skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Do you mean the bit about a user providing others' email addresses when putting them into a tree? Only, family tree making sites, including ones that spot possible "same people" between trees and tell both parties, have been around for years.
Hm, that's cheating :-(
It makes a really weird impression that you are referring to Wikipedia and Google for actual information on your product.

I think you need some information that underlines your trustworthiness. There is not even a picture of the actual product.
The Pmarca Guide to Startups, Part 6: How much funding is too little? Too much?
LG to develop YouTube phone - Keeping up with the Jobses is good for everyone
didn't see a submit and vote widget (didn't look too hard though). for me, this is a killer ap of forging a community.
How To Stop Worrying About Terrorists and Start Your First Business
who says you cant switch jobs on an h1b?
maybe your startup can hire him on an L1 business visa.
The H1 quota was filled in a single day as I hear.
Zoho Launches Facebook Apps: Web Office Meets the Young (Writer, Sheet, and Show)
No, the second sentence is wrong too.
hey rms, I didnt know you were a real live snake oil salesman! :)
I thought it was just a figure of speech but apparently they do exist. heh

(Just looked at your bio: "importing and selling unique herbal substances").
I just tried to submit my own page, but then I did not want to register...
YC is about flipping companies for $millions. They have a formula.

They are looking for child prodigies who fit a certain mold.

People who walk, talk, think and perform a certain way.

It is more like the Iron Curtain coaches who ran schools and would look for potential gymnasts for the next Olympics.
Then don't argue against it. Say, "This article is true in and of itself, but I think the heritage foundation is presenting it in order to..."
Virtualization: the fastest growing market
Most startuppers who read news.yc are not going to mind the youth focus of facebook. Most are young, and are making something they themselves would want.
Weblocks - A Common Lisp web framework
Journalist: Print communication is dying out.
andreeson seems to have the same general approach as paul graham, but often differs in the details. for example, it sounds like marc is advocating raising a lot more money than paul would. my impression of graham's funding advice is to get by on zero outside funding dollars, if you can swing it. it would be interesting to hear these two guys discuss things like this.
The Way To Wealth: The best business book is also the shortest
Failing weather satellite has this weather startup wondering
Ben Yoskovitz - recently funded startup on "What's the Motivation to Start a Startup?"
If we have a formula, no one told us. The current group of founders range from 19 to 35, average 25. Their ambitions range from selling for a couple million to going public. Some are very unworldly hackers; others are business guys who don't know how to program. Their projects range from frivolous social networks to deep infrastructure.

I was about to say that all they have in common is that they all work really hard, but even that isn't universal. There are some slackers in each group.
5 Ways to Optimize AJAX in Ruby on Rails
http://paulgraham.com/guidetoinvestors.html

See: 22. You need investors.
I don't think I'll be applying. Looking through my comments, I see at least 2 instances where pg has answered quite irritated towards me. The rest of my comments are me attacking other potential founders on their poor implementations. I'D not pick ME if I was on the team.

Anyways, let me give a few areas for potential applicants:

1. Organize bookmark tags right. Del.icio.us is nice and all, but things tend to get disorganised

2. iPhone app for public transportation

3. Firefox/IE plugin that makes financial information from bank websites accessible in a global unified format. By financial info, I mean payin/payout history.

4. Debt pay-off site - site that organises the credits of people into a manageable format and tells them what to set aside to get it done with. Include retirement fund as a side option

6. Collaborative website for writing episodes for TV-Shows. Will take fan fiction to the next level. Scriptwriters will like the feedback, and obsessive fans will pay to be part of the inner circle

7. Religious books discussion site. Mix up the religions and abstract the discussion

8. And of course, the favorite of a snappy gentleman like myself - Let people upload pictures of themselves and dress them up in latest purchasable fashion. Find alternatives to expensive designer clothes.

As they say, ideas are cheap. Each has potential if implemented the right way.

I won't be applying, but good luck to all those who will be!
i've actually read that before, but i didn't remember all the details.

okay, so you're both in favor of having investors, but you're emphasizing different points, at least.
One of the worst is schools. Public schools in the US are not very good. Rich people tend to go to private ones.

Pretty near zero representatives' and senators' kids go to DC public schools, for example. Whether they're liberal or conservative, they seem to draw the line at that. And there seems to be an unwritten rule they won't criticize one another about it.

In theory this inequality ends at college, because the best colleges will take you for free if you're poor. But in practice it doesn't, because (a) the good colleges do "legacy admissions" and (b) the private schools are much better at coaching their students to get into good colleges.
Stop hiring people to do your job
Never Stop Cheerleading
Straight dope from Fake Steve Jobs (very entertaining on Iphone AT&T etc.)
My point is that it is a bad point among successful startups, not that it is a bad point among startups in general. Looking at startups in general isn't particularly interesting for an entrepreneur compared to looking at those that are particularly successful (or fail in epic flames).

Doing what you want is a good way to make macro decisions. Should I try to be a dentist or a programmer? I like programming, I'll do that. Unless your psychological makeup is perfect, it doesn't do quite as well for micro decisions. Should I eat that chocolate cake? Well, I want to. Should I go to work today? Nah, I'm tired. Should I drink that next beer? Why the hell not?

I guess it comes down to that I should have been clearer in drawing the distinctions I was trying to make.
I don't even think the inequality ends with college, even theoretically. Colleges use the lack of income as leverage to raise the quality of their students, which means you can only apply to a school substantially worse than you would be capable of reaching if you had greater financial resources (this line gets blurred at the top, because the students getting full ride are above the standard student at the institutions, but there isn't anywhere better they could go anyway).

I don't think legacy admissions are a huge problem, colleges are very lenient about admitting any student who can pay their full way, regardless of previous connections (this is more true for private schools where the full yearly tuition + board can be 35-50k).

On the other hand, I think your point b is crucial. The quality of private schools, especially after 1st grade and before high school, is not consistently better than public schools (this is anecdotal evidence from personal experience, which I suspect the statistics would contradict, but there are so many confounding factors that the statistics seem of dubious quality). Instead, it is the connections the private schools have, and the quality of their college admission counselors that are fundamental.

At my school we were hounded relentlessly to submit college applications (we could be detained at school if we missed completing certain goals by certain days). It was literally harder not to apply to college than it was to apply to college. They proofread all admission essays, and gave personalized advice on where to apply, which institutions we had strong connections, etc. This sort of thing simply doesn't exist at public schools, and its the biggest advantage I experienced from a private high school.
Why the iPhone isn't really revolutionary (because it's locked to AT&T and not programmable - a repeat of 1991? (YC comments))
Is taxation an appropriate venue for implementing and enforcing cultural norms? Flaunting wealth is a cultural phenomenon, and demarcating it as wrong is an entirely subjective decision.

I think following the "we should appease others to keep the masses from taking everything" argument we end up creating a world far too similar to Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Actually, the entire argument is very much Objectivist. I wonder if there is a connection.
Depends on where you go for college. The ivies I am familiar with separate the applications and financial aid process the issue of 'leniency' is not there (except when there are very large sums of money involved).

As for private schools, I think you may be confused. Many of the leading private boarding schools are much better than almost any public schools in the nation. Counseling programs vary with the school. Schools which frequently send kids to the ivies (or ivy-equiv) tend to have lots of experience with the process. My public school had only a small amount. Some have none (and don't even know when one of their students has beaten the odds and made their way into such a school).
When you think about it, the lock with AT&T is a very big gamble for Apple. The industrial design of their phone, a touch screen, can be easily cloned. The UI, on the other hand, is their advantage. This reminds me alot of 1991, when Apple had the far superior UI (OS), but locked it to their hardware. With the rise of PC clones in both quality and power in the early 90s and the pitiful OS by Microsoft by comparison, it was obvious to me that if Apple were to sell their OS for any computer, they would have become the dominant OS. A friend of mine was a huge Apple fan at the time, and I asked "why not sell the OS separately?" He said you couldn't because of the "magic" of the hardware that somehow transcended their sw. Bad answer.

So here we are again, Apple with an amazing UI (OS), but with easily cloned hardware. If AT&T is not able to get their speed up in the next year or two, and the iphone is cloned with a reasonable UI on a carrier such as Verizon, Apple could actually loose their tremendous advantage and end up again with their 7% or so of the market.

I think Iphone's future in many ways is now dependent on AT&T. If AT&T can come through fast enough, AT&T will then be made irrelevant, or AT&T will lumber along at their normal pace and the Iphone will be passed by clones with better bandwidth - this will be an interesting show.

The good news for us, no matter what: Apple again has made something people really want, and with the rise of webapps, businesses need. The big question: will others now jibe and take Apple's wind away because of the AT&T anchor?
Top VC Firms (by number of deals)
I tried to avoid slandering top boarding schools with the "especially after first grade and before high school". I am a byproduct of such a boarding schooling.

The quality of the teachers was high, and academically you don't comprehend the gap until you reach college and realize a majority of your classmates can't write, only read for required assignments, but were in the top 2% of their school, and graduated with a gpa 1.0 higher than yours. That said, I have also met a number of well prepared students from public schools (and a large number of poorly prepared students who spent $120,000+ on their high school education, but didn't take advantage of it).

I am a fairly strong believer that the real distinction is within the students (as necessitated by my desire to maintain my self-worth). The most successful students, at any institution, will be those who are self-motivated, have well educated and intelligent parents, a well educated peer group, and are intelligent themselves.

These are the confounding factors I mentioned. Students with parents who have terminal degrees are more likely to be attending these elite institutions. This parental advantage may be the strongest influence in intellectual development, and thus clouds the value of private schools. In addition the wealth of the students attending these schools is much higher than at a public school (its weird when your school has children whose parents are billionaires). This wealth provides numerous more resources for students: tutors, summer classes, camps, et al. These addition resources provided by surplus wealth also confound the true value of these high-end schools.

Counseling programs do vary by school, but my experience is not particularly unusual for a higher end private school. These schools will typically have 100% of their students accepted to a school when they graduate. That doesn't happen by accident.
Google buys GrandCentral phone service
Announcing the Business of Software Wiki
Web Domains: Tools to use, articles to read
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=AAPL&a=02&b=1&c=2005&d=06&e=3&f=2007&g=m
Your 'review' of the iphone made me cringe. Your use of superlatives is seriously uncool. You seem like a person easily awed - the type of person who sees perfection in something that is merely better.

A frog is just a frog. Nothing else, nothing more. Don't project the feelings you have about frogs unto others.

How can great writing make you see _everything_ different. This is physically impossible. I've been reading since I was small, and each book you read exposes you to more possibilities, and moves you a bit in one direction. But books don't change _everything_ about you. That's just silly.
Hey guys, there is this really amazing article written by this Paul Graham guy. You probably haven't read it, right? Anyway, I really like what he has to say! Hope you like the article.

...okay, so tell me what is wrong with this picture? I can't quite figure it out. Oh well, I'm off to tell a group of biblical scholars about this nifty book called the New Testament.
USCIS takes unprecedented action: stops accepting employment-based Green Card applications
The popularity of this argument depends almost completely on who you choose for your examples.

Most people seem to agree when you talk about Sergey Brin and Larry Page? They started a company from nothing, added trememdous value to the world, and pocketed some big bucks for themselves. Rock on, those are the kind of guys who make you feel fine, even positive, about income inequality.

Next in line come the CEOs who take over an existing company and help themselves to some of the wealth. Some of these CEOs do such a good job generating growth that most people feel fine about it (Google's still a good example - nobody seems to feel that Eric Schmidt's weath is undeserved). But Grasso's payday (what was it, $160M?) upset a lot of people. And Semel's severance package is truly bewildering to me.

And lastly, we do have some of the genuinely worrisome wealth (mabye worse than the 17th century England or Saudi Arabia kind) in the US. This is what PG wrote about when he discussed the intersection of wealth and political power. For example, I heard about the CEO of a large military contractor. He was elected to the second highest office in the land, where he used his influence to start a war and destroy another country's infractructure. Later, he awarded no-bid contracts to his former company - but he refuses to say who he met with and when.

We need to distinguish between good inequality and bad inequality, and there's still plenty of the bad kind out there. The key is to fight corruption, not wealth.
Apple went up another 5% today; it seemed apropos.
Kind of interesting how narrow-minded that seems.
Hiring staff in India may not be worth it
There seems to be another catch-22 here: if you are too successful at promoting kratom, and people are buying it because of its opiate-like properties, then you're inviting the FDA (DEA?) to schedule it.
Patent Wars: Local.com Nabs Local Search Patent
If understanding customers is important, then it makes a lot of sense to cater to customers similar to yourself. Let us older startuppers cater to the older crowd.
Did Winter applications start this early last year?

PG: Given the deadline is still a long ways off, is there a preference for groups to apply early and update the application and demo along the way, or to wait until the end to apply when things are solid? Just curious..
What are the implications for foreign born start-up founders?
Just because they spent the whole time asking you about your idea doesn't neccessarily mean they were mostly interested in your idea...getting someone to talk about their prototype is probably a much better way to guage who they are and how they think than asking "Who are you?, and how do you think?"

Of course I wasn't there, so I don't really know what happened.
My next laptop will definitely be a Mac - and I'm looking forward to it. (I'm even willing to go for a slight performance decline when using my windows only cad software)

The fact that Audodesk, owner of 87% of the World Cad Market and 2nd largest software maker, made their software Windows only back in the mid-90's had a huge impact on Mac use for all CAD using companies. It has been the clinching argument since then to stay with MS and the PC, as well as the fact that Macs were almost always a performance step behind of PCs. Autodesk definitely have a deal with MS, but I'm hoping it will fade away and the tide will turn, and a Linux/Mac version of their software will rise from the ashes again. Sigh
Google Acquisitions by Year 2000-2007
It might be getting expensive, but they have a lot of really talented programmers there - and we don't have enough here and the government won't let more of them come here.

So basically, their salaries will continue to rise until they are in parity with similarly skilled Americans.
Marc seems to advocate raising a ton of money, and then spending it prudently. Which sounds great, but I've read that many VCs aren't that happy with that plan. They want their companies to roll the damn dice already, grow huge quickly, or flame out quickly (allowing the VCs to focus on their few 'home run' companies). The relevant quote being "once you take a few million of my dollars, the clock is ticking".

Aside from a passing reference to not giving up control, I don't see this concern addressed anywhere in the article. Would a post-huge-money board really be ok with a "save it for a rainy day" money management strategy?
bogus story.

In Bangalore, IT salaries range from $200 per month to $2K per month. So how can they be 75% of Valley salaries?

The real truth is - the good engineers prefer to work for the branded companies. InfoSys, Wipro, Google, Microsoft.

Everyone else may join a startup for a short while, with the hope of leveraging a good job at the branded companies.
Thank God my one public stock recommendation worked out right.

(I followed it myself, fortunately, and I'm still not selling. I think Apple has a lot more world left to take over.)
The trend in this graph may be meaningful, but the numbers aren't. Most of Google's acquisitions are never announced.
You might want to check Manjuls blog about this story.
http://munjal.typepad.com/recognizing_deven/2007/04/episode_26_indi.html

He is not making it up. He is talking about the best engineers that he could recruit for his startup in India.
The Five Critical Differences Between Referrals and Advertising
This is insane. We want to let illegal immigrants cross the border so that we can get our grass cut cheaply and eat out cheaply but we're unwilling to allow the very people my company needs to grow. Thanks USCIS!

As Michael Friedman said, "Pretty soon, we'll all be serving burgers to each other."
Can the print journalist blog, and make enough income using Adsense?
Here's a link to the future of print devices; http://www.e-ink.com/products/index.html
The comments on Munjal's post are far more insightful and revealing than the post itself - this is not uncommon with blog posts. Please read those as well.

Here's the one left by Srini Ramakrishnan
"Companies looking for top talent can't also afford to enjoy the advantages of cost arbitrage. If you are truly looking for top talent, you hire the best you can find, where ever they are. They will always have the option to relocate to the US or similar wage band country, and hence they aren't going to come cheap.

What works for code factories doesn't necessarily apply for boutique product companies."

I think that sums it up pretty well
On the Tenacity of Internet Explorer 6
I've been using GTD for the past year and its worked out very very well.

It's strange that I've always used this philosophy of "what is the next smallest increment of code that can be written?" for development but never applied this in other areas
In startups its all the more important that you don't let little things slip.

When I worked in largecorp where MS Outlook was the standard I found this book amazingly useful for GTD
http://www.amazon.com/Total-Workday-Control-Microsoft-Outloo...

now since my primary platform is ubuntu I'm looking into the wiki at http://shared.snapgrid.com/index.html
news.ycombinator.com needs a section to discuss web hosting vendors
Actually, I would sell it now, and buy it back as they start announcing the inevitable 1st gen glitches.
I was going to ask for recommendations, but I'm sure it's been asked before - no reason to keep asking the same question.
news.yc has a section for feature requests:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363
The iphone, like all mobile phones sold in the US, is severly castrated. US wireless carriers play their customers like idiots, and this is because most US consumers dont know any better. Im going to wait until they start selling non-US versions. Apple needs to captalize on the non-US market unless the iphone goes the way of the 90s mac.
UG Ad broker. Advertisers list parameters, users make ads, track each viewing via YouTube, etc. to pay the creators.

If advertisers really like the content, let them buy it whole.
His analysis makes a lot of sense.

I wonder if ads "make the web suck" enough for general users to switch if some browser made ad blocking a priority out of the box. It seems likes a pretty powerful feature, but people are conditioned to have ads surrounding everything they see so they might not care.

Unfortunately Firefox is probably the only existing candidate for turning on ad blocking as a default and there's no way they have the balls for that given their relationships with advertisers (I'm thinking mainly of Google, but am guessing there are more).

Watch the Mozilla CEO skirt the question:
http://apcmag.com/6043/why_theres_no_inbuilt_adblocker_in_fi...
Simply not true. Read the insightful comments that disagree, on the main post.

I too, am tempted to blame my failures on someone or something else.
When I recently left bigcorp and had to finally shell out my own money to buy a laptop ;-) I went with Dell/Ubuntu http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/ubuntu?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

Great deals(once you get all their coupons and upgrade your own memory) on developement strength machines and it's good to support initiatives that provide alternatives to MS.
I think you have a very good point. The vocal people that publicly complain about email the most are also susceptible to the most overwhelming inboxes. Most of us are in a different category. However, almost everyone feels that email could be a lot better.
A place for people to share information about web hosting vendors would be very useful. For many hackers, this is the only fiscal expense on route to a first version.
I partially agree with your comment about it not being a meritocracy: yes, it is still very difficult for those with prior commitments. However, it is still much more realistic than starting a B&M store or something along those lines, where you need significantly more startup capital and working on it in your spare time just doesn't work.