skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Idiotically dangerous, for two reasons. The qualities you would eliminate are the very ones that help our survival as a species. Second, and more important, wars are always about population pressure and competition for resources. Always. Your virus could poop Valium and morphine -- but it wouldn't change the root cause.
Foreigners, who almost by definition have less local knowledge than locals (duh), are more likely to be stuck overpaying for less than premium assets, rather than getting the prime ones. The most talked about European investments in the US as of late seems to have been in Chrysler and subprime mortgages. Hardly stellar examples of high return assets.

Hollywood has been riding high on this principle for decades, sucking in foreign money like a turbocharged vacuum cleaner on crack, and promptly distributing it to themselves, their lawyers, surgeons, trainers and decorators, as salaries and bonuses. All the while, the local insiders/studios keep the choicest releases to themselves. They only need financing 'help' for the risky, read subprime, stuff.

What's really sad, for European savers at least, is that despite being fully aware of this, their homegrown movie industries continue to be an even shittier bet.
Seeing a little text based graphic game called "lunar landar" running on a commodore PET that a teacher had brought in when I was in middle school.
...wars are always about population pressure and competition for resources. Always. Your virus could poop Valium and morphine -- but it wouldn't change the root cause.

So what would happen if war is never an option?
A little-known, fantastic host is Reflected Networks (http://www.reflected.net). I talked them down to an insanely cheap monthly rate for a dedicated server with 3mbps. It's so inexpensive that I'm worried Mr. CEO will fire whomever did it.. :) The service there is fantastic: Zero downtime, free support, and a quick setup. So you should shoot them an email to see what special rates you can get (much less than what they advertise on their site).
Have you seen Serenity? It was the bad guys who tried something like that.
So does one recommend putting all your projects in the corporation of YC funds?
AdWords works great once you actually get it working. Its getting to that point that is nonintuitive, particularly "inactive for search keywords" which are by no means easy to activate intuitively.
....Imagine how powerful you could get by finding a cure for that virus....
> I am assuming a startup will probably be the same. First years it will all be under the rug.

And yet, it usually isn't. (However, all Californians either live on the beach in LA or in San Francisco.)
They could have at least given Eddie Izzard credit for coining the phrase "jihad on you!"

http://www.auntiemomo.com/cakeordeath/d2ktranscription.html#...
I agree, for reading comments its not very nice, but still the beginnings of something that could be really cool.
Does anyone have any thoughts on ServerBeach (http://www.serverbeach.com)? I've heard YouTube started with them.
One probably recommends focusing on one project at a time.

P.S. If you ever get rich, I expect an email rubbing this comment in my face ;)
> large companies from treating employees just as a disposable thing, with no rights, no vacation, no health care, no paid maternity leave as you have in the US.

My US company has those things. If it didn't, I'd find another company. Having lots of companies makes this feasible.
I would like it better if the "Comments" box didn't obscure the content. Even on my 1680 by 1050 monitor, with the browser window scaled to full width, I cannot move the comments completely out of the way. If the main content area was aligned to the left side of the page, rather than having equal horizontal margins, I could easily fit the comments into the margin.

[Edit: it seems that I cannot type Unicode characters into a comment here...]
What is the reason to apply if I am the only co-founder ready to move? I am afraid it is not following YC model
Cures take time and scientists can work on many such viruses -- though you would need to ensure that being infected by several such viruses does not yield bad results.
And even less to do with hacking...
Portfolio Review: Justin.tv
This past week, Justin.tv launched its live broadcasting system. Read the Los Angeles Times coverage of the company.

Everyone's first question to us: How the heck are you going to make money on that investment? Good question! Answer: We don't know, exactly. We have some suspicions.
Yeah, I know for a fact that a bunch of YC companies use them. I was told so by a YC founder. So we signed up with them and so far no complaints. They are quick, and somehow they caught wind of when we launched and sent us an e-mail asking of there was anything they could do for us. It was a nice touch.
Now that's a great reply that adds value. Unlike this one.
Good point. Perhaps there's some game theory in there. The fitness function does need some work.
First Internet-scale programming courses
I don't care what anybody says, we use GoDaddy and they're great.

(Not for heavy duty stuff, but great for low traffic stuff)
Yeah.... that idea is never gonna backfire at you and wipe out all the human race
Imaginary Worlds. Real Money.
You're begging the question. There is no 'be violent' chemical in our brains. It's a complex emergent behavior. So your hypothetical virus would either be ineffective, or so effective it make the organism (that's YOU) unable to feed itself.
It was horrible experience for me on this weekend. For some reason ext3fs on a dedicated server we use was a bit corrupted and since they do not ofer KVM I was first suggested to reprovision server.
Then I was suggested to buy a new hard drive to rescue data. Then I was suggested to pay them $150 fee to swap drives. After few calls to their sales support and wasting several hours talking with them and waiting for their decisions the fee was waived. After all, three days later I got my data.
They are cheap, but when you're in trouble, you're in trouble.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testosterone#Effects_on_the_bra...
19 Rails Tricks Most Rails Coders Don't Know
This method presumes that all hosting companies have an ASN. Often, this will just tell you who the connection provider(s) is (are).
Facebook's growth - approaching #1. What's next?
There's an experimental webcomic about an alternate history of the afghan war where the military develops a spy network of millions of robotic spiders, but for lack of operators decides to open source their operation on the internet.

Among other novel uses of tech in warfare, they deploy an 'empathogenic' aerosol which goes to work on the empathy centers of the brain, making people permanently unable to kill. The story revolves around an American soldier who was accidentally exposed to it.
See:
http://www.e-sheep.com/spiders/3.5/10_knife.html
and
http://www.e-sheep.com/spiders/3.5/000_hospital.html
and
http://www.e-sheep.com/spiders/3.5/11_epilogue.html
Once you found a cure, you could pick up a sword, or boxcutter, and force scientists to stop coming up with new viruses.
Glad to source any of this material if anybody is interested.
The Greatest Compliment A Developer Can Receive
I couldn't tell you where YC applicants host anything, but we've had a nearly flawless experience with Slicehost.
MobileCampLondon 2007 videos
I can code, design, play guitar, dance Salsa, surf, speak Spanish, English and a little Portuguese.
:P
I've also had amazing luck with The Planet; I've used them for about 4 years now and have only had one problem with an outage. I found out about my outage from them, and they were already working to resolve the issue. I think I was down for about 30 minutes total in the middle of the night on a Wednesday, so it wasn't a big deal at all.
Hey, Paul: I've got an even better idea. What say I just cut all you investors out altogether? Whatever happened to growing a company slowly, based on the profits coming in? Oh, that's right - we don't do this in the tech industry because everyone says it won't work.

That's just a bunch of bunk. Nothing was funnier during Web 1.0 than guys saying we were "rewriting" the rules of business - like, profits didn't matter. Truth is, from a business point of view, starting a web service is no different than starting a dry cleaners: give people what they want, at a reasonable price (in our business, that usually means ad-supported)... and they'll come back (and click on ads in the process).

Yes, it may take some technical innovation... but it doesn't take any business innovation. Everything you say in your essay is true; so seriously, why do I need you? You expect me to go through this whole dance to come to Cambridge for, what, the possibility of five-thousand bucks? And then move to SilCon for three months so you can keep tabs on us once a week? Like, are you serious?!

Your essay is particularly prescient because you might have inadvertently predicted the ultimate demise of your current business - i.e., venture funding. No, I won't fill out your form; no, I won't travel to Cambridge for the possibility for you to give me five-thousand bucks. No, I won't move to the Valley so you can keep tabs on what I'm doing. I'm a big boy, and I can take care of this end myself, thanks. Good luck with giving away your cash.

James Touchi-Peters, Founder/CEO
CONK!/Arrow Media
Minneapolis USA
conkhead@conk.com
http://conk.com
GoDaddy is fine, until you have problems. I did a consulting gig once in the same office complex as them, and I had better luck getting an issue fixed by asking random smokers out front of their building if they could change something for me than I did calling their support number and going through the escalation procedures.
Not being a biologist, add a grain of salt and all that, but...

Of course not! It's just not even remotely feasible. There are two reasons, but I'll start with the big one.

We have shown a marked inability to micromanage "changing human nature for the better." We just don't understand enough about the brain to make e.g. violent criminals stop being violent, using psychology, drugs, surgery, or anything else really. See any crime statistics you like on the subject. The one exception is wherein we can stop someone from being violent, by basically stopping them from doing anything -- not a desirable outcome as applied to the entire human population.

The second reason it's not feasible is, well... What happens to the one guy who finds out about this, and spends a year in his basement becoming completely immune to the vector? People are resistant to gene therapy vectors from time to time, with no deliberate action. Deliberate action just makes this scenario more likely.

Eliminating violence is a nice sentiment, but this methodology is just not even remotely feasible. Ethics are a whole other can of worms.
in that case, there's a penalty for surrounding yourself with intelligent people . . . probably not a good thing
A good idea for Google, Yahoo, and Amazon, since students will come out of college already trained on their infrastructure.

It's also notable that Google is somewhat endorsing Hadoop.
I missed Python. :-(
Assembly language would've been awesome too.
This essay definitely gives me a sense of fear and dread. What Paul makes out to be a good thing, really gives me a nasty reaction. Startups becoming ubiquitous? If startups really become so prevalent, I feel like it's not necessarily worth doing. Aren't there only so many things that web startups can do? I'm afraid of startups becoming "the cool thing to do," for students in technical fields. College starting to game students specifically for working on startups. 1000 applications, 10000 applications, it stops becoming novel, it feels like a sellout.
PostgreSQL 8.3 Beta 1 Released
It's feasible, but not terrorism. If developed, aggressive humans would use it as just another tool to stay in power.
Is there an Arabic localization?
Facebook Apps Ruled By the Few
You may find Stephen King's short, "The end of the whole mess" interesting. The point is how to define "better nature".
Startups become YC companies to get investment. If they weren't looking for investment, they'd have no need to talk to VCs, micro or not.
I think iamelgringo's point is that it doesn't matter if Facebook is really worth $10 billion or not, because no one's actually paying that much; and the entities paying some percentage of those valuations are insulated from the effects of a crash.

The term "bubble" scares people because of events such as those that happened in 2000-2001. It's an imprecise term because of that. If you mean "inflated valuations" we might be in a bubble, if you mean "reckless speculation by average consumers" then we're probably not.

If Facebook turns out to be a dud before they ever have an IPO, who are the big losers? A few hundred employees, and some professional investors. Microsoft is still plenty profitable without Facebook, and VCs will bounce back or be replaced. It'll indirectly affect many others, but the typical portfolio of a typical working American will remain relatively stable.

Conversely, if 500,000 average consumers average $20,000 invested in Facebook and it suddenly goes bankrupt, that's a huge problem. It causes a massive disruption in their lives, and it will have a much more noticeable indirect effect on everyone else. (eg nobody can afford to buy Christmas presents this year)
I think the difference is that the new hubs will grow on their own, without anyone trying to 'create' them.
"If things are unequal all bets are off"

Well said, and agreed. Actually, I completely agree with brlewis. "Learning" a language is a hard metric to measure. Accordingly, give a language/framework (if you are already familiar with the language) a couple of days, write a small app in it, and the rest, you will learn as you go.

IMO, in most cases, "learning" is merely trying to figure out how you would solve a problem within the scope of your selected toolset. The involves foreseeing what you will encounter down the road, which in a lot of cases is hard, if not downright impossible. Most books/tutorials (atleast the beginner ones) don't touch the boundary cases, so there's only that much value in them. That's not to say that you should drop every reference book on your shelf right now, but that don't spend a lot of time trying to master every detail before getting your feet wet.

Oh, and Good luck...!
I like the immediate connection to context, but it has some sore-thumb-sticking-out flaws.

-As already mentioned, the expanded comment itself obscures the very context a system like this is designed to provide.

-It also obscures the comment unless you click on it, and provides very little reference for finding a comment you've already looked at, and that you want to see again. Telling your users too little about what they're clicking on and what they've already clicked on is breaking one of the most basic commandments of good web U.I. design.
According to pg, exceptions can be made to any rule if the rest of the application is good enough.

I applied as a sole founder who was unable to move to the bay area -- breaking the requirements far more than you -- until it turned out that I wouldn't be able to fly out for the November 3rd/4th weekend.
Those comments don't show up in IE, just an FYI
"Wars are always about population pressure and competition for resources."

Often, but not always. The security dilemma is another major cause of wars.
Well, if nothing else, it would probably be one of the weirdest applications YC has ever gotten.
argh please wrap your lines!
I am on a slicehost VPS. I think it is probably the best deal for money, in terms of memory allocation.
This is older, right? Still great tips, though
glTail.rb - realtime logfile visualization
Google/IBM to Provide Cloud Computing Students
By reading the opening, the closing, and skimming the rest, you will see that it has a fair bit of useful and accurate content, just very spread out.

And just as the article points out, it gave away its whole article with the words "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
Has there ever been an example of something incredibly popular that hasn't made money eventually? The best I can think of is napster, and their issues were legal.
CSS Diagrams
Selling a community
Followup: the focus fusion guy just gave a presentation to Google, here's the video:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1518007279479871760...

He needs $2 million for the proof-of-concept.
Pownce: Lessons Learned (FOWA 2007)
And it doesn't support IE7, and probably not IE6.
I really get the impression, from reading this site, reading PG, listening to the interview with Jessica, that they are much happier if you have a co founder that you've known for a while, so just finding someone to plug into that role isn't as likely to work, even if they're good.

Maybe I'm wrong though, because my mind reading abilities leave a lot to be desired.
100 Web 2.0-Look Generators
I don't understand what all these people are talking about. A good idea is extremely valuable. A bad idea is a vicious liability.

The problem is the marketplace. Most people aren't very good at telling if an idea is good or not. They're likely to value such an idea low. You don't really want to cofound with these people.

However, brilliant people are likely to have ideas of their own. Ideas that they'd like to work on. One can rationalize an even split, then, by considering an even split as payment for working on your idea, and not their's. Brilliant people would probably rather do their own thing -- you need to give them creative and strategic input, and you need them to feel like partners.

They just have to be good. I'm not going to give someone I'm feeling shaky on an equal stake in my company -- I wouldn't advise this for anyone.
Decreasing our testosterone would reduce violent tendancies, but it would also mess with our ability to reproduce. And besides, war isn't usually about irrational aggression, it's often more about fear, which afaik is mitigated by testosterone
The Best Interface-Design Quotes
That would be my choice as well. It's just really fairly to get someone to join in a cofounder capacity, because the people I know well are all on the east coast or Canada, and I have a lot of pull them away from.

I've had a lot of people willing to work part time. It's just all of the people who are likely to be interested in my project are also likely to be very, very busy -- part time is all I think I can get in the short term.

On the other hand, in the design stages many companies (Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, for example) had only one person working on things. Turning it into a business before a prototype emerges might be premature.
I had endless problems with them. But it's probably the right host for people who "don't care what anybody says" so I'll save some typing ;-)
It's possible to find a cofounder without funding. Almost everyone does. Keep looking for folks.

You need to convince brilliant people that your idea rocks enough to have them leave whatever they're doing. I doubt this is as hard as it would sound, since most brilliant people are wasting their talent.
Apple had Jobs and Woz. Microsoft had Bill and Paul. Yahoo had Jerry Yang and David Filo. Dani and ?
Well, these are all fine predictions and suggestions but I'm curious how much of it will really help Facebook. The reality is that most people aren't on Facebook to look for things to buy in a Marketplace, they are there to "superpoke" their buddies and otherwise use time wasting "apps" and while this makes it a decent advertising platform due to the number of users and page views I don't see why it would be worth 10 billion dollars. The problem is that sites of this nature are a fad and while attempts like the facebook application platform might keep users on the site longer it is hard to predict when something revolutionary better comes along and people will go and waste time somewhere else.
Refactoring with Prototype
Lisp's closure at the end was fantastic!
I advise anyone who is considering hosting with Layered to take backups -- frequently. Drives fail like third-world goverments over there.
Ask PG: What are the startup hubs outside of the US?
PG, you mention that there are 5-6 startup hubs worldwide. I think you mentioned Silicon Valley and Cambridge. Where are the other 3-4? Are they too in the US?
Startups: How Twitter will pay the bills
What is 'Python'? Should I've heard about him/her/it?
huh? http://python.org/
I know that several countries have tried to replicate the Silicon Valley model to various degrees of success. I think by far Silicon Valley is at the top of the list with the others lagging far behind but I can't think of where in the world there would be good startup hubs.
K&R is a great book to learn C from. It is short, the authors are programming greats, and as a bonus you get to learn a little about how the Unix programming model works.

And just to be devil's advocate, C is a fine first language to learn - it is small and encourages you to understand what the machine is doing. C++ on the other hand is not a fun place for beginners to hang out.

Just because most CS depts start freshmen with Java doesn't mean that Java is a great first choice.

I think learning C and Python/Ruby would make for a pretty nice combination.
I'd like to see that graph on a log-log scale.
If you're in europe, London is definately the place to be.

But bring a big suitcase, pack a suit and a tie and stuff the remaining space with money ;-)
Ask YC News: Why doesn't Google provide a useful Adsense API?
By useful, I mean an API that lets users specify the content to provide contextual ads for?
Wallstrip chats with Tariq Krim.
Well, it's interesting what YouTube is doing. Their policy is simply there to cover themselves legally and shift the blame to the users. However this opt-out policy allows them to host the videos and continue making money (or at least getting traffic) from them until the copyright owner calls to complain.

In YouTube's defense, it's nearly impossible to verify the copyright of user supplied content and since YouTube is simply offering to provide hosting of user supplied content it shouldn't be liable for copyright infringements just as your ISP is not liable if you decide to post illegal material on their servers. They will remove the material (and possibly terminate your account) if someone reports the violation.
A Few Important Concerns From the Facebook App O'Reilly Report
They break after a while in Opera.
What about the top few in the US. Of course Silicon Valley is tops, followed by Cambridge/Boston. But after that, perhaps:
Boulder, Los Angeles, New York, Austin, Seattle.

Any other votes?
Well, to quote PG, if you can't convince at least one other person to commit to your idea then perhaps your idea is not that great (or you haven't talked to right people). I wouldn't call myself "great" but while I'm always busy working on something I'm willing to drop everything else and stick to something if I believe in the potential of the idea. The only times I turn something down is if I'm working on something that I believe has a higher chance of success (or that I enjoy a lot more).

Perhaps you need to work at your idea more and get something that you can show potential co-founders. Be careful however of picking just anyone as friction between founders can be fatal. It might not be a bad idea to get someone to help out part time for a mix of cash and equity (I'm guessing more equity than cash since you say you need funding). Once this person gets more familiar with what you are doing he/she might become interested in joining you full-time and at that point you will have had a chance to evaluate how valuable of a co-founder this person would be.

I wouldn't worry about the October 11th deadline, focus on your idea, you can always apply next time.
I use them for my crossword site ( http://clutu.com ). They've been awesome.
Slicehost have fantastic customer service but unfortunately had problems hosting SBCL when I tried them (SBCL is known to interact badly with bugs in some versions of Xen).