skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I felt like Kevin's role into Pownce was a little superficial. Understanding that he has no programming skills, and Leah developed the concept herself, it is almost like Kevin was asked to step in as a poster child for Pownce so that Leah could get some serious users.

Stepping away from all of that, I believe that Kevin is becoming more and more consumed by his Digg baby, and doesn't have the time that he used to have to back all these projects that he "diggs". I think in the next few months, the community will see where Kevin's heart is and we will soon understand if Kevin still has his eye's set on Pownce.
That's a fair response. (And I apologize if I came across mean.) But I can mathematically prove you wrong. (I'm sure you'll prefer that, right? :-) If you look at average incomes and median incomes, the former are higher than the latter. Therefore it's the super rich throwing off the average -- not the super poor.

America has a venture culture that no one else in the world has, and I have to say as an entrepreneur myself that I deeply appreciate America for imparting that on me. But its handful of successes are rouge on a doll. If you're not looking at averages, you're essentially fooling yourself. How many people here are working on the next MySpace, desperate to get lucky and rich, and ignoring the odds and the fact that they're not adding value to anyone, anywhere? Like lottery ticket buyers, they're all fooling themselves that they will join that rich elite, when they never will (despite that, yes, sometimes someone wins).
God, no! Something good this time. :-)
Notes on "Treating Code As Essay" a Beautiful Code Chapter
That was before they were more desperate for money- apparently they have not yet secured an order. They have to resort to selling in the US to raise money and keep the volume up to keep production costs down.
Re: Rand's ethics being nothing like Nietzsche's...

When you really dig into Rand, her ethics are essentially a modernized version of Aristotle's virtue ethics. Most of her ethical theory revolved around core values (Reason, Purpose, Self-Esteem) and virtues that supported these values (Pride, Rationality, Integrity, Productiveness, Independence, and Justice). Many argue she left out a few important virtues like benevolence, but overall it's a pretty good and useful list. She didn't necessarily agree with Aristotle's "Doctrine of the Mean" (virtue is the mean between two extremes), but otherwise her ethics are very Aristotelian.
PG mentioned productivity and you mentioned income, so you aren't addressing the example criticism.

Also, I've heard that France has higher productivity per hour worked, though the average worker spends fewer hours working.

My guess is that people cheat the limits on working to get more done and push up the hourly productivity numbers.
It's interesting that no one has a problem comparing a Framework to a straight-up language. You'll never get an accurate comparison this way and I think that's a huge point. Everyone marvels at what RoR can achieve in terms of logic/decision/data/presentation separation, but doesn't take into account that there are probably 20 or so PHP frameworks that also implement the MVC approach and do a lot of the same things while maintaining the flexibility of php.
Digg took the article out of the upcoming queue...

http://digg.com/design/How_to_kickstart_a_low_cost_but_high_...

Kevin Rose dug it so I messaged him on Facebook and await a reply. I doubt this could be a site bug. Has it been censored and why...
sorry, didn't know
... which is OK if the example criticism has no valid measurement parameters. There's a reason Forbes doesn't list the 100 most productive people.
I doubt it is explicit censorship, you just got buried too many times...
I'm surprized this type of xenophobic comment is given 8 up votes. Is mobbing french people still considered cool ?

The tracks to the poster leads to perdue university. Insulting a community on behalf of german people ? How courageous.
shame - although the 'internet gods' have so far given it about 5500 page views.
A way to signal offending comments.
See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=58389
Unfortunately his analysis is not right. He is confusing revenues with earnings. P/E of 60 is not the same as Price/Revenue of 60. If you are only doing $1M/month and your margins are say ~10%, you will end up with a value of $60M not $600M.
Social Networking Invitation Etiquette
The most productive people aren't the top 100 people. They are the top ~10,000 at the top ~1000 companies and startups.

A magazine should make a list of the top 500 companies...
Ulrich Drepper, you rule!

Really looking forward to the next 6 parts of this series.
Which is better for an IT Career: East Coast or West Coast?
I have a great idea for a webapp, but hardly any programming knowledge.  What should i do?
point of curiosity- do any ycers use second life? i've been out and played around, but couldn't tell you what my username is/was at this point.
Well, you should find someone to execute on it. A good first step would be posting it somewhere where hackers are known to roam so that you can get feedback and find potential partners. Like here, for example.
It's hard, because you don't want to just let you plan out there in the open and have someone take it right out from under you.
Rubinius is important - "Rubinius will be the CRuby implementation of choice within 6 months"
Quick Leaderboard - http://news.ycombinator.com/best
Candid Camera: The cult of Leica
Briefly in 2005 - they named it well, it eats your life, and it's not worth making $L unless you're Anshe Chung, queen of all SL real estate.
Immature developer attitudes revealed in flames regarding CDBaby   at  Pervasive Code
I've tooled around with it in the past, but other than spending some time making little toys in LSL, I found that I didn't really fit in with the "giant walking and talking penis" crowd.
If you're not planning on paying, and want to create a team, you'd better learn how to program. I was in your same position several months ago. I tried looking for programmers, and those that I found were turned off by the fact that I had no programming knowledge/experience. So, I got fed up and decided to learn how to program. I started with Python, dabbled in some SQL, and am currently trying to refine my Django skills. Time, dedication, and documentation is all it really required. It's not that bad.
Are there books you suggest i read, or tutorials to start with?
Lisp Screencast - Episode 1 - A reddit clone in 20 minutes
It'd be really great if PG would consider doing an alpha release of Arc sometime. To me, there appears to be a mini-Lisp revolution going on right now, largely thanks to PG & reddit. It'd be a shame to let that energy dissipate as people grow tired of waiting for it to come out.

I know the excitement that I have for Arc isn't as much the "100 year language" issue as much as the need to have strong leadership for a Lisp. I think that this is evident by the difficulties the various CLs have when introducing new functionality to the language vs. a package, or the whole R6RS fiasco that's been driving the Schemers mad.
>Higher-order functions do entail a sacrifice to readability compared with plain loops.

I disagree with you there. If you understand that Map, Reduce and Filter (for example) are essentially loops, using them greatly increases code readability. Instead of having to read loop code, you're just reading code that describes what you're doing to the data.

EDIT: I know this is going to sound weird, but I recently implemented Map, Reduce and Filter in VB.NET. Aside from the fact that using .NET delegates is clumsy, the code portions that use those methods are much more concise (and readable).
VCs & Tech Lawyers: Innovate, Automate & Simplify
Is that you, Kevin Rose?

John.
Yeah.

For Python:
http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld/

http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/thinkCSpy/

http://www.diveintopython.org/

I also read the O'Reilly book on Python - 'Programming Python'

There's Python.org for all docs, of course.

For Django - http://www.djangoproject.com - they have a cool tutorial on the front page, and http://www.djangobook.com, then move to the documentation from djangoproject.
Top 16 Lies of Lawyers
Guy Kawasaki lists the top sixteen lies lawyers will tell entrepreneurs.
Like they say, no one ever got fired for buying IBM.

It's expensive because it's aimed at accounting drones who make the decisions about what to buy and who want software from a "big name" company like Borland.

On a related note, there is at least one other similarly expensive rails IDE, but the name escapes me right now.
Smalltalk: Getting The Message - "The Essentials of Message-Oriented Programming with Smalltalk"
Lessons from Precimark
ideas are easy. Executing them is harder.
New version of Gmail being tested? (Does Paul Buchheit's recent comment help confirm it?)
Does Paul Buchheit's recent comment help confirm it?

"...Gmail is a big system with many components -- there is no reason that Google would ever need to do a "complete" rewrite. That said, the individual components are frequently rewritten, and it already supports at least 4 completely different interfaces (AJAX, plain HTML, XHTML mobile, Java MIDP mobile, POP3, and probably others that I'm forgetting or can't mention). Adding a new UI for Joel's magical library wouldn't be a big deal."

Edit: Made title more interesting (but a little long).
Man, I'm getting tired of seeing RoR fan boys peddle their framework as if it's the Second Coming. Why all the hate nowadays? Can't we all just get along....
The possibilities for this thing could be huge, when it's understood and mature it could revolutionize the way we interact with computers, even coding (along the lines of subtextual.org). Too bad there's no stock to buy :)
Indeed. Google for 'Non-disclosure Agreements'. But, probably you're better off learning to code, even if you do get a partner. And I agree that Python is a good language to start with.
donate one? donate money to manufacturers?
Disruptive Technologies Can Shrink Addressable Markets 
The addressable market that you calculate for your business may be smaller than it was for the companies that you intend to displace. Disruptive technologies often reduce prices offered to consumers as processes are often more cost effective. If your company lowers prices, it will likely shrink the addressable market.
so then i guess the next question is, anyone interested in signing a non-disclosure agreement and working on a pretty cool idea for a web app?
Get an NDA with anyone you work with. "Ideas are easy, execution is hard" is a cop-out excuse by people who don't have any patentable worthwhile ideas of their own!
I would be interested in signing, please email me if you're interested.
How moving your eyes in a specific way can help you solve a complex problem
Will Facebook tax the Platform?
What are your startup's philosophies?
I'd love to know what the (written or unwritten) philosophies of ViaWeb and YCombinator were/are!
for sufficiently vague definitions of "idea".
There are several ways you can go about this:

1. Create a simple prototype that demonstrates the core ideas of the concept and show it to a few people (you trust). You may be able to attract some good developers if it appeals to them.

2. Start a blog and talk about how your idea may benefit some potential customers. See whether any one shows interest.

3. Go to one of the startup meet ups (www.meetup.com) in your area and informally discuss it or present it to the group.

4. You may not need to build the entire software. Most of the good developers know how to reuse existing software (libraries) to quickly build a version 1 of the product.

5. Try a few interns from your local computer school and let them build the first version of the product. Let a few friends try it out. If there is enough interest, you may be able to find some supporters in funding it or developers interested in developing it further.

6. You can start a project in one of the open source communities like sourceforge put some high level specs and see whether any one will be interested in joining you.

7. If you strongly believe in the idea and do not want to go open source, prepare a simple plan and approach some angels. Many angel investors may also have a good rolodex of development resources.

I think having a good idea for a great app is cool. But you need to go to the next step of prototyping or let others visualize it so that you can get some reactions. This will help improve the idea and also hear if such an idea is already implemented somewhere else.
An article posted to news.yc (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=58522 ) mentioned working with an outsourcing/offshoring partner, and giving them equity in exchange for building the app.

Have yet to find a good example of that really working for someone...
I recently did this, as in about a month ago, I became interested in learning Lisp. I started with a bunch of things. First I tried to get various working environments going like:

Emacs + Slime + SBCL

Emacs + Quack + PLT Scheme

I also tried DrScheme (which is a great learning environment).

Not knowing what i'd really need I also did some searching and discovered a few books:

http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/

http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/dorai/t-y-scheme/t-y-scheme.html

http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/

i also purchased the little schemer. I learned various interesting things from these different sources.

1. practical common lisp was essentially useless to me since i'd already been kind of feeling sold on using scheme and had very little interest in common lisp. what it DID teach me was how datastructures in lisp are created under the hood (or how one might go about implementing them). from this perspective it was very nice and helpful when understading, car, cdr and mapcar. although i wish i'd had a nice example of implementing a scheme in C.

2. reading The Little Schemer, has been the single most satisfying read of my entire computing life. so much so
that i bought The Seasoned Schemer and The Reasoned Schemer
without hesitation at price. this book will teach you to "think lisp" if you can just make it through the first book you will honestly know everything you need to about the lisp mindset and be ready to actually write useful code and no be shocked or surprised by anything. i can't stress enough how useful this book is READ IT.

3. Teach Yourself Scheme in Fixnum days has been a powerful reference for me and I honestly hope that it grows and evolves, it's easy to reference and great for when you start actually hacking on projects. It's just simple and obvious.

4. SICP is a mammoth work and also has a very nice video series. If you're serious about Lisp and even more serious about Scheme and furthermore serious about computing. You must read this. My approach so far has been to read top down (ie. cover to cover) and also use it as a reference. I get sheer joy from reading it, but it's amazing how practical it can be as well.

Personally I've settled on scheme, i dont' really like common lisp i find it irritating and with projects like Chicken: http://www.call-with-current-continuation.org
out there I feel really comfortable. I re-wrote my entire
blog using nothing but chicken and the web-scheme egg. I recently wrote an irc bot for fun during a huge bot writing session that broke out in a channel i frequent (don't ask we all just started writing bots for some reason).

If you're looking for good platforms the best I can recommend are:

SBCL (hands down nothing really compares so far)

PLT Scheme (aka DrScheme if you like GUI's)

Chicken (the absolute best imho BSD licensed scheme)

Hope this helps everyone. This is such an awesome thread i hope it continues for awhile.
Being in the same boat as you, I found the following to be worthwhile

1) Evaluate yourself and the skills you bring to the table. It's all in how you sell yourself. Even though I can't program, I understand experience design, business, visual design, and can get my hands dirty with some HTML and CSS.

2) Network locally. You're probably not going to find anyone worth working with online. Especially if you start out: "I have a great idea, but can't code. Wanna help?"

3) Be open to new ideas; people generally want to participate in the idea construction and product design. They don't want to pick up something that's been thought completely through.

4) Be willing to plunk down some cash. Get a tech lead for your project who can manage people you pay to build your system. If it's simple enough, you can build a decent app for less than $10K.
e-mail addy?
DEMOfall 2007 Preview - Companies to Watch
Arguably, Ruby does things better/lighter/cleaner/more elegantly than PHP, but at the end of the day, they're both accomplishing the same business objective. And when the end result is the same, what PHP provides in the way of stability/industry uptake/user community/compatibility outweighs whatever gains in "programmer happiness" and all the other intangibles commonly flailed about by the Ruby/Rails community.
alaska.miller@gmail.com
webmaster [at] michaelwales [dot] com
ThePudding: Targeted Advertising Comes to Phone Calls
I don't know how you can find a good hacker, because there is no way for you to judge one. That aside, your best bet is to offer a lot of equity in the startup. More than half of the company. Your biggest selling point is that you will take care of all the stuff that annoys hackers - designing UI screens, marketing, face time with real users. If your idea is good, you offer more than 50% equity, and take care of the non technical work, you are providing a pretty good deal.
What you have to remember is that, as a non-hacker, you should feel lucky to be in the game at all. There are only two things startups REALLY need - money and hackers. If you don't bring one of those items, it's hard to make a case for being the major stakeholder.
What I found most interesting is that he has a successful business but no programmers, other then himself, and this one Ruby/Rails developer (for 2 years but now gone). Yet he has legions of support staff.

Having 1 hired person to rewrite your 90,000 lines of code into another language will burn that person out. Hire the expensive professional programmer but also hire a much cheaper 'newbie' and have him train from the ground up to replace the professional who is going to move on to bigger better things. In a few months the newbie should be programming on the main project and will have excitement and passion because he is excited (more excited then the professional hired gun).

I am also curious about the "retraining" that would have to happen for the support staff. I thought they were writing more or less a clone of what was there so why the retraining, if it all looks the same, it should interact with the user/employees the same therefore no retraining would be necessary.
Did the big bang spawn trillions of black holes?
Kevin Rose has no programming skills? Is this a documented fact? How did he build digg then?
It's a good observation. Smart people also tend to focus on the places where one layer of abstraction leaks to the next.
Hot property: A spacious missile base as your new home... 
http://www.themissilebase.com/ for pictures. This is in Washington State. Not a bad base of operations after the Bay Area.
Do shareholders of private companies have the right to know financing details?
In my experience, VC funded startups (later stage especially) are secretive when it comes to number of shares outstanding and valuation. Getting numbers from management is like pulling teeth. If you own shares in one of these startups, do you have a right to know the details of the financing rounds?
The Economist: Seeding Content via Blogs
This is a bit like saying "I have a great idea for a painting. Will you paint it for me, and then give me half the money you get from selling it?"
ideas aren't patentable
For better or worse, this is incorrect.
Plan out exactly what you want for the web app on paper, and be as precise and consistent as possible.

Then pick a language and set up a development environment. (A difficult step to get past, but you might be able to get someone to help you do this for free)

Then start reading tutorials and doing practice examples.

Once you have a feel for how to get a basic app up and running, go back to the specs you wrote earlier and identify some subset that you want to implement.

Begin implementing your idea until you get stuck. When you get stuck, research the language tools you need to get unstuck. If you find yourself hopelessly lost, either pick a different subset of your app to work on, or go back to reading textbooks, tutorials, and forums until you better understand the concepts.

http://www.paulgraham.com/pfaq.html
They can just as well 'unlink' from gold.
Street fighters tend to be very good at details (street fighters as in people who never had formal training but kick ass). While dojo masters tend to be good in abstractions (not necessarily the useful kind). I think a good definition of a hacker is one who is good at both. I came from a dojo and got my ass kicked several times by a few street fighters. Since then I am learning the art of abstractions for details sake and not for its own sake.
Looking at the new user interface, at first I thought this was a Web app. There's also some visible influence from Lightroom.
Parallel universes exist - study
I can't believe Salesforce has a PE of 1100, thats insane
Ask YC: What's the YC protocol for submitting to multiple VC?
How is this handled when one is looking for seed funding. Does one submitt to one funder at a time and wait or what?
In the theoretical law where statute is obeyed and Supreme Court precedents are followed, you're absolutely right. For the actual law that happens to you when you go to court, you should consult a lawyer.
It might turn out it's not such a great idea at the current time after all because as a non-programmer you think too vaguely and declaratively. This isn't anything personal about you, it's just human nature.

Writing code forces you to think precisely and consider practicalities that are otherwise hidden from you as a user.
The fact that you don't know programming is no big deal. Being a programmer for over 12 years and looking forward to my next startup, what I can tell you is that ideas do matter.

Consider this.The same amount of time that Google spend building a billion dollar startup is what a two bit outfit spends generating a million dollars.

Or another that goes belly up.

In other words ideas and execution equally matter. Maybe execution is a little more important. That's why Oracle dominates database software although initially there were multiple database startups (same idea).

A recent survey of forbes billionaires confirmed this. Many of them picked ideas over execution others picked execution.It all depends on the situation.

In any case, you can try building a prototype by using freelance sites such as guru.com or elance and then see what response you get from your target customers.

I think it is important to get feedback from would be paying customers. If it is positive then go for it.

-Augustus
Even though getting started with PHP and MySQL is easy, please avoid the temptation as it will brain-damage you in ways that will take a long time to recover from.
he hired a programmer.

http://www.juixe.com/techknow/index.php/2006/09/24/kevin-ros...
This is over a year old.
10 Reasons You Should be Using Thunderbird
Very few good ideas are actually stolen. Why is yours potentially one of the exceptions?
Do you really think no one has ever thought of what you have in mind?

You could remind us every day about what you're doing and probably no one will care. That's part of the challenge of running a company.