skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"Not according to Freedom House."

The website you cite defines a Free Country as one where there is:
1) a broad scope for open political competition,
2) a climate for respect of civil liberties,
3) significant independent civic life,
4) independent media

The USA does not have 1 (locked two-party system with associated elite families, if not in theory, at least in practice), 2 ( 9/11 related policies? Federal agencies capturing information on citizens continuously?) and 4 (there was an independent media some decades ago, not anymore). 3 is allowed in full only within the privacy of your home. Don't confuse economical prosperity with freedom.

About "lack of public education": I am no native English speaker. I meant to say, lack of education of the public. General culture levels are very low among USA citizens. My data: you have no idea how many times I've been told that Spain is in the north of Mexico, and not by Mexicans obviously. Plus how many USA citizens can locate Iraq in a map? The statistics I've seen are hilarious. Severe lacunae in geography and history among USA citizens is the norm -even though my daily social environment is a university. Exceptions are very much welcome, and I have found out they are almost all first-generation americans with properly educated parents (by which I mean, their parents were born elsewhere and came to the USA as adults).

If you get the GDP and remove the top 5% of rich people, the average citizens' wealth changes a lot. But the main point is: if born poor and grown uneducated, here in the USA the citizen is likely to remain poor and uneducated. Where I come from, free access all the way up to PhD education is the norm, then you're on your own and it's up to you, but at least the impact of the socioeconomic status of one's parent's is removed from the equation (not totally, but substantially).

In my daily experience at the university, senior undergraduate students show the level of knowledge I am used to expect from freshmen, and the writing skills of a 14 year old. There are exceptions of course. And it's good that they catch-up during the first two years of graduate school. Something is horribly wrong in the education USA citizens receive between ages 14 and 22.
Y Combinator doesn't accept porn sites? Maybe Paul should have specified this in the application, so I wouldn't have wasted my time making a MiniDV-casette sized demo with 13 hot female co-founders. "Hey, I'm starting up a company. Every additional founder gets $5,000. But, I need to make a demo. Do you have 60 minutes?"
And there's a book about crypto that he wrote too.

Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution was well written and enlightening. If only the rest of the mass media could figure out what the word hacker actually means.
Do browser add-ons add value to web applications / services?
You guys are still arguing about this after two days? There ought to be a variant of Parkinson's Law about how much easier it is to argue about politics than other matters. It's like a ground state one sinks into. Individuals and sites...
Portrayl and Ficlet: Two Ways to Write that Novel you Always Wanted
Smalltalk is a really excellent language. Very minimal (yet attractive and understandable syntax), and the use of blocks make very cool things possible.

Ruby is about 75% there. Unfortunately Smalltalk suffers from the same problem Common Lisp does; poor marketing/popularity and so-so implementations (compared to say Python).
$100 Laptop Game Jam in June!
Get creative and make a game for the One Laptop Per Child platform. Most of the focus is on Python with Pygame or PyGTK. The window manager called Sugar (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sugar) has a lot of emphasis on collaboration and is very different from the window managers we are used to. Should be lots of fun. Registration extended to May 15.
The reason we don't negotiate is that the most significant thing we offer, our advice and connections, we offer a constant amount of to everyone.

For the thousandth time, it's not about the money...

Here's why it's an IQ test. One should give up n% of one's co for something that will make the remaining 100-n% worth more than 100. So you should give YC 6% if you think we can improve your prospects by 7%. Do we? Easily. And someone who doesn't get that even after talking to us in person is not very perceptive.
And, I just did a search for "write a story web 2.0" on google.com and Paul is #5. Apparently that's because he's also the #4 search result for just "web 2.0"

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=write+a+story+web+2.0&btnG=Search
Nice, but I think their spelling checker needs improvement.
Ok I do it. Just as proof of concept that all the karma system is completely broken. Now I up voted your comments mattjaynes. It seems to me that all the karma concept have to be reinvented in new and robust way.
That means they're not at the stage yet where they can just throw machines in to handle growth.

Hmm, why do you say that? They've already got the DB off on other machines, and it sounds very much like they are doing all the things you do to a rails site so that you can scale it by plugging in more app servers. I.e. they already put everything shared into the DB or memcached.
What is old is new again. From the article:

"The Valley's new wisdom: don't fund anyone over 30."

Eerily reminiscent of Bubble 1.0.
Don't Sell Your Product, Sell Your Concept
You could try Cool Text for free (http://cooltext.com/).
Their default settings are a bit naff but with a little
effort, time and some 'taste' you can make something half decent.
I have often thought that if the hot girls in my high school could have been convinced to start a lesbian porn company with me, then we all would have been rich and never had to get real jobs.
how did they just launch and already get 1 million hits a month?
I'm not sure is useful for web2.0 companies. Websites, are different. The most important thing I've learned (from the YC community) about startups is: Pick an important problem to solve. Build the bare-minimum solution to that problem and get feedback. Improve iteratively.

Startups are forced to grow at a rapid pace. Why? Because web2.0 companies need a large number of users before they can monetize. The only way to grow rapidly is to send a clear message. You go to reddit, and bam, you're using reddit. So, the product has to be the message.
This kind of press fearing google was kinda unheard of in the beginning of the year. Now, it's kinda popping up everywhere I read. It is either that my world is small, or that consensus loving Google has really swung into a transition to hating Google. If Microsoft is not feared by startups, then someone else has to take its place. What easier than to point at the next biggest company?

The truth is probably a little mix of both other companies and industries fearing power, and Google growing too big too fast to turn into what Microsoft had turned into in the 90's.

It's strange to think that things change so much in two years. I'm excited over the next rise in five years. Which new market will it be? One right under our noses? Or one from out of the blue? It's time to stop focusing on "top 10 tips to succeed", and start looking for what sucks out there, what can be done better, what new things are bubbling in the undertows of the tech world.
I am very sorry, but the language of this article is almost exactly same as used by communist propaganda: everything is good, evil capitalism is (as the historical materialism had pre-determined) de-facto dead, just a couple of years and a perfect society will come ... are all the penguins really so mad about the different preferences?
Awesome!
Thanks to everyone who signed up until now, Ive got your emails and when it gets up and running I'll post again.

Cheers,
~E
So you should give YC 6% if you think we can improve your prospects by 7%

Not if you think someone else will improve your prospects by a bigger ratio compared to the cut they're taking though.

Don't know of anyone like that, just being pedantic.
Introducing Facebook Marketplace
I wonder if this will be able to take on the many de-centralized college classified websites. I've been expecting this to happen for a while now. What do you guys think?
Well soon they ll mention http://teenwag.com :) thanks pg for all ur fun
Buzz - Ambient Information Software - Slowly Pushes Content to Desktop
I think a better question would be, "Does anyone program in Smalltalk yet?" It seems to be becoming more popular, rather than less. As people begin to get an awareness of more advanced paradigms some of the older research languages begin to look nicer. Smalltalk is OOP done very well. Ruby is actually a lot like it, and may turn out to be a better Smalltalk than Smalltalk (some would say otherwise, of course).
Most people discover fun problems when they split their web servers, no matter how prepared they thought they were. I'm sure they'll handle it well, but it's a significant step.
Get started, entrepreneurs. You're living in an exciting time.
I think this is bad advice for just about everyone. Tossing out the hard sell of all of your "solutions", when a customer came looking for something specific? I'm pretty sure I'd hang up and call the next vendor on my list. I want expertise and personalized service, not some greedy doofus doing a half-assed job at a dozen different things and expecting me to consider that a positive thing.

As a small company, you must focus. Be the best at one thing, before even thinking about being a dozen things. When you're bigger (and have established yourself as the best whatever in the world) you can expand. Be strong in one area, and leave everything else to others. Maybe later, you'll have to resources to tackle multiple areas...but even then, the moment you take your eye off of your core business, there will be a half-dozen competitors who are more focused who eat your lunch.
The Entrepreneurial Engineer: Genetic algorithms pioneer David Golberg's blog on professional skills for engineers
THREAD DOES NOT DELIVER. :/
DFJ Tim Draper invests in Natalie Portmans Startup Tim Draper lifts Natalie portman up literally
I haven't checked it out, but it seems like a natural addition to unload textbooks. Classifieds attached to profiles and faces will do wonders, as well as having them within set networks.
How hard is it to get access to investors in the Silicon Valley?
In the comments section for the "Y Combinator Boot Camp" story posted on Slashdot, most replies were pure garbage, but there was one decent opinion. One person said he was rejected from YC but later found out it's easy to get funding in the Silicon Valley. How true is that overall? Has anybody gone through the VC or angel process (in Silicon Valley or otherwise) without YC?
Ray Lane of Kleiner Perkins Discusses 7 Criteria for Investment in Enterprise Software [podcast, keynote, 2006]
I really enjoyed the "Engineering for the 21st century" article. He has some good guidelines to think about (thought a lot of his stuff seems based on Mihalyi's Flow theory).

Some bits and pieces: engagement leads to wealth, write documents in a Background-Premise-Roadmap format, create first--critize later, be realistic in application of ideals, the obvious isn't easy, and practice practice practice.
"If you get the GDP and remove the top 5% of rich people, the average citizens' wealth changes a lot. "

You made that figure up! The reason I also included the Gini coefficient was to demonstrate that income inequality in the US is reasonably low too.

"Don't confuse economical prosperity with freedom."

I didn't. I included BOTH Freedom House's ranking of political freedom (which equates the US as politically equal to Western Europe) AND economic freedom (which sets the US much higher than Europe.)

According to Freedom House freedom of the press in the US is as free as Europe: http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=251&year=2006

"Where I come from, free access all the way up to PhD education is the norm"

It's not free. You pay for it in high taxes all your life. Anyway the point is moot as even though you have a "free" education system in Europe the US still has a higher amount of university educated people than Europe according to the OECD.
Isn't there already a web2.0 twitter type site that tracks illnesses just like pogue describes in this article?
Barron's reports death of disk drive business unfounded
Microsoft takes on the free world
cliff notes: But he does break down the total number allegedly violated - 235 - into categories. He says that the Linux kernel - the deepest layer of the free operating system, which interacts most directly with the computer hardware - violates 42 Microsoft patents. The Linux graphical user interfaces - essentially, the way design elements like menus and toolbars are set up - run afoul of another 65, he claims. The Open Office suite of programs, which is analogous to Microsoft Office, infringes 45 more. E-mail programs infringe 15, while other assorted FOSS programs allegedly transgress 68.
Facebook's effect on Uloop.
Is there a reg free link please?
With the introduction of Facebook's new marketplace, they seemed to have ventured into a territory that Uloop has tried to claim. Uloop ads can be seen plastered allover Facebook and has been gaining much traction lately with their success at various campuses.

Two of my friends were asked to leave school and work for Uloop for a year based on the fact that they would be receiving more VC money in about a month or so. Now I am wondering whether they will be granted such funding with Facebook's newest development.

What do you guys think? Will Uloop, a company that's been utilizing Facebook's popularity to gain traction and users, be crushed by the very company that has probably been Uloop's most important venue of advertising?
And yet here you are.

I'm curious: what made you decide to move to a country with no freedom, bad education and no culture?
Its a long hard road to flash memory taking over the drive market. I find it highly unlikely that Seagate and Western Digital don't already have research on crossover products in R&D. They definately have a market advantage over companies like SanDisk in that it would considerably larger manufacturing capabilities to even come close to meeting the demand for storage. I predict this will be more like the original market for drives where a prolific number of smaller players will enter the market to compete with established drive makers. Most of them will either tank or get bought up in the first couple years and maybe one or two lucky newcomers will be left standing.
Good point! And hanging out on the forum of a company which explicitly helps people start companies to freely get rich.
Hard selling your customers is something you resort to when you're in an over sold market. I'm not sure how that would apply to a startup at all, being as your goal is to come up with the next big idea, not rebrand the same old thing without any innovation or unique twist. You know the only major retailer that still does this? Radioshack... ideas why? Nothing new or unique to offer and not enough volume to offer prices low enough to keep customers coming back.
The gratuitous U.S. bashing in this thread looks exactly like something you'd see on Reddit (more likely, Digg). Not only is it ugly, it's utterly irrelevant to the nominal topic of discussion. Even if the U.S. were Nazi Germany, the Stalinist U.S.S.R., and the Pol Pot regime rolled into one, it would have zero relevance to the ethical position of Google with the Chinese government.

I suppose I could have said that Paul B.'s position (and that of several others) is a classic example of the tu quoque variety of ad hominem fallacy, but that would basically just be using Latin to say the same thing.
Low ones-of-millions - say $2M - is still enough to last 20 years at $100K/year (not counting taxes, but also not counting interest). Most decent entrepreneurs ought to be able to come up with another viable startup within 20 years, so for most practical purposes, it basically is fuck-you money. You won't be able to never work again, but you have enough of a financial cushion that you never have to work for another person again.
i think facebook has enough leverage and coverage to dominate whichever area in the college student audience they wish. they are a nimble monster = terrifying for competitors.
Do you think that web 2.0 services will eventually result in a surveillance society, much as you would get by putting surveillance cameras everywhere?
Don't know. But you could always try bugmenot.
Top Five Essential Practices for Developing Software
Facebook Marketplace Stirs Up Old Dreams
I think that facebook, like google, has become another company that startups should steer clear of.

Just like Google dominates the information gathering space, Facebook is now becoming a one stop shop for social/communication tools. Why use twitter when all your friends use facebook status? O'r why use a dating site when all your peers are on the book? You can see that most students don't use flickr or zooomr because they have facebook photos already. I've noticed that since all my friends have become heavy facebook users that we no longer use IM at all and that SMS usage is dropping. We instead just send facebook messages, wall posts or share links/youtube clips using fbook shares.

On the up side facebook + api = universal buddy list. You wont have to worry about importing all your friends to the latest cool social app because everyone is already on facebook.
That reminds me. What ever happened to SCO?
Can you boot into safe mode? If so try using System Restore to roll back to the day before you installed the update.
Peer-reviewed blogs:  a subset of your readers decide whether your post is worth broadcasting to everyone
Would such a thing make sense? After all, how would you know whether your next post will impact your blog in a positive way?
LG Philips develops first A4 color e-paper
my thoughts as an ex-competitor: http://mealticket.wordpress.com/2007/05/14/36/
"It's a tinderbox. Patent law's going to be the terrain on which a big piece of the war's going to be fought. Waterloo is here some where." --Eben Moglen, Executive director, Software Freedom Law Center

This is a very sobering article - MS's way to cripple the Open Source software movement now that MS's products are beginning to loose steam. Let's hope Richard Stallman will be able to slay the Goliath.
His ideas for trying to map real world everyday problems directly on the web strikes me as naive -- the approach taking by lots of dot bombs. He'd probably be excited about a site that allows you to split the tab at restaurants.

I think the exciting web stuff has mostly been products that create totally new user behavior and lack direct analogues in the physical world.
HTML 5: Positive Momentum
Of course, I get modded down to -1. Its really easy to mod down someone who disagrees with you, much easier to do so than to actually think about what they said.

The smartest %30 of china is greater than the entire US population.

The 1% of chinese population that is the smartest is a far greater number than the %1 of US population that is smartest. Both are the same proportion, but there are far more smarts in china because they have far more people... and the smartest %1 is drawn from a bigger pool.

But go ahead, believe what is convenient. Its the american way ... and why america is not long going to be the dominant country, financially or technologically.

If you're smart, you'll be looking at the rest of hte world, instead of being xenophobic.
I don't know about Catalyst, but I'm very happy with Perl/CGI::Application
You don't even need to be in Silicon Valley. I've gone thru the process there and in Seattle. Its not hard to get funding... if you know what you're doing.

The replies on slashdot disagreed with YC ideology, but that does not make them pure garbage. Slashdot is read by an older (more experienced) crowd than news.yc. It would be a good idea to understand some of where they are coming from-- after all they were around during the last boom when the average YC foundre was not yet a teen!

People whose business it is to fund companies are always lookng for good companies. IF the person who is looking to invest is a good person-- then you will have no trouble getting in touch with them-- if your idea is good.

People who don't quite know how to start a business may need coaching before they can communicate... and remember, of course that %95 of the people who represent VC funds in the Bay Area (and anywhere else) are flatline idiots.

so, think of it as a test of their intelligence, whether they get your idea, rather then your worth.

Also it seems to be common that people think that "connections" are important-- they aren't. Not at all.

You often hear the advice "get someone who knows them to introduce you"... that's if you're chasing money. But don't chase money. Build your think, network with your peers, and the money will chase you. Because your peers will say "damn that's cool" and the money will hear it.

Hell... why do you think VC firms hire all the MBA fools from HARVARD who know nothing about technology and whose only education at harvard was doing lines of coke off the bellies of hookers? their only purpose is to find deals.
Nobody has a need for "solutions"... you use the word "solution" in your pitch, unless its saying "I've got a solution to your specfic problem and its product X" is going to lose customers.

People have learned to tune out that smarmy vague marketing junk.

And, by the way, his two examples are off the mark-- lowes advertises products. Google doesn't advertise but when they do talk about their service they talk about the products.... the specifics of the product.

I am constantly amazed at the number of people who put vague bs on their sites.

I can't count the number of times I've gone to a website where I thought they might have a solution to a problem I'm having (specific) or a need I have (again, specific) and seen a lot of vague bullshit that left me wondering, or unable to determine exactly what it is they do.
Would You Stick Around and Ensure You're a "Good Acquisition" Once You Already Have Your Money?
Start up ideas are cheap but you don't have any
Set your customer's hair on fire
Lisp: Surprise! You're soaking in it
I'm curious what other people think about sticking around after you've been bought? Would you have your deal terms include you getting to walk away immediately? Would you try to stick it out?

Mark Fletcher has said something about making an effort to ensure Ask Jeeves was happy with their acquisition of Bloglines. He hinted that he did this to maintain his reputation.

The Reddit acquisition seems like a pretty typical scenario. Aaron Swartz clearly had no desire to stick out in the Big Evil Corp after he got his check, while the other guys are managing to (so far). I can't help but wondering whether Aaron hurt himself seriously for future acquisitions by leaving in a tumultuous way.
I came to the USA following a professor I just wanted to work with. He came here in the 80's because of the weather (no kidding), given an existing research environment similar to Europe.

Before landing here I thought the USA was a great country. But my preconceptions have fallen.

I am aware I have started a thread that is drifting way off topic and can potentially get very personal. If you'd like to discuss the issue further over a beer, that'd be great. We can then talk about why I pay almost identical income taxes in the USA and in Spain, and yet here my money doesn't seem to come back to me. You can reach me at my surname at ucla edu.
Where's the love? Very critical slashdot comments on PG and YC newsweek article: "... what an arrogant twat."
This method certainly did wonders for Microsoft and should work fine for Facebook. MySpace is mostly doing it as well.

1) Build a platform.

2) Encourage others to develop on your platform.

3) Copy/Crush/Buy the most popular applications yourself.

4) Profit.

Facebook's corporate slogan should be: "Do no evil -- Let others do it first and just copy them if it's popular."
Yes, indeed: http://whoissick.org/sickness/