skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't agree with Tim O'Reilly on everything he says, but he does have a point. Now, I'll admit I'm envious of silicon valley startups. They get so much more public attention, they have more sources of funding, they are better connected, etc. But I think there is a danger to what happens there beyond personal envy.

It's not only easy to start a startup in SV (which is a good thing), it's also apparently easy to get funding for stuff that is mediocre and "solves problems" that look distinctly faddish (I know I should back this up with examples...). In fact, much of it doesn't solve existing problems at all but creates new kinds of activities for people. In a positive sense, new markets are being created. But I get wary when the proportion of startups creating new markets compared to those solving existing problems is so unusually high. Or maybe I'm simply missing the point of some of the social web because I'm not a teen any longer?

Even if much of what's happening in SV is a fad, that might not necessarily be a problem for startup founders, and moving to SV might still be the right thing to do. If someone is successfully riding a faddish wave they might still have fun and make money, which they can later use to do something else.

What troubles me more than what is happening is what is not happening. People with real problems and keen startup founders rarely get together. If they did, the energy of so many smart people could be directed at hard problems. These problems do exist in every industry. I don't believe in the "scratching your own itch" mandate. I'm sure, startup founders would be very interested in solving hard problems of others, if they only knew enough about them.

And that brings me to the point where I think O'Reilly is right. If startups were working on hard industry problems, they would not all converge on silicon valley. I believe there is a lot of potential in trying to bring startup founders and industry people together.
The last time I was in that area, we lived in Hayward, because my wife was doing an internship at a biotech company, and we only had one car, so she rode her bike. One thing that always made us laugh was the bank downtown with the cornerstone that had a date on it like 1978. Coming from Italy, where you regularly walk by buildings that are 100-200-500... a few nearly a thousand years old, it's kind of silly.

We were bored to tears in Hayward in terms of having a social life, and usually drove up to Berkeley.
Instead of a rewrite, how about working constructively to improve the existing code base, including the home cooked framework?

As with all startups, it's more important to release something - anything - (well ok, not anything!) than to produce perfect code.
I think that's great.

To me, being successful is flying around the world blowing oil and spewing carbon in a decadent state of material excess, until I attain immortality and start meditating while bombarding myself with all of the energy around me.
link rel="prefetch" - nasty, nasty?
Just discovered this by accident when I cleared my cookie cache, went to Google and found a non-Google cookie on my computer. How did it get there? Google had inserted a link="prefetch" for the top search result (or presumably that cost some money).

I am a bit shocked - yet another way to spy and be spied upon :-(
Does that include public sector workers? If so, countries with a large public sector will show long average tenures even if the rest of the economy is based on hire and fire principles.
I quit too... Best thing I've done in a long time.
That's fine if you can support yourself and your family financially.
It seems to me that two startups can have be roughly the same in terms of how good it is, but one gets much better PR. Maybe PR only matters all things being equal.

I am thinking of PR strategies for my startup, any ideas? BTW its an open source newspaper
Will Google dig its own grave?
The better search gets, the less people will need advertising. Definitely the concept of showing ads alongside search results seems to be flawed, because in theory the search results should be perfect already. So it seems to me that Google's business model is conflicting with their business of being the best possible search engine.
I quit too, I feel like being on the beach with my surf before a 10 feet swell: with so much people looking at me, I can't go back to the car without even trying, but that's scary.
How is your startup different from Wikinews?

Here is one PR idea that I've never actually tried, though I would be very curious to see if it worked. Write a press release about the problem your startup is solving in the style of a human-interest story. Try and put a human face on the story. Send it to every local newspaper in America and see what happens.
Although different this reminds me of those (even those close to you) that voice their thoughts that working on a startup and not working a 9-5 job is less respectful. I file these under the "Wh-what?" replies.
Hey, as long as you're not a terrorist you have nothing to be concerned about.
Hehe, me too. Feels scary at times, esp since I don't have another job. But I can't put up with 9-5 jobs anymore. I switched off my mobile to avoid getting harassed by another company that wants me to work for them.
when you think about it its just a trade or investment. I have some money to survive a few months and i'll trade it for interesting work and a "quasi-slim" shot at financial independence. When/if i run out i will have to go back to pointless meetings so its a pretty big motivator and that can not be bad :)
Facebook's real purpose
Hm, sure that isn't worth a lot of money? I have no experience with domain trading, but that name sounds fairly good. Not sure how the minds of religious people work, though.
Open Source Relational Databases
The domains that are actually worth money are the ones that generate residual type in traffic. godspeaksto.us could be good for branding some type of religious site that believed itself to be divinely inspired but I doubt many people are buying domains like this to start Web 2.0 religions.
Don't think it's there for money - search Google for "reddit" or "ycombinator news" and you'll see that the most obvious site result for those terms is put in a <link rel="prefetch" ...>.

It doesn't seem to appear for things that don't have an obvious site.

I bet it's in there just to "speed up" browsing, especially for people who use Google search as their address bar.
I had a slightly different problem - once I left and made the odd appearance in casual clothes, for some reason it was assumed I had become a highly paid consultant of some kind, living "the life" and that I "had all the luck".

I think, deep down, people know they have the ability to do anything they want, but they are scared to let the thought even bubble up through their subconscious. Either that or they're damn lazy. Its cool, but I resent the whole "luck" thing.. the more I work hard, the more I realise hard work is the only way to succeed.
Hm, I only scanned this but it seems fairly accurate. It's completely void of all the pluses of those places though. After our summer in Cambridge, we moved from Milpitas to San Francisco.
I've learned a lot over the 2.5 years since starting Loopt and I feel that same way about much of my old code. I've found that rewrites can be a huge waste of time unless some key criteria are met:

1) The code is broken. If it's broken, a rewrite is preferable to an involved patch. What constitutes "involved" depends on time constraints and personal taste.

2) I'm about to build on top of the old code. If I'm going to extend or build on top of something I know is crap, I'll rewrite it (time permitting). Fixing it later will be substantially harder the more it's used, so it's best to fix it now.

I've also become more restrictive in what I consider bad code. Bad architecture and interface design are killer. It's nearly impossible to write something good on top of a crappy framework.

For example, if a method body sucks, but the parameters and return type are fine, I'll leave it be. The implementation can be rewritten later if needed.

However, if when writing some new code I find myself using a bunch of switch statements when the strategy pattern is more appropriate, I'll fix it immediately. It's infinitely easier to fix such things when you're adding the third concrete strategy than the sixth.

Also, on a completely unrelated note, if you can implement everything they've done "in a couple days," you'd better be getting founder equity. Furthermore, if the code really is bad and they won't acknowledge it, I'd high tail it out of there. You'll be fighting a constant battle because new code won't be any better.
Hard work will get you to a certain point - look at doctors, laywers, people like that. They work hard, and they take home pretty good pay. They're never going to get youtube or skype amounts of money though.

I think the startup world is more random, though, and hard work only gets you in a position to take advantage of opportunities, as someone mentioned elsewhere regarding "The Black Swan".
Why do you need to quit? Job security + paycheck with time management is much better than a startup without revenue.
Becoming a Better Programmer: A Conversation With Java Champion Heinz Kabutz
Might have to learn how to spell ;)

Grammar nazi strikes again!
I did brutally quit too, a few months ago, for the same reason. But I had no money, so I had to take another job. Anyway, I don't regret it and I'll probably do it again, this time with more preparation :)
Web Based Desktop - Very Impressive
not sure about that, but i can say that new york is an ugly city, and i'm happy it's not a technology hub
This is a great thread. I would love to hear some more personal experiences with various areas. I am looking to live somewhere on the cheap, self-funding and learning for a few months before meeting a couple of co-founders and trying to build something.
"I think I could do the whole thing myself in a couple days, so it wouldn't be a HUGE deal." If you really think so, do it without telling it to them on some weekend or when you have time and show it to them.
It'd be awesome if YC owned some apartment buildings in Palo Alto and rented the rooms to YC founders for (mostly) cash + equity. Seems totally logical given that most YC investment goes into overpriced rent already and renting is such a big distraction. YCScaper seems exactly like the kind of "proxy for demand" good startups take their cues from ;-)
In my experience a day job is probably the single biggest disadvantage you can have.
Why Low-Tech CEOs Should Be Fired Immediately
This article sites the Business Week survey that shows that 73% of technically savvy CEOs (self-professed 'total geeks') reported double-digit annual growth in their companies. Guess who the CEO should be replaced with?...
It really depends on your ability to time manage and keep focus. I know i can not do it. Its much easier for me to work for 16h and sleep till i am rested and then work some more than to follow strict schedule. Focusing on two projects (one being interesting and the other usually dull) is also very hard. There is also commute time ...
+1 Delete. I'd ban poster as well personally.
That's definitely what folks are saying here. Our next big challenge is to make the random people who have information our buyers are looking for comfortable when they come to the site. These are generally folks with little or no net acumen that we've contacted out of the blue. If making an uber sleek web 2.0 landing page is the way to make them comfortable, then we'll absolutely do that.
New VC Model For Small Scale Financing
Thanks - this is on our to-do list as well. You could use SpringWidgets now but we'll probably make a Digg type widget down the road and let bloggers embed referral codes in it.
Google "golden boy" defects to Facebook
The New Nostradamus?
thanks for the comment - very cool to hear from someone that is familiar with the space! we've spent a lot of time looking at GA, YA, Keen, GLG, etc. - if you're interested in discussing further shoot us an message via:

http://knowledgebid.com/contact

lots has changed in the last few years :)
should I seriously suggest that we rewrite all the code

Great idea. And ask them about their severence benefits when you do this.

cool new startup ... I think I could do the whole thing myself in a couple days

How cool could it be if their technology is so simple?
Sounds nice. I disagree, totally.

It's completely natural to appear to want something that you want/need.
I work this way too - I think there are a lot of us. It is hard to get into the "zone" for coding, so once I am there I work until I am quite tired.

So usually i work in 20+ hour spurts, and that is when I get my best work done.
NPR: Americans Flunk Self-Assessment
I tried signing up...and since I am not in the US the signup didn't work

the
-OR- enter city, country is failing
Quite slick.
s/americans/humans/

Not news.
Yeah, I'd noticed this a while ago. It's actually pretty nice if you've told Firefox to ask you about cookies first. I find that if the top site in the search results tries to set a cookie, it's often also one of those times that it's worth skipping to the second.

What's interesting about this is that it won't so much help spy on you (it won't), as tell people how effective their search engine optimization is (prefetch requests where referrer=Google mean you hit the top on something). I would expect it would make it slightly harder (one more hoop) to spy on you, because getting the cookie does not necessarily imply that you clicked the link.
Imploding Rails, Jesus DHH, and The Uncle Ben Principle
Although not YC alums, these guys went through TechStars bootcamp in Colorado (which is very much like YC). Hopefully, there will be more camps that employ the PG philosophy!
joe is bummed none of you tried to import your linkedin profile into your account :)
So let's see, the question is whether or not you should spend two days doing _something_ to the code that will make your ownership of it easier to manage?

Sounds like a no-brainer. Go for it. Of course, you'd better be sure you can really pull it off in a couple of days. Programmers are notorious for under-estimating these things. But in general, if you're going to be doing something for 2 months or more and you can do something up front that saves you ten percent or so -- do the math. Don't get into "always rewrite" or "never rewrite"

If you can recreate what they're doing that quickly, you're not that far along the development path anyway. There's a whole different answer if they've spent 3 months plugging away at it and already have paying customers. But it doesn't sound like you are there.
A startup simultaneously creates several products for different markets:

1) It creates software for users to use. 2) It creates a company that owns the rights to certain software and accompanying intellectual property 3) It creates a community of users 4) It creates a team that has proven that it can create and ship a software product.

#1 is not geographically limited. You don't have to be in Silicon Valley to write software. Anyone in Duluth, MN can create software and load it on a server for users all over the world to use or purchase.

The market for numbers 2, 3 and 4 are geographically limited, however:

#2 and #4) The highest concentration of software companies in the world is in Silicon Valley. This in generally your market for #2 and #4. Your chances of interaction with someone interested in buying your IP are much higher in SV than in Duluth. Your chances of finding someone interested in paying top dollar to acquire a proven group of developers increases exponentially in SV.

#3) Many companies are interested in purchasing large communities of users. These tend to be located in large urban areas, however. If I'm Chief Acquisitions Officer (CAO) for BigMediaCo, and I'm interested in acquiring a startup that has a big community of users, it's not going to hurt if that company is based in Silicon Valley. It adds to the CAO's prestige if he has to travel to silicon valley to acquire a startup.

But, ask yourself this question: How would that CAO feel about traveling to Duluth to talk about the acquisition?

Also, the value of a network increases exponentially with the number of users in the network. In SV, it's hard to avoid networking with entrepreneurs and people in the software industry. It's really not that large, and after you've been here for any length of time, there are no more than 2-4 degrees of separation between you and everybody else in the Valley, including people who want to fund you or acquire you.

Case in point: I've been here for 1 year, and I know for a fact that there are 3 degrees of separation between myself, Guy Kawasaki and Woz, and 2 degrees of separation between 3 different VC's and me. That would probably never happen in Duluth.
Well, as a French, I'm not really willing to move to Silicon Valley:
1) dealing with immigration people in US Airports as a foreigner is a enormous risk by itself. The probability of a bad event is low, but the stake is very very high if it occurs : you have no law to protect yourself in the international zone, and international conventions are notoriously ignored in certain countries.
2) is fleeing your country a really great thing at all if your life is not at stake ?
3) is going where everybody goes to do what everybody does really smart ? Is being mainstream smart ?

But I know that this is not taking the easiest path nor is it doing everything I can do to reach success, since I would raise my success probability by simply moving to Bay Area.
We've all read it, and probably seen it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oAB83Z1ydE?, but for those quitting their jobs and changing the world...

Here's to the crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They're not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can't do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They push the human race forward.
And while some see them as the crazy ones,
We see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think
they can change the world,
Are the ones who do.
This one went by on programming.reddit.com and I didn't feel it added much at all.
Americans, do you consider this a strength or a weakness of your economy?
TED: Richard Branson interview
Tao of Steve:

1)Be Desireless
2)Be Excellent
3)Be Gone
Nothing major here, you can already do this with a hidden iframe if you like.
'Google Concepts' - the linguistic intersection calculator
Stop doing lists
I didn't much care for the book "Good to Great", but one of the good ideas is to have "stop doing" list. I think that can be tough for the intellectually curious.
Just a toy I made.
Here's my current list of things I have going on. I know there are too many of them, but it's hard to get rid of things... What do you guys think?

- Hecl - scripting language for J2ME, mobile phones. I think this is the coolest thing I've done in some ways, but one of the least likely to be profitable (no one makes money selling languages).

- Linux Incompatibility List - leenooks.com - a list of hardware that doesn't work with Linux.

- LinuxSi.com - List of stores in Italy that sell computers with Linux, or at least without Windows.

- Rivet - http://tcl.apache.org/rivet - this one's mostly on the way out in terms of my involvement, but I still have some obbligations.

- ShopList - http://shoplist.dedasys.com - a shopping list app for mobile phones that some people seem to like a lot, because it's done right (data entry is via the web, not the phone).

- Squeezed Books - startup idea that's basically as far as I'm going to take it without an uptick in interest.

- Stuff to Do - a time tracker/todo list that's now open source. Not really going anywhere at this point.

- Tcl book - book on the Tcl programming language that's in its advanced stages. I'm really torn about this one - Tcl isn't going anywhere, but publishing a book would be cool.
I wouldn't quite say we look for people who don't need us. Roughly speaking, we look for people who are like we were when we started Viaweb, and we certainly would have found YC helpful.
There's another element about SV that other places don't have. People.
Talent that is able to walk across the street and go to something that's better suited for them. Talent so that you can end up with the right team.

Also, leverage.

A $20 mil fund in Boston acts differently than a $20 in the Valley. But take the Valley mentality, double the fund size to $40 mil, and while the approach will still very, the dollar size of investment all of the sudden becomes very similar. Funds in the Valley are bigger, they have more cash to invest, and have a much higher risk tolerance than their counterparts on the East Coast

http://www.j-lp.com/blog/2007/10/move-to-silicon-valley.html
Or another way for sensationalists to moan about being spied upon?

Seriously... They already know you searched for "X". What difference does it make if they load some stuff in your browser cache. What extra information does that give them?
How is this spying?
DOS lives ... Secrets of the Windows command prompt
Shall we stop misusing (particularly while simultaneously overusing) the word meme?

If you must (needlessly) use an arcane biological term to describe something, read the arcane biological text to understand it.

http://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Richard-Dawkins/dp/019286...
Downmod: Grammar Nuremberg!
Except that this makes it voluntary for the user. Many people still pay for bandwidth, and they would be able to turn off prefetching in order to minimize usage. By using iframes or AJAX to prefetch, you may be costing the user money that he doesn't want to spend.
It gives extra information for the owners of the site that is the top search result, who otherwise wouldn't know that you searched for the term.
If you feel like rewriting in Rails, make sure you consider the deployment factor.

In my experience, the only way to have a Rails app that is responsive and reliable without spending most of your time on deployment as opposed to on development, is having someone like EngineYard host it. But that costs 100s of dollars per month, which might be ok in your case, I don't know.

Maybe you want to go with Symphony instead.

I'm not so much against big rewrites, you just have to figure it out yourself if you think it makes sense.
I clicked through it and as far as I can tell the user interface does not really accommodate homosexuals. They ask who you want to meet, if you say a girl they assume you are a boy and contrariwise.

I can see hate crimes coming out of this.
As Tech Heats Up, Sages Dust Off Bubble Indicators
That is very responsive... impressive, indeed. There was even transparency while moving windows around. Right-clicking on the taskbar brought up a context menu. Overall it's a nice proof of concept.
A huge strength. A ability to leave a job easily, or to be fired easily, is also the ability to get a job easily.

Closed systems don't allow for mobility. Guaranteed employment, from a company's perspective, adds huge barriers to hiring.

In high tech, this is doubly true.
Idea Week, Day #4: The future of media distribution.
I know in the big scheme of things it is not a biggie, it just frustrates me that it is yet another thing to watch out for (and coming from the "good guys" a ka open source Mozilla). There are too many already - Flash cookies, Javascript includes etc.

I just happened to test the cookei thing - my Sage news reader also installs several cookies immediately, even though I have told it to not automatically update the feeds. I am guessing it comes from the favicons?

Anyway, I am planning to create a collection of all of this.
But you can't or shouldn't cross things off the list, right?

Or is this just eliminating things that you do now? That would make it a "stop doing list"