skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Hold out in hopes of a higher offer now. (hotmail got nearly 3x Microsoft's initial offer after negotiations)
Forget about MS and keeping hacking. Xobni is headed for bigger things.
I can't think of any others that ended suddenly. Usually death is in a series of gradual steps, starting with a long stretch without updates, continuing through founders taking jobs or going back to school, and ending with the site going dead.
An important distinction: Kiva allows only debt financing - the lender needs to be paid back in cash. YC does equity financing - if you fail, you don't owe them anything, but their upside is bigger too.
Is Search Advertising a Giffen Good?
Campuses swimming in flood of infringement notices from RIAA
i'm impressed with the way this cyclically spread across the net and back to YC.
"Since the price of MS Office Home Edition is $150..."

I don't think that really has anything to do with it. There are plenty of Office plugins that cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars. It's all about how much value the product offers and how much that value is worth to the users. I don't disagree that $100 a seat seems a bit pricey for Xobni's existing functionality, but I don't doubt it could someday be worth that or even more to a large organization.
It is a popular misconception that an increase in demand coupled with an increase in price is sufficient to make a good a Giffen good. This is false.

First, the good must be inferior (demand decreases when income rises), which search advertising is probably not. Second, the increase in demand must be because the income effect (the increase in price acts like a decrease in income, so you will buy more of the good since it is inferior) is greater than the substitution effect (you will buy less of the good because its price relative to substitute goods increased). It's not clear this is the mechanism at work here.

Just because an increase in price causes an increase in demand doesn't make search advertising a Giffen good. This is a necessary, but not sufficient condition.
Ask YC: Employee stock options
I received a job offer this afternoon from a startup. The startup has about 15 employees, has $6.1 million in seed and Series A funding, and has gotten good press coverage.

They offered me 30,000 stock options. The problem is, they won't tell me the total number of outstanding or authorized shares. Without that information, I can't even begin to estimate whether the stock options could possibly ever be worth anything.

Is it unreasonable for the company not to tell me the number of outstanding shares? Does anyone else have any experience with this?

Thanks!
That sounds fishy.
> There are plenty of Office plugins that cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

Do you remember the names of these plugins? I know there are some dev-tool type plugins that cost a lot.
look they got a 20million dollar offer while still in beta. They're obviously on to something. Turning down the money at this point isn't that risky.
Simple brain exercise that may boost your short term memory (open-source, feel free to tinker with it)
i notice that all those challenges are related to one challenge that isn't mentioned. the exponential function as it relates to human population is the basis of most problems.

at some point engineering doesn't matter, there simply won't be enough resources to keep everyone alive, much less with a decent standard of living.

how do we reconcile our innate capacity to continuously expand with a finite world?
One could argue that search advertising is "inferior" to brand advertising in the sense that it produces low-margin transactions and builds no brand loyalty. Companies do it because they have to, in the meat-and-potatoes sense. In the long run, loyal users created through a brand are more valuable.

Also, the increased spending on SEM does come from a limited marketing budget, so there is a definite income effect.

Finally, Google keeps changing the SEM rules in ways that that result in price increases, in addition to the auction effect.

Thus it would seem that all the Giffen good conditions are met.
[Shaking my head]

Can't figure out who's behavior is more mystifying...the paymasters at MS, or someone who turns down 20M for a basically useless widget.
How To Get Your Own Fanboys
Shameless plug. I just finished writing a game that supposedly will improve your short-term memory: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=177991

It's based on that paper about fluid intelligence: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=176264
Dress up Barbie Online
Coolest barbie games on the net. Dress up any of the barbie dolls in wonderful dresses, select a haircut and create your own barbie character.
Actually, stuff like git changes how a developer does development. It encourages quick experimentation which can considerably affect the result. I don't care whether it's the "D" of "DVCS" enables it or not, but the end result seems significant.
"Usually" is the key phrase. The first startup I worked for turned down an $50M acquisition offer when we only had 15 employees and no funding. Everyone up to employee 10 would have made at least a million dollars off of the deal. 2 years, $20M of investment and 150 employees later, the company was "sold" for peanuts in a deal where the VCs folded us into another portfolio company and nobody got anything.
Well, I work in the financial industry, so that's the type of product I'm familiar with... but Bloomberg, FactSet, SNL, Capital IQ, Datastream, Mekko, DealMaven... all of those offer Excel, Outlook and/or PowerPoint plug-ins that carry price tags well above those of the Office apps they depend upon.
The Enemy of My Enemy Is Craigslist
Is it unreasonable for the company not to tell me the number of outstanding shares?

Yes. Your logic is absolutely correct -- they're refusing to tell you something which is essential to you being able to evaluate their offer. You (hopefully) wouldn't accept a job offer without being told what the salary / hourly wage is; you should treat this situation no differently.
The Russian approach to battling breaches
I originally found it on someones del.icio.us and posted it here.
It's pretty amazing to see how this stuff spreads. :)
But still, search advertising isn't an inferior good in the traditional sense. All else constant, if a company gets an additional dollar of revenue, they won't spend less on search advertising in absolute terms.
If Ballmer bolts, who will lead Microsoft?
Search-done-right and the list of attachments sent between myself and a contact have removed a perpetual source of frustration in my workday. Maybe your situation is different.
Architecture astronauts take over
I told them I was going to take the night to think it over. I guess tomorrow I will ask again for the number of outstanding or authorized shares. I feel like if they continue to be sketchy about it, it might be an indicator of how they will act in the future.
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/03/nine_questions_.html

1. How many outstanding shares of stock are there?
we beg to differ that sync/sharing isn't a killer app ;)
COBOL: Too much overhead

PL/I: Not as much demand

FORTRAN: Too specialized

C/C++: Go for it. You will be doing stuff that you may never do again with other languages. But that's OK. You'll have a better understanding of what's going on "under the hood".
Thanks for the link.

This stinks because otherwise I really like the company. I just don't want to deal with anyone who isn't completely upfront with me.
I recommend talking to New Relic - they are in stealth but you can see a bit of what they do in the bio at http://en.oreilly.com/rails2008/public/schedule/detail/4352

Also talk with EngineYard - they are in SOMA, and are involved in the ruby community. If Ezra and his team don't know how to fix it they will know who you should talk to.

disclaimer I am an EngineYard customer
There are two possibilities here, really: 1. They're trying to dupe you; 2. They don't realize that this is an essential number for you to know.

In my books, dishonesty and incompetence both mean exactly the same thing: Run away.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=178010
How to get your own fanboys? Get 'em while they're young. If you're any good, they won't switch.

Apple has targeted schools for 30 years. I'd say it's worked.
Yes, you can, http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...

Also their beta has event tracking that is usable from both flash & javascript - and is very useful
>Apple has targeted schools for 30 years. I'd say it's worked.

Good point, I've never seen any remark on that before.
No. If someone has only 15 seconds to get the source code, you might be able to try the encryption mentioned below. Otherwise, it's not possible; if the computer can run the code, the attacker can read the source code.

It's better to just host the application yourself.
For my open source site userscripts.org I use pl_analyze: http://rails-analyzer.rubyforge.org/

Unfortunately doing the analysis of the production logs daily doesn't work as it takes hours to analyze my logs (I get 400k page views not including robots a day), so I run log_rotate/pl_analyze every hour.

Each hour I get a report that looks like http://pastie.textmate.org/private/dwig0jfl5osjqq1hqoeakg

That said this isn't enough and I have ideas of how I want to fix it, but I've not had the time to implement them.
Although I don't think anyone has done it yet, it may perhaps be possible to package a JRuby on Rails app compiled to java bytecode. Not sure about the technical difficulties or when/if that might happen.
50K users find some use in it. I'd like the analytics for GMail. Hell, if they work with gmail, the iGoogle open-social effort might replace facebook for me.
I wonder how many bits will ultimately fit in a single memristor. It seems like this has the ability to increase storage capacity by several orders of magnitude.
Great read. Amazing how succinct and helpful someone can be when forced the distill their thoughts down into one thing.

2 suggestions:

- Dust the slide show and put it on one page. It's 2008.

- Get rid of the military person. Who wants advice from someone who's handed someone else's trillion dollars? You're talking to an audience who has to earn their own revenue.
You bring up an interesting point.

If you're in the target zone, do you know you're in the target zone?
> I don't see why people get so excited about version control, myself.

Well, for most programmers it's one of their most frequently used applications. Subversion is annoying because operations are really really slow. "svn ci" takes forever as it slowly calculates changes, sends them to a remote server, waits for svn to slowly update its database, and finally wait to get a response back. I want to commit my changes, not take a 15 minute nap. Git creates a few files, and it's done. Commits are instantaneous.

Subversion also has other annoyances. If you want to save your changes before updating, that's too bad. "svn update" can destructively modify your working copy (with no way to revert), and there's no way to commit when Subversion decides that your working copy is out of date. You have to merge upstream right then and there, so fuck you. This means that you have to make a copy of your working copy with "cp" just so you don't lose data. Then you have to manually merge. What!? This makes me pine for the days of "foo.c", "foo.c.BAK", "foo.c.BAK.OLD", etc. ;)

Git handles this the right way. You can commit your changes whenever you want. They're saved forever, and you can always get back to this state. If you feel like pulling in upstream, you can. You then have the opportunity to merge, or say "fuck the merge" and forget it. Git doesn't care when or if you merge upstream into your working copy. You're never forced to do anything; you decide how to work, the computer doesn't tell you what to do. (You can even do it non-linearly; make a branch "foo", do the upstream merge in "master", pull a few upstream changes from "master" into "foo", work on that for a while, pull the rest of the changes in, and finally merge foo into master and send master back to the server. Git handles all of this perfectly, so instead of worrying about what the version control system wants to do, YOU get to decide what to do.)

Finally, Subversion, despite its marketing hype, has no support for branching and merging. Yeah, it has "cheap copies" that you can use diff3 against. What a joke. (SVK is better.)

Anyway, please don't think I'm some rails weenie that just switched to Git last week because some blog told me it's cool. I've been using it for over two years, not because it's cool but because it instantly made programming more enjoyable.

Like I said, I don't want to be too mean to Subversion, since that's never the way to advocate something ... but switching from Subversion to Git feels like ending an abusive relationship. You don't realize how bad it was until it's over.
This is laughable to me. I've muttered more obscenities trying to deal with synchronization problems between computers than with anything else I can think of.

I want all of my media everywhere. Is that so wrong?
Is it unreasonable for the company not to tell me the number of outstanding shares?

In California, I believe it is a legal requirement for a company offering stock options to disclose the number of outstanding shares.

A quick Googling found this web page http://www.jonesday.com/pubs/pubs_detail.aspx?pubID=S4587 , which states:
The plan must specify the total number of securities that may be issued and the class of individuals eligible to receive options and purchase securities under the plan.
If they won't tell you what percentage you're getting, just ignore that part of the equation and base your estimate on everything else, like salary and health benefits.

Most companies issue about 10 million shares, or more, so 30,000 would come at about .3%. If they sold the company for 20 million dollars, you'd gross about $60,000 in options, and probably net around $10,000 after capital gains and stuff. Give or take an order of magnitude. Just a very rough back of the napkin.
I sort of did: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=118759
Very interesting. I don't think I'll bring up the law, but it's nice to know!
Yeah I think its a bit of an odd critique. Sure pie in the sky promises are just that, but it doesn't mean it's always a bad idea. Microsoft bob: bad, online file/data synch: good. Obviously the MS implementation is bound to fail for reasons circling the proprietary-lockin-nonstandard-triangle but the idea itself is killer. I am really digging dropbox for instance.
Gary Vaynerchuck to Keynote Blog World and New Media Expo | StartupSD
Let them know that not knowing the total number of outstanding shares is like getting paid in a currency whose value is not pegged, and hence you can't gauge your total compensation correctly, and hence you can't take the offer.

Remember, interviews are a two way street, the company is looking for the right candidate, and you are looking for the right company. And, if a company can't be upfront with you at the beginning, that sort of tells you what you are in for once you start working there.
> "ACCESS RESTRICTED - Website categorized as Personal Network Storage"

Translation: "Find a new company to work for."

They should be restricting you from viewing News.YC too ;)
They won't tell unless you ask. If you explicitly ask and they still say no, that is a bad sign.
Breaking Gmail’s Audio Captcha.
Seven seven 49B and the poetic harmony of zenbe webmail
Well, you guys are actually solving a real problem. Especially since I'm not bored enough to maintain my own real-time backup system. Dropbox is very useful to me, even with just one computer.
The rare woman tech start-up founder
dupe: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=178010
'And dammit foosball doesn't play itself.'

Priceless
wot a boffin
10 million was my initial thought as well.
"Filed Under Uncategorized".

That makes so much sense! But I think it would be even more dramatic to rename the Uncategorized "category" to "Unfiled".

"Filed under Unfiled."

Poison for the non-technical mind.
I deleted it - but seems like I get to keep the +3 in karma upvotes.
I think the company should be honest with you about the outstanding stock options. I had a similar tale, but when I asked the management about the outstanding stock option, they did reveal the numbers. That kind of says a lot. I have worked for many startups, so based on my experience; you need to be careful dealing with the startup founders/management. Its no big deal, if they really want u, then they should address Ur concern. Don’t fall into trap; let them be honest with the employees. Regardless of the idea or product, if the founders/management are crooks, mark my words, those startups don’t make it.
Adobe’s Open Screen Project: Write Once, Flash Everywhere
That is absolutely vintage Joel. And he's right.

Ray Ozzie and the rest of MS should have realized by now that the only thing that really works is building something. Give us something to criticize. Look at YUI. It's not great in places, but at least it works, and it there, and available to play with, and fun, and cross-platform.

It's coming to something when the most interesting thing out of MS is probably F#, and Photosynth. Aren't these from MSR?

What is the rest of MS doing?

[Personally I'd be glad if they finally got round to fixing all the damn non-resizable dialogs in their apps, which infest all MS software like cockroaches.]
Speaking of the synchronization problem, Google calendar now syncs faultlessly with Outlook (my version is 2003) which makes both apps significantly more useful to me.

Go interoperability!
For python use .pyc or .pyo - ofcourse they can be decompiled but then so can be a .class
Hell no it doesn't.Its a full time job where I work!
No, it was a merger. The two combined to form Notabug.
Not if the issue is still relevant :-)
I haven't used Xobni, but if Google desktop search can index my Outlook, then Google are most likely but an intern away from eating Xobni's lunch.

Sender, recipients, subject, threading. I wonder if access to Outlook is the real true prize for all that work on Google desktop.

It still seems pretty surprising that the only really viable way to search MS Email is by using Google desktop search.
24 Hours With Google
The problem with most synchronization systems I've encountered is that they're based on unification -- "one version to rule them all." Unification seems to be an optimization strategy, seen in all kinds of networks, from computer to political. History doesn't suggest it's a very good model in the long run, since it's so fragile. The Bible survived because so many people duplicated it, while all those single manuscripts in Alexandria, however divine, went up in smoke.

Duplication seems to beat unification. Just look at how Wikipedia and Google, writhing seas of duplication, kick the living shit out of closed taxonomies and hierarchal directories. Anand Rajaraman hit the nail on the head with his "more data beats better algorithms" observation, and I'd skew it here as "more copies beats better organization." I want to asynchronize my data, not synchronize it. The tricky part is making this model work at a personal level, across devices and yet not exposed to the world at large. I wouldn't put my money on MSFT figuring it out.
CS major vs CE major
I'm starting college next year and am debating between majoring in Computer Science or Computer Engineering. I've seen a lot of posts regarding CS programs and their follies (I believe my university is a "Java school") and am wary of a purely software oriented major. On the other hand, I haven't heard much talk about Computer Engineering programs.

I am interested in both programming and electronics and want to learn more about CS, but at the same time I don't want to limit myself to a strictly "8 hours in front of the computer" type of job.

A CE degree seems to integrate both CS and EE, and encompass more of what I want to study, so I would like to hear the suggestions and opinions of the YC populous on both CS and CE degrees.
Let us know how many outstanding shares there are, I'm curious what percentage they are offering. I'm trying to get a general sense what a company like that would give % wise.
You're right. We use CVS at work, but I'm the only one who uses it the way it was meant to be used.

I've seen my co-workers, boss, and the consultants we've hired check in output files as well as source files and make commits with no comments. Forget branching, merging, and tagging. Unfortunately, in IT departments, you cannot assume people know anything about source control, even in 2008.

All I can say is thank god I don't have to touch their CVS modules, and thank god they don't touch mine!
Depends a bit on who is doing the hiring - it may tend towards ignorance rather than incompetence. Ask for a conversation with the CFO or equiv.
This will be big someday, but I fear that the huge inertia that is the software and hardware industry (well, at least the larger companies) will keep this out of mainstream for 5-8 years.
Thank you for sharing the knowledge. I didn't know that.

Follow-up questions: I look at Xobni as a time (hence money) saving tool for the end user... not a money making tool. Are all the tools/plug-ins that you mentioned money making tools? Can a time saving tool be sold for a price higher than the host app?
I'd say it's at least that big.
Maybe we just need to put all our data in git or mercurial and forget about all this other nonsense.
For me and the people I know, sync is a killer app for backups, but not for sharing.
To me the real Architecture Astronauts are the Enterprise Architects, who think that documenting in some 6-figure modeling tool how I order paperclips, and defining a paperclip SOA and sending EVERYTHING over a 8-figure ESB they bought from IBM-- now those are some space cadets!
Because flash is faster, less bloated, and integrates with browsers better than most PDF viewers.
Population growth has been slowing in the last couple decades. An odd effect of economic success (as a nation) seems to be vastly lower birthrates. It could be ready access to contraceptives, or more women working, or whatever, but it's an obvious trend. Nations like Japan and Italy have negative replacement rates at the moment.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#Rate_of_increa...

Aside from that, population pressures do build, but they can't just build forever. Eventually something happens (war, famine, technological breakthrough) that solves the problem in the short term. If we suddenly run out of some critical resource, that will suck for individuals, and the ensuing resource wars may take a terrible toll, but the race as a whole will survive and grow again.
You have 7 years to learn Mandarin
Just ordered some LOLMagnetz. OMFG awesome.
Be smarter at work, slack off
I actually found the most interesting part of the article towards the end: Joel's really upset that MSFT and GOOG are picking up all the top CS grads, despite Joel's great internships and Aeron chairs. And, he's also upset that the starting salary for a CS grad is now pushing 6 figures.

I'd actually wager that the true cream of the crop is primarily interested in starting their own companies and cashing out early. It's the second tier that are interested in working for MSFT and GOOG. And then, the rest of the companies are fighting for scraps. I could be wrong, I'm not doing the HR thing like Joel is.

And, it's only going to be a matter of time before undergrad salaries across the board start climbing. And once the press starts writing "Tech shortage. Salaries skyrocket!" there will be a lot more people going into CS as a major.
Building an open source video streamer
Microsoft Raises Yahoo Offer To $32-$33 Through WSJ; YHOO Wants $37*
Hey Joel, look at me! I'll come work for you. I'm a young strapping rapscallion, and I made a python script to play ultimate frisbee FOR me!
Schmidt says Google still scratching head over YouTube profits