skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Obviously YC hires some verbosity thugs to come beat you senseless with dictionaries until you apologize in less than 120 words for wasting their time.

I'm sure it's just a way to keep the task of reading all those applications under control, and not a hard and fast rule. Of course, the standard response about defining your idea succinctly stands!
Mark Jacobstein: Out of the Loopt, into CRV
Acts_as_ferret works okay, but when you run into a lot of writes (the problem the poster had), you have to run it with its built in DRb server to resolve the issues.
I am more concerned with someone breaking into Google and walking away with everyone's email than I am about Google sending malicious Javascript but you have a good point and malicious employees can cause a lot of harm.
I wrote some opinions on this in other thread:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46526

Unless your software will kill people if it fails or something, my advice is: observe what proportion of your development time you spend debugging. If it's one half or more, unit testing would probably benefit you. If it's significantly less than 50%, then you're probably better off riding bareback, because writing and updating those tests will take at least half of your time.

The problem I see with the "you'll test anyway, you may just as well automate it" argument is that unit tests are no substitute for testing with real users.
Whoa. This guy had the same question: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=63066
Ok, let's prentend I didn't write the stupid suggestions (which i still find funny). The fact remains, this essay is basically a compilation of ideas already expressed by PG, who needs to know that some of his fans are disappointed... Mod it up, if you want good writing!
This is terrible advice because if you don't have your story completely straight and they figure out that you have lied to them you could easily find yourself permanently inadmissible to the US.

Unless you are an experienced professional at telling lies to people whose job it is to determine if you are lying to them or not you probably shouldn't try to enter the US without having your visa in order.
That's what I feel like when I get something cool working for the first time. It's better than sex (whatever that's like).
Craigslist Meets WallStreet...Classic
Techmeme is officially a cesspool
Web 3.0, the *official* definition
Internet Explorer 7 Update
I don't understand why you keep posting comments that begin with "I don't understand", and then proceed to make an argument about the comment that you profess not to understand.
All of these articles keep saying that Loopt is available on Sprint... I can search for it on my Samsung A900 and it comes up "Loopt - Free through 2007!!!" but when I try and load the application I get "Error We're sorry, this item is unavailable"

Am I the only Sprint user that can't get Loopt or is it unavailable for everyone?

Edit: Just tried to sign up at the Loopt website and got "We're sorry but Loopt is not yet supported on your phone model." Seems odd, the only Samsung phone they support is the A920.
>> One of the most important things we've been working on standardizing are investment terms. <<

I can see this being very beneficial, both for the VCs and the startups. The standardization of terminology in any discipline or field allows the people in it to have their lingo easily referenced and indexed, increasing efficiencies. Who wants to wade through a bunch of superfluous gibberish to get to the point?

In grad school, I remember having the realization that every discipline has it's own little shorthand lingo. I remember thinking about how confusion can result when there are clashes/overlaps in, for example, acronyms.

>>An angel who wants to insert a bunch of complicated terms into the agreement is probably not one you want anyway.<<

Exactly: reducing complexity, not increasing it, seems a better objective.
Stop putting the entire newspaper online
The New Rules Of Technology VC
A Flood of Mashups Coming? OAuth 1.0 Released
DRb? Ouch... another layer of complexity :( How difficult is it to run DRb over a few VPS'?
Hybrid cars: Too damned quiet?
Chimps don't mind being chumps in raisin game
That seems to say more about Google as a company than its programmers.
"... this is almost a year old news.. and it was just the search where they deprecated soap...."

Old news maybe but where other companies are loosening their data, google is winding back access to theirs. I'm not sure of the motives why. But I can understand the implications. By holding back the access to raw data we are being set up for another monopoly.
Would be nice if I could pay $395 for a startup legal kit that I knew other startups actually used. Put paperwork for incorporation, funding, NDAs, employee ownership stuff, etc. Then when I wanted to hire someone and give him 6% of the company, I could just do it, without a bunch of lawyers.

Just a thought if you wanted to make some money whether we succeed or not.
Does he? Then he's using the wrong word. Refactoring is changing the implementation while keeping the interface and semantics.

Which, I agree, is one of the shortcomings of unit testing: placing an additional burden on improving interfaces and semantics.
I wish I'd thought to consider a startup during my grace period. If I was graduating today, rather than right after 9/11, that's almost certainly what I'd do.
I'm actually kind of surprised so many people are asking this question. There's really no reason to cut off your response after 120 words (we're talking words, not characters). To implement something like that would require splitting the response by a ' ' delim, and then dropping everything after 120 words. Talk about a waste of resources on the server. Storage is much cheaper than time in this case. Plus, if I were reading the applications, I would get annoyed really quick if the last few words of every long answer got cut off.
I always assumed the prep-school -> ivy connection was informal, much like the one between certain software companies and cs programs. For instance, Yale takes 10 kids from andover every year because they know all about how smart the 10 smartest kids from andover are from previous experience.
This is one of those ways in which being a rich kid is a huge advantage. I'm not sure if most young startup founders have rich parents, but it wouldn't be particularly surprising. Then again, maybe having rich parents makes it too easy to just coast in a cruddy job (or grad school)...
That's not happiness... that's smiling.

Ever had your boss come in to work with a camera? What do you do? You smile.
I have a simpler reason why, colour literacy. Most people at the age of 4-6 have similiar drawing and colour mixing skills. You just have to look at kindergarten pictures to see that. There is some variation but they are pretty similiar in ability.

Then most people stop drawing and playing with colour. Their colour literacy stays that of a four year old and worse as they will not experiment it probably degrades from there. So what is the quickest way to re-learn colour and colour combinations? Go outside and observe natural colour combinations. Combine these observations with a bit of theory and experimentation and you can be on your way creating your own colour combinations. For example: http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/541666109/

One other thing. Hackers, programmers and probably writers will have to work hard and re-wire their brain to some extent. Working with text, code or words require different parts of the brain compared to visual tasks like combining colour.
Hmm. I find the argument for unlimited concentration of startups in startup hubs somewhat unconvincing.

If the number of startups founded goes up by an order of magnitude or two, then the need to move to Silicon Valley in order to be in a startup-rich environment goes down.

Now, I do think that startups will still move, but I think that the number of hubs they can choose among to move to will be increasing as well.

I also have a feeling that beyond a certain density, the largest hubs will eventually hit diminishing returns in terms of their utility for startups (which will prompt more hub specialization).
Is this a good strategy?
There are many markets out there where there are middlemen or agents. Take, for example, real estate (or, in the olden days, travel).

Do you guys think it's a good strategy to leverage technology to replace the middleman (i.e. Zillow, Expedia, etc.)?

Obviously the middlemen aren't going to like it one bit. In theory, it's great for consumers (more information, downward pressure on prices), but will they fully embrace the service if they still need the middleman (especially if the middleman is reluctant to use the service)?

I know there are some obvious answers, but I'm curious to hear other people's opinions on this.
right now -the distraction of being buzzed by the blue angels while I'm trying to work!

More generally - we've not yet secured our visas but our E2 (foreign investor) application is in and we should be eligible as we've brought a chunk of money from the UK (you need a 'viable' amount - more for a factory, less for a coffee shop).

Culture is great and much better (and cheaper) than the UK. SF is a very positive place to be starting a company (Boston's not a whole lot better than London thoguh).

Not having a social security number us a royal pain and if you're not careful can sting you all over the place (like bank accounts). One of our founders had very good relations with his bank so we just about managed to get personal and business accounts but that can take a long time and you need one before you apply for your visa.

3 month stints are feasible but dangerous. We're on our second and I know others who've done three but who are definitely on the edge now.

As Gustav said, don't say you're getting paid - treat YC as a training programme and if you at all can then pay yourself through your home company. Don't lie to customs either though - our lawyer (who used to do visas for you tube and google advised that you're much better off being bounced honestly than having a lie highlighted during your actual visa interview.

All in, it's all just about possible (though we can confirm that for certain if and when our visa's get issued - the process takes 4 months and that's after you've sorted out your bank account, incorporation, investment etc) but tricky. It'll definitely sink a lot of time.
I wonder how the Loopt guys are feeling about this.

It just occured to me that in the corporate world, employees have to worry about losing their jobs. Conversely, in the startup world, founders have to worry about losing their employees (especially if PG's thesis from his latest essay is true).
That doesn't work. So many newspapers tried it and failed miserably. Why doesn't it work? Well, rarely is a single newspaper the only source of any story. If you can't find it for free on one newspapers' site, you can find it on some other site. NYTimes tried that and they abandoned this strategy precisely because of the reason I stated. Then NYTimes tried charging for archives but it wasn't very profitable and then they tried charging for Opinion pages (which are unique!) but that didn't take off either.

News wants to be free and it is free. The question that everyone has been asking is: would people pay for quality editing/editorial? And the answer is no. :(
She's Guilty! RIAA wins first case
Sounds like the "it could have been someone else and it can't be proven it was her" defense didn't work because she used her Kazaa username elsewhere on the web as well.

Regardless, $9,250 in damages per song is outrageous.
"Given sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine"

LOL, that's a good one.
Never tried it, but it doesn't work so well on a shared host lol :)
Stealth Mode, Schmealth Mode: The Real Reasons Why Startups Don't Talk
The Era Of Free Music Is Upon Us!
Are you referring to me? I didn't write this, and in fact I pretty much suck at colour, largely for the reasons suggested in the post, so I found it very interesting. Also, I don't think the author was declaring that all programmers suck at color, just that many do, and he then provides some good ways to understand more for those that don't (colour hacks, if you like). Not terribly controversial.
Ahh, then its time to move to San Francisco :)
I lived in Seattle in 1995 starting in August and was able to survive there only until February - the lack of sunshine was far too depressing for me to cope with. At the time, I helped start an architecture office (HOK) specifically to build part of the expanding Microsoft Campus (I was completely impressed with the MS real estate management pros). So I can only answer based on quality of life, and San Francisco (for me) wins hands down. We also have nature here just a short bike ride away (crossing the GG bridge) and we have world-class skiing about 3 hours away. The cultural scene here is extremely rich compared to Seattle. There are also deals to be had in office space (I pay $1 per s.f. per month) but you have to look (I found mine on Craigs List).
I basically decided at some point that else clauses are unnecessary. I think it makes my code much more readable.
It's down to 156 from 798 (I included a real life example).

The last 24 words are just links to:
-the real life example
-a chart showing the application process

What do you guys think?
Yes, but the devil is in the details. You will encounter a lot of pressure if you position yourself as a middleman's worst enemy from the get go. What we did with our startup is to position ourselves as a way for the middlemen to profit... become their friend and learn more about the business. Maybe after you see how they respond to your solution, you can open the floodgates for everyone.

Anyway, it's difficult to speak in hypotheticals so without knowing what space you're in, I can't offer more advice.

Good luck.
Does Chess Need to be Crowdsourced?
Facebook: Dramatic Whitespace is the best app ever
on the topic of starting a startup right out of college - being a rich kid of course would have its many advantages - but thats a given in all aspects of life - thus moot point - here is where the US Gov can and in some cases does offer some help.
You can call up the US loan dept., and tell them you having a hard time paying the loan because you quit your lame job and are starting a business and they will defer the loan payments for a while, I did it and it works.

In the future maybe they could offer this to entice more young people to start companies.
also - i felt there was too much focus on the 22 year old hacker set - this is a segment not the only segment of hungry, savvy, smart entreps. A real solution to the leaky pipe problem needs to include the slightly older pipes as well.
Ah, the wonderful world of mobile apps. The way I see it, a company like Loopt needs to do some or all of these feats:

- get someone to buy a handset to support an app they've never used (because it's not on their current phone)

- develop for a handset that is very popular but is going to be removed from the carrier's lineup in a few months, most likely in favor of an incompatible model

- predict which kinds of phone potential customers (by age, metro area and income) will have 3-6 months from now

- deal with the wildly varying capabilities and interfaces of different handsets

- target the market of people who are technologically-savvy yet do not have a Blackberry (because BBs have their own thing going on) or an iPhone

Yeesh, I'm amazed that anyone has the stomach to develop for this market.

PS: Then there's the network effect, of course -- people you want to communicate with should also have supported phones.
That's some really smart thinking. You should like... apply to YC with an idea or something.
I figured I was safe with getting apps developed for my phone first because the Gmail application used my phone as the reference platform. I guess not.
Most of them are informal, but not all. Here are a few situations where an Ivy would offer guaranteed admissions:

1) The university promises admission the top student from the Japanese language program of a certain high school each year. Situations like this often arise from alumni putting crazy earmarks on the donations to their colleges.

2) The university guarantees admission to a certain percentage of state residents each year in exchange for state funding.

3) The university wants to buy more land but the town tries to block the deal because it doesn't want the property taken off the tax roll. The university brokers a deal guaranteeing admission to a certain number of students from the local HS in exchange for the land.

4) A top prep school comes to some more formal agreement with a university for purely strategic reasons.

Situation #1 seems to be the most common in terms of connections to prep schools, although it's hard to say since the relationships aren't exactly published.
Problem: you're confining your thinking entirely to "web" startups. This irritates me, as one currently involved in a non-web oriented startup. The world is bigger than the web.
The New Rules Of Technology VC
Just a few years ago, large venture firms were incubating companies for months. During the incubation period, the founders wrote 70+ page business plans, which described the market opportunity, the execution plan, along with the five year financial projections. The plan was a proof, a risk management tool, used to justify that the idea has legs and will work.

But this isn't true anymore.
He did present on the topic "The Future of Web Startups" at a conference called "The Future of Web Apps." Perhaps you can forgive his limited perspective.
The easiest and fasted way to lose at negotiating is to ask "is this negotiable?". When you negotiate, you are supposed to be convincing the other side to give you what you want on the terms you want. If, instead, you come into the negotiation looking powerless, you are going to end up with no deal or--worse--a bad deal.

You get 15 minutes or so to present your idea. One minute of that presentation should be about how much money you need to get started. I would not inflate that number, but I would not artificially constrain it to fit the "fixed" limit that YC has. I can't speak for YC, but I would guess that they aren't going to turn down a deal just because the founders demonstrated a need for $7500 per person instead of $5000 each, or whatever the details are. Similarly, if your idea is the best idea they've ever seen, then are they really going to be so rigid about the percentage? Especially if you offer a percentage before they do?

I realize PG said flat out "no" above. But, doesn't Mr. Graham strike you as somebody that has a "rules are meant to be broken" mentality? Don't you think that this is exactly the type of arbitrary rule that is easily broken without too much fuss?
IANALbAFAIK You don't need any visa to incorporate (unless you want to do an S-corporation which doesn't make sense). You don't even need to be in the US when you incorporate a US company.

http://www.thedelawarecompany.com/llc_corporation_informatio...
With 15 minutes, you don't have any time to justify a 50% increase in money and less than an order of magnitude seems negligible anyways. I think most people that actually have a need for more money are encouraged by YC to work on a limited subset of their initial problem before raising more money from another investor, which is easy enough to do for a promising YC startup.
Erick Schonfeld will be good for Techcrunch, the editorial dynamic definitely needed a shift.
Do I think we should expect seed and venture companies not be racist when deciding on how to hand out money? Of course.

I'm not sure we need laws that commit them to be though for the simple fact that it would be very hard to actually enforce those laws.

Employers are a completely different situation, and thus are bound to a different set of expectations.
I'd guess you're in the "popular but about to be discontinued" column then. Carriers keep introducing new phones without much regard for how great the old ones are, because they need to get people to re-up by offering them new hardware that's somehow more capable. Maybe you can get Loopt on it, for example.

And besides, it's basically untenable to develop for a platform that will no longer available at retail by the time that version is ready. There could be half a million handsets out there, but can you imagine press that says "it's available for seven phones, three of which are no longer sold"? Ouch.
More independence/freedom breads unhappiness. This doesn't mean its bad, or the wrong direction. It simply means additional measures need to be taken.

Erich Fromm's "Escape from Freedom" is a great book on the subject.
pretty undescriptive
True enough. It just irritates me occasionally that the startup community seems overly focused on the web. There is a lot more out there that can be done than just web sites.
Want to know what else those conditions led to? death, disease, revolution, communism, fascism and war.

>For example, if I think being a coal miner is too risky, I won't be a coal miner.

Unless of course you're not in the position to make that choice. You are speaking from a position of privilege and assume all share that privilege. It leads to only a half understanding of why we've instituted the systems we have.

>Why do you need a law to deprive me of my freedom to make those decisions?

Wow, that's a warped view of freedom. Too many Ayn Rand books to be sure. If you were right in your theory, the nation you live in (assuming you're American) wouldn't exist right now. Think about that a little.
The Wall Street Journal famously has a successful non-free website. That's probably related to the fact that they're a business publication--those seem to be able to get away more easily with charging for website access--but at least it's one success (we'll see if they make more money on it when Murdoch takes it free).

There are definitely things people will pay for online. It's just that most newspapers haven't figured out what.
Yeah, I see how much Microsoft gets it.

http:/finance.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1191541972000&chddm=492660&cmpto=NASDAQ:GOOG&q=NASDAQ:MSFT

What is it with links? What do I keep doing wrong here? How do you tell it to A HREF?
Noooooo, don't leave Seattle! <grin>

Why exactly wouldn't you apply for YC funding? Would get you rice and beans money and 3 month trip to startup school in CA... If you get selected, of course.

It sounds like your core unmet need is a technical co-founder.

If finding a technical co-founder is your highest priority, you should be able to find one in Seattle. Every event I go to I meet scads of "I work at Amazon/MS ad I'm just seeing what's out there" type of coders. How many of those have you talked to? Why aren't they jumping on board?

Like any other marketing, if you aren't getting a ton of nibbles with smaller audience (Seattle), expanding to a larger audience might not be the answer. It might be smart to address your idea or how you're pitching it.

All that being said, SF looks pretty cool. :-)
Syllabus for Stanford's CS377W: Creating Engaging Facebook Apps
VC Confidential: Horse or Jockey?
How old are you and what is your education level?
Hey I was wondering?

What are hackers age and education?

Feel free to add:
Age + Education Level

Me = 20 + High School.
you've listed pros and cons - but you have to prioritize yourself. So what's more important to you - a co-founder or less rent and so on... are you certain you cannot find those things you think are important in seattle ?
26 + D.Phil in Computer Science (D.Phil is Oxonian for PhD.)
WSJ will be opened up very soon. Murdoch has said that he will open it up and their two biggest competitors: FT and NYT have also opened up. It will be impossible for them to stay closed.
Craigslist Lists New Job Posting Fees