I see what you did there :-P

But if I compare that to google where there are lots of 'names' from just about every era of computing working and being reasonably happy I can't help but notice the contrast.

That changes the atmosphere of the place and that definitely does filter down to lower levels.

There is a downside to that though. Plenty of people use the 'up' as "I agree" and 'down' as "I disagree". I know that's not the way they are intended to be used, but it opens the door to 'I don't like you' and 'I like you' votes as well.

Without having them split out like that you will then only be able to view those votes through your own perception of what was voted on.

This will eventually lead to meta-moderation (not necessarily a bad thing), that's a lot more work than a simple switch, which is one of the reasons I asked this, it's dead simple, takes 2 minutes to implement and we'll have results in a couple of days.

What I don't get is this: To become a registrar is a very marginal business at best, the 'take' on a domain is less than a dollar I believe.

This means that you either have to have a lot of extra stuff to sell and use the domain to get people in the door (godaddy goes so far as to sell their domains at a loss if you transfer them in), or that you'll have to do an awful lot of them.

Either of these strategies takes a long time to get going so it would be quite a big problem to have your accreditation pulled.

If that's all true then why do these registrars take the risk of having just that happen to them ?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=498910

It also has a list, but presumably that's long out of date.

We can be assured of one thing. The semiconductor industry is never going to become boring.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/devices/3d-chips-gro...

That comes with a very large set of engineering challenges but if those are overcome you can expect another big jump.

That's got to be the funniest and most appropriate name for a piece of software ever.

One of the oldest running tales is of the 16 year old getting pregnant in the hope of getting her own "council flat" (i.e. a place to live) rather than because she wants a baby. This just seems like the more extreme end of the same situation in a country that's not quite so forthcoming with social benefits.

So far it seems no-one who has leaked information has had the clearance to get to the truly painful stuff, but the psychological screening to get to those levels is specifically designed to keep potential Snowdens and Mannings out.

Distrust alone of any and all information would significantly limit any direct risk due to being named in a document helpfully supplied by your adversary, or at least people in the same general geographical area. And for all we know that's exactly what happened.

If you could somehow get rid of the feeling of 'I've been tricked' after landing on the page it might even go somewhere. The bounce rate of that page must be a record.

It didn't say anything to the contrary. Note the phrases "of his harshest critics" and "many of them." He claimed that many of his harshest critics were elitists - that does not mean he thought anyone who criticized his ideas was elitist. I would suggest that he believed his harshest critics to be those presenting no reasonable basis (from his POV, at least) for their claims.

Try to get something on paper.

> they could fire us on day #2 and we'd have only the token money we got up front to show for it.

That's something you should take care of contractually.

> the offer is low by about 20% from what would make us "happy" to sell for.

20% is not a whole lot to be off for an opening offer, but keep in mind that if you go for broke you might end with nothing.

> We're very excited (indescribably so) at the prospect, we love the company and really want to make a deal and start working on the million ideas we have for the future - but at the same time we are afraid of cutting a deal now that we'll be second guessing ourself on for 4 years.

How long before the next offer comes along?

Will it be a better one?

Will this offer stand?

Are you the next twitter or are you operating in a space with competition? This matters a lot in your risk assessment.

> The purchaser has made the deal seem very much like a standard-fair offer and has (without saying so) implied that they make an offer and that is it - they don't go back and forth on it.

I would say that :) That doesn't mean it's true. But it does mean that they want to pressure you a bit and apparently that is working.

Keep your head cool.

Don't sign anything on the spot ever, always think it over, always have it reviewed. Be as cool as you can be and don't allow yourself to be pressured.

> We are also being courted by attornies/firms and investment bankers who want the business, and it's hard to get a bead on some really solid advice without feeling like the person giving it has something to sell us. They basically have all told us it's ridiculous we've come this far without getting an LOI already, and the purchaser has basically said they don't issue LOIs until the terms are agreed on in principle.

That makes good sense but even a letter of intent is essentially meaningless. Even a term sheet is meaningless. The only document that really matter is the final contract, and only then when it has been signed.

> So anyhow, what next?

Get a really good lawyer! An experienced one and one that will not blink on doing a deal like this (as in, that has done multiple deals like this and comes with very solid references). Deals like this happen only a few times in a lifetime, don't be cheap, that might come back to bite you big time.

> They are waiting on our go-ahead to put together an LOI.

Get a lawyer.

> Counter immediately?

Get a lawyer.

> Is it stupid to be afraid of "ruining" a deal?

No, not at all, that actually happens. Don't ruin it!

> Should we involve our attorney?

YES!

If you end up with a deal on the table after negotiations are finished and you don't like it walk away.

Treat it as a learning experience up to that point and only sign if you are 100% sure that it's a good deal for you and your buddies.

Good luck!

Results on BBC News for immigration pakistan wife: none. No surprises there.

I know, I know, I'm only envious :-)

Weather, perhaps? Stuff like e-mail, most news, IM, chat, or whatever are ruled out though, even this very site.

If you fancy matching a wager, I'll put down $50 to a charity of your choice that 10% or fewer of the front page items on July 4, 2010 have "iPad" in the title :-)

Bill Gates did it with Microsoft and at that level I'm sure that there is enough momentum in the business to keep it moving along or even to improve. But most smaller businesses (say < 30 employees or so) are both culturally and dynamically much more personal and being both gone and still present in the background creates a strange power dynamic (who's the real boss?) and frustration.

The number they give is their business, your reaction to it is yours.

So if they lowball you just tell them in response that they are well below your acceptable range based on your reputation and being in demand due the difficulty of finding quality people (believe me they will understand that line) and offer to terminate the conversation unless they significantly up their range to avoid wasting time.

Could you provide some examples? The most respected Rubyists I can think of, even if I'm not particularly friendly with them myself, are notably nice and frequently go out of their way to help people.

It is trendy to join the pile on against the Ruby community but little evidence remains to be found for its validity.

It all depends on what you define as 'comfortably' and how well you are able to control your spending on things you don't strictly need. That way you can build up some capital, make that work for you and relax your spending constraints when you are making more money passively.

Makes me wonder.. maybe it's worth building a tool that monitors the Twitter accounts of common services and products and raises a bat signal if they don't tweet for a month or two. It seems to be where budget gets tightened first.

True for most success stories. Overnight success is so rare (and often fleeting - all of the rapid online successes I can think of are underwater now - all the best things were slow burns, including this very site). It's about accumulating bricks here and there and building the wall over years. People who never lose hope and who keep building those bricks will reap the rewards in the end.

That would be Liverpool, 200 miles north-west :-)

or a two thousand year old city, London has no antique palaces or medieval streets

It's hard to say what "antique" is in terms of a palace, but I'd argue it has at least one: the Tower of London (officially Her Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress) was founded in 1066 and much of what stands today was the result of building in the 13th century. This is older than anything in Paris, say, but hardly on a par with Greece ;-)

For a casual stroller London looks like a loosely linked collection of small villages

It is. Even when my dad was a kid, even suburbs as far in as Kidbrooke, Blackheath and Lewisham were essentially considered unique places, often separated by greenery, and not physically joined to the larger conurbation. A lot of gaps have been filled in the past 50 years to make it feel like more of a whole. Heading south, I don't think you even see a field until you hit Coulsdon now..

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14450945

Mahmud pointed out an excellent example of that happening and I have seen plenty of others.

Go visit the last page of the 'new' section and have a look at all the stuff that was lost. It's really a pity.

And plenty of 'fluff' does get upvoted.

When an engineer has a proven ability to ship stuff, to keep things humming and not crashing, it's easy to fall into the trap of rejecting anything that hasn't demonstrated that it can work, that hasn't proven itself in the market.

What he's really saying is that it's the status quo to argue against (reject) ideas and technologies that are radical - simply because "engineers" are trained to produce things that "work." Until proven (which takes time), radical ideas and changes are extremely experimental, by definition, and likely to cause friction. This does not make them unwise, however.

The key point, in my mind, is that even if EVERY highly educated person in your field told you that your idea is stupid, wrong, and will never work, you shouldn't believe them blindly. James Dyson didn't, and now he's a billionaire. SOMETIMES (but very rarely) everyone else is wrong when you are right.

> I certainly don't expect most people on here to understand the short, medium, and long-term goals of my concept.

Does not expect to be understood by others.

> Like I said, I'm very protective of my IP at this point

Secretive

> it's just somewhat laughable to me because there's so many disparate concepts being put together that the only person who could be this crazy and innovative is me, because it's one of those inventions that only comes from a unique mind.

Self describes as having 'a unique mind'

> Professional Writer, Musician and Intellectual

> The innovation is one of physics

Not schooled in the field in which he's making a 'breakthrough invention'

> Liberal arts majors with a lifetime of aviation industry experience? Much more rare.

Well, obviously, yes, liberal arts majors tend not to have lifetimes of aviation industry experience.

Beware, you're sounding suspiciously like the majority of all crackpot 'researchers' and 'inventors' who are coming up with new ways to make energy/spacecraft/airplanes/AI etc in their garages. I've been pretty active on an alternative energy forum and there were quite a few people there that exhibited most or even all of the symptoms above, I never saw them produce anything.

Word to the wise: if you're serious then don't bother commenting on HN teasing the world with your invention without a show and tell, chances are that your breakthrough has been looked at many times before and has been discarded for good reasons. If you have found something original then more power to you, in that case just go out and build it, don't talk about it at all.

And who said HN doesn't have a sense of humour, 16 points and counting.

I did some Googling and it may not have been Prestel (which he did also use) but something called "Telesoftware" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telesoftware – which involved software being distributed over Ceefax.

(Update: On reflection, reducing usability might not be a great way to go. Typically that's a better way to reduce bad behavior than to encourage good..)

- account compromised, wiped out

- operator error

- malicious employee

All of these have happened to companies that I have worked with, so no, I won't do a better job of backing stuff up comapred to google, msft, etc, BUT I would rather have some get-out-of-jail-free card if any of the above should happen and suddenly where there used to be data there is nothing.

You should approach this from a cost-benefits perspective, not from a skills perspective.

A friend of mine is an interesting character, something of a mechanical/electrical genius, he can literally fix any machinery.

One of his jobs involved flying to China to help with the repair of a machine that mass produced latex condoms.

While he was there the proud owner of the condom factory announced he had just finished the creation of a factory for car jacks that were sold in large numbers to the big three car manufacturers for inclusion with their vehicles.

He got a tour of the 'new' factory.

He described a scene straight out of the worst of the beginnings of the industrial age. Workers, mostly women and children stood at endless tables in very bad light operating hand operated machine tools and tool-and-die stamping machines.

Plenty of them were missing fingers or worse, and the pace was literally feverish, the noise deafening.

It was the most unsafe machine shop he has ever seen and he's been in quite a few of them. Now, arguably this is low tech stuff, not comparable with your macbook, and I'd hope that Apple held their suppliers to a higher standard.

But responsible waste management and safety cost a lot of money when you factor them in to the end price of a product, no matter whether it's a nike shoe, a macbook or a car jack.

Notably, I don't do this at all with trackpads, only when using a mouse at the desktop.

These guys do it all the time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtxwT6PQIw8

I'm not 1% the programmer that you are and it wouldn't take me more than 15 minutes to put a search box (after all, it's just a piece of static text) in the HN footer.

See, all those 'quality submissions and comments' are pretty much useless if you can't find them, what's the use of having this amazing body of content if there is no easy way to peruse it?

The content goes by so quick now that if you look the other way for three days that you'll have missed tons of good stuff, an easy way to search would make all of HN accessible, not just what is current right now.

I've sold a few projects in my time, but this conversation makes me think I should really look at having an agent represent me in future. The whole "I can only offer $7500" but then that turned into a $10500 sale just goes over my head - the communications skills needed are next level, and I've read Getting to Yes and such books :-) Maybe having someone less emotionally attached to a project could work in negotiations to increase the price to far more than cover their fee?

To me that would be reason enough to make sure I negotiated the deal in such a way that if the company fires us that our stock will vest instantly.

> Any time someone tries to convince you to not consult your advisors, run away immediately.

No, get advisors anyway.

If the deal is good they might be lowballing them anyway and they're scared the other party finds out by how much.

What's good for one party may be great for the other!

There is this joke about the rights to an invention being sold for a relatively low amount, where the buyer confides after the deal to the seller 'we'd have bought it for ten times as much', whereupon the seller answers 'I'd have sold it for ten time less'.

In some 'free' countries it is even illegal to talk about the state muzzling you or turning over information:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Letter

Other than that, the first 10 pages or so are a real who's who of the Ruby scene in 2007-2008 :-)

I landed there while reading 'the poignant guide to Ruby' (evaluating RoR has lead me down the rabbit hole of learning more about Ruby) and figured I'd take a look at what is there.

It's weird because the domain has a registration date of 19/2/2014.

I can't imagine some random programmer accidentally taking up this moniker though.

the contact page reads:

NOTE: For some reason, I’ve been getting a LOT (like more than 1, which is a lot for me considering how long this site has been going) of messages from people asking me if I’m some kind of famous programmer called #why from Pittsburg or something.

Whilst I wish I was this famous and did get this much attention, unfortunately I’m not. I’m just a dude trying to turn his life around and take a bit of control over what’s going on.

In saying that, please feel free to send me any gifts that you were going to send this dude and I’ll be more than happy to have them :-)

https://twitter.com/#!/dhh/statuses/1631100714

http://david.heinemeierhansson.com/posts/42-we-need-both-eng...

http://jacquesmattheij.com/A+tale+of+two+programmers

I was going to delete this "dupe" but since the discussion has kicked off here, I'll keep it. However, if an admin wants to "fix" the link to point to the original TC source, please do so! :-) Mea culpa!

If anything needs to be fixed, it's the idiots on HN who vote up response posts like this, but that's democracy for you.

Mission accomplished I guess.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=807692

e/n had a variety of celebs itself. "Stile" was in the scene and took clickbaiting to the extreme (though it wasn't called that at the time) by essentially turning into a site packed with "extreme" images and porn. A perennially down on his luck Rush Limbaugh fan called Jon Bence was also pretty famous for describing his mundane life in excruciating detail.

The scene fizzled out within a few years, particularly once "blogging" became its own actual thing.

One of the most popular cams for years was an old person that was extremely ill and that rarely moved but he had pretty big fanclub and he thought it was quite funny that he was more famous on what eventually became his deathbed than he had ever been while he was still active. After he died his family asked to remove all the images and close the account which of course we did. Makes you wonder if all those people wishing him well over the years kept him going a bit longer. What is interesting is that if you did this today I'm pretty sure the jerks would drown out the nice people by a considerable margin, of course there were jerks back then as well, but on the whole the internet seemed to be a much nicer place to hang out than it is today.

Given this, it's very easy to have the same thing submitted multiple times (through different URLs) and to do well each time, as we're seeing here (I submitted the first link to the very useful homepage at cleveralgorithms.com - everyone else is doing internal pages for some reason). It's happening a lot lately. What to do about it? Point out previous HN discussions that might be useful to newcomers to the link and, well, pass on.

The obvious "black hat" tip, though - if you want to rack up some karma points - is dig through the HN archives, find a successful but not crazily memorable post from 2 months ago or more, find a slightly alternative URL to submit, and go to town. It'd work like gangbusters.

How to spot a spammer...

It's a bit of a Bayesian approach but these factors help me to decide whether to flag content or not:

- new account

- no comment participation (or maybe just a 'test' comment)

- first link posted within seconds of account creation

- low quality content

- always submitting the same domain

- re-submitting the same url over and over again

- many submissions per day

If it's a 'mild case' then I flag the entry, if it is more serious (10+ submissions in a relatively short time for instance) then I mail the moderators.

A handful of reasons, I think.

Fatigue with the particular dish (I don't want to eat the same thing within a day or two anyway), a mostly irrational "ick" hygiene factor, not wanting to carry food around (it's less common to be parked close to where you're eating in the UK), a lingering (though lessened) elitist attitude to the practice, and a fear of it being considered an unusual request.

Different cultures engage in slightly odd behaviors (such as the prevalence of stick shift cars in the UK) often because people are, en masse, afraid of being unusual and making a change. If restaurants made taking stuff home an obvious and acceptable policy, I'd probably deliberately eat only half the meal and do it from time to time.

Americans visiting Europe would find themselves in a similar situation if they asked for a doggie bag. Most places wouldn't even be prepared to handle such a request.

But then again, the portions are so much smaller that a request of that nature is unlikely.

The merit of the agent or situation involved (picking a cancer researcher seems like a clever and emotional rhetorical ploy) does not affect the demand for having domain knowledge when using or maintaining certain systems.

Doctors are emphatically not con artists.

I applaud you wife's reasoned decision, clearly she is in control of her own destiny and her decision (if by unfortunate chance it is the wrong one) will mostly affect her and her immediate family.

But if we spend a good sized fortune and several years educating someone I really wonder why we'd bother with that if all that it would take to counteract all that effort and knowledge would be a lay persons reading of the medical literature. Most of which is not exactly written for easy consumption by the general public.

Whether you're in a risk group for certain cancers depends on a lot of factors and you'd need to know all of those to make a weighted decision. This is not always as easy as applying the general case to yourself calling it a day.

Age and sex are obviously the big ones but there are many (not sure how many) contributing factors that may cause doctors to be more concerned about one individual than another. We call those people specialists because we recognize that the amount of knowledge required is typically larger than what one person can acquire in a lifetime.

The time when I'm going to trust my own interpretation of a pile of google'd medical papers over a qualified specialist is still a while away.

In the meantime I'm terribly happy I'm not a medical doctor, I'd hate to have to continuously defend each and every minor decision to a general public that I'd be trying to help in an already time-constrained practice. It's hard enough when non-technical (read: totally clueless) customers question evaluations of technical issues based on some popular text they've been reading, at least there are usually no lives on the line.

It's absolutely doable, go for it!

It's been on my 'to do' list for ages, to build my own but I realize how much time it would take and what I'd need in terms of tooling just to produce a serviceable action. So it will probably never happen. But there are zero obstacles to doing this if you are dedicated, have the space, the skills and the funds.

No, then it wouldn't be secret anymore.

Security by obscurity is not perfect but in this case having that knowledge out there would only benefit the spammers and the 'gamers'.

I'd bet that you're not the only one who thought of that. And for less money I'd bet that someone has beat you to it.

Mine is at 1.91 and I can't vote so that would make sense.

as here they imply simply bringing leftovers home, although it has been a very long time since I've heard the term doggy bag and am more accustomed to people asking if anyone wants a box or their leftovers wrapped up.

It took a while for me to get used to the US phenomenon of asking for leftovers to be "boxed up" and I've noticed a similar level of surprise with less travelled Europeans I've taken to the US.

I'm used to it now (though I still wouldn't ever do it myself) but this is not even slightly common or acceptable practice in the UK. Such a request wouldn't be met with disgust or offense, though, merely confusion. I doubt many places except Chinese restuarants/takeouts would have anything to put the food in anyway.

So, yeah, this is a very American practice from the UK POV. I'd be surprised if it weren't common somewhere in Europe, though, but I've never seen it happen on my travels.

Splitting a meal or asking for more utensils to share a dish isn't exactly common here either but it is done, especially in pubs or similarly low-end places.

Americans visiting Europe would find themselves in a similar situation if they asked for a doggie bag. Most places wouldn't even be prepared to handle such a request.

But then again, the portions are so much smaller that a request of that nature is unlikely.

If you fancy matching a wager, I'll put down $50 to a charity of your choice that 10% or fewer of the front page items on July 4, 2010 have "iPad" in the title :-)

That's because it didn't mention the Ipad.

Industries tends to find a way to win (or at least fight hard). Our content is going to get a lot worse rather than the advertising better, IMHO.

Making an ad campaign that has a positive ROI is doable, but if you are that well embedded in the industry then you will quite likely agree with me that it has become quite a bit harder to achieve that today than it was in the past. The solution (performance based advertising) shifts the burden of the effectiveness of a campaign onto the wrong party (the owner of the inventory) which has resulted in a series of start-ups that optimize on behalf of inventory owner.

This is all like watching eb-and-flood erode a beach and just like real life erosion there are turning points at which the situation can go from steady state to dynamic quite rapidly and it is anybody's guess what the new steady configuration will be once all the potential for movement has been exhausted.

The ad industry is imo not exactly in a bubble as much as that they are more than a little bit worried about why the usual bag of tricks no longer works and how they plan on going back to when conversion rates were still something to be proud of. I don't doubt that this will initially be tackled with a wave of even more invasive advertising, or advertising masquerading as content.

The problem is that what was initially an absolute boon for the advertising industry, that you can 'measure' engagement ended up being the exact problem, you can measure engagement, including a steady drop in engagement over time. And so, by making advertising more and more aggressive the industry has made it impossible - or nearly so - to make a non-aggressive campaign because it has to compete with all the aggressive ones for attention (from the users perspective it is a zero sum game, they only have 24 hours in a day and usually something else to do besides watching and engaging with ads, and if they don't then they are not exactly prime material for some demographic to begin with).

So now there is a problem, which is that the ad industry can't suddenly stop reporting all these engagement metrics, nor can they pull more technological rabbits out of the hat that spawned all these new tricks because these too will work for a while and then run out.

It's not a simple problem.

It's a common and legitimate reason to downvote on HN, even pg has said so. I once disagreed with this practice but have changed my mind given it has been 'approved'.

And to say Jobs was a salesman because he didn't "design" any hardware is bizarre. He was the driving force behind the Macintosh and involved in almost every decision surrounding it, even if he wasn't the one with the pen at the drafting board. It's like saying Obama is merely a spokesman.

If they would engage in debate and downvote that would be the ideal I guess :)

On /. because people can choose to post 'anonymously' and only randomly get allotted mod points instead of having an infinite supply such frustration tends to be vented by some anonymous ad-hominem attack, here it's the downmod button.

Interesting how the technical facilities change peoples behaviour.

As for the subject, I wasn't joking either. Ballmers 'reign' has been a trainwreck, so far he has consistently failed to produce anything that has caused microsoft to gain lost terrain. Vista, the Zune, MSN Search (which three months after launch is stuck in the 3% reach territory).

And I'm fine with that. Now for someone to get up and give google a run for their money.

            Username   Age Karma   K/A
  ------------------------------------
                 dhh     1    48    48
                  pg   563 17544    31
            oldgregg     3    87    29
               nickb   429 11672    27
                donw     3    52    17
                pius   210  2803    13
              edw519   428  5316    12
                 rms   427  5017    11
              drm237   271  2851    10
                 hhm   246  2475    10
             keating    10   103    10
                 sah    42   411     9
               freax     5    45     9
           further08     2    19     9
         iamelgringo   419  3702     8
         ivankirigin   281  2486     8
          luccastera   258  2201     8
                moog    49   436     8
            sant0sk1    35   310     8
            9oliYQjP     4    35     8
               ertra     3    24     8
              davidw   429  3400     7
              terpua   302  2212     7
         kirubakaran   248  1982     7
              nreece   257  1961     7
        pchristensen   161  1210     7
              thorax    92   667     7
           gongfudoi    52   388     7

If you would make the ranking based on quality of postings (which I think is more useful) it would look like this:

  +---------+-----------------+
  | ratio   | username        |
  +---------+-----------------+
  | 15.7917 | sivers          | 
  | 10.5652 | keyist          | 
  |  8.4536 | pg              | 
  |  8.4000 | justinweiss     | 
  |  8.3203 | lbrandy         | 
  |  8.1111 | jl              | 
  |  7.7149 | patio11         | 
  |  7.7005 | randomwalker    | 
  |  7.6548 | mdasen          | 
  |  7.5489 | old-gregg       | 
  |  7.2623 | mojombo         | 
  |  7.1552 | tjic            | 
  |  7.1143 | ironkeith       | 
  |  7.0633 | ajg1977         | 
  |  6.9412 | nixy            | 
  |  6.9394 | jcsalterego     | 
  |  6.8571 | pavs            | 
  |  6.5385 | thedob          | 
  |  6.5345 | Eliezer         | 
  |  6.5000 | malte           | 
  |  6.4933 | niyazpk         | 
  |  6.3125 | sama            | 
  |  6.2870 | michael_nielsen | 
  |  6.2804 | lionhearted     | 
  |  6.2759 | bentoner        | 
  |  6.2020 | evdawg          | 
  |  6.1639 | defunkt         | 
  |  6.0917 | martythemaniak  | 
  |  6.0598 | chaosmachine    | 
  |  6.0310 | zain            | 
  |  5.8735 | JoelSutherland  | 
  |  5.8716 | adamhowell      | 
  |  5.8644 | ryanwaggoner    | 
  |  5.8364 | endtwist        | 
  |  5.8113 | nixme           | 
  |  5.7196 | gabrielroth     | 
  |  5.6400 | cjoh            | 
  |  5.6296 | tc              | 
  |  5.5926 | curtis          | 
  |  5.5401 | anuraggoel      | 
  |  5.5313 | boundlessdreamz | 
  |  5.4784 | TomOfTTB        | 
  |  5.4626 | cperciva        | 
  |  5.4286 | andres          | 
  |  5.4000 | unfoldedorigami | 
  |  5.3889 | kn0thing        | 
  |  5.3783 | edw519          | 
  |  5.3415 | thinkzig        | 
  |  5.2716 | raganwald       | 
  |  5.2364 | paul            | 
  |  5.2208 | smanek          | 
  |  5.2105 | shimon          | 
  |  5.1569 | bokonist        | 
  |  5.1364 | brentb          | 
  |  5.1277 | bouncingsoul    | 
  |  5.0909 | mqt             | 
  |  5.0566 | jim-greer       | 
  |  5.0556 | mjtokelly       |
  |  5.0424 | pc              |
  |  5.0417 | crocus          |
  |  5.0343 | ckinnan         |
  |  5.0323 | dilanj          |
  |  5.0000 | jeeringmole     |
  |  4.9848 | abstractbill    |
  |  4.9690 | tdavis          |
  |  4.9569 | jbyers          |
  |  4.9529 | spencerfry      |
  |  4.9457 | absconditus     |
  |  4.9421 | amix            |
  |  4.9286 | ksvs            |
  |  4.9254 | luckystrike     |
  |  4.9245 | fleaflicker     |
  |  4.9167 | Mystalic        |
  |  4.9020 | kennyroo        |
  |  4.8857 | joao            |
  |  4.8658 | menloparkbum    |
  |  4.8621 | timr            |
  |  4.8571 | shalmanese      |
  |  4.8403 | marcusbooster   |
  |  4.8333 | jkkramer        |
  |  4.8188 | daeken          |
  |  4.8113 | TimothyFitz     |
  |  4.8040 | plinkplonk      |
  |  4.8000 | jefffoster      |
  |  4.7962 | acangiano       |
  |  4.7716 | sachinag        |
  |  4.7545 | halo            |
  |  4.7500 | lackbeard       |
  |  4.7491 | nir             |
  |  4.7486 | tsally          |
  |  4.7434 | shadytrees      |
  |  4.7429 | imgabe          |
  |  4.7342 | ionfish         |
  |  4.7301 | mixmax          |
  |  4.7265 | swombat         |
  |  4.7222 | wolfish         |
  |  4.7209 | kalvin          |
  |  4.6970 | alecst          |
  |  4.6875 | forsaken        |
  +---------+-----------------+

Mine is at 1.91 and I can't vote so that would make sense.

A History of Algorithms too.. looks amazing, lots of diagrams, and shows how algorithms were derived in the past.

I really liked 'Introduction to Algorithms' by Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest and Stein, MIT press.

ah.io, ay.io, di.io, ea.io, ey.io, fa.io, fc.io, fe.io, fg.io, ha.io, he.io, ju.io, ka.io, oe.io, or.io, ow.io, pu.io, ra.io, te.io, ti.io, tu.io, ut.io, wa.io, wi.io, wu.io, wy.io, ya.io, ym.io, yn.io, yr.io, du.io, ld.io, lp.io, m4.io, nm.io, wc.io

UPDATE: It just struck me that two letter domains might be rather hard to register. I'm looking at the T&Cs now. It is notable how many are marked as being registered in the WHOIS though.

UPDATE 2: Neither of the third party registrars I tried allowed two letter .io domains but the central nic.io does.

UPDATE 3: I visited rb.io (which I wanted ;-)) and found this blog post of just a cpl weeks ago on the same topic: http://www.russellbeattie.com/blog/two-letter-io-domains-ava...

https://iwantmyname.com/blog/2012/05/100-shockingly-short-io...

and here is another:

are.io bow.io cot.io cry.io dew.io dip.io dye.io ear.io egg.io fee.io fry.io had.io hem.io hid.io hut.io jug.io lid.io lie.io lip.io men.io mop.io mow.io oar.io ore.io pit.io rag.io ray.io rib.io rid.io rot.io sod.io toe.io tow.io tug.io was.io won.io yaw.io

I did not bother to verify availability.

Nonetheless, taking quotes from an informal chat room and turning them into a biased, borderline libelous blog post isn't cool. It's immaterial whether Collins told the author they didn't care about the post or not. If Collins made an official complaint as per the ToS, the post in question - http://vpsexperience.wordpress.com/2014/01/05/googler-speaks... - strikes me as defamatory and embarrassing enough to legitimately fall under term 2.8.. so the real question has nothing to do with the complaint but more is term 2.8 a good idea or not?

Sorry ?

If you can't express your disagreement without resorting to name calling I guess you feel you've lost the argument ?

And no, you're completely wrong. Running a free service does not give you the right to run roughshod over your users, the users of free services have rights just like those of paid services and you are normally required to spell those out in your terms of service, preferably in language that your users will actually understand.

In fact, the people at posterous seem to have at least come to the conclusion that that is the way things ought to be and we can consider this experiment a one-off.

Transparency is not just because you want to be nice, it is because you want to keep yourself and your users on the same page, so that people don't feel taken advantage of.

The engine is about as far off-center as it is possible to go on a Porsche, it's hanging over behind the rear axle.

Be glad you don't study law! It's practically written in a different language to everyday, pragmatic English. Specs and math papers can descend to similar levels of readability, though RFCs, on the whole, tend to (in comparison) be quite readable IMHO.

I'll take the RFC format (short, to the point and really clear) over others any day.

Most of the times I feel as though those that write specs have received explicit instructions to make things as verbose as possible to justify the insane pricing of standards documents.

Archaic in this case is just another word for continuity and that's not a bad thing. Imagine every RFC hopping on to the latest bandwagon in terms of presentation, powerpoints, pdfs, html animated images and so on. It would be a cacophony, now it is just the minimal amount of information required to implement something. It's great in a minimalist way.

It's good that the people Richard Branson and Bill Gates dealt with early in their careers didn't feel that way.

Branson pretended to be a big magazine company from a phone box (using the operator to appear to be a switchboard operator of sorts) and claimed to have sold lots of ads when he had sold none. The magazine was a success. Gates pretended he had a BASIC. This "lie" was the start of the accumulation of the world's biggest fortune.

Blagging and telling white lies is a big part of starting out, especially if you're an entrepreneur. Looking bigger than you are, looking more established, making your deals look bigger than they are, portraying a better image than your checkbook can support.. all deceptions.

Sure, there are many totally honest and straight talking folks who've made it big, but look at the stories behind most of the well known entrepreneurs and there was plenty of blagging and exaggeration going on at the start of their journeys. (Not to mention most of our dating careers..)

> Often the only thing that separates startup from fraud is that the founders believe in what they are selling.

Unfortunately true.

> How does one determine what is true belief and what is an act?

You can usually tell once you point out that the technology isn't there and likely will not be there for the foreseeable future. The frauds press on, threaten lawsuits and move from one investor to another until one bites, the non-frauds pivot or give up. Personally I think that anything offered to customers should do what it says on the tin and if it doesn't then it might as well not be there, what the future will bring and when it will bring is anybody's guess so making definitive statements to that effect is not something that will make you friends during a due diligence.

What is more surprising is that after many 100's of these borderline scams and outright scams that there are still investors that are willing to plunk down ridiculous sums of money because 'it would be so nice if the story were true'.

I've had a couple of cases where I was pretty sure the start-up people knew exactly what they were doing and one (fairly famous) case where I will never know whether the founder knew that he was defrauding people or whether he truly believed that success was just around the corner. He died one day before making a big and irreversible step, there are rumors that the death wasn't an accident but no autopsy was ever performed so it will remain a mystery.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sloot_Digital_Coding_System

For anybody with even a passing familiarity with data compression and the practical limits thereof the product is clearly an impossibility, and the demos they gave were fairly obviously rigged. Having it under 'lost inventions' in Wikipedia, even under 'questionable examples' is giving it more credit than it deserves.

Sadly this percentage was far too low for it to become a 'big' business and my knowledge of how to grow a company was very poor back then (I used to believe you got the product right, then sold it.. no sirree, that's not how big business really works).

Over time the weight of the new features starts to be larger than the 'simple' free version. The free version is the hook that you use to get people to use the service and to stave off encroachment by competitors.

If a free competitor should arrive on the scene that offers part of your premium features for free then you can choose to selectively offer those features to all your users (not just your paid users) but here you have to be careful not to erode your paying userbase because it is possible that people are paying for just that one feature and they'll possibly cancel their subscription.

This is not as trivial as it sounds.

For the record, I manage a website that has an active userbase of about 100K people a small percentage of those are paying users.

Time certainly flies when you're having fun.

Now lets hope nobody takes this 'interview' seriously.

The other stuff was, likely, a lot more cumbersome to use. Waiting for machines to warm/boot up, waiting for software to start, etc, adds friction that can have bigger than expected effects on how often devices are used.

The iPad is far from perfect, but an almost instant-on and rapid interface, along with the form factor, makes for a game-changing device that's perfect for checking something on the Web, checking e-mail, or updating Twitter almost anywhere in the house or garden. Phones could do some of this before but the form factor provides a similar friction to usability.

Good thing nobody ever had a complicated spread sheet, a document on letterhead for the office or a small programming job to do!

It's genius how Steve Jobs managed to identify that most people now use their computers as a media consumption device, I see mine as power tools.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSzgh3D7-Q0

A 21 year old girl..

That's all well and good until whatever business you run competes with the DNS provider or offends them in some way and they stop resolving your domain name. You're not going to say, "well, people can stop using Google's DNS if they really want to use my service".

Google is under no obligation to provide such a service to a party they deem objectionable (on pretty good grounds).

My guess is that those are simply sockpuppets used for the initial votes. The sad thing is that plenty of times the strategy seems to work.

My guess is that those are simply sockpuppets used for the initial votes. The sad thing is that plenty of times the strategy seems to work.

After all, how much better can a $500K supercar be compared to a $50K car? Definitely not ten times better, the speed limits are the same, seating capacity is likely smaller, there may be a marginal improvement in acceleration and a corresponding reduction in range (and increased fuel consumption).

Even having a car / not having a car is a status thing for many people (and it goes both ways, some see not having a car as being 'better' than those that have cars and vice versa, usually dependent on whether or not car ownership was decided from a position of prosperity or poverty).

The butt fell out of Adsense for many areas in 2008-2009ish though and I've never had any further success with it in the developer space (though I did very well in the mass market up till about 2009). I run some other reasonably successful sites in the developer space and Adsense is basically a no-go - results as bad as you've mentioned.

If I were in your shoes, I'd dabble with some affiliate programs. I've already been doing this and having success on my developer focused sites. Only high quality stuff but latest books, e-books, courses, events, etc. I notice you have Carbon on there and if I recall correctly, they approached me and the CPM was laughably bad (though this may have changed..), I want/need to be making $5-10 CPM overall from display advertising.

I will definitely sign up and let you know how it worked out.

But for that to work you have to have an active community that values the resource more than they value the few seconds it takes to flag a bad submission. Absent such a community you have to do it yourself at least until such a community has formed.

The funny thing is that the combination of 'flag', karma thresholds and community seem to be enough to let the 'submission' box sit there without any tricky stuff like captchas and so on.

Make sure to measure your virality (even if only indirect) by asking your customers how they found you. That way even if you can't directly measure virality like this you can measure it indirectly by comparing it to how that answer was at some arbitrary point in the past.

If the trend in relative terms (%age of respondents) is 'up' then you know you're on the right road to lighting a fuse, if it is 'down' you are losing momentum (even when you're still growing!) and it might mean you have to change your strategy.

Interestingly: amateurs use Leica 2x as much as professionals do, because the myth of the expensive camera making better pictures is still alive and well.

http://www.thesaurus.com/

There's a big difference between knowing whether what you're doing is frowned upon or not and appreciating the severity or consequences of same actions. Age certainly correlates with acquiring the latter.

I was a young writer in the dot com era.. and when I was 17 (or even 21!) I'd have known taking a kickback for a story was wrong. What I'm sure I wouldn't have appreciated, however, is how damaging taking a kickback could have been for my career/reputation/integrity and how much it violates the bonds of trust we form as adults.

It's a bit like toilet papering or egging someone's house. You know it's wrong as a kid, but it's not till you're mature that you appreciate how distressing it could be to the other parties involved. Empathy and a greater awareness of how your actions have consequences within a bigger ecosystem certainly comes with age.

Danilocampos is exactly right. As far as career advice or tech advice, if you think I can contribute regardless of age feel free to contact me as well, j@ww.com . I can't promise to always be immediately available but I'll do my best.

  techcrunch.com       - 22229
  nytimes.com          - 10178
  readwriteweb.com     - 2482
  thestandard.com      - 1888
  centernetworks.com   - 1510
  technologizer.com    - 1470
  alleyinsider.com     - 1158
  sfgate.com           - 1081
  treehugger.com       - 708
  itworld.com          - 698
  devcentral.f5.com    - 658
  markevanstech.com    - 523
  howtoforge.com       - 487
  news.com.com         - 431

That's how this works. I suspect quite a few people have those sites in their rss feeds and as soon as they spot one they post it hoping to beat the rest to the game.

It's the HN equivalent of /.'s 'first post' meme.

Only here the 'first poster' gets rewarded with karma so they keep doing it.

Let me complete your list for you:

(left column is total credits for articles submitted from that source):

  +--------+------------------------------------+-------------+---------------------+                                                                                         
  | sumpts | domain                             | submissions | pointspersubmission |                                                                                         
  +--------+------------------------------------+-------------+---------------------+                                                                                         
                                                                                        
  |  40209 | techcrunch.com                     |        4788 |              8.3979 |                                                                                         
  |  26922 | nytimes.com                        |        3407 |              7.9020 |                                                                                         
  |   8994 | wired.com                          |         967 |              9.3009 |                                                                                         
  |   8298 | paulgraham.com                     |         149 |             55.6913 |                                                                                         
  |   7652 | readwriteweb.com                   |        1576 |              4.8553 |                                                                                         
  |   7605 | 37signals.com                      |         493 |             15.4260 |                                                                                         
  |   7001 | arstechnica.com                    |        1104 |              6.3415 |                                                                                         
  |   6746 | online.wsj.com                     |         816 |              8.2672 |                                                                                         
  |   6127 | economist.com                      |         766 |              7.9987 |                                                                                         
  |   5988 | news.bbc.co.uk                     |        1074 |              5.5754 |                                                                                         
  |   5660 | codinghorror.com                   |         334 |             16.9461 |                                                                                         
  |   4890 | venturebeat.com                    |        1045 |              4.6794 |                                                                                         
  |   4824 | code.google.com                    |         339 |             14.2301 |                                                                                         
  |   4758 | youtube.com                        |         976 |              4.8750 |                                                                                         
  |   4637 | ycombinator.com                    |          69 |             67.2029 |                                                                                         
  |   4364 | guardian.co.uk                     |         499 |              8.7455 |                                                                                         
  |   4082 | github.com                         |         244 |             16.7295 |                                                                                         
  |   4051 | blog.wired.com                     |         692 |              5.8540 |                                                                                         
  |   4033 | businessweek.com                   |         667 |              6.0465 |                                                                                         
  |   4008 | news.cnet.com                      |         800 |              5.0100 |                                                                                         
  |   3995 | alleyinsider.com                   |         964 |              4.1442 |                                                                                         
  |   3992 | gigaom.com                         |         718 |              5.5599 |                                                                                         
  |   3912 | slate.com                          |         375 |             10.4320 |                                                                                         
  |   3873 | mashable.com                       |         827 |              4.6832 |                                                                                         
  |   3748 | sethgodin.typepad.com              |         448 |              8.3661 |                                                                                         
  |   3639 | en.wikipedia.org                   |         395 |              9.2127 |                                                                                         
  |   3363 | daringfireball.net                 |         115 |             29.2435 |                                                                                         
  |   3219 | zedshaw.com                        |          68 |             47.3382 |                                                                                         
  |   3170 | bits.blogs.nytimes.com             |         536 |              5.9142 |                                                                                         
  |   3158 | inc.com                            |         189 |             16.7090 |                                                                                         
  |   3112 | joelonsoftware.com                 |         141 |             22.0709 |                                                                                         
  |   3074 | groups.google.com                  |         215 |             14.2977 |                                                                                         
  |   2868 | googleblog.blogspot.com            |         276 |             10.3913 |                                                                                         
  |   2831 | newscientist.com                   |         354 |              7.9972 |                                                                                         
  |   2748 | theregister.co.uk                  |         366 |              7.5082 |                                                                                         
  |   2708 | mattmaroon.com                     |          95 |             28.5053 |                                                                                         
  |   2601 | washingtonpost.com                 |         311 |              8.3633 |                                                                                         
  |   2600 | sfgate.com                         |         613 |              4.2414 |                                                                                         
  |   2597 | radar.oreilly.com                  |         422 |              6.1540 |                                                                                         
  |   2577 | centernetworks.com                 |         525 |              4.9086 |                                                                                         
  |   2515 | google.com                         |         256 |              9.8242 |                                                                                         
  |   2420 | blogs.zdnet.com                    |         507 |              4.7732 |                                                                                         
  |   2342 | thestandard.com                    |         562 |              4.1673 |                                                                                         
  |   2317 | catonmat.net                       |          88 |             26.3295 |                                                                                         
  |   2316 | money.cnn.com                      |         450 |              5.1467 |                                                                                         
  |   2309 | forbes.com                         |         376 |              6.1410 |                                                                                         
  |   2238 | avc.com                            |         221 |             10.1267 |                                                                                         
  |   2236 | newyorker.com                      |         151 |             14.8079 |                                                                                         
  |   2204 | boston.com                         |         224 |              9.8393 |                                                                                         
  |   2179 | ejohn.org                          |         132 |             16.5076 |                                                                                         
  |   2137 | ted.com                            |         242 |              8.8306 |                                                                                         
  |   2079 | businessinsider.com                |         350 |              5.9400 |                                                                                         
  |   2053 | theatlantic.com                    |          99 |             20.7374 |                                                                                         
  |   2039 | technologyreview.com               |         388 |              5.2552 |                                                                                         
  |   1947 | paulbuchheit.blogspot.com          |          59 |             33.0000 |                                                                                         
  |   1923 | telegraph.co.uk                    |         248 |              7.7540 |                                                                                         
  |   1916 | sivers.org                         |          38 |             50.4211 |
  |   1907 | blog.pmarca.com                    |         126 |             15.1349 |
  |   1866 | steve-yegge.blogspot.com           |          42 |             44.4286 |
  |   1855 | smashingmagazine.com               |         225 |              8.2444 |
  |   1820 | scienceblogs.com                   |         198 |              9.1919 |
  |   1801 | torrentfreak.com                   |         157 |             11.4713 |
  |   1788 | gizmodo.com                        |         266 |              6.7218 |
  |   1787 | cnn.com                            |         341 |              5.2405 |
  |   1762 | slideshare.net                     |         190 |              9.2737 |
  |   1703 | schneier.com                       |         114 |             14.9386 |
  |   1701 | aaronsw.com                        |          80 |             21.2625 |
  |   1691 | blogmaverick.com                   |         131 |             12.9084 |
  |   1652 | venturehacks.com                   |         132 |             12.5152 |
  |   1615 | time.com                           |         181 |              8.9227 |
  |   1553 | technologizer.com                  |         560 |              2.7732 |
  |   1548 | engadget.com                       |         258 |              6.0000 |
  |   1529 | xconomy.com                        |         271 |              5.6421 |
  |   1510 | news.yahoo.com                     |         377 |              4.0053 |
  |   1507 | ajaxian.com                        |         396 |              3.8056 |
  |   1498 | steveblank.com                     |          68 |             22.0294 |
  |   1496 | ft.com                             |         229 |              6.5328 |
  |   1490 | weblog.raganwald.com               |         101 |             14.7525 |
  |   1480 | jgc.org                            |          69 |             21.4493 |
  |   1477 | sciam.com                          |         182 |              8.1154 |
  |   1468 | reuters.com                        |         362 |              4.0552 |
  |   1444 | startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com |          85 |             16.9882 |
  |   1414 | avc.blogs.com                      |         140 |             10.1000 |
  |   1403 | fastcompany.com                    |         235 |              5.9702 |
  |   1374 | newsweek.com                       |         136 |             10.1029 |
  |   1368 | onstartups.com                     |         142 |              9.6338 |
  |   1335 | appleinsider.com                   |         178 |              7.5000 |
  |   1335 | blogs.msdn.com                     |         177 |              7.5424 |
  |   1327 | valleywag.com                      |         377 |              3.5199 |
  |   1327 | bloomberg.com                      |         230 |              5.7696 |
  |   1308 | crunchgear.com                     |         189 |              6.9206 |
  |   1304 | aws.typepad.com                    |          79 |             16.5063 |
  |   1297 | amazon.com                         |          99 |             13.1010 |
  |   1290 | vimeo.com                          |         127 |             10.1575 |
  |   1280 | msnbc.msn.com                      |         230 |              5.5652 |
  |   1275 | blogs.law.harvard.edu              |          88 |             14.4886 |
  |   1248 | xkcd.com                           |         102 |             12.2353 |
  |   1215 | blogs.wsj.com                      |         168 |              7.2321 |
  |   1211 | overcomingbias.com                 |         115 |             10.5304 |
  +--------+------------------------------------+-------------+---------------------+

Let's get crude and say you're a mere 2 out of 10 on a fictional scale of aptitude. At what level do you think you wouldn't be "beaten" by anyone else? What about developers at 7 or 8? They could just as easily feel the same way.

You need to stop looking at this as an RPG-style skills game and one of the world/market being a massive place with opportunities for all. There are so many niches that you can find something productive to do. You just need to be prepared to fail over and over until you get a success.

Once you've proven yourself then those doors will open.

For someone that's simply convinced they are that good but without a track-record the only options are (1) and (5), all the rest will require some form of proof beyond 'your saying so'.

as here they imply simply bringing leftovers home, although it has been a very long time since I've heard the term doggy bag and am more accustomed to people asking if anyone wants a box or their leftovers wrapped up.

It took a while for me to get used to the US phenomenon of asking for leftovers to be "boxed up" and I've noticed a similar level of surprise with less travelled Europeans I've taken to the US.

I'm used to it now (though I still wouldn't ever do it myself) but this is not even slightly common or acceptable practice in the UK. Such a request wouldn't be met with disgust or offense, though, merely confusion. I doubt many places except Chinese restuarants/takeouts would have anything to put the food in anyway.

So, yeah, this is a very American practice from the UK POV. I'd be surprised if it weren't common somewhere in Europe, though, but I've never seen it happen on my travels.

Splitting a meal or asking for more utensils to share a dish isn't exactly common here either but it is done, especially in pubs or similarly low-end places.

I'd hate to try :) I've never ever seen anybody do that, except for maybe asking for an extra spoon to share a desert.

> Also I'm curious if doggy bags imply the same connotations where you are from, as here they imply simply bringing leftovers home, although it has been a very long time since I've heard the term doggy bag and am more accustomed to people asking if anyone wants a box or their leftovers wrapped up.

I think that part of the stigma is that eating out is somewhat of a luxury in Europe whereas in America it is extremely normal. Prices are in general much higher here when eating out, the menus more varied (no thousand island dressing here, no burgers (at least, not in most places)) and people tend to dress up before going out.

A 'doggy bag' simply does not go well with the image of going out when you look at it like that. So I think that it's as much custom as it is setting and social stigma, if you asked for a doggy bag in a restaurant your peers would assume that you are either broke or very very stingy.

Or that you had a dog :)

Of course this is just my experience, maybe other Europeans can add / detract from that by giving their perspective, this is mine.

http://skitch.com/petercooper/dkny7/3d