skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think your statement might be self-contradictory. If having more users (by itself) can bias a new user, then the product being sold has a network-effect.

EDIT: I think the term I (and we) are looking for is positive feedback loop. That's ultimately why network effects cause a race to grow the fastest.
The US Cable ISPs make no attempt whatsoever to stop cable modem hacking. They could:

* Fingerprint / forcibly upgrade your firmware
* Restrict routing to unauthenticated modem MAC addresses
* All they do is give you a walledgarden config
* The subscriber MAC address database is global and lock-free
* The only real authentication is locally in Layer 2
* so you can sniff-and-trade
* Change the locations/names of their config files regularly
* Stop shipping Motorola-based modems to customers

Many European ISPs do a lot of this stuff, but piracy is still totally possible there, just more of a pain.
at first i was surprised by how quickly this happened. but then i saw they've raised 20M in funding in the last 2 years. i think its obvious the VCs run the company.

http://www.crunchbase.com/company/offerpal-media
The github developers are beasts.
Introducing the YUI 3 Gallery
Basecamp either
You can also refrain from writing the bugs ;-)
Of course you can. Even mainstream commentators agree with me on this one; they have a term for it: "illiberal democracy" [1].

In any case, I would make the stronger point that you can't really have freedom with democracy.

[1] The Rise of Illiberal Democracy, Fareed Zakaria, Foreign Affairs, November/December 1997
Additionally, old comments don't have reply links. For example: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=820365
Linda Gottfredson, co-director of the University of Delaware-Johns Hopkins Project for the Study of Intelligence and Society, told me:

"I recently converted Bush's SAT score to an IQ using the high school norms available for his age cohort. Educational Testing Service happened to have done a study of representative high school students within a year or so of when he took the test. I derived an IQ of 125, which is the 95th percentile."
That's one of his points. At the risk of sounding non-HN-esque, rtfa.
As far as guidelines go, my personal rule is "test at the highest level of abstraction possible." That could also be phrased as "test those invariants that are the least likely to change." In practice, the two guidelines turn out to be pretty analogous.

What does that mean, exactly? Any code you write is obviously in the service of some goal. Some code, like a method to split a String that's part of a standard library, is its own end: it's a complete API, so it should be tested as such.

A whole lot of other code, though, is in service of some larger component. Maybe you've got 15 classes that all work together to form the e-mail component, and hopefully only one or two of those classes really encapsulate the external API (whether it's an explicit API or just implied) exposed to other components, and the rest are logically part of the implementation. So instead of unit testing every one of those, you get more mileage testing at the level of that API. That lets you change the implementation of that component without having to rewrite a bunch of tests, and the tests themselves then become a much clearer documentation of that API.

But plenty of times, the overall API is so complex that there's a combinatorial explosion if you try to test at that higher level; in that case you have to find smaller chunks that have few enough paths through them that they can be tested thoroughly. Sometimes those chunks are the level of a single class or method; often they're still a collection of things.

Rather than starting from the classes and say "let's test everything," you look for logical groupings that form logical or explicit APIs, say "let's test this API," and then push the tests down a level only insofar as you can't test that API thoroughly enough to execute all the code paths in the related code.

To put that yet another way: test APIs, not implementation details, and the more things you can treat as implementation details, the less friction your tests will exert on your development process and the more value you'll get from them as a result.
What Makes Boston’s Start-Up Scene Special?
24 Hours Without Privacy
Network effects tend to be substantially overestimated. For instance Metcalfe's law is widely cited, but more careful analysis of actual behavior suggests that n*log(n) tends to be a better scaling estimate than n^2.

Moving on, be careful about moving to a sales force driven strategy. When you're selling with a sales force you have to cover the overhead of an expensive sales process. This is one of the big reasons why a lot of software is priced low enough that someone can pay for it with a credit card, and lots of software priced over $50,000 but very little between those two numbers. Also once you go down the enterprise software route the quality of your sales process matters more than the quality of your software. A good read on that is http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-tol/2005-April/0....

I'm not saying that this is a bad strategic move or the wrong strategy for your company. But you should be aware of the consequences.
Marketing will say it's a brand position problem. Development will say it needs features done this way. Sales will say you need costumer X. Lawyers will say you need patents. Every role has an opinion, because they think the solution lies on what they know how to do best.

And you know what, they're all right. The problem is how to find out who's more right than the others so you can allocate resources properly and coordinate the changes.
Co-working spaces in/around Santa Clara?
I am looking for a place where I can rent a private office/cube on a daily/weekly basis. There are plenty of good options like Sandbox Suites in SF, but I am looking for something in the South Bay or the Peninsula. Thanks.
API stability.

What the fuck are you smoking? Mac OS X has by far the most stable APIs of any modern development environment. They change existing APIs and add with every major release -- but they do so in a new SDK. Apps that were linked against the 10.4u SDK use the 10.4u libraries, even on 10.6. This is fucking amazing.

The only way Win32 stays as stable as it is is by just not changing anything or even adding new APIs.

For instance I compiled nmap yesterday for snow leopard, and guess what, it was not working, unable to open the interfaces. The compiled binary I downloaded from insecure.org worked against the loopback interface but not against the wifi one. The interface to capture raw frames from the airport extreme changed again with snow leopard, breaking valuable programs like Kismac. It's not an open platform so this changes are even worse.

Now you're effectively complaining about Kernel ABI compatibility!
I'm always amazed at 37signals' ability to snipe other people in their industry, and find it more than a little repellent.

Also, of COURSE products have a network effect! Haystack attempts to be a marketplace for design work; if they cannot draw traffic to it then it fails.

Edit: changed Highrise to Haystack
Funny, just seeing the link titles, I made the connection. :)

Anyway, I thought the highlight was the coining of "1KTF". And, even though people will find exception with the details (and I do too), the article is useful food-for-thought for anyone learning to reach this category of market.
Think you mean Haystack? Highrise is the CRM...
When Microsoft released the killer version of Word in 1990 they only had 4000 employees (according to wolframalpha).
Really interesting point. I feel the same way and didn't realize it.

I've used Zoho's Sheet and Writer products, and both are excellent (they blow their Google Docs equivalents out of the water). But I've looked at their other apps, specifically CRM and Meeting, and dismissed both without a fair look in favor of competitors that focus specifically on those products.
Function calls are not stack frames
I'm sure that is true. That's part of the reason it take so long to get paid; they're waiting until the window to return the merchandise expires. My BoA rewards program does the same thing.
When you write desktop apps, you have to do the same thing - usually (lazy loading). I'm not defending flash, I'm just saying.

When I used to do Win32 programming, I'd usually cache a bitmap and scroll that. For larger stuff though, lazy loading all the way.
Buying a Business Instead of Starting One
Tim Berners-Lee Sees Promise, Challenges in HTML5
Shit, Doubleshit...and Bullshit!

[Sorry...I had to say it, even if snark doesn't play well on HN ;-) ]

I'm sure she'll land a new scam job in no time with her pleasant personality and quiet professionalism.
I doubt you have any idea how much 37s (or Fog Creek, for that matter) makes in top line revenue.
No, that's my point--ratified treaties don't supersede the Constitution, and a careful reading of the Constitution doesn't allow for them to.
Don't worry at all about getting cut off.

If that happens, just keep basic cable service and get a hacked cable modem with a random MAC address that asks for their top-of-the-line config file. Hell, you might as well do it before they cut you off -- it will pay for itself in a month.
And firing him obviously confirmed that notion. AA just got Streisand'd
Australia's Pirate Party slams secret copyright talks
You're implying there's a chance they make enough to put them outside the realm of "relatively small". Are you suggesting either of them make many 10s or 100s of millions per year?
Scripty2: A new Javascript framework
37s made 1.5MM on a job board, and 6 digits on an ebook ("getting real"). Would I be surprised if they had an 8-digit top line? No.

What's "relatively small"? Plenty of 100-person VC-funded companies never get that kind of revenue.
Thank you gb. Reread the post again.
I don't think 37s lives or dies on Haystack. It's not even listed on their front page as one of their products. You picked a poor example.
Check out http://listorious.com (a site I made) for a directory of Twitter lists.
> "democracy", which is a shorthand for what America is supposed to be about - government by, for, and of the people and all that.

It's not at all clear that America was supposed to be about this, even if that is what they teach in schools today. However since it's not really relevant I won't argue the point further.

> Do you have a counterexample? What non-democratic form of government do you consider free?

Many monarchies and similar governments throughout history have allowed more freedom for their citizens than today's democracies. Of course, no one is completely free under any of these governments (certainly not a democratic one).

> I guess, in a larger sense, I take it as given that a democratic and free society is a basic requirement for human progress...that make it possible for most to start anything new.

You really, really shouldn't take that as a given, especially that "democratic" part. It is understandable, though, that many people believe this -- considering it's essentially what has been taught in schools for the last century or so. Do you really believe enterprise did not flourish in the West until after the rise of democracy? That is not what history shows.

> what's to stop the political elite from taxing you at 99% of your income as soon as they think your widget would be fun to have? Nothing.

Not that I want your hypothetical to come true, but it is worth considering that tax rates in monarchies were generally quite low (<10%), especially when compared to the tax rates in today's democracies. There are well-understood reasons for this if you are interested.
z/OMG
So, that's where we differ. I consider low 8 digit revenue to be "relatively small".

I made it a point not to base size on headcount, since I agree that's meaningless. I'm talking strictly about revenue.
Is it really necessary to kick someone while they're down?
Careful..

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=922834
From http://dustincurtis.com/dear_american_airlines.html (struck-out): "Fire your entire design team, if you have one."

I guess AA took some of that advice to heart here.

I can only hope this guy does land a job someplace where the company culture isn't completely and utterly fucked all across the board, all the way from the hangar to the board room.
The hacker dojo may meet some of your needs.
Headmount computer design runs Linux
http://tweepml.org/Scoble-s-User-List/
That is the one I am thinking of.
I didn't say that. I said the product dies if it cannot get traffic.
Surveillance, and Cellular Solutions, Madeira Beach FL 33708
Sorry David. Selling bug tracking software can be a network-effect business if your product is a platform: http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/JIRA+Plugin+Dev...

[edit: http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRAEXT/JIRA+Plugins]
I don't have a reference readily available, but I believe I heard/read recently that their revenues are in the $xx million/year (maybe $15M?).
If you just read this ORA post, you get the impression he was indicted for writing a book. But that's not what happened at all. TCNISO sold cable modem programming devices, and then (it was alleged) provided technical support to users of those devices specifically to steal cable Internet service. They apparently made more than $1MM doing it.

Harris was himself alleged to have solicited information from cable Internet users around the country specifically to bypass cable Internet restrictions --- and while researching circumvention techniques isn't and shouldn't be illegal, actually using those techniques to get unauthorized access clearly is illegal.
I used Bing cashback to get 30% off my Macbook Pro from ebay. And I used it again at 20% off to buy a Nikon D60 (I think, or D80, it was for someone else) off ebay.

The funny thing is that Microsoft basically paid me about $200 to get a Mac (it was $200 because that's the max per transaction).
Is it the technology or the business you are unhappy with?

When I was at Rent.com we implemented a very similar telephone system around the time that we were acquired by eBay. The critical difference was that the apartments on our site all had contracts with us and were all paying us per person actually placed in the building. Our initial implementation also didn't have an opt-out, but we had to implement that fairly quickly because of very similar issues with automated answering systems.

The main reasons that we implemented the system were to improve collection rates on our invoices, and improve the rate at which leases go reported to us. (It is amazing how many apartment building owners wanted to cheat us...)

I'm curious whether people's outrage at this technology would extend to that implementation by a different company with a much more clearly established business relationship.
Package management has a place in my heart, too, though. I have seen many attempts to do this that fall far short, and not just on Mac OS X. I suppose what I'd really like is something as powerful as apt-get, but merged with some kind of App Store; and I hope that Apple is working on such a thing.

Ubuntu is creating this. It's called the Ubuntu Software Center:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Software_Center
Google is hiring 200 recruiters and sourcers for a one-year gig
This however is an idea usually reserved for hindsight.
Google!?
sweet. I want a monocular version.
One more thing: this question about whether "hacking cable hardware 'you own' is evil" is crazy talk. We aren't talking about people running their own software on a locked-down platform (clearly should not be illegal). We're talking about people stealing network bandwidth. When you steal music, at least everyone else who wants that music doesn't have to pay more for it, or get crappier music.
Things I would miss if I moved from OS X to Linux:

* Shark

* Instruments

* dtrace

* leaks

* TextMate

* Spin Control
You certainly have that right :) It doesn't really "bother" me in an emotional sense as much as I just can't read much of it whether I'd like to or not -- I'm not complaining, just pointing out that fact.

But some people seem to find it more appealing, so I suppose it works both ways.
Check out Ben Adida's posts about the audit process: http://benlog.com
LEAKED: Microsoft Courier Tablet User Interface Details
And you're right. Haystack is, in fact, a network-effect business. But Haystack is an insignificant part of 37signals business, and trying to characterize them by the way Haystack works is not a lot different then trying to characterize them by how the 37signals Job Board works.
The best open source CRM you'll find
I came across this today, this is better than sugar, better than achievo, and at least as good as salesforce:

http://www.fatfreecrm.com

it took me literally 2 minutes to get live. sorry for the plug, but it's rare to find something so simple and turnkey, and i want to share the find. btw, it's built on ROR 2.3.2 or above.
An application platform does not make a business network-effect driven. Having plugins doesn't make your product create entertaining, compelling, or useful content to "suck in" non-users. Facebook and eBay have this because it's baked in to their DNA.
The fact that Microsoft needed to make layoffs kind of underscores the fact that they are the big, vulnerable dinosaur these days.Twenty years ago, the recession wouldn't have touched them.
I actually think the crunchpad will fail, but the only cool thing about it is the possibility of a launch party. The valley needs more parties in general.
The usual 'binary' scale goes like this: 1 kB = 1024 B, 1 MB = 1024 * 1024 B, 1 GB = 1024 * 1024 * 1024 B, etc. which may be at odds with SI but at least it's self-consistent. The page you've quoted seems to be suggesting that 1 KB = 1024 B, 1 MB = 1024 * 1024 B, and 1 GB = 1000 * 1024 * 1024 B. That seems pretty absurd to me, but maybe they're just taking a page from the book of the "1.44 MB" floppy disks which actually hold 1000 * 1024 B.
Installing and Running Norc on Dreamhost
Agreed. Although I do think AA beats the other US airlines on paper, which is why I haven't tried any others.

(I have flown on Southwest. Once. I got to the airport two hours early for a domestic flight. Waited in line for an hour and 45 minutes to check my bag and get a boarding pass. The boarding pass was "the wrong one" and security wouldn't let me through. Ticket agent didn't care. Gate agent didn't care. I then ran around the airport like a crazy person, "oh, you can connect in Kansas City, go to gate whatever". "She told you that we had room? HA! Try Oakland." Then I was stuck in Oakland for 6 hours.

This was before I was a frequent flyer and perhaps I was being stupid. But I have missed a fair share of AA flights and have never had any problems.)
I'll play along. Have you ever owned your own business, and had to make the trade off between absolute quality and efficiency?
PHP Function For Dealing With Quotes In Input Fields
Review: AT&T 3G MicroCell
I know how simple this function is, but I had an old fashioned PHP function I used that was about 5 or 6 lines long that did this exact same thing so I thought I would post the URL for anyone else that wanted help. I did not include the code in the comment because I do not want to take credit for it... even if it is a simple solution.
What I Learned About Entrepreneurship From Watching the World Series of Poker
"Since you can't have government by, for, and of the people without freedom"

You can if the people don't want freedom--i.e. if the majority of the people want to oppress a minority. You don't have a free society if your 80% white state votes 70-30 to segregate the blacks, for instance.

If the people can be easily convinced to limit their freedom out of fear, you can also have an unfree democracy.

"and you can't be free if you don't have power over the government"

"Do you have a counterexample? What non-democratic form of government do you consider free?"

This is actually questionable as well. Salutary neglect by a foreign imperial power successfully resulted in civil freedom in colonial America and in pre-1997 Hong Kong, for two. I suspect many of Britain's other colonies received similar treatment. The American Revolution was directly caused by a revision in Britain's policy of salutary neglect, but it's questionable 200 years later whether it really left us off any more free.

"So, OK, we can posit an egalitarian, "free" society where only an elite have political power. I honestly don't believe that's an actual possibility - what's to stop the political elite from taxing you at 99% of your income as soon as they think your widget would be fun to have?"

As opposed to a democratic society where an envious populist movement taxes you at 99% of your income as soon as they think you have too much money and are becoming an elitist?
I. Avoid war by every possible means.. (otherwise known as "walk softly and carry a big stick")
PayPal woos developers with $150K challenge
Washington won his struggles with conventional warfare combined with a shitton of direct military intervention from France. The role of guerrilla warfare in the American Revolution is popularly overstated.
TDD says "no line of product code is written until there is a unit test that fails for it". I'm just pointing out that there is a spectrum of practicality in TDD. Our automated regression tests for graphics routinely require humans to re-verify every single screen capture because a single pixel may render slightly differently with some other change and there is no algorithm to determine "is this artifact objectionable to humans". Tests are good, but they are not a panacea.

As for the "proper exceptions" or error codes or what not. That always drove me NUTS to see that. The first line of the function is `if (foo == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("foo")` -- do I really need to write a unit test for that? Furthermore, static analysis tools tell us when your public interface (including exception types we may throw) changes, that is code reviewed too. Writing `AssertThrows(typeof(ArgumentNullException)...` is just a waste of time.

Again: this is not an argument about whether tests have merit or not. All the author (and I) are saying, at the core of our argument, is that write tests when it makes sense to write tests. He's also going a step further to say "it makes sense to write tests less frequently than TDD nuts would have you believe". I may or may not agree with him, but I'm going to publicly denounce that belief simply because I'd rather developers write too many tests than too few.
The book that changed my life:

http://www.amazon.com/Clean-Code-Handbook-Software-Craftsman...

"Clean Code" by Robert Martin is one of the best programming books ever written, and it barely has any code in it. However, it is relevant for every programming language. He treats unit tests like mandatory rituals, though, and unfortunately, I have not progressed quite that far yet. Still, it is a must read and gives good insights into this topic.
I did an internship at a largely sales-driven company (Everyone gets an email when someone closes a big sale), and it suuucked. Especially when everyone was really anxious and uneasy because Customer X wanted his bug fixes Right Now.

Unfortunately, you attract top sales talent with big money, and they get lethargic if the big money doesn't come from commissions, and they tend to over-promise to make the sale. This can piss off the developers and makes it not "a place developers want to work". You definitely have to maintain a balance.

The idea that comes immediately to mind is profit sharing. When Joe closes the big deal, everyone gets commission. Even if it's not a significant amount, it'll let your developers continue to feel valued.

At least that'd make me happier (Edit: Assuming I were in that situation).
I don't think I'll ever agree with him on policy, but if he convinces the country that going from a C to a 95 is "acting black", I will happily anoint him my favorite president ever.
Thanks, this is a great reminder: Work email is strictly for work, personal email for everything else.