skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The woman did nothing wrong.

Im not saying that the legal system is wrong either. But the woman did nothing wrong. I salute her for her courage to go to court.

And Im not going to spend any money on music anymore. Music and money dont go together for me. Im not going to finance people who sue people for sharing.

She did not sell the music. It was a "fan helps fan" thing. She did good, not bad.
24 + Masters in Network Security
28. BS in Comp. Eng. & MFA in Digital Production Arts.
MySpace opens office in San Francisco
Sometimes I think the whole point of college is, "If this person can bring themselves to complete pointless bullshit, then they can bring themselves to complete anything."
"doesn't help that i could have taught the teachers"

You're right about that. Doesn't help a bit.
Why not? You make it sound like a bad thing.

It's not, as long as YOU are the one making the decisions about your life.

Sometimes the last one to blink wins.
Hook them with flash, keep them with software - on smart phones
Bloggers land legal shield in Senate panel vote
Dang it. I was hoping for juror nullification on this one. That ruling would have made some serious waves in the music as well as legal system.
Startup Vidoop Has A Plan To Monetize User Logins
24 + B.S. Biomedical Engineering, Minor in CS, Accounting
Well, if I were to get fully involved in a startup, I'd love to stay south of the Mason-Dixon (Florida). It's nice to be able to not wear a coat from March to November.
Stealing == giving artists 10% of sales.
26 - B.ENG, MBA
"Now I wanna go back full time and get a PhD."

why?
19 + High School, now doing a bachelor's degree in Artificial Intelligence.
Eye openning.
At the time of this posting, and including me (22 + BSEE) and the OP, here are some stats:

Sample Size: 88

Max: 62

Min: 18

Mean: 27.3

Median: 25.5

StdDev: 8.17

I excluded some outliers based on claims I believed to be false or silly (4 yo w/ laptop and 87 w/ high school)

Pretty interesting stats. Disclaimer ripped from slashdot:

"This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane."
36; half a BA in Jazz Performance (dropped out) + half a BA in Psychology (tried to rescue the first BA, couldn't)
maybe the missing '/' after http: ?

http://finance.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chd...
18 + High School

(Currently in 1st year CS)
35, two years of computer science (Edinburgh), never completed the degree - helped start http://voxar.com
36 + BA Russian and two graduate degrees: a MS in Computer Science and an MA in Law and Diplomacy (think International Affairs with a cutesy name).

Wow, that was a lot of BS I just put up there. All those degrees still hasn't gotten me the job I want/love, yet ;).
more SEA PROs: 1) No state income tax 2) Very Green/Environmentally Friendly (until Seattle gets overcrowded) 3) Perfect Summers (beats anywhere in the country)

more SEA CONs: 1) It does not RAIN a lot. It drizzles a lot, but recent studies in the last decade have shown that Seattle's average rainfall in the given year is ranks like 46th outta 50 US states. So if you don't mind daily drizzle, then ya fine. 2) SEATAC airport is not a major hub, so expect inconvenience and pricier tickets if flying to most major cities around the continental US.

Although you can make arguments on the pro's/con's of any given city. Seattle makes more sense in that its lower overheard for your startup. When you hit it mega-big, then you can live in both areas and fly daily for lunch in SF and dinner in SEA.
well, that's certainly encouraging.

i'm personally more drawn to "real" software that runs on desktops and servers. web stuff is nice, but it doesn't fit the way i think as a programmer.
31 + BS in "Information Systems"
Program of Ayala Tech Boot Camp '07 in the Philippines
ABOUT THE TECH BOOT CAMP

The Tech Boot Camp is a three (3) day workshop where technology entrepreneurs, from various fields, will learn the following:

1. Product-Market Dynamics in the Technopreneurship space
2. Technology and Product Development Strategy
3. Development of a Business Model
4. Funding Requirements and Sources of Funds

ICT 2007 Workshop, Oct 6, 13 and 16, 2007

The Tech Boot Camp is a three (3) day workshop that will help bring products, arising from Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), closer to the global market.

Experts from various fields will mentor participants on the elements of their business plan from product development, cash flow projections, and identification of funding sources, among others.

The workshop will culminate in the Funder's Choice, where participants will be expected to pitch their business to Venture Capitalists or "Funders", who will at their discretion, invest in the project. An optional online mentoring assistance will be available within the two month period following the workshop through the BGN forums.

The workshop is open to engineers, scientists, software developers, IP lawyers, angel and VC investors, academics and students.
9 Business Selection Criteria
Salesforce.com, VCs Create Seed Fund for Future Clients
The 'Warrior' Within Jonathan Schwartz
I know this is a repost, but with the upcoming YC application, and new visitors to Hacker News, I thought this would be helpful.
If you love it, then of course stay there. Geez, stupid question.
SpaceX Falcon 9 / Dragon?
34 + halfway done college.

Doing college part time, plus I didn't start until late. In some ways I think I could probably just do without the degree, but I've invested so much time into it, I want to finish.
25 + jd as well (didn't think about dual degree until AFTER I finished)
33, Comp. Sci. Masters
Ask YC: Minneapolis startups? Or, non-"startup hub" startups?
Does anyone know of (or is involved in) startups in Minneapolis/St. Paul? I'm interested to hear how that's working.

Or, any startup that is not in a more well-known "startup hub", for that matter.
PG - Lost all my karma
PG, I have lost all my karma. It was 93 I think.

PS: there should be an email id to send bug reports.
I'm no artist but I know what I like, and this site seems to generate very nice color groupings algorithmically:

http://www.colorjack.com/sphere/
I think Japan or South Korea is at the forefront in terms of widespread availability of cheap high speed internet access. Probably their reputations as societies that are not very inviting to foreigners, and the difficulty of non-native speakers learning the language is going to dissuade a lot of people from moving there to start companies.
Rails 1.2.4: Maintenance release
Paul,

Your each and every article is giving indication that married people are not good enough to start startup. Come on man - I am reading your articles to inspire myself and to keep up my tempo but when I read age analysis then that is very demotivating.

Well I think I need to find place where there are success stories without age limit ;)

I understand that kids and wife can take quite a bit time. But if there are people like me who dreams about own business for years and wasn't able to start it because never found right channels and due to that now I am above 30. Now I have vision and courage but also I am married. Does it mean that I have to stop seeing dream? No way man. I am here to prove you wrong. Will let you know whenever I am succesful :)

Thanks for all great articles.
From my research, the following process is legit. But please check with a lawyer/US Embassy.

1. Set up a bank account in your host country.

2. Get a B1/B2 visa and then go to the US.

3. Assuming you get selected at YC you will need to setup the a company which is fine.

4. Next you will need to take the YC investment of $15K, but you can't take that into a US account, so instead have them wire it to your account in your host country. After this when you come back for 3 months, you should be okay as long as you withdraw money only from your account. If possible get your visa status changed to a work visa then.
26 + BA (theology), 1/3 of a CS master's
I agree. I would rather invest in a startup run by a 30+ person than one run by two 20 somethings.
I think one problem of starting up at 30+ is that one has achieved already a level of income, status etc. Putting that to risk is not so easy step to take than just having graduated. But if such a person takes that risk her idea is probably worth a second look...
25 + bachelor of CS
Stanford Duo Come Up With Online Speed-Dating
so its cheaper for software startups only, then?
28,
Last year of undergrad Philosophy and Maths
Your account was created 3 hours ago, how could you have had 93 karma? Creating a new account will start your karma over, in case you didnt know.
21 + Senior B.S. Info Systems
chicago's kicking. but we're b2b.
according to the sign-up, anything you create belongs to salesforce. so...
Failed startups
I am looking for list of failed startup. Does anyone know how to find companies which are failed or which are about to give up?
23 + High School
Microsoft Moves into Health Care
The article does touch on this, but in a different direction:

"Relate to actions. Never criticize the person. Always criticize the actions. And when you're making suggestions, make suggestions about actions, not about the person. Not: "Maybe you could become a less lumpy person?" Better: 'I suggest you get face smoothener ... it did wonders for me!'"

Moreover, I could be wrong but I feel when you criticize someone's work (especially in the case of a programmer) it may not have an ideal result.

ex. "This code is pure garbage because ..." ~= "Your kid is retarded..."

Unfortunately I learned this the hard way during my internship years ago.
26 on the 26th. MS in Robotics. CS undergrad.
The TechCrunch Deadpool (http://www.techcrunch.com/tag/deadpool) is one place to start.
25 (B.S. Mathematics, B.S. Comp Sci)
25 + BAS in CS
Some AI Koans [Lisp jokes from the old MIT AI Lab]
Hardware development, prototyping, and testing is cheaper for a number of reasons.

Cheap CAD tools, cheap custom boards, processized manufacturing.

Most people drastically underappreciate how much China has helped innovation in this regard.
A couple more here: http://www.serve.com/cmtan/buddhism/Lighter/aikoans.html

Sussman told me that the story about him and Minsky actually happened. Except the punchline is "It has preconceptions, you just don't know what they are."
Russian military equipment has a very bad name these days. It is cheap, but it often fails in confrontations with the west. I think StrategyPage had a bit on it recently.
Thank you. This detail is ignored in most accounts I read. The RIAA has been going after people for redistributing copyrighted material, not for downloading. However, the hype about it is always about downloading.

The RIAA would like both to stop, but I think they encourage the idea that lawsuits have been about downloading rather than uploading because that (they hope) will drive more people to buy instead of snarf.
I love the suggested subjects!
From what I've read, the defense was largely a matter of repeated insistence that there can be no real proof that a particular person or machine was involved because there are enough was to spoof the trace information.

The defendant was not using wi-fi. Is it that plausible that an outside person could engage in file sharing using a spoofed IP address and user name? Could someone go on a P2P network, look at who is online, and then clone someone's identity?
Also make sure their aren't zoning or HOA or other restrictions on running a business from a residence.

If you do not have much traffic this may just be a matter of keeping your mouth shut.
Google age discrimination case to proceed
FuckedCompany.com (http://www.fuckedcompany.com/index.html), though it isn't posting new companies anymore. The author wrote a book called "F'd Companies" that chronicled some of the worst dot-bomb era flameouts.
Miss America Lends Name to Kid-Safe Web Browser
On Pricing: Micro-blog on pricing web apps
This may be an unpopular idea, but I think a company should be able to hire or fire whomever they like for whatever reason. This is best for both the company and the employee - clearly in the case noted in the article, the employee who was fired was having a hard time in the Google culture, so why would he want to continue in the environment? Life seems too short for that.
39, BAs Philosophy & Zoology and that was plenty
I read the title and thought maybe pikluk pulled off some amazing PR...
27 + B.B.A + Tech / Web Certs
i don't worry about it :)

[edit]i like the "say in one tense, mean in all" declarative style (where the present is the "all tense,") if that makes any sense. it's sort of like functional programming
When the "Exit" icon is clicked, Miss America coos, "Buh-BYE!"

LOL. Doesn't sound like it.

Buh-BYE
The Destruction of Venture Capital
Haha, I was hoping for the same thing.
I'm in mid-stage development for a startup in Atlanta.

It is not going well. There aren't many people here that are available, willing, and smart. I'm finding that the biggest advantage to the "startup hubs" is that there are more people nearby with a similar mentality. Be it employees, cofounders or investors. In Atlanta, there's hardly anybody whose brain is wired the same way mine is.

The solution for me is to move out to the west coast as soon as possible. Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be able to make it out there for at least another year.
35 BA Psychology (and 10 years of self-employment... Whew-- what an education!)
There is growing startup interest in Minneapolis. There is a group of folks (10 or 15 I believe) that are meeting bi-weekly to talk shop. Some have started, others starting. Take a look at the following links.

I hope the trend continues, I think Minneapolis has a lot to offer alpha geeks and entrepreneurs.

http://barcamp.org/MinneDemo
http://groups.google.com/group/startupcamp
Why can't you pull kids out of GaTech? They're normally pretty bright...
I feel like we've got all three!
that's disturbing on so many levels.
Due to part-time?
Entremate ( www.entremate.com ) started in 2003 and I have personally seen advantages of that. It is just one another way to find other business minded people. But person started that in part time - no risk - and result as a result, it is now on ebay for just 899$.

Whats % chances to become successful in part time business? I say 10-15%.
23 + BS Economics 07 Duke
Really? What type of laptop?
I'll have to remember the term "Digg-a-book-apedia-r site".
More interesting statistics: Out of a sample size of 107 (as above, after removing obviously silly reports), there are:

41 people whose highest completed degree is a Bachelor's,

17 people whose highest completed degree is a Master's, and

5 people whose highest completed degree is a Doctorate.

At all three levels, there's roughly a 40:20:40 split between degrees in areas other than computing, people who didn't state what field their degree is in, and degrees in computing.
This is similar to CAPTCHAs being used to scan books. Smart idea. Wouldn't be surprised if that's where it got its inspiration.
Well I can add my little web site UseTheSource to the list of dead ideas. It's "Digg" but just for code.

www.usethesource.com.

John.
MSN Algorithm Changes, Yahoo Updates
Not that there are any SEO people in here. But MSN has just made it ridiculously easy to rank!
Build Rapport
It's important that you build the right type of rapport with VCs. However, it's hard for many first time entrepreneurs to figure out what type of relationship they should have with VCs. Should you be deferential, bossy or a cold professional?
In other news, Salesforce.com about to go under because its service sucks.
Feedback requested: UseTheSource
Why Is US Health Care So Expensive?
entremate.com looks like just a message board with maybe 100 messages posted. I don't want to devalue it totally but it doesn't seem to be worth even near $900.
Why (or why not) US health care is so expensive:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=63646
Curiosity :)
force.com: The Perils of Platform As A Service
If wishes were iPhones, then beggars would call
Silicon Valley vs. Silicon Alley: The cheat sheet
Woow. One more competitor for us to deal with. Thank you for the link, gibsonf1!

At this point more competition is good for us since it validates the idea/implementation.
23 + BS Econ, BS Bioengineering
33 + BS Computer Engineering
27, PhD in Physics
23 + Bachelor's Comp. Sci.
Can't agree with the "Younger, nerdier founders" section.

It's like any other long tail, in this case the prototypical founder (late 20', single, technical guy) will not be as common - it'll become a more-diverse population. There will be younger founders and there will be older founders, too. Nerdier, and hipper. Etc.

For example, I'm a 40 yo front-end developer (started in 1995 building interactive apps at ESPN). I'm now starting a company, doing all the backend development too, thanks to Ruby on Rails. This was never available to me before 2006, really.

My bet - the trend will be away from the core developers, as the back end tools become commoditized and packaged, and the prized employees will become the designers - UI and graphical. Brands and positioning will start to play a larger part, and these contributors will have the most to say about this part of the company. I predict the trend will go away from the technical, as people will need to wear many hats in a small company.

As for the young, I don't believe they have an advantage in a crowded startup environment. The lucky bet, or obvious missing younger-demographic website will be created by the kids, but this will happen less and less as the low-hanging fruit is gobbled up. Instead, I think the older (or rather experienced) will have an advantage in a crowded startup world. Here, it'll be the niche positioning, establishing business relationships, and pursuing effective growth strategies that will make the difference.
Yes, I would be happy if I were you.

Pikluk: the non-creepy alternative...
I'm not sure how you value yourself, but even a simple message board would cost me a lot more than $900 - time wise - to make.
This sounds to me rather similar to the (abhorrent) old argument that schools should stay segregated: Why would black students even want to go to a white school where they would have a hard time? Why would they want to continue in that environment? Wouldn't it have been best for the school and the student if schools had been able to continue admitting whomever they wanted for whatever reason?
How well do you know prototype.js?
There is also a part 2 of the series available here: http://thinkweb2.com/projects/prototype/?p=3
"There are so many new bio PhDs minted every year that the labor supply is far out-pacing demand."

If you want a science field where demand far outpaces supply, try geology, with an eye toward either oil or mining. In the oil industry, there are 30,000 qualified geologists to fill 90,000 jobs. My sister's salary offer jumped $10K in the year she delayed entry into the workforce.

She also says that there's a huge software opportunity in geology, because existing software sucks. However, you need some pretty specialized domain knowledge, and you'll be competing against Schlumberger and Halliburton. That's great for technical superiority, but you'll probably have difficulty breaking into Halliburton's old-boy network.
Why Is Apple Being So Lame About iPhone Hacking?
It is an entirely different story under government run operations, such as your school example. The answer to this, in my opinion, would be not to have the schools run by the government in the first place. This would lead to schools, in those days, that were "white" only and "black" only. But it would have opened the door to the school entrepreneurs who only cared about providing the best education value and to profit from that. And to be really successful in that context would argue against being racist and excluding half of the potential students. Of course, in those days, racism was culturally embedded, but this would not have stopped the "black" entrepreneurs from creating high value schools that would have given students a big advantage down the road, and potentially in other less racist locations.

An interesting note is that racism in a modern culture seems to be inversely proportional to prosperity in that culture. Look at Mississippi and Alabama in the US, the Middle East, etc. It is hard to be innovative and successful when your mind is warped into a racist mode.
I worked for a startup in Minneapolis. They are quite different than at the hubs. There's not as much support as you'd get out on the West Coast.

Also the talent pool isn't as easy to tap into here. There are quality developers but its hard to find em.
Well I think that one of the problems is that there just isn't enough information and coverage out there.

I just launched it but I'm gonna start using http://GeekHeartland.com to cover technology and entrepreneurial activity thats happening away from the hubs on the coasts.

It rose out of the geek.windylabs.com and www.chicagobeta.com

Soon it will have news coverage along with geek guides to a lot of the non-hub startup areas.

I encourage everyone to subscribe to the feed and keep checking back. Its about time startups in "flyover country" got more press.
need a ruby hacker? :)
It looks like that message board is build by phpBB ..very simple to install and configure. But still if you count min hosting cost for 3-4 years then total is fair.
Also, if you have an inland startup (the midwest, the great lakes, texas, colorado, elsewhere...) that you'd like me to cover, send me a note through the contact form on http://GeekHeartland.com.

I have some free advertising slots for early stage companies as well if anyone is interested.
PG: Shouldn't that be Brian, not Ryan (Oberkirch)?
Of course he doesn't want to continue in the environment, but he does want monetary compensation for missing out on the hypothetical job that was just like google only without the "old fuddy-duddy" comments.

The point of the laws as they stand is that companies must foster work environments accepting of people without regard to age race etc. for fear of civil liability if they don't, just like making safe baby toys and proper meat processing.

The disadvantage is that it discourages companies from hiring people in the selected groups in the first place as they have a tendency to sue you on the way out; we just saw an article about firing someone in France, think that only for certain groups (of course you can get sued for that too, but discriminatory hiring practices are much harder to prove to a jury than wrongful termination)

It's interesting which transactions get this treatment; do you get to sue for being denied service at a business because of age, sex, race? do you get to sue the town for not patronizing your business because you are age, sex, race? What about suing investors for the cost of equity capital being too high for companies with CEOs of color? This seems to be an issue more of what's practical to regulate than some overriding moral principle.
Oh yeah, his won't work for all fields. Iterative development is excellent in software because the cost of construction (ie., running the code) is nearly zero. You can let constant feedback from application guide where you are going.

This is why interviewers like to ask about languages that aren't in the corporate playbook. If someone says "Ruby? Python? Lisp? No, I haven't had the opportunity to use any of those yet," you know you can pass. Not because all good programmers use ruby, python, and lisp, but because all good programmers know that you don't need to "have the opportunity", you just need to install the language and write some code.

It would be unconscionable to learn brain surgery this way, so if someone says "I haven't had the opportunity to operate on a brain yet," that's a reasonable statement.

I actually suspect that writing software is one of the most complicated things a person can do. If we didn't have the advantage of iterative development with cheap compile cycles (or run cycles, if you don't compile), then no system of any real complexity could be built.