skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Good point; that's what I learn from making judgments about other people's industries.

I won't back out of my bet, of course, but I can see how I might lose it.
I really enjoyed the post, especially the fact that he focuses on some basic basics such as: a documented hiring process, interview questions, and a skills demo.

It seems like with all the hectic-ness of a startup these basics are often dismissed.
New From Microsoft: Windows Mobile Device Center 6.1 for Windows Vista
webwright (a+t) gmail (dawt) com

Tony Wright

Thanks!
I think they are referring to it's position in the marketplace.

For example if you make load balancing software your product sets somewhere is the network stack.

If you sell designer clothing your product sits in fashionable boutiques and department stores.

In terms of web apps I think it sits in a browser on a connected device.

not sure if I nailed it, let me know if that is helpful.
Yes. But they're different from being high via chemicals.
Mike Wadhera, mikewadhera at gmail

Much thanks.
I will be using turk for some research/marketing of my own.
I'd love one

Arnie Riquelme

artixan (ahhht) gmail

Thanks
Kyro Beshay
kbeshay@gmail.com
Hrm, yeah, I think your answer makes much more sense than mine. Just going through it as an exercise kinda helped flushed some things out, but this question was vague for me. Perhaps for company strategists, it's a commonplace term.
His suggestions are somewhat similar to Joel's "Smart and Gets Things Done" rule:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000073.html

In fact, I believe his new book that came out very recently is all about recruiting.
I'd like one - webmaster -at- michaelwales [dot] com

Michael Wales
Sent as well.
Sent :D
I bought a 512 Mac for $3K in the 80's. And I'll buy an iPhone. The lesson from Apple for me... create what you want to use yourself. I bet Bill rather use a Mac ....what about you?
I figured. I was wondering if that sort of feeling is common for coders.
eh, I don't like em.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately too.

Chances are, the older you get, the average person will have lived through more "failures" than huge mega-successes. This influences how they perceive the world and their expected outcome.

Some 20 year-old who has never had to work for a BigCo or failed startup has not had that experience yet. (Not sure if this is a plus or minus, probably a plus.)

Sometimes, just sometimes, a "crotchety old-timer" who might still only be in his late twenties, can bring something to the game that a 20 y/o might not have at that age.
Bill Gates Harvard Commencement Transcript
JavaScript image pipelining: any ideas?
davidsmit |at| gmail
Looking for a great technical co-founder for evolvist.com
Mark Fletcher: ...distributed software development force[s] better communication ... lead[ing] to an overall better development process.
1 for me if you have it still -
iamyoooohoooo@yahoo.com
Amish Lalani - iamyoooohoooo@yahoo.com

with the name this time..
We are small team in New York City. We are in need of another programmer/technical co-founder(s). We have small seed money and can pay/house this person for the summer. If all works out we want to make this person a permanent member of the team.
done and done. hopefully the invite url works, please tell me if there are any problems (or tell the Spock people)
I know I did hehe...I still fall back into that pattern from time to time. But wake up calls in the form of unmanageable code keeps me back in line.
sent. hopefully it works. if the invite url doesn't work, please notify the Spock people
Joel on Software: The inches add up to feet, the feet add up to yards, and the yards add up to miles. And you ship a truly great product.
the second email did not work - how do i notify them - no contact listed on the website and the only email listed is info@corp.spock.com - not sure if that is a service related one.
Hmm... that reminds me too much of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rFx6OFooCs One of the most inspirational movie scenes ever.
THIS is more inspirational (at 4:35 in) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XDrv_M1znc
Except they don't do consulting, there are only 2 of them, and running Pragmatic Studios is their full time job. The point is moot anyway, there is way more Rails work floating around right now then could go to a select group of 50 (ish) people.
This article reads like he really, really wanted to tell everyone the story about finding the rogue alarm clock at his neighbor's apartment, but didn't have a good reason to publish it, so he added a couple paragraphs at the end about how being anal makes a person good at finding bugs. It did not flow together well.
"The barrier to change is not too little caring; it is too much complexity."
please one more for me: antonin.hildebrandgmail
thanks
Click.TV Player enters Techcrunch deadpool
Where can I buy a notebook with Linux?! - See what the manufacturers say...
Lots of features never make it into software because the developers themselves don't need it. You could make it really easy for users to say to developers "If I can get 20 other people to pay $100/ea will you implement this feature?"

Let them create really simple polls, without much registration or anything. Pretty informal. Maybe a "stage 1" poll and then move to a payment-verified "stage 2" poll if there was a good response for the informal poll.

I think the 1000 x $5 is not realistic. Most of the time when I need something created it's for a business and I have hundreds/thousands of dollars to available. I've underwritten projects for tens of thousands of dollars and would love to share the load. I'd go for a smaller number of bigger buyers, even if it seems less interesting. Business-related software because consumers are cheap bastards.
Paul Buchheit: Optimizing everything: some details matter a lot, most don't
My favorite coding "high" is sleep deprivation mixed with dangerous levels of caffeine. I'll sometimes work until ~5AM and be really tired, then get a "second wind" and be wide-awake until the afternoon coding like I'm on speed.

There's also the excited "holy crap this is cool" high, which is more like a tingling giddiness at how interesting something is. Like a child who can't sit still the night before Christmas. Nothing motivates me more than this feeling.
Culture comparison between Apple and Microsoft engineers
Audio and transcript from the first Venture Hacks office hours
WBox - HTTP testing tool
I wrote it in the free time of the last few days, still a bit primitive but I'll try to improve it, please feel free to post feature requests (and bug reports as the only beta tester for now was valgrind ( http://valgrind.org/ )
Alarm clock makers of the world should take note, though.
New approach to quantum information systems
IPOs Coming Back?
This can sound stupid maybe, but what about to design for not having the problem in the first stage? (i.e. no corners nor shadows). Also make sure it's a matter of transfer time and not a rendering speed issue.

Btw some day ago I released this little tool called wbox ( http://hping.org/wbox ), probably I good feature to add is to try to fetch all the js/css/images data like a real browser and time it in order to tell what is really taking time.
I'm like, uh, totally underwhelmed, to be honest...
"...people a world away who have nothing in common with you but their humanity."
MySql and the death of RAID
Now, I know this story has gotten a bunch of people's panties in a bunch. For a minute, ignore the RAID angle, hell - even ignore the RDBMS angle. IMHO, partitioning and replication is one of the cheapest and safest way to scale reads (and in some cases, writes).
One of the most valuable things he brings to the problem
is a certain amount of attitude:

I remember going to Davos some years back and sitting on a global health panel that was discussing ways to save millions of lives. Millions! Think of the thrill of saving just one person's life-- then multiply that by millions. Yet this was the most boring panel I've ever been on-- ever. So boring even I couldn't bear it.
I don't understand. Can someone explain?
Get ready for the summer of Apple
eBay to host developer conference (in Boston)
[video] Interview: Sir Tim Berners-Lee
Parallels updates Windows-on-Mac software
Clearly, the author needs help writing parables that communicate a point with emphasis!

The point was the irony of the IT guys arguing about cronyism in the movie while negotiating a deal that came about because the investor knows the founder's father.

The investor suddenly realized this and wondered whether he really was putting the best people on the deal or whether the poeple he "trusted" would let him down, so he asks his EA to keep an eye on them.
Apple TV: Whence the profits?
There's a feedback page: http://www.spock.com/do/feedback

Please paste the invite and the confirm URL so that they know wtf the problem is.
Ok! No more invites! Three people (who use gmail) have told me they've had problems with the confirm URL and the Spock people know. If you have a problem please tell them here: http://www.spock.com/do/feedback and paste the URL or whatever it is that's being a pain so they can figure out how to fix it. Sorry! When it's been fixed I'll offer some more invites.
Sent, but you should read this: http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=26884
I can second the first "high" (sleep dep + pot of coffee). Afterwards I usually crash pretty hard though. I do usually find the time extremely productive. Maybe because the rest of the world stops being interesting from 3-7am.
For anyone new to quantum computing, here are two good intro papers:

Quantum Computation explained to my Mother
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0305045

An Introduction to Quantum Computing for Non-Physicists
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9809016
Heh. I love the idea of Bill Gates going to Harvard to talk about activism -- I mean, how often does Ralph Nader deliver a commencement speech talking up risk arbitrage?
Well, at least you didn't start with a story about your neighbor's clock radio then try to graft an inappropriate ending to it.
Some Lisp coders have mentioned brain orgasms when discovering something great about the language.

I was bouncing around for a few hours when I removed 20 lines of Python and replaced it with one line
There is an energy apparent when giving order to chaos, which to me happened when I really nailed how my web app would order its information presentation in an elegant way to the public, which would in turn order people's minds in the way they view the topic of the site, Israeli technology (I would Hope).
Actually, he wanted to tell everyone they have released fogbugz 6 beta, wasn't that obvious? It is good story anyway.
Is There an Internet Advertising Bubble?
While I see ppc prices go up every month some sites are charging an absurd price for there banner space. I don't think I would call it a bubble but it is getting old.
We Are 99.9% Not Different - Bill Clinton's Remark at Harvard College Day 2007
I'll never understand the appeal of apple. Compare:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_1000

1985, Motorola 68000 @ 7.16 MHz, $1595

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_II

1987, Motorola 68020, 16 MHz, $5500 (!!!)

To anyone who has ever used both, the superiority of the Amiga was absolutely unmistakable. But what are you going to do when apparently-sane journalists write things like this:

_...and now the iPhone, which goes on sale in America this month, Apple has prospered by keeping just ahead of the times_

Umm..? Ahead of the times? With a cellphone? I mean, they're about a decade too late to be consider "with the times" much less "ahead of the times". Oh, well.
But are all genes equal? Humans and chimps are 98.5% similar, but whatever's in that 1.5% seems to make a big difference.
Great article! I love that you post here, give genuine advice on your blog, and didn't present at startup school with the crazy and rude idea that you were going to find employees for your company, like some of the speakers did.

But, I think you should mention the most important rule of optimization--don't optimize something that doesn't even exist yet. When you create anything new, just do it. When something bothers you once, twice, three times, then you know what to address.

Another example of when optimizing early isn't just a waste of time, but can hurt one in other ways as well, is when optimizing early is going to hide some information from the developer(s) when they need it most.

For example, say one has a live stats page. One can always optimize and cache the stats pages later on when one gets a lot of users and doing so will actually make a difference in performance. But in the beginning, anything "live" should be live so the developers can test things out and get instant feedback, and not see a cached or confusingly optimized result.

How I try to think about it, is "anything that takes time away from creating new things because something that used to work previously is now slow or broken." THEN one should optimize. Anything else is a waste of time.

The WORST kind of optimization? PEOPLE RE-WRITING THEIR ENTIRE SOFTWARE OR WEB APP IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE.
Settle for less than $1 Billion Market Potential?
The most interesting aspect of the Sequoia criteria seems to be

"Address existing markets poised for rapid growth or change. A market on the path to a $1B potential allows for error and time for real margins to develop."

Would you start a startup that doesn't seem poised for $1B?
It all sounds nice but my datacenter charges me $110 a month per U1 rack slot, making that famed "array of cheap disposable boxes" no so cheap in comparison to one beefy server with more cores, more drives, more RAM. I use software RAID 1 for reliability purposes.

With new quad core processors coming out from AMD I can see myself using 4x4 (16 cores) box with at least 32GB of RAM with My SQL DB sitting on one of those "solid state disks". This config should cost me no more than $3-4K and should be quite capable.
I think young entrepreneurial types, such as those who prowl this site, need to read and re-read this article. Money, materialism and MTV all pail in comparison to the world's worst problems.
However, there is also the warehouse effect. If I need some small everyday item, I don't waste time looking around for a small specialized shop. I just go to the big warehouse that stocks every item I can possibly think of.

On the net, ebay and Amazon come to mind - and not because Amazon is the best vendor in selling Paris Hilton memoirs...
Paul Graham's blog may harm your computer
Web 2.0: One More Online Music Service
From the agenda:

June 11

Beer Bash: 4:30 - 6:30
Mystery explained: http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=23980
Sure; ideas grow in the implementation.
Too bad Joel stopped blogging about software... Looking at this last XX posts I don't see anything about software.

Joel is getting old... :-)
I was really proud to write a php-object to JSON converter with many for-loops and indentation, and then seeing that it worked for my needs. However, I was really upset that PHP4 didn't have it built-in as I would rather not go through that.

However, that does not compare to the feeling I have when I create a great user-interface. Maybe not pretty, but when I figure out how to add a few things here or there and a new feature that makes sense but doesn't get in the user's way, and something I would love to have, and I know others would love it, too, and I know it's so good others will copy it--that's when I really, really get excited.

I get really excited and say "yeah" outloud when I have those moments.
Hi Paul, exactly his message --- even comparison with just humans --- we are just different 1/10 of 1% --- and almost all us tend to focus on that difference. He, mentioning we somehow forgetting about purpose over power.
Vint Cerf's Tripping Penguin
This is the clip he ended his presentation with last night, at his talk in Google's NY offices.
Uh oh, bubble alert.

Postini is profitable, though, so it's quite a return to the bad old days... yet.
Hey, this is supposed to be startup news... once the political stuff creeps in here it'll be just like reddit (and I don't mean that in a good way).
Bill just wanted to relay that in a much as we should enjoy our differences --- we should be beginning to put forth more value to our common humanity. It's fastly becoming a very small interdependent world and high time to care much more.
Oh, I thought the warning was because of this: http://www.raydeck.com/2006/10/paul-graham-is-hurting-the-children/
hi. no political intention meant. just thought something that's intrinsic part of our humanity. please read content and maybe you'll agree. thanks.
Yes, that's a classic :)
What do you guys think of Vator.tv?
What potential does vator.tv have? The idea to pitch your business is nice what what is the desired outcomes of these entrepreneurs?
Whoah whoah whoah. Sarbanes-Oxley has basically guaranteed that non-profitable companies can't afford to IPO, so IPO's aren't a sign of a bubble - they are a sign of quite the opposite. Real Profits.
It might be, you've learned something when you can admit you know nothing.
Web 2.0 is more about toys than anything
I have yet to see any true ipo-able web business to appear so far. When i mean truly ipo-able, i mean it has a REAL business model and one that can scale to billions. Something like Paypal or Ebay. Let's face it, Youtube, Facebook are all toys. They have eyeballs but no scalable business model.
The best hope i've seen so far is Prosper.com. It doesn't have the massive eyeballs yet but hey, at least their biz model is scalable.

Does this mean that all the good billion-dollar ipo-able web ideas have been taken up? Is this it?
You might want to consider taking money from an Angel instead.
"Radcliffe was a great place to live. There were more women up there, and most of the guys were science-math types. That combination offered me the best odds, if you know what I mean. This is where I learned the sad lesson that improving your odds doesnt guarantee success."

A subtle jab at college graduates?
How Sequoia Venture Capital Will Pop the Bubble of Web 2.0 - Mahalo or MFAhollow?
Only if the advertising isn't working.
Actually, Facebook generates a great deal of revenue via advertising. That said, I will concede that the ad based Web 2.0 business model has yet to be tested in an economic downturn. This is something that could leave a Web 2.0 company at the whim of unscrupulous hedge fund managers in the public markets. If their revenue proves to be susceptible to downturns, it will be a less than happy time for Bay area employees. Still, perhaps these companies will be able to come up with a new revenue generating product line. I know that most Web 2.0 entrepreneurs can trot out a list of other "business models" a mile long. However, the issue with them is that they generate revenue in the millions in 'best case' scenarios. What the markets would be looking for is revenue in the hundreds of millions, or billions. At a MINIMUM tens of millions in the 'worst case' scenarios.

I think that Facebook has the best chance of ALL of the Web 2.0 sites to make a run at the public markets. Maybe they can charge the users for access later. Or perhaps they can charge all of the developers for access to the platform API. Maybe they will make contracts with advertisers that span YEARS while the internet ad boom is hot. That way they will still have money to get them through to the next ad boom. There are a lot of things they could do.
The Craigslist Secret - why no tech has ever quit Craigslist in 12 years
Counterpoint: 37Signals (and their products)
Why most copywriting on the web sucks
From Free to Freemium!
Why Not? I don't need a $1B return, the VC does!

It's critical not to confuse what a VC considers successful to what a founder would consider successful. The two are not one and the same.

Getting a VC to fund you is a means to an end, and you do it when you think (as they say) that you have a $1B idea, since you'll need all that cash to make it worth anyone's time.

Bootstrapping a company though doesn't have those issues. You should use this approach when you have an idea that may be profitable and good to you, but isn't going to change the world. (Note that this definition classifies 95% of startups out there today)

You only get into trouble when you're looking for VC money for something that isn't likely to pay off. VC's don't care, because they leverage you as a 1/10 chance already.
Venture Capital Survey
Kudos to you guys for doing this.
List processing.
Blogga, PLEASE. You know that's not true.
this is an effing retarded counterpoint. Boy are their biz model scalable to hundreds of millions.
WSJ: Young Entrepreneurs Face Higher Hurdles
http://www.startupjournal.com/howto/soundadvice/20070228-garton.html?mod=RSS_Startup_Journal&sjrss=frontpage

Sorry, I meant to link the actual article, above.
I've blogged about this. What most of these commentaries seem to miss is that the material cost of the AppleTV is only going to drop since the hardware requirements aren't going to change much.

Look at the bill of materials. There are $100 tied up in CPU, Chipset GPU & network chip. How much will that cost in 18 months?
Now, Everyone Can Be Stupid for 15 Minutes of Fame -- WSJ on Guy Kawasaki
I don't think "everybody can be stupid for 15 minutes of fame" applies, as few poor or rich people are going to throw out 12 grand on a startup that is all hype, where the growth is supposed to come from tons of publicity, not by improving the product. (As that would increase the cost beyond 12 grand, and he wouldn't be able to brag about it any more.) They call him an entrepreneurism expert, forgetting that he's a VC.

The writer then says that Kawasaki can pay that amount in a few speeches, or write a book about the failed experience that will make way more than that expense. I'm sorry, but that doesn't sound like something everybody can do. :)