skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
As an aside: developers often cite ongoing costs as a reason to charge in an ongoing fashion for services like, e.g., push notifications or web applications.

It doesn't particularly matter to me how you explain your business model to your users (although "Boo hoo we have costs and have to feed our children" has always struck me as less persuasive in prying money out of people than "Look at how much value we give you!"). However, as long as we're just developers here, I'd just like to point out that marginal users are too cheap to meter and as long as you're continuing to sell the service there is no reason you can't fund the server costs entirely out of present sales.

Example from my app so you can see I'm not blowing smoke: my VPS costs $85 a month. My users pay $30, once. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that I can tolerate 10,000 users in one day (which is absurdly low given typical peak concurrency for my application, but we're just playing napkin-math).

This means that $85 buys me 300,000 user-days a month. Trial users typically go up-or-out within 3 user-days. Paid users consume less than 5 user-days per month. (Far less in my case but hey, napkin math.)

Assuming I like keeping half of my safe allocation available for trial users (150k user-days or, as seen above, enough to support 50k new trials per month, which is more than 1.5k per day, which is more than 10 times my best day ever), this means that I can support up to 30k paying users on one $85 / month box.

Now, hypothetically, if I were getting 1.5k trials per day, I'd be getting somewhere on the order of 30 sales per day. 3 sales per month would pay for the server. It is clearly sustainable without having to use a subscription model.

I mention this mostly because some users groups are extraordinarily resistant to subscription models and I don't want anyone to feel they absolutely must, must, must price on a subscription if they offer a service.

I'm not intimately familiar with push notifications to iTunes apps but I suspect they require something on the order of one HTTP request. If so, on a per user basis, they're too cheap to meter. I'd (personally) offer them to everybody just to increase the amount of sales I got from the daily gravy train. (Well, to the extent that iPhone sales are driven by features, which I think is pretty darn limited.)
Absolutely awesome! Hubris bites back!
I think prices for flash are just now getting to the point where it's entirely feasible to distribute most software on them.
It includes when you click No, Maybe, Yes, or fail to respond.

If you click "Remove from My Events", it appears that you're removed entirely from the event_member table.
I agree. It will be interesting to see what happens when the featured status goes away. Will the brief burst of sales be enough to set off word of mouth marketing, or will it sink back down to where it was before?

Good work with this one, and good luck!
I assume it's being slowly rolled out, but the official blog entry doesn't even hint at that.
That is slightly suspicious. Maybe somebody at facebook actually thought that this was a good idea at some point and had developed it as a feature.
Have you read The Black Swan? It's not a pep talk.

No, but I've read the wikipedia article, and absolutely despised the tone of this article. That said, calling it "pep talk bullshit" was an emotional response - it's been a long day. What I mean to say is that Taleb is giving bad advice with a lot of confidence and bad "proofs" based on idiotically simple models. For example:

Taleb says is to do things that will reward you if the unpredictable happens

That sentence seems to either (a) have a huge gap of basic probability, or (b) contradict itself.

First, if "unpredictable" is to mean "low probability of happening", there are several orders of magnitude more "unpredictable" things than "predictable" ones (and that's why they have such a low probability of happening).

A better model of "events" and "probability" would consider the key variable correlating to probability of events is specificity - it's highly probable that some planes will crash in the next 10 years. That relatively general event can be partitioned into less probable (but more specific) events. There are more specific events than general events, and each is less probable in proportion to its specificity. If you could know which unpredictable thing were going to happen, they wouldn't be unpredictable anymore.

Of course, reality is stranger yet - events aren't all neat subsets and partitions of each other like they are in that model, and predictable varies with probable based on some measure of the accuracy of the world model of the predictor (which, I would argue, is usually pretty bad). Hence, I would argue that predictability doesn't matter much at all (after some point) - evolution and the ability to let go of one seemingly great ideas matters more.
Can somebody explain to me why this article was written/posted/upmodded/commented upon/any of the above?

Serious question.

ED: So...you can't answer the question, but you can click the down arrow? I always find that strange. I'm really puzzled as to why HN is lately polluted by the 3rd-gen friendster copycat facebook, and this latest post just seems to add that many more layers of derivation, all leading to...? I don't know. What's the point?

Serious question, as I said, if that matters.
..but a bitch ain't one. ;-)

(With apologies to Hova.. and HN. I couldn't help myself.)
I don't think threads are slower or less scalable anymore. The OS threading systems have improved a lot over the last four years.
Sucks how the page title is misspelled in the url. "Ninty nine". And there were only eight on there. Is it supposed to be an interview question set?
Sorry I accidentally down voted you.
Google Must Be Drunk
From the comments:

Matt Harwood: I call hoax. There is zero way Facebook would even consider this, nor use that god awful over-sized icon.

Jason Kincaid: It’s not a hoax, I’m seeing it when I browse photo albums. Might now be rolled out for everyone yet.
I got impressed that Dropbox works seamlessly in my Ubuntu Jaunty, it's much better that Ubuntu ONE. And I think the team behind have done a great job of engineering. Really awesome!
I'm guessing that the author of the page is looking to create a version of the 99 prolog problems aimed at web apps. Given that the page is editable, I'm guessing that they're looking for help putting it together.

It probably would have helped a lot if the original author had written some sort of preface to the page.
A.Word.A.Day
Wandering off on to the Japan topic. The suits, briefcases, shiny shoes, etc. is the uniform of the "salary" man, typically working in a bank shuffling paper back and forth. This is simply packaging with no real thought put into what it really means. Even during the heat of summer at 30dC at 80% humidity, they will be wearing the same uniform.

The polite attitude sometimes blocks on getting things done. They have a very hard time openly disagreeing. Instead they would state their position over and over. Ask you for your thoughts and if they do no match, repeat the process.

This is what makes Westerners great IMO. They take a position, scream about it, and action on it. The Japanese will be stuck in a planning committee and not get things done.

Of course this is just generalizations. Just seems in general that Japanese are polite spectators and Westerners are rowdy spectators that are more likely run on to the field to make a change.
No, not just a title but the whole website. The algo currently works on TF-IDF of the tags, and HN is full of points, ago, hours, etc. repeated all over it. This increases the TF. We would be putting an upper limit on it though.
Do you remember what was it? I will be really curious to have a look. Thanks.
More likely is that the fax was manual after clicking the link did this:

send_email(to='prankster@facebook.com', subject='FAX Prank', body='Photo ID: %s\nUser ID: %s' % (photo.id, user.id))

But, you know... in PHP, not Python :-)
Congratulations to all those who were behind this petition.
As an Irish man (educated in the UK) I now have slightly more respect for Gordon Brown.
That's funny. Is there a particular story to share? Do you have a link or source?
Wow. An article about grammar that uses incorrect grammar. Certainly makes the author sound like a chimp.

For example:

Here's a typical incorrect use:

'The committee will consist of Bob, Mr. Parsons, and myself.'

In this circumstance, 'me' is the right choice. In general, 'myself' is a word you shouldn’t find much use for, so if you’re using it a lot, you’re probably using it wrong. 'Myself' should only be used reflexively, to refer back to the subject.

Unfortunately his proposed correct useage is incorrect.

The correct usage in this case would be:

'The committee will consist of Bob, Mr. Parsons, and I.'
No, People is not a default answer. It is due to underlying taxonomy data. Working on refining the database.
The iPod Touch has always been good for games. But it wasn't always positioned as a game player. Or a pocket computer. Now it is.
That's a fair point. I guess my initial reaction was 'this is funny, but does that justify the means?'.

If it's easy enough to do then the means aren't controversial. Punk on!
Proving once again just how many phone calls techcrunch makes before posting stories containing "facts" and opinions drawn from those "facts". If anyone here works for a startup in the bay area, you'll know the answer is generally absolutely none.
The committee will consist of Bob, Mr. Parsons, and I.

"Consist of I"? I don't think so.
I came here to lose some karma posting that comment, but instead I'll lose some karma supporting yours. ;)
Is it me or does it seem that Facebook is working hard to generate a lot of news/publicity these past few days? What are they looking to accomplish?
Have you thought of listening to podcasts as well? Marshall Goldsmith's are at
http://coachm.hipcast.com/rss/marshall_goldsmith.xml

These could also be useful to your entrepreneur side:

David Maister
http://feeds.feedburner.com/DavidMaistersBusinessMasterclass

Negotiation Tip of The Week
http://feeds.feedburner.com/ottergroup/negotiationtip
Damn this just made my night. Thank you Facebook.
The problem with the second half is the guy spends pages and pages sucking his own cock about how successful and how much "value" he is creating. I have a news flash for him: just because you can convince some dejected and directionless individual to pay you for something does not mean you are delivering value.
If I didn't already want to work at facebook, I would now.
The effective bandwidth of face to face meetings is still at least 100X a synchronous audio/video feed. There is also what the military calls "ground truth." Until you have visited a location/situation and experienced it you are not as prepared, no matter how many maps and situation reports you have reviewed.

I do think collaborative virtual reality environments will be extremely useful for visualizing and analyzing patterns in data because there is little emotional aspect to the problem, nor the need to influence or negotiate.
I can't find the story in his blog archives so I'm going to assume it's not public, but it is a real story.

The funny thing is his competitors got back at him by renting his exact same office after he sold the biz. This way they were getting a good chunk if his mail to use for leads!
Not all startups are venture backed. I predict more will be side projects that turn serious. That's the logical conclusion of startups getting cheaper to build. The risk is removed, and the need to make a bet is diminished.
Certainly. Microsoft announced that OS/2 was the future and watched as Lotus and Wordperfect spent millions porting their apps to the new oS.

Then they cobbled Windows 3.x together and ported their own apps to that instead of OS/2. (The wikiedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS/2#Breakup makes no mention of the effect of Windows 3.0 on Lotus and Wordperfect.)
I'm working on a project similar to HaveMyShift. Interesting.
This would be great for political discussions and for deciding on public policy choices.
Tropical fish
Free games
http://myfax.com
Elaborate pranks are appealing to hackers.
There's another huge hole in his thinking which is that he assumes living on a budget is nothing but pain, and making tons of money is nothing but joy. However this is only true if you're a workaholic with expensive tastes.

However most people are better rewarded by doing something they love and having good personal and family relationships. A relentless focus on earning money is going to detract from pursuing those more important things. That's not to say that one shouldn't be enterprising, but money beyond a reasonable threshold doesn't really make most people any happier.
> I think it is important that every business have a good impression of what they do, and what they do not do.

If this is the case, they should ditch the banner ads. On my laptop, with a vertically maximized browser window I can see three ads (EyeQ, LifeLock, and a google text ad that promises to let me know a shocking secret about coffee), but I can't see the legend.

That seems like the model for a site that is trying to make money by having a large volume of visitors clicking ads, not the model for a site that wants serious, important people who have some reason to care about weather.
A "Predictably Irrational" book review. Something both interesting and useful at last. (No "coding" or "horror" involved though, and no cute dog photos).
Aren't you supposed to be on a plane?
I'm going to chime in with the same note that always rings when dropbox get mentioned. This is such an impressive service.

This is the first time I've seen web interface since I first installed it and had a quick play. I just moved a folder which I thought might be useful to have online to dropbox & forgot about it (it'll come in handy sometime).

I loved the little games where I can earn more quota. Great idea and I'm sure it works magic. Dropbox, being so wonderfully invisible, are at a slight disadvantage. They don't get to talk to their customers very often. It's great to see what a great job they do when the opportunity presents.

Dropbox is what MobileMe should have started as.
is it a web app?
No, it should indeed be "me". The reason is the verb "consist" requires that its objects are in the objective case.

Native English speakers often have a problem with noun and pronoun cases because this grammatical feature has all but disappeared from the language, only its weak remnants remain. This is one place, perhaps the most well known place, where it still appears.
On the surface TempMine seems like it has potential, but I can't imagine why a temp agency would donate its industry contacts and its "best" temp contacts to TempMine and pay 1% for the privilege.

I don't think they're fooling anyone about their plans to compete as a what is effectively just another temp agency.

Why not be straight about it and start connecting temps with companies straightaway? This plan also has the virtue of being plausibly profitable.

edit Apparently, this is what manpower.com does.
Ask HN: Is learning Scala/Clojure/Haskell a good career move?
Given that our lives are not infinite and that, as much as it is always a good idea to learn as many different problem-solving approaches that various programming languages can open our minds up to, is it a good career move to learn one of these languages? Are there jobs? Will there be? Is there a future in these languages? Do any big companies use them now or plan on using them? I think I heard Twitter dissed Ruby in favor of Scala but I don't know if that really means much.
When you work on coding, do not listen to books; read! Read what you are writing.
World's first Online Hacker Conference Aim is to Democratize Hacker Cons
Hypnosis downloads
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As a general rule, if you're trying to build a career in industry, no. If you're trying to start your own company, use whatever blows your hair back.
SIMBL will probably fall into obsolescence with input managers being disabled for 64-bit apps.

PlugSuit, on the other hand, is SIMBL-compatible and uses a completely different method of injection. The author just needs to work around some new limitations introduced in Snow Leopard before it works with 64-bit apps. I would keep your eyes peeled for an update.
Dropbox must be so popular with investors. It could be an important acquisition for so many massive companies. In each case that I can think of this would be an extremely smart thing for them to do.
If only they would enable copy-on-select as a regular preference for Terminal, I'd have no further need of SIMBL. :)
So I take it you don't believe any of these languages are going to achieve much traction in the business world. That's generally my take too. But there's still a lingering doubt: what if one of these is the "next big thing"? Just like you would have kicked yourself if you had had the opportunity to buy Google shares when they had not yet passed $10.
Ask HN: Another twist on dating web sites?
Most of dating web sites I've seen are more like online catalogues (with some relatively minor exceptions). You browse for girls/guys, pick those who look better and sound more appealing to you. It feels somewhat disgusting — like you're shopping for a soulmate.

What if one used another approach to help people with dating, such as urban quests of some sort that might lead to a dating with person without prior exposure to any this person profile? Would it be viable?

I am pretty much aware of some security concerns it might raise, but nevertheless :]

P.S. And yeah, if this idea sounds interesting to you, feel free to implement it (if it is worth it, I have no idea yet). I had some ideas on how to implement it (business-wise, security-wise, etc.), and would be happy to share them as I don't have much time for this project at this time.
The TC post does hint at a serious motive for the prank though.

...And something else about teaching us to contact them before posting.
just so we're clear here, "teenaged boys" is (was?), in reality, men of legal age. he was convicted of a crime because he admitted to being a homosexual, stripped of his security clearance, and chemically castrated. he was not a pedophile, as the parent seems to be implying.
The "an historic" one is a major pet peeve of mine. I've had college professors insist that usage.
Depends on your timeframe. At the moment anything that runs on the JVM has a decent chance. There are certainly pure Ruby and Python shops that exist now. Hell, there's even a Common Lisp shop in Boston (ITA). However, you'll find it difficult to get away with not knowing Java and/or C++.

The next big thing in software is the same thing is was 15 years ago: knowing how to program well. This is no easy task. Focus on doing this and don't worry about the language. It's far easier to learn a new language than it is learning how to be a great programmer. For a starting point see: http://norvig.com/21-days.html.

(The only thing I would add to that is that knowing how to program parallel and concurrent programs is pretty important. Don't even go there until you've got the basics down though.)
I didn't mean the title tag--I meant the first story title (the SEO kids talk about google fixating on the first h1 tag of a site, I though it might be a similar idea). I have no idea what this upper limit change would do, but good luck.
Ask HN: How come Disqus goes down all the time?
Happens numerous times per day. Is that growth pains, or is there some other problem?
I can barely listen to music with words while I code.
So at this point, we are sort of like the fruit flies of large mammals.
or a light-hearted way to ask them to stop posting information without first fact-checking.
Thanks! I'll make sure to check those out.
I had the impression that 37signals products are used by a lot of people/businesses and they have a nice thing going on.
That grated on me as well. You can be honored to be the one to finally acknowledge the service of Alan Turing. You cannot be pleased to apologize for your government's having killed him.
The cynical answer, not necessarily because I believe it fully but because nobody seems to ever bring it up:

Because the people working in companies are part of efforts that have actual an old-fashioned good or service attached. (Edit to add that this is often in a perversely indirect manner, though...)

The vast majority of startups (in the Y Combinator sense), however, are focused exclusively on connecting (be it social networking or market-making) and not on making or doing. While there's plenty of value to be contributed this way, I'd say the potential there is inherently limited.
It is a good thing to diversify.

(t) I learned Erlang and Lisp and literally carved out a part of Powerset that had a problem to solve. Now my Erlang code is part of bing.com, and our startup got bought and integrated into Microsoft.com.

(t - 1) I decided to learn Ruby, and started to do a bit of open source work with it. It managed to get me out of a dead end career grind at Lockheed Martin by catching the eye of a silicon valley recruiter.

(t - 2) I decided to learn Lisp, which allowed me to meet a lot of talented developers and work on some really interesting projects, and network with climate scientists who were working in conjunction with me as part of Lockheed Martin RSAII project doing data modeling. This helped me land a job at Lockheed during the worst parts of the post-bubble recession, elevating me from hand-to-mouth temp work (you sure do type fast, sir!) to software engineering.
I have a friend who's been fighting through installing it from source because he's sick of waiting (apparently cabal was having trouble... not really sure). Hope macports gets things sorted out soon.
Wheel of Time fans praise new chapter
Side Benefit of User Testing: Team Unity
Yes thats true, but if (through no fault of your own) circumstance puts in you desperate situations you have to do what you must. And if it means making bold steps then as an entrepreneur you have to do what you have to do.
Their pickup in Chicago-area Starbucks is insane. I've known about it for a while, and on the rare occasions I deign to go into a Starbucks, I ask the staff there about HMS. Every single Starbucks has been a hit. It's crazy. If I were ADP or Paychex, I'd offer whatever it took to buy them out now, before it becomes huge.
And Facebook makes $1.50 off TechCrunch. They should do this more often.
yeah, it does look a little gallery-like
Oh its a basic journalistic trick. Each journalist wants to give the impression that they see both sides of each story. But if they have a hot story they really do not want to wait to hear the other side. So they request a comment, wait an unreasonably short time, and then print the story saying "we requested a comment from the other side but they did not provide a comment by the deadline for this story".
is there a way to sort by date?
with efax you can send a fax with an email, so really sending an email to a person and having a fax sent is the same amount of work.
I've had lots of ideas for dating sites: setting up group outings like ad hoc speed dating, a rating mechanism for actual dates, a virtual currency system where you could "buy" access to deeper levels of people's profiles, and many more.

The problem is always the chicken/egg question. How do I get a sizable membership to the site. The only answer I see is piggybacking onto a social network like Facebook.
Powerset in Bing
> If they don't want things published, they shouldn't be publishing them on Facebook. Nobody should be using Facebook as their personal calendar.

Most folks I know on facebook tend to use it to communicate with their friends. All of their friends are in one simple place, and they can arrange events easily.

They may not be aware of what they're doing until its too late or they read an article like the OP.

Its just ease of use that people have grown accustomed to.