skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think many people saw this coming. It's interesting how it can be viewed as a (semi) recently acquired startup acquiring another. The list of companies that would be interested in buying up your startup is indeed much larger than Yahoo and Google.
YC.News Enhancements (Lots of 'em) - Greasemonkey Script
Design and feature enhancements for news.ycombinator.com

Script: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/9108

=======================

Screenshot:

http://www.photoflock.com/display/p463f8a013cf89

=======================

Enhancements:

- Search box

- Ajax voting (supplied by previous GM script)

- Ajax commenting (also supplied by previous GM script -- only works fully when on comment thread pages)

- Visual distinction between comment threads and outgoing links

- New links open in a background tab while comment threads display on the same page

- View and participate in discussion threads without leaving the main index

- Style modifications:

- New arrows

- Web 2.0'ish logo

======================

Code Contributions:

http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=18361

http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=19402
I think so. They "incubated" Twitter, I believe.
Certainly, PG's point here is very true with respect to the legacy airline carriers: Most of the union contracts were negotiated during airline regulation. Regulated prices guaranteed that the airlines could pass any increases in labor costs on to the customers and still turn a profit - thus, they had no incentive to negotiate with them. Then deregulation and suddenly those contracts don't make much sense anymore.

However, it's very shortsighted to solely blame the unions. A contract is a contract, and if an employer made a bad one, they are still bound to uphold it.
Yea, I agree, it was great to meet everyone. Larger turnout than I expected.

Looking forward to another meeting.
I am sure it would not be difficult to get a room at MIT or BU if the meeting outgrows the coffee shop setting.
I think all of these concerns that startup commenters keep raising about overhear.us is generally unfounded. Getting blocked at work is not the end of the line (it's a great thing if it reaches that point), and receiving registration confirmations at your company email isn't going to be a big deal either, I think.

These comments about its simplicity are ridiculous, even. Users don't care. They're not all browsing TechCrunch looking for the most complex-sounding startup to use. Simple, intuitive, effective design is the hardest thing to get down.
How about one right before June starts? I'm flying in next week.
While Startup News sounds like it should be all about startups, I've come to think that it should just be submissions that would be of interest or value to this community. We've come to understand each others' likes pretty well, so as long as something isn't blatantly off topic, it should have a chance here.
"Democratic practices are completely unrelated to a work environment."

Maybe to YOUR work environment, but not all.

What gains did we get? Well, for one, a voice so that we could communicate with management in an orgainzed way, just as management generally do with the labourforce. Before, each person who had a problem was isolated and dealing with it alone.

Then add in the free legal representation, negotiation advice, free training etc etc
Is anyone interested in doing something similar in NYC?
Nice work. Your redesign gives it some trendy flair without being too garish. But I do prefer the "stock" simplistic look (and I dig the YC orange).
I suppose I took PB's post more broadly than it was intended, then. If he was only talking about solving hard problems that don't benefit the user proportionally, I see that there's no contradiction [and have a clear answer to the question of when to follow which advice ;-)].

Thanks for the clarification.
I didn't say that dangerous work should be banned. When a job has risks, the necessary precautions should be taken to minimize that risk. That's what a union would be asking for in negotiations, right? They shouldn't have to.
Too Hotmail to handle? (unhappy with Windows Live Mail)
Why CEO Compensation Models Are Broken
Dreamhost for early stages + proof of concept. Why? Because 1) they're as cheap as anyone, and 2) they give you more bandwidth than anyone else. For early stages, I think they'll work just fine.

Once you see a growth pattern, though, you'll want to consider VPS or dedicated hosting. VPS should work well if the ISP can guarantee host performance (CPU, disk, etc).

A few options:

- Amazon EC2. This is cool because you only pay for what you use -- your bandwidth is measured and you're charged for what you actually use, not for a fixed limit. For disk space, it uses Amazon S3, where you also pay for what you use. The Xen machine specs are good enough for most of us. And, Amazon just lowered prices on S3 and EC2. Bad news, though: EC2 is still in limited beta. And who knows when they'll be out of that. :-(

- Sun's deal with startups, which was posted here the other day, looks pretty good, especially the Joyant hosting deal @ http://www.joyent.com/partners/sun/sse. Only "problem" is that you're using Solaris. For some people that is not a problem.

- actual VPS hosting: in my cursory search, I think Teknet unmanaged (http://www.tektonic.net/unmanaged.html) looks pretty good, as long as you're technical enough to handle the virtual server yourself. (And you should be.) Their most expensive pkg gives you more disk space than other providers seem to (80G), and more bandwidth (800Gb) -- to me those are big issues. That's for $100/mo, which is a good deal IMHO. Unix-only, CentOS, Fedora Core, Suse, Debian, Ubuntu.
Why do we need a "Theory" to justify being against Unions? If we want to be selfish and keep all the money for the people at top of society. Let us just be honest about it, and say we are selfish and will use the power we have to satisfy our own greed.
In a democracy, people run things. In a corporation, the owners run things. I'm not saying that they should run things without thinking about what their employees want, I'm just saying that by definition, a corporation isn't a democracy.

What kind of issues were there that the union dealt with?

And "free"? Aren't there union dues?
Unions are labor cartels. Sellers of labor ban together to set price floors. The force of special legal privilege alone has prevented unions from being consigned to the scrap heap of history's unsuccessful cartels. This privilege prevents the alternate sellers of goods that normally break up cartel ("scabs") from entering the market.
At what point is a union or a legislature necessary, here? If I want to do something dangerous to myself, should I leave it up to Washington's Finest to assess the risks for me? Why on earth would I do that? They have every incentive to be cautious (they'll get blamed if they okay risks and I still get hurt) and no reason not to be (if my work is approved and I'm unhurt, I get the benefits; if it isn't approved, we'll never know if they were wrong).

Regulators have less information than entrepreneurs. Regulators have a bias towards caution; entrepreneurs would suffer for it. So you're advocating a system in which uninformed people with a vested interest in my failure are responsible for choosing whether or not I have a chance to succeed. I'm afraid you need more of a defense for that than a smug smattering of "should"s.
There were some good suggestions on this earlier thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=18363
I built a company as a "part-time founder". I think it's quite do-able and really forces you to focus your time. Parkinson's Law states that tasks tend to expend to fill to time allotted for them... That's true with Founders as well.

That said, I think your day job needs to be fairly light for this to work. At the time, I was doing light consulting after having sold my first company.

I'm currently working on another little startup idea (http://www.rescuetime.com) but it's been moving a LOT slower, as my day job is something I invest a lot more time and energy into.

Of course, it very much depends on the scope of the problem you are trying to solve. You're never going to build the next salesforce.com as a PT founder. ;-)
Switching to Windows Vista from Mac is like adding a RAM and an extra CPU
That argument would make sense, if you were refering to say someone like evil-knivel, who may be compensated heavily for making extremely dangerous stunts.

But in reality I imagine your talking about coal miners, who are not in the coal mining for the thrill of the mine, or the thrill of fame and money. But are in it to make ends meat.
The footer of the front page of infogami currently says "(c) 2007 CondeNet, Inc. All rights reserved." so I'd guess they own it.
Photobucket was profitable, with tens of millions of annual revenue IIRC (there was an analysis I read somewhere, but can't find it now).

They could be going by the old rule of thumb for acquisitions (three, four times revenues) or, since this is the Web 2.0 world, by some other (more extravagant) equation.
The whole point of capitalism is that people are basically going to be greedy no matter what, but if you tell them, "Well, be as greedy as you like, but to get money you have to convince other people to give it to you, and the best way to do that is usually to make something they like," then things work out ok. Of course, we still need regulation to ensure that the best way to make money really is to make something people like, but outside of that there's no reason to blame geed per se. Greed is the engine that drives the machine!
Skype: Free Calls Worldwide to cellphones and landlines on Mother's day
"Then add in the free legal representation, negotiation advice, free training etc etc"

Wow. Free? Really? Where do you think the money comes from? The union has operative expenses that it pays for with the dues you pay. You PAY for those things and the overhead it takes to support them. Your employer probably pays a bit for them too, and as a result probably increases prices or decreases employee benefits to compensate.

Try owning and running a business sometime and tell me how much you think it would benefit you (and your business) to be "democratized".
I certainly agree with the philosophy of trying to use greed as a motivation/engine for good.

But I certainly do not think it is moral for unions to be weak.
I am not sure how many people in New York would be interested. I go up to NY once every two three months. My friend lives on 37th and 5th so if it wouldn't be too far, I wouldn't mind meeting for lunch on a Saturday some time and meeting people from New York and try to form a joint Boston New York community.
Mac really sucks
I wish part time work was easier to find. I would much rather work 20 hours a week for someone else than 40 hours a week. It'd give me a lot more time to work on my own projects.

You can only be so productive anyway. Just because you spend 8 or 9 hours a day at work doesn't mean you're working the entire time you're there. More like 1/3 of the time is actually spent thinking and working. It's not even that you're being lazy, it's just you burn out if you work too hard and too often.

The strange thing is, nobody who's in a position to hire understands this. And if you do find part-time tech work, you're most likely going to be paid LESS per hour than you would if you were doing the same thing full-time.
And why on earth would you want to restrict the economic freedom of someone desperate enough to do that kind of work? If the money isn't worth the risk, they know it better than you do -- and if you disagree with them, it's probably because you're applying your assumptions to their situation, not that you know more about mining safety than they do.
Sweet. I also commissioned an extension to "Mark all as read" on news.yc: http://www.nivi.com/blog/article/mark-as-read
Without regulation, the cost of someone dying on the job is the same as someone quitting: you just have to train a new person to do the job. That's not the type of society I'd like to live in. Regulation isn't perfect, but it's far better than no regulation.

You keep on talking about regulators making a certain line of work illegal, but that's not what I'm suggesting. All work should be made as safe as possible.
Presumably the person taking on the job would ask for an appropriate compensation for the risk.
Sad that I couldn't make it :-(. I was in Boston the previous day, and I'll be in Boston again (permanently) two days from now.
Cool idea, but all of the example logos look horrible. I'd be embarrassed to have them on my website or product.

I think it misses the whole point that the biggest differences between a good logo and a bad one is typeface and color scheme, and this software seems to leave both of those in the incapable hands of the end user. Sure, having a nice mascot or graphic mark is great to have, but this software can't solve that problem either (because it can only provide a few pre-drawn marks, which once used by anyone become stale and indefensible as a trademark).
full time, definitely. Part time, you are just too tired out.
My Life Without Google
From interview with Alexis:

"Paul wanted to give Aaron Swartz, another YC founder, a birthday gift in November. More than anything else, Aaron wanted co-founder so Paul suggested the 'merger'. Merger is probably a bit hyperbolic for what actually happened, Aaron basically moved in with us and we made him a co-founder."

http://startupstories.com/2006/11/29/passion-for-your-users-will-come-back-alexis-ohanian-co-founder-of-reddit/
At what point do you quit your dayjob to focus on your startup?
I am currently using Dreamhost right now for a staging server. The reliability has been terrible. I have never seen the uptime go over 24 hours.
Reddit's Advice On Cheap Marketing
Whether he was a founder or not, you can tell the Man is highly intelligent and would add to any team. He is a three edged sword. Philosophy, Coding and most importantly social skills.
3 things you can learn from Rock Stars
a) PG has said that they will determinedly keep the place focused, and

b) Reddit did exactly what you're saying, and now look where it is.
As soon as you can quit without starving.
1- DEMO EVERYWHERE
When rock stars have nothing more than a a beat-up old van, they sing for everyone for free or money. DO the same thing. Any chance you have Demo your app.

2- FORGET INVESTORS (just for a little while )
Have you ever heard of Bing Jong?
No!! You know why? Becasue he made only 3 songs and went around every record label on earth trying to get a million dollar deal. Forget it. Launch it. Investors will find you faster than you can spell FAST if you are good.

3-RECORD SONG EVERY DAY AND RELEASE THEM
Rock stars always record and release. Why would your audience want the same features? Improve them, Give them something new whenever possible.

Bonus: And always remember this one, if you paid a starving rock star all the money in the world to throw his guitar over the bridge, You would probably end up in the water. Never Quit.
The look of your website is very professional. Just curious, did you hire someone? what tools did you use to do it?
Even stranger: people who work in manual jobs and even in healthcare, do actually work the full 8 or 9 hours. So, maybe we ARE goofing off (me included).
'... I think that's what several people find aggravating. Aaron got a huge amount of reddit's equity, but only put in a few month's worth of work into the site. ...'

equity, worth and time working are all mixed up if you are a founder. The original idea, the re-write, the bug fixing and all the crappy small things right up to the final sale mean at any one time each founder out-contributed one another at some stage. It's the final result that counts the most. If he wasn't pulling his weight I'm pretty sure the others would have kicked up a stink and given him the boot.

'... always vest your equity. Not only for new hires, but also set up vesting schedules for the founders. This ensures everyone can make a fair exit, with no hard feelings. ...'

This I would agree with. Things don't always go to plan though and people may not like their new role, being told what to do, when. You know the drill. To me the biggest mistake by Naste` is assuming just because you buy a company out that all founders are equally as flexible.

The biggest impression I get with Aaron is people look at him, they see a kid and skip the ability, intelligence, achievement and ideas bit.

"Heh" I joked. "I bet the first time my boss finds out where I am is when he sees my photo on the front page of his own website (Wired)"

I cracked up reading this line because of the irony of it.
I love the intellectual lengths people will goto to justify their own greed.

This is a classic argument you are making. It makes me richer to exploit workers. But if i don't exploit my workers than I will be denying my workers their economic right to be exploited.

So you see I am only exploiting my workers to help my workers, because my workers want to have the freedom to be exploited, really they want to be exploited, it makes them feel more free.

Wow I am such a nice guy. I am spreading freedom.
$250 Million, according to TechCrunch.
"They don't make something people want."

So I guess YC.News has become a cult.
He's definitely very intelligent, but I don't agree with you on the social skills part.
The democracy in the workplace is you are free to leave and join another company at any time. This is a good thing. Any attempt to make it harder for employers to employ people always pushes back by raising unemployment. (See the minimum wage)
How is employing people exploiting them? (In the bad sense of the word "exploit") The employees freely agreed to come and work for you in exchange for a certain amount of money, and they are free to leave at any time.

If they were worth any more money than they were getting paid then they would change to a higher paying job.
Do machines cause unemployment?
Has uncov written a SINGLE positive review of anything? If not, then what's the point? Being contrarian is easy. Having something to add isn't.
I'd say it's everyone who was involved in it before the 1st employee was hired.
He might be good with computers, but he sounds like your classic late teenage activist (not so clever):

"So you think its partly also about creating a male-only business network?

Im not sure its anything so intentional, but it definitely has that effect. If you look at the top levels of any industry, you find just incredible levels of misogyny.

For one example we have good data on, the FBI taped the executives of a major US agribusiness company, ADM. And so we have, on tape, some of the incredibly offensive things these guys said. Theres no reason to believe other firms are any different."
Ask News.YC: Finding office space?
Well this goes into the whole philosophical question of the word "freedom" and "free will"...

It all depends what you mean by the word "freely". But unless you are actually rich, you don't really have the freedom to not get a job. So I would not describe this as purely a contractual agreement entered into by parties freely.
I'm looking to find office space for my startup. Here's what I'm looking for:

- Around 200 sq ft (enough for 2 ppl) with door that closes

- Quiet location, window preffered

- Built in internet access

- In the Bay Area, preferably near Palo Alto

If you have tips/pointers on where I should look (good websites, classifieds, etc.), things to watch out for, and just anything at all that may not be obvious to a newbie such as myself, I'd really appreciate it.
"and receiving registration confirmations at your company email isn't going to be a big deal either, I think."

I think that's enough to scare away a lot of potential users. If I had a gripe against my employer, I wouldn't want to sign up with my work address, because that's a clear way for the employer to know who's blabbing on overhear.us.
i thought that would be as soon as you have enough resources to be able to do so! so if you are single then that could mean just moving in with your parents and working off their garage! while if you have a mortgage then finding a wealthy angel to pay you a year's salary!
We need a service to seed social sites with users and contributions.

This could be done by paying people or perhaps just agreeing to seed each other's startups.
But you could say also that the employer needs a worker, and also isn't really freely entering into the contract. Utter nonsense! Both parties freely enter into the agreement. You might not have the freedom not to have a job, but you do have the freedom to choose which job to take. That freedom means that nobody can pay you less then you are worth, else you'll leave. Therefore nobody employer can exploit you. (That is pay you less then you're worth.)
Craigslist is a good place to start.
Yet another call for a startup update site:  how about a collaborative blog on blogger?
Anyone interested in having a collaborative blog on blogger where you get to announce updates to your startup?

We could have a rule like at most one update per week.

Basically any founder would be allowed to post on the blog provided that the service is SFW.
I'm still wrestling with this question myself, so take everything I say with a grain of salt.

...but I think you should quit as soon as you're sure you have the passion and commitment to see it through.
Since you define what someone is worth as what they are getting paid..you essentially stating a tautology.

However, I would also note that since what people get paid depends on the existance of Unions, and is also effected by the law and certain legal regulations. Then the value someone is worth changes depending on what the laws currently are.

So in any case I am in favor of trying to increase the worth of people.

(Not that this is really relevant, but most people who lead companies actually do not need their workers, they often can afford for the company to fail, and still live a comfortable life...)
World's Best Presentation Contest Winners Announced
Well at least unions have become cartels. I don't see a problem with voluntary bodies representing workers, advocating for them as a body and so forth. In fact I think remove special protections for unions would make them more accountable to their members, making them better at doing what they are suppose to do; look after their members.
"Since you define what someone is worth as what they are getting paid..you essentially stating a tautology."

I'm defining what someone's labour is worth as what employers are willing to pay them. (That may differ from what they are getting paid right now, but they can always change jobs.)

It might help for you to understand that "worth" is defined as what people will pay for something. It's subjective. There's no absolute value that someone should be paid in exchange for labour. It depends on what employers think they are worth,

"However, I would also note that since what people get paid depends on the existance of Unions"

False. Most people aren't in Unions, and the average wage has risen faster than the wage demands from unions. People get paid based on their worth to employers. (Productivity etc)

"So in any case I am in favor of trying to increase the worth of people."

The only way to increase the worth of people is to make them more productive. (Skills, investing in machinery etc.) If you force employers to pay them more you will just cause anyone not worth that amount to become unemployed.

"Not that this is really relevant, but most people who lead companies actually do not need their workers"

So why do these money grabbing capitalists employ them then? Wouldn't they make even more money by getting rid of them?

And you still haven't shown me how employing someone exploits them.
Interesting... I lean more to the latter, I am usually happy to seed, as you put it, other startups I find useful, but not necessarily meeting my needs.

I think posting your startup on news.yc allows it to be given a closer look since the community here is much tighter than most sites. I'm much more willing to graze past the usual .5 second judgment of any site posted here.