skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"I now have enough experience with startups to be able to say what the most important quality is in a startup founder, and it's not what you might think. The most important quality in a startup founder is determination. Not intelligence-- determination."
http://www.paulgraham.com/startuplessons.html
Looking for a partner. My original partner went back to school after rejection by YC, and then got offers of six figures from two different Wall Street hedge funds just for doing an internship next summer. So I don't think I'm going to be getting him back any time soon.
Web-Site Ideas from College Students (Humor, to lighten your rough day)
After the introduction of the topic of acquisition from the buyer to the seller, the first major milestone in an acquisition deal is usually a terms sheet. The terms sheet would be essentially a non-binding high-level agreement to the basic terms of the deal. Price is just one of many terms. It is clearly one of the important ones, but there are other sometimes equally important terms in a given deal, such as associated non-compete and consulting contracts. Also, "price" is a nebulous term and is usually not just one isolated number. For instance, there can be earn-outs, hold-backs, escrowed amounts, consulting fees, etc., and all of these can be tied to indemnities, conditions, etc. And the structure of the deal, e.g. stock vs asset, impacts the net take home to the shareholders, which is what most people are ultimately interested in.

Both parties agree on the terms sheet through negotiation. That sounds obvious, but the point is there is not one set process. There are many strategies to negotiation and some make more sense than others in the context of a particular deal. It is not uncommon for parties to walk away and come back to the table at this stage, and in fact, at all stages. The "price" could easily move up or down significantly depending on a number of factors. It really comes down to what the seller is willing to sell for and what the buyer is willing to buy for. If there is an overlap, there could be a deal. If not, then no deal. The rest is jockeying for the overlap. Walking away until you get x is one tactic to get to the top of the overlap from your perspective.

Finally, investment bankers and their equivalents in these situations are not necessary, but they can get you a higher price. Their basic usefulness is connecting you to potential buyers, i.e. through their roladex. You, alone, may not know or have access to these potential buyers. By engaging multiple buyers you can get an auction scenario, which is often ideal because usually buyers willing to pay more for something if they are taking it away from someone else in addition to getting it for themselves. However, certain tactics can turn off and ultimately dislodge particular buyers from the process, which could be net negative for the shareholders depending on which buyer(s) walked away. Also, brokers usually take a significant % fee, and if they do not get an auction going, this could just be wasted money.
A Whirlwind Week in Cali
Everyone will just describe themselves ;)
This doesn't sound stupid to me. It rings true. Quite simply, of course you can't "trust the negotiators to work in your best interest." The only person you can trust to work in your best interest is yourself.
Web application optimization
I hear good things about Doostang. They appear to be a good source for finance/VC/private equity/hedge fund jobs. Not sure where it goes from there though.
Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace Rocket Crashes and Burns
I don't disagree with you here. I just don't think IQ is a good tool to use; unless you're just trying to predict someone's chances of earning a doctorate (nothing more and nothing less).
This opens up a level of intrigue I didn't initially consider. How low can they go?
Microsoft announces Content Ads Beta; competes with Google's Adsense
Silicon Valley faces Web startup glut
"sounds stupid" because many people scoff at the idea, feeling themselves not skilled enough or a little overwhelmed by the whole thing.
They can go as low as the seller is willing to accept, who ultimately has to sign off on the deal. However, the broker can essentially make stuff up to make the seller think they should take the deal.
I think one of the traits is to be relentlessly going after results, getting stuff done. Result is what matters. And since results are not guaranteed, the best one could do is to religiously maximize his/her probably for success by doing/learning whatever is needed (within legal and moral bounds).

From Paul Graham's wealth creation article http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html

1) Be smart and/or learn a lot so you have a high multiplier on your productivity

2) "You need to be in a position where your performance can be measured ... And you have to have leverage, in the sense that the decisions you make have a big effect." Or in other words start your company or join a small startup producing things people want.

3) Take a lot of actions (with your high multiplier) in working on your company. "Imagine the stress of working for the Post Office for fifty years. In a startup you compress all this stress into three or four years."

4) Enjoy the show after you're done and while at it. (I added that one.)

This was about doing it by creating things. "There are plenty of other ways to get money, including chance, speculation, marriage, inheritance, theft, extortion, fraud, monopoly, graft, lobbying, counterfeiting, and prospecting. Most of the greatest fortunes have probably involved several of these."
Stocks.us: A TechMeme Clone For Stock News
A related issue is timescales: Negotiators may sacrifice a reduced commission through reduced sale price if it means expediting the process and allowing them to get onto other deals. Founders don't have the same rate of turnover and so have more interest in spending time to raise the sale price.
I meant 'low' in a slimeball, backstabbing rhetorical sense but I see what you are saying.
I think this line of thought is related to Leavitt's "Freakonomics", particularly in his observation of real estate dealers leaving their homes on the market for longer periods of time and getting better prices than those for their clients.
New productivity tool launches Friday.  Thoughts and feature requests?
Hiya! Straight to what this tool can do for you: It will help you accomplish something every single day.

Fill in the blank, "I'm going to _____ every day." Thinking of something? Great! Now go out there and do it, then return to the tool and click "I did it today!" You'll be congratulated and given the opportunity to write about your experience and post a picture.

At that point, the picture becomes a link in your productivity chain. After you've formed a few links in the chain, I bet you won't want to stop. But if you do stop and miss a day, the entire chain breaks and everything is deleted.

Now, if you just want to use the tool for just that, all by your lonesome, that's just fine. But we've included a social aspect to it as well. Whenever another person is doing the same thing as you, each one of your chain links will be submitted to a centralized place where you'll be able to explore and upvote others' chain links and post comments to everyone.

On the front page, you'll see the top 20 popular chains and the fastest growing chains for today, as well as the top comments and featured users. Next to each chain is a plus sign that, when clicked, will enable you to do that same thing each day, too. You can also explore and find interesting chains and users.

The time interval is adjustable. You can do something every day, weekday, weekend or week.

The project was inspired by this post: http://lifehacker.com/software/motivation/jerry-seinfelds-pr...

We're launching on Friday at 10PM CST. Everyone who registers in the first hour will start with 50 karma points, so bring a friend! If you have any feature requests, just let us know and they'll be waiting for you at launch.

Common wisdom is that it's dangerous to let you all in on our secret before we're out there, but we wanted to give you the opportunity to make this tool better in your eyes.

Thanks for your critique guys!

Update: First feature request will be implemented for you: A vacation switch that you can toggle on and off. If it's on, your chains are frozen and won't be deleted.
Another reason you don't: it can be a big time sink and the marginal benefit for spending your time on it is probably not higher than on a bunch of other things.
I sort of disagree with the example of wristwatches. A wristwatch is not a blank canvas, it's a highly restrictive environment creatively. People look at those constraints, look at the bigger picture (that a watch is also a clothing accessory) and then stretch the limits.

Most people don't start with a blank canvas and come up with great ideas, the great ideas more often come when there is a need to figure out how to make the most of a limitation.
The idea aside, deleting my stuff would be incredibly annoying.

Say the default is a day, which I assume it is from the write up. There are a ton of valid reasons I might miss a day, or even a week, e.g. medical reasons. And to come back and have my stuff deleted! Man, I don't know what else to say about that except I don't like it.
Thanks for bringing this up. There will be a vacation switch you can flip on and off. When it's on, your chains are frozen and won't be deleted.

What other thoughts do you have on it? We'd really like to know!
in March 2006.
What's Fotolog worth, and why does it matter? (Rumored sale price north of $100 million)
the sad thing is that i have heard numerous people propose a "Facebook, just for college students."
then clearly that's the only approach to take.
From the data we have so far (which is starting to be a lot) the best predictor of success is determination. Then flexibility, intelligence, sense of design.
Really. Now that is a lack of research (or just asking anyone on the street).
The idea certainly works! Here's a competitor:

http://everydaysystems.com/habitcal/
The Skinny on Dry Loop DSL with AT&T
Acquisition 101. Thou Shall Not Give A Price First
102. Thou Shall Triple Any Offer
103. Thou Shall End Up With Double What They Offer
Thanks for locating a competitor!

Wow. Thousands of posts on their bulletin board.
Not trying to spam my blog or anything (I haven't made a cent yet off it anyway), but I am fed up with AT&T misleading people so I thought I'd tell others what I found out about this.
zzz. Oops i missed that, I was sleeping
I use: http://smarterfitter.com/chain for the same purpose. I like the social aspect of your idea though.
zero. my brain shuts down after 11 pm. (unless I am anxious about something - not programming related).
Founders. We matter. repeat as much as we can
Yes we do. I am working on my startup.At the end of it my product may be truly crappy, but I matter. We build things that changes the way people connect between themselves and their environment. We always beat ourselves or worry so much about not doing enough that we fail to see what we have accomplish so far. No one can tell you what will work or not. No one knows if your product will beat Google's. it may, it may not. But at the end of the day do not quit, because you may changes lives upon lives and that buddy is worth more than the 30 millions Yahoo is going to offer you.
Cool, another competitor :) Yeah, we hope you'll have fun exploring what everyone else is accomplishing. See you Friday!
all deadlines, except death, are artificial.
Y Combinator's Hacker News NoFollows Some Links?
Congratulations are in order for creating a community that understands each other. It almost looks like it was all a ploy to get a bunch of new like-minded friends!
i make important thoughts and take decisions during sleep if that counts! So, my 5-6 hour sleep doesn't get in my way
I was half kidding when I wrote it, but apparently it was only a parody of my obsessive personality.
That name is just horrible though. I'm not even going to write what it sounds like; but more to the point, it's totally non-descriptive unlike LinkedIn, MySpace, or Facebook, which is counterproductive for a social networking site.

Edit: Of course one of the founders is named Krapivin...
Jon Udell: Hosted lifebits scenarios
(= follow-threshold* 5)
I've always been under the impression that nofollow doesn't really matter if you're linking to your own site and then redirecting. However, I can't seem to find support to back up this claim...

Edit: I noticed Hacker News direct links. But, does anyone have any thoughts on my previous comment?
thanks for clearing this up.
The vast majority of people would prefer to have children than to adopt. The primal reason for having kids is continuing the genetic line. I don't think we've advanced far beyond that.
Search engines give credit to 301 redirects, so it depends on how you handle those redirects.
Yeah, everthing's OK now. Nothing more to see here.
> The only person you can trust to work in your best interest is yourself.

If only that were true! A great many people have psychological difficulty in following through on what they believe to be in their best interest.

Other people can often be better advocates for you than you are. They may demand more for you than you would be comfortable asking for yourself.
4by6 does some amazing prints, its fairly expensive ($160 for 500 cards with matte finish) but worth it.
Oh, OK. That's good to know. Thanks.
I've always had doubts about evolutionary arguments like this. I somehow doubt people are all that concerned about their genetic line.
His seems to be a hack, you can do better.
Who cares if the product is crappy as long as you learn about your strengths and weaknesses, and what you like to do and what you don't. At our age, just learning that is very helpful.
Thanks for this one, this is all I want except one thing: I can't fill in any days earlier than the current month. For one month I've been avoiding some foods I'm mildly allergic to, and in this page I can only click X-s back to the beginning of August. I can live with that, though.

I clicked on the habitcal.com link above and ran away quickly. I'd plow through the wall of text if there wasn't an alternative that's simple as pie.

TBH I'm not looking forward anything with any more features. I'd even remove the 'today' highlight so the timezone combo could go too.
Determination is highly underrated. I also like a tremendous passion for, and understanding of, the customer.
What about not deleting the stuff at all, so you can do away with the vacation switch too? I wouldn't touch a site that stresses me at all about my data.

I'd lose the karma reward too. It's plain bribery, and it devaluates your site's karma.
And to spice things up a bit, it seems that the reason for this crash was a bug in the vehicle's software: "Post-crash analysis has revealed what went wrong -- the automatic shutdown that should have triggered when Texel first touched down did not occur. That's because the computer was mistakenly told to expect a stronger signal from the touchdown sensor, beyond what it is actually capable of producing."
Your server is vulnerable brute force password guessing: solution?
Follow up on that idea and you'll find out. :>
Genetic modification of children will catch on before this does. There's more money in genetic engineering too.
You're right, on both counts. Simpler's better. We wanted to help motivate people.. But treating it like a game is probably the wrong way to do it.
What was reddit like before it got "Dugg"?
I never visited the site back when, so what made it so appealing? A lot of hackers here seem to have a nostalgia for the olden days.
you are a male without kids, right?
The genetic testing I propose is easier and more ethical than genetic modification.
Maybe they don't outwardly think about their genetic line, but you can't dispute that the vast majority of people prefer to have biological children in the natural way.
I think it has more to do with not trusting the genetics of other people's children. But extensive genetic testing can change that.
I'm curious...do you see mostly the flashy instantly-visible "I'm going to succeed at all costs" determination, or the kind of quiet resolve that only appears when things are going poorly and the founders choose to go on anyway?
We don't really need the browser's implementation of Javascript. For example, consider Steve Yegge's rails port to JS which he developed on top of Rhino (the mozilla engine.) IIRC, rhino includes a very basic shell.
Yes, it is easier. The ethics are debatable but I am confident that in the long run, genetic modification and cloning will win out.

Society today will never adopt what you propose. The advantage is just so small and people are too attached to their genetic progeny. Perhaps societal attitudes will shift in favor of what you propose, but I think by the time that happens genetic modification will already have caught on.
I have a strong desire for my offspring to have my genetic code. I know many other people with said desire. It just seems instinctual to me.
There's some randomness involved. Your biological children will not necessarily end up being anything like you.
A smaller community submitting higher quality links without dumb comments by 13 year olds. The initial community was seeded by Y Combinator and Paul Graham. Check out PG's links here: http://reddit.com/user/bugbear/submitted?offset=300
Nice article. I have met couple of people one with Marketing and Sales back ground and another with Finance background. Both had ideas but no developers to develop their product and were looking for a team of developers. They both insisted me to sign a NDA, before they could talk about their idea, I did.

I thought that was little weird for me because I thought both them would have at least 6 months ahead of anyone who tries to copy their idea, but they weren't thinking that way.

Is it ok to sign a NDA? Are there somethings to watch out for? With respect to these candidates, is asking for NDA right way to share an idea and collaborate with others?
It's all still there.

http://reddit.com/info/bwbu/comments
Yes, but they're a lot more likely to be like me or have elements of me than someone else's child. I realize that genetic testing (sequencing the entire genome?) means that I might be able to get someone else's child that is more like me than my own. But I'd still rather have my own biological child and I'd much rather have my own biological child with amped-up intelligence and mitochondria and cancer resistance. Genetic engineering is going to let us create perfect cookie cutter children if we want, but it's also going to add enormously to the lifespan of engineered children.
A child may resent being genetically modified in any way. Moreover, a child may demand to be given to genetically similar parents.
A "Fantasy League" for Startups: audio interview with CEO of Spigit
Playboy Launches Social Network: High schoolers, old dudes and your Mom cant join
I think it's more likely the children of poor people are going to resent dying 50 years earlier than their genetically modified peers. Still, I'm sure some children will resent being modified. There are likely to be a couple awkward generations as we reach post-humanity.
Satchmo - Open source web store written in Python/Django
Looks good. Anyone using it?
I should have definately posted these questions in his blog's comments. I don't think he's coming back :-(
I think the key to making money on facebook is not by delivering ads but by delivering products and services. For example, TripUp provide a service where you can say where you're travelling and invite your friends to join you or look for people to meet in those areas. That's a goldmine for affiliated sales. Travel services (flights, hotels, hostels, car rental, etc). Local knowledge (internet cafes, guidebooks, taxi services). The list goes on and on.

Ads are an invasion of your viewing space. Smart, affiliated services are a win-win.
i agree - and I don't think Wishhood is that bad of an idea it's a lot more useful than most social networks - which are akin to pokemon collecting except with people (by that I mean that most of the "friends" people have in their lists mean nothing to them - they haven't even met them in person...)

I do think that crap stain err i mean doostang should change its name (then again it's so memorable haha)
Sharing affiliate revenue with users
A discussion about sharing affiliate revenue with the users who spend the money, effectively offering a discount scheme.
And gosh darn it, people like me!
I have logwatch send me a daily report of any authentication failures on our server. The results for today:

root (61-90-254-50.static.asianet.co.th): 399 Time(s)
unknown (200.207.3.135): 6 Time(s)
jonathan (pool-96-233-42-251.bstnma.east.verizon.net): 1 Time(s)
mysql (200.207.3.135): 1 Time(s)
root (200.207.3.135): 1 Time(s)
unknown (61-90-254-50.static.asianet.co.th): 1 Time(s)
unknown (62.147.231.49): 1 Time(s)

Basically, we have bots attempting to crack us daily. And this is a site that's done very little publicity and isn't really known at all throughout the Internet. The crackbots started even before we officially launched.

I'll probably implement the denyhosts tip on our box, along with disabling root login for SSH. But this should highlight the importance of using difficult-to-guess non-dictionary passwords. You will be attacked; don't make it easy for them.
I worked in a factory during college--the founder was long dead, but people were still talking about how wonderful he was...these were cynical blue-collar union types.

Obviously, everybody knows that the founders are the real operators and that subsequent CEOs are basically asskissers and backstabbers. Everyone knows this, and you're bound to get cynicism and disloyalty as a result.

This is true, even of good CEOs. Walt Disney vs. Mike Eisner? Henry Ford versus Robert McNamara? (bad example).
Another asterisk?

(= *follow-threshold* 5)

The markup eats leading newlines and turns code blocks into normal text, and the normal text eats asterisks. Might I suggest backquote code quoting, and backslash escaping of special chars? (Markdown)
You are totally right. Of course, this makes life really difficult because it means you can't trust anyone absolutely, not even yourself. This is yet another reason that these types of negotiations are so stressful!
You might be making soap while you sleep.
Cool. Thank you for this tip. We're about to go live using Debian, so the extra security can't hurt.
When you say flexibility, what exactly do you mean? I see two types:

1. Mental Flexibility - the ability to see things from different perspectives.

2. Resourcefulness - flexibility in getting things done and how they get done.

Which one are you seeing makes entrepreneurs more successful? Both?
KeepAlive dedicates a process to one client until the KeepAliveTimeout. If you have 150 MaxClients and your KeepAliveTimeout is 5 sec, and you get 150 clients in one sec, you can't serve another for 5 more seconds. Ditching KeepAlive gets rid of this problem.

So you want to lower it basically if you have a lot of different clients coming at the same time. On the other hand, if you have a few clients and they each make a lot of requests in a short amount of time, KeepAlive can save some time and resources.

In answer to your other question, I wouldn't worry too much about this stuff until you need to. When that happens, there are a lot of good resources on the Web, and you can post here and I'm sure people will help you. If not, contact me, and I'll do the best I can :)

Here are some further explanations about KeepAlive: http://virtualthreads.blogspot.com/2006/01/tuning-apache-par... and http://www.perlcode.org/tutorials/apache/tuning.html
Scaling without a database
I think there is a better way. Disable ftp, telnet etc. Disable everything not needed (just leave web server, postfix and sshd running) and disable root account and disable SSH password authentication completely and choose key authentication instead. You will never have to worry about someone running a cracker.