skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I've had the same epiphany, and was doing something about it as recently as today. One thing that stops me from getting rid of my stuff is that my dad has been associated with Goodwill Industries for years, and he is always talking about how he's donating stuff to Goodwill (but not before asking me if I want some of it first---which I sometimes take because even I get tired of saying "no" all the time). But Goodwill is like 15 minutes away, you have to put stuff in a box or a bag and haul it over there, and I've never been there before so I don't know exactly how to get there. My trash can, on the other hand, is right here. That doesn't seem like a big difference, but it's big enough that it has kept probably 50 lbs. of clothes in my closet and drawers that I never wear. I'm as resistant to guilt as anyone I know, but even I have a hard time throwing away "perfectly good" clothing that's only been worn once.
When I was a kid growing up in the USSR, "stuff" was really important to everyone because everything was really hard to get. Those who grew up in the West can't possibly understand how valuable even the most insignificant stuff seemed there. Petty theft was rampant. If you left a load of laundry unattended you could come back and find even your socks missing.

The "stuff" mindset is very difficult for some people to break. Over the first few years living in the US, my mother had accumulated more useless stuff than most people who'd spent their whole lives here. After 15 years in the US, she still worries about leaving her stuff in the laundromat.

I've been thinking about the subject a lot over the years and Paul's essay is spot-on. The more money I make, the more I dislike "stuff". I hardly bought anything since I started my first job after college. In contrast I used to buy a fair amount of junk before. My room was always cluttered and I hated being at home because I felt like the stuff drained all my energy.

It's true that stuff owns people and not the other way around. My neighbor in Cambridge, MA keeps a backyard (more like a junkyard) full of used construction materials and equipment, including 3 dead trucks. He spends every single evening trying to straighten it out, but ends up just wheelbarrowing stuff from place to place without any noticeable progress. I, on the other hand, am now able to spend every evening working on my startup, and not having stuff makes me feel great!
Wikipedia wants to take on Google
I agree; web apps and social sites have huge potential and will be big for years to come. Thing is, they have already been "discovered." I wonder which, out of the many concepts that seem irrelevant today, will be huge someday.
Here are some stats showing that younger women are closing the gender gap in high tech startups (although there's still a long way to go)

http://libraryhouse.net/blog/2007/05/16/younger-women-close-...
MySQL.
Even as implementors, most people don't work on large systems while in universities. It isn't so much learning tools to handle these systems but learning why best practices are good to follow.
"20 months from now I will be financially set from the sale of my not-launched-yet mobile startup"

That's my favorite part.
This is brilliant! It creates a venue for films that can't achieve wide distribution through theaters without taking away the social aspects of going to a movie and taking away the allure of the big screen.

There's definitely potential in this kind of thing.
awesome. Kind of buried though.
Keep reading 2 more paragraphs.
New Y Combinator Startup - Disqus
I agree that Americans are too consumed with stuff. More importantly, though, we don't even make our own stuff any more -- the Chinese do. While stuff might not seem important, if that supply line ever gets cut, we'll see how important it really is.

The making of stuff also factors into global power. The US was able to win a war on two fronts in WWII in part because of its ability to make stuff. Remember the guns vs. butter axes on the production possibility curve in ECON101?
He's a fake. "Survivor Man" would out survive him, and probably drag Bear Gryll's lifeless body back, along with all his camera gear.
The Snipshot guys are from Victoria, BC.
An idea on top of this would be use the information that you gather from your own "heavy use items", and buy more - or spend more on those. Get better quality items. About the ones that you didn't use ever, when you get an urge to buy them remind yourself of this pie chart that you made!
"Wow! What a great post! Starting right now, I will STOP FEELING GUILTY about being a single founder. "

You should only stop feeling guilty if you think that a co-founder is only good for a source of ideas. A co-founder isn't an idea guy (tho they should have ideas). They are someone who:

-has skills you don't have.
-will motivate you.
-will make your good ideas better
-will produce ideas that you won't

You might be an exception to the rule, but IMHO it's pretty amazing hubris to think that you have all of the ingredients necessary for a successful startup.
Ars seems to have the best explanation of the ruling I could find:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070731-fcc-sets-700mh...
Apologies. I meant a large amount of YC companies.
Yes, exactly.

You're kind of proving my point here. Designing clothing is hard. Designing web apps are hard. You need to be good at each to be successful at each. You won't be good at either if all you have is a "business/marketing genius" with an idea.
The only difference I've noticed since their "upgrade" is a GET variable called pwstdfy with a 36 character alphanumeric hash. Everything else seems similar... what could pwstdfy stand for?
I am =)
One thing that I think universities could change is to make freshman year more than a rehash of high school calc and physics, albeit at a more involved level. This is a recipe for extinguishing imagination.
Focus On Lessons, Not Footnotes, Of Your Idols (And Create Something!)
Get Venture: Who You Should Submit You Executive Summary To
Founder v. Founders
Your quoting PG's essay. I was responding to the comment that mine is under. I should not have responded as confrontation is bad on boards that could lead to meeting others in real life.

Basically I found the comment that I commented on deceptive. It used anecdotes from childhood claiming X is bad, then mentions full savings as if that is the direct correlation between the two. I regret commenting in this thread and will stick to more agreeable topics.
Most high schools in the USA are so bad that freshman year is mainly remedial. Actually, most high schools in the USA are so bad that the entirety of college is remedial.
an idea for a start-up
I hate Captchas that make no sense and I routinely feel a reprieve when a catpcha has common lettters in sequence. For example, "dogbat" is easier than "hgzxmp". So how about a captcha that makes use of this. Maybe call it EZCaptcha or something.
Well Nostra, I am very glad you are doing something different with diffle. I was getting tired of playing the McDonald's Video Game.
Paul makes a good point, though I have to say George Carlin made it much funnier!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac
The PR release alludes to a proxy issue.

PR = Press Release
I think all three of the above examples (Facebook, Reddit, Facebook) are examples of first mover advantage, not any specific technical feature.
He probably phrased it a little oddly.. "If you build a business that relies on someone else's business, don't be surprised when fluctuations in revenue occur" seems more fitting.
(typing over the hoards of screaming girls that are messaging me in his forum right now)

Mika is almost like a certain children's television show character, except instead of a purple dinosaur, you have a Nick Carter-pre Tommy Lee phase substitute.

It's where I go to wind down.
this is a huge troll and everybody is just feeding it.

edit: including me, duh!
Microformats Bookmarklet
Microformats in Google Maps
"It used anecdotes from childhood claiming X is bad, then mentions full savings as if that is the direct correlation between the two."

I actually believe there is a direct correlation - anecdotes (sometimes) lead to habits, and then habits lead to savings. It's much easier to form habits in childhood, which is why I picked childhood anecdotes. But it can be done late in life too - I think that was part of the point of PG's essays.
"You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet."

The first rule of YCombinator is..

This is a good essay. My mother has a basement full of stuff, hallways full of stuff, and recently moved into my grandmother's house and filled her living room with stuff. Magazines, boxes.. Any average person would be appalled.

She'd probably read this essay and go "Hmm.. Yeah, that's about right", then go buy another piece of furniture from Ikea.
While I can agree with some of what you said, penny-pinching can be really bad if you take it too far. One of the Xobni guys wrote something like, "A good startup founder can create (some value >= $50 per hour) of wealth. So if you spend an hour and save $10, it costs you."
Facebook kills Audio (3rd party app) for copyright violations
Thank you Woz and Jobs! Hey everyone, I just found out about these great things called "Personal Computers"! You should check them out, they're really cool!
You should probably be thanking the team within Google who made Google Apps for that stuff.
You are doing it again. You try to make a point but suddenly mention an irrelevant point that is correct but unrelated to the argument you are trying to make.

Yes that is one of PG's themes(habits can be changed) but it does not relate to believing that advertising is behavior control and holding this to be true will lead to full savings.
I'm saying that Y Combinator is a very small number of people providing startup and venture capital mentoring to a correspondingly large number of bright young people (not all of whom are technical). I'm saying that if you tried to take a similarly small number of technical experts to support a similarly large number of fledgling companies, it probably wouldn't work.

I'm not saying you have a bad idea, but it's an important question and "hiring programmers" isn't really a good answer. If I was a good hacker, and I could take 6% from 30 little companies and do all their coding in 3 months, that might be fun and profitable. I think the chances of you finding someone that capable and willing to take the risk are slim, is all.
sounds like a feature not a business
Agreed. In terms of Computer Science, I believe that every student should at least be given a mandatory introduction on Human Computer Interaction. I've come across many stellar engineers who are passionate about producing beautiful code, but produce sparse, uninteresting UI's - why should we not also be passionate about producing beautiful, elegant user interfaces?
Ask News.YC: Should you rewrite your software from scratch?
The decision to rewrite software has hurt some companies. However, we only hear about the bad that's come from a software rewrite, never the good. So with today's new coding methods, do articles like this one still apply? http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html

Have any of you rewritten or made the decision to rewrite a large codebase? I know Kiko mentioned it as one of the things that hurt them. Microsoft was about to do it with their Pyramid Project, but it was axed.

Another question, for YC: Do YC companies generally rewrite their projects after Demo Day (since it's supposed to be a throwaway prototype), or work with what they've got?
Business2.Gone
Robby and I both were from Phoenix before moving to Mt. View. I make regular trips back and am always interested in meeting up with fellow entrepreneurs (wcrosby@zenter.com)
FCC Gives Google Half a Win
A few years back I was talking to the Electrical and Computer Engineering department head at University of Toronto about pretty much the same topic. He's very much an entrepreneur - started & sold his own business, knows lots of people in the industry, etc.

It's not so much something to "teach" as a culture that needs to be encouraged. Sure, you can offer some business, accounting, economics (entrepreneurship?) courses to engineers, and to some extent U of T does that. But the important thing is, after you graduate chances are you'll do something similar to your friends. All your colleagues are only talking about grad school or working on their resumes and applying for jobs? Chances are that's what you'll do. Been throwing around business ideas with your friends since day 1? You might actually decide to start something.

Don't know if there's an easy solution... good courses and guest speakers help... entrepreneurship/business clubs might help... but if the culture doesn't exist, how do you kickstart it?
Definitely to the team as well. But the biggest deal for me is removing MS Exchange and Outlook from my life - and for that Paul Bucheit gets a lot of credit.
I'm here - working on a local health related internet startup while managing two other self-funded web startups back home in Orange County, CA (interested in meeting other Phoenix based entrepreneurs) - alan@lvx.com
Why decide on PHP/MySQL up front? Sure, they're popular, but that doesn't mean they're good.
Yep. Going on nine years.
That part was supposed to be fun. As I said before noone knows what the outcome is.
Correct. There's a button to check for updates, also, on the Summary tab. That's probably just a feel-good button, though, since it would be logical to check when you plug in your phone.
But it's still illegal.

Do laws count when they are completely unenforceable?
Sending SMTP E-mails With Ruby on Rails
Skip the headaches with this easy guide.
http://www.paulgraham.com/startuplessons.html

Number seven
It doesn't seem like even that's correct, though.
So, who else feels that "viral" marketing is past its sell-by date?

It now seems too willfully hip, and more conniving than clever.
Google is experimenting with Behavioral AdWords | GigaOm
thanks, good tips.
Correction: this is NOT illegal.

It's illegal to show films that you don't obtain licenses for, but if you get the rights, it's perfectly legal.
Sure they do:
http://www.wharton.upenn.edu/whartonfacts/entrepreneurship/#...
What's it like working at Google? So far I've only heard horror stories of founders whose companies get bought and then they hate it there and rebel.
Camtasia is the de facto one for PC. I use iShowU on the Mac and produce it in iMovie. The default settings in iMovie hose it (i wrote a short tutorial here with the settings I've found to work best-> http://www.scrollinondubs.com/2007/06/12/produce-a-clear-scr...)
I've also heard that Snapz is good on the Mac but have not used it personally.

sean
Social Networking Consuming More Time
Ever tried getting a license from MPAA?! Good luck trying to break that cartel!
I've heard before that what keeps many businesses chained to Windows is not Office but Exchange. If some spiffy online web app changes that, great.
Don't Go West, Young Man. Buy Yourself a Franchise Instead.
In my experience most people would show up with some basic ideas and then rely on the group interaction to draw out the rest. The test and the results are flawed because they don't match the real world at all.

Of course you don't do just one or the other because the together/alone pattern repeats itself and there's an opportunity to present new ideas each time the group meets.

I think pmarca's point was that group brainstorming isn't a valuable thing to do. That's not true from my experience. I am a huge fan of avoiding feel-good wishy-washy brainstorming though.
Social Network Marketing:
Where to Next? http://www.emarketer.com/Report.aspx?code=emarketer_2000433
these are interesting reports...

here are some attributes of existing social networks that i believe are making them attractive to advertisers:

- all the customers are in one place (a single medium) so they're easier to target
- users naturally cluster themselves by interest, & many are similar demographic
- communication tools make word of mouth more efficient (e.g., I record all my recommendations)
- advertisers can buy off some users to enter spam into the network
- network growth rates are high
- ad prices are cheaper than tv & print ads (for the time being)
The Pmarca Guide to Startups, Part 7: Why a startup's initial business plan doesn't matter that much
There's a lot of layers of the medium. Design and programming is only a narrow part of the broader picture.
Talent, Wow!-factor, Speed & Short-Cuts
When they get acquired by Google or Yahoo, advertising revenue is what bought them.
What's the big deal with ramen? I like ramen. I have no financial troubles, and I eat it anyway. It requires no preparation, 3 minutes to cook, tastes good, and costs maybe 20 cents for a meal (including the cost of water and heat).

The problem with cooking most things is that you have to think about it before you're hungry. I don't know about you, but that never happens to me. I have better things to think about.
In one ongoing series of consumer products, my several-hundred-thousand-line codebase lasted for well over 10 years. There was no reason to mess with it. Yes, I thought parts were messy... but there was also great stuff in it that I'm very happy survived intact.

Then decades later, on an entirely different product, in a different business...

We had to migrate our product to a new OS platform, as well as needing to fulfill much wider requirements for our customers. The existing code just wouldn't allow this, even if it were stretched and stretched.

So I rewrote most of the codebase.

In some ways I was tortured knowing we had a functioning product that already handled things I was rewriting (even though it was on an obsolete platform). Especially since the rewriting process takes longer than zero.

On the other hand, the new set of code turned out smaller, simpler, more reliable, much more flexible, and is now working well as a foundation our for business.

Both sides of the argument make sense to me, I think it just depends on the situation.
I'm quoting your page. Can't wait to see the idea(s) you come up with that haven't been done before.
I completely agree with Joel. I've done major refactoring work by making a series of minor alterations that clearly don't change anything. This approach takes a lot less time and doesn't introduce nearly as many bugs. Our svn repository is at revision 4995, and that's forked from a project that's 4 years older. Imagine how many of those commits have been bug fixes, and you'll see the big problem with rewriting.
Indeed. There should be a a separation either at admissions or with honors classes for kids that can do more. Universities typically aren't nearly as bad as high schools with this.
That reminds me of the Boulder startup weekend where they chose Java and didn't get anywhere.
New Study: Top 50k blogs had $50 million in 2006 Revenue
A new study being published by the University of Texas and Chitika says that the top 50,000 blogs may have generated around $50 million in aggregate 2006 revenue.
Me-Too Mentality is Bad for Users, Marketers, and Startups
Google was the right decision for Zenter and us. We are really enjoying Google, the team, and the food.
Writing "one to throw away" is an excellent idea. You'll figure out the hard parts of the problem and if it has a chance of succeeding. This is what a startup should do post demo-day.

Throwing away something that's been tuned to target customers is a mistake. This is what Joel is talking about.

Most importantly, these are very, very different activities.

Except, of course, when time and money is ticking and they're not. Then you have to brave (which is what you call it when it works) or foolish (which is what you call it when it doesn't).
Damn.. The iPhone hackers really are fighting an up hill battle then. If they hack it to install their own apps, Apple will just release a patch to stop them.

I was kinda hoping updating would be more difficult so that the hackers could put pressure on Apple to release an open SDK.
You're right, you wouldn't have much luck getting a film licensed by the MPAA. They're just there to crack your kneecaps if you don't.

Swank is the most well known company that sells rights for public performances of blockbuster films. Costs average between $150 and $300 for "non-theatrical" showings (where you aren't selling any tickets)

But why shell out such ungodly sums for the muddied films of the masses? The mobmov makes small showings (< 50 people) feasible, so we can show more special-interest independent films.

And independent films are so much easier to license. For the showing featured in the Chronicle, we watched a wonderful Canadian film called A Simple Curve. It's not something to draw the crowds, but this, at least in my experience, means a more thoughtful and meaningful script. Our showing was licensed through the film distributor (filmmovement.com) directly for a small fee.

So no, you'll never see a movie like Tranformers playing on the wall of your local dilapidated warehouse.

The good news is that independent filmmakers don't like the system either. It restricts their creativity and screws them at every turn. My hope is that as independent filmmakers find out about this new avenue for release, we'll start to see new films produced that are ever more inventive and unique.
Please don't stoop to worshipping Google, the new world doesn't allow giants in it anymore.

And Microsoft's main problem is, has always been, and is killing them now - that their software is rubbish. The DOS TSR model they have pushed since the 80's could only go so far. UNIX models are now, we know with 20-20 hindsight, the only viable long term OS model.

And what did M$ bring to the table, exactly? Everyone says "They made the desktop a reality when Apple were charging too much!" - maybe so, but did you NEED that desktop? No, really, seriously, did you need it?

PC's were incapable of running serious apps simultaneously until about the time Linux's X started to really work.
Word 5 for DOS was probably the last decent version of Word.
OS/2 was a near-perfect OS for small scale applications
There were others, nearly all forgotten.

So what was Windows? I'll tell you.
A backplane that allowed Word and Excell to be run at the same time.

I'll re-iterate that.

Windows was only ever: A backplane that allowed Word and Excell to be run at the same time.

All the hard work is done by the application writers.

AND - before you squawk "Driver Database! Driver Database!" - that's the same thing, the work was thrown onto the manufacturers whilst Microsoft just provided a truly awful API for them to work with, then another, then another....

Really.....Windows never brought much along at all. It is one of the most amazing marketing parlour tricks ever pulled off, like Madonna, like WMD's in Iraq - newsy and flashy and utterly empty. "Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing..."
Stephanie Hannon was the PM who dealt with most of the Google Apps stuff in its early days.
Linus: Why almost all SCMs (other than git) are "broken"
How to Upload YouTube Videos Programmatically
Will Recommmender Systems Ever be Useful?
The Netflix Prize: 300 Days Later
Well, then you give spammers some apriori information, right? Spammers that know your system is used could tailor a solution that has a higher chance of defeating the captcha. This limits the reach of your service.

Captchas are entering the realm of machine solvable. Soon enough, humans will find them so annoyingly hard to discern, many won't bother. And artificial artificial intelligence (e.g. humans solving captchas for porn) make them only a low fence.

All around, it's a dead end.

Recognizing humans isn't necessarily a dead end. Using a system of warped characters is.
I had a very poignant moment when I started forwarding my Pitt email to my Gmail address... I realized that I would be using this email program for the rest of my life.

Thanks.
Americans Addicted to Mobile Email
HitForge: Another YC clone?