skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Maybe something like referring to the value of a cell in a spreadsheet? So wikipedia could have a page on the number of users of web-app Foo, and that number would live update.

Sounds pretty useless.

Or maybe they're talking about the optimization hack in Python where some values of primitive types in Python only have one copy.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, run this in a python console "import sys; sys.getrefcount(1)". You'll get the number of references to the number 1. Another fun trick: plot getrefcount for the first few thousands integers. It doesn't degrease monotonically as you might expect.
Launch Pad 3.0 - Venture Capital Edition Announced: Oct 17-19
Web 2.0 Summit just announced that it's going free (for entrants) and the format is changing a bit. You don't have to be launching a new venture / product anymore, and there's a greater focus on pitching to VCs.
Malaria is an interesting case. It was our sympathies for the poor little birdies dying of DDT that doomed millions of people to death. Next time you hear about the wicked conservatives, just remember that most of the mass murders of the world have come from the left...with moral righteousness and absurdity combined in full force.

Still, there's something sensible (in a primal way) about our sympathies for one suffering servant, but not a hundred. When that many people are dying it strongly suggests that the malady is an epidemic...and that our best strategy is evasion.
Hilarious exchange on news.yc--PG's greatest line
I know this is an old one -- but bugbear's ending it made me laugh uncontrollably
Lisp envy
It's really a list of companies that got strapped to rockets.
Superators Add New Operators to Ruby
I was going to print up #9 and read it over a nice casual lunch sitting outside at a table in the sun. Now I get to re-read "Don't" 2000 times. Thanks Marc, ya bastard!
SoftwareProjects Named to 2007 Inc. 5000 List of Fastest Growing Businesses in the US
That was a little too big brotherish. It talked to me with my gmail name. I have never logged into Orkut. Spooky.
I think you're right. I think the options for image processing on the client side are currently limited to VML ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vml ) for IE or for Safari/Firefox/Opera, SVG or Canvas ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canvas_(HTML_element) ) and from the little bit of tinkering I've done with both, I don't think you can read the values of pixels of image buffers with any of those options. If anyone can disprove this I'd be very glad to hear it. You can with Flash or Java applets but both of those ideas have other problems as well.

It certainly would be useful if it were possible.

I've also been trying to figure out how to control a scanner from in the browser. I'd like to have something on a page which would scan a document, display the image in the browser, and upload it to a server. I was hoping I could do it with Flash, because Flash does have a TWAIN interface, but I've not been able to get Flash to recognize scanner devices, only cameras. I'm starting to think applets may be the answer to that, but that seems like a long road to start on.

Does anyone have any ideas about controlling scanners within browsers?
Dangit Mr. Graham you're making me want to do a startup again!

(just when I'm finally making > $100k if you include all the bad-ass benefits & shit!)
Thanks Paul for deciding to write that. Reading it helped me.
LOL, all google ids are integrated :)
My prediction is that there will be more programs like these with greater global reach.

It's nice to see teams from Russia, Romania, and Dubai in this batch.
I got a free FON in some promo a while back. Problem is, the range on a FON router turned out to be half that of my modded Linksys. It doesn't even reach outside the house...
too integrated.
Nokia completely rips off iPhone... with pride!
Yeah, it makes sense that you didn't mean that. I got stuck on the line that said "The YCombinator application weeds out people who are unintelligent"--which of course clearly implies that 90% of the applicants are NOT smart, unless they got to the interview stage--but the second paragraph has a great message.

Of course YCombinator founders are smart. That's why I said so. I haven't met a stupid one. But it doesn't mean that they were the only smart people, or that stupid people make bad entrepreneurs, or that a great way to judge how smart someone is is by their degree, or that a great way to predict success in the consumer app space is how 'smart' someone is. All of those assumptions go against what is preached time and time again by both Pauls, Max Levchin, and others.

And I still disagree that, based on Paul's application, essays, interviews, and speeches, that YCombinator's main filter is how smart the team is. The order is likely 1) how famous the company already is, 2) whether the team is incorporated already, 3) whether the team is bigger than one person, 4) followed by how dedicated the team is, 5) and, how smart it is. (But it's the same kind of speculation as anyone else's.)

Please let me know what you think, because I respect your opinion.
It would be a good idea to give to the users the option to save links so they could read them later again or something.
before you follow the herd and blindly down mod my comment:

you dont have to get into YC to succeed, but understand he was talking at an exclusive event - the final YC dinner.

Also understand the odds. He picks teams most likely to succeed. If he rates odds of success as 1/2 (or whatever the article said), and the odds of getting in are 20/400, then the odds of success for you and me, those who didnt get in, is 1/40. Which is 2.5% and vibes with I recall that people generally say that startup odds are 2%.
Read your favorite of the others again. There's nothing like repetition!

"How can you internalize all of that knowledge?

I can give you two hacks.

First, use repetition. Download the audio versions of Paul Graham's essays, burn them on a CD, and listen to them over and over again. Read books once, identify the ones you like, and then read those again and again, every six months."

- http://blogs.xobni.com/asmith/archives/27
Did I Godwin this thread? It's a good essay, but I disagree with pg about the ambition being discredited by certain actions in the twentieth century. It just doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
That 90% failure percentage is still true. You just have to not die for a grand total of 18 months, and the odds go from 85% to much less.
Yeah, you're totally right about re-reading. It helps a ton. That's actually what I did today. Still, it's always more enjoyable to read something new.

One problem is that I've re-read (and re-listened) to everything PG and Pmarca have ever posted on the damn internet, many times over. Now I just re-read the best ones for the 20th time. I read/listen on the train, at lunch, and at the park so my appetite is insatiable. Need. More. Content.
lonelygirl15 Marketing Strategy
Jessica Rose used YouTube and this marketing strategy to achieve success and fame. She is currently on ABC's hit-show, Greek.
The author of the linked article talks about the 90% failure stat in a blog post (http://robbieallen.com/2007/05/against-the-wrong-odds/):

> An often cited statistic (presumably from the Small Business Administration) is that 90% of businesses fail within the first 12-18 months. ... Fortunately, the stat is a load of crap.

He talks about how the average outcome of widely differing situations isn't useful. The average entrepreneur has less than a high school diploma. If you've graduated highschool than the 90% failure rate already doesn't apply to you.
Interesting that they don't require registration to submit links, presumably relying on javascript + obscurity to avoid spam.
cafepress.com
Vote this guy up, he's smart. I, too, will never do a startup alone, as it's just too draining to do so.

At the same time, it's exactly what someone should do who's starting out, if they can't get funding or a team together. Try to get all three for as long as it takes.
Some of them might be telecommuting for a US based startup. For instance, it is very hard to find people who are good with audio/video signal processing in the USA. The good ones are all in Europe. We have guys in France, Spain, London, and Estonia.
Bug Labs fleshes out BUGbase, BUGmodule details (hackable hardware)
These are really, really terrible ideas.
Umm, they were asking for people's MySpace password and proxying their connx. This is the sureest way to train MySpace users to accept Phishing.

Of course they cut them off. Any rational site would have.
"It would be unthinkably humiliating to fail now. At this point he is committed to fight to the death."

I'm going to have to disagree with the majority of fanboys here and say that I (still) disagree with Paul's premise that a good way to spend your life is to be miserable in anticipation of a tiny chance to be wealthy. I'd rather enjoy my job every day instead of live in the kind of environment where failure would be synonymous with my actual death. Many great things have come of "failure."
Inside Entrepreneurship: Taking the first steps to start a business
Here's an easy checklist of administrative tasks to help you set up your business right from the start.
Paul Buchheit announces new iPhone with 8 megapixel camera
I.B.M. does not keep track of vacation time
What SeedCamp does is merely getting hype in hope to succeed as a investor2startup intermediate and promote its http://www.opencoffeeclub.org network.

So they pick up ideas that will draw most of attention.

Just my thoughts. source: http://blog.seedcamp.com
Why You Need Accountants, and How Much They Cost [pdf]
Reality Is What It IS
[SF] heysan! hiring web developer & software developer
Google's Trading Floor
Why Google's Advertising Platform is dominate and why no one can catch them.
Ok, I don't want to come off as whining, but I'm just really curious: who downmodded this comment and why? Usually when I get a downmod it's on a statement that's at least somewhat controversial, and I don't understand why this one would be. I can't figure out why anyone except possibly juwo would want to downmod it, and I know it wasn't him because you can't downmod replies to your own posts.
> the most common way to deploy Ruby applications these days

Say what? Are you sure you aren't conflating Ruby with Rails?
Javascript everywhere
The Truth about JavaScript
There is a plugin for vi keyboard commands.
Hey Ivan, JS is a seriously crippled language when it comes to doing low-level processing. Like others have mentioned, cropping and resizing are trivial; however, to do anything even slightly sophisticated I'd suggest looking into flash.

Flash 8's image API -- specifically the BitmapData class -- can provide some low-level access to an image buffer (however the image must be round-tripped from localhost to the server if you want to edit local images).

Alternatively, IE provides some proprietary image filters which can be used to process images (but obviously not in a cross-browser way).
I think it also has a lot to do with the way Americans view failure (versus Europeans and a few Asian countries).

In America while failure is not a good thing, it is also not a permanent thing that can scar you forever as a pariah in both society and the business community. You can try again and again... I could be wrong, but I don't think this is the case for Europe or countries like Japan; it's much harder to try something entrepreneurial more than once if you failed the 1st time...

Case in point, I think it took Sam Walton over ten tries before he got it right with Walmart. (Hell look at Edison too)

(I think as Americans we're just crazier than the Europeans.)
Matz uses emacs, so I expect more love there.
See also The Halo Effect, by Phil Rosenzweig
that gave me a good laugh at least!
What Do You Want to Know From Your Favorite Programmers?
Peter Seibel is writing a book "Coders at Work" where he is interviewing a bunch of well known programmers. The comment section is open for people to suggest who to interview and what to ask etc.
Have you tried 802.11a ? Same speed, more bandwidth, less interference.
I always wondered why "Web apps" have to be made with HTML and accessed through a URL. Web apps are basically regular applications with a shared user database. If you have a graphics intensive application, instead of using AJAX, why not use mature client-side graphics facilities and release a downloadable program that talks to a remote shared database for Web 2.0 style functionality? The only downside is that software updates are harder to propagate, but with update alerts this is not so much of an issue.
"I see nothing wrong with focusing on studying the best--the ones that made it. Those are the people to emulate."

What if the failures are doing a lot of the same things? You just can't get a complete picture without examining the failures, too.

It's probably better to be optimistic, because being realistic is likely to simply be depressing, but still, for those curious about the system as a whole, you can't just look at success.
All of Paul's essays are better written. This wasn't an essay. It was a talk, and one written quickly.
Ok, to counter my bummer parent post here are some things you COULD feasibly implement in javascript:

- color tinting (overlay semi-transparent colored elements on an image)

- image cut-and-paste (like cropping, place some bounded area of an image in a div with hidden overflow [the copy] and allow that to then be placed over the original image [the paste])

- image gradients, drop shadows, reflections (but these have been done to death and are usually too sluggish to use in a production app)

- some neat UI tricks like scroll wheel zooming and gesture-based panning (mootools has some demos which show what's possible - demos.mootools.net)

- if you really wanted to kill yourself, you could use flash (degrade to a server-side script) to build a pixel by pixel representation of the image using floated divs and background colors. Then create a JS singleton with your desired methods to be the image buffer's API. Thus, you're granted pixel-level access to the image and could (slowly) do whatever sort of processing you desire in JS.
Yahoo has a great idea for combining Facebook and LinkedIn
That's a bit like George Burns's famous saying, "If you live to the age of a hundred you have made it because very few people die past the age of a hundred."
Data is clear, individuals don't succeed. The larger the founding team, the higher the chance of success
- Solo entrepreneurs seldom succeed, 2 are more likely to succeed, 3 are even more likely, 4 are even more likely, and 5 are even more likely (don't have enough data after 5)

I think the main factor behind this is not work division, but social stimulation. Just being around other people is stimulating. Plus, we are wired to assign importance to what other people are doing; if nobody else is doing it, it doesn't seem important. By contrast, look how hard two friends will compete to outdo each other in meaningless contests of trivia, gross-outs, and even hazardous stunts.
I would agree about the market being freer in the US than Europe, but the UK's market is almost as free as the US' http://www.heritage.org/research/features/index/countries.cf...

... there has to be something else that the US has got too. A population of 300 million (vs. the UK's ~60 million) springs to mind.
> Many great things have come of "failure."

Especially condom failure.
As an (expat) British person myself I notice than many British people are very pessimistic about the chances of success compared to what I can gather from Americans.
Haha. My two favorite startup books: High Stakes No Prisoners, and Founders at Work.

(btw, who are you? email me at adam@adamsmith.cc?)
Looks like Jermaine's camera phone in Flight of the Conchords.
I don't know the story very well, just wondering: what were people doing before DDT was even invented? I am guessing that because of DDT the structure of the population changed, so that when it was taken away, millions of people were exposed to Malaria, who would not even have existed without DDT?
I am not entirely convinced by the arguments yet. Maybe it really makes more sense to donate to individuals? I think what we like to see is our donations have an effect. It is easier to imagine that one child could be helped, than that 8 children could be helped. Looking at a whole country full of squalor, one simply doesn't feel as if one could make a difference. I mean it is not that we feel less sorry about the mass of suffering people, only less confident in out ability to help.

OK, so that would still be a problem of perception. On the other hand, I am also not sure that I accept the other premise of the article, that throwing lots of money at a problem is going to make it go away. It is great what Bill Gates is doing, but it has not yet proven that it will work, or has it?
Very interesting blog.
I bought High Stakes No Prisoners and never got around to reading it. Then I gave all my precious books away when I moved (big mistake). Thanks a lot for mentioning it! I have to buy it again. I can't wait to read it.

(I'm no one. Just Another Startup Hacker. Not a YC founder or anything.)
Rails vs. Django
Just curious, and I want to see which framework I should pursue more aggressively.

So, how about pros/cons of each.
SayNow lets musicians stay in touch with fans, raises $7.5M
Squid optimization guide from last.fm of all people
You can get a dedicated box from Layered Tech for about the same price. Same deal though - you run everything yourself.
Perhaps the only good news to come out of Michigan this year.
This geek numbers theory is pretty weak. I think the main reason he'll be so effective is that he's not a stupid bureaucrat. Not only is he not a stupid bureaucrat, he's a really smart guy with tons of experience learning how to win.

Most politicians who are responsible for running government aid programs could never dream of taking over as CEO of Microsoft and being successful. That requires actual ability and intelligence, neither of which are required to be a politician.

Bill Gates is doing the same thing he did to a lot of huge companies (like IBM). He's showing them what happens when you have someone who's not a mediocre hack running things.
I would totally avoid any special "grid" crap. That stuff is snake oil. I'd also avoid VPS too, since the price of fully dedicated servers is so low these days. Less than $100/mo for a machine you can call your own.

I think ServerBeach has a better deal than all the other sites mentioned here. I've been super happy with them (and a couple friends who signed up have as well). They do offer cPanel and Plesk and I think give you Webmin by default. I don't use that stuff myself though.

(If you sign up for Serverbeach you can use my referral # 7XYHDMBU8A for $100 credit and I so get credit too http://www.serverbeach.com/catalog/cust_ref_landing_new.php?... )
jesusphreak has a pretty good writeup that's worth reading on the pros of using django: http://jesusphreak.infogami.com/blog/why_django

Having come from a rails background and later switching to django I think it comes down to a matter of preference. Django's ORM gets the job done but leaves something to be desired (ugly syntax, no multiple database support, also watch out for implicit cascading deletes!). Conversion to using SQLAlchemy was supposed to address the gaps, but the branch for the upgrade seems pretty dead... But overall I'm pretty happy due to the transparency of django's framework code. I've implemented some customizations that would have been a lot harder to pull off in rails.

If you had to choose a python web framework, I'd suggest taking a look at pylons which is more flexible (also, by default it uses mako templating which > django's templating and supports SQLAlchemy).
> If you follow a long enough chain of definitions in this way you can prove white = black.

That's pretty amusing. Whim -> arbitrary doesn't exactly constitute a long chain. Might want to start employing your proofreading team for your comments ;)

I'll refer you to one of my other responses:

"Not to mention, a substantial number of people haven't even built anything, which means they really have no choice but to judge the book by its cover. There are always snap judgements and rush decisions in any big application process."

YC's process reminds me of the Feynman story about choosing schoolbooks.

You have a bunch of young would-be founders who don't have a track record. How else are you going to choose? You just don't have enough evidence to go by in many cases.

Assuming a large portion of the applications come in near the deadline, you're in the position of having to review hundreds in the space of a week. It's like going through stacks of resumes, your eyes glaze over.

Making the observation is no slight to YC. You give people a chance despite them not having much of anything to show. I also know whim is a big factor even when there is a lot of supporting evidence because it's just human nature. That's why Cisco was turned down by 80 VCs despite having great numbers and committed people already.

Accusing someone of trolling because they had the audacity to bust out the dictionary to prove you wrong? Classic! "Every native English speaker [...]" -- too funny!

"Where the dictionary and I disagree, the dictionary is wrong." That should clear things up around here!
> I think it also has a lot to do with the way Americans view failure (versus Europeans and a few Asian countries).

U.S. Americans don't view failure the same as the Iraq and the Asian countries. South Africa, such as.
Taking two days to reply makes you automatically lose the debate. Sorry.
What type of app are you looking to build? The scope of the project would carry weight here.
Deployment of Rails sucks.

Django is far better thought out, and can be deployed in a very sane manner. A fleet of Mongrels is just an embarrassingly bad way to handle concurrency. "I know, let's write a crappy barely functional web server, spawn a metric ass ton of them, and then balance between them with a proxy. It'll be most leet and super fast! We'll call it a Best Practice. It'll be awesome." In fact, it's fragile, doesn't scale very well, and is complicated to configure. It's also a huge distraction from solving the problem in a sane way--people seem to think "deploying Rails" is solved by this and Capistrano, when really, it's just a new stack of problems.

Otherwise Rails kicks ass, and I like Ruby better than Python (but I'm a perl monger, so I might be brain-damaged into not seeing the beauty of Python). But I do tend to feel like Django is being written by grownups who've got years of development experience, while the Rails folks are making it up as they go along...sometimes going down really poorly chosen paths (I believe Mongrel is an example of this, but I'm no expert).

Then again, I think if I were starting an app from scratch I'd pick Catalyst. But I haven't spent enough time with any of them to know which one is really most productive for the way I work. I think you'll want to try them out, and not take advice from random dudes at news.yc.
Interesting: how did you hook up the camera with the iPhone? If I know Apple, there won't be any connectors on the iPhone, and also no API you could use to access the connected camera.
Is Scheme as good as Common Lisp?
I think Scheme doesn't have the all-powerful Macros, so would one be missing out on all the LISP goodness for choosing Scheme?

How usable are Macros, anyway? Does their use tend to produce readable code?
> Taking two days to reply makes you automatically lose the debate. Sorry.

It might occur to you that some people are busy working on their start-ups rather than spending all their time debating points of little consequence on YC news. I haven't posted at all in two days, not just on that thread.

It's also pretty hilarious you think you need to "award" Paul the "win", on his own site, based on a made-up technicality.

I can tell you don't really believe what he said, otherwise you wouldn't be trying to score brownie points! You want the whim in your favor.