skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"If you do detect this kind of market inefficiency, there is an obvious way to arbitrage it -- startup started by and hiring people that market does not properly value."

PG? Is that you??
It's not PG. You could claim that it's an experiment in effect of controversial opinion on karma, I suppose :-)
Note to YCers: Change it Up!
just read on valleywag that might be a lie...
Open standards for social networking
Skype To Use Jingle's 411 Service
Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes, Third Edition

Eh. I taught myself VB 4.0 in, like, 6 minutes.

Books like that of course teach you things as slowly as possible. I've seen programming books that got to arrays on page 450. By contrast, the MIT lectures (where sicp is introduced) is already on recursion vs. iteration and big O() notation by the second hour.
Irony: People Soliciting Diggs on Pownce
Rick Schwartz On Selling Domains
Consumers will buy the products that grant them the most utility. Workers have resources to create the environment such that safe workplaces create products with higher utility (by striking in unsafe environments, demanding higher pay in unsafe environments). Thus workplace safety can be, and is, enforced by consumer demand.

Product safety is indeed regulated by consumer demand. People who value safety purchase safer cars, and safer cars exist to be purchased. When contact solution of a certain brand was found to be contaminated earlier this year, people stopped using it, even before the findings were certain. This is because the expected utility of using the product had fallen compared to that of other brands, and thus it was no longer worth its price.

Pollution control is similar to safety. People are willing to pay a premium for less polluting alternatives. Look at Google scrambling to declare itself a green entity. Look at the resurgence of locally grown food (which consumes less fuel in transport), but often costs more. There are real market forces exerting pressure upon businesses to provide less polluting services. It isn't clear that regulatory forces are being very successful (among other examples, Kyoto Protocol has failed miserably to achieve a meaningful shift).

Enron wasn't rational, as evidenced by committing wide-scale fraud. They were in a euphoric panic, simultaneously high off of their success and panicked that they could not maintain it. Their cavalier disregard to legality and honesty destroyed their company, and even without a governmental body to enforce regulations it seems inevitable that the gathering weight of their deception would have swallowed them whole. They pretended to have resources that didn't exist, and eventually consumers would have been awakened to this truth via a catastrophic failure of one sort or another: the existing government regulation certainly did nothing to curtail the financial pandemic that Enron's bloated corpse transmitted to America's economy.

You have a solid point, that we often don't like which actions are rewarded in life, and that it often seems like government regulation can improve on the allotments of resources: that an organization can compensate for the flawed actions of humans.

This is why we now have organizations (UN) that supervise organizations (countries) that supervise organizations (pronvinces) that supervise organizations (municipal districts), that supervise people. I always thought the idea was to build layers of abstraction on top of working components. Somehow stacking layers of flawed implementations has always seemed to magnify and obfuscate flaws rather than compensate for them.
Technical Question...
For me it's a third option... I got something to prove... to myself
So a couple of days ago, TechCrunch profiled VideoCounter: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/07/01/videocountercom-count-v...

While the company's stats tracking was simplistic (only hits are counted as far as I know), I was curious as to how they accomplished it. They're not inserting any snippets of code (a la Google Analytics) and I'm going to assume that they don't have access to the server logs, so how are they tracking page hits?

Anyone know how they are tracking the stats without embedding code or looking at logs? I'm probably missing something very simple and not knowing is... annoying :)
Did not Paul Buchheit come up with adsense?
I'm almost 100% opposed to a certification process that denies people the right to code if they don't hold certification X.

But this post did get me thinking about a different kind of certification - one based on safety rather than talent.

Society does have a reasonable interest in ensuring that applications that process sensitive personal data - like Social Security Numbers, Medical Information, Financial Information (bank account numbers) - meet a certain standard. And most people have no ability to evaluate the dangers of coding errors.

Society doesn't have the right to demand protection from untalented programmers. If you try to pay as little $$$ as possible, your app may suck, it may never get built, the wrong app may get built, etc... If you pay top dollar, the same thing may happen. If you can't evaluate code, you can't evaluate programmers, so you're hosed - and maybe you shouldn't be in this game. If you decide to play it, buyer beware seems to work fine.

But the general public, whose medical information or ssn is in a database somewhere, didn't decide to play this game - the game was played on them. So we'd say - you don't need any certification to code. But you do need certification to handle certain types of personal data.

And if there's a major hack of an application, we (the public) get to know exactly whose "certified" signature was on that piece of paper.
You can prove them wrong as many times as you want and if your language isn't spelled J-A-V-A or C-# then it doesn't matter how many 9s of uptime you can easily achieve or how much scalability you get for free to them. They've already discounted it in their minds and they're just using industry bullshit-speak to explain it.

I would love to punch Hani Suleiman in the face.
Revver uses embedded ads to track hits on their videos, similar (sort of) to using an invisible image and counting the number of times it has been loaded.

I don't specifically know about VideoCounter, for everything the uninformative article says they could be screenscraping/using public APIs to just grab the image views and using a highly complex summation funtion (typically represented using a plus sign).
Lol okay. I was wondering if there was a magic trick behind it all. If its just screen scraping/api usage with a plus sign... it doesn't seem all that impressive.
I agree with Jey. I had no motivation to explore past the learn more page.
Aspirational Networking
Data de-duplication set up for growth
Why prove anything to anyone?
Just build something cool, make $$$,
move on, build something else cool and make $$$, ....

http://armstrongonsoftware.blogspot.com/2006/08/making-money...
I am going to submit RunFatBoy for consideration. I have a complete working app, so hopefully that will put me in a position of advantage.
How Costco Became the Anti-Wal-Mart
The last paragraph is out of nowhere. Nice.
"But Mr. Sinegal warned that if Costco increased markups to 16 or 18 percent, the company might slip down a dangerous slope and lose discipline in minimizing costs and prices."

Costco's strict attitude toward product markup reminds me of 37Signals frequent assertion that often constraints are a good thing to be embraced.
The garage that built Google
the more people who use something, the easier it is to use it to build products.
Someone with the initials of a city 45 minutes north of palo alto?
eBay Imports Kijiji: Good Idea, Tough Competition
Controversy over who really invented AdSense
Post Your Shopping Needs And Get The Best Offers
I love Costco. For me, the best quote of the article was this:

"The traditional retailer will say: 'I'm selling this for $10. I wonder whether I can get $10.50 or $11.' We say: 'We're selling it for $9. How do we get it down to $8?'"
How to write a Rails Plugin (for controllers)
Results of YCNews online bookmarking survey
Affair with iPhone cools when handset breaks (Apple's Customer Service Top Notch - another reason to go with Apple)
Xbox 360 Repairs Will Cost Microsoft $1B (Good News from MS is hard to find these days)
Andrew Chen: 10% discount for CommunityNext viral marketing conference, effective for 24 hours
Costco also has parallels with Craigslist:

1) Wall Street can't understand why they don't "maximize revenue" by raising prices.

2) They are determined to never allow another company to come in under them and beat their prices.

Both companies stay focused on their customers and the long-term, rather than their critics and the short-term.
New Jeff Han Video - Multi Touch UI
RealityPrime: How Google Earth [Really] Works
RealityPrime: Five Disruptive Technologies You Hardly Ever Hear About
sweet. i am going=)
Google beefs up on machine learning, language processing, and research people.

Yahoo beefs up on people who actually know how to use PHP like a professional.

It's a basic difference in culture.
I heard a story that it was Paul Buchheit's idea but the bosses were not so keen on it. So he stayed up overnight, and implemented a prototype to convince them that it would work and they loved it.
How Not to Find a Co-Founder
Doesn't have to be either-or.

Whatever gives me a better chance at improving something that can and should be improved. If everybody waits for someone else to do it, it'll never get done. So if you think you can do it, you should.
Starting the good 'ol blog up again. We'll see how long this lasts...

Comments on the post much appreciated.
I really hate it when people falsely claim that the fiduciary responsibilities of a public company includes maximizing profits at every opportunity. Thinking long-term and win-win is the truly responsible CEOs job. Costco is the Google of discount warehouses. Wal-mart is Microsoft.
I don't agree. The ability to build products doesn't depend on popularity of the methodology. It's more about your creativity, diligence and willingness.
Why is the last datapoint on all the graphs 0?
Web Biz: How to have 4,000 Users Waiting When You Launch
Not generally one to pimp my own posts, but I thought the numbers might be interesting to folks.
I can't imagine there'd be that much in common across the ~50 YC companies. Your question is probably too general to get a very useful answer.
I think he's misinterpreting a lot these people who are "too driven". Perhaps the reason they don't stop after the windfall is because they're working for themselves and doing what they love? Freedom is the ability to choose what you do, it doesn't mean not working.

I'm not even sure it's accurate to say that "most" don't stop. I personally know some very driven people who have "retired". They're doing things now they feel are more fulfilling or more interesting.
I'll be surprised if Google lasts as long as Microsoft. They sure as hell won't last as long as WalMart. Not a chance.

As has been pointed out, MSFT could destroy half the revenue of google tomorrow by adding an ad blocker to IE. It's probably their long term goal (they do have a long term, you know) to take that revenue, and so they don't bother.

As for CostCo, they simply don't have any choice but to do the best for their shareholders, and that can mean a lot of different things, from apeing WalMart to contrasting with it. 17 dollars an hour (or whatever) for retail workers strikes me as ridiculous, but they may well have a good reason for it. Mom-and-pop shops usually pay minimum, WalMart a few bucks over minimum, while Costco pays more than factory wages. Maybe wages fall under their marketing budget...
1,700/month for a garage? I hope it's a lie.
While Costco does treat its employees a little bit better, people normally ignore the fact that Wal-Mart benefits a huge amount of low-income families who shop there. Costco in the other hand targets the upper-middle-class.

Poor families do not have the space neither the stable income required to shop wholesale.
Fake Steve Jobs: The music industry has finally figured out what we're doing
Coding Horror: Rethinking Design Patterns
Skydeck, Bay Area mobile startup, is looking for OCaml hackers!
I definitely agree with the sentiment but it's difficult to practice without freedom. No one can maintain a sense of wonderment while spending 12 hours a day doing something they hate, for someone they hate, and being exhausted the rest of the time.
It was Omid. He put his job on the line and the company when he bet on AdWords.

http://www.google.com/corporate/execs.html#omid
This might just be me, but I often am unable to use the back button on firefox - its an annoying problem. I have to use the history or some other hack to go back when this happens, about 20% of the time.
The Dilbert Blog: How to Be Creative
Interesting article and interesting website... what tool are you using to generate the graphs?
Lambdas, closures, and the risks of Ruby Magic
I'm definitely not saying that people are "too driven" as though it's a bad thing. I'm simply saying that it seems that many successful people are successful because of their passion and the fact that they'd do the same thing even if it wasn't lucrative. I think that's great.

I define freedom as control over your time, and I was trying to say that you don't need a ton of money to gain control over your time and that it's almost impossible to control your time when you're working for someone else. You're best off figuring out a way to generate passive income.
Costco has a choice in how they do well by their shareholders. They're not forced to play by Wal-Mart rules if they decide to play a different game.

You think it's ridiculous to pay retail workers well. A lot of people think the same thing about Google's perks for engineers. Google has profited immensely from their thinking, and Costco has as well. There's more to running a successful business than what shows up on an SEC filing form.
Coding a web application for both sides of the wall
If I was exactly sure what all these names stand for, I could answer that ;-)

I am sorry that my comment sounded so negative. Actually, I was really impressed about the certification I would fail. All the other "how to hire" articles so far were like "check that the candidate can add 2+2". And I wish I knew more about the methods you propose.

Isn't there always a lurking feeling of "there has to be a better way" in programming?
Google Summer of Code Surpise
Very nice article and I agree with your general point emphatically. The part that seems somewhat off is the comparison of investment bankers/lawyers/doctors and entrepreneurs. Being a professional who sells his time is very different from being an entrepreneur that creates a successful business. How many lawyers or doctors could retire at age 30?
eBay Takes on Craigslist
They are flash graphs that are XML-driven. We pondered CSS graphs (there's a great Rails helper for 'em here: http://nubyonrails.com/pages/css_graphs), but ultimately went with flash because there was a bit less code and they were a touch prettier. I still waffle on that particular decision.
Interesting. I just put up a splash Web page for my own startup, but after reading your post I think I should've done that a long time ago rather than when I'm close to launching a beta. Thanks for sharing.
The argument about what hiring or training focus is "the best" is a little silly, it seems to me, because different companies so obviously have different requirements.

Take Google, as a prototypical high-tech firm, and Getronics, as a prototypical business automation consultancy of the kind that tends to put hackers to sleep but that is quite profitable nonetheless.

Google tries to do things that are sufficiently technologically ahead that it will take competitors years to catch up. They'll work on problems before anybody realized they had them, and do things that might seem ridiculously speculative from the perspective of a Getronics executive, like statistical machine translation. Their hiring and and training seems to focus largely on finding, retaining, and developing intelligent generalists, and specialists in esoteric fields where there is no such thing as certification programs.

Getronics, on the other hand, deals with big business clients who are often satisfied with rather run-off-the-mill technology, as long as it's delivered predictably and uniformly. (Of course, that's harder than it sounds.) A typical big job for Getronics might be to help some organization upgrade from a mainframe with terminals to a SQL server with PCs, without interrupting operations. There's nothing particularly innovative about it (it's been done thousands of times before), and it will likely be tolerated if the resulting solution is a little clumsy, but it had better not go wrong.

Getronics has a long and detailed internal training program, and they like people with very specific experience. They have people who are specialists in, say, office printing systems, and who know all the little quirks you'll run into when you move from Novell print servers to Microsoft print servers. If you work there for a number of years, you progress through a system of internal certifications and ranks that begins to approach those of a military organization.

For Google to behave like Getronics or vice versa would probably be silly. If I held shares in these companies, I'd probably want them both to continue hiring and training much the way they do now, even though they're worlds apart in the ways they do it.
Thanks for posting this. When feedback is solicited its always nice to see a result summary. Often it just disappears into a void.
Thanks and you're right. It was an oversimplification to highlight the fact that many of the people who make the most money don't have control over their time. Some entrepreneurs fit in that category, but there's certainly a huge difference between selling your time and being a successful entrepreneur. That's one of the many reasons why I'm an aspiring entrepreneur and not a professional who sells his time : )
I hope my question gets answered here. In our case we're already incorporated and the product (not a prototype) is going through the final stages of beta testing. We are not very interested in money at this point (certainly not in $20k) but we are interested in good business contacts and very open to suggestions and advice from more experienced folks.

I wonder if this makes any sense for us to submit an application, since there are not 20, we're incorporated, we're not living in a dorm, we don't need $20k and we already have the product. The only thing we'd be interested in is well... good contacts (we're not in Bay Area) and business dev. consulting.
if i click on your name it just tkaes me to page with following info (but not email ID):

user: plinkplonk
created: 135 days ago
karma: 17
about:
What does it mean to invent a product? Adwords is just a name. The actual system was built and rebuilt and improved many times. Eric did do a lot to make it a success though -- he's part of the reason why Google makes so much more money than Yahoo.
Geek War on Terror
Actually 1k is pretty low for a 1 bdrm place, especially in menlo park. Check out sf.craigslist.org
Zoho Launches Facebook's First Office Suite
$50,000 Prize For Top Company At TechCrunch20
Facebook Use Continues to Skyrocket
wow another guy making the same guess! The world is small indeed. =)
WIMAX getting real traction
Instead of the $80 walmart bike, I'd recommend buying a simple, robust, used one for the same price. Bikes in walmart are incredibly low-quality, not properly assembled, they will let you down when you need them the most.
Wow - what is not to like about this, except for the deadline today and the commitment not to launch until their event. We're definitely applying for it with http://www.streamfocus.com .
Geni.com Acquires 5 Million Profiles In 5 Months Through Social Networking and Genealogy
Google is blasted after an employee posts personal opinion of Michael Moore's film 'Sicko' on Google's blog
iPhoneDevCamp: IPhone fanciers (developers) going to camp
Crazy for Facebook (Nearly 16 million people used the site in May - 89% annual increase)
Social networking doesn't influence online shopping
Cambridge hangout - Please name places in Cambridge with good programmers, good food, clean bathrooms, and free wifi.
Verizon technology chief talks fiber
Internet Startup Philosophy
So You Sold Your Company For Millions, What Next?
I've never applied but I'll go ahead and suggest you find a new name for whatever it is you're building...
What Every Entrepreneur Should Know About Giving Thanks In Advance
I think sometimes this creative process of reversing conventional wisdom can lead to useful ideas. More often the way people hit upon such ideas is when the conventional wisdom isn't working for them personally.
I'd like to know more about their "don't advertise" strategy. Do upscale shoppers talk to their friends about the deal they got on Heinz ketchup?
Why Good Developers are Promoted into Unhappiness
"talk about their prototype"

you do realize that this really just means talking about the idea, right?
www.hydroteq.com - Harmony Search Algorithm
Post iPhone damage control.
See Figaro's comment on the valleywag article. He quotes Founders at Work.
I think you'd really have to botch things if you ended up with code that was MORE boilerplate after utilizing design patterns. By their very nature they are intended to promote highly cohesive and lowly coupled code..
I wonder if this strategy makes sense for different kinds of plays-- if you think your app will be cloned as soon as word gets around, and you need a good head-start, maybe advertising what you're doing isn't as good an idea?

I have a feeling that's what's motivating many of the stealth-mode startups.
...and if they _did_ play by Wal-Mart's rules, Wal-Mart would have an easier time beating them.
One the whole it's probably better to update the application incrementally. You'll get more attention that way; we may even suggest ideas...

This statement sounds like the YC team reads unsubmitted applications. Have I misread? Anyone have hints on how to maximize the chance of getting comments back? :)
Now submissions and comments have a delete button, and you can delete comments even if they have children.
We now have this, in the sense that you can see a list of links you've upvoted.
You can now include code in comments:

(def codetree (file)
(trav + 1 (readall (infile file))))

Anything that appears after two newlines and a blank space is treated as code, till there's a line that doesn't begin with a space. This is like the markdown convention, but you don't have to use four spaces; one will do.

Incidentally, the code above tells me the number of nodes in the code tree of a file. Not just leaves, which would be

(len (flat (readall (infile file))))

but interior nodes as well. To me this is the best measure of how long a program is. I used to go by lines of code

(def codelines (file)
(w/infile in file
(summing test
(whilet line (readline in)
(test (aand (find nonwhite line) (isnt it #\;)))))))

but I found this was encouraging me to do the wrong things.

(This kind of test matters because I'm constantly trying to make news.yc shorter as a way of pushing functionality down into Arc.)

Here's trav, btw:

(def trav (f base tree)
(if (atom tree)
(base tree)
(f (trav f base (car tree)) (trav f base (cdr tree)))))

It traverses a tree, doing something at every node. So e.g. CL copy-tree would be

(def copy-tree (tree) (trav cons (fn (x) x) tree))

If you're wondering how the second argument to trav in codetree could be 1, it's because a constant when called as a function simply returns itself. This turns out to be quite handy.
When I was living in Harvard Square I use to always go to Darwin's Ltd. There's one on Cambridge Street and another on Mt. Auburn Street.

I can give a definite on good food, clean bathrooms, and free wifi. As for the good programmers... I'm not so sure about that one.

Enjoy.
New: Code in comments (plus a bit of Arc)
I heard a rumor that doubleclick came up with the idea.