skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Reddit renders in lynx. The reply boxes aren't hidden in the comments list, and I can't log in. Otherwise the site is easily usable.

I can load lala.com, and do get a nice description of the page (which is better than some sites!). I can access the search field, but can't change the categories. I can't press the search button.

I'd be interested to know the reason why, for example, they chose to set up their categories like that, rather than using some sort of radio button form. And if they're going to use AJAX, why not make the "tabs" look like actual tabs? What benefits are gained by having a search button that can't be pressed without javascript?
What is the benefit of using the "web browser as the environment" mentality in this case? Future extensibility? Scalability? Rapid development? Or just that they couldn't think of a better way to do it?
Hate to burst your bubble but it's been done already...
...sodahead.com
I find their information rather informative. Maybe you should go away!
I've discovered that writing MIDI music is eerily like writing software. The whole process feels almost exactly the same. You compose (code), you listen (run), you make corrections (debug), you polish (optimize), you add sections (modules/features), which leads to more correction and optimization. Sometimes, changes cascade throughout the piece (refactoring).

In the end, you have a hideous progeny that's not as good as you'd like but you know you can't work on it forever.
Works even more easily when the IP is static, you just register the name don't update the IP. But yeah -- get a domain :-)
Students give up social networks for Lent
wow this site is driving me crazy. The data isn't even that accurate...

Earlier they indicated reddit was getting ~400k hits / month, from what Alexis has said, they're actually getting more like ~160K / day.
I think this is the last we'll see of them. Paul gave them an ultimatum yesterday and they just violated it with this post.
yeah. whoops. didn't realize it was a dupe cause the other one is the 37signals writeup.
I was never 100% sure about "net neutrality" (99% maybe) till I read the opposing view by Mike McCurry. What a blatant piece of hired hackwork. The side that needs to employ someone to write things like that must be the wrong side.
Um... why is this a link to a redirect?
In case you have flash in your browser, but not power point: http://www.scribd.com/doc/21593/Scaling-PHPMySQL
This looks like a terrible abuse of Flash. Why not just encode the parameters into the image URL and have it handled server-side?

I'm not just being an ideological purist here. I have two systems. One is pure 64-bit and thus simply can't run Flash, and the other uses Firefox's FlashBlock extension. If your site demands that I use Flash for something as simple as just viewing an image, you're going to give me a pretty lousy user experience. And of course, even those with no trouble running Flash are still prevented from easily being able to save an offline copy.
I agree wholeheartedly. What kind of woman would rather you spend decades of your life in a situation you find miserable than sacrifice and suffer alongside you while you follow your dream?

For someone who feels like I do this is totally non-negotiable. I would have no problem losing a woman over this question because it would only filter out women that are worth losing anyway.
That is pretty gosh darn impressive. Good work guys!
SellABand Music Model Gaining Traction
Tell me she didn't see a dime of his riches?
I just realized that I did leave a few things out that would be missed by not attending college. The first is that there are some interesting professors who are genuinely interested in teaching and give wonderful lectures. Secondly, some classes are structured to allow intelligent class interaction, and it can be enlightening to participate in a good discussion to see the diverse viewpoints that fellow classmates can offer. Last, but certainly not least, pg has pointed out in several writings that college is a great place to meet a co-founder. So there are a few other things that will be missed in addition to "that shiny piece of paper."
Get a sizable investment from friends/family/VCs or very painfully build your startup on the side nights/weekends.

There doesn't seem to be any other options. I don't think the consulting option is any better than working full-time for someone else.
Just send an email to founders at their domain name.
They need a bigger next-page button. I kept missing it, because I let go of the mouse on each slide.
On the sites that use AJAX correctly and effectively, I must admit that the UI is a marked improvement over past technologies. In many cases, though, it can be overkill: a waste of bandwidth and programmer time (i.e. it would be unnecessary for the Google home page to use AJAX to display search results). As an occasional Lynx user, I really appreciate when a site keeps alternate browsers in mind.

That said, I agree with jw that catering to users of ancient, insecure browsers is probably a waste of time and a barrier to progress. I disagree with a strict cost-benefit approach, however. As an analogy, Microsoft has been benefiting from this phenomenon for years due to hardware companies who only write Windows drivers, while NVidia is a good example of a hardware company which provides open source drivers and receives loyalty and sales opportunities because of it. Additionally, supporting cell phone users and the visually impaired is certainly a good idea, even if only a small percentage of visitors fall into these categories.

Of course, as numerous others mentioned, it's important to be aware of your target audience, but don't be surprised if your actual audience does not necessarily match the one you have in mind.
I've been thinking a lot about micro-finance/micro-credit for funding creative content. There are a lot of different possible ways to do it, and this is a nice one... Anything that replaces the labels, the studios, the publishers, etc has the potential for major disruption. But this site is still a middleman.
The above post was a parody. :)
I've known most of thos from before, but this presentation puts it in the most simple way possible, and as straight forward as possible. Awesome!
This is an interesting in-depth look at what any Reddit or USENET old-timer already knows too well: getting a community to scale up while remaining intelligent and cordial is a really hard problem. If anyone manages to solve it I'll be paying close attention.
Good news for us:) This must be one of the most exciting industry to be in at the moment.
In California at least there are really good laws about this. No matter what your contract says, it's important to remember that you cannot sign away your rights.

The key is to not utilize _any_ employer resources. That means no using the company-provided laptop, servers, office space, bandwidth, and especially time (even lunch).

The other way to protect yourself is by keeping a work journal. Blogs are nice, but it's best if it's handwritten and dated. This is what will save you if it ever ends up in court.

Obviously I'm about as far from a lawyer as it gets, but this is what I know.
I find some of the Cato (Libertarian) arguments against Net Neutrality quite persuasive:

"There is no evidence that broadband operators are unfairly blocking access to websites or online services today, and there is no reason to expect them to do so in the future. No firm or industry has any sort of "bottleneck control" over or market power in the broadband marketplace; it is very much a competitive free-for-all, and no one has any idea what the future market will look like with so many new technologies and operators entering the picture."

http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-507es.html

Any Broadband provider who blocks Google will immediately lose all their customers. And will create a market in "100% Free Content" ISPs. I also think it's a good thing to be able to choose a hypothetical service where guaranteed high quality VOIP packets are charged differently from P2P traffic.

There's also the old assumption that business will tend to be evil and government will tend to be good.
About time the music industry started to fix itself.
If Paul Graham's conviction comes with seed funding, I'll do that.
Improving Server Performance through Better Scheduling
Bianca was a faculty candidate here at Ohio State and gave an interesting talk about a month ago about improving system reliability. The part I found most interesting was how a small patch to the Linux kernel to change scheduling gave a remarkable improvement to performance.
you beat me to it. i uploaded it as well:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/21640/zend-talk
'... "Does a price that ends in -000, like $490,000 seem casual? Is $499,999 too blue-light special?" I stared into my salad. Little did I know that Redfin's mad scientist, Mose Andre, was working on that very problem, crunching statistics on the data-set we pulled to calculate the Redfin Advantage. ...' [0]

great article. what made it better was reading the blog [1] ~ hilarious. The first thing I read is company blog(s). You can tell a lot from the blog (SWOT) [2]. The company hierarchy, culture, toolset used, market. If a blog is boring, doesn't contain at least some sort of technical (even if it's just a hint), I mark that down as a 'old skool' software company who's roots are shipping executables or companies without leaders who understand 'transparency'.

Reference

[0] Redfin blog, 'Pricing Advice: Make the Last 3 Digits -500'

http://blog.redfin.com/redfin/2007/03/pricing_advice_make_the_last_3.html

[1] Redfin, 'Redfin blog mentioned in article'

http://blog.redfin.com

[2] SWOT is an analysis tool and stands for Strength, Weakness, Opportunity & Threat
I wonder to what extent this is a statistical artifact
rather than a genuine improvement. For example, if you
measure performance as the mean time to serve each kilobyte,
then the proposed scheduler does not increase performance.
Nice find. This is a nice, quirky, funny presentation for improving server performance.

A faculty candidate recently gave a talk at Ohio State about improving server reliability, and I have linked to her paper in the following submission:

http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=7517
That's true, but what was actually measured was the mean time to serve the entire request. I think in nearly any usage pattern, this would be the data point that you would be most concerned with. You want users browsing your pages to get their pages and small images very quickly, and if they have to wait a couple seconds for the larger images to finish, or for minutes for large file downloads, that seems to be the kind of behavior a user would expect.

What this scheduling algorithm avoids is the case where several people are downloading large files and other more casual users are having a worse browsing experience because of that.
I am very happy to see all of these music startups. My startup idea is one which should help to change the current structure of the music industry for the better, but I'm glad to see that such changes are already happening. Their funding model in particular is quite clever, one that seems eerily similar to one I read in some paper or article a few months ago, where the writer was suggesting precisely the idea of an art funding model in which fans put money towards bands they like to encourage them to continue producing music. It's too bad that I can't find it.
The title of the article is interesting, because it's a phenomenon I hadn't even considered, but:

"""STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Students abstaining from sites like Facebook for Lent

Graduate student Kerry Graham is finding the sacrifice difficult

Emory University student Jocelyn Chiu giving up the Internet
Clinical psychologist: Limiting time spent can be beneficial"""

Hmm... I think I'll pass. Sounds like all the useful info is in the title.
Zuckerberg is not very smart here, and his comment illuminates the area where younger people are stupider (in general): Blindness. Lack of awareness of the world around you means that you will not understand what your customers are asking for, etc. You can get away with this when all your customers are within 2 years of your age. But it will come up to bite you... better to be wary and listening rather than arrogant.

There is no area of achievement-- physical, mental, or character where one age group dominates over another. There are exceptional people at all ages.

The perception that there are more exceptional young people is actually ironic-- its more surprising when a young person has high achievement and so it gets more media coverage. Exceptional achievements from older people are less noteworthy-- even though they are not less exceptional.

Confusion on this point is exactly the kind of naivete' that keeps young people back.

DO NOT BE ARROGANT-- it doesn't pay. It is a form of escapism.
What I find perplexing is that for so many people who think the Bay area "is better" I've yet to hear any concrete reasons its better.

Ok, more venture capitalists in the bay area-- sure, this is a blessing and a curse.

I've listed the downside... I wish someone would give a concrete advantage. (Cause I might be wrong.)
Actually, its very easy to argue.

You really haven't given a reason at all... only ad hominem. "Best people naturally want to be where teh best startups are".

I think the best startups are in Seattle, and I've compared both regions. I'm not saying people should move to seattle, though, because "Best" is a fuzzy quantity.
Are you creating a product or launching a business?
The Bootstrappers Bible (PDF)
I think that it's unrealistic to build a startup around an unsolved fundamentally hard problem. Can anyone think of a counter-example that succeeded? Typically, the problem is solved first, and then the startup is built to implement the solution.

Solving hard problems depends too much on creativity and research. I'm not sure I could do that under the pressure associated with a startup. The Google environment doesn't seem ideal either, come to think of it, but at least, I'm not the one absorbing the huge risk of failure.

Anybots is a startup that solved a hard problem, but it was self-funded, right? Would YC have funded them if it had been proposed by a 25-year-old Trevor Blackwell?
Nice. It seems a bit complex though for the casual user. But I can see it catch on.
I wonder how Digg is the tenth among those. I wonder how it made the list actually.
I totally agree with not taking decisions lightly, but with a clear head. I've put all my studies on hold this year(currently 19) because it makes so much more sense to experiment as best I can at this stage. I've since been employed as a copywriter(great job), then as a programmer(hated it because things were moving too slow in that company) and I ultimately started a low-profile firm and pitched alternative outdoor marketing projects to big distribution firms here in Bucharest.
What I'm trying to say is that in 9 months I've learned more than in my entire formal studies up until now. And it's not only about the knowledge but also about life experience and how to deal with things. It always demands great respect to take your own life into your hands and take decisions. It's also great to know that you can manage things on your own and be financially independent at this age.

I don't take formal studies lightly in any way, but I consider that it's great added value if I continue them in a few years.
"3) Do you have young kids? Spend your time with kids, not in a startup. You'll be glad you did later on. No matter how much money you make, you won't be able to buy back time!"

This is one of my main reasons for starting a startup - I want to be able to spend more time with my kids. At my current job, I get maybe an hour and a half to spend with them each night after coming home from work, before they have to go to bed.

Starting my own company and getting it to the point where it's profitable will allow me to spend the time I need with my kids. I'll be able to work from home, doing hours that are necessary to keep the company going. My kids and wife will see more of me, and we'll all be happier. :)
Apply anyways. If you get accepted, relocate for the three months. That time away will be well spent getting your product to a presentable point.

Heh - I'm taking that advice myself, and I live in Switzerland!
I couldn't find any info on the license for Apollo yet, but I guess it is not Open Source. Neither is Slingshot. It's certainly a very interesting development (especially considering mobile applications), but I would either wait for an open source framework or create my own.
Wow, the past was an awful place... :)

The video is fun to watch too: http://www.archive.org/details/Business1987_3
So what is Xobni about? "Making email smarter", as they write on their homepage, is not a very profound description.
I think getting a sizable investment is the way to go (unfortunately). I've tried the nights/weekends thing and it just doesn't work because startups seem to really require a long, dedicated burst of attention and energy, something you can't do on the side.

Thanks for your reply - I appreciate it.
Amazon's War on Statsaholic - Be Careful If Your Business Model Relies Entirely on an API from One Company
Aaronsw: We'd set out to make something people want -- but what if they didn't want to want it?
The New, New Manager: What Geeks Can Teach Us About Getting Stuff Done
Seth's Blog: The Joy/cash curve
Paul Kedrosky: Khosla's Clean Tech Companies
10 Awesome Startups You've Never Heard About
Heybuddyvending has some serious potential in a market like Boston or NYC which are full of colleges and in need of internships.
I absolutely agree.
I used to work for a big enterprise software company, and it took me a while to get used to the fact that we're selling crappy software for millions of $ a piece.
I think the problem is that large enterprises trust other large organizations to solve their problems. You can't really get ahead in a large enterprise and become a manager with a budget to spend on software solutions unless you have that kind of organizational mindset. You fear change and fear failure, and so you'd rather spend tons of cash on a crappy solution from someone "trustworthy" - so they can't blame you if the software you bought sucks, than on a small startup's product that no one else in your industry is using.
BTW, Crossing the Chasm is a good book on the subject. I recommend it to anyone considering going into enterprise software.
It's Justin, Live!  (SF Chronicle story on Justin.tv)
How to get your business noticed - Mar. 30, 2007
Please post more links like this one. I bet a lot of people here are like me. I have more tech knowledge than I need. Give me more marketing clue.
It is easy to come up with ideas, but some ideas are better than others. Maybe I can agree to the level that "ideas in nuthsells" are worthless. For example anyone can have the idea to "create a really elegant computer", yet most people agree that only Steve Jobs can pull it off (just look at the TV computer design challenge by intel - so depressing). But I think in his mind the idea is more than just the nutshell description. And having THAT right idea doesn't seem to be trivial to me.
Scaling Y Combinator: the Grahambot [PNG]
This thread started as a poll, and ended as a revolution.
Yeah, I can totally see this being smooshed by Google like Kiko was. PG said that Google was only good at stuff that worked for hackers, but I bet it could parlay its Gmail userbase into a Zenter-killing web-based Powerpoint, even though hackers don't generally do that much powerpoint.
They see keeping in touch with friends as a vice? This perspective will reverse after they get older and have kids. Then they'll feel guilty for not keeping in touch.
If the reddit recommendation engine ever gets really good, I think it could actually be part of the solution, not the problem. As Aaron quotes, "people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests." If we take the quote to be true, then looking at the most popular news items will always be problematic, but people will still need a way to find what interests them.
Can it eat breakfast?
:)

http://paulgrahamatebreakfast.infogami.com/

(What a strange thing that must have been to see if you were indeed Paul Graham)
It just takes longer to evaluate the worth of a novel than the worth of a blog post, so if you read only novels, it might be weeks before you find one you really like, but if you're reading blog posts, you're likely to find something you really like later today. For equally good blog posts and novels, the worth of the novel is less than the proportionately longer length would suggest.
Bah! The grahambot would obviously have squishy actuators for dynamic balancing! None of this stiff-jointed ZMP crap!

[Anybots++]
In the short run, lowbrow material can be quite successful. In the long run, though, quality wins out. People still read the classics, the Simpsons is still around because it's complex and smart.

I think the same is true of companies. There is a lot more value (both morally and monetarily) in building for long-term popularity (via quality) than in brief cheap thrills.

And so, specifically, I'm betting that YouTube will soon be replaced by sites that offer higher quality (production values, intellectual material, better organized) content...the popularity "Farting in Public" will soon pass!
HIS NAME IS ROBERT PAULSEN

HIS NAME IS ROBERT PAULSEN

-- fight club
This version of Grahambot is a knockoff of the Honda Human aka Asimo. Trevor Blackwell wanted to see if he could build his own for less than $5,000 times (n+1).
Social systems are a combination of:

1) The intrinsic qualities of the people there.

2) The systemic forces that drive their interaction.

Let's assume the people who visit Reddit are fixed, at least in the short term. So what can we do to alter the ways they interact so that each one leaves the site a better person than when they came?

The current design simply rewards stories that are the most popular. The problem with this is that there are basically four types of valuable stories: Insightful, interesting, informative, and funny (a la Slashdot).

In terms of what makes you a better person, the order is generally:

1. insightful

2. informative

3. interesting / funny

The problem is that the stories that are interesting and funny tend to get votes very quickly, driving the insightful and informative stories off the screen. (Partly this is because you can tell if something is interesting or funny from the headline, but you need to read the whole article before deciding if something is insightful.)

The are currently subreddits based on topics, but once again it's the interesting stories in each subreddit that are pushing out the insightful ones. If we have Anna Nicole Smith on the front page, then we have whatever the science equivalent of ANS is in science and the programming equivalent of ANS in programming.

So of course people aren't coming away from Reddit as better people. Because all the stories that would make them better people are being squelched because of the systemic forces of the system. I don't even read Reddit anymore for this reason.

It's not as if it can't be fixed though. Reddit has the stories it does because they designed the systemic forces to encourage those types of stories. They could just as easily be redesigned to encourage other types of stories.
And, IMHO, in the long term (a few years) they will steadily lose viewers to sites with a better algorithm for quality (insightful and informative) if they don't make these changes.
12 Reasons People Say No to Your Idea
Using Viral Video to Build Your Brand
This is an interesting idea. Although $50,000 is a high price to get an album recorded with a producer. It seems more like a contest then a new music model.
Comment thread on reddit about revenue sources for popular websites
I bet Trevor would build it...
What Type of Visitors Are Best for Your Site: One Time or Return?