skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
But since they went public, they do have a responsibility to justify on the basis of profit-and-loss.

Sort of. Have you looked at the manner in which GOOG's shares are structured? Their responsibility is actually much greater to internal shareholders. (I view this as another plus.)

Most companies have CEOs who could be fired for doing the right thing. Google has insulated itself from this a little, although a profit must be turned each quarter. The voting weights of their shares are a very concrete implementation of their bias towards long-term strategies, rather than the Street's manic focus on quarterly growth.
Isn't this a straw man?

Do we know Apple has said anything to Pystar about EULA violations? I would guess that if Apple has shutdown Pystar it is because they are violating Apple's trademark by selling a product called OpenMac.

If Pystar was selling a computer called OpenDell they'd get a call from Dell.
How does spam make its way into twitter?
It's more about format than camera per se. 35mm film is expensive to work with.
This post does nothing more than prove Greenspun's 10th law of programming. All I saw in the post were points made that C++ has been hacked to apply functions to collections of data to get new data.
How many startups are seeking out the new, untested, crazy!, VC firms as opposed to the ones with the established track record of blockbusters?

If you expect the VCs to be hip to the 'new era' of investing, then perhaps you, as a startup, should show your own hipness by not showing up at the door of Kleiner Perkins, or Sequoia. A true show of your own non-conservatism.

And remember, the expectations for startups and VCs are reversed (which would seem to explain much).
Startups are expected to fail, and its OK if they do.
VCs are expected to succeed, and its NOT OK if they don't.
Next mortgage crisis
I've thought about doing something kind of like this in the past (tying together tons of data on corporations and individuals -- campaign finance, tax and financial info, etc) but concluded that to make it meaningful (rather than looking like a big data dump) would require a collaborative effort approaching that of Wikipedia and abandoned it.

The question is, you know X donated money to Y at a certain date, and Y is on the board of Z Corp, and ... so what? I never could figure out an answer.
Startup Tracking, Alexa or Compete?
I think for a lot of indie films it's a bunch of guys in a profit sharing scheme living on ramen noodles. Back when I was applying to college I looked into film school, the 35mm film costed $600/minute, and since they're photo films you can't overwrite them. If you screw up you throw them away. So in effect the medium is the weakest link for a lot of indie people, especially ones on the low end of the spectrum.
Twitter: This Space For Rent?
I think if Microsoft were not paying the vendors, more vendors
would offer PCs with Linux or without any OS at all.

They're totally not paying the vendors to install Windows. The reasons the vendors don't offer linux is because in the past when they've done it they've done a really half-assed job of it, and as a result sales have been bad, and they've been burnt.

Weren't the first Linux PCs by Dell even more expensive than the
Windows variants (I am not sure if I remember correctly)?

I remember that. This is all speculation: perhaps their OEM agreement with Microsoft said that they had to pay costs for Windows for each machine they shipped (regardless of whether it had Windows or not), OR maybe they paid RedHat a per-license deal for the linux and the margin on redhat installs was greater.
his values about software patents & why is he forcing the 1-click patent onto the EU
and about the right to read.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
http://diveintomark.org/archives/2007/11/19/the-future-of-re...
Interesting, Fred Wilson is explicitly listed as a VC willing to take chances:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=163641
I agree on recommendations.

But have you ever read a plog?
lol No one thought that was funny? Yeks!
What are you shooting with that specs comparably against the RED Scarlet that can be had for under $1.5K (Scarlet < $3K)? The Scarlet technical specs seem to far beyond anything currently within the $1500-$3000 price range. Unlike others here, I think this is pretty impressive.
Spammers set up account and then mass-follow other accounts. See also http://mashable.com/2008/04/14/twitter-spam-out-of-control/ and http://www.twitterspam.com/ .

I've never used Twitter, I just found those two links by Googling for "Twitter spam".
Appears to be Windows-only. Dropbox is a better name.
Dalibor Topic, welcome to Sun!
RubyAMP - new Ruby bundle for TextMate
What is minimum amount of money for a startup today?
Standard runtime environment to target instead of the 'mess' of ((DOM + CSS + JS) x browsers) we have now?

This is what I've always wanted. When the web first took off, I was constantly whining about how remote application UIs were going to get shoehorned into the model of document layout, of all things. It seemed short-sighted and dumb.

In retrospect, I'm not sure the web could have become what it is with something more like java applets, flash, or AJAX in the forefront. Document layout isn't what we're really doing, but it's a simple starting point that everyone can get behind.
Cubans queue for hours to sign up for mobile phone service -- costs half a year's wages
When I first saw this book, I thought it looked like self-help BS from a pretty sleazy guy...

...but a lot of credible, intelligent people have recommended it lately. I'm going to have to check it out. It might have some value.
I wonder which of his other ones are still going strong. Jobbook seems abandoned even though it was a great idea (or at least, addresses a real need).

There are a lot of organizations doing really good watchdog work -- the problem is getting people to pay attention.
Skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, feedback -- these job characteristics sound a lot like what an entrepreneur craves.

What if they key to enriching a normal job is to make it more entrepreneurial?
That's the RED one camera. The Scarlet won't be coming out till 2009 and was just announced at NAB a day ago.
The camera that is discussed in the original post is the RED Scarlet, which is set to come out in 2009 (http://gizmodo.com/379530/red-scarlet-3k-hd-pocket-pro-camer...). You are thinking about the RED OnE.

I am not slagging the author of the blog cited in this thread but some details about the price point and features would have helped emphasize how "game-changing" this camera really is. Once again, I can agree with that.
Lol... I'm sorry, but all I can say is the author needs to grow up a bit. Teenage angst will pass, just give it time.
I gotcha. Any word if the $3000 is just for the body or if it's for an inclusive kit?
Google's cookie crumbles under scripting attack
Just the body I would assume. Lenses are usually a whole new can 'o worms. THOSE suckers cost an arm and a leg no matter r what camera you are shooting on if you want good ones.
Thanks. I've been thinking about these problems recently (http://cratuki.blogspot.com/2008/04/blogs-as-email-replaceme...), and twitter is the foremost model I've had in mind as an example of a spam-proof system!

I still think the model is good. The follower spam problem described in those links (this too: http://www.stoptwitterspam.com/blog/about/) is indeed spam but could be could be fixed without it breaking the essence of the twitter approach.

I'm convinced that spam is a result of weaknesses in the model of the email system and not inevitable as you suggest. If we had our time again we would be able to standardise on a better model and for this reason was a bit surprised that you just accepted spam as part of life.

The blog link at the top describes some of my thoughts. Models that involve variable payments work as well because they directly price on how much you want to be paid by people who waste your time. In such a world I'd love it for people to spam me.
That is a really good point!
Lenses are usually a whole new can 'o worms. THOSE suckers cost an arm and a leg no matter r what camera you are shooting on if you want good ones.

True, indeed. :)
The specs on the RED link above lists "8X T2.8 Red Zoom Lens" so I think this comes with a lense.
Ad:tech Roundup: Exact Target, AdRevolution, iBloks, AdShuffle And UpSellit
I think the sentence about the fractured market and restrictive biz practices is key: There still is a need, but the market needs to evolve before filling that need becomes profitable.
What Paul ignores is that there is a non-linear reduction in risk that takes place with adoption of a service.

This was my exact response to pg's article. Or at least that one sentence that seemed to stick out.

If you're investing at a tenth the valuation, you only have to be a tenth as sure.

But of course pg cleared that up. The key is not that you can be 1/10th as sure that said investment will be successful, but that you can be 1/10th as sure that said investment will be worth $1B. Fixing final valuation linearizes things.

Suppose your threshold for investing in a startup is an n% confidence that they'll one day have a market cap of a billion dollars.

Suppose instead you split that investment between 10 companies at a tenth the valuation. How confident do you have to be that any given one will become a billion dollar company?
Yay, this old argument! OK, I'll try just that:

MBP at 2400: $1999.00

Thinkpad: (lenovo.com -> laptop -> 15" -> nvidia -> 256mb vram -> customize -> 2.4ghz -> 2x1GB -> 250gb -> wifi n -> bt -> continue -> webcam -> continue -> $1684.16 (on sale, down from $1952.95).

They're not the same computer, so you can't get exactly the same specs. The Mac has a lower screen resolution, shorter battery life, and no option to get a fingerprint scanner. The Thinkpad is heavier and thicker, doesn't have a slot-loading drive, digital audio I/O, Firewire, a built-in camera, a lighted keyboard, or a breakaway power cord. On specs alone, I wouldn't say either is better: I could imagine any one of these factors could be a dealbreaker, depending on your use of a laptop.

So the market says, no, good design isn't worth 1200 bucks. It's worth a little over $300, and that's when the competition has a "sale".
Windows Live Mesh to Launch Next Week
I think you have me confused with someone else -- my first entry into this thread was my post above providing the links to information on Twitter spam.

That said, I mentioned in another comment in another thread that I have to spend some of my time dealing with spam and all of its people effects on a pretty regular basis. I've also screwed around on the 'net since Mosaic, and dialed in to local BBSes before that (I started young :-).

In my opinion, any form of two-way communication which allows anonymous entry will be vulnerable to spam. I certainly can't think of a workaround for that, and nobody else has managed to yet, either. I agree that Twitter spam has a good chance of being eradicated once they tighten things up a little. However, in part they have that chance because Twitter isn't fully bidirectional -- there's no way that I know of for a Twitter user to send messages to someone who hasn't signed up to follow the user.
Sometimes it's impossible to resist the appealing thought that there are purely technological solutions to social problems.
No I disagree Mobile Web is not dead. I agree with the author in regards to the 2" screen mobile space. I think the mobile device market is shifting to larger screens. More people are buying devices like the iPhone/blackberry. Larger screens provide a must enhances user experience for native mobile apps.
If you look at native apps on certain devices such as the BB or iPhone you can see the heavy use for certain types of apps. Mainly email and maps and safari on the iPhone.
with the SDK for android and iPhone you will see a the increase in mobile traffic as these devices start showing up in stores.

The mobile market is not dead, its just starting to get some momentum.
I SEE NO PROBLEM WITH IT.
...but if you look at the companies he _actually_ funds, it ain't so.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/14/y-combinator-demo-day-r...
Image Hosting done right..
John Resig talks about jQuery and JavaScript (at Northeastern University)
Ask him if Amazon intends to attack any other niche vertical markets. Recently they have gotten involved with footwear via endless.com http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/01/05/amazoncom-launches-inde...

Since I operate an ecommerce statup in a niche market (motorcycle gear - revzilla.com) , his answer to that is very interesting to me.
I would ask Jeff:

1) What would you attribute your success to?

2) What was the early days of Amazon like? When did you realize that you can change the way people buy books (and anything for that matter) for ever?
this book may help:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596529321/
Natural traits like being a magnet for money, talent and attention certainly makes one more likely to succeed as an entrepreneur. I don't have such traits. But desire, work ethic and discipline can be great substitutes - and these are traits that certainly can be learned. It just ends up taking a little longer.
Mitch Kapor's new project: Handsfree 3D (Control Second Life avatar without mouse or keyboard)
You need to take more risks, pg. You need to become... pg-13
Startup scene in Dallas?
A couple weeks ago there was a question about the Pittsburgh startup scene on here... What about Dallas, TX?

I am also starting to look for a summer internship and thought it couldn't hurt to ask around here. So I guess my question could be split in to two parts:

1) Is Dallas a good city for startups?
2) Any startups in Dallas taking interns?
What Place Should Mobile Have In The Web's Future?
Shouldn't we "democratize" other programs, then? How about making GCC or CLISP accept incorrect syntax? That would allow more people to provide content and value.

We might end up with a lot of programs that only compiled correctly on one platform (gcc quirks mode!), but it would lower the barrier-to-entry for new programmers.
Less Money Coming In, but Venture Capitalists Stay Upbeat
I think it is: The best business model is one that creates wealth for your customer. Be it money, time, or anything else.
It's been done, in several different forms. It depends on your political leaning how you manage to do it. His politics is evident from other writings. Using the name "watchdog" gives it an air of legitimacy it may not, or ever, deserve.
This might interest you: http://hackrtrackr.com/
A service like this should really be integrated into every desktop "shell" and configurable for various storage back-ends like FTP, WebDAV or Subversion.

Every desktop I work at has a link to an FTP folder on my site where I keep various shared data. I also have ~/svn folder where I keep data I need versioning for (not code). I wouldn't pay anyone money for what I already have but I would acquire DropBox if I were Apple or Microsoft and integrated it into Explorer/Finder.
UK has had this for ages:
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/
http://www.writetothem.com/
Using Ruby with the Google Data APIs
You'll have better chances in Austin...
You're right that it will take a lot of education, but the point is that at $1000-$2000 range it is financially viable to add these to each village. If the average wage is $1 a day and a village has 100 people living in it, you just need to prevent 10 sick days per person (and I'm not even counting the people dying there) for the investment to pay-off. Apply some microlending to it and that's it.
Mobile is truly the next gold rush on the web. A few startups have attempted to make a run at a mobile social network, but none have gained any real traction. When someone creates an app that successfully uses the portability of most mobile phones to connect people together, it will be a huge cross-over success with mainstream audiences.
Yes. And there is scalr too, but it would have been much better if Amazon provided a very robust solution themselves, as they know their systems better than anybody else.

Then Google's app engine would really pale in comparison to Amazon's offering. Right now google is providing an engine that scales up, and which is very easy to get started (their main advantage), but the downside you have to be tied to a very cripled enviroment.

If Amazon provided the glue that sticks all their offerings into one comprehensive package that is easy to use that this would be the best of both worlds.
Who would even use google's app engine where you can have great scalability, easy to use, and have your own linux systems running on Amazon?
1st Look At Peter Gabriel’s New Music Discovery Site: The Filter
I'm an avid HN reader/dreamer/schemer in Dallas, and didn't know anyone else existed....

There are a lot of telecom startups in Dallas, but there are not a lot of Silicon Valley style software startups. You'd have better luck in Austin.

Hopefully, I'll soon be changing that ;)
I see the acquisition of skills as a side effect of building cool and useful applications (or platforms).

Therefore I would refine the second motivating factor to be:
"I want to build something cool and useful that scales to meet the demands of millions of customers".
It seems like Aaron would benefit from writing down both his goals and assumptions.
Google is losing search market share to Yahoo in the states
The Lives of Elevators
It is very interesting to learn that VCs also demonstrate herd mentality or group think when they invest. The same behaviour is also displayed by professional money/mutual fund managers.

I remember reading somewhere the statistics that VC funding during the dot-com bubble days was at its peak. So they were not any better than the individual investors in terms of assessing these dot-coms for their potential. And the common reason VCs gave for those investments was that they knew it was a bubble but they did not want to be left out of the deals.
A lot of big tech and wireless companies in Dallas (Verizon, Texas Instruments, IBM, etc). Some noteworthy game companies are located in Dallas too. I would say Austin has a better investment climate for startups than Dallas, but thats not to say there are not any good startups in Dallas too.

The problem I see with Dallas is the personality of the city is a bit bureaucratic. At least relative to other startup hubs such as SV, Austin, and Seattle, which seem to have more of an outdoor-loving hippie vibe.

Dallas is sufficiently "young" though. Lots of new young talent coming in. I believe Dallas is actually one of the fastest growing cities in the US right now.
Best quote, near the end: "Not only am I unintimidated by litigation; I sometimes rather miss it."
Fair enough, my fault. I was just suspicious because of multiple similar looking submissions from the same person in a short frame of time.
Interestingly, I just went to a talk last week talking about how angel investors are learning to fill that gap in the funding space (http://blog.nextny.org/2008/04/11/the-insider-secrets-of-ang...). They are banding together into groups, and using a common backend platform (AngelSoft) to make it easier for angels to evaluate investment opportunities. Admittedly, the speaker was the CEO of AngelSoft, so he's biased (they've identified the funding gap as a market opportunity and moving towards exploiting it). Seems like an interesting possibility.
No, funny would have been: Would you like to see the dessert menu, sir?
Luckily, people smarter than any of us thought about this a lot already. Unfortunately, with that sort of brain power comes craziness.

Check out the articles and books by Ted Nelson, Douglas Engelbart and Vannevar Bush.
(i can hear the box) being built for entrepreneurs to be put in..
+1 for dallas

texasstartupblog.com has some info about local startups

the owner of that blog runs the only web 2.0 like small company i know of in dallas, you should give him an email, he might be able to hook you up

are you a designer or do you code too?
Should you even start a business in Denmark?

Why don’t I just start with the conclusion. The honest and maybe controversial to some Danes answer is: Only if you really, really have to!

The sad thing is, that it's entirely true. Being from Denmark, I wish the environment for startups was better, and the rules were simpler.
Surfing the web with Iphone's Safari is now the standard to which any other mobile project will have to reach. The UI is hard to beat and extremely enjoyable to use. I browse the web a lot on my Iphone - and enjoy every minute of it (except for the slow AT&T connection - but that will change soon hopefully) The Iphone really is, in spite of the hype, revolutionary.
Tumblr security hole (the gaping kind)
My friend noticed this: If you login to your tumblr account then manually go to /admin it takes you to the systemwide tumblr admin... wow.
I think it's not true that entrepreneurs are "born".

you go that one a bit wrong
If that's true, the lead developer should be fired on the spot. They use that "good" old "security by obscurity". I thought this technique was dead long ago....
Probably better to let Tumblr know first, then us.

Edit: just confirmed that it works.

Basically let's you search users by id or email then give you ability to change their email/reset password.
Screenshot or it didn't happen ;-)
/admin is obscure? :/
That is absolutely unbelievable.
Did you or your friend happen to report this to them before posting it here?
"What do you look for in entrepreneurs? First and foremost, they need to be magnets. For talent. For money. For attention. And for much more."

Would be interesting to see how YC founders compare to that standard.

Although maybe YC/PG is so much of a magnet a would-be entrepreneur wouldn't need to be once gone through YC.
a little harsh maybe....developers make mistakes...probably just forgot about it while trying to get the initial release out the door.... its not like tumblr is a bank or the DoD
yeah he said he told them. I would have more sympathy if it was an obscure hole, but something this big is just disrespectful to their users.
It reminds me more of John Gatto's "The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher."

http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html

The schooling industry is amazingly broken. At least if our goal is to raise educated, critically thinking, independent adults.
A search function....or maye i just don't see it....

If one exists it should be more visible
And all your grains of sand.
I'm here in Dallas and there are some startups (some well funded too).

There is a lot of bigger business moving here and dragging a lot of california imports with it, so we're starting to see more of the free spirit vs. the traditional "work for a big company for security" that is standard here.
ok, maybe :)
But forgeting to secure your admin area deserves more than a simple warning. Can you imagine if the person that discovered the vulnerability decided to delete all the user accounts?
Is American Way of Life Under Threat ?
This is a pretty critical exploit . . . you'd think they'd take the app down or at least change the admin URL while this is resolved. I shouldn't at this moment still be able to reset an arbitrary user's password by going to that URL.
What if the lead developer is the CEO? What would you suggest then? Shut down the company?

Errare humanum est.
High Testosterone Means High Profits
...and how many people have found it and not said anything? we've all used poorly secured admins here and there, but /admin seems particularly egregious.
...and how many people have found it and not said anything?

Scary.
Yes, Errare human est. I guess natural selection will take care of companies like this.
If the developer is the CEO, then the investors should be concerned.
Forgetting to secure the admin panel isn't a little mistake though and is easy enough to detect "Hey, I didn't have to log in to an admin account to use the admin panel thats weird".

Saying security is less important because it's not a bank doesn't make sense because it's issues like this that can cost a company it's existence.