skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The most recent stuff is related to 'infocaster', before that 'camarades', but that's already quite a while ago.

My NDA with the VCs I've worked for is such that I can not give you the names of the companies that I did tdd for without asking them and I don't see how it really would matter which companies they are, but the deals were on the order of tens of millions of euros, so a little larger than your average seed investment.

The principles are much the same at that level but the procedures are far more formal and in depth than at the lower levels of investment. Due diligence for a larger company can take several weeks, at the start-up level there is usually not a whole lot in terms of financial and legal, later those are actually the bigger portion of the time.

There usually is quite a bit of time pressure.

When taken as a percentage of the value of the deal due diligence can cost quite a bit in early stage investments, so it can be a partner or the CFO/CTO of a company 'friendly' to the VC (or one they've already invested in) that will have a thorough look.

Later, as the amounts go up and there is a lot more money available to have this work done by outsiders, also because it usually is too much work to do as a favour.

The VC world is a very tightly interwoven one, lots of partners have a stake in more than one company, some may even have an angel fund of their own. So when you pitch to a VC and you don't get a deal there is still a small chance that one of the VCs partners will do an investment out of their own pocket, outside of the main fund.

And sometimes that's the way to get an investment for a 'stage mismatch', where a VC is interested in you but your current situation does not match their preferred profile. They can then do a smaller investment through one of the partners, it gives them the inside view for relatively little money and it is a way to hedge their bets. By the time you're ready for a larger round they'll have their foot in the door and will be preferred candidate.
Screenshots: Facebook design refreshment in the works
People can choose the messages they want to RT. If they don't like a message, they can hide it.

Its not like mag-pie or other services where people have no control over which messages are retweeted.
It solves a problem for a niche within a niche. Market size is extremely small IMHO. And I'd doubt people are willing to pay for it.
Totally unexpected for me. I thought they were going with countries that have local Amazon stores. No, my country is listed! Now I don't have to wait for two weeks for paper books to be delivered. Very nice move, Amazon!
Google Wave development tutorials | Don't mind Rick
Thanks.

Its a reciprocation tool. But it does give people choices to retweet the messages they like. They don't have to retweet all the messages. They can read 20-30-40 (upto unlimited) messages and select just 4 of them to be retweeted per day. If they like none of the messages - they retweet none.

So how is that spamming?
I see HN a bit different than you do I think. To me HN is already a pretty good resource for information like this, I think I have more threads here bookmarked than from any other site I frequent.

It's a veritable gold mine for information.

Another thing you get when you post stuff on some blog somewhere that is really written exclusively for HN is that the comments will split between the two pages.

Like this it's all in one place. It's not like I need the pageviews.
Excellent points. I have very little to add but a few minor bits:

- Don't worry about NDAs with VCs. At least on this side of the pond, no VC is going to sign them. Don't leave your full deck behind in digital form. Leave them a summary deck on paper if you absolutely must. (just assume the deck will get passed outside the firm).

- Do make sure the VC doesn't have a conflicting investment - if so, assume everything you talk about will be going into the ears of your competitors.

- Avoid spotters/associates. Get referred in to a partner by another entrepreneur they've worked with before (work your linkedin or xing). Don't take a 1st meeting with an associate (feel free to chat with them on the phone briefly). If a firm wants to see you, then they can find a partner to talk to you. Associates can only say 'no' and generally have limited deal experience and just may not understand your market (of course there are exceptional individuals and firms where this doesn't apply).

- Timing is everything. When you're ready to go out - have a list of VCs you want to speak with and try to get all your meetings lined up for the same two to three weeks. VCs all talk to each other. Once they hear another firm passed on your deal, it's harder to get the next one to bite. Make it a parallel competition. Don't overexpose your company.

- Do research on the firm and the partner that you're pitching. http://www.thefunded.com is free for founders. Get an account and use it for research. (I'm not affiliated with thefunded, just a fan).
Yes, a fair point. Concurrent and parallel do not describe disjoint sets of programs, of course. However, they really are different concepts. I think wikipedia's page on concurrency could use some work to make this clearer, maybe I'll try to gather enough references to make the case.

If you want to rephrase the title, perhaps "Parallelism =/> Concurrency" would be better ("=/>" is "does not imply").
Kindle goes International
I despise RTing as it is. Say something original rather than copy others.

As such I also despise any service that encourages people to RT, especially if it is disinteresting spam.

You've obviously put time and effort into this app. Wouldn't your creative energy be better spent building something useful, delightful, helpful, etc rather than a spamming tool?
I went through the Linux-only mindset for years but now pragmatism rules and I use Linux for development and general productivity, Macs for Garageband and testing my website on Safari, and Windows for Solitaire...

...and things like Garmin and Tom Tom software
It's become pretty clear Obama isn't liberal.
Yes but it works just fine as a book reader though - a little time away from blogs and "news sites" might be good for all our souls.

Still - you are right the price is steep given that you are then going to be buying more product from Amazon over the lifetime of the device (I wonder what this is likely to be).

Could be interesting to see what Apple have on offer later in the year with their new device - could do some interesting things to both the device and content price points.
This post begs the question that going the VC rout is right for "you," which is rarely the case.

Most founders and startups are better off bootstrapping and positioning for an early exit than chasing VCs. If you don't know what an early exit is, why it's a good option to have, and why VC's will usually block it, see Basil Peter's blog, http://www.angelblog.net/ (he's compiled much of the info on his blog into a PDF called “Early Exits," which you can find there, too).

I'm digressing, but the point is, VCs are wrong for 99% of startups, and that's a good thing. You do not want them unless you don't need them, in which case they will be chasing you and pitching you, which is the way it should be. Bootstrap or get an angel investor.

Signed,
Former Venture Investor, now startup founder
> Associates can only say 'no' and generally have limited deal experience and just may not understand your market

Interesting!

That's in direct conflict with my (limited, European) experience. Usually you don't get to speak to a partner until you've passed muster with one of the associates, they act as gatekeepers to make sure the partners spend their time on those things that they feel are worth it.

I agree with all your other points, the NDAs are not a common thing in start-ups, but at a later stage they are definitely important.
Maybe you should keep track of messages that people choose to retweet and also assign karma to the people who originated the tweet so you can figure out which tweets are not liked by your users and maybe you can improve the 30 tweet candidates people get to choose from.
Sony LTX200g LTO-2 Tape
Sony has introduced new technologies to the Sony LTX200G LTO-2 format that has significantly decreased the noise level enabling it to match with the increased sensitivity of magneto resistive heads. High output frequency and exceptional tracking stability of Sony LTO-2 tape leads to long life span.
see: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/08/23/...
I guess the upside of having it on a blog is you can edit it later, add links, real formatting, etc.
As a reader, I'd say you come across more credible by posting here, since I know that you're not linkbaiting for ad revenue.
Fair enough.

You despise RT. But a lot of others don't. This tool is for them. Of course - you can't make a tool that makes everyone happy. And people who despise RT-ing is not the target audience.

But how is the tool spamming? People who like RT-ing can login. They can select exactly which messages they think are a good fit for their followers. And RT it. The messages they don't like, they don't RT.

Its a reciprocation tool - yes. But why would reciprocation = to spam if its not forced reciprocation?

Ulterior motive: And I am spending time building more apps that are useful, delightful, helpful. If this app succeeds, it will help me promote all those other apps too.
Java, OCaml, and F#
That's actually a really good point.

But even with angel investors plenty of these points still apply.
Thanks for suggestions.

Right now, which tweets are not liked by users is being recorded. But the data is not being used to rank the tweets. In the future maybe.

Also, if the app succeeds, in the future - may add categories or tags or something too. So folks who like web development will only see web dev RTs. So folks will get to read more relevant RTs. But right now, adding all these features would be an overkill.
RE: "make sure the VC doesn't have a conflicting investment": This is very important.

My recommendation is to proceed like this:

1) Tell then a little about your project (not being cagey, just progressive disclosure) and ask if they have any conflicts, such as existing investments or close relationships ti similar companies.

2) If there are no conflicts, then memorialize this via email (maybe you had this whole conversation via email already, so you're done).

3) Save that email, it is evidence of you disclosing enough about your product/service/whatever for them to determine if they have a conflict or not and them representing that there is no conflict.

4) Proceed and peel back some more layers of the onion. Explore together and ask them as many questions as they ask you. Do not fall into the "I'm pitching them" role. You are "pitching" each other, if you insist on using that word. You should be doing due diligence on them.
Well.

I've written at length about this in the past, and basically my opinion comes down to there being two ways to approach this. One is driven by the application, the other is driven by the database.

The application-driven approach is, I believe, the vastly more common use case: you have some things in your code (objects, data structures, whatever) and want some way to persist them and fetch them back later according to their properties, so you use a SQL-based DB because, hey, you can get them for zero monetary cost (PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, etc.), every language has ways to speak SQL and every developer on your team knows SQL.

The database-driven approach is, in my experience, less common: you start with the database, design it meticulously, take full advantage of the relational model and the features it and your DB offer, build as much as possible in the DB layer and then let people write applications which talk to it.

Both you, and the author of the reply in the email this thread links to, seem to inhabit the latter use case. And that's fine; I know people who do that stuff and I respect it. Where the problem comes in is that you have a tendency to assume that your use case and your approach are or should be the only use case and approach. Which is, frankly, wrong. There are plenty of situations where the application-driven approach does just fine and will take you a very, very long way (and when it breaks down, it probably will not break down because you need to switch to the database-driven approach; it'll break down because of other things), and where the database-driven approach really isn't a great fit (for various reasons).
Unless you've got a way to monetise this, I'd give up right now.
To be fair, the article is about Valiant the person almost as much it is about his research, though the title is a bit misleading.

Anyway, I read it a few months back and this is the part that still sticks with me:

Vaillant was asked, "What have you learned from the Grant Study men?" Vaillant’s response: "That the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people."
Unfortunatelly, besides blogs and online news, this means that wikipedia won't be accessible also in most countries.
The wikipedia feature was the one only thing that was going to make me buy kinde instead of sony readers.
No DX internationally? I need that, since I want to read work documents and code.

I still want a Kindle, but hesitate... the FUD from Apple and Pixel Qi is working on me. :-)
Bad programming with exception
London Stock Exchange Rejects .NET For Open Source
According to some news resource, DX is coming next year.
So Kindle for the UK and free 3G access....wow very tempting
Thanks Jim.

Didn't build the tool for monetization.

Built the tool to make promotion of my other sites and apps easier. (Yes thats my sneaky ulterior motive :p)

If this app succeeds, getting initial seed traffic to other apps would become way easier too.
Your service is opt-in, people choose to RT your messages. That's seemingly fine.

The problem is twitter is a broadcast service. If one of the people I follow chooses to use your service then I also get to see your advert. Admittedly this is why it benefits you.

It is however highly irritating. I'd rather not have to unfollow an otherwise interesting friend because of a service like yours.
Sellaband teams up with Public Enemy
Awesome post, Thanks lot..

+1

pk
This has to be the worst example of blurring out text that I can recall seeing.
Thanks for the feedback. It was launched last night, so it's sparsely populated at the moment.
I and many other people I suspect will be waiting on the sideline a few more months to see whether Apple's tablet offering really does provide a serious alternative...
If you're walking in the front-door / blind emailing then you'll end up with an associate. Same on both sides of the pond.

The trick is to get referred in via a stronger link (a referral from a successful entrepreneur they've worked with in the past is usually a quick way to get to a partner. Perhaps even an intro from a fellow that does due diligence for them ;).
> ...the Ctrl+K combination to get straight to the keyword box is equally useful for those who use one search engine...

It's actually not. When typing in either the keyword box or the URL box, it shows similar previous searches in a dropdown. The URL box's method is superior:

For suggestions, the keyword box does a "StartsWith" query against your previous searches. The URL box does a "Contains" query.

The keyword box has a delay between when you stop typing and when previous searches are displayed. The URL box does not.

(Firefox 3.0. Can't speak for other versions.)
Interesting! That's cheaper than an amazon 'e-book', and when you're done with it you can give the book away to the next person.
I don't see the point of having one extra step if I wan't to update my status. I'd leave it as it is if I would like to encourage people to update regularly (that is the point of FB).
I am, however, looking forward to the "top content" feature as the right box (highlights) is useless for me (showing the same stuff I don't care about for days in a row)
Embedding Lisp is too arcane?

http://ecls.sourceforge.net/new-manual/ch24.html#Internals-W...
Thanks for the feedback. Although we do want it to be useful for anyone coming to or in Bangkok, it's really geared towards Bangkokians. Yeah, I'm not sure how we're going to handle markers (and other clutter) as we take on more data. I too hate clutter.
It's quite an annoying thing. I received the screenshots blurred and all we can do to stop the names from being read is blur the blur even more - which makes it look even worse in some ways. The blur isn't necessary really anyway as it was just a nice gesture to the users in the screenshots. Hopefully we can get copies of the original shots later today to improve the quality of the article :).
I get the problem you have with RTs.

But thats why I've added tools that helps in getting rid of abusive / spammy messages from the network.

So hopefully people who you follow are kind and smart and will only RT interesting messages. A lot of choices are given to them to RT only messages that they think will be interesting for their followers.
Canada: nak

But they say they'll have it soon. I wonder what the hold up is there.
No clue but I know that I'd try http://www.docstoc.com/ if I was looking.
The text to speech feature was also pretty attractive. But I ended up with a sony prs 600 though, and I'm really happy with it. So while I guess I might take a closer look if I was getting an ebook reader now, it probably would not have changed my mind.
You might be interested in this link:

http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1019.html

"Many people who wear helmets can relate their experience of a crash which leads them to believe that a helmet 'saved their life'. This is a very common experience - very much more common, in fact, than the actual number of life-threatening injuries suffered by bare-headed cyclists. Yet there is no evidence that helmets save lives or prevent serious injury at all across cyclists as a whole"

The PDF linked at the bottom is good too, it's written by a guy that runs a cycle helmet testing lab.

http://www.cyclehelmets.org/papers/c2023.pdf

It's an in-depth piece and I don't want to do it an injustice by over-summarizing but here's my take: helmets by design and because of basic physical limits on their size are good for when you fall off a bike onto a flat surface at low speed, not for collisions, certainly not getting hit by speeding cars. Therefore they make a lot of sense for children learning to cycle or others prone to falling off, and much less sense for average cyclists.
Solomon Neuhardt
Solomon Neuhardt is an attorney in Billings MT. His law firm, Neuhardt Law Firm, P.C. represents individuals and families in cases involving motor vehicle accidents, semi truck accidents, serious physical injuries, traumatic brain injuries, wrongful death dangerous or defective products, medical or hospital negligence, premises liability and insurance disputes and is one of the best lawyers in billings Montana.
Samsung SCH-i730
Samsung SCH-I730 Verizon CDMA is complete professional phone with QWERTY keypad and screen touch and having Windows Mobile TM 2003 palm computer software enables you to do any task from the phone. Its great and huge network connection of CDMA EV-DO and Wi-Fi network of 802.11b standard, supports enables you high speed data downloading through web.
Just a note that this machine is at Harvard Book Store, which is an independent business and not part of Harvard University as the shortened HN title might suggest.
I'm initially with cperciva ("Just move on") but the thought did occur to me that this might just a good student project or pet project to help put you through school. If it's such a great idea, then once you have it developed you'll be able to shop it around and get some help. Plus it might be a great resume item or even an incentive to take a few business classes.

As a student there are other reasons to code it up besides just concept of selling it. You probably already know this but, just in case, I thought I'd throw that out there.
That's wonderful news.

It is also on the front page of amazon.co.jp right now, where I hoped to order it from (I get free shipping from them). They have a wonderful letter from Jeff Bezos (translated into Japanese -- some nice touches by the translator, incidentally) and if you click anywhere in it you get directed to the page on amazon.com to buy.

That is, needless to say, written totally in English. And which won't support the payment methods used by most of the customers of amazon.co.jp. (Credit card penetration is pretty low here -- most people I know use bank transfer or payment at the convenience store.)

I mention this just to point out that Internationalization Is Hard, even for big billion dollar companies. I'll be ordering mine by the end of the day.
Being able to develop and use widgets on a whiteboard is quite a differentiating feature I think. I don't know of any AJAX based whiteboards doing this. Secondly, the application isn't just an AJAX app, it is based on SVG.

JSP/J2EE is used for several reasons that I won't get into:)

However creating a widget requires only Javascript.
Has this gentleman addressed why he's developing for the Pre in the first place?

He's a long time Palm fan/user/developer from back in the 'good old days'. Also he's said that he thinks the Pre is an very nice platform to program for and finds it far easier than the iPhone. So basically he develops for the Pre because he likes the Pre, he just wishes it was easier to distribute the results for free to other Pre userd.
Yeah, I passed through Bangkok when I was just out of college and did the Khao San - Samui circuit. I encountered a bunch of drunk soccer hooligans and cynical, scam-touting tourist handlers. When I moved here later on I was amazed what Bangkok is actually like. Wonderful place.
I really, really enjoyed that piece, and was pleasantly surprised after the generic title. If someone has the time, it's an interesting narrative with interesting points backed by data.

But for a busier person, they could start at the meat of it, with the numbers. You'd miss the enjoyable narrative and backstory, but get the important details. Link to page 3 of 4, it'll make sense stand-alone but do go back if you enjoy it:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200906/happiness/3
Yes, and then there were rumours that Microsoft, as well as Asus are working on something too.

My biggest blocking factor is actually the price of the kindle books. When a typical books costs $15, and kindle version is $9.99, it seems to me a bit overpriced. (but of course, maybe it's not Amazons fault, but the author's guild).
"a nice gesture to the users"? I think those users would habe enjoyed the extra attention. More followers, credit, props and traffic? Just put my name in there from now on...
Or the eBook reader form Asus:
http://www.liliputing.com/2009/09/more-details-on-the-asus-e...

They are different though: e-Ink is way better than LCD for reading outside, in bright light settings. I bought a Sony reader couple of months ago, never expected such a move from Amazon. They must have negotiated with hundreds of mobile operators around the world.
How Playdom is Making $50M from 28M Users
Multiple tiling windows is an idea long past it's prime and I've never been keen on Apple's particular take on this model.

Quite often I find that bringing Finder to the front covers the whole screen with the 16 or so Finder windows that I forgot that I had open and which bear no relation to the task I am currently trying to perform. A single window finder with a history and a way to split into two or four tiles might be better.

Of course the tricky thing is making this work for naive users as well as power users. This isn't an easy problem but naive users struggle massively with the current model too and that's not especially optimal for power users either.
Call me suspicious but I doubt these redesigns were done by Facebook, the author of the post is a 16 year old British guy and the screenshots look like they're taken from a 16 year old British guys profile rather than a designer working in Palo Alto...