skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I have to disagree. Although I acknowledge there are distinctions between the two, I can't help but see the parallels.

A VC is more like a partner that brings money to the table, and possibly contacts and advice and they don't take the largest cut by default.

You don't think a label brings those kind of perks too? I think an artist would much rather have Rick Rubin produce their album than some schmuck with a sound board.

Your negotiation position with a VC is much stronger than a typical no-name artist that wants to get distribution.

Just like I, a no-name business student, don't expect to be funded by Sequoia anytime soon, nor should a no-name artist expect to be signed to EMI. It takes traction to gain the attention of either.

Like I said though, I do agree with you on several points. Artists getting shafted and the record companies control of distribution are key points of differentiation between VCs and labels.
1) Two years (March 2008).

2) Never applied; would love to do it, but it’s just not right for me right now.

3) No (and I have no intention to).

4) https://ironmoney.com/
I must admit, I was expecting this piece to be ironic (especially after describing the book as a "lame sequel"), or to have a punch line that they applied all of this and sales dropped 72%.

So I had to re-read it with a different mindset, and there's a few tips I can take away.
25 years of .com domain names
xero.com
2002? Ha! Try 1994! http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/6sok3/either_ive_final...
"The attempt to connect to the Adobe Stratus service timed out. We will wait for 10 more seconds the next time."

then radio silence...
1) About a week. Finally free of the previous failed startup, got my feet back with a quick project (co-founder finder, http://amb.itio.us).

2) Didn't try... I'd have tried for this round, but I didn't want to start any new work until I was completely clear of the previous gig. Lack of co-founders made it a real impossibility (partly inspiring me to write the co-founder finder).

3) I'm going to bootstrap, at least for the short term. Any course of action that leaves me in a position where I'm not substantially the master of my own destiny goes against the whole reason I'm pursuing this startup stuff.

4) http://localhost:8000/ and http://localhost:8001/ at the moment ;)
A library to do what? Maybe we can help.

You typically don't go looking for libraries, you would have a certain task in mind and then use your google fu to look for that specific term which would hopefully turn you into some of them.
There may be more haskell libs, but I doubt that they are as tested as the erlang libs.
Time to show our appreciation for classical music
In his right-hand sidebar he has some image-links to other comics about "roads-to-hell-for-freelancers."

One of them was titled, "create FREE Flash websites" ... except, on further examination it was not another spoof - it was an ad from Google: life imitates art!
2 years
Nope, didn't apply as I'm not 22
Nope again. They aren't exactly funding many companies right now...
www.smartscalesystems.com
that co-founder finder could turn out to be really useful.
Rule of thumb: take the annual income you would like to get as a full-time freelance, divide by 100 for a daily rate.
Microsoft Workers forced to hide their iPhones - Steve Ballmer fake stomps them
I've been taking my dog to daycare since she was six months old. She gets far more attention and exercise throughout the day than anyone with a day job or kids to watch could provide. And - though I'm biased =) - I don't think you could find a better behaved or more pleasant dog. She's so eager to leave for daycare each morning, I think that at this point it would crush her not to go.
1) Two years

2) Never applied to YC but attended Startup School in 2006

3) Raised two rounds from VC

4) http://www.socialcast.com
There's a similar joke about Margaret Thatcher:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4agXi15LfS0#t=2m03s (via Spitting Image)

Which came first?
http://marketsandeconomy.blogspot.com/2008/08/ron-paul-predi...
1) Over a year
2) Ask me again in a few weeks
3) No
4) http://ginzahq.com (be prepared for the ugly; working on that)
すごい！Very nicely done.
On the Origins of Comics
A baby mahalo...
1) Little over a year

2) Never applied

3) No, bootstrapped

4) http://mographstock.com
Those three countries - along with Romania (and sometimes Slovenia) are the case studies for Eastern Europe. They're where the transition from communism went remarkably well and lacked any sort of violence. Hell, in Czechoslovakia, the workers actually put in unpaid overtime to make up for the work that they missed while they were protesting to gain freedom.

// edit: Don't include Romania, actually. ATB pointed out, rightfully, that the Romanian revolution was among the more violent of the revolutions in 1989.

If you look at the Balkans (countries that used to make up Yugoslavia (sans Slovenia), Bulgaria, Albania, etc), the economic story is slightly different. In Bulgaria, for example, the economy only got back up to pre-1989 levels in mid-2004. The economies here were much more tied to the Soviet Union's and its collapse hit them much harder. Or, they just devolved into a series of ethnic battles, which doesn't go over well with the economy.
If only the security organisations of the world could share your attitude.
1) Since early 2010 (but changed the idea several twice, began working on my first idea early 2008). 2) Nope 3) No again.
Canon PG 50 - Ink tank - 1 x black - 300 pages
Canon has poured all the Know How of its extraordinary history of developing innovative office machines into each of its copiers, printers, and networked office systems. The same superiority of design and manufacture goes into all of the Canon-branded consumable imaging supplies and parts for this equipment. Naturally, no one makes better parts and supplies for Canon products than Canon. Using genuine Canon parts and supplies is your best insurance against equipment damage, and possibly voiding your equipment warranty.
Umm, hold on a second. So I have a cofounder and a startup, but I also do little side projects here and there on my own, mostly for fun / learning. Am I to understand that if one of them blows up and I elect to leave and pursue that instead of my current startup, I've committed "treachery" against my cofounder? If my cofounder had something like that happen to him, I'd be incredibly happy for him (and a little jealous), but I wouldn't consider it treachery unless he tried to take his equity or it was competing with our startup or something.

I know that it's popular to compare picking a cofounder to picking a spouse, but they're not the same thing, and if you start a company with someone who later decides to move on, that's just how it goes. Am I way off?
1. 1
2. I am a little bummed about this, I have 27 views on my youtube demo, and my only friend who knows about the demo says he saw it some 3-4 times max.
Considering I might have clicked some 7-8 times that I checked to see it.
It feels like YC def watched my demo more than once. Not sure who many. 27-4-8 = 14. That sounds a lot...What happened ?
3. didn't really open the prototype yet.
4. not sure.

Anyways, I wanted to sell this to MS / Google, or make it bootstrapped and keep the profits myself. Only thing that kind of got me a little too hopeful is seeing a question from Rtm.
Well, other ways it is then.
Open source typesetter for sheet music
1) Almost a year on current project, but had two previous failure since I went solo.

2) Never applied and don't plan to

3) Not yet, hoping to bootstrap then raise money when needing rocket fuel.

4) http://alwaysontechnologies.com
1. few years (amongst other projects)
2. no
3. no (have not tried/no desire to)
4. http://www.UniversityTutor.com
1) About a week or two. Finished 2 days ago

2) Never applied

3) No, self-funded

4) https://text-factory.appspot.com/
Other than the numbers, the font size isn't terribly important: after you've seen it a few times you don't need to read the labels anymore and it's just the numbers and the size of the bars that matter. I made the numbers huge and they're very easy to read even from quite some distance away, and once you know that the top yellow bar is tasks in the "Brillianz" category you don't need to keep reading the label.

The power monitoring thing is something we created internally. It uses current clamps and Arduinos to push data into a web service. You're right that the graph is more pretty than functional, but it wasn't intended for wall-size display. Most people access it on their desktop and it's quite legible in that context, and it just seemed a handy thing to stick up on the status screen.
Depending upon the area you are searching, I would turn to that community.

For example, Rails developers might turn to http://rubygems.org/ for Rails gems. I tried to replicate this for the CakePHP framework by building CakePackages (http://cakepackages.com/) .

Outside of a framework, try searching Google Groups and asking on IRC for places where code is indexed for your specific language/development stack. I find pestering the framework/language core developers is an easy way to find out the information I need, and they are usually happy to answer questions as long as I document and answer those questions for others later (blogging, updating documentation, etc.).
http://freshmeat.net/ - the biggest catalog you can find of released open source software, be it libraries or full blown. Strictly speaking, it is Linux/Unix software -- but almost all of it is open source.

Like with commercial software, projects vary greatly in their quality and maturity; but freshmeat also collects release history with changes per release, which would give you a good idea of how well maintained, and how responsive project maintainers are.
Hmm, I think I detect a little anti-Obama bias.
I would like to think of this document as more of a brainstorming session than polished startup pitches. Throw everything out there and see what sticks. Some people might find a gem from part of an idea, and tweak it to make it viable, even though the rest of the idea is garbage.
VCs do months of due diligence before they'll write you a check. We review an application from and write a check after speaking with you for 10 minutes.
1) 2 years.
2) Never applied.
3) No. Bootstrapping.
4) http://callgraph.biz
Thanks so much for posting that; it has been on my todo list for a while now to figure out a neat way of hooking virtualenv into emacs!
That’s why I subscribed to the HN RSS feed. You automatically get all links with one upvote or so.

If you really want to get to submissions that have been marked dead without any upvotes a simple “site:” query usually helps. The domain is still shown, even with dead links.
Not a bad idea, though I don't know how it would make money. Maybe you could choose which faces get pixelated, and then sell it to online newspapers, facebook, and Google street view.
And we both forgot the plucky Baltic states, which have done very well indeed!
1) Several months (say... November '09?). Spending about 2-3 months to build and launch each project (trying to get something with a little traction).

2) Never applied.

3) Not even close. Highly doubtful anyone wants to invest in my part-time startups, though angels might be more into this than VCs...

4) http://rankiac.com/ & http://bitbuffet.com/
1) Since June 2006. Last year gave equity to two team members in exchange for work they already completed.

2) Didn't apply

3) Didn't start looking. It's bootstrapped so far and I want to continue doing it this way until I no longer can. Not that there are any valley-type VCs in Saudi Arabia, but was approached by a couple of interested investors. One didn't really get web startups. Still in talks with the other one though. Investment is not currently needed, but can certainly accelerate growth.

4) http://www.qaym.com (in Arabic)
That seems unfair. You could accuse them of hyperbole and being pessimistic, but they present a lot of facts and the report in general seemed to be even-handed. I didn't see an anti-Obama bias
> "For decades, our leaders in Washington pushed us towards "a global economy" and told us it would be so good for us. But there is a flip side. Now workers in the U.S. must compete with workers all over the world, and our greedy corporations are free to pursue the cheapest labor available anywhere on the globe."

Bias much? For one thing, outsourcing would've happened whether we liked it or not. For another, having worked in manufacturing for a bit, corporations by and large aren't laughing their way to the bank by outsourcing American manufacturing jobs overseas - the cost of their goods drop proportionally with labour savings, in the mid-to-long haul anyhow.

I like how we're blaming this on everyone but ourselves - the outsourcing of manufacturing to cheap nations has allowed us to develop a rampant, disgusting consumer culture that has an almost fetishist obsession with cheap, shoddy goods. WE did that to ourselves. Believe me, if there was any significant demand in this country for expensive, well-made products we can bring a great number of manufacturing jobs back... but I suspect the Wal-Mart mentality is here to stay, and there's no one to blame for this but ourselves.
The party’s top bureaucracy organized the attempted coup in August 1991, which scuttled the reforms.

This bit made me laugh for some reason. Using "scuttle" makes it seems like a rather whimsical take on one of the more important events of the 1990's. If anyone doesn't know what he's referring to, its the KGB and other branches of the Soviet government taking himself (Gorbachev) hostage and throwing a coup. In turn, Boris Yeltsin led protests to restore Gorbachev to power.

Due to his actions, Yeltsin gained popular support and was, in effect, the leader of the Soviet Union as the president of Russia; Gorbachev had resigned a few days after the coup. And the Soviet Union was nearing its end as well; it ceased to exist just over four months later.
I disagree. I could see a platform for hosting video blogs working, despite people feeling self-conscious. The barrier to entry is really only a webcam on a laptop, and I believe YouTube proves that people are in general comfortable with themselves. Having a wordpress-style CMS dedicated to video submissions shouldn't be too difficult.
Interesting site. You may want to have a look at this page:

http://oakland.universitytutor.com/chinese
As in everything: It depends.

I don't know this story beyond what two people have just said. But, I know that if I commit to something, I expect my co-founder to also be committed to it (within the bounds of what we've agreed upon). Working on other projects now and then is fine and normal...it's what hackers do. But, if you've committed to build a business with someone, it's not really the idea that makes the business. It's the combined effort and execution of the team. So, splitting your time between building your "private business" and your "co-founded business", and then taking off when the private business has some bit of success, is probably not what an honest business person would do. If you don't believe in the co-founded business idea, anymore, you talk it over with your co-founder, and you try to fix the problem.

But, shit happens. If you give up your equity in the co-founded startup, apologize for flaking, etc. then I guess you've done the best you can. I wouldn't expect the co-founder to ever be willing to do business with you again, but it's probably not what I would call "treacherous", either. I think the story of Evan Williams and Blogger (and Odeo/Twitter, for that matter, maybe even moreso) would sound kind of similar when told by different involved parties, and we don't consider Evan treacherous.

Then again, we are talking about one week later. He had to know that he had other irons in the fire and probably wouldn't be involved in the company much longer. So, yeah, this actually does sound kinda nasty.
Very cool. What is it? =)
1.) Since Sept. 2009 (Working on other things as far back as Feb. 2008.)

2.) No. (I usually apply, though.)

3.) No. (Doesn't seem like a good use of time to try.)

4.) http://www.fairoakslabs.com/iknowpeople/ or http://itunes.apple.com/app/iknowpeople/id349918351?mt=8
Wait, do social welfare "clients" really get money for dog stuff? Where is that?
1) 6 months

2) Never applied, probably not the right idea/goals for it. Plus don't live in CA.

3) No VC, but who knows what the future holds. Just a for-fun project scratching my own itch at this point.

4) http://movief.ly
Probably should have worn a shirt in the video, too.
1) Since Oct 2009

2) Not applied

3) Not applicable

4) http://www.smstweet.in : send tweets by a simple SMS
http://www.ideabubbles.in : loyalty program on mobile phone
and other such ideas
1) In my spare time for a few months.
2) I have never applied.
3) No, I am entirely self funded.
4) http://www.sliceapp.com / http://www.clevercollie.com
It's definitely biased, some of those charts are extremely misleading, especially the later ones. I like the one which shows when Democrats take control of Congress.
What are all those orange cones on top of buildings? I don't remember seeing those when I was in Paris 5 years ago.
This is a common myth. US is still the largest manufacturer in the world.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/CompanyFocus/...
"The United States of America is very quickly becoming a socialist welfare state."

The mindless stretching of the term socialism is getting a bit grating, you think?
Chiff.com ranks higher than ncaa and espn when searching "ncaa bracket"
What a cool product! I love it!

I'm curious, did you build/design this yourself and what did you build it on?
A cure for the YC rejection blues
Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia? They weren't satellite states during the Cold War; they were part of the Soviet Union (or Russia, if you go back to before World War 1). They broke off afterwards.

To me, it doesn't make much sense to examine these states the same way you would satellite states. They weren't in the same situation during the Cold War. Although, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia did simply vote themselves out of the Russian Federation, rather then joining it after the Soviet Union collapsed, so, there's a common thread for success, I suppose.
I was going to downmod you for a tired joke about Emacs... but since your nickname is so awesome, I upmodded you instead.
I've done a lot of work with the EDICT data, so shoot me a message if you run into any weirdness: don AT madwombat.com
Chimneys (specifically, the venting caps (“chimney pots”) on top of chimneys). Here's a Wikipedia image of similar chimneys in London: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chimney.stack.london.arp.j...
1) Since October 2009.

2) I haven't applied to YC. I participated in the inaugural San Diego Founder Institute session which finished a few weeks ago.

3) I'm not raising money yet. I'm still working a (percentage of a) full time software engineering job. I think I can get pretty far in terms of traction without funding.

4) I'm still in private beta and not ready to share just yet.
Got my idea up there: Crowd-sourced shipping (Tip: It's row 62). Not sure I'm the best person to go with this idea, but I would love to see the internet make something like this work.

I know it's a little bit out there, but I think it would be a fun startup to make something like this work.
I find it TRAGIC that investment in science education is seen purely from an economic perspective. Look at the keywords Barret uses: "development, productivity improvements, and growth"! "determinant of economic growth"! "work force expertise in STEM"!

These considerations are NOT what inspired mankind's greatest scientific thinkers and philosophers to devote their lives to their pursuits. The major theme to stress instead should be "the study of reality and truth". We all hunger to know "The Truth". Just ackowledge this basic human tendency then. That's all it takes.

India especially is pissing away its advantage of having a culture that places a high regard on education. At my home we had days set apart in a year where we literally worshipped books! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durga_Puja#Kerala)
With China's minimum wage being around US 60c an hour (http://bit.ly/6mDBYz) they are in a much better position to undertake such a labour intensive job as the West.

It is a smart move to receive payment in the form of natural resources as some of the countries involved in the network are economically poor but resource rich. It is likely the countries participating will end up paying a lot more in resources than they would have in cash.

It's my opinion that people are mistaken when viewing the proposal in terms of personal transport. It's not. It's a system designed to fuel China's growing demand for resources, which cannot be transported via air. In the other direction will come a high speed flow of manufactured goods.
boo, gpl. lgpl would be fine
Apple, Wal-mart, and the “Market Capitalization Bigger Than” Thing
I see the assertion that far-flung rail is superior to air or car travel. I've lived in Europe, and while I admittedly used the rail system quite a bit... it was more a matter of economics. With Southwest flying basically anywhere in the nation, why does far flung high speed rail make sense?

High speed commuter rail, sure. Connecting Portland to Seattle? Absolutely.

But we have the most sophisticated flight network in the world. Why is that such a bad thing?
You're wrong because;

A) pg was simply pointing out what the guy had failed to mention in his post.

B) The manner in which you leave a partner to pursue your own thing can vary. It wasn't that he left, from pg's comment I get a feeling the issue is HOW the founder ended his affairs with YC and co-founder.

So relax, keep your side projects. all though I highly recommend that you focus one at a time. put all you can in one idea before you leave and potentially put your team mates in jeopardy to pursue another.
Oh, I've already done that for the page file, and I just disabled hibernation. I actually meant completing an installation, not post-optimization - you can cut down on the total use by moving directories to another drive and linking to them with junctions, and I have done that to cut it down - but the Windows directory alone takes up 14G, and I wouldn't rush to mess with its internals:

~$ time du -cs /c/Windows
14G /c/Windows
14G total

real 0m32.853s
user 0m6.255s
sys 0m22.682s

This is Cygwin du running cold (as cold as the Windows directory gets) and it was CPU limited on a Core i7 920 @ 3.6GHz. There are just shy of 90,000 files in my Windows dir. A second (=> warm) run completed in 28 seconds; the Intel SSD is very fast for random reads, and I highly recommend it. Most of the other brand SSDs have higher contiguous throughput, but the Intel usually beats them easily on random access.
I wonder what that is: http://imgur.com/ATpQj.png
Yeah, lilypond is awesome. I actually used it to typeset a piece of music that got published as an arrangement for handbells! http://www.beckenhorstpress.com/title.asp?id=HB317

[edit] link to recording: http://www.beckenhorstpress.com/audio/HB317.mp3

Bonus points if you can name the actual piece (the publisher didn't want me to use the actual title for the published arrangement).
Terracotta Jewellery for the Fashionable Woman
What superior tools are you thinking about?
Why is the distinction important? We're discussing post-Soviet states, including Russia, and how they managed their transition away from communism.

Whether or not they were an integral part of the USSR or just a vassal state has no bearing on this, except to the extent that the ex-Soviet republics tended to be even more of an economic shambles.

After 1990, everyone was in the same boat, and the countries that were able to push through "shock therapy" reforms prospered, while the rest did not.
Ireland sets up venture center in San Jose, plans $100m VC fund
Maybe related to the Pi Day ?
If it's worth the read, it's worth the read. Otherwise why write it?
1) 18 months.
2) No (3 subsequent rejects).
3) No.
4) Will be announcing soon.
Grand Challenges