skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There's a truth in SteveB words. Nokia is currently the #1 mobile vendor because they sell very (VERY) cheap mobile phone in Asia (especially Hong Kong and South East Asia countries).

Those countries have billions citizens compare to North America and I'm almost sure iPhone would be unreachable (in terms of cost) there.

iPod is a different "thing". iPod is a market maker (I know other companies have come up with MP3 players before but none of them made a SPLASH).

Sometime it is useful to have business or economy skill than just plain programming/coding skill :)
I don't think you've been in academia much. Professors just put their names on things :)
Actually I have.

And top notch professors -- such as those at Stanford -- will generally not do that.
Microsoft drops hints about Internet Explorer 8
And top notch students -- such as those at Stanford -- don't necessarily need professors to come up with things like this.

It was a joke, by the way.
I'm excited for the software industry by any development that loosens patent rights. However, I am also concerned for medicine and other capital-intense industries that need strong patent laws to make innovation worthwhile. Why can't we have separate patent laws for separate industries? If our goal is "to encourage the useful arts", then this makes perfect sense.

Basically, an inventor needs an expected value return of X to have the incentive to invent, where X is the amount that invention costs (including opportunity costs). X is billions of dollars in pharma and only a few thousand in software.

Look which companies line up on different sides of any patent debate. It's informative.
Also, X is insanely low on many creative works (with the exception of high-budget movies)
The thing that works about the Chinese hybrid is that it's a step more capitalist than what they had before. They could repeat that step and have more, and broader, success still.
Digg for developers
Yahoo Launches Browser Version of Messenger
Ajax: Selecting the Framework that Fits (5 frameworks reviewed)
Silverlight Streaming: Roxio Buzz Demo
Who are you and what do you do?
I'm Paul Stamatiou and I'm a 20 year old undergrad at Georgia Tech majoring in Computational Media, I'm an avid tech blogger (link in profile) and am building a party-related web app on the side... and I'm procrastinating from studying for my CS final.
I own 5 dot-com domains. I'm super-rich! yay!

But seriously, bubble's definitely here again. Which ain't a bad thing... if you play smart!
No MochiKit? I guess it's probably considered a meta-framework.
Bravo Mark for saying what a lot of us were thinking!
A Hard Lesson About Planning For Scale
The 3 Culprits That Typically Kill Startups
5 Tips to Start-Up Success with your Significant Other
Digg CEO: I stand by Kevin
The Chinese government (and people) look towards Russia's economic collapse as what happens when you move towards democracy too quickly. They are getting there but it is a slow process. China could not stay united without an authoritarian government. The Communist party will always rule China but maybe in 30 or 40 years the president will resign and announce his successor will be elected.
Anyone interested in sharing an apt/house in Cambridge this summer to work on startups?
I guess if you don't have a family to support and don't plan on having one, you too can be an entrepreneur, no matter your age.
And they were slow to load... and they had a default UI akin to Lotus Notes... and they didn't fit in seamlessly with the rest of the page.
Classic case of 'Do as I say, not as I do' ;)

"How to protect company's data"

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2006/11/01/8392042/index.htm
awesome, I'm my site is worth $8mil. any buyers?
Quite agree with your opinion about patent rights. Those who innovate are in trouble. Those who are copycats, are happy. Good artists innovate. Great artists steal.
paul. will you take a double-double and a side of fries?
I keep get the feeling that we (technical folks) are doing a great job of solving our problems while most of the non-technical folks get left behind.

It seems as though if we better understood the world from their perspective, there's a lot of value yet to be create by us for the needs of non-technical people. Generally speaking, creating value is profitable.

Good article.
"handing a copied HD-DVD to a friend is stealing"

I don't agree. Handing a copied vhs isn't illegal. Its illegal to sell it to him. Perhaps the license on HD-DVD's is more strictly worded but no one is going to be criminally charged with copying a hd-dvd and giving it to a friend.

"represents a failure to appreciate creation, innovation and the advancement of arts and technology."
WHAT?! Failure to recognize copying as theft? Tell that to art thieves.

What would happen if copyright law disappeared tomorrow? Would creation, innovation and the advancement of arts or technology halt? Would it slow? Would it grow? I think the fine arts throughout history are much more amazing than the crap hollywood puts out. Did they need copyright law? Why should the right of the cooperate citizen outweigh the right of a fan who would rebroadcast a work at their own expense?
make it... 5 burritos and I'll consider.
Pandora To shut Out Non-US Users Thursday Evening
The unfortunate result of this:

http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=2637

R.I.P.
I have a feeling that age doesn't matter, but lifestyle (due to commitments) is incredibly important.

the case where you not only have zero leisure time but indeed work so hard that you endanger your health.

http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html

If you can't work that hard due to commitments then you are going to have a hard time of it.
Programming Tip: Learn a Graphics Editor
A trillion dollars can trickle down into quite a few crevices.

I think it's a given that China will want to invest in technology, including start-ups of many sorts. They might dispatch a roving horde of state-appointed VCs to tip the scale. With that kind of money, all bets are off.

They might also toss some billions into existing VC funds, so it expands the pool.
Too bad they weren't using Mozy!
Amazon fixes broken S3 pricing
I probably wouldn't have thought about that either. Although I hope to have a problem like yours one day.
I like it.

Indeed, what's the point of promoting entrepreneurial and economic growth if we sabotage it via these "suffocation" tactics?

Giving lip service to entrepreneurship certainly isn't going to beef up any of our local enterprises. We definitely have to recognize that and get out of our own way.
Has anyone else noticed their karma going haywire recently?
In the past week or so my karma has gone from 267 to 270 to 262, with the only moderation I've received in that time being one comment that got an upvote. Has anyone else noticed similar weirdness?
Your startup's online, but nobody's visiting?  Here's the fix.
Branding on the cheap: 99 tips for poor web startups
Funny, I thought about posting this same question. I'm looking for an apartment on the Red Line right now. I'm moving there within a couple weeks to start a job with a Boston-based startup. I'm not planning on working out of my apartment, but I'm certainly open to having such a person as a roommate. Shoot me an email. df at my username dot us.
I haven't noticed anything. If it went down and you weren't moderated, maybe the vote cheating algorithm was changed and you were getting more or less karma from people that already modded you up or done.
Three golden rules of success in today's brutal web 2.0 world.
I was curious to know what this guy could sell for 500$ a pop, after 10 weeks of development. Eventually, I found this:

http://www.socialparking.com/

"If you had the power to control hundreds of thousands of unique Internet visitors each and every day, where would you send them?"

It looks like he's planning to create content for domain name squatters. He's also done search engine optimization before under Zen Marketing, and chinese translations under yet another "startup".

Ethics aside, I thought that it was interesting to see that someone can manage a startup while being in China. I'd love to do that, although I'm not sure that the YC model would work. Funding would be a problem.
Everything you need to master RoR in one place
"ordinary innovation", "a common sense standard", "dramatically broadened the standard of obviousness"

Surreal. I looked for related articles, and I found:

Court cases threaten weaker patents and could hinder technological innovation, http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070501/BUSINESS01/705010325/1066/BUSINESS01

Supreme Court ruling could squeeze Big Pharma, http://money.cnn.com/2007/05/01/news/companies/patent/?postversion=2007050209

Supreme Court Patent Ruling Wont Affect Us, [patent holder] DataTreasury Says, http://www.digitaltransactions.net/newsstory.cfm?newsid=1343

I'd say that anything that is that vague and imprecise is a net loss for us. It empowers lawyers to find creative interpretations, and thus, it helps big cos.
The whole map looks like an oddly distorted eastern hemisphere:

The 'Myspace Bands' occupy approximately the position of Korea, and Hainan is represented by 'interactive myspace memes' (I think that's what it says)

the 'angsty blog sites' occupy Thailand/Cambodia/Vietnam/Laos,

various of the archipelagos look like federated micronesia, the Philippines, and Indonesia,

Japan is in there somewhere skewed and split (secondlife/wow + broadcaster/flickr/last)

Compare: http://worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/as.htm
Paul Graham - The Record Label Executive
The Digg Story: Why Users Remain King
Start-up Robot Genius deploys new security technology
Cell Phone Software: The Billion-Dollar Sand Trap
Someone went through my posts and modded down about twenty in a row. Took at all the karma I gained and then some from the six hours I spent on my last blog post.
share Apollo apps on ApolloHunter.com
My PC thinks Silverlight is a Virus!
Paul has learned to reduce his risk by now rarely funding undergraduates and teams without demos.
Pandora To Shut Out Non-U.S. Users Thursday Evening
[removed after further reflection - sorry]
Internet Software Services (Gates Email)
PHP regular expressions examples
'... The one-hit wonder is never the guy who creates a new type of music ...'

I really like this article. It has an opinion, bit sarcastic and tells a good story and totally misses the point. Lets start using the music industry analogy.

Firstly all the guys trying out in the contest are mostly musicians. Musicians that can firstly have enough skill to play instruments, have the youth, energy and attitude to create their own tunes and sound. They come from a different era of their predecessors. Turned off by the gimmicky clothes, fancy hairdo's and makeup of binary boys of the 80's and 90's.

More important they are students of music. They have a band, can play their own music but are missing something. Not talent, not ideas (well mostly) but the knowledge and chance to play a good gig and record and commercialise. Do they sell out and re-create the cheesy sounds of the middle of the road Windbag Recording studios? Do they defect to the artsy experimental Sol Records?

No. They know in their heart there is a new sound. More importantly they know there is a growing audience that is looking for a new sound. A new sound that says, "screw you record companies. we can do it for ourselves. we don't care what you think... %$ush off &!@(^@!!! " And so begins the bad-boy image.

Now lets look at the exec. He's a Rollins type guy. Had quite a few hits way back and understands the music industry. More importantly whats wrong with it. There is a gap. A big gap. All the suits are funding bands with mega-dollars for wardrobe, explosions and experimental albums with 27 minute guitar solos.

So along with a few other band members and roadies they create a company and hatch a plan to blow the other record companies and distributors out of the water. By reducing the cost to sign, nurture and release unknown bands and make some profit at the same time nurturing talent. Something the big boys have seem to have forgotten.

Thats right unknown bands. Untested, talented, raw and more importantly ones that want to succeed at all costs with an attitude that makes the older more established bands sneer at the youngsters. With their clunky looking instruments, ripped t-shirts and shorts and attitude. They sneer also because they realise, these youngsters can do what they cannot do. Faster, with less money still managing to listen to their audience and evolve where required.

Then one has a hit. Others in the label start getting serious airplay. The suits take notice and a new sound is created.

Sound fanciful? Well I'm really just re-telling the story of punk-music. A movement that smashed the pomposity of the glam-rock 70's and while short lived and patchy allowed a core group of musicians to succeed where they otherwise they could not have. In the process giving us Lou Reed, Pretenders, Romones, Blondie, Pattie Smith, Talking Heads etc.

YC is that anti-establishment incarnation of punk music in software. Long live 'minimalism, speed, and arrogance' ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punk_music#Early_history
I think it is a good article from a completely different perspective than I had previously considered. I don't know that it's completely accurate, but it makes for a good read.

I would really like to see blog authors be more careful proofreading, though. I mean, at least read the first sentence to make sure that it is grammatically correct, because it sets the tone for the whole article.
New York Times on the social news uproar
It looks to me like the virus software thinks it's a virus simply because it's a .exe file in the cache, not because it's actually any indexed virus.
Wetter Mannheim Deutschland Wettervorhersage Wetterdienst Reisewetter Vorhersage auf wetter.de
What does democracy have to do with capitalism? China (and hell, Dubai) is proof that there is no necessary link.
I know him since we were about 4 years old. ;)
Record Label Executives aren't out finding bands. They have low-level lackeys that do that. Designated representatives are the guys that put on the "hip" face for the company, not anyone with actual power and connections. The only real important thing about them is that they've been designated to hold the keys to the kingdom. Their main purpose is to get the band to sign a preliminary agreement to prevent them from signing with anyone else. [1]

By the time you get to the actual contract, the deal is a complicated 40-page mess that could very well be screwing the artists using a variety of different tricks. [2]

The YC teams can confirm or deny this, but from everything I've read, the terms are quite clear and straightforward. The basic exchange is funding and support for shares in the company, though there may be some relevant adjustments on an individual basis. Participants understand the deal before they have to agree to it, and so far basically always decide it's a win-win. PG is not a lackey for some larger organization, and doesn't try to confuse young companies and trick/coerce them into signing bad deals.

[1] http://negativland.com/albini.html - Semi-Rant about the situation from the guy who produced Nirvana's "In Uetero"

[2] http://www.music-law.com/contractbasics.html - Article about Music Contracts
Why some people excel and others do not - Mindset, believe in your own potential
Anything that can install on your system through your browser without your knowledge or permission is petty close to a virus IMHO.
why do you think some of us are good at what we do and others are not?
You're correct, unless your hardware is specifically designed for lambda calculus (like one of those old lisp machines), lambda code gets compiled into Turing instructions.

But why code in a Turing style (whether it's Java or assembly) when lambda programming is more efficient?

That's the point all the lambda folks are making.
Most marketing lacks balls -or- This coffee sucks
Google Reader Integrates With Gmail, 2007 is "Year of Integration" at Google
That's an excellent list of regexes, but I'm a bit torn about whether to recommend using it. One the one hand, regexes are a good and sometimes interesting mental exercise. On the other hand, small little discrepancies can cause you headaches. But no pain, no gain...

I guess unlike, say, sorting algorithms, which are fairly straightforward, text matching requirements are fickle enough that fixed lists are less helpful. I'm pretty surprised at that software written just for regexes.
I have a feeling this guy doesnt know what he's talking about. I see what he's trying to say, but he probably shouldn't talk about something he's not involved in or is familiar with.

Take point #3 for example. Has he not heard of OTA installation? That is the way things are done nowadays, not transfer over the USB cable.

Basically all of his points are BS with the exception of #1. Compatibility differences really are the problem with cell phone development. But this really just makes the barriers for entry higher. Cool things are still possible. Also, I'm not seeing THAT many cell phone startups right now.. At least not as many as I would expect.
is this is all true if it is so, so go and fuck your self with a water maloon
Stop Screwing Around and Focus, Will Ya?
"It's easy to look at Paul Graham and think - hey, he's one of the boys! He's a hacker, just like us! He cares about the technology! Well, if you ever were put in Paul Grahams position as a partner in an investment portfolio, you would stop being the way you are now. Being an investor means that you are playing a hacking game too, but the object of this hacking game is to make you some money. And to do that, you cannot take 10 risky investments - you have to go with 8 safe investments, and take 2 risky investments."

The point of diversifying is that you can make only risky investments. If a VC is honestly putting his money into the safest companies, rather than the ones with the highest risk-adjusted return, he should be fired.
I like the general attitude of your article, but I'm not too fond of the certainty of tone used regarding the fairly general and debated topic of "achievement." I have a great interest in that subject, but far too often the writings about it are written too casually and to some extent, carelessly.

Mindset and hard work are undeniably important factors. There has been an accumulation of studies dealing with this stuff, which is a good thing, but still not enough to be conclusive. Fairly recently, one such study surveyed two classes; in one class, students were told that intelligence is all genetic, and in the other, is changeable by effort. Over x years, the second class had an overally higher achievement score.

This is encouraging news, but usually the metrics involved are fairly specific and limited, the timeframe too short (2 years in highschool cannot predict much), this and that and more. Regardless, every step is a step. But research artcile or not, when you deal with this topic, you need to have grounds for your discussion.

All children are not smart. There are smart kids, dumb kids, and average kids. A kid who can read the NYTimes within 48 months of birth (Sho Yano) is no average kid. Self confidence is important, but you tread into chicken and egg territory: confidence is intertwined with external feedback. You can be confident because you think you are good. You can also be, because you know you are good. There is a drastic difference here: the latter needs a foundation for reasoning.

oops i wrote a bit too much... this is just an area im particularly interested in. but such an open ended question is probably not going to give you definite answers. anthony robbins probably has a lot to say, but half of what he writes is like pulled from the clouds... kinda fluffy and cool but all vapor and volumeless.
Reason #12 not to go into mobile wireless: Not even the people writing about it have any idea what they're talking about. :-)
social squatting seems like an interesting concept. perhaps a user only needs one cookie written, and then can receive targetted information across all squatted domains within the partnership circle.

as for doing YC in China, I doubt it would work anytime soon. everything I've seen and heard so far says that the world's creativity centers are still in the western hemisphere.
yeap, I'm pretty interested into this subject also. I don't have any grounds in this field, it's just about personal experience in dealing with smart/dumb people. and it's not related only to being smart or not, it's related to everything, even sports. I've met people who've set their mind to be great at something and they succeeded.

I'm not talking about those exceptions who read or write when others can barely speak, I'm referring to the majority here.
I don't agree with one of your points: intelligence is not changeable by effort, it's actually changeable by mindset and self confidence.

For example the number one guy in my university was also the guy working the most. but he was not brilliant, he was only really determined to be the best.
thanks for your comments ;)
The odd thing about this post is that it's not merely mistaken,
but diametrically opposite from the truth. The thesis seems to
be that because of my "position as a partner in an investment
portfolio" (what?) I'm forced to choose bland, unimaginative
startups that will turn a quick profit. In fact one of the
defining differences of YC is that we don't have to do this.
Because we make a large number of small investments instead of
a small number of large ones, we can and do fund the
riskiest projects we can find.

This whole article seems to be based on a misunderstanding of
why Reddit succeeded. It looks so simple; therefore it must have
succeeded merely because I promoted it. But everything simple looks
easy in hindsight. If it was so easy, why didn't anyone do it before? Technically it was possible to build 10 years ago.

(And no, Reddit didn't copy Digg. The founders of Reddit didn't know about Digg when they started, and the two derive from
different sources. Digg is Slashdot with voting instead of editors. Reddit is
Del.icio.us/popular driven by voting instead of bookmarking.)
Even if you take what the article says at face value, the implication that PG is morally bankrupt doesn't work, because of the following: music bosses are morally bankrupt because they get wildly unimaginably rich off artists' efforts, and prevent said artists from getting even mildly well-off. If PG were like a music boss, he would take 100% of the company for $20k, and proceed to make the startup sign an agreement that prohibited investment from any other firm. Then, he'd sue the users of said startup for using said startup's product, on the rationale that he was defending said startup's founders.
Do you mean someone downmodded your comments? It's not possible to downmod submissions. I looked at your last couple comments and no one had downmodded them.