skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I agree with you that much of silicon valley is depressing. This is actually a really serious problem for valley companies, because employees don't get to know each other as well, and everyone scatters off to various suburbs after work.

My wife worked for a startup in SF next to a cool bar and a cool coffee shop. When you left work, a couple of your friends/coworkers would often be in that bar or coffeeshop. So you'd stop in, and start chatting. Often, you'd chat about work, and come up with new ideas. They might get excited enough to go back into work to hash it out a bit more - at least they'd have something they were charged up about.

At the time, I was working for Sun Micro in Fremont, a spiritually crushing place. On occasion, we'd all agree to get together for drinks at the W nearby. But it took planning, arranging, getting into your car, driving over there... not at all spontaneous. And so we didn't get to know each other as well, and didn't have any fun.

That said - your post is missing one really important thing: San Francisco and Berkeley have a vibe that is very conducive to creativity, and even parts of (admittedly suburban) Palo Alto aren't so bad. This is why I drove a horrendous hour and fifteen minutes to work every day. It's also why I finally got so fed up with the commute that I faced a choice: quit sun, or move to Fremont. I quit.

But hey, would you rather live in SF and be an hour from the valley, or in Munich and be a trans atlantic flight away? One poster called SF a "second rate new york" in a previous thread (obviously not getting it). San Francisco is not a big city like New York, so don't go looking for Manhattan. Look for a small (surprisingly small to some, considering how many comparisons to NY I hear) but very entertaining city with a terrific vibe and a ton of technical and creative people to hang with.
We certainly haven't looked at any demos yet. We occasionally skim applications early to take the pulse of this cycle's applicant pool. But basically, seriously evaluating applications is a huge amount of work that we tend to put off till it's unavoidable. Which is why I'm writing such long comments today...
Online Advertising: Are Web ads set for a downturn?
Joel's book is a great introduction and a must read if you haven't taken a look before.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog0000000057....

Jakob Neilson's site is a treasure trove of usability information.
http://www.useit.com/

37 Signals will often write blog posts outlining particular design decisions in their products.
http://www.37signals.com/svn/

For a more specific topic, I have been researching typography. Something really simple to do (for which I am in the process of doing); get your text baselines to line up ("baseline rhythm"). It will make your site easier to read. Here's some great writeups on the subject.

http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2007/04/30/typography-baselin...
http://nubyonrails.com/articles/get-rhythm-in-your-baseline

And here's an online tool that will generate a CSS file with all the appropriate measurements:
http://topfunky.com/baseline-rhythm-calculator/
Internet Recession Watch: Falling Ads, Taxes, Housing
The Social Network Operating System
More Gmail storage coming for all
Google Maps Now Native S60
Google Gives Some Hints About Social Network Plan
Uncov seems like a risky idea for a group who are about to launch a startup themselves. Sure it gets them press, but they also inherit ill will and an audience looking to call them on it when their product doesn't live up to their rhetoric.
It's hard to know in just what way we're supposed to take some of these comments.

"Crazy people"? There's a difference between taking a calculated (but passionate) risk and a redneck, "watch this" kind of risk.I've spent time in SF - I think the quality of life is better in Atlanta because there aren't so many nutjobs (no offense to the left-coast nutjobs).

Geography: You're right - there is no sprawl in California. Everyone hangs out at Buck's and the 880 or 280 (take your pick - I prefer scenic Newark) to San Jose ia a short, leasurely jaunt.

BTW, I drink a lot of coffee. Re-phrase: A LOT OF COFFEE. When I'm in a coffee shop, I tend to be head down, working away - I'm not broadcasting that I'm working on a startup or looking to get a "feel" for what other startups in Atlanta are doing. There's plenty of more efficient ways to do that (ATDC/TAG, AWE, YnR, etc.).

Business Mix: God forbid that you'd ever want to associate with anyone that might be your customer/end-user or just a regular human. I love my startup(s). I love hanging out with the other "Crazy People" (I assume you mean "entrepreneurs") here in Atlanta. But 99.99999% (don't hold me to that - I made it up) of the world is NOT made up of startup entrepreneurs. Be wary of hillbillies with "real world" perspectives - we shall rule the world y'all.

Business Culture: By "porosity" I'm guessing you mean Yahoo Lunch 2.0, Google seminars, etc. If so, you'd be right. I'll admit that UPS, Home Depot, et. al. don't exactly fling their doors open, but they're not that type of company. Google has offices here. They certainly have enough servers a few feet down from my colo rack. I'm not seeing much "porosity" from them, but then again, I'm guessing at what you mean.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Atlanta is perfect. I will probably NOT be able to raise the capital I'm looking for locally. The local investors don't really get the space I'm in (and candidly, that's just because there aren't that many local investors). And I'm aware that investors want to be able to drive to your office and flash the pimp hand, etc., etc. (No offense to any investor types either). But the water in SV does NOT make you smarter or better able to execute. Yes, there are enablers there, and most will never leave. But I've got cheap rent, some pretty smart people working with me and AirTran has cheap tickets to SFO.

Full Disclaimer: I've changed my position many times before (as recently as this morning) and reserve the right to do so in the future.
It's a spinning, blinking design made of circles, and it talks in a circus-clown voice. Nothing on the page appears to do anything else. Is this supposed to be the new hamsterdance? Am I missing something here?
The Silicon Valley Leadership Group actually ranked Silicon Valley at the bottom of their technology hub list for reasons such as you suggest. The NC Research triangle was first.

http://blog.usweb.com/archives/silicon-valley-last-among-tec...
I didn't give them the demo URL until yesterday.
http://www.alistapart.com/topics/design/

http://www.baekdal.com/articles/

The book "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug is a classic.
/me points to the Teddy Roosevelt quote again:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=66782
Jakob Nielsen is all about usability:

http://useit.com/
he talks too much shitting other companies when instead he should concentrate on his startup...

by the way his idea is already implemented by others: www.feeds2.com

"All these companies will keep getting bought up, but the acquirers are not going to see great returns."

gettting acquired without the potential of revenue? show us these dump acquirers, others would be interested too!

he sais he likes companies like Joost, that have real technology behind them. Yeah, it also has 100 employees.
I'm fond of the quote "If you're bored, it's your fault."

I think it must apply triple to someone working at Google. I'm guessing he was eased out for surfing /b/ too much.
Where Am I? (An entertaining meditation on brains & minds by Dennett)
Denny, its not about reading a book o convince oneself, rather it is about taking a calculated risk. I want to convince myself about starting a startup based on rational thought and facts and figures, and not based on emotions. Everyone wants to start something new and make innovations, but I do not want to screw up my life chasing a though that has a very marginal success rate.

It is not about convincing, it is about facts, and they can speak for themselves.
Tech titans seek virtual world interoperability
Sorry for the late reply. So Causes received about $1.25M in funding, and they only have about five engineers I think. The hardward is always the lowest cost. With an ad network, that will be quite a lot actually especially if you plan to scale to every app imaginable. According to many of those in the top 3% and 1% of facebook apps, it's fairly data intensive, but I think you can scale this pretty easily. I'd start with a smaller amount first and then just scale up with a managed hosting service.
The age of mass innovation
It's mature. At some point, a lot of articles become "done", or at least beyond the point of needing constant revisions.
A List apart - www.alistapart.com
Do Not Stand While Presenting To VCs
In your meeting with a VC ignore those magazine ads that show an executive standing and pointing at a pie chart while other executives sitting around the board room clap. Those images don't apply to venture. Plain and simple, don't stand unless you have to...
Edward Tufte's forum:

http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-new-answers?topic_...
I'm guessing kn0thing was referring to the parent comment of his comment, not the Reddit post itself.
Have you read any of the uncov reviews? Most of the sites they are making fun of deserve the abuse, IMO.

I think the wide-eyed optimism of most Web 2.0 coverage justifies at least one more critical perspective.
Whose work do you think has been of the greatest benefit to mankind this past year?
yeah paul graham, you really showed me. internet is pretty serious business!
PG: Any luck fixing our karma
Refer - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=63583

And this is why I think you might have some time on your hands - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=66898
You can be critical in an intelligent way, or you can simply avoid talking about things that you don't like. No need to fling mud at them.
Ask YC: Different cultures in The Valley?
Is there a "cultural divide" between hackers and business-types in Silicon Valley -- analogous to C.P. Snow's famous distinction between scientists and literary intellectuals?

If so, how might it effect productivity/creativity?

If not, could Silicon Valley be (or become) the main venue for the "emerging third culture" talked about by John Brockman and the edge.org crowd?
I'm sure he is concentrating on his startup. What's wrong if he took a short break to write Uncov article?

So what if his idea has already implemented? Google's idea had been implemented by others as well. Just that Google does it better. It's possible that his startup might do it better.

I kind of agree with you that he has no solid data on these "dumb buyers" but I think the word "acquired" should be swapped with "invested". There are a lot of web 2.0 companies that don't have strong revenue but got a lot of money via investment. Let me ask you back, can you give example of web 2.0 companies with strong revenue record?

The best deal I've seen so far was Flickr's 30-40 million dollars. The rest seem to be over valued.

What's wrong with Joost and 100 employees? If Joost really needs 100 employees, be it. They have a solid product compare to most of YCombinator companies out there.

By the way, out of 50 YComb companies out there, I only use Reddit.
don't negg me bro.....
You talk as if uncov is some kind of calculated move to get them press for persai. This kind of thinking pretty much forgets the fact that people usually start sites like uncov as a hobby, or as they would put it, "for the lulz." They probably had no idea they'd be even as popular as they are now. The amount of attention it's getting now only suggests that maybe they have a pretty good point.
The hundred thousand
Some blogs from my Google Reader:

Functioning Form: http://www.lukew.com/ff/

flow|state: http://miksovsky.blogs.com

Bokardo (social design): http://bokardo.com

WeBreakStuff: http://blog.webreakstuff.com/

37signals: http://37signals.com/svn

ParticleTree: http://particletree.com/

Jensen Harris (Office 2K7): http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/

Usability in the News: http://www.usernomics.com/news/user-interface-design-news.ht...
Report Urges U.S. to Pursue Space-Based Solar Power
Y Combinator's webcam can't touch MC Hammer
MC Hammer's rap career may have been over more than a decade ago, but to the startup kids at Y Combinator, he'll always be a superstar. First, he awkwardly pitched Weebly's MySpace profile editorSnapLayout to lifecaster Justine Ezarik, better known as iJustine of Justin.tv. Now, Hammer has made an iminlikewithyou profile.
I think uncov is critical in a reasonably intelligent way -- albeit they use humor, rather than sombre critical analysis. The things that uncov typically makes fun of startups for -- being derivative, lacking interesting technology, not providing value to users, not having a workable business model, etc. -- are substantive criticisms.
Thanks nickb. If you are on a windows machine you need to use "wb" instead of "w" for this to work. Here is a version that works on windows:

require 'open-uri';(1..34).to_a.each{|x| open("CH#{x}.PDF", "wb").write(open('http://www.dspguide.com/CH1.PDF').read)}
It's not a question of benefit. I'm not arguing that Gore's promotion of the Global Warming threat wasn't a great benefit, but that he did not deserve the Nobel PEACE Prize.

Evangelizing the Global Warming movement doesn't promote peace in any direct way. It might promote it in an indirect way (by stopping resource wars) but even that is doubtful.

Give the Peace prize to someone truly deserving of the title ... say the Burmese monks who are attempting to free and save their country/people from oppression.

If you can't find someone to give it to, don't give it out at all.

This is equivalent to giving Apple the prize for Physics because they put a small hard drive in everyone's hands instead of the people who actually invented the technology.
Beauty. Thanks pg for finding a "concrete example" that iamwil wanted to support my post yesterday on 'web3.0' (or whatever it should be called).

If wikipedia is really serious about growing, they might do well to start figuring out how to progress from being merely a place to manage existing knowledge, towards being a vehicle/engine for developing/creating new knowledge.

Why wait around for new fields to open up? Start encouraging users to stick around and do it there...
10 Million Dollar Ideas That Shouldn't Have Worked
I definitely didn't mean to suggest that I think they did Uncov in a calculated move for press. I don't doubt that it arose organically as you suggest. I just think it goes to show that doing something like Uncov can be short sighted.

I'm not really sure that attention is a good indicator of having a good point. Bill O'Reilly gets a lot of attention. It's not necessarily because he is making good points.
I'd defend you Ted, but I'm too busy laughing.

http://terrychay.com/blog/article/ycombinator-xobni-party.sh...
I like Joost. You got that one wrong.

It's natural investments may turn out wrong. Especially when expectations are larger than the potential, which is what happens..

He can do whatever he wants with his free time. I don't care. But telling everyone that is pointless if you don't solve a computer science problem, he is really illusionating himself. And raising his recomendation engine as the ultimate computer science problem is really ridicilus.

I will put it this way:

It was said during the International Symposium in Computer Architecture this year, although, i'd be mistaken who said it. I think it was put something like this to the crowd:

"We asked teenagers to tell us what is the most significant discovery. Their answer? YouTube
That's what happened, we've gone so far with technology that we neglected what is important to the people."
There's no doubt, Justine is hot. Without that, it would have been hard to sit through the MC Hammer portion :)
Maybe not in your opinion, but certainly in somebody's.
I liked Kottke's comment: "Al Gore won a share of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for what is essentially a PowerPoint presentation."
http://www.kottke.org/remainder/07/10/14273.html
What do you think might happen if the federal government tried to implement a centralized innovation initiative?:
Would it be a joke? a moderate success? a non-entitiy? or could it even be counter-productive?
I guess the Norwegian committee decided that Gore did "the most or the best work for fraternity between nations." The Burmese monks are doing something within a single nation.

http://nobelpeaceprize.org/eng_com_will1.html

http://nobelprize.org/alfred_nobel/will/short_testamente.htm...
Wow. Thank you.

(An up-mod didn't seem quite sufficient.)
It all begins with Tufte.

http://www.amazon.com/Envisioning-Information-Edward-R-Tufte...

http://www.amazon.com/Visual-Display-Quantitative-Informatio...
>>>Fremont, a spiritually crushing place.

I remember trying to make the more than 1 hour drive from there to SF, and then back again... just to spend a few hours in a the nice city. Yes, I'd rather live in Munich.

This is a huge topic and it affects the entire USA. Our whole country is stupid automobile sprawl. "The greatest mis-allocation of resources in the history of mankind."
That's just it... what did he do?

Sure everyone knows about global warming, but there's still nothing being done. The US is standing still, the Kyoto protocol is a joke and China/India are still industrializing so their fossil fuel consumption is only going up.

Europe has made some efforts but nearly enough. I just think it's ridiculous to give out the Peace Prize for basically, promoting a cause.

Well whatever :) The committee gave it to him, so congratulations I guess.
Isn't this essentially SesameVault?

http://www.sesamevault.com/

I suspect it's irrelevant, since when given a choice between paying one cent to host HD video and free craptastic YouTube, most people would choose YouTube.
This is an entertaining and interesting read.
Never mind my last comment.

I should've just said "Second Life." Those users -- at least the ones who stick around -- invest alot of capital (cultural, emotional, financial, etc).

I don't know if Second Life will be the company that gets the next wave right, but I think we should look at what they (and their users) are doing, to see who'll be the big winners in 5 to 10 years.

Here's a fairly recent post on GigaOM about it:
http://gigaom.com/2007/09/26/7-reasons-why-second-life-shoul...

...and then there's the story posted by pg about declining use of wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dragons_flight/Log_analysi...
... and my comment on there: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=66946
If the third culture is embodied anywhere, it's in SV. Most of the successful businessy people in SV seem to be hackers-turned-businessperson.

Shortly after The Dot Com Crash there was The MBA Exodus where all the MBAs went off to go start or join hedge funds.
Rails 1.2.5: Security and maintenance release
Fixed: "The promise of a speech is not how clean the language is on the surface or how much thought is under the hood, but the value it provides solving someone's problem."

Seriously, people who swear still have good ideas. Filtering them out before you can critically evaluate them is the mark of an idealist unsuited to the pragmatism of real business.
sounds like a maddox wannabe imo
"Filtering them out before you can critically evaluate them is the mark of an idealist unsuited to the pragmatism of real business."

On what planet?

Toilet mouth is the quickest way to demonstrate that you are not to be taken seriously in business. No need to filter. Just move along and talk with a professional, not an idiot.
Ahhh rokhayakebe. You must have patience!!
Always glad to help. The key thing is to read blogs of people who are better Usability than I (and possible you) ;)

If you read other people's blogs, they find the interesting stuff for you.

http://www.37signals.com/svn/
http://daringfireball.net
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/

When you start to see that they keep linking to a site, and saying there's a good article there, then start reading that site too ;)
This is a must read:

The Inmates are Running the Asylum by Alan Cooper

http://www.amazon.com/Inmates-Are-Running-Asylum-Products/dp...
Fantastic Photoshop tutorials that focus on "polish" and a lot of design elements that are currently in vogue.

http://psdtuts.com/designing-tutorials/elements-of-great-web...

http://psdtuts.com/interface-tutorials/making-a-message-stri...
It's an odd proclamation. Even if it's an open API, I don't think people will write hamburger throwing apps for linkedin because that's not what people go to linkedin for in the first place. Most people log in there to do business-like things. Apps like 'throw hamburger' probably wouldn't be added by most, especially in light of being seen as unprofessional, in industries where it still counts. So only the apps that help business-like things will be added.

However, that's not to say working people can't be inane and juvenile. My guess is if there was a "watercooler" app where you can anonymously gossip about your coworkers (what truemors should have been, imho), or if it was something to count #meetings vs # of bathroom breaks, there might be an uptake on that.
He's wearing the same American Eagle polo shirt as my sixteen-year-old brother. It's funny, between the Superbowl commercial for Nationwide, the blog, and this, it's clear that he's actively trying to market himself as a washed up celebrity. It's actually kind of clever.
Why the downmodding? It was a joke...

Clearly Zombo is the first step towards (as mentioned) Web 4.0, where humans do all the work, and the Internet sits back and drinks coffee.
Brain-computer interface for controlling Second Life avatars
http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Zombo.com
The application is the first of a kind. It violates causality.
Steve Jobs makes a lot more money than Gore making essentially powerpoint presentations. But you know that is essentially not true.
What about wearing white-collared shirts and neckties? Beards? Comfortable shoes?
PHP 5 Objects, Patterns, and Practice has a lot of advanced stuff.
http://www.amazon.com/PHP-5-Objects-Patterns-Practice/dp/159...

Zend PHP Study Guide has the basics without much examples.
http://www.amazon.com/architects-Zend-Certification-Study-Gu...
The noble committee is a disgrace.

There is no connection between global warming and peace.It is questionable whether global warming is a threat in the first place.

What does a lifetime politician know about global warming anyway.

The noble peace price should be given to the US armed forces. They are the ones eradicating terrorism so the world can have peace.

-Augustus
http://draftgore.com
Crash Course in Learning Theory
We're considering immediate incorporation as an S Corp and then switching to a C Corp at the beginning of next year. I've just left my job, and it would be nice to have some of the initial startup expense flow through to my personal taxes.

When checking on the California vs Delaware incorporation, I ran across this:
http://venturebeat.com/2007/01/30/roundup-bombs-dont-do-dela...
If we get into YC, our incorporation process seems mostly set. If not, we might consider a California S Corp for this year.
another good one:
http://slash7.com/articles/2006/12/30/6-things-you-need-to-k...
This is a great thread, will be really interesting to go through all these links.

Here is another good one, the domain is pretty self explanatory

http://www.webdesignfromscratch.com/current-style.cfm
I've been waiting since 1999...
We're looking for good examples of sticky signup processes. Asking users for the 'fun' info and sneaking in the necessary nuts, blots, and email confirmation later seems like a good way to go. Thoughts? Examples?
Atwood blogs on Tufte with links cheatsheet "An Education for Analytical Design"
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000739.html