skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask YC: Help our startup and get cheap advertising
Hey everyone,

Since starting at Galaxy IT in January (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=89615), I've been responsible for developing our advertising system. We had to roll our own because our application is built on Adobe Flex, and traditional advertising services (ie. Google AdSense) won't work. Besides that, we want our advertisements to be a bit more visually appealing than the standard boxes you see throughout the web today.

In order to get our system tested and off the ground, we need companies to advertise with us, and I figured News.YC would be a great place to ask. How interested would any of you be in helping us test our ad system? We'd be offering discounted rates, of course, and you'd get a pretty nice looking ad. This is kind of a "startups helping startups" situation: we need help getting our ad system tested, stable, and off the ground, and we want to help other startups by providing some cheap advertising.

Please note that this post is solely to gauge interest. It'll still be a while until we're ready to go.

More information: http://www.galaxyit.com/index.php?page=game
Firefox Gains On Internet Explorer In Businesses
As an undergraduate, I volunteered to present part of a another student's Ph.D. work at a tech conference. Like you, I was most nervous about questions because it wasn't my research and I wasn't even a grad student, so I was afraid that I would lose my credibility with the audience if they questioned me too closely. But I decided to just go in with confidence, and I learned all I could about the research I was presenting.

My talk was at the end of a long day, and due to a poorly organized conference, most of the potential audience had gotten fed up and gone home before I even got a chance to give my talk. In the end, I gave the talk to a nearly empty room and no one asked any questions.
Xoopit turns Gmail into a gorgeous media browser
VC Funds Pour Into Commercial Open Source
> we built it from scratch

Thats anything but silly.
It's also a critical ingredient for failure.
If someone's writing a client in an IDE, WSDL gets them code completion.
Some venture investors heading for the cellars, as larger economic problems loom
I thought for a while about how you could monetize this, but I came up totally empty.
People that are a bit older have already developed the BS filters to ward off 'inspirational' type of people, aka snake oil salesmen. So that means look for someone younger if you're hoping they're going to drink your kool-aid.

Otherwise, just seem legit, reasonable, and someone that a hacker would want to spend time with. Offer a lifestyle and an experience that you can't get while manning a cubicle. Make it a combined mission, and compensate them that way.
And to answer the right question, it is vital to take the users point of view to honestly see if your product will take off.

Imagine how highly motivated you will be when after careful reflection, you know for sure fact that your product will be truly something that everyone will want and that it will be there to last.
Is this based on TextPayMe, the YC company purchased by amazon?
Extensible CSS - the most basic things your site's css/html should support
Neither. The problem isn't aspies or the rest of the world. The problem is a lack of understanding of neurodiversity.

Everybody is different neurologically, weird, undefinable, sometimes subtle ways. The only way our society can grasp that now is by using the disorder/disease/problem mentality. Which is way better than nothing, but not ideal.
I got 88, but I'm kinda in the business. I thought I'd get more.
How to Deal With the Fear of Quitting Your Job in Order to Start Your Own Business
Have laptops killed the desktop? (Dell closing factory in Austin)
Dell is closing a plant in Austin as its desktop business continues to wane. DMN may require login (sorry) but it's an interesting story. Basically, Dell is closing an Austin computer factory, and lay off thousands worldwide.
There have been lot of startup advice from techies and hackers but this one is something different and offers some good advice:

1)Simple Life: strip all the clutter in your life so your business can benefit from your clear and undivided attention.

2)Marketing and sales is the lifeblood of any business and both factors are hugely responsible for the success or failure in the beginning stages of any business
As an aspie myself, I generally try not to let people know about it, but I debated on something in my resume the last time I was job-searching.

I co-founded a major AS website with 17k+ registered users, but you definitely don't want to disclose a disability in the hiring process. But a cursory Google search on me would reveal the same, so I left the mention in. Additionally, it's well-known in the IT industry.

In retrospect, I should have left it out.
The Art of Designing Markets
I totally think so. Why should I be tied to a desk, when I can take my laptop anywhere.
I'm going to restrict the number of hours per week I spend on freelancing and raise my prices as I reach that cap of hours. Hopefully supply is plentiful enough for this to work. Has anyone tried something like this? How did it work out?
The Danger of Expectations and the Beauty of Duty
"Do not confuse “duty” with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different. Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfill obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anything from years of patient work to instant willingness to die. Difficult it may be, but the reward is self-respect.

But there is no reward at all for doing what other people expect of you, and to do so is not merely difficult, but impossible. It is easier to deal with a footpad [a thief] than it is to deal with a leech who wants “just a few minutes of your time, please - this won’t take long”… Time is your total capital, and the minutes of your life are painfully few. If you allow yourself to fall into the vice of agreeing to such requests, they quickly snowball to the point where these parasites will use up 100 percent of your time - and squawk for more!"
Songkick wants to be the home of live music online
I was initially impressed with the ease of converting some classes into SOAP requests with axis, but after a while we got random service outages & bad error handling.

From previous experience in the biological field I saw great plans, lovely (& expensive) plans to develop grand services in SOAP ... that never actually materialized ... & were converted to REST spitting out standard files.

I think the ideas of SOAP, WSDL & Co are actually very interesting but as a WS consumer I've come to shun SOAP services.

In my opinion, human discoverability & excellent documentation are core to any webservice. Maybe throw in some example implementations or lightweight libraries specific to your service.
It would be cooler if it integrated with http://codepad.org/
How about Developer #3 here:

http://washingtondc.craigslist.org/nva/web/620559733.html
Publish us: Getting Real, 2nd Edition
Douglas Coupland touched on the subject a few years ago in his book "jPod". After reading that, it really changed the way that I looked at all of the coders / sys-admins that I know.
Brijit - The world in 100 words
If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter - T.S Eliot
Good one, paul.
I'm a huge fan of "necessary but not sufficient" qualities like this.

A startup needs:

1) Boldness
2) A crazy idea that most people think is stupid.
3) Persistence

All of these things seem to be absolutely required for success. But none of them is sufficient. Combine 'em with good "product/market fit" (a la Andreessen) and I think you win.
this could really take off if it remembered my billing info and phone# and brought their '1-click' tech mobile, so that I didnt have to go through the data entry process each time I want to buy stuff
If you can't, there are still benefits to be had. Have other loosely-related, monetizable projects. Execute the plan with an intent of garnering massive media coverage. Build your personal brand and reputation. Leverage the fame to jumpstart the marketing on the other projects.
The folks I work for are super smart and funny as hell. They also pay really well and respect my abilities and judgment. That's enough for me.
The Curious Lives of Surrogates
Could be it has something to do with Dell's position in the market for desktops and laptops. I'd rather buy a white box desktop and take the savings, but for something where service is more important, having a brand like Dell is more meaningful. Or maybe not... I'd definitely rather have a laptop. I wonder what the difference between price/performance in laptops and desktops looks like over time?
John Doerr on traits of startup mercenaries vs missionaries (Stanford Video)
Why don't you ask your friend to apply to TechStars (www.techstars.org/), the Colorado YCombinator clone?

To answer your original question, it depends on what incentives drive the individuals you hire. For some it's the experience, for some it's working at a startup, for some it's the money, for some it might be working on java.

Figure out what the individual want's, both long term and short term and if working at your company is a bridge to where that person want's to go. Make the interview more about the candidate and less about your company.

The good thing is that you understand that it's a two part problem, i.e.:
1. getting someone good
2. making sure they stay

A lot of companies stop at 1.
I don't think they killed it, but average Joes will be buying laptops instead of desktops for the foreseeable future. They have all the power needed for the basics.

I definitely see desktops becoming how laptops were years ago: a niche market. If you need a specific feature: i.e. lots of power or high-end gaming, you go with a desktop. Years ago people only got laptops if they had a specific need for mobility. The default option has already changed from desktop to laptop.
What PR won’t fix
too many start-ups are in this mode of "Let's see what we can get away with". That is sad.

Dude, not to be a dick, but have you watched how ExxonMobil or Altria/PhilipMorris operate? This is how most companies do business -- brinksmanship is very useful for a CEO.

Why go looking for trouble when it's probably going to find you anyways? Scribd offers a great service, it's fast, it's useful, and it's not really their fault that people abuse it, any more than it's the phone company's fault that individuals make obscene phone calls and pitch scams.

My suspicion is that they would be willing to deal with the copyright infringement stuff if they could do so without crippling their productivity. As it stands, wait-for-notification is probably more cost-effective.

I worked at a large free-hosting website from 1998-2000. We had a full-time staff of 12 people looking for copyright infringement and kiddie porn. Anything less severe than that was simply not worth the trouble. It's fucking hard to get on top of peoples' tendency to take advantage.
would love to see a bit more depth here, most points seemed rather surface - "we focused entirely on product/mark fit" - how?, what are some methods you found effective? maybe best left for a follow up post but after reading it I wanted more on their successful/unsuccessful tactics.
So that your boss knows your actually working.
I think I'll just leap on my own. And if I funding was based on enthusiasm I would have been a millionaire years ago. It takes a little more than that to get a spot.
Wow. RTS and CL. Two of my favorite things. Any chance of a video demonstration?
jayliew I haven't been able to contact Fred so I can't speak for the April 19th meeting. If anyone can get a hold of him please let me know.

Anyway, if you want to come around the April 16th meeting see the comments above :)
Philip was more interesting before he retired. There was some optimism mixed in with the bile.
You don't have to have to be socially disabled to think bureaucracy, meeetings & office politics is boring unproductive BS. Why do you think people start starups :P

It's an interesting egotistical defense I notice most autistics use; saying that everyone else is WRONG and I am RIGHT; using derogatory terms such as 'neurotypical'; which all stems from their frustration in trying to work in a social world.
I was under the impression that far fewer than 2/3rds of VC investments break even. I am more surprised that 1/3rd of them "work out the way you want them to."

Anyone have more concrete statistics on general VC success rates?
Being able to work in Lisp instead of C++ is a big win, but always remember all the user will care about is whether it's fun or not and not what language it's implemented in.
I'd say it's not so much he's trying to get people to follow his ideas, but rather looking for people who are really into the work.
Good luck to all the YC applicants!
I'm not applying this round (I will next time) but I wanted to wish you all good luck.
It's disappointing that people aren't interested in optimal productivity when carrying out knowledge-work tasks like programming and editing photos (most laptop users don't hook up a big monitor to get high resolution).

Macbook Pro + 30" cinema screen is what I'd buy if money were not an object.
Does it please you to just hope the rest of I are real?
Ask YC: Suggestion: Visually distinguish Ask YC posts from articles
Since we have so many more AskYC posts these days, it's starting to become slightly more difficult to point out the links on the front page that actually go to real articles.

Here's the suggestion, pg: visually distinguish the AskYC posts by changing the color of the number (to the left) or adding an orange dot or something beside the title.

And here are some reasons:

1. When I want to come here and read responses to a free-form topic (like this one), I'll be able to point out the forum-like topics easier.

2. The AskYC posts in disguise (ones that don't say "AskYC:" in front of the name) will be more obvious

3. More orange is never a bad thing.

Thoughts?
Rates vary a lot among VC firms. Union Square is one of the good ones, so they have a higher success rate. But the median VC Fund actually loses money.
That's a compliment, right?
The Maasai warriors' guide to England
got me
I have submitted the application. I can't wait until the 9th to hear back from them.
Amazon TextBuyIt
I think that, in the future, the idea of reserving special places in homes and offices to use computers will seem quaint, like the way we think of reserving whole rooms for giant mainframes. No doubt people will still want reserved working-places, but the computing arrangements will be much more flexible and integrated.
nevermind, awesome ! !

From the FAQ:

How does Amazon TextBuyIt know where to ship my item and how I want to pay for my order?

Amazon TextBuyIt uses your mobile phone number to find your Amazon.com 1-Click default settings for the shipping address and payment method when processing your order. You can manage your 1-Click default settings by going to Your Account on Amazon.com. You can use TextBuyIt regardless of whether you use 1-Click.
It's a bit crushing to put forward your best and not get in. However for those who get in it is way better then going it on your own.
That's what you think of the author, but what did you think of the points in the article?
If you want to hack adsense into your sys, check out this article I wrote for thenextweb:

http://thenextweb.org/2008/02/20/adsense-in-adobe-flash-now-...
"You decide what sites to crawl indexed and search"

Should probably be:

"You decide what sites to crawl, index and search"

You might also consider avoiding technical terms altogether when you market it.
Raising VC: The Due Diligence Process
The due diligence process centers around the belief that it is more effective to assess granular aspects of a business than a business as a whole.

To illustrate this imagine that you are an automotive mechanic. One day a car owner drives up and asks you to appraise the general condition of his car so that he can sell it. While seeing the shiny new paint job and hearing about the make of the vehicle, mileage and performance to date will be helpful, it is simply not enough information for you to guarantee that the car will perform well in the future. In order to make that assessment, you will need to evaluate all of the aspects of the car individually. You will check the breaks, test the engine and look at the tires. And then, if each of the cars key parts and processes seem to be in good shape you can conclude that the car as a whole is likely to perform well going forward. If all the things that make up the car are in excellent condition, you can more reliably conclude that the car as a whole is in excellent condition.

This same logic applies to conducting due diligence on companies. Investors that simply look at the type of company, how long it has been around and how it has performed to date will typically not make as reliable judgments about the future viability of the company as an investor who takes a look at all of the individual aspects of a business that are required to create future value. The process of conducting due diligence forces investors to carefully check the competency of the management, test the strength of customer demand and look at future competitive dynamics. If all of the parts of the company are well oiled, then it is safer to conclude that the company is ready to go the distance.

More at www.markpeterdavis.com
Essentially the middle-third (get back 1-to-2x the money back) and the bottom-third (lose money), hence canceling out each other [Assuming that the middle gives just 1x and the bottom loses 100%].

But the top third is expected to make 5-10x.
So that gives .333 * 7, (assuming 7x), which is approximately 2.33 times the original money invested.

So every year if the investment is $100 and the eventual return on it is $233, that looks like an awesome deal. Why is everyone not doing it then ?? Whenever any scheme yields more than the long-term-market-average (approx 15%(?)), it is good to ask why and how it works, if it is indeed true. My guess is that there is way more risk involved and the one-third rule is an optimistic view as well as a very simplified theory.

So while it could hold good for a very good VC firm, it might not for every VC firm out there.
very nice.

quick question. why clos? and why not more macros? i like what you did in defdrawmethod -- do more of that, less clos :)
Can someone please explain to me how REST is anything but a pompous name for HTTP? Or how it has applicability to any kind of service other than document management? All of the criteria stipulated in chapter 5 of the Fielding dissertation are spelled out in the RFCs that describe HTTP and related technologies, and _they only apply to documents_. There are other verbs that need to be applied over a network.

I think the (sane) pro-REST argument can be summed up in the following: 'HTTP is a wonderful way to do CRUD operations over a network. Wouldn't it be cool if there was a catchy word to remind people that HTTP has a lot more to it than most people are aware of?'. This bollocks about REST being able to replace RPC is like having an argument about whether cars of airplanes are a better way to get around. And please stop torturing your service models to look like URLs just to be fashionable (I know, if I want upmod a comment I can POST to /comment/1234/karma/new! No, 'Upmod' is a distinct verb that doesn't have anything to do with GET or POST or PUT or HEAD or DELETE). If the thing you are modeling isn't a document in any sense, then don't try to model it as one.

What I think people really mean when they say REST is 'ad-hoc RPC over HTTP using reasonably lightweight serialization', which is quite a lovely idea in its own right. The decision about using SOAP or a more lightweight RPC really boils down to the languages on each side of the wire. If the languages are structurally typed with object literal syntax then you want to use something lightweight, as the impedance mismatch between a literal Ruby datastructure and JSON is low. If you are connecting two nominally typed (often early bound) languages then you want SOAP, because if you're into that bondage and discipline thing then you need a WSDL to make sure that no one's boundaries get crossed. And pulling the result out of an HTTP response in Java is a lot easier with Axis than trying to parse some loosely specified JSON blob (unless you're coding in Perl, in which case I'll take the JSON blob any day).

Don't debate SOAP/REST, if you must have some silly religious debate between two technology stacks which are both reasonable tools well suited to certain activities then at least debate Java/Python, the appropriate choice of RPC philosophy sort of falls out.
Edge: The computational universe
CollegeHumor Guys' Secret Success: T-Shirts
PriorSmart, easy patent search for entrepreneurs
Professional racial discrimination testers in St. Louis, circa 1992
This was apparently digitized off someone's VCR so there is some weirdness for the first few seconds. Also, the actual segment is only 16 minutes long even though the video runs for 23 min.
http://reddit.com/info/6eaxh/comments/c03lwfe
Since one out of 150 people have some kind of autism-spectrum disorder, then it should be easy for a reporter to find people with these disorders in a wide range of occupations. A plumbing-supplies Web site could run an article about how plumbers with Asperger's use their nonverbal skills to find clogs. UPS could put something on its intranet about an autistic driver who can plan a complex route just by glancing at a map.

But "aspie IT worker" reinforces hoary stereotypes, whereas "aspie plumber" and "aspie truck driver" don't.
Being a big fan of The Week, this is right up my alley. Very cool.

Combine this with Arts and Letters Daily and you may never read another medium-sized article again!
That's interesting. It really is gambling.
Excellent! Grotkjaer
I think the next logical step for this would be to have the software recognize bar codes such that you could simply use your camera's phone to scan the code, rather than having to type in the UPC.
Thanks for the referral. :) My buddy will definitely be interested.
My So Called Startup Life...
Laptops and servers are the future (present?), I think.

The laptop is your way of interfacing with data. Ergonomics (such as easy portability) are very important here. Hook up large display and maybe more comfortable keyboard/mouse when appropriate. iPhone provides another set of ergonomic trade-offs (even more portable, interface options even more constrained). Non-volatile storage in these devices become more of a caching mechanism over time; more and more of our data will reside on a server somewhere we never physically see.

Then the universe of large scale processing power and data storage is The Network. Amazon S3/EC2 and the like. Most people on the planet will never physically see this hardware at all. But we use these resources constantly as we browse, interact, communicate, and work on the web.

So, two directions for the future of computing. Ergonomics is King for consumer devices (Apple is thriving in this market), and economies of scale (Google the poster child here, interesting in that they do not design or develop hardware at all, but write software to make commodity hardware scale in amazing ways).
VidyUp- Widget Letting Friends and Visitors Upload YouTube Videos
Shameless plug, but if you consider log(x) as "time needed to grow by x" it's very clear why log(a) + log(b) = log(ab)

http://betterexplained.com/articles/demystifying-the-natural...
Shouldn't you have "SPOILER ALERT!" next to that link?
I'll definitely point him to TechStars. And you're definitely right. A lot of companies and people undervalue hackers, and don't really see their value beyond a particular skill set they have which can be used as a means to an end; hackers are people too. :P
Whole site is entirely html+javascript. No server-side scripting and it's hosted on S3 (ONLY S3, no EC2).