skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I found the article disappointing; the headline and lead promised a story about why, in general, the Valley is attracting startups away from Boston, but the article was a story about Facebook in particular.
Bay Area startups seeing "increase in the value of their shares" in recent VC deals
Funny people. Sounds almost like downloading web sites, burning them onto CDs and selling to people.
Virtualmin GPL EC2 image
A quick way to get a sane virtual hosting system with mail, web, DNS, and the LAMP stack running on EC2, plus the Virtualmin GPL Open Source control panel to manage it all.
60+ Web 2.0 Audio Applications you really need to know
The problem is not what you say but how you say it. E.g. "raining on their fantasy parade."
A request for PG - links like these seem like they would be better with (subdomain.domain.com), which in this case could be (blogs.nytimes.com) or (freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com). The link as it stands is slightly misleading since this isn't a news article from the main site.
The reason why we went with MySQL even though Postgres performed better was the greater availability of MySQL expertise on the team. Three people on the team were experienced in MySQL and each had a bag of tricks and none of us knew Postgres past the basics. Also, people at the hosting place had a ton of MySQL experience and they would jump in and help when needed.

Consider many different things when choosing DB. Don't just consider raw performance.
Been lightboxed lately?
I am rolling an AMI with: ligHTTPD, pylons/web.py, fcgi etc. Would anyone here be interested in using that (GPL) or am I just wasting my time?
I couldn't agree more - it's all too easy to construct your own interpretation of what's happening and then convince yourself it's the absolute truth. Before you split you need to talk to your co-founder and at least give him a chance to put his side of the story forward.
What language will mobile phone apps be written in, in the near future?
Beyond simply asking the question, I also created an Inkling Market for it. What do you guys think?
They always try not to upset their partners.

Is this supposed to be ironic?
The RoR image is pretty popular, so a Python focused image might also. We don't have any hard numbers about the usage of our Virtualmin image (yet, though we're working on it), but I've definitely talked to a dozen or so users that are toying with it and even a couple who are deploying on EC2. I'd still be a wee bit leery of production use, as EC2 has had some reliability problems which I'm not sure have all been worked out. A couple of YC companies are hosting entirely with EC2/S3, and they've figured out ways to work around the reliability issues to their satisfaction, so far.
How about a "techshop" for hackers. I've heard of coworking, but we don't have any here, so I'll keep hacking alone.

I love my cats, but they're so Web 1.0. Hard to have a reasonable technical discussion with them.
I think both databases have their merits, but the thing that makes me turn up my nose is seeing so many MySql installations done wrong. These are the people who didn't consider things carefully and choose, but just heard that Mysql was faster, installed the default version of that, and now handle people's money with no transactions, and no referential integrity.
I can see the theory behind lightboxes, but in practice they're generally a bit of pain. Mostly because they're still relatively unusual and unexpected, so they break the flow of normal browsing.

But I'd put up with lightboxes everywhere if we could lose those awful on-hover link preview things stinkin' up the web.
Co-founder won't move to the valley if accepted by YC. What do I do?
Well, I had a kinda ugly conversation with my team yesterday. I'm starting on our YC application for the winter term, and of course the first question is "will you move to the valley Jan-Mar if accepted?". My answer is a resounding "hell yea!" but my co-founder, and our #3 guy both said no.

This is not the first symptom of lack of dedication from my others on my team. I quit my job last November (wow, 10 months already) to work on the startup full time. I've done 85% of the code, server admin, graphics, everything. I'm pretty much running the operations by myself

Co-founder is not a technical person, but does a good job with idea generation, responding to our alpha users, legal documents and creating bug tickets for me to fix ... but that's about it. He doesn't do much in the way of progressing the product to be ready for market (which is what we need most right now). I've urged him many times to join me full-time, I'll teach him basic web design and testing, I'll of course still handle the complicated stuff. He has a very good job (he's MUCH younger than anyone in his industry) at a private equity firm, and won't leave that without some guarantee of funding his relatively high cost of living for at least 6 months or so.

#3 guy is a talented developer, but also has a full-time job, new wife, and other projects. We work great together. The hard part is getting together. I don't think he's got the "startup drive" that must of us have, though. I didn't really expect him to say yes.

My predicament is pretty clear. I need help getting our product market-ready (public beta is supposed to be this month, but it won't be everything that I wanted it to be) and I'm hitting a wall from my team. I can do a lot by myself, but I'm still only one person.

I want so badly to be in the YC environment, working with smart people all around. It's been 10 months now of me hacking away alone in my condo ... getting very antsy. If I got accepted, I'd pack up right away and plan on a permanent move out west (It's always been a dream of mine to live out there).

Part of me is thinking that I need a new team. Or maybe just another technical founder. Will YC even consider me with a non-committed team as baggage? Should I apply just by myself? Please share your advice.
You really want to find yourself another technical cofounder that is fully committed to the project.
Some good advice:
http://www.lyricsfreak.com/p/paul+simon/50+ways+to+leave+you...

I can't comment on (c) but:

a: Just be open about your reasons. It isn't a personal attack to say someone is a slow/inefficient worker.

b: Work away from the partner. I hope you aren't roommates

c: Ideas aren't worth much, and it sounds like your friend isn't the competition to worry about.

I would follow the advice you hear when you read about how to quit: be direct, polite, in a private/scheduled meeting, and open.
Ask the other person what they think is fair. 90% of the time the other person will underestimate their own value relative to what you were going to offer anyway.
Does anyone in Los Angeles have a startup mentality? Ahhhhh....
I'm having a hard time connecting with fellow hackers/entrepreneurs or wannabe entrepreneurs in Los Angeles. The mentality of most people is to do a day job if they are programmers. No one in tech has a startup mentality - does everyone have that problem where you are? Looks like a move to the valley seems imminent.....
How Do You Find a Co-Founder/Partner?
I have an awesome idea, but no co-founder/partner!?

I could crank out the application myself in 4 & 1/2 - 5 & 1/2 months, but that's too long for the 3 month period.

Also, having a co-founder (at least I feel)really helps in getting a YC spot.

So, how would any of you guys go about finding someone that would share your vision as a coder and would be trustworthy enough not to steal your idea!?

--

Auston
That's exactly how it works with consumer Internet projects. Consider that even Google didn't realized how valuable what they had was. They tried to sell their search technology in the early days, but only because nobody would buy it, they had to continue running the company on their own.
The forumla seems to be:

1. Build a basic version of something you think people want.

2. Try it.

3. If people don't like it, modify and try again. Do that for a few times, and if it still doesn't work. Go back to step 1.
Is anyone on here interested? Email me nate@wamily.com.
where are you located ?
Is implementation important to a startup?
The first thing that pops into my mind is: Profitability?

Those machines are expensive to fix if somebody breaks them. Can $30 day passes cover the cost?

Other than that, this is an awesome idea.
WRT capitalization, lower-case identifiers are not actually required in PostgreSQL. The case-folding rules are:

1. unquoted identifiers are folded to lower-case
2. double-quoted identifiers have their case preserved

This applies to all SQL queries, whether DDL or otherwise. Therefore, you can freely use mixed-case or upper-case identifiers, as long as you consistently either don't double-quote them, or always use the same case when you double-quote them.

So it is perfectly feasible to use non-lower-case identifier names, you just need to be aware of the rules. In practice, most Postgres users just use lower case identifiers all the time, but that's mostly a matter of style I think.

(FWIW, Postgres' case-folding behavior is actually one of the few areas where it is not conformant with the SQL standard.)
Do you even have ownership of the project at this point? Don't all these others have a claim to it? Are you prepared to buy them out and/or completely start from scratch?
S. Florida.

--
Auston
As I understand it, ConnectU brought Mark Zuckerberg onto the existing project. From there, Zuckerberg allegedly forked the code into what is now known as Facebook. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Facebook)

So assuming OP=ConnectU, the legal issues the OP's afraid of is that his partner will fork the existing code into something successful, even though OP has done most of the work thus far.

At least this is how I interpret it. Please correct me if I'm wrong!
Have you tried attending any of the tech networking events in LA? There is a strong, small, but growing tech / startup community in LA. If you haven't attended Twiistup, Lunch 2.0, LA Web App Meetup, or Los Angeles Open Coffee Club, etc. than I would suggest you start there. But there are definately people with the 'startup mentality'.

It's no valley, that's for sure, but there are those of us in the trenches working full time on our startups in LA. Don't give up!
Sorry to hear that your team is not on the same page.

I think the level of commitment from the other two co-founders is much less according to your description, I am not even sure you should give them co-founder status. Remember you're working full time on the project that means you're investing $x (your full time job's salary) every month as opposed to the other guys. From your description the other two guys seems to be playing safe, not risk takers (very much required ingredient for startups)

I think you really need to find new team members who are committed, dedicated, and risk takers.

As far as finding new team members, I think it would be nice to work with people who you know already to reduce time consumed building a new relationship. Otherwise, you got to work with people for some time to find workable team members.

Best of luck
The truth is you can't succeed with that type of a team.
Read PG's article "How Not to Die". A great quote is:

"The number one thing not to do is other things. If you find yourself saying a sentence that ends with "but we're going to keep working on the startup," you are in big trouble. Bob's going to grad school, but we're going to keep working on the startup. We're moving back to Minnesota, but we're going to keep working on the startup. We're taking on some consulting projects, but we're going to keep working on the startup. You may as well just translate these to "we're giving up on the startup, but we're not willing to admit that to ourselves," because that's what it means most of the time."

I've run into similar situations before. This is a serious problem and one you should deal with immediately, because it will only get worse. Have an honest, tough talk with your team. It sounds like you won't convince them to put it all on the line like you have, but at least you'll know and you can make an arrangement so that you're moving forward with the company and not having this looming over your head. If worse comes to worst, tell them you are going to move on because its sounds like you are pretty talented and there are many opportunities for someone like you.

Good luck.
I do not have complete ownership, no. Co-founder has an equal stake as currently, but we have a prearranged agreement where I will be entitled to more equity upon our first financing. I don't really want to throw them out ... they are good at what they do (just not doing enough, in my opinion). I don't think it would be a problem to come to an agreement to redistribute equity.
4.5-5.5 months sounds like a pretty short development cycle for a product. If you started tomorrow, you'd probably be done before WFP finished.
I'm mostly trying to figure out what the essential qualities of Perl are such that you consider it more lisplike than any other language. I have in fact been trying to avoid making value judgments about either language (though I have complained about Perl in the past, and I understand the original author makes some absurd criticisms).

So: I have specified a few things that, to me, seem remarkably different from Lisp. In some cases, such features are more cumbersome or less flexible. In others, such as the reserved characters, there is no clear winner.

That Common Lisp has few if any reserved characters gives me lots of freedom to change how my program looks. In my example above, I could remap 'funcall' to '&' and the result would look almost just like Perl. It means, though, that I have to be really careful not to do anything stupid lest my program be unreadable. Perl, in contrast, has built-in meanings for all sorts of punctuation. This often saves a lot of typing, and allows many ideas to be expressed succinctly without any extraneous configuration So Lisp is more flexible in a sense, but it's not immediately clear that this makes Lisp more powerful.

What I'm interested in, is how much different it is to program in lisp as compared to perl. The symbols thing seems minor in principle. But in practice, when coding in Lisp I find this flexibility leads to a completely different way of thinking. It's way too early for me to say whether one is better than the other, but the difference is remarkable.

merely syntax

Perl is full of syntax. There's syntax for everything, personally I think it's one of Perl's strengths. Lisp, in contrast, (usually) has very little syntax. It's orthogonal and consistent. (limited and static, if you'd prefer more negative connotations)

Some people do better memorizing huge number of details, others do better learning core rules and applying them to each case. In my first year of music theory, my professor took the "few core rules, consistently applied" approach to teaching voice-leading and almost everyone hated it. The first day of class next semester, my new professor handed out a voice-leading review sheet that was, front-and-back, covered with rules about what to do in a given context. Most people seemed to prefer it that way.
Should every app be a platform?
"... I'm having a hard time connecting with fellow hackers/entrepreneurs or wannabe entrepreneurs in Los Angeles. The mentality of most people is to do a day job if they are programmers. No one in tech has a startup mentality ..."

Move

... or startup a startup group in LA to let like minded people clump. We've had one just start in au, melb (artichoke end of the startup world) around twitter. A twitter channel was created, MTUB (Melbourne Twitter Underground Brigade, http://twitter.com/mtub ), broadcast to people living in melb and the clumpiness began ...

- http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/258693

- http://www.flickr.com/photos/byte/sets/72157601494320939/

- http://benbarren.blogspot.com/2007/06/mtub1-when-friends-fol...

I don't think this is an uncommon problem. You just have to know where to look. A bit like at school, the computer lab, chess club or D&D groups.

Any chess clubs in LA?
Not to thread jack or anything, but here's some stuff about Startup Weekend Atlanta coming up in November.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=52796 (article from the guy bringing Startup Weekend to Atlanta)
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=52696 (my post about what SW is all about)
We agree in our interpretation, but disagree in whether this is a cause for concern.

If his partner can fork it and build something successful faster than OP, then the OP isn't the productive one and his current deadbeat partner is, the premise of OP is invalid.

Based on the original post, the OP thinks he is the one that can deliver and that his partner can't. If OP can't deliver a product that people want, none of this matters.

That's all I'm saying. You're assuming that ConnectU would have been successful if Facebook hadn't happened. I don't believe that to be the case.
Yep, I agree with your advice and I also read PG's recent article that you referenced. Totally agree.

I have talked with the team, and we seem to all understand that this is not going the way we want. I have made it clear that I will be looking for others to join in a "co-founder" capacity if I get the opportunity to go to YC this winter. They are reasonable people and good friends, so I don't think it will be a big problem to do a little equity restructuring if its in the best interest of the startup.

My real question is not "am I screwed?" because I already know that. I'm asking "how can I fix this now?" or, in other words "please help me find a new co-founder and a chance to get into YC (or another good startuppy environment)."
Before you, your cofounder and your team came together to work on the startup, did you "communicate" to your cofounder and/or team that you might/will consider moving to a different city if the need arises? Did you guys talk through any such possibility if the startup looks promising in the future? If not, then do you think its justifiable to only hold them accountable for not agreeing to move with you?

Teams are made up of people, not ideas alone. They may have families and other responsibilities which might be more important to them. So if you think that they do not share your vision, then try and talk to each one of them individually and understand what's holding them back. And if its really not going to work out, then be polite and express them clearly that you care about the future of this startup a great deal, and you will have to find a team member who shares your vision. But be humble, and stay humble. Nobody likes a cranky selfish boss. Good luck!
Based on this info you need to cut ties with these people. Equity is for risk takers. If you are taking all of the risks, then you should get all of the equity.

Now, if you have already shared the equity, then you are in a big bind.
There is one important one you left out: Flash Lite. Its somewhere between web and an on-deck app, since it runs on top of a very small on-deck virtual machine.

The UI for the LG Prada is built entirely on it, and in an interview with an iPhone dev at Apple, it was confirmed that the iPhone will soon support Flash too (I lost the damn link though). It allows for rich interfaces and doesnt necessitate the installation of an on-deck application since it is loaded from the browser.

I agree with your notes on Java ME... Sun really didnt have a choice though in the early days, if they were to gain adoption by the handset manufacturers. They had to allow lots of flexibility across implementations. The good news is that modern Java ME phones usually support a wide range of libraries and the manufacturers are much better about being compliant.
Which brings me to a question I have always wanted to ask... If a startup already has Angel funding, is there any additional advantage to be derived from moving out west?
Wanted: Gullible Lawyers
Berlin is much cheaper than major US cities. Look at rents. Food and services are also cheaper. Food is generally of higher quality than in the US.
"... did you "communicate" ..."

Hmmm communicating. Sounds like your making a statement there. Why?

"... Each person should just do what they need to without anyone telling them ... If that sounds like a recipe for chaos, think about a soccer team ... David Beckham if there were any language problems at Real Madrid, since the players were from about eight different countries. He said it was never an issue, because everyone was so good they never had to talk. They all just did the right thing. ..."

It's "bleedin obvious" that at some stage you might have to move. So the requirement for communication bit could be an indication of co-founders (3) "Not determined enough" or (9) "Family to support" or (11) "Not ready for commitment".

All reasons to 'not (not) start a startup' with them ~ http://www.paulgraham.com/notnot.html
You really need to drop this guy (#2)--I predict failure, near-failure, or serious regrets and much less than what could have been if you don't.
We were in a similar situation in the last YC funding cycle. 5 founders, 3 were not willing to quit their day jobs or move to Boston for the SFP. It absolutely is a problem - the first thing PG shot back was "Too many uncommitted founders!", and we didn't get accepted (or even interviewed). It'll likely be a problem without YC too: you end up spending more time ensuring that everyone's on the same page than actually building the project. We sped up noticeably after we dropped from 5 founders to 2.

I can't really help find a new cofounder (other than reiterate what others have said: ask around here, check cofoundr.com, etc.), but I can tell you what we did. We (my surviving cofounder and I) bought out the other 3 founders for $1000 apiece. In retrospect this was probably too high, given how quickly they accepted. But it was done mostly to preserve good relations and make sure nobody felt they were being cheated, and I think it succeeded in that. When our incorporation papers come through there will be a few agreements for them to sign to make sure we own the stuff they did before we bought them out.
OMG! Here come The Commandments!

Imo, a startup is a relationship, where you need communication - with your team, as with your customers.
No.

If you don't think it's interesting, then maybe you aren't paying close enough attention. Anyone involved with consumer web should be watching FB.
Argh! Good point, how forgetful of me... Looks like it's possible to edit markets even after they're live though. Thanks!
I couldn't help but think, what if the scammer had actually gotten investors to fund him?

With the team he'd hired, and the website and other work they'd produced (ok, so maybe the author took some creative license with how good it actually was), how far would he have gotten?
I want so badly to be in the YC environment, working with smart people all around. It's been 10 months now of me hacking away alone in my condo ... getting very antsy. If I got accepted, I'd pack up right away and plan on a permanent move out west (It's always been a dream of mine to live out there).

YC is not the only path to success, nor should you think that you absolutely need these two other people (especially if they won't go with you).

If you really feel that way, you should just take the plunge and head out there, even if YC rejects you.
I do. :-)
Thanks for posting this -- I was just thinking about what I would have to do to organize one of these in Atlanta.
Because I'd be hugely interested in working with a "cofounder" who broadcast his unhappiness with his previous team to a public forum as a vehicle to replace them. That guy sounds like a real rock star.
I second chadboyda's comment. There's a real sense of excitement about an emerging startup scene in LA, especially on the Westside (Santa Monica, Venice, etc.); you just have to get out there and mix it up. (I've been to both Twiistups, and I've added the other events endorsed by chadboyda to my list.)

In this vein, I'd be happy to meet with any Hacker News readers in the LA area. My background and contact info can be found via my profile page.
Wow. That story was... unbelievable.