skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What has worked for me in the past is an experience that combines intense physical exertion combined with attaining a difficult goal combined with an inspiring view. In other words, I hop on my bike and ride up a mountain and refuse to stop until I get to the top and bask in the incredible view. This has worked wonders for me in helping to gain real perspective on my situation, and I think the physical exertion and intense focus needed to make it to the top of the mountain help "reboot" my brain. Another method, during the winter, is cross-country skiing. (In the Bay Area, we have the largest X-country ski area in North America 2.5 hours North of SF.)

The bottom line, you need to completely focus on something entirely different than your problem at hand to give your subconscious a chance to recuperate and give you a solution and new inspiration.
Google, Apple and the future of personal computing
I used to use hot-bot. I found they brought back the best results.
I wonder how many other hackers are cyclists? I think it's the perfect hacker sport - there's lots of tech, you can go alone if needs be, but it can also be fun to join a team, or participate in events like races.

There are things I don't care for here in Innsbruck, but I have some nice trails about 5 minutes away from home, and plenty of tall mountains to ride up.
It sounded like they're just verifying identity and nothing further. My guess is that it'll be implemented by requiring an SSL certificate signed by a trusted authority.
You seem like a pretty smart guy and this might be bad advice; is there any way you can scale back what you're doing? Can you get something smaller done so you don't have to spend as much and invest as much time and energy?
Wow, cycling in the Austrian Alps! It is so ridiculously beautiful in Austria - and beyond category climbs are easy to find. :) The best cycling I've done to date was in Colorado along the Continental Divide in the Boulder area. But I haven't gone riding in Austria yet (just skiing and visiting) and would love to some day.
What is your definition of "enterprise"? If it's Fortune 500, then I agree with you.

If it's the other 7 million small businesses ($1 to $100 million annual revenue, many outside of SOX enforcement), then I disagree. These people have literally been dying for good software forever. They are already leapfrogging the enterprise software bandits and installing their own mission critical systems, many based on open source technology. They simply can't wait for or afford "enterprise" solutions. Their viral chain? Word of mouth, industry journals, chambers of commerce, tech groups, country clubs, lawyers, accountants,...

Just because there is a whole new "Web 2.0 space" doesn't mean that those who have been driving the economy for ages have disappeared. This sleeping giant needs to be fed and its providers probably stand to gain the most.

Enterprise + Web 2.0? You better believe it.
When I was in grad school, I went through exactly what you are experiencing. My advisor sat down with me and said:

"Take a month off. Go hang out with family and friends. Don't think about work. Eat well & exercise. Then we will talk."

It was the best advice I ever got. I realized while I was away that I was working on the wrong problem, and that with some reframing there was a way out. You can't get that perspective while you are in the middle of things.
Interesting news -- Apple promises release of iPhone SDK, Nokia introduces S60 touch interface:

http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/16/nokias-s60-touch-interfac...
http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/6089_S60_Touch_Inte...

Related?

(Don't know if S60 means anything to people in the US, but it is the major smartphone platform in Europe and Asia)
This is great. I think the capabilities of the iphone touch screen system are gonna make for some great gaming possibilities that we haven't seen before. I know I've got some ideas already at least.
I think we have slightly different concepts of what "enterprise" is, actually, which is ok, since it's hardly a term with a precise definition. I'd tend to think of companies like VMWare as something else, though. Enterprise to me means SAP, Oracle, IBM, and that kind of thing.

Do you think the people who run IBM or GE are stupid? Probably not... What they are not, however, is "hackers". That's a vague term too, so I guess debating it is meaningless, but please don't put words in my mouth with regards to "stupid people". There are plenty of smart people whose footsteps I wouldn't wish to tread.

As to why PG is focused on web companies, I think it's pretty natural, given his background and what YC does in terms of investment (15K doesn't get you a lot if you're building something capital intensive). Lots of us are also interested in this idea of startups becoming more widely possible, which also means we're interested, once again, in low capital requirements.

So, yeah, there's other stuff out there, but for most of us, the web is where the action is at.
My only advice is to make sure you distinguish between short term and long term burnout. I once left an entertaining startup (that was later aquired by Apple) because I thought I was unhappy with the field, the job, the office, the nature of the work. I took two months off between jobs, because that was the only way I felt I could get time off.

At the end of the two months, I have to say, the old job didn't sound so bad anymore. I started grad school afterwards, so I was charged up, but I suspect that the time off was what I really needed. Looking back, it was actually one of the more innovative startups I've ever worked at.

You may be looking at deep long term burnout, but how long as it been since you've walked away from work long enough to reset your head? It doesn't have to be decades - a single year of 10 hour days where you often find yourself at the office on weekends can be enough to cause your mind to rebel and shut down. Think of your head as an employee that has been pushed too hard, and has retaliated by not producing anything.

I've learned to identify my short-term tendency to burn out and distinguish it from true career malaise. Maybe I just need more time off than the average person. I wish I could drive harder, but if I can't, I may as well know that about myself and minimize the damage.
Working 80 hour weeks in a radically foreign country may be a significant part of the problem.

You sound like you need a strong drink. Start with that.

If you are still in China and, damningly, in one of their wretchedly filthy cities. Get out for a while. Go to the country. Go for a run or a walk or get in a sporting fight. Do something human. I have found that I need this antidote to engineering.
I haven't found a citation either, but the name of William Randolph Hearst comes to mind.
What does virtualization have to do with enterprise software? I'm talking about systems which store and manage access to company financial, inventory, human resources, etc. data(1). Things like SAP, Peoplesoft, Great Plains, and even Quickbooks. The examples you give are all very nice and innovative I'm sure but they aren't really examples of the same thing. (Except maybe for ITA but that's very specific to airline industry.)

You could have mentioned salesforce.com. That would be a valid counter to my original argument.

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_software
Rumors have it that Apple is looking to emulate T-Mobile's Sidekick distribution platform with iTunes. Presumably they have employed the help of some of the Sidekick developers for this.

With the Sidekick service you first have to prove that you are a developer, and they give you a key which unlocks the phone for development access. When you have developed a stable app, you submit it to through an approval process and then the application is made available on the Sidekick/T-Mobile app site.

If this is the case with Apple, then they could control app approval, distribution, and even pricing through iTunes. It will likely be tightly controlled.
It is really denotationally impossible for a start up to me a commodity. Come on folks, you are in business; you really need to stop mucking up the fundamental concepts of economics.

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

(Don't tell me its a metaphor either, because it makes really terrible one.)
Awesome. This is the third great announcement from a big tech company in two days (along with Amazon and EC2, and Apple and the iPhone API).

Now I just need to hope for another great announcement tomorrow from a certain small LLC.
Vaulations Exploding: It's 1999 all over again.
It's a seller's market once again for startups.
we do this in LA:

http://www.midnightridazz.com
I used Altavista, then HotBot, then Google. I remember reading a Time Magazine article in 1998 about the "new wave" of search engines; it featured Google pretty prominently, and I switched not long after that.

Google's results were very much better than everything else, by a much greater margin than they are today. Before Google, the cliche that every search returns porn was actually pretty true.
Thanks for your advice, and the interesting read.

I've had the past couple of weeks off to think about everything, and I think that's why my posting is anywhere near articulate... Two weeks ago I talked to my partners and they recommended that I take some time to think about what I need to make myself healthy again, totally irrespective of what impact that would have on the business.

It was today when I tried getting back into work again by focusing on the most simple of tasks, and I got deer-in-headlights syndrome again -- for the first time since I started my break. One moment back-in-the-game and it felt like I'd had no break at all. So, more time is needed I think.

I agree 100% that health and relationships are most important. I noticed that I was no longer responding to emails from family and friends, and my health was declining. I tried to take action on these more recently but it was a little too late to have enough impact.

If the business was anywhere near stable, it would be a different story, but in our product development we're currently facing an uphill battle wearing rollerskates -- if we're not advancing, we're sliding backwards due to our burn rate and the seasonal nature of our market.
Some of the best experiences I ever had were climbing volcanoes and hiking through the highlands of Guatemala. Time to re-visit this I think.
I am definitely with the crowd suggesting some physical exertion.

10 months is a long time to go at full steam, take a few days off and reset. Do not think about work at all, and go physically exert yourself, eat well and relax.

It will vary by the individual dramatically, but I usually find all I need is a few days to reset.

Best of luck
A historical perspective on tech bubbles
That's what I mean by "aggressive" as well. Since they're more likely to make risky investments, you'll get more offers from VCs.
I remember using Altavista, Excite, WebCrawler and Yahoo simultaneously in order to find what I wanted.
This sort of thing really helps reduce barriers to entry for startups.

Hopefully, reducing legal costs will benefit the entrepreneur more than the VC. From what I've read, a VC is much better versed in the legal aspects of funding companies and has more money and time to spend on legalities. This makes it much easier for the VC to exert influence on the legal side of the financing equation. If legal proceedings become standardized, VCs will lose the legal bargaining chip.
Interesting -- your hypothesis is almost exactly what I wrote down in my journal just this morning, when thinking about how I let my "commitment to the business" override so many other thoughts/desires/gut-reactions. Some level of compromise is needed to get anything done in real life, but too much is too much.
This is a very good observation, and being a programmer I do see and feel the change. However, there is another force at play at the same time which pulls in the other direction: because software development got cheaper, there is more competition, and that makes it more critical than ever to be able to get the word out and build market share quickly before the other 50 competitors take it. So, the marketing guys can still make a huge difference. The idea guys, probably not so much.
We used to do night rides in Oregon, off road. It's a lot of fun, although it can be kind of creepy to be out in the middle of nowhere in the dark, so it's best done with others.
I'm assuming that to duplicate Loopt, you'd have to restrict it to cell phones with a full GPS chipset as opposed to just partial GPS capabilities for e911. Since the iphone doesn't have full GPS capabilities, I don't see this as really being a threat to Loopt at all. If they could get it to work with the e911 locating feature, then it would be applicable to all current phones...
The MIT Scheme scmutils library, and how to run it on Mac OS X
How about this one?

http://tinyurl.com/2os5mw
Dispensing with a Co-founder
I'm in an uncomfortable position. I've been working with a partner in my spare time on gathering information for a business I want to start, and we had a meeting to discuss incorporation (as in, fill in the blanks on the filing and put postage on it).

My about-to-be co-founder expressed hesitation. He's an undergrad student who left university for several years to work in IT, then returned and basically had to start over, so he's got a couple of years left, while I'm graduating in about seven months.

Effectively, he said that he didn't want to incorporate because the expense (90 bucks, if) wouldn't be justified if the venture failed, plus we'd be out the $35 required to formally dissolve.

Instead, we just bought a couple of domains from GoDaddy, and a year of hosting.

As you can imagine, this left me unsettled and severely doubting his commitment. The idea is going to be very capital-intensive, and simply can't tolerate founders who are going to waver on it. Although he brings some pretty good knowledge and connections, I wouldn't call him indispensable. My biggest concern going forward would be not having enough time to find a better co-founder, since the window of opportunity for this business is somewhat narrow.

We've got excellent personal rapport, but I don't think I can choose short-term goodwill over the chance to build something great. Sanity check? Advice?
Good viewpoint. As the PM/Marketing guy of a wireless startup, am working with a small product team. Always find it to be challenging to remind the team to focus on developing a product for the needs of the marketplace not what they think they like. Seen too many teams lose track of what they are doing. In most cases, it is their project manager that fails to build a Tangible Vision that the team collaboratively connect to..
and why exactly is this relevant at all?
yeah, rides are always better with others. even better with 500 others =)
Ugh -- lazy journalism strikes again. He's obviously not read the book nor even Ms. Perez's CV. (hint: she's Venezuelan, not British)

This is a much better interview and discussion of her ideas on Long Wave Theory:
http://www.strategy-business.com/press/16635507/05410
but... why?!
90 and even 125 bucks are not that much, eh?
IMO, if he can't justify the 90 bucks, he does not believe in it, and will not be the right partner.

Even in times when I was completely college-student broke, I could find ways to come up with $100 for the right opportunity.

I'd also question his availability and opportunity to contribute if he will still be finishing studies for a couple of years. The first couple of years are arguably the hardest, and most formative part, of the whole operation.
no kidding! that's quite a cut-n-paste job
You nailed it. Because we live in a society whose rules we'd like for the most part to uphold, we impose norms on ourselves and on others. Fairness is among the most important of those, and it's the foundation of many others.

Check out the Ultimatum game (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game) for another example of the same desire to keep people's dealings fair.
hotbot was awesome, especially for pirated stuff (songs and games). If you were a starving student, it helped finding entertainment for free.
You are not burnt out and I have proof. This discussion. A truly burnt out person would not have even bothered. (Kinda like claiming you're over your ex-girlfriend but still wonder what she's doing all day long). The fact that you are here is not an admission of giving up; it is a cry for help. You still really want this.

There is some excellent feedback in this thread. Let me add mine, which may be a little different. I go through what you are experiencing all the time. There are days when I can't stay awake at my terminal. Sometimes I hit a road block and wonder how I'll ever get by. I usually step away for a time, but here is my real secret...

Pick one little thing that needs to get done, no matter how small or unimportant it may seem. If I'm really down, I pick some mundane task like refactoring 25 lines of code, manually updating 50 records, or even changing some naming conventions. But not something big like solving a client-server architecture problem. Hell, that's the reason I'm already down. One other thing - the task must be in the heart of your project; cleaning off your desk or reading a journal don't count. Then do the task. Completely. You'll feel a little better, I promise. The next day, do it again, maybe with a slightly bigger task. And again. And again. Who knows, you may be feeling a lot better before you know it.

I have no idea if my advice can help save your project, but I do know you still want to. Use this group for support (I know I already do) and keep us posted. You are not alone.
I think they know better than that. You can do pretty well on Inkling just by shorting every rumor about Apple.
Morgan Stanley Sells Entire New York Times Stake
"there is more competition"

Maybe. OTOH, you can find a more fertile niche. I'm one of those idealists who still believes that all of us can win.

"Two roads diverged in a wood and I took the road less travelled by and that has made all the difference." - Robert Frost

I know it sounds nerdy, but I really believe those words are as applicable now as ever.
Apple faces legal threat over a 'toxic' iPhone
Great! I've been attempting to develop iPhone applications using the unofficial toolchain, but it hasn't been easy considering the complete lack of documentation and smorgasboard of new/different frameworks. While, in some respects, it's very similar to programming on Mac OS X with Objective-C and some of the same Cocoa frameworks, the interface frameworks are completely different.

It will be nice to get an Apple supported solution.
He hasn't understood what a startup means. If he did, $135 would seem very tiny compared to the huge amount of work he was planning to do.

He's not planning to do that work. Yet. Don't dump him immediately. People are complicated, and sometimes they grow into things very quickly, or there was only one little thing missing. And it's possible you misunderstood his reasons for hesitation, or there was some other kind of miscommunication.

So, go talk to him again and explain your vision carefully and how much work it will be, and why $135 is trivial. It's worth a try. And if you can't agree, OK, then go find someone else, with his blessing, since he will see that he doesn't want to be part of your vision (at this time in his life).
You are definitely right to question the other founder's commitment at this point. Me and my cofounder had a pretty big argument over whether to incorporate or not this summer. However, in our case the heart of the debate was whether or not it was needed yet, not the cost.

If they are having trouble parting with $100 or so, I really think they should consider what they are getting involved in. Startups are cheap these days, but they still are not free.
7 Business Basics for the Self-Employed
I can't work at any place for longer than 6 months. My resume is filled with companies every 6 months. Simply because I wake up with so much stress. My current job I've held longer for a year but it's getting to the point where I'm starting to dread going there despite what great opportunity and work environment it is. To me, this is just the way I'm wired. Take a break, you're in China, go see something. Do two weeks and refocus.
Buy and Sell Facebook Apps
Yes, it looks like Amazon has been solving the easy problems (paid AMIs, bigger instances) first, while the hard problems will be addressed later. But given that it took a year or so to add large instances, I wonder when load balancing and storage will be improved.
Why finagle over a form? Why don't you make a product, court some customers, and design the webpage before spending the 125?

But it also seems the timing isn't right. I think in the back of his mind he might still want to do the school thing. I know I do.
"What does virtualization have to do with enterprise software?" - Which rock were you hiding under ? Come out and face the bulbs :-D

Seriously though, one counterpoint could be that, Apple and Google - companies that had two of the biggest IPOs in history are not really enterprise software companies.
It is an interesting concept but why are efficient houses ugly as sin?
YC Voting Incentives Problem
If you post a comment on a recent thread, and there's only a couple other comments on about 1-4 points, then if you want your comment to be on top and get the most discussion and feedback (and maybe karma too), you have an incentive to downvote the competition to raise the relative score of your comment.

That is a bad incentive to have. Anyone have a good idea to fix it?
I've recently switched to git from svn and it is pretty good so far. Git allows having a centralized server, it just needs to be enforced at the human level, not at the software level.
125 bucks is a lot of money for a coffee.

It is not a lot of money for incorporating a company and gaining all of the benefits of doing so. It is also not a lot of money if you compare it to spending 10,000 hours of time commitment.

It also is not a lot of money to start a company, compared to your hardware costs, etc.
Easy: don't be a tool.
Games want to be free, too
Do you really down vote on other comments to be on top?

Maybe if YC comments could be arranged by points or time in which they were posted (of course keeping the conversational style).
I didn't think someone would go to such lengths to seek attention... kinda sad.
It isn't good to design systems with bad incentives, whether people follow them or not.
I knew it was just a matter of time before Apple opened up the phone for outside developers. I don't understand why everyone blamed Apple for trying to monopolize the phone. When a company just enters the mobile business you have to cut them some slack and give them credit for doing a few things well instead of trying to cram everything into the initial release.
Me too. Or one of those multi-engine search sites (Copernicus?).

One day, I decided to try Google. I remember having thought "Humm, this seems to be slightly better. I'll use it for a while"

Sometimes it seems incredible that it was only 10 years ago.
Im not talking about looking who have more points, but looking for the recent comments, in that way you can keep track of the thread.
Also most pointed comments tend to be very good.

Sometimes you see threads with a huge amount of comments, sure, you read it 2 hours ago and you want to see if there are new comments, that's why it would be great to arrange the comments that way.