skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I agree with all of your (webwright's) points. However, I was trying to explain people's behavior rather than highlight what logically makes the most sense.
Outraged eBay sellers plan boycott
i'm diggin the new webkit. much much faster than firefox
Awareness is only really valuable if you're in a position to capitalize on it. Has it been super valuable to RescueTime? You're still 3 "owner-operators", plus "the occasional contractor". It obviously hasn't solved your recruiting problems. From what I can tell, you've "closed" a "round" of YC funding. Got a real term sheet yet? Did awareness do it for you?

I'm not trying to be petulant.

For you guys, awareness may convert directly into users, and users to a shot at VC funding (though, if you're up and running already, god I hope not).

And on the flip side, in my field (security), there's an obvious need for secrecy; we're a bunch of cutthroat motherfuckers over here. So my experience doesn't translate to yours directly.

Just saying, the answers to questions like these aren't always straightforward.
It's just the business cycle. The economy at whole is having problems and the company is at risk of lower earnings, as you said. This is temporary. The economy will recover, and Yahoo is probably expecting their stock to rise again to closer to their average. Yahoo is probably telling Microsoft that the premium they are offering does not reflect their true value, but an artificially low value instead. Come back later when our stock rebounds with the rest of the economy.

I'm saying that Yahoo is currently down right now, and understandably so, but that it is set to rise with the rest of the economy and Yahoo wants Microsoft to reflect that in their offer.

I believe that there is validity in the claim "massively undervalued" though the term "massively" is subject to different interpretations.
If your startup is hovering near another more established one, outing the idea could lead competition quickly. I find this to be particularly true for facebook applications. There are several powerful companies that have the reach and the expertise to quickly clone your idea and beat you to it.
This may sound simplistic, but I think this happens due to the intent of the user when using some service.

Simply people with commercial intents, willing to spend money on something, are more likely to use a search engine than a social network.
Whatever the ineffectiveness of ads on social sites, I'd venture that tv or radio effectiveness is far worse. They just don't get graded (measured) with anywhere near the scrutiny that these ad networks do.
In this day and age its fairly easy to take a concept and build it out for little outlay.
People are secretive so they can avoid the likes of a Marc Andreeson or a Mark Zuckerburg. As you can plainly see, despite all the talk of "honor" and "our reputation is the basis for our business" and not dealing with companies that are being sued under suspicious circumstances, etc., even "top-tier" VC firms will put their stated ethics aside and jump into bed with the money makers, regardless of how they came to be that way. Who the heck wants to go around for the rest of their life wondering "what could have been" if they kept their mouths shut. And here's a little clue - just because VCs tell you they think you're a noob for using NDAs, doesn't mean they respect you for mindlessly taking their advice. Learn to think for yourself. What would you rather invest in, as a VC - a guy who's taken measures to ensure that everyone who knows about the idea is either part of it or prevented from copying it, or a guy who spoke about the idea with 100 programmers who may very well be trying to secretly implement it behind his back even though they pretended not to be intested? It's called control, and when you're starting up, it's one of the few things that are actually "in your control".
A Byte of Python - Beginner's Book / Tutorial
Мы все-таки на этом веб-сайте находимся, а не работаем... :~)
I don't know about should have. The subtle ambiguity in the wording is what makes this version of the problem interesting.
Sony Ericsson Unveils Microsoft Phone
I have to sign up for a pre-paid master card in order to get paid? I gave up after that.
Getting Engaged (with your customers)
I'm a bit skeptical of outsourcing my subversion repository. Getting backups is nice but you can get those anyway from your hosting provider.

If you don't feel like spending hours learning how to make subversion and apache play together (depending on your OS and versions and whether or not you need to compile things from scratch, etc) I guess it might be a good idea.
Yes, it started as KHTML, but Apple has taken it to a new level.

The KHTML and WebKit guys have had their differences in the past, but I believe KHTML is trying to merge all of the WebKit improvements back into KHTML, hopefully eventually unforking the two:

http://arstechnica.com/journals/linux.ars/2007/07/23/the-unf...
All good questions. The big wins for us at RescueTime (I imagine this would vary by situation) were:

1) We got crazy excited and worked our asses off and ultimately set aside great jobs to work on this full-time. I don't know if we could've sustained the energy if we didn't have our users (and potential users) dragging us along.
2) We applied to YC. I honestly don't know if we would've done this if we didn't have such a great response to our "this is what we're building... coming soon!" page.

3) We got accepted to YC. I dunno if it mattered, but it certainly is easier to say "we're building something people want" when we've got a line of thousands of people who have signed up for the beta, contributed ideas, blogged about us, etc. Showing "love letters" from users was huge, IMO.
4) the product is HUGELY better than the original vision IMO, because we've been buried in several thousand emails from people who want certain things that never occurred to us or didn't want things that we thought were important.

For VCs and for internal morale/energy, traction wins. There is simply no substitute for being able to say, "people LOVE us" and being able to prove it. There is nothing that keeps you working harder than users applauding your featureset and clamoring for enhancements. At least for me.

Regarding funding beyond YC, we currently aren't looking for investment but we might be eventually. We have been approached by several investors. Ask me in a few months. :-) Either way, I think being out-there helps on this front, and stealth would hurt us.
Is it just me or do grammatically incorrect prominently placed titles annoy others as well? (I think Lisp rocks, of course, so I don't have an issue with the content)
Get paid to find bugs: Get a job in QA or test engineering.

Seriously, pay is better, as are job security and success rate. I got my start in industry as the testing guy for a fairly small contract software house. I started following the instructions on someone else's testing plan, then eventually graduated to doing my own testing plans, from design to execution. For someone in his last year of undergrad/right out of school, it afforded decent pay, good job security, and great industry experience.

Furthermore, it made me a far better coder, because it gave me a crash course in how to try to break things. It gave me a better sense of where and when software tends to break. As a result, the software I write is much more reliable than it would otherwise.
Measure yourself using the same techniques the Fortune 500 uses
Thanks.

I hate clicking on a post only to find a video. I don't always have Flash available and even when I have flash I don't always have sound. It helps when someone summarizes the main point in a comment.
I guess it's not quite an open proxy. It translates pages for mobile devices. I think they use this by default if you do a search from your phone (depending on the kind of phone) and click on the results. It came in handy when I was using a Blackberry.
hey, i was wondering if you might be able to show me your old 'this is what were building... coming soon' page?

ty in advance if can/do.
Here is my personal opinion:

I've been working on a project now for almost 5 months. I've been more free to discuss my project lately because I think to myself that most are not going to be as motivated as I've been nor are they going to sacrifice the long hours and weekends I've poured into it.

I commend the creator of Pageflakes...if you read this guy's blog or articles the guy practically hands it to you on a plate...yet I haven't seen many take advantage of it. Except maybe Yahoo :).

I also believe that if your passionate about your idea you don't want it contaminated with others ideas and views. Now, this definitely plays a role in the future phases, but in the beginning you want to create your own idea...not someone elses. We all want the credit, so we keep it under wraps until the time is right.
I think the Marimba Effect is the key point. You've highlighted a problem with the original submitter's question: It focuses too much on how the competitors will react when you announce an idea before shipping a product, whereas the primary concern should be how the customers will react.

I just watched a talk by Mac developer Wil Shipley, whose advice is "Don't announce until it can be downloaded. Don't let it be downloaded until it can be bought." Otherwise you spoil a lot of perfectly good hype.

There are, of course, some exceptions to this rule in the webapp world -- for example, if you're starting Ptacek's social calendar for pets, you can't even build the product without having customers, since social networks without members are completely useless. So you're forced to bootstrap.
Man, I really need to get around to learning Lisp. (Of course I've been telling myself for a few years now.)

Admittedly, as someone who's only ever used C, C++, C# and Java, Lisp seems so alien that I have a hard time understanding how anyone can do any non-trivial work in it. Then I look at all the awesome stuff that's been done in it and how many people are obsessed with it and, well, I definitely need to check it out at SOME point.
Yes! Couldn't agree more. I'm a big fan of the "Use Better Tools" mentality. This, of course, means using tools in the first place. Measurement is a critical one.
Where did you come up with that assumption? A quick (very unscientific) test of a big web application (over 100 JavaScript and image files) shows you're wrong...

(first column is seconds with empty cache, second column is seconds after cache was filled)

WebKit - 15 / 9
Firefox 3 - 18 / 12
Safari 3 - 19 / 12
Opera 9.24 - 20 / 15
Opera 9.5b - 20 / 19
Firefox 2 - 21 / 21

Again, these are very rough numbers (I took the best out of about 3 runs) on a pretty slow machine (1.33GHz G4). Perhaps the numbers would be different for simple static pages, but I don't have a good way to time that.
I'd take that bet -- but, then, I used to watch TV before TiVO was invented.

You see, kids, back in the Elder Days, when a commercial came on, you had no choice but to watch it. I mean, you could click to another channel, but then you ran the risk of missing part of the program that you were originally watching.

Nowadays, of course, I can easily go for years without seeing a TV commercial, so I guess you're right: an ad on Facebook, however ineffective, is better than an ad I never see. But TiVO users are still a minority in the world, so TV and radio ads are still plenty effective.
Definitely worth listening to all the way to the end (it gets much better at the end).
Mostly out of unthinking reflex and herd mentality. Startups are secretive because past startups were secretive.

There certainly are benefits to it in some cases, but in most it's probably best to just open your doors ASAP.
Ph.D.s Ditch the Lab
Nah. Everyone can see two blue eyes.
It's also worth noting that Apple could have used a different engine, or started from scratch.

Similarly, they could have chosen not to open source the darwin kernel, and they could have based it on something other than BSD.

The point was that Apple seems to know when to choose open source technology and leverage it, and when to start from scratch and build their own proprietary system.
What does the money buy you? (With limited contacts, how smart is his smart money?)
I can. It seems developers in general do not consider performance to be a priority anymore, unfortunately.
I am not sure google would be interested in buying Yahoo the same way intel wouldnt be interested in AMD. Always good to have an underperforming competitor to avoid being labelled as a bully or a monopoly!
I've been doing the same thing for the past 6 months. I agree. I guess the details of an idea is what I would care most about before the release. I wouldn't mind sharing my overall idea with a few people just to see what details they have in mind. If it's good, I'd ask them to be my partner. And if they take the idea and develop it into something better then me, then so be it. they deserve it more.
Not Your Grandma’s Robot
Mashups Are Breaking the Mold at Microsoft
Reminds me more of Amazon Mechanical Turk, which I was thinking of using as a generalized QA mechanism for computer software just the other day--the HIT would be "Report a new, unique, significant bug on the bug tracker of a piece of software you use."
TipJoy Launches (YC winter 08)
That's awesome! That's going on the white board at work first thing tomorrow morning.
I use facebook a fair bit and I've gotten so used to using it that I'd forgotten it had ads. I read this article and then had to check facebook to see if it actually display ads. I've been just totally screening them out.
Awesome concept and execution. This has alot of potential!
His logic is that because your college isn't the best for you at each individual class, it isn't the best for you overall. That's stupid. One must be. If there are 2,000 colleges and you chose one at random, you'd have a 1/2,000 chance of having chosen the best. Not (1/1000)^35 or whatever that moron came up with.

Not to mention it's most likely that the top x are all so close to the best for an individual, if such a thing could truly be quantified, that the difference between them is negligible. Let's say that the top 5% are that way, you now have a 5% chance, given random selection. Add in the fact that people don't attend random colleges, and there's a pretty non-zero chance that you're attending the college you should. Most people probably fail, but even then not be enough that it would have been worth the massive effort required.

I'm guessing from his abominable logic that this guy went to the wrong college.
Social ads are only cool if they can get you to start a conversation about the product with your friends. That's why the movie trailers they show in theaters are so effective. Because if they're cool you can talk about them to your friends sitting on either side of you. And then go see the movie a couple months later when it comes out.

Facebook social ads are lame because they don't start conversations. People complain about YouTube's plan to show preroll commercials, but honestly I don't think it's such a bad idea. Except instead of showing ads in front of all videos, only show ads in front of the movies that you've favorited. Why? Because when you watch a movie that's in your favorites, it's usually because you're showing your friends. So then there exists the potential to start a conversation. And the other 90% of the time when you're watching YouTube alone the ads never bother you.
Good points. I never really thought about the increase in cost of using the software.
gotta love Venture Voice
pmpknpi - A dead-simple blog API written in Merb designed  to be customized and embellished.
Are there really lots of great ideas floating around, more than we can all use? If so, please tell me two or three!
The blog post title is a play on the "All Your Base Are Belong to Us" meme: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_your_base_are_belong_to_us
It would be cool if there were a way to leave a tipjar in the comments/threads/diaries of social sites.
Many congratulations to you both.
I imagine you can.
Funny you ask. We just added a new one today for some new features we're planning for businesses. http://www.rescuetime.com/forbiz Very similar in style to our original one which was basically the site as it is, with the product tour (prototypes at the time), but without the sign up form.
Congrats, Kirigins!
The point being that grammatical incorrectness is less annoying if it creates a snowclone.
Most are not. I've been amazed at how much various startup founders have been willing to share.

Most, however, are selective as to who, what, and how they reveal. If you've met a few times with a startup founder and gotten to know them, they'll tell you a lot about their future plans. It's great to get feedback, after all. You're expected not to blab that info about, but that's why they bothered to get to know you before telling you stuff.

There's no point to indiscriminately spewing your vaporware all over the Internet. If you don't have a demo or UI for people to react to, you probably won't even get good feedback, and it'll lessen the impact when you actually do launch (case in point: Arc). But if you do have something for people to react to, or you have people in a similar space that know your target market, you can gain quite a bit from sharing your idea.
As Howard Aiken said: "Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats."

That being said, previous commenters have pointed out that getting ideas stolen isn't exactly the point.

Yeah, okay, so this comment is basically an excuse for me to spout a favored quote, but really, it's one that's definitely helped me get over secrecy paranoia in developing my own ideas.
Congrats Ivan and Abbey. I'll be adding it to my blog immediately.

Everyone please be sure to give me lots of money so they'll have nice stats to show on Demo Day.
This is really cool, it feels much more personal than being stuck with an ad. Hilariously though, on TechCrunch this has become a moral discussion over the virtues of tipping at Starbucks.
You can see it sans CSS and images at:

http://web.archive.org/web/20070509002443/http://www.rescuet...

You can look at the live site and get the jist of how the images/css would look like (it's not much different).

We detailed the process here:

http://blog.rescuetime.com/2007/07/05/web-biz-how-to-have-40...
(4,000 turned out to be a much lower number than what we eventually launched with)
My conclusion from the article: advertising in general will slow down, but not as much as in previous recessions, because of internet advertising growth (which arguably lags behind compared to offline advertising). Those are not too far-fetched speculations...

As a side note, when having a look at the GDP/ad spending graph, it's quite impressive to see how those 2 are correlated. The ad spending curve is (almost) always an "exaggeration" of the real GDP one!
You can get the MP3 from here:

http://www.venturevoice.com/2005/11/vv_show_20_joel_spolsky_...

One of my pet hates is using video, especially online non downloadable video, when it adds absolutely nothing. Video lectures with slides I can understand - but a static one frame face of Joel?
For the purpose of commentary, let's assume that you're actually creating a product for the public. 1.0 means that this is the first point at which you're confident that the product reflects your vision for a first release. It is feature complete (for all the features you haven't pared down or pushed back), and all of your known bugs from the beta period have been addressed.

Notice that I said "known bugs from the beta period." If you haven't had a beta period, you're having one now -- you're not at 1.0. I align with the traditional camp that considers beta software to be on a feature freeze. They may not work right yet, but they're implemented.
Finally! The need for a service like this has always been around. Your execution is excellent too.
at which age will the little-uns be inspired towards ycombinator, Paul? :D
As someone who's been working in a "stealth mode" startup for the last few months, I can relate. It wasn't my idea to work this way, but my partner insisted. The reasoning is that there's two parts to the business and the other part, the non-technical one, won't be ready for public consumption for a while yet. Disclosing it now, when we won't be ready to fully launch for a relatively long time, could be disasterous. As mechanical_fish said, we'd lose a lot of perfectly good hype.

Mind you, I'd love nothing more to be able to answer people openly when they ask, "so what are you working on anyways?"
No, you can computer more for less because of utility computing examples like Google. And I didn't say that having something that provides computing power in the home will go away, just that the value of you sitting down with your IBM PC-AT and running Lotus 123 will go away. When you claim that the desktop is better than the web, you had SETI@Home in mind?

And it is all about efficiently using computing power -- this will change your view on developing applications for the better. The sooner you accept that the web is a better path, the sooner you'll figure out to make web apps better, and we'll all appreciate your work.
MySpace actually sells the rights to spam your account
Funny that no one's asked "to whom?".

I have a guess, though.
The Concept of a Universal Classification of Intelligence
Linux Kernel 2.6 Local Root Exploit
Purchasing free-software-friendly hardware
I have too many ideas and not much time to develop them all. If you narrow down what area you are more interested in and what your skills are I'll give you some of my ideas
Arts and Crafts Find New Life Online
Thanks PG - confirm everything appears to be completely working now!
emo on Flickr - Photo Sharing
Nine Weird & Disturbing (But Funny) Things Found On The Web
"You should add to that what REALLY happens when people respond to it. "

On what do you base this claim? Can you, for example, point to several threads here where someone declared the plans of their startup and there was a strong, valuable response leading to favorable business results?

The "Don't bother with secrets" meme is something of a permathread, but there seems to be scant tangible evidence for what many people claim (either for or against keeping mum).
Suggestion: rel=nofollow for ranked sites. The spammers are already tipping sites that they want to jack up the pagerank of.
Does that explain all of the posts on this site saying "we're looking for a hacker!!"?

And lack of any saying "We're looking for a business idea guy!"?
Painted Cats | Animals & Nature | Funny Videos, Pictures and Jokes at JibJab
Cool stuff.

Quick gripe: On the main page, you show sites sans subdomain, but you seem to be tracking money based on subdomain, so for example techcrunch.com has two entries.
Does anyone happen to have a transcript of this?
you can alway beta test your software before adding the cost of bug to your customers
When, oh, when will someone develop a decent competitor to Ebay? The site is awful and is ripe for a startup to carve away market share. They've already proven the business model. We know it makes money. I know the boys at auctomatic are doing their best to help out, but what's needed is a full on competitor.

I mean, really. How hard is it to offer a couple of decent looking templates for people to make their own site, to that it isn't such an eyesore? How hard is it to implement a better form of search and categorization? How hard is it to develop a form of authentication to cut down on all the fraud that takes place on Ebay?

The last time I used Ebay or thought it was decent was back in 97-98. The site hasn't changed much since.

We should have a challenge to see who can develop the best Ebay competitor.