skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Europe is not just one thing. There are many countries in europe that have very different labour laws and regulations.

South\Eastern Europe is now the place with the most growth, like an "up and comming" neighborhood, and you can get away with a lot more there.

Back home, most of my friends that have "starter" jobs, are actually doing it under the rug. Go to work, regurarly, get paid, but they don't officially result in the payroll of the company (to avoid all the obligations that come with it).

After a couple of years of work, once you gained some experience you move there, or somewhere else in a more stable status.

I am assuming a startup will probably be the same. First years it will all be under the rug. Remember, laws are made to be broken to a certain extent, but they also prevent 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.

Sure some large companies do provide them, but some don't (ala Walmart), and this nation leaves it's citizen under the mercy of capitalism (which just wants you healthy enough to perform your duties).

Remember, Europeans work to live, Americans live to work.
C maybe isn't the easiest choice of a first language, but I disagree that it's a bad one. No single language will make you a good programmer, because a good programmer needs to be capable of thinking in high-level abstractions and also needs to understand what goes on close to the metal. No language that I know of is good for both of those (Forth comes closest), and C is excellent for the latter.
I am so tired of hearing this word "hacker". Use, programmer, software engineer, coder whatever.

There are appropreate times to use the word "hack", when i am doing something really quick and dirty, just b/c it needs to get out asap, but probably I am not really proud of my solution, as it probably less maintanable on the long run.

When you heare phrases like: I did something "hackish", or my bug fix is kinda of a "hack", usually are not something programmers are proud of. Usually that means I did a quick and dirty solution to that problem, and not an elegant one.

In an early startup, i guess, being quick is the most important thing, but after a while you have to start caring about the long term of the code you are writting or end up like friendster, where their poor performance killed the company.

A good programmer will use a "hack" only as a last resort.
flame bait, this is just arguing semantics. it doesn't really matter one way or the other.
"What is the idea worth?" -- Not much really. People have ideas all the damn time, but it is execution that counts. Maybe %2-%5 of the company, MAX.

That 2-5% is worth only if you come with something novel + a plan and strategy how to make it happen, and some contacts-help.

If all you say let's "do a music application for kids under 12", that is worth nada.
An Alien has taken over Pmarca's blog , he's had some strange posts in the last few days.
It is coming eventually. I thought the formula was;

idea -> code something -> market it -> users -> ???? -> $$money

so they are at the "users" part, once the figure out the "???" then they make some money.
If I might suggest a simpler question?

"How do I value this idea maximize my odds of getting genuinely rich from this venture?"

The question isn't "how much is this worth?" at all. It's "how do I price this to maximize the odds of success and the dollar worth of my share."

If you do very well and sell for $10m, the practical difference between 33% and 50% in terms of your quality of life is quite small.

On the other hand, a feeling of uneven split between founders, particularly as the start up moves further and further from the basic concept you started with, is a potential contributor to a "50% of nothing is nothing" situation.

Once the game starts, it doesn't matter who put what on the table: if you're not actively getting screwed get your head down and focus on making what you "own" worth something, rather than worrying about how the loot is divided.
Well, mint.com has a "???" filled in. They'll make money from referral kickbacks for the services they recommend. Hence why I was expecting to hear about some revenue generated.
Thanks for the advice (and thanks to the others who responded to my post). I think I'll still give K&R a shot, possibly with the notes a13x recommended (I haven't had the time to check them out yet), because I don't want to buy another book right now. If I find that I'm not getting excited about programming or not learning well from K&R, I'll switch to Python.
Yeah... their affiliate programs pay insane kickbacks, ING Direct is around $100 dollars per new account with an additional $50 bonus to the person that opens a new account and they offer the best savings account rate in the USA, so Mint should get lots of signups.
For Google, Advertising and Phones Go Together
So THAT explains that Bionic Woman post!
Does it have to be legal?
ardit, no offense, but your lack of knowledge about the etymology of the word is apparent. I hate to jump onto this flame-bait, but here's the real definition of a "hacker" from the illustrious jargon file:

1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. RFC1392, the Internet Users' Glossary, usefully amplifies this as: A person who delights in having an intimate understanding of the internal workings of a system, computers and computer networks in particular.

2. One who programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who enjoys programming rather than just theorizing about programming.

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/hacker.html
ING Direct pays out less than HSBC, and I'm sure a host of other e-savings account that spend less to advertise. That said, I think you're right about them having a lucrative referral program. When I spoke with Patzer about it last summer, they were one of the big ones he mentioned.
Wrong. Maybe to you... but for many many years it has meant something completely different. Scroll down and find yourself enlightened....
Does it have to be run where it'd be illegal?
It's really amazing how quickly cutting edge biotech trickles down to the undergraduate level.
If your product is inherently viral, but isn't taking off, does that mean it's a bad idea? Or just that it hasn't tipped yet?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_surplus

"Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist and father of Monetarism, argued that many of the fears of trade deficits are unfair criticisms in an attempt to push macroeconomic policies favorable to exporting industries. He stated that these deficits are not harmful to the country as the currency always comes back to the country of origin in some form or another (country A sells to country B, country B sells to country C who buys from country A, but the trade deficit only includes A and B). In fact, in his view, the "worst case scenario" of the currency never returning to the country of origin was actually the best possible outcome: the country actually purchased its goods by exchanging them for pieces of cheaply-made paper. As Friedman put it, this would be the same result as if the exporting country burned the dollars it earned, never returning it to market circulation."

It's worth keeping in mind that trade is not a race or competition. It doesn't hurt us in any way if Europe accumulates wealth quickly.

I think the idea that trade deficits are bad and trade surpluses are good is largely an artifact of the way we talk about it. It wouldn't sound as scary if Lou Dobbs talked about "America's looming capital account surplus," even though a capital account surplus is logically equivalent to a trade deficit. Right now, foreigners are buying up a small share of our capital goods and sending us consumer goods in exchange. At some point in the future, those same foreigners will sell the capital goods and use them to purchase consumer goods from us. In an of itself, neither situation is something to be concerned about.
Do you have any non-human capital for this challenge or does it have to be created from scratch?
Our trade deficit is bad because it is combined with an enormous fiscal deficit... we're not exporting anything other than currency and we're simultaneously borrowing positively enormous amounts of money. If we had a trade surplus, we probably wouldn't have to borrow as much money.
"from scratch" is not specified. Part of the challenge, I assume, is not inventing assumptions that don't exist.

I'll see how much capital I can get on short notice. Seed amounts (a few thousand for equipment like PCs and office stuff, base living expenses) I can spot. Office space too, though we're in the process of moving from a small office to a larger one, so I can't spot you a private office this month.

Real capital, what you would need to hire and whatnot... that's a process that takes longer than a month, so it's not immediately applicable. There's no reason not to raise capital, though.
Will giving you a bunch of money allow me to "Work at HOME! and earn $5000 a week!"?

Jokes aside... Can you elaborate on just what "this" and "it" is? Cause "this and "it" sound like giving your company money without provisions so that you can continue to remain in its employ.

Superfluous disclosure: I have no idea if I speak for anyone else here.
Social Network Portability
You don't really believe this do you? Everyone has ideas, very few have the skills to execute those ideas, execution has the value, not the idea.
It seems to me that the strategy was to loosen some panties and inspire some laughter. I enjoyed the fruits of both efforts.
Haha, good point.

You keep your own money.

Think "walk miles for cancer research" drive. The catch is that what creates the profit needs to be made / done this month. It's against the spirit of the contest to log income from elsewhere.

Also, this has nothing to do with my employment, nor are you giving me or my company anything. It's merely a "profit pledge drive." Self reported.

BUT: something like this, in such a short time, is best done collaboratively. That's the objective. It's a goal, and nothing more or less.

Edit: see update.
My 2c: At best, this is a prank. Nothing adds up, including the LinkedIn link. If andrew_yates were serious, he would have explained things in a simpler manner.
:) guess I fell for ING's marketing then.
> I think ideas really are a dime a dozen.

But really good ideas are rare.

I understand that an idea not backed by an implementation is near useless, but the current mantra about the value of ideas is sort of like saying that cars are a dime a dozen, and it's the driver that matters.

All other things being equal, though, your raw materials (cars or ideas or what have you) do matter.

Current patent nonsense aside, there are often good reasons why people do not want others to know exactly what they are planning or doing, or want a means to restrict others from attempting their own implementation.
This is actually breaking news, because sources indicate that the GPhone will not actually be a phone, but rather a software suite package for mobile devices, based on linux.

So the idea of a GPhone device competing directly with the iPhone wont happen right now. Google simply wants other handset makers to use their cell phone software (they dont charge any license fees, it is entirely ad funded).

I'm a bit disappointed they wont build special hardware but hopefully some of the good handset makers will adopt Google's software since it is open.
I don't think most people with good ideas are capable of recognizing whether they are good or really good ideas, the market gets to decide.

Except for me, I know I have really good ideas. ;)
Ah, ok. I remember reading that it couldn't compete with the lame Yahoo! equivalent for some reason.
Same here. I've been working on it a couple of years, and I'm sure I'll be working on it for years to come.

I can tell that you have the drive, curiosity and the desire, though. I think that's the biggest part of it.
Everything else is just learning and not putting your foot through the monitor the umpteenth time your code doesn't work. :)
I'm in a hurry. I'm making this up as I go. I'm in the luck business of diversifying risk over lots of stupid ideas very quickly.
I dunno if I'd be disappointed by Google not building a real phone. They're not what I imagine when I think "hardware."
It's true that one of the shady aspects of economics is the tendency to lump anything thats not observable in the model into an exogenous catch-all "intangible factors" variable.

But fair play to economists, they have been banging on about the role of institutions as a key determinant to economic growth for a while now. For example:

http://econpapers.repec.org/article/tafapeclt/v_3A11_3Ay_3A2...)

In part it's because the empirical data supports their view, though there's obviously a retrospective bias and a chicken and egg problem - did good institutions result from economic growth or vice versa?
The $987,345,897,349,875 question is...

<ultra bold>What, PRECISELY, is it that you want the members of this community to do?</ultra bold>

- Write code for you?
- Write a check to you?
- Let you invest in our startups and liquidate by the end of the month?

The X-Men should bring you on as a cofounder for your keen ability to stump people with your being vague. This may cause problems for Professor, though, because he'd then have nothing to read.
Seems like it involves making money in whatever we want and pledging this money to Andrew Yates's venture "in spirit" and he needs to get 100k worth of profit pledges. I think it has to be money that would have not been made if it wasn't for the challenge, but this point seems unclear.

He is apparently offering 3k to people that are willing to work at this under his direction. I would probably take him up on the offer but I'm on the other side of the USA and only have fake hacking skills.
thinnest. client. ever.
Pledge profits "in spirit" in a collaborative effort to actually build something that makes money.
Clarification: Pledge profits "in spirit" in a collaborative effort to actually build something that makes money.

If it can be done for hacking projects, it can be done for business.
Ditto other webkit browsers - from my Nokia N95 this looks horrible.
It was just kind of confusing because this type of challenge was new to all of us, like I imagine it was to you as well. Good luck with your new job, I'm sure it will be an interesting VC firm.

This is of course very bubble-tastic but there is a lot of money in popular Facebook apps. I saw an app for "Fans of Grey's Anatomy" that had 100,000 active users yesterday, there is definitely money in reproducing fan sites for popular TV shows and bands and movies as Facebook applications.
Machine Learning and Dragons - A Game
A little Python/pygame game I wrote using Genetic Programming for the dragon AI.
The 7 Pillars of Pretty Code
Haha, yes, deliciously bubble-tastic.

Also, "VC firm" means something else that we're not doing. This is an angel fund run by bored geeks in silicon valley. That's it.
> I am so tired of hearing this word "hacker". Use, programmer, software engineer, coder whatever.

Exactly. Using words out of the jargon file is crass. You don't "learn to hack". It's just wrong and painful, seeing that phrase.
It'd be nice to provide more than just Skype and Firefox. OpenOffice, Pidgin and Evince would be worthwhile additions.
Bite your tongue. Folks with far less to show are regularly promoted to sainthood here.

Marc climbed up from grad student to monster IPO, rode out huge corporate stuff at Netscape/AOL, left and started another company, raised huge money, built a huge business during the dot-com winter, and piloted the ship home through a dizzy chain of IPO/merger/acquisition. He is now blogging the best stuff about entrepreneuring you can read anywhere on the net right now.

You should listen to this guy...
For some reason I find this article title disturbing. "Where's my money?" like a drug deal gone bad and people start shooting each other.

Plus the link doesn't work.
Need a plain-English NDA for your startup? Just $3 for the one we put together.
Step One: Hold the meeting somewhere other than Neto Cafe. Put the money saved by not buying $13 salads toward your $100k.

Why is it that googling for "ByIQ" doesn't turn up any useful hits?
http://www.startupnorth.ca/2007/10/06/angel-financing-%E2%80...
looks like there was a non-standard dash in the URL and it was filtered out of the submission instead of replacing it with the escape characters
I'm not sure I understand, but it sounds interesting, you talked about giving people money, and I think I'd be a candidate, so maybe you can help me with an example :) Actually, this might even be the best way for you to illustrate to everyone, so if you can make some kind of canonical statement, it'd be awesome -- the rest of what's written is kinda scattered.

I've been building something in my spare time for the last few weeks, and it could be making money in the next month. (It sounds like that's what you're looking for.) So... what would happen now, exactly? It sounds like all you want me to do is email you some proof of profit at the end of the month or something, is that right? You talked about spotting expenses, how would we arrange that?
Can anyone remember the news.yc ranking algorithm?
I'm building a clone just to learn more Rails (not going to release it) and I was looking for the algorithm that pg posted a while ago, but can't find it. Does anyone remember what it was or where I could find it?

Thanks a lot.
Ask YC: What is considered high level of ability ?
IQ ? SAT ? Experience ? Creative answer :) ?
extra points for nested parentheses in english sentences.

ONLY a coder would do such a thing ^-^
What about taxes in Europe compared to the US?
IPO on Nasdaq Portal?
Would you, as the CEO of a successful startup, consider taking your company public on Portal?
IQ? SATs? How dare you! Everyone knows those are not correlated with intelligence.
I feel for you.

I lived in Germany for a little while a few years ago. It has a very conservative culture when it comes to career paths.

My (German) girlfriend was quite talented in the area of hospitality management, but found it very difficult to get a job in hotel management due to not having her degree in the field (she'd had great marks in her international business degree though). Self taught skills were regarded negatively compared to a degree in the field.

In Australia, I'd worked as a journalist for the largest magazine and newspaper publishers in the country, and was training RHCAs and RHCEs for Red Hat, despite having neither a journalism nor computer science degree.

My girlfriend's mother never really understood how I could either not have gone to university, or changed careers. I doubt they'd understand why anyone would leave a job for a startup with a high likelihood of failure either.

When I read your post, I was reminded of a similar article about Asian students, who despite high marks, often exist in a culture that pushes them away from the unknown.

There are, however, always exceptions. Best of luck.
I have a feeling cperciva wins.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079
Its sad that MS and Intuit totally missed the boat on providing a service like this. User's fall over themselves signing up for 'free' services like this when really they are signing themselves up to be marketed to. Brilliant.
It is one of many necessary but insufficient conditions. Like having a clean criminal record when applying to college.
I considered putting down my IQ, but decided that would be a bit tacky so I just listed some of the areas of technology that interest me or that I feel I'm good in.

IQ and SAT stats do not strongly correlate with performance anyway.
Any time someone mentions "ability", you should ask "... to do what?"

If you're looking for ability to find new algorithms and prove their correctness, I probably win. If you're looking for ability to build a robust application (which is a key point to me -- I'm working on online backups, and the central point of backups is that they do NOT lose data, even if hardware failure occurs) I might win. If you're looking for ability to create an engaging Web 2.0 site, I definitely lose.

I'd assume that what YC means by "ability" is "ability to create whatever you've said on the application form that you intend to create" -- which in my case was an efficient, robust, and secure online backup system, but for most applications would be an engaging Web 2.0 site.

EDIT: Incidentally, it didn't even occur to me to mention the Putnam on the YC application form. For the "high level of ability" question I pointed towards my BSDCan'05 paper concerning stealing RSA keys on Intel CPUs with HyperThreading via an architectural side channel.
Spam. And not the good type either.
Edit: Solved, title now accurate.
I'd love some numbers on that:

Does 'active users' actually equate to profit? I hear clickthrough rates for advertising on facebook is something like 0.05%
If 100,000 users were active, that would equate to 50 clicks on adverts, which is probably going to make enough money to buy a coffee or something.
Let me get this straight. You want a startup to go from $0 to $100,000 in revenues in thirty days and prove it to you guys, in exchange for funding?
SAT scores correlate highly with academic performance. This should come as no surprise, since their whole purpose was to democratize college admissions by allowing those students who would do best at college to be accepted, regardless of their religion or social connections.

The fact that SAT scores correlate poorly with workplace success is a red herring -- SAT scores were never supposed to predict workplace success.
He wants n number of people to go from 0 to $100,000 in profit in exchange for nothing explicit except a mention of paid living expenses, though I imagine an investor relationship could certainly develop.
Does it really look like spam? Why? Several "startup types" have already found it useful, and at $3, you can hardly lose. To get a lawyer to write you something similar might cost you $300.

I posted it because I honestly thought it might be of interest, and useful, to startup founders.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=58193

Apparently the advertising clickthrough rates are better in the apps, possibly because a lot of facebook app advertisements are paid ads for other apps.
Can you post an email address? If you have one on your user page, it doesn't show up publicly which is a "feature", you need to retype in the about area of your profile page. Or email me at the address in my profile.
Does the money have to be freshly generated revenue (on top of either a $0 starting amount or $X existing revenue).

i.e. I have a business that generates $5k per month, saying you can use that towards your goal "in spirit" is pretty silly, right?

BTW have you heard of Steve Pavlina's Million Dollar Experiment?
http://www.stevepavlina.com/million-dollar-experiment.htm

This sounds a bit like it only for startups.
I think they want to know if you have achieved a high-level of ability in any field. This would indicate a certain discipline and application.
Just a minor nitpick:

There should probably be a comma between "Help" and "YC News".
It wouldn't be spam if it was properly advertised. A title that said "Plain English legal NDA for just $3" would have been fine. However, when an article is linked to, unless noted otherwise in the title, I expect to see content.
The Colbert maneuver. Nicely done.
Id say it means higher than most other people you know or have met.
Fair enough -- I've changed it to make that clear. No hard feelings :-), but perhaps a bit harsh to bam it as spam?
Perception matters more when we're talking about something that involves emotion. Sure, it rains more in inches in NY, but not in a depressing, all day, every day sorta way. Sorry, I just have to be annoyed at the Seattle rain.
www.byiq.com

The DNS will be resolved by sometime Monday.