skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
1. Make something people want. 2. Don't die until you do #1. 3. There's nothing stopping you except yourself - the people who read this site are already further ahead than they might think. 4. Distribution is key, and is easier to get if you're doing #1. 5. Talking to important people (selling yourself!) is easy and fun if you're doing #1. 6. Don't think - do. Perfection is the enemy of good enough, and good enough is the enemy of at all. (That came from Paul Buchheit). 7. Launch fast, launch often. There's more, I should probably write a blog post about it but I'm wasting time when I should be doing #1. :)
Outside of taking up arms against the United States, you can pretty much do whatever you please.

http://www.uscitizenship.info/en_US/faq/citizenship/ans/g60....
damn, that's a lot of commits. I only usually make 3-5 a day, but then again I only work on my work stuff 8 hours a day, too.
This is a pretty cool idea. I guess that your success will depend on whether or not it's an interesting place to go to read about other people's dreams, though: in most communities there is a real gap between personal use and people who contribute.

So you should allow people to sort by language, for example.

It is much more in the nature of a social experiment than a tech startup, but I think it's pretty cool.
The revenue model is to tell people what the dreams mean :)
Perfectly twittery. Excellent user design. I love it. All you need to do is 1) spread the word to non-developers and 2) solicit feedback from registered users (most important source) as well as those who aren't ready to register yet (a feedback box.) I wouldn't use it because I don't remember my dreams. But I would have a starry night background, with some purple in it, like the background of the Mac OS X Leopard desktop.
Jealous?
I don't think so. Getting enough traffic to choke a small VPS is possible sooner than you may expect, especially if you have not rooted out all serious bottlenecks (which are often discovered during load testing.)
First look: Google relaunches JotSpot as Google Sites
UK ISPs face forced anti-piracy measures
Well, that depends on your definition of "home". This guy apparently slept in Kinko's. How he got away with that, I don't know, but if we define "home" as "a place where you can sleep without being arrested, robbed, attacked, or frozen", then he had a home.

I should mention that I live in the Northeast. Here, being homeless is a much bigger deal than in California because of that whole "frozen" factor.
Nice to hear it, thank you. Keep up the good work!
Wikia Open Sources Social Networking - Focused Networking Now Open to All
People who take the Tickle test are probably wasting time, so all this shows is that Smart people are more likely to be sitting around idle in Massachusetts.
PHP isn't going anywhere: LAMP increasing to 3e5 DLs/month
We'd consider any technology startup. But as it says
in the News.YC guidelines,

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

you shouldn't use this site to ask YC questions about your application; just send us an email. Though in this case the answer is in our FAQ:

http://ycombinator.com/faq.html
Excellent bulletin board material! Thank you.
I didn't know about Markus Frind's intelligence (interesting info), but in PlentyOfFish's case (and successes like MySpace), it's no masterpiece of hacking.

Writing prose can be similar in intensity to writing code. John Scalzi, a recent sci-fi award winner, wrote a book for writers called "You're Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffeeshop." Many writers block out pure concentration time. Nonetheless, I'll concede that long stretches of time are more available to the young, unless they are out partying :)

I wonder how many big successes depend on bleeding edge software? For every Google, there are plenty more like MySpace, Ebay, Amazon, and Facebook.

I usually live off specialized applications, where you build software that focuses on a particular need for a niche population. Knowing the domain (say radiotherapy or creative writing) is really useful because of insights into how you can fashion new tools using advancing technology (e.g., faster 3D graphics or a better web framework). So while I agree that creating totally innovative approaches might be easier for the young, I think experience helps in creating domain-specific software.

My main point, though, is even if you believe you have a limited shelf-life, you might consider it's your shelf-life in only one of many possible avenues to make your mark.
We're doing some emergency maintenance on the sites, and things should already have been fixed a long time ago. Scaling issues are rough. The good news is that even though our shared-storage system was quite scaling as we'd hoped, we've got a new one in place, so things should be better going forward.
Are you an independently wealthy individual? If not, why do you feel that you are in a position of authority to discuss the state of knowledge of the average rich person?

Could it be that you, like Joel, are capable of observation and imagination?

And are you asserting that Joel, who has not only worked as an Israeli soldier (did you read the essay?) and a baker's assistant, but has also spent time as an average, corporate Microsoft employee, is somehow ineligible to discuss his own former perspective? Or are you suggesting that Joel somehow got special treatment at Microsoft because his grandma had money? I'm sure Bill Gates was really impressed by that.

If you think Joel is wrong, give us some arguments. Spare us the ad hominem attacks.
My thoughts exactly. MySpace for me is just shorthand for "pile of crap", not the sort of branding I'd want for my website :p
Numbers Guy
Fearing Google...
People are focusing on citizenship, which is not the issue. The Selective Service board may have something to say on the matter, for instance.
Even the openness is not what i was expecting last year. So what if it runs on Linux? You're stuck with whatever the Android SDK supports and you have to use Java.
This is the shirt I wear when I interview hackers (ignore fake prices, not an ad)
CryoPID - A Process Freezer for Linux
Ask YC: I started learning Lisp and I'm looking for some advice.
Hello all. Let me give you a brief background of myself, its important to the post, I promise.

I am a graduate with a CS degree. I didn't really get into programming during college, I enjoyed it, but it wasn't my life like so many other students. I now am getting to the point where its becoming my life (in a good way). I feel like I am really behind in certain areas and no matter what I do, I can't seem to break this barrier and step it up to the next level. I was taught C++ in college but haven't used it once since. I got a job as a web programmer and now work using mainly PHP and Javascript.

I have wanted to take my abilities to the next level for some time but I didn't know how. A friend of mine wanted to start programming so we decided to learn a language together. We narrowed it down to Python or Lisp. I am now learning Lisp and enjoying it, but I don't know how to proceed. It seems every time I try to read a book, the basic stuff is too basic and the advanced stuff is too advanced. I'm in this limbo where I know enough to be a successful web programmer, but know almost nothing of real programming. The ramblings in this message should convey how upset I am with myself. I just don't get it.

I need some advice. I can't seem to find basic lisp projects to get me going. I have even tried to find home work problems on the web just to get something. Books seem to go from "here's a loop!" to "here's a bunch of stuff that we have never covered and now we are throwing it in!" I don't know how to move forward.

Any thoughts and advice would be most appreciated.
modern cold war
From this "analysis":

"This time around is better. Taking the regression equations produced by running the numbers in the data table put together by Richard Lynn in Race Differences in Intelligence... "

Hm, that would be this book by Richard Lynn:

The IQs of the races...can be explained as having arisen from the different environments in which they evolved, and in particular from the ice ages in the northern hemisphere exerting selection pressures for greater intelligence for survival during cold winters...

-475, Inane and Racist. This is the mother of all trolls. Do not feed it.
Microsoft Internal Emails about Vista Problems
To his credit and as a former grunt myself, you won't survive in any army with an attitude of being the "rich kid" for longer than 30 seconds. (Although the Israeli army is conscripted, so it could be different.)

Being an infantry soldier is just about one of the toughest and bottom of the barrel jobs on the planet. Anyone who serves - in my mind - is automatically given the right to speak from the school of hard knocks.
I would disagree with this, not because it isn't very good advice in general, but because its not good advice for entrepreneurs. The fact is that other people with motivation and drive to start something are quite rare to find in non top-tier schools, and you not only want people who think like an entrepreneur, but you also want them to be able to carry part of the load of the initial work (for web-based applications, code). Don't apply to the top tier schools because its something that everyone else is doing - do it because you'll find the best people there, and anything less is giving yourself a handicap that just isn't worth it. If you're scared about not making it into the top tier, well just remember, wanting to be an entrpreneur already puts you above many, many people.

One thing I do agree on is that starting something requires more than just coding skills - your ability to socialize, to motivate other people, and to get along with others is critically important. However, I would recommend teaching yourself how to socialize and getting academic schooling on code rather than the other way around.

If you're choosing your college based on where you can build a startup, you should look at 3 things:

1) Smart, motivated people. I would say Stanford, Harvard, MIT have taken most of them. Startups are rarely 1 person endeavors, and having a lot of candidates for a partner really helps.

2) Skills. This is why any top-tier university is good, because the skill-sets there are abundant. Plenty of smart people are looking for the next frontier, and you can give it to them.

3) Community. Most people don't get serious about entrepreneurship until they meet an entrepreneur. Make sure you have some sort of VC connection in your school, or a business program in entrepreneurship and a lively entrepreneur community. Also take entrepreneurial classes if you can, and try to connect with the community as fast as possible.

I go to CMU (Carnegie Mellon), and while it has, to some extent, all of the 3 points above, I do sometimes regret not going somewhere better. The difference in the caliber of people and the quantity and quality of the entrepreneurs here is quite apparent. CMU has a lot of old VCs that don't really know the web, and the entrepreneur community here is mostly older people doing older stuff (but still fascinating startups). One thing I'm very satisfied with is the professors here teaching entrepreneurship, as they have their own companies and provide a LOT of advice and motivation (they just are limited in how much help they can give if you're doing a web startup). I would say its a tier or 2 below the top three.

There seems to be a good correlation between the VC money in a certain area and how startup-friendly the colleges nearby are. Its best if you just follow that.

also - business vs CS - do CS.

The business school here at CMU produces the worst slackers-that-look-good-in-suits that I've ever seen. It does wonders to your presentation skills but kills your ability to do any serious work whatsoever.
Your buyer is run by public, unionized bureaucracies. How open do you think they would be to trying something radically new?
Strictly-speaking, it is unnecessary for an entrepreneur, but I wouldn't be very keen to skip college (what's the rush to start your first business? Your career as an entrepreneur doesn't end at 30). The educational background will be very useful -- you can learn Rails, SQL, and the like on your own, but tackling true CS subjects individually is not something a lot of people can truly do. Going to college is also a great experience, from a networking and personal maturity perspective.
Ever hear of a guy named John Carmack, DHH? He develops on Windows. I'm sure he'll be crushed to find out that he won't be able to get a job at 37 Signals.
Actually, I'm a big fan. There's no denying his personal work ethic, leadership, and marketing skills. Several of our clients actually use FogBuzz. If all it took was money, everyone could be just as successful.

Anyone remember Magnet Interactive? It was a consulting shrink-wrap product start-up bootstrapped by blue-bloods which was started post dot-com-crash. It died a quick death.

Joel and his partner built Fog Creek into a success post-dot-com bust and switched business models from consulting to products on-the-fly. They also do a great deal with a very small staff. Analogies to Craigslist come to mind. There's a lot to admire.

It's just a poor subject and analogy choice for Joel. I got the same feeling recently when reading an article on how to "fix" America's public school system--written by Jack (ex GE-CEO) and Suzi Welch. Mr. Welch may know "leadership" and how to run a large business conglomerate, but he has zero "line" experience with the day-to-day challenges of teachers in the modern classroom.

Unfortunately, there's no way to avoid some ad hominem in my refutation since the article's thesis is itself purportedly supported by ad hominem experiences. The article quotes specific examples from Joel's conscripted Isreali Army experience. My comments include examples provided by Joel himself on his personal website and essays on building Fog Creek over the years.
I'd add one more and split "product" out from "technology." For example, youtube was simply a better product for the market than google video -- even though the back-end technology was supposedly worse.

Perhaps there is the assumption that the product can easily change once google, with its massive resources, acquires the company. Evidence though, shows that buyouts and success tend more to feature-freeze products.

Oh, one more: legal protection. Again refer to youtube and the liability of some court ruling against the legal protections that online video sites currently use.
Launching a startup is like letting a child go...
Kind of strange that they have Joe Kraus's actual phone number in one of the demos.
a) Answers without reasons are more or less alma mater shoutouts, I recommend you ignore them.

b) Stanford and UIUC tend to be more entrepreneurial than other CS colleges (I find Carnegie Mellon/MIT tend to lean towards academia), but I'd say it's more important to go where you'll be happy...visit everywhere and find a place that won't drive you insane, since nothing kills the startup spirit faster than being forced to work day-in and day-out on things you don't enjoy.

That being said, I love Carnegie Mellon :-P
For "networking" and "personal maturity", agreed.

"but tackling true CS subjects individually is not something a lot of people can truly do"

Unless they have jobs.

Please don't kid yourself into thinking that CS in college is anything other than the warm-up act for the real thing. It's strictly optional.
That does look like a lot of fun. I love all the new game mechanics coming out.

Here's another that was a finalist at the 2008 Independent Games Festival:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=122548
I should add that we are not focusing on file-sharing. Our commercial model (.com) is based upon managed backup services. When we looked at the possibility of file-sharing as a service, we were quickly dissuaded by the amount of potential litigation we could face.
The article mentions tweaking the algorithm to take the timing of ratings into account. It gives the example that a person might rate two movies as 3/5, and a third they watch right after as a 4/5, because it was better than the previous two, but under normal(ized) circumstances that user would've given the 3rd movie a 3/5 too.

Soo.... it's an interesting notion, that there can be time-segment-based normalization of the data set. Team Bellkor/KorBell credit a big part of their gains to using the ordering of rankings, rather than the rankings themselves to test for similarity, so this guy's actually got a novel approach for normalizing the dataset. I really don't know how he can detect if he's dealing with the kind of person that is meticulous enough to make sure their new ratings take all their previous ratings into account, though, or if he's dealing with the kind of person that gives everything a rating from 4/5 to 5/5.. I wouldn't be surprised if he hits a wall because of this.

Really I think netflix would make a lot better strides towards their goals by improving their data collection technique. They could probably make great enhancements towards normalization just by saying "you gave this previous movie 3/5 stars. How do you rate this latest movie?" That way the data would be much more normalized. There are lots of possibilities for this sort of enhancement, so I'm not sure why they're only letting competitors look at the already collected dataset.
I would say Youtube is quite a different monster in itself.

It's particular popularity and name recognition was important. The backroom deal made by Google with major media studios with the purchase ensured that every other flash video site would be bled to death.
you have to pitch to the DoE. and that's a whole other blackhole of ineptitude,
No one wants their dirty laundry aired out in public, especially when it smells so bad.
Vista is plain aweful. I bought a cheap $400 laptop for my parents, and unfortunately it came with vista. I should have just wiped it out, and installed XP, but I didn't have time.

The user interface is confusing, menus are incoherent, and the web 2.0 gradients everywhere create huge readibility problems in cheap lcd screens.
I also had problems with remote help and connection, and had to use a third party solution to help my parents on some problems they had.

If you are looking for a cheap laptops for your parents, just don't go with vista. Just install XP, or even Ubuntu would be better.

Unfortunately for 400-500 dollars you can't buy anything with Mac Os in it. Mac Os seems to be easier to operate, especially for older folks.
Well, I'm just saying that the number of people with the enthusiasm to really, deeply grok, say, the PCP theorem, Bayes nets, or the FFT in their spare time is quite small. Sure, undergrad CS is just a "warm-up act for the real thing", but a solid grounding in all those topics is a really useful thing for someone planning a career doing technology startups.
Ignore your competitors otherwise you'll obsessed with their success and/or end up with a clone of their product and significantly less users.
If someone proposed that my company be subject to regulations on what algorithm we could use to rank our search results, I'd be kind of upset about that.
Ah okay. Thanks for the reply, sorry about the rulebreak.
To launch or not to launch?
For most purposes the leading three (including minor variations thereof) are all good enough to get the job done. OSs have essentially become commodities, just like web browsers and relational databases. Who cares. Let's move on to something that really matters for application development.
RescueTime just started using Tipjoy. Give 'em some love.
I recommend learning Scheme first. I found "Teach Yourself Scheme in Fixnum Days" to be very readable:

http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/dorai/t-y-scheme/t-y-scheme.html
It's probably just not that hot of a solution, believe it or not. The recommendation engine should be able to make much better associations between movies, without even being able to describe what those associations are. Looking at features like genre, director, actor etc, is like a spam filter looking for specific spammy words. As soon as the spammers start saying "p3n1s" instead or Eddy Murphy starts making family movies, it falls apart. Check out http://karmatics.com/docs/evolution-and-wisdom-of-crowds.htm... (scroll down to "3. Recommendation Systems" for the relevant part) for an explanation.
I'd recommend adding a simple client, that syncs with the site. And think about the situations under which someone wakes up:

Are they definitely going to have internet access? Nope. Better have an offline mode.

Is their computer going to be on already? Maybe not. Better give it an automatic start-on-startup option, and make sure it's lightweight enough to open in a flash.

Are they going to wake up with their computer around them? Probably so, really, or at least the majority of the time. So a desktop client's a good call, because it doesn't have to be portable, and you can store detailed settings, because they're not going to be changing them over multiple computers.

Also, you're a grad student in Shanghai? Wouldn't an SMS interface be well-received? I sense potential twitter partnerships!

If you want to talk about this anymore, I hang out in #startups on irc.freenode.net a lot. I like your idea, I'd love to help you brainstorm more.
I have not had that experience myself as I am pretty happy with the lisp books I have read. Maybe it's because I took lisp courses in undergrad, and then worked on projects where my figuring things out was driven by specific projects. I would recommend possibly a video course, and following like a real course, doing the work, and then coming up with a project where you apply it. Here is a free video course from MIT following the classic textbook, which is also available for free online http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/classes/6.001/abelson-sussman-le...
This is actually a really interesting experiment in monetization of free web applications.
Have you read Peter Siebel's "Practical Common Lisp"? [http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/] Its a great book to learn Lisp from IMO. The pace is just right (for me) and every chapter tackles a truly practical project. Its free online, so you don't have much to lose just to try it.

I have also heard really good things about PG's "On Lisp" [http://www.paulgraham.com/onlisp.html]. Again, its free to download, so you don't have much to lose to try it.

Hope this helps.
I don't see the tipjoy button

update: I see, I have to login..
They have it most places, but not the landing page.

If anyone doesn't already have an account (and is on a Windows or OS X box), they should make one and start using RescueTime immediately. I use it religiously.
Take a web application you like and rewrite it in Lisp. Or better yet, take one that you wrote in PHP and rewrite it in Lisp. Nothing else beats the knowledge you will gain working this way.
Looks pretty cool. I got invited yesterday, and just noticed 5 invites too. You can email max maxwellterry.com for one.
MIT OpenCourseWare | Designing and Leading the Entrepreneurial Organization
One of the more popular requests is for a "new" page for Brainstorm - first day of the service, and they're already getting site feature requests. Interesting, they suggest hiding the posts' score until clicked on to prevent people from just going with the mob; I wonder what effect that would have here..
We use Munin on our machines - it's a great tool, highly recommended.
One of the best strategies I've learned is to remove all indications of time from your immediate vicinity when working on a project with a tight deadline. Trying to constantly judge your productivity vs. time is often a huge distraction, and every time you look at the clock is a break in concentration.