skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You need to do a better job of convincing users that the product is trying out. Photos grouped by date, is that your biggest selling point? Emailing photos is nice but I wouldn't name it as one of the three selling points. And I'm sure I can upload photos and I'm sure it's safe too - tell me something cool about your site I don't know.

And if you aim for users with a huge backlog of pictures, why don't you mention that? Can I try it out for free for a month? It's not on the front page.

Maybe you need marketing, but you need more work on the selling aspect of your site first.

Get Google Analytics. Measure your bounce rate.
The idea of embeddable-apps-in-a-box, or "the widget is the platform", seems pretty compelling to me. What are your reasons for thinking it's over-hyped?

I don't find the "most widgets are trivial" argument compelling; the large portion of the internet devoted to porn doesn't detract from the rest of it, and likewise, the uselessness of unpopular widgets doesn't detract from usefulness of popular ones.

I really like Google's widget advertising service that let you dive deep into content without leaving a page. For example, I watched all 6 video clips on a National Geographic widget ad for their new "6 degrees" show. I'd have never navigated to another page to do the same thing.

I think we're just at the beginning of widget up-take... but I could be wrong, and would like to hear the arguments from the other side (perhaps there good discussions of this elsewhere already?)
The social balance involved in such ecosystems can be very fragile. I have no idea if this will work. And how can ebay know, unless they test it before full-scale deployment? One option would be to apply it to new sellers at first and see how it goes.
It is currently working and our customers seems happy.
This makes a great iPhone app :)
Alternative tech history? We had a few opportunities. One was Wardenclyffe Tower, which proposed wireless time division multiplexed fax in 1902. We can only imagine the world today if such developments had succeeded.

Likewise, the computer industry in the 1980s had some promising developments in massively parallel computing. This included wafer scale integration and parallel processor microkernels. In 1987, Sir Clive Sinclair was granted a patent for creating massively parallel, fault tolerant computing. Rather than making a wafer of chips then packaging and testing each unit, it is possible for processors to self-test and self-assemble into a working network. This would allow an eight inch wafer to be packaged with minimal additional steps. Furthermore, this would have been an asyncronous processor design. Microkernels, such as HeliOS could have been adapted to run on such hardware and the user level programs may not have required any changes. You may also wish to research the Meiko Computing Surface which used Inmos Transputers or the Connexion Machine. Unfortunately, none of these developments were compatible with Windows.

Finally, if you enjoy alternative history, you'd probably enjoy The Gernsback Continuum from William Gibson's book of short stories, Burning Chrome ( http://project.cyberpunk.ru/lib/burning_chrome/ ).
New YC Company 8aweek To Help You Kick That Internet Time Wasting Addiction
I wouldn't read too much into it. My experience of the corporate world so far suggests that any group whose name explicitly mentions innovation doesn't actually do anything.
Too close for comfort is right-- it's pretty much exactly the same as rescuetime, only with fewer features, a worse interface, and new tools that let you interfere with your browsing (which I suppose is its distinguishing feature).

This is confusing to me-- why not just have RescueTime implement these features rather than fund an entirely new company? Did I miss something?

--edit--

So I watched the video, and it looks like this is a pretty awesome toolbar. The features are pretty cool. The site/copy is cheesy, though.

My comment about RescueTime and the closeness of their businesses still stands though-- I have a feeling this would be fairly easy for RescueTime to implement.
Power Guide: 121 CrackBerry Tips, Hacks and Resources
Google iPhone usage shocks search giant
Did I miss something?

Several. One is that the time-suck of the Internet is a big problem, which means that dealing with it will be a big business, which means there will be room for many slightly differing approaches.

The other is that we can't "have" people implement features. These are startups, not employees.
I have to disagree. Media people tend to be self-obsessed. They are more likely to publish stories which affect themselves. Indeed, I believe there was a formula:

distance from NYTimes office / (severity of incident * people involved) = page number

So, one person being stabbed outside the NYTimes office would be front page news while 1000 people in an African genocide would be on page 22.
(1) is the closest to the right path, though it's not phrased as one. And in fact you never do know when you'll hit the tipping point. So you have to work fast.

But your existing users are the place to start. There must be something they like about whatever you have, or you wouldn't be there. So you just have to learn to understand them well enough to turn that like into love. In the process you may appeal to a broader set of users, and as you iterate the "typical" user you focus on can move.
Tiny but influential. So I don't think they can always be that safely ignored, especially for startups that hope to begin with techy early adopters.
It's not just Microsoft researchers, even the developers and UI designers can make you cry - there are millions of users who will support me.
Have people had success with the no procrastinate feature here?

Dunno about others, but I tend to go from one form of procrastination to another.
In a digital age, can you live off the info-grid? The Anonymity Experiment
Of course you can't "have" RescueTime implement a certain feature, but you do have clout at y-funded companies, right? I mean, it's in your best interest to push the funded companies into success by suggesting new/complementary features.

The time-suck industry will be an interesting one to watch; I can see why you chose to fund 8aweek. The major problem I see with using a toolbar is that the time-suck, in many ways, is due to internet addiction. And if it's easy to bypass the toolbar, it might not be very useful. Addiction usually wins. Noprocrast fails in that regard, because you can simply launch another browser.

Can anyone share how much they ignore noprocrast?

If you have enough personal responsibility to obey noprocrast/toolbar restrictions, I can see how this would be awesome. But I also think that market is probably small. Snooze is obviously the way 8aweek tries to get around this, but after a while I think it might get annoying. I'll try it, though, and see how it goes.
Vimeo is the best, you made a good choice.
For my MMORPG, Star Sonata, I get very close to 50% conversion (downloading the free trial) on my landing page: http://www.starsonata.com/welcome.html

The weird thing (to me) is that out of the people who download the trial, only 1 out of every 3.66 people actually play it. To play, you have to choose a user name, password, and enter an email address, but nothing more.
This is not so much of a problem with autoupdate, microsoft can just command all (windows) clients to download the thing.
What would happen if you gave all the candy away. No, really, what would happen if, for one country in particular, candy was free? 10% would show restraint and eat healthily. The rest would more or less bing. If you put escalators everywhere, 90% wouldn't climb stairs anymore.
This is what has happened with capitalism in America. We've made everything easy and most have binged on it. In fact, I think it's part of a natural cycle. America will lose the power to compete (the escalators will stop), and the next generations will be quite smart because they have to be.

Companies go through this all the time. Company X was at the top of the world, got complacent, lost its competitive edge, and had to start over. What makes us think that countries are any different?

Of course the article cherry-picks evidence to support its claim, and that's not fair. But I think, outside of America, no one questions its premise. Worse, it's evident there is nothing that can be done to remedy the situation; all we can do is wait and let nature take its course.
Also: cadr. "Firest" doesn't have the same ring.
First impression, it seems very nicely done. RescueTime is not available for Linux, and I prefer local logging, so I'll give this a shot.
I wonder what is a reasonable way to count the time on a website? I have simple Greasemonkey script that blocks web sites and have also considered to add the monitoring functionality. My thoughts would have been to stop counting after, say, 15 minutes of inactivity. It would be a shame if a site stays open and counts for hours of usage because the user forgets to close it.
Interesting topic. The risk of emotional failure is perhaps the most important reason why many talented people don't do startups.
Taking a Look at Seesmic and Why It Won't Work Despite Those Behind It
An outsider's flawed view of Silicon Valley
PR Wire Service to Journalists & Bloggers: We Don't Need You
I mean, it's in your best interest to push the funded companies into success by suggesting new/complementary features.

That assumes that pg (or any other person funding a company) is an oracle of what will make the company successful. The reality is that pg et al. are going to succeed by being good judges of founder character. Once they have the right founders, the founders themselves will figure out what it best to make their business suceed and pg wealthier.
That is shockingly believable data and speaks of how terrible it is to use the internet on any phone other than an iPhone.
Elephant 2000, John McCarthy new programming language.
Tom Coates: Web of Data
The Drake Equation
50% Of All BitTorrent Downloads are TV-Shows
Reddit alternative?
Oy, the echo chamber!

This tempest in a teapot started when the New York Times wrote a rather comical article on how Seattle is the new silicon valley:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/08/technology/08nation.html

The entrepreneur blogger at the Seattle PI picked this up, and started a debate:

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/venture/archives/131378.a...

In response to this debate, Kelman wrote a long post enumerating the ways that he thought Seattle was better than the valley:

http://blog.redfin.com/blog/2008/02/the_next_silicon_valley....

And now, we have this.
i am just reading this from a n95 quite pleasantly and replying with one hand which i an not sure you can do with iphone.
Can anyone predict how much years is several as mentioned in an earlier post that it will outnumber? Of course its a natural direction and i dont understand why so much credit for the iphone
Redfin CEO:  Stanford is the Hogwarts of Silicon Valley.
I usually assume that homeless people are suffering from some mental illness or severe addiction that prevents them from getting back into society.

It would be great to know more about their backgrounds, but so far I haven't figured out a good way of doing it - they probably are not too keen on making their sad state public.
The URL is broken. Try http://blog.redfin.com/blog/2008/02/the_next_silicon_valley....
Hell _Holes: Not Afraid of Steel Balls?
That's exactly what I imagine SV looking like.
a high cost of living – a two-bedroom house in Palo Alto typically costs more than $1.5 million — prevents people from buying homes and having children

Yet again the housing fallacy, this time from a guy at a real estate startup.

The houses in Silicon Valley are not sitting empty because they're expensive. In fact, it's not merely false that SV's high housing prices prevent people from living here, it's necessarily false. The fact that a house cost $x means someone was able to buy it.
Don't worry about surviving the digg effect just add memcache, worry about building the application rapidly, cleanly and being comfortable with the codebase.
How/why to learn about the FSM (Finite State Machines)
Just curious about all the YC companies that have been launching recently. Techcrunch has all of them as being fonded on January 1 2008. Is that the date of incorporation, or is that when they officially got together to start developing the apps?
I am also really interested in a way to start a startup in the US. Also Canadian.

Currently, I am working on a TN visa for a big tech company in the US. The TN is a 1 year temporary work permit. Currently, I'm on my second TN; last year, I tried to upgrade to an H-1B, but my application was not randomly selected. The TN visa is quite easy to obtain if sponsored by a company. It's the H-1B that poses a problem; you might get one after 1 year, or it might take longer (like in my case). Once on an H-1B, you can start applying for a green card. You can find more info about the TN and H-1B on wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TN_visa

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H1B_visa

It is also possible to go straight from a TN to a green card if you have a good immigration lawyer. This procedure is risky: if your green card application is rejected, you'll never be able to obtain a TN again. Take a look here for more info:

http://www.immigrationportal.com/archive/index.php/t-123851....

I do plan to start a startup later this year, in the US if possible. I don't really want to wait 3-5 years (or even longer) to get a green card. In my research, I also came across the Treaty Investor visa status that petesmithy mentions in his thread. Here are some links:

http://travel.state.gov/visa/temp/types/types_1273.html

http://toronto.usconsulate.gov/content/content.asp?section=v...

I would be really curious to see how this goes for you omakase. I've only recently started to do some research into this. You can contact me at (alx dot solomon at gmail dot com).
noprocrast works for me big time ..i will be willing to pay sites to implement noprocrast
Cygwin?
Can anyone stop this man?
You are quite correct - it is all about usability. The larger screen real estate and the rendering engine of the iPhone makes access to the Internet workable - plus the Apple deal with the network providers ensures that Apple phone users can reach the Internet (and thus, in this instance, Google) unimpeded.

I think this is a clear indicator of the key role that phone based (or perhaps more properly phone accessible) applications will have into the future. There are still UI issues to be resolved (cut and paste on the iPhone not the least) to make hand held devices effective for general tasks but once the right balance has been achieved then phones will be the access point of choice for the vast majority.
Local logging is definitely a big plus... I feel a little uncomfortable with having a log of all te websites I have visited on someone's server somewhere
GeForce 8 graphics processors to gain PhysX support
Interviewing for Open Source
How to Build a Twitter Agent
There's a certain irony here: web services to prevent internet usage.

And while the whole "logging time" concept may have some appeal for HR & accounting types (so yes, there is a business model), it's hardly the kind of inspirational startup I come here to read about.
A Greasemonkey script would be a better solution... Even for news.YC, if you have an independent solution pg wouldn't know how likely you are to override the noprocrast setting ;)

I would take on this project if I had any time, which I probably waste now... hmmm... ;)
Newton's zeroeth law
Newton the Scientific Savior of Humanity, the Moses of Mechanics, the inventor of the other Apple Myth, is the self-anointed prophet of Newtonian religion.
I'd agree with the graph you've drawn there. I'm a big fan of TurboGears.

The reason I chose it was because it sits in the middle. It does a lot of stuff for you... but you can get rid of most of it when you need to.

Looking at web.py I think you'll suffer from the poor docs and the code can get a little hairy.

As a simple web server you may want to check cherrypy (which under pins TurboGears). It's got a good reputation, good docs and can be deployed in a variety of ways behind apache (or many other web servers)
Well the original idea came from me...so at this point the original concept has been on my own. And unlike you I didn't feel overloaded after one month. Actually at this point things are progressing very smoothly and to be honest I actually don't need the help. I know what I want it to be, I've created that, and thus far my testers have really loved it. So yes, I feel that I don't want to veer to much from that. If I had a new guy try to change all that and now say, great work...now let me drive...that would be bothersome to me. What I really need is someone to task out to...and if during that time I get some good ideas I want to have the final say.

Let me put it to you in these terms. Unlike you I did spend 6 months alone working an additional 4-5 hour/days on top of 8 at work day job, and about 8 more on the weekend. So lets say thats 30hrs/week * 50/hr (just an estimate...I actually charge over $80 at my day job)...but just for argument sake I've invested in time and effort 6mo * 4wks * 30hrs/wk * $50/hr = $36,000. So just in time alone that how much I've invested. Now why would I want to just give that away to someone who sat on the sideline and waited until it was a good enough idea to just jump in when the product is almost complete?
Misreading Scoble on Microsoft cry
Pretty Sweet. Here's my hacked together Python version (not sure what Monads have to do with it):

class Maybe:
def __init__(self, obj):
self.o = obj

def __repr__(self):
return repr(self.o)

def __getattr__(self, name):
try:
return Maybe(getattr(self.o,name))
except:
return Maybe(None)

I'm trying to decide whether using it's Pythonic or not.
Like reality tv is a new form of theatre.
Scoble, master of cheesy hyperbole. I love technology more than the average person, but come on, a demo made him cry? You've gotta be kidding me.
Hacker - the logical definition
Ashamed of those hours in front of msdn.microsoft.com?
Actually you can. See: https://www.paypalobjects.com/WEBSCR-500-20080214-1/en_US/pd...

<snip>"You can let your subscribers change the name, number, regular terms, or currency of an
existing subscription without canceling it and re-subscribing by creating a Modify
Subscription button."</snip>
The Killer App for OpenID
Finding planets that far away is great, however I wouldn't count on life coming from what would likely be a high-end flare star, or a small sun. Either way, the habitable zone will be too close to the sun (likely 20% closer than mercury) and getting hit by repeated and large flares could prevent ozone building up and allow UV light to steralise the planet's surface.

However, I don't doubt natures ability to adapt. So there would possibly be life similar to our radiotrophic fungus, however I doubt there'll be many sentient fungais out in the universe.
"dealing with it will be a big business"

<sarcasm>

Which may open up opportunities for the next round of startups: Workarounds to avoid HR mandated implementations of RescueTime and 8aweek.

In all my visits to client sites in the past 5 years, I would safely venture that 50% of all the time (that I've observed) spent by office workers is spent surfing the internet. I don't know why. Maybe they're bored. Maybe they don't have enough to do. Maybe they don't care. Maybe they lack guidance and direction (my guess).

I've often said that someone should develop a service that feeds selected content to a browser and looks exactly like outlook. The next killer app for bored workers and their PHBs. Would also save health care costs associated with sore fingers from "alt-tabbing" whenever the boss walks by.

</sarcasm>
Technology and the public sector
Massive S3 outage
Massive S3 outage. Seems to affect other AWS services (SDB, SQS) as well.

Other AWS services are down too ...
EC2 http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/thread.jspa?threadID=19715&tstart=0
SQS http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/thread.jspa?threadID=19713&tstart=0
Reminds me of a college campus which did a major construction project for which the architects never included sidewalks because they didn't want to try to predict usage. They waited 6 months and laid the sidewalks over the well worn paths in the grass. Brilliant.
What he seems to mean is 'prevents many people from buying homes and having children', which I think is difficult to argue with. Obviously people buy those houses, but they probably aren't 'average middle class american' types, either.

One of the reasons I was happy to return to Italy in 2000 was that most towns there seem to have a mix of young and old, rich and poor that seemed much more real to me than San Francisco, which especially in those days was like living on another planet in terms of how weird it had gotten with all the money and craziness.
Sure they are. Once we have established that (look, we have plenty of anecdotal evidence!), we never need to reconsider our judgement or allow exceptions, since everybody arguing against it is clearly (in mentality) an American and thusly, (due to what we already know about Americans (they're dumb and dumber)) not a reliable source of information.
Call me Logic Master.
what really is scary is all the controls that telcos have built around accessing net with such devices.
BTW, notice how my argument (the one behind the irony) is based on an incorrect assumption about the message of the article. (I read something about rhethorics.)
BTW, notice how I try to get away with not reading TFA by pretending it was a special rhethorical feat.
Further, notice how I seem to be replying to myself all the time.
It surely is the expression of an inner intellectual dialogue; no, no MPD here, go along!
http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/thread.jspa?t...
Fudge - ec2 is working for me, but s3 reads and writes are not. Guess its time to get to work on some kind of failover...
Cheat Sheets for Everything
Dupe: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=116240
Yahoo Relaunches Yahoo Video
Upvoted for the use of Pylons.
Scripting in Common Lisp
People seem to have trouble with ec2 as well.
http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/thread.jspa?m...
I'm willing to try out 8aweek for the simple reason is if I'm doing work, I'm running Linux. I liked RescueTime, for the little that I experimented with it, but when I'm running Windows I'm usually just messing about.
Any ideas where this release name came from?
Bummer. Would anyone like backup virtual hosting on our physical servers?
Phew, back up. Although that the fact that it was possible to have the entire network go down is quite worrying.

S3 actually has an SLA; http://aws.amazon.com/s3-sla If I'm reading that right, if S3 is completely down for more than about 40 mins in Feb (which it was - about 90 mins by my count) then we should get a 10% discount for this month. Is that right?
This is a contrived example of the "American Dream." You're not truly suffering unless you feel the emotional pains of poverty. The depression from the uncertainties of tomorrow is the real killer.

I'm not surprised that he achieved mediocrity with the confidence of education and safety-net of a credit line and a weathy family. You could do similar by working at McDonalds. This sort of thing is possible in many Western countries. Infact, you are probably better off in a welfare state than in America if great wealth does not interest you.
Aussie Startup Carnival 2008 Reg Opens Feb 11-24
cheers, deleted
I believe I saw photos of that college green in "How Buildings Learn" Highly recommended - brilliant book about construction and architecture that applies fully to software development. Basic premise: If you don't build the right infrastructure/architecture, you will have to tear down to rebuild/remodel. All the copies I've lended out have been only returned to me years later.