skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
MobileRules - it could be you
Competition for mobile applications. I haven't really looked at the competition, just thought the "it could be you" picture was amusing. Is that really what is driving us? ;-)
This crappy article gave me a thought. The advantage of not allowing downmods on this site seems to be: It's impossible to actively bury submissions, and so things only rise on popularity. But, at some point, that stops mattering. So, what if, after a certain # of points or after a certain position is reached, a downmod arrow appears?
Sudoku solvers vs TDD vs Peter Norvig
Hm, where is the comment? So here it is again: I just thought the "it could be you" picture was amusing. It seems so stereotypical...
Why didn't they buy it before it became popular?!
Good catch Paul!
Surprise, surprise Seth Levine is a "mentor" at Techstars:
http://www.techstars.org/site/page/pg5883.html

What a shame!
Marketing team brainstorms Facebook app launch (video)
Jobster's CEO Jason Goldberg sent me this vid this morning. It's an inside look at their marketing team brainstorming the launch of their new Facebook application. Jobster has received around $48 Million in funding.

I'm curious what your thoughts are on the brainstorming process and the ideas they're throwing around. Let me know.
Firefox 3: Preview of the User Interface
You say that your co-founder can't move, but if just you can, that might be enough:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32179
Wow. Somewhere in the world, Paul Graham is weeping. Not once did they talk about what Facebook users WANT or how to give value to them.
Inbox at news.yc.  Thoughts?
Cool to be able to contact fellow entrepreneurs and hackers.
It's not only time but respect too. The ability of YC to connect startups with investors and acquirers depends on its ability and commitment to select only the most promising teams. Anything that may look like a deviation from that would harm the YC brand.

Waiving the cash suggests that you have your priorities right, but if YC believes in you, that money serves you both better in your pocket than in YC's, don't you think?
Personal names around the World (how to localize them)
I just happened to glance at their privacy doc:

"We may provide information to service providers to help us bring you the services we offer. Specifically, we may use third parties to facilitate our business, such as to send email solicitations. In connection with these offerings and business operations, our service providers may have access to your personal information for use in connection with these business activities."

Email solicitations from third parties ? .. makes me real reluctant to sign up.
And it's the #69 book (not business book, book) on Amazon.com as of 11:15 AM PDT and climbing fast (it was #115 at 11). More proof of the well-deserved influence Marc already has.
Just follow HTTP 3xx redirects (up to n times, so as not to get stuck in an endless loop). "Click here for the real page" or javascript "redirects" are the feed provider's problem, not yours.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Http_status_codes#3xx_Redirecti...
If that would be a problem, give that first upload for free. Or is your concern about something other than cost?
My first reaction was: I see this more as donationware open source. But then again, if you feel your technology would be hard to replicate, and if the cost is on the S3 ballpark, I'm in.
What I learned from Hitch Hiking today
Scary stuff but interesting...
It didn't turn bad, did it? The product got validated and they didn't pay a lot extra.
reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated
Just put your email address in your profile. I already have email, myspace (which I ignore), and Facebook. I don't need yet another inbox.

I wouldn't object to a form on news.yc that would send a message via email without revealing the recipient's email address, in case people don't want to put their email address in their profile.
Did this come up after reading the "Kids say e-mail is, like, soooo dead" article on the front page now?
Damn. I'm totally busted.

Just the once, though, huh?
Or put your website in your profile and have your email or a contact page on the website (if you'd rather keep track of where your email address goes and take anti-spam measures).

Looking at my News.YC profile just now reminds me ... for websites in general, should /profile be the same page as /user/MYSELF? Some sites (like News.YC) have only the latter, or make them equivalent, but then you need to log out to see what your profile looks like to others.
Not that it really matters for News.YC itself, because the profiles are pretty trivial.

(BTW, I sometimes use "Web Developer Toolbar, Disable Cookies" to pretend to log myself out. Handy.)
Low ratings for Friday's Orbitz IPO
Orbitz LLC has always been a bit of an outsider in the world of online travel, founded as it was not by Silicon Valley techies but by large airlines hoping to reap a windfall from the tech boom...
Storing iPhone apps locally with data URLs: Run iPhone apps with no net connection!
I only made it 1/4 of the way through the book. I found it sort of boring.

However, the idea of customer driven development is a good concept to understand. One idea from this methodology is that you should start charging some customers as soon as you have a product. That way you'll find out what users really can't live without. No one seems to do this these days.
I hope not ;)

After graduating college I think most people would disagree.
"The Thursday I decide to go, the designated charity is the Polaris Project, which raises money to fight international human trafficking. The invite promises a kissing booth. Apparently no one senses the irony."

hah, thats great...
Hehe... good point. I'm always reminded how Yahoo rewrote ViaWeb after they bought it. Silly stuff...
I am not sure how this is relevant to startups? Very amusing post (and comments) but still very irrelevant in this forum imo
This sounds terrible:

The other bedrock changes to the US patent system envisioned in the original bill remain, including a shift from a "first to invent" system to the "first to file" system used in other countries.

So I do the required prior-art search, pretend not to find anything, and patent an idea that's been out there forever. No one can claim prior art.

Great going, guys.
I talked to Andrew about Ashton Kutcher's involvement a few weeks ago. He pretty much said Ashton doesn't get credit for how smart he is because of the character he played in that 70's show. Ashton RAN punk'd and built up a ton of PR and buzz for that show; I expect he'll help do the same for ooma.
Making a Small Common Lisp Project
Decent introduction to how to structure your CL projects. Showed me how to do asd files which I didn't know before. Good short reference if you want to learn CL.
survivorship bias.
Can news.yc provide a 'comment' link in the RSS feeds?
I like how the feed titles go directly to the article in question and not to their own homepage first (like Digg), but I often find that I want to comment on a story I read here on news.yc. This means I have to open up news.ycombinator.com, find the article, and click 'comments'. Can you provide a simple '[comments]' link in the feed body pointing to the news.yc comment page, similar to reddit?
Great analysis.

I have a friend who (years ago) told me "Damn you're lucky! You have a horseshoe stuck up your [butt]. But you seem to work really hard for it..."

I never forgot that, and in the intervening years I've attributed the majority of my success to luck, rather than skill. Luck, however, that I work hard to create.

The reason is this: If you believe that your success is due to your own skill, you become lax. Complacent. Entitled. You've succeeded so far, so clearly you're da man and you should succeed going forward.

If, on the other hand, you ascribe it to luck, you acknowledge that there's little that you did to make it work. And so you have to keep working hard and scrambling to make the next project successful. Because your previous successes have little bearing on future performance.
Civ II took over my life at one point. However now, I rarely play games, except for the occasional game of battleground in WOW with my house mates.
Portable Social Network: A demo using openID, rails, XFN and hCard with example code
What RSS reader are you using? In IE7 (no one's favorite) there is a comments link. Not sure about other feed readers.
200+ Hotkeys To Boost Your Productivity
If you don't have enough self control to stay focused on the task at hand, it doesn't seem like you're in the right business...not that I disagree about using a Mac, I just think your logic might be a little off...
Yes, only once. But I actually consider my first score on the Putnam (53, ranked 53.5th in North America) to be my most impressive performance on the Putnam, considering that I was only 14 years old at the time.
Ashton sounds like a dolt when he speaks (from the podcast). Andrew should give him a script the next time he speaks for the company.
lol @ brett
Other enhancements I've been thinking about...

Specific RSS feeds:

RSS feed of responses to your comments

RSS feed of leader stories (I think the existing one does this)

RSS feed of new stories

Is downmodding available? Sometimes I see it, but not other times.

Leading users shouldn't be based on lifetime, as some people have dropped off. It should be something like mean karma/day over the last month. Both rankings would be useful.

I don't think an inbox is needed. Perhaps just an open comment stream on each users page, with the option of privacy. You then should be able to have an RSS feed from your user page.
A look at Danger
My wife would prefer that if I'm going to do a startup, at least I could still be around physically...

We did apply (and were not accepted) to SFP this last cycle-- Cambridge is much more manageable from where we are in NYC than SF, and I could have had free housing there, too.
I use google-reader, and the only link is to the target story. Ideally, the RSS feed would allow a link to the news.yc story, which would allow you to leave a comment. Modding should also be in the rss feed, if possible. Buttons are bad in most rss feeds it seems.
I'm using FeedReader and there isn't a comment link.
I'm not sure if it's specific to FR, but there's no article summary or extract, that would also be useful.
you can use the bookmarklet, but this means you'll be upvoting the article, too.
The Open Source Web Design Toolbox: 100 Tools, Resources, and Template Sources
The open source model has, over the last 20 years, proven that collaborative development is one of the best ways to incorporate the newest ideas and latest concepts into design.
If a man is wrong, you don't need to tell him so. Just give it a rest and let others form their own opinions.

Seriously, these issues, and a lot of other issues, are covered in "How to Win Friends and Influence People". Read it. If I could figure out a way to get you to feel like you came up with the idea to read it, I would, but I can't, so just read it.
"there's generally less software available for the Mac in most areas"

Depeneds on the area (graphics, video, audio editing being exceptions) but I tend to agree with that. The thing I found out is that even though there's less choice, the quality of apps that are available for Max are MUCH HIGHER than apps available for Linux & Windows! So it's a definite win-win!
Spam spoiled email for my family. We now rely on IM for communication.
Well, your demeanor is very ingrained into your personality. I doubt you can change it without a lot of effort. Even saying little things like "I routinely tell Wall Street headhunters to stop bothering me..." comes off as arrogant. Do you really not see that? Or do you just not care?

Let's put it this way: How arrogant you are perceived as can be measured by how many times you say "I".
Yes! Please do this!

I read the RSS feed for news.ycombinator.com, and I don't get to view (and participate in) the discussions as much as I'd like to, purely because the RSS feed in Google Reader does not include a link to the discussion page.

I see the RSS feed contains a <comments> element for each entry, which is being ignored by Google Reader. Sure, using <comments> is the purer way to do it, but it's worth adding a simple "View comments" link to the description of each RSS entry, for people whose RSS readers don't support the RSS <comments> tag.
The only substantial difference between facebook and traditional email is the restriction on who can send you mail. If all of the people you interact with are all on facebook already and use it often, it doesn't make sense to use anything else.

The fact that you can't get email directly forwarded to you is very annoying, however it is a bit more secure.

(edit there are other differences of course, but they are "non-substantial." The restriction of in-network sending is the only thing that makes it not "email" already as far as this discussion is concerned. If you could message myname@facebook.com then it would be email.)
Very much agreed - regardless of what OS you are using, if you do not have the discipline to get your work done, there are bigger issues that you have to deal with. I have been using Windows/Visual Studio for most of my professional career and have not had an issue with being 'distracted' by so many games & apps etc.

Yes, I do play an occasional game when I have the time (I'm a sucker for RTS games ;) As a personal preference I would rather play a game for 1-2 hours rather than watch TV
We do. Look at the feed source. If there's something wrong with the format, please tell us.
Stealth Mode Report Uncovers Hottest Emerging Technology Companies
Massinvestor Publishing is excited to announce that its Stealth Mode Report email newsletter has uncovered many of Massachusetts hottest technology firms over the last year...
When did reddit switch? I wasn't able to find any reference to that. As of January 2007, it was still web.py:

http://reddit.com/info/vovg/comments
Founders At Work?
I'm starting to feel either invisible or grossly inarticulate on this one.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19842

A lot of readers will render (xml escaped) html put in a description tag for each item, including a tags pointing to a given link's comment page.
About a year ago I was in that network. It was really just a bunch of DC kids goofing around. Most of my friends on it were actually non-snob democrats and it wasn't exclusive at all. Everyone in DC got invites to that thing. It was like gmail used to be. If you wanted a gmail account and you couldn't get one, it meant you were living in a cave underwater.

I later removed myself from all social networks b/c I worked in the defense industry where RIGOROUS background checks are common. I didn't want to have to explain to the DOD that my profession was not actually "Dildo Model." I never spent much time on it but what I saw wasn't nearly as bad as what I read in that article. Not sure if it took a turn for the worse or it's just sensational reporting.

It was actually a pretty good idea to have a hyper-local social network. I was kind of bummed when I bailed. Not so much anymore though...
How to Find, Pitch, and Work with Angel Investors - MIT Enterprise Forum [video]
Long, but lots of really good gems in here!
It still sounds like the biggest corporations are making the rules. These reforms do almost nothing for smaller companies and individual inventors, and nothing to address the real harm that patents have done to the web, and the free and Open Source software world.

We need somewhat higher standards of novelty and non-obviousness, particularly on "business method" patents (if business method patents should even continue to exist).
I claim that food shouldn't have to be "extremely" inexpensive, merely reasonable. Eating a poor diet may save you $100 per month, but you risk getting sick and decreased productivity. That's like saving a minute while driving to not put on your seatbelt, eat, and talk on your cellphone.

@ rms: check out Trader Joe's. It's not a bargain, but it's much better than Safeway (which seems to be a front to sell soft drinks and snacks, not a grocery store). There's one in the San Antonio shopping center.
"Perhaps just an open comment stream on each users page"

That's an interesting suggestion.
get a gmail account
An useful stat would be karma/post.
If you comment on lots of new stories, where others don't comment, you would be less of a leader. That doesn't sound right.
> You then should be able to have an RSS feed from your user page.

With the intent that others might want to read what others discuss with you. And individual threads would have the option to be private -- at the authors discretion.
Wordpress & Sproose Facebook Applications
Wow. You really need to read this:

http://paulgraham.com/bronze.html
It's a tradeoff between rewarding volume or signal to noise ratio. I think showing both stats gives a more complete picture.
Downmodding is disabled for news stories and replies to your own comments.
Advice from Ooma founder Andrew Frame (vids + podcast)
Facebook acquires Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt's Parakey
Agreed. It's logical too. Most high schoolers and college students have a very small network of friends, acquaintances, family, etc. (in relative terms).

Once you get into the real world, you have to deal with people all over the place, oftentimes whom you've never met before. That's when email becomes truly useful.

Alternative hypothesis: after college, people aren't as concerned with appearing "cool," so Facebook Wall Posts really don't matter much anymore.
Update: four hours later, it's #48.
No, even under "first to file" you cannot patent something where publicly accessible prior art exists. You can never patent something if it already exists in the public. The difference in first to file is that you can't pull up internal, private (i.e. NOT public) documents after the fact and say "look, here's proof I did it first" even though nobody could access that document.
Flip side is that users who comment a lot on popular stories but don't post much tend to get overcounted. My karma/post is like 25-30, but only because I get the majority of my karma from comments. My posts themselves average like 5 points.

I've picked up literally 100 karma in the last week or so, yet made only one submission in the last month. A couple popular comments can heavily distort the averages.
Congrats guys, that's awesome.
And that was when the facebook economy was born.
With these guys at facebook, they might be able to take over the world.
Checkers Solved! - Computers crack famous board game
Agreed. Joe and Blake are two of the smartest guys in the field. Crazily productive to boot.

I'm a little surprised by the direction of the acquisition (I would have expected someone bigger than Facebook to be the buyer) but not that one happened quickly. (I predicted that Zenter would not be the last acquisition this year from the WFP07 group.)
Google profits fall short of expectations, shares drop
Oxford using Facebook to snoop on students, emails fines of $80 to $200 for breaking rules
Sheesh.. Why? I don't understand why people keep trying to take something which is inherently non-object-oriented (Lisp) and cram an object-oriented mentality into it. Sure, it's nifty you can make objects without using the Common Lisp Object System, but that's generally not how you'd want to structure an actual application, right? Lisp is so powerful you can build and manipulate your own structures at runtime, so you don't need to make objects which represent a concept. Those concepts are represented through utility functions. Maybe I'm just dumb, but I don't see it.
Is this the first facebook acquisition? They're getting closer to being the new google. All they need now is a good way of monetising..
There is something wrong with the format. Some readers are ignoring the comment field (not your fault, but that's the sad reality), change it to a description field and encode the link to the story and the link to the comments in that field. This is what the reddit feed does, fwiw.
Ashton was an engineering student as well.
Selling a $400 piece of harware will be extremely hard. SunRocket had a bit better model and they failed. These guys will need every bit of viral marketing that Ashton can produce.

http://www.postchronicle.com/news/original/article_21292575....
I have no idea about their finances and how much money they raised and how much they got offered by facebook, but selling out this early before even doing an open beta is a sure way to undersell yourself.
Techcrunch: Facebook has acquired Parakey
I'm not too sure how a great app is poking yourself. Unless you're referring to the world's oldest app...
"And he's just written and published a book..."

It was published in 2005 -- that's what amazon says.
Here it says it was published in 2006:
http://www.cafepress.com/kandsranch.58024175

Also at cafepress it 29.99 and at
amazon 39.99.
A bug at Amazon?
I wonder: is it harder to sell oneself as a hitch hiker or a web app?
I am shocked and awed.
Fantastic!! Congrats, guys...
Maybe. Or this was their last chance to get a boatload of pre-IPO priced shares, fully vested... Maybe this acquisition is another sign of a looming IPO filing.
A Web Phone Called ooma
Business Week telecom reporter Olga Kharif writes today about a new VoIP startup called "ooma." (Yet another example of lousy brand names due to cybersquatters).
Sorry about the confusion: by post I meant either news stories or comments, no distinction.

We could use the median rather than the mean, but I see no problem in the fact that a few very popular comments can pump up your average. They boost your absolute count too. And that's OK. Karma measures popularity.
Skilled Workers May See Green-Card Surge
to ask someone an open question and discuss their ideas/plans if they're open about it.
heh, in my home language ouma means 'granny', and therefore ooma and its pronunciation in English is almost identical :)
I think Parakey could have become a billion dollar company on its own. Instead, they're getting what will become 50M+ of the hottest closed stock around. Not a bad trade-off, and it will still be enough money to mostly free them from ever having to worry about scarcity again.
As a major bandwidth user, mainly bandwidth actually. But having the first upload for free would be a great incentive.

I think it took several days to move my data to the current system remotely which was not fun. I think its just an unavoidable problem. The severity was lessened by the service calibrating the upload to occur in the middle of the night, which really did help a lot. All of the incremental uploads also are scheduled at night, which is an obvious move.
"when it comes to encapsulation, the very foundation is that all state must be accessible only from inside the object's methods."

Screw encapsulation then. Low tech data abstraction gives you most of the benefits without the hassle. (+)

http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-14.html...

(+) Edit: was "The real point is data abstraction."
hmm...great question. at least with web app i can get my friends to use it.
It's a bit pricey but I recommend a Presso: http://www.presso.co.uk
Thoughts on 'The Equity Equation'
Ok. I hate to reply to this way off topic post, but I'm a coffee geek, so I need to.

Peets is crap. It's fresh, but it's way over-roasted - nearly burned. And 10 days in the store (especially because they store them in open air) is still way too long.

Find a local roaster. One that roasts light, to what they call a "city" roast. Buy beans every few days, tops once a week. It will change the way you view coffee.

Or, better yet, do what I do, and roast at home www.sweetmarias.com (not my site, just where I buy beans)

And for god sakes don't put cream in it.
I love Washington City Paper. It's full or grumps and cranks who are not at all impressed with DC. It's free, so if you're in DC, pick it up. The lead stories are often harrowing. Their article on the "college town" where I live was damning.

This is not, however, a paper that is going to break much important news for startups.