skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Engineers can be great at selling, given one major caveat. They must learn to communicate with people who are less sophisticated then they are without being condescending.

I was (shockingly) successful at selling for 3 simple reasons.

1 - I know what I'm talking about.
2 - I tell the truth.
3 - I don't care what other people think of me.

If you can share ideas well, and have prior three traits, you'll stand out. The biggest issue I had was confusion about what selling is. Selling is not 3 martini lunches at strip clubs, or schmoozing with execs. Selling is about sharing a story about how you can (or even more important, cannot) help a person/company solve a problem.

Note, this is a rather different type of selling than so called cold-calling (I can't imagine a more perfect personal hell, than doing that).
FTP over S3 - Feedback please
We are a data management startup and we are looking at building a web-based app that allows the setup and management of ftp users and ftp over s3 for businesses.

The rational:
1) web-based management of s3 is lacking and thus hard to use (e.g., you can't limit Frank to use only 5GB and Sarah to have 9GB)
2) s3 provides a "never ending" supply of centralized online storage
3) but users are not familiar with s3, but know ftp and have ftp clients

Thoughts?
Should Designers & Developers Do Usability? (smaller dev teams can benefit doing own user testing & usability)
(Classic) How Palm defined themselves against Windows and Balmer
During your lifetime you'll be faced with a certain number of problems. Each problem requires a certain number of thoughts to solve, and the faster you think, the faster you solve those problems. Carefully choosing which problems you apply your thoughts to will also allow you live longer because if you sidestep a problem you won't spend any time thinking about it. This leaves you with more time to do with as you choose, which has the effect of making you live longer. Nifty, huh? :)

Thinking faster also has the side effect of giving you a greater influence upon humanity. If you assume that any given thought has a certain chance of influencing others, then the more thoughts you have, the more influential you can become.

But wait, isn't our rate of thought fixed? I don't think so. Every single part of us - our muscles, our reading speed, our tools - can all be improved. Why should our rate of thinking be the exception?

I was driving home from work today and stumbled upon this theory. I want to enrich at least one other person's day with it, as it enriched mine. So, to all of you, I encourage you to spend time thinking of ways to think faster, think more, and think smarter. It will make you live longer and add value to anything you apply yourself to.

Shawn
Web 2.0 explained by Porn
I don't know if it is thinking fast as more than acting fast and then correcting yourself quickly....
It's genius they're using Flash to play it, but seriously crippled by requiring the Java applet.

Very interesting work, I'll be watching those guys very closely.
Relationship between simple logical specifications & intuitive user interfaces (they don't coincide often do they?)
For example, an intuitive WYSIWYG word processor is probably full of ugly and unnecessary special cases in the spec. Intuitive user experiences are often not the most simple and logical ones.

I guess part of the reason for this is that you need to preserve backwards compatibility with the user's previous experiences. And this includes some ugliness from early software.

But there's probably also a limit in terms of what average users can understand in terms of what's logical, consistent, and simple.
S3 as-is has a long way to go before being friendly for the end user. There's some neat technology at the core with a pretty poor interface on top (unless you're fairly tech savvy).

I think it sounds like an interesting idea, and something that no one has come close to successfully tackling yet.
Haven't seen a lot written on this. It's so true. I also agree competition can help you focus yourself. It can provide a valuable reference for drawing lines in the sand.

Above all, what always comforts me is knowing that most companies half-ass a lot of stuff or get screwed up in some way. Bill Gates remarked how refreshing Steve Jobs is as competition: at least he sticks around, unlike the hordes of competitors he's faced.

Companies that really are ready to fight to the death are extremely rare. If you're one of them it doesn't matter how smart or rich the competition is, they should be scared of you.
Another Facebook App Acquisition: Slide buys Favorite Peeps for $60k, or 4.6 cents US per user
I think that initially, it is hard to develop both clean code and good UI simultaneously. At least in my experience, in developing a hybrid CMS/shopping framework from scratch, I had no specs to start from, so it was a fairly intense iterative process.

I would start with some functionality, ugly as it may be and then switch over to work on the code for a while. I would then look for common code areas and try to come up with functions or classes that were as general as possible. Some might say I'm too picky about leaving things to generalized, but even though my codebase is 90% procedural, I and others have little problems, debugging and/or adding functionality.

I also took great care to generalize as much of the UI as possible. Even though there aren't too many objects in play, sweeping presentation changes in both layout and style are fairly easy.

I guess, to answer your question, an intuitive user interface takes time, as does clean reusable code. A programmer who is disciplined to see the value in both would most likely be able to start a new project with both in place. Unless you have done it before, it will take time and you will mostly likely fall towards one side.

I have done most of my coding solo, but I suspect that in a team, the most important keys to success, aside from technical excellence, would be clear communication and a well-defined goal.

Really short answer, you can have both, but you need relevant experience, good communication, a clear goal, and the ever elusive time.
It would be cool to also add the ability to upload files to S3 via email.
I made this a while ago, but I don't know what to do with it? Ideas?
The point I am making does not concern the ability of the developer to write clean code.

Rather, I am asking whether it is even possible in principle to have a clean spec that corresponds to an intuitive UI.
oh boy, I can tell that just by asking this question you clearly know nada about the mobile world...

good luck, don't let it discourage you.
Q&A with Max Levchin: Slide more than a widget-maker
I believe the basic algorithm is truly novel. The usage of colors is a little bit of a gimmick, but is an interesting way to store data.

I'm just not sure what I could use it for or if anyone might be interested in it.

One interesting aspect is that the algorithm is very dependent on the bit length of each chunk of the key as well as how many chunks there are. Almost like there is a meta-key.

Without this knowledge, even if you were to guess the entire key correctly, decryption fails without any indication that you were close.

As noted at the bottom of the page, I came up with the basic algorithm in 2002. I was researching several other cryptosystems and it was one of those "eureka" type moments.

So, any ideas, comments, criticism, or whatever is welcome.
Google Code: Search before you spend 2000 hours porting Rails to JavaScript
Techcrunch Database: Y Combinator's Profile Page
I think there needs to be a bit more of a description of why it's different and better.

Run it by Bruce.
Gotcha... missed that.

I would still say that only with lots of relevant experience could a project manager or whomever spec it cleanly and intuitively.

So in theory, it think it is possible, but not at all easy. It would take a lot more time than "normal".

I wonder if that much forethought might save more time than would be otherwise spent on development and testing?

Kind of like the adage of "cut twice, measure once".
I realize there are a lot of talented hackers in India, but our next "destination" is the 99% of hackers in the US who could start startups and instead just go get jobs at big companies. Even in the US, we've just begun.
Uhh, simply thinking faster doesn't mean you'll think the appropriate thoughts to come to your desired solution.

Without emotion there's no real compelling reason to choose one arbitrary course of action over another, and it takes time for the chemical bath to build up and wear off.

Most of our decision-making is unconscious anyway. See the Precognitive Carousel:

http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1422464

http://reddit.com/info/1cqi4/comments/c1ctfp

The subjects already had electrodes implanted in their brains, and the experimenter "gave them a slideshow to watch, with a button to push to advance to the next slide. But the button was fake. What really moved the slide was a motor potential building in the brain before they were aware of the desire to move it. It unnerved the patients, because it seemed to them as if the projector was always advancing just before they'd consciously decided to advance it."

Your unconscious decides to do something about half a second to a second before letting your conscious know about it.

> then the more thoughts you have, the more influential you can become.

The old quantity over quality argument, eh?

> think smarter.

Well, I guess that solves everything! Thanks!
Well, compared to Bruce's Blowfish, it too is symmetric with a variable key length. What is different about ColorBlynd is that the block length can vary and the number of blocks within the key varies as well.

What this does is add a "meta key" beyond simply knowing the key. The meta key includes how the key is broken down into blocks. And the number of blocks is used during each round relative to the block length.

So if you know the exact key, but don't know how many blocks there are or how many bits per block, you wouldn't know that you had the entire key.

The whole color deal is a neat way to transport the key and the cipertext, but it isn't integral to the algorithm.

The actual algorithm can be succinctly described in 4 sentences.

I'd definitely like to have Bruce look at it, but I'm not sure how to convince him to check it out. If anybody here knows him personally and thinks this might be worth his time, please forward him this thread.
Leaden handcuffs, they aren't worth anything yet.
90+ Online Photography Tools and Resources
There's still a higher probability that you WILL come to your desired solution if you have more thoughts. That's why spending more time on something yields results. The trick is to focus on one thing at a time.

Grr, damn man. Your reply really gets under my skin for some reason. I wasn't saying the above because I thought I was -better- or anything like that. I was hoping to motivate one person into doing something they ordinarily wouldn't have.

Thanks for the downvote though, I appreciate it. I rewarded it with an upvote.
Because it costs a billion dollars to buy a YouTube. For that kind of dough you can try out 50,000 Y Combinator companies.
Why not SCP/SFTP? Do you really want your customers usernames/passwords crossing the net in the clear? SCP/SFTP is pretty much a drop in replacement.
CenterNetworks discussion with Flock CEO Shawn Hardin about the future of Flock
Except you don't get points for merely getting on base -- it's not "success". And if the bases are loaded, a safe double is better than a home run with bases empty.

As for Sequoia, they funded YouTube. If they had thought it could go public, why would they sell to Google? I assume because getting bought by an established company with a very strong stock status is preferable to rolling the dice -- IPOs can go straight downhill.

I think it's pretty obvious that they never planned on an IPO, but instead on a bidding war between Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft (and maybe others).
> There's still a higher probability that you WILL come to your desired solution if you have more thoughts.

Sounds like an unsupported assertion to me. And not how the brain seems to work, at least that we can tell -- e.g. computer chess vs. human chess. You seem to be describing a brute force approach.

> The trick is to focus on one thing at a time.

That sounds awfully contradictory.

> Your reply really gets under my skin for some reason.

Tripe like "think smarter" gets under mine. This ain't no pointy-hair seminar!
Focusing on one thing at a time falls under "think smarter". Do you not get anything done because you're scatterbrained or something? Yeesh, I've elicited an almost religious response from you.
Niklas Zennstrom on Entrepreneurship & Scratching Your Own Itch (and not having a business plan)
An interesting essay on competition - http://software.ericsink.com/Choose_Your_Competition.html

All of Eric Sink's essays are valuable to a founder, at least as food for thought.
There's a difference between critiquing ideas and ad hominem attacks.

"Think smarter" is so vague and nebulous it can refer to anything you want it to. This is the first time I've heard it refer to "focus", as that usually falls under the category of... "focus". And certainly it's the first time I've read advice to "think more thoughts" claim to mean "focus on one thing", and "think faster" claim to mean "spend more time on something".
Geek housing (&#919;&#916;C&#922;&#931;R &#919;&#920;US&#931;?)
Yup, shouldn't be hard to add either by default/option.
an average Indian programmer gets significantly more. the average salary for someone just out of school is about 1200 $ /month (in Bangalore, as of today). Companies like Google pay much more.
Steve Yen already did it, a couple years ago.

http://code.google.com/p/trimpath/wiki/TrimJunction
I don't have anything against java applets, but I'd like to hear their rationale for using them--pg is known to have publicly criticized java, after all.

Applets only have one major problem, which is their iffy deployment process. Once running, they're about as good as a desktop application.
My question is: Can we build a mind out of software that aggregates millions of minds?
I'm about to move out to Silicon Valley, and I need a place to live. I would really like to room in a house or apartment with a bunch of other hackers and/or entrepreneurial types.

Is anyone else is in a similar position? Or does anyone know of someone looking for a roommate or to sublet?

I am now regretting the fratty "Hacker House" parenthetical in the title, but I think it'd be fun as hell to bring a bunch of hackers together into a nurturing environment, where we sip not from foamy Dixie cups, but from the fountain of our collective knowledge.

If there're a lot of us, I'll throw together a hacker housing app to help everyone get in touch.
UPvoted for title! Reminds me of the Animal House fraternity.
Mitch Kapor's Foxmarks To Leap Into Search World
Our brains ARE computers. Conscious machines are a matter of when, not "if".

Think of a computer simulation of every atom of your brain, along with modelling the electrical impulses going through it. It WOULD be you, and it would be really freaked out by the lack of sensory input. Probably you'd need to "anesthetize" parts of it that panic when they detect "you" aren't breathing -- along with other autonomic controls -- or feed them fake information. Otherwise you'd be in a situation where you'd boot up your brain simulation and you'd actually torture a conscious machine. If you simulated every atom, it would be you!

Note also that this would not need to run in real-time. It could be updated in simulated femtosecond steps that could take an arbitrarily large amount of "real" time, without realizing it. Ethics would apply to a software simulation, as far as pain goes, but you could shut it down or pause it without it realizing what happened, as long as it was in a virtual environment. If you gave it physical sensors, it would find it quite jarring to be in the middle of saying something and suddenly have it be 5 days later partway through the sentence!
What I wrote is what I meant .. :-)
You are right Subhash unfortunately there's is no PG equivalent in India , and thats the point. Angel funding is not an issue, what PG advices is what that matters most.
Using Flash to play video is genius? What?
The Andreessen guide: Have Jim Clark find you.

Marc: You may not know me, but I'm the founder and former

chairman of Silicon Graphics. As you may have read in the

press lately, I'm leaving SGI. I plan to form a new company.

I would like to discuss the possibility of your joining me.
I'm surprised Gelernter is so pessimistic (he's a brilliant guy)... It looks a lot easier to me than he's making out.

Hecht-Nielsen's discoveries about brain architecture have supplied a great foundation for building raw cognition, so we can move forward to the conscious level.
Not by itself, but in combination with P2P. Yes.
Do you mean the question about YC in your town?

If so, not quite. Moving to a different town to start a startup is just a test of commitment. Moving to a different country, though, dilutes the test with a bunch of bureaucratic stuff.
Can you consider persons who could telecommute ?

Thanks a lot for responding.
A few years ago I attempted to do a very similar thing with a few friends from the goog. The issue that we ran into - owners really don't like renting large places (like a house) to non-families. So the four of us (including one woman!) were denied at each of the 5 places we applied.

I wish you better luck!
If they're using Java they could just as well use a Java video player. My guess is that it's closer to "off-the-shelf" for Flash, and the networking stuff is closer to existing code in Java. I'm sure those parts'll all be redone in Flash next.
My guess is they're using the applet to run the P2P program and the Flash client to connect to various P2P "servers" over HTTP (or possibly) RTMP for streaming.

I don't think you can bind to local ports and run servers inside AIR or Silverlight, but you can in Java applets.

They could theoretically have 100k P2P Java applets running on "super node" (high bandwidth) machines serving an audience of millions of leeching peers. Hopefully they've realized this. It's probably the best way to mitigate the applet problem: only require 10% of people to have it.
A Java player would suck and a Flash client couldn't do what the Java piece does.
I'm also interested in this (but can't move in until december).

Someone should talk to David Weekly / shdh. I know there are a couple guys @ shdh that are looking to start up a geek house. I think they're also planning on using the house to host future shdh events.
Please name some successful startups that came out of India. Acquisition data would be nice!

Now it is possible that there is a bit of a chicken and egg problem here. But, imho, it is not enough to state baldly that there is significant entrepreneurial and IT activity happening here. IT as in "outsourcing" or "India Development Centres" sure. But the level of talent or software startups available is nowhere near what Silicon Valley offers.
The few startups I have seen here in Bangalore are all a bit flaky. Examples :- Guruji.com claims to do "India Specific Search" better than Google. Their search engine is terrible . Minglebox attempts to create an Orkut clone (there was a scandal recently about some incestous connections between the VC and a founder of the company and suspicions about the objectivity of the deal and so on).

The only half decent software startup I know in India is Zoho and it remains to be seen if they can avoid being crushed by the Google Office juggernaut.

Now as to talent. Name 10 Indians who have significantly contributed to Open Source software and are based in India. Any significant languages, frameworks etc that came out of India?

I am not saying there aren't extremely bright people or developers in India . Given the size of the population it is impossible not to have bright people . But there does seem to be a distinct lack of entrepreneurial ability and the people who do seem to be very good developers don't want to take the risks of running their own company. Which is what Google Sacca was talking about. The people who do want to run their own companies are not correlated with high levels of programming skill, who prefer to emigrate to the USA.

Having worked 10 years in Bangalore, I assert that YC will find hypothetical Indian operations massively unsuccessful. This may change in the future. But for now, YC should focus on the US.

And before anyone accuses me of "racism "or something , I am Indian. I just try not to be blinkered.
Condensed version: Making money.

Edit: No, really. "Because, really, what else could it possibly be?"
I haven't programmed Java Applets since 1996. Have they solved the stability/slowness at loading issues yet? It always seemed like a shame that they weren't put to more use, and yet they slowed the browser down and crashed it so much it put my right off them.
What can't Flash do?
I explained what I think they're doing in thread above:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30705
I'd be interested, but not for a little while: I just signed a 6 month lease (so I could move in at the beginning of January). I moved out to the Bay Area to work for a startup a few weeks ago, but I've been planning to try and find a place with some fellow geeks. The rent here is pretty crazy, and it would be nice to live with some smart, like-minded folks.
I was wondering about this, thanks for the info! I'm sure owners won't look too kindly on self-employed entrepreneurs either ;)
There's a book that has been around for a while about pick up artistry called 'The Game' by Neil Strauss, which basically teaches one the science to picking up women within minutes.

Part of the science is establishing something called 'social proof.' This is essentially establishing a presence in a room within minutes to the point where people are just attracted to you and chase after you to talk to you.

The book has a lot of tips about socializing in general which can be drawn from it's more specific goal of picking up women. I've noticed that many of the tips have helped me within my own social circle, when speaking with professionals, meeting new people, etc. And with... girls :P.
Robot House or Lambda Lambda Lambda would be a good name for a house too.
I sort of did this with some of my engineer friends from college. I say 'sort of' because although we're all hackers, we're not all hackers of the YC news variety.

I'll just say you CAN get housing for 4-5 engineers, but it's not always easy. We were rejected from at least 1 place because we were not a family.

You might have a hard time if some or all of you don't have steady income and are not students with access to their parents' checkbook. If you do have income, you're going to look better than students, and many landlords are open to renting to students.
Niklas Zennstrom talks about venture itch
AIR actually has a full network API, Silverlight might too but I'm not sure. So listening on a local port should still be possible. Just be mindful that your protocol makes it through NAT ok.

Your distributed idea is cool, but I think the intended benefit here is to avoid escalating hosting costs when having to do it all in-house. YouTube was paying $1M per month in hosting fees pre-google acquisition.. ouch
Thats true to certain extent Jey, but not entirely.
Lots of Indians are coming out with exciting ideas everyday, but we don't have a person like PG here who could give right advice at the right time and this causes more startups to tank :-).

Thanks for the comment.
Hmm, apparently a missing listen() means they have to bring in an entire second language and VM. I don't get why normal sockets are so anathema to web purveyors.
Why would we expect an intelligence with sensory inputs and expressive outputs so radically different from our own to relate to our experiences in the same way?
Living in Europe. There are a whole slew of reasons why Europe is worse for startups, but this is a point in Europe's favor.