skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is a really good article. It reminds me of when I was starting up my real estate business. For real estate transactions, there are a ridiculous amount of moving parts. For real estate investors that are testing all boundaries of how transactions are done, you really need an experienced, knowledgeable team to help guide you through everything.

I churned through 6 title companies, 10 different real estate agents, more than 15 different private investors and more contractors than I care to remember in a 3 year period before I formed a great, reliable team.

You won't really know how good a co-founder is until you "try him out." The best point about this article is to establish a steady supply of talented, entrepreneurial people and keep trying out co-founders (or replace whatever position you need) until you find a great match.
...and not a single Palo Alto or Menlo Park location on that map.
All I have to do now is apply, fly to the USA and be accepted, simple huh?

Hey, I'm from Australia, went for an interview, and didn't get in. Its not that simple because of VISA issues...

The real point of this post is to get you email me, because you're in Australia :)
Murphy's law is not a joke !
They don't generate revenues, and more likely than not, have no plan to generate revenues.

Source? I think that's based on anecdotal evidence.

There are a number of startups generating revenues (reddit, loopt, TextPayMe, Inkling).

And a number of others that have a reasonable way to get revenue: (justin.tv - sell video service to celebrities; scribd - contextual advertising; shoutfit - sell trends to fashion houses; thinkature - sell collab software to businesses; octopart - sell product advertising; wufoo - sell upgraded forms that can be embedded into your website).

Come to think of it, I have a hard time pointing out specific YC companies that don't have any revenue model. Maybe there's a few - but the fast majority of them do have the potential to be self sufficient.
If those photo sharing sites are close to perfection for you, that's fine. They aren't at all what I want. I want to mix text and photos to tell a story chronologically:

http://ourdoings.com/ourdoings-demo-stock/

It's a mistake to look at photo sharing as a single finish line that these various sites are racing to. Different people will have different purposes for sharing photos, and these will lead to different sites. For example, Smugmug didn't have an email updates feature with embedded photos for more than two years after ourdoings.com had it. This is not because Don is a slow racer; it's just that that feature has less appeal for his user base than it does for mine. He's not trying to catch up with me; I'm not trying to catch up with him. There are millions of people out there whose photos sit on their hard drive never to be seen. I think a lot of those people would be best served by doing what I've been doing for years on ourdoings.com with my own photos; I just want to make it accessible to them.
Presenting Financials to Venture Capitalists
At Google, Java's bigger than ever.
I really liked this, so much so I wrote up a post on the topic , check it out if your interested: http://www.promoterforce.com/blog/2007/05/16/comparing-yourself-is-failure-your-path-is-your-path/

now back to creating something people want
Flickr censorship
Can you read a legal contract and instantly understand all the implications without having to consult a lawyer? How about a mathematical paper? A medical test result?
Apparently though, it was a mistake rather than censorship:

http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/40074/#reply212150
I'm not sure if this is right or not, but in philosophy class, I was taught that Google's motto was a manifestation of negative consequentialism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequentialism#Negative_consequentialism

Basically, the ethical decision is that which avoids a negative outcome. The professor mentioned a number of interesting implications of strict negative consequentialism. The following actions would be morally wrong:

- For someone to stave off starvation by stealing a loaf of bread from Bill Gates.

- Any type of self defense that involves harming others. Ie: using pepper spray to prevent rape.

- Sacrificing one person's life to save the lives of a million others. Ie: killing Hitler before he started WWII.
"I want to mix text and photos to tell a story chronologically" - Is that not the same as comments or a photo blog.

I am sorry for being so negative, but I just can't see this going anywhere. Also it doesn't seem like you take people's advice. Your site still have loads of text painfully explaining stuff. In the past nearly everyone said the same things they said here.

Do a better design. Drop the text. Make it intuitive/easy to use.
Web 2.0 Media: Create Animation Of Yourself
A couple ways to monitor your name/brand in Google and other search engines.
No one (except me, maybe) will admit to downvoting someone because of an ideological disagreement.

I vote up a comment if I strongly agree with it. Conversely, I vote down a comment if I strongly disagree with it. Those in between, which I don't feel strongly about, I leave. Isn't that what the down vote is intended for?
AOL Acquires ADTECH
"""I can do a follow-up post on lots of the tricks we use to get there."""

Hey, that would be great.
The 3 points you describe sound more to me like deontology than negative consequentialism. According to the entry you linked to, deontology judges actions based on the actions themselves, while consequentialism judges actions based on their consequences. Negative consequentialism, then, involves avoiding actions which produce consequences that are overall negative. In each case you described, the actions are typically considered deontologically wrong, but the overall consequences of those actions are not negative, so they don't seem to me to be wrong by negative consequentialist standards.

Getting back to the topic of the submission, I always presumed that the comment basically meant, "Don't be like Microsoft." Many people call Microsoft the "Evil Empire", so this falls in nicely with that theme. By aligning themselves opposite Microsoft, Google is able to attract that population of hackers which does not appreciate Microsoft's business tactics (things like the FUD campaign that is going on right now in regards to patents). Whether Google is actually committed to moral business practices or not is debatable, but the motto is a nice way to appear "hacker-friendly".
26: The Entrepreneural Prime
What about dispearing the comment without the poster knowing it?

For example a variation of this would be:
If a post has -2 votes, 10% of the users will not see it. If it gets -4, 20% will not see it...etc. The poster will always see it and he has no idea that he is being gradually ignored.
I don't know anything about the numbers, to be honest. It just seems like a very interesting and inspiring environment. I think it would be worth to pay money to be a part of it. If money was the only thing that would interest me, I would probably have become a financial consultant or an estate agent.
What kind of moron would bother doing that?
What about tracking everything about people's lives, and pushing spyware onto their computers (Google Toolbar)? Would that qualify?
I wouldn't really call Google Toolbar "spyware" or say that it's pushed onto a computer. If you don't like it, don't use it. I don't. Nobody has yet made me.
You're right - my examples (and google's motto) sound more deontological, or similar to the golden rule. Maybe someone who knows more about this can clarify.
Along with nostrademons, I disagree strongly with that article. In my opinion, the thing that affects maintainability the most is the length of the resulting programs. What's easier to maintain, 20 lines of paren-filled code or 200 lines of BASIC garbage?

I especially disagree with the last criterion: enforcement of good programming practices. The definition of good programming practice varies greatly with the intended use, and is something that is best defined on a problem-by-problem basis. Every language I've encountered that attempted to enforce "good programming practice" has required me to write workarounds anytime I wanted to do something interesting.

One good example is writing a few Java classes that inherit from a parent in different ways, and then making a few method calls to note which method was called. I wanted to print something akin to:

"Entering class Child constructor.

Entering class Parent constructor.

Exiting class Parent constructor.

Exiting class Child constructor."

The easiest way to do this is to have something like

public Child () {

System.out.println("Entering class Child constructor.");

super();

System.out.println("Exiting class Child constructor.");

}

Unfortunately, the creators of Java decided that good practice maintains that the call to the parent constructor must occur before any other code. Because of this, I had to create silly workarounds with parameter overloading to call the parent method, something that was not at all extensible or scalable.

If you want maintainable programs, use a powerful language, hire good programmers, and agree on some common conventions. If something doesn't fit within the conventions, discuss it and clearly comment it in the code. How hard can that be?

Only so much can be automated. At some point, programmers have to take responsibility for what their programs look like, and no "maintainable language" will ever be able to solve this problem.
It's cool. Why not set up a full list yourself?
Is your idea a winner?
I loved the article, but I also came across a gem of a quote in the comments ( http://waiterrant.net/?p=450#comment-323693 ):

Security to me seems like another name for a slow death, where every opportunity for greatness is ignored for fear's sake.
In New Net Economy, Everyone Gets to Be Stupid for 15 Minutes
I wish maths was always taught this way.
That's a good question. There's no simple (non-circular) answer, but I can try to give a few heuristics.

First, it's important to remember that any significant action is likely to have some negative consequences. One test is to ask, "Ignoring personal loss/gain, would the world be better if I stopped doing X?" For example, if a spammer stopped spamming, I think we'd all be better off, therefore spamming is probably evil. On the other hand, news.yc is a nice service that benefits a lot of people, so it's probably non-evil.

At the specific time that I made up the "Don't be evil" phrase, there were a number of topics in mind, including the spyware/scumware problem, and paid-inclusion, which was popular at the time among our competitors (you could pay to sneak your site in their regular search results). These are both examples of tricking your users for your own benefit, which is generally evil. Paid inclusion is hidden advertising -- none of their users knew which results were paid for. It would be similar to a reporter who takes bribes to write favorably about something. Spyware is evil not because it is spying on you, but because it is doing so without your consent and probably against your will. If users had actually knowingly given informed consent (not hidden in some EULA somewhere, or anything like that), then the "spyware" wouldn't be evil -- it's like the difference between justin.tv filming his own life, and someone else secretly doing so.
Google To Launch Cross-Language Search Engine
Thanks for the clarification. So the "evil" refers to the very narrow context of the specific functionality of the google product, rather than to a wider context which is usually understood by the idea?

With your broader point: "Ignoring personal loss/gain, would the world be better if I stopped doing X?", what standard would you use for judging what is better for the world?

To frame the rule in the positive action sense, if you were judging whether to take some action, you would think about the world minus yourself, and then see if the world is "better" after the action. How would you judge what "better" means here? Would it mean adding "value" to others? If so, how would you bridge the gap between those who value mystical pursuits divorced from real world evidence and modern media versus those who might want to increase their knowledge about the world through focused learning and induction? (Say between Pennsylvania Amish and tech startup founders) Some people value manipulating others, some controlling others, some killing others - the range between individual values is very large. In short, it seems impossible to approach "better" by looking at what each person in the world values as everyone values different things in spite of some similar things that people do value in common which is what we here are trying to provide, and of course it is impossible to know what everyone values anyway.

So without your personal value as a standard and other individual values as a standard for better, what do you use?
Haha. Veritas you can't tell me you've never read something on paper and tried to do a CTRL-F (or equivalent OS Find command) to search for what you were looking for?
pg, whatever you read into this rant, please don't let it make you go soft and pull your punches in essays, posts, talks or interviews. Most of your audience prefer your straight talk to mealy mouthed, watered down, PC blandspeak, even when you're wrong. And if destitution necessitated scurvy (out of all things......) turns out to be a huge problem amongst your founders, I suspect there are investors out there willing to come to the rescue, even at twice YC's valuations. No questions asked :).

PS: for those who find the IQ test comment arrogant; Paul Graham is just showing off his mastery of Cambridgeian lingo. Back there, saying someone has low IQ is short for saying they disagree with you. Nothing more, nothing less, and absolutely nothing to be all up in arms about.
If you'd care to use a non funded-up-the ying/yang chat startup that has mobile support: http://mychatlog.com/chat?channel=ycombinator
This article is very interesting. However, the headline strongly indicates that it was submitted here to smear Sun.

Firstly, the headline is at odds with the conclusion in the article; the article states that they would have preferred Sun's updated (fixed) product if it had been released at the time.

The headline takes one specific company's experience with one specific product and generalizes it to cover the vendor's entire storage product line.

The comment poster, Onethumb, has never commented or submitted to this site before.

I have no affiliation with Sun.
A VC: The Age Question (continued)
Paul,

I wish I had met you or read this column column back in 1993 when I was graduating from college. Not that I'm complaining but I'm now in the don't start phase of my life due to kids etc... So I'll just wait and use the time to learn more until the point where my kids are a little older and can go off like Mike Siebold.

PS: I thought I'd add this post since no one has posted for a while to let you know that people are still reading your thoughts.
Umm the meebo room keeps disconnecting & can't reattach. http://mychatlog.com/chat?channel=ycombinator anyone?
Horrible place to contact you, but an email wasn't listed in your profile.

I was scrolling through the log of the Meebo room setup by jkush and I thought I saw that you were in Providence. I just moved to Providence a few months ago from Boston and it would be cool to meetup with with someone in the area to possibly collaborate on some ideas.

If you get a chance, shoot me an email.

Thanks
Of course http://www.onethumb.com/ happens to take you to a blog with a subtitle "Thought stream from SmugMugÂs CEO & Chief Geek".

But anyone could've registered that name.

I'm also mildly amused that he went from Quake-related news to photo sharing (of course the Quake/gaming community is much different than how it was in the beginning).
Insightful video interview w/ Matt Mullenweg, creator of WordPress
I don't think his stated definition has a narrow context at all. It seems to apply to anything. As a corporate motto, of course it only applies to Google...but as a statement of ethics it looks pretty general.
Here's part two - "When open source fails" http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9719805-2.html
" Arguably, the same thing happens in science. Great fundamental discoveries are most often made by brilliant scientists in their 20s."

Have you heard of Perelman? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman
The singularity is near!
whoa. he didn't get the job? I am so fucked.
I think they do try to push it, for example didn't they strike a deal with Dell so that it comes preinstalled on every Dell Computer? Don't know what else they try to bundle it with - Yahoo does the same thing, though.
This wasn't very helpful. I still haven't found a good source that explains financial projections for web startups. While personally I think its bullshit, you build the product and see what happens. Investors/VCs want to see it sometimes and you don't want to look incompetent.
I think just about everything comes preinstalled on every Dell Computer. Dell probably thinks they're doing their users a favor by loading a brand new computer up with every piece of software available. I disagree, but that's why I don't buy from Dell - I've got a nice Acer laptop that came with absolutely nothing except the OS and some hardware-specific stuff (DVD-burner software, touchpad enhancements).
Survey: Apple is "best brand"
Microsoft is dead. Right. That's why they still have abut 95% markeet share in the desktop OS market. Remember that you need to have an OS to connect to broadband and that means any growth for Google, is pretty much automatic growth for Microsoft. if another desktop OS actually gets more than a 10% market share then you might be right.
I really like the way this article is short and to the point.
We really need an official chat room for this sort of thing. IRC would work best.

Then again, maybe no chat room would work best, too.
Stuki and the rest of the YC defenders sound like bigger trolls than anyone else. You argue against arrogance but are arrogant enough to claim things like "Microsoft is dead" and "Paul Graham is God". Grow up.

It sounds like you've watched the Paul Graham late night infomercial "Get Rich in 10 Easy Steps" a few too many times.
But anyone could've registered that name.

If you're referring to the domain name - it looks like it was registered (or is at least affiliated) with SmugMug / Don MacAskill.

Try comparing $whois onethumb.com | grep "nserver" to $whois smugmug.com | grep "nserver"
Lots of Product Announcements At Google Today
There's #news.yc on the EFnet IRC network, and it has a few regular visitors.

http://www.efnet.org/?module=servers
A single counter-example doesn't invalidate the whole observation.
How is bankruptcy different from stealing?
Has that happened?
I'm pretty sure it was just about not being Microsoft (and their anti-trust problems), using popup ads, or spamming, the things that were major problems in 2001.
I'm pretty sure it was just about not being Microsoft (and their anti-trust problems), using popup ads, or spamming, the things that were major problems that were ticking people off 7 or so years ago when that motto came about. I don't think it's very much beyond that.

Don't be evil was a competitive advantage.
Popup ads, spam, integrating paid results with search results, and spyware/adware were the big problems during the dot com crash, when ethics went out the window, and the main community for nerds (slashdot) really liked to call companies evil for their behavior way before digg or redit existed. Once Google made that a slogan, Google was mentioned all the time in such threads for the slogan, and not just because they are a search engine.

Google's name still comes up when any evil corporate behavior is discussed in any nerd community (not so much non-nerd groups) because of that great catch phrase, especially when Microsoft is mentioned. I've always believed, as it sounds from your post, that the phrase has no philosophical or religious meaning beyond "enough is enough". If they teach otherwise in business school, they're making things up.
'Worlds most X' programming language, for programming what? The ideal language in which to express something kind of depends on what you are trying to express, doesn't it? ( maybe unless you are some kind of meta lisper ( or perl6'er :) ) dreaming of a language that's a strict superset of all possible others )
Jott has a voice-to-E-mail converter.
I am absolutely baffled as to how anyone could see YC as 'clubby', elitist, or whatever peoples' problem seems to be. Can anyone name another angel or VC firm that is more transparent than YC, or contributes more to the web startup world?

It seems like a number of people on here were staking the entire existence of their startup on YC funding - that's not an entrepreneurial attitude. If you have something worthwhile you'll build and launch it with or without YC.

Don't change a thing, Paul.
TapeFailure moves out of beta and adds some very cool new features
The true meaning of Truemors in Guy Kawasaki's own words
Why did he start off saying "don't lie?" That's not what the post was about.
Heck no. The runtime is state of the art. So are many/most of the important libraries. Until another environment available ex Windows get close to that, java is solid. Generally speaking, languages with 'nice' features are a dime a dozen. It's the runtimes and ecosystems that are hard to duplicate.
Startups and The Challenge Of The Freemium Pricing Model
Move it to Freenode =D
Related post on the Probability of success/failure - http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=7680
An observation based on what and/or who? The counter-examples in this case are numerous:

Tesla http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla

Feynman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman
Engadget Knocks $4 billion off Apple Market Cap on Bogus iPhone email
Is apple also preparing to execute the leakers?
There seemed to be a big disappointment because of the spamming. The spamming resulted from the big hype, so reasonably it will subside after the initial phase and there will probably be more interesting things coming out of the site.

In conjunction, look at justin.tv. The hype has subsided and how is it doing now? I can't say, not the target market, never paid attention. Similarly I'm not in the target market for Truemors, but comparing these two I would say that justin.tv's interestingness correlates to the hype and for Truemors the opposite.

So Guy has a point, and the critics who jumped quickly to deride the thing probably have too short of attention spans, or write to appeal to audiences with short attention spans.

ok enough whacked lameness from me over the past howevermany hours.
Marketing Tools and Software
Although I didn't apply, my guess is that this feedback would help tremendously. If implemented correctly, it might not even take much time.

The majority of applications were probably rejected for the same few reasons: talent, quality of app, quality of demo, hard to monetize, lack potential market, etc. Only in a minority of cases would YC have to actually write a sentence explaining why the app was rejected.
Veotag gets 750k investment
Startup pricing woes: Challenges of the freemium model
Google's new timeline search is practically identical in concept to my startup, onetimeline. Compare:

http://onetimeline.com/timeline?query=hendrix

and

http://www.google.com/views?q=hendrix+view%3Atimeline&btnGt=Search
It's pretty obvious what Paul Grahams goal is. He wants to pay some kids a laughable amount of money to write code for an idea he likes. He then uses his popularity to promote those websites. He basically gets coders for cheap. He's not stupid or anything, it's just he gets the better end of the deal than the kids he gives $5k to.

If you have an idea that paul graham likes, you're better off not taking the money.
Why define yourself as "rejected YCombinator company"? It seems like something that does not deserve mention except maybe on the "Company History" page.
State of the Computer Book Market - Programming Languages