skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
My bubble alarm has been going on for years, but I predicted that neighter Facebook nor Twitter would ever have a viable business model and I have already been proved wrong on Facebook at least - I assumed that it was the harder of the two.

Having said that, it still doesn't smell right.
Know When to Fold ’Em: Omar Hamoui (Founder of AdMob)
Practically:

* As you "launch" there is like 1% of conversion

* As you keep optimizing, conversion rate increases (in your case by 1.45%)

* Something like +1% per major optimization (and targeting) (compound rate ?)

Can you confirm it?

And don't forget that you can always hack the buyer psychologically.
Searchmp3songs.com is a music search engine for locating an
mp3-audio files over the Internet.
Searchmp3songs.com does not host any files - its crawler searches
through the Net and indexes all the brand new and popular songs for
your comfortable and fast search.
TheWebFellas featured Rails developer on Rails Development Directory
Can you name one language feature any of the three have which hasn't been around for decades?
When Angel Capital Is Not So Angelic
Does SIAA even have the right to audit your software use?
Fixed in 1.4.2... Thanks for pointing that out!
The point that both Cuban and Murdoch are missing I think is the shelf life of news content isn't limited to only breaking news. For example I check a particular news site everyday but maybe 30 or 40% of the content interests me right now. I may be interested in the other 60-70% later but how am I going to find it without Google? I'm obviously not going to individually search a bunch of sites. That's why search engines exist in the first place -- no one wants to do that.
real time news is just a preference. The market segment for that preference and for people who know how to get real time news from the various tools is still very small.There are still millions of other people who prefer the old way that google caters to.

News corp getting rid of google and using facebook and twitter instead to drive traffic is dumb.They will block out millions of internet users in the process.

The only thing I agree with about marks blog is that twitter and facebook are not threats because they do not compete with newscorp news properties in the destination site space.
If they jam pack the page with ads then the page will load slower and probably be unacceptable in terms of page response time.
Oh, it's way ahead on operator count. http://www.ozonehouse.com/mark/periodic/
Sure, of course.

I guess my point is: Think of the patent debate as a continuum where at one end you have 'strong patents' and at the other end you have 'weak patents'.

At the strong patents end you have a prevalence of IP trolling. At the weak/no patents end you have a prevalence of reverse engineering and heavily reduced incentive to innovate (might as well just copy and produce/market cheaper/better). IP trolling and reverse engineering are kind of edge-case exploits.

It isn't clear to me that anything in the middle of the continuum (defends against both edge cases) is really consistent with what we think of as a patent, or that there is anything in the middle that is actually possible enforce in a fair and consistent matter.
The problems with Carr's piece are:

1. That he points out a problem with mainstream journalism (failing to vet sources), not one with citizen journalism, as he says. (Note: citizen journalism has that problem too, but not here.)

2. His definition of "citizen journalism" is far too wide, in my opinion. Moore isn't a citizen journalist. She's just a person who happened to be talking to her friends about an event as it happened.

If we accept the "everyone is now a journalist" definition that Carr seems to use, then journalism becomes something of very little value. Journalism is removing the signal from the noise, and his first example (Moore) demonstrates a failure on the part of trained journalists to do that properly.

His second example (the video of the Iranian protesters death) is tragic, but again, not a failure of journalism or journalists. It's a failure of human decency, perhaps (and one that's certainly debatable)... but that's another topic altogether.
Completely agree. Dodgeball/Jaiku and the likes are sooooper tiny compared to the ones that google has gotten right(YouTube/Urchin/doubleclick). Yahoo can learn leaps from them. I don't think enough can be said about how good Google's acquisition strategy is.
Bingo. In order to beat admob you have to move their advertisers to your system (may be easy) and try to get app developers to run your ads instead of Admob's ads (hard).

It's a bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario (devs will not move until the advertisers are there, etc.) and much easier to just buy them outright.
This is a good aquisition. I think with EA's connections and knowledge with making games they can make a lot of branded games for a lot of businesses.
As a manager, how do I know I'm not making an opposite mistake - confusing action with motion? In other words, how do I know I'm not too hard on somebody? The guy is making dozens of calls, sending hundreds of e-mails, and going to dozens of meetings to get people to write software for my machine with no customer base, but I don't see any concrete results. How do I know it's not my fault for asking him to do an impossible task?
Great point. Pagination in harmony with the content (splitting across sections or chapters of a longer article) is valuable to a user. It's easier to bookmark or remember I was on page 4 of that Ars Technica review, or to send a specific URL of a relevant page in a long-form article to a friend.

The problem is with arbitrarily introduced page breaks, where it is doing a disservice to the user in favor of inflating page views.
I've worked on products like this. Some explanations include:

* Copy-paste code reuse

* Existing implementations aren't in a common library location, making them hard to find/nobody knows about them

* Lack of knowledge about the relevant platform built-in implementation

* Corporate organization is not set up to make information sharing easy

* Product team organization doesn't include a core UI assets team

* Product teams organized by feature and don't communicate
This might be me being a nitpicker... but how does being able to bet on "Innovation... Software... Things on Screens... Programming Languages" help anyone? Are these things that were up for debate?

The useful things in here are the bold predictions, such as Linux never being a factor on the desktop, and not betting on things like business school and government change.

Sorry, had to get that off my chest. I should also clarify that I'm not commenting on the fact that this list was posted in its entirety, just on the list itself. I appreciate it being posted for us to review.
Ikea is a great idea. Sell artistic looking pieces of furniture that cost crap to produce.

why buy a frank wright designed chair for thousands of dollars when you can buy a similar chair for a hundred and no one will even know.
I disagree. At least you can "understand" what someone has written in another language. In fact, at the end basically everyone is speaking the same language. My experience in math is that you become so specialized you literally have no idea what the problem domain the other person is working on even is. The only discipline I could compare this to may be theoretical computer science, but that's basically a closely related math variant.

Edit: Come to think of it, literature may work. Nowadays you don't become an expert in lit, you become an expert in Shakespeare or Proust or Dostoevsky. Sometimes you may even be an expert in a single work. I think the problem is mitigated a little bit by the very low ratio of jargon to information. Math, on the other hand, has an entire new language to learn in each new subfield.
How to Use Twitter for Marketing and PR
Internet Atrocity GeoCities' Demise Erases Web History
The Robot and the Baby
For me a business idea also encompasses the possible path to getting traction. "If we had x and Walmart would sell it, we would make billions" does not count - is has to include "Walmart will sell it because".
I kind of am, but I think in reality perl and python appeal to a different enough mindset, and solve similar enough problems, that there's almost no real competition between them. Most people will instantly like one and loathe the other based on their opinions on compiler-mandated style. (It's not just that, but it's an immediate thing you encounter and exemplifies the philosophy through the whole language - the One True Way to do things, uniformly and consistently across programmers, or There's More Than One Way To Do It, the language accepting as many alternate ways as possible and adapting to the programmer.)

There exist performance benchmarks, but I tend to think they continue to trend close enough together to never be a more compelling argument than the underlying design principal, for people choosing a primary language to work in. Similar for featureset - comparing modern releases, there's a vanishingly small set of real differences, especially if you're willing to consider best practice modules freely available. (IE, yes, we're sorry about Perl's built-in object model, but really, we fixed that in libraries years ago, seriously guys, years.)

We can band together and agree that we hate java more than each other, though.
Thanks rbanffy - that is my read of the AGPL also. I suppose that if there were a problem, then MongoDB would not be as popular :-)
"the old Thinkpad "TrackPoint" cursor dot thingy." = "clitoris"

Mods you're a cruel unbending lot - that is simple factual information.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/18/pictures-of-the-thinkpad-...
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/05/26/nec-offers-typicall...
http://everything2.com/user/Jargon/writeups/nipple+mouse
http://gizmodo.com/175484/lenovo-thinkpad-t43-review-verdict...

Not that being modded down bothers me at all, no sireee.
Which web software startups would you label as technologically disruptive (outside of YC)?
If I were Spolsky, I'd be a little bothered by the fact that someone called this "StackOverflow for Startups" and also by the fact that it looks so much like StackOverflow. When I went there, the first thing I thought was that the StackOverflow/ServerFault folks had created a third website which isn't the case.
Google already makes quite a few exceptions from this rule: journal articles, for example, show up in search results, but you get to a paywall if you click on them.
You can't extrapolate from Gandhi to a generalized theory of resist

That's what I said. Worked small scale but won't work large scale = can't extrapolate. Did I miss something?
I was in the same boat, but managed to get around it by verifying a friends a physical line (cell), leaving it in my account, but disabling it from receiving future calls.
Keep laughing; Cuil isn't quitting yet
The feral houses are cool but the writing at http://www.detroitblog.org/ is amazing.
How does futures relate to Twisted's deferreds?
Jason Calacanis on How To Kill Google (re: Murdoch)
Ummm, they license the software to anyone who wants it for about $120/month to $2000+/month (?) or something.

Seriously, you can go and get a site like StackOverflow; the software is called StackExchange (http://www.stackexchange.com/)
Your requirement that there be no external libraries is unfair.

If the question being discussed is "How likely is an 8-year-old to randomly discover programming", it's not unfair in the slightest. Installation of anything is a huge barrier to discoverability.
Investing in a mobile future with AdMob
Google Buys AdMob For $750 Million In Stock
I'd say any device running Opera was "the first mobile device with a good web browser".
Yeah, a lot of acquisition news today (EA bought Playfish today too). This is all very good news!
Isn't it a waste of money to run AdWords that point to your own site? Or is something else going on here? http://imgur.com/0RaUa.png

This is with the pointer over the banner at the top.
Jason sent an email about this, the YouTube video is the only publicly viewable version of it that I could find right now (apologies).

The idea is that major news organizations could opt out of Google's search index entirely if Bing would pay a premium to them. The claim is that if 10 powerful publishers did this it could transfer 10-20% of market share away from Google. Also that it would be worth it from Bing's perspective because they could advertise things like "want to find nytimes, WSJ, etc. content, the only place is Bing..."

Or use that threat as a bargaining chip to Google.
And from the other direction: http://www.admob.com/google
Could be a bargaining chip or a referral fee play? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=931647
Google To Murdoch: Go Ahead & Block Us
It's interesting that although this list seems a little vague, other than "iPhone" I'd argue that this would have been just as accurate 10 years ago.

Does anyone know if the BOS talks are going to be available online?
it's interesting how google's page puts the price right in the first sentence, but it's nowhere in the admob notice.
but in reality, his ego is quite fragile. My theory is that the left-over dregs of being a kid with CP has left him a) prone to overstatement and b) quite shy of being challenged.

I actually got him to admit (in public, on his blog) that half of all he claims is untrue.
Parkinson’s dopamine killers identified
Rate Perq -- www.perqworks.com
Hello HN,
Some of you may remember, I asked for feedback on my startup's new web app Perq (http://www.perqworks.com). At that time, a credit card was required to sign up for the free account. That has changed -- now anyone can sign up to view the application for free.

Perq is a web-based app for companies to create policy, and manage and track employee Paid Time Off (PTO). We created this application out of a frustration with the lack of good quality software in this niche. At Matter (www.matterco.com), we pride ourselves in our ability to create compelling User Interface and Interaction Design. Our application design strives to make the HR administrator's job easier by automating PTO leave requests. For employees, we wanted to focus employee attention on an often undervalued form of compensation, PTO. To literally highlight the value of leave time, we use a gauge metaphor to show current PTO balances, earning potential, and amounts used.

As both designers and developers, we are looking for more good, critical feedback. Try it out by entering your company's leave policy and let us know what you think.

For those interested, our application uses:

* Symfony PHP Framework (www.symfony-project.org) -- We found this MVC framework excellent. The code is well written and the documentation is accurate and thorough. We considered Rails, but were won over by the proven success of the LAMP stack as epitomized by DIGG, Yahoo, and Facebook.

* jQuery -- What a godsend... Perq relies heavily on AJAX to make the UI function fluidly. jQuery, by abstracting away cross-browser nuances, allowed more time spent developing functionality rather than fixing IE bugs.

* Doctrine ORM (http://www.doctrine-project.org/) -- SQL and Database design not being my strong suit, a good ORM is critical to the maintainability and performance of the application. The Doctrine syntax is excellent at grabbing records and manipulating them without spending time tweaking SQL statements.

* And Others... -- Our application supports calendar integration with ICS. We rely on email as a communication channel, and employed SwiftMailer (http://swiftmailer.org/). Rackspace is our host.

Again, your feedback and any forwarding of the link to small business or HR people who manage employee benefits is extremely appreciated.

-- Perq Developer
Markopolous's letter was brilliant.

BTW. Take a lookat Madoff's current web page: http://www.madoff.com/

Determined Claims: 2,875
Allowed Claims: 1,564
Denied Claims: 1,311

Amount of Allowed Claims: $4,443,335,043.32
Amount of SIPC Coverage Committed: $536,189,466.60
Amount by Which Allowed Claims Exceed Statutory Limits of SIPC Protection: $3,907,145,576.7
clickable link: http://www.perqworks.com
Not sure, but it might be that as a public company, they have to release the price as it is public information anyway.
Interleukin-6 nasal spray boosts memory.
Can my site be removed from Hacker News's spam filter?
TrueSlant.com used to get a pretty steady stream of traffic from Hacker News, and your community seemed to like a lot of our original content. But then we were banned and submitted material no longer registered here.

How can we get unbanned? We spoke to a couple of our writers who were submitting content a little too anxiously and failing to abide by the community's etiquette and standards, and we don't think they'll 'blogspam' HN again. We'd really like to return to participating in this great community.
They don't - at least not exactly. Also, not the same codebase. See: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/stdlib-sig/2009-November/00...
Not at all. I've already put in some answers. I really like the SO social model, and you've got a great domain name. Best of luck!
Surely not sugar pills, it's got to taste horrible, good medicines don't taste nice! Perhaps sugar pills but coated with bitrex ...?
Good point.

I think the bottom line comes down to needs for cross-clique knowledge sharing. The possibility for a change in culture is low if there is no incentive for it.
Surely his point wasn't that 'citizen journalism' is bad, but that sorting the signal from the noise is extremely hard, and no one has really solved that yet. Certainly not twitter.

Also the other point that I got was that people are often more interested in whipping out their camera/twitter client/etc than actually helping/enjoying something/participating etc.

Personally I thought those two points were valid and worth making. Also thought it a bit sad that pg killed the discussion on HN, because I think it would have been interesting.
Also, defensive. Consider the other big players - Google would prefer MS or Yahoo don't snap Admob up.

Google might be able to replicate the Adbob business but it would take time. Admob + Google's existing strength is a big head start.
The facebook playfish games now have ads in their sidebar to some of EA's games - sims3 on the app store and pogo.com
It surprises me that 5/8ths is enough of a difference to be useful, but then I guess it's the way it bunches and forms a ridge that's important for the microfluidics, not the absolute feature size. Hm.
What's that video game where you pick the locks on the doors by solving a puzzle routing fluid through pipes? Same deal. Here, TechCrunch is the source. Maybe Scoble's the sink? Winer's once again piping the goo from place to place. But it's all the same sewer.
It's true. A crazy series of events took lots of my time recently... including the launch of my startup. I'm planning on getting back into the swing of things with Hackety, though, as my local Ruby Brigade just started up, and I feel like I could get a decent helping hand from some of those guys. I'd love to not be the only guy doing something with it. I have one other core contributer, but again, he's busy as well.

Every project goes through slow periods. _why has some quite large shoes to fill.
And I like how extrapolates that trend in the story to a point where most of them don't know much about... well... thinking? Seems like relegating all decision making to the computers would lead to atrophy of the rational side of our brain.
The "Too Big to Fail, Too Big to Exist Act"
Use compression to make the web faster
My guess is, these were the overarching "themes". It's the context and reasoning that makes them insightful. Hoping more in depth notes or a video from the conference makes itself online.
I have to say that this talk played out basically exactly like pg's "List of N Things" article (http://www.paulgraham.com/nthings.html). In particular, these quotes seemed apt: "a few main points with few to no subordinate ones, and no particular connection between them", and "I use it when I get close to a deadline. If I have to give a talk and I haven't started it a few days beforehand, I'll sometimes play it safe and make the talk a list of n things".

It wasn't very useful, or interesting, and just seemed like a talk for the sake of giving a talk, with maybe years of knowledge behind it, but very little useful or new information actually conveyed.
scenario a:
operate at a loss for a while, maybe achieve target (but maybe not), draw the ire of regulators for anticompetitive behavior

scenario b:
spend cash you can easily afford, have an immediate cash flow return, get a solution that is known to work, eliminate competitive threat without pissing off anyone in the process while ingesting talent at the same time

it's fairly easy to see why GOOG chose the latter option.
That was a good explanation to calculating the index of a point on the Hilbert curve - I had been wondering how that was done myself. I'm going to have to sit down and implement one of these someday.

Other than the quadtree, the Hilbert curve can be used to optimize the r-tree as well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert_R-tree .
Seems like more of prescription for multicore not happening first on the cloud. "The cloud" aims to allow overloading of well-understood computers functions to an outside location. But the rise of multicore basically requires the development of new uses of computers for the new parallel architecture. The cloud offers only disadvantages in such development.
This is so absurd. I couldn't help but think that this would have made a good Onion article.
The key point:

> My brain was wired to focus on the end-point and work backwards, removing each obstacle in my path or going around them all while keeping the goal in sight.

Which is a really good one.
I just had a look at trueslant.com, and I didn't see a single story that looked like Hacker News appropriate content (even though I like some of the contributors listed on the front page, and I definitely recall seeing Matt Taibbi articles--from Rolling Stone--receiving really good discussion here). But, perhaps this simply isn't the right place for promoting your site.

pg would be the person to talk to about unbanning of a domain.
Don't worry about it. I had to spend ~2 minutes looking for what it was actually called.
No he got downmodded because his comment didn't add to the conversation. One-line, humorous comments with no meat are generally frowned upon and become easy targets.
That's extremely irresponsible of them.

This is what was probably a direct consequence of such behaviour (it started in the UK and has since spread worldwide):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methicillin-resistant_Staphyloc...

As for me not being familiar with medicine in the US, you are correct, I have lived in Canada and currently live in Europe.
Dharmesh Shah (OnStartups) has a bit more detail in his twitter feed:

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=&ands=&phrase=%23...
Neat question. I don't think it'd be the need for labor as much as the need for ear plugs. Imagine if everyone around you was an entrepreneur trying to constantly solve every last problem in your work and personal life. How many pitches would you get a day? If all of them were even half as driven as a founder in a startup, people would hardly talk about anything else. It would be overwhelming and there would be 0 demand for most of these products and services.
Relative is better than absolute. If you have a benchmark like this:

for(i=0; i<100; i++){ do something }

Then it could just as well have been this:

for(i=0; i<10000; i++){ do something }

This change makes that benchmark 100x more important relative to the other benchmarks.

IOW, the relative importance of benchmarks in an average is arbitrary. If you measure speedups you give every benchmark the same weight.

The "average" he uses, the geometric mean, doesn't have the problem you describe. The geometric mean of a 99% slowdown and a 100% speedup is computed as sqrt(1/100 * 2) ~= 0.141421356. This means that the "average" slowdown is 1/0.141421356 ~= 7.07x.