skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Someone here derided the idea of declining to do business with people you don't trust: "...modern financial and legal infra-structure is designed so that we can make business with people we don't trust."

Since the beginning of mankind the world has been full of people who will take advantage of others who are not as smart or experienced or powerful as they are.

It's not always easy to discern these kinds of people. Some are very smooth and skilled manipulators. You describe yourselves as "young founders". I suggest you seek out someone "old" (over 50) who you know well and whose judgement you trust, and ask them for counsel. I'm not necessarily referring to business or legal counsel, I'm talking about someone who's been around the mountain enough times that they can discern when someone is trying to blow smoke up your dress. It should be someone who has your best interest at heart. Maybe your own father or grandfather might be a good choice.

I am not being condescending about you being young and inexperienced. Nobody is born knowing everything. I'm old now, but I was young once, and I remember how it was. Get someone with the long fangs of many years who is on your side. Bring him to meetings with this company's people, introduce him simply as one of your "advisors". He doesn't need to say anything in the meetings, he may just observe and listen, and perhaps ask a few questions which unmask any propaganda.

I've been doing consulting for 30 years. When contemplating a job, if I don't have enough trust in the client's integrity (and he in me) that I feel we could do the deal on nothing more than a handshake, I'll walk away. For most jobs I do have a paper contract, because having things written down is good, but I don't expect any contract to turn a snake into a good guy.

If someone is intent on cheating you, all the contracts in the world aren't going to make much difference.

Over the years I've ignored my snake radar a few times, and in each case I regretted it.

Any contract must be equitable. What you've described so far sounds rather inequitable. Consider what that might indicate about the integrity and good faith of your potential purchasers.

As someone else here said, a bad deal is far worse than no deal. You may think this is the only offer you will ever get, but you don't know that. Many amazing things can happen in life which you would never have imagined.
adhesive.com has a way more advanced version of this. You add can additional criteria, like rigid/flexible, heat resistance, dries clear, etc.

They also let you order directly from them. I've used them quite a few times when I couldn't find something suitable at the hardware place by my house.
This is more like what I was hoping for and even mentioned things I'd forgotten in my list
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Tazers might be called fake guns.
Entrepreneur Organizations/Networks
Am curious to know of which organizations or groups have been the most useful to entrepreneurs in the US (or globally). EO, YPO etc come to mind, but I'm curious to know if there's any real value there for someone considering a startup. Am in the Silicon Valley and am looking to connect with VCs/angels, other founders, university researchers, corporate M&A people etc. to network and learn about start up best practices/stories from the trenches in the most efficient manner possible. Any suggestions?
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$150K will not make your startup succeed on its own. There were already companies raising larger amounts before YC started and this did not seem to hurt the "spirit" of YC.

I think the biggest effect this will have on the YC process is that more teams, especially those who pivot during YC or are building something very complicated, will choose to delay fundraising past demo day in favor of working on their product/trying to get traction for several more months.
Not a Hacker (TM)

We'd have to get through a few 1,000 people before he'd be the next most germane individual.
First impression: awesome.

Second impression: The animations are a bit contrived. The hit state on the file browser arrows could be larger.
* sigh * not many Mo Willems fans here, I guess.
Peace in NK + healthy democracy, and good organic agriculture + great universities = heaven.
We haven’t talked to Sequoia, and it’s possible the partners don’t agree that Milner and Conway’s deal is a no-brainer.

Come on Sarah. Seriously. Not only does the post not tell me how Yuri outfoxed Sequoia, it doesn't even make the claim that Sequoia was outfoxed or that they even cared. Every sentence is hedged. But you know who might--It seems--it’s possible--Maybe Sequoia wouldn’t--Milner may have.

This post actually made me a little angry. I feel like a fool who got hooked by headline bait and then had a minute of my life stolen from me.
Meta: I want to ask something right now that will sound very flip but I mean it with no malice and with full earnestness. Seriously – I'm asking because I want an answer. Cool? Cool.

How has Mr. Scoble convinced so many people to listen to him?

In over six years of following the Valley and tech in general with interest, I have heard Mr. Scoble's name so many times – but never associated with anything of substance. I've never read of any dramatic achievements, nor have I been pointed to any essays of any deep insight or poignancy. While he frequently comes up in conversation he does not seem to... do anything. Like a Paris Hilton.

From what I can tell, he worked for Microsoft, then wrote a book in which he appeared on the cover naked (Hiltonesque!)... and then convinced a bunch of people to follow him on Twitter and other social media flavors of the moment. Then Rackspace bought him an enormous tripod.

I hasten to reiterate that I have no specific ill-will toward Mr. Scoble, but I am... mystified and hope for some insight. Is this a case of wildly successful self-promotion? Is the success of the self-promotion, itself, the measure of success from which he derives attention and note? Do people latch onto him in the hopes of learning similar powers of promotion?
True. But if it isn't, it should be considered emotional harm or sabotage, not straight-up damage.
Someone once wisely said (wish I could remember who) that programs should be written for other humans to read and understand and only incidentally for compilers to translate. The program will be read a lot more by humans during it's lifetime than by compilers.

Line by line comments can be hard to read. It helps to use clear naming, nouns for things, verbs for actions, spelling stuff out in full. I prefer block comments which only explain what isn't obvious in the code and what could not be expressed more clearly in the code.

As for comments not agreeing with the code, that should get picked up during peer review. Of course, the best comprehension test is when you come across the code a year later to make some change.
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The UK, Greece, Finland, Denmark, and Norway are officially Christian nations with state religions. Sweden disestablished its state religion in 2000. These are all nevertheless very much secular states in practice and by law. Note that Israel's religious establishment is far weaker than that of, for example, the UK.
Here's the right visual:

http://atdetroit.net/forum/messages/5843/178783.jpg

Scoble is the ultra-fan. I wouldn't really call him a rabid self-promoter (though those are certainly around) -- he just oozes an almost naive excitement about the technology world and seems to try to be in all corners of it at once. I think that sort of excitement, almost like the tech world is one big family of sorts, is, in its own way, contagious.
> which aren't scraped from elsewhere

They used to be scraped from usenet. They may well still be, but I don't have any current evidence. Are they still doing that?
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I do respect him, but I just wish Mahalo was something that I could use.

It seems to me that maybe after his first success, he doesn't quite have the same creativity to problem solving. Instead "serial" entrepreneurs sometimes seem to go "big" solving a problem that might not exist.
> Traffic served by Google doubled every single month for the entire five years (1999-2004) that I was there.

I do not believe this is true.
It's a very legitimate concern. From my personal experience, I think "being starved" is an important part of the experience, it prepares you for the long grind (unless your are the lucky few that grow gangbusters out of the door). I think the right amount of money is the key.
Scoble is just a normal guy who has gradually built a following of mostly normal people. He isn't technical or anything but is a good conduit to "the normal people" who do not read TechCrunch.
This deal won't change that. YC knows scrappy companies win, and especially well capitalised scrappy companies.
According to the US State Department "Libya remains on the list of designated state sponsors of terrorism."

Since part of the registration fees go directly to the government, registering a .ly domain is about the shortest route you can take to get funds into the hands of terrorists planning attacks on western countries without being subjected to a criminal investigation in the US.

It is fun to play pretend on the internet that your actions have no impact on the real world, but you should take a few minutes to reflect on what your business is supporting.
maybe now we need a YC for new YC's
He has a self-deprecating charm. An everyman; like Homer Simpson. He's also like that snake-bite guy form Australia with a hundred scars who says 'give it here lads, I'll see if it's poisonous'

Occasionally you will see him get worked up and stand his ground but he's so enthusiastic about everything new and shiny that it becomes infectious. A little naive perhaps, but his optimism for technology and the future is a light in dark places.
I am most excited because this will mean hardware and oter "harder" things might be possible with less "baby steps" involved to get companies where they want to be - faster.
One potential issue I see is that YC companies might get complacent. I know that there are tons of factors that lead to the insane productivity that happens during YC, but I'm sure that the fact that many companies need to raise money or fail contributes.

Also, the money might keep people working on bad ideas instead of giving up and trying something new. Obviously they could pivot, but $150k gives them the ability to spend ~a year working on a bad idea before needing outside validation.

But I'm sure it'll be great for YC overall
Reminds me of CouchApps. http://couchapp.org/page/what-is-couchapp
Y combinator is doing an amazing job!
Scoble is a great curator and breaker/spreader of startup news. And I think it would be fair to say he's done a good job of pioneering some new forms of social media journalism.

It's true that he's a startup enthusiast, and often looks more like an evangelist for startups. But he's a decent and friendly guy in person, and genuinely believes in the importance of startups.

That's why people quote him, tweet him and support him. He's part of the startup community as much as a person who covers it.

He's one of the good guys, and good on him for supporting and covering startups the way he does.
My takeaway from previous ycombinator groups is that anyone onto anything half decent by the end has had no trouble getting a financing round.

Personally if it was me I don't think it would really change the way I went about things, would still work out of a house and go it cheap, just might be able to get an early hire in to push things along even faster without having to worry about how much equity I was sacrificing to do it at such an early stage.
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This is the place to go if you want good lessons:
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He also offers intermediate material: http://justinguitar.com/en/IM-000-IntermediateMethod.php

Seriously, check this out, I haven't seen anything better on the web, free or paid.
What does RFC 1036 (USENET Message format) have to do with DMCA takedowns?

Read here in their request, for some reason the lawyer is referencing RFC 1036
https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2011-01-28-tera.m...
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I'm 45 and I'm starting mine too. It's never too late.
This is truly remarkable. Those of us yet to have submitted to YC now have an additional reason to do so. And it took a foreigner to do it. Po.iticians should take note, because this is how you stimulate an economy and innovation.
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Didnt know ask yahoo still existed
ran into ask.yahoo.com yesterday and was like wow.. this site is still there.. i remember when it was the main hub for questions till yahoo answers came along..
Yuri Milner Uses Anybot to Announce Funding for Every Y Combinator Startup
But is it for sure a net gain? Is there no value in humble beginnings?
Congratulations, irrespective of whether you sink or swim, this will change you from here on.

I was in your shoes a bit over 2-years ago and still going at it, so, if I may, give you some pointers.

1. Before you leave your full time job, model your expenses for as long as you can (did that for six months) and make sure you have enough to see you through both good and worst case scenarios. This will also tell you where the stop-loss is for you.

2. Have a list of people who you can lean on for emotional and intellectual support. It only takes one bad day to pour cold water on all the good days. Make sure that you have people who will keep you moored on both the good and bad days.

3. The first month is the toughest one and nothing in the world prepares you for it, especially if you have been securely employed for close to a decade.

4. Make sure you are doing what you enjoy doing & aim for revenue that will take you out doing things that you don't enjoy doing at the earliest.

Good luck, again :)
While this idea seems similar to Ping for iTunes, I think it has merit as another channel for music discovery. From what is described in the post, however, it seems like it would be more difficult to build and manage than it needs to be. Why resell from the site and go through headaches of profit splitting, when you can just redirect to iTunes, Amazon, etc?
I'm 43 (and a HN-lurker as well) and I am edging towards starting mine too. Having two kids and a house, I think I know how you feel. Must be as scary as it is exciting. Hopefully I will be able to 'join' you soon.

In the meantime: all the best to you and your start up!

And you said it well: I hope we get rich, or at least be profitable.
For illustration, if google had a single hit in the first month of 1999:

monthly traffic 5 years later = 2^59 hits

Which is the equivalent of every person in the world using google 83 million times that month.
Your reasoning is synonymous with why I never accepted an offer from Google in the past. Big companies often have a lot of perks, but much like continually buying electronic toys every week, it's only medicating most people's existence.

Breaking out on your own to create your own products forces you to adapt in ways a "cushy" corporate job just can't stimulate. And although it's infinitely harder, the battle is worth fighting through. Seeing it through, persevering, and then driving home a success, all on your own (or with some help) is an experience you simply can't replace.

Best of luck to you. This is a great community to help see you make it happen. And congrats!
I too think this cannot be true. If Google had 1 hit in his first month, and traffic doubled every month for the 5 years he was there, Google would have had 576,460,752,303,423,000 hits in his last month.
There are some problems with it.

Java:

import harding.compsci.graphics.Rectangle; // Import single class

C#:

// Import all class. Can't import single class.

Correct answer:

using Rectangle = Harding.CompSci.Graphics.Rectangle; // import single class
What do you know about Scoble that makes this 'disingenious'? I read nothing but an honest sentiment. Not everything has a deeper meaning or needs to be part of a grand consistent whole of thoughts, you know.
I know that you're saying that Google News is a dedicated site, and separate from the search results. But, Google links to it's own aggregation service from its results on a regular basis, and at the very top of most every results page in Google there is a link to Google News version of the search.

Google News does stand alone as an aggregator, but you have to admit that it is promoted heavily by Google search. If GOOG keeps doing stuff like that, I suspect there are going to be a lot more companies that start to take umbrage, and start challenging this behavior in court claiming that it's anti-competitive behavior.
Mostly things done in the web browser for me...
sorry, I don't think being born in the west entitles you to millions of dollars of medical care at other's expense when a million dollars means hundreds of lives saved.
Communication and the access to information is a highly important issue, especially if hell breaks loose in your country.
Would it be feasible to introduce a search customization setting: "lower the estimated probability that I mistyped"? I assume google uses something like two cut-offs: A < B, where if P(mistype)>A, it suggests but doesn't search for the correction, while if P(mistype)> B, it displays auto-corrected results. Simply an user option to nudge P(mistype) lower would probably suffice, or an option to increase B.

A major usability problem for me with auto-corrected results is the two lines with links: "Showing results for <link>" and "Search instead for <link>". Interpreting those two lines takes me out of the flow of analyzing search results. I haven't yet been conditioned to click on the second link. I never want to click on the first link, because google is already showing me those results.

I frequently search for unusual acronyms, terms, variables, made-up words, and gibberish that shows up in logs, among other things that google likes to "correct" for my benefit. I realize those use cases are not typical, but current auto-correction behavior can be extremely aggravating in those cases.

Auto-suggest a correction all you want, but auto-correcting and suggesting the original is going too far I think, unless there are zero hits, or some equivalently strong algorithmic determination is made that I couldn't possibly want the query the way I typed it.
I think the point is, the user's password could potentially be set to something other than the original if they happen to type it "close enough". That would cause major confusion going forward.
A great advantage startups have over established companies is they get excited over small wins. And beginnings are small.

The Innovator's Dilemma even suggests established companies spin-out small startups to work on emerging technologies/markets, for this reason.
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I'd say 'It doesn't', which is objectively impossible but does represent my perception. In 7 or 8 years of using it, I have never found it to be a problem. This is with working on C++ projects with a total size (including third party libraries like boost) of around 400 megabytes of source code. The parsing of code happens behind the scenes; sometimes (when starting VS after a major update from source control or something) you see in the status bar 'Visual Assist: updating databases' or something like that, and sometimes the syntax highlighting takes a few seconds to kick in, but again I've never been annoyed or irritated with delays for which I had any reason to believe that they had anything to do with Visual Assist.

Of course Visual Studio still does its own parsing in the background, for example for the class browser. VA provides something similar, maybe I should use that one and see if there's a way to turn off the Visual Studio Intellisense. It is my subjective impression that this one does sometimes slow down the IDE itself.

My only complaints are the recent price hikes: 249$ -_- ? Those are getting above discretionary purchasing power and although I guess there is some effective productivity gain, it's very hard to quantify and therefore justify... Especially when other people don't want it, because then if you do want it, you look like a wuss who can't hold his own without having his hand held by pretty colors (simplifying of course but let's face it, this is what it looks like from the outside).
You should read the new yorker story http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/24/110124fa_fact_... . It answers your questions, mostly. For (1), if the health insurer is forced to treat those patients and acknowledges who they are they can spend a bit of money on preventive and follow-up care and save a lot of money on hospitalization, surgeries, etc. (2) This is true, but if the algorithm is retrainable (and it should be, as it's machine learning) there's the possibility that all you have to do is a bit of domain adaptation to keep things going; if this doesn't work, another contest 5 years from now will probably pay for itself.

The problem with your proposed solution is precisely that there seems to be far too little data points and far too many variables. Not only that but I expect most of the information to be in the interactions between variables and clever features that cover that. Most ways of learning bayesian networks don't work very well when you have to model interactions. I'd bet on the usual winning approaches for this sort of thing, which is clever boosting, matrix decomposition, and random forests, all of which can model interactions and somewhat deal with incomplete data.
Perhaps a stupid question, but why get a tattoo OR start a business?

Personally I have my startup's logo tattooed ... it seemed only fitting.
Maybe the extra 150k can help lower the 1/3 failure rate.
Best Web Design and Web Development Articles Roundup [January 2011]
No longer will we hear stories like we heard from Airbnb’s founders of surviving off of cereal or “ramen.”

'ramen profitable' and it's derivatives should be taken as a cutesy fluffy marketing term and nothing more (like most startups were never actually started in a garage).

No one should be living literally off Ramen noodles and cereal. It's incredibly bad for your health and a total lack of investment in your body and your brain.

I'm not saying YC's small funding encourages this, but nevertheless we should not be encouraging the promotion of this concept.
Why Almost Everything You Hear About Medicine Is Wrong
We're in the same revenue ballpark - though consulting business, so smaller multiples :(

We have used lawyers in the UK and US (for contract advice, that kind of thing) but we don't have one I'd turn to if I were in this position. It's certainly not impossible to reach this point without that kind of advisor around.

[Note: we started in the UK, which could be a factor]
I thought rock bands got shitty contract deals from record labels. These terms seem pretty fair and very unlike the recording industry.
Worse, it's a syntax comparison from Java to C#, i.e. a "how do I" for Java people writing C#, not the other way around. For example I saw it list the ?: operator, but where is the ?? operator that C# has and Java sorely lacks? Where's the using block? Delegates? LAMBDA EXPRESSIONS?!?
How about showing a random new article on the front page?
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