skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I agree, but I'm not sure it's worth the $60-$100k (not including opportunity cost)... I would think if you live in a major metro that there are other venues for that.

Then again the credibility it brings if you want to go to finance in Wall St or move up in Big Corp X may be useful to some people (assuming that you go to a top 10 MBA program)... but probably not too useful to most of the people who come to yc news
The new Attack on the RDBMS
Update: I just watched the whole PG presentation, and it did not get stuck.

Also: Your UI rocks!
Is it time to lower America's drinking age?
I can't believe someone built "A pure JavaScript video player"
I personally think altruism is born the murkiest waters of self-interest. But discriptive psychalogical egoism skirts the the issue a bit and forks us into a long examination of the nature of the "soul". But, whether altruism is some measure "divine" (or symbolically derived), or born completely out of self-interest, there is a wide consensus on what it ought to look like.

(egoism is an easy card play, we could pull the appartus down and have a look at it though, but we might not get much farther than those that have gone before us.)
One issue there is that I know I personally decline to mod people if they already have a large positive or negative balance on a single post. (There are some posts which I think should sit at 0 rather than -30, or even -5, for example.) If I have to mod someone to see what others mods were then I will be much more likely to unintentionally karma-bomb someone when I really just want to see what other hackers here thought about their post.
MySpace Launches Community Builder For Brand Advertisers
This isn't true. Adsense and Federated Media kept me very profitable. I don't know a thing about ad sales. The ad networks allowed me to focus on pure development.
How I Wrote a Search Engine in 6 Weeks
My guess is there was some length of time assumption that he just glossed over. 500 x $40 x 6.25 months = $125,000 for instance.
im going too; here is a link to a 60min video in case you needed a reason to do it :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU87ozKYY4M
Approaching Python 3000: string formatting
Yes, it is time. Lowering the drinking age would make 21 years olds behave like 21 years olds, and not like 16 or 18 years olds. It is astonishing how much effect the drinking age has on maturity.
Lightweight Approach to AOP in Python
Make Web Analytics Actionable: Focus On "What's Changed"
I'm not sure you have to pretend at all. Try to realize that everyone and everything has a story and that it's often interesting to find out what it is.

Some people and things are more interesting than others of course. Learning how to gracefully exit a conversation is step #2.
Good Communication Is An Unsung Hero
HTTP Ranges for Pagination?
I agree with you - I didn't mean to sound overly cynical. Although I find that I do have to pretend when I'm dealing with people who are initially rude or hostile to me. And I don't always succeed at pretending :-). But I can when I'm at my best. And over time, I can begin to genuinely appreciate their stories, too.
Why do you think the drinking age makes 21 year olds behave like 16 or 18 year olds?
For quick feedback you can promote to feature requests and votes with a site/widget like our featurelist:
http://featurelist.org

http://featurelist.org/info/features
So take one random sample from one of your 86 "hands-on IT projects", and you're trying to tell me that you learned all the things that you would need to learn in a full-time 2 year MBA program? I just don't see how that is remotely possible.

If you're just talking about random learning, then your statement doesn't really reply. I could spend two years reading Wikipedia and learn a lot more than I could in two years of full-time MBA study -- the problem is the quality not the quantity.

Besides, a lot of the value of the MBA doesn't come directly from the curriculum but rather having in-depth case analysis with your professor and the other students.

I find it pretty interesting that a lot of the values of the MBA and the decisions for firms to hire MBAs parallel a lot with how YC operates, yet YC is viewed as the holy entity and MBAs are viewed as hell spawns. The bulk of the value of YC doesn't come from the investment, it comes from the community, much like an MBA. The curriculum doesn't vary that much between a top school like Wharton or Chicago and your standard state school. The difference is the quality of the other students. And much like YC, firms hire MBAs on their abilities to learn and not what they've already learned. Don't get me wrong, the curriculum is very important and gives a very good general overview of every major operation in a corporation (operations, accounting, finance, marketing, IS, etc), but honestly, you COULD learn it all on your own. But that applies to just about anything. I could learn all the curriculum I would need for a CS PhD on my own if I wanted to as well...
From my own experience: It may seem crazy, but try this.

Climb down your geek tower and stop judging people (you may be judging people without even knowing it), then will come respect for people.

When you respect anyone around, you will gradually find interest in them; That will help break the ice, conversation will come easy and you’ll found out that people are much interesting than you think.
> i think you're making too big of a deal out of hardware choice. you're talking about people who don't know if they want a gui or not, yet you think those same people will want to choose what type of computer to run it on? as if.

For casual consumers, hardware choice mostly only matters in that you can go buy a variety of Windows computers at Best Buy for under $500 bundled with a monitor and a printer. There are also laptops in that range, as well.

This is important for two reasons. First, because some people just don't have a lot of money. If you are living in poverty, all the nifty extra features a Mac might have don't really matter. Second, because there are more multiple-PC homes. If you're buying a second computer for the kids or checking email or whatever, a simple, cheap system may do everything you want.

For less casual users, there are HTPCs, tablet PCs, sub-$500 ultralight notebooks like the Eee, gaming notebooks, and other segments that Apple doesn't compete in.
I work at Angelsoft which also runs Open-Deals.com

If you are looking for funding your first stop should be your local Angel group. There is no substitution for that. Our CEO, David S. Rose, Chairman of the New York Angels, would give you the same advice.

After 4 years in the Angel Investment industry, we have consolidated most of the worlds groups onto a single platform called Angelsoft. Go to most any Angel group website and click apply, you will be brought to an application page powered by Angelsoft.

We received hundreds of emails from entrepreneurs asking us how they can apply to all of the groups using our system. In response, we created open-deals.com which allows you to do just that. It is an open directory built into Angelsoft that allows Angels to browse through deals, and refer ones that interest them into their own group for further review. You can see what open-deals.com looks like from an Angel prospective here: http://blog.angelsoft.net/2008/04/17/sneak-peek-what-does-op...

The challenge came in protecting the Angels that use our system from an avalanche of poor quality deals. Angel groups told us that one of the ways they filter out poor quality deals is by charging a submission fee. The theory is that if you are serious enough to pay $250, you are more likely to be a serious entrepreneur.

I hope that clears up some confusion. Feel free to ask questions, I will be monitoring this discussion,

Jason Schwartz
Community Manager
Jakob Nielsen: 25 Years in Usability
"I'm not convinced that it's that everyone at Microsoft is individually defective as much as that their methods of collaboration, like those of most large corporations, usually yield results less effective than good individuals or small teams could have produced with sufficient autonomy."

Which brings this thread from the religious fervour of "what it means to be smart" right back to the subject at hand: Why MSFT would pay M$20+ for Xobni rather than write a kock-off in-house.
Game Theory Explains the Eligible-Bachelor Paradox
I'm not a lawyer, but I had the same questions with my project and discovered that you can aggregate feeds under the Safe Harbor Provisions of the DMCA (http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/512.html) as long as:

(1) You stick to publicly-available feeds

(2) You don't edit the feed content

(3) You provide the feed owner a way to opt-out if he doesn't want you to access his feed anymore
In all seriousness, and I know this has been used to troll before but let's bring it out of that context:

I feel that if you are old enough to go to war and risk your life, you are old enough to have a few beers. Now what that arbitrary age is, who knows. But you shouldn't be able to join the military before you can drink in my opinion.

Now from experience, with the drinking age between 18-19, there is little difference at parties compared to the US despite the difference in drinking age. At 16-17 a lot of kids start drinking and are quite irresponsible with it. At 18-20 people begin to mature and handle drinking a bit better, with a few going to the extreme and drinking excessively regularly. At 21+ people tend to lose interest in drinking and gain interest in socializing at parties.

(Anecdotal evidence obviously)
Well if every (almost?) other country has a lower drinking age and the US claims to be the most democratic country, I'd think having the drinking age at 21 is a bit hypocritical.

But as the article says, if you want to drink under 21 you can easily do it so like most things, it's up the parents to raise the child well and stop blaming society.
The emancipatory power of the American hotel
It's like playing a sport: it takes practice to become a natural at it.
New Wii Games Find a Big (but Stingy) Audience
My goal is to allow the use of OpenID, to minimize as much as possible the DRY violation that is profiles (e.g. keep the minimum amount on my system, make whatever I use the most re-usable and source images, etc. from an already established and reusable location).

So, it sounds like the best path is to either add Clickpass now or wait and see what someone like JanRain does. Making it, ultimately, a matter of style and timing? I use Disqus, so maybe Clickpass gets one extra vote.

Thanks!
Shriram is a super-sharp guy. One of the best talks I've heard for scheme evangelism was his "The Swine before Perl" talk.

(edit)

http://www.cs.brown.edu/~sk/Publications/Talks/SwineBeforePe...
Yes, but it's not hacker news.
I don't know if asdf was suggesting they "crush dissent" - but I do think "WOULD they?" is a good question to ask!

I have always wanted to do a startup that has more mid to long term success as a goal- "37signals-like" if you want to call it that- but I've always felt that there is a HUGE amount of pressure to grow grow grow and sell.

And btw- I really do get the feeling reading news.yc and other venture related sites, that many who are into the startup scene right now look down on anyone who doesn't build-to-flip... but that doesn't jive with all the positive feedback given to companies that buck the trend and hold on longer. anyway that's enough rambling for now.
No Fortissimo? Symphony Told to Keep It Down
Being democratic doesn't seem related to the drinking age. We democratically have fixed the age at 21 (for most states).

Also, I don't see how most other countries fixing it at a certain age is a strong argument for us to do so.
I need to hear a much stronger case for Digi-Key having monopoly pricing power than just an assertion. Aren't the distributors market shares fairly fragmented (the assumption I'm operating on)? Digi-Key seems to have a large market share because it has built some kind of service reputation.

I don't really understand the legal position of scraping (and I'd love to see an accessible semi-authoritative explanation of the current state), but I do read lots of TOS's that basically say that that information is _not_ "public domain".

I'm in spiritual agreement with you as to what benefits part buyers the most (I think most people are wise enough to factor in some level of service into cost), but I think it's useful to think about Digi-Key's motivations in more dimensions than just good/evil. Again, I offer the pricewatch feedback/stars as an initial step that might address at least one apparent grievance. Not that that would stop them from fighting you (and good luck on that).
I suggest reading the following books, but I also suggest not using their suggestions. These books are merely for awareness. I fee like knowing what was out there, gave me more confidence while I was trying to find my own style.

[the Game] - this book is about the secret lives of pickup artists and their quest to find either a Beta or Alpha Gal. This book offers- ZERO advice if you are looking for a Gamma.

[The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security] - from Kevin Mitnick, one of the fore-most books on social engineering. Reading this book kept us out of a few scams.
Since Malaria was a specific example, this headline caught my eye yesterday:

Web guru targets malaria with social network site
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080420/tc_nm/britain_malaria_dc...

I admit some skepticism but haven't read beyond the article. Maybe it is possible to "Facebook" malaria out of existence...
Why do they use a cartoon of Ann Coulter as their logo?
Web guru targets malaria with social network site
President-Elect Dmitry Medvedev remarks at Russian Internet Forum
I'm not sure I understand - Octopart does not sell any parts. Digi-Key's core function is to sell parts. They do in fact have a warehouse of parts and a team of salespeople, whereas we are three guys working out of cafes. Our interests certainly overlap to a high degree in that we both want accurate part information. But Digi-Key is in the information business in the same way that Walmart is in the information business (a company that also re-sells most of its inventory from manufacturers in its supply chain).
"all the things that you would need to learn in a full-time 2 year MBA program"

I can't think of a single thing that would be on that list. Business School is not like Law School or Medical School where you must remember the "things" you learned. Employers use the MBA to differentiate candidates. It's unlikely that you'll use all that much from the curriculum on your first job. You even say so yourself, "firms hire MBAs on their abilities to learn and not what they've already learned".

"I just don't see how that is remotely possible."

How could you if you've never done it? Every large project I've ever worked on had issues with interpersonal communication, project management, logistics, deployment, revenue generation, and profitability (you know, all the important stuff), in a manner that business school can't even imagine covering.

"the problem is the quality not the quantity"

Exactly. That's my whole point. The quality of a hands on business education blows away anything academic. I imagine most business people (with MBAs or not) would heartily concur. The only thing I remember from business school was, "A degree in business is a degree in nothing."

"in-depth case analysis"

Case studies are notoriously poor for learning about business. What good is it to study business decisions after the fact, when you already know what they didn't? Marc Andressson said as much in his talk at Startup School here:

http://www.justin.tv/hackertv/98124/Marc_Andreessen_Founder_...

or here:

http://omnisio.com/startupschool08/marc-andreessen-at-startu...

If you don't want to listen to me, perhaps he's a little more convincing. (Whether you agree with me about anything or not, I strongly suggest this video. A lot to learn from someone with real battle scars.)

"with your professor and the other students"

who pale in comparison to people your encounter every day on the job. Why do you think the most important class in any business school is the internship?
I always wondered how a man that dresses so poorly can be the worlds leading expert on something like usability.
Seems like a way for Google to increase their monopoly =)
This is fantastic for Xobni. Congrats.

Hopefully Xobni is able to secure contractual assurances that they'll be able to maintain a level of sovereignty to continue to work on their amazing vision. Microsoft, from experience, is a patchwork of fiefdoms, some the domain of engineering teams, and some product marketing. A team at Microsoft can easily get lost in the shuffle or killed randomly, without a strong exec as high up in the org as possible to make things work.

Cautionary tale: Lookout, that fantastic Outlook plugin that got bought and then promptly taken offline / never heard from again. I believe they were folded into Live Desktop Search. (Will leave it to an exercise to the reader as to whether that was a good move.)
Hey PG, I bought www.benevolentcorporation.com a few months ago while thinking about these memes.

I'll sell it to you for $5M ;-)
Wow, so this is a little off topic, but I'm constantly rooting around. (Book looks awesome btw, downloaded, and 'hope' to read it).

But I saw that the book was 'free', and I wanted to take a beat on where free things were be published. I checked google with the quoted title, zero results.

Then I went to his site saw three links, download, download+donate, and buy paperback. I struggled here, he was giving me no excuse not to donate if I was going to read the book for free. Then I saw the paperback offer, and thought I don't really consider a "book" a 'book' unless I can put it on my shelf. Thus I would gladly pay for a paperback, and if I like his "book" that is how I would give my return. I want a memento from our "free" digital exchange too, I mean, if the book is worth it's salt.

But that's not the point, point is this guy published through 'LuLu', and LuLu like Google is a name that can mean something simply because it means nothing. Something I'll say to my voice command pc, or when I tell my friends fifty years in the "future" I bought a future-word-for-book off 'LuLu' (post computing ubiquity).

How are they going to win? Look at their community. When I got to the page and played around with the links, I was really blown away. I see this company making it.

http://LuLu.com
People who first start drinking once they're are legally allowed to start doing so excessively. That's always the case, no matter if you are 16, 18 or 21. Being from Germany, where the drinking age is 16, I was stunned to see those 18 year old "kids" in the UK behave in a way that reminded me of myself when I was 16. I suspect this is similar for 21-year olds in the states.
Ask YC: Do you care about Karma?
Since the last influx of users, I have been thinking about social aggregation systems such as news.YC.
And, to put it in a nutshell, I believe that for communities such as nYC which are, not mainstream, comparatively close knit and somewhat homogeneous, it is possible to improve the quality of the submissions and comments if we removed individual karma altogether but kept the voting system for submissions and comments intact.

What do you think?
Not focusing on how you feel socially inept goes a long way. People will cut you some slack if you cut yourself some.
Could be that it looks dubious, but it's actually really legit.

I'm a startup (BricaBox.com) in the incubator downstairs from AngelSoft. My roommate has been working on their biz dev for the past two years (I found him the job on CL actually) -- so I know first hand that they really did go out and spend two years and get all these big, legit angel groups on their platform (think: Basecamp for Angel networks).

Anywho, now that they have these groups using the platform, they're opening it up for us to be submit deals, solving the problem I'm sure many of you feel: networking outside your local network (I know tons of angels in NYC, but even as close as Philly I know no one!).
In an earlier post, I pointed out some price discrepancies between the electronic parts industry and the consumer electronics industry (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=168796). This is the evidence that I'm basing my assertion on. Incidentally, this comparison was not possible before Octopart.

There is no difference between what Octopart is doing and what Google is doing. Both companies crawl the web and mine their data sets for useful information. Typically, the word "scraping" is used to imply mal intent but I don't think it has a good technical definition.
Stop Waiting for the Magical Startup Fairy
Integrated optics: the way to scale a quantum computer
I think this is where you're missing it. The angels are already on this platform... because it's what they use to manage deal flow.
Wasn't there someone here a few days ago complaining that all startups today were webbased, and that there were no algorithmic an engineering challenges?

Well, read the article and start doing noise cancellation software.
*and I realize I'm pretty late to the game, but cool site :)
blinksale.com followed a 37s path-- consulting firm that eventually gave up consulting, I believe.
6 weeks? Why so long? - (just kidding) I am building a search engine as my current project. It took all of a weekend to get it up and running. I didn't do it alone my friend helped so I guess maybe that doesn't count ;) We've been crawling for a little under 3 weeks and I keep making interface and search-results tweaks but otherwise it works "ok". I am in the process of switching it over to S3 (maybe EC2) - after that change I think I'll open it up to the public.
Quote of the week.
Yes, I care, as a form of trust metric:

For the person: it is a simplest way to see if you fit or not in this community.
For the community: quickly judge if the post or comment is spam or not.
I think that people spend a LOT of time obsessing over karma and rankings/ratings.

This includes not only obsession with gaining karma, but obsession with how to better measure, display or distribute/earn karma points.

What I would personally prefer to see is someone present a valid, (semi)tested proposal for a better system. There have been a lot of threads withe what I personally consider to be vague half-suggestions for "improvement" that don't really articulate how the proposal will make news:YC cumulatively "better".

When I'm reading the site or submitting comments or linking I don't really find myself giving a lot of merit to the overall rankings. I'm just as likely to add a comment to a story with a ranking of 100 as I am to a story ranked 1, provided the story itself interests me.

Perhaps your argument would be more persuasive if you applied it to some submissions or comments showing how it would affect those items for the overall betterment of the site.
Boston Startup Meetup: tomorrow (22 Apr) at 6:30pm
I'd love if social news were more like an RPG where you could
"level up" to get more features, customizations and other things I can't think of. Last I knew, users with 250 karma were allowed to change the color of the nav bar at the top.
They always have been expensive. In my experience they're also worth it. Very high quality parts and they do wonders for encouraging imagination and creative exploration.

I still have all of my classic Lego sets from when I was a kid :)