skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Great minds etc.

I was also looking at ERP after working in the field for a number of years. I was planning on coming from a very different angle. Hosting a very configurable system that required little or no manual intervention. Aiming at small business for a $20 per month per user fee.

Then I discovered I hate running a business, not just dis-like but hate so much I never want to do it again :-(

I think your idea could take off but the software has to be malleable, this is in contrast to nearly every piece of software written to this day which is brittle. I was looking at this as just a way to predict how software will be written in the future.

First off read a couple of books to understand better where I'm coming from :-

Necessary But Not Sufficient by Eliyahu M. Goldratt
Naked Objects by Richard Pawson

From a business perspective I want a group of classes that mirror real world items e.g. Order, Invoice, Address, Amount, Price, Date etc. Then I want another group of classes that handle business actions e.g. Enter Order, Print invoice. Lastly a group of classes that handle business process e.g. Process Order, Calculate invoice etc.

The above would give you a group of objects that you can model the business with and forget about technical details.

Then the underlying system could be built e.g. fully temporal, fully redundant etc. etc.

The idea being that you could focus on business processes without thinking about implementation details. In true naked object style the UI would be automatically generated from the business action/process classes.

To make what you are thinking about work _ALL_ design has to be KISS and DRY. Also, the more you can generate the better you'd be.

I was thinking of using Lisp or SmallTalk to gain an advantage, must use a VM to be able to separate business from technical. I want to my software running 24/7 with zero downtime including during upgrades, automatic rudundancy, load balancing etc.

If you are thinking of something along these lines then drop me a line and I'd love to help.

If you just want to re-implement the current paradigm don't bother contacting me. The current paradigm is so broken it's not even funny.
Opened a text document on my Palm Pilot. (You could use any computer, but I always have my Palm with me.) Every time I had an idea, I appended it to the end. Every once in a while, I sorted them into "most desirable" sequence. After a year or so, I noticed that the same name was at the top of the list for the previous 3 months. It won.

(It's also amazing to see how bad some of your ideas look a week later.)
Immediate social bonding between strangers is highly dependent on mimicry
I had tipr.net for a while. I think tipr.com was some italian trading platform.

I just kept thinking about it. It is a iterative process. I like flow of consciousness. Two short words together work. Tipping, giving, paying, happy, support, joyful, micro (all all other SI prefixes)...

Shortest words there:
tip
pay
joy

tipjoy.com was available and I immediately purchased it.
Haha, I'd bet real money that > 75% of people who read this site still use a centralized VCS, most likely SVN. The pace of change is glacial.
Why not just use the email as a login name and make it 3 fields instead of 4?

I think it's best to offer a two stage user signup. On the first page you ask for two things: email and password. On the next page they are asked for addition optional information to build out their profile (or whatever) with things like name, location, etc....

This way you make signing up as easy as possible (2 pieces of info) and still give them the opportunity to give more info if they want.
there's also http://www.todotoh.com/rgb/rgbanalysis.aspx which takes a screen cap and returns a list of hex codes sorted by most frequently used. It doesn't work on every site, but it does for most. I use it to quickly get the color palette for a site I think looks good.
"There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things" - Phil Karlton

For, http://www.mobtropolis.com, it came out of the concept of collectively finding interesting things to do that were out of the norm. If they were doing it all at the same time and place, it would be likened to a mob. I figured this sort of thing would only happen in more urban areas with denser concentration of people. Hence after a short brainstorming session..."Mobs in the City" became "Mobtropolis".

I hesitated for a while since it's a 4 syllable word, and people might not remember it. But since I couldn't find anything better, I just went with it.

After a while, a name just grows on you and others, as long as you're consistent about it. It also helps you when you're pitching it if you don't feel stupid saying it. I would imagine del.icio.us wasn't exactly easy to associate with bookmarking, but as long as people consistently associate a name with a clear idea of what your product is, I think it'll be ok.
The initial article said that 50% of clicks were generated by 6% of users. That's really a statement about the median click, but it was spun to make it sound as if it meant something more definite and interesting. And now this TC article has taken up the spin as if it were what the study discovered-- as if those 6% of users were some separate, distinctive group, idly generating half the clicks.
Just wanted to tell you that you are on the right path, track everything, every stage, optimize the pitfalls.
Wow! This is one of the most insightful and helpful posts ever. (Many of us are in the same boat.)

Your site may not be ready, but you guys sure seem like you're on the ball. Thank you and good luck!
We're bootstraping http://www.OtherWeather.com with some help from a silent private investor (very small money).

Would take investment if it was presented, but working on marketing/pr now (yes part time grrr).

We could do the ol' VC dog and pony show but we're wary of wasting our time when we could be building value of the site (instead of making PowerPoints and buying suits).
Ask YC: Who here still plays WoW?
Every time I get back into this game I get addicted. So who here is very productive at work and still has time to play? How many hours do you spend playing?
No only recently, like the last 2 months. Before that 8 hours, before that, 12(when I didn't work).
If you go down a couple songs down, you can hear an acoustic version of "Baby got Back" Oh, does it bring back memories.
Loic Le Meur raises $6 million for videomail startup
I did a domain hack using .us, but i would say you could also use an action word plus your product name. 37Signals does it for most of their apps, backpackit.com, campfirenow.com also the vitamin web resource thinkvitamin.com. The trick is to create something memorable for people. I also try to make its easy for people to say over the phone to someone. Take slashdot.org, if the app is for normal people a name like that is not the greatest.
Or just make the registration simple. Ask for a username and password and nothing more.
or ajaxwhois.com (not quite as fast, but does more than com/net/org for delicious-type names)
I think exercise also helps reduce my sleep. That, and how excited I am about life.
Don't you think TV is a good source for information, a useful way to keep up with culture.

If you want a startup to appeal to 'the masses', it helps to know what 'the masses' are into.
How did you reach that conclusion from what he said? From what I remember he loved it while on it, and noted improvements in mood and concentration, in addition to having time for additional hobbies such as cooking.

He switched back to monophasic several months later so that he could spend more time with his family during their traditional awake hours. He also simply got bored of being awake when no one else was...
"there's nothing left to argue"

Good. Then the trafficing of enterprise data will be permitted within limits, edw519 will provide software in the east, and there will be the peace.

(Apologies to Mario Puzo)
6 hours on average. My dogs don't let me sleep in, my girlfriend doesn't let me sleep early, my job doesn't let me sleep during the day.
this is an unhelpful title. i much prefer ones that let me know what the article is about.
I agree. Personally I think TV is a useful way of keeping informed about what 'the masses' if you want to call them that, are into.

Removing yourself from what most people do doesn't seem a great thing to do IMHO if you're trying to appeal/sell to those people.
An oldie but a goodie. If you want to explore this kinda stuff, I recommend downloading Netlogo.

http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/
Sry...no time for WoW. Play only news.yc.com
I just made one(http://featurelist.org/projects/details/35) for my site Utility Mill(http://utilitymill.com)

Feel free to post some ideas for new utilities or improvements to Utility Mill itself.
Never have.
The quality (and apparent sincerity) of your reply merit a full inhaling of your 2 references. I'm off to Amazon as soon as I finish typing this.

"The idea being that you could focus on business processes without thinking about implementation details."

Bingo! In 18 months of sharing this concept, I think you may have closest to understanding it (or at least explaining your understanding).

"Then I discovered I hate running a business, not just dis-like but hate so much I never want to do it again :-("

I may be the yin for your yang. I can't wait to have a business to run and customers to serve! Seeing a customer achieve their goals with my support is like oxygen to me. I have to have it. I love hacking, but it's only a means to an end. If I had something to implement, I'd be implementing, not hacking.

Kindly put your email address on your profile and stay in touch.
You should drop the user-generated-directory aspect of it. Interface all the good people search engines, and use google as a fallback.
Ask YC: Need advice on direction of site.
I launched my site 2 months back (subavatar.com) as a Commenter Avatar + Profile + Comment History + Karma service. Based on the initial feedback I dropped the Karma part and changed the domain name (from ipkarma.com to subavatar.com). making it like Gravatar with profile + comment tracking. Now I'm having thoughts about dropping the avatar part. What direction going forward do you suggest I take ?
What is it with all these ASK YC lifestyle questions? Are we trying to define success in terms of things like sleep/watches tv?

Ah most hackers get 6 hours of sleep! I should too then my startup will succeed.

Sorry, but seriously... A few are kind of interesting, but how many more of these questions are to come?
Agree with everything you said. I also think its easier to "ease" into the schedule. Keep a few hours of core sleep at night and still take your 30min naps every 4hrs until you feel like you're starting to get on the schedule. Then shrink and eventually eliminate the block of core sleep and you're there. Its never perfect, but at least it helps with the brutal agony of the adaptation period.

The biggest benefit of polyphasic is not squeezing every possible minute of awake time. Its the improved concentration and mood. If you want to leave 3-4hrs of core sleep at night thats perfectly fine.
Alaska Standard Time -9 GMT
PST here.
I was a little harsh I suppose, but here's what he says:

"The #1 reason I decided to call it quits is simply that the rest of the world is monophasic. If most of the world was polyphasic, I probably would have stuck with it. Obviously when you go polyphasic, you fall out of sync with the way other people live. You’re awake most of the night while everyone is asleep. If you sleep like most people, then the hours you’ll gain from polyphasic sleep will come in the middle of the night. And as I gradually learned, nighttime hours are not the same as daytime hours when you live in a monophasic world."
Don't these people have non-competes? You'd especially think Yahoo and Microsoft would even explicitly list Google on their employment contracts.
Interesting, so the Patriot act is an entry barrier for paypal? And people say politics don't impact geeks :)
I like it. Thanks for making it.

http://featurelist.org/projects/details/36
Andy: Hello.

Michael: Ah, you must be Andy Bernard. Aloha and welcome!

Andy: And you must be Michael Scott. Aloha and … hello.

Michael (laughing): Ah ha! Very good! Welcome to our little kingdom. We have a bag of nifty gifties for you.

Andy: Michael, thank you for welcoming me to your little kingdom … Mike. Nifty!

Michael: They are nifty! They’re nifty gifties.

---

Michael: You know who I really like? Is this guy Andy Bernard. He has got this very likeable way about him.
It's better not to use just email because people hesitate to give out their addresses. I give them a choice:

https://ourdoings.com/reg.html
Ask YC:  Are people interested in hanging out the weekend of startup school?
I don't know if anything formal had been planned by the Startup School, so if there is something formal already planned, please let me know. I was just thinking that it would be cool if we could give people flying in a chance to hang out a bit more and talk. Also, if people live in the area but didn't get accepted, it would be nice to still be able to get together with other people from Hacker News.

My wife used to do event planning, and has some spare time. We also live in the area, so we'd be happy to put something together if people are interested. But before we did something, we wanted to gauge people's interest, to see if people want to hang out, what size place we'd need, etc...

I know the application deadline is still a month away, but if there's a large enough group of people that want to get together, we should start doing some leg work now.

I'd be interested in hearing from people who went last year. What did people do to get together? How did that work? Any thoughts on something different you'd like?
Wow I never saw that. Thanks for the link. I can tell you that in my experience (oldest of 6 children plus general observations) they don't get that much sleep.
I need about 9 hours, more if I've skimped lately and less if I haven't. I have an alarm set for 8AM but that's only because my work time is not entirely flexible. I'd probably wake up between 9 and 10 if I could set my own schedule. I could probably cut this down a little bit by improving my sleep quality (I often wake up at 4AM and can't get back to sleep), but I haven't really investigated that fully.

But to step back a level, there are probably other time sucks you could cut back on other than sleep. For me those things are surfing pr0n and the sort of unfocused yak shaving that could be avoided by just getting enough sleep.

Cutting back on sleep seems like denying yourself something pleasurable that your body needs anyway. It's like trying to not masturbate.
It is a problem for a significant number of startups. But the increased difficulty of getting into the US is a worse one.
We didn't make this super-clear (other than a brief mention in the FAQ), but the basename in your project actually gives you a URL to use like this:

http://featurelist.org/OurDoings

For example, if you wanted to request features for the featurelist.org site yourself, you'd use:

http://featurelist.org/featurelist
As I commented to you briefly on another site, the basename you choose when you create the project gives you a redirecting URL to share like this:

http://featurelist.org/UtilityMill
E-commerce averages 3.16%. Forms average 2-10% depending on how targeted the referring source is.
The Bureau of Communication
> Don't these people have non-competes?

Welcome to California! :-D
Imeem Acquires Snocap
Make Rails Associations Faster by Optimizing Named Blocks and String Callbacks
How to Write Posts that Generate Traffic from StumbleUpon
Why products fail
that is better, thanks.
I'll double that. EET. Turku, Finland, to be more exact.
The Internet has led to a huge net savings in energy
I made one for the iPhone too :-)
http://featurelist.org/iphone
‘I am ashamed to use proprietary software’
"California law voids any provision, contract term or purported "agreement" that prevents them from working for a
competitor or to work for him or herself. In other words,
restrictions on an employee's right to work for a competitor
or to operate a competing business are illegal and cannot be
enforced"

Source: http://www.employlaw.com/noncompete.htm
I also noticed it in the help text for the form, but never saw the actual friendly URL because you redirect. I put in a feature request for you not to redirect. I hope others vote it up. :-)
productivity is important to any startup. since a startup is such a diff environment, it's nice to know how other ppl do it. lifestyle is as important as cool hacks, biz news, or debates about ARC.
This is not a troll - could someone please explain to me why I might use Git instead of SVN? With Git, wouldn't I still need to merge all the streams through some "offical" repository before I release version x of the product? And if I'm doing that, then what's the difference?
College is a waste of time and money for kids
Heh, I voted it up myself. Likely will look into that.
I give out fake emails to anyone who forces me to register to try out a service.

However, I'm perfectly willing to give my e-mail address to a service I've already verified that I like and want to use.

Try before you sign up is really important for getting good info.
www.microsoft.ac is available through www.speednames.com

That's a great name, I'm sure you will get a lot of publicity if you do your PR right.

All you need is a good lawyer ;-)
We are currently self funded. We have two founders who saved for about a year. Then we also had a small site we worked on the side for a long time, which we sold. So that has been our funding. We are approaching 1 year self funded right now.

We also reduced a lot of our expenses
we don't eat out
we don't go to bars
we buy food at costco
we watch netflix (no cable no movie theaters)
we got vonage and reduced our cell phone bills
we have a really cheap place we rent
we started doing cheaper activities with friends, board games, making them dinner, video games

So we have made our small amounts of funding really last.

Still haven't really made it yet, but we still have money in the bank to keep on going.
Have you culled any extraneous processes from the Ubuntu image you used?
I don't have any stats of my own to share yet (soon, very soon I'll have some from our site once we launch) but here's a page from a marketing report that shows you 'industry average' of many forms of conversions.

http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/2910/conversionrateshm0.j...

Enjoy!

PS: Ping me off line for more info.
pacific time for me. daytime is reasonably active IME. at 2am, not so many people are on. that's no surprise: 2am my time means it's later for the rest of the US.
I looked around the site, and thought it was confusing. I saw the avatar stuff, but I didn't see much about the comment tracking which is more interesting to me.

I like the idea of co-comment and integrating to work with any comment system, but ti seems to fail often.

Disqus and Intense Debate are cool, but I don't really want to have to switch over my blogs and other systems to just get comment tracking. I don't care as much about the karma of comments I guess.

So I would perhaps focus on that, because as a blogger and someone writting an app, I am unlikely to change the code of my systems to support your avatars, I would be happy if the comment tracking worked by default. Then I might point out the service to readers on my blog or make a link by the comments like "track these comments with subavatar"

On your page I would show example screen shots of the avatars and comment tracking in action on some site. I couldn't get a very good feel of what the avatars were like. Perhaps have a link to your own avatar to let people see what the whole profiles look like.

Good luck
It's fun to learn about the other people on the site. The more you get to know someone, the more context and more valuable each one of their comments is. It's like hearing from a friend rather than a URL.
I like this. (Although I would prefer a SecurID-type dongle rather than smartcard-type.) Rather than complaining about how OpenID reduces security, they're finding a case where OpenID increases it. Most Web sites will never support smartcard login, but if they support OpenID they get it for free.
Your slashdot.org thing reminded me of this list:
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/lists/27MichaelWard.html

Email addresses it would be really annoying to give out over the phone.
I realised by analysing user feedback that the comment tracking is the main USP of the site. Subavatar supports fallback avatars, if you only want to use the comment tracking feature with your current avatar service.

My profile http://subavatar.com/user/6e00c923a13ce323523d417e40c1537e

The initial release had an elaborate system generated avatar system (Identicon), but found them very cold, inhuman and controversial (some of them looked like swastikas). I've converted them to a simple color coded placeholder now.

PS all avatars are linked to their profiles.
what do rich cultures have in common? they are civilized enough to get rich. they have good enough values that let them cooperate peacefully with others, etc

the sort of good values that make societies richer include caring about your children individually and spending much more money per child, instead of just trying to have a lot of kids and use them for cheap labor.

also, our culture considers children a pain in the ass. then people wonder why we aren't having as many as we used to? because more people are doing what they want instead of blindly following tradition.
wow, I wish all states did that.

but wait, Microsoft is in WA, so you sign the contract in WA. Can CA really say a contract signed in WA is void?

So in that case anyone in the country can work at any job in CA they want regardless of what their non-compete says?
Angel Investing Revealed (Ron Conway interview)
I think this may help

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2199332044603874737
I'm interested in attending. Last year my cofounder and I went, and then left right after - we didn't know anyone then.
Proposal: IPv4 address blocks could be bought and sold after 2012
Elements of access control (in Perl)
2-5 hours a night, but I've only been doing that for the past 4 years.

My family members have seen sleep specialists, and according to them, the "people need 8 hours a night" argument is not true for everyone. Different people need different amounts. And if you actually read the research papers (it's been a couple years, so I'm not sure of links), scientists don't even know with 100% certainty what the purpose of sleep is.

However, that being said, there was a study done recently showing a correlation between getting less than 5 hours a night and heart problems later on in life. This has prompted me to start averaging closer to 5 hours than 2 hours lately.
I'm in the same boat as ajmoir. I thought of implementing is as a DSL for businesses - let the "tigers" specify it in the DSL and then the implementation can be upgraded underneath the definition. Naturally, Lisp would be a good fit. I do enjoy the success of seeing customers achieve goals, but I prefer the tractability of engineering systems over the political systems of the real world. I'd certainly love to hack for businesses if there was a thin wrapper over them (ie business oriented cofounder). I've already emailed you expressing interest in your project, so keep me in mind too!

I haven't read naked objects - maybe that would help me get over my general distrust of OO. Thanks for the recommendation!