skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The MSFT guy is right. Full open speech recognition is very hard and a long way away. For some simpler tasks, it's fine.

On a related note, I was surprised to discover that "say" works over remote logins. Try "ssh some-mac say hello world". Good for Halloween.
Wow, what a response. I am excited by the prospect that at some point in the near future I can dive into lisp with a clear goal in mind and the resources to make it happen. I have been hearing for years about how lisp is really the ultimate programmers language. I respect this lisp-lover's oppinion and experience ultimately, and put him right in the list with Paul and Carl. So, 3 elite programmers who sing the graces of lisp. One was enough for me to want to learn to think in lisp. 3 in support should be a point to ponder.

The problem I have always encountered with trying to build a solution in lisp is the lack of resources. It sounds like lisp is inching closer and closer to the critical mass where tools and libraries will finally be available for more then a few uses.

This lisper I know said "Don't hold your breath." when I suggested that lisp may be coming close to getting its due. I know that there are alot of people out there like me. We will start using lisp when the great advantages of the language finally outweigh the disadvantages of implementation. I think its just a matter of time until lisp is a clear win, as long as the tools come.

I've never written a line of lisp. I want to save my lisp cherry for a time when I can have more "Yay" then "Doh" while I learn and use it. I think it will be worth the wait.
How to be Charming
Buxfer will be the next startup from Y to get picked up. It's useful and could easily be a feature in some bank's web portal.
Though it could be said in a much less offensive way, I agreed with this in the article

"I read YCombinator Startup News. I read that thing that Paul wrote saying that anybody who contributes regularly is going to fare better. Thats shit from a bull! Anybody who is spending time posting on a site that is a collection of links to dream money instead of working on his project is never going to make money. Anybody who cares about karma on that site instead of spending time reaching users for his product is an idiot."

I've been checking out these threads for a few days and have started leaving comments because that apparently gives you a better chance. Paul has a lot of tough choices to make and I understand his reasons for using comments as one of the many tools in filtering prospective startups, but I really hope its a small small factor. Sure it proves I read blogged advice and other mumbo jumbo on the subject of startups and am interested in the funding, but it also might indicate that a person has way too much free time or has a serious net addiction (a major development killer). I've been getting ready to kick start my startup this summer for over a month now. During that time I've read a lot of these startup articles, all of Paul's entries, Founders at Work, bought a few other books and searched the net for VC firms and how to get in touch with them. One article at the beginning of the process affected me greatly. When I was making the tough decision to do the startup or take a very appealing job offer I read Paul's article (not to brown nose) "A student's guide to startups" which said the best time to start one is when you're 24, fresh out of grad school, and hopefully have a solid internship behind you. That was something I didn't know and hit me hard because this summer that will be my exact situation. If I hadn't have read it I might have missed my perfect window! I made my decision right then. Every article, book, or resource since however has been repetitive and more draining on my energy to get started than helpful.

My point, and the article's author's point in the quoted paragraph is, use these articles to get yourself inspired and confident about doing this thing and then stop reading and commenting! You're inspired now don't kill it and waste your time with reading more and more of the same crap, go make your own stories. This is most likely my last post here. I hope that doesn't effect my rating :).
To be precise: is bootystrapping bringing sexy back?
Is "Understanding Investors" going to be a based off a brand new essay, Paul? Sounds interesting -- I think I might go check this one out.

Max Levchin is also going to be presenting in the morning; see the schedule: http://ases.stanford.edu/summit_2007_schedule.shtml
Ruby on Rails and Merb.

I'm actually just starting to use merb for simple requests that don't need the full rails stack (merb being threadsafe whereas rails is not, so it's useful to delegate some of the simple stuff to merb).

I still plan on investigating flex and seaside in the short term, just to see if there is any good ideas I can learn... (in a longuer term, I'll dedicate some time to lisp)
Awesome! I'm wearing a Justin.TV t-shirt right now! He's less monotone now than he used to be on day 2. You know, I never realized that there is no stabilization going on, and that Justin has to make sure he rarely moves his head. I never realized that. I could never do something like that!
Believing yourself to be on the right side of this chart is a left-side mentality.

Believing yourself to be moving from left-to-right is a right-side mentality.
Why do all the good things happen only at Stanford? Hopefully someone will make a bootleg video of this and spread the wisdom through torrents.
I disagree that Dell is a similar company to Google. Google designs, innovates, and improves their own products. Dell is more similar to Nike--neither manufactures anything. They manage their brand identity (including picking out some options out of a supplier catalog about what their future laptops will look like) and spend money on advertising, but they do not make any of the actual components--not one. Dell is not a technology company any more than Nike is one. Dell does do simple assembly, but I don't think it's very technical stuff to put 7 components together on an assembly line.

HP is a tech company because they design printers and manufacture calculators. Apple is definitely a tech company (software, itunes, etc.) Sony? Not sure. Dell? Same as Nike.
Free is folly? Google's gmail seems to be working out fine. And in fact, YouTube seems to be working out fine (or at least Google thought so enough to buy it), too. Free is only bad if you didn't think your plan through, I think.
We Want You to Kick Ass
http://www.lispworks.com/success-stories/netfonds-primetrader.html
http://gigaom.com/2007/04/09/lastfm-launches-subscriptions/

There's another little thing on this. I guess they're now 'pushing' the ad-free radio more since the royalty rates increased.
Advertising. Their advertisers are probably only paying for views inside the US, so anything they serve outside of the US is throwing away bandwidth for them. Giving away their content still helps their brand if they ever expand to those countries, but even in an expansion there can be different owners involved, among other factors that complicate the whole scenario.

A bigger problem is that if any MTV content is syndicated on other networks outside the US, MTV would be breaking their contract by showing videos to non-US viewers. These types of contracts worked well when everything was based on TV, which has fairly definite boundaries, but hopefully we don't see these types of restrictions in another five years or so.
I think this is a little bit ironic. One of Paul's YCombinator companies, Loopt.com is using Microsoft/IIS 6.0 and Paul has been touting them to be one of the best of his startup investments. I agree with you on this one Paul, Loopt.com is the only one that is actually doing something real.

Another startup that just caught Techcrunch attention (and apparently got financed because the company has a real business model) is Gigya (http://www.gigya.com/) and they, too, are using Microsoft/IIS 6.0.

I'm not saying that there's a strong correlation between Microsoft and your success rate, but I just find it ironic.

The rest startups seem to not to have their business models and hoping for a buyout. Actually that includes Reddit as well. If you read Aaron's blog and see how they're desperate to get a "deal" from PG.

Note: I assume Microsoft/IIS 6.0 = ASP.NET
I like this his post for several reasons. First I'm not the kind of guy who would like to build a business that is built-to-flip, built-to-be-acquired or any of the sort. Call me old school but I still believe that if we work hard enough at our business we can create something lasting and with value to the customer. I've read Getting Real and I too took it with a grain of salt. Granted they have good points in the form of building something customers want and not taking VC funding initially or never at all. THe point I'm driving it is I see alot of great ideas around the web for a business. But sadly I don't see what their economic engine is? nor do I think they have any idea, no sound business model, and little or no added value to the customer. Funny thing is I'm a hacker! just like most of you! I'm not a "business guy" nor will I ever want to be one. Either way I'm just trying to make sense out of all the noise I'm hearing.

-Mathew
Quoting yourself:

"When we started our startup in 1995, the first three were our biggest expenses. We had to pay $5000 for the Netscape Commerce Server, the only software that then supported secure http connections. We paid $3000 for a server with a 90 MHz processor and 32 meg of memory. And we paid a PR firm about $30,000 to promote our launch.

Now you could get all three for nothing. You can get the software for free; people throw away computers more powerful than our first server; and if you make something good you can generate ten times as much traffic by word of mouth online than our first PR firm got through the print media."
I feel horrible for not giving python a chance .... but then there are only so many languages one can do mock-ups in .... before making a decision
HA! cari.net/complexdrive.com has bad bandwidth quality and poor facilities. aplus.net is also bad. And for the love of fnord avoid ADN. These are all poor choices in San Diego. cari.net does have good prices though.
Are u considering JRuby ??
http://www.franz.com/success/
What is your experience with FastCGI??? I am running ROR off it, but lighttpd throws quite a lot of 500 Internal Server Errors.
Are you serious?? I didn't know people actually used F# ... are you using it for the Java Syntax or any other reason??
Wired's Interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt
Do schools today kill creativity? (Ken Robinson, TEDTalks)
The first alternative is what I thought: that you were probably taking time away to write. The piece somehow reminded of a time when I was in the middle of doing my taxes and took 45 minutes off to solve a puzzle: dissect an 8x8x27 cubic inch parallelpiped into four pieces that can be reassembled into a cube.
The libraries we're currently using:

Portable AllegroServe: Lisp Webserver (with Webactions Session control)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/portableaserve/

ASDF: Another System Definition Facility
http://www.cliki.net/asdf

CLSQL: Database interface Library
http://www.cliki.net/CLSQL

UFFI: Universal Foreign Function Interface
http://www.cliki.net/UFFI
Smart Bookmarks:  Finally, you can bookmark "pages" in AJAX apps where the URL doesn't change (e.g., google reader)! [pdf]
Can't agree more! One of their partners in creating that world of monopoly was Intel. Remember the Wintel combo. For one, there are other chip companies (AMD esp) which has not allowed a monopoly situation. Intel itself is now available on Apple.

Now, MS might be loosing because slowly the rules of the game are changing. IBM - Mainframe, MS - Desktop. Get it. Cellphone/mobile - ???

Maybe it's still early but we may have to watch out who will be the dangerous player on mobile. That is if it becomes the device for - computing, entertainment, and communication.
The headline is somewhat misrepresentative - this is on Mr. Norvig's personal site, so it's only from him, not from Google.
About 60 Web clients (web client), servers, application servers, browsers, etc:
http://www.cliki.net/web
List of things that people believed would change the world
...and of course, with that reply you actually mean that the gfx-hardware doesn't natively support osx and linux :). I, for one, marvel at the sheer number of drivers that have been written for free for hardware manufactured by companies who still think Windows is the only OS.
Seems like Amazon S3 is the top candidate for changing the world. XHTML and podcasting are close second, followed by mobile technologies and the like. No mention of any non-Web 2.0 stuff, such as medicine, energy or politics. Pretty funny.

PS This link is more focused: http://www.google.com/search?q=technology+is+going+to+change+the+world
"In summary, my problem is not with capitalism, and I am not a socialist. I merely fear that the inevitable end of capitalism is the type of corporate society that has been steadily evolving in the U.S. and elsewhere, one in which paper and numbers are more important than people."

You contradict yourself.

Obviously you have a problem with capitalism because you beleive people should be forced at gunpoint to live the way you prefer.

This is because you value "paper and numbers" more than people.

Your idolizing of hunter gatherer societies is the kind of pseudo-science that has always been used to sell socialism.

Feel free to quit your job and go find food yourself. In alaska you are free to hunt to feed your family-- subsistence is prtected there (and its a good thing... nothing worse for the environment than environmentalists anyway.)

You talk about "Seeing things at a human level" but your idea of the "human level" is sticking a gun in someones face.

I never equated open source software wiht development at gunpoint-- so of course you had to say I did to try and make me out as crazy. People who voluntarily open source their software are Capitalists -- they are profiting (exploiting in your parlance) the works of thousands who decide to contribute to their open source software.

No, the violence ocmes in when you insist that companies must be restrained and people must be restrained from freely trading for each toher.

becauss of your pretend care for their spirit "So the customers save money, yes, but they lose out in so many other ways."

When you force walmart to stay out of your town-- you are using a gun to deny poor people the ability to feed themselves.

You, my freind, are a socialist. The spew of your post is pure socialist drivel. Its nonsense... and as long as socialists like you continue to spout hateful anti-human nonsense like that, I'll be asking the questiosn you can't answer.

Like:

Why not let people live in peace? Why do you insist on using violence to force people to live according to your (ignorant) ideas?
No, it means you haven't saved up enough money. :-)

Good luck with getting YC funding. But there's a huge difference between YC and venture capital. When you start talking to venture capitalists, you'll see.
See, the problem that I think people are missing is that VC funding is no longer a means to an end.

Implicit in your comment is that a company without VC funding cannot grow as fast as a company with VC funding.

That was true ten years ago when a lot of costs were unavoidable: Server hardware ,server software, and you had to build a lot of software infrastructure from scratch.

Now all that is cheap, or free, and what isn't comes with lease terms.

Thus, lacking a big pile of money is not an inhibitor to growing big fast.
If you applied for summer 2007 funding, please tell us your email address
Firefox: View-Page Style-No Style
You nailed it, Paul. The bad reaction is akin to what you'd expect from a dowager having been goosed by an upstart who crashed her stuffy fund-raiser.

-john longawa
It ate my greater-than signs.

->
cargo cult management strategy.

Spot on!

"The brand-building idea is all about casino thinking. The theory is, the minute you have a brand, you can cash out. This casino attitude is good for VCs but it's ruinous for programmers, and it's ruinous for normal investors as well. (And it isn't even really that good for VCs.)"

This guy knows what he's talking about.

Getting Real misses the mark in a few areas... the 37signals people are (I am guessing) from a design background and often end up implemting a solution that solves the problem the way they want to solve it, but not generally... and rails suffers because of this. Some other things in the book don't make sense... but it is an excellent book and well worth reading.

Venture Capital is dead. Its deader than microsoft.
"Just try to take a released feature away from customers and see how pissed off they get."
Yeah, because his books so far have no substance at all... (cough one of the top Lisp books out there cough)
There should be a rule against submitting all of a blog's posts to news.ycombinator.com.
Anyone have experience with removing features from a live product? What was the response -- would you do it again?

It seems like this advice conflicts with being experimental and releasing stuff early for user feedback. What if you release something and decide it's obtrusive to 95% of people but there's a small group who loves it? Do you hide it away somewhere -- what if it's a drag to maintain?
Did you just say "MILLIONS of [...] hackers [...] in the Windows world"? Wow, that's pretty funny, because Windows isn't really designed for hackers, you know? I mean, sure, they can go out and buy Visual Studio and write some programs, but why not just get an OS that supports real hacking out of the box, and is free?

I mean, either the definition of "hacker" has expanded quite liberally, or we should start seeing a slew of awesome apps start rolling out any minute now...
Wow, I can clearly see that it was a mistake to reply to your comment. This is pointless...
I never claimed VC funding is required for quick (or expansive growth). There are obvious examples where that's not the case.

I'm not sure how you can claim that VC funding is not a means to an end. There are clearly cases in which a lot of cash helps. Startups use money for many more things than servers.

If you're pursuing cash for equity for no reason and do not really need it, then yes of course that's a bad idea. If you're preemptively avoiding cash for equity without considering if it can help you get where you want to go, however, that's also a bad idea.
Definitely a valid question. My guess is that they'd be fine with you building a company for the long term -- you could always buy out their shares at some point.

But I think most YC founders will be saying "yes" to offers that are in the millions. As pg says "That first million is just worth so much more than the subsequent ones"

When you walk away with a few million dollars in your pocket there's not much stopping you from creating a new startup, if you have the drive.
Trying to get HAppS to work. http://www.happs.org/

Of course, I'm about ten lines of code in, so I probably don't count.
What is your opinion guys on start a web service startup in Russia? Google and Yahoo are there. Are you?
If the emails are automated, they might end up in the junk mail. Yahoo and Hotmail, in particular, have the tendency to do that.

Anyway, about one hour is left before it hits 10th in Mountain View. Good luck everyone!
I hope they're ready for the mad traffic rush of crazed teen girls. I mean, does anyone else watch MTV anymore?

It was also funny that they mentioned Flavor Flav, and being able to see how he lives. I was actually at a Hampton Inn in Covington, Kentucky (just south of Cincinnati), and he was staying there with like 1 or 2 guys (at least that's all that was with him when I saw him). This place was by no means a luxury hotel, so I got a small chuckle out of the whole thing.
What I've realized about startups in international markets(specifically India/Asia) is that they are either backed by folks who understand the local culture but can't develop a great product or folks who develop a great site--but doesn't connect with the geographical audience.

Every now and then you get a decent startup. ie. baazee.com in India played its cards somewhat right(acquired by ebay for 50mil but took 10+mil in funding I believe).

That is why google and yahoo have such an edge - they usually send an American exec. at some level to oversee international markets.

-Zaid
Cheesy?: Yes

Useful?: Yeah

Should more programmers learn these fluffy skills?: Too obvious to answer ;)
The idea I got from reading few of the responses was that some people chose to only read the title and copy-paste random fragments totally out of context to show Microsoft's not going broke anytime soon. Doh. That was never pg's argument.
Works okay from .jp
Didn't the applications themselves call for email addresses, or am I misremembering?
Many charming guys are here at YC too IMHO.
Yes, but I assume that was just for human consumption. This probably makes it easier to automate the ~1k emails they have to send.
Hmm, I haven't used my current setup in production yet. Development has been fine, only time will tell. Hopefully I don't get the errors you experienced :(
Karma is the law of cause and effect. Every effect has a cause and every cause follows an effect, so karma is suggestible.
Why is lisp so sparsely documented?
I can't speak for the GP, but since it has been 11 hours and he haven't answered yet I'll give you my answer: it's mostly a matter of taste, or sometimes if there is a particular library/app/framework for one which you'd like to use.
I would also add that at least in my experience the Scheme community was much friendlier the the Common Lisp one. They don't particularly like novices over there and it is quite easy to get flamed if you're not careful enough...
I think there's a failure to acurately calculate opportunity cost going on here.

At startup school they talked about (presumably VC backed) startups being a %15 chance of success. IF you have a %15 chance of building a company worth $20M in 2 years, and you'll get $2M of that-- then the opportunty value is 0.15X2M or $300,000.

On the other hand, if you bootstrap, and you build the same business, your chances of being a success go up to %60 (No flatline VC sitting on your board forcing bad decisions) but maybe you spend a bit less on marketing and grow more organically (really, I'm being generous here- I think the same business would grow just as fast bootstrapped.) so you end up being worth $10M in two years. Your share of that is $5M, for an opportunity value of $3,000,000.

In other words, you're likely to return ten times the money by forgoing venture capital.

While in both cases you could end up with nothing, weighting the payoff with the likihood of success lets you evaluate two very different opportunities.

If you take the choice tht has a %15 chance of success, odds are you won't get that first million... where as in the alternative, odds are you will.
FastCGI is super lightweight and very powerful. If you're seeing errors like that you likely have a problem that requires fixing. Judging from your post it might involve excessive question marks in a regex.
Nice, I have my e-mail in my profile from beginning :) however I can't apply, my english is very poor and I can't relocate to the U.S., so good luck to everyone who apply!
There is one high-selling area of software that I can never imagine being separated from the desktop: activity-monitoring anti-virus suites. So for all those people to be able to run their anti-virus programs, they are going to need Windows, and therefore, Windows will stay relevant.