skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Writing one can be useful just because it helps clarify your idea. If you can't clearly explain what your trying to do and who its aimed at on paper then you should probably restructure your idea. You dont necessarily have to stick to a business plan format, something like the YC application form can be just as useful.

Of course a lot of the best stuff happens through accident/luck and no amount of planning will help you there.
You might want to give this article a read: http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/2006/05/removing-middleman-part-3-books.html

Theres also a follow on article about producing an ebook reader/digital notebook:
http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/2006/05/desperately-seeking-info-pad.html
My Tangible Standard Library (RoR/Agility Books)
Coworking - community/collaboration space for developers, writers, and independents
10 Company name types on TechCrunch: pros and cons - useful if you&#39;re trying to pick a name
Myspace: why we block widgets (TC can be useful eh)
I don't know, I really don't feel like this article contributed much.
Reputation Capital and the Ruby on Rails Community
If you had N overwritable "save-game" slots for the universe, what would you do differently?

Saving a game stores a re-loadable state of the universe. Let's say saving or loading a state takes less than a second to initiate, and is impossible to do accidentally.

Would you lie? Cheat? Kill? (You don't have to answer).

What if N is 1, 10, 100?

What if N is uncertain?

What if there's a probability, p, of load failure?
In theory couldn't one ban any OpenID below a certain pagerank? For example, my OpenID is embedded on my homepage, which has a pagerank of 6. So then could I create a Reddit clone and ban anyone with an OpenID coming from a site with a pagerank of below 4? You would probably have to accept only OpenID's from the header of index.html, and check to make sure there was only one OpenID per page. That way if you got banned for trolling then you'd have to make a new homepage and get it up to a certain pagerank before you could make a new account at the site.
iShopr - The making of a web application
Dexter Walks (first dynamically balancing biped robot)
What happens to old posts? I would like a way to browse the archive.

Also, threads you comment on should show up in your profile so you can keep track of ongoing conversations.
I'm not convinced there is much use for this. And there are two fundamental problems.

The first problem is the institutional structure of the US education system. In my experience, tech-savvy instructors rarely look for a generic CMS solution. And those without much tech experience resist change unless it is forced upon them because they are already good at what they do and change disrupts their ability to get their jobs done. Blackboard gets around this inertia by selling to university and school administrations, which then push the technology out throughout campuses. It is a top-down sales regime. The company has non-compete clauses so that instructors cannot adopt other systems even if they wanted to. Competing with Blackboard on their own terms would mean wining and dining a lot of administrators who are not going to be interested in beta-testing software.

The second problem is more fundamental. A lot of the really interesting stuff happening in the education field is happening with interest based communities like Chinesepod or even open source software projects (for an education in programming...). There are two things that are common to both sorts of communities: #1 they are interest driven, #2 the materials produced are not attempts to solve specific institutional needs so much as address individual "learner" problems.

A project like this should be very clear about whether it is serving institutional or learner needs. If you don't know exactly how to help students, what is the point of creating a system simply to automate stuff?
&#34;Facebook Query Language&#34; is here
thanks, I've read these... but I re-read them now :)
Amazon + Two Guys + $0 = Next YouTube
Founders at Work - Full PDF
I had the opportunity to see Dexter live in action, it was one of the coolest things I've ever seen!
Factor: A practical stack language
You bring up some great points, trevelyan. Let me address them.

Blackboard is very much university-centric. They've won the war as far as universities are concerned. However, universities generally do the job of teaching very well. You also don't hear of fatal university shootings often (If ever? I haven't looked.) I'm in it to improve the lives and education of high school students. If I manage to better just one student's life, then I'll consider it mission accomplished.

High schools are very much open game. They're open game because they can't typically afford the huge sums of money that universities can. I plan to dominate the low end by creating a product that's simple, efficient, and inexpensive; something that every teacher would want. I'm not competing with Blackboard. I'm sidestepping them.

I agree that teachers have methods that they've employed for years to teach students. But part of that is exactly the problem. When something is done exactly the same for years on end, it gets stale. A teacher would have -fun- with my product, exploring other's ideas and communities. I plan to make them happy.

They may be reluctant to use my product, but I plan to be with my two cofounders, on foot, visiting local high schools as soon as I have a feature set that's useful, and spending time with individual teachers to show them how they might benefit from it. Then it's up to the teachers whether or not they'll use Classbug, but if I've done my job well, they'll most certainly want to.

Shawn
Google, Amazon, LiveJournal, SixApart, Flickr, YouTube, Craigslist. Most any company who has had highly technical top brass. MySpace was created by suits, that's why it runs on Windows and cost many millions more than it should.
Congrats Tevor - I suspect the military has spent 1000X the money with 1/ 1000X the progress.
Why you should study at Stanford
Never heard any of those sites. Must be popular in some other village.
Brilliant. Well done. It's very cool seeing him go up onto his tip-toes to keep balance. I also think it's cool that they built a whole other robot just to try to pick a fight with Dexter.
The configuration for each virtual instance that Amazon Cloud gives you is a 1.86Ghz with 160GB non peristant storage. Which means that even if not more computing power is required you will be required to pay for another instance if you need more than 160GB. If we suppose you run one balancer, and two instance for database for replication, you need to pay at least 3 instances.
Which is $72x3=$216/month=$2512/year. For the traffic of 1.5mbit/s which is 474GB, means you need at least $94/month=$1128/year.
So, for me I don't see really the advantage. If we suppose that with $2000 you buy a pc with 1TB and two dual core's at 1.8Ghz.
So, 512+1128=$1640/year for the bandwidth. You can lease a dedicated T1 line (1.5mbits x 1.5bmits) for $5200/year.
So, there is not really advantage going to Amazon. The only thing you save is maintaining hardware...

I would use Amazon only as backup like smugmug does...other than that for me, there is not avdantage...
Just in case you dont have time to listen to all of them the Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn was pretty interesting. Can anyone recommends others that are especially good?
[The Grauniad](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grauniad#The_Guardian_in_the_popular_imagination) is well known for it's typos.
Almost all startups with two founders also fail.

What I find interesting, is that a comparatively large number of companies on that page had only one founder, even though the odds seem stacked against them. Maybe there are substantial advantages to being alone. For one, you avoid having to design by committee.
Social Network Only For Friends
I asked few days ago if its possible for someone to get a green card if got funded by YC. I read the reply that is not enough. From the US immigration web site they site is possible and on some other sites it sais that 500,000-1,000,000 dollars is required as investment for someone to get green card.

My question is, would you risk to accept someone for funding, and wait until he finds invenstors through you, so that he could use these money as invenstment and also get a green card?

The thread is not available so I thought asking you here...
I asked few days ago if its possible for someone to get a green card if I got funded by YC. I read the reply that is not enough. From the US immigration web site they site is possible and on some other sites it sais that 500,000-1,000,000 dollars is required as investment for someone to get green card.

My question is, would you risk to accept someone for funding, and wait until he finds invenstors through you, so that he could use these money as invenstment and also get a green card?

The thread is not available so I thought asking you here...
Django or Ruby on Rails? -- A Comparison
The link goes to a small comparison done on the two (similar in many aspects) frameworks.

To the YC-News community: Based on experiences, which do you prefer? If your project uses one of the two, why did you pick the one you did?
DIGG and Reddit Killer from Former Amazon Engineer
Silicon Valley vs the rest of the world (or not)
While this article has some good insights it is not on topic -- it's for established businesses, not start-ups.
I'm leaning more towards Django currently. I've worked with Django for a longer time than RoR so that may be the source of my bias.

I prefer it because it gives me more out of the box. I can set up logins and accounts very easily for example. It is however a complete pain to install. Chances are you will spend days fighting with it and may even give up before you ever get it working!
Above and beyond - Fabrice Grinda! This man is a true european serial entrepreneur and legend. 3 big startups by age 33. See Fabrice's blog www.fabricegrinda.com

Joe Kraus' one rocked too. Also premal shah from kiva was really smart to listen to.
Ning - Create Your Own Social Network for Anything
I know they are receiving a lot of press already, but I just think that a website that allows users to make a social website that allows users to contribute amusing. Wonder if someone can take it to the next level: make a webiste that allows users to make websites that allow users to make more specific niche websites that have user contributions for content, haha.
O'r you could use Amazon S3 instead of EC2 for storage.

* Pay only for what you use. There is no minimum fee, and no start-up cost.
* $0.15 per GB-Month of storage used.
* $0.20 per GB of data transferred.

EC2 is designed for computation, S3 for storage.
Interview with James Sun (Zoodango)
Isn't development on Findory suspended? (http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/01/14/findory-to-deadpool/)
MyBlogLog Case Study: Product progression and the widget
Rails, because that's the one I started with, and it works well enough. I like Ruby, too.

Basically, Rails doesn't have defects that are bad enough that they make me want to ditch it, and it's a pretty subjective call in any case, so I'm sticking with it. Best to get on with actually creating some sites...
While I agree that personalization is the way to go, I think that most users would like more control over personalization rather than rely on some mysterious collaborative filtering algorithm. Moreover, people read blogs for a reason: they actually want to see all the postings from those blogs, not potentially interesting postings from unknown blogs. Consequently, instead of having a collaborative filtering algorithm, one might use a social network approach. Moreover, rather than recommending individual posts, the user would instead build a set of trusted sources (users and/or feeds) via the social network.
... and if that doesn't work, try rebooting it? Sorry...:-)
Says the Harvard dropout... Do me a favor, if I ever get really rich and start to view other people only as tools to make me more money, shoot me. Gates had a few decent ideas that came out of the Aspen Institute conference a few years ago, but they're getting progressively more dumbed down and degrading over time.
"the online news space is grossly oversaturated. It will take a significant technology step forward for a new startup to get traction."

Seemed to be room for something like news.YC (yah, I know it's a much smaller niche). It's the social networking side that findory is missing, which, BTW, is why it's cool, but not in the same category as digg and reddit. No user generated content that I could see...
Reddit is still good by me if we can just get the political stuff out of there. I don't mind a few good stories here and there, but it's become completely overpowering, especially in the Hot list. If you use programming.reddit.com you're in good shape. Still good stories, and any submission you make can still get some traction if people like it. General stories though get clobbered by the relentless Iraq/Iran/Bush/Anna-Nicole/Cheney/RandomGayPastor element.
Would anyone care to comment on what the downfalls of the commercial gyros were? Is it precision or time-lag? I know I can't get specifics, but I'm curious in general what is different in this application that commercial gyros were not capable. Any info would scratch my itch! Thanks!
Sorry. Accidentally refreshed and reposted. A moderator can delete this comment!
Reminds me of an old person who had a stroke and has to shamblingly re-learn how to walk.
I would like to have the option of changing my vote on articles and comments. There are times (on reddit) when I vote an article up and then read the comments and find that the blogger was actually full of crap.
Stanford is an interesting place. On one hand, it is the birthplace of the Silicon Valley school, a movement that believes the best way to measure the value of a person is by what they can do for others. Contrasted with meritocracy, what others say you can do as opposed to what you can actually do, this seems to be a more empowering and productive economic and political philosophy than anything in the history of humanity.

On the other hand, it's also the birthplace of intelligence testing and the American eugenics movement, and played a major role in creating the ideological foundations of the holocaust.

Both traditions are very much alive and kicking around there today, and what the people you talk to believe depends very much on which side of campus you're on.

It seems to be working out for the students though.
The timestamp said that the article was written back in 2005. Does anyone have a feel for how much of it is still relevant?
tagging is coming, saith the founders... that should solve a lot of those problems
My understanding (after watching the "Snakes and Rubies" video of DHH and the Adrian Holovaty) was that Django is for best for content-centric sites, while Rails is for apps...

http://www.djangoproject.com/snakesandrubies/
yeah, because there are no unscrupulous ways of elevating one's pagerank...
I would like to know your answer to this then:

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2007/01/05/best-web-server-program-for-a-lot-of-static-files/#comment-19962
Setup a Ubuntu Dev Server (good step-by-step tutorial)
it corresponds to comment score
Yahoo! Earning 5% More With The New Ads System
10 Ways to Convert Customer Service into Sales
I'm actually quite happy with Google's GWT. And eclipse makes Java quite pleasant to use.
I'm looking for a partner or two (here are some of my ideas, feel free to add your own here)
Anyone looking for a partner? My email: amichail@gmail.com. If you like, we can discuss startup ideas here. In fact, this social news forum might be a good way to throw ideas around to see which ones generate more interest.
Are web ads really going to be this valuable in a generation? Even now, most tech savvy people are so used to the omnipresent nature of goole ads that they ignore them by nature. I can't even remember the last time I clicked on a google ad or any ad for that matter! If we add real means to block ads (mozilla add ons for example) to this subconcious rejection of advertising one can see that, in at most a generation, the viability of ad based businesses will be tenuous at best.

Take the example of the Sprint ad which featured 3 guys dancing in the office. A majority of us watched, a majority probably even liked the ad, but I'll bet very few switched over. As technology and information become more pervasive, it's going to be harder and harder to sell a bad or second class product no matter how good your marketing team is. Better to spend those precious dollars on designing a top notch product and let the consumers be your advertisers.
I've been using django, but I picked it because I enjoy python more than ruby. I think that they are close enough that the selection comes down to whether you've any pre-existing experience with either framework or language. If not, then I claim the decision really lies between which language you want.

My biased and un-researched opinion is that you'll find more support for learning python than ruby.
i like the 'friends' option. i unfortunately didn't use it enough at Reddit when it was new and now i can't filter for the users that consistently matched my tastes (or challenged them) - the noob tide has risen... i like reddit but a filter that lets everything in isn't filtering anymore. i guess i'm looking for a way that allows me to create my own 'recomendations' type algorithm. i think if it's on and clear at the beginning, it might allow the system to scale if/when it hits a major growth curve and allow that community vibe to remain.
There are two points I like from this case study:

1) They had 3 founders all concentrating on different areas. 1 Biz, 1 Technical and 1 product. The product peep was in charge of making sure everything was done in favour of the user/customer. Great approach.

2) "The product progression here is worth pointing out. MyBlogLog started with a product that delivered value to users without requiring network effects to be in place first. The social product would not have worked as effectively upon launch without it being pre-populated by profiles." - Network effects are tricky to get started. Build something you can use stand alone too. Like flickr. Many used flickr because it was a better photo organiser than what they had on their PCs and it was better than emailing pictures. Only later did the community come into play.
It's interesting to look at the differences between the way Dexter's doing it and the way we do it. Dexter appears to be lifting his foot straight up off the ground and then falling forward to produce the forward motion.

The way humans walk is exactly the opposite. The toes are at a different angle from the foot (when walking), so that our feet effectively look something like ___/ , with the underscores being the foot and the / being the toes. We then transition from the ___ part of the foot to the / part of the foot and push forward, and land flat footed with the other foot. For whatever speed you are going, there is a proper ratio between landing on the ___ part of the foot and pushing off the / part of the foot, and that's where balance comes from. That is, the faster the acceleration of the fall, the faster you transition from ___ to / .

So in humans, balance comes from the way one step connects to the next step, whereas Dexter appears to be treating each step as a discrete unit, where it has to attain balance at the end of one step before going on to the next step.

If you actually have to balance yourself after each individual step instead of using the next step for balance, the problem seems in some ways to be much harder.

Also, the balance problem is greatly compounded by the small steps Dexter takes. Compare this to doing lunges. When you do a lunge, you basically take a long stride forward and then sink into it, all while keeping your torso perfectly upright. This gives you a much bigger platform for stability. As terrain gets steeper, the way humans walk becomes more like a lunge for this reason.

So my guess is that taking one tiny step and then balancing is the hardest part of this problem, because you have the least tools at your disposal. For example, you can't use the next step to balance you. However, once you can do the last step of the sequence, all the preceding steps working backward from the last one get progressively easier.

I don't know anything about robotics, but as an athlete and sports physiology geek I find the problem interesting.
Do you have any ideas currently?
This is my current startup attempt: http://forwardingtree.com.
Also see: http://groups.google.com/group/forwarding-tree. Note that personalization is just another way to control spam. One might imagine an extension of the social network approach used that would apply to discussion forums for example, even at the level of individual threads/posters. How would you personalize a discussion and yet still retain something that is coherent?

I'll present some other ideas here soon.
I'm interested in ways to make people scale. For example, one might imagine a service that allows people to construct a chatbot for themselves that they could unleash onto the net to spread their views. Yet another possibility is to have such a chatbot constructed in a collaborative way by many people. The interaction between such chatbots is also interesting. For example, you could have an online dating site where you can go on thousands of dates per day by having your chatbot interact with other chatbots. Promising interactions can then be brought to your attention and you may then decide to go on a real date.
I'm interested in a service for creating or inventing things in a collaborative way. For example, consider using human-based genetic algorithms to create daily news shows, perhaps in the style of this site: http://www.newsatseven.com (but using people rather than computers). As another example, one might build a service where users invent board games. Again, this could be done using human-based genetic algorithms. Users of the service would be able to modify rules to try to make a game more fun. A fitness function would take into account how popular various game variants are among players. Note that users of such a service need not be programmers: the domain is sufficiently restricted so as to make visual point-and-click rule creation/modification possible.
I'm interested in understanding people more deeply and learning from them by watching what they do and how they think. One idea that I tried is a service for broadcasting your computer screen, just as if it were a TV show. See my work on VNCCasts: http://www.mobuzztv.com/uk/shows/vnccast_my_scrap_beckett_sculpture/. (The report is a bit misleading though as they apparently mistook the sample channels I created as ones actually used by others.)
Yes, Venture Voice rocks. Greg is a really great interviewer, and the interviewees are super interesting.

This is one of the most consistent sources of entrepreneurial inspiration I've found, up there with PG's essays and Jessica's book (Founders at Work).

The interviews are long, in sharp contrast to all the fast-food info you'll find through social news sites like this one. But if you're passionate about entrepreneurship, I can guarantee that taking a long walk with one of these interviews will be good for your career and for your soul.

(In case anyone's wary of my effusing, I've got no connection to VV, just a big fan.)
I'm interested in showing people data that they don't normally see. I mentioned VNCCasts in another post. Another example would be to show the web traffic at a web site to everyone in real-time. This might be done using something like http://www.visitorville.com/. Or maybe you would show actual sessions in progress. But whatever you do, the point is to make the site look more active and interesting. It's a way to promote the site.