sd

Actually, it seems like the argument is subtly different. Instead of trying to guess what we're looking for, this would try to answer what we've explicitly asked about. It's like the difference between your friends randomly telling you what car you should buy and them answering in response to your question about what car you should buy.

In a linear regression model, r-squared represents how correlated the model is with the data, while beta indicates the relationship between an outcome (e.g., revenue) to an input (e.g., GDP). Thus, a r-squared of one in a model where profit is the dependent variable and GDP is the single independent variable suggests that profit is 100% correlated with GDP. A beta of 1 indicates that profit moves in the same direction and to the same degree as GDP.

If you read Reason enough, you'll know that they take this position -- that market liberalization makes the world better -- on pretty much every issue.

Perhaps this should be entitled "The Perils of Market Efficiency" instead, because this is more about market liberalization than improved productivity.

Although this article highlights some of the consequences of market liberalization, I think it's dangerously to extrapolate this case more broadly. First, structural readjustment programs took place in sub-Saharan countries that lacked necessary markets, transit infrastructure, and other prerequisites for private business growth. This differs from in the United States, where such infrastructure is substantially more mature. Second, many of these countries lack sufficient crop diversification, which when coupled with limited purchasing power, exacerbates famine during droughts.

If you think the American government is coercive, then imagine what would transpire in its absence. Regardless, voting reduces the coercive power of the state by affording citizens the right to change government.

Remember that this is about teaching students to program and not about producing code for a business on deadline. I learned much more about how to program by doing things myself from scratch than using the relevant libraries. Also, I find learning the low-level stuff much more interesting that memorizing libraries and reading documentation.

If the bg stands for Mr. Gates, any idea what the C3 represents?

It seems like the core message (apart from getting to profitability quickly) is pretty important to YC startups keen on getting acquired - "in a poor economy, companies really need to find better, cheaper, and more efficient ways of operating."

In other words, stop making widgets that turn your Facebook friends into zombies and start creating ones that make it easier for people to sell or make things.

1. To bid on your DVD player, I had to randomly guess the lowest price. The only reason I would pay more than the lowest price on Onista is out of frustration from having to guess the price. Unless the prices were wildly cheaper, I'd just go to eBay and "buy it now" and avoid the hassle.

2. Before you promote your site, get a copy editor. I am very cautious about paying - let alone registering - on sites that have lots of typos.

3. Cut out as many features as you can. This probably starts with the "social network." Not only is the sheer volume of options confusing, but it's also impossible to maintain such complexity with three part-time developers. There are a lot of broken links and titles that don't accurately reflect the content they link to (such as category links that say there are multiple listings, when there are in fact none, and vice-versa). I'd rather have one simple and well-done feature than 10 half-baked ones.

Here's a question for anyone that does angel investment: How much does this decrease in availability of VC capital and exit options affect your decision to invest in fledgling startups?

Just to clarify, I meant that the other course might result in much more massive decline than has already happened. Think 22 sigma level -- like the '87 crash. Bailing out distressed financial firms is almost expected now. Thus, if it doesn't happen, then a lot of market participants may reevaluate their choice to invest in firms with heavy debt.

Obviously, these bail outs have their costs, such as the value of money lent as well as increased moral hazard, but it's worth considering whether this is worth the potential cost of a market collapse to the whole economy.

Obviously, it's impossible to determine the effect of any one action on the economy -- but if this $85b prevents the markets from crashing, I'd argue its money well "spent." U.S. market cap has already fallen $4t in the past year. Do you really want to risk losing considerably more?

Just have one text field for the url you want to shorten. When the user clicks submit, then give two urls. One is the shortened url, the other is for analytics. Make the analytics url publicly accessible and have a button on that page to make it private -- for a cost!

Higher interest rates = less credit & financing = fewer startups

One major problem with this article is that it confounds content-based sites with the web. Just a quick sampling of Alexa's Top 100 Sites for about 10 random countries indicates that Google, MSN, and Yahoo (or their localized versions) are frequently among the top ten most visited. So there are in fact some truly global sites on these here interwebs.

What types of site vary the most between countries? Sites that produce content, like newspapers, all-in-one portals, and video sites.

Maybe the problem with Hulu and Pandora isn't just their complex licensing agreements, but also the content that they license. Anyone been to karaoke bars in Asia that are popular among youth? Guess what? Only about one-tenth to one-third of the content is in English. Look hard enough, like mechanical_fish suggests and you'll find plenty of similar sites (some even identical) in other countries.

Looks like Ballard in Seattle.

FMI http://www.myballard.com/2008/09/11/microsoft-ad-set-in-ball...

I think the concern is that HTTPS is necessary, but not sufficient for security. If you use HTTPS on your site, but send cookies without the secure flag, then it is possible for someone to trick the user into acquiring (or otherwise obtain) standard HTTP content. Setting the secure flag requires that all content sent relative to the cookie be from HTTPS. Hopefully, that makes some sense.

FYI, the process has been simplified with a security tool called Surf Jack.

See http://enablesecurity.com/2008/08/11/surf-jack-https-will-no... for more information. The Internet -- it's a fragile thing.

Even though this article is brimming with hyperbole, it brings up a number of important points that are often glossed over by many readers of HN. These include:

1) For most entrepreneurs, the present value of expected personal profit from a startup is probably less than that from a salary at a big tech company -- or even less so than from on Wall Street. 2) Luck begets success in entrepreneurship. Sure, it requires hard work and some intelligence, but obviously there are far more smart and hard working people than people who started public companies. Perhaps the function should be "(success) = (hard work) * (intelligence) * (luck),” where hard work and intelligence = 0 or 1 and luck is any real number. 3) Many tech bloggers and journalists are writing about things in which they don't have expertise. It's commonly cited among the academics whom I’ve met that expertise requires 10+ years in a field. Many of these people are in their 20s. Something doesn't add up. Moreover, many experienced people extrapolate their previous lessons to situations that are too broad or not directly parallel.

You know the universe is coming to an end when art and click fraud converge.

In addition to periodically taking a mini-vacation; I also find it helpful to take a change of scenery. If I'm getting fatigued by working at my desk, going to get some work done at a cafe or meeting with someone helps get my energy going again. Maybe it's the caffeine, but I suspect it's something more. Nothing is more draining than spending 12+ hours a day, day after day, in front of one (or two or three) computer screen(s) at one desk.

Back at the 2001 Comdex, Bill Gates announced that by 2007, such devices would be the most popular form of PC in the U.S. Although his timing was off, I think Gates was definitely on to something.

Yet as brm notes, it's probably going to take more than just the open source community. Open source seems great for advancing the bleeding-edge; but honestly, unless money is on the line, how many devs are going to cut out their cool feature that they spent hours developing, just because it's hard to use or might make the device more complicated?

Perhaps, a team (but not necessarily a large team) of hackers devoted full-time to making a successful interface / kiosk for this might make it big. Perhaps, such a business might make a good fit for Y Combinator. ;-)

I somewhat disagree about this not being very "Googley." Although Lively is very different than the Google homepage in terms of presentation; both share the same ends of organizing the world's information and making it accessible. Google's press release blog post about Lively suggests, "In our user research, we’ve been amazed at how much more poignant it is to receive an animated hug than seeing the text [[hug]]" [1]. Perhaps in some abstract sense, Lively allows users to store and present information that is difficult to disseminate via text or other currently available methods. On the other hand, maybe it's just Google's way of making money on a perceived market that is the intersection between video gamers and Facebookers.

[1] http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/be-who-you-want-on-we...