skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>> "maybe I've fallen so in love with my new home in San Francisco"

I think perhaps you're in the epicenter of a bubble now (SF). Unless it's a $20million investment for a twitter based replyBot, it looks lame.

Meanwhile, plenty of people in the UK (And everywhere else) are building profitable online businesses quietly, just as they have done for years.

One thing that has always seemed weird to me is how companies who announce they've "won $Xm in funding" seem to be 'rated' higher than companies that are making modest profits and growing fast. IMHO "winning" investment just means you convinced someone to give you some money. Whereas a company that's profitable and growing fast, you've proven your business model - far more impressive than convincing a handful of people to give you some cash.

Much as I hate a lot of what 37signals have to say, when URL shorteners, twitter crawlers, etc getting millions in funding, you have to ask yourself if that's a good thing, impresive, or just the sign of a large bubble that will burst pretty soon. Building a business on top of another unproven business - is anyone doing any sort of risk assessment here? Or even thinking about business models? Or are they just hyping up the hype to the next level and taking the easy investment money. There's a lot to be said for just being a quietly profitable startup without all the hype+glitz+bs.

Just my 2p.
that's just a search & replace, they're equivalent.
FYI: This isn't Reddit, and any meta-commentary about voting here is, at best, ignored as noise that detracts from conversation.

ObRelational: For people who want to learn about the relational model, two of the better presentations I've read are:

1. The Definitive Guide to SQLite by Mike Owens -- short, non-academic, theoretical enough to be useful. Focuses on SQLite, which is nice, because that way you don't take MySQL's flaws for granted.

2. An Introduction to Database Systems by C. J. Date -- academically thorough; it's a textbook, so the previous edition is pennies on the dollar. Mostly covers the relational model itself, rather than SQL, which is somewhat like comparing the pure untyped lambda calculus to Scheme. Once you understand the big ideas, though, everything else is just syntax and performance tuning (which are often implementation-specific anyway).
does the confirmation say your done or that its not finished?? If your done, any hints? :)
Why do so many people seem to want PDF output?

If there's a web page you want to save, why not just save it as .MHT? (IE does this natively, and FF via plugins). From that, you can still use links, you can copy-paste, etc.

PDF, on the other hand, is a black hole. You can look at it, but you can't (effectively) get any of the data or other content out to use later.

PDF makes sense where the layout is sacred (government forms) or where the ability to cite specific references by page number (research articles, judicial opinions). And it makes sense as the medium to carry material to be published to the publisher.

But I just can't see how it's useful as a document format for regular people.
Matt Taibbi: On The ‘Everyone Was Doing It’ Excuse
I am tempted to say "real men don't use databases", but that is a little dramatic. Databases in the sense of RDBMS/SQL databases. It seems that HN doesn't, Google doesn't, Yahoo doesn't, ITA does (from what I understand). (Or at least they are using a lot of Oracle--maybe that is stuff that is much more than just the RDBMS.) Is your problem as big or as hard as the problem that these outfits solve? Isn't it an interesting matter for contemplation why these smart folk aren't?

While the article has an agenda, it seems useful to understand why a database might be needed and what the useful alternatives might be.
AOL Reviewing Assets, But Will Likely Keep Bebo
Paul Carr just enjoys writing controversial headlines to stir up the pot. I think his statements are just as valid for many Web 2.0 businesses frankly, around the world, not just London. Things that aren't successful will naturally die. There are no shortages of businesses here in the UK and across Europe that are doing well and getting funded accordingly. Of course the volume overall is lower than Silicon Valley but that doesn't mean thing here are much different than elsewhere in the world.
I like using Blueprint CSS because it helps me design my sites in a true grid layout. Right now I am all about grids and really think they are a pleasing layout.

My experience with CSS is very high and I have cut my teeth writing barebones layouts innumerable times. So, I don't feel like I am cheating or using the framework to do something for me I don't know how to do on my own. It is a tool that accomplishes my goal a lot faster.

Plus, as content needs evolve on a site, I have the framework that makes it easier to add content divs that play nice with my existing markup. For example if I want to create a nice (1/3) (1/3) (1/3) set of columns below my main content div...the framework has solid classes to do that without me fighting browser issues.
1. This isn't true for complex text editors.

2. Java isn't slow if that's what you were insinuating. According to the shootout game the java vm is generally faster than mono.
Five Tibetan Rites are one of the best form of ancient Yoga for longitivity and healthy physical and mental fitness!!

http://www.mkprojects.com/pf_TibetanRites.htm
Cisco's strange foray into cloud/music/social networking
When I was in school still I was a researcher for an appraisal firm. Mostly commercial but also a great deal of jumbo-loan-sized residential business.

One of many lessons learned was that most the best properties never make it onto MLS.
Release an OS that will send more people to the internet, where your (profitable) search engine is.
Yes, but normalization is done to lean on the RDBMS's constraints to ensure the data is internally consistent, not for performance-related reasons. Similarly, keeping backups may waste storage space, but when you need them, you really need them, and it's too late to change your mind.
At a precise technical level, Linux is not an operating system. It is a kernel that can serve as the core for an operating system. What most people mean by "Linux", though, is an operating system built around the Linux kernel.

Hmmm. I disagree with his semantics. Linux is the operating system. The rest of a distribution - the userland stuff - is the environment. Since Linux is a monolithic kernel, all operating systems code exists in the kernel itself. Consequently, on a Linux system, everything in userland is not part of the operating system.
I'm sorry, what?

Michelangelo's frescoes were commissioned. I utterly fail to see why anyone should admit they were graffiti.
Youtube definately will survive, once Google introduces the YouTube Marketplace, it will allow producers to sell products directly from the video. Call to action, buy now videos. Google is positioning itself to become a serious platform (better & bigger then TV), think iTunes but not limited to just creative content.
Twitter suspends accounts of users with infected computers
Great point expressed in a nice anecdote. (Almost self-referential in that respect!).
>Just tell me when it outpaces c++

On Linux, probably never. KDE/Qt development is really easy.
As Gruber pointed out, it could be like OS X: built on BSD, runs only Apple's hardware, plus your PC hardware if you have massive quantities of time on your hands.
The advice I got from the article: making something valuable to your customers instead of doing something hot.
I agreed, especially with #1. I'm a writer, and I'll always have either a windows/mac computer at all times. However, I definitely would like to have a streamlined OS for a netbook, after it is a netbook.

I already use Google Docs for my writing, despite small privacy concerns (which as yet have shown to be more theoretical than realistic). 90% of what I use my laptop for now is just web browsing or working, and for me the two are one in the same.

What would make Chrome OS practical is full integration of their web apps, like Docs, into offline mode. I know they work offline, however it's still not like opening up Word, which it should be.

I think what the author overlooked, is that the majority of people online have computers that are solely used for browsing the internet and maybe as a secondary a word processing suite.
Emailing (scanned or whatever) PDFs is the new fax.

Most PDF reader programs will let you copy text/images from PDFs, to paste elsewhere. Kpdf under linux is good, but even Acroread will do something for you.

For MS-windows, I like PDFcreator (http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/ ), a print-to-PDF program. Note that many web pages have less extraneous stuff in the print view.

P.S. I believe that Gimp already reads in PDFs, and I'm not sure if OpenOffice wasn't supposed to also do that in some (upcoming?) version.

P.P.S. There's at least an OpenOffice 'PDF import extension'. This seems the latest/most-official: http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/pdfimport
What is heap fragmentation?
No to SQL? Anti-database movement gains steam - My Take
Startup Hotbed Inferiority Complex
> some of the writing has a bit of a conspiracy-theory

Just a bit! At one point they seem to suggest Titanic was sank as part of the huge plot against Tesla :P
Also this is not new (well the drug possibly imitating the effects of calorie restriction is), I read Waldrop's life extension book which concentrated on calorie restriction back in the early 1990s. The concerns about mental functioning were brought up soon after by several critics of the book. I didn't bother looking up the title, etc because I seriously don't recommend it, it was a waste of time, very shallow.
An interesting question would be whether stimulants, like caffeine, can be used to increase brain function without calories. I wouldn't suspect this to be a healthy option though...
Very cool-looks like this is the same code that is used in Google Maps for location awareness in Firefox. It doesn't seem to like Opera (or it could be my connection not being found) but it seems to be cross browser compatible.
He provides reasons why he doesn't think Chrome OS will be a Linux distribution as we know it. (Which I happen to agree with.) If you disagree with his conclusion, you should be able to explain what is wrong with his argument. His bias for Apple is not a part of that argument.
Is VC too Fat and Happy? | CloudAve
It goes from awib v1.0-rc1, rc2, up to awib-1.0rc6-BETA.b... and then the final release is awib-0.1 (not awib-1.0).

Am I missing something/is this part of the joke/is it just a typo? It's... ah... messing with my mind a little.
In a world where everything is digital and downloaded to players, Sturgeon's law will still hold sway. Except, instead of a 10:1 ratio, the dirt:truffle ratio might be even higher.

Display your culture (in the larger sense) by producing culture. Download knowledge into yourself. Cook. Tell stories. Play music. Write. Code. If you want to display your culture to strangers on the subway, go out to some website and make yourself a custom T-Shirt with an obscure quote.

"Consume the Minimum. Produce the Maximum!"
-- The coders of Deck
The New Yorker would have had nine.
IMO, so many entrepreneurs have made it that they are paying it forward and reinvesting in the ecosystem. So while many of these companies may fail — like many do regardless of geographic location, they'll produce talent that has experience and a better understanding in the next cycle. I agree that there is hype, thats the nature of the beast with popularity and seemingly unavoidable... but it contributes to maintaining the ecosystem in SF.

Also, I've concluded most investors prefer investing in strong teams over simply a new idea. Many of the 2.0 startups are stacked with guys from 1.0 era.
How much patience is necessary for something like this? If I could start a slow clap, I would.
The measurement is all off though. Who is doing well in 2.0? Twitter??? Seriously?

IMHO startups are being judged mainly on 'hype' and how much investment they get rather than usual sane business metrics.
Fascinating. I haven't finished reading the entire presentation yet, but I already stumbled on something.

The author lists a drawback of the first antipattern ("metadata tribbles"): a table split into multiples to keep its size down requires tricky querying, specifically, it requires a union across all splits (slide 10). It also requires extra effort to keep table structures synchronized (slide 11). Then, in a solution to his second antipattern ("entity-attribute-value"), he suggests doing something quite similar to his first antipattern: creating multiple tables with nearly identical columns and using a union to query across them (slides 27 and 28).

Hello? So to resolve antipattern 2 you just apply antipattern 1? This is why precisely why relational databases for most problems look like square pegs being hammered into round holes.

[EDIT] Not sure if it's worth finishing reading this presentation. Slide 56, a "solution" to the problem of storing a hierarchy in a relational database. Breadcrumbs. Not bad, except that the query now requires a "like" clause. Whoops, can't use an index on that column anymore! (Feel free to correct me if there exists a RDBMS which can use an index on a "like.") Hope the author doesn't mind a nice table scan on that query. He doesn't even mention this problem.
Google CEO says will discuss Apple board role
You can send encrypted data reliably over a flaky and wiretapped link. Why do you think you couldn't do computation in a similar environment?
Currently I don't run a startup nor do I work for a startup(I know, what am I doing on hacker news!), but this is something I think about a lot.

I live in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada which has a fairly lively technology community and what seems to be a growing startup community and it always gets me to wondering whether the Silicon Valley thing is just hype or whether it really is the place to be.

The main thing I always consider in this(especially when i consider possibly starting my own startup) is whether it is hype or not. Maybe it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy that Silicon Valley will always be king if all the best talent moves to silicon valley to start or work with new startups.
Working in an area like silicon valley you have a much greater chance of working for a startup. But to start one and build it into a business is possible anywhere.

But working for that startup is great experience and you see and learn what it takes to be successful.
Facebook Sued for Click Fraud
> This guy happens to be a damn good software engineer.

I'd have to agree with that point. I think he pretty much single-handedly wrote LLBLGen Pro, an ORM solution for C# or VB.NET. My company uses it and I personally think it's really quite nice.
its all about $$$.

eBay used to save you a crapload over other web stores. Now the difference is so tiny, that there is no reason to take the risk with eBay
Personal experience indicates that they can. In fact, I find that is one of the main problems I have with stimulants - they tend to suppress my appetite, but since I am still able to function well on them I don't notice how hungry I am until they wear off and I crash becasue I haven't eaten in 3 hours.
I"ve studied CSS for years and find CSS frameworks useful, particularly in that I don't need to recall all the cross-browser quirks. Currently, I use Blueprint with Compass driving the generation. This gives me a lot of flexibility and more readable code than if I were wrangling directly with CSS for all of it.
Apologies to anybody that got fired over that.

Brainfuck tutorial:

http://www.nieko.net/bf.php
How long can you survive on bootstrapping?
Hi everyone. I'm looking for some advice from fellow startup founders/alums about taking the leap from releasing your prototype into the wild to scaling your userbase and product. I'm a single founder of a Boston-based mobile app startup – the product is released, we continue to iterate and build further enhancements, our userbase is excited and giving constructive feedback, etc. We've reached the point where we are receiving interest from companies to buy the app or discuss licensing deals, but interest from local angels is basically non-existent at this point. I quote from one VC: "idea is a feature, not a company".

Here's the problem: I'm completely broke. For this startup, I chose the bootstrapping route. I plunged most of my savings and used credit cards to work with an offshore team and received investment from friends and family to make it past the prototype stage. My development team is willing to take an equity stake to improve the product, but server costs are expensive. Our userbase increased 20x when I dropped the app to free 1 week ago. I cannot afford to pump in $30-40 a day to pay for server costs.

The acquisition talks are positive (it would be a very small exit), but I'd really like to work on building out a company here. Is there any option other than an angel round to make it to the next stage? Would licensing the app to other companies be a detriment in future financing rounds, if we ever make it to that point?
It's Not Just a Recession. It's a Mancession
Bing Leapfrogs Yahoo Search … Again
One of Microsoft's greatest accomplishments in the original "OS war" was to confuse users to the point where they didn't understand the difference between an OS and a computer. Most people didn't, and still don't, quite understand what a PC is vs. what Windows is, and this was brilliant. How can a competitor compete with your OS when users don't even know OS's exist? Most people have no idea they can install anything other than Windows on their PC, so to most people having anything else run on their computer means "buying a new computer". Google's goal is to make browsers the dominant platform in whatever way possible and completely commoditize everything "under" the browser, from the hardware all the way up to the OS in the same way that Microsoft's goal was to commoditize everything under the OS. It makes sense to me that a good goal for them would be to not make these things distinct and instead once again heighten the confusion. Google wants a very limited number of brand names that are tied to getting things done "browser", "googling", "apps", "chrome", etc. Then in Google's ideal world, when users go buy their next computer, and the salesperson says "this runs google chrome os", they will hear "this runs chrome" (which they have installed on their windows machine and use for most their work), and will thus say "oh ok then I can buy it".
I assume you mean the risk of using PayPal. That's the main reason I don't use eBay.
It would be unfair to say it's all due to Firefox and nothing due to improvements on IE (like pre-loading stuff on startup)
Youtube remains unprofitable 3 years after Google acquisition
It's generally said that it takes until version 3 for a Microsoft product to be any good. They've done a remarkable job in reaching this magic milestone just a year and a bit after the first release.
All Great Ideas Don’t Make Great Startups
It looks like you need a business angel NOT a VC, they are two completely different things (and from your description above it doesn't look like the distinction is clear).

Find someone that is already fairly wealthy from being in business for themselves and pitch your idea to them, make it a partnership and not an outright investment, that would help to get some interest going.

How much money are you looking for ?

30/40 per day for server costs seems to be outrageously high for any mobile startup, why is it that expensive ?
And that's the beauty of FLOSS. An end-user caught a problem that will, hopefully, be corrected in a couple days.

Were it a problem within IE (or Oracle applications - let's be fair as this is not a Microsoft-only problem) we would have to wait until a developer reads the report, the bug being assigned and the correction being put in a future bug-fix release.

In a way, a guy from Microsoft just made a huge point on how open-source is far superior to their own closed development cycle.
As someone else noted, you're still waiting around for ~25 seconds with Bump. That's an incremental improvement and users may be slightly more forgiving of the time.

Have you looked into Bonjour?
I use MySQL and SQL Server everyday and there isn't a really huge difference in performance. And I'm working with large (100 line) queries over large sets of data trying to return real-time results. I've got more joins, subselects, and unions going on than the average user will ever use and I still return results instantly.

Now older versions of MySQL, like 3.23, are still in use (unfortunately) and pretty crappy but it was released over 8 years ago. Most of these performance myths about MySQL are outdated.
The redfin UI needs to be massively cloned for location based services. Honestly, I love craigslist, but when I'm looking for houses to rent, I want to specify a polygon on a map. Maybe it's just me.
Actually, you should have named this 'how long can I survive on bootstrapping'. It seems as though your answer is 'not much longer' at your current trajectory.

So you need to change something.

It sounds like you couldn't afford to release a free version, with all the costs involved. So don't. Stop releasing the free version. Think of a price you would be comfortable charging for it.

Now double that price. Chances are you undervalued what people might be willing to pay for your application. You have a growing user base, but most unfortunately if it grows too much you'll just be out of business that much sooner.

Sure, it wouldn't hurt to keep talking about acquisition. The beauty of that is in most cases these talks take forever, so you have plenty of time, and can always back out or tell them you'd like a few more months. The downside to this is they might just wait until you run out of money, and then whatever small amount they were offering you will become surprisingly smaller. When they have a meeting about whether to acquire your product or not one of their strategies is going to be 'let's wait and see what happens in the next couple months'. It's only to their advantage.

And at least give us the link so we can let you know if we would pay for it! Your company is failing, this is not the time to be discreet.
You Win :)

That's just a really sensible solution to this "problem".
The bootloader, libc, and init fall very squarely on the 'operating system' side of the fence.
Augmented ID: Augmented Reality Facial Recognition for Mobile
I just let it start up when I log-in. By the time Outlook and the anti-virus (and, presumably, all the malware that was not caught by either my anti-virus or my IT staff), Firefox will be there too.

In the meantime, I walked the floor, said "good morning" to my co-workers and got a nice warm cup of coffee from the espresso machine.

Could I use Linux, I would have to start working only a couple seconds after my computer was turned on. Think of it as a quality of life issue ;-)
The web is a great leveler, but when it comes to securing funding (in a later stage of your project) it really helps if you are in the neighbourhood of potential investors.

Other than that if you're self funded and you have a project that has a clear business driver making money from the start then it might actually be an advantage to not be in an expensive area.

First of all your retention of employees will be higher, second your cost of living and your salaries and expenses will be lower.
Social Skydiving: Getting a Name is a PITA
Facing cash-flow issues in a start-up
It looks like it's really only designed to work with devices that provide Geolocation functionality. They have a list on their site:
http://code.google.com/p/geo-location-javascript/wiki/Suppor...

I think this also includes support for the Geolocation API found in Firefox 3.5, so they can probably add that to the list, as well.