skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>A CMS requiring a slew of third-party mods before it can be usable is useless to someone who can code a custom Rails CMS in a day or two.

In other words, a system one doesn't know is useless to someone who knows an other system with a similar purpose. Right. Use the system you know.

While I agree with some of this critique, here are some points I take issue with.

>Databases are great for storing passwords, content, and countless other things. These things do not include “views”, i.e. templates. That’s right, templates. In the database. Drupal stores templates in the database.

Views are not templates. Views are more analogous to database queries. Drupal does, in fact, store templates in the filesystem.

>Drupal has a history of security vulnerabilities and is written in ugly spaghetti code

Ironically, the OP's blog post is hosted in WordPress, a PHP project that, unlike Drupal, has had security response issues.

Drupal's security response is great. When's the last time an update-to-date Drupal site was hacked? The code isn't object oriented, but is clean and a coding standing is upheld.

>Gripe #4: Drupal’s None Too Friendly

Drupal's community is one of the friendliest, non-elitist out there. Really. The Drupal project has a higher percentage of women involved than any other open source project of a comparable size.

>There’s been quite a backlash over Drupal’s new trademark policy, which is rather contrary to the spirit of open-source software.

The backlash has been by folks who don't realize that protecting trademark is standard practice for large open source projects. Look at the license of MySQL, for example.

>Drupal's search sucks

What CMS, out of the box, has a search that doesn't suck? Use Solr or Sphinx.
Dave McClure doesn't need to "fill the void left by Zed's old persona", he already has his own place that he's quite comfortable in. See http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/about-dave-mcclure.html
Why is running Twitter so expensive? What proportion of that money is going to towards engineering talent and servers?
I choose to not pay much attention to it

I'm mostly with you on that one, actually, but some folks feel like the big bad Competition Vampire will suck their blood if they don't pound a timesheet through its heart, so I try to keep it to one major heresy per blog post. (For my next trick: you can work less and ignore the competition while running your software business on Microsoft Vista.)

Even if you're one guy sitting at home (hi, me) I recommend tracking productivity simply because using time more efficiently gives you more time to spend on things which are more important to you than, e.g., licking stamps. (No matter how good you are at what you do, and how much you enjoy everything you do, you have done one thing this week that was less important than all the others. Ask yourself: what could I have done to not have had to do that?)
PHP wasn't "almost brand new" in 2000. It's practically as old as Apache. And not in the way that Ruby existed for a long time before anyone noticed it; PHP has been popular for almost that long, too. I remember having to support it in the 90's.
I don't think Dave needs to "stand up to Jason or Graham or Spolsky" to give more value to his opinion. He's got enough star power by himself, though oddly the people posting on here at the moment seem to be blind to it. See http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/about-dave-mcclure.html
I've run into several archetypal "freetards" in the Drupal community - you probably know the type: To any criticism they say, "Well, you were lucky enough to have been given the source for free, and if you don't like it, go write something better!"

I've also found a large part of the Drupal community to be non-technical users attempting to help each other with various technical problems such as module or database upgrades. I never saw this amazing community that i've heard people mention - so I assumed there must be an invite-only mailing list somewhere.
>> "This is a great example of how not to blog:"

Not really, I found it quite entertaining, and agreed with most of it. It was certainly a better blog post than most of the stuff that comes out of 37signals (IMHO).
Introducing the bra that is meant to be taken off
Solr seems to have emerged as the new Drupal search standard.
I didn't get past the second picture of Gordon Gecko.
Running Twitter might not be calamitously expensive, but positioning it and executing a plan to make it lucrative might be. For instance:

* It might require mainstream media promotion to push it into the mainstream market.

* Their plans to monetize it might involve M&A.
It's realtime, there's a lot of users, and there's no follower limit, so Twitter tends more (than say facebook) to the O(n^2) case where everyone follows everyone.
I don't really think so. 500 words is not a long essay, and if you have sufficient qualities to seriously consider applying to MIT, you are likely able to hyperfocus and employ it as a strategy for meeting deadlines. With ADD it's hard to get and stay engaged, but when one does find something to engage one's attention, one can churn out a higher-than-normal amount of work in 'burst mode'.
Meh, you're probably right. I'm just saying, edw's point doesn't require us to believe that we should back down to "authorities".
The more I hear about the US university admissions process, the more I'm grateful for the Australian system, where students are admitted, or not, purely on the basis of their marks from their final year at school (half by a final set of exams and half based on school marks correctly normalized by those exams).

No BS essays, no BS extracurricular activities (unless, of course, you want to do them) and no potential for racial or other bias.
I'm not sure what you mean. Like, a mom-and-pop store has vendors who supply the flour they sell, so that's an ecosystem and therefore a REAL business?

I certainly have vendors (server providers, contractors, etc.), so if that's not what you mean...what do you mean?
Now, as before, they're used to inject subjectivity into a process that could just as well be based on tests and grades alone.

The problem with the purely objective approach is you'd go from having a 40% minority campus to having about 2-3%. That's a political problem.
The important point of Dave's screed is at the bottom (and it's something every single person who has ever worked in VC and made the jump to the light side says this): for your first company, don't hold on too long - it's OK to sell out.

Successfully selling out makes it ridiculously easy to raise money, strike partnerships, and do things your way the second time around. Hell, it probably gets you a third bite at the apple as well.
>There's an insane arrogance in the community.

My experience with the Drupal community has been the opposite. The Drupal community, more than any other project with a similar size I can think of, makes a conscious effort to get people at various skill levels involved (encouraging non-devs to do documentation, etc.). Also, there seems to be more women involved in Drupal than projects of a similar size.
I used http://www.crowdspring.com/ with success.
Just keep in mind that while a lot of artists are able to create some great looking designs, many are not versed in human cognition and user interface design concepts. You may end up with a great looking interface which is largely unusable, or at least irritating to use on a regular basis. If you're going to go down this route, make sure that someone on your team has a good grasp on UI/UX basics in order to vet the designs that are proposed and suggest changes as needed.
Good point:
"""Libraries likely don't offer recommendations based on a user's checkout history because of a long tradition of utmost privacy concerning a patron's information."""

That's where privacy statements like these come in:

http://www.goodreads.com/about/privacy [courtesy j2d2]
This all sounds like a nightmare for the casual/less-proficient developer to figure out. Is this a problem that a majority of Drupal developers face?
Upvoted for the women observation, which I've noticed, too. It speaks well for them.
oddly the people posting on here at the moment seem to be blind to it

Thank you. I was blind, but now I can see...

Dave barely graduated from the Johns Hopkins University in 1988, with a BS in Mathematical Sciences Engineering and a minor in frisbee, billiards, and foosball.

Foosball? I had no idea. I take it all back.

In the future all disagreements between foosball players should be settled on the table where they belong. Does Jason play?
Supreme Mathematics of Gods and Earths
CrowdSpring is another nice option in my experience.

http://www.crowdspring.com/
I don't believe that this should ever go to zero. I think the heart of this question is : how do you maximize long term productivity? For me, if I work more than 70-77 hours a week for an extended period, my productivity drops. I can flirt with 90 hours in a pinch, but once I break 70 hours I start to make mistakes. I don't know about you, but my experience in writing software is that it is like poker in the sense that a single mistake can end up costing a lot. So, that translates to an optimal 10-11 hours a day with an occasional 12 hour day. This leaves 5-7 hours of free time per day. I also believe that a balanced mind, body and emotions leads to better results than overemphasizing one or the other. So, I focus on exercising to keep a sound body, sleeping 7-8 hours per night and spending an hour or two relaxing every day. Of course, I'm not rich yet, either.
I would really like this type of feature from a git or hg. One of my concerns about the state of version control is the sub par handling of binary files. Git works well for the intended use case of the strictly text projects such as the linux kernel etc. but not as good for complex multimedia applications with changes to binary files being common. I guess I could do a repack often but it would be nice for a version control system to handle these files better. I know it's a pipe dream right now but one can hope.

Edit: I guess I should say I was referring to open source DVCS and not the commercial stuff like perforce.
Is there anybody in this thread actually reading this essay seriously and weighing its merits, instead of dismissing it on superficial stylistic reasons?

The man brings up interesting points regarding the Mint.com merger and how 37signals handled the news, f-bombs be damned. Especially in regards to the differing metrics of incentives for startups, VCs and preexisting competitors.
The use case for using WordPress is different than that of Drupal.
Couple of other problems with Drupal that haven't been mentioned:

* massive numbers of database queries to build a page (i think 30+ for a relatively boring stock homepage). (Yes, there are cacheing modules - but they only work for anon users. If you are logged in as an admin it feels sluggish.)

* You need to put PHP code in the DB (!) for example, if you only want a search box on some pages. (This is wrong for many reasons, but my fave is that if you make a syntax error, or your whole site will break!)
Amazon's CTO certainly is a big proponent of SOA.

Here is a light interview (by none other than Jim Gray) on this published in ACM Queue from 2006.

http://portal.acm.org/ft_gateway.cfm?id=1142065&type=pdf
I'm asserting that it's a bad software patent because I'm familiar with the details. You obviously don't have to take it on faith that my assertion is correct. Believe me, I'd love to share the details--and I will when my friend gives me the go-ahead.

I agree with you that not all software patents are vague, overly broad, or anticipated by prior art. I've been on the other side myself.
>1. We can only use the LAMP stack. (perhaps with other operating sytems instead of GNU/Linux, but you get the idea).

You can use nginx (and lighty as well, I believe). You can use Postgres (and Drupal 7's ORM abstracts the data model, opening up the possibility of nosql). The only thing you're really stuck with is PHP.
Since when does anything add anything to anything?

This is a useful argument...
Your second point is pretty spot on. Asking for technical help in Drupal forums almost guarantees a response from a well-meaning non-technical person who likely can't help you.

Asking in a module's issue queue can be hit or miss. If it's a major project, you'll get a response and it'll be "this has been asked before, here's the link." That's great.

More likely you'll never hear a response.

#drupal-support can have some very helpful people on it. But once your question gets beyond general use of the major modules, the odds of getting useful help approach zero.
Out of curiousity, I tried to figure out the current capitalization table based on the listed values for price per share and amount raised for each round, along with a current valuation of $1B:

round # shares fraction ownership
A 14.6 M 23%
B 8.2 M 13%
C 8.4 M 13%
D 8.3 M 13%
E 6.3 M 10%
non-VCs 16.7 M 27%
Hidden in the F-bombs and the wacky colors I think there is a good point here. There are entrepreneurs who love the start of a company (working 7 days a week, adding new functionality, etc...) and there are people who are good at (and sometimes love) maintaining a company once it's established itself (by creating moderate growth, doing a bunch of testing for each new feature, etc...)

What flipping does is to allow the entrepreneurs to pass a company off to the maintainers once it moves beyond that startup phase
Bitbucket: On our extended downtime with Amazon
Agree.

Dave can be very blunt sometimes.

I saw him on a panel earlier this year and he's just very direct. It's refreshing to get very honest answers. Some people just play too nice just not to offend anybody.
Also, my friend is reading this page, and I hope he'll reach out to folks who have volunteered to help. Bad patents hurt everyone--you never know if you'll be the next victim. Regardless of your stance on software patents in general, I hope you agree that that there are a lot of invalid software patents out there, and that their holders are wreaking havoc by what amounts to legalized extortion.
article should be titled "increasing hourly productivity to improve life balance" - working more hours do not have any negative impact on having less productive time

maximized hour/efficiency-productivity * maximized #hours/week = maximized output(not necessary value). The rest depends on how much you are willing to sacrifice to balance your life with other activities.
It is not unstable. It is uncomfortable because you are putting all your weight on your crotch, rather than on your (much stronger) legs.
I believe the reason it took too long for Dave to respond was that he was doing Geeks On A Plance (GOAP) that took him to the East Coast and Europe.
The article was written about an effort using Drupal 4 ... and it turned out to be suprisingly easy due to the structured nature of the Drupal database api. Did you read the stuff??
I don't pirate/buy e-books because I can't read books on a screen, it is okay for small articles and coding and whatnot but feeling the paper and guiding your eyes is so much better with paper. (I haven't tried e-ink or the kindle so I don't know how that compares.)
> The only thing you're really stuck with is PHP.

Yeah, we really need to work on that. ;-)
I'm doing the startup thing, but didn't really think about medical insurance too much. It turns out I'm uninsurable. That is a real and serious consequence of accepting (professional) help.
Agreed. If you actually read the article instead of dismissing it based on its content, you'd find that Dave makes a great point. The Mint sale may not turn out to be great for Mint users, and it certainly wasn't amazing for (most) of their investors that were hoping for a home run -- but I know with certainty it was amazing for Aaron, personally.

Saying that the VCs forced Aaron to sell is an absolutely ludicrous statement.
It depends on what you mean by minority. As hughprime said, most schools restrict the number of Asians they admit. Cornell has a much higher percentage of Asian students and a much lower percentage of African American students than the other Ivies, and it's no coincidence.
The word "fuck" only really works in a shock way the first few times; after that you just sound angry.

Some good points got lost because of that.

Young Entrepreneurs Should Sell Out Early

I did that - not because I was forced but because the deal was good and I have plenty of other ideas to turn into countries. And I agree: it's a good thing.

In fact I sold my second company - the first one crashed and burned. It was a useful experience because the oulay costs were 4 figure amounts and I had no employee's - so no one really lost out.

Now I feel like I have had the right experiences and can make better decisions next time.

Too often I think we see people offered vast sums of money with no idea really what to do with it. The successes we hear about are the multi-millionaires who make the right decisions (either through luck or skill) but Im sure there are plenty of others who failed.

Im glad I got the chance when the worst setback I could face is being back at square one.
A graphical breakdown of the death of newspapers
Good point! Take a look at how similar it is to this: http://www.timecube.com/
when Dave says "sell out early" (and says "firesales don't count), he's talking about sales < $250M as "early", not $xxx,xxx or sub 5M deals.
Startups are intense evironments where tempers flare and principled differences of opinion lay, ready to be kicked up, like sleeping dragons on the floor. This being the case, I really feel for his co-founder. I can't imagine that there aren't words he wished he could take back or signs he thinks he should have seen.

I urge you not to blame yourself for any harsh words or deeds you may have let loose in the life of your company. Bruised egos in startups are like bruised thighs in pro football. They're just part of the game. So go easy on yourself. The rules of personal interaction in startups are different.

Furthermore, you can't make sense of suicide. It's an act that by definition doesn't make sense. I don't know you but I'm really sorry for you. I wish you and your company the best.
I am not a writer myself, but I know several novelists.

Some of which considered successful - i.e. they published several books which sold well and got payed handsomely for it.

None of them works as a novelist full time, because they would have never been able to cover their expenses.

Your chances of success (where success == making a living out of it without needing to keep another job) might be even lower than for indie game developers...
I didn't get past the 8th f-bomb.

But at least you know how cool and edgy he is. Saying "fuck" in a blog post is totally sticking it to the man!
They've used the wording 'top dollar' frequently, and their ads definitely don't emphasize convenience over value for money. I certainly find them deceptive knowing what their real practices are.
Accountability, or confessing when you make a mistake, is the mark of a professional. I didn't learn that lesson right away, but I'm glad I finally did. Your manager or customers might not be happy that you made the mistake, but they'll always respect and appreciate you for being accountable.
Ooh, this is a fun linguistic game...

capacity of help

opacity of hoop

perspicacity of hip

mendacity of, er, tenacity of...

...ok, I give up.
Real Usability
> How about silicon valley takes a hiatus from frivolous social apps and make some good fruit picking robots so nobody has to do it? It wouldn't make business sense now, but post deportation it might.

Frivolous social apps exist because a market for them exists. Furthermore, the manufacture of web apps is significantly easier than the manufacture of machines with image processing and manipulation skills capable of matching an immigrant.

The initial cost of purchasing robots capable of harvesting fruit would be astronomical, probably enough to send more than a few farms on the margin into deep debt or bankruptcy. I can't imagine what the support costs for such an operation would be.
The Duplicates Paradox
Here we go again with the fallacious nice == indirect argument. I've heard this over and over again and it never makes sense. Why do you think that it is necessary to go on an offensive rampage in order to be honest? Guess what? Some people actually don't hate everyone who disagrees with them and these people can be very blunt and honest without petty insults.
Thank you neilc, it works so good, though that took me a evening to setup. And I'd recommend this to peers, it makes GFW much much harder to block, thus free us ultimately.
The thing is he might have actually made some good points in his post. Him typing out something like that doesn't really encourage people to read the entire post. I didn't read the entire post, and I'm guessing a lot of others did not too.
So while it may appear to be coattail-riding, it may actually not be (not that the author helps his case much).
Downtime like this sucks - I've been there beating my head against a brick wall trying to get someone else to admit it really is something they need to look at :( I'm impressed with the effort they put in in the end.

BitBucket has had quite a lot of down time this year - and I also had a few problems with payments a short time back.

but

It doesn't piss me off like it would with certain other providers.

The status update pages are amusingly maintained when they go down, updates are prompt and contacting support got a sensibly fast (it was a Sunday I emailed :D). At no point have I thought about moving on. So they do deserve a lot of kudos for that.
I hadn't seen the SVG graphing stuff. Looks pretty cool. Is anyone here using it?
I know but the same principle stands, it's just a different scale :)
Ask HN: Tips on starting a tiny business?
I'm a college student looking to make a few extra dollars here and there. With a friend of mine, I've started a small internet-based record label without about four artists.I have a small bit of secondhand small business experience from my father, whom I worked for through high school, and his home-based business. Aside from that, however, I've never done any real business before.

I'm looking to keep things very small, maybe 10 musicians maximum, but potentially more after college. Any tips to help me along with this smaller than small business?
Dave doesn't appear as eloquent as J,G&S so that probably explains why he looks like an upstart ranter by comparison.
That was a private hack from students at Georgia Tech - preprint of their impressive paper: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/cpl/projects/augearth/augearth_isma...
You can make a production quality CMS in a few days as long as it is specialized. Genericity is the productivity killer.

I spent some time revamping my website last weekend after having done no web development for about 4 years. I roughly split up my time like this:
-2 hours to build a proxy to S3 in GAE (Custom)
-2 hours to set-up a pure-Java PHP implementation on my GAE proxy (OSS)
-3 hours to set-up a WebDAV interface to S3 in GAE (OSS)
-4 hours to create XSLT templates and build them automatically (Custom)

I use NetDrive to connect to S3, and Kompozer to edit the content. Highly scalable, nearly free website with a perfectly good CMS and no need to make back-ups. Updating the software or adding services is as simple as typing my password in Eclipse. (by the way, everything in Java)

Over the years I've found web developers are not the smartest types.
Banksy is a mainstream commercial artist now, he sells his work at Sotheby's, who mainly deal in traditional oil paintings. Was his "graffiti" just a clever marketing campaign?
Perhaps you're looking in the wrong place. A lot of illegal file-sharing seems to be done through file-hostin services such as rapidshare these days. A few choice keywords on google should net you just about any book you want.
I ported his test suite to the gnu toolchain at: http://www.uucidl.com/git/?p=hashperf.git;a=summary