skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Friendfeed raised $5m... I'd guess on a post-money valuation of $25m. So a $25m exit would basically mean that the investors in the most recent round get a 1 to 1 payout for their investment. Not a big win.

But justifying a $50+mm offer for FriendFeed seems awful hard-- so my guess is $25-$35m.

It does get the FF investors a pile of Facebook stock which is pretty hard to come by (but at what valuation for FB?).

OTOH, Facebook has scads of stock to give away, and at their atmospheric valuations, buying FriendFeed for $100m in pure stock would be like trading 1/65th of Facebook ($6.5B valuation) for it...
I think facebook wanted their technology. Facebook has fallen pretty flat on their "real-time" feed whereas friendfeed has thrived. Get ready for facebook to see a spike in how their real-time feed works ;-)
That would handle accidental votes, but not votes that can't be made, e.g. downvotes. I think it would make more sense to have a single mechanism for all of these.
CPython 2.x and Python implementations built directly on it have bytestrings. PyPy does, as far as I know. And Unladen Swallow is a CPython fork, so it does.

But everything else either has strings which are natively Unicode (and hence not byte-based in the sense we want here) or run on platforms where the underlying string abstraction is natively Unicode. This includes Jython, IronPython, Python 3.x, etc.

WSGI would like very much for those platforms to do something else, because it has to expend a bit of verbiage to basically say "shame on you for having these dangerous Unicode strings, don't you dare try to take advantage of them!"
Udvarhely/Odorhei
Access to Twitter's "full firehose" can easily be turned off, if Twitter doesn't want Facebook to access it they can make that happen instantly.
which is why i said "but even that would be at the cost of Friendfeed's development."

Friendfeed has already admitted they don't know what will happen to their product long term now. if they disappear, that's one competitor that goes away, which probably will mean slower innovation in social sites in general.
Interview with Friendfeed's co-founder
Not to mention that they didn't just say "we're closing", they said "There is no way for us to monetize URL shortening", and all but said there was only room for one shortener to make money.

If I were a prospective buyer, "we failed" wouldn't be a turn-off, but "we don't think it can be monetized" sure would be. You want to sell something you don't think can be monetized? Good luck.
way high, think more like <10mm , plus great signing bonuses for the employees (200k+ ea) ..
Facebook acquires FriendFeed. Interview with Robert Scoble | My Philly Network
East bay
Gruber may benefit from Apple because employees at apple give him good information, but he doesn't hide it. Furthermore, especially in this case, he's calling them out. He usually doesn't let his love of the company from clouding his appraisal of their actions.
Several study's have shown you remember more with speed reading. Up to the point where you are skipping content. The advantage seems to be pre-filtering the useless content which let's you focus on the important details. You can also make connections between larger sections of the text because it's fresher in your memory.
For all the mention of link rot, it seems like the primary use of third-party url-shorteners is Twitter. What percent of tweets are still useful a month later? "Oh no, my 3-month old tweet will be slightly more useless!" isn't really all that scary of a thought.
"In the blog posts I’ve read, Wave’s merits are analyzed solely based on the current developer UI preview. ... and not an infrastructure protocol under heavy development."

Great insight! I also feel the same way; that is a very important point that people often overlook. Wave has a huge grand vision that could be shown far beyond the power of current UI client.

Great to hear that you are a fellow gtug campout member. It was one of the best experience. Thanks to Google for providing it.
Android pulls ahead of Windows Mobile (June mobile OS market share stats)
For a long time I was really into the idea of speed reading, and I worked through one of the original books on it:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/073520019X

After a lot of practice I ultimately came to the conclusion that it doesn't really work. I could 'read' the pages really fast, but it's not what I'd call reading. It's skimming. Sure, the speed of fixation and regressions limit your theoretical maximum reading speed, but — for me at least — the real bottleneck was how fast I could understand what I was reading. You may be able to look at 10 pages of words per minute, but understanding 10 pages of material per minute just doesn't really work.

Another thing I learned is that there's no good metric for what constitutes 'retention'. It's usually measured by making a list of how many 'things' you can remember from what you read. It's arguable whether remembering a list of words from what you've read relates in any meaningful way to whether you comprehended what you read. Having the word 'scientific' in the title of the article is misleading at best.
Leave IE6 Alone
This must be an effective presentation because I actually understood it after 3 minutes. Then again, isn't that the point? Great job.
The Doomslayer (1997)
The environment is going to hell, and human life is doomed to only get worse, right? Wrong.
(puts pitchfork down and chases pigs and chickens away from computer)...Sioux Falls, SD!!
If you want analysis. why not use one of the numerous proven tools out there already, designed for this specificly?

Not trolling. This is a serious question.
If we're talking about the '80s and '90s, there can be no real question that Apple screwed up badly. How and why are still legitimate questions, but the only reason Apple lasted until OS X was because Microsoft needed them as a token competitor. They were constantly on Death's doorstep, and I don't doubt that if MS wasn't under anti-trust watch, they could have finished Apple off then.

If we're talking 2000s, then that's a totally different story.
200K is peanuts for the ex-googlers in friendfeed.
Assuming the acquisition was for $20-$40 million+ in stock, that's way outside the signing bonus territory.
If you want some socially acceptable looking shoes that aren't padded, I have some Vivo Barefoot shoes and they are expensive and lovely. All they have is a few millimeters of puncture-resistant rubber between your foot and the ground.

All I wear now is Vibrams and Vivos, and I don't even run... >.> I used to hate shoes and wear flip-flops at every opportunity, but now even flip-flops feel clunky.

http://www.terraplana.com/vivobarefoot.php
How much power is wasted worldwide by slow code that isn't the bottleneck? Surely, fast habits are better than slow habits, all else being equal.
I find that worrying too much about #2 upfront makes it too easy for coders to go down blind alleys and turn into "architecture astronauts"

I am still agreeing, and that's about where I came in. The words "Design first, then code" are fighting talk to an agile software guy. But if you add "but I meant graphic design not software design" I would say "oh... that's all right then, I guess".
Wedding Photographer Devon
Contemporary & Stylish Wedding & Portrait Photography for Devon, Cornwall & Somerset.Our focus is one of utmost quality, complemented by a friendly, professional & personal service.
It mostly runs on those devices because it's what's shipped on those devices. I can't install IE/Safari/whatever on my DS or non-smartphone. No offense to Opera, but no one I know (or have heard of) picked a product because it came with Opera (unless it was in a "anything but Mobile IE" sense).
All agreed. I have the Sprints, and running in them takes some intense getting used to (muscles and blisters). Now that I'm used to them, though, I feel like a ninja.
Actually, any service out there that tries to do away with the requirement that people actively perform some effort would fit the bill for a potential Google killer in a particular vertical. In other words, any recommendation service that preferably can "learn" the habits of its users and then simply recommend new content. DirectedEdge is just the latest player in this game. I personally track the news recommendation niche. There used to be a service called Findory that in my opinion came very close to being "optimal". But they went under for some reason. The closest to Findory (and with some very cool features such as computational lie detector for news) is http://www.euraeka.com
They have all three basic features - search (aka Google-style), discovery (aka crowd-wisdom style) and recommendation engine.
The Firebug analogy isn't valid since Gmail hardcodes a check. I would be surprised if Gmail detects it even if you renamed the extension to something else and still produced the same behavior. The meta point here is that you can only warn for known bad plugins
The FogBugz Plugin Architecture
Read slower.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_reading
Yeah, I read DDJ back in the day. And yes, I felt that sense of excitement. What I was wondering is, how did they do it? I think you're onto something with the two-fold "Here's something new to do, and here's how you can do it."
Airbnb (YC W09) hiring crazy fun interns
We are so fun, every Monday is Mustache Monday!

Airbnb.com (YC W09) is a profitable, fast-growing online marketplace that lets people and companies rent out their extra space to travelers in 1183 cities in 83 countries. Just as eBay monetizes the stuff in your attic, we monetize your most valuable asset: an extra bedroom, vacation rental, airbed, castle, or treehouse. We have recently been featured in Time Magazine, NY Times, CNN, NPR, Good Morning America, and the Washington Post (last Sunday's travel cover story). You will work in our sunny designer San Francisco office with a 360-degree roofdeck view of the city. Every Wednesday we have recess (yes, just like in elementary school), and every Friday we go out together after work.

Responsibilities: Work with host relations managers to drive new user-acquisitions, assist our marketing teams with outreach to prospective customers, clients, and organizations, support our customer service and customer loyalty team, and work with product dev teams on new ideas and features.

Requirements: In college or college graduate (active on campus), passion for startup culture, and believes in the mission of Airbnb.

Internship Details: The programs are 2-3 months, and can be renewed for a second term. This is a full-time paid internship.

Apply here: Drop us a note with (1) a letter about why you want to join our team, and (2) your resume, and send to intern@airbnb.com
There's nothing wrong with Opera Mobile, but simultaneously, there's nothing "better than Mobile Safari" about it. Both render HTML/CSS equally well, and both are accessible and usable. It's not that Opera Mobile is worse than Safari, it's that it's not that much better.
To be honest, 3 years on, I am embarrassed to read it. So many things I know now that I would have liked to have put in the deck. Thanks for the kind words...I really want to share as much as I can from that learning experience.
What are the names of the studies that demonstrate that?
Microsoft's Windows Mobile: Time to Hang Up?
Why go online ? Just set up a media pc with a backup at a friends house in the neighbourhood (have them backup to each other). Cheap, reliable and no overnight disappearances.
My paraphrased read:

If you require hourly/non-salaried employees to attend concalls and check ticketing systems during off-hours, expect to pay OT for that time. Smart hourly employees will find the broadest interpretation of your requirements to rack up maximal OT comp for minimal work. Serves you right.

If you employee non-hourly ("exempt") workers, there is nothing here for you to be concerned about. That's why they call it "exempt".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling%27s_approximation says that log(n!) is O(n log n) anyway...
Thinkgeek Redesign
Idealab rebounds with recent focus on clean technology
After I'd seen a bunch of people with these who wholly recommended them I kept meaning to buy some. Last week I did.

One thing I think is interesting, is that Vibram seem to be getting a lot of grass-roots evangelism but the company itself has done a terrible job of encouraging that. Someone I know who's had Vibram's for way over least a year (to my knowledge) asked them repeatedly if he could sell them somehow, since everyone always asks about his shoes. Vibram said that unless he wanted really large distributor amounts, then no.

It seems to me like they could make a great story by enabling people wearing the shoes to refer people to their online store with a small discount in return for a buck or two. If you wear these shoes people will stop and ask you about them, and this would be a great model to encourage Vibram owners to upsell them.
Not likely. Note the following rather more informed subthread further down the page:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=753825
Recommendation engines tend to fail, with StumbleUpon being the exception.
I don't know if it will be the "next big thing", but I do think augmented reality has huge potential. I think it will be especially big in the social gaming scene. iPhones don't allow background applications today, but think about the old school college campus favorites like Assassin / Werewolf / Mafia - instead of having to run around with squirt guns and the like, you now carry a grenade launcher / werewolf detection system in your pocket.
Neither of which can be provided by unskilled workers.
"No plan survives contact with the enemy" more or less sums this up.

I see it as a trade-off - you do need a lot of flexibility to adapt to unexpected things and disappointments and successes, but at the same time, you need to make good decisions fast. Planning is basically speculative decision-making, and that's valuable.

The kind of planning that I think works better is a web-style plan - less focused plans that cover more contingencies and are applicable in different circumstances. Have a general idea of what to do as a response to major stimuli, and have some ideas of things which build well upon each other. "Well, if we have a lot of users, we can leverage that to do X" is a plan that works somewhat independently of how you got those users, for instance. "If we wind up needing to boost traffic at some point, our ace-in-hole can be Y", or "If Z happens, we can capitalize on that by doing Q".
Agreed. My own corp still runs 8000 of these reports weekly, plus extracts, etc....
My guess is that deal will be somewhere around $25-30mn cash and $40mn stock.
Use shorter code/compile/run cycles. Use print statements instead of a debugger (much faster to scan input than step through a debugger). If something doesn't work, it's likely related to the change you just made. If you coded for a long time since last testing, it's much harder to mentally identify where the problem might be.

It's ok if you don't get it perfect all of the time. It's the 20 minutes debugging that's killing you. Shorten your cycle and eventually you will get less sloppy (or immediately know where/what the sloppiness is before you even run). It will be like that typo you "know" you made even before you finished typing (something won't feel right and you'll go back and fix it before you read the debugging output).
But how does this work with the non-owning 'talent'? The owners of a company can't force/guarantee that their engineers are going to stay, right?
Now there is a hole waiting to be filled... with proven value.
First Interview After Acquisition With FriendFeed And Facebook
Let's suppose that, for reasons of security and integrity, that's a really stupid idea?
I wonder how much of it was Facebook stock and at what valuation
Electronic voting machine taken over with new programming technique
I'm not sure why this is surprising. There are already articles on most every topic that I tend to search for, at the very least there is usually a stub. Getting all of the long tail will take some time, but it won't require many new articles per month.

Also, I wonder if they checked any languages other than English. Some of those may still be in the rapid growth stage.
That's awesome...
(Bayless High School for me)
No, after google wikipedia is the next page I visit most on a daily basis.

I say google should buy them and profit from ads, millions of them.

Add more eyeballs to their web properties.
I was just at my friendly public library, and saw this Woody Allen quotation about speed-reading:

"I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia."

Any claim that a method of speed-reading is scientific should trigger interest in testing how scientifically the reading speed and comprehension was measured.

http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

But for this claim here, maybe we can go right to the conclusion of the expanded blog post

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/07/30/speed-readin...

to see that the claim is bogus:

"Final recommendations: If used for study, it is recommended that you not read 3 assignments in the time it would take you to read one, but rather, read the same assignment 3 times for exposure and recall improvement, depending on relevancy to testing."

On my part, I'd rather read three different writings about the same subject, rather than the same writing three times, if I'm studying to thoroughly learn a new subject. And I do that just fine with my current reading speed, which allows me time to THINK as I read. (I did a lot of study of speed-reading techniques when I was an undergraduate student, but ultimately concluded that they get Woody-Allen-style results, and that other techniques for improved studying work better.)
Ask HN: A site that tracks what technologies a startup uses?
I spend a lot of time looking at startups and wondering what technologies they use. An online database of startups and the things they use to move bits around would be very, very useful in my opinion. Does anyone know if this sort of thing exists?
But I promise I'll stop once I discover Gunpowder!
Interview with Vitor Lourenco: The Design mind behind Twitter
You know that the talent is what produces the tech, right?

Sheesh.
The pros, cons, and future of DRM
I do think there is some merit to their argument regarding newbie unfriendliness. There's a large contingent of established editors who are very vigorous about enforcing the notability guidelines. It doesn't help that the guidelines are somewhat broken in some regards, especially for internet content.

On the other hand, there is a point at which the low hanging fruit articles have already been written. In areas of science or math, for example, wikipedia's coverage far, far exceeds my own knowledge of the subject. In many cases, I suspect that in many areas there is little besides formatting or editorial fixes that can be added without already having a phd in the subject. And while this is certainly a great thing for the quality and comprehensiveness of the encyclopedia, it doesn't help when you are looking at the number of new pages being written.
Several study's have shown you remember more with speed reading.

Citations please?
See also: http://www.friendface.org
In the Bowels of Carnivorous Plants, a Tiny Model of the World
I really hope friendfeed can stay independent, and grow itself into something much bigger.

On the other hand, this should create opportunities for other social aggregation startups.
Huh? What is a maid but an unskilled laborer who saves me time?
JEDI - Javascript Embedded Data Islands
A Beginner's Guide to Getting a Website Online With Business Web Hosting
Do you have any figures to back up the claim that memory allocation for small, short-lived objects consisting of final members is actually as slow as you claim? My understanding is that it isn't.
Vesting. Nearly all startups grant equity options to employees, and these options vest over a certain period of time (usually 4 years). While employment is usually at-will, if you leave, you lose all of your unvested stock (hence, the incentive to stick around).
Quick Review:
The shoes hurt on pavement to start but after logging 25 miles total or so it didn't really bother me anymore. They are great for running in grass and other uneven terrain where you might lose your balance with regular shoes.

I find they hurt when running on gravel(nickel sized rocks hurt!) more than anything so I try to avoid that but it might be something your feet adjust to with more mileage. I started at 2 miles and have worked my way up to 8 at a time. When switching back to the KSO's after doing a run in regular shoes the day before you feel very light on your feet because they weigh so little. The most pain for me is that im getting blisters in a couple of places I havent before but I expect that to not be a problem once my feet adjust accordingly. Also make sure you get socks if you are going to do running..you dont need them for regular use but you will want them for long distance running.

EDIT: The KSO's are probably the shoes you want to get if you want to do longer distance running vs the classic (Based on numerous other reviews I read when trying choosing a model).
Assuming that this type of information is worth anything, Friendfeed delivers insight into corelations like 'how many FB users also do use SN XYZ regularly', or not?
VMware Buys SpringSource for $362 million
Basically, they wanted Hyperic.
This subthread is 'guesstimates'. Redorb gave his honest guesstimate. Time will tell if it's right, but in the meantime it's rude to vote this comment down to -4 fade-out (where I saw it) just because you disagree.
no, 99.999999999999999999999999999% of people who go to wikipedia are there to read. Only a tiny minority actually modifies articles
Same shelf Stephen King is Tom Clancy's "Executive Orders" (2nd from far left).
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
VMware to Acquire SpringSource
Instead of an excess of planning it sounds more like the author approached his startup without any real plan whatsoever.

After attributing failure to spending three months on mockups and market research before doing any actual development, the author concludes with:

After the past experiences I don’t plan anything. I don’t even do market research... We just jump in and start developing, after doing some sorta brainstorming(what features we should add, etc). We ask a couple of target users what they think and decide whether we’re gonna add that feature or not.

No, you ARE still making plans, they just happen to be ones that are better and more appropriate.
Doug Cutting joins Cloudera
I referred to professional geneticists, persons who enter a graduate program of study of genetics and gain a Ph.D. and academic position in that discipline.

From above:

Professional geneticists are aware of cases of monozygotic twins being quite discordant in height, IQ, or various other phenotypical characteristics of interest. Some of those cases are reported in detail in the better textbooks on human genetics.
Man, I need to go read the spec for things like this. I had no idea relative URIs relative to the protocol were legal.
Of course they are a burden; things are only burdensome to the extent that they are valued. If they were worthless, who'd care. Besides, if nothing else, you can always donate them to a library; I've ended up doing that with boxes of the books that were less valuable to me every time I have moved.
The country of Libya ultimately controls bit.ly's domain.
Haha..

I am also putting off signing up for Twitter.
They implicitely acknowledge that by buying thin +$50 foot coverings.
Kardiss - bilddagboken
Actually no. The remote app server initiates clients to run on it. So the remote one is the client, and the local one is the server.
"Facebook buying Friendfeed is like cloning yourself, not feeding it for a few years, and then eating it." http://www.fimoculous.com/archive/post-6353.cfm