skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is going to be something to watch as media conglomerates don't have a good track record with partnerships, especially with their Hollywood-sized egos playing into name selection.

I'm thinking the name is going to resemble that of a puppet company (think MovieLink) trying to be sexy, so it definitely won't contain the words "News Corp." or "NBC." They'll try to openly brand it this way so that Viacom and ABC have an option to join the syndicate. Such a move would obviously strengthen their leverage against YouTube, but would be difficult to pull considering we haven't heard any hard details as to how revenue sharing would work.

Just imagine throwing 4 retarded gorillas in one cage with one banana. All YouTube needs to do is sit back and press RECORD.
I have never met a YC company that wasn't thinking about how to build a business.

The key thing to understand is that if problem A is 100 times harder than problem B, and problem A is critical to success, then you should spend a lot of time worrying about problem A. In this case, problem A is building something that people will want to use. If you fail at that, then none of the other problems matter, because you have failed.
I'll see you at school this w.e.

my id @ gmail
Yes, you've missed the point.

I'm not asking how much you'd have to be paid to throw away that experience forever. My answer to that question would be a lot more than $350k. I'm just asking how much you'd have to be paid to throw away your current progress and roll the dice again. If you're confident in your abilities, then that shouldn't be all that frightening.

Also, if you're in it mostly for the warm fuzzies, then YC is not the only game in town. You could find a similar experience by going to a top grad school, or mentoring at Mathcamp (http://www.mathcamp.org), or interning at Google. I'd rather do the SFP than any of those things, but not by such an enormous margin that I can't put a dollar value on it.
This is a huge advantage for small startups that I hope others are realizing. As programmers or hardware hackers, we can make something of value to other people but there might be difficulties in selling it to them (not even in the monetary sense, just adoption). The YC funded teams have become a network in itself to help you get some momentum and spread word of your new creation. And everyone uses everyone else's stuff. It's just cool.

I was visiting Crystal Towers yesterday and, well, YC really needs to just buy that whole complex.
Voicethread: New startup adds audio or text to photo albums
Hi, Paul. Gosh, I can't find a link anywhere either. I didn't realize it was anything but wide open when I wrote that. But I know it's true through personal conversations with several involved parties. Everyone else will have to settle for "I heard from some guy on a forum"...

Sorry - next time I'll be more careful about shooting off my mouth.

<edit>After putting out some queries, I'm told that it's all available on the web via online legal filings. I'm too busy building the next FaceBook (kidding!) to spend a day searching, but I'm adding this trailhead in case anyone is very interested.</edit>
I'm struggling with how the pieces shift around. As I'm dragging a piece across the puzzle it messes up everything else I've done. I'd prefer to have it not affect other pieces until I drop it, at which point it swaps places with the piece I drop it on.
Dharmesh is a smart guy and I enjoy his blog entries, but I just don't see eye-to-eye with him on #7 (Projects vs. Businesses).

We're not business people (most of us); we're just trying to create cool things and subsequently be freed from the shackles of the nine-to-five life. The great thing about Internet entrepreneurship is that it's relatively easy to get off the ground, and subsequently we can create products that are solutions and not immediately worry about the business model. It doesn't hurt to keep it in mind, but we don't have to let it weigh us down. I mean, search wasn't the best business to begin with.
This will be a gigantic failure. It will be fun to watch, too... like a giant car accident in slow motion.
Why do people think Twitter is so great? I feel like I'm missing something
There's nothing to see here. This is not technology. It's not a site. It's not a product. It's just a handshake between a bunch of executives who think that having meetings about innovation is the same as innovation. They're equity partners in an idea. Which we all know isn't actually worth anything.
There is so much buzz around this company and I just don't get it. You can keep everyone up to date on what you do. Don't people already do this with AIM, Myspace, friendster, blogs, etc.? I just don't see a need to know if someone is listening to a Bono track right now. I'd like to get some feedback on some people who love the site.
I think with Internet based companies, it is kind of counterproductive to focus on monetization at an early stage. This is because many innovative web companies tend to change the economics of how people make money in an industry. The best example of this is Google, that is shaking up the software industry by practically giving software away but earning revenue through advertising.

Changing industries requires a lot of industry clout, which I think YC gives its budding companies, freeing them to concentrate on designing good products that create value. If the product is really good and creates real value, the industry will reshape itself somehow to reward the entrepreneurs.
Thanks for the compliment. I've struggled with articulating my position on this issue, and still haven't nailed it yet. Here's another pass:

I completely get the fact that projects are not a bad thing. Most of the best businesses actually started out as projects.

It makes total sense for me that startups should pursue building something people want (and make that the focus). However, a subset of these are projects that seek to build something people want AND that they will pay for. I'd further argue that within this particular subset of ideas, the optimal choice might be to build something people will pay for from the get go. In these cases, it would be sub-optimal to simply strive to build something people want.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that in some situations, trying to find the problem that people want solved AND will pay for ends up putting the startup on the right idea wheresa if they simply tried to build something people want, they may wind up in the wrong place.

Not all software is best served by creating something that will be subsidized by another activity (like advertising). I think it's jumping too quickly to that assumption that I think has the chance of being misguided. Sometimes the right answer is building something that people will part with money for and you have to start with that end in mind to really get there.
If only one could buy puts on this thing...
This point of view gets my hackles up.

All of the fears surround Google doing something to "punish" people who are not behaving in a Google-profit-optimizing way. But punishment as deterrent (to people using WordPress instead of Blogger for example) only works if everyone knows - otherwise how can they be deterred from their non-profitable (for Google) behavior?

But if everyone knows Google is borking their search results like that, they'll just use Yahoo, or more likely that new search engine those crazy kids from the valley just wrote. (You know, the ones on the cover of the May 2009 Wired.) Then Google will stop doing whatever evil they're doing, because it's costing advertising revenue. (But it will be too late.)

These sorts of FUD articles have the veneer of rationality and healthy skepticism, but they're really rooted in a fear of success and, often, a cynical attitude that the truly successful only become so by stomping other people.

Trust the market.
I think users will always pay as little as they possibly can.

Advertising models could be seen more as a competitive strategy of companies that have efficient infrastructure to target ads to software users, thus reducing the price of the software for the end user and squeezing out competition.

So, I think the lesson is to always be thinking of advertising models because if your competition is and you're not, you could find yourself priced out of the market.
SynapseLife Taking eBay Exit (i.e. SynapseLife Taking Exit On eBay)
Do you limit your development to that of the perceived trends, techniques, and standards associated with the "2.0"?

If not, just call yourself a web developer. Branding yourself with a buzzword gives the impression that you're just as insubstantial.
All I have to say is that is one awful name.
I heard about Twitter about 5 months ago, but this thing seemed to explode after SXSW.
You've got something there.
oops. yay for clear thinking :-)
The REAL future of web 2.0
Only 3 days left to apply to Google Summer of Code
Human Nature Makes People Assholes; Not the Internet
You're not the only one. After the explosion at SXSW there was a lot of "I don't get it" noise in the blogosphere (http://drumsnwhistles.com/2007/03/11/twitter-this/) with some claiming that that Twitter has already (http://www.flickr.com/photos/baratunde/416990545/) or will soon (http://ross.typepad.com/blog/2007/03/twitter_tips_th.html) 'jump the shark' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark).

P.S. is would be great if comments allowed some kind of wiki link syntax like [http://blah friendly name] :)
New Video site launches 1.5 years after Youtube launches promising to outsell Youtube 1.5B
The Banality of Heroism
Actually, if they were innovating, or planning to innovate, that would be something. But they're not innovating (or rather, nothing in the article led me to believe that they are). They're desperately trying to find a way to map their business from the old media (Television) to new one (the Internet). The new transcends the old. What worked well on one isn't necessarily going to work well on the other, and unless they "get" this sometime between now and launch, they'll fail.
9) Make all your example use cases involve hockey.
Yeah I'm thinking it's mostly just buzz and the aftermath of SXSW. A friend did point out that it's good for if you're in the city and want to know if friends are somewhere close. This however does not apply to my 90s Zack Morris phone.

I compare it to those overly hyped bands that you only hear about either at SXSW or around awards shows. They never get a good record deal and fade away very quickly.
2 years "ago web developer" was a buzzword
On Writing - This can be applied to writing software
Crowdrules: Youtube + Crowd Wisdom
Oh man, someone's got to start the weblog to follow this thing. This has "desperate failure" written all over it.
Apple TV is creating a new market as a cable TV alternative
MovieLink sounds to be on the right track. Remember MusicNet? Ugh.

The Clown Co. execs will fumble this big. The good that can come from this is that conventional media might further understand the paradigm shift in how people want to be entertained. The record companies are still trying to get on the ball so it'll be interesting to see where this is heading.
Search Smarter, Save what you find in tabs!
Will the Real Web 2.0 Please Stand Up?
Is there a business in managing the grouping of links! So you browse, you bookmark, you organize and you share your links and organization all at once. This would be an improvement over what a digg does in that they store your links and rank them by popularity, but they manage the grouping (Politics, Technology, etc). Does this resonate?
I like the Apple TV, but not as Apple presents it ;)

When you tear it down, the machine is basically a Mac mini mini- They cut every conceivable feature from the machine, then halved the price, and targetted it toward video..

This opens a lot of possibilities as a Platform- The team who loaded Divx drivers onto it [1] already showed that it's just OSX ont he inside- This opens possibilities on what to do with it.

This makes it useful as a Platform, albeit one that you need to fight to develop for.

People could write games for the machine, or do TiVo style hacks.. Keep in mind, Dozens of mods and hacks have been written for Tivos, many which greatly enhance the built in functionality [2]..

The question now is what will Apple Do- They could go either the Tivo/Xbox route and try to lock it down, or go the Linksys route, and embrace the hackers and agree that they add value.

It's too early to tell for sure which route they'll take, but from early indications it looks like they're A) Making it easy to hack- This lets people develop on it, and make cool things, without getting in the way.. They are doing this while also b) Not guaranteeing that the system won't change..

Essentially, anything made for it can stop working with the next set fromt eh factory. This means that most companies would be insane to develop anything for it, since their investment could be stopped by a third party in a second..

It seems like what Apple is doing is letting Hackers play and extend, while stopping any larger players from getting involved.

Interesting move.

[1]http://crunchgear.com/2007/03/23/hackers-hack-hacked-apple-tv-to-play-divx/
[2] Such as the ability to have a web interface, to schedule recordings from work
I also heard that they hacked AppleTV to support Xvid -- this is huge.
Really good marketing at SXSW. They had big screens in public places that scrolled random twitters. If you've ever stared at the scrolling Google search thing on Google's campus, you can understand the appeal.
Maybe a "Fake Jeff Zucker" or "Fake Rupert Murdoch" blog.
Fantastic Place To Share And Find New Recipes
I'm going to have to check this out... I use epicurious.com all the time, but that's restricted to the CondeNaste food magazine recipes. The rest of the recipe sites suck.. no reviews, no feedback, no indication that a recipe is good or not.

At the house I lived in during college we had a strict "No Internet Recipes" rule. But that was... well a while ago.
Software Start-ups: What Worked and What Did Not, an economists view
It looks terrible, it has no useful features, it has no users nor will it ever have any users because it provides no value to users. If you can't compete with that then it's not a good sign.
Xobni, Y Combinator startup seeking great hackers. We'll be wearing black shirts at startup school.
These are great guys. If you're not going to start your own thing, go hack for them because this is going to be a big deal.
the analysis in this paper is problematic.

the main problem is that the authors didn't look at the data by disk model and manufacturing lot. ideally you should remove drives with known problems from the population.

known problems? yes. there aren't any truly horrible drives out there, but there is he occasional bad bunch. a three point or more difference in afr between "good" drives and a bad bunch is typical.

disclosure: i reviewed this paper for the FAST program committee.
yes, the classic RAID paper assumes that faults are independent. this is not the case.

some recent work extends the basic analysis to deal with correlated faults.
Daring Fireball: Deal With It (more ui simplicity stuff)
infant mortality is practically non-existent for enterprise-class drives and rare for consumer-class drives.

there is something to gain by using drives from different manufacturers (or different lots from the same manufacturer) within an array.
Bill Gates to Finally Get Harvard Degree
This obviously seals the deal for anyone thinking about dropping out of uni to start a startup. Just build an $x bn business and get a degree for free!
iinnovate - A brilliant collection of entreprenuer/business interviews
So, does the gang have a hand signal?
A discussion of software start-ups founded by UW students and what they did that helped them grow and what failed to help.
Eric Schmidt, Andy Grove, Chris Larsen (Prosper.com), Randy Komisar (Kleiner Perkins), Ed Catmull (Pixar), Debra Dunn (Hewlett Packard), Geoffrey Moore (Crossing the Chasm), Alex Tai (Virgin Galactic)... I wonder how these guys land these interviews, week after week.
In town for startup school?  Come to dinner TONIGHT!
mspw?
Yes, really goes to show the type of turn the tech industry is taking. In order to continue to improve existing functions (email, searches, etc) more and more cutting edge analysis techniques must be developed.
I think the point the author is making is to build something useful for users. I totally agree with him on this!. His blog hits us with some good old common sense.
Yeah, but there's _two_:

http://www.socializr.com/
http://www.socializer.com/

So now they have an evil triplet. He should call it MySocializr.com
msgbeepa is a spammer. This is a paid post and spam submission.
read http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/03/the_banality_of.html for background.
and a summary of that is:

The short explanation of what it takes to be a hero is the presence of heroic imagination which the authors describe as the capacity to imagine facing physically or socially risky situations, to struggle with the hypothetical problems these situations generate, and to consider ones actions and the consequences.
' School of Rock for web entrepreneurs.'

I cracked up reading this (after having seen a repeat of it) & also because pg's post really does puts the 'gifted' quote from the original post into perspective. You've got to have the 'determination' to build the best damn product (performance) you can.
It could mean 'Midwestern States Pro Wrestling' but I think they mean 'Make Something People Want'
Justin.tv police raid gets Techcrunched
C#? Ouch.
True. Personally though, Fake Steve Jobs is one of those things that's too perfectly executed to even riff on.
stanford alumni?
Ask the Wizard: How and What to Measure
Video sharing social network Teenwag seeks great Python hackers we ll wear Python T-shirts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenwag
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=teenwag.com
No one is asking: "How big is this share of this particular market?"

That'd be my question. If these two companies are fighting for share of a tiny pie, it's just stupid. If the pie is much bigger than I believe it is, then the game for market share hasn't even begun yet. The big players haven't even really placed their bets, and that's when things will get interesting (but you have to be there before the big players if you want a chance at walking away a big winner).

Anyway, it's not a market I'd want to go after, because I don't see it being big enough for so many contenders (there are others out there--it's not just these two). But then, almost no market looks big "enough" to outsiders. People are always confused when I make claims about how large our market is (niche software for a 10-20 billion dollar worldwide industry that's increasing at a couple billion per year).

So, if they've researched their market and found it large enough to make for big winners in a year or two, now is a fine time to enter it. Just because you and I know all about 37signals and think they're cool, doesn't mean anybody else knows what the heck they're building. The real market (folks who aren't web 2.0 developers) hasn't even begun buying this product on the web yet, and they certainly will. Everybody has an equal chance to be "first mover" at this point.
Stanford Entrepreneurship Education Resources
I would have to agree, the problem is when you have to self measure a potential projects earnings before it comes into a large circulation.

I think it would be very easy to over/under estimate a projects worth, personally I would think that a percentage of profits over a certain period of time plus a smaller lump sum would be ideal for me.

I am a little new to this game but I would assume it would also increase my motivation to see a project come to fruition if I had a more longterm stake in it.
It's considered bad taste to create your own entries.

This will be gone as soon as a Wikipedia editor comes along and marks it "non-notable".

You're not helping yourself with this kind of spammy approach.
I found the base site here off of several links. Since then I've spent more time watching their videos that checking stuff here or on Reddit.
damn i got played!
Prospect Markets
I'd like to hear from those who "consciously chose not to apply at all". So far it seems that if you're going to build a typical web startup, then being funded by pg is always a net positive... I'm more interested in learning about the other ways of doing it.
I agree, jamongkad! The best part about them, and a major reason why I submitted their post, is that they're from Sydney, Australia. I wanted to show all you non-US entrepreneurs that you don't have to startup in the US to be successful. These guys, and many others in the Aussie startup community, provide much inspiration to Aussie students like myself who hope to follow them into the industry. I hope they add some value and inspire you too!
I was reading about salt, ended up in key derivation function, then to Robert "Bob" Morris, then to R. Tappan M., then to "Morris Worm"
http://xkcd.com/c214.html
startup idea right there.
there will be always place for new implementations because existing ones create gaps or cause a new wave of needs,
that takes force by users that are bored of something they already used.

if you accept that what we have available yesterday is enough for everyone today then you accept that there is
no space for new ideas.

but the reason there are ideas is because we are never satisfied.

though, i had also the same reaction when i first heared about netvibes broad use and I wondered why contrary to its simplicity. But its one of these times that simplicity of creating something not conceived by lots of people, can grasp significant usage due to the audience ready to adopt that peculiar experience, that later only becomes familiar and how i could live without it or just a trend that will pass...
Check out the comments, people are really offended and demanding that Arrington apologized. He made the mistake of calling it funny instead of entertaining.
And from an anonymous leet hacker on Techcrunch:

"from irc:
[04:20] My IP Relay: exactly what happened qq ga
[04:21] jessicasmith486: i need to report a fire Maam
[04:21] jessicasmith486: im trapped in my bathroom with flames coming from the other side ga
[04:21] jessicasmith486: theres no possible way out ga
[04:22] My IP Relay: tell him i ll send the police
[04:22] jessicasmith486: no ? ga
[04:22] My IP Relay: out there and just deal with him
[04:22] My IP Relay: ga
[04:22] My IP Relay: i m sorry
[04:23] My IP Relay: to help now they
[04:23] My IP Relay: will evacuate his building ga"
What are YC founders made of?
Sociologically, twitter is very different from other communication forms. AIM and Skype are designed for communicating thoughts and ideas. Twitter, however, is designed for telecocooning. Telecocooning is traditionally defined as sending little "presence pokes" to people. For example, just saying hi or sending someone a picture of a heart or a smiley face. The point of these messages isn't the ideas they contain, but rather the message itself. That is, just getting any message from someone shows that the other person is thinking about them and cares about them.

Traditionally people telecocoon with their two or three closest friends. However, Twitter lowers the telecocooning barrier so you can telecocoon with many more friends for the same effort. People tend to just send messages like "ahh homework sucks" or "heh stuck at the library." You aren't really communicating anything intelligent, but you are building a feeling of group solidarity by letting people around you know what's up. It also helps people to find where their friends are if they want to meet up.
What's interesting to me is how delayed this post was -- the response time of an official editor.

TechCrunch is the Slashdot of startup news and YCN is the Reddit.
"- Tend to have trouble empathizing with others."

That's bad news:

"And so hackers, like painters, must have empathy to do really great work." -- http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html