skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I won't bother linking to all the previous times I've requested you add guidance text to the submissions page, including pointing them to the Feature Requests thread. I'm sure you've seen them yet prefer to leave the page sparse.

Is it intended as some kind of intelligence test on your users? In the same way as not explaining the markup system anywhere? If so, I think it's a silly test, and one your users are happy to fail.

If you haven't got the time to concoct some text, here's a suggestion:

Submit a URL with a well-thought through title to explain its relevance to your audience. Leaving the URL empty will submit a question for discussion. Please ensure submissions are relevant to Startup News; if you want Slashdot, Digg, or Reddit, you know where to find them. There's a thread for Feature Requests, so please add a post to that and refrain from starting anymore "Vote up for ..." threads. There's a bookmarklet to ease submitting, but it doesn't mean these guidelines don't apply.
"Do it right" is more important than "Release Early"
Going to check it out. Thanks for the idea. We've been thinking about "Stormpulse as an embedded service" for a while . . .
Thanks, Ty!

Ideally, anyone interested in this sort of information. That said, there's obviously an advanced tilt to the site right now to support our marketing strategy of going after the most avid enthusiasts first, and the general public second.

We are planning to provide some (hopefully) very useful localization features. Ads and sponsorships would be okay as well. We have sunk in personal investment, but we don't owe any outside financiers; read: we don't feel pressured to make huge sums, nor must we to make anyone happy.
Thanks for the encouragement.

S3, yes. We're happy so far.

Feel free to point out any trouble spots with information density vs. legibility.
By which I assume you mean: 'Make all of it work on the cell phone.' because at least part of it already does.

FlashLite is the answer to getting the Flash component to work on something other than the iPhone :), and I haven't had the time to figure out how to make our ActionScript 2.0 / Flash Player 8 code compatible.

I'm pretty convinced that doing so would be profitable, of course. Problem is, I feel that way about more features/enhancements than we have the time for right now.
Simple Spark: a Catalog of Web Applications (Techcrunch)
Obviously it depends on what you're up to, but I think that in terms of startups, I'm much more inclined to trust PG's judgement than this guy's. In the article, he cites "40,000 lines of code" as something that was impressive to PG in an interview, and then bemoans the fact that they may have to "throw out and rewrite most of their code". I wonder if that's the same 40,000 of Zenter code that Google might have to rewrite in any case to make use of Google's infrastructure?

He also complains about reddit, but once again - they certainly "made something people wanted" even if it does/did have its share of bugs (clear text passwords...).

This is one of those things that needs to be balanced. You do have to have something that basically works, and doesn't crash all over the place, but sometimes adding new features or doing other things might be more important than making everything 100% bulletproof.
That was the most obnoxious view of our youth I've read in a long time. Well done.
rewriting code isn't as bad as some would claim. Because the logic of the code has already been set, a rewrite of the app in another language should take no more than 2 weeks. This is esp. true if your app uses an MVC framework where the view template is separated from the logic.
I'm referring to the tales of orders-of-magnitude flexibility and productivity enhancement, mostly the "Beating the Averages" essay, in other words. Here's a fragment that seems to promise almost magical productivity:

It must have seemed to our competitors that we had some kind of secret weapon-- that we were decoding their Enigma traffic or something. In fact we did have a secret weapon, but it was simpler than they realized. No one was leaking news of their features to us. We were just able to develop software faster than anyone thought possible.
I would consider charging a small fee per minute (to the person calling you).

[edit] I absolutely love this idea! I love to see this kind of thing, too.
The author is right in the domain he's working on, cryptographic security.

For those of us making web sites, we often won't know what "right" is until we put something in front of users.
That idea is highly thievable. Done right, I could see it being a good go-to site for news in general.
seems like you're getting screwed. Try to get a better deal or jump ship. Man do i hate people who screw others.
Implementing Silverlight in 21 Days
Outsourcing for startups
HTML first. Then some SQL. Then some JavaScript. Then BRL (never PHP if you have a choice). Then more SQL. Then more JavaScript.
You might not know what is "right" until you put it in front of users, but at very least you should know that certain things are "not right". Cross-site scripting vulnerabilities fall into the category of "not right" regardless of what your website is supposed to be doing.
Overclocking as a business model
You may want to consider implementing [Idea Futures](http://hanson.gmu.edu/ifextropy.pdf).
For the "comments" page, how about putting each comment in context, by indenting it underneath the submission to which it belongs?

I know you've got a "parent" link there already, but it's not something people are going to click for each one (and the comment text alone is often not enough to figure out what it's in reference to).
The xss vulnerabilities in Reddit aren't a great example, since they haven't harmed the service, same for the password fiasco even.

Reddit's problems are more conceptual: not fixing the recommendation engine and not thinking through the game-theory of their system are the main reasons for Reddit succumbing to the dumbness of crowds so easily.
He picked a bad example. The guys who wrote 40,000 lines of code in 10 weeks were the founders of Zenter, which just got bought by Google. Most startups would love to do as badly as Zenter.

The reason to plunge in and just start coding is that, as in writing, it helps you to have ideas. But since that initial hacking is mainly a way of having ideas, you should be ready to discard a lot of it. That is just what the Zenters did. They rapidly iterated through a bunch of versions, and that's why by Demo Day they had such cool features to wow the audience with.
Usually you get some kind of incentive to work for the acquirer for 1 to 4 years, median 3.
Simple Spark
How to measure the success of your web app
A lot of people here are starting web based businesses, but may not understand the right numbers to look at. This article is like Webonomics 101.
That's out of left field? We were writing code in Lisp, with a read-eval-print loop to test stuff, and they were writing code in C++ with "builds."

There's nothing preposterous in claiming we could implement a serious feature in a couple hours. A lot of people could today with Ruby or Python. But there were no Ruby or Python at the time I'm describing. (An early form of Python existed, but few used it.)
These are all very valid points, although when I started I didn't have much trouble picking them up quickly. Still, a good resouce for beginners.
Founders: would you hire a telecommuting, part-time (but talented) college student?
True, there's no one to keep you in line if you work alone, but there are some people who are disciplined enough to keep themselves in line.

I think the real disadvantage of working alone is that you have no one to bounce ideas off.
why not? with the increasing efficiency in cross border communications, i don't see how remote hiring wouldn't work.
For some reason, the submit page isn't doing dupe checking anymore-- it doesn't take me directly to the discussion page of the article being resubmitted. This means I have to go back to the homepage and find the article I clicked to find the discussion page.

Also, there's no link to the homepage from the submit page-- clicking the icon takes me to the YC main page, not the news.yc main page.
Interesting article. The business definitely seems a bit dirty, and now that registrars themselves are getting into it, I imagine it will get out of hand. They really need to repeal the 2 or 3 day trial period; I think that would take care of a lot of the speculative purchasing going on.
Hey, who's downmodding this guy? No one has ever said a truer thing!
A college student is already a risky proposition, part-time makes the potential payoff smaller, and telecommuting means that it's much harder for a hiring manager to judge the "talented" part of the equation.

So, no.
I ask this partially for myself (as I will be attending school as again in the fall, and am really drawn to the startup environment), but also just in general. What kind of qualifications are generally expected?
this isn't reddit. we value signal/noise here, not cleverness.
Josh, I expected as much, but it is unfortunate to hear. I really want to finish up my degree, but there is not a lot of startup activity in my area, and I am really itching to get involved with one.
I've considered starting my own, but I don't yet have a good idea to go with, and I'd like more experience before I jump the gun.
What if the student were willing to work for equity (obviously a small amount) rather than pay?
Where are you and what skills do you have?

I think starting your own or getting involved with something locally is your best bet. That's the fastest way to get experience.
How much are you looking for an hour? Do you have a pet project in mind? How many hours a week can you work on the project?
It's a considerable risk handing any sort of substantial work to a new person in a small startup. I'm not going to give responsibility to someone who I don't trust completely and, being part-time, may not have the level of commitment to follow through, leaving me high and dry.

As you have probably read elsewhere, the choice of co-founders and early employees is extremely important to a startup.

That said, depending on your skillset, you might want to look for freelance work for smaller companies on places like authenticjobs.com or the 37signals gig board. These will give you good experience and credibility, and require less risk on the part of the hiring company.
I would. If I could afford you now :-) Because if you are really good and really talented, getting you to work with us 2 years after you graduate will be one hell of a lot harder.
Yes, but I would treat him as a contractor and not give him equity.

At least until he is willing to relocate and become involved in the day-to-day operations.
Early hiring is very important. I would evaluate you like a potential cofounder, and start you on a summer project to see how you do. IMO, from the founder's side, it is a small bet to place for a potentially large gain if things work out.

What kind of experience are you looking to get out of it? What skills you got, and where are you located?
Looking for cofounders for a finance-related startup idea
Yeah, it would have to at least start as a pay-as-you-go model for services provided. That's the only way I could see managing the risks (potential inexperienced + remote location).
We (2 guys at the moment) are currently looking for 1 or 2 more cofounders for our finance-related startup project. We are currently in the midst of building the demo, hopefully in time for the Ycombinator winter application, and would love to expand the team.

The startup project is finance-related (forex, stocks, options etc.). If you are interested, do contact me at stepwok|gmail.com and i will provide more details about the project. If you are a regular at elitetrader.com/nuclearphynance.com, we would love to hear from you.
I live in Salt Lake City. I did work for a local "startup", but they a marketing startup where software was a small part of the company, and I was basically the only developer. I am looking for something with more like minded individuals and more software oriented.
I forgot to touch on the skills part of things. I am three years through a CS degree, so I have the experience you'd expect from that (Java/.NET/C++ development, UML, some design, significant math (Calculus, Linear Algebra, Stats), but I have also been working as a Ruby on Rails developer for a year now, and really dived into it. I really love software development, and I am learning Scheme on my own right now. I've been working through SICP and have almost completed chapter 2, doing every single exercise on the way. I've also dabbled with smalltalk and seaside, and that looks appealing as well.
As far as what I would be looking for in a job, I don't really care about the language. If it is one I know already, great, if not, I'd be more than happy to learn a new one. I just want to work with smart, ambitious people in a setting where I can actually do significant work, rather than the drudgery that I have experienced from my corporate experiences so far.
Digg overtakes Facebook; Both cross 20 million U.S. Unique Visitors
Some people just develop software for fun and make it available to the public as an afterthought in the hopes like minded people will find it useful.

That's true. But this is a programming language we're talking about. The goal is to create a good implementation and part of that is having good support. Does a programming language exist if no one uses it?
I answered very similar questions below in response to davidw, so look there for a breakdown. As for the experience I am looking to get out of it... hard to explain exactly. I just find the idea of working with a small group of developers on something innovative to be extremely appealing, and the risk/reward ratio of startups to be satisfying as well. I would much rather work for a startup with a chance to make it big (and a considerable chance to fail) than work for a corp with a guaranteed chance of office politics and mindless drudgery.
Thought this was quite interesting: "Average stay on MySpace is 2x more time than on Facebook." What you think? Comment 4 was also quite interesting!
I would be willing to seriously negotiate pay per hour dependent on the project. I really want to work for something I find interesting and enjoyable, and that is more important to me than money right now. As for specific pet projects, I don't really know at the moment. My interests are many and varied. As for hours per week, starting in August around 20 (I would be willing to increase this for crunch times, but within reason.)
Also, another thing I haven't mentioned yet in this thread, once I graduate, if I was already involved with a project, I would be very willing to relocate. Basically all of the software mechas appeal to me (SF, Seattle, Austin, Boston), so that is a non-issue.
Another question for those that have already responded to this thread: What kinds of things would you be valuable to you in making a hiring decision? Personally I find resumes to be a weak indicator of abilities. Not to say I don't have one, but I don't think a checklist is nearly enough. Would you find a personal blog regularly updated with development related posts worthwhile? Should I spend time learning (reading books, etc) or would I be better off getting a few small pet projects going? In a world with no time limitations, I would like to do all of these things, but that just isn't practical (right now, at least).
Bottom-line, you need experience. I'm young, 22, but got my job as lead developer when I was 20 and in college because no one could argue with my experience. I don't mean you need to go and work for a dozen companies before you can get a job where the founders trust you. Do what I did, manufacture experience. I've written around 10 medium-large scale projects by myself, one being a social network that wowed the founder of my current company.

One thing I know for sure, school means almost nothing. It helps a lot but only when you spend the time learning as much as possible about web technologies. As well as developing and refining your skills as a web developer.
That is precisely what I have been doing. I spend considerable amounts of time learning about web technologies and refining my skills, and it really has nothing to do with making myself employable. On average I would rather experiment with Seaside than play a video game.
I am 21, and actually already have considerable experience in the work field so far, but have been unsatisfied. I think I would find a startup much more to my liking. Perhaps I will have to follow your lead and develop a pet project into something impressive.
Continuous Partial Attention: Software & Solutions
I agree with you, that being said you still can't deny that these things are happening because of human nature...so come on lighten up and enjoy Ms. Livingston's work and contribution to the community.
Hi fireblade!

Yes comp.lang.lisp was very useful to me for the last year. Too bad the group is not available on gmane, and the full archive is only in google, but if you have an NNTP provider (www.motzarella.org for example) you can read it with your newsgroup reader, although you get only the messages from the last month.

Dimiter "malkia" Stanev.
As someone working alone, I find that not being able to bounce ideas off of a parter is not that much of a problem once you have users. You can evaluate ideas based on what users are saying or doing, or just try them out and see what happens. The real disadvantage is that it just isn't as much fun as working together.
I like that attitude. Any way I can contact you? My e-mail is in my profile.
"We are basically trying to help the next generation of founders and entrepreneurs build awesome businesses"
Four hours upfront and then reevaluate - (37signals)
First iPhone dev camp - July 6th - 8th
Yikes, that's awfully long... Is it reasonably negotiable? Are there fields where this is not true?
Perfect. Please send your contact info to jobsdca@yahoo.com.

I would like to hire you.

Answers that question, doesn't it....
I had previously ignored this links on News.YC since hurricanes aren't a passion of mine, but glad I checked it out today. Very well done! Excellent job on the site and the interface. I found myself engrossed and playing with the data for much longer than I anticipated. Keep up the good work!
What startup/VC/tech/internet blogs do you read ?
Other than the standard techcrunch, mashable, feld, kawasaki, slashdot etc.
The Best Startup Strategy - Do What You Love, Or Do What You Know?
I just asked a bunch of friends for possible names. One suggested MyGrub.com. Unfortunately, that was taken, so I settled for MyGrub.net
and... http://www.engadget.com/ , http://gizmodo.com/ ....
would you be equating men in the field of technology by cutey pie??.. I would appreciate respecting her accomplishments equally thank you.
I actually don't read any of the above unless linked from another source - too much noise, not enough signal.

I read Programming Reddit, News.YC, and occasionally Startupping and LambdaTheUltimate. I try to keep up with some blogs of startup-type people - Dharmesh Shah, Joe Kraus, Raganwald, Paul Buchheit, Mark Fletcher, and Marc Andreesen and Wil Schroter look interesting based on their recently-linked news.YC articles.

Also, don't underestimate the importance of good old fashioned dead-tree books. I know it's fashionable to spend all day online now, but I still find I get lots more information out of published works than the Internet (the net is great for pointers to books, though). I read a lot of history, economics, corporate histories, some biographies, theoretical computer science, etc. Some selected titles off my reading history (my library's software keeps track of books I've checked out):

"Founders at Work" (Jessica Livingston), "The Rockefeller Billions" (Jules Abels), "Stocks for the Long Run" (Jeremy Siegel), "The Intelligent Investor" (Benjamin Graham), "When Genius Failed" (Roger Lowenstein), "One Up on Wall Street" (Peter Lynch), "Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes" (Gary Belsky and Thomas Gilovich), "The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money" (John Maynard Keynes), "The Google Story" (David A. Vise), "When the Astors Owned New York" (Justin Kaplan), "Art of the Start" and "Rules for Revolutionaries" (Guy Kawasaki), "Purple Cow" and "Big Red Fez" and "All Marketers are Liars" (Seth Godin), "Microsoft Secrets" (Michael Cusumano), "Damn Right: Behind the scenes with Charlie Munger" (Janet Lowe), "Crossing the Chasm" (Geoffrey Moore), "A Good Hard Kick in the Pants" (Rob Adams), "Innovation and Entrepreneurship" and "The Essential Drucker" (Peter Drucker), "Only the Paranoid Survive" (Andy Grove), "dot.bomb: My days and nights at an Internet goliath" (J. David Kuo), "Accidental Empires" (Robery X. Cringely), "The Microsoft Way" (Randall Stross), "High St@kes, No Prisoners" (Charles Ferguson), "The Making of Microsoft" (Daniel Ichbiah and Susan L. Knepper), "AlmostPerfect: How a bunch of regular guys built WordPerfect Corporation" (W.E. Pete Peterson), "Direct from Dell" (Michael Dell), "Inside Intel" (Tim Jackson), "The Innovator's Dilemma" and "The Innovator's Solution" (Clayton Christianson), "Good to Great" and "Built to Last" (Jim Collins), and "Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh" and "Hackers" by Steven Levy.
As a male, I agree. I don't think this is the proper forum to be remarking on the appearance of others period.

I would assume that the level of conversation here is based on experience and knowledge.
Greg Mankiw: http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/
The Electric Sheep Company: http://blogs.electricsheepcompany.com/sheep/
Any reason why? Its set to "Lucida Grande" which I believe is an okay choice. If someone doesn't have that it defaults to Times New Roman which is safe.

What font would you suggest?
Their email box is going be flooded with YC rejects shortly... (mine included)
What's more with Zenter is that if you've been paying attention around here, about half their codebase is readily downloadable. It's pretty impressive.

In fact when I heard about the Google acquisition one of the first thing's I thought was: That make sense inasmuch as it just continues the trend of Google's apps being the goto place for learning interesting javascript hacks
Thanks, Matt! I was somewhat hesitant to put this up on the news, but since it is our startup and I've been following YC for a while now, I thought some folks might like to see it.

Really happy to hear that you were pulled in even though you're not a storm-o-phile.

We definitely seem to teeter somewhere between 'great interface' and 'whoa, I'm overwhelmed, there's too much data!' Density is what we are striving for, but legibility is paramount.
I really like this idea. I think every developer falls into the trap and I find myself often hammering away at something for way too long.
Practicing the Art of Pitchcraft
Venture capitalists don't have a clue how consumers will behave.
The server technology behind digg (LAMP)
It's a challenging process.... I was consumed by it for months--every word I saw was a potential name. Finally one of my inspirations paid off and I found an open domain I liked (fluther.com).

My only advice is to open your mind to lots of ideas, and try and find a name which will match your branding.

A great tool (I wish I knew about when I was starting):
http://ajaxwhois.com
Dick Costolo
http://www.burningdoor.com/askthewizard/

Marc Andreesen has been amazing lately.
Some of the blogs I read:

http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/

http://weblog.fortnow.com/

http://glinden.blogspot.com/

http://community.livejournal.com/evan_tech/

I used to have a blog called CleverCS that you may have heard of.