means they can be partitioned as well, both from each other (more important in a P2P app) and from your servers. So you may not be able to "direct all your users to the other(s)."
This is why investing in an index fund is a great decision. When you rely on more active management, you pay higher fees, and your returns are likely to be about average (or worse). With an index fund you can take a healthy return, mitigate risk by diversifying well, and pay a fraction of the fee (which equates to hundreds of thousands of dollars over 30-40 years from the added growth).
I hit it exactly during the outage. I was flabbergasted. :O
Interesting question. Obviously the people behind the LAME MP3 encoder cannot extend you any patent rights on MP3 encoding, you would have to go to MPEG-LA for that. On the other hand, if you take that MP3 encoder and embed it in a device you start selling, you'll most certainly put yourself in the chain of liability, no?
Warning: An accurate analysis of one of the world's biggest problems
And you know what comes next after Arch...

...Gentoo.
it's already on the front page..
Even better, just reading this title induced a small amount of fearful discomfort. Not very different to 'electricity grid is down'.

/me needs to reflect on life
I have a Mid 2011 MacBook Pro - so around 2 years old. According to iStat Pro, it's been through 430 cycles with 93% battery health. As far as I can see from the comments, I'm one of the lucky ones.
Google is...Up
2012 Macbook Air:
Cycles: 138
Health: 83%

Is this replacement worthy? What am I doing wrong?
I noticed that right after it came back online, google.com redirected to google.com/?itsfriday.

Anybody know anything about that?
Series A Crunch?  Here's how to beat it.
And HN.
What did people do before Google? Ah yes, I recall now, Alta Vista. Chuckle.
Roger that on the litany of variables. Super insightful response. Thank you.

Thanks to you I think the essence of this thread can be refined to: What financial (and/or other) consideration would a US-based Hacker, with mobile skill sets, require to team up with a CA-based Non-technical with an idea, business and legal chops?
Perhaps you should review http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacies_of_Distributed_Comput...
Gay Midget Sings Like a Virgin -- The Meltdown Pot
It's children that are the real financial issue. Even one child, last I heard, is the difference between early retirement as a reward for spending your 20s and 30s on grad-student frugality while earning plenty of money, and just having to work a 9-5 until it kills you.
I bet Bing goes down all the time and nobody notices.
Hackernews is slowly turning into reddit, except there's only one subreddit you can't unsubscribe from.
Anyone else notice that google.com now seems to force ssl even for non logged in users?
I'm not sure if this is feasible or not, but I'd love to read an overview of how you are handling the different plans scenario (previous plans setup vs new pay as you go setup) on a technical level. It'd be helpful for any SaaS owners who want to one day do something similar and as far as I know, no one has ever documented this process.
It'll be interesting to see whether or not Google releases a statement as to why they were down.
It depends on where you're visiting it from. While it is up for me, some sources say otherwise:

Down: http://www.isup.me/google.com
Up: http://isitup.org/google.com
Up: http://www.isitdownrightnow.com/google.com.html
Now I'm curious. It's not safe to run this at home, on any sort of paid hosting, on a university network, where is it safe to run this program?

If you work for an ISP?

If you ask the University nicely?
Everything in life is a trade-off. Being an employee at a decently sized company is about trading certain pleasantries (e.g. having to deal with the 9 to 5 drill) for certain benefits (e.g. a stable income).

Similarly in jobs that have no paid overtime, you are usually compensated a bit more and don't always have to work overtime.

Taken care of in this context is talking about the stability a company provides you. It isn't given to you out of charity, you certainly earn it, but it doesn't come free either.
The fact that "make the sacrifices necessary" is a useful attitude for you does not mean the cost-benefit/risk structure is actually adequate for everyone else.
Is the changing 'I'm feeling lucky' button new or has that been there previously? Mouse over and it changes. Clicking 'I'm feeling stellar' takes me to a page about the Hubble telescope, 'I'm feeling puzzled' to a Google games page.
What do you want to build? Any ideas? Comparte camarada.
Isn't this a regression from Google Earth, a globe zoomed out, zoomed in a flat map?
I appreciate the reply! I guess my only sad face was bc I used to run a tech accelerator and I have seen how pervasive the title of your post actually is. That is, people just think that with an idea and a team then the money will come pouring in.

I think it would be good to have a follow on post with something that spoke to a) what key domain knowledge gave you a leg up b) what terms you got that let the investors feeling confident you would deliver without a product at the moment c) something that is repeatable to other founders.

To me, and I may be misguided, but it read more like a lottery-ticket funding rather than the hard work that and network that you had which shows your grind!

Just my two cents! Great read and congratulations again!
This is my favourite pet hate - colleague says they'll Google it <types Google into search bar. I mentally tear my hair out and dive out 5th story window screaming>
I thought it was "Bing it on".
If they hadn't done advertising then many of the non-search products (Gmail especially) could have been behind a paywall. The brand recognition from search would build the other businesses for them.

All the analytics, google alerts, etc would have been non-free products as well.

It just would have made them much, much, much less money.

But god damn that search engine would be amazing by now.
Better yet, be the one charging the fees.
The Russians came close to initiating accidental nuclear war [0] Sure, nobody wanted a nuclear war (MAD [1]) but a mistake or oversight could easily have triggered an accidental war.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction
And now "Cocaine", apparently! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6226993
It's mostly manual work at this point, although it's not too bad because of some javascript that I wrote that makes it really straightforward to partition a score into time intervals...

And yes, I might actually write a blog post about this so make sure you have signed up on the site :)
aka "An Inside Look At Re-architecting Twitter"
So, loans are the answer to everything? Are corporations guaranteeing higher wages and certain jobs to everyone with degrees?

What about : http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/ripping-off-young-...
from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6224982

Did you even look at that? Just because you were lucky enough to be able to pay off your loans doesnt mean everyone is. What if they dont find a job in their field? And have to work at minimum wage?

What about the veterans that come back from fighting for the country which includes these 'corporations'? Do the corporations guarantee them a higher salary?

http://www.epi.org/blog/raising-minimum-wage-benefits-millio...

What about : http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-28/minimum-wage-in-u-s...

How is that not EXPLOITATION? Just because the rich people are able to keep minimum wage low by having funds and time to spend lobbying, does that mean that it is correct?
Pleased to hear that! Thanks :)
Still down here in Brazil
> How many apps can you imagine not talking to a remote web service in the future?

Since server based structures make it very easy for intel agencies to gain mass access via one contact point, I'd actually suppose the answer to the question above will increment faster than thought in the post Snowdon era.
> That would take down much of the internet.

Much of the _web_, the internet is doing fine :)
HT Cryptogram - http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-1308.html#4
It's interesting that this article states "Buffett, then just 44 years old" while in the tech industry 44 years old is considered...
I'm a Googler myself and my manager has told us that although 20% time is ok, we should only do it if the project has some direct contribution to the core work we work on.
Really depends on the team/department you work at, the policy is there to allow it, but different team have different culture. I believe it's more discouraged in certain departments such as Android and Social (G+) (those teams are probably under more constant pressure to "produce") than some of the more "old school" departments.
On the contrary, I bet if Bing goes down it would within minutes spawn hundreds upon thousands of posts along the tunes of "LOLz BING!"

Among the internet's many obsessions, watching MSFT fail must be near the top.
Did I miss HP turning around and becoming an awesome company again? Has Apple been doing as well as it did under Jobs? Do you think it still will be in 5 years?
I believe that should not cause a simultaneous problem like this, given all the caching layers involved.
Well there's the thing: $100k salaries are most commonly made in portions of the world where lots of people make $100k salaries, thus merely increasing locational inequality while not actually pushing up the quality of life for the highly skilled workers commensurately with the income.
It sounds like airplane engines from within a 747 - at the volume you set, of course. Much better than jlooch or turing tunes.

I'm a bit disappointed that you erased the github history when moving to sourcefourge, as it would be interesting to compare it to the version you showed six months ago.
Hack Growth At Virool (YC S12)
ABOUT VIROOL
This video sums up our culture: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IJqdmsycKQ

There are over 1.5M videos being uploaded to the web every day and more than 95% of them get less than 1000 views.

Enter Virool.

Virool is a self-serve platform that distributes videos across its network of Facebook apps, mobile games and blogs. Whether it’s an agency promoting their next viral hit or a musician looking to become a YouTube sensation, Virool is a service they use to reach the right people.

Today over 100,000 advertisers use Virool to reach more than 30 million people with their videos every month.

WHO WE WANT:

+ A creative problem solver with ambitions to build a big company

+ Experience with: SEO, AdWords, AdRoll, Facebook Ads, MixPanel, Twitter Ads, Customer.io, Mailchimp, Optimizely and other tools for customer acquisition, retention

+ Experience with setting up, monitoring and improving funnels

+ Experience with content creation and moderation

+ Experience with creating and improving: banner ads, contextual ads, landing pages, videos.

+ Ruby on Rails coding experience preferred

+ Experience with growth hacking and various marketing strategies is a plus

RESPONSIBILITIES

+ You will be managing 7-figure annual marketing budget

+ Setting KPI strategy and tracking effectiveness of all marketing channels.

+ Managing all online/offline marketing activities that will impact our user growth

+ Hiring and managing growth team

+ You should not be scared by perspective of hacking simple query to database or excel or creating simple html page to test some of your ideas.

+ Coordinating marketing efforts with other teams - sales, RnD and support.

WHAT WE OFFER

+ Generous equity stake and ability to jump on still very early but very fast growing startup.

+ Very competitive base salary (6-figures) + and performance based bonuses.

+ Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner provided

+ Travel related expenses and any other expenses will be covered.

+ All of the benefits and opportunities of working in environment of small startup but with all A-level players

To apply, email your resume to jobs (at) virool (dot) com with subject ‘Growth Hacker for Virool’

Bonus: Please send us a video of why you want to work with us.
No reason to panic, it was just the Google Search team finally deciding to use their 20% time.
I get asked that all the time. But I'm from Iceland. With only a population of 300.000 it's to be expected. Funny thing is I've actually known the person twice when asked (but it's out of hundreds of queries).
> The problem is fundamentally that fund managers consume a large portion of the returns, after you factor the cost of the fund manager the result is negative.

Yes, a point I make in my article, but didn't make in my post. Fund managers are very difficult to justify.
That is so smart. Congrats, I hope it works out. I would personally use that all the time.
Stowthat wants to be the 'Airbnb of self-storage'
I'm open to new stuff.
I think a lot of people never really know the true reasons why something happens. I find it hard to believe these were only three reasons. Did you ask the investors why they invested and this is what they said or is it your own feeling? Plus you don't really go into details on the points so I didn't really learn anything or find it useful.
The daily routine is probably key, you'll get better compliance with something that is done daily than something that can (in theory) be done weekly, even if the batteries could last that long.
Rangzen - Circumventing Government-Imposed Communication Blackouts
> But instead it has become an enormous metastasizing moneymaker for minting Certified Scrum Masters, Certified Scrum Product Owners, Agile Certified Practitioners, and all sorts of other Agile titles for $1000+ a pop.

As long as there are people looking for packaged solutions and willing to pay top dollar for them, there will be people willing to sell them to you under any name that you ask.

But if the name on the tin is refers to something diametrically opposed to that kind of packaged-solution approach, well, its probably not going to be an accurate label.
This is probably a nature of how the MailChimp plans are constructed. I know that the Zencoder plans get cheaper when you level up to the next one (and it’s worth while switching before you hit the minimum included minutes.)

Plans can be done right - that is in a customer friendly fashion while still maintaining reoccurring revenue for the service.
That's great to read. The last time I looked into purchasing flowers outside of SF I was sad to discover that most local florists are themselves effectively just resellers of gross FTD flowers, so it seems like a service like yours can go far. I wish you luck.
Will look into this - just please clarify the pentagram part, and also what hardware / software you are using? Thanks.
This is fantastic. Great work!
San Francisco Hits Back Against Its Most Vocal Critic
Besides the fact that the author is clearly an 'API-go-to-guy' (ex-Twilio, ex-IFTTT so I'm sure he knows his stuff!) I wonder if this is also because of the ecosystem which is OK with betting on the confidence of the founder.

Good stuff!
Plus, the entire article is blogspam. It should be flagged as such (edit: and resubmitted, since the letter itself is interesting).

Actual letter (plus some other blowhard commentary) at:

http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2013/08/15/warren-buffett-kat...
To be honest the world has also changed while this was happening. HP used to make quality stuff that people would pay more for. Today for the most part they have succumbed to commoditization where it's a race to the bottom. When people (for the most part) put price ahead of quality there's less value for things that create quality.

That said there's lot of penny wise pound foolish style thinking everywhere. That also tends to relate to the growth of the business to the point where management can't really figure out what going on any more (assuming they could at some point).
> What is the market? A bunch of fund managers.

This is like saying all personal relationships are limited to prostitutes. One can buy stocks directly, or invest in index mutual funds that don't have managers, for the reason that no management is required.

> Then track the winners. This will show whether it's a game of skill or chance.

But that's been done -- the WSJ Dartboard Contest showed that the experts don't do better than throwing darts at a list of stocks.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732450470457841...

My point is that buying and holding an index fund, and relying on long-term market growth instead of phony expertise, is a much better approach to equity investment.
Tried it again and the Beethoven's now fine. (Chrome, OSX.) The Beethoven audio file had taken about a minute to load though, maybe it had to do with that. Anyways, probably just an edge case.
Perhaps all stereotypes are harmful and should be avoided.
For reference a $1 billion dollar pay raise spread amongst McDonald's 1.8 million employees would amount to $556 each. Assuming everyone works an average of 20 hours a week, that is $0.50.

Put another way, if McDonald's gave everyone a $3.50 raise in 2013, they would have not made a profit.

Not saying that McDonald's is right or wrong in their practice, but when you spread out money it really doesn't go very far.

BTW a major factor people tend to forget about companies is to look at what market they are in. Companies that care only about costs are going to treat their employees like crap because their employees are simply an expense they have to bear.

Costco doesn't treat their employees as an expense, they treat them as an investment. They believe that by treating their employees well their return will be enough to allow this additional expense. Aka a better environment for their customers, lower theft, etc.

Short term the former is nice, since you only get employees that are awesome after a long time. Given the huge emphasis today on short term gains, guess which companies are doing "better".
The investors told us it was attractive for the three reasons I listed: team, market, and plan of attack.

Edit: I left out more specifics for length reasons. May do a follow up post on more of the details.
> Calling 20% time 120% time is fair. Realistically it's hard to do your day job productively and also build a new project from scratch. You have to be willing to put in hours outside of your normal job to be successful.

LinkedIn'er here.

One of the things I love about our culture is InDay/HackDay. It works out to less than 20% time, but the entire company is given 1 day a month - generally the middle Friday - to do anything they want. This results in a lot of things ranging from prototyping ideas; learning new tools (I spent my day today brushing up on Scala); or just taking a fitness class.

The best part? The day is honored. It's not 100+n% time. Unless you own something that is bleeding money or users from a serious bug no one is going to come to you and ask you to do anything other maybe grab a beer.

I know we're not the only company doing this, I think Twitter has hack weeks every quarter, but it's a huge differentiator from our neighbors.