skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Voice mail re-emerges with a new relevance as text or e-mail
Sherlock Holmes
If you read the article, please also read:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Steven_J._Milloy
Start with the assumption that you can get lots of users. If you can then listen to those customers very, very carefully. You will discover some additional value that you can bring by adding specific features; charge extra for those features. It's OK to have lots of free users, it's also OK to say that you are not sure about the revenue, but I'd be on the lookout for an opportunity to charge a customer to extra value that your product is bringing.
1984 (George Orwell)

The Four Hour Work Week (Tim Ferriss)

Getting Things Done (David Allen)

Deception Point (Dan Brown)
Startup is Dark Horse in Spectrum Auction
That's interesting. I've always been uncomfortable even describing my exit strategy, because it seems to be like presenting one means my idea is just the means to an end. Not only is that not really how I feel, but it's sort of at odds with an entrepreneur being prepared to sweat blood into a project to make it succeed at all costs.

It also seems like saying "acquisition is my exit strategy" is the equivalent of saying "I'm not sure this is a sustainable business model". Honestly, if the business is profitable enough to attract enough attention that it might be acquired, I'm not sure I'd be interested in selling anyway. :)
Trick question. It is a valid exit strategy. But it's not a good plan to make your corporate strategy = an exit strategy. You should never be in a position where you depend on getting bought.
Apple validates 13-inch LED backlight units ahead of ultra-portable
Is it really okay to say you're not sure about revenue? I keep reading that that's one thing you really need to nail down. (Then again, I see these companies like Twitter with no realistic business model get funding...)
Defined by w3c:

http://www.w3.org/html/wg/html5/diff/#new-elements
Rebel Without a Crew (Robert Rodriguez),
The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho),
Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
The hardest thing I found was building up my way with proper bankroll management.

I played too high of limits for my bankroll, so I would do well but my negative swings would deplete my whole bankroll.

That, and I found myself cashing out because I was in school at the time.
I had a similar setup back in the day, and I think you did just tell the story.
If you can get past step 2, you can almost always find a way to monetize your business. Now, is that going to be enough for an investor to invest? No. You'll have to show that you will be able to grow and create something that someone will be willing to pay a large amount of money to own. Many companies end up being lifestyle companies and don't have a lot of upside for serious investors to really consider investing. M&A is definitely a valid exit strategy and make sure you have a list of possible exit targets but don't make 'chasing suitors' your business strategy! IPO market has been anemic lately so M&A is definitely the way to present your case to investors.
I would like to see data about the data used -- with almost 100 million S60 Symbian users around [1], I find it hard to believe that there would be 9 times more people browsing on an iPhone than S60 device. (0.09% vs 0.01%)

For examle, user agent strings from browsers, at least on S60, are far from trivial to parse. And it would be easy to get skewed results based on the sites that are used to gather the data.

[1] Canalys, 2007
Cradle to cradle, by William McDonough & Michael Braungart

http://www.mcdonough.com/cradle_to_cradle.htm

About environmental design of, well, everything. Might fall into the "technical" category, though.
I used to sit through presentation after presentation every day and they all had revenue estimates.

No one in the room believed those estimates, not the entrepreneur and certainly not the VC. It's important to have them because they indicate that you've tried to think about how you are going to make money. Also, no one manages to actually make those estimates either because there's always something that goes wrong, or better, or sideways.

So, think about how you are going to make money, make a revenue plan (and an expense plan). Present the plan you have, but don't be ashamed if you don't make it.

It's worth asking yourself about Twitter. Why would you fund Twitter? Well, you might look at the enormous traction they have, and if you think the team is smart then you'd say to yourself "Here's a team with lots of 'customers' and the smarts to figure out how to monetize them".
Nokia to acquire Avvenu
Eeek! The Web without JavaScript -- Do you design sites for the JS-impaired?
Will the Valley Sweep the Crunchies?
JGC, personally I'd love it if you blogged/wrote somewhere about being/becoming an independent consultant, especially in a righteous/sexy domain like anti-spam/text learning. :)
I like how GEB ties together everything with 'strange loops'.

The concept of how small pieces of something can form into something else entirely, is fascinating. How does a bunch of your cells form into you? How do a bunch of notes from a song form something so grand? How does a collection of 'inanimate' material form something animate?
Definitely among my favorites, too.
Google and Its Enemies
they looked at how the UI flowed

UI may flow well, except it may flow in a wrong direction.

In 90's there were pieces of software that were close to the definition of "crappy" in terms of bugs, UI flow and even screen flickering, yet they delivered such a value that users forgave their mistakes. First that comes to mind is Macromedia Dreamweaver, also Cakewalk Pro Audio.
MPAA's University wiretapping product taken down for violating copyright
The Evolution of Cooperation - Robert Axelrod

Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell - Susanna Clark

Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace

The Informant - Kurt Eichenwald

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information - Edward Tufte

Liar's Poker - Michael Lewis
Find A VC Champion
During or after the first meeting you need to find one person at the VC firm to be your champion X the person who will promote your company inside the fund. Your champion should be the person who is most interested and most qualified to sell the deal internally...
As opposed to what... IPO?

M&A is about the only likely exit strategy. Hopefully you look good on that front-- if you don't have a liquidation event (selling, IPO, etc) and hum along with a healthy 10% growth rate and 10% profit margin, you are a total failure as fair as an investment goes. It's good to think about who could theoretically want you and what asset you are creating that they'd want. Give some thought to WHAT the big 3 buy when they buy a company:

1) A profit center... Profitable businesses are easy to sell.
2) A team of innovators. Hiring is expensive.
3) A feature-set they don't offer and couldn't develop as quickly.
4) A user-base that they can integrate with their own, making their collection of services more "sticky" (Yahoo does this a lot-- they want the @yahoo login to be hard to give up).
5) A targeted user-base that advertisers love... Having a service that caters to 10,000 male CEOs is better than having a service that caters to 50,000 people you know nothing about.
6) An appearing of "coolness". Corp dev guys LIKE BUYING STUFF. It's their job, it gets the company PR, etc. If you are a service that is loved by a particular audience, you might get bought to acquire that goodwill. While it's not the only reason, I think this is part of the MS Facebook investment... To appear slightly less lame on the web front.

As PG says, it's a fairly bad business strategy to focus too much on. Set out to build a business that CAN be profitable. You don't want to be looking at a dwindling bank account praying that someone swoops in to acquire you.
I can summarize it like this:

1. I had no other choice. After years of working for people I just needed a break.

2. It's harder than it looks... my income is totally variable.

3. It's the best thing I ever did. I get to choose what I work on (to a certain extent).

I'm actually thinking of going back full time, but that's only because a start up is enticing me with an interesting combination of good team, interesting problem, and stock.

We'll see.
We have a much larger sample at RescueTime.com and we're seeing this... But it's not too painful. Our conversion rates are pretty outstanding (20% or so of absolute uniques download our software).

It's all about credibility (a bit harder to establish with no-name p2p app).
It is hard to say what my favorite book is. But the book that impacted my life most was Cosmos by Carl Sagan. Read it.

My favorite authors and playwrights are (in no meaningful order) Michael Lewis, Carl Sagan, Siddhartha Gautama, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Aldous Huxley, Ayn Rand, Patrick Marber, Arthur Miller, and Shakespeare.
You should never be in a position where you depend on getting bought.

Why not?

Not that I disagree, but just for the sake of discussion. You may sell things, services or ideas, as well as you may sell entire companies. Is there a fundamental difference?
Ask YC: Does anyone know of a simple web page layout tool that you can share with others?
I'm looking just a simple tool where I can draw boxes to layout a page. Nothing fancy, like colors. Just ability to drag and drop boxes and label them.
Ender Series - Orson Scott Card

Rama Series - Arthur C Clarke

Firestar Series - Michael Flynn

1984 - George Orwell

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs - Some guys at MIT (I know it's technical, but couldn't resist, it's just too good)

Anything by Bret Easton Ellis, Greg Bear, Stephen Baxter, and the above mentioned authors.
Bubble 2.0: The Video
ughh
there is a difference between making money and making money doing cool things. Joel makes moeney by doing really boring things really well. Web2.0 stuff makes me want to yawn.

The interesting future lies more in the fields of Machine Learning, Computer Vision, 3D graphics, Bioinformatics, and what not. Things which are not trivial to do and for which now slowly and steadily we have the computing power to make it happen on the standard desktops.

trying to make money using web2.0 type stuff is like lottery i think. There are so many people trying to do it.
"I, for one, welcome our new Russian Overlords" -- Brad on the LJ buyout
Web 2.0 sucks, I agree. Its suckage does not preclude bug tracker suckage, though. The GP had a point, which is that boring software is boring, and really, it would be better to read stuff about interesting software, by people who regularly write interesting software. There is interesting software floating around; the problem is, most of the people who write it don't have time to blog about it. They sometimes do write about it, but usually in that case it comes in the form of either patents or academic papers, both of which are unnecessarily hard to read.
"but you can learn from the backlash seen from YouTube and Facebook users who felt cheated when the sites built a loyal userbase, got bought out and suddenly the user experience drops in favour of advertising revenue."

I think ads are lame. Power users block them with AdBlock Plus, anyway, so if you cater to savvy users you'll get shit clickthrough rates and annoy everyone else.

Are people making $40-100k a year really too cheap to pay $9/month for something they use everyday?
Google Announces Fastest Growing Search Terms
This is a great book. It delves into the psychology of how we think about and use the built world and explains why some things are simply hard to use as compared to other, better designed things.
Campaign Monitor: a small, cool email marketing web app driven entirely by .NET
Consider relative bargaining power when you enter into acquisition negotiations. If you NEED to sell, then you will most likely accept any offer, no matter how bad, from the buyer. When you can take or leave any offer put on the table, you're in a much better position to bargain from.
The Silicon Alley 100
If you are concerned about your 'exit strategy' from the business you're planning to start, maybe you shouldn't even bother. Seriously, if you're not interested in building something to last, you might as well go into another fields such as financial derivatives or hedge fund trading. As a consumer, I would be less inclined to do business with a company run by folks whose goal was to 'exiting' as quickly as possible.
Post your proofs: Given five points on a sphere, four of them lie on a closed hemisphere.
This question comes from the Putnam math exam I took as an undergrad as part of our college team. Just to give you a sense of what taking the exam is like, it has ten questions worth ten points each with the median exam taker scoring 0 or 1 point depending on the year. This was my favorite question from the first exam I took (partly because it was one of the few I felt like actually had a shot at getting right).
In-house programming is usually worse than product progamming, but there are exceptions.

Some companies really do see their in-house programming as critical for success, and treat it accordingly. I get the impression that NetFlix, for instance, is a pretty good place to be a developer, because the company sees logistical software (for optimizing DVD delivery) as a critical components in winning against blockbuster (they also do video downloads, from what I've heard, but that's so close to an actual software product that I'm not sure I'd call it "in-house"). I gather that Amazon is also pretty innovative, but I don't know anyone who works there.

On rare occasion, product companies are clueless enough to treat their developers like typists - I've been at exactly one. The difference, of course, is that these companies don't really last long. A textiles company with crappy software management practices can survive anyway, whereas a product company with that attitude will almost certainly fail, and quickly.

So in general, I agree - though there are some notable exceptions.
I agree entirely, but you have to look at it from the perspective of the investor. The only way they actually get paid is if the company has a liquidation event. That's (at least in my understanding) why all VCs want to know your exit strategy.
That was funny and well done.
Interesting topic, but 40% seems like a high number of "buyers" with JS turned off. I wonder if they counted all web hits as "people who buy" and 39% of their hits came from bots.
Google's Infrastructure is its Strategic Advantage
I thought the square milk, round pop question was a cool example of "When you've got a hammer" Ask an economics class why milk is square and they'll talk about the marginal cost of refrigerator space and packaging, while the engineer (from the comments) will first think of carbonated milk and exploding milk cartons.

I'm reminded of my square-milk-carton-ginger-ale-brewing experiment that my wife eyed nervously every time she saw it bulging in the back of the fridge.
We didn't start the Fire (2.0)
I don't have the math chops to prove it, but there is an intuitive answer:

The farthest any two points can be is on a line passing through the center of the sphere. There are three such point-pairs for the x,y, and z axes. Given at least 5 points, four must lie on the same plane. That plane defines the border between hemispheres. Voila.
Procuit Inc. announces the creation of Studytag.com
Answer ROT13ed, see http://www.rot13.com/ to translate:

Gnxr nal gjb bs gur svir cbvagf, naq pnyy gurz N naq O. Pnyy gur bgure guerr cbvagf P, Q, naq R.

Abj pbafgehpg n cynar K cnffvat guebhtu N, O, naq gur pragre bs gur fcurer (vs N naq O ner rdhny, gurer ner vasvavgryl znal fhpu cynarf; bgurejvfr gurer vf cerpvfryl bar). Gur cynar K qvivqrf gur fcurer F vagb gjb bcra urzvfcurerf F_1 naq F_2, naq gur pvepyr F_3 juvpu vf gur vagrefrpgvba bs F naq K. Abgr gung F_3 pbagnvaf obgu N naq O.

Abj qrsvar G_1 = F_1 H F_3 naq G_2 = F_2 H F_3; ol vafcrpgvba, gurfr ner obgu pybfrq urzvfcurerf. Fvapr F_3 pbagnvaf obgu N naq O, G_1 naq G_2 obgu pbagnva obgu N naq O. Shegurezber, G_1 H G_2 = F_1 H F_2 H F_3 = F, naq gurersber gur cbvagf P, Q, naq R rnpu yvr ba bar be zber bs G_1 naq G_2.

Ol gur cvtrbaubyr cevapvcyr, ng yrnfg bar bs G_1 naq G_2 pbagnvaf ng yrnfg gjb bhg bs gur guerr cbvagf P, Q, naq R. Pnyy guvf bar G. Fvapr jr nyernql xabj gung G pbagnvaf obgu N naq O, jr pbapyhqr gung G vf n pybfrq urzvfcurer pbagnvavat ng yrnfg sbhe bhg bs gur svir cbvagf N, O, P, Q, naq R.
Unfortunately I can't read fiction too much, I feel like what I read must directly help me with what I do, so I feel a lot better reading either technical stuff or business related (I love business). Since we are excluding technical, most of the following are business related, or helps you in dealing with people and solving problems)

Netscape Time - Jim Clark (very educational for those interested in startups, good piece of Internet history, interesting insights to the culture of the first Internet companies)

How To Win Friends And Influence People - Dale Carnegie (found it through YC recommendations, THANK YOU. one of the best educational books I have ever read, it will teach you how to make friends, be a good leader, get along at home, encourage people, make them follow you and so much more...)

Founders at Work - Jessica Livingston (I found it relevant to what I am doing, good lessons, and interesting insights)

Getting to Yes - Roger Fisher, William L. Ury (teaches you how to negotiate and how to get the best out of each situation for yourself and the other part, will be useful both at work and personal life, a bit dry)

Winning - Jack Welch (great advices on leadership, might be more useful to someone that is running a big company)

Leadership Is an Art - Max Depree (great leadership advices, it will give you the right mindset of how to be a great leader)

-----------

Animal Farm (George Orwell), Alchemist (Paulo Coelho), Interpreting Your Dreams(Freud)
Stanford Facebook Class Produces Impressive Results
Funny, I started doing a lisp interpreter a while back and I have only got to the part where it makes a damn fine calculator.

I believe my version is much handier than having to use Emacs.
A few sort of random selections from my bookshelf (in no particular order):

* GEB:EGB - Hofstader
* The Pragmatic Programmer - Hunt / Thomas
* Peopleware - DeMarco / Lister
* The Mythical Man Month - Brooks
* Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming - Norvig
* Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind - Miyazaki
View From Silicon Valley: VC$ analysis
This, to me, feels similar to the outdated practice of including all JS in HTML comments for 'older browsers'. Crockford has a good paragraph on this in one of his articles.

"The use of HTML comments in scripts dates further back to a transitional problem between Netscape Navigator and Netscape Navigator 2. The latter introduced the <script> tag. However, users of the former would see the script as text because of the HTML convention that unrecognized markup is ignored. The <!-- comment hack stopped being necessary by the time Netscape Navigator 3 came out. It certainly is not needed now. It is ugly and a waste of space."

People use to turn off JavaScript because the web was new and people were using it improperly. Based on the proliferation of everything JS these days, it feels like we've overcome this barrier, just like we've overcome Netscape 2.

I also feel like the analogy the author makes between 'designing for accessibility' to 'using JavaScript' is improper. I think if the article criticized the usage of Flash, it'd be a different story -- Flash used to be completely inaccessible and it (still) requires someone to download a plugin for it to work. Even so, youtube and the myspace music player (both Flash) are still incredibly popular on the web -- despite that barrier to entry. Something to think about -- maybe prompting to turn on JavaScript solves the problem, just like saying you need to install flash solves the flash problem.
The "Captain Underpants" series.
rot13.com also:

Cvpx nal gjb bs gur cbvagf naq pbafgehpg gur terng pvepyr gung pbagnvaf gurz. Guvf terng pvepyr qvivqrf gur fcurer vagb gjb urzvfcurerf, yrg'f pnyy gurz N naq O.

Jurer (n,o) vf gur ahzore bs gubfr bgure cbvagf ylvat va gur erfcrpgvir urzvfcurerf, (n,o) zhfg or bar bs: (0,3), (1,2), (2,1), be (3,0).

Nqqvat gur 2 cbvagf gung yvr ba gur terng pvepyr (naq gurersber va N naq O), gur ahzore bs gbgny cbvagf va gur erfcrpgvir urzvfcurerf zhfg or: (2,5), (3,4), (4,3) be (5,2). Nyy bs gurfr srngher bar pybfrq urzvfcurer pbagnvavat 4 be zber bs gur cbvagf.

(Arrqf gb or nppbzcnavrq jvgu fvzvyne cebbsf, be trarenyvfrq gb nppbhag sbe, fpranevbf jurer 3, 4 be 5 bs gur bevtvany cbvagf yvr ba gur fnzr terng pvepyr).
Funny. But is there really a bubble?
Probably, but this does not mean that there aren't good ideas.
Generate "Fake Data" in Ruby (Names, Emails, Usernames, Addresses, ...)
It feels like a bubble in many ways -- full employment (of programmers anyway), tons of "me too" sites. Interestingly there's also probably another recession coming on soon, which will probably have a negative impact one way or another. If we're not in a bubble, we may be at the crest of some sort of ripple or wave at least.
I doubt I could do a proper rigorous proof, but pigeonhole principle comes to mind.
If DMCA applied to physical World...
Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky)

House Of Leaves (Mark Danielewski)
Charlie Stross: Why I don't like Amazon's Kindle
Google Joins NORAD to Track Santa
Exposed: Why tv-links was really shut down
7 Most Evil Websites on Earth
You can see my list of recommended books on my blog. They really are the books I endorse.
Talk about the 'bubble' has been going on for years now. Does this not indicate that it isn't actually a bubble? Is industry growth really of bubble proportions?
Defective Anti-Piracy 'Kill switch' dropped from Vista
Chess and poker are fundamentally different problems.
Unfortunately this argument is going to come down to arguing about the definition of "complex" and things like that.

But I will still reiterate these points:

1. A great deal more effort has gone into computer chess than computer poker. When that amount of effort is put into computer poker, computers will be better than humans at poker.

2. The argument can be made that poker is harder or more complex than chess for computers, but the opposite is definitely true of humans today. If you don't study chess hard from the age of ten and then dedicate your life to it starting in your teens, you can't be the best. The amount of study (not playing) is probably an order of magnitude difference. In practice this means that any great chess player could switch to poker, study hard, play hard, and have a chance at making it, but no great poker players could switch to chess.

Fundamentally, sports in which real money is gambled will probably never reach the competitive level of play of non-gambling sports. Chess has a rating system and is setup so that the players of similar calibar play each other. Contrast this with poker where professionals are always actively seeking to play against worse players (with higher bank rolls).