skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm working with an incubator in Atlanta now that gives a couple exercises like this for entrepreneurs. It's actually a good way to get your messaging about your startup sharpened to a finer point. Having a very crisp, easy two sentence overview of your business is difficult but critical.
That's fabulous. I love bite-sized articles like this one.
Equity for lawyers?
It seems that Silicon Valley attorneys typically work on a deferred basis, taking 1-2% equity for $10-20k legal work. Does this type of fee structure work well?

I once remember reading somewhere (possibly by Paul Graham) that trading equity for legal work isn't ideal in many cases.

Additionally, what's the most cost-effective method for filing for a S-Corp/Delaware incorporation? If I have existing incorporation documents, would I be able to go straight to Delaware authorities to apply for a business license?

Thanks in advance for the helpful insight.
Sure, there are qualitative arguments both ways in terms of trust. It was just a conjecture. I'm sure people have done quantitative research on this, and it probably varies by situation anyway, so it is probably not worth discussing further.

But that it is a different thing from off-site vs on-site. I can pretty much guarantee the optimal checkout process (among the universe of checkout processes) would be an integrated solution minimizing the number of steps and abrupt transitions in the overall process. Such an optimal process might include additional options for Google Checkout, PayPal, and others, i.e. third parties for those people who want that.

What it comes down to, is that for every step, there will be a drop off %. Putting checkout on your site allows for less steps. And it allows for more possibilities in look and feel, etc. That is, it allows you to move more freely around the universe of checkout processes toward the optimal process for your particular situation.

From experience, this universe of checkout processes can have vastly different outcomes in terms of sales. By the way, I worked on another site that saw an immediate increase in sales from moving off Yahoo Store to an integrated checkout, and then another big increase when the checkout process was further optimized with, among other things, upselling and coupons right in the process.

I just don't understand the want to move this off-site when you have the capability to do it on-site. I assume the main goal of this site is to sell stuff. So I would imagine that you would at least want to experiment with one of the main things involved with selling stuff, i.e. the checkout process. You could even run experiments testing off-site vs various on-site configurations. I suppose I could see a compelling argument if it took months to create something functional. But it is probably an order of magnitude shorter.
What $10-20K in legal work are you talking about?

If you are talking about incorporation, that costs next to nothing and takes little time. Just do it yourself.

Other than that, it depends how you value your equity. That is, read http://www.paulgraham.com/equity.html
are there any more of these kind of color preference examples? i think i suck at picking colors.
By all means ignore the ads. Using software to physically (so to speak) remove the ads is a much different thing then ignoring them. Advertisers know that a large percentage of viewers are in fact going to ignore them, and that's built into the system.

"What is the point of pushing ads at people who don't want to see them?"

I don't know, what's the point of charging people money for things when they'd really prefer them to be free? This isn't about what you want. This is about people supplying services and/or content, and trying to monetize them in some manner. Again, if you don't like the way they are monetizing these things, don't use them.
I'm sad that the summer is over too. I'll miss the Tuesday dinners quite a bit. I obviously don't have much time to dwell on it, and I'm excited about the future, but I'll always look back fondly on the Y C experience. The atmosphere there was something I'm pretty sure I'll never encounter anywhere else.

I'll probably drop by the dinners in Mountain View so frequently that half of the new founders will think I'm in their batch.
I don't see what's so complicated about that whiteboard. Half the boxes are unnecessary to the point at hand, which is how perforce does bugzilla integration.
Their lawyers can't stop the business model from dying completely. I guess artists will have to make money off touring, which is much more profitable today than it was before. It used to be that artists toured at a loss to promote their album sales; now they won't make any money distributing their music in order to profit off concerts.
This site has a few: http://www.worqx.com/color/combinations.htm
Do you know of any quizzes that test for that kind of perception? I know I'm not colorblind, but I strongly suspect I'm lacking the color-combination-preference circuit.
Sure, grab the nearest girl ask her if your clothes match. If she laughs you fail.

Ok just kidding :) Although girls do generally have more sensitive eyes than guys, so its not totally silly.
"[...]Visitors will leave at the slightest obstacle.

So if you want people to visit and order from your site, don't put any obstacles in their way. Whatever you do, don't force visitors to register."-Paul Graham, "The 10 Secrets of Selling Online: #4. Make Your Site Easy," http://store.yahoo.com/easy.html

By accepting only Google Checkout, you are adding an obstacle to everyone who does not already have a Google Checkout account, and thus discouraging casual browsers from executing a purchase. I'd personally encounter a lot less "mental friction" logging into an existing Paypal account or the like and pressing a few buttons than going to another site, starting creating an account, finding and typing in a credit-card number, enter an address, glance through the Terms of Service, etc...

Of course, depending on your product, there may not be such thing as a "casual browser" who may leave and look at a similar product merely based on the inconvenience of making an account, but it is nevertheless a large obstacle; it's just that the seeker and prize on either side have suddenly increased in strength.
Who's willing to bet that Microsoft is going to be around in the year 2200?
Once you're done, test it on your mom or annoying uncle. If they get it, you're golden.
the article deals only with the mechanics but surprisingly, omits the really hard part - getting emotion to be depicted in the violin tone.
that's why I gave up the violin after 3 years.
A friend of mine was an electrical engineer and a drummer. For a senior project he made some electronic drums. Bessel functions are hard :)
I've already worked in free Tues. meals as part of future budgeting.
Where is the "rails" of EC2? A set of images with all the headaches solved and management baked in?

Mysql clustering/replication?
rails/mongrel scaling?
memcached?
crash recovery/backup?
New GoogleaEURXs Patent: SMS Payment System A
I am under the impression that my clothes mostly match by default, since all my pants are khakis. I just imagined some set of images that I was supposed to compare for appealingness, and then have a hidden set of answers I could compare to; that would demonstrate it pretty strongly for me, without having any power of suggestion involved.
i thought they were smart. but this is all they do.
In my mind advertising and fast food industries have a lot in common. General public kind of needs them right now, but as a society we shall learn to live without such dependence.

P.S. I am a long time AdBlock Plus user and we incorporated its filters (not code) into our own software that performs the same function in IE6&7.
Java-based Startups, do they exist?
I get the feeling that most of the hackers here use something like Ruby on Rails or Django, but obviously I have no scientific evidence to prove this, so that is what brings this question to mind. What about Java? Are any of you using Java at your startup to develop your software infrastructure? If you are not, did you consider it in the beginning? what influenced your specific choice.

What about Dynamic languages written for Java such as Groovy or ColdFusion?
I'm still up-voting for the aviators, but even if I wasn't, that garnered a chuckle.

Mom to Mark. "oh, you're building a website, like Google?"
That was an excellent find.
First off, our gov't should be better at keeping its important secrets. But this guy really has his head up his arse.

Just b/c you live in San Francisco does not mean that you get to know the 49ers plays before they're run. Just b/c you have an apple computer doesn't mean you get to know what features they're releasing next. Just b/c you're a US citizen does not mean that you should have carte-blanche insight into the military and intelligence communties. Secrecy is an important factor in any competition and geo-politics is most certainly a competition.

If he were making the argument that somehow the world is better off knowing the location of our continuity of gov't facilities or the names of our Case Officers (they're not called CIA agents) that would be one thing. But he says that there should be "no secrets." This implies that there should be no competition or that he wants to loose the competitions. Like it or not, we could shut down our entire military and intel services and not a single country would follow suit.

Also posting names of Case Officers can expose their sources and get them killed in the most brutal possible ways. These sources are often dissidents of the most oppressive regimes and they feed us information at great personal risk. I doubt Mr. Young would still do what he did if he looked into the eyes of a dissident whose family just got gunned down in some anonymous basement.

I would say he is a traiter but I think he's just ignoarant.
I'm actually not entirely sure about the $10-20k. This was brought up during discussions with a couple of law firms. All of these firms want to jump straight into VC introductions, so I would imagine most of this money would go towards the legal work associated with raising a Series A.

Regarding incorporation, do you have any suggestions as where to start?

Thanks for responding.
Privacy Startup: Reputation Defender
This is an interesting article. I'm always miffed by numbers as models for cars and computers. In some cases, like BMW, it provides an air of sophistication. But it's lost on me. Once again, it all comes down to branding. Sometimes, branding isn't meant to impress but maintain brand consistency.
Great idea. You're making money off of temporary hype, but the pricing structure has to reflect the variable costs. At some point, you can't make one t-shirt with Twitter on it and make any money, right?
I hate to be so Covey's Seven Habits, but you gotta find someone that has the passion, skills, ethics, and temperament. These are the leadership skills needed to avert the worst situations.

They've gotta be able to communicate and be open-minded. And most of all, they have to have these qualities in lieu of a big ego. Sometimes, we 20-something's think we know a lot more than we actually do. I think the best of us are those that can listen attentively to contrary opinions.
Labor Day
How to think about classes for engineers?
Researchers Can Crack Wireless Keyless Entry to Cars
As a PhD student in engineering, this is not only true in business school research but most other disciplines. There are typically two arguments against this though:

1. Research isn't meant to be applied all the time, but it's academic for academic's sake.

2. Research is relevant, because incremental gains can be picked up by the next researcher. That next researcher could make it relevant for managers and other practitioners.

I also find this troubling. Who said B-School research was ever relevant? Aren't MBA's for networking with the future business world's best and brightest?
Erlang - Google TechTalk Video
This talk will cover the history of Erlang, demonstrate major design goals with a few programming examples and also touch on the subject of the future of Erlang.
IP Telephony Startups Getting Cash
This guy is probably wrong, just like John Walker was probably wrong when he wrote "Microsoft at Apogee" many years ago... http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/msapogee.html .

I don't think that vista will kill MS, nor will losing money on Zune, but I think that the bureaucratization of MS will kill them. Would you buy an OS from the DMV?
Ruby Matters: A Place to Put Your Stuff
Why are so many people into Ruby? I get this question a lot because I speak at a lot of Java conferences and talk about Ruby and JRuby. In this and several more blog entries, I'm going to explore this question in depth.
http://www.mint.com
Google Web Toolkit, which is Java based. It is not popular among most other hackers though and I'm still not sure why. It is a powerful tool for building web applications if you can make it over the initial learning curve.
I sure hope so. I'm a huge fan of my competitors using Java. All these damn RoR and Django guys are too damn fast.
Of course. There's a per-screen (per color) setup charge of $x, so it wouldn't work to have a very small number of subscribers. Fortunately variable costs decrease on a per-unit basis (at volume thresholds) and the relative impact of the fixed costs decreases with each additional unit.
By serving up some HTML, you're giving away content - you might have some rules about redistribution, of course, but esentially, you're giving some HTML and/or images to someone's browser to render as they see fit. If they choose to ignore or excise some of it, that's their business. For instance, screen readers for blind people ignore images.

I sympathize with the advertiser's point of view, because I have several sites myself that get a little bit of money from adsense. However, I'm enough of a believer in freedom to think that if people want to block ads more than they want free content, well, that's what the market will give them in some way or another.
No.

Lawyers don't get equity for a tech startup. Period.

If, on the other hand, your startup is in a heavily litigious or heavily regulated field, you not only will want a lawyer involved from very early, you'll probably want a lawyer holding a stake in your company.

So...for example, an equities or futures trading company: the lawyer gets equity. Equities or futures social networking site: the lawyer gets paid a fee.

Or, medical mal-practice hedge fund (I dunno, I'm just making up a phrase from words that involves lots of litigation and huge smelly contracts): you need a lawyer on your board. Medical Mal the Practical Hedgehog video game: the lawyer gets paid a fee.

Got it? Good.

Incorporation costs a few hundred bucks (even if you get outside help), plus a few hundred bucks for statutory representation in Delaware.
It's gonna be crowded. I've been missing the dinners all summer. Most fun I had in months was when YC was back in town (I think I got less done that week, though...so maybe that's a negative).
wer'nt the folks over at zenter using java?
the entire heist was completely fake, everyone was in on it.

It still really upsets me to see people convicted and sent to jail for not committing any crimes, like To Catch a Predator and the senate foot tapper.
NVIDIA's Playbook
NVIDIA's strategy against the AMD/ATI merger, future AMD Fusion products, as well as Intel's massive, multicore plans.
Voted up because it looks interesting, but listening to people talk is just unbearably slow.
Thanks Joe. Do you have a suggestion as to where I should start with incorporation? I have all of the necessary legal documents.
A FAQ is warning your user support material is failing.

Consider rewriting, augmenting, or restructuring your user guide. How about adding a 'getting started guide', assistants, wizards, or sample walk through documents?

Visit http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/ and browse the posts on technical support and manuals.

Depending on your users, the very acronym FAQ is a hurdle. The majority of potential users have no idea, or desire to learn, what FAQ means.

With every significant release of DssW Power Manager http://www.dssw.co.uk , we have been improving, refining, and adding to the user experience. The core functionality has remained fairly constant but sales increase with each release; more 'get' the concept thanks to better documentation and experience.

Hope this helps,

Graham
Using RoR is like taking a loan. You build it fast, but then spend a lot of time fixing it.
> All of these firms want to jump straight into VC introductions, so I would imagine most of this money would go towards the legal work associated with raising a Series A.

Sounds like a red flag to me. It seems like they're looking out more for themselves than for you and your business, unless for some reason they are super excited about your idea and think it needs a lot of VC cash ASAP to move forward.
I agree, it's more fun to jump right into code instead: http://www.erlang.org/doc/getting_started/part_frame.html
Will there be a software industry in 2200? Or will computers write their own software?
Just curious do people still hack in ColdFusion? I haven't heard from that language in a looong time.
They've made mine.

Sorry, but ads are annoying, period. I don't want to spend time training a Bayesian filter when I already have a filter that works perfectly. I wish the Adpinion folks success, but I will not be contributing to it.

PS: "Hello, Chair, inc."? There's got to be a story behind that.
To clarify, we got very positive feedback from major law firms. Many basically take the stance of trying to get us together with VCs/angels while they draw up the incorporation paperwork, etc.

Frankly, I'd prefer to incorporate on my own and don't want to get too far ahead (i.e VC meetings) while assuming the law firm will cover my ass.
Most of what I said was inferred from the Reddit discussion resulting from the aforementioned interview, and most of the content in that discussion came from people who were actually involved. So, maybe I inferred wrongly; which things weren't true?
The guys in the companies have met, though I don't think either are looking for a merger. I'm sure they've discussed "synergies".

They are, despite appearances to the contrary, being used in very different markets, as epi hints at. Wufoo is very heavily tilted towards business users, with a client list including a nice little chunk of the Fortune 500 (and Virtualmin, Inc. as we use it for our "get a T-shirt" form). Weebly is heavily favored by individuals. I don't know of any big businesses using Weebly, but they've got like a billion people using it for personal websites (I've setup one, and I might even move my personal blog over).

Wufoo did just add a very simple checkout module, which may be the thing that pushes them into the mainstream with individuals selling small goods. But I dunno if that's how it's shaking out. I suspect it is small businesses and organizations, like always, but now they're collecting payments for their field trips or bake sales or T-shirts or whatever it is they're organizing with the form.
Java is definately a viable choice, no matter how unpopular it currently is. It has some real advantages over Ruby, the most important being speed, which translates into productivity if the alternative is mixing C and Ruby. Another advantage is proper unicode support.

I still decided against Java because I feel that meta programming could be that great enabler of the next productivity revolution. A revolution that smarter people than me have experienced ages ago. Having explored Java to some extremes, I know that many of the complexities of something like J2EE are down to the lack of powerful language internal meta programming facilities.

Why not JRuby? Because right now JRuby is even slower than C based Ruby and Ruby 2 will have a virtual machine too, which doesn't have to concern itself with anything other than serving Ruby.

Yes, Java has a lot of libraries. But how many of those am I really using in my startup? Quite a few, and it does take me some time to figure out good alternatives for Ruby. But at the end of the day the library issue doesn't make a big difference in my case.

The only thing that really concerns me about the popular dynamic languages is raw speed for algorithmic stuff. Yes I do need that for what I'm doing. If lisp had any momentum whatsoever I'd gladly jump onto something like sbcl because it has all the metaprogramming facilities and it's as fast as C.
We're using both Java and Ruby.
We started out with Ruby and Rails, which worked great for the prototype but we have some very processor-intensive operations and the Ruby code won't scale. Rewriting these in Java produced an instant 100-fold performance improvement, so going forward we're doing that stuff in Java.
On the other hand, we have some text-processing stuff where Ruby really shines. Having used Ruby for that I'd never go back to Java for such tasks.
What is the big difference between ignoring them and not displaying them? I really don't get it, unless you count on the subtle effect on the subconsciousness if you only ignore them, but not display them. And it is an entirely different question from asking money for things that people would rather have for free.

Just because you put up some content doesn't mean you get to control the brains of your clients.
A new library for composing PDF documents in Haskell
Hm, and ASP was not designed by committee? I thought it is a Microsoft thing, which hardly lends much hacker credibility.

Contrary to what many people think, Java is actually often the coders choice in the companies that adapt Java. It is not only a management decision - in smaller companies, the coders actually have a say...
And it will mean you can't use it from a library or a phone.
I actually like the regexp implementation of Java, and it is more complete than in most other languages. There are also many options for XML parsers. Where does the advantage for Ruby lie?
Make some Ad-click and win free Money !! Offer now
Make some Ad-click and win free Money !! Offer now
It's true for every language you don't know well. No one writes bug free Java code from scratch after few months of experience.

Also, even if you're right, it's not that bad, as it sounds. It's not possible to write something good at a first try. Code, like wine, takes time. A language that fools you to think otherwise makes your work harder.

I think the whole problem with Rails is the premise that you can create whole sites in a minute or two, literally without any significant experience.
This is the power of feedback. Nice post!
I think if the ads come from the same server as the web site, AdBlocker is screwed? So I guess that is what is going to happen - which is good, because it reduces the amount of tracking the advertising companies can do on the user.
Java often feels like "playing fetch" to me:

http://journal.dedasys.com/articles/2006/11/23/playing-fetch

In other words, there's so much makework that a small team is at a disadvantage compared to a bigger team, which is not the kind of playing field a startup wants to be on.
www.dimdim.com
I think these guyz use Java.
The firm should do the work for deferred cash payment. I.e. they do $25k of legal work, and you pay up when you get real money. You obviously need to look credible / have good intros / etc.

They shouldn't get equity because they don't _really_ add that much value at an early stage. It will also look bad to investors if you give equity to people who shouldn't have it. Work on your product, ask questions later.

Set up an S corporation if you incorporate yourself.
This question can be answered only by Wikipedia IT since they are with the experience with Wikipedia needs in all aspects.
What are your sources for dicsovering new music? I certainly know good music from after 69, but in recent years I have been slacking in my research. I don't think it would be fair to judge current music just by the stuff you get to hear on MTV or radio.