skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Nick is the author of "An Engineer's View of Venture Capitalists" http://ycombinator.com/tredennick.html and a dynamic and insightful speaker. You can get a sense of his humor from the bio for the talk:

Nick Tredennick has the usual degrees from typical universities and has held an uninspiring assortment of run-of-the-mill jobs. For example, he has been a fry cook, Air Force pilot, janitor, university professor, dishwasher, design engineer, truck driver, naval officer, oil field worker, and corporate executive. He even helped start a few companies, but was soon forced out. However, despite an appalling lack of knowledge about programmable logic and electronics in general, he was once chief scientist at Altera, a leading maker of programmable logic devices. Through what could only have been a monumental bureaucratic foul-up, he was also once a Research Staff Member at IBM's prestigious Watson Research Center. Tredennick has put considerable effort into finding something he could do well. No luck so far. He started his career as a working engineer (nerd), but moved to management when he found watching people work was easier than working. He moved to a university when he found talking about work was even easier than watching it. He has finally reached the pinnacle of his career in a position where he doesn't even have to talk about work. He is a technology analyst for Gilder Publishing.
For those needing funding in the middle range one option might be Band of Angels.
http://www.bandangels.com/entrepreneurs/index.php
I don't really know much about them, though.
"Because this change in diet has been slow and incremental, it cannot explain the dramatic price movements of the past year. The second change can: the rampant demand for ethanol as fuel for American cars. In 2000 around 15m tonnes of America's maize crop was turned into ethanol; this year the quantity is likely to be around 85m tonnes. Ethanol is the dominant reason for this year's increase in grain prices. It accounts for the rise in the price of maize because the federal government has in practice waded into the market to mop up about one-third of America's corn harvest. A big expansion of the ethanol programme in 2005 explains why maize prices started rising in the first place."
If d is an infinitesimal value, I'm not sure what d * infinity would be. If d is defined as 1 / infinity, then it would equal 1, but that doesn't seem right.
Just like he solved the worlds walking problems!
This textbook teaches calculus using the infinitesimal approach. To do rigorous infinitesimal calculus, you have to define the hyperreal number system.

http://theassayer.org/cgi-bin/asbook.cgi?book=770
Twitter Testing Advertising In Twitter Streams
Wow. That was one honest blog post. After reading it I get the feeling that Russ sees the world clearly and will be on his feet again in no time.
Citigroup
Bridging the Gap, the Sequel
I am happy that a company that makes something real is worth more than a company that just moves money around.
Elementary Calculus: An Approach Using Infinitesimals
Technically possible. There are a few Scheme implementations that have persistent continuation (all I know is JVM based ones). Also this page contains a link to the slides that talks about persistent delimited continuation in OCaml: http://logic.cs.tsukuba.ac.jp/Continuation/program.html

Making continuations serializable may cost its implementation, so whether it scales well for yc.news is anothoer question. I don't know the answer for it.
Actually the Fed is the right place to do this because it is banking not securities. Wall Street and its flora and fauna are fairly well regulated, but the "shadow banking system" is not, and much of the current housing loan crisis is due to the lack of the Fed using its already granted regulatory powers.

What we need is a Fed chairman who believes that regulation makes for more transparent and effective credit markets, not one that follows the political dictates of questionably informed politicians.
The Sequoia pitch meeting with Will Ferrell was surely the funniest pitch meeting of all time.
Ok, while I am not an expert, but I can say there are many good people leaving Google. 1. From knowing three x-gogglers, (one of them is a good friend), 2. From what you can read on the news also,

http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/03/can-google-stop.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/apr/30/news.cityne...
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/04/03/what_to_ma...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/brain-drain-...
http://www.gulfnews.com/business/Technology/10204853.html

it is an undenaible fact that people are leaving. For many reasons, but they are. I understand that there are bright people that like the security of a large company, but there are many more bright people that Google is not attractive employer anymore. Lots of great perks, but salaries are just average, work maybe interesting or mindblowing boring (depending where you get stuck), plus many people bright would like to work on something on their own rather just be another small cog in a large company.
This is true of a lot of sites now that offer online discount codes. A quick google search will often save you 10-20% on purchases. I think I got 25% off our business card purchases and free shipping at overnightprints.
I haven't reread the edited version, but the draft is less grating to me than most of these essays (I read every essay). I can see why you deleted much of it, but the draft has some interesting detail that got cut.

The essays do have a lot of telling vs. showing, and maybe that gives them the feel of over-produced music. For instance, the paragraph about VC reactions to your suggestions in Why There Aren't More Googles would be way better as an anecdote with specific detail, imho.
Video interview of how Markus Frind runs PlentyofFish with 1 webserver (starts at 1 min 56)
There's also the fact that the mindset among hackers at large is shifting away from being employees toward being entrepreneurs. No doubt employment at Google is more pleasant than average, but hackers are sensitive to the judgments of their peers, especially the ones doing cool things, and I bet that many talented programmers at Google are chafing under the idea that they are nevertheless an employee.
Sure... but where does the waste go? How do you clean this 'magical' machine? How do you dispose of the potentially highly toxic substances that were in the water?
The Definition of "CEO"
Who is Most Influential?
I was sitting in the back row last year and I watched him prepare the presentation during the afternoon. I didn't know what he looked like at the time but seeing him work the alien on his laptop was a dead giveaway. And yes, I did talk to him and asked about his YC experience. It certainly made the idea of doing startups more real to me. (Sigh... working at a job-job these days, but still dreaming.)

For those of you who are going this year - remember to talk to other people; meeting other like-minded hackers is part of the Startup School experience.
> Nowadays our team has exploded to a total of five.

BOOM!
If you can get this at a production cost in the $1000-$2000 range as the site says, then the impact of this thing will be much, much larger than the Segway.

Still, I think the guy should be applauded. There are still really important issues that need to be addressed, and he is working on them.
Sergey and Larry were famous in the valley for supposedly being clueless about how business worked.

http://www.mathewingram.com/work/2006/12/04/let-me-cut-you-w...

I also know a guy that Sergey tried to recruit in the early years. Imagine if you saw this logo:

http://blogoscoped.com/files/google-com-history/1998.jpg

..on a business card printed out from a laser printer on ordinary office paper. The guy pushing this on you is some grad school dropout with a strange voice who keeps saying he's going to change the world.

Look like a winner to you?
It is a joke, right? If you can purify urine with something like that, all you'd need is to get users "contributing" to the system.
Bury it in a hole in the ground... heck, you could even dump it back in the same water source it came from and filter it again :)
The Segway kinda sucked, but still, you gotta be a real genius to think up and design something that sucks in just that kind of way. I'm glad he's working on something so fundamental. We need more like this. Even if Segway is a little lame.

In fact this is particularly well suited too Dean, because even if the design is lamer then segway polo if the science and engineering are right, it's a worldchanger.
Am I the only person here who couldn't care less about business cards? Who groans at the very thought of them? I didn't think I was a dirty fucking hippie but y'all are making me wonder.

Do I still get to be startup guy?
Not a joke in the slightest. It is a distiller, so clean water boils off and is collected, separated from any contaminants.
SHDH usually has free beer. We'll try to have enough.
It's a very open event.
With all respect for Paul Graham I don't think he deserves a place on this list. Steve Jobs is 195 and Nelson Mandela is 192.
#2 is Korean popstar Rain.
Learn CS - David Weekly's Practical Computer Science Primer
Somewhere below the Dalai Lama...and all those other people.

Of course, we should take this very seriously, since number 2 right now (and the landslide winner last year), is someone by the name of "Rain" who is apparently a pop sensation (and obviously incredibly influential) in Korea or some other place where "pop sensation" really means something--not like our namby pamby pop sensations here in the States.

I think it's safe to say that Time Magazine is thoroughly on the right path when it comes to user generated content.
We recognized this gap in the capital for young companies a while ago when we started Tandem Entrepreneurs and I could go on about this in great detail. However I will just highlight that the gap isn't just with financial capital, it is with human capital too. Beyond the founders, there are very few who would join these startups as employees? Why wouldn't a talent entrepreneur not just do his own? The basic equation of go raise some money and then go hire people breaks down.

Moving to risk, they key driver here is that investors must take themselves out of the equation when investing.The company must make sense even if they are not involved. This makes them cautious when things are still iffy. Tandem address this problem through a co-entrepreneurship model. We invest both human and financial capital. The human capital is to find our way to clarity together. This gives a greater comfort in taking risk. We feel much more like an entrepreneur.

Of course the Tandem model is not very scalable; we can’t even do the 30-40 that YC will do. We do a handful a year and only where we know our human capital will bring an edge.

I don’t think the VC’s have much incentive to do a co-entrepreneurship model, when they can make nice salaries doing what they do. It is obvious in hindsite that the short haul model of Southwest Airlines was a good business but it was a long time before the incumbent airlines paid it heed. I wouldn;t hold my breath for the VCs to change.
Reason enough not to use a 'session based web framework'.

If PHP can do it...
I guess this probably isn't the type of crowd where I could convince people to do shots of 200 proof...
Even more reason for pg not to be on the list.
Google’s Don’t Be Evil Not “Ordained Motto” Says Marissa Mayer
True. Causality vs Correlation. I would imagine that many if not most big successes had an acquisition offer along the way but could it be that becoming a google, apple, microsoft or oracle is much more a function of good strategy, good execution, good markets, good timing and good luck than a function of an entrepreneur walking away from an acquisition offer?
If we're going to rag on Damien for his "lisp as blub" linkbait, I think this merits the same appellation as well...
Yeah, I know. But most of the problems that poorer nations face are not related with complete lack of water, but with the lack of drinkable water. The droughts you mentioned are oftentimes the same.
He didn't tell it's coming soon, did he
Solid technology, not so good marketing and positioning
It's done by popular vote over the internet; the list is not overly meaningful.
This guy sounds like a suit in a boardroom . . . just spouting words devoid of validity . . .
What were you selling?
Wow, what a cool guy. Very transparent, very smart. I have a new respect for blip.tv as a company.

He brings up some interesting points around 13:00 regarding Blip's five founders. Does anyone know of any other companies with that many founders?

A good quote: "We're good about having intellectually honest discussion... it's not about ego, it's not about the position we had when we entered the room. I really don't like conversations where people go into rooms with their positions laid out and are totally unwilling to move just because that's the way they came into the room." (around 15:00)
This is true. However, I think the point being made here is that while you need strategy, execution, timing, all of the things you just listed above (and more), even if you have all of these things, you still can't become "a Google" if you don't resist early offers.
You should check out Tandem Entrepreneurs. We are not an angel group but co-entrepreneurs. Have done a couple of YC companies.
Great Demo!: Dead-ends…
With Highfield gone, the BBC must now open up
Yeah, the union-card line is a sad bit of truth -- I can't imagine a union card that is harder to receive, which carries fewer benefits.
I would be applying for government grants right now if I had said union-card.
Dean Kamen has done a lot of good for man kind. Both in terms of inventions and education. We need more entrepreneurs like him.
Just putting this out there...Paris Hilton hit #173, Amy Winehouse was #174.

Maybe if YC replaced PG with a young substance abusing woman it would be more popular with the media.
I really don't think there is a lack of water. Just lack of drinkable water. Unless you are in the middle of Sahara, you should be able to find all kinds of water sources.
Don't sweat it...with funding rates in the single digits, you're not missing much. ;-)
Doubtful. These guys are more in partnership than people think
DevHouse FTW
I wish that we the people could take 1% of the wealth away from investment banks and give everyone food and water.
Don't bother, the Colbert fans will bury anyone who stands in their way.
The Segway may not have changed the world, but the technology was also used for one killer wheelchair.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBOT
ILike (are they still around?) should/could perform another experiment.
Zoho on Salesforce (Openness wins)
Yeah, but you're rich. That at least deserves a :/ rather than a :( !
You can send one of 'em my way.
http://startupcrunch.org/sponsors/intimidation.php
Fliiby : community network (add your site to the grid)
Ugh. Completely unrelated to the actual content -- why, oh why, do people take a simple thing like static tabular data, and make a Flash object out of it? Why? Now it doesn't scroll like anything else does, and in exchange for losing the ability to scroll-wheel through the list, I get ... nothing.
Is the Mobile Web Dead? Some Mobile Entrepreneurs Say Yes
This caused a stir in the UK 2 years ago too: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/500000-whe...
Gmail blocking Messages to Yahoo Mailing Lists
I've used them once and once was enough. The cards that I ordered were their premium variety but, when I received them, the card stock was poor and the cards were sloppily cut (meaning the bleeds looked poor). I would definitely pay more to use a more professional company.
That was a great interview. I really liked his point about how North American culture is so accepting of failures, which ends up leading to a greater chance of success and innovation. I never really thought of it that way, but it gives a new appreciation for something I know I sometimes take for granted and even look at as lacking compared to the appeal of foreign cultures (grass is always greener on the other side, right? :) Thanks for posting that one!
Are you also happy that you're in a lower tax bracket because that means you'll pay less taxes? lol - I actually had someone say that to me last night. He probably doesn't like the idea of business cards either. Sorry - it's tax time here in the US and I have taxes on the brain...
I need to log in for that link, but not this one:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/10/us/10names.html?hp
...but if you read the rest of PG articles, you'll see that he says _exactly_ that.
Migrating to Ruby 1.9
Just look at the CVs and salary data (if available) at any VC firm, or, outside of the startup world, grep for median MBA compensation and compare it to any tech field median salary.
I would have known they were winners from the "Linux Search" option.
I love to help out fellow entrepreneurs but, if I can't order it on the web w/o talking to a human, I'm just less likely to buy (especially when I can do that at so many other places). Perhaps I can buy from you on the web but your Products page does not seem to show me that I can (http://www.trifectaagencies.com/products.php). I'm not criticizing your site in any way; I'm just telling you why I am not buying from you. As an entrepreneur myself, I always appreciate that sort of feedback and try to give it in return.
http://www.newnetworks.com/broadbandscandals.htm

In the US, the ISPs were supposed to give us 45Mbps connections by 2006. That never happened. I don't feel too bad for them.
From the article: "In many cases, retrieving information is much like dialing a bulletin board. A user mails a query to a particular computer address, and the system responds by sending a directory and then providing any specific documents requested."

I like how they use the phrase "mail a request to a computer address." Kind of made me chuckle.
When "High School Musical Cast" is #42, we've obviously got bigger problems.
Voted for #1.

Maybe a heretical opinion, but why use continuations here at all? Their drawbacks aren't worth it in a simple app like news.yc. Use URL parameters, like /news?skip=30 for paging. Make the "reply" link lead to /item?id=12345 , it already has a reply box.

In my own apps I give a lot of thought to URL design. And yeah, don't explain, I do know about closure/cont-based web frameworks - used to be a contributor to Borges back in the day, then wrote my own one ;-)
Plus I can't open a link in a new tab. Although, to be fair, flash does discourage bots, which is important for a fair poll.
You forget the Koreans and their cult around singing sensation Rain.
Japanese geeks offered smaller-than-Eee little laptop
How did you bump into Google, coming from the middle of the country? What made you get over the initial skepticism and join? (If you don't mind me asking.)
Damn, I thought this was some new line of children's books.
Then make voting a flash-only feature (not that I think it's a good idea to do it).

The most annoying "feature" of flash in this case is that you can't search [for Paul Graham] in the text.

Flash is good for embedding videos, animating stuff, etc. It's terrible for text and navigation, as the accessibility is next to none.
I was a teenager back then attracted to the apparent freedom & lack of oversight present in the fabric of internet 'culture' back then. Somehow, looking back now I cannot help but feel a slight sentiment of loss. I want my old internet back, without the ads please, without the copyright police, without the spam & without big brother watching over my shoulder. Anyone up for a rebuild of the thing? ;-)
he is still in beta. open beta, but beta none the less. When his brand of influence is bought by the market he'll be on the list.
You can get them for about $10, with free shipping. Codes at retailmenot.com
And no one ever tells us the drawbacks of continuations...

(Why is this so?)
The Motif of Employee Motivations (and how to leverage them).
Who’s Louis Gray?
Want To Work In Video Games? Get An MBA
This issue raises when commeting.
"Producers plan to plant 86 million acres of corn this year. While 7.6 million acres less than 2007, this would still be the second-largest area since 1949." Furthermore, Soybean and Wheat acreage are both increasing.

http://www.nass.usda.gov/Newsroom/2008/03_31_2008.asp

Even if we guess at 150 bushels/acre for 2008, with 86 million acres that's 12.9 billion bushels or 322-328 million tons (not sure which version of the ton the article is using).

So 25% of the corn crop predicted to be diverted to ethanol. While this is a large increase since 2004, this is still just a quarter of a third of the total of Corn, Wheat, Soy, and Cotton crop. That's like 9%.

The article points out that this 9% is more than their rough estimate of the shortage, but that's like blaming Florida for the outcome of the entire US election or for blaming a loss on the basketball player who misses a free throw in the final seconds of a close game. So the US magically switches off its ethanol production-- what then? Demand increases by that same level again and this time there's no ethanol scapegoat.
Neat. I love my Eee, but it could use more storage. Would be nice to see this unit offered without the Windows tax.
Liferea (linux feed reader - http://liferea.sourceforge.net/) is unable to parse your RSS feed. I posted a bug report (https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=581684...) and they started to take care of it. Apparently, it's something with new line characters.

I've used Liferea for 3 years and AFAIR I didn't have any similar problems.

Reddit's feed is fine (in case you share the code - I'm not from around here...).
Salesforce Made an Offer to Acquire Zoho Before Turning to Google
Virtual Users And Domains With Postfix, Courier, MySQL And SquirrelMail (Mandriva 2008.1)
I heard a presentation once from a consultant who people hired to help get government grants. Does the funding rate go up a whole lot if you hire someone to rewrite your proposal?
IPhone’s Safari Vulnerable To Denial of Service Attacks; Can Even Crash The iPhone
dupe: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=157804
Ask HN: If you had a chance to rebuild the internet, what would you change?
True anonymity at the lowest level of the stack? No ads? Standard runtime environment to target instead of the 'mess' of ((DOM + CSS + JS) * browsers) we have now? Built-in state?
I get this often, but since refreshing the page always fixes it, I've assumed that it's just because I've used the "back button" to get to an expired version of the page.
IM aggregator eBuddy catches up to Meebo in popularity, claims nearly 10x more revenue
Will Mechanical Turk work to find the links to scientific papers?
We post biology news press releases and original content at thinkgene.com, similar to other popular sites such as biology-news.net and physorg.com. One thing we do differently is we try and find the links to the real scientific papers mentioned.

We'd like to pay people to find a scientific paper from the corresponding press release. And for them to write the anchor that includes at least the first author of the paper, name of the paper, and name of the journal. This requires some googling and some comprehension of technical/scientific English.

Will this work on Mechanical Turk and how much should we charge per job?
How do you mean? Not that I don't believe you, but I don't follow your logic. (About the subsistence farmers, I mean)
>While Meebo focuses on putting chatrooms all over the web with their Meebo Rooms product — a group chat widget you can embed on other sites — eBuddy has focused on building out its mobile offerings.

Focusing on mobile was definitely the better idea. It also sounds like they are selling much more aggressive/invasive advertising than Meebo. And it definitely doesn't sound like the users of eBuddy mind.