skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Well, it looks nice to me. While the service sounds good, I'm not sure I'd use it. I still use a lot of the surrounding features of the social sites when checking updates - it's usually done such that I can quickly respond to something and not have to log in during the switch from finding out and responding.

What about customization? Can I change the look of the site to mirror maybe one of those services or something I would prefer? I say this mostly because a lot of those services listed offer that ability and it is well used by many users with accounts on those other sites.

Still, I like it, kind of like a google feadburner for social sites. Actually, what different are you doing other than an rss/atom aggregator?

If I could use those accounts from your site I would probably use it more often than all the others. Even with minimal functionality of use imported from those other sites.
Exactly. Because the "New" page is useful and should stay that way.
A third party? You mean like my cell phone provider? I sure hope they aren't listening to my calls!
Startups tend to destroy relationships... no matter how understanding you think your spouse will be, the human nature is hard to beat. Tread carefully :(
Married. My husband is my co-founder. Working together is tons of fun & we live and breathe our startup. I highly recommend marrying your co-founder, or co-founding with your husband/wife.
7 Stupid Thinking Errors You Probably Make
Is Linux Really Ready for Simple Users?
theres a post on my blog that may provide a good laugh.

Honestly, being recently married and suddenly not producing any income is hard. In the Bay Area at least, most woman drive super nice new cars and have a lot of disposable income, so its tough when your living on sacrifice street. That said, wives are awesome when your down and give you something besides yourself to work your ass off for.

link: http://www.rephoria.com/blog/2007/05/25/five-reasons-why-sta...
Last time I tried the Yahoo! Mail Beta, there was no fallback to basic HTML; since I tend to find myself in links quite frequently, that matters. In contrast, Gmail's Basic HTML mode seems to be better every time I try it... that's decisive for me.

Relatedly, but off topic: It still appals me how many sites don't gracefully degrade back to vanilla HTML. Or even check, for heaven's sake, merrily making all of their links Javascript-only. Not nearly as many as assume that you can't possibly be using your own fonts or setting minimum point sizes, admittedly (my eyesight isn't what it used to be, and it never used to be up to much) but even so... I keep hoping that someday a revision of HTML will come out that banishes the javascript: protocol from links altogether.
The Grey Web
Ad-based Trojan hits MySpace, Bebo and others
I've used gmail for the last couple of years, but only because email hasn't been very important to me and I've had always-on web access. Now that both of those circumstances seem about to change, I think it's time I learned my way around mutt... or some other offline client.

The one thing I dislike about gmail is that I find myself reluctant to use it to write long emails. Especially in Basic HTML view.
How could this have a positive EROI? You start with H2O, radio energy then breaks the bonds and gives you 2H2 + 02, and the H2 burns and gives you back H20 + heat. But since you start with the same substance you end with, the amount of energy released as heat must be less than amount of energy added by the radio waves, right? Unless the salt is somehow involved...

Am I missing anything? Hydrocarbons have a positive EROI because the end products (CO2 and H20) have lower energy than the original fuel, and so the excess can be harnessed to do work. But electrolysis/fuel cells have only been proposed for energy storage (and portability) because you can't get out more energy than you put in...
"I responded that ideas are easy, doing stuff is hard."

Ideas per se are easy; good ideas, not so easy.

"History is littered with inventors who had 'great' ideas but kept them quiet and then poorly executed them. And history is lit up with do-ers who took ideas that were floating around in the ether and actually made something happen."

This suggests that, if you share your ideas with people, but are a bit slow in executing, someone else may beat you to it. It's perhaps a waste to have a good idea and not bother to execute it, but once you decide to act on it, giving others the chance to act faster doesn't seem like good plan.
I believe this shows that there's plenty of room for innovation for API's that have seamless integration with SMS/E-mail/IM.
The new page as it stands will continue to be useful up to at least one more order of magnitude in volume, and I don't think PG intends to let the site grow any more than that.
That's the one thing I wanted to see mentioned in the article - how much energy they managed to get out relative to how much they put in.

Looking forward to the discussion about this on slashdot. :p
iPhone Free Software Unlock App - iUnlock - iPhone is finally Free (source code included)
and to save the rest of the curious folks time:

http://readr.com/?ver=0
http://readr.com/?ver=1
http://readr.com/?ver=2
http://readr.com/?ver=3

just trying out different things to see how they perform.
Great idea, but the site is ugly. This is probably the worst non-animated thing I have ever seen on the web: http://readr.com/images/verify_email.png?1189560575
Adobe: Photoshop Goes Online and Free
What is Interference Robustness?
FuXi: Becoming a Full-fledged Logical Reasoning System
My wife of 10 years is pregnant with our first child and I have finally screwed up my courage to its sticking place and am making the leap with my own startup. I am continuing to work my day job--which can suck up 50-60 hours a week while working on the startup another 16-20 hours a week. Both suck a lot of time away from her. I am definitely concerned about this--especially with a child on the way. But, I have a wonderful wife who understands why I want to start my own company and is nothing but supportive. (Plus, she understands that the path to wealth in the US is not through working for someone else so if she wants to be rich, she has to be willing to take the risk of starting a company.)

A lot of people will tell you that a spouse and children will make it more difficult to start, but that is only true if you let it be true. I'm not saying they don't complicate matters, they do. I'm saying turn your weaknesses into your strengths: family can be a great source of source of support (as other posters have mentioned).

Also, when I think about the lessons I want to teach my son, "work hard making someone else a lot of money" is not something I want him to learn, which means I need to get off my ass and practice what I preach.

Regarding how your SO feels about your startup, I think it's gonna really depend on where you are in the relationship. Is it new and you want to spend a lot of time together? Or, is it a more mature relationship where you don't have to be near each other every waking second.

Also, on the SO front, if the your SO wants you to give up your dreams, there are deeper problems with the relationship that you should consider. Just because your married or in a relationship doesn't mean your desires have been sublimated for the sake of the relationship.

Bottom line: I see a lot of people telling you why you shouldn't start, and they are right--unless it's just in you to start, and then nothing can stop you.
Leaked Google Video Discusses Google Reader, Social Efforts
Are you absolutely required to work that many hours a week? That's going to burn you out really fast. Can you work less, even with a pay cut?
We need more non-geeks creating internet startups
It seems like most internet related startups these days are being founded by people with technical backgrounds such as computer science, programming, etc. You know, areas where geeks excel. Now, I agree that you obviously need some technical skills to create web application(s) for your startup, and geeks are good at that. But an internet startup these days is much more than writing code. Understanding what people want, what people will pay for, marketing, management, etc all are very important. I mean, you dont need to ace advanced algorithms class to create myspace or facebook or flickr or whatever. Now, many geeks can handle things very well beyond writing code, and they have proven that (myspace, facebook). But I think we'll see much more interesting startups if people from other backgrounds ranging from sociology to psychology to i dont know, english literature, can learn some programming and create some web apps. Any thoughts on that.
Once they learn the programming, aren't they geeks?
BEWARE of month number 1 with the baby. It is impossible to comprehend until you have a baby, and month 1 (especially week 1) will require more time than you can imagine. I was in the midst of multiple all-nighters on an architecture project around the time of birth (though I took the first week off) and I will never hear the end of my inability to help as much as I should have when the wife was as thoroughly exhausted as me. Life changes totally once you have a child. Once you understand what it means to have a different life as a family (which took me about a year), it is really a great thing. The transition from romance to family, though, is not easy, but that is a completely different topic.
Google Intends to Integrate Its Social Applications
I don't mean to give a negative comment but hey, this is life.

1) You can't get everything you want

2) In every situation, decision has to be made because there are choices (either you've become a good father, or a good CEO). You simply can't be good at both. Maybe once in a while you saw your CEO as both good CEO and good father because from the outside, his family looks happy. But you'll never know what happen inside.
Meh, I'd guess that Google has better backups and better availability than your servers. Maybe I underestimate your skills. =)
Fascinating, version 2 looks like it should be the best... Maybe if you did version 2 but with the large images of version 3, because the sample stuff down the bottom _really_ shows off what you're about.

Either way, love it, signing up now, stick with this because I think you have a shot at going big or being bought out early by someone like yahoo (I figure with google's recent announcement they'll stick with makamaka for a while).
Does anyone else find the irony in requiring 77 resources to simplify life?
Free iPhone Software Unlock Guide
If nothing else, it's an amazing distribution opportunity. People are building simple little apps and getting millions of users practically overnight (and making a surprising amount of money!).
Myspace is still huge (and growing), but Facebook appears to be much smarter and their platform is very important (especially to other startups).
Whichever gives faster and more sustained growth is preferable.
Hell No. Seriously, No way.

What I really don't understand is why the linux community even cares about the "Simple User".
I totally agree with you. I consider myself a geek but I hardly know anything about programming. I understand networking concepts and I live and breathe technology but I am not a hacker. I am learning, but it is hard. I applied for Winter 08 funding because I think I have a great idea with great potential. Hopefully YC looks beyond my partner and I not being able to code and takes our other strengths into account.
Sounds like TC20/40
Who Needs Hackers?
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=53326

Again with the non-unique times urls. This should be killed if it gets noticed before it falls off the new page.
How much money are we talking? I was under the impression that writing facebook apps is not really a way to make money. After all it's not a simple task to incorporate adverts.

People on google are looking for stuff. They'll click on ads if it looks like they'll find the stuff.
On facebook people aren't looking for stuff. They're looking for interactions..... with other humans.... not with adverts.

Sure, if you can build a big app and then sell it to a company that just wants to 'brand' it and get some exposure that's cool, but I'm pretty skeptical you can make a 'surprising amount of money'. Care to share some examples?
Thanks for the comments. Much appreciated.
Is it the boldness?

http://images.apple.com/home/2007/images/ipod_title_20070905...
You've picked some bad examples... Flickr founders were a philosophy major and former art director:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caterina_Fake

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Butterfield

myspace founder has a master's degree in film:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Anderson
> I have found more opportunity working in a cafe, and going out,

That may be true, but are you really lacking in opportunity if you're in a decent startup?

>i can invite someone to lunch for a networking opportunity

Is this "networking" for the startup, you, or is it a euphemism for a social life?

Let me suggest a test. Networking involves enough pre-meeting prep to enable a non-trivial agenda. Post-networking, there will be a debriefing to evaluate whether you achieved your goals and possibly what to do about it. You may not achieve said agenda every time, but if you do, that will often result in work that you have to do for the startup. If it rarely does, then either you're not very good at networking or you're not networking for the startup.

So, let's hear more about the value of this networking to the startup.
Even if we ignore for a second the fact that the Apple slogan takes 4.25" on my screen while your thing takes 10.5", there is this: you are not introducing the best iPods ever. You are asking the user to perform a very trivial stage in the registration procedure. If the font boldness, and not that, was the first thing that came to mind, I suggest hiring someone else to do the design.

If I sound spiteful, it's because I'm envious. The thought of making a meta-social-network crossed my mind, but it never occurred to me why anyone would want to use it, especially at the start. Feeds! Duh.
I did get it. How exactly are you different from 100+ other RSS readers/aggregators?
It is so incredibly easy to aggregate anything form the web today that I simply miss your value proposition.
It's easier than ever to build web applications. And cheaper than ever to hire people to make them for you (see: Digg, MySpace).

I've encouraged folks who aren't technical to pursue their (seemingly good) ideas in the past...so far, not much has come of it. But I don't think it's because it is impossible for a non-technical founder to guide a good product into existence. It seems likely that the people just didn't have the necessary drive or were too risk averse to spend the few thousand bucks it takes to build something.

But, when I see a fundamentally technical startup (which any web application is) without any technical founders, I also assume that it is destined for failure. You need to contribute something to the equation. A good idea isn't even a start. It can be something as simple as money (a few thousand bucks can start something), design ability, good industry contacts in your target market, etc. But you need something that random dude on the street doesn't have, or else there's no way you're going to win against the dozen or so hackers who have the same idea right now (or have it five minutes after they see your shoddy implementation of the idea).

So, I guess my answer is a resounding: Maybe.
Well no, it is not Photoshop, only some other image editor by Adobe.
What is a simple user? The article was too long for me...

I have put my mother on Ubuntu and it works great. Most things are a lot easier easy than with Windows, and most importantly, security updates take care of themselves, too. Under windows it is just big mess. Usually applications come with their own updater software, which is ugly and spyware-ish by itself, and also very unreliable.
So sad. I was obsessed with Alex for a while. If you've never heard of Alex the parrot or the things he can do, check out this video of him with Alan Alda (3rd from the top):
http://www.pbs.org/saf/1201/video/watchonline.htm

Once, I got to meet Alex. My girlfriend at the time got really jealous, because for the next two weeks all I could talk about was this (brilliant, charming) parrot. She broke up with me shortly thereafter. Sadly, I'm not kidding.
A lot more than you would guess, but the details are all private (so I can't share examples, though I know of several).
The advertising networks make the real money, they get to take half of what everyone else makes.
I'm fond of the 3rd dimension, too. Without it, life would just be so... flat.
There's no reason why "geeks" can't understand these other topics as well (and likewise, people from other backgrounds can learn to code). I don't like pigeonholing people and expecting them to only be good at one thing.

If you can understand both sides of the equation, that's a huge advantage. Technology is still very important, and people who don't understand it are going to have (or cause) problems.
no we don't!

there are enough and not enough startups already comprised of those beautiful creatures you call geeks!

laughing at the code of others is not the right start for learning programming!

having a non-technical co-founder is one thing, and having a person of a different field learn being technical a tottaly unnecessary thing and probably harder and needs totally different drive to pursue...technical persons tend to choose like minded ones. its easier for them to become business minded, at least one of them from the team...

good luck!
Married, and it's the best thing I ever did. Money, companies, and everything else comes and goes, but it's important to have someone who will always be there.

That said, it affects your ability to do a startup, because you have something that's more important. Oh well, I wouldn't trade it for anything!
Facebook needs People Grouping for better privacy
The unix philosophy is that there are users, and there are sysadmins, and the sysadmins take care of the users' computers. The Windows philosophy, on the other hand, is basically that every user should be a half-competent sysadmin in their own right.

Windows has never been, is not, and never will be, for "simple users." It is for power-users, and those with power-users in their support networks. Unix was designed for "simple users" from day one, but under the simple rule that there be someone else around whose only task is to take care of the system.

I've always wondered why computer repair shops don't offer a service where they continue on as root of any repaired computers....
Hack: Create a market for your shares (includes quote from Adam of Xobni)
Some companies know in advance that their business model requires raising money. It doesn't make sense for those companies to not locate themselves in the Bay Area.

Everyone else is much more flexible.
I abandoned gnus when I decided I needed a spam filter, and just didn't want to spend a whole day fiddling with Emacs Lisp, and worrying about silently trashing my mail.
How much startup equity is awarded to Board members?
I'd rather use prolog.
Patches are welcome. :)

OTOH, how are you? remember ugh2yay?
Is there a helpdesk for CSS/HTML problems?
Yesterday I got caught up in Internet Explorer 6 CSS hell. I am not an CSS expert, so I was thinking for once it would be nice to have a place to consult. Ie what if I could post my problem to some web page with a price tag, and if somebody else can solve it for me, they get the money? Is that a common way helpdesks work? Are there even public helpdesks, or only internal ones?
you can ask a question here for free. http://www.htmlforums.com/
People should care about such users because computing isn't just for elitist assholes.
They should, but there isn't a platform for them to do so. I've thought a lot about this problem but would prefer not to discuss it in public forums. So anyone that would like to discuss, please email me.
1) Register domain
2) Register Google Apps
3) Shift DNS entries
4) Yeah! 100 x 2GB email accounts, for free, with integrated XMPP! And an incredibly simple administrative interface.
Right now my grandfather is using Ubuntu with iGoogle. All he does is go and look at his stocks and the news, but it works really well for him for that. Every now and then he googles something. He uses a trackball because we couldn't afford a big touchscreen and mice are extremely hard to use once you get beyond a certain age (which my experience shows to be curved around 70).

In other words -- my 90 year old grandfather is successfully using the internet through a dynamic home page and a command prompt.
He's got a good point, but he should have explained his solution to the related problem...
I predict it will be Britney VMA bad.
Have you tried experts-exchange.com?
You didn't have any luck on IRC?
A GTDish issue tracker
We're launching an early version of a GTD-based issue tracker.
We haven't yet implemented every feature we dreamed, yet it is already doing its job for early adopters.
We're leaking early accounts occasionally and will be definitely interested in hearing some feedback.
I'm not sure what you are saying here - are you saying that if intelligent non-coders learn coding they will produce better internet applications? Is the implication of that statement that coders like myself are uncreative?

Menloparkbum gets my vote here - Paul also.

I'm not trying to be harsh, but really, just what segment of the technology community are you referring to when you say "geeks"? Coders? I only ask because this is a news message board on YC, so its kind of the pot calling the kettle black. To most people everyone on this board would be a geek. I say embrace your fellow programmer and don't discriminate against him how ever much he may remind you of Wayne Knight in Jurassic Park.
We're launching an early version of a GTD-based issue tracker.
We haven't yet implemented every feature we dreamed, yet it is already doing its job for early adopters.
We're leaking early accounts occasionally and will be definitely interested in hearing some feedback.
The AP: Yahoo to Sell Ads for Social Network
Just don't die - Advice from Last.fm
Echos of pg's essay (http://paulgraham.com/die.html) on the importance of staying alive for a startup from one of the Last.fm founders.

Anyone think they ever quit too early with their startup ?
Morphology 2.0 - Inspired by uberbrands & other branding conventions
Man-made chemicals blamed as many more girls than boys are born in Arctic
I love the labels and filters and I use Google Calendar religiously and gmail integrates with that pretty well.
Easy way to let friends access folders on your pc
The story behind the iUnlock hack: the first free, open iPhone SIM unlock software
Who Needs Hackers (when there's complexity)?
it's rubbish. extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. there is no exception to the third law of TD known and boy have people looked. novel force previously unknown to physics vs investment scam... hhhmmm which should i choose? oh how can i possibly decide?
I prefer my email on Evolution/Outlook, much better than gmail.
That could work, but this article makes them out to be completely clueless.
How the Porn Industry Plans to Wipe Out BitTorrent
Gigabyte vs Gigabyte
I didn't know this.
"Makers of fine websites since 2007?" Write it only in 2057.
Soy Division >> About "This is an example of a WordPress page, you could edit this ..."

I would recommend to get all these right before launching a product. It's all about user's trust.
Congratulations. Have you had this name for a while or was it a recent expiration?
With no "snarkiness" intended I have to ask: Do you have any affiliation with or work for Yahoo?
It just copies the Outlook interface. If I wanted that interface, I'd use Thunderbird. Gmail has a fundamentally better GUI.