skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That's really not that bad of an idea. Probably.
I am also in Providence.
Someone recently posted http://www.submityourvote.com/ a few days ago. Seems like the same type of concept.
These flexible video displays are amazing.
http://www.sciencentral.com/articles/view.php3?article_id=21...
That's awesome. I don't think I'll ever use it because I don't like the idea of meeting completely random people, but the fact that he did so fast on the cheap is impressive.
Beautiful code has worked for me. In fact, you're using it to make this point.

One reason beautiful code works is that beautiful code roughly equals concise code, and concise code is easier to modify and easier to see bugs in.
If you disagree with something, just refute it.
This shows what a nice guy Fred is. How many VCs would advertise a bunch of promising deals to other VCs?
Bookmarking sites without no-follow tag
Disqus sign up.
I stumbled upon this linking from someone else's blog...

Not sure if this is something known, or something that shouldn't be known.

http://disqus.com/login/?next=/dashboard/account/%3Fnew%3D1
Jacksonville, FL / Austin, TX
Interesting. Here's a link to my (now failed) poll site: http://www.todotoh.com

Instead of choosing an answer, you either left your own answer or joined up with a person who you agreed with. The intent was to build networks of people based on who you agreed with.

Didn't work though. :)
I would've upvoted this for being a hilarious hack. Then I'd need to pick another couterbalance :)
Complete with original footnotes. :-)
I love the discussion part ...
This is one of the options in the poll (but it's a bit hard to tell now). This option was meant to see how many people visit Startup News who have no intention of doing a startup.
"I prefer clearly separating my work life and my fun life instead of living for my job"

That's likely because your job is not fun. If you were more invested in it (e.g., it fulfilled your dreams), you might feel differently.

Thinking that work doesn't have to be fun is what leads most people to dissatisfaction, IMO. I think the idea that your job should be a vehicle for fulfillment is a very important one. Time is scarce resource, and it is a shame that many people are willing to trade the bulk of their lives away helping someone else achieve his dreams rather than trying to achieve their own.

It occurs to me that the most liberating and frightening aspect of entrepreneurship is its lack of definition compared to traditional employment. Consider that a traditional employment relationship leaves the average employee little time for introspection, and it's easy to see that he's been trained to dream small and settle for the scraps of time he hasn't traded to his employer for a relatively small amount of money.
True enough.

It's just frustrating that something that has little evidence beyond the anecdotal is taken as gospel.

We've got to remember that being involved in tech start-ups or being in college tends means that our own experience is limited to that which we see everyday, and isn't necessarily the norm.

For example: "A 2005 CGC study of 3,000 job seekers found that 13 percent started their own businesses in the second quarter, up from 9.9 percent in the same quarter a year ago. And of that group, 86.6 percent were over 40, evidence that the next big wave of entrepreneurs may be seasoned workers, not college dropouts in Silicon Valley with a breakthrough technology concept." From here: http://www.usnews.com/usnews/biztech/articles/060403/3primet...

And Here:
"...last available government statistics on business startups revealed that the average entrepreneur is white, male, aged 36," From Here: http://www.startups.co.uk/The_average_entrepreneur.YYB-B-hoS...

And Here: "According to a Vanderbilt University study the number of entrepreneurs age 45 to 64 will grow by 15 million by 2006. That"s compared to a 4 million decline for entrepreneurs age 25 to 44." From: http://www.ez2find.info/entrepreneur/Small_Business_QA_Entre...

Now, until we see statistics that suggest the failure rate is a lot lower for younger entrepreneurs, the age question has obviously been blown out of proportion based on a few opinions, valid as they may be.
I hope this doesn't read back negatively but YC is looking a lot like Triple-A ball in major league baseball.

A talent farm for players brought up through the draft, you let VCs scout and choose who they want on their team... hah cool.
I was with the author on that until that line. This group, better than any other I've found on the internet, surely understands how little the actual idea of facebook is worth.

Why didn't Zuckerberg's friends make the site themselves? Maybe because it was easier to not make it, and then demand money from him later especially after facebook became really successful.
I have to mention that your blog looks better laid out than your main page.
Unsolicited Advice alert
"We are like Myspace & Facebook, but with more of the things you want" sounds pretty weak. I suggest you state your value proposition and leave it at that.
I am actively working (part time) on a project that I intend to build a startup around, but it is not currently a startup.
Was YC demo day recorded?
Wow, guys. This is pretty disgusting. The first set of comments were really interesting, then.. What? I'm a bigot? What by'view said was bullshit? Wonderful. Grow up.

Yeah, maybe it was silly to call attention to the fact that he's approaching 60, but guess what? People get old. When they get older they get more and more tired. So it's really great, even inspirational, that he is still fighting the good fight even though he's done this kind of thing his whole life.

Jeez.
i thought disqus was just a commenting system add-on for blogs and websites... but they are working on almost an exact replica of what I'm working on.
You can learn a lot about the character of VCs by their blogs. I had a gut feel Fred is an up and up guy, and from what you confirm that seems to be the case. Hopefully I'll get the chance to do business with him.
Of course they don't give the two options equal treatment. Why should they? All that means is that they don't want you to skip the step. They do provide an option to skip, however.

Maybe you missed it because you wrote the story with a sensationalist conclusion in mind. At least you got to say 'fuck', right?
Social Media, Ltd. Launches Centralized Blog Concept for Web 2.0 Companies at SXP.com
Facebook is like AOL and MySpace. It will remain popular. It will make a lot of money. It will make its founders rich. It won't live up to its hype. Given its closed, proprietary nature, it won't be where true innovation happens on the web.

I don't blame the Facebook crew for the overhyping of their product. That blame rests with the investment community, tech journalists, and a reasonable-sized chunk of the blogosphere, who collectively are about as discerning as a clique of 15-year-old girls. They think that what's "hot" is whatever they think everyone else thinks is "hot," which creates an echo-chamber effect surrounding every half-way successful web business that comes down the pike.
You are already competing with Google, or better yet, the expectations they have created. Because of their immense ad revenue they can afford to buy companies and apps and then give them away for free.

Although your product may be different you're already competing for people's time and attention online. If you're building something to give away for free - then you are opening up the possibility of being Google-ized (as well as the positive of being bought by them)

Abstractly speaking, obviously.
The footnote links in the article leads back to http://www.paulgraham.com/equity.html . They don't even know how to steal content correctly.
Yes, do tell; inquiring minds want to know.
I'd like name an exotic location, but I am in good old New Jersey :)
If all goes according to plan, I'll be moving to the SF area in January 2008.
You can get a sense of just how irrational buyer behavior really is now that you understand why people are afraid to leave their overvalued software.

Uh huh. I'd been upgrading FF consistently until I realized that every new version just got worse and worse. So now I'm done upgrading. I understand that the "X" mark to close tabs is now on every tab, rather than on the right side of the pane. So, there: I've missed that ridiculous change.

It's worse with other things. The Java IDE Eclipse starting at 2.0 made a simple change: The search box defaults to "Case Sensitive", and never learns that I wan't this unchecked. Believe it or not, this destroys my productivity. So, I've learned not to upgrade Eclipse anymore. I don't care if they add a million new features--they've effectively destroyed the software for me with one stupid change.

There is no shortage of people who regret the 2000 > XP > Vista upgrade/descent path.

I remember the first VCR my family had. Put tape in. Press play. It works Want to try improving on that? You can't. DVDs are a nightmare by comparison. There's a 15 step process between holding the disc in your hand and actually watching a movie.

Consumers are more savvy than you think, in some ways. They realize, at some level, that companies just release the same thing over and over, sometimes with a new talking paperclip, sometimes with a new talking dog, and it's otherwise the same. The transition costs aren't worth it.

Of course, I'm talking about upgrades rather than Brand X > Brand Y transitions. That might actually be worse, since everything changes.
Doesn't work in Opera on Ubuntu.
I doubt it - they don't record much else that goes on there, so that people can be candid. Makes sense, because the whole thing is put on for the benefit of the people there, be they buyers or sellers.
I'm getting pretty board of chat about the supposed web 2.0 bubble.

Instead of creating a new venture I might just bet against the 'Web 2.0 crash' materialising'. Any takers?
Rapleaf Engineering Blog
Pounding A Nail: Old Shoe or Glass Bottle?
Well, has he taken his checkbook out yet? :)
Why should they? Respect for their potential users.

Implying that I missed because of how I'd written my take on it seems a little odd. You do realize that I wrote it after the fact, right?

Of course you do. But it's more fun to pretend that I don't "get it."

Had I wanted to be sensationalist, I could have done so.
wow, my karma really took a hit, I wasn't trying to spam here guys
Hmm, a good question was, how much would you have paid for a crack at Demo Day.

My Answer: 5% of my start-up. We're three months old.
I don't think that's synonymous with what he said: that he didn't find his work fulfilling. That's a higher threshold. If you could get paid to play video games, you might like your job, but probably wouldn't find it fulfilling.
Google has a huge case of NIH syndrome:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_Invented_Here
iYomu Lets Community Choose $1M Winner
Get Your Manager To Prioritize Your Tasks
It's the kind of book you would read at say Stanford GSB or Harvard Business School--it's definitely reputable.

That said, davidw just summarized pretty much everything a tech entrepreneur would get out of the book.

All it says is that the wide-open markets are "blue oceans," the competitive ones are "red oceans." Many of the most successful companies started out in a blue ocean. Thus, you should opt to be in a blue ocean too.
For me personally, it's less about meeting random people through Facebook and more about getting to know people I randomly meet in real life.

For instance, if I meet someone (hopefully a cute girl) at a party, then using Facebook I can strengthen that relationship via inviting her to parties, writing on her wall, and so on. So I use Facebook to enhance existing relationships, not to develop new ones.

Also, I will never friend someone I haven't meet in real life. That's what Myspace is for.
Best of July 2007 - Smashing Magazine
Idea of the Week - Edit Queue Website
This completely makes sense and in some ways justifies the success of companies like Apple and 37signals. Rather competing on features, companies should compete on ease-of-use.

Getting past the endowment effect also comes down to using concrete metrics. What's more effective? "My product has the latest and greatest features, it is so much better than the competition" or "If you use my product, it will save you X amount of time and/or Y dollars"? Obviously the latter. Saving time and money is a compelling value proposition--they are both easy-to-understand concepts that cut through consumers' irrationality bubble. Naturally, to be able to make this claim, you've got to make something that consumers want and that is also easy to use.

For a great book on this topic, check out Made To Stick by Chip and Dan Heath.
Why Apple doesn't sell to the enterprise market
via Raganwald's submission on Programming Reddit
Second Life gets a well-deserved drubbing in Time
Except for YouTube, DoubleClick, Zenter, Deja, Blogger, JotSpot, Picasa, Keyhole, Phatbits, Urchin, Writely, hmm...OK, so you're either wrong or we disagree on the meaning of "Google has a huge case of NIH syndrome".
The tasty effects of good branding
You're also competing with others who might be acquired by Google who do the same thing you're doing (only you're competing to be the one acquired by Google, or a Google competitor).
The Zenter guys knew Google had a presentation product in development from before they started. Turned out alright for them.
A good book that I read that actually talks about the mental processes involved in attempting to create something innovative is this:

http://www.squeezedbooks.com/book/show/5/lateral-marketing-n...

It takes you through cataloging the 'dimensions' of an existing product, then changing one or more radically, and going back to look and see if it could make sense. It's an interesting mental exercise, if nothing else.
So the value of a service on the internet is solely to be derived from it's suitability to deliver advertisements to it's users? I think not...

As for the casinos, it was obvious from the start that they would be shut down eventually.
Cross Platform Desktop Applications with Python
I doubt the solution is to force the phone companies into doing something they don't want to. That will just create a horrible service.
Managing your time is important, but might be even more important to know how to manage it yourself. It's better to have the skill of knowing how to prioritize things than to just listen to what someone else says. Of course you can share your priorities with others to see if they are in line with project goals.
Founder conundrum - How will my equity numbers look? - Solved!!
Tirana Albania, and San Francisco
Ask News.YC: What sort of things do you do when you're so bummed you can't be productive?
What's your guilty pleasure?
That is cool. I wish I could enter a zip code to relocate the circle much easier.
My startup is powered by 200mg / day of gray market modafinil.
I try to minimize the rebound time. One thing that helps me with that is to reread Paul's essays. (Is it bad to admit that? It must look like kissing up. Whatever, I don't care.) They're short enough that I can sit down with one and tell myself "Okay, when you're done, get back to what you need to do." I feel sort of.. revitalized afterwards.
lulz. Let's see him try and apply to YC now too. =)
I think they do want to trick their users into giving up their email passwords, as do the other pages that employ that method.
Read News.YC
Vote up if you dislike Karma Whoring!
This post is an infinite loop of hypocrisy!
Idea came from It's Just Lunch dating service that's been around for a while, it would seem.
Taking a quick nap, shower, or exercising helps me rejuvenate.
Folks here are getting a little too obsessed with karma points.
best. analogy. ever.

too bad it was lost on over half the audience here, and I'm gonna get down-voted for this, but yeah, just like the minors.
San Francisco, CA - Financial District & North Beach ;)
To those of us in short-season Class A, Triple-A looks pretty good.
Those are all politics, all the time. Something like cnn.com has a much better mix of stories, even if they're certainly not stellar journalists. People are motivated to get involved in politics stories for free (everyone has an opinion, and to judge by lots of people, don't even need much in the way of facts to have one), but much less so to go out and do real reporting.
Second Life's user base has an average age of 32 IIRC.

Says Gartner research chief Steve Prentice: "Second Life is moving into a phase of disillusionment."

Gartner talking about MMOGs is like John McCain talking about Nine Inch Nails.

The article isn't a drubbing, it's merely pointing out issues that virtual communities have to deal with as a result of real-world situations.
Lisp NYC: If you're tired of waiting for Paul Graham to release Arc
Breathalyzer Source Code
I'd rather wait five years than use something mediocre.
What do I do if I like karma whoring? Aaaahhhh!
I voted you up to prove to you that karma doesn't matter.

Whoa, that's deep isn't it?
Then make your own thread. Perhaps people will appreciate the honesty.
I am only posting because this gives me a karma point. There I said it!
Uh oh, I hope news.yc doesn't asymptotically approach SLASH (Slashdot's CMS).
Or kill if you're an admin and it's offtopic...
ok boys, enough ass kissing, get back to work.
I think your theory should be tested with capitalism. Your theory would only be correct if karma has no (or negligible) monetary value. Has anyone sold a news.YC account on ebay? I should give it a try. Could be interesting :)!
Another question: was anyone in attendance asked to sign an NDA before seeing the presentations of companies still in stealth-mode? Most bloggers aren't talking about the ones that haven't released and I was wondering if they're just being ethical or if they were prohibited from doing so.
It's cool that you actually googled some stats.

But let's face it -- we're on news.ycombinator.com, where the majority of the applicants and chosen entrepreneurs seem to be college kids or people in their twenties. (with a few outliers?)

A large chunk of the general population thinks it's entrepreneurial to join up with Amway, or do a consulting biz. (which it might be, just not what we're talking about here)
No one had to sign anything. We just asked people verbally not to write about startups that aren't launched yet.
The Internet (Apparently) Isn't Ready For IPTV
Go running.
I was a bit turned off by the Spock sign up process myself, but for different reasons. First, the invite email was extremely vague - "a new search engine that organizes information around people"? I thought it might be a new human-assisted search site (something which has been in the news a bit lately), but wasn't sure. Second, clicking the invite list brings you to a very basic sign-up page with no information. As I went through the sign-up process, I really wasn't sure what I was actually getting myself into, but since I'm pretty trusting I just went ahead anyway. Once I finally got to the site, I still didn't know what it was, but I recognized that it was some sort of search engine, so I typed in a search for a bookstore I like and got one result - a person who said they liked something or other which happened to use the same word as the bookstore's name. In the end, I really wouldn't have known what was going on at Spock if my friend didn't send me a link to an article about the site which nicely explained what it was. It's actually a pretty interesting idea, and I can see that the site would work better once more people sign up. Still, Spock needs to work on their user experience, especially on their sign up process.
(Additionally, although far less important, they need to work on their icon: their little person favicon looks exactly like the calvin klein logo.)
yeah, but the ass kissing feels good to me!

fred
Maybe the reason is that the enterprise market is downstream. They're not the trendsetters. If you get all the individual users using Macs, eventually big cos will have to switch. Just as happened with desktop computers, in fact.

So maybe Apple ignores this market because they know they'll get it automatically (but only when) they're the default for individual users.
This just in: run4yourlives (karma: 116 and growing!) is for sale.

All serious offers will be considered. I don't need no stinkin' ebay. :-)
Cool. Probably email is the best option for pinging.
>But let's face it -- we're on news.ycombinator.com, where the majority of the applicants and chosen entrepreneurs seem to be college kids or people in their twenties. (with a few outliers?)

In other words: Don't let the facts get in the way of a good opinion! :-)

I get you, and believe me I agree, but as entrepreneurs, it's always good to keep two things front and centre:

1. We live as part of a much larger world.
2. Our perceptions often lie to us.

If I'm the only one preaching that, so be it. Perhaps it helps one lucky person someday.
Even if it's not rarer for old people, a lot of people have the perception that it is. What's wrong with being inspired by an example that runs counter to that perception?

It's pretty harsh to say that the poster is intolerant of older people because he expects fewer of them to have the startup mentality. At the very worst, it's just naive.
I don't see a problem with it. They are still providing the source. What is the issue? IMO, it isn't any less in the 'spirit of open source' to do something like this.
Alexa Says YouTube Is Now Bigger Than Google. Alexa Is Useless
Hey Fred, (assuming it really is you), I just noticed you're using the disqus comment system on your blog. Pretty cool! PG, have you given any thoughts to using the disqus system in news.YC?
Crush found dead - TvByDemand | Forums | WWE
Head down to the Ferry Building; that's where the summer sun shines in SF. Indulge in a glass of red wine and watch people.
"...if someone pays your fee and gets a copy [of the source], the GPL gives them the freedom to release it to the public" -- from GPL FAQ. Which means, any paying customer has the freedom to request the sources and then publish them. Did MySQL folks miss something?
I wish I could vote this down. One man's karma whoring is another man's good intent.
No Employees for a while - Plentyoffish won't hire
"All I can say is there is going to be a major major change to the web and the economics of Online Dating are about to dramatically change."

Sounds... well, dramatic.
Arrington uses Feedlounge's demise to disagree with 37 Signals about charging for software
Web users reading more, saying less, study says
"... All I can say is there is going to be a major major change to the web and the economics of Online Dating are about to dramatically change. So for now I'm just going to overspend on tech and buy my way out of any trouble and maybe hire someone part time to do customer service stuff. ..."

duck around that obstacle, spend the money only when needed ~ smarter than we (I) give credit? ~ http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40810
The 'SL idea' is ok (virtual 3D worlds) but for it to really work you need an 'open SL' where you can create your own land with your own hardware.

Where's the money to be made in that?
It's hard to know yet whether it's mediocre, though, eh? Perry Metzger is a smart guy, so I'll wait and see.
transparency in action. you can confirm it here ~ http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2007/08/bosto...
Digg-nation is huge! Community is more powerful than money or technology
Isn't the difference that startups aren't going public? How are small, closely held companies going to cause an economic meltdown?

Why doesn't anyone listen to the guy that coined the phrase?

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/12/web_20_compact.htm...

Computer hardware and software are now commodities. The value in the computing industry has moved. "Data is the Intel Inside."

Pay attention.
What a suckup!