skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Watch "The Heist" performed by Derren Brown - a british hypnotist. The episode appeared in Channel4. I am not sure where to get it in the US or elsewhere.(psst,psst ..torrent).

He convinces a group of 4 middle manager types to rob a 100,000 pounds from a bank. He selects his subjects by using the milgram experiment. I was shocked by the results. See it to believe it.

(Edit:Earlier I thought it was Stanford prison.expt.Its milgram.expt).
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7673429342190916780
Is it possible to be co-founding with someone without knowing them for a while. Anyone here with such experience?
Do you also believe that our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S. or should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future for our children?
Sadly, "Who doesn't have maps?" doesn't seem to return any results.

My new startup: [http://youtube.com/watch?v=pzDS3i4vv6w] Like Such as Maps!
Helping Users Avoid Bugs in GUI Applications [pdf] (Would this make sense with web apps?)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3773540249257160836

is the part where he does the milgram expt.
I remember the Excel 97 flight simulator Easter Egg. Oh, google, when will you learn to innovate?
Harvard had an internal facebook system that had pictures and brief descriptions of students. Via your dorm network, you could browse the other freshmen in your dorm.

Zuckerberg went and jacked into each dorm and downloaded all the data. Then, he put the pictures up on a site called Facemash. When you went to Facemash, you were given two pictures and asked to rate which one was hotter. This quickly became very popular and got Zuckerberg in trouble with Harvard.

He used the negative publicity (but remember that there's almost no such thing as bad publicity) to launch Facebook. From there, it's a case study in viral marketing, as Zuckerberg launched at the schools that had the most students that were friends with the Harvard students.
Apple to announce advanced ringtone capabilities for the iPhone soon
Anyone remember sixdegrees.com when Amazon bought it during the dot boom... I agree - this is stupid
Andrew Chen: Viral marketing is not a marketing strategy
Quit and do a startup.
Someone posted a perfect set-up for this and I nailed it:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48652

Apparently there are still some people who haven't seen the clip yet. They must be working harder on their start-ups.
Is envy a good thing?
A lot of Web 2.0 news circulates around who is getting bought by whom for how much. A lot of people see this and envision the same success for themselves. A lot of these same people are creating startups.

My question is this: is envy a good thing? I mean we are talking about the American Dream after all, the web is the new land of opportunity for many people, and a lot of us look to it as our chance to become rich and successful. But is this envy good or bad? Do we focus too much on getting acquired, rather than starting something you love and possibly being able to make a living off of it? The YC application even asks who you think would be the most likely to acquire you.

PG has said many times, that during his Viaweb days all he wanted to do was make something good. What are your thoughts?

P.S.
This blew me away a few months back. In my Mens Health magazine, the results to a survey on the average guy's fantasy profession:
1. Professional athlete, 2. Movie Star, 3. Internet start-up millionaire, 4. Rock and Roll star, 5. Playboy photographer ... in that order!
Yes internet start-up made it ahead of taking pictures of hot naked women all day, and being a rock and roll singer! Oh how the times have changed...
Anything that creates obligations essentially has to be done as a company. Open-source programmers typically tend to be leery of taking on projects where they have to do something, with good reason. Also, contracts generally aren't enforceable if there is no money (or other "consideration") changing hands. Anything where you want to be sure that something gets done in the future basically needs to go through the real economy.

The examples cited so far are basically special cases of this. Google needs to be able to enter into contracts for hosting, bandwidth, power, uptime, etc, so it needs to be a real corporation. When you entrust sensitive personal data, you want an ongoing obligation to keep that data secure, which you can't get with open-source. Additional examples might be corporate support contracts, support for certain platforms, and any service dealing with payment or finances.

Basically, open-source is good for sharing what people have done, while corporations are good for determining what people will do.
I bought that issue for the articles.
Get a job at a game company. Many have huge turnover of coders, and are 'always' hiring. Unless you're a real superstar, they'll make you do shitty work for shitty pay for a shitty number of hours, hence are unlikely to dent your entrepreneurial aspirations like more cushy jobs have been known to.

Stash whatever crumbs they do pay you, and be on the lookout for designers that are both decent and disgruntled.
I liked it, not because it is (or isn't) technical, but because it is inspiring.
That's all I need to start working even harder and tell myself that all the decisions I've taken were the right ones.

Another inspiring speech is this one from Steve Jobs:

http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-06150...
You're underestimating just how weak a rogue country is. If you tell the US that you have a nuke in DC, they won't believe you and they will crush you, overnight, with the real Special Forces. If you responsibility build your own nuclear power infrastructure, it will be assumed that you can build a bomb overnight and that's just as good as having the real thing. Japan is an example of a country with nuclear power on this level.

It doesn't work to be an enemy to the first world. They will crush you. You've gotta be a friend. That means if your country has a lot of oil, you give it to the corporations just like the powers that be want. They reward the leaders generously for going along with them and they kill you if you assert your independence and don't give them the oil. Threatening the death of civilians with nukes is just a really bad idea.
the guardian didn't bother goggling "world's oldest blogger" to fact check this story. a 107 year old australian has been blogging for sometime. the guardian should be embarrassed.
I disagree. I don't think virality has to be or perhaps even should be built in from the start. I think you should design a solution to a problem people have. And at that stage you should just choose the best solution, instead of ignoring solutions that don't have a viral aspect.

Furthermore, if you're sufficiently imaginative you certainly can take an idea and add a viral component after the fact. In fact, virality was bolted on to Hotmail, the application for which the term "viral marketing" was invented.
No, our UI was not cool enough at the time of the interview. (It is far better now), but we were promised an article when we launch by Michael Arrington who interviewed us.
NSA@Home
Theory and Practice: Macros in Erlang
6. To make cool things that people enjoy while not caring about money past a house.

The only reason I'm pursuing financial security is to be free of the 9-5 so that I can focus on creating interesting things.
Photos of people using the product are powerful images. But , in order to make a similar manual for a web app today, what demographic you should use? It must be like a Benetton ad?
It never hurts to have diversity in your marketing material. And by that, I mean women and black people.
It's also assumed that people who haven't figured computers out yet never will. This is a major problem but is usually just ignored.
> My question is this: is envy a good thing?

Well, envy causes suffering, and suffering is bad; so no, envy is not good. You can not want something so badly that you get it. It's true that chance favors the prepared mind, but not always.

What can you do to be happy now? It's not that hard. There is honor and pleasure in cutting an onion well.
reddit, not rabbit - the problem with randomly changing your logo
Do you still read Slashdot?
I don't think it matters what your initial spark is to get you started. Whether its envy or inspiration, as long as your doing it and enjoying it.

If months after getting your project up, and the first thing you can say to someone who asks you why your doing it? And you respond like "for Google to buy me", then maybe your envy has become a bad thing, or at least its made you kinda shallow.

Otherwise there's nothing wrong with reading that youtube buyout article and then choosing the next day to spend the day thinking of an idea you'd be happy with pursuing over the next couple of months.
Is it inevitable that wars will be faught by unsuspecting online gamers?
I believe that it will become increasingly difficult to attract people to a volunteer army. One might imagine the creation of online games that manifest themselves in actual combat (e.g., via drones, robots) without revealing their true nature to the online gamer.
Google: See no evil, do no evil
If Google views all their actions through telescope vision and never allows themselves to enterain the thought that what there doing maybe bad, can they ever do evil?

I watched the google documantary not to long ago, and when the questionaire started throughing Marissa Mayer (the Product manager at google) some obivously tough questions about Google Books and the possible effects of their actions, here response several times was simply "I don't see that way".
Yes, but I mostly just scan the links, I click a link less than once a day.
Is it inevitable that all science fiction premises will come true?
Nope. I haven't for several years now.
Do you think it is at least feasible to fight wars in this way?

Would you play any online game if there is a small probability that doing so may kill people in real life?
I don't know if finding meaning in a statement of no meaning is something worth bragging about...
I think as with most things it depends. Envy is closely related to pride , and if envy/pride drives us to create beautiful products to always push outside our comfort zones to make something beautiful/useful then I am all for it., But if with, I daresay most people ,envy drives them to do things beyond what decent people do.

IN short figure out how envy affects you. Honestly assess yourself and act accordingly.
Screenify preview
Yes, it is feasible to do so. But in the same way that there is close to no shortage of volunteers for the current army, there would be no shortage of volunteers for the robot army. I sure as hell wouldn't volunteer to go to Iraq, but I'd be much more willing to control a robot or spy drone remotely. There's no personal risk.

In short, if war is fought in the far future the superior side won't have very many human soldiers, but the robots definitely won't be controlled by unsuspecting online gamers because they can just use paid remote soldiers.
With every line of code I write, I stay focused on the day that I will achieve greatness and crush all others. At this rate I'm set to completely burn out in my mid 20's but I can take that risk.
One advantage to using unsuspecting online gamers is secrecy. It's also cheaper.

Moreover, the guilt from killing people is reduced since there is only a small probability that the online game you are playing is for real.
It's just a completely ridiculous idea. I can't seeing anything in the future of politics that could lead to this scenario.
Two issues:

1) What motivates you? For some, it's desire. For others, it's fear. Envy is a form of desire. Doing anything with all your soul -- pouring yourself into something -- is your job in life as far as I'm concerned. Pick whatever works for you. Whatever keeps you moving.

2) It also depends on what you envy. I envy people that have made a positive difference in people's lives. Other things seem kind of stupid to me, like money and fame. You can inherit money, or trick somebody out of it, so while it's nice, it's more like the scoreboard on a basketball game. You don't play basketball by looking at the scoreboard. Fame is too much a crap shoot. Plus I'd rather have freedom to invent and innovate than having the world watching my every move.
there are sooo many issues and feelings to handle during a startup to have time for a such destructful emotion like envyness
A coupla times a week. Back around 1999, I was there multiple times a day.
I thought you were joking. He is. Inanity.
This is business. Envy is a distraction. Being able to see the paths someone else took to get somewhere shouldn't serve as the primary inspiration or impetus to pursue your ideas. Those paths are more than likely not opportunities for your success.

If "some 24 year old kid from illinois just sold his <2 year old video site for more than 1.5b!" gets you past the "wow maybe I could actually do this" hurdle without inflating your ego to the point of forecasting your certain success then it's been a positive thing for your personal progress.

Ymmv. Do it, fail, learn, repeat as necessary. Try not to let anecdotal successes inspire visions of grandeur.
I think Kimmel said it best: http://tinyurl.com/2abgv8
To quote the article:
"I really can't blame them since they were probably told in college that logic and reason are superior to evidence and observation."

Albert Einstein was criticized by the physics community for ONLY using "logic and reason" to explain what he was proposing.

Don't be hasty and dismiss half the tools we have because YOU find them useless.
Password vulnerability in Firefox 2.0.0.5 - TvByDemand | Forums | Viruses, Spyware and Exploits
I scan the stories using a once-a-day RSS update but I never bother with the comments.
They made a movie about this. http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0105629/
Dear sir,
If you are looking for a co-founder who will do the hacking and design work for you, then what do you propose to bring to the table?
I used to read it multiple times a day. Now I read it every few days. News.YC has replaced /. (and Digg too) as my source for interesting articles and relevant commentary.
Yes it is. It is actually a gr8 thing. Being envious is nothing but desiring the same thing someone else has. Of course I want what the sergey and Larry have. I certainly want what the zentel guys have. I also want what the anywhere FM guys have. But it is not that I want their product or money, but I want to be where they are. I certainly do not want them not to have what they have. Now that would have been horrible. As long as you want to have the same as the other guy without taking away from his success then it is ok to want it. Actually I would advise you to wake up every morning and tell yourself I am going to build a company that people want just like anywhere.FM and zenter and delicious and flickr and all the other successes did. I can recall PG saying to us being successful mean getting the founders rich
Work for my entire adult life in forced mediocrity just to keep my head above water or spend a small number of years working super hard to buy my freedom? An easy decision for me.

I'd hack even if there was no money in it and I'd run a business to get rich even if I couldn't do it hacking. I happen to be alive in a time when I'm lucky enough to combine the two.

Envy may enter into my mind on occasion when I look at others who have achieved what I'm aiming for, but most of the time it's just purely and hugely inspiring.
I'd heard that as Winston Churchill.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Churchill
If all our guys are really online gamers, whose to say that their guys won't be too?

Hell, after a few titanic clashes where nobody actually gets killed, they might get rid of the machines entirely and just have our guys duke it out with their guys in a virtual world. And then we'd have...battle.net. ;-)
This is for wars against low-tech countries. They won't have sophisticated drones/robots.
A member of the National Academy of Sciences of my acquaintance once said that life was too chaotic to plan beyond six months.
I was just lying down, thinking about it now and for the past few days. I like the questions about ego that have been posted this week.
"... Do you still read Slashdot? ..."

Started reading in '96, uid of 2774 and I used to read it as much as I read hacknews.yc but stopped after ads started appearing and the sig/noise became unbearable ~ http://slashdot.org/~goon
Two more feature requests:

-- show news.yc karma in the popup and on the forum page

-- have an area or a email link for feature requests :)
I also used to read it a couple times a day. Now I scan it maybe once in a while.

They don't break any stories to me anymore, it is always a delayed link to something I already read in reddit / digg yc.
it so is a strategy.
IBM's Computing Breakthrough Promises Chips The Size Of Dust
No. Security + Copyright Law = BORING
Daily from around 1997 until 2004 or so, since then maybe a few times a year.
Every day, man. Beats the hell out of reddit and digg. Sure, there's a lot of pointless articles there, but at least I don't have to see tracksuitceo articles every day there, either.
somewhat regularly, with comments having score 5 only.
The hidden "F" in your web page
Posession is 9/10ths of the law.
From poster's profile: "Son of a school teacher got his start designing websites. Dropped out of community college freshman year to pursue clothing venture.Failed, started programming with a "Get it done!" mantra.Made first million when he founded xyz game in 2007 at age 20 with partner from Ycombinator. Sold to xyz media two years later for a whopping $1.9 Billion. Devotes time to improving infrastructure in developing nations, Africa."

Seems a bit over the top for y combinator. Hackers are usually very humble people (save bill gates / larry ellison types).
Not at all, PG said in a comment here that they fund undergraduates with take over the world attitudes.
Once a day. Given up on reddit and digg. Now its news.YC and Slashdot. I really need to work out a better way to get "local" news - I feel really out of touch at times.
While Apple And NBC Squabble Like Girls In A Schoolyard, BitTorrent Keeps On Rolling
Stevey's Tech News, Issue #1
Good as in an objective, moral goodness, or good as in may make you more money?

If it's the former, then no. If it's the latter, then maybe.

Most of us are working on projects that are amoral in nature, therefore, just have fun along the way and don't hurt anyone.
C'mon, how can there be a (figurative) room full of nerds, and none of you have read "Ender's Game"? You guys need to be nerdier. Way nerdier.

Your assignment for next week is to play AD&D (2nd generation rules), and I want to see all of you here next week in full Klingon battle dress, or traditional Tolkien Elvin garb, per your preference.
> or spend a small number of years working super hard to buy my freedom? An easy decision for me.

I think that particular idea from PG's essay is... not quite right. It worked for him, but plenty of people work super hard and end up with nothing after a few years, so it's not really like it's an automatic benefit of doing as much as you can in a given time frame.
Storm Worm Dwarfs World's Top Supercomputers
You may also read http://tinyurl.com/2dydfa reporting about a ciberwar against Estonia in April.
You may also read http://tinyurl.com/2dydfa reporting about a ciberwar against Estonia in April. It gives an idea what a botnet could be used for.
I get the daily email. Occasionally there are a couple of things that I've missed from the day before, but I agree. It's not as "breaking" as it used to be.
I've made several unsuccessful attempts over the years to go more than a few days without reading slashdot :)

I still read it almost every day, at least to check what the stories are. For a while, about eight months ago, I found myself going to it less, in favor of the main reddit page. Now that www.reddit.com has... evolved, I start a lot of my free-range browsing time from programming.reddit.com and slashdot (as well as news.yc, suddenly).

The firehose is intriguing. Good to see Malda et al. continuing to experiment with novel approaches (and it IS novel - it's not a straight digg/reddit clone, as some opine). Will be interesting to see how that plays out.
I started reading Slashdot when it was Chips and Dips...but I had completely discontinued Slashdot for about two years and reddit took its place. Now that reddit has declined from a "have to read nearly every link on the page" to "maybe two or three articles per day" habit, I find myself going back to slashdot at least once every couple of days.

I read news.YC more often than either now...but the volume here is still low enough to where it's not a problem. I drop in more than I need to (I'll come back not really expecting anything new) kind of as a nervous tick while I'm waiting on software to build or virtual machine images to copy (I manage our apt/yum software repositories, and do all of the QC testing, so I twiddle my thumbs more than I'd like).

Lately, there's a lot more of that, as may be seen in my ridiculous increase in comment volume this week...I'm kind of embarrassed looking over it now...because I'm in the midst of rolling out a new version of our installer--so lots of testing and packaging. I need to find something more productive to turn into a nervous tick. Blogging, or smoking crack or something.
Haven't read slashdot in years. neither do I read digg. prog.reddit sometimes. YC News everyday.

The million $ question is when do I move away from YC News, and when?
So as of right now, your resume is "Son of a school teacher got his start designing websites. Dropped out of community college freshman year to pursue clothing venture.Failed."

Impressive. Too bad I'm already involved in a startup, otherwise I'd be down.
It's hardly a PG specific idea that you can work harder for yourself and make a lot more money. It's definitely not a sure thing that you'll succeed quickly, but if you're wiling to try really hard until you do you have a very good shot.

It worked for my grandfather as a farmer and my father as an artist. There's no reason it shouldn't work for me with technology.
I agree - if you are so passionate about an idea and its actually going to take some kind of envy to go ahead and implement it, then so be it.
Pretty much the only way I'd play an online game is if that was a certainty.
This is awesome...

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Size_of_English_Wiki...
I read it daily, but it's true it's value has been declining with time. If you read many feeds, you'll keep getting duplicated news with a one day delay in Slashdot. Of course, comment reading is a no-no except you are really, really interested, in which case I only read top score comments from the first page.
I get all my news through my RSS reader. If it doesn't have RSS (or Atom) it doesn't exist :-)

So I look at the headlines and reads at least one article a day
Bug fixed on BarCodeMaker 
The setup bug was successfully fixed, re download it now !
Download a Free BarCodeMaker (True Type Font) !!!
Free BarCodeMaker with True Type Font, download now !!
And the unsuspecting soldiers play a game in which they have to kill nerds sitting in front of a computer screen? That doesn't sound very exciting.
Wouldn't it also depend on the layout of the web page, though? It almost reads as if scientists have discovered that people read from left to right, starting from the top and then proceeding to following lines in a vertical movement from the top to the bottom.
There's doubtless a relationship between work input and output, but what I thought you were referring to was this:

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

"Economically, you can think of a startup as a way to compress your whole working life into a few years. Instead of working at a low intensity for forty years, you work as hard as you possibly can for four."
What about videos showing how people uses iSuck on myTube?

Em, wait. Forget about it.