skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Funny, I was actually thinking of changing my site's focus. I don't talk much about leadership there, as you can see.
The business practices in the web 2.0 space are becoming less and less honorable. In addition to this, I was reading recently about companies who were using Facebook apps to advertise, you guessed it, other Facebook apps. So funded startups pay these funded startups to advertise to Facebook users, who then start using the advertised app. Would be perfectly acceptable, only to date this seems to be the only proven model for generating money from Facebook apps. This is being described by investment circles in the midwest as a new age multi level marketing scheme. That is, if the group you are talking to is gentlemanly. The less gentlemanly circles are calling it a Ponzi scheme.
Grad School :(
His closest competitor is hotornot.com. Also, match.com has double the traffic. OKCupid is too slow to be a threat.
An O'Reilly blog Beautiful Code to augment the book
Or not. This could be a disaster for them given that people like Friedman actually have a relatively loyal following. Going free is not the answer to everything.
"What I am saying is that ad-based businesses aren't stable enough to warrant the valuations that we're seeing right now."

What valuations? You mean profits? I honestly don't know what companies you're talking about. Google? You're predicting the downfall of Google? Get in line -- there's been one for years, right next to the one that predicts Apple will Die Any Day Now[tm].
Risk Everything
"Google isn't an ad-supported business, though. They are an ad business, period."

Sorry, but you're just playing semantic games there. "Ad-supported business" and "ad business" means the same thing in this context.
There's no one programmer who does the work of ten other programmers
I don't know how someone could consider Google's 4 demands as being designed only to benefit Google. Those 4 demands benefited USERS, is that not obvious? I thought it would have been but I guess the telco lobbyists did a good job of convincing certain people otherwise. This guy is basically preaching the exact same thing as the dissenting FCC commissioners.

Perfect example of our wonderful govt ignoring citizen interests in favor of those of the lobbyists.

This guy is beating a dead horse anyway, the ruling has already happened and is done. Its really just a matter who participates in the auction and who comes through in the clutch. I dont see GOOG shareholders being happy with them spending the amount of money that the telcos will be able to however.. especially if the carriers collude. This understanding could have been the reason why google tried to instate these rules to begin with.
"This guy must have hit a nerve to generate so much vitriol."

He hit a nerve, but not any kind of "nerve of truth". We're simply tired of the same old bullshit repeated by thinking-impaired writers.

You can't have a "crash" if the stock marketed is not tied into the business. PlentyOfFish.com, my favorite example at the moment, does not need to worry -- directly -- about a stock market crash. Nor does he (it's one guy) need to worry about VC pulling out: he has no VC.

A stock market crash could hurt everyone, but that won't be caused by some "overvaluation" of Web 2.0 companies.

Folks, the worst thing that can happen here is that some people may have to get corporate jobs while they plan their next ventures.

Those who predict a Web 2.0 crash don't understand what happened the first time.
There's a huge difference!

Google is a ad monopoly, they own the method of delivery, the ads, the monetary distribution and the placement.

That's an advantage that no other company can claim, and basically means that you can't compare them in this context at all.
On the same day as the pronouncement of Dot Bomb 2.0. Timing couldn't be worse, according to that guy.
I hereby predict that the fledgling blog at davidpiccione.com, created in May 2007 by Canadian David Piccione, will be forced to fold soon due to overvaluation and other market pressures.

We expect that the blog will cease operations before the end of the calendar year.
Nope, no fundamental difference. Money is made from advertising. As long as businesses continue to advertise, revenue is generated.
Palo Alto is getting harder and harder to live in.
Dude, you're taking my opinion awfully serious. Chill.

If I'm so wrong, you have nothing to worry about. I'm not getting why simply presenting a viewpoint needs to escalate into a personal attack.

Tell ya what, if it means so much to you, I'll write another post exactly one year from now. If you are correct I'll point out how wrong I was for you.
The Chronicle has been a great paper for years. Sorry to see this happening to it.
True, but I think the exposure that Friedman will now receive by making his columns free more than offsets the loss of "pay" revenue. This move will enhance both the Times readership and its reputation.
Just curious, did they need H1B visa (or other paperworks) for the first few months in the states?
Startup Visas..?  
I started a discussion here about how to get into proper visa status to start companies in the US. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3531

After much research I have concluded that the situation in the US is too grim.

For eg. It takes upto 8 years for certain nationals to get a residential visa. And in that time you are not supposed to change the big company job you are holding. If you do, the clock starts again. If you want a better idea follow this link: http://immigrationvoice.org/index.php?option=com_content&...

Anyway, the point of this post is that I wanted to point out that Canada is so much more welcoming. You get a residential visa without even having to hold a job in 1.5 years, and the process is deterministic. And once in Canada you can immediately incorporate. 3 years of staying in Canada will earn you a Canadian passport again by a deterministic process. Apart from nice health care, with the Canadian passport you can enter and exit US without having to apply for a visa.(This is important for me, since many of my friends are here.)

This recent post here about Vancouver is very encouraging. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40054

Silicon valley is the best as pg has pointed out in many of his essays. But it is hard for aliens to maintain visa status in the US.

I might not be seeing potential problems with Canada. If you understand things better, please leave a comment here.

Thanks,
bluishgreen.
$600 subsidy to live within a mile of the office! I would live in my car and pocket that. But I would then spend it on one trip to Spagos.
I think there's some confusion about the definition of "work" here. Most programmers are rather like powerful sports cars stuck in six inches of snow -- the wheels are spinning very fast, but no useful progress is being made.

Does a great programmer write ten times as many lines of code as an average programmer? Probably not.

Does a great programmer solve ten times as many problems / create ten times as much functionality as an average programmer? Absolutely.
I use YC news to weed the crap and most will agree that there's some of that both on Techcrunch and Valleywag. I've seen YC to be much more reliable in terms of which stories rise to the top (atleast for my interests anyway)
This "analysis" is nothing but opinion. There is nothing data- or fact-driven about the graph (labeled "hypothetical valuation during a general market correction") or assertions (e.g., "Even the most optimistic however, don't suggest that we are heading into anything but a bear market.").

If you are going to form opinions and hypotheses, please back them up with fact-based analytical rigor before writing an article and posting it in public. The world doesn't need more opinion masquerading as analysis.
Or labeled "hypothetical valuation of general market correction".
I don't.

I'm not in the valley, so what happens there only matters to me if it's big enough to venture beyond those two publications.

TC can sometimes break a few new products, but valleywag means about as much to me as us magazine. I honestly don't care what Marisa Meyer is wearing today.
Buy.com's Garage Sale Goes To Facebook
The value of an opinion is higher when more people hear it. They should have known this would fail from the beginning.

The fact is that there are lots of smart people giving out free content online. If you put a barrier to reading the smart folks in the NYT, then more people will go to the bloggers and other pundits out there.
I'd hope that an uber-programmer wrote 10 times fewer lines of code.
I wouldn't say grad school is a mistake. It's a good place to meet a lot of smart people that you could potentially partner with or even get technical advice from. Grad students that I know are geniuses.
Well, isn't "traffic comes from lifehack type websites discovering it and linking to it" the equivalent of "dude, you've got to check it out"? True, not everybody does it in your case, but it wasn't YOU the initiator of those links. Its pretty much the same thing concentrated in hands of few individuals.
This is important research for robotics generally.

You'll note something in common with most deployed robots:
- Aibo is a toy that plays around. There is no function so there is no way it can fail. All robot toys are in this category.
- For vacuuming robots the biggest interaction with the environment is bumping into things. But they are autonomous.
- UAVs use GPS waypoint navigation and have nothing to interact with. There is usually no obstacle avoidance.
- Bomb disposal robots are fully teleoperated. The hands are usually pincers.

None of these robots have rich interaction with their environments. This is because the perception, planning, and mechanics of manipulation are much harder than locomotion tasks.

Bionic hands will need tiny sensors that allow for input of texture, pressure, temperature, etc.
They will probably have series elastic actuators that allow for compliance in grasping and higher reliability.

This is important work.
What language is the majority of startups using today?
Based on what I can see, it looks like more and more people are switching to Python and Ruby from PHP.

What's your startup using and your reason for choosing said language?
TeeBeeDee Takes $4.8 Million for Grown Up Social Network
I'm making around $30 day off of a .33 CPM from Lookery.com ads.
Haven't we already discussed this? Google is not your regular old ad-supported company. They have a unique position being an ad provider.

He can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe Google was who he had in mind when he made that statement.
Yes, I strongly disagree with the submitted post for situations beyond his very limited examples.
Actually I'm just teasing. The "your blog will go defunct because of market pressures" part anyway.

The rest: it's just healthy debate. As long as no one resorts to name-calling or breaks Godwin's Law (comparing something to Hitler or the Nazis) then you can assume we're all just stating our opinions. No hard feelings.
I disagree that traditional marketing is useless.

Marketing is and always will be very real and very effective.
RoR is great for making a prototype, but just wait until you try to find other good rails hackers. they're scarce.
Can someone explain to me why all these startup companies end up in California? Surely there are much more economical places to run a tech company from. Is it just the connections?
I'm currently researching Python with Django as the web framework. Coming from a decent size website in RoR, Django is looking quite promising. I'd love to hear what people's experiences are using Django.
I walked by the Chron building the other day and was kind of sad. I used to be a paperboy for the Chronicle. I've read it since I was a kid.

The sad part isn't that old media is being replaced by new. It's that the Chronicle is dying when other papers are finding ways to fit into modern media.

It's seriously a shame. Kind of like when Tower Records went out of business instead of trying to reinvent itself. OK, no more 'records'. But why not just "Tower" and sell DVDs? Or get even crazier and sell books (they always did) and open in-store cafes? Steal some of Hot Topic's business and sell more hipster crap?

Obviously I'm missing something, but you just don't need to let a good brand die without a fight. The Chronicle is doing exactly that, IMHO.
We made it to the finals of techcrunch20 (100 out of 700 entries) with streamfocus.com, but we passed on buying the demopit ticket just in case we didn't make the final 20. (The deal is that if you get into the final 20, they give you your money back). It seems like a bad value for precious dollars to be in the pit. Back to coding (demo for tc20 is this Friday at 1PM - wish us luck :)
And may you explain why paying [traditional marketing] may makes sense when your revenue (unlike selling TV's for example) is anywhere between 0 and $10?
I think having Stanford and Berkeley close by is a big reason as well.
Python + JavaScript + Flash.

The server-side choice between Python and Ruby is completely arbitrary; I suspect either one could do the job equally well. I was swayed by the somewhat greater availability of libraries for Python, plus I thought it'd be easier to get Python programmers if we got big enough to hire, plus it's somewhat more likely that an acquirer will use Python than Ruby.

PHP or Perl could also have done the job equally well, but I figure that if I'm gonna code my ass off for a year or two, it might as well be in a language that I enjoy. I've written some decent-sized PHP projects before, I'm reasonably fluent in the language, and I just don't want to deal with its gotchas.

On the client side, your choices are much more limited. Basically, if you want to do any sort of rich embeddable widget, it has to be Flash. That's the only technology available on nearly every browser that isn't blocked by 3rd party websites for security reasons. If you want to do rich interfaces on your own site that don't run in a box, it has to be JavaScript.
We spent considerable time testing Django, Plone (not really a framework), PHP, and Cake PHP. We ended up going with django (Python). Really quick to learn. There's some documentation lacking once you get really deep and start doing some crazy stuff, but its more than made up for by a very helpful IRC community. We love it!
Open _is_ better, because closed just sits there. You have to wait and hope that the Powers That Be will support what you want, and that they won't just decide to eat your lunch.

Yeah, often Open is "some assembly required". But that's true of Closed as well. STFU and start hacking, people.
Perl. Reason: I can build scalable things in it really quickly. For people deciding between different languages, I think the main selling points for Perl are a) most of the code is already written for you (see http://search.cpan.org/) and b) it scales really well (see http://perl.apache.org/).
I met with a SF Chron reporter a few weeks ago and talked about this very issue. Being in San Fran and close to the valley where new media is accepted much faster has hit the Chron faster than newspapers in other cities.
Good luck with your demo gibsonf1. Let us know if you make it.
SOX rules apply ONLY to PUBLIC companies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes-Oxley_Act

If you're a startup and you worry about SOX, you have nothing to worry about then since you can pay for real accountants anyway ;).
Python (with Django) and RoR.
Hate to say it but this "demo pit" feels more like a "loser pit" :(

(please, no offense meant!)
Megavideo: Does It Beat YouTube?
If you had to choose one, which would you pick?
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10748
"... Python + JavaScript + Flash. ..."

Nostra... what's the front/back ratio? I remember reading Ryan from Wufoo's "Web App Autopsy" ~ ( http://particletree.com/features/web-app-autopsy/ ) was quoting 60% front-end to 40% back-end code ratios.
The Canadian Dollar is also going to pass the US Dollar any day now. One of the main advantages of doing your startup outside of the United States is that you get to base your worth in a currency that isn't facing impending doom.
Django and Python. Because they're just that good.

But, really, use what you're good at. If you're working on a startup, do you really want to spend valuable time getting up to speed with a programming language that you don't know and are only learning because random people on the Internet told you they were using it?
Some hope for immigrant startuppers
Just wanted to let any other hopeful Green Card applicants here know that after four years, and despite several snafus, political in-fighting and feet-dragging by various parties, I got my Green
Card last week.

Note in particular that this means uscis is still processing applications despite the recent indications that they were not.

Good luck to everyone else!
Rolled my own framework with mod_python. I am sick of reading docs to figure something out. Also, the bugs in my framework code are easy to fix compared to those found in the 'real' code. I don't think the cost of a home grown framework is high if you spend more than a few months on something.
Joining OIN?
This basically blows the Google calculator away
I used webpy for my last site, but recently changed development to django. Django is really easy to learn, and provides a full stack of components that integrates really well together. I used AJS javascript library, but has changed to JQuery this time. Mostly because of JQuery's numerous plugins.
And it's a great example of the type of design YC prefers. The functionality of the site is clear at first glance.
Hard to tell what the finished product will have, because we're nowhere near done. The site that's currently up at www.diffle.com is 707 lines of HTML, 733 CSS, 6283 Python (including all server administration tools), and 81 JavaScript. (These figures include comments and tests, which are fairly extensive in the Python and basically omitted on the frontend.) However, that's a very Web 1.0 site, with AJAX used in only a couple places where it really improves usability.

The 8 or so prototypes we've done for the more dynamic aspects total about 1000 lines of JavaScript and 3107 lines of ActionScript, but this is misleading. Since they're prototypes, they often copy straight from each other and don't bother to factor out common functionality.

I'm expecting it'll be something like 60/40 front/back by the time we're done, with nearly all of the post-launch code going on the front. But much of the JavaScript and ActionScript may be generated by Python scripts running on the backend. Kinda hard to say what's front-end and what back-end then.
This comment redefines terms to make a point. Instead of doing ten times the work, a super hacker finds a way to shrink the amount of the work by 90%.

It amounts to the same thing, but it's still a good perspective. In this sense you could say that people don't actually get more done when they switch from Struts and Hibernate to Ruby on Rails - they just don't have as much to do.
I can think of worse reasons, and worse places to ask:)
Even if you're located in the US, can't you keep any significant amounts of money in the currency of your choice though? For any debt it should be good if the currency loses value. And startup ownership is percentages of future value instead of some fixed nomination in a currency.

When the value of the US dollar keeps falling, it becomes more and more difficult for foreign companies to keep their prices low for the US customers.
I'm using webpy for a few sites and it seems great to me. Are there many reasons for the switch? Or did you just want to try something new/better supported?

I'm thinking of taking a look at django just because guido tells me to, but I don't see any strong reason to switch.
>I might not be seeing potential problems with Canada. If you understand things better, please leave a comment here.

Well, just my two cents as a Canadian citizen:

- the major cities have a fair share of high-tech companies and workforce. Finding good talent is hard everywhere, but it should be easier in Canada than in SF - a lot of good people are probably dying of boredom at a financial institution or just finished university and are looking south for interesting jobs, rather than starting their own.

- cost of living is lower than in SF, but in the major cities it's not MUCH lower

- there is a start-up scene, you might just have to look a bit harder

- from what I'm told, investors are more cautious, money doesn't get thrown at you

- health care!

- you don't get to enjoy the perfect temperatures in the Bay Area

- all cities are different. Vancouver != Toronto != Montreal, just like San Francisco != Boston != New York. Do your research.
No question. PHP. However, this doesn't mean you should follow suit. In particular, PHP works best as a vanilla choice, something to get set up with quickly. The moment you start using e.g. Cake, the point of PHP is no longer and you should look elsewhere.

There's no useful answer in any case, just hints and use cases. It depends entirely on what you're building.

Heavy single-purpose web app like gmail? No question - GWT.

Light multi-purpose web app with lots of pages but where some ajax here and there wouldn't go amiss: rails looks good.

etcetera.
"If you're working on a startup, do you really want to spend valuable time getting up to speed with a programming language that you don't know"

I did that.

It probably hurt the startup a bit - we'd be moving much faster if I didn't have to learn the technologies as I went along. Thing is - the web technologies I really know well consist of PHP and JSF, and I know them well enough to know that I do not want to be programming in them if I can help it.

I figure that any startup will be taking up a good chunk of your time, and you might as well make it at least semi-enjoyable. I'd much rather put in the up-front effort to learn Python and have a tool that can grow with me than curse PHP's naming conventions or lack thereof for the umpteenth time.
"With social networking sites the amount spent is zero"

That statement further supports your claim. The time people spend working on their profile, building friends and relationships ... etc is probably worth much more to them than a $300 iPod.
Easier time finding great talent is a big plus. Probably the biggest of all of the things mentioned here. Silicon Valley's full of great companies and you'll be competing with some heavy-weights to gain attention of great candidates. Also, you will most certainly ovepay. Canada does not have such a big problem with finding great talent.
The ubiquity of US currency abroad (especially asia and south america) would strongly suggest the US dollar is not anywhere near "impending doom."
We went with Python + Django. It was an excellent choice for us! We don't have any performance & scaling issues so far (and we have a pretty big site already) and programmer productivity has been nothing short of amazing.

In the end, pick whatever you feel more comfortable with and whatever the market you have company in supports. If it's easy to find RoR folks around where you live, use that... if it's easier to find Python people, maybe you should use Python instead. They're both excellent languages and a huge improvement over Java/C++/C#.
All of your points are true and it's especially good to be USD based if you're debt financed. Most startups intended to grow rapidly are financed with equity though, not debt.

If you're outside of the USA, it's much easier to keep your money in a foreign currency. You just go to the ATM and deposit the money instead of having to go out of your way to maintain a portfolio hedged against the collapse of the USD.