skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Not really. First, they have very little to gain from keeping .NET closed: there are strong open-source replacement projects for the "proprietary" framework classes, and .NET assemblies don't really protect source code, even when obfuscated.

Second, even if that weren't true, opening things up is actually not out of character for MSFT, despite the conventional wisdom. For instance, you can download near-complete debug symbols for the underlying operating system. If you've ever read assembly with and without PDB files in IDA Pro, you know what a big deal that is.
How To Create a Web App
consider this system paired with traditional catastrophic health insurance
Yet another essay on startups, by PG... It appears that essays tend to be cheaper to make, as time goes on, too (thanks to, you know, copy/paste). I couldn't find any ideas here that hadn't been expressed elsewhere in your writings or wasn't self-evident. We want more crazy controversial stuff, like the last (brilliant) one on philosophy!

Ideas for new subjects:

- "google is dead";

- "how to fund painters";

- "all things considered, java rocks";

- "vaporware, or why I gave up arc";

- "return of the web 1.0"

There are plenty of weird ideas that only wait for PG to write clever stuff on them! Seriously, I don't know why people like FOWA, whoever that is, actually pay you to listen to the same old story...
Okay. It might make your argument more compelling. You're making a judgement that Web 2.0 startups are relatively bad -- it would be nice to know what they're relatively bad compared to.
I'm not aware of any studies about happiness and its relation to freedom, so I don't know if that's true. My anecdotal impression is that caring for a child full-time is extremely difficult -- which is why the daycare industry exists.
This guy could accept insurance, but given the way he practices, I'd imagine it would be a bureaucratic nightmare.

His intent doesn't seem to be to subvert the insurance system so much as to serve the large niche of people, especially in NYC, who are relatively young, need a good GP, and don't have insurance (or good insurance).
PG has mentioned his view that the VCs are more aggressive in the valley. More failures is probably a sign of more aggressive VCs, evidence supporting his reasoning as to why the valley is better than other places for starting a company.
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"So you're saying that college, while expensive, is still worth it? "

Yes that's exactly what I'm saying. You meet like-minded people there who are excited about technology - potential co-founders. You learn about technology.

I've been through 3 universities, and the relationships I have built at these institutions have helped me to this day. I'm running a startup btw.
I always felt that VCs continue to spread the 30% minimum ownership myth to manipulate the expectations of entrepreneurs seeking funding. Good to know that my gut feeling was right.
It depends on the type of doctor, and the type of service. For example, dentists and oral surgeons use referral kickbacks almost 100% of the time. I've seen xray specialists and open-MRI centers also offer doctors kickbacks.

It's obviously not seen in HMOs and in emergencies or in large hospital institutions, but in the private medicine arena, where this guy is solely practicing, it certainly is more common than you make it seem.
If you're accepted to YC, can you negotiate the percentage?
I know that the amount of funding is fixed, but the percentage that YC takes doesn't seem to be. Anyone from the previous batches successfully negotiated the percentage that YC asked for?
Why am I not excited about trying their program? It looks to me like you have to work with MS software to join.
Where is the evidence that Google has the best programmers? Certainly if you look at Google's acquisitions, they all stagnate post Google. Picasa was a pretty good product -- two years ago when Google bought it. Since then it's added a button to upload photos to Blogger. Gmail had a pretty good feature set for Web-based mail -- two years ago when it rolled out. Since then? etc.
What was the point of your original post? It looks like you were saying "It is better to have a college education than to spend that time or money in any other possible way." But you keep saying that like it's a bad thing, and talking about how college reduces your chances of starting a startup because it's so expensive. If college increases your chances of starting a startup, and you want to start a startup, your original post doesn't make sense. What were you trying to say?
I'm not 100% sure, but my guess is no. Read:

http://paulgraham.com/webstartups.html

Section 2.
Parents allow their children to read the encyclopedia, right? I mean, sure, Brittanica may not have an entry on, say, Paraphilic Infantilism, but... where was my point again?
sort of exists already. I use these guys:

http://www.sfoncall.com/index.html
What I was saying is that paying for the education that gives you the tools to start a startup is one of the biggest impediments to starting one.
Legal question: what visa do you arrive in the US?
I think this might be the one good use for the OS X dock UI: have the icons be small, translucent _overlays_ off to the side (thus obviating the scrollbars), which grow to large, opaque buttons when moused near.
The government does not have an interest in impeding entrepreneurs or the formation of new businesses. The goals are usually the opposite, as can be seen with the various govt incentives and programs in place to help aspiring business owners.

I dont foresee increased regulation to be a big problem. Hindering the development of new businesses would be shooting the economy in the foot.
What you gonna tell them? "Okay kids, if you see boobs somewhere in the internet close your eyes..."
Kids are curious, it is their nature. What would you do if you were a kid?
This is a very important topic for me. I asked a while ago if a B1/B2 visa would be enough to incorporate a company, but no one was able to provide an answer.
Could you put up an interactive demo with said 80% of the functionality, just running in your browser? It wouldn't have to do all the "shell sandboxing" that the full client does; it's for the parents, not the kids.
VCs would never agree to be constrained like that.
No. You can turn us down though. (Two groups did, both very early on. I don't know what became of them.)
Paul, you always speak of acquisition of a startup by a big company. What possibilities exist for startups merging? Is it common, or do you expect it to be?

I know a couple other startups in my town (one of your big 3) who do similar things to my startup. Thanks to the public (link-happy!) structure of the web, we already let people go from one to the other: a loose ad-hoc integration. Will this be the future of cooperative web software development?
Pay no attention to the purely ad hominem argument against that person's comment, either.

It's a valid point: to learn to use the Internet, you actually have to use the Internet. Using this program will only teach you how to use this program, much as a video game console won't quite teach you to use a computer.

However, the target market is too young to really need to learn any sort of skills. Save it for when they can flash the BIOS to boot from a Live CD...
Moore's Law, open source, more abstract languages, the web for promotion. (I believe this list is in the Wikipedia entry for YC.)
late, i know: tiesto(some), atb(more), always looking for more will check out z7.
Ask YCombinator: What Happened To My Hacker News Comments?
I'm browsing my comments history and just see my comments from 20 days ago.

What happened to my previous comments?
What I Learned From X That Makes Me a Better Programmer in Y
My original comment is about the business opportunity. Robots that can operate independently in a particular environment will be deployed in the next decade or two.

The problem is that lots of environments aren't standard, e.g. a particular manufacturing plant might require a niche robot.

Freeway driving is very standard. Hard, but achievable.

I might be wrong on the time frame, but auto bots make up a very big single application. That it is why the opportunity is huge.
"And being Google, they're figuring out how to do it efficiently."

pg, I am a little alarmed by this flat recognition that is awarded to Google. It might be actually true. But its not an optimal way to think about things in the long run. As a teen ager I was a Michael Jackson fan, It took me a good while longer than other people to realize that he has turned into shit.
I completely agree with you there.
Here's what happiness at work looks like
Arrington Goes Nuts in Unnecesary Force
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Calacanis: Web 3.0 is Whatever I Say it is
Human Rights trump Economics.

That's what our society has decided, therefore employment laws, while imperfect, have good reason.

For reference, see 19th century factory conditions.
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I'd like to know, what happens if your answers are over 120 words, are they cut off? less likely to be read? not read for not following directions?
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Treating Your Equity Options Like Organs
Ask YC: Is the Bay Area Much Better than Seattle for Startups?
Long time reader, first time poster. Thanks in advance for reading this post and extra thanks if you can reply with your thoughts.

I'm working full time in a software company in Seattle area and will be leaving soon to work full-time on my startup. (I already have already released a prototype of my product). I'm tempted to stay in Seattle as I love it here... but my startup is my first priority, and I'm prepared to move anywhere in the world if it means I'll have a significantly higher probability of success. Finally, I'm a single founder and potentially looking for a technical co-founder... so where I can find this person factors in to the decision as well.

Questions for you:
1) For those of you who have lived in Seattle & San Francisco, how much better is SF for startups than Seattle? How do you quantify this?
2) I have a quick list of pros/cons to Seattle vs. SF below... can folks provide feedback on whether this analysis makes sense?
3) Any other thoughts on whether I should make the move or not?
4) Where is better for finding like minded entrepreneurial hackers?

Pro/Con for Seattle vs. SF
Seattle Pros: lower cost of living, closer access to outdoors & mountains etc..., lower cost of rent for offices, lower legal costs, less competition for top quality talent than SF (there are fewer startups in Seattle so people who want to work at them have fewer choices on where to go), monthly startup events have on the order of ~50 people or so, rains often so you're more likely to sit inside coding than going outside
Cons: rains a lot :P

SF Pros: epicenter of startups, monthly startup events (SFBeta etc..) have on the order of ~100 people, huge talent pool of highly skilled engineers, more likely to find technical co-founder, more startup events, more access to capital, closer to family
SF Cons: higher cost of living, higher cost of rent, higher cost of services (leagal etc..), harder to get top quality talent (you're competing with hundreds of startups), more competition for capital

PS:
I have already read PG's essays and read the YCNews forums on where to be for a tech startup. I've also recently read Marc Andreessen's post on where your startup should be (he reccomends moving to the Valley). Finally, I have a friend who recently quit Google to work on his startup full time in the Bay Area and he extols the advantages of the location.
Ask YC: 120 Words or more?
I'd like to know, what happens if your answers are over 120 words, are they cut off? less likely to be read? not read for not following directions?

We've got a very long answer to one question but the rest are all under 120 words.
Why not develop a prototype or beta at home, then after you've got something working go to the Bay and start from there!
Looks like Moscow will soon be renamed to New-Vasiuky
So you think that seed and VC firms should be bound by the same laws?

If not, why the distinction?
> If they're already way in debt, shouldn't they want to take more risks?

1. They took basically zero risks before, so it would not be "more".

2. And screw up their credit history/get creditors chasing them?

> So wouldn't those people drop out earlier?

Because they couldn't predict the future? Not everyone who does a startup knew their path since they were 2 years old.
In point 1 where Paul states there will be a lot of startups because it's cheap to startup, I have to wonder where is the demand side of the equation. Is there enough demand for whatever it is these startups are/will be doing? Hearing more about that would be very interesting; I'd love to see a world with many many more startups.

ak
I think this is what Clayton Christensen called "the law of conservation of attractive profits."
> What possibilities exist for startups merging?

Sure they can merge, but this is not an "exit". As far as I know, the purpose of a startup is a successful exit of some type.
Forgiving the possibility of alternate spellings I'm unaware of (e.g., "color" vs. "colour"), and despite the fact that I wish I had more to contribute, I would like to file a:

Pedantic Typo Report

The Future of Web Startups, Section 2. Standardization.

"In essense, let the market design the product."

"essense" vs. "essence"

That is all.
2 words: too late.

To me it seems much more motivated by desperation than by conviction.

In about 5 years we will see all of Windows(R) source code released, but again, it will be too late...
This was unexpectedly quite good. It hit some points that I've been feeling strongly about for a while.

I found the warning that it's getting more risky to just sit on ideas and not act inspiring. Will be doing extra coding tonight!
I laughed hard as soon as I read that "benefit".
my theory is that they disabled the APIs to fight SEO firms. Being able to check SERP rankings in an automated fashion would be a big help in trying to game your rankings
If it's the "What is your company going to make?" question, you have a problem on your hands. If you can't reformulate your pitch to be convincing and succinct, I would bet that your idea is just not a compelling idea. So try to come up with a short and sweet pitch, and if you can't, you should really rethink whether your idea makes sense. Compressibility of the pitch is probably a good first-order heuristic for judging the worth of an idea.

If it's a different question, just delete stuff until you get it under 120 words. We just wrote too much stuff for all of the questions, then deleted the least important stuff to get it under 120 words.

These are just my talking-out-my-ass, non-expert and non-YC-partner-mindreading two cents.
Would you be interested talking to us a bit more about the subject? If you are interested, please take a look at my profile.
Does anyone believe that the future viability of web application innovation depends on the availability of consumer access to higher and higher bandwidth connections (at a cheaper and cheaper cost - to the point of commoditization), and if so, as the US falls further behind other countries in this respect,will that reduce the relevance of Silicon Valley as a startup hub for web application companies? Which country (city) do you think will emerge as the web app innovation leader?
I came to the US on such a visa to create a startup in the Valley. I was not the one responsible for the incorporation paperwork so I can't exactly say. I think it should be ok. However, you will not be allowed to work or receive a salary until you change your visa status. This usually entails leaving and re-entering the US.
yeah if there's anything MS has proven over the years is that they should not be trusted... history is usually a good predictor of the future...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyglass%2C_Inc.
So... they are offering to accelerate your startup by means of giving you discounts on their software. In that case, Linux-based startups must be traveling at the speed of light...
Economics drives human rights. For reference, see the conditions of the 19th century farms people fled to go work in those factories.

See also: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118134633403829656.html?mod=...

And I don't understand what you mean about laws being proof that people feel this way. I assume that the proof that people feel a certain way is that they act that way. For example, if I think being a coal miner is too risky, I won't be a coal miner; if I think the rewards are fair compensation, I will be one. Why do you need a law to deprive me of my freedom to make those decisions?
The funny thing about a great metaphor is that it somehow makes it easier to draw conclusions. If Paul had only said, "A startup now can be just a pair of 22 year old guys, so they can move to a new town pretty easily, so we'll probably see more clustering of startups, not less" then you'd nod and continue on. But instead he said this about startup hubs: "the particles they're attracting are getting lighter." Suddenly you can see it and feel it: move your startup to Palo Alto! Buy real estate in Mountain View! It's so obvious!
He didn't say all the best founders will move to Silicon Valley, just that more will than previously.
Thanks for the advice Matt. (Better late than never)
"Everybody Tests" is a good point. Some devs throw away their tests, and other devs keep the tests around and run them periodically, but devs who write code iteratively (which seems like pretty much all of them) write something that could be easily turned into a unit test.

If you don't like TDD (and I have to admit I'm not a fan), you can still produce tests while you write code (you probably already are). Whenever you write a bit of code, you probably do something to check whether it is producing the expected outcome - even if it is as simple as writing a little script to generate some output that you visually inspect as it flashes by on the screen. If it looks good, you keep developing. If it fails, you figure out why.

Just store your these mini-testing scripts in a unit test, and verify the expectation/output in a short statement. If you use a framework, you'll have some methods for this available to you - if you don't, no biggie, just write something that honks loud and gives you a message diagnosing the failure.

It's not going to satisfy the TDD crowd, and honestly your coverage won't be as good as if you had done TDD, but there you go - you just got yourself some unit tests, and you didn't have to disrupt the mental flow that you prefer to TDD.
The title of the talk (or article) is "future of web startups" and most of what is in it is satisfyingly accurate and perhaps marginally prescient. Except for the jump to the gushing, meritocratic tubes of the future. This much is true about startups; they are high-risk high-reward options, with the risk basically come down to around monetary opportunity cost now. Smart people definitely have a better chance at succeeding at these and college is not necessary for success at startups. Read that again. Success at startups. What most young people (I am in my mid-twenties and almost definitely going down the start-up trail so I do not speak from any graying high horse) do not understand is that priorities change as you age. And not just fuzzy notions of priority engendered by cultural forces, but those fostered by your own biology. There is literature, and longitudinally applied common sense, suggesting so.
The opportunity cost of foregoing college is changing, not evaporating. Yes you can pick most of those lessons on the web, and the elitist cachet of iv(or)y league schools is losing its allure. In fact, you don't need to live in a dorm to have an immersive social experience, not that many here do anyways. The oppurtunity cost is that of being thrust into social situations with people whose interests and desires don't align with yours. It is about being part of a tribe for four or more years and finding a niche to flourish within that tribe. Most geeks don't get this anyways, and the evolutionarily obtained multiple equilibria of personalities are partitioned into the black and white of nerds and jocks.
OK, not all are that extreme,but branding the gentle friction of shallow social interactions as 'fake' is rather blinkered. That is an opinion, or even a delusion, and may suit some well, but do understand that what works for some does not work for all.
We can all of course go on with our sheltered lives deciding not understanding why some cultural institutions have evolved (and why their need may eventually be obviated) and it cannot be a bad life. An ignorant life is in fact a blissful one isn't it? But to distort and distill the argument into catchy trade-off: "startups leads to success; college leads to catalepsy" is not even apples and oranges. ..

One last thing: Recognize that success is a shape-shifting beast.
The different thing about the web is that a biz doesn't need to be physically close to its customers. In fact, there frequently aren't any advantages to being close to said customers (or it's impossible to be close to all of them because they're spread out).

However, there are still advantages to a biz being close to itself and its resources.

The combination of those to things means that startup hubs will become stronger.
I think jey is right, if it's the answer to "What is your company going to make?" then you're in trouble. You need to be able to refine your idea into something easily expressible and understandable.

Our only long answer is to "What might go wrong?" Our list is a little humorous, so hopefully YC won't mind the length. Even so, it's only 150 words, so it's not too much longer than their suggested length.
I didn't downmod you. But I guess the reason people are downmodding you might be for the way you said things rather than what you are trying to say.

And oh, the part about ideas for new subjects... ok. I am wondering why I didn't downmod you now.
This might be a recent policy change, but now at CWRU you need to be in the top 10% of your high school class to get the SAT scholarship. I had a high enough SAT score to qualify for one of CWRU's standard scholarships but didn't get it because I was in the top 12% of my high school class.
Check out this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=61901, it has PG's response to the 120 words and verbosity along with others.
Not really. Paul simply says, "If your answers are less than 120 words that's fine." And that's it.

There's still no real consensus on what happens when you go over 120 words.
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To CHANGE-CLASS or not to CHANGE-CLASS
I'm one of those founders, last time i put out my email for anyone needing advice I got like 20 different people asking me questions. I'm happy to answer any questions in the forum.

This is what think:

1. Don't worry about VISA until you get accepted, it will take too much time

2. To get the right VISA is hard, lawyers will tell you what the law say, not necessary what is the right thing to do in the situation

3. Don't be too honest at the border control. I had a friend once who where touring with their band in US, at the border the asked if they where going to work in the US? (I.e get paid) and they were honest and said yes, the border threw them out. As long as you are not earning money in the US, you're best off by saying you are on vacation.
Yes, my understanding that "All countries are equal but some countries are more equal than others"...i.e people from eastern Europe have a bigger problem entering US than people from western. That sucks bad.
Great call... I actually already have a prototype of the product built... now it's about improving it and selling/marketing it.
I totally agree with your last statement.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40208
They're still there but your personal threads page does not display all of them.
Microsoft: Open-source trap or sign of weakness?