skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There certainly are some computer scientists who are multi-disciplinarians. At some (but not all) of the top departments, there's also a lot of collaborative work that is done among specialists in different areas.

But I think the tendency to specialize on one or two subfields is pretty understandable. A major part of becoming a successful academic is establishing a reputation among the members of your subfield: regularly publishing at the prominent conferences and getting your name recognized as someone doing good work is a major component in whether you get funding, tenure, awards, and the like. It is easier to establish that reputation when you concentrate on a single subfield and a single community of academics. Trying to become prominent in a bunch of subfields simultaneously is not impossible, but it's a lot more difficult.

It's also a lot more effort to do good work in several unrelated fields (and especially to do good work as both a theoretician and a practitioner). In each subfield, there's usually a vast literature that you need to master; learning n subfields is obviously harder than learning 1.
Well, his linkedin.com profile has about 400 connections, and I've got about 5 or 6 people linking us, so I know he is a real person who has real connections and real startups. Judy's Book had a huge following, and I have seen him in the local paper here and there.

But, it is definitely concerning. I wrote him an email just now and gave him the link to this thread. If he writes me back I'll let you all know.
I'm not sure this is the best advice, but a number of my good friends do this, and they set up companies in the US (LLC) and do their work abroad while on tourist visas.
Why is this poorly written article getting front page attention? Oh, because the internet reads headlines... forget the important substance or in this case, lack there of.
It's not about copying the idea.

It's about making yourself look like a total asshat by copying someone else's writing verbatim and passing it off as your own.

> which I'm sure they'd rectify if asked,

"If you have to ask..."

> then they'll, like most ventures, find ways to differentiate themselves and do their thing or die.

There's a YC copycat in India that differentiates itself by posting armed guards to keep you in your office until midnight. And not let you sleep. Seriously.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=158049
13 Seed Funding Options For Entrepreneurs
There are plenty of me-too's borrowing from YC's model in an attempt to clone it. This company just happens to take the additional step of stealing from the YC application.

It's shady but it goes on. Be glad some light was shed on this particular misuse and skip these guys if you don't agree with their actions.

They won't hurt YC's brand and they won't injure the value of the YC companies. This type of thing -- whether an act of theft, laziness, or both -- only hurts the offender. Just looks at some of the other comments in this thread.

I'm with aristus... this isn't anything to get excited about.
Local is a plus.
Brad Feld, whose blog appears on that page, also has a hand in TechStars (their application was copied from YC too).
Anagrams for founders coop:

------------------------------------------

Unforced Oops

Dunces Of Poor

Poser Fund C.O.O.
At first, I thought this was sarcasm; too many people submit questions that are trivial or can easily be googled.

Not sure though...
Seeing that most custom enterprise applications use proprietary systems/infrastructure, I don't see "web 2.0" fitting in with big business...

However, I do know small/medium companies are beginning the transition into completely custom apps like web-based POS systems, sales generation, etc.. But, $50-200k is a big chunk of change for a small entity. And as already stated, there is a significant education process when dealing with decision makers over ~30 years old who are unfamiliar with current technology... scare + relative cost = hard sell.
Obviously, the very nature of this site would make most people disagree with #10, so I won't comment. As for #9, I was a little irked he used "joy" to describe Aristotle's eudaemonia.

However, I disagree with #2, beginning with the term he chose to use: "Obey the absolutes." I understand he's trying to say "be a moral person" (in the neoclassical sense), but even regardless if he's right--even if we should "obey the absolutes"--it is improper to start this tenet with "obey." For one, let's face it, we all know the moral sphere is not black and white as described in his comments on #2. However, "obey" implies thoughtlessness regarding one's moral behavior, because these "absolutes" are then taken for granted for societal and biological reasons (respectively popular conceptions of good and evil, and conscience, a largely biological instinct). Of course, we weren't all meant to be moral philosophers, but some consideration of one's moral system is still pertinent to everyone.

Besides that, some of these are fairly standard and self-evident guidelines, albeit targeted to (in content and phrasing) lay people (i.e., eight-to-fivers, pardon the term).
Google scares me...
and upsets...
yet they bring me a lot of utility... love/hate.

I wish they'd focus on fixing and improving their existing services, instead of gobbling everything up before it has a chance to live in a competitive market and mature. For as big as they are, they do a terrible job of buttoning up their projects.
Maybe I should write a blog post discussing why dropping out of college for 2 years was the best decision of my life, followed by my second best: finishing.
That was a very well thought out and written essay. I invite you to look at and join if you feel so inspired a new site called Thinklike. The address is: http://www.thinklike.net.
Yes Dave it should be spam resistant. I am looking at to utilize quality and quantity of contents to rank a rivalry. Contents are in form of weapons, weaknesses, images, videos, passion talk and news. Other sub contents can be comments on each of these contents. We can have number of fans on each side into consideration. Plus ranking and loyalties of those fans. So there are many things we can take into account but the problem is how we can make sure that homepage has good amount of variations in terms of rivalries it displays.

I hope I am clear here.
Make it simple... really simple !
yes cream of the crop rises to the top style ranking will be better but that does not mean we dont give proper exposure to new rivalries which are being added. We have tried this kind of ranking before but in that case old rivalries remain on top because they have the maximum contents, fans etc. We dont want that. We want dynamism on the homepage.
Thanks :) looks cool
the only problem with this kind of formula is that it does not get rid of older rivalries from homepage because they will be having maximum fans, contents etc. for e.g. pepsi vs coke. I dont want this rivalry to be on the homepage everytime someone gives a visit.
> I was a diligent Oriental in high school and college.

Orientals are objects. Asians are people.

> Frankly, smoking, drugs, alcohol--and using an IBM PC--are signs of stupidity. End of discussion.

Probably the majority of creative people in the history of the world have used drugs of some type. In fact, that's how we got some of our finest literature and works of art.

IBM PC? Is he still stuck in the 80s?

> There absolutely are absolute rights and wrongs.

"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." -- Anatole France

Guy was just a PR flack for Apple which happened to net him a lot of face time and even magazine covers. He doesn't "Think Different", he just got a marketing job and talked up his employer. Fini.
4 Things to Do After You Get Your First Term Sheet
I was going to say the same thing... and not to sound bitter that entrepreneurial interest has increased significantly the past few years, but it's reaching the point of being "fashionable" amongst educated youth and blogsphere.

The interest is a good thing because it facilitates progression and capital flow but I think there is a key element missing from the youth-explosion, similar to that of a Blackberry user: Lots of typing/philosophizing, no pudding...
Sounds great, I'll try to pop along
Requiring usage only on Apple hardware would be illegal tying.

Trying to do it technically would amount to the same thing.
Nah, the DMCA bites the bucket in cases like that. It was already overturned for a garage door opener and a printer manufacturer.

You can't claim DMCA protection in cases where you are simply trying to shut out competition. Others are allowed to be interoperable.
I love my 10Mbit Virgin cable connection, but if they're going to start limiting iPlayer I'd rather move to a slower dsl line elsewhere
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This is Spartaa!!! er Hacker News....

(don't neg me, sorry I couldn't resist)
Supposing you 1) dont' want to live in the Bay Area, or 2) weren't accepted to YC, or have some other issue with YC, having some other options isn't bad, even if they're not as good as the original.

I don't get the need people seem to have to put these YC clones down. Yes, copying the application is lame (we'll see if the guy responds), but having more options is a good thing. If your idea (YC) is any good, people will try and replicate it, and that's what we're seeing here. The early-stage-seed whatever area is not some kind of network-effect amped winner-takes-all market where PG needs to grow things at an insane pace to grab market share. Far from it, he does well by his funded companies to dedicate his time to them, and not worry if people copy his idea.
In light of the Lexmark decision Apple can't stop others from being interoperable legally. Their choices are to bludgeon clonemakers with frivolous lawsuits and try to bankrupt them for pursuing their rights, or to keep trying to make OS X paranoid about what it's running on while clonemakers keep patching the code that does hardware checks. And clonemakers might even be able to sue to stop Apple from doing that.

See
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/07/1416228
So far we have 5 comments related to the Ask Reddit bit and not a single answer to the actual question. This is sad.
something, write, take photos, notice other people, their work, their world, ...). Have a broad understanding about different areas of knowledge. Think about these different areas and how they could be combined together.
Patent Program ideas from SCIFI?
If you got an idea for a software program from a SCI-FI book, and you create that program. Would you be able to patent it?
I'm very disappointed in you all, I'm sure we could have had a lot of fun in the mean time...
Yes meet with VCs, but don't sign anything and take any money until you have a good idea about whats up for grabs.

When you accept VC money its the equivalent of going public, you will have to make sure your start up turns around a profit or sells rather quickly...
yea i mean it seems to be a first step obvious point.
All the links are no follow here
I don't know what exactly you're looking for, but everybody I know who has filed patents, has done so via provisional patents first (cheap and easy, and gives you a year to file full patent, AFAIK).

That's US patents only, don't know about other regions, or filing non-provisional patents.
Depends exactly what you mean by "got an idea ... from a sci-fi book". If you mean "copied directly from a sci-fi book", you shouldn't be able to patent it -- the USPTO has accepted science fiction as prior art in the past. (Naturally, it's only prior art if it describes the method -- Star Trek transporters aren't prior art for anything, because the mechanisms behind how they work were never specified.)

The most famous example of fiction being cited as prior art is probably the method of raising a sunken ship by filling it with ping pong balls, where a 1949 Donald Duck cartoon was cited.
saves you from writing two application forms?
Israel: a country too far from Mike Arrington’s house
> It's about making yourself look like a total asshat by copying someone else's writing verbatim and passing it off as your own.

There's a famous line by Igor Stravinsky. "Good composers borrow. Great composers steal."

If you're working on something, and you see someone else that's got part of it righ, by all means copy them!

I don't mean plagiarize them, but emulate what they're doing and figure out the parts that you're good at. If you read through what this co-op is about there's some interesting stuff there. They're trying to get people in Seattle for a year, are offering more funding and trying to build integration between the companies they're investing in. This is a good thing. Ask them to reword their questions if you must, but cheer these people on! Comparing this the Indian proposal from a little while back is just silly.
Is YC bold enough? (warning: possible linkbait)
One of the things that I like about pg's modus operandi is this: I love to build stuff, but I'm not so much of a business guy. I think I could build something that lots of people want, but less sure that I'd be the right guy to keep running it. Maybe I would, in the right field, but having the possibility to 'flip' the company to someone more adept at running it sounds pretty good to me, as well as allowing me to go back to do what I do best.
Definite linkbait.
I think that was the idea Techstars had. Since they got away with it outside of this community, I can see why other new microseed funds want to keep using the same application.
Yahoo and contacts
Google has the contacts API. Does Yahoo do anything similar in its developer network?
becasue this is exactly what they intended to do. Have the entire YC community talk about it and cr8 some interest about their program. It seems to work.
So true. I think it even goes deeper than that. In some sense, it's the secret to a happy family (not that you become a push-over and literally give everybody exactly what they want -- especially not your kids) and happy relationships.

Maybe an even better way to word it is "Think about other's needs before your own, and act on other's needs before your own."

The only way it works is if it's sincere.
But theres another thing. Working on problems like that are boring. Nobody here wants to do that.
You don't do that sort of thing in javascript :)
There's a couple of areas where things are different - event handling for example.
Either you use a library, or you feature sniff. Certainly not browser sniff.

Flash is pretty slow and inaccessible. I'd bet my money on javascript every time. The only thing missing is video/audio. Which should be there soon afaik.
Hopeless? You're describing an organization so riddled with inertia that they'll keep using (and paying for) an obsolete system they are comfortable with it and have no team inside capable of building something better?

Your problem will be building something that actually IS more useful than what they've evolved towards. The big problem is here though:

> the guys who cut big checks

Why would any organization like that pay significant funds up front for something that has no value to them. If this market is worth it, the way to succeed is to give them a low cost / high trust system that complements the way they work. Charge them next to nothing for the basic version and once they've used it bill for ongoing support and further development.
I don't think that YC is claiming to be a VC. Unless I am missing something? everybody knows that 10-20k is not worth much. People apply for something else.
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Uh, Notkin's and the blog's author's own advice are actually two sentences each. Oh well.
Being that I build such systems for a living, from what I've observed you're pretty much right: the problems are boring in that they're not problems you the engineer care about solving, no one sees/cares about your work, and it's kind of a rough way to build software thanks to the terrible deployment model, long feedback cycles, etc. We make it better by focusing a lot on building infrastucture for building applications and trying to push the envelope technologically, which keeps it interesting, and by giving people autonomy to at least be creative in solving the business problems. But in general all the rockstar developers have better things to be doing than building enterprise systems, which just means there's less competition for those of us who do it.
Yeah, small ISPs seem to be the way forward. When stuff does go wrong, at least it's pretty easy to get someone at the end of the phone who even knows what they're talking about.
I signed up for your site a while ago so I'd like to share my thoughts.

Design wise the site is a bit dull, but passable. The text is unbelievably hard to read (on Windows/Firefox, default font size). I'm guessing you use Mac or Linux, otherwise you would never have launched with that font.

I originally signed up because the site had the promise of a good recommendation engine. That's something that others have promised (Jaanix, reddit) but no one has really delivered on. If you have got something that you think is unique then tell people about it. I even visited the about page on my first session, trying to find what made your page different. I still don't know.

The biggest problem was with the content. When I first visited most links on the front page seemed to be on machine learning/AI. I guess that probably is because of the interests of the initial users, but I don't need a whole page of links on the same topic. If possible a mix of article types would be good; I found most links were just Wikipedia articles.

Finally, I'm not sure how I feel about the rating system. Other sites have two ratings for a reason. It is much harder to choose between 10 options and breaks up the flow.
Thanks,Paul.

Just when it all seems bleak, you deliver a bit of common sense. How true it rings.

Thanks.
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Kiko didn't sell the business (right?) They just sold the product. So I'm not convinced.
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Give him some credit, English isn't his first language:

http://haineault.com/about/
The "funding gap" and Founders Co-op
So exactly who or what is Psystar?
Follows on from ~ http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=164892
Re: UK ISPs - I've yet to hear anything negative about Be Internet (aka O2 Internet) - it's cheap, fast and unlimited. Of course, how long this will last is another question entirely.
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Not everyone when exposed to entrepreurship feels the urge to embrace it and most of all pursue it no matter cost, no matter where they live.

Therefore, it's obvious that those who do, have a different drive.

That's what I meant and some folks here were unwilling to understand with the short phrase in my previous comment.
I agree. Not everything that gets to the front page of reddit should be posted here, that's what reddit's for.
The rest is history. I was interviewing at Altera and Xilinx at the time. Never would have occured to me that something that big was brewing not to far away.
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Do you fall prey to technical folk etymology?
Just a plug, FYI -- anyone 18-26 and of vaguely Jewish descent can have a free trip to Israel via the Birthright organization. There is minimal religion and maximum Zionism. Also no time to check out the startup scene, but it's still a lot of fun.

Free means free, they cover airfare from NYC or LA and many meals. $250 deposit is required to reserve your spot. Email me if you have any questions.
>> what part of 'make something people want' contradicts creating value?

>Crack? Junk food? Time-wasting websites? People rarely act even in their own best interests.

Who said anything about acting in their own "best interests"? (and who decides these?)

Make what people want, not what you think they ought to want. Value, like beauty is very much in the eye of the beholder
Ah, ok. I missed the assumption that they'd still be farming. I thought you meant they'd go work in factories or something.
My comment on that page:

But why did you do blatant plagiarism?

Unless you specifically contacted Graham about copying those interview questions verbatim and he granted you explicit permission. In which case, I applaud you, sirs, keep up the good work.
I don't think anyone is opposed to the idea of YCombinator clones (I think it's wonderful).

Just the blatant plagiarism.
I usually have to try a captcha 4 or 5 times until I happen to guess right.
They are just getting stupid these days.
I know this is off-topic, but isn't asking for the applicants' ages illegal, as it can be used as a basis for discrimination? -- in the same way that asking if the applicants have children would probably be illegal.
TechCrunch UK - Will TheFunded be good or bad for Europe?
Related: http://www.thecoffeeshopsofmayfair.com/2008/04/thefundedcom-...
In other news Scoble discovers that there's life outside Silicon Valley. So, there's a hot start-up scene in Tel Aviv, big deal. There have been hot startups coming out of Israel for a long time... ICQ anyone? CheckPoint?

I've personally been involved with a few who moved operations from Israel to SV (which is quite common). One recent interesting one is Dapper: http://www.dapper.net/
He's just letting people know about a trip they can take. What's wrong with that? ( I didn't downmod you, BTW).
Perhaps someone can ask it at Startup School?

PG -- is Jeff doing Q&A?
"Self-fund on credit cards and a second mortgage"

It shouldn't have to come to this. It's so cheap to start a software startup, at least in the initial prototype phase.

Most founders already currently have jobs as developers where saving enough to cover your expenses for a few months shouldn't be too hard.
This is becoming a house of mirrors.
Simplify. Simplify. Simplify.
interview with commandshift3 co-founder and exclusive on upcoming features
My buddy went on this and had a blast. If I were Jewish, I'd be all over it.
interview with commandshift3 co-founder and exclusive peak into upcoming features
When I was accepted for my first job, I made the shortlist because of the A's. After the first job, indeed, they were more or less useless.

I think especially for CS or physics students, networking is hard and it is a good exercise to start early. I once read an interesting article where a MIT Professor was quoted. I don't remember his name, but he advised his tech students (especially the tech students!) to visit every party they could find and talk to at least four different persons at each party.

Good advice. Networks become more and more important the older you get. For startup founders few things have more value than a good network. Most people I know are techies. Today I would like to know more lawyers, businesspeople, tax experts and designers. And I would like to be able to talk to them in a way that does not sound chinese in their ears (and vice versa).
Yes he honestly did! And this trip is amazing..
Sorry. Just the usual negative connotations with "Zionism" (thanks, ADL) coupled with his claim of "free[1] ([1] that is, $250)" made it sound like spam.
I just think that as soon as Israel is involved there is tension in the air. Everybody has a strong opinion about Israel, me included. I won't vent it here though - this isn't reddit.