skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Damnit! He stole my idea!

When I was in undergrad, I had a bunch of conversations with my friends about just why we were in college. It all came down to three things:

1. We wanted to show potential employers that we were smart enough to get into an elite private college.

2. We wanted to show potential employers that we were docile and persistent enough to continue attending said elite private college, even though we had accomplished #1.

3. We wanted to get to know lots of other people who were willing to pay $40K/year for the privilege of #1 and #2.

Of course, once you get out in the working world and actually get involved in hiring decisions, you quickly learn that there's not that much difference in the quality of education at various universities. Harvard's classroom instruction is not much better than any other top-tier college, and may actually be worse. MIT's is probably better, but it's nothing that a couple of guys from UVA (ahem, Reddit) can't pick up in their spare time.

Instead, you look at the Education section on a resume because people have already done the hard work for you. Someone at Harvard painstakingly went through 18 years of that candidate's life and decided that they were good enough for Harvard. I've got code to write: I don't have time to spend digging through a candidate's background. If it's good enough for Harvard, it's good enough for me.

So, the business idea I came up with was a simple certification program. We'd look at all your test scores, administer a few additional tests, have you complete a project or two, talk to previous people you've worked with, and generally decide if you're worthy or not. We'd set the bar high enough that the average Harvard or MIT grad would fail. And if you pass, we give you a college degree - all without having to put up with the bullshit aspects, like going to classes or forking over a couple hundred dollars. You're responsible for your own education, we just say whether you've educated yourself.

I wonder if I should've put this down under "other ideas" on my yCombinator app.
Is Google too powerful?
I have no idea what their reasons are, but probably the biggest value for them will be the attention they get.
Iminlikewithyou overview on Business 2.0
Very cool post. I don't think this is limited to Lisp though. I bet that if a big company acquired a company whose product was written in Python/Ruby/etc then they'd consider rewriting into C# or Java. And they'd have the same issues that Yahoo and Sony had, as expressed in this article.
What an angry letter. They upped the quality of the music and charged a little more for it, there's nothing wrong with that. They charge what they think the market is willing to bear, not what it might be "truly worth." A Louis Vuitton bag costs a whole lot less to make than to sell, but prices will never go down, because that's what people are willing to pay.

If others join in to compete in the DRMless music wave, then at best we can hope it will drive the price down. That's competition at its best, an effort to capture the market by constantly producing something better OR cheaper (and not necessarily both). At the very least, you're getting something better.
While I don't consider anything patentable, I just put "No" on the application.
I'd like to see sortable views. Full links vs domains. I found myself filtering the links trying to spot new domains which would lead me to new things i haven't seen - kinda like how i got to emilys hub to just see what new 2.0s have popped up.

It'd be interesting a tag cloud view or word frequency count, kinda like that other site i saw where you can read whats on peoples minds in twitter the past min, hour, day etc.

I like the idea of at a glance views of twitter data since it so fleeting.
Oh it's definitely got the "we're the only smart guys here" feeling. It can be funny for a story or two, but I do get tired of the negativity.

What might be cooler is always suggesting another way of doing things. Maybe using the case study approach. Here's what went wrong, and here's what we're going to do to fix it. That'd be a cool site.
Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech 2005
StumbleUpon has a new look. Reminds me of iLike
Startup Meme ComScore Files for IPO
Comscore Files For IPO: Ajax Is A 'Risk Factor'
Angel groups optimistic about 2007
Interesting stats:

1) 7.4--the average # of investments per angel group

2) $242k--the average amount for a single round of financing
8 Sneaky, Clever, and Downright Dirty Ways To Quit Your Job
Pingdom Says Google Sucks When It Comes to Staying Live
That's pretty interesting. Thanks for posting a link! Now if I can find a way to actually FIND some angel investors - I'd feel so much better!
Dude, I know they have beach volley arenas on MV. Maybe they're looking for people that know how to play it.

I think having a cool dog helps to get there too :)

Java, C, perl, php, enginnering skills? What are they for on google?

BTW to work with GWT is more about solving puzzles than knowning about programming languages and stuff.

At the very end, doesn't matter what they are looking for. I've a buddy working on Google that learned everything he does there. He has a degree on marketing and works on adwords support team.
In our experience, these official angel groups are a waste of time. They don't get technology, and they're very slow and bureaucratic.

Real angels often form a syndicate to invest in a startup. That kind of one-time group is ok, of course.
I'd say, XP (extreme programming) is for Entrepreneurs.
Not only for coders, for everyone that needs speed and quality that are variables on opposite sides of the equation.
Addictions only last until you find something more addictive.
Is the test of worth then based upon the group being "official" or "syndicate"?
Hey I'm glad you posted that. There's a group in my area but I hadn't spent a lot of time targeting them yet. Might put that off for a bit.

I actually know some people who do this sort of thing but don't belong to any publicly identified association. Actually this is a benefit of having been in the consulting world and getting to meet different folks. There are indeed angels out there and they're definitely looking for strong teams and ideas.
Technorati Unveils State of Technorati
My issue would be, aside from a passing interest on what people are talking about... Why would I visit?

Perhaps a list of popular twitter people? Something to make people want to keep visiting...
Get 10GB Free Space For Sharing
MBET - Masters of Business, Entrepreneurship, and Technology
Seth's idea is one that i'm sure a lot of people have thought of recently. I know i have a bunch of ideas written on scrap paper about it. I'm just glad to see someone might be doing something cool to circumvent the current college standard.

As much as i talk about college being a big fat waste of time and money, I generally enjoyed my time spent there. I had an awesome marketing job with one of the greatest companies/brands in the world and made some stellar contacts. It was the job offers halfway through college that showed me that the experience was worth MUCH more than the diploma. Finding out that jobs that "require" college degrees really just require proof that you are capable and determined was a great realization.

If you can demonstrate to a company that you have what it takes, waiting for you to finish your degree could be a waste of time for all parties involved.

So if your goal is to get a good job... it is entirely possible without a degree. Your friends and family may tell you otherwise, and very few people will encourage you to drop out to take a job... but it's your decision. Having a degree hardly dictates your happiness or success as a person.

I ended up leaving school after 3.5 years. Not to take a job, just because it was clearly a waste of my time. I wanted to focus on starting/building my company, and school was just getting in the way of that. Incidentally I found (sorta like Seth) a way that I could get my last semester's worth of credits from my university - so i'll still have that "all mighty piece of paper" in a couple months.

My suggestion to people usually is: Do what you want! Fitting the social norm is easy and will probably work out for you, but it might not be the best choice. If I were to go to college again, I'd study something that interested me as a person. Not something that I felt was a happy medium between interesting and a safe career path.

You should go to college to learn about something you think is cool & enjoy your time spent there. Study art or music, history of physics... something that will make you want to attend early morning class discussions. Get involved on campus, network with people, and use your free-time to read and figure out how you're going to make your mark. If you're just going to school to prepare for a job... rethink why you'd spend your time and money being lectured and quizzed on material from drab books who's curriculum is behind the times anyway. If you are planning to start a company, you'll know for yourself if college is important to you or not.
OTOH, James has a few million in the bank from HotOrNot's previous profits. So he can afford to take some risks.
I'll have to say though, this one is pretty good.

http://worsethanfailure.com/Articles/Really_Unique_Passwords.aspx
How many Y Combinator startups have stayed in Cambridge or Bay Area?
ClickTale Launches Heatmaps
I'm interested in how many Y Combinator startups have stayed in the area where they were formed, or if they've moved "Back Home" or to other cities.
Overall the more successful startups are less likely to move "home." And among successful ones that did, in all but one case, home happened to be a startup hub. E.g. Iminlikewithyou went to NYC, TextPayMe to Seattle. The one exception so far is Wufoo, who moved back to Florida.
I think Lisp is simply the right choice for great applications, whether entrepreneur driven or otherwise. For Corporations, if the managers don't understand the value of Lisp, they will opt for different solutions, even if those solutions destroy the value that Lisp offered. Perhaps the only barrier to wider Lisp adoption is an education barrier?
Is this basically a repackaging of their existing affiliates program?

Either way - Amazon clearly doesn't get it. Their blog references blogs.inspions.net as an example of someone using the double underline for their new Context Links. Well not only is Thought Garage using no-underline ... the context links are completely irrelevant.

http://img238.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture2zz1.png

This is not more effective advertising, this is more
Sucks.
auctomatic "moved" back to London in the sense that we're filing visa applications to get back out there asap. what's more interesting is the number of Cambridge startups that end up in SV (usually in the Crystal Towers building)
where is the crystal towers building?
Google Testing Auctioning of TV Ads
A list of popular twitter people already exists, see: twitterholic.com.

Your right, I would need to work on the value proposition.
That's pretty much what I was expecting; thanks for the confirmation.
With all due respect to the Sony and Yahoo engineers/managers I wonder if the shortcomings of the reimplemenations have less to do with the choice of programming language and more to do with the characterestics of people doing the work. I have a suspicion that the "Lisp startups" of the past tended to be composed of particularly intelligent people.
Online Ads Offer Best ROI
Not bad at all. It overcomes some of the inherent problems with internet dating. Basically if you can make an environment where girls won't get bombarded by tons and tons of creepy dudes, you'll get more and more hot girls from different areas, not just in California. More and more desirable, and approachable girls is a winning formula.
I have personally seen Lisp stamped out for political reasons. I had been tasked with generating C code from a textual description of a finite state machine. With my boss's permission (also a Lisp programmer) I used scheme to take in the descriptions and output C code. It hooked right into the Makefiles and worked well. Despite the fact that the solution worked and that there were several engineers on staff who were Lisp programmers this did not make it through review. A senior engineer who had been with the company for a long time (who'd never programmed in Lisp) had major objections. He pulled the right strings and we were forced to reimplement it all in C. I suspect one of real problems for Lisp is the presence of this sort of anti-Lisp person in the industry.
JobTonic - Replace headhunters and earn cash (UK)
So where is some good data as to how much traffic can convert and how much CPM one can get with various types of traffic? I've been all around googling this to come up with almost nothing. I know one must work on getting users first, but this is not always a viable method, and sometimes one must worry about monetization later on.
CyberTwin - Create virtual clones to live and breathe on the web on your behalf
It's just an apartment building in San Francisco, but a freakish number of their units are rented by YC founders at this point. It feels more like a dormitory than an apartment building.
Bigstring.com could have funded over 200 ycombinator teams. Hurrah for baby steps!
Jimdo: a possible Weebly competitor, an easy to use site building tool
Thank you for the support.
Tweako now shares revenue and offer web bookmarking buttons
what about Inkling? they're in chicago, which is a decidedly lesser startup hub.
All I know is that the day after Startup School my cofounders and I starting scoping out places online to help with the move. :)
May I ask what your visa options are? (fellow non-US citizen here).
sounds like a fun environment, rent is a little high even by SF standards, and especially for a pre-funding startup, but i guess if/after the angel and vc rounds come, it is not such a concern.
20 most interesting wireless startups, Iminlikewithyou makes the list
GIVE THEM THE DDOS!!!!

;)
thanks for the link Matt, many hours of listening will follow. Do you know the location of the images for '2007 Recent founders Panel' that match this talk? http://weblava.net/2007-03/startup-school/Startup_School_2007-Recent_Founders.mp3
I'm really not sure why anyone would want to do this.

I'm sure the article is intended to be taken tongue-in-cheek, but if so, the humor may get lost on the audience..

I've left several jobs before, and I can certainly agree that there are good reasons and bad reasons.

When I left a job to go back to school, companies were very understanding- Generally they supported me, and wished me well in my academics.

At one job I had been with for several years, my immediate manager left, and the feel of the department went with him. While I liked the work the company was doing, I felt like we were floundering- I explained that I was loyal to my boss, we talked about it, and an understanding was had.

I think the key, like so many things, is communication.

Firmly explain that you're leaving, but that you want to make the transition as easy as possible.

Spent time documenting everything you do, to help provide transition documents for your replacement(s).

Finally, after leaving, stay in contact with any people from your previous job you got along with- These people will be ideal contacts later in life.

-Colin

(Granted that everything I'm suggesting is common-sense, but I've been surprised how many people seemingly insisted on leaving on bad terms...)
Yeah, true; ok, Wufoo and Inkling.
That's a very good point, Daniel .. thanks :)

It is true -- sometimes I get that feeling that I beat my up unnecessarily for no real reason, and get miserable. Then, it takes someone else (like my mentor), to point to me all the things I did right, which makes me go "oh yeah ..", I'm not a that dumb after all. HEH.

But you know what, if there's one thing I've learned from my previous job -- working in a team where I am the smartest person on board, IS NOT APPEALING to me. I specifically told my current boss, during the interview, that I _don't_ want to be the smartest guy on the team.

So basically its an infinite loop:

1. don't want to be the smartest person on the team

2. play catch up

3. go to (1)

So in all that three steps, the standard I set for myself is always higher and I never appear to have "met" my standards. Just like you said.

LOL

:)
Seattle startup event: Ignite Seattle - Thursday, April 5th
Autodesk's wireless location services API/platform for developers
Never Return Phone Calls Right Away
I believe these guys are the platform being used by Nextel, Verizon Wireless, and Vodafone for services tracking a user's location via their cell phone. Can anyone in the developers program using their API comment on the platform?
Greatest Asset, My... (Circuit City lays off 3,400 of their 'greatest assets')
100 Ways to Kill a Concept: Why Most Ideas Get Shot Down
same reason people are interested in popurls or the NYTimes' most-emailed-articles.. it's a filter. Throw up some google ads...

If there weren't horrible privacy implications, I'd be curious to see what would happen if AIM or gTalk mined their IM traffic and threw up the most popular/IM'ed links...
Listen Game: Like the ESP Game but for music
Business 2.0 on Justin.tv
I guess my advice is chopped liver? ;)
Helping users "feel the fear and do it anyway"
New Google mashup: combining maps and spreadsheets
Fact: North America accounts for only 20.9% of total Internet usage
I know with all the hype it is easy to build stuff for your friends or people in your region because that is whom we connect best with.

Yet knowing at the back of the mind that North America accounts for only about a fifth of the total Internet usage can help give a new perspective when we're thinking of ideas for the long-term.

Additional trends I noticed:

- Only 16.9% of the world population is currently online. That is after a 208.7% growth between 2000 and 2007.

- Africa, with three times the population of North America, has a mere 3.6% of its population online. That is after a 638.4% growth between 2000-2007.

- Asia, the largest region with 3.7 billion people, has merely 10.7% of the people on the Internet. That is after a 248.8% growth between 2000-2007.
users, not usage
Smart Quotes. And it's an issue in pretty much any web form... Go to Tools... | Autoformat | Autoformat As You Type, and turn off "replace straight quotes with smart quotes".

Then do a global search and replace... " and '.
But what are the stats for actual revenue/money spent/business done online, for each country?

What is the online buying power/marketability of US/UK/Euroland vs. other countries?
I used to read reddit, never commented/submitted anything, however. Reddit, these days, is full of things I have absolutely no interest in. n.yc is perfectly aligned with my interests. I hope it doesn't degenerate into another reddit.
I like your advice and I'll be taking it soon but right now I'm busy fighting some nasty bugs in the backend :)
Marketing Book Now Available for Free
True, not sure why they use the word "usage".
Wow, what PR firm do you use?
Good list.

I'd love to see radar combined with the photoriver concept on http://www.tat.se/images/demo/photoriver.mov
error - delete
PhotoRiver - Amazing slick mobile UI concept from TAT [scroll down and play photoriver]
Testing this - Is there no way to delete this? Dont want to spam
Quiz School A Digg-like Quiz Resource
Man, those Ustream guys are such fakers. They don't have any technology; they just use a laptop with a webcam and a wireless connection. And yet reporters keep mentioning them as if they were comparable.

A bit like the seed funding business, come to think of it...
How is Justin.tv any superior technology wise? He is still using a camera (a helmet cam) tied to a laptop which he carries on his back, right? And Justin uses EV-DO cards for wireless internet access. Admiditely, Justin.tv will probably trounce Ustream due to their content anyway but technology wise I dont see much difference..

I personally think there is a better way of doing this... Please see our YC app for more info ;-)
Is it just me or is this is a really long way of saying "be nice to people"?
Practical startup question: Do you founders pay for health insurance out of pocket while working full-time on your projects?
Any Boston founders/YC addicts wanna meet up?
I'm disinclined to think that this is PR motivated. The tool is pretty general, and FB has a history of open source involvement (notably, memcached, to which they contribute heavily).
Calling likewithyou a wireless startup is a pretty big stretch.
I find this question pretty interesting, not because I can meet up, but because you would come here to look for people, and not go to something like meetup.com.

meetup.com won't cut it. There should be something like a cross between meetup.com and flashmob.com and provide widgets for meet-up groups to relevant sites...
Good luck getting that degree accredited.[0] You've entirely elided the fundamental aspect of education: education. A college degree is not supposed to just be a certification that you are competent over a certain domain of facts, but rather an indication that you have spent 3-4 years thinking, applying yourself, and growing intellectually.

While autodidactism is certainly laudable, there is value in a corporate educational setting, namely the value of intellectual interaction. College is not so much about learning a set of data, but learning how to learn. (For the ultimate example, consider the Ph.D., a degree meant only to teach you to do research, and requiring legitimate research to attain it.)

Now, I'll admit, I was educated in a liberal arts[1] high school, and am currently pursuing a couple of liberal arts degrees. That is both why and because I believe education is about thinking, not committing facts to memory. I eschew academic engineering because it is (at my university, at least) primarily a series of courses that certify your knowledge of yet another parcel of facts. That is useless, educationally. As technical training,[2] great, but it's not education.

Your list of "why"s implies that, substantively, you were no different at the end of college than at the beginning, modulo a group of friends, and four years aging. If that is the case, I'm terribly sorry; you managed to miss most of your education.

[0] Mea culpa: this entire comment is a bit hot-headed. You've hit a pet peeve.
[1] Before you jump to conclusions: the liberal arts include the hard sciences.
[2] In all honesty, that's what engineering school is: a vocational education in an incredibly advanced vocation. (That's not a problem, really: I share my time between my liberal arts degrees and a fine arts program, which is also vocational education, in a (imho) advanced vocation.)
while i'm not the target market for this, has anyone played with it?

is it like iminlikewithyourprofilepicture?
4 EVDO cards on Sprint's network.
I thought so too but I wasn't sure all of the features that were involved with iminlikewithyou.
It's all their personal handiwork. And I've gotta say, it's damn good work these past couple weeks with all the coverage and mainstream publicity.
Good post!

It does however contains some potential misconceptions. Your brain does grow new neurons when you are old, but at a scale rather trivial compared to kids. Don't count on thse new neurons to hold your newly-mastered skill. They will not make you a native speaker of a new language.

Skill is developed by wiring, rewiring, and more rewiring, which for us mortals, per Ericsson, means "deliberate practice". If you work hard, you have a stab of reaching awesomehood. If you don't work hard, you are guaranteed to suck. The risks/benefits are clear. Work hard.

The problem is, some people's brains wire faster than others. And when speed is all the concern, some others are quickly deterred from attempting what they may eventually excel at. I think this is a problem of the education system. schools with big resources don't do as much to create experts as they do to attract them. /semi-rant