skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Great blog on issues facing startup founders
Noam is a professor at HBS who researches and teaches a course on challenges faced by startup founders. Compensation, organization, hiring, fundraising, managing, succession, exits, blowups...it's all there.
http://www.seeingmachines.com/faceAPI.html

Now we just need to hack together a Johnny Lee style 3D demo like the one in the faceAPI video...
That logo feels so foreign.
" If you're going to ban cell-phones on the basis of how much they annoy other passengers, you'll also have to ban babies."

I'm in!
Actually, we just took on a customer who required insurance. So sometimes you need it when you don't need it. I was pretty surprised when the request came through and didn't know anything about how to get it or what to look for.
Interesting that Kawasaki didn't pick up on the fact that YC crashes at Anybots HQ when they're on this side of the country. Kind of explains the robots and unicycles.
Stupid java tricks: Throw checked exceptions but don't deal with them
Thanks, that's a great link.

I especially liked this:

"Picture a boot stomping on a human face forever. Well, okay, not that. But picture the book social network wars ending with a site created by music people who probably wouldn't get that allusion, ..."

Seems to sum up the difference between the two. One is for book lovers; the other is for people who buy books.
Python Knol: Jon Parise
Revealed: The Internet's Biggest Security Hole
This is not true. Most stay until they are fully vested.
What’s the First Thing to Do Meeting a Client?
I want to ask a related question: most of you startup folks dream of selling out to somebody... what do you think it's going to be like? Do you even plan that far? You do realize that after the big liquidity moment, you have 2-3 years of working for the acquiring company, in order to realize your gains?
Fetishes
Mobile VoIP going Mainstream
This isn't Digg. This has nothing to do with Hacker News either.
This is exactly how the web should be. Holy crap this is so cool!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_t...
148-day-later-update: I may have been misguided here. There's a difference between being wrong, and being dishonest. Dishonesty implies deception -- intentionally misleading people.

The pastor in my example misled people with wrong arguments, but it was unintentional. While this type of action can lead to horrible results, it's hard to call the pastor "dishonest" if he didn't intend to deceive. Perhaps a better descriptor would be "fool" or "ignoramus".
I certainly don't know what happened in this situation, but there are also quite a few scenarios where the company may be justified.

Would it be fair to companies if any employee could create anything they wanted to, on company time, and screw the company over? Would it be fair to the company if the employee could use all of the trade secrets and intimate knowledge of the company's product to build a competitor on his/her own time, and screw the company over?

It's obviously not a completely black and white situation.
I dare say very few of the Digg population would understand this joke.

Personally, I haven't laughed at an XKCD this much in a while.
This article was quite confused and incoherent. What is he trying to say? What does he want people to do?

Seems like a personal, not very well structured rant without a point.
"Lee says he was brought on as an ex-Delicious Monster employee, and was planning to create the type of full featured and well designed app that Delicious is associated with. Conversely, he says that CEO Bart Decrem is trying to steer the company’s apps into the same vein as Slide or RockYou, with a large number of flashy and fun apps that aren’t particularly useful."

That's ironic, as much as I love Delicious Library I would have described Delicious Monster as a company that creates a small number (one, to be exact) of flashy and fun apps that aren’t particularly useful.
Can we please, please start referring to the iPhone as it's actually called... _i_Phone, not Iphone or IPhone or I-Phone. Lowercase i, uppercase Phone.

iPhone.

I'm starting to think that News.YC does this automagically... someone help a brother out here.
Check out the Nutch crawler. It closely integrates with the Lucene search engine project.

If you want something which is very specific (like the hype machine) you can easily create a basic crawler in python. There is not much change in the crawling strategies. Just a basic programming knowledge and reading the documentation of the urllib module (in python) would be enough.
Potion Factory, OSS web store for shareware apps
YC News does it automatically. I cut and paste the title from my blog (where I have it and will always spell it iPhone).
Yes, the first letter of titles is always automatically capitalized by news.yc.
Share Your Firefox Data Across Operating Systems & Computers
Share Your Firefox Data Across Operating Systems & Computers
After fulfilling their commitments to the acquirer, and their colleagues, whatever the hell they feel like doing.
Pretty much any xkcd cartoon has everything to do with Hacker News.
First point: MUCH thanks to the author for this tip. The working examples definitely showed the difference on my iPhone on edge.

Second point: who in the hell cares how the word "iPhone" is capitalized? Really, is the most pertinent comment you can contribute about being a f*cking grammar Nazi?

On a fun note, the iPhone makes sure you cap the "P" automatically. It doesn't care about the caps on microsoft.
One thing to remember is Base64 encoding is less efficient than the raw binary. Also, all modern web servers and browsers support reusing TCP connections for multiple HTTP requests (though there is still the extra latency for each actual request, just not the TCP connection sequence, etc)

I'd be interested to see actual benchmarks, rather than this "trust me, it works" thing.
I came across Nutch actually. I just didn't know if it was recommended.Thanks, I'll look into urllib and find some python tutorials.
Curved Scrollbars (WPF only) but they look great
Degrading Script Tags
Take their payout, quit, and do it all over again!
Okay, the redesign is much more sensible than the old. It's cleaner, clearer, and IMO much better.

Contrast?! The new design plays much better to contrast. They took out unnecessary visual debris (well, besides the ads, of course).

This is at least one thing TC is has done right recently.
Why there are so many salespeople and phone stores
Red-light cameras increase crashes as drivers attempt to abruptly stop at intersections
Those pictures rock.
The Case of the Failing Disk Drive or Windows Home Server Saved My Marriage
Ubiquity In Depth - An experiment into connecting the Web with language.
Well, I was reading it about 4 hours ago, and I'd like to be told why one should be libertarian. :)

But I'm genuinely curious to see what sort of reasoning led to Thiel's becoming a libertarian, and there's just not much to go on in the interview. People of many political persuasions, after all, maintain a healthy dislike for totalitarianism. And anyone who's taken Lord Acton's proverb to heart should recognize that corruption can manifest itself in those who hold market power just as easily as in those who hold political power.
solr might also be worth a look. http://lucene.apache.org/solr/ It's based on Lucene also but has JSON/XML connectors to alleviate some of the pain of using Nutch.
Ubiquitous Interfaces, Ubiquitous Functionality
For big, boring companies like IBM, sure, it doesn't hold. But the current crop of household names in software, companies like Google and Microsoft, are bombarded with more quality applicants in a day than most startups will ever see. Most people are attracted to success, not potential success.
I once had a contract working with the division of a big company formed after the acquisition of a startup. From my vantage point most of the negative things already mentioned
were valid for the founders, so I'll mention what I consider the "perks."

The good points seemed to be: the founders were now VPs of something or other, so in addition to their immediate cashout, they also received VP level salaries, and bonuses.

They had the freedom to say "I'm only coming in for meetings."

The rest of the time they "worked" at home - i.e. they didn't do any work, they hired contractors like me to do it for them.

They had the freedom to be complete assholes in meetings and interactions with staff they deemed stupid.

The guys who had it hardest were the non-founders who worked at the original startup. They had to stick around for four years to receive their 300 grand or whatever it was, but couldn't be assholes or just not show up four out of every five days. They had to put up with all the weird political bullshit that happens in a big company, which was made worse because the founders were busy making everyone at the big company angry. This seemed doubly hard to take, because most startup employees take jobs at startups partially to avoid big company politics and bullshit. Founders, throw your employees a bone and make sure they have an accelerated vesting schedule upon acquisition clause written into their contract.
Report on Small Business - August 2008 - Serial Thrillers
A webcam, eh? I always keep track of my human eyes using egg crates. They're just the right size, and you can label the outside with sharpie...
Youlicit/backtype : word/html-noise ratio is very low
youlicit.com - about 26 readable english words
on the site and about 10KB of html with a
ton of javascript. [side note - typing an invalid email address doesn't do anything in spite of all the javascript]

backtype.com - ONE SINGLE word on the page...but they are very curious to know how many people visited that page...and all the javascript/css goodness.

hint : Look at news.ycombinator.com site for anyone looking to minimize.

hint2 : save bandwidth and some money.
solr is a search engine (based on lucene which itself is a search engine). it won't help the OP as he wants to crawl websites.
Maybe if he wants to search through the crawled data later, he can use it.
I would recommend solr instead of lucene as it has faceted search and updates to documents which (i think ) was missing in lucene.
Bleh, no pdf link?
> Published September 2008

I'm still stuck in August :(
Fun with LINQ
The only remarkable thing about the equity being asked for is the anti-dilution provision. I don't think he's suggesting you ask for liquidation preference or participating preference (which wouldn't make any sense).

Anti-dillution is there to prevent unscrupulous partners from buying tons of equity (issuing new shares) at absurdly low prices just to dilute you.
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I continue to be blown away by Readernaut: http://readernaut.com
Facebook's 'Cassandra' is similar and is open source. See:

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=24413138919

http://code.google.com/p/the-cassandra-project/
I wonder if someone from a society where brick and wood is the "dull" office norm (it looks like it certainly could be) would welcome "cloth-covered cube walls" as refreshing.
One Inviolable Rule
I know from using the tobii that eye-tracking has one big problem: Your eyes never stay still. Whenever you're focusing on something, you are making mini-movements (called micro saccades IIRC) around the focus point. When you move to the next point, you're eyes 'jump' there and do the mini-movement again. When you read a line of text, it feels as a fluid movement, but it actually is a series of jumps over a couple of words at a time.

Interpreting eye tracking is mostly defining what is the cut-off point between movement during focus and actual movement. It seems that with a web-cam, this choice is already made for you, due to it's low resulution :). It's been a year or two since I had to deal with it though, so my memory is a bit hazy. I can post links to some good articles on eye tracking if anyone is interested (just leave a reply).

Finally, I'd like to remark that many people put their mouse where their focus is. Mouse tracking is a quite effective (and cheap, and hardware-less) means of focus logging. As is simply recording clicks.
I wouldn't even recommend going into business with a friend.

But if the friend has a complimentary skill set, and clear expectations are set from each person, the startup with a friend as a co-founder has the highest chance of being successful.
Calling D functions from python: too simple
Print Watermarks with CSS
Ghosts of a Corporate Future - Regina Spektor
That's Russell's paradox, which he knew all about, since it was bloody named after him.

Godel would have said something more like this: "Sure, put me down for 'fetish for systems of fetish knowledge which cannot prove the existence of this fetish.'"

Sorry to subject you to pedantry, but someone was wrong on the internet.
Myob indonesia - Mahalo
When Good Lizards Go Bad:   Komodo Dragons Take Violent Turn
The most intruiging startup of the bunch is popcuts. It's the one I really see potential for. The rest will likely do good, but popcuts could possibly be a game changing blowout. Depending on the founders of course.

It also has the easiest path to profits...
I will qualify this though - popcuts needs to bring in a creative agency to fix their page as soon as they have some money.
Unintended Consequences: Seven Years under the DMCA
Pool Cue | Billiards-Billiard Supplies-Pool Tables
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Very funny, but the misspelling makes me wince.
I was thinking the same thing.

One of my favorite set theory jokes is based on Russel's Paradox.

A mathematician starts a proof: "Consider the set of all sets that have never been considered. Oh wait ... never mind"
Amen, brother.

(I hate to post something that is essentially "+1", but in this case I think it really needs to be said.)
Also, doesn't Safari on iPhone cache images? For those with a bandwidth cap, downloading all the images on every page could be quite heavy.

Not sure if this is a great idea if navigation involves multiple image-rich pages. Any idea?
But that's perfectly valid. We have just considered that set, so obviously it's not an element of itself. I think maybe what you meant to say is after that: "Now consider an arbitrary element in this set." That would present a problem. Of course so would showing it's non-empty, but I think there could be a way around that.
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Reddit Now Fully Customizable: Bring Your Own Design and Domain
Hopefully, Songbird will take the Firefox approach and start innovating more. It's good to see it copy iTunes, because iTunes has a great user interface, but at some point, they'll hopefully exceed iTunes, just like Firefox exceeded IE.
How Do Toll Free Numbers Work?
Toll free numbers are the latest buzz words in all recent customer relationship management strategies. All the companies that value their customers and that are particular about providing quality pre-sales and post sales support know the importance of toll free numbers. Though we have heard of toll free numbers many times, all of us are not aware of how exactly these toll free numbers work. So if you are interested in arranging toll free numbers or 800 numbers for your business, then you must have a clear understanding of how toll free numbers work.
California Traffic School
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As I poorly stated in my initial comment I am aware of this problem. My hope was that by assuming virtually nobody ran the race 10 years ago, which I assume/hope is totally inaccurate, the two errors would cancel each other out.

It's a 'back-of-a-napkin' calculation. Certainly not accurate but a nice place to start for future refactoring.
NJ Defensive Driving
New Jersey Defensive Driving Online helps you improve your driving record and New Jersey insurance rates. It couldnt be easier to dismiss a ticket or get New Jersey point reduction with NDSS.
this is really clever... source code?!
Trabajo & Recursos humanos
Human Online es un proyecto dentro del área de recursos humanos (RR.HH.) donde presentamos agencias de contratación de distintos países del mundo.
PyDev bought by Aptana.. Free pyDev Extensions??
The colors are also selected to make it look like there is a significant "presence" even when there are only 10 guys who work in the embassy, like here in Austria.

!HN
Excellent advice.

The law is not logical and the outcomes are not reasonable. This is a hard thing for the engineering mind to come to terms with given how much these seemingly random outcomes can affect peoples' lives.

The law is a system that's nearly completely hacked at this point. Think of it as a RedHat linux 5.0 system with wuftp enabled that's been running on the net since '97. Do you really think that ls is still ls?
Making money off facebook
Can I take your word for it that I should ask a lawyer for legal advice? I mean, you're not a lawyer? Why should I trust you?
Some of us are too old for those sorts of shenanigans.

This is the point at which I would make a joke about celebrating by having a nice lunch with the other old people at Luby's, but I don't think the valley has Luby's or anything comparable, and I don't know where old people in the valley stereotypically go to eat.
I don't think I've met any venture capitalists that are snarky. I've been surprised by how pleasant most of them are, given the reputation the industry has. I have met a couple of obnoxiously "fratty" VCs, but they weren't partners, and they weren't with a top tier firm.
According to what I have heardÖ finding a good PHP developer is much more easier than finding a ROR developer coz ruby is new and less developers available and they demand higher salary.
Sometimes one just needs to know in general how the law looks like, and cannot be bothered to ask a lawyer. For example, let's say you want to know if it's legal to sleep with a 17 year old girl. You ask your friend who has experience with such things. You don't go calling up a lawyer straight away.. it makes you look suspicious.
I don't think it's so bad to ask after other people's experiences and advice as long as you keep in mind that 1) free advice is worth what you paid for it 2) who they are and what their credentials are. Someone who's started 5 successful companies probably does have some insight into the legal part of it, even though he's not a lawyer.
I have to say that while the topic interests me, the goals here sound a bit overreaching. It's not quite clear if he means for people coming in once some of the business groundwork has begun or people coming in as co-founders, but I can't really see it working for either.

First employee: No way you're getting a board seat or that much equity. Sorry.

Co-founder: If you're going through this many hoops pre-money that seems to be overkill. If you don't trust the guys that you're co-founding with, you're probably screwed anyway. I don't mean that trust is everything, things naturally can get ugly, but most of this contract stuff is going to be re-negotiated when you're funded anyway.
Photobucket’s Sale To Fox: How VC Insiders Made Big Personal Returns
VC Malaise Grips Europe
Is not it too much stressful to use eyes as an input device? I don't think there general uses for people that can use a mouse. I think that the next revolution in input devices can be a keyboard that is actually like the iphone a display + touchscreen so that the keyboard will drastically change in order to be application-specific.
Virus Infects Space Station Laptops (Again)
And I'm skeptical of articles that lead to exchanges like these on hacker news.
But part of the insight they are likely to have is that every case is different and that the differences matter, and that the legal judgments are best left to a lawyer.

Would you post a question here asking for medical advice?
corruption can manifest itself in those who hold market power just as easily as in those who hold political power.

Not really. People in business pursue the profit-maximizing choice, which at its worst means providing something unique enough that you can charge a monopolistic price. People in government pursue the power-maximizing choice, which at its best means maintaining the status quo until the next election.

I guess it's too bad we don't have his whole conversion story, but I notice that NPR will not ask guests how they all became indistinguishable center-leftists.
This site isn't remotely about doctors or health, so obviously not.

I don't believe every case is that different though, and there are some common threads, as can be seen in the recent advice-wanted article (LLC's are cheap and easy, definitely get a lawyer if there's more than one person). Would anyone here recommend that people use Cobol or Forth to make a web site with, unless the user has some really outlandish requirements?

In other words, advice here may be good for getting the 'gist' of how things are or ought to be. Clearly, when you want to get serious, at that point you should consult a lawyer. For example, I think pretty much anyone can tell you that forming a partnership instead of an LLC or corporation is likely to be a bad idea, or that people aiming for investments are likely better off with a C corporation. Of course, there are lots of underlying details that need to be looked after by a professional.

Furthermore, I like learning about this stuff, and it's not rocket science. Complex, in some cases, certainly, but this isn't a group of people that shys away from tough or complex things. The important thing is to keep in mind that we aren't experts in it, simply learners.
Well, I'm skeptical of people who would make a claim like that without noting that last time the article was submitted (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=177504) such comments didn't show up.
For a consumer-oriented website, I think you're correct. If you're filling out the form as a one-time thing I don't see the reset button's usefulness. Probably a cancel button which takes the user to some previous step would be better.

But if this form is part of an enterprise or small-office intranet application, and that's a form you fill out many times a day, perhaps 100s of times, then the form reset button might come in handy.
Robo-skeleton lets paralysed walk
Why Every Linux Application Known To Man Will Be SaaS Soon
Reason has been around for decades. Nowadays, it represents a very laid-back, modern, and liberal wing of the libertarian movement.
>And anyone who's taken Lord Acton's proverb to heart should recognize that corruption can manifest itself in those who hold market power just as easily as in those who hold political power.

Political power tends to come in big chunks while market power is disperse. If I had to choose between fighting any given private firm or the government, I have no doubt as to which one I'd pick.
>And anyone who's taken Lord Acton's proverb to heart should recognize that corruption can manifest itself in those who hold market power just as easily as in those who hold political power.

Political power tends to come in big chunks while market power is disperse. If I had to choose between fighting any given private firm or the government, I have no doubt as to which one I'd pick.

Comcast could screw with my cable. The government could make me disappear.
I hear what you're saying, and I understand the desire to tackle complex and tough things-- but some things are best left to professionals, believe me.

I can think of a few times where a lack of proper legal advice cost me more than a million dollars.

Once burned, twice shy.
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