skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I absolutely think your correct. I fully expect Android to eclipse the iPhone in market share within the next 3 years. I say that with a couple of caveats, however:

1. Google has to get serious about competing with Apple. They need to adopt multi-touch, and they need to do it NOW. I get there is a legal question around it, but that didn't stop them from aggressively pursuing YouTube.

2. Google needs to show that they're serious. The app-store for Android is a mess (as the article clearly articulates). There is a lot of money to be made there, but Google needs to step up to the plate and make that a vibrant eco-system. They need to be Microsoft to Apples..well.. Apple. Be more developer friendly, more marketing friendly, and let the openness of their system eclipse the closed off world of the iPhone.

If they do that, Android should be a huge win. They've built the technology. Just as S60 dominates the smart phone market today, Android is similarly positioned. It can support a lot of price points and a lot of different form factors. That variety allows for a huge number of devices to collectively drive that share through the roof.

Since the device is more open, it creates an environment for developers to build truly killer apps that utilize the full system in a much more advanced way. Again, that is predicated on Googles ability to bring a truly robust store to their phones. If they do, that further increases Android's viability and gives them a marked advantage over the iPhone.

Google is REALLY close with this.. they just need to take the next step.
Nor do you with Android. It goes entirely through Google Checkout -- Unless you've never set up Checkout (which is admittedly a lot more likely than not having set up Paypal, or a competitor) then you just need your CO credentials.
It looks like you are right:

https://www.savethekoala.com/koalasendangered.html
Google To Affix A “Slow” Scarlett Letter To Some iGoogle Gadgets
Domain Desperation And Six Minute Abs: .Biz To Sell One Character Domains
Yes, I laughed at it a lot when I saw it on reddit, immediately after the story about the guy who crapped himself on the subway and just before I moved on to a riveting story about the Ron Paul Revolution.
Kill or cure? - Making sense of the Daily Mail's cancer research reporting
Interesting question.

Not all investors are VCs. There are also angel investors, and we are much more like angels, both in our backgrounds and the part of the startup world we occupy. Angels don't have a lot of habits, either good or bad. They're mostly just individuals who got rich from their own startups; their personalities are not much affected by being investors.

The one thing that makes us different from angels is that we invest on such a large scale. We have a brand name and an office and a web site and all that. Would that engender any habits, though? I can't think of any.

I definitely don't think we have any of the habits of VCs that are mentioned in this list. The fact that VCs dress up and try to project an aura of power comes from being finance guys, not VCs per se; investment bankers are the same (and in fact are indistinguishable to me). And we don't have the luxury of being sheep, because we have to decide whether or not to invest in a company the same day we meet them.
Does it feel good not to be so unbearably and inefficiently "normal"?
I'm glad people are finding this useful. If there's anything I've missed please point it out here on in a comment on the entry itself.
A guide to merging is an interesting idea, but it wouldn't necessarily be similar to this guide. This guide was about the different branching workflows/models in Mercurial, but there's only one merging model.

It could be useful to diagram out the concepts used in that single model though, so it's something I'll keep in mind for a rainy day when I have some free time.
Why bother reviewing their initial ideas at all (other than as an indicator of the aforementioned smarts & personality)?

That is in fact about how we think of the idea, if it's still just an idea. Sometimes, as e.g. with a company like Bump, there's a real product to judge, but that's rarely the case.
There IS explosive growth just around the corner in terms of Android device models.

Of course, this doesn't necessarily translate into explosive growth in terms of users.
It's important to read the original blog post: http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2009/08/least-surprising-corr...

The author makes it quite clear there, but not in the sharing of this second graph, that the correlation does not imply a causation.
"Scrappy" is a half-compliment. That's different from an underhanded compliment, which is an insult in the guise of a compliment. A half-compliment is a statement that is earnestly complimentary, but with some negative connotations.

Think of it this way: nobody would refer to Roger Federer as "scrappy". You could say that the opposite of "scrappy" is dignified, but you could also say the opposite of scrappy is "elegant." Dignity may be deadly, but I'm not sure that's the only thing you lose when you exude "scrappiness".
From the winter cycle of 16 startups, there are 3 that have neither raised money nor are ramen profitable. Of those 3, 1 is already dead, because of disputes between the founders. Another hasn't started trying to raise money yet, because there's stuff they want to get built first. So only 1 of the 16 is currently trying to raise money.
AT&T Gets a Fuzzy Signal on Apple's iPhone
You're right...posts about this are more interesting. The annoying bit is her trying to play it off like this is a normal activity...
The measurable benefits of college (i.e. technical abilities) are largely obtainable without going to college. A substantial investment in effort and materials is required, and perhaps the final product does not attain that achieved by a college education. But the difference in achievable technical skill probably does not warrant the difference in price between the two options (excepting cases like certain sciences where experience with specific laboratory procedures is highly valuable).

The price of college is therefore primarily the price of a credential, and of the "intangibles." As my parent argues, credentials are bubblable; and as the OP argues, the market value of intangibles is (nearly by definition) a product of social factors, and advertising - hence subject to "bubbles" (by which I take it we mean wild price fluctuations unrelated to the underlying asset's value).

Personally, I think the price of college is really the price of a credential of the intangibles - belonging to a certain class in which there are a set of prioritized attitudes and shared cultural idioms, and a shared experience. This hypothesis suggests an incentive toward uniformity of experience among educational institutions - which (I opine) can be observed quite widely.
This looks awesome on the iphone
It's always been a mystery to me why both Twitter and OpenDNS use NTT/Verio exclusively -- of the Tier-1 networks, they have the highest latency across the board, and by far the least connectedness.

Why the hell wouldn't you want to at least be geographically distributed, with direct connections to more than one Tier-1?
How eBay can save itself in 1 day
The Financial Meltdown and Computing
Haha! The gratuitous graph is hilarious, and you're totally right. Forget about Android.
As a developer, I have no problem buying development tools from one-man-shop / small company.

When it comes to software for my other business needs however, I wouldn't use a hosted SaaS service if I didn't think it was backed by a lot of people, has a lot of customers, and isn't going anywhere.

As a provider of hosted business tools, similar to the ones I wouldn't buy myself, I find that showing the small size of my company is a huge problem.

I'm actually finding that the customers that won't host their data with a small company would be more than happy to buy a version they could install on-site.
Perhaps someone might say the same of me, but my initial reaction to the FSA study was that it sounded cherry-picked, based on the very language that was cited in this response, that nutritional differences were found in certain cases, but were overlooked as "insignificant". I believed this was cherry-picking because I have read a number of very good, highly controlled studies (NOT meta-studies), which contradicted the FSA report. If one has an agenda, it is ridiculously easy to "invalidate" this or that study, and exclude it from your pool of research.

And pardon me for paranoia, but I also know that the Monsantos and Cargills of the world spend mega-bucks lobbying against organics in the halls of government. But one must ultimately set such suspicions aside and deal with the report upon its own merits.

Meta-studies are damn hard to do and get right. But they are next to worthless if there is an agenda behind the study, which this article appears to imply.
Because it would imply that we'd given people the wrong advice. The speakers are generally pretty eminent. We'd look bad if we told people to do x and some famous startup founder then told them not to.
Why people sue when they "win" the lottery
For a guy that wants to make it big on other peoples work that may be true (a 'start-up consultant' ?), but if you're satisfied with a living + some money for unexpected expenses simply operating a social networking site in a niche is a great way to get out of the job market and into being your own boss.

I know at least 5 people that have started their own social networking sites in the last couple of years and they're doing just fine (some of them considerably better than me).

What kind of niches ?

- handicapped people

- ethnic minorities in a country or region

- renewable energy

- a common language other than english

- a common interest

All of these are doing pretty good, could possibly do better but have a real income stream generated by their users or traffic that is targeted enough to find advertising for.

Sure, if you want to be the 'next facebook' then it's a different story, but some of the examples above were started on a shoestring budget or even without one, simply as a hobby that slowly grew in to a full time job with a couple of friends hired to keep the wheels greased.

It all depends on how fast you want to move and how high you're aiming.

Niches have another advantage, the chances of having strong competition are usually smaller than if you go mainstream, also you probably will have a fairly good idea where your target audience is hanging out.

Plenty of the mainstream social networking sites still have to turn a buck, the smaller ones are usually quietly ticking away the time and making money for their owners.

The only way VCs and other investors hope to make money in that part of the game is in the exit, hardly any of them invest to see you become a 'going concern'. Not surprising that they would not be interested in a route that would have a low chance of a major exit and a fair chance at simply a living for a bunch of people.

It's logical though, because in this respect the aims of entrepreneurs and VCs are not completely aligned, after all an entrepreneur might be (more than) happy with 25K / month, to a VC that's pocket change.
The Many Different Types of A-Holes
Transactional Memory versus Locks - A Comparative Case Study
Very helpful.
Thanks for the information, It turned out to be easier than I thought.
It's not everyone, its just that PG fanatics are... more concentrated here.
I disagree with your first point, but I upvoted because it is a well-stated, intelligent argument.

While it's true that you can get an education without going to college, college is a more efficient mechanism than most. They typically cover a variety of things that are not obviously important to someone studying independently (algorithmic complexity would be a good example), and (much like with a startup) the possibility of failure is an effective motivator.

It's certainly not the best solution for everyone -- not everyone learns the same way -- but there are a lot of people for whom it is a good choice.
Game ideas are worth $0.008333.*

* A dime a dozen.
Is there any arena in which the idea in and of itself is important?
H1N1 - Preparing for the second wave: lessons from current outbreaks
Top Developer Reveals Android Market’s Meager Sales
How Much Credit is Too Much?
Yep. One piece of advice I have received multiple times is to never hire a VP of sales who is not mortgaged to the hilt and living beyond his/her salary. The incentive to cover a large nut is what drives a lot of them to go out and close the deal.
I could tell you, but then I'd have to segfault you.
Patent law.
Because these are obviously the best web companies around.
Ask HN: limiting new account registrations
For a project I'm working on I need to make sure as far as possible that users are not able to signup multiple accounts. The most obvious way to do this would be to ask for credit card details then charge & refund a small 'verification' amount.

However, I'm in the UK & having a hard time getting a merchant account because I don't have a business bank account, nor do I want one yet if I can help it because it's extra overhead and I want to launch a beta soon.

another option would be to use an SMS web service to send a confirmation code to a users mobile phone - not as stringent as a CC check but I'd use it as a last resort.

can anyone suggest an alternative?

evan
Doesn't a patent require an implementation?
> but that didn't stop them from aggressively pursuing YouTube.

That's true, but Hurley and Chen + VCs were not going to put up much of a fight against one of the few parties on the planet that could have bought them out.

When it comes to legal stamina and clout Apple on the other hand is a different kettle of fish, if Google and Apple ever go head to head on something like this there will be two winners (the lawyers and Microsoft).
Sounds like you need to follow the maker/manager schedule described here http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html
I would say college cannot be resold, but it is sold in the first place. I looked up the Wikipedia article for "Economic Bubble", which defined it as "trade in high volumes at prices that are considerably at variance with intrinsic values." A college education is definitely a product, even though it is completely illiquid. I would definitely agree that many or even most people are paying more for college than it is worth, though not in every field and not at every school.
'Reading Rainbow' Reaches Its Final Chapter
"Never heard of Acsii? It’s a kind of digital art that uses computer letters to paint objects – something like a Lego project but instead of bricks it uses dashes, hyphens, X’s, O’s, slashes, and whatever else your keyboard can come up with."

Oh really? I thought Ascii was the American Standard Code for Information Interchange, not an art form. It was used for such, hence "ascii art"
Android Market has been out since October 2008, and Android G1 has been out since then as well. By month 10, App Store was doing better than this--hell, by day 1, App Store was doing better than this.

That's some pretty slow growth.
I hope your peers aren't unaware of the class privileges they are enjoying. Getting an undergrad and then going into a low-paying service job is tough if you're poor.
AWS Managment Console Now Has Amazon CloudWatch Support (And Pretty Graphs)
What? Are you kidding me? This may be something that we won't agree on, but I chose that extreme example for a reason. Can you honestly say, with a straight face, that you believe these people think that killing innocent schoolgirls is good? And I'm not talking about the ends-justify-the-means kind of good, but rather objective good.. Do you really think that? If so, then what exactly what are we supposed to "explain" to them, and why would you imagine that they can be reckoned with at all? Wouldn't that make them, sort of, oh I don't know... totally frickin' evil to the core? How does it benefit us to assume that about our enemies?

Besides, the evidence is against you here. When the Taliban announced last month that are now devoting themselves to protecting civilians, I can't imagine that their embrace of the PR value is completely detached from reality.

BTW - This is still nate_meurer... I can't login from my home for some reason, thus the new account.

Also BTW - Yes, I am equating the folks who hounded Turing to this death with the Taliban.
PG - I / We would love to see the engagement stats on here? Is that 1/10/100 rule valid?

I'd like to hope that it's greater than 50% of people who understand the voting concept, but it would be interesting to see the metrics.
Old hat, but take a very careful look at p27 of Nobody Knows Shoes (pdf version) with the text: So flows hit the end and move down ...

If that isn't Kylie ...
Interestingly, my first parsing of "Awesome Female Coder" not that she's an awesome coder who is female, but rather than she's an awesome female who is a coder. Which may perhaps also be true, of course, but it sounds as if you're saying that there are aspects of her femaleness that are awesome.

"Awesome Male Coder" makes me think of Chuck Norris typing machine code by roundhouse kicking his keyboard…
It seems like that approach greatly increases the cost of starting a company. Finding a suitable partner for "marriage" isn't easy...ask any middle aged single woman. It's almost a full time job in and of itself. And then you have to face the herculian task of creating something out of nothing.

I think the lesson here is that if loneliness is a big problem for you, you might not want to start your own company.
It's a matter of prioritization- with numbers like that, we'll prioritize to being on every other platform before we go to Android.
How about you bid your "reservation price" and have no regrets? Simply bid the most you are willing to pay and then last minute bidders won't matter. That is the beauty of a second price auction.
because she's an awesome female coder.
That's why he only got a C-
There's no implementation requirement for US patents, but there is a requirement that can be satisfied by demonstrating an implementation.
What countries require homosexuals to be treated with mind altering drugs? Iran actually goes beyond chemical castration with required physical sex changes: it is illegal to be gay, but it is legal to be transexual. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Iran
Recent stats from a reporter friend at a city business publication with a strong web presence: 50% of overhead is in printing, while >50% revenues are from print ads. hits to the site are increasing, while circulation is decreasing. They'll have to, at some point soon, to take out printing altogether.

This is the story of every print publication in the united states.
I have 2 credit cards.
Maybe an email account that should be unique... i.e. a school or employer? @google.com or @berkeley.edu. Although people might have multiple schools/employers or a mix of both. This also might not work for certain demographics (ones without email!) but I am not sure who your audience is.
He could request the billing address, I believe, and cross reference that. Of course you might have 2 billing addresses as well...
I suspect the Monsanto's and Cargill's of the world spend mega bucks moving the classification of organic. If that's where the money is, they would be developing products that would fit within the constraints of how organic was defined which to date is still a fairly nebulous definition.

The problem is that we're all losers if we're wrong about organics and we get lower yields from land, this will ultimately reduce food security, increase food costs and increase prices for everyone - rich and poor alike. I think you also assume that those who are for organics (which in its own right is becoming a significant business) don't have an agenda of their own to encourage consumers to pay a premium for their product.
This is one of my favorite plot devices in science fiction.

See Asimov's drastically underrated The End of Eternity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_Eternity

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/101698/Asimov%2C%20Isaac%20-%20Th...
That's one way, but it doesn't approximate real world "bidding".

I definitely think eBay would be better off with this feature implemented
Why is the SMS confirmation code method less stringent than a CC check?
> Although I agree that the jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none personality type doesn't make a good hire

I'm not sure that I do. I've seen companies that survived because someone did what it took to ship, regardless of whether "it" had anything to do with his/her speciality.

Or, maybe that person's "speciality" was "ships product".
If Google is serious about their App Store, and with Google that's always a concern, they should be promoting the platform. Apple is actively highlighting third party apps as a major selling point of the iPhone platform with constant TV commercials showing off some of the best apps. Google's approach to multiple handset vendors already makes the situation confusing to consumers so it's even more important they advertise. A Google commercial showing off 2 or 3 different Android handsets running some third party apps would be a massive boost for the platform and handset makers.

Someone pointed out that the Android platform is really starting to feel like "Linux on the desktop" where it's always the next handset, the next OS revision, etc that's going to change everything. The same basic rule applies: If you fall too far behind commercial alternatives you will lose no matter how good your platform is. Personally I think Google's window of opportunity is very small here. If they can't start making some headway the game is over when the iPhone hits Verizon.
In other news, 'Gravity's Rainbow' is no more; Pynchon no longer assumed erudite.

(I grew up with Reading Rainbow and look what it got me: bouts of graphomania, a lifelong addiction to reading and a sinking feeling when I'm exposed to contemporary long-form writing.)
I think that's the traditional definition -- but its meaning is drifting, because the word also makes people think of 'scrounging' or 'getting by on scraps'. So it's not just a fighter, but one who fights on in a resourceful/thrifty way.

Though PG cites the 'belligerent' meaning, I suspect Kate and others are likely to mean/hear the 'thrifty/tenacious' connotations.
I don't think supporting a lot of form factors and "price points" (i.e. hardware capability) is necessarily a recipe for success. The baseline hardware has to be pretty capable, e.g. including a 3D graphics chip, generous memory, ample storage, etc. The phone can't be too cheap, or apps will run on some Android installations and not on others, leading to platform fragmentation.

If anything, something like Vista's machine performance score could be implemented, with the lowest-scoring element being the total score.
Stick to the subject - changes to Basecamp. I don't care what your product does.
Sad. It was always a treat when the teacher would put one of these on in elementary school.
eBay has heard this proposal at least a bajillion times before, including at least 3 for me. I don't know what their reason is for not doing it that way but it's been heavily considered and rejected.
Demographic changes do have consequences.
eBay just holds it's "ending time" as some sort of holy grail. I really have no idea why.

Even if this was just a feature that sellers could opt for (for five bucks more or so), I think it would make a world of difference.
The Android market uses Google checkout, and all android phones are tied to a Google account. There's certainly no requirement that you physically have a credit card on you, though before you can use the market you do need to set up payments on checkout either via the phone or on your laptop, etc...
That sounds really cool, you should write it up and submit it.
Dutch teen develops pedal-powered plane
Yeah, i figure that they actually won't change anything. it's just striking how different ebay is from an actual auction. i had never been able to pinpoint what part of it was out of whack though.