skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Today's doctors are for the most part motivated by $.

Not any more so than any other field. Me - I want a doctor who is smart enough to have done something else and smart enough to say "pay me what I'm worth".

> We need more doctors and need to pay them less.

Unless you're going to break the monopoly on services that can only be performed by doctors or the medical school monopoly, you're not going to reduce income without introducing more scarcity (they'll do something else and won't be replaced).

The "universal health care" advocates never mention that the federal, state, and local govts directly control about half of the US healthcare spending and cover about half of the covered people. If you're going to argue that govt healthcare can be better/cheaper, that can be done today with those resources.

As it is, they're arguing that they'll be able to cover more than twice as many people for about 50% more money. How about demonstrating that and opening up the govt system to outsiders for cost? If you're right, the private system will either become as good or die.
Thank you. Try the veal!
well its not like Facebook has any innovative technology...does it?
A good friend of mine grew up poor in the city. His parents brought him and his brother every Sunday to the bookstore and told them they could buy a book. Even when the family was having trouble with finances. To this day, an individual who loves literature, he gets emotional when trying to tell me what this meant to him.
Yea, good thing we never have to sell software to people who don't care how elegant the code is...
Here's a screenshot of StudiVZ vs. Facebook from 2006:
http://www.sebbi.de/archives/2006/10/04/einziger-deutscher-b...
The important question isn't whether it improves scholastic performance, but whether it improves life and career performance. Computer skills are a prerequisite for getting almost any modern job.

Whether a computer improves a student's performance on algebra or history is really not too important.
See "colorForth": http://www.colorforth.com/cf.html
Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund
True even without the "(math)". I've always liked the idea of elegance applied to writing -- the best writing, like the best code, uses simple language to unusually strong effect.
I had a teacher in high school who gave us some great advice for picking a career, and it applies to this question, too.

Make a list of your top 5 things that you'd really love to do, that would excite you and be fun. Then pick the one that makes the most money, and chase it relentlessly. If you don't have a list of 5 yet, dabble until you do.

If you try to look for your one magic idea that's going to make you happy and rich, you'll never find it. Happiness is fuzzy -- any of those top 5 ideas will probably do. So pick the one that makes the most money, because that's the one that's sustainable.

--

Earning potential vs effort? Not quite. You'll spend 100% of your effort on it, or maybe a little more. The goal is to maximize the earning potential of the effort that you have to spend. An easy execution with a low earning potential is a great hobby, but not a business. An idea which earns nothing unless you spend double the effort that you have is doomed to failure.

Friends' reactions to the idea are worse than useless. Your friends' are incented to make you feel good; but what you need is a dose of pessimism about the challenges you'll face. Strangers would be better, since they don't care about you.

Pursuing interesting technology is a fine hobby. But it's not a business.

Good ideas really are a dime a dozen. Don't wait for your One Original Idea. Pick a niche you can win, and win it. Winning adds to fun and enthusiasm.

If you really can't decide, you can always go work for someone else.
All of the games would go away if the govt auctioned H1-B visas. Then the only question is whether they'd be owned/rented by companies or by individuals.

As to choosing the number to be auctioned, we could either pick a number or stop issuing visas as soon as "enough" money has been raised. (Yes, you'd set things up so the first visa didn't cost a lot more than the last one.)
solving a problem you have and have a passion for and is a problem that lots of other people have too and are willing to pay (attention|$$) to solve.
I'd probably go with my "gut feeling" on what I felt would be the most fun to work on, most rewarding at the end, and how much work is involved.

Ultimately, going with the gut feeling will always be a better determiner of success than thinking things through with your head.
Very good point. I had a computer available almost as long as I've been in school, since about age 6-7. I first stumbled onto QBASIC shortly thereafter, and I've been coding ever since.

My grades were never stellar. I was just never driven to excel in school and avoided homework whenever possible. Instead of studying, I spent my time learning about computers.

All that time on the computer definitely hurt my scholastic performance, but it did wonders for my career performance.
I can't agree with this.

First of all, there are other elements of building a successful project that can be just as rewarding and satisfying as making a buck. Perhaps, the project is some type of "resume builder" which helps you along your way to making the big payoff later on down in life.

Secondly, you can never know if a project is going to pay off in the end anyway. So I say work on the project that you would enjoy the most, and you never know, it could be the big payoff. Take Craigslist (to cite an overused example). He never knew his email list would turn into a website and make him phenomenally rich!
Very few successes, in my opinion, were really about a great idea. (Google, Microsoft, Apple, a few others I'm sure.) Cracking into that market is stupid hard.

You're better off taking a good idea that you can actually do, and doing it better than anyone else. Passion helps with that. It also helps to find a problem where the existing solutions are all similar and not very good. Flickr, del.icio.us, Viaweb, and Mozilla all seem to me to have done well playing this angle.
I'm a bit surprised. Some of the ideas - ok, two of the ideas, dating and "the next craigslist" - don't seem that far off from the proverbial pie-in-the-sky "Facebook killer": the hard part is getting the critical mass, and everyone wants to make one. [edit] #9 and 10, photo/video sharing and auctions, are arguably in this category as well.

I also still don't get WebOS. There must be something to it, because a lot of smart people are getting excited about the field, but I just can't see it myself... can anyone help me "see the light"?
pg, I have working beta for #1 pls. email me at paulpajo [at] gmail
Resume builders are fine hobbies. But crappy businesses.

you can never know if a project is going to pay off in the end

If we demanded perfection, we'd be left with math and The White Album. While you can't know, you can estimate well enough to decide. Do people with money have this problem? Are the existing solutions flawed? Can I build a better one? If you just got 3 yesses, it's got $ inside.
We're working on a combination of 5 and 7. It's a good place to be, I reckon. A lot of existing enterprise software is indeed simply appalling - both internally developed and external products bought from companies that supposedly have evolved in the free market. Most of it seems to be stuck in the late 90's, when it was ok to have an awful unfriendly interface that makes user endure pain for every minute they have to use it.
To Save Gas, Shoppers Stay Home and Click
"Some [Amiga capabilities], such as displaying multiple windows at different color depths and resolutions on the same physical screen, have yet to be duplicated at all."

Why could the Amiga do this and current computers can't? Is it any screen that can display multiple resolutions simultaneously? If so, why don't current OSes support this?
I don't see the need for any "Facebook Killer" proverb. Facebook seems to be doing a pretty good job of killing itself without any external assistance.
With Exits Barred, VCs Keep Investments Flat
How is vi considered minimalist compared to Notepad?
Help. Help. I feel like that guy in the Sandman comics who gets cursed to have nothing but original ideas, as rapidly as possible, day and night, forever.

Seriously, this list is exhausting to read. It's like the topic sentence for an entire century. I'm going to have to take it a little piece at a time.
Why San Francisco's network admin went rogue
iPhone Platform: What We Can Learn From Tap Tap Revenge
http://ycombinator.com/w2009.html
Motorola Claims Executive Now With Apple Took Secrets
I agree. It is clear - certainly in the IT world - that scholastic performance is not linked with happiness and "success"
If you can become the platform everybody is building their webapp on, you are going to be the new Microsoft.
American Airlines Drops Google Trademark Lawsuit
Motivation re:dating site - the very simple (and quite ugly) dating site, Plenty of Fish, earns $10M a year.
The idea I submitted and worked on for three years when I applied in 2007 had three of those in one... I don't think anybody has executed on it yet, if you want to read my Spring 2007 application again. (Though if I apply again, it would be with another, more time-sensitive idea, which can also be split up into several of your categories.) I'm not trying to brag, but I did outline the exact way to beat eBay.
Google's Services Converge in the New iGoogle
What do you expect? Demand is demand: There's not all that much difference between what humans want in 2008 and what they wanted in 1908. They want to listen to music, look at art and theatre, visit with their families, impress their friends, find meaning in their lives, and get laid.

Naturally, these are the waters where everybody goes fishing, year after year.

I think part of the secret, though, is to stop designing (e.g.) "the next dating site" and start designing a way to get compatible, single people into the same room. Focus on the problem, not the old solution. For example, the very word "WebOS" encourages bad habits of thought: It encourages you to look for something shaped like Windows or Linux, or for apps with a UI that reminds you of the desktop.
Really a great list on what is broken and why it needs to be fixed. Pretty much everything on the internet is broken to a certain extent, that gives an opportunity for early and existing Entrepreneurs. I really want to do something with music and news, those two are totally broken which will eventually destroy the industry.
"sponsoring employer" can be changed any time by the visa holder applying for 'H1 transfer' with USCIS. Your wikipedia quote is correct but the impact is just that you can't have multiple jobs without multiple H1Bs (one person can have up to 4). Since you can change the sponsoring employer any time, you can change jobs any time.

Since my parent post got voted down, I should probably note that I am on H1B and I've done this myself.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but YC's model is built around working with very early-stage, yet-to-incorporated businesses. A team that had already built a product to the point of beta, or that had been working on one of the ideas on the list for the past three years as someone has mentioned here, would probably not qualify, right?
Yes, the development of the web is definitely not over! Lots of great ideas there. At swirrl.com we're working on something like Paul's item 22, with a bit of 5 thrown in.
The last confirmation was $5 million a year in July of 2007.
Care to share about your thoughts on eBay? Can you reveal your email address?
Hmmm... wasn't planning on applying for Winter, but we're working on the auctions one. (Although I think auctions is the wrong way to look at - looking at marketplaces in general makes more sense.)
I don't see why not, if they're interested in the sorts of terms that YC generally does. At least by my reading of PG over time...
Exactly, efficient market and all that says there cannot be a "correct" choice.
Reminds me of Hilbert's list (http://www.math.niu.edu/~rusin/known-math/95/hilb.list). I wish this list also has the same effect and influence as that one.

edit: wikilink - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert%27s_problems
My dad was a programmer, so I don't know what it's like to grow up without a computer. Having a computer from such a young age set me up to be bored in school. Zork was a major influence in my initial interest in reading. By the time I hit kindergarten, I was already devouring the biographies written for kids. My teachers usually didn't know what to do with me, so I spent most of kindergarten - second grade on my own in the school library.

My grades have always been good, but I think that's more because of my parents' influence. My mom is a teacher and helped me find books on subjects that weren't offered in my school, so I would be less likely to hit material that I would be learning later in class. She also encouraged me to write.

My dad introduced me to programming and Pascal in elementary school. I went to a rural public high school in Louisiana, so my dad would often pick up old college textbooks in subjects my high school didn't offer, like chemistry, Latin, and history from a non Christian perspective. He also stood up for me when my guidance counselor tried to put me on the MRS. track instead of college. If I had to sit through 4 years of home ec and parenting classes, I would have dropped out as soon as I turned 16.

I think kids tend to do better in school when their parents care. An involved parent could use a computer to enhance their child's education. A non involved parent might use it as "tv 2.0" - just another thing to entertain their kid so they don't have to.
I'll be there, wearing an F1 hat
Yes. So the above quote is a bit misleading. Better cite Kerckhoff's principle.
Some things I want:

1) A way to ensure that each person can only create one account on a website, without having to sacrifice anonymity.

2) A day planner that plans my day for me; based on my to-do list, what my friends are doing, and also what's going on in the local area. Also, populate the bulk of my to-do list automatically based on what my friends in the same classes are adding to theirs. Plan social dates for me based on when my friends and I are free. Introduce me to people I don't know but should know.

3) A way to get more people involved in Internet-mediated locally social stuff.

4) A semi-standardized way for people to build up a reputation without needing a college degree.

5) An IMDB for people who have won awards. I want to a quick way to find the professors with the most citations in any given subject, the chefs in the area with the best zagats reviews, the local high school football players with the most touchdowns, etc.

6) An academic search engine targeting people who are college educated but who don't necessarily have extensive experience with the inner workings of academia. Right now there are really good ways of accessing journal articles online, but really poor ways of learning what academic journals to look in. There's no way to know which journals are respected and which aren't. No easy way to translate plain English questions into the keywords that are used by academics.

7) A way to turn recipes on the web into peapod orders. A way to turn the customized diets that Weight Watchers or WebMD create into a peapod order.
You want to lock yourself in?
The Story Behind San Francisco's Rogue Network Admin
Actually we especially like groups that have already started.

http://ycombinator.com/faq.html
One, there's already plenty of competition: Etsy and Amazon are just the tip of the iceberg. There's a whole ecosystem of blogs out there on this. Start with Randy Smythe and AuctionBytes.

I'm not going to outline our strategy to expand beyond gaming, but I think our plan is one (of many possible) that will work.
My source: http://myventurepad.com/Startups/17787
I totally agree with the outsourcing of IT. My father owns a minor distribution company. That deals with spa, pool, and bath parts. No piece of software has ever come to make their life easier. I have been involved with every major software purchase and I am constantly thinking to myself, I know these people I could probably make something that would work.

The biggest problem I see is that hosted apps are great, but these guys need the software to be up all the time. They may even have bad internet connections. So I was thinking the best model would be to have a hosted application, and then if the company wanted greater up time they could by a box and put it at their location and it would take care of syncing with the online counterpart. That way they could continue business while offline.

As long as you are taking care of integration, and migration you could probably open source the underlying software and still make money on support services. You could also make money selling monthly low cost licenses per user like 10 or 15 dollars per person.
Samsung F210 Silver / Rose (Unlocked)
The New samsung F210 looks fun, feels fun & is a fun fashion phone which comes with a 2 megapixel digital camera complete with easy to access camera features. The phone comes with 1 Gbyte of internal memory & the phone has a memory card slot.
Perhaps today. Earlier it was: Belong to the right family - a family that did log picking for ages.
Yet another “Y Combinator of Korea” opens doors
its depressing, i've had some ideas that i think are good that touch on some of those areas but i'm not applying to YC because i don't have the time to make it up there for a few months. :(
The truth is that if pencils and paper don't work, then computers won't either. The problem can't be solved by chucking more "stuff" or money at it.
Computer skills are a prerequisite for getting almost any modern job.

It depends what you mean by computer skills. E.g. everything needs to read and write - only a few specialists need to know how to make paper and bind books, and they learn that as adults.
"Your friends' are incented to make you feel good"

I guess that means if my friends reactions are not very enthusiastic, my idea is really crap :-( Then again, a certain amount of stubbornness is also an entrepreneurial trait, I think?
> So you're saying they didn't intentionally compose this picture in such a way as to increase the likelihood that people will donate?

If it was your kid, wouldn't you?
A fun modern way to trade: math trades
These are not new, but I have liked the idea ever since I encountered it, and I have not seen it mentioned on news.yc before. So far I have only seen it on boardgamegeek, although I think there is independent software for conducting such trades (so people outside of boardgemgeek seem to know and care about it).

What I like about it: it might be a more optimal form of trade, that has only become feasible with the access to adequate computing power (100 years ago, there wasn't an option to trade like this - I think calculating the optimal trade is a NP complete problem. Haven't checked this now, though).

And furthermore, it is simply fun: it adds an element of suspense and excitement to the trade, while you can still be sure to not be screwed over.

I was inspired to post this because of the "auctions" in the YC list... A part of me wanted to remain quiet, but we'll see ;-)
Weird. The problem we're tackling at Pikluk is exactly what #2 is about, yet we weren't even invited for an interview in 07 cycle. Something tells me we should have polished our application more.
Start by writing Basic for the Altair.

Priceless.
What's a peapod order?
Looks really nice, but I'm planning to be there for a month, so its too expensive :(. Thanks though.
Regarding music, I've laid out a formula here:

"Using a solution of microformats, browser and OS media tracking, and direct-to-creator payments, a new Web model is quite possible."

http://cleanzap.com/grabbing-music-from-the-net/

Basically, the creator applies metadata to their media, and lets it circulate (P2P, fansites, internet radio - anything) wherever it needs to go from the outset. A Creative Commons Attribution license is used.

Browsers, media players, or a special app tracks whatever is played locally and a special app regularly prompts for voluntary payment at regular times. Only 5% may pay - but in a global world with low production costs, that might be enough.

http://Musicbrainz.org can be used to retag the files if the metadata is corrupted along the way.

News can also be 'solved' the same way - track what's being consumed and let the consumer voluntarily pay later. Few will pay, but in paying, other benefits can be obtained, like the content creator being able to give previews or special releases to their known audiences.
#30 is too meta. Will we eventually have startups that help startups make products for other startups that make products for other startups?

It's just not scalable.
Scholastic performance in this context usually means ability to follow arbitrary instructions, remain quiet, and perform obviously unimportant busywork without becoming bored or distracted.

So, no, a tool that can both provide distraction and unleash a creative mind to explore is not exactly what you'd want to hand someone you'd like to meet the above goal. Its quite likely the opposite. For God's sake, give it to them!
http://www.peapod.com Looks like an online grocery store.
Interesting stuff, for anyone who is thinking about data mining. For an overview of what the plan was in 2006, check out the FT article (which, incidentally, led to unanticipated problem, according to TFA)

http://tinyurl.com/2aaxdc
I disagree. It is meta, but not too meta. You're right, startups helping startups that help startups will fail. I think there are still enough startups for ONE round of meta. There's nothing that says it will go beyond that.
The Wiki-Hacker Strikes Again
In Pictures: A Brief Hacker History
Why Does Win32 Even Have Fibers?
When it comes to VOIP its more economic than cultural, not so for other services/websites. Speed/latency is the biggest challenge. That's really nice of you, thanks, I will let you know if I need it. Interestingly, the first 3-4 links for "start using cgiproxy" are blocked as well :-(
A deeper thing you're getting at is the irrelevancy of public grade school.
About two years ago I wanted tot make a craigslist competitor for my area... But it was just me alone so I never kicked it off. I've been wanting to revive it though. I made some preliminary designs. (the design tests are oooold and in spanish though).

http://nsovocal.com/lalista/
http://nsovocal.com/lalista/login.htm
http://nsovocal.com/lalista/registro.htm
http://nsovocal.com/lalista/list.htm
http://nsovocal.com/lalista/ad.htm

Maybe it's good time to pick up the project again with a proper business plan and design :P
The largest online grocery store.
This is pathetic. How about these two?
http://www.aol.com
http://www.yahoo.com

Or these two?
http://live.com
http://ask.com

When there isn't any technology behind your "look and feel", then "look and feel" is the only thing you've got to protect.

... and this is happening after Facebook itself admitted and settled on charges of code (!) theft.
It was a very hot web start up back in the 90's it was since bought out by some brick and mortar grocery store.
I'm not sure I buy the SWOT that Graham's proposing for Craigslist or EBay. There are ways that both suck, but there's an absolutely enormous network effect they're riding on.
Well, my company funds itself by, amongst other things, going out and breaking web apps, and I'm going to assert without evidence that in both code quality and in environmental security (admin interfaces, etc), CF sites rank at the bottom, and .NET and J2EE sites are neck and neck at the top.

We're a Rails product shop and our dev team is recovery Lisp hippies, so that's not a BigCo bias, it's just the empirical observation.
By now other people have answered the question of what it is.

I use peapod every other week. It probably saves me an hour and a half each time--it's pretty cool.
Backslapping Ruby’s average performance once again