skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
1. Drawing shapes on the computer is not protected by microsoft copyright or patents. The actual code is and the name "Autoshape" may be.
2. http://code.google.com/p/svg-edit/
3. Doing it well is not trivial.

For the web I'd recommend SVG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Vector_Graphics
I am doing this and I agree. I am taking 4 classes, a 40 hour/wk job, and am working on a startup that is not yet launched. It is exhausting and I never know what deserves the most attention in my life. To make matters worse I also have a girlfriend.

It's a physical, emotional, and psychological whirlwind to put it lightly. I definitely do not suggest anyone attempt what I'm doing, but if you can more power to you. If possible, I'd have never gotten a job. I don't make a lot of money, but it's hard to give it up. I think what's most important about starting a startup in school is that you probably do not make a lot of money and you're less likely to compromise where most would because of finances.
Good idea. Yep I was thinking about that - browsed it a bit and most of the sites looked like total crap. "Make money at home", diet scams, etc.

But maybe there are some diamonds in the rough. Will try listing there, thanks!
Insert grellas here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1716285
> Canada has the lowest ratio of net debt to gross domestic product among the Group of Seven industrialized countries

If we're including household debt this does not square with what I've read elsewhere.

p.s.
I've immensely enjoyed various sharp screeds from recent years ripping Taleb a new one:

http://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2009/07/17/nassim-taleb-cl...

http://falkenblog.blogspot.com/search?q=taleb
If you're not aware, most of the old guard companies pulled 15-20 hour days starting out too. And making a physical product is generally MUCH more frustrating than anything in web app land. Hurrying up and waiting, for a flawed product messed up by the machinists. Also much higher startup capital costs for anything nontrivial like semiconductors. Expensive equipment, office space, manufacturing space, all this stuff you need to start. Not just two or three guys with open source software working in a dorm.

Studying the physical sciences is also more mentally taxing than coding PHP. I've gotten paid for both. You can't compare designing aircraft in CAD and Excel (what I do) that could kill someone if done improperly, with setting up email verification for your social networking site. Not even close.
I agree it's not a super strong differentiator. But here are a few of the features it has over FeadBurner:

http://feedmailpro.com/faqs/7

Mainly I built this as a response to Aweber charging bloggers about $75 a month for a similar feature list.
I enjoy Mark's blog. But there is something strange in his proposal to carve out $10,000 for five early investors and offer them an immediate 10x ROI on paper just for jumping first.

First of all, $10,000 is not enough money to justify giving away equity in any company with reasonable prospects, especially since issuing the equity costs money over time. This is the same problem with the Twilio fund (they should just offer free service to pre-revenue start-ups).

Second, assuming the major value of social proof is the assurance it provides later investors that people they respect see the risk-return ratio as favorable enough to risk their own capital, this will accomplish nothing but shift the equilibrium towards smaller rounds for entrepreneurs while demands for social proof will shift correspondingly ("But who else has invested $50,000....").

I respect Mark's investing in small business. But as a single founder with a bootstrapped business (outside SV), I'd chalk up someone who even suggested this as just trying to exploit me. I do think it's a good idea for investors to get compensation for effort put into organizing rounds. But the founder-friendly arrangement is performance based though, not "giving a good deal to investors [who founders] expect to help them [sometime in the future]".
Probably because it sounds like spam. Not saying it wouldn't work either - but that that is probably why.
I assume there will be some type of financial damage claim from the clients against the law firm and its individual attornies who are involved in this. I wonder if the multi-clients monetary damages will be covered by any kind of insurance or if it will come out of the pockets of those involved?

I wonder what level of standard of care for the documents will be used to decide this. Some of the more security experienced among our ranks may be able to make some good quick money from expert testimony in this matter. On both sides of the issue.

Edit: A lot of law firms use Interwoven to manage their documents and email. Here is link, if anyone is interested in coming up to speed on this

http://www.interwoven.com/index_iManage_legal.jsp
Equating “don't have any great ability in graphic design” with “can’t draw logos” is applying a pretty narrow definition. Someone who just “makes pretty stuff in photoshop” should probably be called a “digital illustrator” or a “photo retoucher”, or a “digital imaging expert”, not a “graphic designer”.
It rendered using display postscript - it wasn't itself written in postscript
I'm not aware of a way to do it technically since I'd have to integrate with any sort of ad system they might be using. Most probably Adsense for feeds, which I don't think allows me to rev share. Also, for some reason adds in RSS feeds tend to convert terribly compared to normal adsense - at least from what I've seen.
Because they are really in a studio in Burbank ?
Ok, thanks for feedback - considering the number of upvotes I'll go ahead and remove that :)
IMO what's wrong with kids wanting to be entrepreneurs? He might not be the best role model, but so what? We need a culture that supports and admires startups and small business.
Nothing I said belittles the efforts of past Valley heroes.

As for it becoming cheaper to do a start-up now versus previously, well doh. That should not be an excuse to belittle today's start-ups as the author does so recklessly.

And where is the discussion headed anyways? I am sure it was harder for entrepreneurs in 1900 than 1950 on the whole.

Studying the physical sciences is also more mentally taxing than coding PHP.

You make it sound like that is all a start-up is: some php code. Most successful start-ups are a lot more than php code.

Also, having to walk ten miles before we had a means of transportation was more taxing than taking cars. What are we gonna do about that? Attack the whole world for not having it as hard as when folks had to walk 10 miles?
Thanks for the correction, dunno what I was thinking there. Too many TLAs...
I am trying to launch my web application while remaining open source. It's a bit crazy, and my gut feeling say it is absolutely crazy.

Nonetheless, I am interested in seeing how can I work with my site being open source and how to make money.

I put my hypothesis is that people don't care much or don't want to set up a web application when they can sign up for a web service that is of low enough barrier. So I am planning to charge 5 bucks a month just to see what happen.

I do not see DRM and anti-piracy technologies as a solution to my problem. If people respect copyright, they would all be running to free products like GIMP instead of purchasing photoshop.

I also have no ethical issue with piracy and pirating. However, let it be clear that contractual copyright is something I absolutely support. However, if there are no expressed agreement between two parties, than it is absolutely ethical to "pirate". If third parties get their hand on copyrighted material that the initial party agree not to distribute, than the third party has not done anything wrong because he didn't agree to anything.

But contractual copyright, like current copyright are not alway or maybe never solutions. If you're going to use copyright, make sure you don't fall into "It ain't fair for people to pirated from me" mindset. That's a dangerous trap and path to your doom on the free market.

I consider copyright truth to be important to the survival of business. An accurate model of the benefit and cost of copyright will make or break an entire industries, corporations, and individuals. Don't assume anything.
Ask HN: Your bookmark structure/folders?
How do you organize your bookmarks?

I am going through thousands of bookmarks, deleting most, but some tips would be nice.

Also - are there any chrome extensions or tools that would help me out with the processing of bookmarks? Eg have the bookmarks open with a shortcut key to delete/file/etc?
Can use the contact form on my blog that is linked from my profile. Thanks!
Dropping out of school or quite our day job should be, IMHO, the results of a deep "self-understanding". I would advocate that one should first try to know the answer to what do I live this life for?. Why become an entrepreneur when you are meant to be a doctor? And why become a doctor when you are meant to be an entrepreneur? Look inside...
pointless negativity? you don't think there are genuine social issues at stake here?
This model seems to have worked well for RT and Best Practical Solutions. RT is GPL, but they sell support for it and seem to make enough money to have employees and buy e-book readers :)

Slashdot is similar. Open source code, but people still click the ads and pay for subscriptions.

Given the choice to use a closed web service versus one with all the code available, I'd pay more every time to use the open one.
It has some features FeedBurner doesn't, although I like FeedBurner a lot:
http://feedmailpro.com/faqs/7

Will message you.
Would you please post a link to that article.
Ask HN: Why doesn't Google release Chrome for Windows 2K?
It would seem that doing so would offer significant competitive advantage to Google:

1) it would allow lots of people with low end hardware to be able to run a very fast, standards compliant browser on the Windows platform.

2) it would put pressure on MS to backport IE9, and if MS did so it would hurt Windows sales.

3) Win2K lacks the same level of copy protection as newer versions of Windows, and is very widespread in the 3rd world.

So does anyone have any speculation (or first hand knowledge) about why this hasn't happened?
I benefited greatly from the courses I took at Caltech. What I learned was:

1. how to learn
2. organized methods of thinking about problems
3. how to separate truth from crap
4. how to break down large problems into solvable small ones

I'm not sure how these can be learned effectively through self study.
The Wikipedia Game
I live in SLO and would love to do this. Email in profile.
You guys don't but the credit card companies does. Perhaps I am reading my statement wrong from my processor, but I got a lot more authorization charges than transaction charges.
Given the choice to use a closed web service versus one with all the code available, I'd pay more every time to use the open one.

With some good luck and hard pushing, I should have a terrible web application for hacker news people to critique and ripped to shred. It would also be a chance for you to try my service and see if you're going to pay for it.

We'll see, we'll see...
Someone was having a bad day or something...
Aside from the items you've mentioned you should also consider these items:

Proving your market - Attracting and registering large numbers of people prove it's something people want. If you can't give it away for free, there's a problem. (Good for funding)

User feedback and "The up sell" - With the right features that non-paying customer may be a paying customer waiting to happen. You'll also have collection of emails of people interested enough to try your product, where you can up sell them to paid later. (Good for your product)

Scalability - Testing your product in the real world with real traffic patterns, live servers, and people depending on your service is very valuable. (Good for funding AND your product)

I'm a huge believer in the freemium model. Just don't give the cow away and try to position your premium product where users feel like they are getting real value when they have to take out their wallets.
Strategy and development priorities. By the time they reach significant penetration, that Win2K audience will be smaller. If they spend a lot of effort supporting old systems now, they'll have less resources for making Chrome better on modern OSs, which will slow down HTML5 and hurt penetration.
Ask HN: Patents in Tech
I am wondering if patent process poses any potential threat to new startup companies and if so what kind. This is referring exclusively to software based startups, the only hardware involved would be iPhone/Android/mobile applications.

It doesn't seem like patents aren't talked about much with tech startups (in comparison to other industries), especially with everything so open source... but after reading the Dropbox YC application (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=801503) I saw the question "Do you have any you consider patentable," which is absent from the current application. I was wondering both why that question is no longer present (or no longer applicable) and whether it is something worth considering about your startup.

I also found the article about Microsoft patenting the process of an OS shutdown (http://www.conceivablytech.com/2530/products/microsoft-patents-operating-system-shutdown/) to be interesting and it sort of raised the question as to whether or not it is worth it to search the USPTO when doing your market research about your web/mobile app so that you don't develop something and then realize that you have to deal with the IP factor.

So does anyone have some experience or insight into

1) The amount of concern a completely software based startup should have with patents
2) When/under what circumstances should patents be filed
3) Whether anyone has any first hand experience either with patent issuing processes or being on the other side of infringing on the patent of another company

I am not saying that anything I have is potentially patentable at all I am mostly just curious about the entire notion of patents and the role they play in startups.
I agree, our defect might be insurmountable. However, reducing spending, while important, is comparatively ineffective to increasing revenue. In the later part of this decade, because of changes in Social Security, you're likely to see less traction from spending reductions than you might think. Therefore, we must increase revenue sooner than later. Furthermore, most of this should come from the middle class. We cannot sustain our deficit with the current middle class tax rate.

That said, our short-term deficit issue could be address immediately. If we cancel the entirety of the Bush tax cuts, we could stabilize our deficit without major expenditure decreases or revenue increases.

From a stimulatory perspective, It's true that a lower income tax rate is better than a higher tax rate, but the benefit is marginal. I'd look up the forecast, but hilariously, the C.B.O. website is unavailable. I think the cost benefit is two years of full-time employment per million dollars of total-budget. Interestingly, changes in the income tax rate get most of the press, but it's largely ineffective in comparison to other stimulatory options (e.g. decreasing payroll taxes and extending unemployment benefits being the two most beneficial).
clickable
[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=801503
[2] http://www.conceivablytech.com/2530/products/microsoft-paten...
“the unknown engineers and professors who have good ideas. Are those people going to get funded or will they be talked out of it and told they should do something like Zynga, because virtual goods is where it’s at these days?”
I'm not really a big fan of Linux for routers; too hard to administer. I run OpenBSD on an old Mac Mini (with a $15 USB Ethernet adapter), and it's the best router I've ever had.

(OK, it won't boot unless I shove a resistor into the DVI port. But it's an Apple product, so it's not expected to be useful for anything other than buying iTunes movies.)

Anyway, with OpenBSD I have a fast OpenVPN endpoint, full IPv6 support for my whole home network via a Hurricane Electric tunnel, flexible QoS, and of course, proper firewalling and NAT that actually works. The consumer-level router I had before was a joke -- even when I put my main machine into the "DMZ", it still blocked my IPv6 tunnel. What a piece of shit. (ddwrt probably doesn't have this problem, but pf is still nicer than iptables.)

With that thing gone, I can browse kame.net in all its dancing-turtle glory!

My favorite feature is the QoS. If I'm downloading a TV show on my TV and something else on the network decides it wants to download something, I keep enough bandwidth allocated to the TV to keep the stream from being interrupted. And, I prioritize ACKs over all other traffic, so I get full download speed even when the uplink is saturated. And, my ssh sessions stay interactive no matter how much other traffic there is.

My only complaint is power consumption -- the thing runs pretty hot even when it's not loaded, and that's a waste of electricity. But a computer I already had was cheaper than
a Soekris device, so...
250 miles is nothing. I had a friend in college who's dad did this with a bunch of ham radio equipment and a huge satellite dish: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EME_(communications)
Studying the physical sciences is also more mentally taxing than coding PHP. I've gotten paid for both. You can't compare designing aircraft in CAD and Excel (what I do) that could kill someone if done improperly, with setting up email verification for your social networking site. Not even close.

You are not going to just go anywhere with just a social networking site. It's going to be much harder than that.
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Those Taleb take-downs are well worth a read. Taleb makes for good media soundbites as a contrarian; but to me it seems more like anti-intellectualism for the educated. I'm not sure why he deserves that platform he apparently has.

From the first piece:
"So why do people listen to this guy? Part of it is doubtless the “famous for being famous” effect. Taleb is witty and clever, and ruthlessly promoted himself as a public figure after his trading days were over. Not a bad strat for success in the modern media culture: grab the megaphone and declare yourself a genius. Everyone wants to think they’re more of a mental bigshot than the eggheads who run things. Plus, it’s not like Jim Simons has time to write Financial Times articles. He’s too busy making money more or less proving people like Taleb wrong."
No, I took it down a while ago because of vandalism. I guess I forgot to remove the link! It'll be fixed soon (I was working on moving it to a new server today and fixed that in the process, just haven't changed the live site).
How to Convert AVI to MPEG/MPG on Mac OS X
Downloaded some AVI files on line and would like to change them to MPEG/MPG format for convenient playback on players or editing? If you do have such kind of problem, you can follow the steps in the article to convert AVI to MPEG/MPG on Mac (Snow Leopard included).
Interesting, please could you elaborate on the specific courses/experiences which helped you learn these things (esp no. 3)

My experience of a CS degree was being drowned in information but not anything nearly as useful as that which you've noted.
My experience is that Windows XP is more popular around the world than Win 2k. I don't remember Win 2k ever being mainstream. Windows 98 was the more popular option before XP.
Why the ISS is listening?

Most astronauts are HAMs. Also, for an emergency radio, go calculate the signal strength of a 1W 2M/70cm radio with the worst possible antenna: damn near everybody can 'hear' you. Your signal can be heard clearly up to, I think, around 8000 miles. One of the older ARRL magazines published that as one of the 'games'.
Yes, that's the one.

http://flippa.com/auctions/84185/11000month-Revenue-No--1-In...
The real writer, not the one who posted it on HN, probably doesn't even know this thread exists.
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Flippa has a very detailed search/filter system so you can ask it to only show you sites that are over a year old, with over $x in monthly revenue, and get their income from a certain source, etc. And you can save the search to have it e-mailed to you. There are tons of "built to flip" sites for sale but it's easy to find the older sites too.
I like the 1st video.
I would move the value prop to the beginning. "Introducing a new way...
What did you use to make it?
Good Luck.
Dammit. I raced back after reading the article to post this exact statement. Once again someone beats me to the karma :)
English is written for people and not machines. Code needs to be written for both. It's too bad that coders often forget that someone is going to need to be able to read it later.
(long time user, anon for obvious reasons)

I say you should drop out for a sufficiently interesting project. Even if it doesn't work out, by the time you're done you'll have enough experience to be far ahead of your peers.

Personally, I dropped out of a top-tier school to found a startup (we closed our Series A ~3 weeks after I decided not to sign up for classes. Scariest 3 weeks of my life ;-)). After I left the startup, I was worried about my options w/o a degree - but it's really not a problem.

Within 2 weeks of leaving I had 6-figure offers in NYC, Chicago, and SF. I'm now 24 yrs old, making ~$200K/year, doing work I really enjoy, and still no degree.

The important thing is to prove you can do stuff. And the best proof of that is actually having done stuff.
Had my first run in with instant personalization on rotten tomatoes today. It was really trippy to see myself get automatically ID by RT. Why is this necessary?

I have never worried about facebook privacy, but this just crossed the line. I am going to turn it off, and see what happens.
His characterization was interesting, but I'm not sure if I agree. Since the crisis, Warren Buffet acquired 10% perpetual preferred stock of Goldman Sachs, invested $2.6 billion into Swiss Re, and acquired Burlington Northern for $24 billion. Three deals, each of which was different in composition, cost, and market. Moreover, I suspect each will be success and none wholly initiated by a "certain earnings profile." Nonetheless, while I think the comparison is meaningless, the underlying logic is intellectually attractive.
I dislike pyschoanaylsis. They're really neat explanation but they're well, lack explaining power.

Plus they don't do much for learning about the truth, and they're more about attacking a person's character.