skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Instead of spending 10 pages describing why it's actually OUR fault that metadata isn't well supported (we have an open API you could write it yourself) a la 37 signals, he admits the problem and says they will address it. Class act.
Any idea how many of these are uniques or how many registered users the site has? Certainly there are at least about 300 users that check the site many times a day (that's how many hits a post on my blog that got 7 upvotes received).
http://www.betaflow.com/

Just shoot me a message via the contact page and it's as good as posted. Will get you added to the Betaflow Codex as well. :D
A static snapshot of a web-based product may be open to easy copying. What is hard to copy and compete with is the dynamic trajectory of listening to users and rapidly adding features.
Related question in the YC app: "What do you understand about your business that other companies in it just don't get?"

http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=17628
Digg Eco-System Starting To Evolve
Nicholas Carr: Microsoft is dead in theory
Hm, seems a bit too simple for my liking. But I do like how it's focused on the task-making.
Wait a minute, you aren't one of my investors, I don't have to ;)

If you re-read the OP, I said YC has a bias towards a certain type of start-up, not that it was exclusive. If you list all the YC'dlings it may hold true for the majority.

As for the exceptions you mentioned, Xobni hasn't released anything, nor has the unlaunched unnamed start-up, so I'll have to take your word for it. I don't have Boost so loopt isn't something I can even use yet. As for TextPayMe, it reminds me of the pre-web Paypal, and a natural extension of what Paypal's doing now: adding an SMS option. (Perhaps less clunky than using your phone's web browser to go to paypal.com.) However, sending and receiving text messages is not exactly rocket science and the barrier there is really in handling the money and dealing with the applicable regulations, then having a large enough network to be useful. Paypal already has the hard part done, and I can think of numerous reasons to add SMS capability in-house instead, but eBay has so much cash they might just decide to acquire you. (I'm personally impressed with TPM's gumption in dealing with what I imagine is quite a lot of red tape.)

Was implementing Reddit harder than I think? I think the original route was circuitous, fighting a buggy CMUCL and lack of web frameworks.
@sbraford Nope, it wasn't payperposted, just think weebly's amazing. I'd love to talk with any of the weebly folks if anyone can send them my way-- my info's on the blog at carolynnduncan.com.
More details about the justin.tv eviction from YScraper
WSJ censoring Vonage ads?
agreed. I wasn't aware that 37 is really more than just a software company until I listened to some podcast on the layout of the company. It's really a product company that conceives, designs, market & ships bits as well as atoms. Are they stretched too thin?

What I really liked with SM was the way this lack of an API didn't become an issue that clouds over more important things. SM I think really get the development process - things are going to fail all the time - make small incremental improvements and then make major releases to make major adjustments.

The blog is now added to my must reads.
Justin.tv eviction article at sfgate.com
your instincts are probably right. Joel has a good article on developers get seduced on the 80/20 rule on feature where 80% of users us 20% of features ... but not the same 20% ~ http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/12/09.html
Any chance we can also take a peek at the unique daily visitor numbers?
Initially, I thought the question was referring to a project on strictly technical terms. After thinking, I soon realized that it's not all about technicalities and complexity in code, rather it can be taken as why would the atmosphere, communities, ease of use, value, services, etc. that your project will create be difficult to duplicate by competitors.

Surely, big companies such as Google, etc., can probably code any given project in fractions of a time less than the time say a couple hackers can complete it in, but I believe it's the environment and quality of service that you provide that differentiates one project from a duplicate.

At least that's how I interpreted it.
Who are you to say that lifestyle businesses are not focused on growth? Or that they cant' grow fast and change large numbers of people's lives?

A basic principle of finance is that you can either reinvest profits into your business, to pursue growth, OR you can withdraw profits as dividends. A lifestyle business is one that supports you, paying dividends early on. The owner(s) are withdrawing cash from the company. For a refresher on the definition of a lifestyle business vs. a high growth business, see http://www.indianaventurecenter.org/faqs.asp#7

So the question is - are you interested in growth, or the cash? Personally, I'm interested in growth. I want to build a company that touches as many lives as possible.

It's OK to want to build a company that generates cash, but don't pretend like you can pursue both cash and growth simultaneously. If your pursuing growth, you're spending cash. If you're taking out cash, you're scarifying growth.
dupe http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=17635
Bit old news isn't it? I've been playing with this since march.

It's good stuff, especially the CSS files make it easy to really define what you want. Not as sure about the javascript, myself, but then I haven't used it as heavily. I tend to just go with bare-metal javascript as/when needed.
Why I Enjoy Startup News - PaulStamatiou.com
'... Bit old news isn't it? I've been playing with this since march. ...'

the release news is, but quite a few yc companies use the api so it might be of interest. nice thing with this set of tools is a) open source and b) not dependent on a closed service. what do you use for calendering? (showing 'foo' items on a particular date?)
I think you need two out of three:

1. Desire to make things better.
2. Desire to get rich.
3. Pressure from friends to succeed.
I thought it's possible to just squat and they can't do much about it?
Ugh... "team of writers in India"... "link baiting"..."the ads are the content".

It's kind of sad that this is the sort of thing that adsense ends up promoting, but if you think about it, it's far more "productive" in dollar terms to automate a bunch of junk sites than sit around writing content yourself.
To get people thinking about it?
This is outright jealously and conspiracy. This is just ridiculous as to how people cant digest the fact that companies getting out of YC are going places. All the reasons given in here like noisy parties and things are funny. But one thing is that YC/PG combo has ruffled few feathers :).
Pretty neat app. Seems like a lot of the material depends upon multiple, overlapping copyright violations, however. The licensing sort of adds insult to that:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/

[quote]
You are free:
to Share Â to copy, distribute and transmit the work
[/quote]

...umm. Not really.
An interesting article from smugmug but they wrote it back in November 2006.
I was actually looking at one of Trinity's buildings for a place to stay for the summer. On second thought...
At least three tenants complained about the large number of people coming and going at all hours and the filming of tenants and common areas without permission, according to documents Bornstein sent to Justin.tv.

I'd be miffed if the nature of the block I rented in changed to match the above description. The odd party, fine, OK. But the larger foot-fall can be disruptive, especially if you're trying to work at home.

The landlord can probably easily re-fill the apartments with low-hassle tenants, just like the justin.tv crowd used to be, so he'd be daft not to. Ignoring complaints from other tenants wouldn't be a good thing for the landlord to do either.

Whilst awkward for those being evicted, it isn't too surprising, and may be best for justin.tv in the long run, e.g. forcing them to find a more interesting location.
This is just really all very ugly. Justin should get one of the 'business' more suave guys on his team to talk to the landlord about it and point out all the great publicity the building's getting from the Y teams...if indeed they still want to stay there. The landlord's a business guy. In the tech industry, hackers rule but in the 'real' world, it's all business.

Also, while it's very sweet that his loyal fans have put up a site to not evict Justin, I have a feeling Justin and the gang is about to get slapped with a defamation court order if the landlord finds out about it. Ah, the things you can sue people over
I decided that this is just a bad space to be in:

http://journal.dedasys.com/articles/2007/04/27/stuff-to-do-for-everyone

Everyone and their mother has done an ajaxy todo list. While mine has a few features that I need for what I do that I think set it above the crowd, realistically, with 3498364984531 alternatives out there, it's not something you want to pursue as a business.
What happens when all your data is on S3 and Amazon decides to raise their prices ?
The hurdle is converting spectators to creators. It's important to remember to cater to spectators and make the transition to creator as easy as possible. No registration for much of the good stuff, but make the process as easy as possible when it becomes necessary.

Incentives is the key here. You want to say, "Come on in and just have at it. But if you take a couple seconds to sign my guest book, look at what else you'll get."
Would the landlord want such publicity? If he is only interested in attracting tenants who are technology start-ups, then perhaps so. Or maybe he prefers quiet tenants who keep their heads down and don't disturb other tenants? The latter are easy enough to come by and pay the same amount of rent.
Seriously.

The thing you should seek now are better friends, and better ideas. ;-)
todo lists seem to be the 'hello world' ajax app that everyone has a go at. probably for good reason. it's useful, it's something you probably do anyway and you build it using the tools you have. I remember a joel on software article 'Painless Software Schedules' ~ http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000245.html pretty much with the same idea but using excel. Mine are 5x9" cards. Not as good, they don't scale & can be torn up.
What kind of PR do you need to get onto CNN?
You could call it a human interest story until you get to the last two paragraphs.
--
Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, is said to be developing a spaceport north of Van Horn, Texas. Bezos' Blue Origin is working to develop manned spaceflight for space tourists.

British billionaire Richard Branson also has announced plans to launch a space tourism company, which is expected to have its headquarters at the New Mexico spaceport.
Fear MicrosoftNBC in the era of copyright tyranny
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSNBC
You wouldn't want free press because you have your users that you like, and your business is apartments, and so you don't want any more users, so you don't want any more press. You just want peace and quiet, like you used to have, and a constant revenue stream. Not everybody is looking to take over the world.
Another interesting post from SmugMug, but this isn't news. It was posted back in January.
Is this how news.ycombinator.com runs? (Ctrl+F for "Closures Simulate Subroutines")
I asked this question elsewhere too. Can we have a "known bugs" page that has what you consider bugs on there together with whether you intend to fix them or not.

I think spam posts being counted is a bug but it isn't clear if you do. A known bugs page may answer that. Perhaps it's awkward to fix because you send the HTML containing the count before examining each of the posts, or do you build the whole page before sending anything?
It wouldn't. But many people prefer to think up something new rather than compete with someone who's already in the market. And the others tend to be dissatisfied with an existing product and therefore implement an improvement on it rather than simply clone.
I stayed in Trinity Towers at Polk/O'Farrell between 1991 and 1995. The building has 2 towers about 12 stories high each. On the 4th floor there is a city viewing deck with pool, jacuzzi, sauna, and a health club all with views of the city. There is a drive in garage with elevators right to your apt. My apt had a great floor plan on the 9th floor with large modern bay windows and city views - it was the ultimate bachelor pad. The management was very professional and responsive, and it is one of the best apts I've ever had.
This is exactly what StreamFocus is worried about. But, if the Amazon business model is successful, it will be hard to stop the me-too companies from coming in to the market. So this means there will probably be competition which means there will be other vendors available with similar services. Switching from one to another company in terms of coding will most likely be a very simple thing,
Paul Buchheit: Whose reality are you living in? Whose reality would you rather live in?
I always assumed it was, and that the closures are stored in the user's session (in memory, on the server). You notice that if you leave a comment reply box up on the screen long enough, you'll get "Unknown or expired session" when you try to submit, and have to back up to the main comment page before you can try again?
What they can't easily copy from a month old YC company is the huge amount of free publicity/contacts that comes from being a YC company.
have you not heard of the term, "synonym"?

buy a thesaurus instead.
Is Flex/Actionscript a real programming language? Can it do what Java does? (work offline, write files, networking etc.)
Even Bruce Eckel who wrote the popular Java books, "Thinking in Java", has switched sides and is backing Flex.

Qs:
Can your application if written in Flex;

1) can it open/close files, in Flex?

2) FTP stuff across, open network connections?

3) can it work offline?

If ActionScript is simply a scripting language in the browser, then I doubt it can do the above. So why the hype?
-
Anil
A very interesting article, but I think your model of a mental frame which you define as the biased and limited way in which information is perceived or understood. is a bit malformed as information isn't really perceived, it is processed at a higher level than perception. Integrated sensation or Perception is the lowest level of awareness humans have with the least amount of variability among members of the species. There is not often much debate about perception, such as the building on a certain block is brown vs. green. Or the shape that something you see is a bicycle vs. a car. etc. Perception is in fact the most objective faculty we have - our direct connection to the real world.

Now to say that our prior thinking can change our perception, I disagree. I think that people can actively evade perceptions they have by trying hard to ignore them, especially those perceptions that indicate that an idea held by the perceiver is incorrect in spite of the emotional need of the perceiver to continue to hold the incorrect idea.

You say that As far as you can tell, that frame is reality. Clearly, a mental model is not reality, it is a model of reality. If your theory were true, we probably couldn't even participate on this forum as our differently modeled realities wouldn't allow a common language that so relies on commonalities of perception and concept formation.

But I agree with your actual point that it is important to associate with people who share similar views about the world, people who have a similar sense of life. It can be very destructive to a person's view of what is possible in the world if everyone they spend time with is pessimistic and skeptical.

When I was in Architecture school, all of my professors tried to convince us students that there were no new ideas, everything had been done. That nothing great was created/designed/invented by individuals, it was all thanks to groups. That the heroic in architecture was impossible and undesirable. That Wright's Falling water was banal, just a bunch of concrete plates stacked up above each other. All of this foolishness was washed away when I worked for Paul Rudolph in NYC who single handedly was designing some of the most beautiful and heroic buildings I had ever seen. The experience saved my world view of what is possible.

So my advice is to find the very best in whatever your field, and learn from it. If you aren't able to do a startup on your own yet, find a startup that is the most innovative with the best ideas, and learn from them. Don't let the pessimists get you down, but stay grounded and realistic about the possibilities. Too much optimism can be a bad thing as well, but keep in mind that great things are achievable.
you mean now, or what i'd be doing in the 80 hours?

i'm a developer/entrepreneur. i don't hate what i a do; i love it.

i hate working for people who make it annoying/hard/painful to do the work they want me to do.
Yay! LinkedIn is (finally) blogging
If they expire sessions in order to avoid losing memory over users leaving without ever calling the closure, their timer seems short for what it gains.

The link name "fnid=" is a pretty strong giveaway as to what is underneath.
[silly test to see if they remove the closure from the HT once it's used, and the answer seems no]
Koonji Launches User-Generated How-To Web Guides
Pikspot launches, joins media mashup fray
Big change in 'Second Life' design tools
Meet Google's culture czar
The number one caboose to for companies to switch platform from Windows to Linux is the that the employees are reluctant to the switch. They had a hard time just to get adopted to computers in general (Windows) from type writes and are terrified for a change. When the people from the 1960 retire there's nothing to hold companies back from switching desktop platforms.
This is the email I recieved from those guys yesterday. Two tips: make it shorter(three lines?); dont use random font color/formatting style.

---------

Hi Zaid,

Koonji is an innovative experiment to redefine the way people access and use information. The main objective is to make web research more meaningful by providing a complete solution to search, enhance, organize and share relevant online information. Koonji is a community-powered step-by-step how-to guide to do effective searches on the web.
People often turn to the internet to find information and to seek advice typically starting with a search engine. But there is no way they can get organized information and a guide to trace the path for them. Koonji solves this problem by organizing information by breaking down topics into multiple steps and providing the best resources available along with helpful tips. The step-by-step guides can be on any topic from baking a cake to applying for a home loan.

Koonji's content is all community driven, the guides or "Koonji's" are authored by users usually drawing from their experiences. Koonji believes that the community's collective experiences are the best place to generate information. Users find organizes information and are also aided by a companion Koonji toolbar travels with the users, allows users to tag and save information as a Koonji.

Whether one is looking to learn how to buy a HDTV, how to organize a birthday party, how to find a job or how to plan a vacationÃÂÃÂthe process for completing these activities can be time consuming and frustrating. Koonji users benefit from the discoveries know-how of others, avoid time consuming web searches and any the trial and error method of finding information. Koonji.com is information by users and for users seeking information.

Please do contact me should you have any queries at steve@koonji.com .

Warm Regards,

Team Koonji

-----------
Yes, I find it too short and the end result is annoying but passable for the audience here. Non-technical users wouldn't be so understanding I suspect.

How are hash keys deleted? Age? Or are just the last N generated ones kept?
there is footage of underage people drinking alcohol, people throwing other people into the swimming pool, all night parties, the cops showing up with guns drawn, etc.

I feel a "Far Side" caption coming:

"And suddenly, the drawbacks of having every moment of your life recorded and broadcast to the world were clear"

;)

Seriously, though, good luck with finding new digs.
Are They Really Think To Compete Google?
Smugmug had 200,000 paying users last I heard. It's not a public company, so not obligated to unlimited growth. If they're making money and having fun with their current customer base, there's no need to target everybody else.

They can simply add features either as they become important to their current customers, or as they feel like it would be fun to do (e.g. OpenID). They'll grow organically just fine and still leave plenty of room for everybody else. There are millions of people out there who should share photos online but don't.
http://flexblog.faratasystems.com/?p=115

The answer to the initial question, "Is Actionscript 3 a 'real' programming language?" depends entirely on who you're asking.

1) Flex application run in a sandbox, much as Java applets do. Locally, and currently, Flex applications can open files for parsing, but can not write to them. This is remedied with Apollo which is in alpha. Apollo is essentially a Flex application wrapper that provides a file system API, among other things.

2) This really becomes a question of whether or not someone is inclined enough to write the necessary Actionscript 3 as it supports binary sockets and byte arrays currently. Someone has already created a ZIP library.

3) Again, when Apollo launches, then yes. Although, a Flex application can run offline should it not require file system access, and even then files can be opened, just not written to.

Actionscript runs in a VM just as Java does, which is irrelevant given that the questions you're asking are entirely arbitrary. The answers to which only tangentially, and tenuously, provide support in defining whether or not a programming language is 'real'.

In the interests of providing my own answer... I would say no, it's not quite a 'real' programming language.
ECMAScript (the standard that action script is built upon) is turing complete, therefore Actionscript is a real language.
The hype is because you can possibly simplify rich websites by fitting your web content into the standardized widgets that Flex provides you, thus speeding up development a lot.
I really don't see any alternatives other than 37signals' Backpack. The others like RememberTheMilk seem too...cluttered UI-wise. Yours doesn't seem bad but the signup is broken. I can't pick a timezone. Lucky for you I have Firebug turned on :P

Form is not defined
http://stufftodo.dedasys.com/account/signup
Line 285
Anyone who knows how to program in Lisp is smart.
Coming Soon, Justin.tv's The Homeless Chronicles