skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
For maximum flexible development, use Adobe's Flash IDE itself. Flex is a watered down version of Flash IDE for quick development.Using Flex is recommended only if you cant afford an Actionscript developer. [Actionscript 3 is written almost like Java ]
This is a pretty cool concept for a profit-making site actually, although I don't know if that was the intention. What would also be great is pictures of offices at historic tech companies like Digital and Wang, from back in the day.
what point you are trying to drive home?
I wonder if that guy has ever actually tried using OSX?
When you take a photograph of someone, you are stealing their soul. Photography would be more accurately termed "soul piracy". It's the same way with music.

:)
IBM will be king for a long time to come. Just because a few rogue techno-mavericks are starting to use these little "personal computers" doesn't mean anything. They have no effect on nor relevance to the rest of society. A dinky little machine is good for people who aren't serious and who just want a toy. You can't get work done on a little toy. Mainframes will always be the way real, serious, moneymaking business is done. After all, look at how much money is put into the mainframe market today. Do you see any self-respecting professional who doesn't pay attention to the mainframe market? It's obvious that "PCs" are for amateur hobbyist techno-mavericks who have nothing better to do with their free time than waste it.

--

While Mac may not win in the long run, Windows sure as hell is on the way to the land of nostalgia. It'll still be around, and people will still use it and depend on it, but they won't like it -- just like COBOL. I'd be pretty unhappy if my checks stopped clearing because all the COBOL programmers maintaining IBM 360s suddenly vanished.
i see... i just tried it and apparently never noticed it before. thanks for the reply!
New Social Sites Aim at Users Too Young for MySpace
Web game programming seems more reasonable now that ActionScript is no longer retardedly bad.
I think it's good etiquette to put a date in the title if you're posting something that's old, like this.

"Paul Graham is Braindead (April 2007)" or something.

This guy's post is barely coherent and shorter than many comments on this site.
http://www.grupl.com has the same functionality as reddit. It was started by my friend Zach and has now morphed into a facebook app. Its still small. If you post something there it will probably make the front page shortly.
Don't Buy a Business Plan -- Write Your Own
my mother actually... for saying the internet is "no place to make 'real money'"

(i tend to try my best to prove people wrong w/ they say something i'm doing is impossible)

needless to say, after making money as a PHP hacker for several years now... she still asks if i've looked for a real job. heh...
I thought that if an article with such title is upvoted here, it will say something interesting. Not so.
Every payment carries fixed "mental processing fee" (deciding whether to do it or not) that is not going to go away.
If it can literally be one-click away in some cases, that's all that's necessary for small amounts. Why do they have all that stuff right next to the checkout counter? Impulse buys. If things are cheap and very accessible, you are likely to think "whatever, fsck it", and buy it. I think that is a decent way to think about micro-payments.
I didn't mean to say that the "mental processing fee" will ever go away, but there are ways to put it in the back of your users' minds for a moment. The case I mentioned above, saying that something is limited edition or only for a short time, putting a personal spin on things, ..
Pyro - Merging web and desktop
Scratching itches in the cloud
Sometimes you really have no idea what a startup is about
MacGuyver
The people interviewed seemed genuinely concerned about money, rather than simply being smitten with what they're doing. Also... lots of talk about N hour days, with large values of N. I know I don't do my best creating when I'm completely knackered from too much work.
Dear TechCrunch: nofoodhere's new concept already implemented - by live.com
Techcrunch reports on nofoodhere, a search concept that allows users to see further results by scrolling downwards, rather than having to click through endless pages of additional results. A great idea - but not quite so innovative...
I think nothing is dead.We are in a phase that exploring the possibilities of huge network connectivity,distributed network services, the power of collaboration in content creating,knowledge shearing etc...

I think the third phase will be somewhere in between desktop app. - web app. When that time come, we'll only need differrent kind of browser (or browsing experience) which present power of desktop app. and backed with the information rich web app. services and techniques.(3d surfing,clear navigation of web space in 3d,"web space" as a real 3d space experience)

remember, life don't likes extreme sides.
It's not about looking 'bad' vs 'good', but finished vs unfinished.

You're mixing two related but different things: managing expectations in order to prevent disappointment, and accurately conveying the maturity of a project in order to get suitable feedback. Unfortunately, the article starts as if it was just about the first aspect.

In zaidf's example, the button colors not only are a distraction; they actively inhibit criticism to the layout. Unconsciously, the 'cost' of criticising the fundamental design features (layout) has raised, since changing these implies having to rethink many of the details designed on top of them (color of the buttons, or whether you'll be using buttons at all).

Someone with design experience will be less shy about asking you to do big reworks. Design professors are all too happy about this. But most people will block criticism in a direct correspondence of the rework it would involve. In big companies, that may be a conscious political decision. In startups, it may be an unconscious bias due to social factors.
Taxis.
A VC: Pincus Talks To Howard
Judging from the content, that site targets a different audience than what the poster/commenters are looking for.

Case in point: "Cats + Crazy Captions = Comedy Gold!".
MINNEAPOLIS Bridge collapse, who will pay? - TvByDemand | Forums | News
The government is only liable to $1 million in damages? someone please explain to me what incentive they have to keep these bridges in proper order? Government uses fines and the publics ability to sue a company under civil law to maintain a level of safety on commercial and private property, but how to we keep our government accountable?
For Love or Money: Am I Making Right Decision?
The Technium & the 7th Kingdom of Life: What is the meaning of technology in our lives?
This is a more valid criticism of Graham, without the personal attacks: http://www.raydeck.com/2006/10/paul-graham-is-hurting-the-ch...
Could you unpack that? I'm not sure how taxicabs relate.
A taximeter is an example of a UI where small charges accumulate, and you don't have to think about them individually.
But this one is disagreeing with something else. Is this the Microsoft-isn't-dead thread, or the general pg-sucks thread?
To be perfectly frank I think he has a point. Paul Graham has some great things to say and he is certainly not braindead. But on this one I think he is dead wrong.
This in an interesting concept, but it's very pre-beta - yes, Firefox is working as a composited window manager, but Pyro isn't a full desktop environment and currently lacks even the most simplest of application launchers.

One to watch though.
Amen to this and the OP.

Speaking of the time limit, it's already blatantly obvious that putting everyone on the same, fixed time track learning a subject with a fixed curriculum is out of date and suboptimal. But who's going to challenge generations of tradition, and the lucrative business called university education?

That's why modern schools suck in so many ways.
I disagree. When I first read pg's Microsoft-is-dead essay my response was definitely of the "well duh" variety.
I took this to be the general "emperor has no clothes" (perhaps contrarian is a better phrase) thread, but if this is supposed to be the Microsoft-isn't-dead thread, then I'll delete my comment.
A great idea, and definitely one to watch, as nailer says. Hopefully we can learn a lot from the attempt. I think this is something only the hard core of developers will use, since it's built for Linux.
This is something specialized underground forums have managed to do by using referrals. Like you said, you can't do this for a start-up but if you add members one by one, it is possible to build a concentrated community of few hundred members.
Someone had to post this:

http://mog.com/Sethpian/blog_post/7493
Colorado Startup Scene
"Back in February, when I sold Current Wisdom, I knew that I wanted to get back into the technology scene. But, my California bias made me believe that there was little to no startup activity in Colorado."
Investing in a new bank has never been easier
The pitch, made to about 20 people, is: Investing in a new bank has never been easier.
Nice, interesting, piece of advice:

"...this is known to all startups: when we stopped trying to do something really revolutionary, which was fix your computer, and we started saying let's just diagnose what was wrong, that's when our sales took off."
Totally agree. Social networking sites are only one of hundreds of ways people want the Internet to process information for them.
This works with current payment processing schemes as well: the accumulated result is no longer a micropayment. Examples: monthly subscriptions (WSJ, Basecamp), Amazon S3.
Well, there you go. If you wonder why a "normal" house in SV costs five times more than in St. Louis or Dallas, this is a profile of the answer. For that matter, I understand better why Athertonians live in $12M houses -- they'd be $4M houses in other parts of the country, so curiously they're getting more bang for the buck.

And it has a reciprocal effect. When a major component of life, one's house, costs five times more, that depresses the wealth effect. When you're living among the super-rich, same thing. If these folks were living in Buffalo, they would be so acutely aware that they were exceptionally rich you wouldn't expect them to have anything to strive for. So there's a lack of a sense of privilege.

But it's also interesting to see the cavalier attitude toward wealth that it engenders. To be the richest fellow in town and still strive for "just a little bit more" requires a rare mindset. But yeah, stick a multi-millionaire in a suburb of super-millionaires and golly, what's a couple million bucks? Not much. I mean, it's not like you're going to quit your job or anything.
Heh... I think it's a bit amusing how conceptually similar this is to what Microsoft tried to do years ago with IE and ActiveX.
Really, what does YC need a CDN _for_? Just because YSlow says it doesn't mean it's actually a sane idea. They also say to turn off ETags, when what's actually good advice is to set up ETags in such a way that it works.
The "infinite scroll" is definitely nothing new:

http://www.37signals.com/svn/archives2/no_more_more_pages.ph...
Yes, but it seems from discussion here earlier news.yc user accounts are reviewed as part of the YC application process (this has been mentioned before).

As such, even though PG would never penalize users for upvoting critical articles, I'm guessing there are some users that are paranoid anyways and playing it safe.
It seems to me that the concept applies whenever you're trying to get feedback from non-programmers; big corporations or not.

If you're demoing to an investor, on the other hand, you should try make it look really good. You're not asking for feedback, you're trying to impress.
The Importance of Saying "Oops"
What counts as a real job to her? Does she realize that computers and the web are now an integral part of society?
Lol @ linkbaiting.
Never thought about startups until a combination of forces started coming into play all at the same time. Paul's article on what wealth really is, gave a different perspective.

As for childhood inspiration, I don't think I ever had one. I remember liking to read picture books on robots. That's probably where some of it comes from.
I would love any feedback on blog entry, or more generally about the viability of the site as a business. I'm having a hard time deciding whether I broke the rule of starting a business around a hobby instead of around an idea with a lot of business potential.
btw, myyearbook.com has implemented something similar. At least your site doesn't give me motion sickness.
Thanks everyone.
Honestly, I hate buying stuff, and I'm pretty depressed every time I have to. It takes time to go to shopping mall, a very loud place, and there's always risk that a new thing won't serve me well. Later, even if it turns out that the thing is not that bad as I thought, time destroys it, what forces me to repeat the whole pain.
I agree, but the example doesn't work for this case. You don't think about each 1/8th mile on a ride, so the charges aren't thought of individually.

But the issue here is content that isn't worth much, and you pay a tiny amount for each piece. My application to yc shares more thoughts on this.
Steve Pavlina's and Paul Graham's articles circa 2002 and up; Bill Gates/Microsoft (QBasic, Visual Basic, C); volunteer work and after school clubs to learn that it doesn't matter if you're making money/getting graded/successful/one of the starters, if you're around smart people and having fun and learning a lot; business articles in general; learning to focus on taking things into my own hands and think logically, regardless of what people say is possible or isn't; thinking (maybe mistakingly) that inventing or discovering something is commonplace and therefore I have to do it.

Childhood inspiration for a startup? I was just happy to be learning English and didn't have a computer until I was 14.
Not all progress must come from mistakes. He seems to equate the two. Big changes do not necessarily come from fixing big mistakes. They can come from recognizing new opportunities as well.
They try to blur the borders between whats on the web and whats on my harddisk. That seems to make things worse in the first instance. Confusion is a bad thing.

What vantages do I get in return?
indeed. though opportunities often come from mistakes or negligence of others.
It seems the entire argument could be summed up as follows:

PG focuses simply on product development I focus on product development with obvious monetization, which for some reason I call 'marketing.' If you have a product which cannot obviously be monetizatized, you should not quit your day job. Therefore, PG is 'hurting the children' by encouraging people to spend time developing products which may not be easily monetized.

An even more concise summary:

Don't put any effort into anything unless you are sure you can make money off of it. Altruism is stupid. PG believes in altruistic behavior, therefore he is stupid.
When I first saw this, I thought maybe Amazon was balancing out its offerings by developing online games in the manner of Quake. Not so, but why the same acronym?
To the GetDropBox guys
Have you considered extending your product to do encrypted backups on unused space in corporate networks. Each new PC comes with so much space that never gets used in a job setting. Maybe you could make like a bit torrent type of encryption/sharing client for each pc and a manager the sys admin could use. I'm guessing you guys are close to that type of a product.
Tcl and Tk were actually a pretty good effort in that direction, until Tcl's marketing fell apart and they took something like 8 years to release a version of Tk that didn't look bad and out of place on Unix.

Still though, there's no contest with web applications in terms of how easy it is for the developer to deploy them.
@comforteagle: are you involved in a startup? If yes, e-mail me: robin@bateboerop.name
Even in Javascript, a Quake 1 engine is doable.
Startups face pressure in China
INTERNET: Failure is common, but it doesn't stop entrepreneurs from launching new ventures.
Ah, he is typing. As I suspected, news of his brain's demise have been highly exagerrated.
I think you want founders [at] getdropbox.com rather than http://news.ycombinator.com.
What part of "this one" don't you understand? :)

www.ycombinator.com is not necessarily news.ycombinator.com.
This pair of comments reproduces the phenomenon described in the last paragraph of the essay.

Perhaps that happens if you write about any super controversial topic, no matter what conclusion you draw.
Web 2.0 trends: startups will rely more and more on crowdsourcing
Although the sentiment goes back to Cicero.
Altruism is stupid. PG believes in altruistic behavior, therefore he is stupid.

Not sure you've come to the correct conclusion in your analysis.

Graham has defined YC as "a hack to make money". Elsewhere in YC's site (it used to be on the FAQ) it talks about being benevolent, but "not a charity".

So, yes, any investor is looking to make a profit.

And so, you do need to think about whether or not your product can be profitable (even YC's application asks this question).
Paul Buchheit visits Y Combinator
Nah Seriously! Who designs the YC startups websites? Loving it.
Really guys, how do you come up with such designs?
Paul Graham as of when "Why Nerds Are Unpopular" was published. Eric Raymond before that.
Great article. A good % of the things I regret are situations where I wasted time/energy defending something I knew to be wrong, simply to hide the fact that I was wrong.
AFAIK the idea was introduced by the Humanized Reader, or at least the HR was one of the first good implementations.
I'll second that request!
I don't really see how you can improve upon yc news with a new reddit clone. The community here is like minded with its startup interest.
Here is what would be nice: more yc news like sites for all my other interests.
I could have sworn last week that I walked past Paul Buchheit as I was getting off the T at Kendall. Now I know I'm not crazy. (I seem to be having a lot of these encounters lately. Today I ran into Matt Maroon on the way to lunch.)
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9253
Does anyone know how well VC firms are doing?
lotta koolaid being drank round here
Till now the only consistent force across YC startups was that I nagged people to fix the same kinds of things.

But it's kind of amusing to read this, because this year we got Bryan Kennedy (http://pairwise.com) to fly out and fix up some of the uglier sites, and I can hear him down the hall talking to one group of founders right now.
Basically the answer is what it always is: the top ones are making insane amounts of money, and most aren't making any money at all.

In a world like that, it's meaningless to talk about average returns. It's like talking about the average net worth of a room containing Bill Gates and twenty subsistence farmers.
Will YC ever post videos of talks? I suppose that might take some competitive edge off. It might also be a problem for what is a semi-private meeting, with folks less willing to talk openly. No need to hurt the discussion.

But it would be interesting either way. I suppose the video library of interviews with interesting people is pretty large.
start this vid @ ~4:10:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZTQeqpdDYQ&mode=related&...

and then start this one from the beginning:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwYxjgyPHNM&mode=related&...

I don't know much about pyro but I like the concept. I love thick clients. I use Mail.app, Addressbook, iCal, iPhoto and iTunes. I have yet to find suitable web based replacements for these basic apps. I've tried gmail and a number of others but I keep coming back thick clients...

Ideally I want to combine the best of both worlds. I want the iApp integration and gui's when I'm home but with the implicit backup and access to large datasets of a web based app. I only want to deal w/ pure browser apps when I'm away from my computer...
'Profit' is usually defined as pecuniary benefit. PG has stated elsewhere that he is not particularly concerned about this.

In my charitable estimation, PG's "Not a charity" statement means that YC is not in the business of giving out financial handouts. It does not mean that PG's first or only motive is pecuniary benefit.

We live in a culture defined by the worship of the Almighty dollar. If PG is at least hinting in a different direction, I'd say that's a good thing.
A Mystery Solved: "Fake Steve" Blogger Comes Clean - New York Times
I'm in the 'Well duh' category too, but I still think Apple is over-rated. Too much enthusiasm for Jobs & co. will do no one any good.
That is not true. Ricky Pernikoff is a rockstar.
Write Well, Blog Better
Maybe he left behind a text file of replies, to be posted here one by one by an automated script in such an event.
Wow, talk about missing the point!
So if living among people much more wealthy than oneself leads to so much angst, why not try living among the lower classes? You ought to feel fantastic then.
You're not going to be much of an entrepreneur if you're afraid of disagreeing with your investors every now and then.
I think you're in the 'duh' category based on what you've written here.
Hackers: Social networking sites flawed (defcon)
Wow, down-modded by create_account for questioning the wisdom of Jobs. Sorry.
Go go New York Times

"The book, in part, led to Mr. Lyons's unmasking. Last year, his agent showed the manuscript to several book publishers and told them the anonymous author was a published novelist and writer for a major business magazine. The New York Times found Mr. Lyons by looking for writers who fit those two criteria, and then by comparing the writing of "Fake Steve" to a blog Mr. Lyons writes in his own name, called Floating Point (floatingpoint.wordpress.com)."

The NYT also gets to IM the man himself.

"[Steve Jobs] said in an instant message conversation that he had no interest in reading Mr. Lyons's novel. "
Top Five Best Hackers of All Time
Top N lists will hopefully not be part of web 3.0 :-P
Not at all, more like a proper subset of making what people want...
This is more like the "Top Five Best-Known Hackers of All Time". Surely, the real top 5 (with all due respect to RTM), whoever they are, never saw the inside of a courtroom.
Actually, the talk was two weeks ago, so you might still be crazy. Sorry :(
I hereby unofficially nominate PB as the first additional YCombinator partner.
Help with my business plan - please comment
If you have a del.icio.us or furl account, how often do you go back and read articles?

Do you ever go back and read or just add more?

Thanks
Doh, when I saw "hacker" in the title, I assumed "skilled programmer"...
Wonder why he left GOOG.
I go back and read what i've saved. But i'm never going to pay del.icio.us a thing ever. I'd be intrigued as to where u think this is a business.
You would be looking for http://www.marvquin.com/blog/top-five-5-best-non-criminal-ha... . Well, maybe. Also not a great list.
"... "You see, most blokes will be playing at 10. You're on 10, all the way up, all the way up...Where can you go from there? Nowhere. What we do, is if we need that extra push over the cliff...Eleven. One louder. ... these go to 11 ..." ~ http://www.spinaltapfan.com/atozed/TAP00160.HTM

Kalid from instacalc wrote this ~ http://instacalc.com the articles a bit lame but the idea on the site is vg, and is well worth reading through. But writing about "writing blogs" is like "writing about playing guitars".

Don't analyse, do.
In case some haven't noticed yet, Robert Morris of Y Combinator is #4 on that list. Pretty cool.
It is awesome. Who hasn't dreamed of being featured on the MarvQuin.com Blog? ;-)
I think it was on Friday, July 27, which I guess is technically two weeks ago. Were you in Cambridge then?
Paul Buchheit:  What does it mean to own a "right"?
Nope, I left town on the 26th. Also, I never got off at the Kendall station.