skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ahh.. You're saying they're worth something because of an IPO. I was referring to sustainable, intrinsic value.

They're certainly worth a lot because they have a lot of eyes, but probably not more than PlentyOfFish is.
It makes sense when you think about it. The yCombinator application weeds out people who are unintelligent; the interview weeds out people who are inflexible. So anyone who gets into the program is bound to be both intelligent and flexible.

What can go wrong with startups? You can work on the problem wrong, which is hopefully averted by smarts. Or you can work on the wrong problem, which is averted by flexibility and subjecting yourself to reality checks. If you've got both of those elements, the only thing that can really go wrong is that you give up before you hit upon an idea that's useful.
Why not incorporate off-shore? Ireland's corporate tax is 12.5%; British Virgin Islands' is 0%
openCoffee club is perfect for this. Turn up every week and you'll get to know people who you respect. They'll always ask you what you're up to and what you've done since last week. The simple fact that you don't wan't to look bad in front of them is a great motivator.

Or perhaps some kind of demo party. Everyone has to present something for 10 minutes, something they've done or learnt since last week.
Making scaling a money issue vs. a time issue?
As a one man band, I've been looking at some Virtual Private Servers to try and make low level scalability issues more of a money issue rather than a time issue. I've looked at thegridlayer.com and mediatemple's dv packages.

So far I like mediatemple because it comes with a control panel, Virtuozzo, etc. thegridlayer's solutions seem to require more setup and come with none of these features out of the gate.

Is there a better VPS provider with more timesaving features and reliability or an easier way to get a good, quick scaling server?
Gotcha, title changed
From what I read, the legal environment in your place of incorporation matters as much as, if not more than, the tax rate.

So many companies incorporate in Delaware because it has extremely detailed corporate case law history (and separate courts for corporate law), even though it is more expensive to incorporate there than most other states.

I would imagine for the average startup it's more an issue of overhead costs. Incorporating in Ireland, for instance, would require you to have a legal expert in Irish law on the payroll (most likely an Irish Lawyer) and deal with all the fancy tax forms I'm sure the IRS has for offshore companies doing business in the US.

I highly doubt either of those places is a hostile legal climate by any means (but IANAL!), but it seems like all that paperwork would be distracting from your business when you are that small.
If you can't meet up try twitter or tumblr. Every day post what you've achieved that day and what you're going to do tomorrow. If you keep it up for a week you'll feel very guilty if you stop. I've got a moleskin notebook that I use for this purpose and it works great.
This is fantastic. The essay feels more "shoot from the hip" and emotional than normal. It will certainly stay with me!
Can't claim to have actually used them, but I have kept an eye on slicehost ... might be worth a look anyway.
Is it changing?

I think it still holds the same connotation (that's in the rare cases where hacker isn't already taken to mean someone who breaks into computers). Which is why I cringed when startup news changed to hacker news.
Ubuntu Founder Mark Shuttleworth on Productivity and Linux
Thinking about Lifestreams
Ruin.
I essentially agree with them.

Programmers are people who know what they're doing, like janitors.

Hackers are people who don't know what they're doing and are trying to figure things out, like scientists.

Code that shows you didn't know what you were doing is a hack.

Code that shows an innovative way to do something is a cool hack.
I have a few definitions of hacker, and consider it a fairly nebulous word.

1. Someone who has attained a level of mastery of the art of making a computer do what you want.

2. Someone who loves doing (1), even if they aren't a "master"

3. A programmer who tends to use creative solutions with little regard for convention. This can sometimes be negative.

My definition of programmer is:

1. Someone who writes computer programs
Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: Data center porn
Is Microsoft looking to buy RIM?
Yeah. This appears to be a very bad sign.
Dot bomb or not, this article does inspire me to go out and make stuff happen fast!

"This is not a strategy play, this is an execution play" sure describes a whole lot of web2.0 startups...
Yeah I agree with you. I could care less about karma but I was under the impression that it will affect how your votes are counted. Or at least give you the ability to down vote (if that is ever possible). So some people could game the system and get their submissions on the front page.
Ask Hackers: How to solve the Wifi dilemma?
With all the urban WiFi projects getting shelved:
Chicago Drops Expensive WiFi Project http://www.tmcnet.com/wifirevolution/articles/10205-chicago-...

S.F. citywide Wi-Fi plan fizzles as provider backs off
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/08/30/...

Anybody have any ideas how to create a breakthrough solution? Seems there are numerous supply of wifi connections, but they all need passcodes.

I want to be able log on to any WiFi in San Francisco even if I don't have the passcode... I don't want to use a hacker tool, and I want it to be fair to everyone. What's the problem with doing that?
Facebook giveth, facebook taketh away.

When you develop for someone's platform, you always have this fear.
>What're your predictions?

How can one make any predictions without knowing the teams?
Steve Jobs' Master Plan
Hmm. What are your opinions of the ideas based on the very limited information given?
> Our game is hypernumbers which will do to numbers what hypertext did to text.

If I could understand what the hell that meant, there's a chance I might think it was interesting.
Is it possible that you are referring to Java rather than JavaScript?
It might be a good solution, except that we have a 6-month-old daughter. And I'm very happy that we do, but it does make startup decisions harder. :-)
I recently got this:

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=...

I like it so far. The split nature makes you type correctly (hitting the T with your right hand is quite a stretch otherwise) and the angle is very relaxing on the wrists. I am at the computer about 15 hours a day and never have wrist strain.

It's amazing how hard it is to find a keyboard with a simple wire nowdays. I went to Best Buy originally and all they had were wireless models. Am I the only one that doesn't see the point in having a six foot cable run to a wireless transmitter that only has a six foot range?
Are you talking about scaling from 1/10 of a server to 1 server, or from 1 to 10 servers, or from 10 to 1000 servers?

I was turned off by 3Tera/TheGridLayer because their sites are all marketing, no tech. But I just discovered the docs (http://doc.3tera.net/AppLogic2/WebHome.html), so now it's possible to size up their system without some salesperson sizing up my wallet first.

TGL's prices for individual VPSes do not look competitive and the starting price of $4000/month for a virtual datacenter is pretty spicy.

Previous VPS discussion:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43949
Most providers do not mention scalability or upgrades on their sites, so maybe it is worth paying more to MT for scalability.
That's true. I've been using it all day though, and my eyes definitely feel better. It's kinda growing on me.
The Pmarca Guide to Startups, Part 9: How to hire a professional CEO
We could get everyone to sign up to http://www.fon.com/en/ or some similar service.
AppLogic "Grid Operating System" - possible EC2-killer?
Here's my guess for Sept 5th: An iPod with combined features of iPhone: Flash memory, touchscreen, it's an iChat/Skype phone that uses wifi networking for $379.

However, I'm waiting for the home entertainment center: An Apple LCD HDTV perfectly-mounted screen, wirelessly streaming data from other Apple devices. DVD, TV tuner, rent movies from iTunes like a Netflix.
Probably not. At some point you have to learn to trust your own judgment rather than someone else's. For me at least, that took time.
Yes, but the 10% figure is quoted for startups who don't have the advantage of YC's network and PR status.

Perhaps that's an obvious point, but I think it's an important one.
The Startup Game: How Anywhere.fm is building a hit niche
I'll give that a try. Something more interactive would be nice though if only to generate conversation and set a hard deadline.
hmm, buy new hardware :-/
Is it time for profile pictures in Hacker News?
I've been working out recently and I want to show off my biceps to all the cute girls reading Hacker News.

Additionally, it would be nice to put a face to people's idiotic comments.
That's one of the points in 'The Black Swan'. People concentrate way too much on success stories without looking at the failure stories.
You could work from home and be interrupted by the daughter, no? I have thoughts in that direction if we have kids. Not going to be easy, but at least one person is working a stable job that earns money, and if you can carve out time between the interruptions, you can get something done. Obviously I don't have kids and don't know what I'm talking about. Maybe it's even worse than I imagine!
I'm surprised that nobody has posted a link to the R language archive site:

http://cran.r-project.org/

R is a GPL project; there are free builds for the major operating systems, including a nice graphical environment for OS X.

R is an incredibly useful language -- with only a little bit of effort, you can do sophisticated statistical analyses that would take weeks to implement in other languages. It's also a great tool for developing/prototyping statistical machine-learning algorithms. Highly recommended.
Before you get too excited about this article, realize that if you are not in the YC club, this article was not intended for you.

In other words, the warm encouraging phrases have qualifiers - you have to figure out what they are and if they apply to you.
Makes sense to me, but a hard deal to do for sure. RIM is not exactly a startup.

With iPhone and the mysterious gPhone, Microsoft might find itself played out of this market... buying RIM would make them the leader here.

It's also interesting to ponder what this would do to the other, non aligned players like Palm.
If people want that, they can put a link in their profile.

Hackers are experts at following links.
Do people actually buy software in a normal shop?
If you look around on the site there is free software to turn a linux or mac box with a free wifi card into a hotspot (with simple TUN/TAP).

If the new linksys routers weren't so crippled compared to the good old WRT54G V4, you could probably work out a firmware solution, which would open it up to anyone able to flash.

There is a startup idea for someone that wants it. Create a firmware solution for FON... or create your own better solution.
Life is about compromise.

I don't think most startup founders with families are looking at the same picture of success as those right out of college.
Hmm, pics of the outside? I was hoping for something a little more hardcore.
I'll get to work gathering some "imperial evidence".
Jason Rubin Takes Flektor Nationwide
I wish I had known about Octopart before reading this essay. I needed a part a couple weeks ago that I had no idea what the technical term for it was, my best guesses lead to things that were totally wrong, and the company that made it was now under a different name, and I could find no trace of the device or anything similar on their online catalog. Oh, and my predecessor, who bought the thing in the first place, 'picked it up at a garage sale'. The correct part from the correct (newly named) company was the first result from Octopart when I tried it just now.
I hate to always be the jerk on this board, but:

1) How can a just-now-released essay be influential at all?

2) At least half of pg's essays are better written than this, which to me seemed a little phoned-in. It's not really an essay anyway, but a peptalk. He didn't even have the usual cavalcade of proofreaders at the bottom.

3) The most influential essay I've ever read is the first essay of "Genealogy of Morals".
haha, good catch. I'll fix that,
"1) How can a just-now-released essay be influential at all?"

It can, obviously, be very influential to one reader...and instantly. Time is irrelevant once it reaches that one reader.
> Facebook has moved to directly compete with a top Platform application.

Shocking.
I don't know if you can actually modify the image, but you could do things like change image width and height properties, or use css in ways to show manipulated image.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" /> </head> <style> body { margin: 0 } </style> <body> <script src="http://particletree.com/scripts/prototype.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <div id="image_container" > <img src="http://www.google.com/intl/en_ALL/images/logo.gif" id="image" style=" position:absolute; " /> </div> <input type="button" onclick="resize1()" value="double size" style="position:absolute; top: 260px;" /> <input type="button" onclick="resize2()" value="morph right side" style="position:absolute; top: 300px;" /> </body>

<script> var i = $('image'); var oldWidth = i.width ; var oldHeight = i.height ;

function resize1() { i.width = oldWidth + oldWidth ; i.height = oldHeight + oldHeight ; i.style.clip = 'auto'; if ($('image2')) {$('image2').remove();} }

function resize2() { i.width = oldWidth; i.height = oldHeight; i.setStyle( { clip: 'rect(0px 138px 110px 0px)'} ); new Insertion.Bottom( 'image_container', '<img src="http://www.google.com/intl/en_ALL/images/logo.gif" id="image2" style=" position:absolute; " /> '); i2 = $('image2'); i2.setStyle( { clip: 'rect(0px 552px 110px 276px)' , left: '-138px' } ); i2.width = oldWidth + oldWidth ; i2.height = oldHeight; } </script> </html>

You could use overflow:hidden instead of clipping. Then find the math formulas for the resizing, attach drag handler to image edges, overlay semi-transparent layers to emulate effects. To save it in the end though the user has to take a screenshot or your backend script has to process it for the user.
That explains the low success rate.
This may be true.

But would you mind making some guesses as to how well google's other aps are doing for income? I'd say that most are generating huge losses on paper.
Not necessarily pictures, but a link or an email is nice to have on one's profile. Most readers don't even have that.
Sometimes I'm surprised at people who declare that they're looking for co-founders and they don't even put a link or anyway through which you can contact them.
perfect solution.
Folding Farmer - Folding @ Home As A Service
Linksys actually made a special model, the WRT54GL, that remains flashable.
Finding motivation from my peers and making lots of little mental deadlines have been two of my "secrets" to maintaining very high levels of output while feeling great for all these years. It's great advice.
You won't save on taxes because you pay where you're doing business. So, if your office is in California, or you hire people in California, then you'll have to pay CA taxes. At lease that's how it is in CA, AFAIK.
That's really dodging his question:)
Very astute summary, nos.

And it's actually been proven true by one of the YC companies that was in WFP 07 (I'm sure it's been true of others, too...pg mentions Wufoo in the essay). Paul McKellar's first run was SocialMoth.com which is fun as hell to use and crazy sticky...but got no traction and no investment. Next came Overhear.us. Also fun to use, but no traction and no investment. Then came the Facebook SocialMoth, which exploded...now he's a mini-mogul with a bunch of Facebook apps in development, and real revenues from those users. Is he rich yet? Probably not. But he's found a niche that is paying and growing rapidly, because he stubbornly kept iterating and evolving.
Unions Call for Workplace Facebook Guidelines
What is a Social Graph?
What makes it so dangerous? Facebook and Google already are using it. What is it?
The only qualifiers I see are "smart" and "flexible". If both those things apply to you, then so does the article.
Google founders spotted at Burning Man?
Ireland and London are good for gambling or related ventures. Not sure why you'd want to do it there otherwise.
I'm using slicehost and I'm loving it! :)

http://slicehost.com
JavaScript in a browser doesn't give you enough low-level access to manipulate images. A good compromise is to build the UI in javascript, and have the image processing on the server. Then, use AJAX to give the user a nice and quick experience that feels as if the processing is happening on the client. Of course, you won't have as dynamic a behavior as if it's all on the client, but that's probably the closest you can get with JavaScript. Other options include using a JavaApplet that runs on the client, or a .NET component (IE on Win only).
Why Are Microsoft Execs So Active on Facebook? Plus: Is Bill G. Hot, or Not?
"I'm not sure you realise just how scary the thought of failing in front of so many hard-working people is..."

Failure has a different meaning in Silicon Valley (kind of). There have been a couple of quiet fizzle outs from WFP that I'm sure of, and I've spoken to two of the guys from those fizzle outs since then...one is working on new ideas, and another has moved to another company (perhaps the most flexible of the bunch, in that they changed their entire business model and started from scratch during the program) from the same program that raised some money and he's happy and enthusiastic. While there is a bit of averting of the gaze when I asked how things were going, the fact that they were there at a YC event and talking about new things tells me they will probably go on to great things.

It's the folks who went back home, went back to consulting or school, who aren't going to be among the winners in the end. Which comes back to pg's assertion that just by staying in touch and staying involved you could very well guarantee success...I'm not sure if it's the cause or the effect, but I do think the folks who've stuck around and keep coming to the events and keep in touch with other YC'ers will probably do well.
I've read all of his essays too, but I guess for me in particular this one strikes a chord because:

1) I just resigned from my day job this week to pursue startup ambitions and

2) I am definitely having "oh shit what am I doing" thoughts right now.

So given the timing for me, this kind of inspiration is very moving. As far as how it is written, I would argue that the phoned-in and impulsive nature is what makes this essay so elegant. It is clean and concise, stating the idea simply: dont give up. Anyway, this is all one mans opinion so you are certainly entitled to disagree.
Directory of Angel Investor Associations
"People concentrate way too much on success stories without looking at the failure stories."

By what definition of "too much"? I see nothing wrong with focusing on studying the best--the ones that made it. Those are the people to emulate. Why spend your limited time studying the ones that failed? Sure, learning from mistakes is great. But I suspect I'm going to weather the storm better if I learn about mistakes from people who made it through to the other side--rather than from people who blew it and ended up bankrupt. I really don't think I'd like to be facing a problem and thinking, "Oh, wait, I read about this...it turned out horribly...we're dead!" Much better to think, "Well, Evan Williams had exactly this problem with Blogger. And look how that turned out! Just gotta keep plugging away."

Just a thought. I don't really think we need a lot of post-mortems while we're in the early stages. Maybe later when we have a huge success on our hands and want to know how to avoid becoming the next SGI (Google uses SGI internally to mean, "company that has huge success and then made huge mistakes", because Google has actually moved into nearly all of the old SGI buildings in Mountain View as SGI has atrophied into a shell of itself--seeing how business and management heavy Google has become in the past year makes me think they didn't think hard enough about SGI...).
If you're defining success as rich enough to be written about in Newsweek, yes.
"Hang in there. Stay plugged in. Oh, and in case you didn't get it the first time, don't give up."

The most influential, well-written paragraph I've ever read!
You need to get to a startup hub, if you're serious. It makes a huge difference in mindset, and odds of success.

I've started companies in Houston, Austin, and now in the Valley. Austin was vastly better than Houston, but Silicon Valley is worlds apart from anything I've ever seen.

The only benefit to not being in a startup hub is that you don't have as short of a runway during that very early self-funded stage. You can live on peanuts in most parts of the country...but in the valley you will go broke fast if you don't have income or funding. So, it seems like "not dying" would be easier in places where the cost of living is very low, but I think it's probably a zombie-like existence. You also don't have to move as fast...and if you aren't moving fast at 3 months into your company, you're as good as dead.
I'm on my second startup. My first was a "failure" by some definitions of failure (it paid the bills, bought me a 350Z, and worked me nearly to death for seven years...it never really stopped being a service business despite my attempts to convince myself that I was selling products--I consider it a failure, but I learned a lot).

"Wisdom and exhaustion in equal parts, I'd suspect, and only one side is going to win."

Agreed. I'm just stubborn enough to keep trying. I'm also lucky enough to have a fantastic business partner, which I didn't have the first time around (I should have brought him on back then...he was already doing contract work for me on a regular basis).

This time around I put much tighter time constraints on myself. I'm not giving myself 7 years to figure out if I have a failure on my hands. Every 6 months I evaluate where we are, and if I don't see clearly how to get to the next level, it's time for a serious change. So far, that hasn't happened...wisdom gained from the previous startup seems to have allowed me to avoid most pitfalls.
The problem is that it doesnt work. I installed wifi in large NYC apt buildings for a long time. WiFi just doesnt work as reliably as wireline solutions.

Here in NYC, I cannot even use my own wifi network from more than 15 feet away because, the entire spectrum is getting stomped on from everyone else around me.

If your main goal is blowing away tax dollars to consultants, municipal wifi is awesome. If you just want to connect to the internet get an EVDO card.
Seam Carving Demo in Flash
Don't worry, it's not another link to the (very cool) video.
Great essay! It applies to life in general not just start-ups!
Don't bother, if you plan to ever raise money, get acquired, or go public.

I took the advice of an attorney in Texas and incorporated in Texas, with plans to switch to an LLC/Corporation holding company combo when it began making money--there's a well-known loophole in Texas tax law that allows the first 15 million to go untaxed (SBC LLC are the most famous beneficiaries of this loophole, and the most generous to politicians who keep it on the books). But when I began talking to folks in the rest of the business world it became apparent that those benefits were out-weighed by the negatives for a tech company that plans to be acquired or go IPO.

Just incorporate in Delaware, and don't worry about it.