skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Like most things in real life, the answer boils down to a set of intertwined non-linear feedback loops that you can probably identify and analyze (even quantitatively) using systems analysis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_analysis) or a similar technique. I suspect pg in his essay has nailed down some of (and probably the major) loops involved, i.e. the ones around rich people and nerds.

The basic loops he identifies seem to be nerds attract other nerds, rich people attract other rich people, and nerds attract rich people as long as they are starting startups that need investment and get rich people richer (please correct me if I am wrong). These are all positive feedback loops, so they keep growing until they hit some negative ones. Some negative ones: saturation of nerds or rich people (not yet), saturation of space (getting there), high living costs (definitely close), nerds not starting startups because they work for Google (hard to tell but I doubt it), nerds not needing investment (increasingly so for Web apps), and other viable places to move (true in some areas like Biotech).
You are absolutely right about hackers caring about other things than business, but we already have a hundred places to get all that information online. The reason I liked this site is that it had a purpose: to provide news about startups. With a focus like that, the site is unlikely to ever go the route of reddit (the internet version of chain letters and "my dad can beat up your dad").

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE change it back. If you want to launch another site for hacker news, I'll be the first to subscribe, but PLEASE give us back startup news!
Pretty much everyone has JavaScript. While for what you are doing, probably everyone in your target audience has Flash, but keep in mind for different versions the % of the general population that has it installed is not 100%: http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/vers...

Adobe (who has an incentive to inflate their numbers though I'm not saying they are) puts Flash 9 at 84.0%. Below that you get into the high 90s. But if your whole product is based on a viral loop, and you can achieve the same thing with JavaScript, that few % can be important when compounded over time.
From where I am (Europe), it looks like SV is mostly turning into an advertising industry. They're just making the web the new TV and it's really depressing.
Agreed. That's actually the best analysis. Instead of Television taking up 4 hours a day of family time, you have the same amount of computer time (though not always video, it's the same exact principle.)
plz tell me this is parody
Paul, we were having news.yc meetings way before you wrote any code for news.yc...
What's interesting to look at is the distribution of where open source software is produced. That, IMO, is a reasonable proxy for where hackers are doing interesting things, and it is very definitely not SV centric. Perhaps they would be founding companies if they were in SV, but maybe not. I'm glad that people like Linus and Guido van Rossum stuck to doing what the really know best, which is pure tech. There are definitely some opportunity costs for a hacker who chooses to go into business over sticking to pure tech.
This was posted to the Lisp NYC mailing list yesterday (Aug. 15):

Repeating some content from a slide last night...

If you want to join the otter announcements list (so you can hear
about things like the release when it happens), send email to:

announce-request@otterlang.org

The general discussion list is otter@otterlang.org, join by mailing:

otter-request@otterlang.org
It's true that the Flash VM is quite fast itself, at parsing, rendering, etc. But Flash feels much more sluggish for most things. Try any largish interface in Flash to see for yourself. Imagine Gmail in Flash, it would be much less snappy. Flash is an entirely different platform inside your browser with all its own facilities. Javascript can be used in a lightweight way on top of the native HTML/image/CSS stuff your browser is so good at.
I'm interested and might be able to make it
I use an iPhone daily and there have only been a few times I've missed copy and paste. Usually it's been when I'm tapping out a reply email or posting on a site such as YC News and need to quote someone. To route around the lack of copy and paste my replies end up being similar to using a word you know how to spell instead of one you don't; I just write what I think rather than writing about what someone else has written and think nothing of it. There are certainly cases when this analogy doesn't hold and copy and paste functionality would be nice, but it's definitely by design that there isn't one.

Constraining developers and themselves to create simpler ways to do things is smart of Apple. Emailing photos is the perfect example: I want to email this photo that is on my screen -- not open my "photo application", copy a photo, go back to the main screen, open my "email application" and paste the photo. Most of the copy and paste scenarios can be handled in a similar way: links to maps, links to phone numbers, links to URLs, and so on.

Maybe there are better ways to perform actions on mobile platforms instead of following the decades-old clunky mouse way to do them?
Great idea, yes I'll be there. I am also looking for a co-founder before applying for winter program.
Viral Marketing and Community Building: The Basics
You don't build a product and try to viral market it. Your product has to be built from the core on a problem that is viral and hence the solution will prove to be viral in being used.
You are right. One of the greatest advantages of Flash is that, you need to code only once, and you can deploy the swf wherever Adobe's flash player works.But thats the catch! The format's license do not allow the creation of software that could 'play' SWF files. The license only allows the creation of software that could 'create' swf files. Aptana, Openlaszlo are all development environments that could 'create' SWF.
In short, Adobe doesn't want anyone to mess up with the Flash Player.As you may already know, Gnash is an open source movement in this direction.

What if Netscape said only Netscape's browser could handle javascript although you could write the script in emacs or notepad or whatever .. ?

As a widget usually requires only very little coding, its worth coding it in Javascript ,if it isnt too Rich with animation,video or audio.When it comes to these rich factors, there is no question that flash is the best choice.
I think the new algorithm is going to make the site less adaptable to new concepts and ideas in the future, if a just few of the big users vote them down. The type of stories voted up high will get stuck at a local maxima in story space.
Los Angeles Venture Association VC panel presentation summary
LAVA isn't what you think it is. It's not boiling hot magma from a volcano bursting in LA threatening to destroy the city. Nope - LAVA is Los Angeles Venture Association and it's doing anything but destructive. I joined their yearly VC panel presentation at 7AM!!! yesterday (Tuesday the 14th) to get the scoop.
This looks interesting, but it doesn't seem like the content is actually available yet. Anyway, I think most perlmongers and anyone else who cares already knew perl had these capabilities.
That's an interesting view...in fact I never thought about it that way.
Unconventional Wisdom: Quitting is good for you
Three Ways Startups Are Providing VOIP
Yes, it's best not to introduce more features lest they introduce more bugs. Let's just use white shiny plastic boxes connected with a metal cable then, shall we?
It may very well be easier for startups in Silicon Valley, but so what? Focus your attention on the specific problems you have, not on comparing your situation to other people's situations.

Having a hard time finding a co-founder? More difficulty getting funding? Look at the resources available to you in your community and take advantage of those. Don't have any resources? Create some yourself. Many times, problems can be solves with the right network. Read /Never Eat Alone/ and start building yours.

And ultimately, if you think a move out to SV will solve your problems, move out to SV. But realize that the grass is never greener--just different shades of brown that, from a distance, look greener. Out in SV, you're likely to have a different set of problems: greater competition for talent (both partners and employees), higher cost of living, greater competition for angel and VCs.

It all comes down to the realization that there are trade-offs to every situation. Challenges to every startup, no matter where you are. Focus on the challenges you're facing and find creative ways to solve them. That's when you'll be successful. Not when you're lamenting about how easy other people have it compared to you.
Good things to keep in mind as I write out my front end. I never knew about defering.
"Back Is the Only Way Forward"

I liked the quote, but I really hate what it means.
Scalability should not be an excuse for lack of important features.
Firefox or IE7 users don't have this problem.
USAToday's Social Network Experiment May Not Be Paying Off
'Facebook Secrets' blog gets the DMCA takedown treatment
You can use asterisk(*) to get italics.
It makes a huge difference. I am doing this in Milwaukee, WI.
incidentally, the last meet-up was organized in response to someone suggesting that news.YC set up an IRC channel
Widgets for Tracking Internet Trends
Help test my Facebook game in private beta and I will help test your Facebook app
It's the sort of game where you guess how other people think. It's a twist on something that people already do in discussion groups.

My goal is to release the game in two weeks.

If you might want to participate in private testing, please email me @ amichail@gmail.com.
The first mistake startups make is they need VC or angel funding to get moving. The mindset in SV is bad enough, it does not need to bleed to the rest of the country.
Mark Zuckerberg ate breakfast.
How to write a book - the short honest truth
Skype down?
Reports from US and Europe of outages.
It would be quite neat to be able to do that. Ancestry.com is another site that should offer something like that... enter your family tree and then pick some random person who also has a family tree on file and show how you're related. They can't even do that within your own family tree (e.g. pick a person in your family tree and tell you "Augustus is your fourth cousin three times removed" or "Myrtle is your great-grandmother."

It is an example of the traveling salesman problem but there are ways of optimizing that... think about chess, or how google maps and the other map programs give you a route to a destination. If they had to check every single intersection it would be NP-complete. Instead they use the distance between two points as a weighting factor and try to find major arteries near both points.

I think you could do the same thing with Facebook et al - first look for common groups between people and then look for people who have pairs of common groups which would help to connect the people.

But you would have to have a reasonably complete set of Facebook data to work on. I wonder if they'd mind if you crawled their entire network and then did it again every few days, just to keep things current?
We're running a startup from Chicago and Birmingham, AL. We're not finding it particularly difficult. We're not interested in outside money right now, but if we were it wouldn't be particularly hard to find. We were approached before we had seriously considered outside funding.

I think the main difference is the types of companies that get funded in The Valley. Twitter, for example, wouldn't get funding in Chicago and certainly not Birmingham. Facebook and Google wouldn't have gotten funding either.

But there is money for the right product outside of The Valley.
because is the not the nokia N95

apple repeated the same mistake they made with the mac 20 years ago, thats why the will never lead the mobile market.
I think it is retarded that I have to manually re-write stuff that is already in an email into a text message or vice versa.
At least several times every day I wish my iphone had copy and paste
Flickr, Zoho, Flirtomatic. It is not hard to start a startup outside the valley, it is simply "harder". It won't be easy no matter where you are.
Sorry folks: this is hilarious. I love it.

Perhaps you'd like to make a competing rap about your place of work? What's the phrase I'm thinking of for the folks at VallyWag? strap on some plums.

I wonder if a reaction to this can be considered a Rorschach test for how much you actually support user generated content :-P
That 'Dip' book looks like a perfect target for Squeezed Books in that it looks a bit fluffy. Still though, the concept is worthwhile.
I work for a small company in Cambridge, Massachusetts (we have about 60 employees and were founded in 1999; I'm not sure if we count as a startup any more), so it's certainly possible.

My impression is that high-tech startups in the Boston area tend to sell products or services to larger companies, so that each customer brings in five or six figures worth of revenue. All the Valley startups I hear about, by comparison, aim for the mass market.

I know that PG doesn't like the idea of starting a consulting firm and using the consulting revenues to bootstrap product development, but I worked for one company and interviewed at two that did exactly that. (The one I worked for, Kenan Systems, never took a dime of outside investment, until the founder sold the company to Lucent for $10 billion. Things went downhill from there. But I digress.) Maybe the knowledge and contacts such entrepreneurs gained from consulting helped them make their first five-figure sales?...
Yes. If not them, then who?
Marketing. I wouldn't call it good marketing, because like AI in the 80s, if you promise more than you deliver, people stop trusting you.
This is interesting but completely discounts the social aspect of investment.

I don't know much about it, but my guess is that a good angel or VC will make serious efforts to get your business to the next level. They'll undoubtedly know people you won't. They also are free to say no, meaning they can give criticism without rose colored glasses.
"Tans are rare."

We need full spectrum monitors!
Most recognized pain relief over 100 years
Statues express the ancient of pain itself on humans. Since then, pain was relieved by this ointment.
The color chooser on the site is fun.
Especially when you lose your Internet connection for days at a time because someone has stolen the copper in the wires....
I'll probably be there. May be a little late.
Not sure I can make that time, but I am interested and will try to be there.
If You're Not Authentic, You Will Probably Fail
Choosing an AJAX framework
Local search startup Grayboxx goes after search giants
"How exactly is Grayboxx going to improve local search? Well, their algorithm is in the stealth stage...so they aren't revealing details yet. But it looks like a guerilla tactic approach to ranking local results...to create a local community rolodex of favorable votes without imposing review-writing chores."
Finance geeks: what's behind this odd chart?
This is strange looking:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=EURUSD=X&t=5d

Not the fact that it's trending downward, but the very regular looking stairstep each day. Any idea what that is?
Netflix customer service -- bucking the trend
I'm eagerly awaiting the Google response.
The number one reason is the lack/timidity of angel investors. But there are a lot of others. In startup hubs like SV (and to a lesser extent Boston), everyone gets startups. Not just investors, but employees, landlords, suppliers, girlfriends' parents. In a startup hub you're going with the grain to start a startup, and elsewhere you're going against it.
Name some successful tech startups that have taken zero outside investment.
Interestingly I was looking at this chart and then came to news.yc and saw your post. I don't understand your question. Are you asking why there are lows and highs for each day? It is because the its traded just like stocks are traded and have intra day lows and highs.
If SV investors habitually invested in crap companies, they'd have run out of money by now. Instead they are richer than ever.

Nor are their investment choices what you think they are. For every frothy social app SV investors fund, they fund two boring b2b companies that you don't hear about because you are not the target market.
Market prices as fractal patterns? Where have I seen that before?

Ah, yes, here: http://www.amazon.com/Mis-Behavior-Markets-Fractal-Reward/dp...
Ok, but why the odd looking stairstep?

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=%5EDJI&t=5d

Is not nearly so regular.
Also being in LA, I'd say the major difference is really the access to funding and to deal-making in general.

I haven't been looking for funding so much, but I've heard frustrated stories from those who have. There just isn't the kind of widespread network that includes angels and VCs like there is up north.

It is nice to see more non-entertainment-related tech startups in LA, but honestly there's a long way to go.

Also, maybe it's just me, but there's still a geographic issue. It seems like startup activity was split between Santa Monica, Irvine, Pasadena, Encino and Hollywood for the longest time.

I think we can say the Santa Monica and west-of-WeHo area has won, at least since Yahoo moved their Overture group to the Santa Monica campus. About time, but this is just the ground floor. Funding sources are still spread all around too.
Amazon S3 and offline development
Let's say I want to use S3 to serve all of the images for my site; I also do alot of my developing offline on a local setup.

Do I just have to bite the bullet and have the page layout broken when I am not online?
Sounds good. I just wanted to suggest Andala Coffee House nearbly because they have free WiFi in contrast to 1369.

Here's the link:
http://www.yelp.com/biz/QAbqOn5VhO4k15_wfSQdvg
Isn't it most likely true that most people who edit Wikipedia do so from work? And when they do they probably edit things they know (or think they know) about. Given that, you'd expect these sort of things to happen without any intention on the part of the organizations in question.
Club Penguin. It was a Web 2.0/virtual community play. Acquired by Disney for $350+ mil. I don't know if Plentyoffish qualifies as a Web 2.0 startup, but it is making a lot of cash. I could name a few more.
Cheers.

PS. I agree with the original poster "The first mistake startups make is they need VC or angel funding to get moving," if by "get moving" s/he means get started. You might need it when you want to expand, grow, get serious, etc. but you don't necessarily need it at the beginning.
How do people protect their startup ideas if you can't afford a patent? (Facebook vs ConnectU)
Seeking Co-Founders for the upcoming YCombi
Seriously. I've never seen as many bentley's as I have in the parking garages on Sand Hill Road.
Theres i also Diesel Cafe in Davis Square. Much Much bigger space with lots more tables and even a pool table. Also has WiFi

http://www.yelp.com/biz/c67rQbz3CEXyI0nd5kG-Uw
Findind the shortest path between two nodes in a graph has nothing to do with the Traveling Salesman problem. You could use e.g. linear optimization to solve it. The Problem here lies in P.
Pretty clever? Findind the shortest path between two nodes in a graph is more or less a solved problem..
Do you use special confidentiality clauses? Some example I can see? If so, do you need to specify you ideas thoroughly?

If you where in ConnectU's position, how could you had avoided Mark copying the idea?

Can you really avoid it?
Keios, I hope you're right about your first point. But my fear is that this site will become just another hacker site. There is nothing wrong with that per se, but we may end up losing a valuable resource on startups in the process.

It may be true that lots of people are bored reading about startups, but when I become bored with a site, I stop visiting, I don't ask them to change their content to something I find more interesting. (I don't think anyone actually asked for this change, but you see my point.)

I also agree with you that stories such as #3, #5 and #6 are useful, and I fully expect and appreciate to see stories like that here. They are part of what's needed for a startup, they're just not the only part, and should not be emphasized over other equally important startup-related stories. I'm not an entrepreneur (at least not yet), but I know that entrepreneurs wear many hats, and I want to learn about all those hats.

Regarding your freedom of choice, remember that one of the changes proposed is giving un-equal weight to votes. You can vote up stories you like, but if the new system thinks those choices are "dumb stories", then your participation may not be having the effect you think it is.

In the end I think a startup that focuses only on technology can produce a cool product, but no one may need it, or even hear about it. I think such a focus fosters the attitude of "If you build it, they will come". Which doesn't seem to work.
The Giver by Lois Lowry. Seriously, it has everything you need to know about entrepreneurship, namely:

1.) People lie to you, and most of the time, you will never know that they're lying to you.

2.) There are 5 qualities necessary to be a successful entrepreneur: intelligence, integrity, courage, wisdom, and the capacity to see beyond. When you start, you should have intelligence, integrity, and courage. Wisdom can only come from experience, but you should have the ability to acquire wisdom. Finally, entrepreneurs need the ability to "see beyond", and only time will tell if they truly have that ability.

3.) Precision of language is important.

4.) Safe and comfortable is more dangerous than painful and real.

5.) Making wise decisions is perhaps the hardest task that someone can take on, so difficult that people will try to concentrate the burden in one individual. It shouldn't be concentrated, though. For the community to thrive, everybody needs to bear the burden.

6.) To accomplish anything, you need passion. Don't try to suppress it with a pill.

7.) The way things are is not always the way things should be.

8.) Sometimes, the greatest weight is the knowledge of what others have done before you.

9.) Find people like you, and pass them your memories. They're often the only ones who will understand them.

10.) There's more than one way to interpret the ending.

All this in a book that is shorter than John Galt's speech.

I thought Atlas Shrugged was a good book, but it wasn't a great book. The ideas are very seductive, but then you start trying to apply them, find you're being a jackass, and then realize there are subtleties to life that Ayn Rand didn't understand. Atlas Shrugged had a lot about how you should live your life, but very little about why. That's why I think that The Giver - and much children's literature, in general - is better and more mature.
Nevermind, I can just use htaccess to redirect image paths when I am developing on my local computer.
Self-publishing is easy. Self-editing is hard.
For me, the simplest and logical conclusion about the site is that there's way too much text on the top of the page, and when you visit the site, a screen-size ad opens up that you have to close. When you do, a popup ad shows up as well. It's insane. Users leaving because they're annoyed at the ads, not the social features, is the best and simplest and most obvious conclusion.

But I do agree with this comment:

"I think this was a valiant effort to provide a more interactive user experience to a website whose users have no interest in it."