skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's all HTML except for a couple of server-side includes that happen to use PHP to include HTML. In any case it's definitely a better example of HTML code than of PHP code :)
Currently we have a few select partners in the process of implementation. We will be releasing the sign up information next week to the public and we will release a notification here and on our blog.
Would you expect the average Facebook user to be interested in interacting much with friends?

Yes, definitely. But in general, at least among the largely growing high school contingent on Facebook, I generally wouldn't expect much sophistication... the interactions I've observed are pretty similar to what you see on MySpace.

Facebook is growing in the older-than-college age group too, though, and naturally those users are going to act more like adults. Writing facebook applications is pretty easy, so one great way to test your idea would be to just put out a prototype and see what happens.
Ask YC: What are the best computer science universities in Canada?
I'm considering a move to Canada sometime in the next year or two, but I plan on going to grad school (I'm on track to finish my BS in CS in the next two years). If I do decide to make the move, what are the best computer science schools, preferably with significant research in security? I like the Vancouver area, but I don't think the University of British Columbia would be a good pick for CS. Opinions?

Also, it would be nice, but not necessary, for there to be some amount of startup activity in the area.
I wonder if it's not so much primness as a desire to steer threads away from the sort of boring/crude one-liners that reddit can often devolve into.
One of my co-founders and I have been friends since high school and later ended up working at Atari together. He ended up leaving Atari for another game development company where he met our third co-founder.
Petrol Pumps at Gas Stations to Dispense Google Maps
I assume you've googled around a bit and found there is no simple answer to this question. I'd say posting site like this is your best bet. Do you know what you're looking for? I ran a successful startup/small company and this is my advise - YMMV.

1) you're looking for someone who has similar values yet contrasting /knowledge/skills/abilities (KSA)
The similar values makes them a 'potential friend' and that's the best you can aim for. In the past I made the mistake like so many co-founder do, of connecting with ppl because of our common KSA. At first it's very easy to get along with someone who is equally passionate about, say, linux. Over time your conflicting philosophies will lead to a poopy_work_environment(tm)... at which point you'll mostly like start the "why I hate this person" list to help validate breaking apart the company. I assume it's very similar to a marriage/divorce.

2) Understand that nothing is more important than the 'who'
The person/ppl you choose to build a company with will make you who you're going to become. If your values are similar you'll agree quickly on possible problems and get up into a high level of creativity when brainstorming solutions. The process will be rapid and you'll alter your ideas with nothing more than an "um" from the other person/co-founder... You'll know exactly what they're thinking. You're a product of your environment so nothing is more important to you than the 'who'.

3) filtering
Let's say you get 100 ppl interested in working with you, how do you choose? I recommend tracking down someone who's studied Industrial and Organizational Psychology. I was lucky to find two post-grads from a local university (UW) here in Waterloo and they suggested I read the textbook "Human Resource Selection, 5th ed., by R.D. Gatewood and H.S. Field). They also assisted with a few filters. The best I'd say is to create a 'structured interview'. This will help you interpret a persons values.

4) pick a small 'what'
Once you've gathered your 'potential friends', choose a small problem/project to work on -- even if it's for free. Make sure the project is meaty enough (6months?). The purpose is to alpha-test your startup. Especially watch how/if you all resolve conflict. I suggest agreeing before hand on the most pragmatic approach possible... something like, if we reach an impass than we'll flip a coin... watch how the person who didn't get his/her way responds (especially if that's you).

5) try find someone who has already run the race -- successfully!
Imagine this 'potential friend' was someone like pg. Their insight will handicap your odds of success.

6) Do not rush it. At worst get a job at Burger King and wait.

I hope that's coherent. I apologize for the length of this post, it wasn't intended. If you have further questions, you can email me at dollarsignfoo@gmail.com
-steve
Chinese Maglev Wind Turbines Enter Mass Production
Univ of Toronto is the top one overall for grad school though I don't know how much security research is done there.
It still takes a week or so to build an app, so there's a limit to how much experimentation you can do as an individual.

Perhaps we can share some experiences.
Damn, now I have to create another account to procrastinate smoothly.
For whatever it's worth to you, you will readily get more than 5 minutes of semi-solicited opinions about your prospects and strategy from any VC manager or partner you talk to. You may even score customer introductions.

The solid "yes" or "no" is a major feature of the YC process though.
This is probably the least user friendly feature implementation I have ever seen.

Why not call it something better than "noprocrast?" If I didn't read that news post, I would be completely confused as to what it does or what the other two values do.

It's a cool idea/feature, just implemented very, very badly.
I want a very large portion of that $42 billion. Should I set my login to procrast for getting kicked off?
That's a good point but besides fighting, having at least one co-founder is a great deal (if he/she is a close friend).
I'm telling this because a lot of startups change their business ideas several times, and sometimes your vision is not the right one.

There's one big issue here, if an employee tells you that your company will be better doing X instead of Y is totally your decision,
it can be right or wrong but that employee will never talk to you about that idea again.

Sure, you can have a lot of discussions with your co-founders, but having a combined vision of the project helps a lot.

In my case, having one of my best friends as a co-founder is the best thing that ever happened to me.
"... one key factor between those who succeed as entrepreneurs and those who fail is that those who fail give up too soon, but I've not seen very many suggestions given on how people can develop the "stick with it" trait ..."

You can learn resilience - you have to know and explore your limitations, physically & psychologically. Then push hard!

For me there are a number of things to learn though. A combination of both psychological and physical skills. For the psychology I use techniques that can be summarised in 1 line:

SDNT CVS2OBVS QRH PRR

They are really just a series of techniques to get you pointing in the right direction. It is probably one of the most underused skill-set I picked up in some training [0] in the first startup I worked for.

- SDNT: Start, Do, Notice, Think

- CVS2BVS: Current view of Situation 2 Best View of Situation

- QRH: Quality, Recognition. Humour

- PRR: Practice Repetition Rehearsal

A simple toolbox to overcome obstacles. Most revolve around questioning assumptions, finding out what is going on by observation then executing on what is important. [1] The key insight I gain usually is perspective. Change perspective and you can see things in a different more positive light. Then work out where you need to go and execute.

The physical side should not be forgotten.

You live in a physical world. Ignore it and it will impact you just as much as the psychological world. For this I keep reasonable fitness and undertake physical challenges like climbing that hill over there ~ http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/tags/mtdandenong or see how far you can walk before you succumb to hunger or fatigue. Half your battle is going to be the physical world you work in. You may as well know how resilient you are by pushing yourself physically and see how you cope [2]

For me, resilience a combination of both physical stamina and the skills and confidence you develop, used in conjunction with simple psychology techniques. Combining them allows you to guide your mind, keep it questioning, on track and doing what needs to be done.

[0] http://www.schoolofthinking.org/who/who-dr-michael-hewitt-gl...

[1] Download the book for more details ~ http://www.schoolofthinking.org/software.pdf

[2] http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/252138977
Just because there's an example of a single co-founder company succeeding doesn't make your hypothesis true.

Statistically, it seems that multiple founders correlates more highly with success than single founders.

Perhaps there's an underlying reason that the companies you've worked with have failed when there were multiple founders (e.g. personality clashes, inability to resolve disputes, etc.).
This is my first meeting with mrtron, so I don't think we're dating (unless you mean 'by LiveJournal standards', in which your guess would be as good as mine).

I'm engaged in the real world. We fight all the time.
This seems to indicate that a fully-working demo is not what you want to present to YC. Since all you have is ten minutes, I would think you'd want a more focused form of presentation.

Put it this way -- are you a magician? If you present a demo that effectively says "pick a card, any card," you'd better be. If you're demoing Google (the site it is today) for YC, it's probably not the best sell to just let someone type anything they want into it.

When you only have ten minutes, you need to retain as much control as possible over your message. Present the article to sell the magazine.
I have been desperately looking for a co-founder who thinks just like me and now that I've read this post, my search is over!

<on knees>

BitGeek, will you be my co-founder?

</on knees>
http://blogger.com
You could of directed them to comics by explaining that it was the what your alpha users had worked on. I think demo's are much better than pp, lets face it a demo proves you can actually deliver a product. Just make sure you take control and not get side tracked on uncompleted stuff.
Ahh... I thought this had been posted before. I seemed to remember people replying with similar comments to what we saw this time around.
University of Waterloo has always ranked at the top of all CS programs, and is the most sought after school with respect to university recruiting. Security is thoroughly covered in the combinatorics department of the math faculty
Can you be a bit more specific than "security"? Are you interested in cryptography? Protocol analysis? Formal security proofs? Automatic analysis of source code to detect bugs (think Coverity)? Also, from a general point of view, do you consider Computer Science to be a branch of mathematics, or a field of engineering?

If you like Vancouver, I'd certainly recommend considering SFU -- as a whole, SFU is smaller than UBC, but the CS departments are almost exactly the same size.
41 Ways to Turn Your Dorm Into An Office
Except that I really don't like Windows XP... I could care less about it. I'm not going to go to all that trouble (including buying a copy of Windows XP; I'm not going to steal it) just to use a Java-based website. That's really the main crux of my initial point, that if you're using Java applets, you're probably turning away what could be some valuable users.
Nice Image, some great advice, I would like to have it as my desktop background but...

Doctype Transitional.

<img> tag without width and height.

<div style="clear: both;"></div> ?
it seems that multiple founders correlates more highly with success than single founders

I keep hearing this stated, but I don't think I've ever seen the stats. Anyone got a cite?

However, assuming there is a correlation, this doesn't tell us much about causation. Perhaps a much larger percentage of single-founder startups aren't started seriously, and are therefore irrelevant to the numbers.

As a single-founder, what I want to know is: will adding a co-founder increase my probability of success? What if the co-founder is not a good friend?
The simple correlations mentioned above aren't very useful in answering these sorts of questions. If there is any good evidence either way I'd very much like to see it.
A New Way to look at Networking
I'm a CS grad student at the Universite de Montreal. It's probably not what you're looking for (what's security?), since it's francophone and concentrates mainly on operations research, but if there's any interest feel free to email me.

If you do come to Montreal, check http://montrealtechwatch.com/ for local startup activity. In any case, it's a great city to live in.
Justin.tv search API and Common Lisp
The justin.tv search now has an API. At this blog entry, details about the API and a use example using Common Lisp.

Good work William! :-)
I think this is a bad idea. Just my thought
Matt, how many hits did you get from being t'crunced? What's the return visitor rate?
RailsFactory is a Ruby on Rails development shop based in Chennai, India.

when you are a very small startup, and self funded, you just need to make 2-3 bad moves to go into bankruptcy and closure.

Startups have its Eureka moments and frustrating times

I consider myself more of a visionary than a implementer, I get into high energy mode in short bursts, but my partner keeps our company sane.

I find my co-Founder a great stress buster for me.
not having a cofounder can be used as an excuse for not starting anything at all. it's probably better to start and take action. that might be the best strategy to attract the right cofounder anyway.
If you're wondering why your "D" cell batteries don't last long...
In my (truly) humble opinion, co-founders are overrated, especially by this crowd. The value of an inner circle of talented and trustworthy first employees, on the other hand, can't be overestimated.
By security, I mean cryptography, intrusion detection systems, firewalls, and web-based attacks (like SQL injection, XSS, and the like). I consider computer security to be equal parts mathematics and engineering (even the best cryptosystems can be engineered poorly and introduce weak points).

I'm taking a course (in the mathematics department) on elliptic curve cryptography, and I am a new member on UF's infosec team. I'll be competing in this year's iCTF, so that should help give you an idea of what I mean by security and what I'm interested in researching.
The Web 2.0 World is Skunk Drunk on Its Own Kool-Aid
How did you think of this one? did someone ask for it?
I like it!
I worked with Dinesh, my co-founder in RailsFactory, on two occassions and I used to be his boss.

I knew his technical skills, but he was more than that, a great guy and a family friend.

Though there were over 20 developers whom I managed, but he was the chosen one :)

only after a 2 year period, we went on to start our company.

my suggestion, get someone whom you dont mind meeting at anytime of the day, any place in the world, with whom you share many things in common.

startups are stressful, dont get someone who has financial and personal problems( more than you).someone who can commit minimum one year of his/her life for the Idea and you
Why is it that every time you state your opinion (even in a respectful manner) someone has to down mod .
I kind of wonder if there is a middle ground. There are two different posts on the front page right now: one deriding the idea of co-founders and one from someone desperately seeking a co-founder.

My (worthless) advice is to let it happen naturally. Neither seek out a co-founder nor refuse co-founders who approach you. Just try to make friends with similar people who are interested in startups. Talk about ideas. It definitely helps if you have known these people for a while before starting a business with one. I can't even imagine going in on a business venture with a total stranger.
Are you involved in a green startup?
Actually, less than I got from here (by far). But I got a hell of a lot of random contact emails from people wanting to sell me stuff, wanting a job, wanting to explore a partnership, and potentially even to invest. Very odd.
Just having a little link to the news post next to the noprocrast dropdown would pretty much clear this up.
But if presented a hammer and a screwdriver, you'll use a hammer as a hammer every time. So why give people a screwdriver?
I'm really on the fence about this because both arguments have truth to them. If you look at many successful companies, they were often founded by two people. However you'll also find that usually one of the founders leaves eventually (usually after a short while compared to overall lifetime of the company), and the other stays to run the company.

I can give a whole bunch of examples. Apple: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Microsoft: Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Valve: Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington. Id Software: John Carmack and John Romero. People split for various reasons, sometimes due to disagreements. Sometimes personal reasons or change of interests. In the end most companies seem to end up being run by one person whether or not they were founded by more than one.

There are also successful companies that were founded by one person, like Dell and Amazon. So to me it seems that statistically speaking eventually you'll split up and one of you will have to leave the company.

Ultimately it seems that the co-founder issue is mostly an issue of initial mutual support. It's tough to go through the early stages on your own, and having someone to share the workload with and get moral support from increases your chances of success. But it can only truly work in the long term if you decide at the beginning that one of you will be the president and have the final word in major decisions. Otherwise it's a recipe for trouble down the road.
Looks like I have a new goal in life. -23, here I come.
Probably because opinions without explanations aren't very interesting.
I agree. I'd be curious to see what you think of ours.
Waterloo is probably a good bet. Startup and entrepreneurship history (Maple, RIM/Blackberry).

Strong in math and applied math also. http://www.cacr.math.uwaterloo.ca/
http://crysp.uwaterloo.ca/
The head of CS department has a PhD from MIT with strong Math background and a fellow AT&T researcher specializing in security.

http://www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/ubcreports/2005/05mar03/defe...

UBC has won ACM Pacific Northwest Programming Contest for 4 years in a row beating Stanford, Berkeley and the rest. The other 2 UBC teams usually place within top 10 (3rd, 4th place)
Excellent! 10 minutes a visit; 1440 minutes between visits. My productivity is saved.
In Canada, Waterloo is head and shoulders above the rest for almost anything. Ian Goldberg teaches there now, so there's at least one world-class security researcher. I believe there are plenty of startups in the area, but I don't have first-hand knowledge. I can tell you that a Waterloo degree is looked on very favorably at Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo.

In Vancouver, your picks are UBC or Simon Fraser University. I don't know enough about their grad programs to say anything useful, but I know SFU has a very good undergrad degree, and they really mentor their students to be entrepreneurs. There is a startup scene in Vancouver but it's a bit lightweight, with a few notable exceptions.
Cryptography, Security and Privacy research group at Waterloo:

http://crysp.uwaterloo.ca/
this wasn't started by just one person, though. granted evan finished it by himself, proving the point below about co-founders leaving.
i think the title is misleading.

"Sure, its better to have more than one person in the company... and feel free to call your second thru fourth employees 'co-founders' or give them 'founders stock'... whatever."

it's alright to have co-founders as long as everyone agrees that at the end of the day one co-founder has the final say no matter what, though I don't think it's necessary to be disparaging and think of them as just "employees"...
BitGeek:

Your post is simply amazing. I couldn't agree more. Having multiple co-Founders does not guarantee success but also does not guarantee failure. But if a startup with multiple co-Founders were to somehow become successful, it is still very difficult for it to grow beyond the bootstrapping stage. I actually have one chapter planned for my on-line book to be entitled "Middle Management Gone Wild" which is what happens to the later stage of a successful startup with multiple co-Founders. It is the same difficulty that a hunting party would have growing into a village.

Thanks again.

--Denny--

Denny K Miu

http://www.startupforless.com
>A co-founder is not what you need, unless you already have one, and you have as good a relationship with them as the best relationship you've ever had with anyone in your life.

My co-founder and I work incredibly well together as complements, what we are doing would not work if it was just one of us starting.
How would you define a niche market?
Put a number on it (or a range). Would 100M total potential users be niche? 50M? 10M? 1M?
In programming languages every character is just as important as every other character (on average), so each character should get the same amount of space.

For example, looking at this: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/images/programming-fonts-2-...

...the "!" in the conditional is squished into about 3 pixels, but it has just as much importance as any other character, if not more. Glancing at this code you might not even notice it. In normal text it is also important, but would appear at the end of a sentence, which would be hard to miss...but wedged in there between the "(" and "O" it gets lost.

Another example is trying to line up things. This is sort of a style preference, but sometimes I like doing things like this:

float percent = 0.4f;

int width = 640,

height = 480;

char flag = 'A';

Now, when I typed that the text field was using a monospaced font and everything was lined up perfectly. Chances are, you're viewing it with a variable width font... is it lined up? Not really. (edit: ok in this case multiple whitespace characters are converted to a single point but you get the idea)

What about this:

float percent = 0.4f;
int width = 640,
height = 480;
char flag = 'A';

Much nicer, eh?

Variable width fonts are optimized for readability of free flowing text like books, articles, etc. Code is highly structured, and lining things up and that sort of thing can help the readability.

Can you give me cases where variable width font in code is better?
Interviewing the boss
I'm lucky enough to work at a place where they won't hire a new manager unless there's team buy-in.

Assume technical competence is not an issue. What questions do we need to have answered?

I am also selling our team to him. Any advice there would be helpful.
The fact that most plane crashes are due to engine failure doesn't mean planes shouldn't have engines.

All you have to do is look at the empirical evidence. Successful single-founder startups are so rare that they're famous on that account.

I'm not saying that having a cofounder is so important that you should take someone lame, or someone you don't know well. Maybe if you can't find a cofounder you're just screwed; I don't have enough data yet to say for sure. But someone going into a startup as a single founder should be aware they're doing something that, for whatever reason, rarely works.
How do those jurisdictions judge betting on the result of a match? Picking players on their teams likely performance would surely be a significant part of the game.

Although given that what you're doing isn't odds adjusted, it's probably not that great a comparison.
I think brett was suggesting rambling, angry, posts are better suited for a blog.