skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The way I see it, there are two scenarios:

1. Your co-founder is right, your competitors have created something way beyond what you could ever create, and your venture is not worth pursuing. If this is the case, you must either rethink your approach or shut down.

2. Your founder is wrong, and has been scared away by a little competition. Many people can be scared away when competition comes up. These people are not the ones you want as co-founders. Do NOT drag these people along for the ride! This person will drain your energy and slowly sink your company. There are bigger bumps than competitors showing up, and a founder that will bolt at the first sign of trouble is not who you want on your team.

The problem is that discerning between the two can be difficult, if not impossible for someone so closely involved as another founder. Have family, friends, and colleagues you trust talk to you about your situation to help gauge which of the situations this is. Also keep in mind that it is not necessarily one or the other. It could be mix of both 1 and 2, so be aware of this.
Ten weirdest types of computers
they both have a certain feel to them. call it web 2.0 web 3.0 :) or just look at the graphics or the language and yes sometimes features too. "Share the love" / "concert-savvy friend" just an example. There are other bits and pieces too. You could say that this is the general trend, what attracts yc, and so on. of course. that would be the value of their vision. I don't have any arguments about that at all. And it's a good think that they can see it. but my argument is that this is the theme of yc.

Another thing I've noticed is how features that have been around for a long time (web time), are slightly "modified" (most times more simplified, either for the good reason of simplification, or simply because of lack of technical experience, or in the worst case because of bad copying) many examples of this. but since you brought up dropbox, the first thing brings to my mind is box.net. again I'm not saying anything bad about it. I'm sure its better since I know about box.net and their not that great anyway. but my point is that there are not that many selections that are either new innovative products or an old idea that you could say wow this is how it should be implemented. say Google for example. And, they have common theme to them. no not from the perspective of the consumer or what the products are.

I really don't know about how yc views things but the theme of yc is clear. alteast to some degree. either because that's simply the result of their total work and it just produces this, or intention by design to move in this direction or both.

if you go to many vc's site and look under their portfolio many times you can find a common theme in their select.
On local merchants purchasing advertising, I think there's been poor adoption partly because it's difficult for advertisers to see the value and tell if it's working, and partly because it is currently absurdly hard to target local advertising.
Secret to Justin.tv's Recent Traffic Surge
Agreed. Facebook will lose dominance shortly because it is so easily replicable. (Although, the way Facebook grew its user base through colleges was genius and would be hard to match.)

The same argument could be made for Google as well. Hadoop is poised to render Google's search technology worthless.
The Internet is a global communications network which is accessed by viewing electronic documents called "pages" which contain certain highlighted parts called "links" that when accessed will lead you to other pages. A small on-screen arrow called a "cursor" can be moved around the page you are currently viewing with a navigation device called a mouse and this is used to browse and navigate documents. People use the Internet for things like news, commerce, entertainment, pornography, copyright infringement, and watching videos of lesbians eating each other's shit out of a cup like an icecream cone.
Thanks for the advice everybody. I thought I'd add that while the competing product is very polished, and run by an excellent company, they're not exactly the same.

It's sort of like Mint.com and Quicken. They both help you do the same thing but they approach it completely differently.

Our product is going to do A, B, and C but the focus is on item A. Our competition also does A, B, and C but they put all of the focus on B.
Can the cellphone help end global poverty?
Why China is the real master of the universe
I'll think about this further. I've been making the case for our product for a long time though, and today when he gave up because of this other product, I didn't know if I really wanted to convince him. I wondered if it would be a mistake to keep him as a co founder.
Lisp Interpreter using Javascript
If you really mean zero computer knowledge that's pretty tough challenge. I'd probably have to try a few times until I could develop a pitch that seemed to work. The "curse of knowledge" means I don't think I could imagine what it'd take to get across the concepts to someone. I'd love to try.
Git and Mercurial are almost the same, when it comes to the command line interface!

Seriously, there's a project by Carl Worth to quite literally port the Mercurial book to Git. See http://cworth.org/hgbook-git/
I use Grand Central and it's great.
there are a few:
giggle (developer.imendio.com/projects/giggle)
git-gui (packaged with Git, at least on my distro)
gitk (same as git-gui)

and probably a few more
I appreciate this response. I think it's #2 but I'll think about it some more.
I guess I could do all that (truth be told, my C's a bit rusty for a prompt answer).

How 'bout:

$echo -n "YC" > foo
$hd foo
00000000 59 43 |YC|
00000002

Yeah, I know, perhaps 4359 might be better.

(UPDATE: fixed code spacing)
It's a trade off. Microsoft is smart too because it sacrifices the hardware markup for volume. Both are valid strategies.
common theme is "build something people want". i guess you could call that a common philosophy as well.
Let me repeat... red light cameras are NOT for safety, but for revenue.

If this was not the case, Dallas, Texas (and several other cities) wouldn't have recently stopped their red light camera program because it was TOO effective at reducing red light violations and, as a result, was a money-losing program.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23710970
Wow.. that really hit home..
The Internet is like being able to sit down at your desk and being able to read any book in any library anywhere on earth, instantly.
>It started with a question: could software help people connect in real life? Nothing we knew about was any good. Nobody sane would sift through lists of events online. Dating sites mostly sucked. Put people in the position of a judge, and romance cannot bloom. Chat rooms sucked. There are trolls and perverts everywhere. And the internet at large has no location. Rarely would you find someone nearby.

Ah, local social software. A chat room that you can only access if you are close enough to start a conversation in real life. A forum that you can only post to if you are sitting in the same coffee shop.

I hear that they are working on such things for the iPhone.

I can't wait until the world realizes that social software is not social unless you actually meet people through it.
Auction Software 
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I'm guessing these decisions need not be static. if in future their content improves, im sure we can turn off the ban.
They aren't spamming new.yc nor does it consist mainly of linkjacked content. I can understand that people have problems with some of their content, but then just don't vote it up. It's as simple as that. To ban a site entirely that does have some legitimate content simply because you don't like it is a very bad precedent to set.
I believe that the most profitable things are the most creative. Just because Scrabulous is popular doesn't mean that your puzzle couldn't be moreso. Remember, there was a time before Scrabble even existed!
I recall Zuckerberg admitting at SXSW they only valued it at that so that Microsoft could invest their cash and not suck up a big percentage of the company. That would mean not even Zuckerberg pretends its worth $15 billion. It seems a bit lame to repeat this valuation as if Zuckerberg is running around yelling "My company is worth $15 billion!" because he's definitely not doing that.
So? All the power to them.

If they're close to getting acquired, this could be a very good strategy, and could even be a catalyst for an acquisition altogether. This is a VERY nice end game move.

Those "big" lawsuits don't happen till normally later in the game. Those "big" lawsuits also take a very long time, and in the mean time traffic would continue to skyrocket (it already has past ustream.tv by far). I think this is definately a winning strategy, and predict the lawsuit will either A) never happen, or B) will happen far too late to put them out of business.

If jtv had started pimping out pirate traffic a year ago when they first started, things would be different. They're going to make bank off of this. Just watch.
American Idol mainstream tv advertising != Facebook
Rails 2.1 Time Zone Support: An Overview
I hate to say it but I have to disagree. In the 6 or so months that we had an active GC number, we would just receive endless wrong-number messages. Perhaps there are some settings or options I neglected to set that would cut down on this?
I think you don't need to be objective -- you just need to whip up enough enthusiasm to get the person over their fear of the evil compuwebs and trying it out. After that, they'll learn themselves. I had this with my mum, who is now happy googling away, buying things from amazon, and watching youtube.

Start small, with the benefits of one or two sites. Find a site that offers a batch of benefits together -- say, google, google mail, google video, google maps, and google shopping -- and tell them that this is 'home.' In fact, you could just tell them that Google is the internet, teach them to compose a search, and be done with it. People take to the web very naturally once they try it.
Three words: slow news day.
The Internet is a series of tubes.
Column stores generally compress the data better than row stores. Some xml systems like XMill[1] use column representations behind the scenes for this reason.

[1] - http://www.liefke.com/hartmut/xmill/xmill.html
It's like if everybody has a TV and a mini TV studio in their home. The number of channels are nearly illimited. Main difference is that huge part of the content is text.
Glad I found this thread. Didn't realize it existed at the time of my original suggestion

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=156530

for an optional dark skin. Anyway. Here is the style made specifically for the Stylish addon in Fx, as per suggestion of PieSquared.

http://userstyles.org/styles/6381
Embracing Rejection
Especially with inflation the way it is now.
the internet is a ginormous trailer park. it is open to anyone without limits. some people park their trailer for no particular reason. some bring their lunch wagon to sell food. some have a movie wagon. lots of wagon do not charge the residents for their service, they just love to have a lot of people around their wagon and figure a way to make money from them later. you can live the park anytime you want. you live there for life for a mere 5.99/month... ....and so on....
Hopefully we'll get lots of new users!
Ubuntu + Firefox:

Blank screen and a window with this message pops up:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException
at java.lang.String.String(java.lang.String) (/usr/lib/libgcj.so.6.0.0)
at gnu.gcjwebplugin.AppletTag.parseParamValue(java.io.StreamTokenizer) (Unknown Source)
at gnu.gcjwebplugin.EmbedTag.EmbedTag(java.io.StreamTokenizer, java.net.URL, java.lang.String) (Unknown Source)
at gnu.gcjwebplugin.AppletTag.parseNextTag(java.io.StreamTokenizer, java.net.URL, java.lang.String) (Unknown Source)
at gnu.gcjwebplugin.PluginAppletWindow.setTag(java.lang.String, java.lang.String, java.lang.String) (Unknown Source)
at gnu.gcjwebplugin.PluginAppletViewer.start(java.io.InputStream, java.io.OutputStream) (Unknown Source)
at gnu.gcjwebplugin.AppletViewer.main(java.lang.String[]) (Unknown Source)
at gnu.java.lang.MainThread.call_main() (/usr/lib/libgcj.so.6.0.0)
at gnu.java.lang.MainThread.run() (/usr/lib/libgcj.so.6.0.0)

Ubuntu + Opera:

Blank (grey) page with a tiny thing on it saying "Java ap" and the rest cant be read.
Ban Valleywag

Review of valleywag on yelp

http://www.yelp.com/biz/valleywag-com-east-palo-alto#hrid:es...
You might try to find out what he wants to make, what would get him excited. You need him to program something he will actually do and in turn you are going to have to market it. I don't see many other choices...
It allows exceptional stories to pass through the filter. That's a form of censorship, but it's only censoring the spammy, linkbait articles.

So, like Paul said, I guess there IS a time when censorship in the answer, and it's for obvious spam.
That's not the point of brand advertising though. The point is to hammer the consumer with a brand over and over again until they KNOW that's the brand for them and go out and seek it on their own. Think Coke, Ford, etc. Facebook has terrible click-through rates, so if they're going to make money from advertising, it'll probably be this way.
It has a spam folder that allows you to spam out certain numbers... hope this helps.

It obviously is not a perfect tool -- there's no such thing. But the value that it has coupled with the fact that it's free make it a very strong alternative to GotVmail.com and other options for storing and tracking voicemail's.

It's also pretty new. It will be even cooler this time next year.
So? The reason this kind of thing is a problem is ethics. The blog post this refers to made strong opinions on the ethics of this situation - negatively.

If the speculation that JTV guys are consciously allowing this to happen is true, then it is a failure of ethics and breaking of rules.

The attitude you reflect may win publicity but at the cost of ethics.
Suggestion: If you really want this to work, grab the nearest English major you can find and have them rewrite your content.
thanks for the reply. IIRC, the problem for us was that the messages came from different numbers every time.. it's like GC yanked the phone number from someone that didn't pay their bills.

but yeah, nothing is perfect.
There is nothing stopping you from creating it with or without the validation of YC. You're right that just because it's been done doesn't mean you can't do it better and get it right. Would Yelp exist if they thought -- oh, darn, Citysearch seems to have the whole market, we'll never win.

That being said, you should consider starting with a specific community you know, getting it in the hands of real users, and iterating like crazy. These things can't be developed in an intellectual vacuum.

Best of luck!
For enterprises, the license cost of a product is a small part of the equation. Maintenance and support (billed annually) is really what they're interested in.

And don't forget that the more that someone's paid for something, the more willing they are to scream bloody murder until whatever issue (they think) they're having is fixed.
So you inherited somebody else's debt collector problem. That's hilarious! I'm actually laughing as I write this because I know exactly what it feels like to have debt collectors calling. In fact, I just got a nice, shiny new letter from my friendly local attorney.

My 1st startup didn't go so well, nor was it structured well. So this summer I'm doing door-to-door sales to get out of debt. Kind of lame. I'd much rather work on my next startup, but I want my wife to stay sane....
In-vitro hamburger? "We have the technology."
This is good advice. You can definitely tell how good an organization is by the quality of their questions.
A lot of people in the 90's used to describe the internet this way, but I think it has sort of evolved beyond just a library of knowledge.

What about the availability of instant, practically free communication?
I think life should be more about finding things you want to do and then doing them, and less about getting more time off from what you don't want to do.
Ask PG: Essay Editing?
PG has often emphasized the importance of editing and rewriting his essays. I was curious if he would be willing to post copies of some particular essay at various stages of editing. I would be really interested to see the progression.
Regardless of what Zuckerberg says, it's the valuation. It doesn't matter why. It's a simple mathematical equation. He can feign humility all he wants, but legally and technically speaking, their valuation is $15 billion.

I don't know any of their investors, but I'd be willing to bet my left nut that they'd be angry if the next funding round values them at $10b.
I don't see what Google did as being illegal. Certainly reprehensible, but making someone unemployable is not the same as employing them with zero salary.
I thought so. Then I couldn't find nothing to back it up. Cause it's off label and I didn't look hard.
Is your startup public yet?
FWIW, I've met a lot of people who are similarly worshiped, and PG handles it better than most.
We hear you. There are advantages besides proximity to investors to siting in the bay area. San Francisco and Berkeley are wonderfully vibrant communities.
Actually now that I think about it, because Google is now an OpenId provider, you can probably just accept OpenIds when you port it out of GAE and everything will work fine.
In a similar vein, placebos work better when they are more expensive.
I installed this a few months ago so my daughter could play her favorite windows 98 games on her Macbook. It worked well but finding and installing the necessary drivers took forever.
text Google Now Fills Out 1 minute ago link
It's nice to know that Michael Arrington agrees that Valleywag is toxic. And, I also find Michael's tone regarding Hacker News is significant. It's pretty clear that he has tons of respect for the site and what PG is doing with it.
Use geotargeting to target a specific state or small country pour massive amounts of money relatively to the small target zone and monitor changes in consuming habits, brand reach and recognition etc.

I'm not sure most consumer product companies know how to do it properly.

Also some brand advertising isn't always about gaining ground, its about not losing ground to competing brands that do advertise, if Pepsi is pushing a huge TV campaign, Coke feels the pressure to play catch up.
reminds me of a scene in Neuromancer:

"Molly and Armitage ate in silence, while Case sawed shakily at his steak, reducing it to uneaten bite-sized fragments, which he pushed around in the rich sauce, finally abandoning the whole thing.

'Jesus,' Molly said, her own plate empty, 'gimme that. You know what this costs?' She took his plate. 'They gotta raise a whole animal for years and then they kill it. This isn't vat stuff.' She forked a mouthful up
and chewed."
I thought Grand Central was great. One number for life. Awesome. Then they sent me an email informing me that they had to switch my number (which I printed onto business cards). I never went back.
Dromaeo: JavaScript Performance Testing
At least you still have the desire to start a new co, the experience didn't kill your spirit!
Having not thought about it much before, I found the "Metcalfe's Law is Wrong"[1] article more interesting.

[1] - http://spectrum.ieee.org/print/4109
"App Engine is a portion of n servers automatically allocated by load."

Theoretically. Right now, unless I'm reading things wrong, the limits imposed by the agreement are less than quite a small shared hosting account, and pretty much any dedicated or VPS account, could serve each month. Is n scalability really infinite, or even interesting, if it's less than a single box could serve using standard tools?

I'm sure it'll expand in time, and maybe even in time to keep up with any app you build on it that happens to be explosively successful. I'm just saying that it's silly to imply that App Engine scales if you can't actually run bigger applications on it than a single traditional host.
Using public safety regulations as a revenue stream has a deleterious effect on the rule of law.

Or as a wise man once said:

If you make the law into a joke, don't be surprised when the people start laughing.
Would you want people reading your half-baked essays? I know "I'd be embarrassed to let anyone see this as it is right now" is the most common reason I have for not making code open source -- I wouldn't be surprised at all if PG, for exactly the same reason, didn't want to publish early drafts of his essays.
Imagine big telephones that could transmit written words, images, audio, and even video. That thing over there, yeah the one with the keyboard and screen, that's the advanced telephone we call a "computer." Instead of dialing someone with numbers, you dial with letters. And we call the big telephone network the "internet."
CASEScontact.org - security portal
Steve Baller, Change Agent
Actually, this would make a great essay in itself, wouldn't it?
Disqus, Daniel Ha interview
I highly recommend Zinsser's "On Writing Well" (http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-25th-Anniversary-Nonficti...). It has excellent advice & real examples of rough drafts.
I'm not saying it will scale well, but it is designed to scale in a way a shared host simply can't. If App Engine fails to scale because the bandwidth is too expensive then Google can reduce the price. I don't think the article even understands that this isn't simply another shared host. The joyent people didn't get it with their 'give the people root'.
The startup pitch generatr.