skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
For most people I think LLC's are the best choice as they are very simple and suit bootstrapping perfectly. However if you are going for VC relatively quickly it may be worth while getting a c corp.

I wrote a couple of posts about this a while back

http://stakeventures.com/articles/2005/06/01/legal-structure...

http://stakeventures.com/articles/2006/02/13/why-the-llc-is-...

This post explains why it might not be a good idea and why an S-corp might be a better choice:

http://www.rothcpa.com/archives/001617.php
Usually Delaware is chosen for C-Corps because the state of Delaware has a special set of courts for corporate law and have an extremely detailed history of rulings with expert judges that special in corporate law.
This is exactly why there is a 1 year cliff when it comes to equity.
Comcast Faces FCC Sanctions for Blocking Web Traffic
Have you read this?

"Applying to Ph.D. Programs in Computer Science", by Mor Harchol-Balter ( http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/gradschooltalk.pdf )

It's quite good. Since you have been in grad school already, many of the things won't be news to you.

I would say that the fact that you left grad school for a Wall Street job will hurt your application. The admissions committee might think that you're not determined and self-motivated enough for grad school. They might think "If this dude likes CS so much, why didn't he jump to the CS department back then?". Might be a good idea to explain in your statement of purpose that you discovered your passion for CS while in Wall Street.
In this passage Yudkowsky only discusses a very small portion of Popper's philosophy.

The most apparent problem with Yudkowsky's position is: where do probability estimates and hypotheses come from in the first place? That is an issue which Popper's philosophy provides answers for, and Bayesian Inference does not.
Read it years ago, but will read it again.
Wow that story sounds familiar. I was out of school for two years working as a financial analyst before getting accepted in to YC this summer.

Right out of school and six months in to my job I knew I wasn't really cut out for finance and preferred to not work for someone else. I started a business on the side and learned more in 3 months than I did all through college. Fast forward a year. A childhood friend of mine and I began collaborating on an idea I had whenever we had spare time. However, we were eventually faced with a Catch22 situation: we needed more time to work on our startup, but we also needed money to live on (my other side business was making decent money, but not enough to live off of). We were OK with this and planned on doing the startup on the side until it was making money, or at least launched.

On a whim we applied to YC as we figured "why the hell not?" YC accepted us even though I was a non-technical. I'm not exactly sure why as I've never actually asked them, but I will offer some speculation: my partner is a genius and I was extremely familiar with the market we were trying to get in to.

Looking back, if we would have been rejected, I would have learned to code. Even now I plan on doing so (and have already done some) once things are a little less hectic.
Obviously, YC has sped up the creation process considerably and we've gotten more done in ~1.5 months than all the previous time combined.

So I guess my advice to you is this:
1. Start a business on the side if you can
2. Learn to hack
3. Follow aaronblohowiak's advice
4. Forget the mock business plans - I've run/ran 3 small to micro sized businesses and the closest thing I've done to completing a business plan is a YC Summer 08 application. At some point, you have to stop planning and start doing.

Good luck and feel free to email me anytime.
Most investors hate pass-through taxation that is attached to LLC. They, being passive members, are not eligible for tax pass-through but you as an active member are, so it is in effect places money from their pockets into yours.

Delaware incorporation is a superstition. They do come in handy if you plan to litigate on corporate law (e.g. shareholders vs. management) because their case law is much more thorough and their judges are very experienced. However, if you incorporate there as opposed to you home state you will still have to register in your home state as a "foreign corporation", so you will in effect double your paperwork. It also carries risk that you will have to travel over there to appear in court. Not worth it for a small Internet start-up with simple ownership structure.

So with that in mind, talk to a lawyer and an accountant.
Case of Marburg Haemorrhagic Fever (Ebola Relative) Appears in Amsterdam
Car company hires someone with experience in car industry shocker.
Which is the longshot, finding the mentor or the NSF?

My experience is that top departments, and fellowships like NSF, basically want people who are already grad students. Actually, NSF seems to have more to do with the merits of the research problem than the student, per se. I don't think I have a shot without enough research experience to have a rough idea of what "my problem" will be.
This is the only poll with 100% positives and 100% accuracy
Ever wonder what makes Panasonic's Toughbooks so tough?
In the Wild for July 11, 2008
Which NAS is best? Synology's looks good...
Given my experience (CS PhD. CMU) I would say that you are likely a very good candidate. The PhD you left was pure-math (not CS) so I don't think it counts much against you. You have lots of plusses (analytic and work experience) and the best thing would be to be very articulate about what you want to do (at this point they will be expecting you have some goals). The CS GRE really can not be taken without some studying (it had some obscure stuff on it when I took it).

Now for picking a grad school a lot of things are really important.
1) Will they fund you?
2) Are they teaching what you want to learn?
3) Is it a happy place?

Don't want to start a fight here- but schools vary by A LOT on these criteria.
Many measures of technological development are increasing exponentially: computer processor cost performance, solar cell cost performance, resolution of FMRI, DNA sequencing cost per base pair,....
IPhone Web Goodies: Drag and Drop with Touch, Resize and Rotate with Gestures
I use skype to talk to my parents, and it is pretty good. Sometimes I feel like they are close, especially when you full screen the video.
When it was my father's bday, I bought a cake, put some candles on it, and singed to him happy bday, in front of skype. I ate if of course, but they ate the cake my mom did for him at the same time.

I see my parents about 2-3 times a year, and something like skype (and maybe yahoo messenger), helps to fill the gap.

Who said that web 2.0 -ish apps are totally useless is wrong. They can actually change the world and make people's lives a little better.
Electric rail is completely orthogonal to electric cars. Gasoline, used almost only in personal vehicles and light trucks, was responsible for 9 million barrels per day in 2004:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/analysis_public...

Electric cars are suitable to replace at least two-thirds of those vehicles, yielding a savings of 6 million barrels/day. I say this because the commute for 68% of people is under 30 miles round trip:

http://www.bts.gov/publications/omnistats/volume_03_issue_04...

Even if trains were the only use for diesel fuel and you converted every single one to pure-electric, that is less than 3 million barrels per day (the transportation section of the "distillates" column).

YOU can convert your car today. See http://www.evdl.org and http://www.evalbum.com for help and examples.

However, I would love to have high-speed electric trains for cross-country travel instead of flight.

EDIT-I've heard it alleged rails are not electrified because the property tax increases, see

http://www.lightrailnow.org/features/f_lrt_2006-05a.htm
Thanks for the advice and I couldn't agree more. Ending the planning and beginning the doing is the theme of my day today. Trouble is, since im not a programmer, me "doing" something would consist of market research, putting my ideas on paper (i.e. summary business plans), and trying to network. If I knew that I could turn one of my ideas into even a small reality, then I would have plenty more to do in terms of copywriting, marketing, etc. I just need to either begin an active search for a hacker co-founder, pursue a non-software type of startup, or try to outsource the development.
You're in luck. Tomorrow, there won't be a line at all.
sweet. I was thinking of going just to see, but i'm glad i didn't. 3 hrs is a long time.
That always struck me as BS, like lying to kids about your flavor afterlife. I understand it's nice for coping & all, but none of the people saying it would choose to die if they could live forever.
2. Especially since you have a pure math background, you could work on SAGE (http://sagemath.org). The people there (mostly academics) are very friendly and open, and you should be able to find something with an AI flavour (e.g., automated empirical optimization of software, as is done in ATLAS http://math-atlas.sourceforge.net/) that has a fair chance of generating a publication, or at least generating an outcome you can point to.
At first glance, I wanted to say your lawyer is an idiot. But then I took a deep breath and came to my senses. He's not an idiot, but he doesn't know what a startup (in the HN/YC sense) is. Most "small businesses" are never candidates for VC funding, etc. A startup, in my mind, is different than a typical small biz precisely in that it is considered as a potential VC investment from the get-go.

Here's why you do a DE C-corp: it gives you the most flexibility and the most certainty of outcome. Only C corps can have different classes of stock (a necessity for the preferred stock that VCs prefer), and DE is the best because they provide very wide latitude to management and have a great and well-understood corporate legal system with lots of caselaw. This means that everyone knows what the rules of engagement are going in, and the judges in the Chancery Court (if it ever gets that far) know what they're doing.

An example: when I was in VC, we negotiated a term sheet with a non-DE C-corp. The term sheet was accepted, and we drafted the amended and restated articles, investors rights agreement, blah blah. But, when we filed the amended articles with the non-DE Secretary of State, the SOS office rejected them. We had negotiated a voting structure that offended this state's rules for voting vis a vis ownership. This held back closing for months, as we had to re-incorporate in DE, and tens of thousands extra in legal fees. In DE, never would have been a problem. And because in VC, almost everything is DE, it never occurred to us to think that the SOS office would reject the Articles.
Nothing against Jacob Nelik, but ideally if your mother has nothing to live for but you, wouldn't it be more helpful to try to get her to develop some other friends/interests?
What about IPOs, or a leveraged management buyout? Just because acquisitions are the 'en vogue' liquidity event doesn't mean it's the only kind.
The business you start doesn't necessarily have to be web related - it can be anything.
An NSF graduate fellowship is always a long-shot. Every good first- or second-year graduate student in the country is applying for one, and the competition is intense.

More to the point: the competition is at such a high level that the outcome rests on things that are far more subjective than you might like. For example, volunteer experience and educational outreach can be decisive factors when all the candidates are equally good on paper.
I don't especially like Javas libraries either but they are usable and there are a lot of them and some very good ones.
The upper bound is e(m/48), where e is the amount of equity they'd have gotten if they stuck around, and m is the number of months they worked.
Thats a very good question. I myself would like to hear what others are doing.

Some conventional wisdom would probably say that they shouldn't receive anything, but I don't think thats contractually fair and it looks like you don't either.

Did you have any agreement about percentages before you got started?

As you yourself concluded I agree that retrospectively they should be treated as if they were consultants.

As consultants almost by definition aren't going to be working on your project for a longer time, I would think less shares than a non paid employee, but a project milestone based vesting period.

I've known one startup that had a group of 10-20 equity consultants. Everyone got to vote for I think it was 3 other people as who deserved more. The consultant equity pool was thereafter split according to this. It's certainly interesting, but not necessarily totally fair.

If we could work out a best practice, I'd be willing to workout an example contract template for this over on http://agree2.com
I've heard that most Y Combinator startups are set up as Delaware C-Corps because most investors prefer to work with Delaware C-Corps. Being in Delaware provides them with more legal protection as investors and the C structure gives them more control. Some VCs will ask founders to restructure as C-Corps as a condition of investment, so pg recommends that Y Combinator startups just start out as C-Corps from the start (anticipating further investment).

If you're looking for VC money or major investment, it's probably a good idea. If you're going to try to be self sustaining for several months/years then an LLC might not be the worst thing (or you'll have to pay taxes twice, once for the business and once for yourself)
If the teacher was teaching a process, and looking for evidence that you understood that process, it seems entirely reasonable to not count your work.
I've been thinking along similar lines since I've been interviewing; far too many interviewers are only looking for the password.
it's as you say. it is contrived. but no more contrived than the basic integers. these are abstract systems that we have contrived in ways that are most useful to us. the natural numbers just seem more "real" because everyone in most cultures deals with "quantity" and "magnitude"
That's the kernel... Darwin's userland is GNU.
I'm questioning your premise that it's possible to substitute electricity for gasoline on the scale you're indicating. The generation isn't there. Much smaller, much slower cars used a lot less are far more plausible than huge numbers of electric cars.
i really doubt openmoko's browser is like the iphone's. does it have multi-touch? i'm pretty sure it doesn't. that means no pinching, which is a vital part of the iphone experience.

and then there's the tired old argument that the only difference is that apple's products are prettier than everybody else's. not so. the difference is that apple's products are more fun to use, easier for people to figure out, and easier to get the most out of.
We have women???!??!

Shit... I'll be right back...
Chris Anderson: free, the business model of the 21st century
A batteries included Lua installation on Windows.
Need an updated resume?  Maybe something like this...
I like that.

Using that we could work out a similar formula for project or time based equity.

Lets say you agree that a developer gets say %5 (e) for building the first prototype. Assuming developer only gets the project half built he gets half of e(completion percentage) 2.5%.

The difficulty here are the same though as in normal fixed price, namely that of scope change and creep. This is in particularly a problem with startups, where you should be changing scope and direction all the time.

A possibly better way could be to work out an time based deal based on how much a founder would get.

Lets say programmer A and B are both of equal skill level:

A agrees to work fulltime as a founder receives 10% (e) complete with regular vesting over 4 years.

B can not for whatever reason offer to work fulltime but would like a similar deal only with hourly vesting. As there isn't a normal 1 year cliff we probably want to reduce e to maybe half of what A is making so lets put e to 5% as a example. This would of course all be for personal negotiation.

Lets assume 4 years is equal to 8000 hours. He is vested using a variation of pg's formula e(hours/8000). So if he only ended up doing 100 hours during the life of the project his share would be 0.0625%.

Thoughts?
Debian needs some serious commit review
Sun lays off approximately 1,000 employees
Bazaar has the model right
Point very well taken and I appreciate your advice.

I have several ideas that I feel have potential, but I am open to working with someone elses dream idea just the same (in my opinion it's less about the idea and more about the execution). I boostrap my life and would expect to run a startup in much the same way. Depending on the type of startup, however, VC funding may very well be valuable. I have advanced Excel modeling skills and I build financial models everyday. I have experience working with numerous small to mid size companies and closed $10k-$20k web projects with my clients on a consistent basis while I was a junior/senior in college. I'm obviously not a programmer, but I learned enough to basically run the sales efforts for this company, make us a leader in working with alternative energy clients, and make clients comfortable with sending a $10k check to a small company they had never even heard of before.
| This is totally a commercial idea. They seem to be interested in the clicks and henceforth the dollars. The idea would have been a runaway hit if they tried to personalize news as per personal interests.

There was a great magazine article sometime back -- that I can't find now -- that featured a guy who'd been in the radio business for a long time complaining that the ratings and rankings system that he'd developed effectively killed radio, causing so many stations to all play the same homogeneous crap. Yahoo's system, and news in general reflect the same problem: following the money leads to this steaming pile of crap that a lot of people seem to hate.

But there's another edge to this too. People who claim to be interested in specific subjects, or in meatier or niche news, are still drawn in to some of the vacuous material. So, nobody actually really wants a completely personalized news service; I'm convinced that that's one reason why jaanix hasn't made it big, while Reddit continues to steam along. People will tune Jaanix for the news feeds that they think they ought to like, and then they quit following it after a while because they'd actually rather click on all of the [pic]s on Reddit's front page.
Dan Weinreb's Advice About Sending Email
Interview with co-founder of Reddit.com, Alexis Ohanian
Lay off Sam! I think he's gotten enough flack for the double polo incident... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dju9y5BdVQ (though that video is quite amusing)
Web Security and Encryption - Missing a Middle Ground?
Speaking as someone with mouse-induced RSI, this is great news. I can't wait!
I'd say Loopt is pretty useful, though as with all social networks the usefulness increases with the number of people you know on the network (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe's_law) and I don't know many people on Loopt.

I look forward to the day when rather than messaging/calling a dozen friends to see who's around I can just look on Loopt and see if a friend is nearby who I want to hang out with.

Actually, I just installed Loopt yesterday, and this morning I was wondering where one of my co-founders was. I checked on Loopt, and there he was, "39 mi NW" in SF. I didn't even have to bother him to find out what he was up to. It's kind of like Twitter, but implicit instead of explicit. I don't have to manually update it to let people know where I am.
I'm a Rails coder, can lead project and define architecture. Getting ready for YC spring 2009. Looking for the business side partners who can sell and promote the hell out of a SaaS idea that will be big time for small and medium businesses. Email address in my profile.

Getting ready for YC spring 2009.
"A bad game your friend made is still just a bad game."

I don't think so. I've been doing games for a lot of time and in the amateur game dev communities, users tend to like simple and sometimes bad games that are made by their community friends.
Since my Gran was in a home, I've thought that IT / the internet really should be able to help with some of the loneliness.

I know I feel more connected with forums and IRC than I do without.
Nick, Zacharye

I'm a Rails coder, can lead project and define architecture. Getting ready for YC spring 2009. Looking for the business side partners who can sell and promote the hell out of a SaaS idea that will be big time for small and medium businesses. Hackers are welcomed too!
Email address in my profile.
Hah! I was working on something almost exactly like this as a personal project.

Wonder how they did the doc/pdf creation? I thought about using LaTeX, and there are (commercial) html renderers, but I was trying to keep it cheap and easy.
It does, they are tri-band the online store is just poorly laid out (it is either 850/1800/1900 or 900/1800/1900) depending on which model you select.
So its $399 , but I got a debug board to go along with it.
That brings up an interesting question: if immortality were possible, would people choose to die, and what would their motivations be? It seems that curiosity about the afterlife would be a primary factor. Then there is the question: would this curiosity mount over time, to the point that everyone succumbed to it? I don't think anyone can answer this question. Peoples' religious views might change over the centuries-- I know mine have, over mere decades-- and it might be that nearly everyone comes to believe in a better life after death at some point, and chooses to die.
While not HN specific, there are a few regular web meetups north of Boston. North Shore Web Geeks (http://northshorewebgeeks.com/) in Newburyport happens the third Thursday of every month. Build Guild (http://www.buildguild.org/) in Salem happens the second Tuesday of every month.
shame on you if that's an affiliate link.
I agree that liquidity event is a more accurate term than "selling the company". If you are looking for something less formal, you can use "cashing out".

While we're on the topic of language: Parker, you may want to read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallelism_(grammar) -- the incongruity between "are" and "it's" in your sentence ain't right.
The Shaggy God - Richard Stallman in Boston Magazine
Programs are like Fractal Legos
Agreed in general. 2 points about electric one pro, one con.

1 - There is always a conversion cost in energy so whatever you had, if it was oil or natural gas, had more energy you could have used before you converted it. Transmission costs are lower, so maybe that partially counters this.

2 - Electrication, if we relate it to a software design principle, is like loose coupling. You can change the underlying code as long as the output (interface) is electricity, the implementation details are hidden from the rest of the system.
Three thoughts.

(1) I can totally see LinkedIn buying this a year from now.

(2) I would be less likely to hire someone if this was the only way I could see their resume.

(3) The front page doesn't address my most immediate objection, which is "how does it produce email-safe resumes in plain text?".
Is it really going to fall apart because you aren't born with all the priors you would theoretically need?
This is the best "cheat sheet" for creating consumer web apps since that Joshua Schacter text file from a while back.

Nice work.
or just get tired as hell of living
Related: http://www.emurse.com/