skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Google Forges Alliance With Airtel (Google's cell service in India?)
The one minute story
Tcl and Tk are ok. Not the best.
Copyright infringement is often publicly referred to as theft. So there is obviously an overlap in people's minds.
I think what is negotiable in 3 months is the amount of equity. what I may ask for is the guarantee of some (read minimum amount of) equity in 3 months written into my contract.
Fuzzwich (YC startup) - Animate Your Thoughts
I think I agree, but that's only because I'm a cheap bastard. Also, I often stop myself and realize I'm biased towards thinking a cab is a better deal when it is moving faster -- as if I can magically avoid traffic and stop lights when I'm driving.

But I suppose the point is that user pain needn't be rational.
A startup is right to want a trial period for such an early employee, but 3 months is on the long side. Half that should be enough for them to decide.

The percentage is impossible to predict. On average maybe 2% for a hacker. Less if they're post series A, or the salary is substantial.
Geek Bonding (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Star Trek)
The manager of a team of programmers is faced with a unique challenge: how to apply general principles to the weird and lead the unleadable so as to create a functioning group out of the unsocial. Blake Watson examines techniques and stereotypes that serve to create strong teams.
Salary is market rate, I think I may push for a shorter trial period, or more importantly a clause saying I will get a minimum amount - say 1% which we can then negotiate an increase on in 3 months.

To be honest a trial period of 1.5 or 3 months seems inconsequential, what I am mindful of is at the end of the trial period, they change their minds and say they're not going to offer me any equity.
indeed. The blog was really a good read sometimes.

That fake steve got up in rankings on most important tech people is proof of that :)
GooTube Sends a Stinging Gmail
Even during Viaweb I still slept 8 hours a night (roughly 3-11). The most productive people rarely have more than 6 hours or so of really concentrated work per day, except in emergencies. If you can ensure you get that every day, you don't need to economize on sleep.

My way of getting those 6 solid hours was a common hacker solution to the problem: I used the hours between 9 pm and 3 am, when no one could interrupt me.
Open Your Social Network or Face Wired's Wrath!
I already go to the gym for an hour every day at 5am. It's actually not so much a problem of getting to sleep - I can almost always do that. The trouble is more that I'm a very light sleeper and if anything disturbs me at night I can never get back to sleep.
It's reasonable to talk about what range of numbers
they're thinking about. You don't want to work 3 months
and then learn they consider .1% generous. But if
you specify a minimum, that may start to become the
default number in both your heads.
It would be more revealing if you had ranking of choices ?

For eg my preference would have been "pay pal" , "amazon fps" and finally "credit card".
If you have no design skills, just try to make things as minimal as possible. Google's UI was designed by engineers with no design skills, and it still works for them.

If you can't design the (original) Porsche 911,

http://www.idee.demon.nl/911_22/b911-117.jpg

just design a Land Rover

http://www.roverclub.org/crmpuf.gif

The thing to avoid is getting halfway to cool design and ending up with a Pontiac Aztek

http://www.familycar.com/RoadTests/PontiacAztek/Images2/Righ...

or an Edsel

http://blog.ninjakiwi.com/images/edsel.jpg
For that you have to either eliminate the disturbance, or make sure the same kind of disturbance is happening at the time you go to sleep.

There's a book called "Solving Your Child's Sleep Problems" by Ferber that is good not just in relation to children. It contains a long explanation of how the sleep process works and what causes anyone (child or adult) to be unable to return to sleep after waking.
I agree that these sites don't necessarily require an MFA to design, but they do require really careful thinking about exactly how the user will use site - not just which rounded font and pastel color scheme to use. Designs may be simple, but simple does not imply that they aren't well thought out. Fortunately, this is precisely what a good engineer should be thinking about the whole time.

[As an aside those faded blue gradients make me want to throw a rotten tomato at Jason Fried.]
The longer the brain goes without sleep, the more sleep debt is incurred. So staying awake for long periods at a time is unproductive from a time perspective. I'd advocate the opposite: take naps.
I think that half though is pretty tough though. I'd call that half more like 80%.
Has anyone run a successful company on a polyphasic sleep schedule?
Thanks for your input, I think I will ask to see what range they are thinking about. Will let you guys know what they say!
Just to clarify, I was not criticizing Graham in general. I was only calling him out on his "Microsoft is Dead" article. The grand majority of his work is excellent (which is why "Microsoft is Dead" stood out so much).
Nice Stripe Generator for Web 2.0ish graphics
I liked it and thought the bunch of you may find it useful.
Online CSS Editor
CSSFly is a web 2.0 tool for easy editing websites direct and in real-time in your browser.
A Glimpse Into The Suffering of Venture Capitalists
This is correct. I work on core technical stuff for about the same number of hours and spend the rest of my time taking care of business -- managing, outsourcing, etc.

And I also manage a 1.5 hour bicycle ride in there and some time with my kids.
And dont stray too far from traditional design conventions, or you could end up like Weber's new supercar and people will want to throw up when they see your work:

http://www.autoblog.com/2007/05/04/top-gear-crowns-weber-sup...
Such a cute idea!
Force yourself to sleep and it is most likely not going to happen. What I found helpful is to ACCEPT that you cannot sleep, but you can RELAX. Get your MIND OFF RUBY and think about that HOT WAITRESS you have been dying to ask out on a date. Imagine being on a date with her and start SMILING, I promess you will go to sleep within 15-30 minutes.
Google has always been good at UI's, but they don't have truly talented illustrators on staff (it's not what they need). Take a look at the "Pick a name" button thing on gmail as a reference.
Any recommendation on a design firm? How much should you expect to pay?
Design isn't an exception to most other talents. The way to get good is to do it. It helps to know how to make things, from paper prototypes drawn freehand to more serious tools.

Also, from a usability perspective, there are a number of tools people use. Lots of them boil down to "figure out why people can't use this or think it's ugly". But i'm no expert.

Also, it helps to have a sense of aesthetics. That usually comes when you admit something is ugly, and grows from there.

There are a ridiculous number of design books out there. You could probably finish "Laws of Simplicity" in an hour.
http://www.amazon.com/Laws-Simplicity-Design-Technology-Busi...

Note that I'm no designer.
Skype is another example of a very striking and original site. But sometimes, like you suggest, good graphic design is simply about paying attention to details like lining things up.
Jakob Nielsen: Feature Richness and User Engagement
Steve Pavlina, maybe? Though his company may only be successful to the extent that people believe they will become successful by sleeping polyphasically...
Doesn't pg have a patent on this? :)

http://www.google.com/patents?id=MEx4AAAAEBAJ
Viaweb 2.0 :)

I'd be happy to discuss in more detail. Email: alex "at" mystorespace.com
He invests as an angel in a lot of the companies already in the post-YC round, probably more profitable for him this way.
does this give me anything more than that offered by firebug/firefox web developer plugin?
Accoona Files for $80.5 Million IPO
It could be plugged into a real FPS. 10 cents per frag :)
Wall Street analyst: in 2016, Facebook will have six trillion dollars in annual revenue
He ran his business on a normal schedule; he stopped the polyphasic experiment after a few months.

Buckminster Fuller might count ( http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,774680,00.h... ), but his friends made him give it up.
CEOs of the hottest private companies doing to gain traction? Video link here to a chat.
In the past, we said "omg paul graham what is this Lisp thing and isn't it so amazing?"

Now we say "omg paul buccheit and isn't gmail neato?"

Times have changed.
If anyone believed that, wouldn't Yahoo have paid facebook the 12 billion they wanted?
How easily do you fall for linkbait?
Am I the only one who sees right through all these "Top 5 funny/greatest/cool/whatever X" posts?

It works (it gets links), but, I dunno, any book on search engine optimization lists linkbaiting of the kind that rules the Digg front page as the best way to attract people who use the Internet as a substitute for television.
Minekey Gets $3M for Recommendation Feeds Widget
Slide.com Launches Ad Network
We're so quick to deprive ourselves of sleep, but that is the one thing we need the most -- more than food, I think. Without sleep, you become depressed, your mind slows, your vocabulary shrinks. You lose IQ points.

I'm the father of a toddler. Needless to say, the last couple of years, I haven't slept well. Finally I gave up and started going to bed a couple of hours early. Amazing, the difference.
Here's the crazy thing for me: I know Dan Lyons. Or, I knew him a few years ago. Here I am, a huge FSJ fan. I have the t-shirts. The RSS feed is on my google home. And not for a moment did I suspect it was Dan.
Coding Horror: Yes, But What Have You *Done*?
EdgeCast, a content delivery network with an edge
EdgeCast, a content delivery network that came out of stealth mode today, thinks it can disrupt the content delivery market currently dominated by companies like Akamai and Limelight.
The Secret To Only Working 8-5
Pre-alpha search engine - walk2web
So, what is a pre-alpha alternative search engine? walk2web has developed a nifty web application that allows you to "walk" from one web site -via links - to another. They are working on a Search Engine version which will allow you to query a search term, something like Quintura or KartOO, but that's not done yet; so I'm calling it "pre-alpha." (or Stealth Mode)
Web 2.0 Primer - for those who still need one
I have put emails out to 2 proven programmers (Marc Andreessen and Max Levchin) to show up in my NYC office next week to interview for positions as programmers in my startup. To get hired, they must promise to lay everything on the line so I can fulfill my dreams, this of course includes their respective ferarris as well as Marc's 'windfall' from the recent acquisition of Opsware.
John Chambers will leave Cisco to be my VP of sales even though we have neither revenue nor funding yet.
I think you should defend yourself becuase you are NOT on the west coast. PG patrols the east coast with a mean machete, lopping off the heads of all that offend.
Hiring Stories From Silicon Valley Revealed
A Guide to Hiring Programmers: The High Cost of Low Quality
Kevin Mitnick's Business Card
This is pretty cool...
I believe that some of these 'analysts' are in need of help with a more full understanding of economics. Particularly the seemingly external factors that turn out to be fundamentals when thinking about economies. Energy inputs necessary to generate 'wealth' for example. What population would be necessary to support that level of economic activity. Keep in mind that the larger your population, the more of your fixed amount of energy resources you will need to do simple support of the population outside of other economic activities.

I am somewhat uncertain as to whether this is a misprint, however, I felt compelled to point out that US$6 trillion is an enormous amount of economic activity. By way of comparison, WalMart's revenue is about US$350 billion. Global telecom market sits somewhere between US$1 trillion and US$3 trillion depending on how we count things. The energy inputs that go into supporting this economic activity are mind boggling. Keep in mind that these industries invest a great deal in keeping those energy inputs to a minimum, that is, they invest in 'efficiency'. Still the inputs are incredulous! I suspect energy efficiency is not a strength that Facebook is possessed of.

I am fairly confident that this is the point that Warren Buffet would pose a question like will people need more Facebook than food? Maybe they will. I just ask that everyone try to keep in mind everything that needs to happen for Facebook to reach those numbers.

Then again . . . Maybe he is factoring in the crash of the US Dollar . . .

Never mind.
Intellectual property is arbitrary relative to, say, a hammer. Everyone agrees on what a hammer is, and that it is a "contested resource." The term "Intellectual Property" is very recent and we are still trying to reach an agreement on what it means.

"Stealing a portion of an owner's exclusive copyrights," isn't generally the message being sent when someone talks about "stealing music" or "stealing software."

I agree the dictionary is not the right place to look, however I disagree that legal lexicons are much more helpful. I think the issue here is the general metaphor used by regular people to communicate these ideas with each other.
News reports a few years ago said that studies had shown that 3mg worked less well than none at all.
I liked the argument and stance taken. This is precisely what GeniTeam is doing to faciliate startups. HR Managers and all luxuries are possible for big companies, but not for startups. GeniTeam started its services on similar concept. Feel free to comment on GeniTeam's business model ( www.geniteam.com )
How to Tranform Your IT Department from Order Taker to Innovator
$6T is roughly half of the total U.S. GDP. Assuming that U.S. GDP grows at typical 3% rates or so over the next 10 years, this is saying that FaceBook will account for ~40% of the U.S. economy by 2016.

Something about that seems a little wrong to me...
LA Fire Department all 'aTwitter' over Web 2.0
The article says 6 Billion not 6 Trillion.
Wow, I haven't seen a site that makes such annoying use of sound in some time.

Unless I hear they've removed sound, I have no intention of trying it again.
LiveJournal creator leaves as Six Apart fails to spin
Yah, I'm curious how people expect to improve their blog/business beyond the immediate rush.

If it's just an ad house, the business of posting pictures of funny cats and top-N lists is pretty sustainable.

But who would attrack users of a real system like that? In that sense, I see the space of sites that linkbait, as you put it, as orthogonal to real services and social content.
that is what I was wondering. Nice idea either way, buy it doesn't beat firebug
VC Investments Hitting New Highs
Amie Street Closes Series A Financing Led By Amazon.com
Is eBay Ready To Make A Big Move? (Who would they buy?)
Summary: Because of complexity cost, your default strategy should be to minimize features and emphasize simplicity. However, some situations increase the number of features an application can sustain. High user engagement is one such situation.
You're right . . .

Even with a crash, this is just asinine.

It's that midwestern courtesy of mine. It obliges me, at times, to simply point out the deficiencies in arguments for silly positions as opposed to dismissing them out of hand. It is difficult to imagine a scenario culminating in the situation that the analyst postulates.

AAarrrggghhh!!!

I just did it again!!!

Listen to nostrademons.
I use outlook. In fact, I just measured the load-up time for Outlook and gmail.

Outlook: 12 seconds
Firefox+Gmail: 21 seconds.

Finding and opening messages is much easier in Outlook. I can use tab and arrow keys to navigate much easier than I can with gmail, and messages load much more quickly. Since it's an Exchange server that maintains a constant connection, I get email from anyone on the network within a few seconds, and a notification in the taskbar that I've got a new message. Mail filters are not difficult to set up, and arranging messages is a drag-and-drop affair.

I'm using Outlook less these days, as my co-workers tend to use IRC for most incidental communication and email for technical notifications and documentation and such. But at my last company most professionals, managers, and executives lived in Outlook.

There are a few things that really bug me about Outlook: No support for tabbed browsing of messages and a buggy, poorly documented scripting engine. Practically speaking, Outlook requires more IT support than gmail.
Even if you think he gets more hype then he deserves, this is pretty cool. It always pays to have a lock-pick set with you at all times...
US$6 billion makes more sense.

Still a little foolhardy. A projection that goes out 10 years in this industry? Not smart.

If you give someone US$1 billion, they cannot hurt WalMart much. I suspect they could hurt Facebook a great deal. Maybe the 'new hotness' will come along, maybe Yahoo! will get their act together, maybe Apple (iPhone) is working on an announcement for the next MacWorld conference, maybe some kid is in his dorm right now about to make the whole social networking thing P2P.

The Facebook Fawnfest needs to cool off a bit.
Getting Better Employees Than Google
It's more of a long-tail effect. Outlook has a lot of features, and it's a bit bloaty in the sense that they could be better organized but having supported people using outlook for a couple of years I can say that people find the Way They Like To Do Things and it's not always the same as everyone else. People find the feature they like and use it. Delegate configurations are very common executives and their assistants. A friend of mine used the notes feature all the time.
VooDoo Venture Capital: How much to raise?
Companies that raise $10 million dollar A rounds don't raise $5 million dollar B rounds, they raise $30 million dollar B rounds. If you have not accurately predicted how quickly you can grow the top line, you will quickly find that the cap table has gotten away from you, and you will have less flexibility to build the company the way you might like to if the market zigs when you thought it would zag.
Too bad the post is so short on details... it feels like reading a an intro without a main article :(
"Finding good programmers is hard in any language." I'm not so sure. Job descriptions that include functional programming languages seem to attract high-quality candidates.
The 100% Easy-2-Read Standard - must read for web professionals
Good point.

What does "proven" mean? Even if you've worked with someone before, and things worked out well, there's no guaranteeing it will be 100% the same the next go around.

Miscommunication is probably the biggest problem here. Were both of you expecting to work 80 hours a week on the startup for the next 3 years of your life? Or was one person really thinkg "I'll see how this thing plays out... might have to bail after a few months if it doesn't."
Slap in the Facebook: It's Time for Social Networks to Open Up
Actually, it says 6,049,602 Trillion
Anyone else ever go to sleep while thinking about the problem you were hacking on, and end up having horrible dreams while you (ineptly) try to solve it in your sleep? I get really bad sleep that way and wake up stressed out.
I downmodded you because this sounds like an advertisement for GeniTeam without any meaningful value proposition for the members of this community. You (and your website) don't clearly state why start ups should use your services and justify those claims.

Also, your website is confusing. You have a bunch of web 2.0 buzz words on the left, but clicking on the words do not do anything. The drop down menu navigation on the right for sections 01 to 08 add friction to my user experience. After reading the copy above the fold, my main objection still is not answered: "Why should I trust GeniTeam to recruit and manage my engineers?"

I hope you take these critiques to heart, and contribute some valuable, well thought out posts in the future.
Seems to be some confusion.

Article gives Facebook a ~$6 billion valuation today.

It then says that after we have evolved into transhumans Facebook will have 6,049,602,150 billion dollars worth of revenue. This is actually $6 quintillion, not $6 trillion.

I'm assuming this is something of a joke, or a typo. Probably the former?
I know http://www.silverorange.com. They seem very good. They made Firefox's layout (I believe) and even Digg's layout. But I assume it must be kind of expensive.
And I downmodded you for this sentence:

The model allows companies to employee resources in different geographical location, managed by GeniTeam.
Facebook App w/ 1.5 million installs 
I need a hacker. You want money and some equity? Leave a comment to your site/email/resmue/whatever

You start now. Please help me.
Why is it that people are most productive (at hacking) during night time hours? Even with no interruptions during the day, I find myself not as engaged as I would be during the night.

Also, I've read that taking short naps for about 20 minutes (any longer would make you groggy) helps improve learning potential and confidence.
As most startuppers here aren't really in the same game as Google, it's hard to "lose" an employee to them. People who want great perks, a decent-sized, steady paycheck, and free food at all hours at a pretty sizable company will choose Google every time. Those looking for more adventure, potentially less pay, and real equity at a small company will always pick the start up.

Your real competition when it comes to recruitment is all right here, reading this site...
Here is the original: http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/heavy-metal/lock-pick-business-ca...
drink a cup of hot milk and eat a banana.
I'm becoming more and more convinced that one of the keys to getting good software is to have it developed by a software company, not by the technical department of a non software company, or even by a multifaceted 'management consulting' company. Unless developing software is a company's sole concern, hierarchies, rituals and reward structures certain to drive away the best developers, almost inevitably take root.
Yeah, it pays in possible jail time:

From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lock_picking

"In United States, laws concerning possession of lock picks vary from state to state. Generally, possession and use of lock picks is considered equivalent to the possession of a crowbar or other tool that may or may not be used in a burglary. Illegal possession of lock picks is generally prosecuted as a felony under the category of possession of burglary tools or similar statutes. In many states, simple possession is completely legal as their statutes require proof of intent. In some states, however, possession without appropriate licensure is considered prima facie evidence of intent to commit a crime (in California for example), rendering simple possession a crime"
There is no such Thing as Having "No Competition"
Scientific American: Meraki's Guerilla Wi-Fi to Put a Billion More People Online
or, #11 naming your startup squidoo
How are people monetizing Facebook aps? Ads (if so, are they more or less effective than ads on traditional sites)?