skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"Incubators tend to focus on the ‘low hanging fruits’, the companies that are either very easy to make profitable or very easy to ‘flip’ to a larger party in a tech acquisition or a team acquisition. Various incubator operators are on the record stating that they are ‘in for the long haul’ but the statistics do not bear this out and incubators tend to stay away from companies that really intend to ‘change the world’."

I have no idea if this is true of the others, but for the record, it is certainly not true of us. It's one of our guiding principles that the ideas with the biggest potential usually seem borderline crazy, and we consciously seek them out.
"The 'change the world' companies are typically not launched from incubators, though there is no reason why that should continue to be the case."

I wonder if this is simply because incubators of the YC variety are still such a new idea that we really don't know yet whether they'll produce a Google or Facebook yet. I doubt there's a deliberate focus on safe bets going on, since it seems to me it's in their best interest to take more risks if they're investing such a small amount at such an early stage.
The 'remote' will be the biggest hit, and the salary will be more based on where that company is rather than where you are.

My own limited experience in this would say that for a US-based company, with the 'remote' thrown in, you likely would be looking at north of $80k.

This is based on my own experiences working remote (not full time, but contracting) and talking with others who are doing full and part time work remotely.

The 'remote' thing will be the hardest. I've talked to companies all over that are willing to shell out >$120k for a good sr level developer, but will not entertain the idea of a remote worker under any circumstance. I am somewhat sympathetic to this - a company needs to really be set up to take advantage of remote workers. Just having someone working from home without a strong culture of communication and inclusion will benefit no one. However, given the supposed shortage of good developers available, this seems to be an area where fwd-thinking companies could have a great advantage over their competitors. But, it'll take a lot of time and investment to develop that culture, and that's something few companies seem willing to do.
Liquid fuel does have one serious upside that electric doesn't: storage.
I don't get that logic. They aren't the only ones with billions to spare, Microsoft for example has more.

You are suggesting that they mustn't find a way to protect their interests from patent suits because otherwise they are abusing their position?! that doesn't make sense.
Things you have to look at fast.

* Money laundering. Cap fees now.

* You are using Stripe, but you're still collecting CC data. Are you PCI compliant?

* Does Stripe allow you to do this? Really? Basically, you're acting as a third party processor, an IPSP. People can sell anything through your service (Think adult content)

I'm really interested if Stripe is aware of what you are doing and fine with it.
Good points. We are privacy positive, so we'll figure out a good way to convey that. Thanks!
Solving an Unsolvable Math Problem
Definitely not. They were not here long enough and did not interact with enough people to have that influence.

Most of the sarcastic comments, the tone and the nature of sarcasm does not even parse for a westerner.

In fact you will see a lot of Indian language sarcasm directly "translated" to English leading to hilarious situations.

British just came, looted and left. It would be good if people stopped attributing every god-damned thing about India to the "British Influence".
Why the Consumer Price Index is Out of Touch with Reality
NP I'll do it first thing tomorrow.
The DHS / Department of Justice have proven that US domains are not particularly safe or immune from arbitrary shutdown either.
Even Indians in US adhere to the IST...Most indian parties start atleast an hour after the scheduled time!
You know, unlike English some languages have a sarcastic tense.
Thanks for your answer.

In this case the entire company works remotely, similar to 37signals. So its a distributed team.
"But I make a profit of three and a quarter cents an egg by selling them for four and a quarter cents an egg to the people in Malta I buy them from for seven cents an egg.

Of course, I don't make the profit. The syndicate makes the profit. And everybody has a share."

-- Milo Minderbinder, Catch 22
It’s worth rereading what Mike Montiero wrote about the new Gap Logo.

http://weblog.muledesign.com/2010/10/dear_gap_i_have_your_ne...
I'm well aware of the existence of the flag button. From experience, however, a comment urging others to hit the flag button helps bury lousy entries like this a lot faster than average. As demonstrated.

I should also urge you to look at the submissions guidelines for HN - this falls rather squarely into the 'unsubstantial, crap content' category. Again, speaking from experience - I make it a point to alert other members when I can (the flagging usually begins shortly after). Front-page space is precious; it's too expensive to waste it on something like this (edit: that rarely encourages interesting conversation).
Yes, I am quite embarrassed by this error. Now, if I'd decided to register a Colombian domain name, maybe I would have done a little more research.

Regarding your second paragraph, I think you may simply have a chip on your shoulder. My comfort with a German domain name is based on my knowledge that Germany's been a stable democracy for the last sixty years. I know very little about South America and am therefore more leery of domains backed by governments there.

I am quite fond of the UK and France, but given the curious libel and intellectual property legal environments of those two countries, respectively—yes, from my American and therefore evil, small-minded perspective—I wouldn't want to expose my business to those environment by using a registrar in the UK or France.

So sorry to not be the racist cultural-imperialist Europhile you'd like me to be.
You know how people fight over things that happened hundreds of years ago? Its like that. When people who have been here for 100+ years hear about "family history" it often involves stories of say the potato famine in Ireland. While intellectually they understand Ireland is no longer like that (indeed they may even have visited it to get in touch with there roots). Emotionally they have a lasting impression of a America being the promised land. Their ancestors fled elsewhere to come here, thus here must be the best.

The main and important exception to this is of course African American's.
The title should say "$2 an HOUR". Breathless, but misleading title.
User Interface Development Using jQuery
For time-series, I like dygraphs: http://dygraphs.com/

For server-side chart generation, I tend to use matplotlib (semi-recently changed from gnuplot).
E-Books and Pricing -- is $99.99 Okay?
I'm thinking about them hard. :)
Yeah, we're not (being disrupted).

The difference between doing a Skype redesign for a contest and doing it in a classroom or for a client is the experience. In the latter, you get constructive feedback - which you build upon over the years and directly makes you a professional.

A contest doesn't teach a designer anything and provides the wrong kind of feedback: reinforcing wishfulness over strategy, accuracy, and insight.

New designers have wishfulness in spades but lack the knowledge of how to turn it into a career. Experienced designers have learned the hard way that contests seem like a good idea but they're a terrible waste of time and emotion.
But at the same time, I don't mind giving money to "America" as a whole.
Yes. If one will take you, say, 3 months and the other 8 months, then the choice is easy, do the quick one.

If they're similar in terms of how hard/how long it'll take, you'll need to share some more detail here (else we get a really long IF ELSE tree.)

Is one revenue based (ie. Saas) and the other audience based (ie. Facebook)?

Is one in a competitive field and the other not?
> but a domain name seems like am okay deal

Yes, until you have half a million customers coming to your site every month, and they suddenly found out that your site "no longer works".
Yes, that's exactly right. The way we invest (a large number of small bets) means that it makes less sense for us to be conservative than it does for any other investor. So either JM is writing about other "incubators" or he's been misled by the fact that it takes a while for the world-changing companies to emerge as such. At year 2, Microsoft or Google or Facebook would not have seemed world-changing.
[EDIT: the text below is correct, but a bit too snarky. My apologies.

Also, the site owner could just trust the client to actually run his/her bitcoin-generating code for a couple of hours and send any generated coins - this should earn him/her ~$0.20/hour, rounded down because lots of people have crufty computers. Still not feasible, and generating bitcoins will only get harder in the future, but not as bad as I suggest below.]

Sure, if you're willing to leave your browser consuming 100% CPU for a couple of weeks. And if you're willing to pay the entire resulting 50 bitcoins (~$40-45) you generated (at the cost of ~$60 in electricty, I'd guess)[1], or trust the site to return you the rest. In either case, you'd need to trust the site code to tell you that it's generated a coin, instead of silently sending it back to the server and continuing to run.

At least, that's my understanding of how bitcoins work.

[1] Only GPU-based generation is currently profitable, and there's no way NaCl can be given full access to the GPU - GPUs typically have DMA access, so being able to run arbitrary code on them is more or less equivalent to kernel-level access. In theory, you could verify the GPU code - but that's an enormous job, and there are lots of GPUs that you'd need to check for security holes. And security was not design criterion #1 for these devices, I'd guess.

Something like DirectX/OpenGL access makes sense, but running crypto algorithms through OpenGL (instead of CUDA or the like) is probably infeasible.
"Your existing business model is disappearing".

No, it's not. It's changing-- just like programming.

Non-consultative design is eminently outsource-able. Many many businesses can thrive with a "good enough" logo or site theme from 99Designs or PageForest... Just like most businesses can thrive with Drupal or WordPress for most of their needs (supported by a $15/hr offshore developer) instead of hiring a programmer.

If you're a designer or a developer, your best protection is being good at solving Hard Problems(tm) that are Core to the Business.

A Bed and Breakfast will never hire an expensive resource for their logo or contact form. But they WILL buy nice mattresses and sheets.

A startup will go to great lengths to buy a crappy used desk on Craigslist for pennies, but will generally NOT skimp on developers or product design if they can help it.

The days of getting paid $95/hr for making something pretty or simple form/database work are coming to an end. But the opportunity for designer/developers who can demonstrably help sales/revenue are EXPLODING.
One thing I'd actually like that could be classified as "social" is link scrubbing, i.e. given something like a twitter feed give me a list of the links posted therein over a certain time, de-shortened and with the proper page titles. With quick options to a) add them to my bookmarks, maybe with a certain tag ("read-later" or "<author_name>"), b) delete them, c) instapaper the content.
Good idea, but maybe they're more sophisticated. You note higher traffic customers as higher risk. The front-running might be done by employees, opportunistically and episodically. Or they might screen somehow for silly phrases.
Ask HN: Creating Niche Web/Mobile Ad Network
I've identified an opportunity in creating an ad network for a niche market.

I have the connections with both advertisers and content publishers (blogs, mobile apps, etc) to really try and make a go of it.

What tools are there to manage such a network? Ideally, I'd be looking for a solution that allows me to sell ads within our network, and have content publishers easily display those ads.

Any help would be hugely appreciated.
Cool Idea will just have to wait until Money Idea can support its development...
Just been going through this process myself. I usually use Fireworks, but wanted to learn Photoshop since there are so many more resources available. Here's some that I've found helpful:

- http://365psd.com/ and http://designmoo.com/ - Both have free, high-quality (for the most part) PSD's you can download. Sometimes for me the most helpful thing is just seeing how someone else constructed something. How many layers they used, which layer styles created a certain effect, etc.

- http://methodandcraft.com/ - Just recently launched, but already has some nice videos I've learned a lot from.

- http://photoshopetiquette.com/ - A bunch of quick tips

- http://bjango.com/articles/ - All the design articles are great

- http://designthencode.com/ - Can't vouch for this personally as I haven't gone through it myself, but looks like a really great and detailed guide.
I've tried it and purchased on my own link.

1) How soon until the money reaches PayPal?
2) There are no assurances that the CC data is safe. It looks to be sent over HTTPS, but you're assumed to be trusted.
It's not about who you give the money to, though that may also be a valid concern, but how you build a reliable business if your site can be taken down for arbitrary reasons at any time.
What it feels like being disrupted, when you are a musician:

http://acapella.harmony-central.com/showthread.php?2664517-W...

This is the tale of an ex-pro cover band player finding himself out of work, and coming to grips with the realization that the amateurs are not to blame, after all.
I like it. Couple of nit-picky points.

1) The instructions are too small and placed wrong. Shouldn't it be shown above the login button? I do like that it's a clear 1,2,3 though.

2) No way to log out (that I could find anyway).
The assumption that too many people are making is that design is just that last thing to be welded on in the assembly line. Design isn’t just a product, it’s also a process.
Alls I know is I wouldn't want to be on this puppy in 50' swells. :)
Any viewpoint that starts off with "Americans are so much more enlightened than any other nationality" is probably an extremely unenlightened view, is all I'm saying.

I'm not taking this view at all. I'm just pointing out that while the direction of ignorance varies widely, the magnitude varies less.

People are lazy, and ignorance is the result of laziness. I don't think the US is particularly exceptional in this regard.
This is the way forward for codecs on the web. Alan Kay has previously complained about how dumbed-down the browsers are in comparison to the possibilities of mobile code, and that's now starting to become less true.

The next step beyond that is to provide browser extensions for programming network protocols. One-way HTTP over NAT sucks, web-sockets do not and will not work.

We're starting to come back around to the vision of the Internet in the 80s - multi-protocol, multi-host (if you're on the web, you can be a server), mobile code via bytecode (or source code), and with pervasive remote access (VNC and X11/NX).
3 verbs! Don't do the 3 verbs. Manage, organize and share. Setup, track and improve. Etcetera. My eyes glaze over.

Perhaps better:

FitFeud is Biggest Loser for companies (start short). Help your employees loose weight. It's easy to implement and low cost.
I consider myself pretty high on the chart of "technology-savvy" and trusting when it comes to payment on the Internet.

But for some reason, I won't pay for something inside the Android store. I know Google's behind it and that my stuff is probably safe. But there's just something inherintly shady about the Android store that I can't put my finger on.

I know it's irrational, but imagine how someone who hasn't created apps feels.
I'm sorry, like what?

Perhaps better:

Triviatise.com lets you create quizzes around your ads that you can embed in your website. Consumers will remember your brand and message better.
Oracle's vision of java
Hi jtnt, looks like we are the only ones on this thread :)

I like the idea and it feels exciting. A group of people I play hockey with recently did a weight loss challenge together which I think is a great idea.

I like the comparison to the biggest loser as that really helped me to visualize what it was. I think I would have liked to have that first.
Im not an expert by any means, but it seems like you could distill the elevator pitch to:

Fit feud is the 'biggest loser' for companies. It is a web based system to encourage weight loss competition amongst their employees.

All the phrases like "easily setup", "easy to implement" "low-cost" are phrases that dilute the message. If you get past the first sentence, I would follow it with "the way it works is...",

The target market is extraneous. I think it is important for you to understand it, and be ready to answer questions about it, but isnt one of the top items.
Right, so is it really exciting for MS to make their own version?
No, not at all. Lots of the startups we fund also applied to and were offered funding by other YC-like organizations.
"(also, on your tu quoque in regards to Iran, there's not a lot to defend about that country but at least they give equal legal status to all people within their borders, kurdish or baluch"

Try being Baha'i in Iran. I know several refugees from Iran who would vehemently disagree with your statement.
"Such Design competitions are a disguised form of crowdsourcing, and are extremely insulting to the design profession."

Oh, come off it. Too many designers become smug asses with an unwarranted sense of importance. Competitions like this are opportunities for those just starting to get their name out in the world. You're not going to be put out on the street because Skype held a public UI contest rather than hiring your firm.
When I saw that image, the first thing that came to mind was pgrep from the procps package. Using pkill would have crunched it all down to one line. Too bad they didn't use that.

However, I must admit it did look pretty cool as-is.
I had a similar experience with the platform. I was very excited, browsed through the APIs to check the required features were there and jumped in. It then took ages to get the right versions of SDKs/XCode and Titanium installed, which also involved searching though forum posts and patching files. Finally I got the "Kitchen Sink" app working. All was good.

I started implementing my app and quickly became flummoxed by the difference between seemingly identical windows (it's all down to "execution contexts" explained here http://iamwil.posterous.com/when-it-comes-to-titaniuminclude... not in the Titanium Docs).

And now Apple have made their subscription functionality the only game in town and that module (StoreKit) will cost a hefty Appcelerator subscription ($2500/yr, IIRC)

Bah... I've abandoned my Appelerator prototype and I'm going to try out PhoneGap which looks like it's really improved in the past ~6 months

Edit: typo
It does not surprise me in the least that the people who produced the Skype 5 "design" also treat design as something to be welded on at the end of the assembly line.

Design isn’t just a product, it’s also a process.

Thank you for articulating in nine words what took me eight paragraphs to fumble around.
I'm tired of hearing about the "death" of IaaS. This guy is paranoid. The reason that "PaaS" platforms are multiplying is that they are easy to put together. By deliberately restricting what the customer can do, you can offer cheaper and higher-performing services.

Vendor lock-in is a nice plus for the vendor, but that alone wouldn't drive these product offerings.

The truth is that we haven't worked out the kinks in infrastructure as a service. Only trivial designs can be implemented in today's public clouds. Judging from vCloud Service Director (or whatever Redwood is called this week), that's not likely to change in the immediate future.

Get back to me when "IaaS" products permit the kind of extensive network design customization that your managed service colo host will typically support. If those types of products are supplanted by vendors pushing PaaS, then I'll start to worry.
The service could send a special "auth" key along as parameter when forwarding. E.g.: http://example.com/secret.php?key=dh498

In secret.php on your server you could then ask the Gumroad API (via another http request) how often this key was already used and deny or allow access. This would be super easy to implement for the seller - just paste in ~5 lines of PHP code.
I don't have a flag button next to comments, should I?
I"m not saying any of that at all. My point is that probably, there are more exciting things to hope for in new versions of Windows. Or, perhaps as others have stated, there really isn't much to be excited about. All of the major desktop environments do everything a user wants, and it's really unlikely MS will do anything majorly innovative, bold or disruptive in terms of interface in the next version of Windows.
Gone Bingo Review
edit: Triviatise is a trivia based advertising platform. Increase brand engagement through quizzes with prizes.
You don't need the search button. Instantdomainsearch shows you availability on the fly, as you type each letter. That's the whole point.
what sort of Amazon integration have you done? Be curious to know what ideas you had
1. They both roughly have similar timeframes.

2. One targets entrepreneurs, while the other targets virtually everyone (consumer-based.) The former is SaaS, while the latter is free to start but costs more to remove ads/add features. It doesn't necessarily need a lot of users to be successful (not something like Facebook) but the experience of the site is better with more people.

3. Both have virtually no competition and solve significant problems.

Sorry for being so sneaky and vague about it, but there's nothing out there like either of these ideas, so I'm a bit hesitant to broadcast on a savvy community like HN.
haha I thought everyone had heard of scvngr. It is a location based service where you play games at the location, get badges levels etc.

How about triviatise is like trivial pursuit about products
I've also worked with SQLite, and one project was the using the C API. It's also why I really liked Google Gears.

Here's the Google Tech Talk on SQLite from 2006
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giAMt8Tj-84&feature=chann...
The ship times to canada are international too (3-4 weeks), as opposed to 1-2 days in US. And it actually does take that long (did in my case anyway).
From what I understand, they aren't located in Libya. Would you find it amazing if a war some middle-eastern country shut down Gmail?

I think the moral of the story here is that an important system like DNS should be distributed (real distributed, not the kind of distributed it is right now).
(I'm American and) I'm most curious about the supposed "superficiality" of Americans, particularly w/respect to friendships. Can anyone enlighten me on the reason for this? Are people of other countries accustomed to dealing with people who are less mobile and more likely to stick around for a while, and therefore more willing to invest time in a relationship? Is it an overemphasis on an appearance of independence?
An Introduction to SQLite - Richard Hipp [video]
This reads like a distillation of years of "desktop publishing" articles I encountered in the early 90s. Good work.
"Big Content" Is Strangling Tech Innovation
Take the one that's narrower. In your case, the one that targets entrepreneurs, not the one that targets "everyone". Narrow is good.