skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Right now I have a laptop hooked up to a 24" monitor.
It is sweet.

The nice thing about having it as a laptop is if you have to go collaborate you can go to a meeting room and both sit down with your laptops. As opposed to, i don't know, really...

At my current work I often save a lot of time (and save myself from abject boredom), by bringing my laptop into meetings that are not really relevant to me, and hacking until the part of the meeting that I need to pay attention to is happening.

It seems that you are very insistent on the idea that the iMac will cause work to take place in the office. Really what it will do is cause work to not take place other places.

Lets say I have an iMac and we really need to get X feature over the goal line soon. If i want to put in a couple of extra hours at night to do that, I'll have to stay at the office. I don't particularly like the office (and its spooky at night there...), so I'll probably not do that.

If I have a laptop, I'll probably just unplug the laptop at 5:00 and take the darn thing home. Then I can work on whatever while eating caviar and watching MythBusters on FULL Cable, because of the billions in stock options i've made from our AWESOME web app.

I mean, if you want people to be at the office most of the time, I think you are well within your rights as an employer to say, 'Hey, i expect you to be here between X-hour and Y-hour'.

Anyway, iMac and Dell sounds very branded. I'd go with solid laptops running some version of Linux (whatever you are deploying on), and the nicest/biggest secondary screens that you can get on the cheap.
Well - the idea seems sound. It's the same concept that makes stackoverflow, serverfault and others work. If there's a problem, it would be the target audience / moderation... Is there a stackoverflow clone for internet shopping already online?
No I meant 100MB. It really depends on how strained your databases are. For example, we have about 6 people constantly running jobs on MySQL and running it into the ground. So if I ever wanted to do some data manipulation I have to pretty much wait until 11pm. But yes, if your situation isn't as bad, you can do a lot with MySQL.

HiveQL is less forgiving in the sense that sometimes it doesn't return what you'd expect. Sometimes when I run DISTINCTS and GROUPBY's, the output isn't what SQL on MySQL would give. For example, DISTINCTs on strings don't work very well. GROUPBY's lose a little functionality, and you have to read the documentation to figure out what you can do.

Other than that, queries in Hive are not as cheap as they are in a traditional DB. Hive offers great flexibility, but you still have to plan your query carefully because its going to take a while to execute on your large dataset. Even if you specify LIMIT, it doesn't enforce that until after all the MapReduce jobs have run.
Sorry, the definition of "web app" that I intended here is a UI written in HTML/CSS and scripted with JavaScript. Also, it's distributed over HTTP, and usually it relies on data and application logic that lives on a remote server. Currently, this basically means it runs in a web browser.

I agree with you that the distinction is blurring and that we should attempt to blur it even more.
That was the inspiration.
With regards to your last point: I don't doubt that the vast majority of hiring processes aren't correlated with on-the-job success, but Google is definitely the kind of company that would strive for objective measures and to refine their process. They at least claim it's working. I think it was on the Stack Overflow podcast that I heard a discussion of Peter Norvig's remarks about this in Coders at Work. He evidently posted something similar online:

"Our interviews are more to do with practical problem solving, not with puzzles and tricks. Our interview scores actually correlate very well with on-the-job performance: we are doing quite well at hiring the right people, we believe, and we work hard at analyzing the process. Peter Seibel asked me if there was anything counterintuitive about the process and I said that people who got one low score but were hired anyway did well on-the-job. To me, that means the interview process is doing very well, not that it is broken. It means that we don't let one bad interview blackball a candidate. We'll keep interviewing, keep hiring, and keep analyzing the results to improve the process." http://www.mv-voice.com/square/index.php?i=3&d=&t=16...
What Is Escapism? How Does It Cost Me?
I have spent a long time in that position and entirely get where you're coming from. Having recently experienced a change in circumstances, though, I have to side with the author - my previous frugal mindset has left me unprepared to manage larger resources.

If you'd asked me 3 months ago what I'd do with a windfall, I'd have said something like 'enjoy 10%, share 10%, use 30% for a project, put the other 50% in some savings vehicle, then get back to work'. In actuality I've got option paralysis because the consequences of such decisions loom larger than I'm used to.
NASA moon crash struck lots of water
NASA source with pictures:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LCROSS/main/prelim_water_results.html
the problem with this is scale.

Just look at what you need to do: print out the letter, print out the envelope, stuff the letter, apply stamp, seal the envelope. Double check the data.

That's 3-5 minutes per letter.

@3 minutes that's 20 letters per hour.
@4 minutes that's 15 letters per hour,
@5 minutes that's 12 letters per hour.

So your potential income is $12-20 an hour.

Let's add up all your variable costs:
stamp: 44 cents
ink: 22 cents (sample laser cartridge is $35 for 470 pages, count 3 to print envelope+2 pages)

So based on this, you are making 33 cents off each letter. That means your current profit margin per hour is:

@3 minutes: $6.66 per hour
@4 minutes: $4.95 per hour
@5 minutes: $3.96 per hour

At those rates, you can't even legally hire anyone, since the minimum wage is $7.25 per hour.

Even if you get super efficient and cut that down to 1 letter every 2 minutes. (simply can't do it faster than that on consistent basis), that's only 30 letters mailed. Or $9.90 an hour.

At $1 a letter you simply aren't making enough money. You need to pretty much double your rates, to make this workable.
To play devil's advocate:

- Users require a higher level of reliability from their phone than their computer, and keeping out trojans and buggy apps improves the overall experience.

- Apple is able to maintain a more consistent UI by only allowing apps that conform to certain standards.

- Some apps need to be kept out for legal reasons (BitTorrent) or to make parents more comfortable giving a device to their kids (porn).

I don't mind a review process inherently, but Apple has mismanaged the whole thing in about every conceivable way. If I had my druthers, all apps would be instantly approved, with malware/etc yanked remotely as needed. Failing that, a community review process might also work well.
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You know, the University of Chicago still sounds like it.

The best answer would be, there are 14 haircutting places within the shopping disctructs of the U of C, and it is currently overzoned for hair currently, accroding to the maroon. Only two are true barbershops. It consists of three long blocks. Lets take the U of C landscape to be somewhat abnormal, and that there should really only be 7, of which 1 is a barbershop. There are about 24 neighborhoods in chicago. There should be 24 barbershops...ect ect....

Just for the record...
Blackberry's Twitter App is More Popular than Facebook
That does seem a bit safer than this approach (the fun starts about 60 seconds in): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tzga6qAaBA
> The OS would just run web apps directly

You know, that's basically what Microsoft tried to do with internet explorer, but they ran up against such vehement opposition I'm pretty convinced that's why the concept hasn't progressed.

Next up is Google with Chrome/OS/Android, will they be perceived as Evil also? Only time will tell.
"The latest version of iTunes is almost entirely WebKit based."

Much of the store frontend is, but I think you underestimate the staggering amount of code that goes into a desktop app like iTunes.
Just mentioning another approach. I don't really understand it myself, but I kind of find it intriguing because of its relation to computability aspects.
As much as I love Macs, I think I can be more productive writing code on a linux box. I'm going to assume that applies to everyone else :-), and say you should save some money on desktops by getting everyone a linux box with 2 Dell monitors.

Spend that money (and more) on getting everyone a MacBook Pro as well. As anonjon points out, if you don't give out laptops you might be discouraging working outside the office more than encouraging working at the office. An important part of startup culture, imho, is to not require face time at the office.

Shameless plug: I agree with you that encouraging collaboration is key. Since lots of teams are working in a distributed fashion these days, we think they need some other way to collaborate effectively. This is why we're building http://shoptalkapp.com . We've found that it even encourages more collaboration for those that are in the office.
Gizmo5 / SIPphone Shareholders--Beware of Michael Robertson's History
Expert Performance Its Structure and Acquisition
Kevin Carmony also posted a comment on this entry with further information on how shareholders are being dealt with in this deal. It's definitely worth a read.
How could they not? Apple created a completely opaque submission system on purpose; in order to retain full control over what goes into the store.

I think not only do large companies get a much faster and simpler submission process, but I also believe the current landscape of the entire app store has an impact on your submission. If 1000 action games just got submitted and that part of the store is currently saturated, I am positive Apple will hold back any more action game submissions for a while and possibly even reject perfectly valid submissions.

After all, Apple is making money off these apps too, they have a vested interested in maximizing what goes into the store.
I've done that accidently, several times, while using her phone. The phone never loads the home page, just sits at the blue "loading" screen.
Most of the applicants that Google accepts have side projects and internship experience and a good GPA.
The Last of the Bluefin Tuna?
It would be very interesting to know how Google measures on-the-job performance since you obviously can't talk about correlation without numbers backing it up. I seem to recall having read that on-the-job-performance is not as easily measurable than Norvig seems to imply but I guess that if they successfully managed to reach this Holy Grail they probably won't share the numbers, even less the methods.
Headline reads: Girl gets groped by drunk man in van sponsored by Bob's Bakery. Alleges sexual assault and vows to pursue legal action against all parties.

Maybe there's no legal liability for Bob's Bakery in a situation like that, but it is certainly bad for business.
The startup culture around here is typically that of flexibility. We work long hours, we don't keep track of vacation time and I don't care if you sit at your desk.

Currently, my favorite spot is the office couch. Maybe next week it'll be the conference room table.

I encourage people at startups to integrate work with their life. It's not just a job.

That being said, my preferred rig is a macbook with wireless. It comes to the table for demos on the projector, it can sit at my desk or come to the couch.
A lot of data is kept strictly confidential; unless there's a mole somewhere, a market research firm isn't going to have it. Many of these estimates are made by applying data that you know about your own company's operations to public information available about your competitors.
At scale, all of these things can be automated. The challenge is getting to scale but not getting destroyed by someone who already has the infrastructure to do this at far lower cost. (Vistaprint, for example, could probably offer this service with just a little bit of programming work.)

To avoid that, you'll want to offer users whatever you can to make your service a more efficient option: address book integration, built-in letterhead, quickbooks integration, who knows.

You might also expand to adjacent markets. I once heard of an online greeting card company that lets you enter in the addresses and birthdays of everyone you want to send cards to. Then a couple weeks before each birthday, they mail you an envelope containing a pre-addressed, stamped envelope with your choice of card. You just write a note and drop it in the mail.

You could do the same sort of thing, maybe even including the handwritten part!
+1 for "At scale, all of these things can be automated."
I'm with you, it's tough to make the numbers work unless you've got some serious volume. You'll notice that one-off letters are actually $3 each.

You don't get the lower rates unless you commit to spending more... take a look at the pricing/signup link at the top. (Also, would love some feedback on this page...)
Second Life Founder Launching Reputation Currency System
"It seems that you are very insistent on the idea that the iMac will cause work to take place in the office. Really what it will do is cause work to not take place other places."

That's actually part of the point. I would like developers to put in good hours in the office but I don't want to create a culture of 80hr work weeks.

I'm mindful we're a startup and it's about putting in the hours - but my experience has been that "putting in the hours" often includes the procrastination in the office during the day OR it means doing lots and lots of work and the quality drops off as it's not sustainable.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=940299
You mean because your internal network was firewalled/restricted etc?

We're a startup so our network is just our router plugged into the internet :)
It's on Heroku at the moment.

Yes, definitely. I actually have one customer that's beta testing an "email to snail mail" system that I've built. I need to clean up a few things but should have that available to everyone sometime next week.

If you're serious about using the service to send invoices (or anything else), feel free to ping me -- my contact info is in my profile. I'll trade you a reduced rate for solid feedback. :)
Do what you like (of course!) but it would drive me nuts to have a "work computer" and a "personal computer." I love the iMac, but I love my portable too, and I can work and do personal stuff on both. Personally, I'd suggest not enforcing anything too tightly (especially that 90 degree screen thing - not everyone likes it.. I hated it).. but it's your gig, so you can do whatever you like, naturally.
The thing I like most about this post is that he doesn't know what percentage of their portfolio founders have degrees. That must be because they didn't ask, or checked on it while they were doing the funding, but don't really care anymore, and that tells you that he's serious.
If you buy everyone a linux box, I'm not clear why buy a MacBook Pro too?

If we were going to do that we could just buy MacBook Pros and be done with it.
Technically, probably nothing. Fundamentally, I'm trying to go after solo entrepreneurs and SMBs that need to send stuff out to clients, prospects, etc.

Unless I'm mistaken, Dustin's service is better for people that have a "one-off" need to mail stuff. I'm setup for that use case too, but am trying to build stuff to cater to a group of people that have already budgeted money for this expense.
vitamin water got famous because he was already famous. as its easy to make money when you are already rich..its easy to make your products famous when you are famous to begin with
Knowing regular expressions is an all around good idea when doing data processing. Steep learning curve but pays itself off in increased productivity.

What stream XML parsers do you use? I just get my data ready for Hadoop and let it go.
The idea of charging an up-front-buy-in is unusual, and I'm not sure why it makes any sense, except as an unusual way of helping you bootstrap this business.

What about replacing the Lite plan with something that costs $25/mo and includes 15 letters (add'l $2) and the Pro with, say, $99/mo for 99 letters (add'l $1.50).
Definitely, I actually spoke to the USPS folks today. This shouldn't be too hard at all, though I may defer this for a little bit -- you actually don't save all that much so I may not spend the time setting this up until I've got a little more volume.

EDIT: Also, when you send via bulk mail, you have to take it to specialized bulk mail facilities... unfortunately, I'm ~50 miles from the nearest one. So, unless I can fill a truck full of mail, I'm not sure how I'd make the numbers work.
I'm not sure that InDesign's UI could be done with current tools -- there's a lot of hardcore typography and image manipulation going on there at levels of precision that make pixel-perfect look slapdash.

Still, I take the point, but it still seems to me much more like something that would be theoretically possible than anything that will actually come to pass. As you say, to really make this happen, you have to stop limiting the progress of HTML, and that means breaking out of the browsers.

But ... if you break out of the browsers, you fracture the platform, and that means you lose the incentive to make these apps web apps in the first place. If your HTML/JS/CSS stack isn't as platform and browser-agnostic as it can be, ultimately you end up with a platform-specific way of writing apps that competes with native apps, and that's a losing battle.

Putting that aside, I'm not sure there's case that all apps should be HTML/JS, either. We can do cool things with the web stack, but ultimately it's designed and optimised for sending pages and forms back and forth. We put up with that because there are a great many benefits in doing so, but there has to be a reason to write our apps that way -- reasons that things like iTunes and the Safari Web Inspector have, but lots of other desktop apps don't and won't.
Question: If I let you pay $1.60/letter, how many would you actually send? :)
I kind of put them in the other thread ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=937184 )
I think a large part of the justification for a moon base is that it could be used as a location from which to stage further space missions. If you construct a rocket on the moon you've got no atmosphere and a fraction of the gravity to deal with.

No atmosphere might also make it useful for astronomy, but I'm not so sure of that.

EDIT: Wikipedia, of course, has a section on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_base#Advantages

These points on their list:

A lunar base would provide an excellent site for any kind of observatory. Particular advantages arise from building observatory facilities on the Moon from lunar materials. As the Moon's rotation is so slow, visible light observatories could perform observations for days at a time. It is possible to maintain near-constant observations on a specific target with a string of such observatories spanning the circumference of the Moon. The fact that the Moon is geologically inactive along with the lack of widespread human activity results in a remarkable lack of mechanical disturbance, making it far easier to set up interferometric telescopes on the lunar surface, even at relatively high frequencies such as visible light.

A lunar base could also hold a future site for launching rockets, to distant planets such as Mars. Launching rockets from the Moon would be an easier prospect than on Earth due to the Moon's lower gravity requiring a lower escape velocity.
Actually, I would rather setup a monthly plan instead... I got some initial pushback from my initial customers when they balked at the idea that they'd have to pay the monthly fee whether or not they actually mailed the allotted amount of letters each month. To be clear, the notion of "use it or lose it" seemed to scare people.

What you're proposing sounds a bit better (and helps me make more sense of the numbers), I'm going to put some thought into it this weekend.

Does anyone else have any thoughts on the pricing models?

EDIT: I've switched the plans over to monthly instead. Will monitor signups over the next few days and see how that compares to the pre-paid stuff I had originally.
Mmmm...

It feels like you're treating your developers somewhat condesceningly. Go with laptops dude, and extra screens (2 large ones each) at the office. That's what developers like.
It depends on how rich and what type of famous/following you have though because I doubt people would fancy buying water from Bill Gates or Donald Trump. (Even if it wasn't immediately obvious who was selling said water once word gets out it all goes down the hole)
I'm honestly not sure if one can hook up 2 20" or 24" monitors to a MacBook Pro these days, but even if you can't it's nice to have a desktop with a mouse and keyboard and not have to plug/unplug your laptop from everything all the time. Also, I prefer linux on the desktop (for my work machine, not personal) and Mac OS on the laptop, but that's just me.
Magic cookies mean the end of privacy on the Internet
I don't disagree. If you actually asked me for informational purposes, I'd have started with the Yellow Pages and then go look for a trade association or something.

On the other hand, that's not always practical. Sometimes the facts aren't readily to hand or you have to make some decision that's time sensitive. For example, working in film production it's not so unusual to have to eyeball something and estimate your needs for time or material - you try to anticipate as much of that as possible in advance, but say you come to the set one day and the lead actor has fallen ill, so now you have to rearrange your shooting schedule on the fly...in which case it's not uncommon for a few key crew members to huddle, deliberate, and then split the difference rather than obsess over further optimization.

This isn't to say one should rely heavily on gut decisions, since that's likely to be self-defeating; on the other hand, you don't use a slide rule and protractor to drive.
Yeah, but he wasn't born famous. For that matter, I had no idea he put money into vitamin water, it doesn't even remotely overlap with his personal branding.
Slashdot offers this as an option for high karma users also, which I think makes sense. If your site benefits from a small subset power-users, giving them perks to keep those users around and engaged will make the entire site better.
From the Monterey Bay SeaFood Watch application I have on my Iphone...

"Rating: Avoid - All populations of bluefin tuna are being caught faster than they can reproduce. Bluefin is being further depleted by ranching operations that collect small bluefin and raise them to full size to sell primarily to the sushi market"

Best alternatives are: Albacore (U.S Pacific), Bigeye, Skipjack (Troll), Yellowfin.
"One study found "... citation needed.
No argument here. The only reason I went down this road was because I figured any guesses I made about actual click rates of users would be mostly based on a sample of 1 and thus even more laughably off than guessing the minimum viable earnings...of course, this is why one should never be ashamed to say you don't know. It's one thing to speculate and exhibit your thinking process, but when you start getting confident about it it's all too easy to slip in bullshit artistry, and I'm sure they'd rather avoid that trait in hiring.