skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is pretty depressing, even for Dilbert. Which is why you should App to YC!
Thanks, I'll remember! It seems like SBCL is the general consensus. I hope I can figure out a way to get it to interface with a C library.
Startup is hiring software developers: ITDM (a Mobile Virtual Network Operator). Work from home. Good pay.
Disclaimer: I work for them - you can ask me questions!

The founder, Patrick Zimmer, has a regular internet radio show on entrepreneurship. http://www.1510.com http://www.livewithjay.com/

---------------------
Software Engineer

IT decision Management (MVNO Sherpa) specializes in providing full service technology support for Mobile Virtual Network Operators. We have over 20 years of combined mobile computing experience and are very involved in developing the MVNO market. Our experience has been built in the trenches, developing next generation wireless products/services for over 10 years so our customer's have a unique advantage when it comes to launching their products and services.

The Software Engineer will work with the team to provide analysis, design, development and implementation of software for MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) systems. In addition the individual will provide customers with support and analysis in business intelligence, provisioning, activations/deactivations, and subscriber billing.

-----------------------

Senior Software Engineer

BS or MS in CS or technical field

Prior experience working with MVNO / MVNEs preferred

Proficient in server-side Java development and OOP

Experienced in CORBA programming (preferably CORBA 2.3 or later)

Experience with ASP .NET web application and UI development.

Strong skills in SOAP/XML, HTML technologies

Extensive experience in database development (SQL, PL/SQL)

Candidate should poses effective verbal and written communication skills

------------------------

Software Engineer

BS or MS in CS or technical Field

Proficient in server-side Java development and OOP

Experience with ASP .NET web application and UI development.

Strong skills in SOAP/XML, HTML technologies

Experience in database development (SQL, PL/SQL)

Candidate should poses effective verbal and written communication skills
You know, I could take that postingand make some wording changes.

"And, in this case, history says, IBM will always be key to a central computing-centric world....For now minicomputers seem to have the baton, but as we move into a very rich data environment....No matter what, no-one is going to trust their corporate data entirely to desktop computers. They will share it there, but not leave it there." and so forth.

This would have seemed very plausible thirty years ago, when IBM was dominant. And, indeed, nobody pushed IBM out of the dinosaur pens. There are still IBM mainframes out there, and they don't have much competition in the mainframe business. Of course, IBM wasn't pushing anything as relatively bad as Vista in those days.

Microsoft isn't going to die because of being pushed off the desktop, unless they do it themselves with increasingly unusable operating systems. They will cease to be relevant as applications become less tied to the underlying desktop OS, much as IBM ceased to be relevant as data became less tied to the central mainframe.
Stop the spam and lying links
Google buys Doubleclick for $3.1 Billion
"go where?" I don't get it.

At any rate, failure is a part of business. Think of a store owner: He sits and watches people enter and exit all day long without buying anything. Failure, failure, failure. If you can't stomach it, then _that_ is your real problem, not what PG thinks--remember that PG has his prejudices when it comes to technology, and I don't think he likes games very much.
This is a good point, and there are some of us in Atlanta meeting next week. We've met purely as a result of being in this group.
Man, if this has been your greatest challenge and biggest disappointment to date, get ready for the journey ahead!

One lesson I have learned over the years from disappointments is never to get too attached or confident when applying for something. I felt we had a very strong application but I always know there is decent chance we won't get accepted and it would have little to do with the quality of our idea or product--communication and bad luck, may be.
I can sympathise. I think my fiancee put it best though, when she asked me "Do you want to turn out like Uncle Rico, always moaning about how life could have been if only coach had put you in the game?"
Keep your head up man, it's all good. YC said in the email that it's an error-prone process. I know of at least one blunder they made. :)
No. A bubble happens when you have a huge number of trades at prices well above the fundamental value of items being traded. In this case I assume the items we're referring to are "small, internet-oriented companies". At least right now there is not a high enough volume of trades happening to drive prices up into the astronomical range characteristic of a bubble.
Seconded. Just be aware that its implementation of equalp for strings is dog-slow (compared to clisp at least).
The best domain name search tool I've used
I don't think I've seen this here, and it's something I have fun with when thinking through ideas.
It's very useful -- an example of good Ajax use. One of the guys behind YC-funded Snipshot made this.
News.YC dashboard widget for your Mac
In this instance if we consider the variable the number of investments being made into internet startups are we seeing bubble like behaviour? Are valuations much higher now (artificially so - post youtube etc) than before? Is this leading to herd-like behaviour both in entrepreneurs looking to create opportunity and investors chasing deals?
Cool, but how is this different than http://teleflip.com?

Also, it's been possible to send text messages to your phone for a while, see: http://lifehacker.com/software/cell-phones/send-sms-from-email-127033.php
Cluztr, the Anti Bookmarking Service that Makes Browsing a Social Experience
Maybe the issue is that YC is not funding stand-alone games but focusing on web technologies which would mean it has nothing to do with the merits of your plan. (Is the game web-based?)
$3.1B in cash. That's pretty sick.

I'm guessing Doubleclick is basically going to stay independent (especially since they don't have any stake in Google). There's probably substantial culture mismatch, in which case integration of the company would be tricky.
Navel gazing
There might be some deals going on in anticipation of a bubble. Sort of hedge deals being made to guarantee a spot on the leading edge of some hypothetical bubble. But I don't think all the deals fall into that category and many of them are pretty legitimate investments and at fair prices.
The original "Getting Real"
Talked to a friend at doubleclick and the office is going wild!
I believe Google primarily bought DoubleClick for its audience reach and vast customer base, aside from playing keep-away from Microsoft. You could think of this deal as more pricey customer acquisition versus corporate integration.
btw it only works for cell phones in the US.
and on popular carriers...
(using the email-to-sms interface the carriers provide -- for example if you send an email to PHONENUMBER@tmomail.net, then a sms message will be delivered to PHONENUMBER) see the lifehacker link that sam odio provides above.
Sorry to "Hack" the site, but the other post's title wasn't very interesting (even though it is the title of the article!). I just read this and thought the readers of ynews would enjoy it.
Fun. Hook it up to a thesaurus and synonym dictionary and it will kick everyone else's butt.

Meanwhile, I had fun seeing how many "a"'s I had to type before a .com became available. And it was this many - aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.com

What were the first 50 guys thinking?
Sad but true... If you were starting a company today, you'd still fear Microsoft if gates were still at the helm.
The brain thinks in Lisp parse trees
I find it interesting that all the people who tell you how to be successful, are not successful at anything other than telling you how to be successful.
Official blog post with a 5 page FAQ:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/next-step-in-google-advertising.html
FeedBurner Burns AOLs Feeds
clay@woolam.org
"because surely you could get 15000$ somehow"

I think you live in a different world than some of the rest of us. Not only is 15K a lot of money (more than half of what my wife and I made last year, and we're not doing badly here in east Alabama), but it's often the case that the only people who could possibly get that kind of money are friends and family who've already paid for most or all of a house. So, the question becomes, would you rather work on this part time, or try to convince your parents or friends to bet their home on your startup?
just realized that you gave away all your others, oops
Using Quantum Physics to Stay Positive
Though it would suck to get sand in your laptop.
Interesting also to note that GoogleWiFi isn't designed to work in buildings. You might get a weak signal, but chances are you'll have to be outside to get reception. Just fyi, based on my experiences in Mountain View.
Google Acquires DoubleClick for $3.1 Billion in Cash
As I understand it, they have quite a large audience (hundreds of thousands of unique IPs/day), and the goal of any acquirer of a site like that is to convert traffic to ad sales.
This feels a lot different. The barrier to entry has dropped a lot, so we're seeing lots of small start-ups as opposed to the gigantic ones last time around. Also the monetizing seems to be coming from larger tech companies (Google, Yahoo, etc.) as opposed to non-technical outside investors.
Not only that, but everyone knows you're also a Pomeranian or a Chihuahua. A very smart one, but small; the majority are "web 2.0" sites with a 3-month ramp-up.

A few are a bit larger, like Lassie.
"Q. Does Google plan to eventually offer DoubleClick's existing services for free?
A. At this time, we will continue to operate DoubleClick's services as they have been. They have proven to be a successful business and we don't have immediate plans to change their business model."

This question sounds like they assume publishers think adsense is a free service when in fact, they refuse to reveal what percent of revenue publishers are getting per click/impression.

Don't be evil - Sneaky - We want to store the world's data - Evil tyrant.
I've been following YC fairly closely since their start and have never come across anything that gave the impression that they would accept "any team good enough". Think about it - they have very limited resources - particularly of time, and there is just no way they could take on every team "good enough" unless they grew their staff and created a large investment organization, which is not what they're trying to do. Even big VC's and angels don't accept "any team good enough" - they just don't have the time and it wouldn't make sense for them to spread themselves so thin.

You said: "That would mean, incidentally, that anyone who was rejected this round might have been accepted in the last, or might be accepted in the next one."

Yes, that is exactly right according to what Paul said.
Looks like someone put "On Lisp" in HTML
Well put. Thanks for posting.
Yeah, this is a really great one. Paul is a bit more succinct than 37Signals, though I loved their book too.
The acquisition price they quote for reddit is wrong. (And no, I'm not saying if it was higher or lower.)
I think we're going to see far more companies fail than succeed in this current boom, but the crazy optimism of the first bubble seems gone. The bets are smaller and more numerous, so some are bound to take off.
Know a good host for tons of space and bandwidth?
I certainly dont believe that Microsoft couldnt have outbid Google, I think that DoubleClick made a lot of sense with Google because its largest client AOL is also one of the largest clients and partners of Google. Going with Microsoft would have resulted in a potential lose of AOL. So may be they used Microsoft to pump their valuation and then let Google do the rest. Poor ol Microsoft, the once powerful company, that used to erode market share and valuations of others is now being used to increase just that. May be Microsoft really is dead now.
if someone wants to work with me on this, email me (sri at defcraft dot org). work to take this public (right now it won't handle a massive load) -- it is build with ruby on rails and python, so if you have productions experience with rails -- that'll be helpful.
Google's Acquisitions Chief Looking For "Crazy" Ideas
I'm using DreamHost.
Not perfect but has 200GB of disk storage and 2TB of bandwidth.

http://www.dreamhost.com/r.cgi?keitairank
i don't know what teleflip does, but this app has started out of a basic need: when i'm away from my computer, i would like to know if i have received any (important) emails. right now it truncates an email to 140 characters, so you can't read the entire mail (most of the time) -- just know the sender and subject and the first line...
Y Combinator picked Pollground.

And one of their best-performing picks currently was their thirtieth and last pick of the 30 "most promising" they invited for interviews that round -- if they had assigned it #31, it would have gotten axed. One can infer from this that some who missed the cut would likely do better than some who made it.

The low-hanging web 2.0 fruit may be harvested soon, in which case they would have to expand into other types of ventures.

Also, there are some technologies that are vital but don't make good start-ups. Work done on the Linux kernel (including virtualization); Compiz/Beryl; PostGreSQL; and so forth. The complexity may be an order of magnitude greater than doing a website, but you can't sell ads in Xen source code.

YC's modus operandi also rules out start-ups that need more time and/or capital. In short, they are pursuing a specific niche.

Don't be discouraged -- their validation is orthogonal to whether your work is technically novel or highly profitable.
Simplicity: The Ultimate Sophistication
Glogger: personal imaging to the masses
Also see SWIG: http://www.swig.org/Doc1.3/Lisp.html

Here's an example of compiling and loading inline C code that works with SBCL and CMUCL:
http://homepages.nyu.edu/~ys453/

SBCL: sb-alien package allows interfacing with C-code, loading shared object files, etc. See Foreign Function Interface. http://www.sbcl.org/manual/Foreign-Function-Interface.html
Most Impressive Recruiting Pitch I've Ever Seen!
Wow. Red5's approach is so starkly different from the lame mail-merge recruiter emails I get. A great example of how to woo someone to your company!
Well here's to hoping it's higher than quoted. I love Reddit, impeachment and all.
the number of people who have never before considered starting a web business who are wanting to give it a go are coming back again

Those people are here to stay for as long there are startups who make succesful exits and get talked about. The process looks so damn easy. Make a small app quickly using a nice platform like rails in only a few weeks and then flip it for millions. Why wouldnt you give it a try?
College Drop-Out Confessions (writing sw without degree)
As someone who'd like to think of himself as a decent hacker, I usually think criticism is a good thing. I don't however, enjoy criticism when it's combined with insults to attract more attention.

I know and like the WriteWith developers, so I'm not really interested in spending time defending a team I have confidence in and a product that will figure itself out with time. I haven't had any long discussions about where they're aiming - but they're smart guys who work damn hard, so I'm sure we'll see new things out of them.

I would however, enjoy helping to filter some of the lower quality posts here on news.ycombinator.com - so let's take a look at the quality of the people behind uncov.com (based on 5 minutes worth of googling). A couple of their articles have made it to news.ycombinator.com in the past few days - and I haven't particularly enjoyed any of them when compared to the rest of the articles posted.

'whois uncov.com - returns "Kyle Shank" with DNS pointing to www.shanksoft.com/

shanksoft.com reports a 404

You can do your own googles for "Kyle Shank", but what's more important to me is the quality of the critic - ie, what software he's written in the past.

A google for "shanksoft.com" returns some old shareware "ASPXEdit" that I would assume does what it should, and is a basic ASP editor. There wasn't an updated version on any of the sites I checked, and I'm assuming this was a failed attempt at "making something people want".
It also returned what appears to have been an attempt my the same "group/person" at Shanksoft to make an original p2p client, "Shankster". Also couldn't find a version, but it seemed like yet-another-gnutella client, and never really got much traction.

Point of the story - uncov's team (at least just this one) doesn't seem to be anything substantial, but more some college aged wannabes (aren't we all?) who aren't actually out there doing it themselves.

In hindsight - this comment wasn't really worth my time. The research just proved what I thought before - and Harj's comment.
Sorry, I think I was the one who submitted it previously. I was experimenting at the time to see how much difference a posts title makes to how many votes it gets. Turns out the title is far more important than the article as far as votes go, as you can see from this one.

Paul Graham + 37 Signals reference = instant karma ;)
This is the site we always use to figure out names for YC startups. Probably half got their names this way. And yes, this was written by Beau Hartshorne, founder of Snipshot. In fact, it was this app that made us invite him to apply.
Define "scalable".

Trivially, Erlang; because the language and implementation, including Mnesia, go together.

However, you might find its performance characteristics don't suit your problem domain: it's not fast compared to C:

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/gp4sandbox/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=hipe&lang2=gcc

Also you are forced to message-pass, which adds overhead of a processor talking to itself; for some applications you want shared memory and parallel computing rather than message-passing and concurrent computing.

You also might find that its behavior running on multiple nodes isn't optimal, because it's a generic solution; you might do better with a specific solution with a truncated feature set, written in a language with a faster runtime (SBCL; C++; Haskell; etc.). You might also want guarantees of order, execution time, or determinacy -- something else it doesn't give you.

Furthermore, you might find that it's not scalable on the programmer-end; more people may have experience with Python, Ruby, or Lisp. Or it may lack libraries you want, and thus not "scale" to cover certain types of applications, given the constraint of human developer time.

So the answer is, "it depends".
Jet Engines (managing developer strength/weakness)
Shiny, yes. But what about equity?
It's more bubbly than it was 2 years ago, but still nothing like the Bubble in the late 90s. The defining quality of an investment bubble is people (a) investing a lot of money in stupid things, in the hope that (b) other people will pay more for them later. Neither are happening now. Though a lot of startups are getting started, the amount being invested is small, because startups are taking way less each. And (b) isn't happening because the IPO market is still very small. Acquisition is still the main exit, and acquirers are more prudent than retail investors.
I've been using it for a while, but recently switched to: pcnames.com. They're both excellent and once you use them you can't go back to the old way anymore.
That sounds pretty good, I've heard that name several times before.
That's curious. In the Boston area, $15K is easily savable in a year, for a single person fresh out of college.

In my graduating class, about 1/3 took jobs in engineering, consulting, or finance that pay $60-$80k (more in finance). The remaining 2/3 became graduate students, temp workers, secretaries and teachers making $20-30k/year. The ones making $60-80k don't live significantly more extravagant lifestyles (actually, I see far more engineers and consultants living with their parents than secretaries and teachers), so they pocket the $40K/year difference.

What's a typical salary for a talented computer programmer in Alabama? Are there particular barriers to relocating to Boston or SF or Redmond or Austin and getting a decent salary?
Weird, the first 3 Google showed me who Kyle Shank is:

http://canadaonrails.com/speakers/show/7

Apparently he's the lead of RadRails and other projects.
I'm with ya dfranke. I picked it back up pretty fast too. My point is that we all pick it back up eventually. Some (like you) don't even waste time feeling bad, you get right back to it. Others don't. My point is that if you do feel bad, fine. Feel bad and move on. You're going to move on eventually, so just do it quicker.
once you use them you can't go back to the old way anymore

The best apps are ones that simplify your life and change your expectations
College is a way, not the way.

Billionaire college drop-outs:
http://www.pennylicious.com/2006/10/09/billionaire-dropouts/

Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Michael Dell, Richard Branson, et al. This doesn't include hundred-millionaires, like Woz, who went back to college and got a degree afterward.

Having "something to fall back on" (a degree) seems a bit like saying, "not living your dreams is acceptable". Obviously one can be successful with a degree as well; but we're a product of our circumstances, and how hard we try tends to depend on how hard we have to try.

Looked at another way, the effort you expend from 18-22 to get a degree may well be frittering away some of your most energetic and productive years. Assuming your course of study is actually difficult and rigorous, your degree is a real accomplishment, and to be lauded; yet it does not directly yield positive financial results.

It seems easier to go back to school later and follow a prescribed course of study on a regular schedule than to found a start-up at a later age, with all its unpredictability and long hours.

Electing not to obtain a degree is to accept a set of obstacles and challenges in dealing with others who place a premium on third-party certifications. The connection with entrepreneurship is apparent:

entrepreneur: a person who organizes and manages any enterprise, esp. a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk.
I don't know much about cheap living down in the valley.

If you are talking SF, there are some other options:

www.sfofficelofts.com - a friend of mine (an artist, not in software) rents one of these for $725 a month. It is a huge loft. The downside - you share a bathroom with everyone else on the floor, like a college dorm. And, the building is conveniently located between a porno theatre and an alley full of meth tweakers.

The usual option is to find a share on craig's list.
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/roo
use assembling language then wait for Greenspun's 10th.
Firefox Users Are Rich Young Men
Afraid I'm out now
Good resources on offshore incorporation (taxes, legal work,...)?
This one is from a YC guy so it's probably safe -- but in general it's good to be suspicious of any lookup tool like this. There have been instances of domainers using sites like this as a way getting users to generate lists for them.