skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I wouldn't say it's a case of "less is more" from the founders' point of view. They obviously spent a lot of effort to monitor and filter content in order to increase the quality of their site. To me, the real message is that quality matters. Don't blindly trust the wisdom of the crowds.
I have found that Sass makes managing large amounts of CSS really easy. It's honestly probably more useful to me than Haml itself. But both of those were the 'killer app' of rails for me personally. I can write html and css, but haml and sass are just so much more succinct and DRY.
This is an interesting move. Is this at all common? I''m curious to know if this happens a lot. I really like how the guy took an honest assessment of what he loves to do and then took drastic action to assure that he could continue to focus on his core competencies. Hope it works out for him!
> I'm fine if Ben Stein believes this individually but what offends me is his desire to spread his lies.

Well, that's democracy for you. If you could stop everyone who you thought was spreading ignorance from sharing/convincing others of their views, you'd be living someplace else.
It explains why she was so surprisingly recent.
Because this isn't warfare. War is pretty serious: massive armies fighting to the death and all. Very little is analogous to war, so lets find a new metaphor.
I enjoy the idea a lot. Really nifty.
Thanks. I was being lazy too :)
Congratulations. You're an inspiration to all of us.

If you dont mind me asking, did you take on investment money or was the decision to sell solely yours?
It's a little weird to include the author's name like that. It's no fault of the submitter, I just thought the story was about Jared (the jewelers) getting revenge for some past wrong.
Aggregators are going to be huge. The social networking sphere is going to become increasingly fractured over then next couple years and we'll need services like this to get us through the chaos till the dust settles .
ID is basically an American phenomena. (oh, and maybe in the middle east too).

Most of the rest of the world is pretty much settled on this topic.
Rails Kits: Ready-made Rails Code
The real problem with Blogger: Google's neglect
Yes, thanks everyone.
Solo Founder? I demand you scuttle the acquisition and stop violating pg's pet theories.

congrats!!!

http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html
Zero outside investment. Zero other employees (I've been doing this full-time for ~3.5 years). I hired an artist for the illustrations. And used a lot of open source projects.
Also amazing is how this recent population decline and rebound of people based in Africa was only a few dozens of millenia away from the "mitochondrial blonde" (if you will) 6-10k years agohttp://www.ku.dk/english/news/?content=http://www.ku.dk/engl...
Solve your character encoding woes for all your Django models
The 'cool' factor is definitely here. Personally, I would be hesitant to relly on gyros to keep me upright at highway speeds (given that they are 'smart' gyros that depend on electronics to dynamically adjust). I really applaud his efforts and i do concede that the sort of safety testing and design tweaking that would occur if this design got picked up for mass production would likely alleviate my fears.

I'd still be scared that minivan drivers would gawk at me on the highway and cause some sort of accident.
Looks like you just got drafted in the "Reality Hackers League". Congratulations!

You are inspiriation to the rest of us fellow single founders.
Hmm, I see that my appreciation was ill-received :-) Ah well, I found the article to be helpful to me.
Congratulations! Looking forward to your next adventure/venture
FreeBSD developer Kip Macy charged with tenant terror
Cool. Do you have a blog? Or perhaps you can share some bootstrapped, single founder stories. There just aren't enough of those here. I would find them especially enlightening.
Every new technology will most likely break SOMETHING someplace. If it doesn't, it's probably not innovative enough. I agree with 95% of what you are saying, but at the same time, there has to be some way to move forward.
Finding your lost youth through XQuery
US bills are still the same size.
It's been noted in the past that Y Combinator in fact does ask for founders' ages. Presumably it can skirt the hiring laws because it is funding a company, not employing people.
Remote Lisp Hacking
Scala and XML
Free WiFi Access Begins
thanks for the feedback -- we'll crank out Flash versions and post them soon.
Thiel pledges $500K to create new scoieties on the ocean
I think one of the main reasons all this "37 Signals/DHH/Make Money Now" talk has been so well received is because it's a message ripe for this community.

I just spent my first weekend ever in the Silicon Valley and was incredibly impressed with all the smart personable people working on and talking about cool things.

I was also perplexed at how many of them were having trouble making money, and the general lack of customer facing skills that we take for granted in other parts of the U.S.

Sure, it's nice to dream of hitting a grand slam, but it's also nice to eat while you're dreaming. You CAN have it both ways; it's just so easy to get caught up in the hype of the former that we forget about the latter.

Thanks, 37 Signals, for helping put the bus back in the middle of the road where it belongs.
Great job. Doing something for 3.5 years on your own requires a lot of confidence and perseverance. Congratulations!
Creating widgets
Hi everyone,
This might be a silly question but how are widges actually created/deployed?

I am interested in creating a tool that would allow people to create and embed a widgeton their webpage. The widget will basically collect responses from individuals and store them in our database. The widget will also show all responses that have already been entered in the database. You could say its something like the widgets created by PollDaddy.

I understand the HTML part necessary to display the widget. However, how do I get the dynamic part (mainly interacting with our database) working without making it too complicated for the widget user to embed.

Any suggestions will be helpful. Thanks!
How did you finance yourself (since you did it FT for 3.5 y)
Hundreds of Thousands of Microsoft Web Servers Hacked
I'd suggest blacklisting my site. I don't want to have to deal with any of you guys flaming me in my comments. :D
It's kind of sad, but their most valuable asset now is probably their IP in terms of licensing t-shirts and other swag to companies that cater to us nostalgic 80's kids.

One has to wonder if the German and dutch firms that traded Commodore around over the past few years failed to understand the value in leveraging the american nostalgia for the brand.

What is sad is that I truly think that Commodore could have come back had the brand been managed smartly. Unfortunately, in this day and age I'm not sure how many people have the intestinal fortitude to base an ad campaign on nostalgia, since it's hard to demonstrate how that could be sustainable. The problem is, without this approach the Commodore brand becomes a deadweight around their neck (seen as old and outdated) instead of an asset (good feelings about my very first computers, retro, hip)
Appreciation is better expressed with an upvote. The comment didn't add anything to the discussion, so it was spam. Although, I do agree that -5 is a bit harsh for simple spam. I'd suggest we try to keep those at -1 or 0.
Is OS X font rendering that much nicer? I use Ubuntu with hinting turned off and no subpixel rendering (just gray) and it looks beautiful.

Could anyone who has access to both OS X and GNU/Linux post side-by-side screenshots to compare the two?
Not everyone with a family to support has tons of money saved up so they can go without income for a year. Almost none do.

I have no idea how you could possibly say "No it doesn't".
Self-proclaimed "technologist"-journos, especially those focusing on social networking and "Web 2.x" coverage, don't seem to have any sort of expectation towards the quality of their own reporting.

So this InformationWeek dude initially tries out friendfeed for a very short time and does not like it. He does so again a second time, investing "more time" and all of a sudden sees more of a light. The time he invested the second time around turns out to be a day. Even though he writes it is "too early to pass judgement", the one day experience seems to be enough to serve as foundation for an article.

Doesn't anybody strive a little more for something more conclusive?

Btw, I like and use friendfeed (http://friendfeed.com/codesurgeon) a lot. I just wonder what kind of deep insights some reporters get from a day's usage and interaction.
I don't know all the details here, but I'll say this: This doesn't sound like the Kip Macy I know.

Unfortunately, since the first piece of advice lawyers give their clients is usually "don't say anything to anyone", I suspect it will be a long time before the full story comes out.
Congrats! Looking forward to details...
Student Twitters Himself Out of Jail
Starting a business sucks. Failure rates are often just as high, no big reward to look forward to, your peers who work a fourth as hard in regular jobs usually get more money. Unless you're already rich, starting a business is the worst of everything.
Yeah you can have it both ways, it's called getting a regular job and having some stock options.
Very low overhead. The largest investment by far was my time.
Lightspeed Funding Turns Facebook Application Into “Serious Business”
No blog but if you have specific questions feel free to ask here or contact me.

http://www.fleaflicker.com/contact.do
congrats. Can you share the acquisition value? :P
Installing Linux Ubuntu like a Windows Application with Wubi
There's lots of ways.

You can also write a great app that people want, get them to pay for it, and scale, scale, scale. With great tech, nice financials, and growth, you may be surprised at the investors who seek you, not the other way around.
Many congrats! You are an inspiration to all of us!

So, who is your favorite NFL team? :)
Congratulations.

how does the acquisition process initially start?
I think personal, portable AI that can follow me to whatever sites I visit and whatever searches I make and learns enough about me to start inferring what I may mean when I search for any given thing would be nice. Should be easy. (Ok, so that last part was facetious )
Who takes more risk: VC or Entreprenuer
Seems obvious but a good read nonetheless.
Too bad only robots will comply.
It's a bit obvious but a good read nonetheless.
I'm guessing you did a full-upgrade. Have you tried a fresh install from scratch?
Amen. I've used blogger since 2000, if I remember correctly. The service is clunky. It does not have Google polish. I had to hack the template code just to not show every single tag I've ever used and only show over a threshold.

If I get the time to figure out how to move to some other free service without losing my readership and without leaving my historical posts behind, I can't think of anything that would hold me back.
Nickb, Are you okay?
It has been more than a week since nickb was seen here. Am I the only person worried?

He didn't show up in Startup School though he said he would. I hope he is okay.
Why does Ubuntu provide a server edition in addition to their desktop edition? It would seem a natural fit to leave servers to Debian and focus their own efforts on delivering the best desktop experience possible.
Great, thanks. Hope you don't mind, but the questions are "gushing" out right now. Your story is very compelling to me (and probably quite a few others, too):

1. Did you have personal savings before you got started?

2. In that 3.5 years, how much time did you spend on other jobs? Employee or contractor?

3. Which month (of the 42) did you see your first revenue?

4. Did you do all of the hacking, hosting, and marketing? Which was most on the "critical path"?

5. When you encountered problems (of any type), where did you turn for help?

6. Did you ever get lonely? How did you manage that?

7. If you didn't get your exit, how long were you prepared to continue this?

8. How did you manage to find your exit?

I'll probably think of more. Thanks so much for joining us and sharing!
Google Chooses Clickthrough Revenue over Usability in New Design
The old interface was classic and simple. The new one is as cluttered as possible with irrelavent pictures and links to top news sites. See the comments for user opinions.
I don't think the guys will flame you; sounds kinda girly to complain about this.
Learning Curves for Text Editors
30th Anniversary of Spam Next Week - Click for Free Viagra
There Is No One Right Way to Start a Startup
Could you not send him an email (it's in his profile)?
This is exactly what justin.tv's traffic curve looks like. I joined just around the first Wiggles Of False Hope.
Ajax often gets used when a page is so complex (possibly due to lots of ads) that reloading the whole thing would be too much work. In those cases, I wonder if maybe the problem could be solved instead by just making the page simpler...
I wholeheartedly concur with the Growing a Business recommendation. It's like reading "Getting Real" but as a real book with an ISBN number and everything, and it was written 20+ years ago, yet is still relevant, which is a good sign. I also added it as a summary at SB, but it's one I think is worth buying:

http://www.squeezedbooks.com/book/show/4/growing-a-business
Wait. I thought Paul Graham was nickb?
Several people said they saw him in the pizza line, but I was too far back to see for myself.
1) This site really looks cool

2) It's easy to use, so kudos - I sent the link to my girlfriend and she set it up in no time flat.

3) There is no three, but I'd like to say again that this is a pretty cool application.
Heresy!
pg's theories are consistent with some solo founders succeeding.
3.1. Which month (if any) did you first see enough revenue that this was paying for your living expenses?
May design patterns may help you somehow: http://cssdesignpatterns.com
Site's down, so:

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/04/the_uno_a_one_wheel...
Ah, I see what you mean. That makes sense.
I'm guessing this is coming off the discussion DHH and PG had in another thread and... wow. I've never seen such intelligent people waste so much time arguing word choice. What a waste of time.

Different kind of "entrepreneurial enterprises" can be successful in different ways - and most of us would be happy with either kind of success. So let's be specific as to what has the highest probability of success.

PG advocates iterative design throughout the product - he mentions it repeatedly in his essays and talks, that startups should start somewhere which looks good and change their ideas "en route". It seems to me that DHH might call this "trying to give turds wings" - instead, he advocates starting with an idea which will have a strong market to start with, like Basecamp. Then you can work a productive 4-day week working on "objectives [which] are reasonably clear". PG would argue that most of the time, the objectives should never be too clear - in the sense that we should keep an flexible mindset about what we are building.

I guess the unknowns we don't agree on are:

1) How many "obvious" market niches are there, where at least 2,000 users will pay you $40/month? In his SS2008 talk, DHH hypothesizes that there are many, but as far as I can tell, it's just a hunch.

2) What is the probability of hitting one of those niches, and what is the probability of getting acquired/going IPO using "iterative design" to traverse the space of ideas? I don't think there are enough data available to really say.

Since there aren't enough data to make a call statistically, both PG and DHH argue from their experiences - which differ. Both are right to claim that you can be successful either way, so I guess the best way to make a call is based on an individual's personality.
One simple way is to use javascript.

Have your users add a single <script> tag in their html page, which points to a javascript file on your server.

That javascript file on your server is just a single statement:

document.write(" ... [ widget content goes here ] ... ");

which gets executed every time someone visits your user's site.

Just generate the javascript file on your server as often as necessary (and, obviously, you can have multiple javascript files customized for each of your users).
That's why we need more female tech entrepreneurs. Mud wrestling is hawt.

[with apologies to all women, ever, for making a joke at your expense]
Now all you have to do is feed it to a travesty generator, and you can have your very own PG bot.

Sample output:

This is the least useful time to have done that would lead to horrible bugs. But I don't think boundp exists either. So far I haven't needed it. readall keeps calling read till it runs out of input, and returns itself. This turns out to be quite handy. is is just CL eq (or rather eql) Unset variables are not null; that would not be hard, but their valuations are not null; that would not be hard, but their valuations are not null; that would not be hard, but their valuations are not null; that would have reacted so angrily if I'd said Microsoft was dead in 1995. They would have been ambivalent about it. Why pre-announce it? To prevent people from using competitors. MSFT used to be called progn. (It's surprising how much better that little change makes...
Looks like the seeds of a meta-essay.
I guess I'm in an even smaller minority.

I use OS X, but I wish I could have the old sawfish behavior, where clicking on a window gave it focus but did not raise it, and clicking on a window's title-bar gave it focus and raised it.
He said "rules out". No it doesn't. It was an over generalization.
Yeah, I saw him standing in line right next to Elvis.
Did you apply or consider applying to YC? If not, why?
The other thing that bugs me is, of course, the completely useless green "+" button, which seems to mean "randomize the size and position of this window" :-/

(other than those two, OS X is without a doubt the most enjoyable OS I've ever used).
You should check out my startup, www.stoprespondingseriouslytojokes.com
Yeah. Maybe he's off implementing a downmod arrow so I can bury this crap submission.
Need to disconnect - Why I'm taking an Online Sabbatical
Hey, thanks icey. Let me know if you have any other thoughts or ideas to make it better.
lol...very true
Nice article, Hank. I knew it was only a matter of time when you posted something I completely agreed with.

One other point: you can lose money and then get it back but you can never get back the time you lost. In a lot of deals the VC puts in the money and the entrepreneur puts in his time. Since he's investing something he can never recover, isn't that another way of saying he's taking the greater risk?
Haskell Study Plan
Old school reporting was about doing a lot of work and then passing informed judgement. So, I think this was a little im/pre-mature.

What I've decided, having used FriendFeed for a while, is that the direction everyone needs this to go is a standards-based feature of the feed-producing platforms themselves. Having to go to FriendFeed to see what my friends are doing in a site which should incorporate the other sites is akward and annoying.

I'm not ragging on FriendFeed. I like that they're tackling this. But signing up for Facebook, then Flickr, then signing up for FriendFeed and telling FriendFeed that I use Facebook and then Flickr and then adding the FriendFeed app to Facebook and not being able to do it to Flickr is just dumb. Hopefully FriendFeed or something like it can become a de-centralized value add of any serious social network, based on an open standard, while not losing the ability to import or fake friendships for the other 75% of users.

One day, I would like to add a friend on Twitter and have Twitter ask me if I'd also like to friend her on Facebook, Flickr and [insert x here], since we both use both services.
Congrats man! Good to see someone in the space cashing out.
Thanks for the suggestion. So the javascript file would basically write the html markup for the widget? How would it handle interaction with the database? Can I use it to write php code as well?
The best user manuals EVER
The Cognitive Surplus: Wasted Brain Power
Grid Systems in Web Design
Duh...he's from Jersey. He has to be a Giants fan
I didn't know this book was made available for free; that's pretty cool. Can anyone recommend a similar book for Git?
Maybe a reddit-like "hide" feature would be better -- doesn't affect anyone else, just let's you skip stuff you'd personally not see. I'm sure someone has the GreaseMonkey-Fu to do this without troubling the site programmers.
Battelle Casts, but Andreessen Doesn`t Take the Bait
He was at the reception the night before.
The most enlightening Calculus books
My criticism is valid. nickb is one of two things: A non-existent person, or a person who has real-life contacts who can submit a missing-persons report if required.
While Ballmer and Yang Fiddle, Web 2.0 Hotties Burn…
In the future, I'd like to suggest that all regulars post their vacation schedules and travel times to news.YC so that we can make sure you're ok. Please also post your mom's phone number so that we can call her and tell you're doing alright and that the weather is great in Whogivesashitistan.
I can see that you've been here longer, and you have a lot more karma than me (I can't even downvote stories yet). But, I just recently switched from reddit to HN and I am very hopeful that it will not end up like reddit. So, with all due respect, I'm thinking this submission is more appropriate in this subreddit:
http://reddit.com/r/pics/
Maybe nickb will mysteriously disappear and completely cease activity, the way linuxer did from reddit. http://reddit.com/user/linuxer
bumping because I agree with this good list of calculus books.
So the javascript file would basically write the html markup for the widget?

Yes.

The text passed to the document.write statement (also note that document.write is not the only thing you could use here) is the html markup you want to display.

Just make sure you take care of character entity references (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_XML_and_HTML_character_...) in that markup text.

How would it handle interaction with the database?

You just need to have some process running on your server which can connect to the db, make whatever queries it needs, and generate the javascript file in your web server's htodcs folder (or wherever you set the output target).

Can I use it to write php code as well?

Just a guess (I really don't know much about php other than a high-level understanding) but you'll probably run into security issues b/c your user's server will have a different domain from your server.

I.e., any web client visiting the user's page will (probably) disallow references to executing code on your server.

I could be wrong on that last point, though, so you may want to do some more research or just try a few experiments.
Youtube Suggest
Yeah, I was kind of afraid that might be the case. :)
</lifelong-pats-fan>
Over generalization is when you generalize to a group larger than is applicable. This is the same group and a very accurate generalization on his part.
Congrats. That is so awsome! I love hearing about someone "making it."

I think I remember a post you made on Reddit about not having a co-founder. If I recall you wanted one. Guess it turned out anyway.

I have a deadbeat co-founder. :-( Going solo would be better.
Why 37 Signals is Encouraging A Different Kind of Silicon Valley
Maybe The Fight Against Click Fraud Isn’t Hopeless After All
I used to be a big f-f-m fan, but it doesn't make sense in the Mac UI at all, due to the menubar (as he notes). So I got over it.

But the big missing feature that doesn't contradict the UI at all is the ability to lower a window. It would solve his "I want to type 'make' over there but then end up with the terminal window on the bottom", too.