skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Definitely useful. Love the simplicity of it. Foursquare and Gowalla have too much going on, and it's weird to pull out your Spot at a restaurant.

One enhancement might be to use the location of your friend to get directions to each other.

Charging for something like mobileply.com/matt sounds like a good idea too.

My other thought comes from how Spot does it - they use passwords to make sure you can't get in just by knowing the URL. You could even mix that up so the password you give your mum only lets her know you're in Chicago, while someone else can see you're on 42nd & Grand. Maybe that's too much though.

The simplicity of it is the best part - keep it up.
Oft-suggested solution, plenty of existing implementations, eg passwordmaker.org.
Some VC, "When you play it safe you nearly always lose."

To understand what's really being said here, you have to replace the word "you" with the actual antecedents. So: "When you play it safe you nearly always lose" should read: "When founders play it safe VCs nearly always lose."

But founders often win.

Money quote.
I find it heartening. It makes failure sound downright awesome.
I wouldn't really trust Cha-Cha for information security / infrastructure advice ;)
Putting aside business models, valuations, and the amount of each investment, there are 2 reasons this founder would rather talk to an angel:

1. It's more likely to be his/her own money.

2. They probably earned it themselves.

Don't underestimate the effect of these 2 points on their relationship with you.

I would expect a little more TLC from someone who's investing the result of their own hard work over someone who's more concerned about third party ROI.
Looking at the independent claims, it seems like this is a patent on reverse engineering (with a computer!) something, then getting a patent on it, and finally licensing that patent to the owner of the system that was reverse engineered.
Simple fix, take them before you go to bed, you won't notice the burps at all in your sleep.
It's something in the line of every change is a transaction. A redo is a replay of a transaction. An undo is not exactly a rollback but a reverse of the change and also a new transaction. You can undo a transaction in the past by reaplying later transactions. Makes me think a bit about Operational Transforms but I couldn't synthesizes my precise thoughts on that.
If you want to optimize for energy-efficiency and short travel distances, you end up with something spherical or octahedral, and probably mostly buried, like a subterranean Epcot Center, or maybe Arcosanti. The form of Burj Khalifa is following a very different function.
I think that's a good point. So many business decisions are made on gut feeling, and then we make a spreadsheet of wumpats sales to back up our gut.

If all someone brings to the table is "I think this will work" that's essentially nothing.
Why don't you ask the people in your team? They're more likely to give more to the project if the idea comes out of a discussion of theirs, rather than something you just present to them.
Not to sound negative, as I appreciate your situation, but you do realize that their are tens of thousands of people who do try and come up with startup ideas everyday; they call it work.
I'm sorry, but I don't think you are going to get much here, especially just so you can skirt some classes. Best of luck though
Harj and Jessica and I schedule blocks of office hours for individual startups to talk to us about whatever problems are most urgent for them. There hasn't yet been one that needed to talk to us every day, but they can talk to us as much as they want.
I think the point is that the military is the easiest sell - sadly - for such levels of massive investment. Ensuring the survival of the American nation is something that Americans seem very willing to spend lots of money on.

If earth was for certain doomed in a short term astronomical sense, I'd wager that NASA would see all the funding and then some that the military complex sees.

The inventions listed are all beneficial spin offs of ones that were designed to further the military's main goal: killing. It is unlikely that something such as RADAR is invented when it is if one does not need to shoot down aircraft carrying thousands of pounds of bombs.

There are simpler and easier ways to accomplish everything else we use RADAR for.
> Do you have any evidence that shows that, given similar funds only the military could have provided these innovations?

It doesn't much matter if something else "could". What matters is whether something else "will".

Past performance is no guarantee of future results, but it is a constructive argument.

I'd love to see other sources of innovation. (And there is one, but it's often military-associated.) However, it's dumb to rely on them until after they've produced.
> he still seems to be as much a consumer as he ever was

I'm not debating that, but is it necessarily a bad thing? I don't interpreting your comment to say that it is, but it raises the question. The wonder of the internet and "consumer culture" is that we now have access to the creative output of millions of people we otherwise wouldn't. As long as I can choose my level of participation, I like having it there.
I tried using on my work BB and it wouldn't load the map. Than I remembered that google maps won't work at all in the BB browser. When I try to go to maps.google.com it tells me to download the google maps app for BB.
Yet kanji were kept, notably because of the numerous homophones in the Japanese language.

But the reason for this was that a lot of Japanese vocabulary originates from Chinese, which is tonal, whereas Japanese is not. Kanji are used because they are necessary for Sino-Japanese vocabulary. Native Japanese vocabulary has no need for them.
Leading with "I expect to be downvoted" is the surest way to get me to downvote you.
From the western perspective a prosperous China is a good thing. Unfortunately, China is speeding towards one of the largest economic walls the world has ever seen. Mix a rapidly aging population, high levels of corruption, high savings rates, and an unstable government and you have a recipe for disaster.

Growing the Chinese GDP to 3 or 4 times its current size should still be easy, but as per person income starts to approach Japan it’s going to be really rough sailing.
Mrs Browl works for a discovery firm; she sugggests that the rolling billing might not work, but getting the foot in the door might allow sales of a long-term cache at a premium price instead eg $10 keeps a page up for 10 years.

Tricky pitch for a new company, of course - you haven't been around so long. Any sort of partnership with an existing one would help. Be aware that law firms in general are conservative about technology so it might take a year or two for the idea to catch on. A way around this might be to target law students first. Contact the editors at prominent 10-20 prominent law journals and give them free accounts for the journal and/or themselves as individuals; let them recommend your freemium service to their fellow students. Law librarians are another likely target, they spend quite a bit of time helping people with research tasks.

I think it would help if these 'permacache links' had some distinctive appearance that was easy to type from a printed page, eg 'http://historio.us/citations/username/98734545.htm <- numeric is easier than mixed alphanumeric if you have to copy it by hand.

In fact you could do 10 digits easily using a telephone format, and then ditch the user id string. 'historio.us/citations/####' is easy enough to become a standard link for public citation, and 111-222-3333 gives you room for 10 billion citations before you need to change the naming schema.
Yes - IBM already did it

http://www.geeknewscentral.com/2007/10/22/the-ibm-patent-tro...
Happiness is a competitive advantage
OpenJDK itself took years to gain acceptance from OSS purists

Recent events seem to indicate the "purists" had a point...
I have a idea / project that has been psuedo designed about six months ago.
There was also a good development push for about two months.

It is a music related (think dj / nightclub) suite, including a mobile app, web site, desktop app.
Primary goal would initially be mobile app/desktop app.

Perhaps this is something we could get together on as my partner who was the lead tech for us is now far too busy to work on the project.

I live in Westminster CO.
Maybe we could talk more about it if you have interest in helping each other...
blairbryngelson@yahoo.com
Spot on. For an example of a site that takes broad interest in tech and tries its best to funnel it, look at http://builtwith.com , particularly the "build" tab.

They provide a list of affilaite linkbait for each technology you might be interested in. It's not that bad.
IHelp for Autism
One thing I like about these case studies is that they seem to have patterns that probably come up over and over again.

For example, Eric and Sarah gave this pivot a name, value capture. I guess that means they introduced price points to capture a broader range of the market.

I also see in this, the CEO did the customer interviews, which according to Steve Blank seems like a prerequisite for making a pivot.

And, I'm hoping someone can come up with a catchy name for the pattern of inflicting crummy software on early customers, getting their feedback, and then converting them into happy customers with quick turnaround. It's like a variation on good cop, bad cop (even has interrogation).
Solve a problem. That's it. Make a solution that will put a salve on someones pain.

It sounds like all of your other ideas are trying to take advantage of a percieved hot space or were just "neat ideas".

Start making a list of all the problems you have observed and figure out how your proposal could help address them.

Get your team together and brainstorm.
I've always thought it would be fun to build a "ramen profit" tool suite.

I.E. a suite of tools for startups to see how close they're coming to achieving ramen profitability and what else they need to do to get there. Also some tools to help grow the startups. Working with partners like 37signals/lesseverything/and other startups.

The business model could be something like this: offer the tools to the startups at a freemium rate model, make commissions each time they sign up with different partners...

As I was hoping to build this some day (but will realistically never get around to it) - I will mention that I own the domain RamenProfit.com and would be more than willing to contribute my design skills to the project.

Let me know if you're interested. (email is in my profile)
Original article (the one at sun-sentinel appears to be a copy-paste of this): http://www2.journalnow.com/content/2010/aug/14/diet-dficienc...
Email passwords matter more, but it's not the only one. If you use the same password for a random forum as you do for Facebook, that could still get you in a fair amount of (social) trouble.
Hello. I am bumping the price to $500 to include license for images/gimp files, etc. If you close the transaction today, I will respect the original price.
Why don't you build an airbnb for Tools and Equipments.
In winter, I'd pay to borrow someones snow blower once a week instead of buying it out-right.

People with specialized machinery will flock to your system if you manage the bookings and payment processing, and make it easy for locals/neighbours to meet each others needs.

That's something I would personally find value in, but it might not be so technologically challenging for a group of cs majors.

I'll shoot out more ideas if I think of any. You've got the ideal situation on your hands, get busy!
Everybody wants to hang out with a traveller. They all have questions. People who would never dream of doing what we do, are happy to tell us their dreams about doing what we do, believe it or not. Everyone seems to find the idea romantic even if they could never do it. Back when I was traveling by myself I found it easier to meet women on the road than at home. I guess maybe you would think these women were "really strange and desperate" because many of them were also solo travelers.

I do like the term "settled society", as there is a strong temptation to see people who don't do this as having settled for something adequate.

Travelling only changes your location, it doesn't change who you are. Who I am is someone who has trouble meeting people, but found that travel provided more opportunity for social interaction and people more willing to be open with me.
That is a patent application. It has not been granted.
I'm disputing your reasoning, not your conclusion. I fully agree that your conclusion is correct.

To survive, a person needs more than just wine and a B&B. That doesn't mean that a closed economy is a perpetual motion machine (and therefore can't exist), as the world economy proves.
Specifically with respect to software. I'm sure there are plenty of hardware/biotech startups out there that still need VC money to get anywhere significant.

Having said that I'd be very interested to hear about successful bootstrapped hardware companies. I think Dell might be an example but my google-fu is failing me today.
I dub this Rob's Law: For any arbitrarily bad situation, someone can always imagine a worse situation.

And the corollary: the second situation does not, by comparison, improve the first.
The korean writing system, hangul, is phonetic.
"The net engages all our senses" (of which we have 5)

That's a cliché. Aristotle noted five, but there are others, including proprioception (sense of location of one's self), pain, and balance. This only serves to invalidate Carr's point further, of course!

I bought The Times on Saturday too. I usually only buy the Sunday Times but thought I'd give it a go. It's not a patch on the Sunday Times, alas, but I couldn't blame the editors for giving a little time to an external contributor with Carr's stature.
What about Python do you find better than modern Perl? Besides Pygame and NLTK, there's nothing in Python I can't do faster, easier, or more maintainably in Perl. I much prefer Moose to Python's barely-there OO, and nothing compares to the availability (and testing and other infrastructure) of the CPAN.
FWIW I interviewed with these guys and was very impressed. I went through a pretty brutal two-on-one interview that covered unit testing, dynamic programming, algorithmic problem solving, etc. The team seemed extremely bright and they were certainly solving interesting problems.

This was for a java role but I'd be excited to see what these guys are doing with functional programming.
People do want to hang out with a traveller - for an evening.

There's also a difference between being a "traveller" and just being a guy with no home and no stuff. The article seemed to be more about the latter.
Sketching data structures
You are right about the mint guy, that's a great example! Thanks.
Google Will Use Spy Drones To Mend Street View
To a VC this is a small time exit. I'm not surprised they would be talking about it this way.
LOL @ calling it Privacy 'Zuckering'
Open Multi-Methods for C++
It sounds like you're recommending Cod Liver Oil, which contains both Vitamin D and Vitamin A. Be careful about the Vitamin A, as you can overdose. I take 4,000 IU of Vitamin D a day, and I also take Fish Oil (without Vitamin A or D) capsules separately, to avoid overdosing on Vitamin A.
Geofencing: what's next for LBS?
I can't remember much of the P/NP stuff from my comp sci university days.

Wouldn't this work? O(n * k)?

<?php

$input = array(-2, -3, 15, 14, 7, -10);

$sums = array();

foreach ($input as $val) {

$i = 0;
$count = count($sums);
foreach ($sums as $sum => $bool) {
if ($i >= ($count / 2)) {
break;
}

$sums[$sum + $val] = true;
}

$sums[$val] = true;
if (array_key_exists(0, $sums)) {
print "yes\n";
break;
}
}
Twilio & MongoDB Developer Contest
Maybe I just don't get it, but the things keeping me tied to my apartment are my bed, shower and stove, not my shelves and shelves of physical media. I don't see how the digitalization of my live helps with those things.
I recently started down this trail to simplify my life and draw down my personal property. I got rid of my DVDs because I simply wasn't watching them. I ripped every one of my CDs in FLAC format and then gave them away to friends. And these days, instead of a netbook and a desktop, I have only a single laptop running Arch Linux.

The one thing I cannot move on from is my book collection. I love books and I have two bookshelves with 285 graphic novels and novels (according to my LibraryThing account). And I am starting to make use of sites like Project Guttenburg to read public domains works (using FBReader).
"We're still happy to be in search, believe me. But one idea is that more and more searches are done on your behalf without you needing to type. I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next."

As Google knows "roughly who you are, roughly what you care about, roughly who your friends are..."

Stop the ride. I want to get off now.
A co-founder is someone who is willing to take as much risk as you, not someone you hire. Look at YC as a bonus. You decide if you're going to do your thing or not. Develop your idea as much as you can and meet with relevant people, or even irrelevant people who might be able to give you good advice about the viability of your idea. You might find a cofounder in this process, and if so, great, if not, don't worry about it.

If YC doesn't fund you because you're solo, then go prove them wrong and make it a success anyway.

I've got a cofounder now, but it is because I was unwilling to settle for a "cofounder" and found someone who was a perfect partner.

For most of my ventures they have been solo, and they have done ok on average-- some successes some failures. Doing a startup with a cofounder has psychic advantages, but it doesn't determine success-- for me, anyway.

If you get friends and advisors enough to provide the support system you need then you can do it without a cofounder, just optimize what you work on so that the time you spend building your product is as efficient as possible.
Ask HN: How should I sell this domain name?
I have a two-word, highly pronounceable domain name that I had been using for a start-up. Since I'm moving on to another project, I no longer have any use for it, but it does appear to be somewhat valuable. The domain name is MENUVOICE.COM, and GoDaddy Premium listings for domains like MenuAssociates.com are going for $2,000+. I would be happy with even a small fraction of that.

Why I think this domain is valuable: I was using it for a restaurant customer feedback start-up, and I can see it being used similarly for a food industry endeavor.

My question is: how do I unload this domain name? I've given up on passive selling methods such as listing through Sedo, and would like to transfer it sooner rather than later.
I'm lead to believe it greatly reduces your chances of getting in. There are a number of reasons to prefer teams over solo founders, but if you manage to stand out enough it's possible.

It's important to keep in mind that getting into yc does not guarantee success, nor does getting rejected guarantee failure. I applied as a single founder laster year and didn't get in, and probably got more bummed than I should have. I urge you not to make the same mistake.
Fuck you, Money
US Government Uses Social Networking Sites for More than Investigations
It's a joke pointing out how Perl has fallen behind in the marketplace. I've written as much Perl as your average bear, to see it lose out has been sad.
You know, I was thinking about this. I don't know much about sharia-compliant finance, but I have the impression that a lot of it works by giving the "lender" something like preferred shares in the venture they're financing — no voting rights, but a defined dividend, and liquidation preference. (I don't know; do you know anything about this stuff?) Dubai might be in much better shape if they had been financed this way instead of through debt at interest.

It's hard to tell because the comment you're replying to is so absurd, but perhaps the commenter meant to say that Dubai is a sort of cartoon version of a European state, as imagined by some "Islamic" people who deplore the structure of such states — and thus was doomed to fail. It's hard to read it as other than a gross stereotype, though.

Me, it depresses and scares me a bit how little I understand about the human world: not only the "Islamic world", to whatever extent it makes sense to lump together Indonesia, Turkey, and Egypt under a single rubric, but also Africa, India, and China.
You see a troll, I see a lack of introspection on your part.
In case anyone hasn't already figured it out, this should be proof that you shouldn't take anything Ellison says too seriously. He's like the tech crunch of CEOs.
The article suggests drinking 1 quart of milk a day to get the minimum requirement. That's almost a litre (as per google). In most 3rd world countries, people don't get that much, and we don't have Vit D deficiency.

The article makes me wonder -- if you have to take supplements to reach the recommended daily amount, are we sure the RDA is correct ? How have people managed for thousands of years ?

From what I've been reading this is more of a problem in northern latitudes where the Sun comes out for a few hours only, for half the year.
Do you have any links to articles/books? This is precisely the kind of information I'm looking for.
Dropbox is another example of a successful YC solo-founded company: http://files.dropbox.com/u/2/app.html

I am planning on applying as a solo co-founder as well, so you aren't alone. Good luck!
Follow The Herd, End Up As Mincemeat
That sounds interesting, do you have any pointers?
Taking a Look at Lost Lettermen
I cheated on it a little bit. I sort of bounced between types of credit for a while. When I was in college, my grandfather cosigned for my line of credit, so when I was making enough money to allow it, I converted it into a standard loan to get his name off my debt. Not long after that - a few months, maybe - the bank called and said that I was such a good customer that they'd love to give me a brand new line of credit (with a $5k limit increase over the old one), and that they could consolidate my visa and loan debt onto the line of credit, which sounded like a great deal. So I did it, but I guess I missed out on the psychological reward you mentioned.

My student loans (the 'OSAP' in my top post - Ontario Student Assistance Program) were just this thing I never paid attention to. They just draw $96 from me every month, and I don't care that they do. When I have the money to pay it off entirely, I will, but for now just getting them to accept > $96/mo is such a massive hassle that I don't bother.

When my line of credit was paid off, the only "reward" I got from that was, "that's it?" I knew I still had that damn student loan, but there was little I could do about it for the reasons listed above. So I guess I just started living my life.

Oh, and "paying off the highest interest first" and "paying off the smallest debt first" were the exact same thing for me, since my smallest debt was the credit card.
I originally started the project because I was away at an internship and had left all of my stuff with friends back in LA. When I returned for the fall term, I couldn't remember what was in the boxes I had left. (I had about 10 or 11 boxes of stuff in total.) If I couldn't remember what it was, I figured it wasn't worth keeping around. I got rid of a bunch of trinkets and things I wasn't really using anymore. I've been happier ever since.