skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Something I'm curious about: what if VCs worked like Berkshire Hathaway, reinvesting the cash thrown off by portfolio businesses but never selling their shares? Profitable businesses all generate return-on-capital; that cash can be reinvested to get new businesses off the ground.

It seems like this would be a good model for seed-funding businesses like YC to try, because they've got many more at-bats than big VCs. It might be hard for a big VC firm to generate enough cash for this: if the average investment is $5M, they take 50% of the company, and 90% of their investments fail, then their "hit" needs to churn off $100M in profits to sustain the next round of startups. But if you target hundreds of niche businesses, your investment is $20K, you take 10% of the company, and 50% of the companies survive, then they only need to spin off $400K/year in profits to fund the next round. That seems a lot more achievable.

Then again, one of the reasons Berkshire is successful is that Buffett refuses to invest in businesses that don't have predictable streams of cashflow. Startups are anything but predictable, so maybe the model's fundamentally flawed when it comes to startups.
A lower barrier to entry often means that a low standard of quality should be expected of a lot of entries :). But I can't argue that it's an easy choice for someone who wants to get started writing web applications in their garage -- $8 shared hosting is great if you're at that end of the spectrum.

PHP works fine for many people and, hey, if it works for you by all means stick with it. We should all work with the tools we're most comfortable with.

http://www.coboloncogs.org/COGS.HTM
These days, I don't know if I can trust advice on the internet anymore. Could be they just want to send the competition down the wrong path (Norvig is commercial now, working for Google). Follow their advice, and you waste a lot of time, while they are busy making progress.
To support Ticket Tracking, I love and use Trac all the time. For Emails, Bugzilla I think has an outward facing submission form/ bug tracking system that users can report through. Trac does not, but is great for developers b/c it's simple although somewhat hard to setup at first.

These services aren't hosted though, fyi.

http://www.bugzilla.org/

http://trac.edgewall.org/
The thought was, what I really want is a newspaper, but with just sports on the front page.
I think there's another angle to this... And that's social.

Digital does have a lower overhead (less cost per user gained) than physical. But Web 2.0 products are part product, part community. Their value is largely derived from the bustling community that uses the product. FB would be worth nothing with no subscribers, both from a consumer and investment perspective. Remember how FriendFeed became suddenly awesome when the closed beta ended? The value for myself (and others) is the relationships that form. If payment is a barrier to usage, the growth stagnates and users don't get the best experience.
Nice, although I would prefer a more readable font.
Exactly. Just don't enter a market where the competition offers their product for free. Or enter, but be prepared to work 10 times as hard.

Another example: PC operating systems (where the cost of the OS license is subsumed into the price of the PC).
I tend to agree with you, I mistook your original comment as disagreeing with a problem with "free services"
Fabio Akita interviewed by FiveRuns
FiveRuns is interviewing luminary Ruby on Rails developers for a series called 'TakeFive', where each answer to 5 questions about Rails/Ruby land.
Are fires getting bigger?
What to Do If the Domain Name You Want Is Taken
A large telecom owns a domain name that would be perfect. It was used as a portal for their dial-up service back in the day and is not being used; however, it looks like they have auto-renewal.How would one go about getting the domain? Should I apply for a job in their IT deparment and talk to someone on the inside?!
> For static pages, there's no reason he can't stick an Apache in front.

For static pages, there no reason to stick Apache in front.
"The questions that we are raising here are profound. How do we prevent this downward spiral from happening? Are we smart enough to see the robotic revolution that is coming and plan for it prior to the crisis? Can we redesign the economy so that we enter the new era of robots smoothly? With robots doing most of the work, can we actually create a society that takes advantage of the leisure that robots can provide? Or will the tens of millions of people displaced by the robots end up being homeless and destitute, living in government welfare dormatories?"

From: http://marshallbrain.com/robots-in-2015.htm
Brief Coverage of Wednesday's WebInno17 in Cambridge
Another example is the blogspot competitor typepad.com: it does not offer free blog accounts: accounts start at $4.95 a month, and go up from there.
House with undulating floors keeps inhabitants on their toes
Free is a very powerful marketing tool you will get more sign ups and then can convert those up rather then having nothing free and try to convert people with limited trials.
maximilian, we are already doing that.
'Willpower' may be a vague term, but it describes a real issue. It describes the difficulty of people who have long term goals that get subsumed by short term urges.

We all have drives, say for example the drive to mate and the drive to eat, and these drives compete: can't mate if we don't stay thin, can't be thin if we eat those cookies. In the long term someone may want to lose weight, but the short term impulse to eat can override that goal, even if intellectually we know what we'd prefer. I suspect that human action is as much driven by our chemical drives as our intellectual choices.

Willpower refers to the ability to use the rational element of our psyche to repress the baser elements rather than having the baser elements override the rational. The more willpower someone has, the more he acts based on reason rather than instinct.
"An Application may not ... launch other executable code by any means"

This wording, taken at face value, means that you can't deploy a Python app. Assuming that the CPython interpreter would be the "Application" that is written using the iPhone SDK, then that Application would not be permitted to launch other executable code (i.e., your .py or .pyc files).

In fact, Sun has backpedaled on its plan to port Java to the iPhone because of this restriction:
http://www.ericklein.com/2008/03/btw-i-love-apple.html
I used that for a while at a previous job. It's ok, looks nice... nothing fantastic, but it got the job done.
By all means, play around with different languages when you're getting started. I think it's really important to be exposed to different languages as part of your education, be it undergrad or (for you as it was for me) junior/high school.

But even in your situation, I'd say balance languages with other knowledge that is important. It's easy to play with languages because it's fun, but there's a lot of other important stuff to learn, some of which might make more practical difference to you.

But by all means, learn and have fun. If you're getting a kick out of languages, have at it, especially if you've got plenty of time.
true that.
we were using SupportTrio, which sucked beyond belief. We recently switched to Kayako SupportSuite, which is definitely better but not without its own problems.
I call BS. The trouble Microsoft has had with Vista would be nothing compared to the trouble it would have if ALL applications had to be recompiled to work with Windows 7. The article cites no sources and doesn't offer any substantiation at all for its claims.
This reads like a pre-Ford car manufacturer complaining about the fact that Ford was reducing the price of cars by an order of magnitude.

This is not a recent trend. In fact, it's practically the definition of technological growth that it makes things dramatically cheaper. I don't think this is a trend that will ever be "put to bed."
fwiw, we'd (Xobni) evaluated them, and I wasn't impressed by their source nor database structure.
I think it's really important to be exposed to different languages as part of your education

And is one's education supposed to stop?
A SaaSy SAP vs. Salesforce debate: Is Benioff overestimating his platform?
What about 37signals? They make money from charging for their products.

I think it's possible to do, but not as easy as "hack some website together and hope for the best". Some things are going to be easier to market than others. 37signals products (while I think they're useless) appeal to a lot of business-type people (who have money so spend), so they do well.

If you look at startups like Reddit, they set themselves up for advertising-only revenue. There is nothing worth paying for there, so of course nobody is going to pay them. (Yes, I know that reddit sells the reddit engine. But the most public part of reddit is reddit.com.)
I think it looks cool. Would probably add some colored fonts, pictures etc.
A bit long-winded.

I think the wisdom here is to not throw the baby out with the bathwater-- because most biz types are useless doesn't mean they all are. Every business is different and has different needs- some can benefit from a biz guy right out of the gates.

That being said, I'm pretty convinced that MOST web startups need an MBA sitting around like they need a hole in the head. The first test of a startup is whether they can builds something anyone wants. It's a lot of work, and most fail.

Domain knowledge and business wisdom is valuable here, but you can get that by talking to customers/users. There is 10 hours a day of BUILDING to do, and there sure as heck isn't that much business wisdom to dispense.

There are plenty of exceptions to this rule-- if you have a business offering, for example, you need someone who has an appetite for selling stuff.

But at the end of the day, you (as a biz guy) need to be able to answer the question: "What are you going to do for 10 hours a day while I build a product?". And you need to be able to answer it in such a way that makes me say, "Wow-- that's way more important than having someone who can code, design, and write effectively."
I think Kayako is winning in my evaluation. Any specific gotchas I should look out for?
how so? I'm rather new to rails and from my understanding of rails and mvc it seems to follow that pattern. Good Practice wise atleast
http://www.kayako.com

Been using them for years. Excellent solution with several add-ons, customizable (if you pay a little extra you can customize even further. i.e. take their copyright info out of the user interface), and reasonable pricing.
Internet Posse Busts 'The Claw,' Canada's Dumbest Car Thief
I've found that most languages I consider worth learning have fairly small overhead. The syntaxes of ML, Lisp, Haskell, Smalltalk, Prolog, Lua, Ruby, Qi and Python are small, simple and easy to learn[0]. Most of those have small standard libraries as well. Learning any one of those, assuming you don't already know a very similar language is likely to change how you think about programming. Even if you don't use that language much, it will alter how you code in other languages.

Is this worth it, from a strictly professional perspective? I have no clue. I've never met a strictly professional programmer who was any good.

[0] This should not be taken to mean that these are the only languages I consider worth learning - they're just the first ones that came to mind.
Online communities acting in the real world to help their members, pretty cool.
I agree (in that the article is weak). He breaks down a incredibly complex economic model with a painfully crude analysis. If that's his hunch fine, but to assert it like it's a dissertation is almost shameful.

This type of article is a complete waste of space, other than it serves as an example of how not to deconstruct a type of behavior.
I used kayako before, and would definitely recommend it... I do have to add that I did not have nearly as many tickets as the Xobnis probably do
IPhone owners do everything but talk ("the iPhone is a computer that just happens to make phone calls")
Searching for the Real VCs
As neat as being being able to produce gamma rays with my brain would be, (see: 'I can kill you with my brain.') I think you meant gamma waves.
I like the clean design. Though I'm no design expert, I think it would be nice if the user's eyes were clearly directed, since right now nothing really jumps out of the page that much.
I agree that the site looks cool but the domain is misleading. Maybe something like, thesportspage.com (not sure if its available, just off the top of my head)
Being targeted doesn't necessarily make you unlike media. The whole business model behind most behind magazines is delivering a targeted, valuable audience to the right advertisers.
I think it looks great. I know your angle is sports on the front page, but I almost wonder if it would be better to make it a generic news site and have pageonetimes.com/sports or what have you.

At least, I wish the newspapers around here would do that... I would love to be able to go to mylocalpaper.com/business to read the business news or mylocalpaper.com/local/phoenix to see the local news for Phoenix.
realistically, find a new name.
Wouldn't it be sensible to instead contribute to the compilation framework of PLT Scheme instead since Arc is hosted on PLT scheme, or is there a solid reason to not do that?
Someone is going to get calls from Google Headhunters pretty soon...
Exactly. Some form of bootstrapping + pursuing a vertical market = doing exactly what he's talking about. This is alive and well. This won't get the same tech media coverage as starting Facebook or Twitter, but if you're pursuing a vertical, who needs tech media coverage anyway?
Google Maps Artwork - Bonsai
I am a sports fan and I love it. The most important thing to me were the categories along the top. One click on "NBA" and I found everything I'm interested in. Lots of good stuff I haven't seen anywhere else. (Where did you find it?) The front page was too diverse for me (and probably anyone).

General complaint not directed to you, but to many:

Lots of people say this is MY fault. I am still 800 x 600 because of vision problems. This works perfectly for me all the time except when I encounter a web page that is hard coded to a large resolution (like yours). This happens more and more often and drives me nuts with all the horizontal scrolling. I would have left your page, but I loved the content.

Why not check the browser's resolution and adjust the css, or simply use tables? Maybe I'm old school, but I just don't believe this should be the customer's fault (or problem).
>>The class of programs encompassing those things is enormous.

Heh. Welcome to the real world.

If you'd like to call them buzzwords, I don't care, it is your prerogative. They are what they are. People who have done workflow software know what they mean. If you were to spend some time on Google you'd get a sense of the meaning too.
YouTube had the huge advantage of being a little startup. They didn't have enough assets to make them a very worthwhile target for a billion dollar law suit. Scribd is in a similar situation I think. Startups can afford to be super daring.
Ah, one interview question I know the right answer to.

Q: What computer do you have at home

A: I have five.

Q: What OS do they run?

A: All of them. ;-)
Best tools/practices for A/B testing web apps
I am starting to do more A/B testing on my web apps, but I wondered if anyone had any advice on best practices or tools that help them.
Ozzy Knows Best
actually, Bram Cohen's blog on the various version control systems articulates what I was trying to say perfectly "Darcs's big advantage right now is that it have very good extensive support for cherry picking, a feature which is planned for Codeville but not implemented yet, and I'm not sure if it's planned for Monotone."

from
http://bramcohen.livejournal.com/17319.html
If you're trying to compete with Norvig right now, for god's sake don't waste time learning more languages. You have a business to build.

If you're willing to bide your time and you hope to develop jedi-level expertise eventually, then I think it's still good advice. But again, it will pay off only in the long term.

Likewise, if someone is beating you up after school every day, don't start studying a martial art that will take you 5 years to learn properly. Learn something quick and dirty. But if you want to learn to be a true master of martial arts, it will be a lifelong study and you will likely need to learn at least several styles.
Well, assuming you can scale past one. "Marginal" cost is the cost of, for example, serving 100 pages instead of 99. It's tiny for Internet media companies; probably a bit higher for manufacturers. Some service businesses are basically all marginal cost. Scaling up or down is easy, but getting a competitive advantage is not.
Come on any tips?
"Is Benioff overestimating his platform?"

No!

SaaS was an extremely viable platform in the 60's and 70's (remember timesharing) before the cost of hardware and software plummetted. Now that the cost has plummetted even more and the pipes are much bigger, we've come full circle (thin clients = dumb terminals), and this idea makes more sense than ever. The critical path, as always, will be good software. Great news for us.
That fits in interestingly with the free-but-guilty NPR model.
man, you guys are a wordy bunch. chew on this.

"niche thyself."

don't believe me? may i present exhibit a, smug mug's article in business week:
"Competitors such as Ofoto, Snapfish, and Shutterfly (SFLY) were well-established, and free. The business that wasn't already taken by them was split among the likes of Canon (CAN), Nikon, and Sony (SNE), which offered photo sharing as a service to camera buyers. But today, SmugMug is the destination of choice for professionals and serious amateurs, with more than 450,000 customers, including nearly 120,000 subscribers who pay $40 to $150 a year for the service. Revenues doubled in 2007, as they have for the past three years, to $12 million. With only 29 employees (including seven MacAskills), it's profitable."

sorry to interrupt, have fun.
I think that the writer is deliberately being controversial just to get a rise out of the readers. Having said that - he does make some valid points.

The bottom line is that you have to use the right tool for the job: it could mean using what you know, learning something new, or even inventing something totally new and original.
<sarcasm>

My probation officer would beg to disagree.

</sarcasm>
Everyone should ensure that all email validation routines under their control permit the use of the + sign. Lots don't and it ain't right!
My pragmatic advice is learn enough of a language from a different programming paradigm so you can apply that new way of thinking to your native language.

I think "enough" is a crucial point here. The author almost seemed to be arguing against switching to a new language every year, which I agree is ridiculous. The idea is to learn some new concepts, not to write significant programs in a new language every year. I only adopt new languages for regular work if they're the pragmatic choice.
Adobe Photoshop Express puts image editing online
(didn't check the video yet, but..)
the humans are dead. we poisoned their asses, with poisonous gases; the humans are dead.
Of course an article coming out of Japan would site a future filled with robots...
My partner and I created http://www.friendfury.com back when Myspace was growing popular in 2 days, placed it on some $10/mo shared hosting, and generated $680 within the first 8 hours.

You don't need the best equipment; just enough to make sure you stay up through any traffic spikes (we had to upgrade within 30min of going online).

I like to think bootstrapping is the most powerful tool a startup can utilize, if you consider it a tool at all. It keeps you sharp and always looking for new and innovative ways to get objectives completed. For us, it paid off extremely well for a couple 18 and 19 year olds looking for a few bucks here and there.
Build a quad-core, 8-gig server for $900*

*bandwidth not included. good luck colo'ing that bad boy.
I feel like this story was also run in 1920 with the invention of the steam-shovel. There was once a time when ditches were dug by hand, and the steam-shovel displaced thousands of jobs.

This was a major fear at the time -- look at some of the popular literature that's survived: The story of John Henry ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_(folklore) ) is nothing more than a fight between man and machine.

Technology always displaces labor. There might be some new or interesting reason why this time is different, but the concept is not new.
Seconded. Originally ourdoings.com was not the domain I wanted, but it's grown on me, and now I wouldn't trade it.
This could be a step towards self-hosting for Arc.
The article didn't say that everything had to be recompiled, but that they could. Without recompiling apps can run in a virtualized, compatible environment (like Classic on OSX). It didn't cite sources, but MS has alluded several times to this being the plan.
Clonezilla - open source version of Norton Ghost
This all sounds great, but the author didn't cite a source for any piece of information contained in the article.
This isn't all that different from the transition from a manufacturing economy to an information economy that's been going on for a long time. It hurt the economy a hell of a lot worse to lose middle class manufacturing job than it's going to hurt losing lowest-common-denominator fast food jobs, which are the jobs at the most risk.

The more a job requires actual judgement, the less at risk it is. And indeed, I expect there will be plenty of supervision and maintenance jobs in the workplaces that transition to automation -- people will be much better at exception handling than machine systems for the foreseeable future.
Amazon Kindle is a boon to e-book market, all $0.12 of it
Great links, thanks.

Here's a video for anyone who's interested:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=S06oMxdt40A
I've been working on something just like what you are asking for. I follow news in a few different cities, so I wanted an easy place to track all the news outlets in each location.

I'll post a link this weekend when its live.
Right - you're thinking of "network effects" or "positive network externalities".
From a talk by Jeff Barr, Amazon's Web Services Evangelist:

Smugmug is one of the biggest customers for Amazon.com web services (meaning they could be invoiced if they wanted to be). However, they are billing everything on a American Express Platinum corporate credit card with the highest credit limit ($100K). Jeff says every month they probably earn three or four first-class tickets based on bonus points.

According to Jeff, their rate of growth is astonishing (Jeff said that they are
storing about 15TB (yes, Terabytes) a month in S3). What happens to images in Smugmug ceases operations? Well, apparently the family has committed to a multi-generational commitment.
where's the hockey?!?!?

edit: found it - it just wasn't a major category like the other sports at the top of the page
Inspired by YC sites: Add a quick feedback button to your web app
I feel like the design is too cluttered. It looks like a sports rag, but the designs of most sports rags are too cluttered. I'd go with 2 columns max.

The idea is a solid one. No question. Digg Sports isn't very good. If you can keep the community focused I think you'll do well.
I've used clonezilla (along with gpartd) to clone my hard drive (with NTFS-vista and ext3 partitions) to a CIFS share.

Worked like a champ and I strongly recommend it.
We developed featurelist.org to help us track feedback/feature requests from our sites and want to make the same sort of thing available to other startups. You can see another example of the widget on our site, http://bug.gd.
It's free; stop whining
I like it. Id like it more if you added a section for MMA. Regardless Ill keep my eye on it
how did this get on the front page?