skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Seems kind of a shoddy list. It'd seem for those numbers to be meaningful you'd also need to know their burn rate, how long they need to be profitable, and what their valuations were from those funding rounds and what that might mean for them if some of the exit opportunities start becoming scarcer.

That's been one of the more interesting things that I've thought through a little -- what will the opportunities for exits look like in the upcoming years? Will the big acquirers tighten their belts?
How about the profitable businesses that have taken far less funding, or none at all? This list is ridiculous and only serves to perpetuate excessive valuations, feature-not-business and built-to-flip strategies, and wasteful investments.

It's an endorsement to take a ridiculous (or any) amount of funding based on the thought that more money == better! This is moronic. If you're building a business that requires 20mm in capital to build out an infrastructure, fine, but you damn well better have a business model and accurate profit projections to go along with that.

But, whatever. Go ahead. Follow the TC Way(tm). Take a shit load of money with no firm plan for spending it. Waste all your time trying to make good hires then hire managers to manage those hires and VPs to manage them. Give most of your company to a firm with deep pockets and far less knowledge of your industry than you have. Give up most of your stake in the company. Hope to Christ you do really well so your business doesn't get folded into another portfolio company so they don't have to count you as a loss. Answer to a board of directors when you want to change a font color.

The rest of us, we'll still be here, slowly growing our existing profits, spending nearly nothing, and making smart moves that grow our businesses without excessive cap expenditures. And later, if we need it, the money will be there. My Father told me something once that has stuck with me for many years. Essentially: "Don't worry so much about money. There will always be money and there will always be ways to make it, when you need it."
if you raise $455 million I would hardly call you a startup
What impact will the credit crunch have on venture financing for startups?
Yes.

A credit crunch is great news. Big, established businesses can't raise huge amounts of money to grow.

So small, flexible business raise little amounts in unusual and novel ways and have room to grow.

Hey, I don't want this thing to blow up, but if it does, there is going to be all kinds of bright sides, including the ability of people/firms with lots of cash to start their own lending institutions.
This is more evidence of the bizarro universe taking ours over. For the first time I can recall, Peter Norvig is being labeled "NotHackerNews"
I think in open Web land the alternative is to just not write the app.
Sure, you're just a start-up with a ton of expenses that hasn't figured out how to make the revenue necessary to sustain without that kind of cash.

If it's not a "start-up", what is it? It sure as hell isn't an "established, profitable business." It's not established because people are still willing to invest 100s of millions of dollars based on a hope that it'll pay off huge later and it's obviously not very profitable.
In this instance, the author is irrelevant. This would have been more aptly titled "2008 Election FAQ (by Peter Norvig)".
I agree. This list is pretty pointless. The companies that are most likely to succeed in a down economy are those that solve actual problems for people. These problems could be ways to save money, or otherwise. But, it has to be a problem truly worth something to the consumer if it is solved. Because in a down economy, consumers won't spend money on solving problems that are just nice to have solved, instead of need to be solved.
Recommendations for promoting a new web app?
I've been working on a web app for a couple weeks. I should be able to launch it in a few weeks. So if anyone reading HN has had success at building buzz, what'd you do?
I know the basics: post on HN, share on Twitter, submit to Digg, send to Techcrunch, etc.
Going to get some of my buddies to promote it as much as they can, but none of them are big web celebrities.
I feel certain that if you build a project that is simple, works very well for its purpose, and makes it easier for the user to do a task, then it has a better chance at success.

I made a Firefox extension about 3 years ago called "Cacheout!" that was up to about 10,000 regular users before I had to kill the project when my hosting situation died. It had gotten to the front page of Digg and had been shared around a few blogs. I considered it a minor success for me at the time.

What should I do to get ready to promote this new project?
It's a hacker writing about politics. Unless he developed some algorithm to determine the winner based on number of lies and non-answer-answers, I don't really give a damn about his "objective" analysis.
Protect Marriage SD
Six Burning Questions About Flash on the iPhone
Its just a business. You don't have to be profitable to be considered one. Doesn't facebook has something like 700 employees at this point?

To me once you have revenues of 1mm per year, you are no longer a startup.
That line of argument is part of examining religion as a social phenomenon using ideas of non-genetic evolution. The idea is that you can find evolutionary processes at play that are not a consequence of genes. It's a theory explaining parts of sociology with evolutionary biology/zoology. This is a actually an area where he is a leading expert.

As an example, Richard Dawkins coined the term 'meme' which is a term describing a gene equivalent for social traits. 'Memetics' often ends looking at religion for various reasons (availablitlity of data for one). His focus (obsession) with religion is not incidental.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme#Memetic_accounts_of_religi...
My. No offense, but for someone with such strong feelings and a little name-calling and all about political posts, you certainly seem to make a lot of political posts yourself.

Tell you what. You make your FAQ, and I'll make a FAQ about how some political posters on HN who merely disagree with other political posters are actually blathering hypocrites.

Nothing opionionated, mind you...wink...
if you were a lobbyist working for Fannie or Freddie and you were simultaneously employed by Obama or McCain, I would think it would affect how McCain or Obama would view Fannie Mae
Google's index is the crawling information they gathered. You can actually do searches and get results as they would have been 7 years ago. The WayBack Machine just caches the HTML pages and would not provide this functionality.
Perhaps a title for PG's new book?

Hackers, Painters & Godless Killing Machines?
Evil but cooler?

BTW, Apple's complaints about Microsoft have always been 'tasteless' not 'evil.'
Thanks for posting that - I found it really inspiring. I'd just like to ask what it was that got you interested in the x264 project in the first place?
I don't know why this was modded down ... it's a fascinating subject. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression

Every entrepreneur knows that those who choose to ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
New WebKit Web Inspector: debugging, profiling, FireBug-compatible console API, and more
I never said that there weren't other influences going on, I was just saying that such (un-broken-down) numbers were rather misleading.

On a side note, I'm an Obama supporter ;)
Here's what i don't understand. If the global pool of money is getting tighter, why aren't interest rates going up?
Posted as an example of a refreshing, rational, surprisingly lucid way to look at making a particular decision using messy data. Norvig's analysis, whether you agree with it or not, is a good example of using a particular tool occasionally prized by some scientists and engineers -- reason.

Some folks do seem to get a bit upset when reason interferes with their own irrational, sacred cows. Understandable.
I've always found this copy-paste rather hypocritical since by responding to my comment you are submitting a comment complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site instead of flagging it, thereby contradicting your entire stance on the issue.

If you don't like my comment, flag it, don't tell me something I already know.

Edit: Also, it would seem that down-voting would serve an even better purpose here since while you can down-vote my comment, there's nothing of substance I can do about this stupid article w/o commenting on it since, historically, I have seen no effect from flagging.
I found myself using it for encoding game videos of EVE Online, and had noticed that it got massively better quality at the same bitrate as compared to the more popular WMV9--at least on those videos, it could get 2-3x better compression at the same quality. So I promoted and used it, and eventually I decided to learn how it worked and see if I could make it better.

Since then, I've moved on from EVE Online; in fact, I would say the primary cause is I found that x264 development was more interesting (if college itself wasn't enough of a reason!) I still use it for all sorts of video compression, of course, and every once in a while I find myself quite literally improving it because it gave suboptimal results on some video I wanted to post online.

By the way, I didn't note it in my above post, but I'm a sophomore in college (CS major), which puts it quite into perspective, I think.

I always tell people that they don't necessarily need lots of background knowledge or experience to get involved in something as complex, as, say, video encoder development. Almost none of my prior knowledge was at all useful in learning how x264 worked. At most my linear algebra and Fourier knowledge from my education went to some use on a theoretical level, but that's about it, and it was only "nice to have"; I could have done as well without. It seems to be this way with most jobs I've taken, too; 90% of what you need to know ends up being learned on the job. What really matters is your ability to learn and adapt, not your prior knowledge base.
"there's nothing of substance I can do about this stupid article w/o commenting on it".

You can ignore it.
I don't understand why Apple gets a free ride for manufacturing weapons components (via their acquisition of PA Semi) and having a CEO that owns a large chunk of Disney, which is barely more than a swear word among the same people who appreciate their products on a technical level.

The iPhone SDK issues are merely disappointing in comparison. You don't see two year old blog posts from the same group of people flaming Apple for not providing a wireless device of any kind for them to develop on, which is surely a bigger injustice by their logic. Where were these people when I wanted some apps for my RAZR?

I think the Venn diagram of people who are affected by Apple's iPhone development policies, and the group of people who complain about them on the internet has a very small intersection, and if you add the group of people who can actually code, you could probably buy the lot of them a round of drinks for twenty bucks.

Personally, as a veteran of the war of mendacity against common sense that is SOAP, I support anything that gets Dave Winer upset.
Surprised by the tax charts.

They are are actually sticking to their left/right positioning.
Delicious blog - Fully armed and operational
Totally agree. The iPhone is to developers as the iPod is to music owners. Sure, music owners could hawk their wares on any number of music stores, but only a deal with Apple would give them access to the huge iPod base.
Are you talking Major GPA or over all? Someone who is getting C's in art appreciation is probably just a bit wiser about how they spend their time than someone who gets all A's.
YOU CAN SAFELY SKIP THIS ARTICLE. (that's for those who came here to read comments and decide whether to read the article). Accurate summary: economy is down, money is scarce, hence startups with lots of funding will survive. Now, look at our huge list of a hrefs!

A pointless article that just pulls down the standard of TC even lower than what it has become. Who cares about the guys with millions and millions of VC? How about an analysis of what kind of product is well-positioned for customers with tight wallets?

Of course I'm not getting off the hook without supplying my own interpretation. I'm bullish on something that decreases distance between international netizens. Facebook? Sure, but they only tackle one facet of it. There are lots of nontrivial, invisible, local-dependent barriers to get around.
What a load of crap. How much did pets.com have in their war chest back in the day? How far did that get them?

Massive "startups" vs the small agile ones are like the dinosaurs vs the rodents. Who survived and thrived after the meteor hit?
128K, doesn't ARM also manufacture weapons components? I'm assuming their CPUs (or Intel's FLASH parts) are used in weapons, along with toaster ovens.
Apple's digital music showdown
I actually got results when searching for myself :-)

What a bunch of crap I wrote back then...
From my experience in new york, you can get into almost any "hot" or sought after club with the same tactics -- ones that have 200 people lines at midnight. Bypassing a 200 person line is pretty exhilarating.

He seems to wrap it up well in his tips -- the most important is that it seems natural, that you dress well and seem meant to be there, and not be awkward about the tip.

Walking straight up to the bouncer at the front of a line, asking to get in, and (after you are denied and told to get to the back of the line) saying "Isn't there some way we can work this out?" while slipping him a twenty works every time.
Actually one of the few threads where I've done this in the past was killed, presumably by flagging. I don't think it takes that many flags to kill a story.

In the end my comment is certainly wasting space, but in the end hopefully it results in less people complaining about submissions. Finally if you want to play semantics, the guidelines say don't complain about a "submission." Complaining about comments is fair game.
Yes, a sucky list, but it feels kind of good to see mahalo.com isn't there.
Netflix API Launches Tomorrow
The Cloud needs Infrastructure2.0
"YOU CAN SAFELY SKIP THIS ARTICLE" probably applies to just about everything on techcrunch.
> I saw once that one of the better income predictors was having had more than one sexual partner in high school.

Silicon Valley makes me think this rule isn't hard and fast.
what happened to your hosting for Cacheout?
I'm guessing because the hardware itself is open and fully hackable whereas with android all you get is a Java SDK?
5 Engineering lessons from the new, reopened Minnesota bridge
We should see some new commercials soon:

"I'm the Emperor...And I'm Darth Vader"

We're both evil, but one of us is ugly, while the other is shiny and black (for a premium!)
Google "Power Computing."
Ask HN: What % of users are still on IE6?
And if we're running into constant snags with CSS that is killing us in IE6, should we ignore it in the spirit of efficiency so that we can get a version up, or always work to get it right?
Report and Case Study on CSRF
What's this doing on Y Combinator News? Will we see announcements about Joomla templates and Drupal themes next?
Is that a new guideline, by the way? It wasn't there in the old days -- presumably it postdates the "flag" feature.

In any case, I don't like that guideline much. Complaining about offtopicness is, in my opinion, the best substitute for downvoting. Sure, it means that every political story acquires a boring "!HN" thread, but that's exactly the point: the boring thread is the punishment for the story, and is designed to suck out all the oxygen from the _actual_ political debate which would otherwise ensue.

I know I post rather a lot of comments complaining about political stories. This isn't because I'm not interested in politics -- it's actually because I'm very interested in politics and have to actively stop myself from getting involved in internet-based political arguments (something I swore off many years ago as a waste of time).
In Canada, the average Debt-to-Equity ratio for banks is 3:1. We only have a few. Large, heavily regulated, safe as hell.
http://www.knozama.com
Entire site uses nothing more the code and a property file of < 10 values. No application data whatsoever.
Focus on Things Under Your Control: Brad Feld
Could there also possibly be some knock on effect from the rising cost of fuel prices, leading on to rising costs of food, home heating/cooling and other essentials for these "gentrifiers"?
Learn Game Programming in Scheme
I'm pretty sure this is meaningless as well, but interesting:

Then

2,730,000 for asp code
2,450,000 for java code
1,730,000 for php code
1,710,000 for perl code
276,000 for python code
224,000 for lisp code
89,600 for ruby code
9,580 for erlang code

Now

64,700,000 for php code
25,700,000 for asp code
15,500,000 for java code
1,540,000 for perl code
1,390,000 for erlang code
1,160,000 for python code
711,000 for ruby code
484,000 for lisp code
al qaeda turns up 1,670 results back in 2001, (Today is 20,400,000) and the first hit is for a Frontline episode on "Who is Bin Laden?"

http://www.google.com/search2001/search?q=al+qaeda&hl=en...
(that's for those who came here to read comments and decide whether to read the article).

Thanks.
4th hit "Cisco - iPhone Support"

Explains the settlment: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/22/business/cisco.php
Technorati's 2008 State of the Blogsphere
"...as there is no way to use multi-touch and Flash on your computer screen today either."

And that's one of the principal points: Flash is yesteryear's technology.

"How this affects coherency on the iPhone is up for debate"

What's there to debate? Flash doesn't support multi-touch, iPhone runs on it.

"I don't think Flash's lack of multi-touch should restrict me from using stormpulse from my iPhone."

I have written another article:

Runtime wars (2): Apple's answer to Flash, Silverlight and JavaFX

http://counternotions.com/2007/11/15/apple-runtime-answer-2/

wherein I explain how emerging standard technologies are essentially rendering most (not all) of Flash's advantages moot. Actually, since I wrote that article, advances in JavaScript, canvas, CSS animation, etc., have been pouring in at an astounding pace.

So most (not all) folks out there will take a harder look and see if they can easily do now with HTML5 what they could only do with Flash yesterday. Apple, like Google, is riding on that wave.
http://www.google.com/search2001/search?q=%22Osama+Bin+Laden...

Totally interesting.
"(God help you if you're, say, a young server-farm company.)"

Cloud computing anybody?
His first two points are wrong if there's inflation coming as the current crisis seems to precipitate, you should spend your money before it loses value..
I was poor and got poorer. Baby was on the way that miscarried, etc. Life sucked major. Much, much better now though.
1. Searching in 2001 for: altavista google, the 3rd result is:
"AltaVista launches Google competitor"

2. Searching in 2008 for: google facebook, the 3rd result is:
Google’s Response to Facebook: "Maka-Maka"

If history can teach something, Google's future is doomed. :)
The Tragedy of Linked Lists
Or even better, "Why I prefer candidate A to candidate B, phrased in FAQ form with occasional attempts to sound impartial by pointing out [before immediately dismissing] the arguments the other way, by Peter Norvig".

Don't get me wrong -- as far as party-political blog postings go this one is by no means especially bad, but nor is it good enough to transcend its genre of the usual douche-is-better-than-turd politics.
2 SENTENCES CEO..TELL US WHAT YOU DO (AND GET FUNDING)
At the company I work at, we are gradually inching down towards around 25% IE6 usage out of all IE users. Overall, about 75% of total traffic is Internet Explorer. IE8 is about 1%, IE7 is about 74%. Firefox is around 20% overall. The other 5% contains Safari and other minor browsers, which includes Opera, old IE versions, Chrome, Netscape, etc.
Our site gets about 3.5 million hits a month. My coworker and I are the lead front-end engineers for the site and we are actively pushing on all fronts to abandon IE6 support entirely. We are making gradual headway, but its a long slog. Unfortunately for us IE6 users still comprise too large a percent of our audience to abandon completely.
Few organizations have higher uptime requirements and so much money (literally) at stake... I'd imagine that it'd be tough to push through any kind of software/system change, let alone large-scale ones. (If it ain't broke, don't fix it.) There's substantial risk to upgrades like that unless they're flawless.
UNC Chapel Hill has an interesting grade system for grad students that emphasizes that grades don't matter much. There are only three major grades:

H (high pass),

P (pass), and

L (low pass).

Well, and and F, technically, but you are kindly asked to leave if you get an F.

You can have at most one L. You need to maintain a slightly above P average to be admitted to the PhD program.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/03/technology/03google.html

"Unfortunately, most of the academic research suggests that the factors Google has put the most weight on — grades and interviews — are not an especially reliable way of hiring good people. [...] Dr. Carlisle set about analyzing the two million data points the survey collected. Among the first results was confirmation that Google’s obsession with academic performance was not always correlated with success at the company."

I seem to remember there being another better article than this one that went into more detail, but I can't find it right now. If you want the real story you'd probably have to ask a high ranking ex-googler...
If this holder employed bad accounting (by counting promised dollars as dollars-in-hand), then they may fail as well (and so on).

That's called accrual accounting, and is required by United States Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, International Financial Reporting Standards, and the UK's Companies Act.
It's usually better to get something out sooner. You can always go back and "tweak" IE if you have time.

Companies can thrive on less than 100% of the market; look at Apple as one example. You don't have to win everyone over to succeed -- and in this case, IE6 share will continue to decrease with time, so your market segment will increase likewise.

Don't kick IE6 users out, but don't go out of your way to make the experience flawless. If the issues are fairly noticeable, you can put a note saying "You're using an outdated browser; for the best experience please upgrade."
What if I have a 30-year-old restaurant with revenues of $900K?

I was wondering about the definition of "startup" the other day. Would it be reasonable to define it in terms of profitability? Once you reach profitability you have a proper, self-sustaining business; before that you're in the much riskier position of being a start-up, burning through cash in the hopes of becoming profitable later on. This would mean that things like restaurants fall into the startup category only briefly, while (say) biotech companies can be startups for a decade or more.
If your business is making money, Scoble isn't talking about you
With WebKit 3.0, will/does SVG have a drawing API as powerful as that of Flash? If not now, when?

Fact: IE 6 still represents 29% of all traffic to www.stormpulse.com.
Marc Andreessen (Pmarca) joins eBay Board