skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Panel @ MIT: Talking to Angel Investors [video]
If you mean hacker in the traditional sense, I'm not so sure you can learn to be a hacker. It's an attitude of mind that makes you want to take things apart to see how they work, and then try to see if you can put them back together again better. If you have that mindset, play with a computer, and you'll learn enough on your own just by following what interests you. If you don't have that curious mindset, try to develop it; it's the hardest part of the hacker nature, but also one of the essential ones.

If you mean "competent programmer," then the best route that way is a good computer science degree (which will teach you mainly theory) followed by a job programming (which will teach you how to apply the theory). Both the theory and the application of the theory are important; vocational-training computer courses that teach the application often omit the theory altogether.

Hackers can benefit from formal education, too. The important thing is understanding how things work, not that you discovered them on your own. Learning by reading and by observing is as valuable as learning by doing; and the computer world has an endless stream of good examples of what NOT to do.
s/DLT Scheme/PLT Scheme
A bit of an aside, but I too was an Amiga user back in the day. Bought an Amiga 2000 in 1987. I recall reading the hardware reference manual and programming the blitter in 68K assembly. Those were the days :)
The author of this piece doesn't read books?
Host the Yahoo UI Toolkit instead of loading it from their slow servers.
Don't you feel the monitor, in vertical orientation, destroying your eyes? It is painful to look at, like an old 15-inch CRT monitor from 1997.
Best flash/dhtml charts/bar graphing toolkit (free)?
Academy X is San Francisco is good:
http://www.academyx.com/

(This concept should be franchised.)
I guess I should get ready to use somebody else. I've been with Vonage for a number of years now--happy customer.
the bogus elitism in this community is truly astounding, symptoms of a deeply-held inferiority complex
The point of the article as I understand it, is that Google itself even without special commands is a "command-line" tool in a sense that you more often enter text rather than click.

This kind of "cmdline" tools win in some specific areas because they work perfectly with thin clients and via thin communication channels. All you need is to send a couple of words to the server using some relatively simple standard local application - be it a browser or your console client.
Is anyone working on something that is not a website?
Improved and better tasting! Ugh
Web is certainly where the money can be at. But everyone probably realizes that there are plenty of other things you can do and still create a startup. The advice in Paul Graham's essays and YCombinator's library holds just as true if you're not working on a webpage startup.

For example, I read about someone who created a startup selling knife sheaths on EBay. Even if he were to create a website advertising his knife sheaths, he still wouldn't really have a webpage startup.

So, is anyone working on a non-webpage startup, and if so, what're you doing? :)

Shawn
I think the URL was supposed to be: http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/371/

Just a guess though.
The reason WHY OO sucks
Yup! Thank you, sorry. IF that doesn't work, there is also:

http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/371/
I'm fascinated by businesses that still deal in physical goods or services, but are enabled because of the web. The two best examples being netflix and city carshare-type businesses.
The clincher for me was years ago when our ISP moved physical locations. They had a bunch of geeks including my friend Joey go over and help move things, especially all of the co-lo servers. Joey told me later that as they loaded the vans the nix guys grabbed their servers, jumped into the vans and crammed them in there as best they could, sometimes plopping them on the ground. The windows geeks who showed up gently disconnected each machine and very, very gently and carefully carried them to the vans or transported them to the new location in their own vehicles. They treated their servers like glass. And then when everyone arrived and the ISP guys said "OK, who can help crimp cat-5s?" all the nix guys said sure and all the windows guys looked around for a bit and said "uh, we're not certified to do network stuff" and left.

It's funny- it's completely a mental thing, but Joey and I were sure they treated those servers like glass because, as we had both experienced in former lives, the OS acted like it was made of glass. Any jarring and who knows what would happen to the registry or filesystem. That and the fact that they had so much money tied up in those servers.
There are plenty of startups that make cool software. Trolltech, Sleepycat (now Oracle), VMWare, Coverity are just a few that come to mind. I think the main difference between software startups compared to web startups is that there is a lot more depth to them. I don't think an average kid out of college is capable of something like this.

I am working on software development tools: http://www.codesynthesis.com
Great suggestion. I would add (and this is if you want to become a hacker, not a code monkey or script kiddie or whatever else), The Little Schemer, and then something functional- I'd recommend a book that's not even published yet, http://pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/jaerlang/index.html
www.defragcon.com

a startup that's not a website
I have plans for two projects dealing in physical goods. For one, I'll probably use cafepress for production & fulfillment until volume justifies reshuffling my supply chain.

For another, I'm going to advertise a blog we already have that has a small but growing audience. We'll have a small inventory with a limited number of skus. We'll probably make the items ourselves. I'm not sure how I'll handle the commerce (ebay, yahoo store, paypay...). We'll do fulfillment ourselves too. Once we establish a microbrand I have what I think is a clever bundling idea to increase our average transaction size by about 2-5 fold without needing to bloat our inventory. At that point, I'm not sure exactly what's next, we might try it on a small scale, continuing doing our own manufacturing, or we might line up offshore manufacturing and outsourced fulfillment and make a big push. I think we'll probably do a blend of the two. Start rolling out the evolved business model while still making the items ourselves at the same time we're lining up manufacturing and fulfillment with the goal for having them on-line in time for the holiday shopping season.

I also have ideas for web apps, but I'm cautious about both ad revenue and hoping to be bought out. I do have an idea for a service that would be monetized by transaction based revenue, but I have quite figured out how to put it into practice.
Nice list.

I would add: Don't use Google Analytics.
Wow, for $1,000 per year you could just about buy a MacBook and a copy of Parallels, which would let you create a full library of VMs with all the different browsers and operating systems, then load any one you wanted.

Plus -- you'd have a sweet machine to use for other purposes when you weren't testing. This sounds way overpriced.

You could do the same thing with VMWare Fusion (though it's still in beta, and I haven't tried it).
We just got an angel round for a destop sw startup. It is a visualization tool that is OpenGL heavy and I'm not sure how I'd deliver that over the interwebs.

www.uuorld.com

We're using trolltech's Qt and releasing on Win32, OS X, and Linux. If anyone knows of any mature packages for interactive 3d over the web, I'm all ears.
"I don't think an average kid out of college is capable of something like this."

I've done both desktop/server software and web software, and IMHO good web software is harder. With web software, you have to explicitly think about many things that just aren't an issue with conventional software, like how to distribute the load of a million users over dozens of boxes. It helps that user expectations for UI responsiveness and robustness are somewhat lower with webapps, but that's changing with AJAX. You also need to know many more technologies to build a successful webapp: CSS, HTML, Javascript, a web scripting language, SQL, database performance, server administration & shell scripts, and any libraries necessary for your problem domain.

It is a completely different skillset. With conventional apps, you need to know how to architect a large single app instead of architecting a large collection of collaborating servers. You need to know C++, Java, or C# instead of PHP/Python/Ruby. You need to know intimately the particular toolset that your app fits into - VMWare can't live without device drivers; Sleepycat can't live without transaction algorithms; one desktop app I worked on needed an intimate knowledge of TCP, including Winsock LSPs and Linux kernel hacking. You get much more out of deep knowledge with conventional apps, while webapps require a more shallow understanding of a very broad range of topics.

Also, the technologies you need for desktop apps don't have zillions of articles on them plastered across the web, and the documentation is often poor quality. But if you take a professional software engineering job, you'll be expected to make sense of it and figure out how everything works (possibly through prototypes, debuggers, and a lot of pain and patience). It's not taught in college, but that doesn't make it particularly difficult.
Disruptors Video: "Ah-ha" Startup Moments
Wil Schroter's Go BIG or Go Home -- free full pdf download
Great tips! Here's the full presentation:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/49362/High-Performance-Web-Sites
"I've done both desktop/server software and web software, and IMHO good web software is harder."

I am not saying web development is necessarily easier. I don't have any problem believing Javascript or AJAX is a lot of pain to get working consistently across various browsers. What I am saying is that serious software (i.e., the kind that people are willing to pay for) requires deeper knowledge and practical experience to get right.
There are some food items that I would love to import/produce in the US, from Italy. I'll see about it when/if we ever move back to the states. Food has a lot of legal requirements, and more capital to start something up. On the other hand, it's the thing I'm most certain of in terms of I know people would like this stuff.
I'd encourage anyone really interested in Wil's advice and info to buy the paperback -- I did. But if you want to check out the book online, you can download the pdf. It seems to be a legit and legal link to a straightforward download on Wil's gobig site.
Our service will do the same or better job for only $50. Just because someone is asking for twice the going rate, doesn't mean they necessarily do a better job.

Please check us out at http://PowerNamer.com
I am using XML/SWF Charts on my site.
(http://www.maani.us/xml_charts/)
You can see an example here: http://www.carhuntr.com/prices-Chevrolet-Suburban.html

It is easy to work with, and I have tested it using browsershots. Displays correctly in almost all browsers. My only concern is the load-time. So far it does not seem too bad.
Yes, we are working on a wireless startup -- not an application but infrastructure. This includes hw, sw and fw.
soldering irons, oscilloscopes, etc. ;)
People are willing to pay for web software too (as evidenced by Reddit, HotOrNot, PlentyOfFish, and various other profitable web startups). It's just that different people are willing to pay for it. The business model for consumer webstartups is to offer a simple service to lots of people for free, so that you deliver something of value to advertisers.

Most profitable software requires deep knowledge of at least one relatively unknown technology (the three web startups mentioned above are exceptions). This applies as much to web startups as desktop startups, eg. Google had deep knowledge of search, YouTube of Flash and video, Amazon of inventory and retailing. But acquiring this deep knowledge is not rocket science: typically, you identify the technologies that'll be useful for your app, you read all the publicly available documentation, you download a demo and write some prototypes, you ask some questions on a mailing list, and you e-mail the support people at the vendor (possibly paying for a product along the way). Fresh college graduates typically don't have this knowledge off the bat because it's not taught in school and they aren't exposed to it, but that doesn't prevent them from picking it up quickly. Look at Loopt, for example.
I'm a lot less worried about having my information given away to the government than I am of a company trying to create a database of all the data in the world. Which is what google seems to want to do.

Yes, yahoo has given away information before (in China). But I'd still rather switch to a company that does not want to collect every single piece of data about me (be it my email, rss feeds, search history, or even the files on my computer - google desktop search).
first post, perhaps the first time I actually have something to contribute :).

There are two startup-ish things I do that are not websites, but are largely disseminated via the web:

a) my main job is represented at gmatdaily.wordpress.com. I sell study materials for the GMAT ...I worked in the industry for a few years, discovered a multitude of problems, and am slowly solving them all.

b) i collect, package, analyze, and sell college baseball statistics to major league teams ... my partner and I had a website for this (collegesplits.com) where we gave away a lot of the data for free, but eventually took it down because the maintenance wasn't worth it. My web presence in the field made it easy to line up customers, and I suppose I could set up a members-only site to deliver the data (and thus the business would be a website), but that's not what the clients want.

Now, perhaps one of these days I'll work on something that IS a website :).
The real state of the Indian Online Industry
Ok, that's disturbing. Hope google stays separate and doesn't want to incorporate it into their search.
I cannot tell you in very concrete terms what we're doing (it has to do with data integration), but I can tell you the reason why we will probably NOT do it as a web app. It's not the UI capabilities, it's the data hub problem and economics.

Anything you do on the web has to funnel every piece of data through that web app because browsers cannot access anything other than their originating server (They might soon be able to do that via Flex/Silverlight type plugins). Even if they could, it just doesn't make sense for many data centric interactive applications to buy a lot of servers when a huge number of powerful PC clients does almost nothing.

I reckon, if I have some algorithmic data analysis stuff and I can distribute that to client machines to some degree, I can make my service cheaper and maybe even architecturally simpler in some cases, because there is a natural partitioning scheme. Ok, now I see this argument becomes quite obscure without going into further detail so I'll leave it at that.
Considering it appeared on ValleyWag, it's definitely not a secret anymore =)
Our product is not a website, but it is web-based (it is installable web-based system administration tools). I dunno if that qualifies by your definition.

So we have all of the pain of developing a web-based application (browser incompatibilities, limitations of the medium, etc.) with all of the negatives of installed applications (high barrier to adoption, lower volume, etc.). But it does give us a business model that everyone can easily understand: Give us money, we give you software, you install it, we support you. Next year, you give us money again and we keep supporting you.

Web applications are the most fun to build, but there's an awful lot of room for technology in non-web spaces. Large retailers a huge users of technology (and their websites are generally not even a blip on the radar, as far as technology expenditures go--I was involved briefly in a $2.7 million content distribution deployment for Lowe's...I'm certain they haven't spent more than a tenth that much on their website).

Lots of areas for high tech to make a huge impact on peoples lives (and thus make a huge impact on your bottom line): Medical records and billing, legal services, banking, accounting, warehouse automation, etc. There are businesses working in all of these spaces already, of course, but there's still plenty of niches left unfilled.
Risk-Free Domain Name Service - PowerNamer.com
I also think it takes more business knowledge - distribution, packaging, etc.
Why learn PHP if you are going to learn RoR anyway? I think you could take a shortcut to RoR.
Id add one thing: understand your sales cycle.

Ive worked with more than one company who tripped on these questions:

How many customers do you have to win to make that number?
What do you expect your close ratio to be?
Given your close ratio and sale cycle, how many prospects do you need to be engaged with at any give time?
How will you attract that many prospects in that time period?
2 side projects for fun.

1. Mobile search. No website. If we did it would be a one static page site.

2. Image recognition. Also no interaction with a website.

As far as goods, I would stay away from it. Logistics r pain in the butt.
Don't forget threadless and moo as two other great examples of using the web to rework real world products.
http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/charting/ (it is affordable, but not free)
"I've done both desktop/server software and web software, and IMHO good web software is harder."

I can only ask what kind of software have you developed, sir?

If web software was harder, you wouldn't see "products" created over a weekend shaping up into companies a week later. And don't get me started on "millions of users on dozen boxes".

The primitiveness of web application development is mainly the reason why so many "ex-taxi drivers" and are rolling out web apps daily.

Two huge reasons why web app development is so trivial are:
- You control your hardware. This is really important.
- You do not need to develop UI. Web Pages are joke compared to the "real thing".

For starters, try to develop an super-simple desktop application that uploads an arbitrary file to a given FTP address, let 100,000 users (let alone millions) download it to discover:
- It won't start
- It won't connect
- It crashes their computer.
- "Where did it go?" question after downloading.

You'll be amazed. You will realize that PCs of most people are just like jungle, populated with adware, multiple software firewalls running simultaneously, paranoid anti-virus packages, missing DLLs and weird security settings. Moreover, users will be brutal: they'll be turning power off in the middle of your disk writes, they will upgrade libraries you linked to without asking you first, they will install your executable on desktop and will be killing files you create, the list goes on.

Over 80% of developing desktop software consists of two things:
- Fighting unexpected problems in a hostile environment of user's PC
- Dealing with real, LIVE UI that is reflecting real-time changing objects, and is pleasant to use.

On top of that you're trying to do this using minimal amount of libraries, because you can't expect people to download 100MB installer.
The Process of Software Development :))
Understand the value of free time!, you might get lulled into this not having to go to the "office" every morning. But remember! The idea is to make this permanent! You have to work your ass off starting now. (Move or not). It will be cool to move to the valley, but don't loose focus. And make deadlines and stick to them. Deadlines are your friend.

Btw, I heard that your co-founder is a fucking genius, with complete qualifications (what with getting his ass kicked out of grad school :)) !
ActiveScaffold goes gold (Rails auto UI layer)
Try:
http://www.amcharts.com/pie/
http://www.solutoire.com/plotr
http://www.liquidx.net/plotkit/
Mmm! I love raisins made with SELECT * FROM [Equipment Table]! (pic)
WordPress - an overnight success (or is it?)
Matt Mullenweg: Meaningful Overnight Relationship
I'm in a small startup developing a cross-platform desktop IM client. In Python. It's going to kick the pants off of Adium, Pidgin, and especially Trillian ;)
Biotech 2.0. Which of course involves a website and a physical product/service.
chartcapture.com
Everything you mention is true, and a huge pain when developing desktop applications. One of the projects I've worked on was to serve as the release engineer for a desktop app that involved a Winsock layered service provider, a background Windows service, a system tray icon, and a Java control application, plus a large server-side component. My job basically consisted of making a tweak to the InstallShield scripts, pushing it out to a dozen VirtualPC images, and making sure it all worked and I didn't hose anything. Then I'd find out that eg. it didn't work with Symantec Personal Firewall, because they based their code off the same sample Microsoft LSP that we did, the one that explicitly says "Do not use for production code", and didn't fix the bug that we spent a week tracking down.

But webapps have the same problem, they just push the complexity into a different area. I also volunteered for FictionAlley.org, a mid-size (110k or so registered users) web community. We would get complaints from users that the site was unreadable on their 40 character PDA screen. We'd get e-mails from blind people saying could we please make the site handicap-accessible and usable on their screen readers. We would get irate e-mails from Opera users about display glitches, or irate e-mails from Mac users wondering why the latest feature we just released didn't work on Safari. We'd get tirades from people because we added navigation bars, after getting tirades from people because we didn't have navigation bars. We'd get constant complaints about the (free) site being too slow, because we didn't have money for more servers.

Until you've actually been involved with a website that has lots of visitors, you have no idea what goes on behind the scenes to keep things running smoothly (or sometimes not-so-smoothly). Yes, desktop apps are hard. I've done them - not just the release engineering stuff above, but I also wrote the Java app included in the package, and I wrote a Netbeans plugin for my current employer, and both had to deal with the sticky platform-and-threading issues necessary for a responsive, professional UI. I still say that webapps are harder.
In addition to some web applications, I am slowly developing several products in the chemical sector. (I am a chemical engineer by training). But, the barriers to entry are so high and the risks are so great (often including literal physical danger) that software is decisively more attractive.
10 common geek misconceptions about businesses
The exasperating problem with advice
Great examples. I think the most successful web businesses will be those that enhance one's "real" life.
VMware is not even close to a startup anymore (EMC acquired, 1000's of employees, soon to IPO 10% of shares)
Looking for two specific search engine startups
Citizen Journalism: Web 2.0 Content Creators Get Taken Seriously
Sorry, I hope this is not too off-topic, but I couldn't think of any other place to ask.

One search engine was specialised on finding people. The special feature was that people could "adopt" the result page for themselves and add more specific information. So it was also a kind of Wiki, I guess.

The other one also allowed people to add meta data to the search result, in theory a kind of semantic web could emerge.

Both are fairly recent startups, I think. Don't know why I can't find them in my bookmarks anymore :-(
The New Economy: Profits are dropping, stocks are tanking, and we should be fine with it (2002)
Good examples of fee-based web biz models you can respect? (besides flickr)
37signals.com
I am working on WiMax, the next generation wireless network.