skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It'll depend on your expectations.
You can come to Buenos Aires, Argentina.
You're money will worth at least three or four times more than in the US.
We're specially friendly with foreigners.
Best food you'll ever get.
Plenty of night life.
And last but not least, incredibly gorgeous women.
Cons? There always are, but you can always go back to the US.
This thread is useless w/out pics
No, if you're an entrepreneur in Seattle/NYC/CA you're not going to be making top dollar for your market (at first). You're lucky to live somewhere cheap, take advantage. It's a lot easier to make $40k in your first year than it is to make $120k.
Why don't you answer @me?
Mutilated Furries, Flying Phalluses: Put the Blame on Griefers, the Sociopaths of the Virtual World
Pretty interesting study of the somethingawful / 4chan crowd, and how they represent a real danger to online communities.
You made the right decision. The big point everyone here seems to be missing is the diminishing value of money. If you sold for even $1 million, that's enought to live off interest for the rest of your life.
Interesting -- sounds like facebook is taking cues from friendfeed.

Suggestion - make the subject on posts like this more specific to what is in the content, e.g. Facebook Minifeed adds better import feature.
Sounds like a good topic for an essay.
Why did I get down modded!
Written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb:
"Glander best describes the notion of lifting all inhibitions to “tinker intellectually in an undirected stochastic process aiming at capturing some idea that will enrich your corpus”. “Researching” or “thinking” smack of a top-down activity."

More on Glander by Taleb:
"It is an irony that the academy does not have a word for the process by which discovery works best—but slang does. I was trying to describe in a letter what I am currently doing: French would not let me. But argot lends itself very well... I am involved in an activity called “Glander”, more precisely “glandouiller”. It means “to idle”, though not “to be in a state of idleness” (it is an active verb). Gandouiller denotes enjoyment. The formal French word is “ne rien faire” (to do nothing), which misses on the active part —so do words that have a languishing connotation. Glander is what children without soccer moms do when they are out of school. It resembles flâner which has this perambulation part; though Glander does not have any strings attached. The Italians have farniente but it is really doing nothing. Even the Arabs do not have a verb for Glander: the construction takaslana from the Semitic root ksl denotes laziness (other words imply some inertia)."

Newton was a “glandeur”; In Dijksterhuis 2004:

George Spencer Brown has famously said about Sir Isaac Newton that “to arrive at the simplest truth, as Newton knew and practiced, requires years of contemplation. Not activity. Not reasoning. Not calculating. Not busy behavior of any kind. Not reading. Not talking. Not making an effort. Not thinking. Simply bearing in mind what it is that one needs to know.”

I Glander whenever I am bored and I come up with formulate groundbreaking ideas. Some of them are even viable for monetization!
The Bug that Took Down a Release and How I Wrote It
This exploit is nothing short of a work of art; seriously, it's beautiful.

I haven't checked out TAOSSA, but I have to admit I've got a pretty dog-eared copy of Applied Cryptography here on my desk. In my defense, I only have it for light reading over lunch, I wouldn't dare implement anything from it by hand ;)
Fractal expressionism - revisiting the work of Jackson Pollock
Yes -- mod_rails is awesome for people running lots of small rails sites. I'm definitely going to use it for my personal sites and projects.
What was the most frequent mistake the company made?

http://ben.casnocha.com/2007/08/what-was-your-m.html
Plugin Functionality - In the browser or on the page?
Twentysomething: Why I regret getting straight A’s in college
And the counterpoint:
Thirtysomething: Why I DON’T regret getting straight A’s in college
http://robbieallen.com/2007/12/thirtysomething-why-i-dont-regret-getting-straight-as-in-college/
And the counterpoint:
Thirtysomething: Why I DON’T regret getting straight A’s in college
http://robbieallen.com/2007/12/thirtysomething-why-i-dont-re...
Everything in the article dealing with the problems of overcapitalization from the entrepreneurs end is pure speculation ("lavish salaries, expensive office chairs and generally a hunger killer for execution"). He has no knowledge that those things are true for FatDoor and nothing even anecdotal from other companies.

He does have a point that if they didn't execute well the first time, that doesn't bode well for the next try. However, that's not a problem with capitalization, that would be a problem with the team.

I was on the Odeo team that became Twitter. We were overcapitalized for a podcasting startup and that's exactly why we ended up with a bigger hit. We had the runway to experiment and the knowledge that we hadn't hit on anything big enough, so we kept trying new things.

In that case overcapitalization wasn't a problem in terms of being successful.
Data integration is a big factor. Basecamp doesn't use my LDAP directory. Nor does GMAIL.

That's a big problem I see with the uptake of Web 2.0's SAS model in the corporate world - each app is a data island. Initiatives like OpenID or OpenSocial are great within the sphere, but doesn't do much for interoperating with the legacy systems companies have in place.

I see that as a market opportunity as well. I have some ideas and wish I had the time to do something about it. ;)
Does this look familiar to anyone?
"You give people what they want to be given."

That's the secret to great PR also, which is just a special case of networking.
"Average salaries of CS graduate after 3-4 years out of school are in six-figure range in most parts of the country. "

What have you been smoking, I want some. Seriously, you're way out of touch if you think that's average salary in most parts of the Country.
If you don't have any (or many) ideas, you need to lower your threshold for what you consider a good idea.

And when you see something that annoys you, think about how to solve it.

Talk about your ideas with friends. Get feedback. Tweak. Rinse and repeat.
I think Jason Fried just has a bunch of negative friends. I tend to see a lot of extremes on twitter. Something is either totally awesome or pitifully stupid. Not a lot of middle ground.
Guy Kawasaki: Hindsights
Double sided, high gloss. 500 cards x 5 people. Still that estimate is wayyyyy to high. We are probably gonna spend half that quote, but that is why we are shopping around.
Sure,

colellm, wavesplash,

Send me email at prashantdesale@yahoo.com

or give me your emails. I will give you the names

Thanks
Ask Reddit: How do you file your patents?
If you've ever filed a patent, how did you do it? Did you just hire a patent attorney, or are there any cheaper shortcuts? How much did it cost?
One Sentence Tips From Entrepreneurs
Heh, I hardly went to class, and ran a successful business while I was in college, and got almost a 4.0 </self promotion>

I kind of regret even going to college though. I learned much more in the real world and having a business, for sure.
I have to agree there. Fatdoor raised themselves enough to be able to try something else when Idea A looked to be a dud. And exit strategies don't even come into play yet.

Also, their new idea seems to be a logical extension of (and possibly an improvement on) the old one. If Idea B works they will be fine. If not, they'll be no less or no more bankrupt than if they raised less money earlier.

If some omniscient person told me my idea was going to turn out a dud, I'd want more money rather than less.
You want to double check the tax code. Otherwise you might get charged twice.
Tumblr is not alone
This is not Reddit!
I'm sorry, and forgive my presumptuousness, but...did you title this Ask Reddit??
That's really nifty. Good way to make the point.
Most of the comments here are about very linear thought processes like: problem->simplification->solution.

Those are great, and valuable but I think the most fun ideas are the ones that come from having a head full of random shit floating around and colliding. The ones that stick together well are the winners. :D
QA departments are notorious for not being very creative. You'd need a star QA department to find the /admin hole, I think.
I can't name an ISP you SHOULDN'T cancel. It's like that old qoute about democracy from Churchill (I think it was him) "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others" I've heard so many horror stories about ISP's that I kind of think they all stink like dirty socks. Might be some really nice smaller ones though, dunno.
I can't read French, it is true and so my ability to evaluate certain aspects of the site are compromised, but as an ad piece I do find it compelling to be honest.
Looks like DHH wrote that entry.
I would argue that if you're going to go the trouble of including a "Shout-outs" page, you should mention the company who's application you stole verbatim:

http://www.founderscoop.com/shout-outs.php
No, you just need functional tests. Having these kind of bugs in a spare time project is fine, but if you call yourself a startup and ask customers to trust you with data, you need to seriously consider security issues.
I my state you can go to jail for using even free wifi :-( it sucks so badly I want to cry. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070522-michigan-man-a...
IPhone new killer apps
Does anyone else find this sickening? I'd be unable to plagarise in a professional setting even if I knew 100% that I wouldn't get caught. I'd feel way too slimy afterwards to even consider it. What ever happened to taking pride in your work?

Add in to that the absolute certainty of getting caught on the internet (hell, you can automate the process), I'm just amazed that people still do it. I just don't understand their thinking at all.
So did he get picked up by Google or is this him doing this on his own?
Meanwhile, I, in my ADHD state find that an increasing number of captchas tell me I'm not human. I'm thinking of making a shirt. "Failing the turing test since 1982"
These all seem so blatant at this point, but if the trend is moving towards early-stage/micro-investments like this, then most likely we'll be seeing lots more where this came from.

But when YC has all the cred which serves to give a nice profile boost to YC-funded startups, what can these others offer that amounts to the same thing? There's the community, experience and hookups with further funding opportunities, but these knock-offs just seem like they're lacking in comparison to the full value proposition YC offers. I wonder how they can compensate for that...
Microsoft Completes Danger Purchase
Also note that things might be a bit different for a CS major. Paying attention in those algorithms / theory classes make a difference down the line.
Another thing is trust -- would you trust a knock-off to have that much experience and insight, when you can verify via PG's essays the insight they'll bring to the table? Hard sell if you ask me.
You would have to be unlucky for that to happen (maybe depends on country).
For me I have done that before and had no issue, only local tax (just like anyone else who "exports" stuff really). On the US side, I didn't think it was an issue in my case.
Study Shows No Facebook Means No Staff (Kinda)
Tod Machover, Dan Ellsey: Releasing the music in your head (video)
Exactly the conclusion I came to in my short take on this development at http://borderlinetheory.com/?p=107#more-107
Your Analytics Data Is Very Wrong
what I don't understand is that why these people don't even try just changing around the wording at least just by a little bit... are they that uncreative and lazy? or at least (as brett mentions) give credit where it's due
The tricky thing is that infinity isn't a number as we normally think of numbers. There are different kinds of infinity, so infinity / infinity does not necessarily equal 1. It could be any number between 1 and infinity, inclusive.

To get this intuition, think of the integers. There are obviously an infinite number of them. Now think of the rationals. There are now an infinite number of numbers between 1 and 2, so there are more rational numbers than there are integers; in fact infinitely more.
The best way I have found is this: Think about the most normal, expected solution to a problem would be, and then try to imagine the opposite. This is really good for getting juices flowing and starting things up. in reality you usually use 80% of the "normal" solution and make a couple nuances that are opposite of what people might normally think of.
He was being funny by saying A, but actually meaning B, where A = !B.

Sarcasm might be what it is called.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcasm

Or maybe you wanted to be funny as well? Oh the joys of textual communication and vague jokes. :)
Wait, is AC bad or good?

I can't tell whether the gp means it'll cause problems because the protocols are hard to implement or wrong.
alternatively, there are a few other healthier ways to get into a high alpha state. I find that a shower, or driving around is good. Also a nap. Sleep deprivation leads me to full imagine some of my best graphic designs. They just pop into my head fully formed as I lay in bed half crazy cause I haven't slept. :-)
i loved it, but methinks this belongs on digg
DNS.

I don't know exactly what I'd change, but I'd look for a way to make it impractical for the whole domain/certificate "industry" to get where it is today. ICANN, Verisign, Network Solutions and the like are all just scams.
Snot beer. Ew. Really though, what is sad is that there are a ton of good ideas that got turned down and DIDN'T end up making it. Don't ever give up guys, even if your sick of getting rejected!
Aren't explosions usually the end of laptops anyway? :)
Facebook Lexicon
Good response, I don't trust hindsight only a couple years old.
Gurgitators Meet Gamers
Google: March Paid-Click Growth Awful (Again)
It's because these people have no earthly idea what else to do in SL. I used to cover the second life beat for a commercial blog and I can tell you that it takes a bit of work and effort to find things to do there.
I believe set theory is the only area of mathematics where different orders of infinite actually mean anything.

So, in set theory, cardinality is a measure of the elements of a set. The cardinality of the infinite set of natural numbers is aleph-0. An infinite set has cardinality aleph-0 if it can be put in one to one correspondence with the naturals. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bijection This counterintuitively includes the rational numbers also. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor%27s_diagonal_argument

The real numbers can't be put into one-to-one correspondence with the rational numbers. So the infinite of the reals truly is bigger than the infinite of the rational numbers.

Also see this ppt: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/academic/class/15251/di...
An idea for an RSS filter: if it existed, would you use it?
I am thinking of writing a RSS filter/reader with an extremely simple user interface: you upload an OPML file, and it displays a reddit like list of links which you can rate or visit. My question is: how important is an RSS reader's ability to display the content of the RSS feed? Since many feed doesn't include the full content and you have to visit the main site anyway, it is better to just display the title as a link? The reason I am asking is that in order to personalize, you would have to gather data, which is impossible to do unless the user is using your RSS reader, and I do not have the expertise to write a (full featured) RSS reader.
Why was I not informed of this earlier!
Thank you, somebody needed to say this.
Portable functionality on limited systems, where the limitation is not technical, but policy-based (i.e. display systems that you can't break out of the web-browser on.) Not the most righteous cause, but a cause nonetheless.
A media business is driven by the ability to deliver a well characterized audience, and the value those characteristics imply to advertisers.

The challenge is not a media property with no eyeballs. The challenge is what audience can you gather to sell to your advertisers. If they are undifferentiated then you have to have millions because they are not of much value. If it's presidents of Fortune 500 firms then you only need an audience of a few hundred to be able to make a lot of money.

So I would suggest it's not "people" but a well characterized audience at an acquisition cost that allows you to mark them up to your advertisers who will in turn make more money from the purchases your audience makes.

The YC mantra of "make something people want" gets interpreted in ways that cause a lot of startups to overlook the value of a niche focus.
Dugg for 'Ask Reddit.'
Are you me? That's almost exactly what I would have written. I have a yellow notebook in which I write down ideas as they come to me. It contains everything from a way to dry the shower curtain to prevent mold, through a way to adjust car mirrors by eye tracking to various web site ideas.

Essentially, whenever I see something I end up wondering how to improve it, or why it hasn't been improved in the way I think would work.
AC is bad. If you implement cryptography and you're not depending on it in some way, you're wasting time. If you do depend on it, you have to get it exactly right. Even people who do that for a living don't know exactly what that means.

http://www.matasano.com/log/487/rsa-signature-forgery-explai...
The US has an $80k exemption for income earned abroad, assuming you set up legal residence overseas.
Long Tail Versus Big Head In Advertising
Calm down. This is precisely how industries standardize. No one thought it was "sickening" when search engines pages started to imitate each other's blue title + grey descr + green url design. It was just an obviously good idea.
hey guys, chill out. Is the application the same as YC? (It is not currently posted on YC, so I don't know).

Other than the unattributed copying of the YC application... This seems like a totally different deal. He's not just giving a tiny bit of money to fresh college grads and making you move to San Jose for 3 months, it looks like it is going to be an actual co-op where each group accepted gets part of the pie from everyone else, and its not only limited to 10k. I live in Seattle and have 2 little kids, so I can't exactly do the YC thing, so I'm actually kind of fired up about this idea. I've read about the two founders of this group so it seems legit.
Great advice guys, thanks a lot! I'll be honest with them, and hope they'll keep in touch and help us out on the ride up (hopefully not down!).
Are you going to be paid in the US? Or the other country?

If the other country, you'll need a visa with work entitlements, and you'll want to fill in a U.S. Form 1040 when you file your taxes. Generally you won't be taxed twice.

On the other hand, if you go somewhere on a tourist visa - say for 3 months - and get paid in the US, it's business as usual.
I goofed off first year which was a lot of fun, and totally worth it on a personal level, but it meant when it came time to start my PhD, I barely scraped into my program thanks to the GPA (even though I aced everything 2nd year onwards) and found it hard to get in to any overseas Master's programs with a scholarship.

Luckily a great PhD scholarship right in my area (ubicomp, what are the odds?) showed up at the last minute at my university which I was accepted for straight away. Not everyone lucks out like that though and gets the balance of no consequences and enjoying college.
Again, I don't understand the super-reactionary responses here every time that there's something based on YC. By the YC founders own assessments they can't accommodate all of the good ideas that they're receiving.

And what of this, "Well, they're going to suck..." Do you think YC was perfect right off of the bat? Really? Sure, the copy-cats will be rough at first, then they'll, like most ventures, find ways to differentiate themselves and do their thing or die.

Or is the big objection that they copy-and-pasted the form? Other than very minor copyright infringement, which I'm sure they'd rectify if asked, it's obvious that they just went live. I can think of dumber ideas than copying your role-model as a place-holder until you have time to rewrite the form.
Malcolm Gladwell talk on the importance of stubbornness & collaboration in problem-solving [video]
Violent Games Beget Violent Opinions | GotGame
Actually, I don't think YC should mind. If they're not smart enough, or dedicated enough to think of a few due diligence questions on their own, would a really good startup want them on board as investors?
I have been doing this for the past year and a half (Canadian Citizen, working in Finland). It has been great, but there are some things that you need to watch out for.

- Ensure the countries have a double taxation treaty in place, so that income you claim abroad does not have to be claimed at home (or rather you have to claim it, but not pay tax on it again)
- Residence permits for self-employed persons can take a long time in some countries. For example, Finland has two national languages, and I decided to apply in the minority language (Swedish) because I was studying it. It took nearly 5 months to get the residence permit, partially because of the extra bureaucracy involved with doing things in the minority language.
- Cost of living is a huge issue. Choose a country where you will benefit from the currency exchange (harder with the US dollar lately). I am earning Canadian Dollars, living in Euros, and it hurts.

I do not think that citizenship should be an issue, though, unless you obtained your citizenship recently. If you are a natural born citizen, living in another country under a residence permit should not affect things.

I hope some of what I said helps.
The Physical Genius
+5 Insightful
Every couple of months one of these wanders along by. They are looking slicker these days but they all have the same problem:

They are just OS mock-ups that don't do anything running in a browser.

When I can upload a vmware image and then run it quickly in a browser from anywhere, then we might have something, but until then, toy versions of real apps running in fake desktops are cool, very technical, and very impressive, but not useful.

I can almost feel the vibe of something like this coming from amazon EC2 eventually. Something with EC2, nomachine, persistent storage, vnc... its almost all there. Sounds like a ycombinator startup to me.
I find it dubious not only for the massive plagiarism (even the word limit!) but in that they seem to lack the l33t skills needed to make an HTML form submission page.

I think having YC in your corner is a boost; these guys look like they'd HURT your chances. Why would you want people who are unoriginal and unscrupulous dragging you down?
Well, since I didn't apply to YC, I didn't know the application... and the current app is gone from the YC site. But, here's a previous YC app:
http://ycombinator.com/s7app.txt

It is a bit disturbing that he took everything exactly... even the parenthetic remarks which make him sound like PG.

But, other than that glaring trust-killer, it does seem pretty cool to have an alternative to YC, which is just not feasible for me.
Yeah, it's basically verbatim plagiarism. Check out, for example, http://web.archive.org/web/20060825161615/ycombinator.com/w7...
> It is a bit disturbing that he took everything exactly...

Still think they sound legit?
Calm down. This is precisely how industries standardize. No one thought it was "sickening" when search engines pages started to imitate each other's blue title + grey descr + green url design. It was just an obviously good idea.

How does that feel, bitch?