skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
'... Haven't we all had enough of Molyneux ...'

I think Carmack, Broussard, Molyneux represent the leading edge of software in the PC era (and beyond for Carmack). Molyneux is a good study. Created 2 startups in a difficult industry, shipped product.

Nolan Bushnell is definitely a good one. He's still at it with 'uWink'. There's a pattern here. These guys are serial entrepreneurs of technology.
In connection with demomyapp?
It's evidence that the value of ideas, on aggregate, is low (which makes sense), but doesn't point to a value of 0, just lower than the transaction costs inherent in the attempt to create a market for a more or less non excludable good. Markets do best when there is sufficient information, and so a market based around secrecy and potential lawsuits isn't going to be a very good one. Look at software patents, for instance... it's not a very nice or healthy market.
'... facebook are in danger ...'

Don't think so. Facebook are pretty good at what they do. But saying that for USD12.5M you should be. What will kill them is if they don't listen to users and adapt. Social software has downsides.

There's an old saying if you work in a family business and get on the wrong side of one. Your toast. This could have profound effects on social software sites that peeve pivot point members who leave and their community follows.
Well, I would submit that it takes "guts" to go it alone, because you know that it's harder that way and that you're more likely to fail. How's that for a circular argument?:-)

Like the silly age debate, I guess it all comes down to this: do what you can with what you have. I certainly think that there is some 'cargo cult co-founder searching' going on around here, meaning that you shouldn't just grab a warm body because PG said so, but you should already know that person by the time you're ready to go. And if there isn't a someone, well, tough, do your best in any case... that's where I'm at.
Pop-culture social network Buzznet closes $6M funding
Please include some people from the infrastructure world. Founders of companies like Cisco, Juniper, Qualcomm, etc. Even smaller chip companies. How did these people get started?

Here's an example of someone interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Bechtolsheim

And another:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascade_Communications
"... I'd steer well clear of building anything that I expected to make money on for Facebook. ..."

Been thinking about this problem. There is a trend at the moment for web2 companies creating apps, exposing API's then allowing third parties to use them. If this is a trend and consolidation occurs is it wise to use these API's? Will there be a choice as large numbers of users move to these online apps effectively recreating the monopolies that past operating systems had?

Could a solution be to spread the usage of API's across a larger number of services?
No, but what's important is that the idea was physically incarnated in the form of writing. The act of writing is what counts.
I created one for my own company just to feel good.
You can't predict who will change the world (or why we need more tinkerers)
strange double post bug.
4) they are working on something tangential 4.5) you have some neat feature/ui/concept that they are referencing as good/bad on their project/article.
Signals are creating largest link farm on the planet and you are luckily on the list :)
Ha!

Have your ex-girlfriend write it, so that the vitriol comes across as authentic.
Ouch, my eyes hurt :-(
Absolutely.

It now makes sense when Zuckerberg turned down Yahoo, saying that he thinks they can do it better. It's probably showing that facebook will be trying to prove that, whatever can be done off their userbase, they will prove that they can do it better. They have enough leverage to do anything that's social network related, and they are guaranteed that their userbase will be computer-literate enough (because those who aren't, know someone who is, just across the hall) to adapt to any new features.

Launching your business straight off of facebook's API is nothing but stupid. Fine, not stupid, but a risk that without a miracle, tremendously outweighs the benefits. You basically expose yourself as the guniea pig. Clear the minefield for your opposition to trot through. And functionally, it looks like you tap into a ready-made, enormous free pool of users, but financially (in the per user aspect), you have zero users.

Looking at the landscape it shouldn't be hard to predict what kinds of services they will be adding, at least in the next 6 months or so. A questions service is probably the next low-hanging fruit. By now, answeru.com should be worried, like, hell worried.

FB's API is probably good for data mining. Other than that I don't know what.
A reCAPTCHA is more than a CAPTCHA, it also helps to digitize old books.
Mathew Ingram: Vancouver is a tech hub.
The language in my post is a bit sloppy and for for that I apologize. As I imply in the second paragraph and explain in the edit you do get a warning BUT unless you then pull out your paper copy of the fingerprint and manually compare the fingerprint of the certificate with the one you have on file you do not know that your connection is secure. When is the last time anyone took that step? We need CAs to automate this process for us.
I suggest my partner and me. Just give us a little while...
The Reddits, of course.
IMO, human computation is a field with enormous potential. But strangely, there are few publications on the topic. It's not taken seriously in computer science yet.

Or maybe it requires a different sort of thinking than what most computer scientists are accustomed to?

Or perhaps most computer scientists feel that human computation is cheating? For them, maybe there is no reward in this sort of research. They are more interested in something technically difficult, even if the results are much worse.
I'm by no means an expert on crypto but I think I understand the fundamentals. If something I said is incorrect please point it out specifically. See [1] for a more complete explanation of my point.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MITM
BTW, in terms of cleverness in human computation, http://listengame.org is a must-see.

You can use the approach behind listengame.org to build a service that gives first impressions on all sorts of things.

In fact, you can apply the listengame.org approach to online advertising to encourage people to look at online ads very carefully. Moreover, advertisers would get feedback on their ads.
Technology's next generation / Palo Alto forum shows off work of valley's young entrepreneurs
Sequoia Leads Trulias $10 Million Series C
Apple Matters | May 24, 1985: Jobs Fails to Oust Sculley
ePals: An Integrated Solution for Students of the Future
1) the theory of relativity was executed by people who used that idea to develop nuclear weapons, satellites, GPS systems, semiconductor electronics etc.

Here are two 'proofs':

2) According to the patent office, if you can write down in sufficient detail your idea so that "a person of reasonable skill in the trade" can implement it, then you can patent it. (assuming other conditions like non-obviousness etc apply).
Even if someone patents before you, you can still patent it (if you wrote it down with proof of date) and claim royalties. (example, the laser).

3) Have you read about the numerous lawsuits in the entertainment world about ideas for a TV show or book being stolen and executed? There are no prototypes to steal - just ideas, but they carry weight in court.
do a google search on "patent trolls"
Net taxes could arrive by this fall
Hm. At 6 points in 3 hours, I don't see this article on the front page, even though this is:

"6.
Google announces purge of ad-heavy sites (nypost.com)
4 points by jkush 5 hours ago | discuss"

[Edit: Either Firefox's text search and I missed this, or it's been restored to the front page.]

And the article is weak. They're complaining that Facebook is competing with Twitter. Why would you fault someone for doing what other people do, but better? And why would you care if they do it worse?
I am not bothered to look for his article but I am sure he used the term "ideas are worthless". Otherwise that phrase would never have independently stuck around here so long.
[video] Start-ups aim to take on YouTube, iTunes
see

http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=24338
10 More Startup Commandments
See here: http://paulgraham.com/ideas.html

He did write "The fact that there's no market for startup ideas suggests there's no demand. Which means, in the narrow sense of the word, that startup ideas are worthless."

What I mean when I say playing with words is that he qualified that statement with "in the narrow sense of the word." He was also referring to startup ideas in particular.

This discussion is getting to be a little ridiculous because you're splitting hairs and and missing the point entirely.
Internet ad revenue up 35% to $17 billion / One crucial element -- ability to deliver interested customers
As said elsewhere, you can read all about Carmack in Masters of Doom. Besides, I think he'd have technical rather than entrepreneurial advice to give. Still, if he made the cut I'd read his interview voraciously anyway.

I'm not looking forward to Molyneux, though.
not exclusively :)
"my own position is we ought to have a temporary moratorium until we finally resolve the issue of how the states are going to support public services with an eroding tax base predicated on the growth of e-commerce."

Stop supporting public services?
Guy Kawasaki is in your Tshirts (verb)ing your (noun)s
Has mobile data finally arrived?
Is it Useful?
The OpenCoffee Club Movement
Although most/all academics are aware of facebook. If they had an interest in this they would be using facebook to do it.
3 Lessons you Mistakenly Inherited from your Parents
the first girl said she didnt think services needed to be combined

This is something I found in my own research too. It appears most normal teen users cant stand mashups. I was building a platform that converted between sms, email, IM, facebook message so that you wouldn't have to check all your messages in different clients and ran it past normal users. They hated it. Users want communication mediums to stay seperate!
This is largely true, but I'd still recommend joining a startup or 5 before starting your own. Why? Because as a new startup founder, you will make every mistake your former bosses did. It's much easier to recognize somebody else's mistakes than your own, particularly when their mistakes prevent you from doing your job well or make you quit.

Joining someone else's startup gives you a chance to learn from their mistakes and get paid (relatively little) for it. You shouldn't think of it as a job, you should think of it as an MBA that's not full of bullshit where the money flows from instructor to student instead of student to instructor.
This is ridiculous. Instead of increasing taxes, how about actually controlling your spending? So many people seem to be under the illusion that more money will help solve problems with their spending habits.

in this respect, our public officials really are representing us. "About 43% of American families spend more than they earn each year."
http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/SavingandDebt/P70581.asp
Sure, but like I said on my blog, if even Jason Rubin and Andy Gavin started Flektor instead of a game company, is there a whole lot of opportunity out there for anyone else?

http://www.zachbaker.com/articles/2007/05/19/congrats-to-flektor

That was also around the time last year at E3 where Warren Spector gave his advice to those who wanted to start the next big studio:

"You have a zero percent chance of success. The barrier to entry in terms of cost, quality required, access to a market... forget it."
Seems like an awesome concept. Just what I have been looking for.
I agree with Kraus even though he's in the current edition. More!
Greg Stein - compare.net (sold to MS, originally founded with Pierre O. -- he left to found eBay); Greg worked on SVN and ended up at Google. Fascinating guy.
Bill Gross
BradFitz
Justin Frankel
Mark fraunfelder -- boingboing
John Hanke - keyhole
Scalability vs. Performance: it isn't a battle
It is great, I've been to the London one a few time and met great people. It's not all about finding investment too like the article suggests
UnCommon Web (PG Inspired Lisp Web Platform: Then there was UCW, and all was good)
Does anyone have experience with the highly object-oriented UCW Lisp web platform? It looks interesting.
dan: thanks for telling me this. I was about to start on something similar (mostly as a quick side project to learn some RSS parsing, etc)
Sounds to me like a special case of Sturgeon's Law: of course 90% of startups are crap. That's because 90% of everything is crap.
Except crap. 100% of crap is crap
(http://www.tmcm.com/comics/webcomics/179_crap)
I don't think patents are legitimate.
Well I could always be wrong. Perhaps I approached the problem in the wrong way or pitched it at the wrong people. Orgoo appears to be making this work.
How did Trulia came out of nowhere to steal the thunder from Zillow?
You really think an interview with Yunus would be helpful? He's just a loan shark with good PR.
The first version of Trulia was bad. Jackass bad. It's like those crappy Google Maps mashup site built by a kid overnight. When Zillow came out, I thought they had won the real estate web sector. That's it. Then suddenly, out of nowhere came a revamped Trulia with a better site than the first version and most importantly, MORE HOUSE SALE LISTINGS than Zillow. What's a real estate site without real estate sale listings?
Why did you guys come here instead of Startupping.com?
Startupping came about first. So why didn't you hang out at their forums there instead of here?
Better style would be to select only the columns you use.

WordPress database error: [Got error 28 from table handler]

SELECT DISTINCT (star) FROM wp_posts WHERE 1=1 AND post_name = 'comic-is-it-useful' AND post_date_gmt (less)= '2007-05-24 16:56:59' AND (post_status != "static") AND post_status != "attachment" GROUP BY wp_posts.ID ORDER BY post_date DESC

Error 404 - Not Found
When will users become Adwords-blind?
PG & YCombinator
Its the community that makes the forum.
Given how users got banners-blind after some years of conditioning, how long would it take for them to become Adwords-blind, especially with 99.999999999999999999999% of websites forcing these ads on them via Adsense?
better than a yale kid
unlike European schooling, American education is not based on equation drills and memorization

Erm... My education hasn't been based on drills and memorisation despite being 'European'. I wish journalists wouldn't just make stuff up.
I don't think his point carries very far. Look, people are running large, successful web sites using PHP. What more proof do you need that performance is irrelevant?
I think you're missing my point. "Most people" isn't what I'm getting at. It's the type of person that is doing the ranking that I'm concerned about. For example, my blog on personal finance might be targeted to financial planners. Their opinions of where my blog ranks to them are more important to me than the opinions of the 18 year olds who have a passing interest in finance after they read all about justin and Angelina.

If both of those groups are taken at face value by your system, how is it helping me as an author?
Thanks! We've deliberately tried to break from the norm with the design - which has raised a few eyebrows. We're still in the experimental phase - so all comments, good and bad are welcome - and indeed integral to our development strategy.
You could try calling up Michael Arrington and crying on the phone. http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/05/22/silicon-valley-could-use-a-downturn-right-about-now/
please include Markus Frind from PlentyOfFish. His story is both fascinating, inspiring and so not the norm.
Also.. it may be better if you dont include YC companies, since most of their stories are already so well publicized.
I follow both, actually. This site is better for news/discussion, I think that site is a little bit better for practical advice.
Vlog about a struggling entrepreneur.  Watch and learn.
I once worked in programming for a non-tech startup, and the experience was like this guy describes it, only much worse. There were times when I worked 30+ hours straight and my paycheck bounced. The two guys who founded the company were worthless, lying megalomaniacs who still owe me thousands of dollars.

It was a very educational experience though. Here's a summary of startup wisdom I learned from this experience Forgive me if some of these seem like tautologies.

Don't spend money unless you absolutely have to - don't buy a $5000 copy machine when you really don't copy things that often. Don't spend several grand on rent when you could work out of your house.

Don't forget to eat and sleep (once in awhile). You aren't a very good programmer after 36 hours of straight coding with no sleep and only a can of mixed nuts for sustenance.

Becoming a startup founder doesn't immediately make you 'somebody', so don't go around being a dick to everyone. The same rules that apply to everyone else still apply to you.

Spend your time building products, not doing administrative stuff.

Focus on your core competency. If you're a clothing company who happen to have developed a piece of inventory-control software in house, you might be tempted to try to re-sell it for an additional revenue stream. Don't do it! Get back to designing clothes and just be thankful you have a way to control your inventory. Amazon seems to be the exception here, they're selling everything under the sun, even at night.
Sean Adams - founder of Slim Devices. He seems like a great example of bootstrapping and initiative. Web startups are one thing, but starting a company that builds neat consumer electronics hardware, builds a great community, and then gets acquired by Logitech - that would be an excellent case study.
I dont read his essays any more.

No, you are missing the point.

So, now it is qualified by startup ideas?
Then where did all the "ideas are worthless" phrases come from? (like this thread).

If you agree that in general, ideas have worth - some more than others - then we are on the same side. :)
I don't think performance is irrelevant at all.

However, the "sweet spot" for acquisitions seems to be when your business reaches the 20-100 server range. LiveJournal, Wikipedia, Meebo, Flickr, etc. all seem to be around that size.

That's precisely the range where scalability does matter and performance doesn't. You've outgrown the put-web-and-DB-on-separate-boxes-and-replicate approach, so you actually have to think about partitioning & shared-nothing. But 30 servers @ $200/month/server is only about $6000/month, the cost of a single employee. At this stage, it doesn't really make sense to sacrifice developer hours for operational costs.

If you get to be really big, it makes a whole lot more sense. 100,000 servers @ $200/month/server = $20M/month, more than the purchase price of a small smartup. At this point, it makes a lot of sense to put a team of a half-dozen or so programmers onto the problem of speeding up individual server performance. If you can double performance, you save $10M/month, which'll pay wages for close to 1000 programmers.

There's a reason why Google writes all their performance-critical stuff in C++.
"The act of writing is what counts"

really?

So you will agree that writing our ideas down on the YC application form made them valuable?

(which is precisely what PG is arguing against).
1. Never heard of it.

2. First impression not good. The interface looks like any other random vBulletin website. Just the news please
I visit startupping every once and a while, but the interface for news.yc is so much better - I can scan the posts and pick out the interesting stuff quickly.
Actually, 30% of crap is bacteria. ( http://www.livescience.com/mysteries/061101_feces_brown.html )
i enjoyed the 10 commandments post though. I feel bad now
Aren't they, already? I hear that effectiveness of ads placed outside of search results context (google themselves) is pretty low.
I'm not fond of the structure of forums, news.yc matches the way I hunt for information better.
Not to worry, the internet is designed to route around this "problem" and will do so, whether the politicians like it or not.

Like the RIAA and MPAA, they can't win this battle. The sooner they realize that the better.
My suggestion would be not to get so experimental that I can't figure out what you're about and decide to leave the site altogether.
Failed Customer Support Diving Save Attempt
When will these idiots learn that really, in the end, it doesn't matter?
Ask NewsY - How to handle early founder severance
The startup I'm working on had an interesting start and we have 7 'founders' involved. Only 5 are really contributing anything to the project even though the others somehow seem to feel that they are entitled to a share in the profits. At this point it's not much of a problem but when we get funding I'd like to make them an offer to leave and give up their rights to the company. I'm thinking of offering 1% of the profit from any company sale or an option on 1% of the publicly available shares if we go public. (That's for each of them so basicaly give away 2%) Do you think this is a good move? Has anyone dealt with something like this before?
Intel's revolutionary design--thin as a cell phone, battery as long as a cell phone, the case charges the laptop
seems like the purpose of the sites are different, I've only been to startupping 1 or 2 times so I'm no expert. I visit YC News to get interesting news bites and the occasional comment conversation.
Would you have known it without having to look it up? I'm just saying that there is some reasonable limit to what you should be expected to know offhand.

For our startup we tend to look a lot more for general intelligence and ability to figure things out fast rather than rote memorization of formulas. I know somebody who is smart can look that up in a book and figure it out.

I think it is totally fair that they expect somebody to have a good comprehension of stats for what they are working on, maybe even to be a stats master, but I know people who have majored in math and are very smart that would still have to look some of that stuff up.

I'm just saying that the style of the technical questions they asked may filter out some great candidates.
news.ycombinator is clean and easy to use. Its simple and it doesn't get in my way of reading news. I can discuss stuff if I feel like it.
google is already trying new things to make sure you just dont click by accident, such as making you do something to pay you (ie, sign up for a newsletter, actually BUY a product), but if they were to do that fully, they'd loose a lot of revenue as I feel that most people that click on ads do so by accident or out of curiosity, not necessarily with the intent of actually purchasing a product or a service
If the adwords are relevant, why would users ignore them? Adwords are fundamentally different from banners in that they are customized to the query. If they were so ineffective, where would all of google's money be coming from?
Yikes Paul. I think it's safe to say that you jumped the shark on this one. I too have been in awe of your past essays and have learned from your wisdom. I feel that this must have been a reactionary piece that you've written. Perhaps Microsoft is competing with or hurting one of your Y-Comb startups or something? It sounds like you're venting in frustration. The Mac IS "just plain cool" but the fact is that Microsoft does treat their developers with respect and loves them. They still know how to say "Thanks" and do it often. For you to suggest that Google and company have crippled them shows your lack of understanding of Microsoft's true power. It is not in the OS. It's in their developer base that utilizes their development tools - still the largest of it's kind on the planet. The day Microsoft starts taking these guys for granted is the day they will die - not a day sooner.