skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Me too. I'd settle for some example code for now though.
That is encouraging. If folks with no previous design experience (assuming) can dish out beautiful html and css, that is indeed encouraging to the rest of us :) Any pointers to templates or design guides?
I grew up in the UK in the 70s and 80s and there used to be public service announcements about the dangers of being an "Amber Gambler".
Here's the counterpoint to Sicko. 6 month+ waiting lists for MRI/CAT scans, and 1 year+ waiting lists for routine operations until you die, or they have to remove parts of your body: http://www.freemarketcure.com/
Here's where my ignorance shines through once again...but does the javascript that runs on the JVM have proper threading?

Coz, I'm really not sure how anything server-side could work properly with setInterval() or whatever the favored workaround is.

Why did he not use Python?
What? Wow. What?!

Okay, that sounds great, but what a bureaucratic-sounding backstory. Seriously, that sounds like what happens in Soviet Russia: languages program you!
You're right of course. The famous quote for this is "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tape"

It's a laughable example anyway. Very few sites use anywhere near a petabyte of storage. I think he overshot a bit there. I also think he's generally right about S3.

I can only think of two scenarios where I would recommend S3:

1. You're spending such small amounts of money that buying your own storage servers is out of the question.

2. You don't have anyone qualified to run your storage servers.
http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/02/next-big-language.html

He didn't use Python because Javascript is the native scripting language for the "next platform," that is, the browser.

Also, he doesn't think that Python is superficially close enough to C and Java to be widely adopted.
So the second set, the down arrow, could really just be something like an exclamation mark?
LinkedIn to Open Platform in Response to Facebook
The Pmarca Guide to Startups, Part 3: "But I don't know any VCs!"
news.yc doesn't validate its parameters properly, e.g. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30479)foo
No, it's because if Javascript is both the language you write client code AND server code, it could be huge.
I've never heard any of them use the phrase.
This article assumes that your Facebook app is designed to bring in advertising revenue. I think many Facebook apps are designed to acquire users and direct them to their main site.
he certainly looks like he just ported rails to javascript. yikes!

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1188/612490975_5b2f804df2.jpg
Our general rule is, if you don't have any graphic design sense (and only about 10% of founders do), just make the site as sparse as possible. Worked for Google.

In at least one case (reddit), the founders had a great sense of design and yet chose to make the site sparse anyway. This was because as a news site they wanted to emphasize the information on the page and make the site itself fade into the background.
Well, there have been two funded by Sequoia (Loopt and another still unannounced), and I doubt Sequoia would touch a startup unless in their opinion it had the potential to go public.

I would say off the top of my head that perhaps 5 startups of the 38 we funded prior to this round have a chance of going public one day.

The fact that being bought is the most common liquidity event certainly does not mean I want that to happen. If a baseball coach tells his players that the most common type of hit is a base hit, that doesn't mean he would not prefer them to hit home runs as often as possible.
I think this is where the non-hacker founder can get completely trounced by a hacker-founder.

As smart as the guy is, Reid Hoffman has dragged his feet on letting people insert third party applications even since MySpace widgets started exploding. I don't think he really gets the leverage these platforms give a programmer, because he's not one.

Hoffman was also an investor and on the board of Friendster. Another company that totally missed the boat on becoming a social platform.

Now perhaps he finally is starting to get it. Too bad he's not a hacker and is therefore at the mercy of his development team, which is going to need 9 months to release anything.
Paul,
That's what I thought!
Thank You!
Rhino JS is well integrated with the JVM, so it's easy to call back and forth between Java and JS. You basically have access to everything Java has. JS doesn't have an equivalent to "synchronized", but it could easily be added as a function call (since JS has real functions). However, I wouldn't do that way since sticking synchronized blocks all over the place is the wrong solution anyway. Just write your code so that separate threads aren't stepping on eachother's data (and do cross-thread stuff in a carefully controlled manner).

I'm doing my development in Java+JS and it's a pretty nice combination.
Is it also what you wanted to hear ? Personally I have had good and bad experiences with XP. XP can tremendously improve the quality of the software and moreover helps to spread knowledge of the codebase if the right guys are working together. If you have the wrong guys sitting together they will stall each other on discussions of coding style and for versus while loop efficiency. You should probably just sit together and see why the guys want to do it. If they have the right arguments and are not merely argumentative about it; you might wanna let them do it their way.
Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace
One reason they may not satisfy a user's needs is simply because they're converged. No one wants a cellphone/coffee mug or a pocket knife/baseball, no matter how "well" converged. One reason the iPod was so great was precisely because it did one thing. I do agree with the author that convergence is the biggest risk, I just think Jobs can handle it. He's hyper aware of these issues.
"car phone...You might have thought it would eventually converge with the automobile. It did not."

Tell that to the companies making millions on onStar and similar services. Though I'll admit it took a while.
I wish they would ..., but here's my humble opionion why Powerset is not going to kill Google. In 2002 a guy called Andrei Broder, who now happens to be Vice President of Emerging Search Technology for Yahoo!, published a paper titled "The Taxonomy of Web Search". Broder analysed clickthrough logs (think of AOL) and came up with a taxonomy to classify what people search for in the Web. He identified three types of queries: Informational (people search for a specific piece of information: Who is Snoopy?), Navigational (people know where they want to go, a specific homepage or web site: Snoopy creator homepage), and Transactional (people search for a site to perform some kind of transaction: Buy Snoopy Case Mod). Long story. However what is remarkable: He and several others after him found that less than 50 percent of all Web queries are informational. Powersets search engine clearly seems to target informational queries. In order to lure users away from Google, Yahoo, and maybe Answers.com they have to offer a significantly better experience. That's hard. But they might do it, and kill Answers.com by doing so. However in order to be good at Navigational and Transactional queries (and that's where the money is) you don't need sophisticated Natural Language Modelling. Those queries are short for a reason. Users have a target in mind and want to go there as quick as possible. And in order to not dissapoint users there, you have to crawl as much of the web as you can. And then build a system that is still able to deliever queries at least as fast as google. And that's really really really hard, and probably the reason we haven't seen a Google killer so far. Hail to Powerset - the Answers.com killer.
What socioeconomic class drives someone to using teenwag?
Some Ycombies may be using ideas promoted by XP, e.g. wide ranging automated testing, without chanting the XP mantra. I'd have thought good unit test coverage and web interface testing, e.g. twill, benefit fast site development, especially with today's dynamic languages like Python. http://twill.idyll.org/
The story behind mugglenet.com.
"It's a mistake to only consider expected value."

Agreed, to be precise, one has to look at the entire value range, associated probabilities, and their effect on one's personal "happiness function". That's what I was trying to do with my variance "estimates", since most of these things are pretty gaussian anyway.

"Risk is something that should be intelligently assessed and balanced, not blindly embraced."

Also agreed, and that is precisely what I am trying to do with regards to the real value of health insurance (admittedly without much quantitative data). So far, all I see in this thread is anecdotal evidence of some catastrophic events.

"I'd rather work at a string of unsuccessful but fun startups than some soul-crushing big company.": Me too, but that depends on a whole lot of personal factors, and there is no one right answer for everyone. Likewise for health insurance.
In GoogleReader, the article shown is different from the article link on TC. The GoogleReader headline states "Google To Acquire Grand Central For $50-75 million"
BerkShares: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070619/lf_nm/usa_economy_berkshares_dc

Apparently some cities in the US are devloping their own currency systems.
Maybe one could it make somehow nicer, ie if your friend gets you to spend the gift certificate for ice cream in time, he gets an ice cream cone, too.
Sure, get insurance! But also make sure to eat good food, and do sport.
"working class teens will reject hegemonic values because it's the only way to continue to be a part of the community that they live in. In other words, if you don't know that you will succeed if you make a run at jumping class, don't bother - you'll lose all of your friends and community in the process."

This seems to apply to middle class entrepreneurs as well. Saying that you don't need a boss often gets interpreted as a big fuck-you by everyone else. (Same applies to not finishing college.)
I want to amplify the point about emphasizing user-supplied information. About a year ago when my alumni class started using ourdoings.com for class notes, I knew graphic design was lacking. I was surprised by comments like "the new format looks great." Then I figured out that by making the information/photos people wanted more accessible, they were more pleased by what they saw.

The design of ourdoings.com is relatively subtle, as most picture frames are, but back then it was even uglier than it is now. Nevertheless, people look at what they're interested in.
Google: 'We all have to invent the wheel' - the state and future of Web security
I just posted a comment saying that if, like me, you are skeptical about claims that "Wal-Mart Nation has destroyed many of the opportunities for meaningful working class labor", you should squint a bit and read the article anyway, because there is some truth to it.

Looking at it some more, I am still convinced that there is some truth to it, but there really is also a lot of very, uh, fluid logic going on.

Identifying those who can "play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm" with those who are expected to go to college, and later calling them "hegemonic", is simplistic. An enumeration like 'Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, "burnouts," "alternative kids," "art fags," punks, emos, goths, gangstas, queer kids' lumps together categories that are closely related to social class (Hispanic), categories that have nothing to do with it (queer), and even some categories that may be associated with higher social strata (when did you last meet a working class art fag?)
As of now, you cannot compare Flashlite and J2ME. Its almost like comparing Javascript with Java. Flashlite has very limited capabilities . Add to it the limited capabilities of a mobile device.

If your application want to access phone's file system(r/w), or want to access phone's camera, FlashLite alone wont help. [its only possible with a java or python wrapper]

From my personal experience Flashlite is most suited for making quick visual demos/prototypes [within hours].

Right now Adobe is working on Flashlite 3.0 , which is expected to be the most robust release ever, complete with flv video support.

One great thing about flashlite is that, if you build and test on a single device, you can deploy it on ANY flashlite enabled device without any change[subject to some device factors like support for screensavers, wallpapers etc.].This 'build once, deploy anywhere concept ' is unheard of in J2ME development world.
Plaxo turns address books into Web social networks
Hollywood seeks opening in iPhone
Venture Voice #46 - Jeremy Stoppelman of Yelp.com (Finally a new one!) [podcast]
It's great!

They even have a web call feature. Here's mine for YC readers to test, below. Notice I replaced the standard dial tone:

http://embed.grandcentral.com/flash/GC_NewWebCall_tiny.swf?key=7a7e2a8ecdde98f2815a47f7111e0254
Plus, if you want Rails in Python, well, Pylons is pretty close. Only better.
Is YC "Karma" hurting the relevancy of stories?
I keep seeing more stories that are not relevant to startup news (like this, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30270) and users that will post 10 stories in a row that are pointless. Is the 'Karma' devaluing the YC news feature? I think it is a great resources and hate to see the stories become less and less relevant.
Yes. My earlier reply to pg's question: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22499
Web app without makeup: The design iterations of TeamSnap
That's pretty much the point of voting, only the relevant stories appear on the front page.

Good voting practices are probably more important than good posting practices. Unless, I suppose, the number of stories posted gets so large that people stop looking through the "new" page occasionally to vote up the good stuff.

If you want to be a good samaritan, you can routinely check the new stories to up-mod (sp?) the good stories.
Yes, I need to access the file system rw and camera.
With Flashlite, I wonder if you have to be online also.
The problem is when some post 7 stories in a row and you only have 50 slots before you fall off the site, good stories don't even get a chance to collect votes.
Sure, we might go look at framework code sometimes. But it just looks like, well, code. There's usually nothing particularly famous-looking or even glamorous about it. Go look at the source code for Emacs or Rails or Python or Firefox, and it's just a big ball of code. In fact, often as not it's a big hairy ball, and the original author is focused on refactoring or even rewriting big sections of it.

http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/07/get-famous-by-not-programming.html

I wonder if he wrote that while worrying about this sort of thing.
There's a really sweet web application framework called Helma that lets you write entire web apps in javascript, and gives you the JDK through Rhino. The documentation is a little slim, but it's my framework of choice. I don't know why it isn't more popular.

http://dev.helma.org/
Limit the number of new stories you can submit per day... the other stories you would have submitted will likely get posted by someone else if they're really worth the time.
O'Reilly Radar  Facebook in the Mail
That is a good idea. How many stories do you really need to submit in a day?
'What is the most recent movie Halle Berry started in?'

Try asking what movie she starred in... it might work a little better.
I agree to a certain degree. If it were up to me, I'd remove "leaders" section completely and use karma to track down spammers etc.
Include the wife as a co-founder? :) I am trying that, and the biggest advantage I can see is that our interests and intentions are more aligned than can be with other co-founders.
This is not offtopic. Stories about backbone providers and how they make money are relevant to startups. The more competition there is to users' houses, the more bandwidth users will end up with, and that affects what startups should build.
I don't think that's working very well (so far anyway). Most F8 app sites have experienced a significant drop in visitors, not a rise (look into iLike). I think that Andrew is on to something and that you should cultivate the social net on your own site and not give up so easily. Slow organic growth of your own property is more desirable than quick widget rise numbers on someone else's platform. Problem with F8 is that you don't own the relationship with the customer and you won't be able to monetize that relationship as easily. I'd give organic growth a try first and if that fails, go with F8... you have nothing to lose then.
The Art Of Startup Prioritization: Maximizing The Wow-To-Work Ratio
That can be a problem with sites like this, but it hasn't started to happen yet here. I watch the site quite closely and I haven't started to see good stories slipping unseen off the new page.
Great interview. I've always been a fan of Yelp and how they are run. Their unique community and culture really shows how they're doing many things right.
Simple software development methodology for solo developers
Facebook and Twitter - The suck-up effect
No Plan, No Capital, No Model...No Problem: Guy Kawasaki moderates a panel with Markus Frind and James Hong
The example you state is both relevant AND has NO karma upvotes. How does this support your thesis?
No karma up votes because it is not relevant.
If it has no karma, then how does it support your thesis that karma is hurting the quality of YC news?
Paul, that is reassuring.
juwo qualifies as a 'bad' idea :)

see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26739

If you would like to collaborate on it, please email me (your's isn't listed).
Wouldn't taking half of that 50% still be a significant amount of Google's pie? Killing doesn't require taking all of the pie - it just requires taking enough.
"Is it also what you wanted to hear ?"

If I "want to hear something" I will let you know in advance thank you :-) .

While it is impossible to convey all the nuances of the choice before me in a paragraph, I believe the question was very specific.
- Have any of the y combinator companies used XP (and want to talk about it)? Not "Is XP a good thing? What do you think?" or "Can you confirm what I want to hear"? ;-)

I hope I don't sound rude , but if you are part of a y combinator funded startup and are using XP, I'd like your permission to mail you off thread with more questions about how you are implementing some of the practices in the context of a startup, but I am not looking for "generic" opinions about XP. I can use the internet for that.

I am sorry if the question wasn't clear enough. Thanks for your comments anyway.
Thank You. We plan to use both automated unit and web interface tests.
What are you doing about health insurance?
I'm in the early stages of starting my startup and I'm interested to hear how others are obtaining health insurance.
FTA: "One benefit of Web applications is that patching is much easier than traditional PC or server applications. Fixes don't need to be tested on multiple versions of an operating system, as Google knows exactly what its infrastructure is."

Isn't testing fixes on multiple JavaScript engines essentially the same thing?
The Evolution of MMORPG Communication
Wired on Michael Arrington
Free Government Storm Data Inspires Hurricane Tracking Startup
Think Long Term, Act Now!
It is a major problem with reddit, and could possible over time become a problem for news.yc, but it is not necessarily an insurmountable problem. For instance, if you really get a lot of submissions, you could pre-select probably-interesting posts with a text classifier and shunt them into a probably-interesting queue. (A text classifier could be something like the ones used in spam filters, or, if you want, you can throw the whole machine learning book at it and use Markov chains, neural networks, &c.)
In situation 5, I think he's suggesting that being good at making a de-compilers would help a lot in being able to interpret the undocumented router responses. I think maybe he got sidetracked talking about compiler optimization and didn't explicitly mention the sort of practical benefits you'd get from understanding how to do it.
We should expect that a piece like this will draw conclusions that are "simplistic" over-generalizations; she is going for mass generalizations that do have a point, but some significant data will be smoothed over in the process. She is describing high-level patterns, not specifically addressing each subgroup. Note that she does address the distinctions between the subgroups within "subaltern", e.g.:

"I should note here that aesthetics do divide MySpace users. The look and feel that is acceptable amongst average Latino users is quite different from what you see the subculturally-identified outcasts using. Amongst the emo teens, there's a push for simple black/white/grey backgrounds and simplistic layouts. While I'm using the term "subaltern teens" to lump together non-hegemonic teens, the lifestyle divisions amongst the subalterns are quite visible on MySpace through the aesthetic choices of the backgrounds."

Also, you asked "when did you last meet a working class art fag?". I'll bet most "art fags" are not getting rich off of it.
It goes back to members posting 7 stories at once just to gain karma points and pushing real stories off the limited new page. (that story linked to a group of stories submitted by the same person in a span of a couple minutes.)
I think I wait too long to do things. What are the best ways everyone has found to prioritize coding, building, etc....
Do you need help? This startup will help you solve almost any problem: helpfulvideo dot com
Learn to Grow by Saying No
I guess I am the "guilty" party in your complaint here. The reason I submit all in a row as I do is when I'm reading my daily news (typically in the morning) and see something relevant for YC, I submit it. This is why you'll get several from me in a row, especially since there aren't that many up at 5am or so posting. This is also typical of a few others.
Keeping my day job. ;-)

Once it's time to leave, I'll probably get catastrophic coverage in case I get hit by a bus or end up with cancer, and pay for routine expenses out of pocket. Healthy people in their 20s really don't have many medical expenses - I think the last time I went to the doctor was a year and a half ago, and it cost about $150 (through a COBRA mixup, my coverage didn't start until the month after I needed it, but they refunded my check for the month I wasn't covered and I ended up saving like $200 by not being covered). If there are serious problems, that's what the catastrophic insurance is for.
I am the poster of this article: I found this particular article actually exciting. Why? I had no idea Verizon was laying fiber directly to customers and allowing all that bandwidth to be used at a very reasonable cost. I was very dissappointed, though, when I found out that the service is not yet available for my location. The big news for startups here: cheaper bandwidth! (maybe its available at your location?), and potentially a growing base of users with large bandwidth which will change the kinds of services that can be provided.
How to Work the Room
Why Engineers/Programmers Suck at Selling
Is this an undergraduate project or something? It seems to be masquerading as a paper that is more serious than it actually is.

All the anecdotal stuff, opinions, and ideas are cool. Where the author starts trying to put labels on things is where this paper falls apart. Don't waste my time trying to subdivide people into groups like "art fag" and "emo" unless there is data and falsifiable definitions to support them.