rgr

If I were designing html5 I would have removed a bunch of redundant tags instead of adding new ones.

I like Pandora a lot but a couple of months ago I switched to last.fm because it gave me more variety. Maybe it's time to check out Pandora again -- though last.fm is still 100% free.

I'm cool with both.

I think you just summarized the theory of blub, but with more compassion to the blub.

I worry about people using the work 'hacker' so broadly that it becomes meaningless. Is a football player a hacker because he's 'hacking' his body to optimize the actions that would lead to a touchdown?

Please let's stick to 'hacker' as a person who creates innovative technology.

You can't ignore growth though. In many cases it's much more important than current active users. A product with 1mil active users and a 10x growth rate is much more valuable than a product with 5mil users and a 2x growth rate. The same calculation applies to stock valuations. A stock isn't priced by current earnings, but by expected future earnings.

Can you recommend any sources for learning CAD modeling?

He didn't say that criticism of Israel is anti-semitism. He just said 'No Politics. No anti-semitism.' I agree with him that HN should have no politics and no anti semitism or any racism for that matter. Don't you?

All new business plans are risky. Dependencies on 3rd parties add risk, but if the potential rewards are big enough the risk is worth taking.

I agree with Paul's point, but it seems like the flip side of the equation is that most startups these days don't have the kind of big exits that internet giants like Amazon, Ebay, Yahoo and Google had (or even the mass market penetration that MySpace and Facebook have gotten for that matter). If a these new startups truly had the potential to capture huge markets, they would need the funding, because 3 guys in an apartment simply can't go after a $5bil opportunity. I think the phenomenon Paul describes is the result of 2 trends, not just one: 1) it's cheaper to start companies and 2) most startups are going after small markets (or whatever is left from big markets that bigger companies have already captured).

How so? I fail to see your reasoning. Are you suggesting Facebook is going to die in the foreseeable future?

Smart money seems to be in great scarcity these days. Those so called smart Wall St firms are the first to line up for tax dollar handouts. Those firms that should be in chapter 11 right now for their stupidity are the ones you and I are now involuntarily working for by proxy of our government.

I don't get your reasoning. He and his cofounders built a product that people wanted. The product spread mostly virally by word of mouth. This is the classic definition of succeeding by one's efforts, not privilege. How does an allegedly elite rolodex (at the time when he was 19, no less) factor into the equation?

facebook.com was originally owned by someone else.

Are you suggesting that Facebook isn't successful?