skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Social networking is but an AOL paradigm. Yahoo and Google and Microsoft all have the elements of a social networking but chose not to pursue it, or half-assed it over the year, but I have more faith in Google being able to pull it off and succeeding than the other companies or even Facebook. But then again, the point of Facebook was never to care about social networking, they aspire to be an advertising powerhouse.
What I really want is a link in the feed to the item on news.yc itself -- not just the source link. Part of the value is the discussion and having to find it again on news.yc is a pain.
Creative and Noncreative Problem Solvers Exhibit Different Patterns of Brain Activity
World's Scariest Stock: Google
Moi.
Equity. It's called dilution.
We have enough data to know that the company can't even pay their first employee.
I nearly have finished c and i hope to complete c++ within few months.After that what shold i learn ruby,python,perl or lisp.I mean which language is the most powerful?
When you SHOULD Rewrite Your Software:

When it's a house of cards.

Perhaps I'm a little jaded, but I've built a very nice career rewriting software that never should have been written in the first place. Of the existing code I've encountered, at least 95% would never have passed a code review by me (or anyone else who knew what to look for).

The problem is that we're so committed to pass user acceptance testing that we never subject the source code and data base design to the same rigors.

I like to think I've seen it all: one and two character variable names that mean nothing, homemade routines for <sorting, selecting, you name it>, memory leaks, iterations to nowhere, upward branches to nowhere, data base schemas that would make M. C. Escher jealous, and on and on and on. Face it, if programmers were doctors, we'd all be dead.

As a constant victim of the "You Can't Get There From Here Syndrome", I often tell my clients the same thing, "It's not how soon we get started, it's how soon we finish AND how capable we are to handle the next revision".

Often rewriting is the last best hope.
How to Build Decent Productivity Software
I would guess that somewhere on their site you would find information about legal issues that come up when you arrange financial transactions between other parties. It will probably be US-centric, but it would be worth looking.
The point of Facebook was always to care about social networking, and they still haven't public announced an aspiration to be an advertising powerhouse.
"more suits"? C'mon, that just sounds childish.

Often the "first few tech guys" don't have to do much more than create a working prototype.

It's extremely common (I'd venture to guess 80+% of the time) that the product that is launched is substantially different than the original concept. So, the initial coders are there to help prove the viability of the idea, not always to write 100% production-ready code.
Our startup Seekler just launched (alpha release). Feedback is much appreciated
http://seekler.com

In a nutshell, Seekler makes it easy to find and create lists of the best stuff (songs, movies, artists, comics, jokes, restaurants, or anything else you can think of). Seekler merges users' lists together to create 'community lists' that display the aggregated opinion of the entire community. Some of the popular community lists include Best Movies, Best Cities to Visit, and Best Presidential Candidates.

We're doing a staged launch, so we're limiting the number of user accounts for now (until we complete some important features). However, you can still search for and view Seekler's community lists on a wide variety of topics.

We'd really appreciate any questions, comments, or criticism about the site. Thanks!
"Google already has so much data on you, depending on how many Google apps you already use."

Call me a little old school, but I think like my Paulie in Goodfellas. He didn't want anyone hearing what he said and he didn't want anyone hearing what was said to him.

I use Google for search and Yahoo for apps. Imagine any one entity knowing who I am AND what I search for. Ewwww.
How's it going for you? Praise? Complaints?
You need to provide a lot more info if you expect us to make a rational suggestion. There are a lot of good questions and thoughts in the comments. But at this point it's only speculations.
If It Looks Like a Cow, Swims Like a Dolphin and Quacks Like a Duck, It Must Be Enterprise Software
S3 makes storage just easy. EC2 makes hosting easy but we still need to test it out to see if it scales, cost wise.
Around 3%.
Raganwald: Zen in the Art of Rewriting
Microsoft Puts Money Down on Web 2.0 Trend
While the Facebook deal got all the attention, two smaller partnerships to bring offerings from pure play Web 2.0 vendors to Microsoft SharePoint might be the biggest news yet of things to come.
I really doubt you have 'finished' C (and C++ is even harder to really master).

There is not really a language that is absolutely more powerful than another; but some languages are more suited to certain tasks.

You should read this, it answers a lot of your questions: http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html
It was so early that we had no books to open, and they were business guys who would not have understood our code if we'd shown it to them. All we did was explain what we were doing.
Frankly, google doesn't have much of a chance. They are desperate in this space. This is evidenced by them blindly pumping ~billion into myspace. Orkut is a flop, except in brazil. Meanwhile facebook continues to lay waste to the industry.
It would make sense: while they would spend their time debugging and fine tuning their beloved baby of a kernel you would just use their work and add value on top of it.
I wonder about it scaling though.

Yet another firm that starts up in Eugene and moves on to greener pastures (or actually, in this case, sunnier, less green pastures).
Front page starts with a link to itself.
First Mover Disadvantage
First mover advantage is commonly cited as being a strategic opportunity. This is largely because by being the first company to bring a new concept to market you will have a unique opportunity to create barriers. However, being the first mover also has several key disadvantages that first movers should be aware of and try to manage...
I'll email you privately.
What are you talking about? I was in school for 4 years flat.
Fred Wilson: What is a "lead investor?"
Lengthy and in-depth is an understatement. Great job, worth reading!
Yeah, I've seen all the Lisp screencasts. They're great, but I'm looking for a professional training product on DVD that is sequential and really takes people new to Emacs up to proficiency and that teaches experienced Emacs users new tips and tricks. Something that is unlikely to appear for free. I'd be willing to pay several hundred dollars per license for quality training.

We have 50+ developers that are using Emacs, and a dozen more that have never used Emacs but need to do so in the future. I regularly drop coin on training materials for our design staff, but there are no compelling AV materials for our developers. There is no company equivalent to Total Training for most developer and sysadmin tasks, for example, unless you want to get an MCSE or something.

I've spent over $75K on video training for our designers this year (Total Training, Lynda, NAPP, etc.), but our developers usually end up using online documentation and a few books. I think there is a market opportunity for developer-focused video/multimedia training materials. And sysadmin stuff too, for that matter.
I notice a different formula applies for an upstart competitor. Quintura gets mentioned in the third sentence. This is different from Men's Wearhouse, where an article on suits being back benefits business regardless of how many people see the company name. They can afford the "expert, expert, client quote" pattern burying their name deeper.
That's ridiculous, they care about "social graphs". If I'm not somebody's friend I can't view their profile. I don't meet people on Facebook like I do with any other service or in real life, I simply establish an alternative identity and throw all my pictures and mundane details into it.

As for their aspirations of being in advertising not being announced? And?
I think a lot of us are curious about your company. How many private emails will you send?
People keep passing around that little story about Orkut is only popular in Brazil but never go beyond that. Orkut has a 68 million users, it's not Myspace or Facebook numbers, but a flop? Jesus Tapdancing Christ, when was your last project scaling at 68 million?

And who's to say that Orkut is even Google's response to Facebook. It was an acquisition, if anything I see it as a technology buy. They wanted to know how a social network would operate and function and they bought something that works in the International market to test it.

But I still think my point still stands, social networking is just a paradigm. It is not separate service or platform, it is just how features are organized. And almost every feature Facebook has, GYM has. The only innovation Facebook ever done was come out with poke. But then again, I've been pinging or yt?-ing my friends since AOL 2.1.
"I can't believe Mark Cuban is a billionaire and I'm not"

That thought has occurred to me.
That's an excellent point. My follow-up question is: how easy/hard is it to find advertisers for brand new sites? I know that AdSense wants you to have 100K uniques (or something like that)...
Brian, excellent point. The gold is always in the data that you collect so trying to sell/license the data is an option. The problem is that you need a long(er) runaway to execute that strategy. You need some investment (maybe even a large one) to sustain you while you're in the red.
I think "Grand Theft Auto" is a horrible game. It's as close to pornography for the game business as you can get

Wrong:

(At bottom) http://www.seanbaby.com/nes/atari2600.htm

http://www.seanbaby.com/nes/egm09.htm
That's very interesting! I find it interesting that you'd wanna show an ad to a person coming from Google. Would you lose a possible registration/lead if that person thought that there's too many ads on the site? What if you turn this upside down and show ads to people who are already 'hooked' to your product?

Definitely an interesting insight!
Adsense and adbrite have no minimum traffic requirements and cost nothing to get started in. You just won't get a payment until you've accumulated $100, which may take a while.
Do you mean the "Seekler" image in the top left links to itself?
Facebook employees meddling with profiles?
"Suits" is no more insulting than "tech guys" or "hackers".

As to the difference between the initial product and the initial launch, that's just as true of the idea as the code.

In fact, experience with the prototype and its development is what reveals what the viable idea actually is.

If the difference between the prototype and the product is large, the prototype development clearly had huge value, and it was largely due to the "tech guy".

If it's not large, the relative contribution of the tech guy ranges from secretarial to huge, depending on the idea.
SftpDrive Makes Managing Files on your Server Easy
Leopard's default system icon for a "Generic PC"
Adbrite has a minimum payment of $5, I got a payment of $5.36 from them recently.
Visualizing Data for the Masses: Information Graphics at The New York Times
Technically we have enough data to know that the company PREFERS not to pay their first employee.
"I'm not sure what you're basing your statements on. But it sounds like you've gotten a very bad deal in the past. Or, you've had no deals in the past...."

Well, okay, if we're going to make ASSumptions:

Maybe you're just sensitive to this situation because you are ALSO trying to get some poor schmuck to take 2% equity and no salary to implement YOUR big business idea, which is all you have to contribute to the venture? Or maybe you're a hacker that took 2% equity for implementing someone else's idea and you're trying to rationalize your empyty bank account and minimize the cognitive dissonance for yourself?

I'm going to ASSume there is something in YOUR past that makes you unable to hear the fire alarm bells and see what a bad freaking deal the OP is being offered.
"Microsoft and Oracle, for example, both needed 10 years of incredibly work to get to their IPOs"

Most people forget than Microsoft never tried to get to IPO. They were FORCED to go public when their ESOP reached 500 employees. Imagine that, earning revenue and going public against your wishes when you already have enough cash.
ROFL! Can't wait to see the one for an "iPod brick"
A new and cool Forum for discussing barcodes
Orkut was an internal Google project and launched a month before Facebook.
...to most of the enterprising people I know as well...b/c he's just very visible. I bet if some of the richest people in history blogged, a lot of people would feel that way towards a good percentage of them too.
You're arguing semantics mostly. The bottom line is, Facebook is doing a piss poor job of being an advertising marketplace, and a pretty good job of being a social network.
68 million is larger than Facbeook, just so you know.
"If I were Google, I would start buying stakes in new search start-ups."

So what you're saying is that if you were Google, you'd provide a subsidy to anyone willing to make some sort of plausible search engine?

They're stuck, here. They can't buy stakes in smaller companies without eventually paying someone to build a better Google (at the expense of the current Google), but there's not much else they can do to get around the fact that, as the best company in their business, they have nowhere to go but down.
haha, wtf?

I understand what you're trying to achieve with this mathematical model, but I couldn't follow your logic at all...
Facebook - http://www.aarongreenspan.com/letter/
taoyue.com: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men
http://decenturl.com/news.ycombinator/earlier-ycnews-discuss...
What an odd way to start an interview.
I agree that often no salary != founder. For instance, a recruiter, legal advice, or short term contractor might agree to a small equity share instead of a payment. Without more information, we can't be sure about the current situation.

But it sounds like there are only 2 other founders, no employees, and no product. I'm not sure if there is any funding or investment at this point either. Because the original poster would be the first technical employee, I'm going to guess there hasn't been much prototyping either.

Considering that this guy would be the third in the company and would be the first guy with a technical background, I think it sounds like a no salary == founder situation.
Flare Visualization Took Kit.
Heh. This is the second 'Google is overpriced' article I've seen from the same user. A few new howlers:

"Google's core competency - search -- has barriers to entry the size of LEGO walls. If two guys starting from their dorm room were able to topple one-time reigning search king Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO), what makes you think that Google itself is any more secure?"

What, indeed? Well, for starters, Larry and Sergei are probably aware that, if it's 1998 all over again, the next Larry and Sergei are going to eat their lunch. This is sort of how France was aware in 1939 that, if it was 1914 again, the Germans would go straight for Paris.

"Look no further than the whopping price Google was forced to offer up for DoubleClick as proof of what can happen when you pit a couple of ludicrously cash-rich companies against each other."

I would suggest looking a lot further, actually. Most of Google's acquisitions go unreported (at least that's the impression I get from people in a position to know). Obviously, the most overpriced deal will get the most attention -- but that's practically a tautology. Google is probably able to buy smaller startups for less because they pay half the cost in dollars, and half the cost in I'm-working-for-Google cred.

"That said, binding the company's fortunes so tightly to an approach that has left heaps of corpses in the corporate graveyard is more than a touch frightening."

Which corpses does he have in mind? If he's thinking of dot.coms from the late 90's, he's thinking of the early version of a business Google got right, which seems as relevant as noting that Henry Ford was doomed because look at what happened to to that horse-drawn carriage company down the street. I don't know what else he could have in mind -- television, radio, product placement, and outdoor advertising aren't doing noticeably poorly (and if their returns do start to drop, the first thing to check is whether or not it's Google's fault).

"Google forecast: Underperformance, with a slight chance of greatness
Again, I love Google, and I have huge respect for the company's accomplishments. The company could innovate itself to outstanding returns for many more years to come. But given the... fat valuation on the shares, I certainly wouldn't bet on it."

That's it. That's the case against Google. Good, but not 52X earnings on $4 billion in annualized earnings great.
I agree with just about everything said here. I don't feel so strongly about some of those points, but they're all legitimate arguments to a certain degree. However, there's one thing I'd like to add to the author's argument.

Google lacks one thing that will prevent its true value from growing into its current market capitalization: trust. We already trust so much of our lives to Google. They know what we search for and do on the web, what we do with our time (Calendar), who we speak to and what we say (Gmail), and so much more.

People (and the regulatory authorities) were skeptical (and afraid) of Google's acquisition of Double-Click because of the "scariness factor." Soon, Google will hit a point where people will no longer trust it with certain kinds of information. People's lack of trust, or perhaps anti-trust legislation, will provide some setbacks for the company in due time.

Of course, this will leave "gaps" for more trustworthy young entrepreneurs to take the stage in certain areas; areas that people no longer trust Google to dominate. In reality, Google has nearly unlimited potential, but all-in-one integration in our lives can only reach a certain point before we become uncomfortable.
Ask YC: We have a common challenge; share strategies to overcome it?
Stamina. Or rather the fatigue that results from lack of it. Ok, so while pursuing my startup effort, I've noticed a desire growing inside of me - a desire to locate some sort of establishment that caters to people like me who need meth-laced quadruple expressos. I haven't found such a thing yet, Starbucks refuses to even consider the need seriously - let alone research the market viability (I can't be the only one, right? - and my doctor doesn't believe my claims at being depressed and needing anti-depresents to "perk things up a bit" ... in the meantime - anyone want to share stamina hacks? I guess we can discuss workflow hacks to to figure out how to schedule things more efficiently so as to work more productively when starting a startup, but I'm talking about when you've woken up at 3:30am, and now it's 1am the next day, your brain shut off hours ago, and you don't want to eat for extra energy because you fear the blood necessary to digest the meal will hamper what little ability to think you have left as Adult Swim comes to an end. What do you guys use as "emergency" stuff? Meditation? Yoga? Ninja hand seals? stretching? Ice cold shower? Cross-brain stimulation drills? Go for a quick sprint outside naked? Seriously any new ideas I haven't tried would help just from a novelty perspective. Care to share?
I faced a similar question myself and decided to try adsense and adpinions, I put up a little line saying basically if this pisses you off let us know. No one really has, but I'm sure some find it bothersome. I am thinking about doing the wordpress thing and not showing ads to logged in users. If you use hard stats(pagviews,uniques, etc) to get advertisers you may not want to use this method.

I think I am going to switch to a donation based way becuase people either really see the value in my site or they don't and just leave anyway.

Great Question, I am interested in seeing what other say as well.
When I displayed the Movies list, it appeared with only results 1-10 of 257.
Maybe you should have the option to increase results to 20, 50 or even 100 results per page.

Good luck.
As scary as it may seem to some of us, I can't wait to see it come to fruition.
I don't think that nobody wants to pay for their product. If I could get a CD for 3 or 4$ I would happily buy it, let it be only because of the nice cover photo or to have something in my hand that I have given money for. Let alone the uncompressed quality of the music.

But:
It does cost me 12-18$. And I know that the record label gets most of it, not the artist. Thus I pay most of my money to the stupid lawyers, who use other peoples instruments to record, carry the music to the shops, spend my money to sue people who don't pay and do all these dumb things that need neither talent nor intelligence.
Instead they use also my money to give shit contracts to the ones who produce all this: the artist, who creates in the real value.
The author of this article is completely right: In our ecomomy the ones who produce value are the ones who take all the risk and get the least profit for it. The distributors get it all and they make the rules.

This is definitely wrong!
Great idea. It is pretty tedious to go through that many pages of results. Thanks!
Apple ignores Java developers with Leopard
Interesting. What would you expect to happen when you click on that image? We weren't sure what to do with that link, so we just had it take you to the main page. This seems to be a pretty common pattern (Reddit, Digg, and Favebook all behave similarly), but if this goes against user's expectations, we'd happily change it.
When I was very young, I thought "well, I'll start a business, retire early, and enjoy my life." Now I have so many ideas that I could split into ten of me and still not see them all come to fruition. I guess I'm destined to be such a serial entrepreneur, for better or for worse.

The best line of the post: "Money, but not just 'I can buy a fancier cashmere car cover' kind of thing - just as often I think it's money as a way to keep score"

So true.
I've always wondered why enterprise software is so shitty. The HMO Kaiser uses a DOS-based keyboard-controlled interface to schedule appointments. The interface consists only of white or green dots on a black background. But the computers are all fairly powerful machines running Windows XP.

Making an appointment requires the user (secretary, usually) to hold the arrow key down for several seconds as the screens scroll by. It is really the most time-wasting piece of software I have ever seen.

The interesting thing is that Kaiser probably bought the software at the lowest possible price, choosing the crappiest company to develop it. But in the end, it wastes so much time, confuses their employees so much, and pisses of their customers so much that it has probably cost them far more than it would have to just buy well-designed custom software.

In the future, I honestly think the best enterprise software will be in the form of web-based systems that run in browsers. It's easily updatable, uses standards-based technology, is fairly cheap to develop, and-- perhaps most importantly-- the users of the software have experience using interfaces on the web. Everyone uses the internet, even Kaiser's secretaries, so that will completely eliminate the learning curve of these retarded custom interfaces.
Veropedia - Startup making Wikipedia more presentable
So you disagree with the specifics, but agree in general terms that GOOG is overpriced?
How many keypressees on a Mobile phone is your URL?