News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

opal

Re:Generating domain names using Markov Chains on Monday October 20, 2008 @01:10PM (#338059)
But those names suck.
Re:Freemium is Not a Business Model on Friday October 17, 2008 @11:00AM (#335653)
4.53% is the accepted ISO standard.
Re:Freemium is Not a Business Model on Friday October 17, 2008 @10:59AM (#335650)
Seeing if people are willing to pay for it is still a great metric. But until (if ever) the advertising bubble actually pops, extremely few web products will be best served by freemium.

I can count web freemiums that made more money than their free counterparts on half a hand.

Re:Freemium is Not a Business Model on Friday October 17, 2008 @10:20AM (#335620)
There is always a competitor willing to give more away for free with the bet that they can make up for it once they control the market.

This is for the WEB though where cost/user is low and cloning a product is easy. Other platforms are vastly different.

Re:Do I Look Like a CEO? on Friday October 17, 2008 @10:13AM (#335612)
The real genius of bittorrent is how it brings together many people who are interested in sharing the same file all at once so you get great download/upload speeds. This mostly isn't even due to the protocol itself but in the way that torrent sites tend to present the torrents chronologically.

Plus there is no bandwidth wasted on sharing content other than what you are interested in. Almost every other client wants to make you share all kinds of other stuff to even use the network: emule, freenet, tor, i2p, gnutella, etc.

Finally, pure luck has allowed the laws to progress in a way that hasn't resulted in the immediate shutdown or blocking of popular torrent sites. It should be noted that in certain countries this isn't the case and bittorrent has been a total failure there.

Also, on the majority of American college campuses today, bittorrent is a huge failure because it is easily fingerprinted and will get you banned from the network. Maybe they have finally added some stenography to protect against this but not that I know of. Then, there are the large ISPs that are degrading or blocking bittorrent now.

Of course, everyone knows that the real reason bittorrent beat freenet is because bittorrent was python and freenet was a big steaming pile of java:)

Re:Freemium is Not a Business Model on Friday October 17, 2008 @09:08AM (#335556)
Very true. On the web, it's not uncommon for free vs paid users to be 1,000,000 to 1. For desktop apps it may be different, but online, way over-hyped.
Re:Y Combinator Mentoring for Women on Thursday October 16, 2008 @09:18AM (#334403)
No we don't, accurately, and thanks for nothing.
Re:Y Combinator Mentoring for Women on Thursday October 16, 2008 @09:12AM (#334400)
Wow, interesting. The only shortcoming is that you made this all up.

People in PLENTY of more evenly paired occupations flirt all day long. If flirting is something a woman hates then go right ahead into programming! You can easily avoid human interaction almost entirely.

Re:Y Combinator Mentoring for Women on Wednesday October 15, 2008 @02:22PM (#333569)
Now lets look at the men's situation.
Re:Y Combinator Mentoring for Women on Wednesday October 15, 2008 @11:51AM (#333398)
Just to add, the guys have it far worse in this situation.
Crazy in that it's a big shift. Crazier if it actually happens. I don't see anyone saying that it's a bad idea though.
Re:Sorry, Startups: Party's Over on Thursday October 09, 2008 @05:04PM (#328268)
Will is a strong word for so early.
Re:Reminder: Eight (8) days left to submit your YC application. on Thursday October 09, 2008 @11:06AM (#327880)
No time for no return.
Re:Mint.com users are feeling the hurt, pinching pennies on Monday October 06, 2008 @04:39PM (#325275)
January is a heavy vacation month...?
Re:America's Most Overrated Product: the Bachelor's Degree on Monday October 06, 2008 @04:34PM (#325270)
I'm sure that there are some colleges where other factors have greater influence on the behavior of the college. But for the vast majority, all that I've seen, the schools are operated exactly as you say.
Re:The Man Who Stuck His Head Inside a Particle Accelerator on Monday October 06, 2008 @01:53PM (#325137)
I guess he got bored with the pickle slicer.
Re:Mac OS X market share cracks 8% on Monday October 06, 2008 @11:45AM (#324992)
No. You can compile the vast majority of unix projects on linux and run them with no modifications. Darwinports is ok if you want only the top 1% of popular projects, often several versions behind.
Re:Mac OS X market share cracks 8% on Friday October 03, 2008 @03:44PM (#322985)
Too bad it's a fake *nix. Not compatible out of the box with 95% of linux applications.
I signed up for a site like this before.... never heard from them again. Good luck making it popular enough to work.
Re:Why Android Will Soon Kick Ass on Tuesday September 30, 2008 @02:16PM (#319851)
Java's "write once, run everywhere" is a sham. Even within just the mobile targets.
Re:Why Android Will Soon Kick Ass on Tuesday September 30, 2008 @02:14PM (#319850)
YES.
Re:How to get into the Hottest Restaurants in Town on Monday September 29, 2008 @07:00PM (#318995)
I'm still stuck on the get hot girl to accompany me step. I hear that's where the expense lies.
Re:Rebuttal to "A hacker's loneliness" on Thursday September 25, 2008 @03:05PM (#315234)
> I never even knew!

Exactly. And it seems you still don't understand what you missed. The essay probably should have ended there.

- Written as another person who also spent countless hours every single day with programming/engineering for entire youth.

Re:Tipjoy Raises $1 Million For Its Simple Micropayment Platform on Thursday September 25, 2008 @08:57AM (#314793)
Making billions through overdraft fees is the way they innovate. Less work, less risk, and they have no soul anyway.
Re:The worst misuse of the term 'load balancing' ever on Wednesday September 24, 2008 @10:20AM (#313503)
kills -> restarts? Http can be pretty stateless anyway.