skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm sure there are other advances in technology that is very useful to others but overlooked by American teenagers.

If what's important is to fulfill teenagers' fantasy, all of us should build more social network a'la MySpace, Xanga and create cyberworld a'la ClubPenguin, BarbieWorlds, CyWorlds instead of helping the Health industry.
Well that's 10 seconds of my life I'm never getting back.
It was really helpful for me, hope you like it.

If you do like it, a PDF summary sheet (with the graphics as icon/reminders) of the full post is availble here:

http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/files/....

Note: This PDF will make no sense if you haven't read the post.
Enough to get the formula. Rush Limbaugh uses the same one. But oddly enough Limbaugh is the more intellectually honest of the two, because he's not attacking things where the right strategy is to launch with a minimal version 1.
nickb -- I have no idea if they know what they're doing, but I believe they've got the kind of large datasets you're talking about. On their <a href="http://blog.persai.com/">http://blog.persai.com/</a>; blog they describe their collection of several hundred thousand RSS feed. I'm curious to see what they come up with.
It's like he's thinking the same thoughts I have, except he's not afraid to be mean about it. O.o
No, no, you missed the good bits if you only stayed for 10 seconds.
okay - so no exact numbers for quantity - any comments on quality?

How original are the applications and product ideas this round?
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/105-4473380-9298029?ini...
I can't help but wonder how this story made it to the top with the new policy and all http://ycombinator.com/hackernews.html

Will I be deemed a "bad hacker" for up-voting it?
Am I the only one who just realized that anyone can pay for more storage on gmail?
For those who don't read the article, his claim is that each active user is worth $3.00 annually.
I was really taken by the effectiveness of the RSS in plain english videos:

http://www.commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english

It's not prototyping, but it is paper and I think underscores how powerful a "cheap" paper design can be.
If you know what you're doing, a standing presentation will be more effective than a sitting presentation.

Steve Jobs doesn't seem to have a problem establishing a rapport with his audience.
Right but don't think of it like a data processing container, even though thats what it is. Its end goal is not so much search as it is processing for ad generation.
The link is a spam-blog. The text has been floating around the internet for a while, and the "weird facts" blogger just took it added their get-rich-quick scheme to the list.
UpNext and other map-based systems offer one significant advantage over text-based interfaces: geospatial search. When people are looking for something to do, they usually know the general area where they want to go before-hand, but don't know exactly what they're looking for. A keyword based system is only efficient when you already know what you want to do. It doesn't help the process of discovery.

The second advantage of UpNext is an improvement over current 2D search offerings, which are usually based on Google maps, Yahoo maps, or MapQuest. While most people focus on the 3D, the other enhancement of UpNext is real-time rendering. Other map-based systems use static images or photos; they're unable to change on-the-fly to better highlight information. Our spotlight feature showcases the advantages of real-time rendering in search: buildings of interest glow, and others become transparent. In the future we plan to have the map do a number of interesting things in real-time to give people a feel for the neighborhood they're in.

Then there is 3D, the topic of the comments above. Yes, 3D doesn't convey mounds of information, but if you're doing real-time rendering, you might as well do it in 3D. Beyond looking compelling, the perspective information does convey a feel for the area you're looking at, and we hope to further improve this in the future to attain a stylistic impression of each area of Manhattan. That 3D contains occlusion is easily mitigated by simply rotating to a birds-eye view.

Finally, that there is no standard for 3D navigation is simply because the technology is only recently breaking out of the gamer universe. Regardless, if everyone waited for standards before innovating, the internet would be in a very sorry state.

Thanks for the comments! Raj Advani, UpNext
Question
Am I wrong?
bullshit, that's nice article with real facts
Twenty-something uncertainty "a sensible response to modern conditions"
With an inherently smaller addressable population of users ("all businesspeople", as opposed to "all people, and any cartoon characters they like"), LinkedIn probably needs to be more aggressive about capturing some of the value third-party apps create on their site. I feel like the subtext here is that LinkedIn doesn't want to give this feature away for free.
Are Private High Schools Better Academically Than Public High Schools?
There's a PDF summary at the link. The gist is that students at private high schools probably would have done equally well had they gone to a public high school.

Two exceptions are noted: Private High Schools appear to have an effect on SAT scores. Also Catholic Schools run by a Holy Order (such as Jesuit) actually did show some benefits.
Ah Zombocom - a true pilgrimage. I end up there atleast a couple of times every year.
The Tie is Back
Ask News YC: What's the cheapest/quickest/easiest way to set up an ecommerce store?
I'm sure a lot of you have done the research - what's it like to sell something online, and what are the pitfalls?
Yossi: Young Entrepreneurs in the Arena
This almost looks like it's not a PR piece for Men's Warehouse.
The same thing happens to me, It looks like Zombo is trying to hypnotize me :P
This time the client is the necktie trade association. Just follow the quotes: user, expert, expert, client.
Lucky for us, Out just became the new Back!
Context: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
I see now - thanks. They must have paid a lot for this placement. I personally have seen 0 younger artsy people wearing ties in SF.
I agree that the tie is back. I wear a tie to my lab everyday. Sometimes it gets in the way as I fiddle with the calibration knobs on my oscilloscope, but people take my research findings a lot more seriously these days as a result of it.
It is true that investors will find it a tad more difficult to reject a group once they feel like they know you. By sitting down you would appear more human, whereas standing up gives a more commercial look.

From a sales course I recently attended, the lecturer told a sequence from one of her recent trips. They were in a small town in Turkey and she and some friends had just gotten off a bus. A sorry looking man came up to her and asked, "Do you have any medicine for my head?" She was caught off guard and responded, "What?" The man points to his head and says, "My head pains, do you have any medicine?" She then understood that he was talking about painkillers and eventually got some painkillers from one of her friends and handed them to the man. With a big smile on his face, the man says, "You are very kind! Come I show you my shop."
What? Startup hackers following the herds and their fashion fads? Next thing you know, they'll expect all of us to go out and get jobs too, just like everyone else.

Moo.
I love zipper ties.

http://www.absoluteties.com/whisziticlhe.html
Are you being sarcastic? You need to read PGs essay "The Submarine" to put this in context.
Yahoo Store, OSCommerce and there is a Ruby one...I forget it.

Everything about selling online isn't fun. Customer Service, Fulfillment, Choosing Shipping partners, Choosing Payment Processing, and the biggest pain: Getting Customers. Tweaking pages for higher conversion, stuff like that.
Very lucid description of one of the major pitfalls (cough) inherent with a strict OOP design structure where the problem domain and/or programming language does not facilitate its imposition.
I can't imagine a person who would possibly need more than 10GB for email, much less pay for that much email storage.
Last time the "Tie was back":
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DE5DB163AF...
Are you being sarcastic about my being sarcastic?
I'll toss another hat in Tufte's ring. His stuff can be pretty meta, but once the concepts are in your head, you start looking at design much differently.

If I hadn't read 'The Quantitative Display of Visual Information' I think that my design work would be much more cluttered and confusing. Reading the book actually made me want to be a better designer -- I knew, instinctively and through his demonstrations, that my work was definitely not up to par. Any book that can cut through the dense pretenses of a cocky young designer deserves some respect ;D
This article sure didn't provide much evidence of their hypothesis, besides somehow equating the housing bubble to an internet recession. Their only other point was that cyclical downturns begin gradually without much major indication, which somehow means that we're in the beginning of such a downturn?
"All these companies will keep getting bought up, but the acquirers are not going to see great returns."

This struck me as the thing we don't talk about here--not unlike certain topics you don't talk about with old German people. Is there data on how much revenue startups bring to companies that buy them?

Another way to approach this issue: if startups are capable of revenues that justify the enormous amounts that BigCos are paying for them these days, why is there such focus on having an exit? If startups are so much better at solving problems than BigCos, why can't they solve the problem of pulling in revenue better, too? This is not meant to refute the antecedent. It's an actual question that I'd be glad to hear someone answer.

Some startups do end up with healthy revenue, but you'll notice that their expected source of revenue was obvious from the start. Not so with most YC startups.
I agree, a lot of the US is pretty awful. I'm not sure that this is specific to the US, though - I think it's specific to places that were largely built after WWII. The outskirts of european cities are generally pretty soulless, too. But since most of the European cities were built before the automobile, they've avoided this truly depressing problem. I really doubt it has all that much to do with Europeans being particularly marvelous people - after all, San Franciscans like to credit themselves with how pretty their city is (and there is some credit due - my dad remembers signing the petition to preserve the trolley cars when he was a kid), but it was too full to build anything else much after the 50s - so I know I didn't have a damn thing to do with it. (Ok, there is the factor that some people value the physical environment so much that they'll shell out 1Mil+ to live in a small 2br house, so some self-selection may be going on here...)

Hang out in the outer suburbs of Paris some time, and you'll see what I mean - not a big improvement over the outskirts of SF or LA (actually, don't - vacation time in the US is precious, and you definitely don't want to waste it on that).
some good ones:

http://pageflakes.com

http://widgetbox.com

https://jobs.37signals.com/jobs/new

http://netvibes.com
>>1. It makes the format feel more formal, reducing your ability to develop a rapport with the VCs and making the interaction more awkward.

I'm not sure about this. A standing presentation gives you the opportunity to communicate a lot using body language instead of 'hiding' behind the table and your laptop.

>> 2. It implies that you expect to walk the VC through your presentation slide by slide which may make you look green - seasoned entrepreneurs know that the flow of the conversation will be anything but predictable.

Hu? YOU are the presentation, not your slides.

>> 3. It limits the length of the meeting, as few presenters can stand for the length of a meeting.

Good! No presentation should last more than 15 minutes.

>> 4. Your partner will be forced to focus on flipping slides rather than engaging in the dialogue.

Not necessarily true. Whoever leads the presentation can change the slides with a remote control.

>> 5. Most people look awkward when it comes to delivering a standing presentation.

Sure. That's why you must practice before. It's a presentation! Face your audience!
Yahoo Store is an off site solution, OSCommerce is a local hosted Free shopping cart, just like ZenCart. They are needlessly complex and big if all you need is a very basic online store. I think http://www.shopify.info is the Ruby off-site hosted one, or at least it looks more Web 2.0. All of the off-site ones have big monthly charges + a transaction fee in addition to the credit card processing fees.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12010

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49787
Having to manually enter data in social networks sucks indeed.

That global person identity record that Tim is talking about would be enormously useful for everyone (including Xobni, where I work), but I doubt it'll become reality due to privacy concerns.
ok, people, we have to admit, the average startup guys are bunch of fugly mofos.

We totally lack fashion sense, beauty (gym is just a disctraction), etc... etc...

Unfortunately, we are cursed of working and being in a very male oriented industry, in which the very few females we get to interact, are not good looking at all.

oh, well.....
Seriously?! Call it political bias but the Nobel committee will never give the peace prize to someone who starts a war preemptively.
it wasn't all that funny nor sardonic
Vimeo updates their video player - pretty sweet updates - better size and bit quality
Are we domesticating human beings?
I found this article on web application form design to be a good primer:

http://www.lukew.com/resources/articles/web_forms.html

It's on the Functioning Form blog for interaction designers:

http://www.lukew.com/ff/
How do I go about following the quotes?
On Blogs and Books
How Risky is it to Join a Startup?
One of the most important jobs of a founding entrepreneur is building the team with incredibly talented individuals. An interesting concern for the candidate considering joining a startup is the perception of risk.
It would be surprising if he was 30. Tearing down other people's ideas is easy - it's actually what some people are best at right after graduating from college.
"I can't imagine a person who would possibly need more than 10GB for email"

Careful with that one... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failed_predictions#Computers

;)
she scares me though :(

this was also the weirdest and most awkward demo video i've seen
Risk mitigation. Most large tech companies don't purchase startups for the revenue they bring in. They purchase them because they are deathly afraid that some startup will become the next big thing that renders their revenue stream obsolete. It's happened often enough that big companies have reason to be concerned: think of how the computer world would look different if IBM had bought Microsoft instead of licensing their software, or if Yahoo had bought Google when it was an early-stage startup.

If you look at the > $1B acquisitions, almost all (except Skype) have been for companies that fundamentally threaten a large company's business model. If Google hadn't bought YouTube, Viacom's lawsuit against it might have set a precedent that literally puts Google out of business. If EBay hadn't bought PayPal, it would've opened the door to a payment service that wasn't controlled by Ebay yet was frequented by all of EBay's customers; it's not a huge leap for Paypal to start offering its own listings then.

Startup founders have the opposite risk profile: their wealth is all tied up in one company, so if they don't take over the big company's market, they get nothing. Most founders would rather take their $40M payout and diversify.

So basically it comes down to risk aversion. Say that a startup has a 1% chance of displacing the big company (worth $100B for the sake of argumentation), and a 99% chance of eventually failing. For a big company, 1% is far too large a chance of losing everything, particularly when they have the cash & stock to avert the possibility entirely. For a founder, $1B is a helluva lot of money, and far better than a 1% chance at being the richest man in the world yet a 99% chance of nothing.

There's also a moral hazard issue, in that the people actually responsible for footing the bill are stockholders, yet the company executives have a far stronger incentive to not look bad by botching an acquisition than to save $1B. Many money managers hate acquisitions, because it's by far the favorite way to destroy shareholder value. But few CEOs will be replaced for making too many acquisitions, while it's almost guaranteed that they will be replaced if they fail to make the acquisition that becomes a major competitor.

A pithy way to put it might be "Big companies are driven by fear, yet startups are driven by greed." That gives both of them incentives to agree on an acquisition price higher than fair market value.
Bitrot isn't the primary problem - you broke the old url. I save notes on what I read, so it'd be nice if the urls were real permalinks.
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I love The Submarine, it's my favorite pg essay
Ah, good to know! Thanks!

PS: Those who are wondering wtf this is all about, save it as book.rb and run 'ruby book.rb' and it will grab all the PDFs of that book for you.
Another MT customer here, and they indeed have been screwing the pooch for the past couple of days. SSH is constantly down, FTP is slow, and email got knocked out for a whole day. First they say it was a service overload so they fixed it by adding more RAM, then they say they had a DOS attack, now they say it's just a service upgrade. All the while my website is slow and inaccessible and I can barely get to it to fix things.

I'm jumping ship as soon as I can.
It's just as easy to convert an LLC to a C-Corp unless you've done something really crazy in structuring it. Google the advantages that an LLC has over an S-Corp and see how it all applies to your situation. Examine the differences regarding taxes, fringe benefits, RULPA, etc.
For most use cases, I strongly prefer an LLC to an S-Corp. The S-Corp is basically dead as an entity for new ventures, because most if not all of its benefits have been surpassed by the LLC.

Since I'm not big on 'flipping' companies, I even prefer LLCs to C-Corps USUALLY. I have also received VC funding for LLC startups multiple times, despite reading that it is 'basically impossible' in numerous articles. It IS more difficult to get funding as an LLC in most cases, but in some situations it is actually easier to get outside investment as an LLC. [I received investments from two international firms (Irish and Chinese) and they specifically stated that they appreciated that we were an LLC instead of an S or C Corp! There are fewer restrictions on foreign investment and ownership in LLCs. We took the investment largely to get access to their distribution networks, and the flexibility of the LLC helped us immensely because you can separate 'ownership' interests from 'economic benefit' interests, etc. I also know some angel investment groups that prefer LLCs because of their flexibility.]

I've discovered that (well-intentioned) people often dispense bits of startup advice like they are undisputed truths, when they are actually speaking to their own specific history and goals. They will tell you that you MUST incorporate as a C-Corp in Delaware, for example. That may be a MUST for them, but not for you. Not every business wants to flip to Google or Yahoo within a year. Not every business wants to go public. I can't think of very many 'Universal Truths" about startups...you just have to research everything and make your own decision based on YOUR particular circumstances.
Let's assume you're right. Then essentially, startups are primarily making money by exploiting the irrationality and inefficiency of modern corporate decision making? That's not very nice. I wouldn't call it stealing, but it's a far cry from PG's squeaky-clean ideal of "creating wealth".

But I don't think you're exactly right, either (though most of your points are well taken). First of all, >$B acquisitions account for a small percentage of all acquisitions, and using them as a model isn't instructive. Do you think Google was afraid that Zenter would displace it?

Second of all, when assessing the average startup's risk profile, success shouldn't be defined as displacing the BigCo. It should be defined as making some money (say, a few million). If there is a 99% chance that nobody will want to pay for it, are you really making something people want?
She seemed to do ok until MC Hammer entered the scene and she had to give him his lines and run around chasing him. I didn't think he was the real MC but an impostor? (The MC I remember from way back had a lot more presence)
So many workplaces have relaxed dress for men, the best position to be in is where you don't have to wear a tie to work is to wear one.

You stand out, will be socially tested by your peers for doing so, and will hopefully withstand these tests, and gain social value.

Your ideas will also be noticed more, simply because you are noticed more.
If modern art is any indication, it would be mostly a joke/counter-productive, with a few successes.
NSA's Lucky Break: How the U.S. Became Switchboard to the World
It'd be nice to watch a higher res video & read the text.
great post. That is a classic quote
Next Social Network? Web 2.0 & It knows where you are
(these numbers are completely rough, but what I've been working out in my head)

Last season they had around 10 companies. These were the top 5%. So I gathered there were two hundred applicants for that season.

PG says in another comment there were a lot more than before (probably because of news.yc), so maybe double that for this year.
Users. Get an good analytics tools and watch what your users do.
The economist has a special report on innovation this week. There are 8 articles similar to this one and as of now none are subscription only:

see upper right:
http://www.economist.com/printedition/
The numbers from last cycle are public knowledge: 435 applications, 20 of which we funded.
Inheritance is a useful tool. The article mentions the strategy pattern which, ironically, often requires inheritance to implement. So I feel like the author may have been burned and/or confused by inheritance, and following true nerd form has cast it aside completely.

Sometimes when you are using a framework, the productivity gained from inheritance cannot be ignored. I suppose this depends on the language and framework design, to a limited extent.

That said, I try to compose rather than inherit when possible, as it provides a more opaque implementation.