skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What about News.YCombinator, the most useful of them all?
What, in your opinion, are some "good" names?

The expensive, "professional" names are usually the ones that I find most nauseating ("accenture", "agilent", etc).
See Ruth Shalit's 'the name game' from 99 for the amusing origins of some of those: http://www.salon.com/media/col/shal/1999/11/30/naming/print....
And some interesting and useful things have to be done as open source projects.

Like programming languages:-)
http://beta.jottit.com/62yhc/
So is there anything besides misconception? Is there One True Conception, which defeats all others in internet debate?
Wikipedia is bogus and changing the language wont be of any help.
i heard through the grapevine that zed shaw, the dude who wrote mongrel, is down on it and isn't actively developing it anymore. hopefully someone else will pick up the slack, but i'm afraid that 95% of the folks using ruby+rails are know-nothing newbies (like me). =P

anyone have any experience with lighttpd + rails?
Internet debate gets a bad rep, but it's intrinsically no worse than any other written debate (which in and of itself is certainly the highest form of discourse man has ever invented). Sincere internet debate is perhaps 50% of what makes the medium useful (the other 50% being, of course, videos of kittens). Insincere internet debate is unfortunately 99% of the overall market and often clouds that fact. So if anything, there's your unified theory of sincerity.

As for one true conception, I imagine it exists on many topics, though getting at it is rather tricky. I've certainly started to argue with people before only to find out, as I put it in writing, that I agreed with them, sometimes even for reasons they'd missed. So if the truth is so convoluted that you can never really know it, perhaps it functionally does not exist.

I now feel my counter argument to the sincerity thing is overhyped though. I don't have enough time to make it live up. Please don't read, you'll only be let down.
I actually founded Facebook. I called it thebookoffaces.com and built it in 1999. Mark Zuckerberg probably saw it when he did some summer school at the University of Akron and ripped it off from me.

Did anyone else here found Facebook?
Actually, I hacked my Roomba to bring me gin & tonics.
6) Build a nuclear power plant yourself. This gives you an enormous amount of leverage in international politics.
Asimov's "The Last Question": the greatest sci-fi short story of all time
I started one of those YC-funded companies that "crawled off somewhere and died."

After that happened, I spent a couple of months staring at walls, feeling sorry for myself. During that time, I listened to everything at venturevoice.com, read Founders at Work, and kept thinking "man, these success stories are inspiring, but what I need right now are some goddamn failure storiesX." (If you're in the same position, I highly recommend this book: http://tinyurl.com/362eg5 )

Anyways, you're both right. Founders at Rest: Stories of Losers Who Fucked Up and Gave Up would be boring and depressing. But interviews with successful people about their failures -- e.g., Evan Williams' Blogger saga -- would be fascinating and inspiring. The classic story arc doesn't let the hero succeed right off the bat. First he hits a low point, then pulls himself up by his bootstraps.

One of these days I'll write that book. Right now, though, I'm too busy working on my next startup.

Don't forget, Microsoft wasn't Bill Gates' first company.
he developed an automated system that generated personalized query letters to more than 800 literary agents nationwide

Spamming literary agents? Ouch. Your typical literary agent gets 100s of manuscripts a day, and accepts maybe 10 a year. (Much, much worse odds than applying a yc).

Obviously, the facebook idea was old, old, old even when Zuck got to it, so of course he's no innovator. Just threw the dice and won. (Plus, he's probably a good operator, despite his assholism).
Have you thought about writing the story of your first startup? A lot of us would be very curious to get a different perspective of the Y Combinator experience.
In the game I worked in, most had no power whatsoever in the game. The only power some of them had was moderator role in the help chat channels, and the ability to teleport their GM characters (not their playing ones) to check out problems. They were watched closely for abuse, so you can hardly call that power at all.

You can say they were motivated by a feeling of notoriety. In my area we have problems with people that would sneak and set woods on fire only so they can feel important helping to extinguish the fire. They get no tangible benefit from it, not even power, and they risk shame and jail if they get caught. Feeling relevant is a strong motivation for some people.
Benchmarks don't backup many of these claims. Search "joe@swelltech.com squid performance" for my authority to make such a claim in the face of an extremely well-written blog post from a very smart fellow.

But the core bits of ReiserFS, raised file descriptors, and balancing RAM to disk are valid.

The aufs threads just aren't useful over about 24 even on the fastest machine--they are disk limited, not CPU bound. Squid is not multi-threaded, but there is a disk IO thread pool option (the aufs bit in the article). Going crazy with threads is counter productive and just eats memory.

Most of the configuration and proc options covered are just superstitious from a performance standpoint--they're generally fine at their defaults, and it's usually more productive to figure out what is binding performance and then turn the knobs with that knowledge rather than blindly cranking everything to eleven.

So, not a bad article, per se...but one that is rife with superstition. Squid brings it out of people like no other project I've ever seen (aside from maybe filesystems).
I played around a little bit on beta.jottit.com. In editing mode, I like the live rendering alongside the marked up text. I haven't seen that before.
Whats the idea?
Sounds like Europe to me.
20 most bizarre experiments - check out #16 (found on octopart news)
I found this url on Octopart news, but experiment #16 really surprised me. I wouldn't have thought that possbile yet. Although I have once seen that done to a spider in a TV documentary. But a cat is something else.
exclusive:Free Bar Code Maker and compatible with Office !!
exclusive:Free Bar Code Maker and compatible with Office !!
Wow this discussion has invoked a lot of participation, unfortunately this is useless discussion. Don't you guys have to hack?
Wow, us start-ups have something to look forward to...Party's at the playboy mansion to play with boobs and bunny's. Brin and Page, you guys are our idols.
Depends what you mean by defeat. It seems like one is only defeated when they stop trying new things, which is never going to be the case for us. But one can simply fail by making something only 2 people want.
Just came to mind: an area where open source doesn't even try to go, AFAIK, is services that require you to entrust them with sensitive personal data. For example, I don't think there's any volunteer run service that asks you for your credit card info, or that hosts your personal email.

I don't think it's only (or mainly) a matter of accountability. In general, volunteer services are given for the benefit of a community. Services targeted to individuals (except casual social interactions like answering questions) don't attract much volunteer effort, and are generally provided by for-profit companies.
What about the size of both markets. I would assume that SV is 10x at least in size. So the fact that Boston has similar IPO numbers for that quarter says alot about the vigor of the market. The point is the two are not comparable , size and market focus. You are giving the Boston VC's a shot at your type of company and hopefully they will respond. But it is not as if they are "need to". Our best shot would be for some more Consumer web type angels to start a group like Common Angels to help support your efforts.
I.B.M. Researchers Approaching Atom-Level Computing
The proper way to find closure would probably be to found another billion dollar business. How hard can it be?
There's nothing wrong with correcting misconceptions. The most interesting scientific discoveries are usually of that form. And there is nothing special about the Internet; it's just a medium, and rapidly becoming the default one.
Free GTD Printable Workflow
I use GTD as my methodology for productivity. I found it useful to have a simple diagram printed out on my wall to give me a quick reminder on the flow. I have shared it with a few people new to the GTD and they loved it, so I'm now sharing it with the world :) Enjoy.
Good point. It's on the roadmap for the second phase.
Know Your Rights: What to do when the RIAA comes calling
Google to start hosting news stories
The Internet's "Black Holes"
http://buzzboston.wordpress.com/2007/08/14/ben-franklin-was-...
This is really cool. However, it is unrealistic to compare it to MS Flight Simulator X... It is literally not even close in terms of graphics and realism. But, like rms says I'm sure it will continue to get better.
heh. I'm still waiting for WiTricity!
Like Sands Through The Hour Glass, Another Person Is Claiming To Have Founded Facebook
TechCrunch20 is now TechCrunch40 - Is There Enough Time?
Microsoft's Hacker Blog
Malgram's obedience experiment is a bit strange. Why would volunteers be needed to administer shocks? Doesn't that look suspicious?
Have you tried Scala?
Benchmark Capital: The end of the Benchmark boy's club?
Getaways: Where to go to escape the Internet
I think PG expressed why making money is important in an earlier essay.
So that we get making money out of the way of us making a life, or something like that.
Here's some fun followup on this steaming pile:
http://www.plasticbag.org/archives/2007/09/ben_goldacre_vs_c...
It should look suspicious, but the fact that they weren't suspicious further demonstrates the power of authority figures.
I like to get on my bike and go for a nice ride, outside of town, to "get away from the computer". This is one of the reasons why I don't really care for big metro areas.
Yes, SYNTAX-CASE has been around for quite a while, and there is a portable implementation that has just a few prerequisites beyond what R5RS provides.

http://www.cs.indiana.edu/chezscheme/syntax-case/
Maybe they were suspicious but saying something would have jeopardized whatever they were getting paid for their participation.
Beyond repetition, actually regurgitating, in your own words, what you've read is pretty helpful. I've found that, in doing summaries for my site Squeezed Books (http://www.squeezedbooks.com), that I've digested some things a lot more than if I had only read them. Anyone and everyone is welcome to try their hand at summarizing some business books for the site - absolutely free;-)

I've had some thoughts about ways to include essay/non book summaries, but so far I haven't bothered - stuff that's free on the internet is usually short enough to read, because it hasn't been inflated with fluff in order to make a book out of it.
Seeking cofounder who can hack and design
see profile
What a great article... once again. How inspiring, it comes at a perfect time for us. Kudos Paul!
mail merge? rocket science.
#2 (Milgram), #7 (Stanford Prison), and #19 (Shock the Puppy) are all mentioned in Phil Zimbardo's just-published book, The Lucifer Effect. It's fascinating reading - he gives the blow-by-blow on the Stanford Prison Experiment, including some of his notes that didn't make it into the popular press treatment.
[rolls eyes]

You've never heard of that experiment before? It's your canonical "How easily can we turn people into Nazis test". If people tortured others for a research fee, then that would be a very interesting finding, but typically they continue because of dog-like obedience.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_e02xGc-K0c

Real life example of similar phenomena:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strip_Search_Prank_Call_Scam

Anyway, I prefered the puppy-torture case. Quite interesting that women are more willing to torture puppies than men. I wish they had used larger samples.
Yes, I have heard of it. I'm just pointing out that it is strange for the experimenter to ask for help doing something that he could have easily done himself. So it looks suspicious.

Perhaps a better experiment would involve two people playing a game with shocks given whenever a bad move is made. Mild shocks would be given to the participant early on while the other player would intentionally play poorly later to receive (fake) severe shocks.
Original Macintosh User Manual (everything needed an explanation)
Thanks for your thought-provoking comments, actually I had quite forgotten that I didn't necessarily need SQL (despite reading all the threads about that here)!

Trouble is, I understand the theory of in-memory data logged to disk, but as I'm just a humble hacker (self-taught amateur) there seem a lot of unknowns in such an approach. SQL, though a pain, is at least familiar and abundantly documented.

Guess I'll do a little more research, and a little more hacking, since I would be quite happy to drop SQL entirely!
...someone familiar with pyschological testing would have questioned a lot of things, yes. But if you watch the video above, you'll see that person was very ordinary. Probably most of the subjects were the same.
TechCrunch20 is now TechCrunch40
While Milgram's experiment sheds light on war-time atrocities, maybe it also sheds light on why large companies work. If employees were more independent and more frequently disobeyed their bosses, perhaps there would be too much conflict and companies would struggle.
The world's oldest blogger (95)
The Jessica Alba sexy walk story was a plant by a PR firm
I think of him more as the pied piper leading the children away from the corporations.
SIW - Everything you want to know about your PC
SIW is a tool that gathers detailed information about your system properties and settings. A utility that includes detailed specs for Hardware, Software and Network. Product Key (CD key), Serial Numbers, Password Recovery, behind asterisks Passwords..
Hey gibsonf, did your company make it on the TC40 list?
Paul, you did another startup. It's Y Combinator. And judging by this essay, it won't die ;-) I love your determination.
Introspective Robot Learns to Walk
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehno85yI-sA

"Towards the end of the video, the robot conceptualizes itself, determining its own structure using sensors built into each joint. Then, it thinks of different ways that it might move - walk - from place to place. Starfish can also sense damage to any of its legs or joints, and then compensate."
How Long Before You Purge? Apparently Never for the Gap
You've Seen Youtube Before
I don't understand. He criticizes them for sending a mail because it will cost them money? If he doesn't want to be on their list then he can use the can-spam mandated opt out option that the email offers.

Purge? Never if the customer doesn't want to be purged. I don't see the cost justification.
You're deeply mistaken.

I actually founded Facebook. It was back in '96 when I realized gluing a book to my face was the best method in keeping me focused on my reading.
danw, I don't think OpenCoffee club really is like this right now. But after reading PGs essay I think that perhaps it should.

Perhaps opencoffee should have a culture of demoing every week. You show up, you get scrutinized, but it's all for the best.
a poorly executed knock off of the eminent Y Combinator
...fake boobs and an old man hooked up to a dialysis machine and a 600 horsepower Swedish penis pump working round the clock.
For those who thought that this comment was feeding a troll. You assumed too much.
Mocospace - The Largest Mobile Social Network You Haven't Heard About
...but where is the accompanying picture of Jessica Alba?
glad I took the time to chill out today with this talk/paper. I've already felt like crawling away a few times and we are just at the starting line. I love the idea of making it really matter if you fail, making it public to friends and family, risking something of yourself, these are the things you think about when its grim, "what will her mom say?", how will we repay the CC debt?, when it will hurt to fall, your better off holding on tight.

very inspiring, thanks pg!
Julian Lombardi's Blog: A Croquet Demo Movie
Put an email address so that interested cofounders can reach you.
Parsing Miss South Carolina's Statement
http://ccsl.mae.cornell.edu/research/selfmodels/

link to actual research page.

The gait looks more like a limp. The idea is neat, but it needs more work with their gait--even undamaged.
When is CEO 2.0 good? Ambient hires ex Palm, Sony exec as new CEO.
Is it ever a good time to replace yourself as CEO?
If the startup is a consumer-oriented Web site that spreads by word of mouth, then a non-hacker can add little in the early days. A dedicated, entrepreneurial hacker is all it takes.

With that said, there are a lot of hackers who are super smart, but lack the entrepreneurial skills and need encouragement. If you do provide what the hacker is missing, the two of you could be a great team. Think: Jobs and Wozniak.

Go find that hacker. This is your first challenge. If you succeed, then you're on your way to a successful startup.
Good point about the fiber. I wonder if you could make dark fiber to embassies throughout the world to prevent local ISPs from blocking your country.

That, and other things about this, take lots of money. There are better ways to invest that money than starting a country, which is why it wouldn't make sense to go for oil.
Why would you want leverage is a useless system like international politics?

To avoid another country invading yours, simply declare that a tactical nuke has been placed in its capital. You don't even need a weapons program to make this seem legitimate ... just say you bought it from an underpaid Russian general.
I'd love to see the design :)
Is that bold or is it sophomoric? At what point does confidence turn into unfounded arrogance?
MC Hammer is an industry expert involved in the panel.
Jessica Alba sexy boobs a plant by...

Oh, hell. Why is this at the top of "Hacker News".
I'm from South Carolina, you insensitive clod.
Good luck with that.

Maybe you ought to find two co-founders...one that hacks, one that designs. If you're doing a game, you need a lot of design...all of my previous comments, and Harj's comments, about the beauty of a designer that codes or vice versa, are irrelevant when you need a LOT of great design for a long period of time. In fact, you might ought to have two good designers and two good developers. Games are a lot of work. (OK, indie developers do more and more with better libraries and such...so maybe a one or two man show can pull something great together).

BTW-YC has never, to my knowledge, funded a straight game company (Matt Maroon has a fantasy sports gaming business...but it's effectively a US-legal gambling business, which is a whole world away from pure computer gaming).
While purging the mailing list would decrease the number of spam complaints I wouldn't send out messages to past customers with the explicit message (and only message) of opting out because... suprise they WOULD opt-out. Instead email your list on a regular basis which in-turn would allow people plenty of opportunities to opt-out.

The Gap, at least they are not pitching Viagra or Cialis. There email shows a lack of saavy about the Internet it speaks more about who is running the company as being out-of-step with the exact market they are trying to attract.
meh, it is a mildly interesting story.
That's right.. in a way.

You need to love the platform you're going to develop on top of. Guys like him, that ask which one is better, needs to at least give both of them a try and see which one he likes it the most.

Just like the most common comments from the Rails vs Django: it's up to which one you're comfortable/love.

I tried Rails, Django, TurboGears and I ended up with ASP.NET.
This leaves me curious what proportion of this documentation a. is necessary, b. used to be necessary, but isn't now that computer are a bigger part of everyone's life, or c. was never necessary.
Sadly, I was kidding. Does sound like a fun project, though. Hey, that's quite a vision of the future: your Roomba gets you drunk, and your AutoBot drives you home.
Right-O!

"Bluto's right. Psychotic, but absolutely right. We gotta take these bastards. Now we could do it with conventional weapons that could take years and cost millions of lives. No, I think we have to go all out. I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part."
Too vague. I'm guessing there are lots of folks looking for co-founders who can hack and design.
Hate to say it... but this lady appears to be older (at 107).

Funny, I just saw this the other day.

http://www.aol.in/news/story/2007083106139026000006/
http://paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html

Reasons #2, 7, 8, 14, 16, and 18. ;-)
We get to know the answer to that in 10 years. Likely it's the latter.
Looks like Greenspan is headed down the path I suggested in a previous thread [1]: fame as Mark Zuckerberg's Gary Kildall [2].

Even reading Greenspan's book account, it's clear that he dawdled while Zuckerberg executed. Greenspan frittered around with committees ("'Maybe we should put more emphasis on the Universal Face Book,' I thought aloud during a board meeting" [3]), kvetched about media unfairness ("'Can we get _The Crimson_ to give us any decent coverage at all?' I kept asking my board, week after week" [3]), worried idly delaying essential features ("I had considered creating detailed user profile pages at houseSYSTEM's inception, but it seemed like the worst idea possible when students began to fret openly about privacy"[4]), and engaged in redundant academic make-work ("'I can write [a version tracking system],' I offered, not wanting to be the only one without code to write" [5]).

If tempted to label someone a 'fraud' (as Greenspan did Zuckerberg in a previous HN thread[1]), consider instead that they may be expressing competencies in a dimension you can't readily perceive. Maybe even the very things you're criticizing ("Even though he was clearly smart, he seemed like he had the capacity to go off in a zany direction at any point in time, totally unconcerned about the consequences of his actions. I couldn't figure out any other scenario that would have allowed for the creation of the facemash site." [6]) are, in fact, strengths.

--

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24742

[2] Though, Greenspan would still have to contribue a lot to the computer industry to hold a candle to Kildall -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Kildall

[3] http://www.aarongreenspan.com/read/read.html?page=293

[4] http://www.aarongreenspan.com/read/read.html?page=299

[5] http://www.aarongreenspan.com/read/read.html?page=300

[6] http://www.aarongreenspan.com/read/read.html?page=296
How was it marketed?
>1) Buy or find an island around the size of Manhattan. This shouldn't be too hard.

That's impossible. Unlike wealth, power is a zero-sum game, and a new country (of the kind that matters) is against the interests of everyone who has power. Even if you somehow manage to buy land on terms that will allow you to become de jure sovereign (again, absolutely impossible), as soon as something happens to it (like Blackwater deciding to turn it into their private base), everyone will just cheer.
Yay - another "Let's make an MMO," where do I signup?

</sarcasm>
Actually, I am self taught too and most hackers here are probably much better than me. I use python, if you do the same then try out Zope DB and schevo.org. These are Object based DBMS - non SQL. The problem like someone pointed out is that such systems are not language agnostic.