skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Here's the background story, in case you missed it in April: http://kotaku.com/gaming/thinkgeek/thinkgeeks-8+bit-tie-not-...
Sorry, but this is health-care going back to pre-1850 levels with a Web 2.0 interface. If this becomes widespread, it defeats the whole idea of 'pay according to your means, get treatment according to your needs', social solidarity, etc.
I'm in the same boat, one of those dreaded single (and non-genius) founders.

But she makes a good point about that: not knowing your partner well can lead to all kinds of trouble down the road.

Picking a co-founder is not something that should be done lightly.
Another way of thinking about this is: don't take a job where your compensation is tied to a finite metric.

E.g. jobs that are paid by the hour, or based on how many units of something you produce.
I second that. Very good for deployment too.
Ask YC: how to create Web 2.0 beta flares?
Couldn't find a tutorial for the Gimp. What is the usual way to create them? If I steal them from somewhere, I won't have antialiasing...
And it looks like you would pay less interest.
Or perhaps these two things are caused by a third.
VC's Concerns About Successful Entrepreneurs
VCs generally get excited about backing entrepreneurs that have already successfully exited a venture. However, the stereotype of the repeat entrepreneur brings with it a concern...
You describe a social, not technical problem. There is already a solution today -- it's called your manager.

This is why the tools market is the domain of a few niche companies and IMO a waste of time for startups. Pain points at the level at which you could conceivably write code are all unique to the organization. It's a consultant's game -- A branching layer like you describe will be written in PowerPoint, not emacs. Do it and get yourself a promotion.
Interesting how life is cyclical like that.
I believe there are several problems with the premise of your question:

1) It assumes that the poster has described the entire problem. Due to the nature of printed material, things like background, emotions, personality, etc many times are not conveyed completely. Most questions are woefully under-detailed. Most times you are answering what you _think_ the person really asked.

2) It assumes that there is a generalization or rule that the question falls under. Things like "Do I like ice cream?" don't have any kind of generalization to have exceptions from. Not everything is quantitative.

3) It assumes that only one set of patterns can be determined from the same initial data. Many times, multiple patterns apply to the same data.

4) It's not the way people communicate. People are not logicians.When you are a kid and touch a hot stove, your mom didn't give you the formulae for thermodynamics. She probably said something like "Don't do that!" As you got older and our problems got more complicated, the stories got more elaborate. But they were always stories. This is because people naturally communicate by anecdote, something anthropologists have been observing for decades. An anecdote is always true -- but more specific theories and generalizations suffer from 1-3 above.

I admire your quest for certainty. I was that way myself back when I was younger, that is, until I realized -- -yikes! I'm doing it! See what I mean? It's everywhere.
How did you guys like PG's talk at FOWA '07 this morning?
Good. In case you hadn't noticed, most Americans do not agree with that concept. Maybe they oughta try it in Russia. Oh, wait. Too late.
The talk itself was awesome and the questions afterwards where fun. What I didn't quite get was why Ryan Carson claimed startups can happen everywhere, while PG took a more Valley-based standpoint. Kind of like a slap in the face or something?
I know I suck at picking colors. Being color blind doesn't help either!

I put together a small service that tells you what colors a url uses. So, if I see a website that has a nice color palette, I use my service to get the hex codes. It's way faster and easier than using the eye dropper! Here's the link:

Try putting in http://news.ycombinator.com

http://www.todotoh.com/rgb/rgbanalysis.aspx
Microsoft Looks to Social Networking for Zune 2.0
So the only ones who make money are those who actually provide value. What a concept.
At Least I Didn't Sue Apple
Just what we need. Another "expert" comes to a hackers' forum and declares that programmers suck at something else. Yawn.
Overview of Paul Graham's Future of Web Apps (FOWA) session
They are probably incomplete and may contain mistakes, though I do my best to be accurate. Chances are I'll be adding links to extra material and photos later on, so don't hesitate to come back and check.

steph-note: missed the beginning, very incomplete...
I think given personalities, different solution sets are viable. A charismatic person might bet more heavily on their charisma and ability to sell something, while a technical person might assume a "build it and they will come" strategy.

Both are viable and both can be write just a bit; but what if a charismatic person could also build something, or a hacker could actually sell something?

I love seeing all of the different opinions on YC.NEWS.
Great idea! A refreshing change from "Yet another social networking tool". Best of luck.
this was a big ear mark in the crossing the chasm book
I personally found Kent Beck's book very tedious and boring. In it , simple classes are bludgeoned into submission through the over use of tests.

From Ganssle's article at http://www.ganssle.com/articles/deconstructing%20xp.htm

"XP's motivating guru, Kent Beck, also has a new book out. Test Driven Development (Addison Wesley, 2003, ISBN 0-321-14653-0) focuses on XP's testing practice.

I bought the book because I'm fascinated with testing. It's usually done as an afterthought, and rarely hits the hard conditions. Unit tests are notoriously poor. The programmer runs his new function through the simplest of situations, totally ignoring timing issues or boundary conditions. So of course the function passes, only to inflict the team with agony when integrated into the entire system. XP's idea of writing the tests in parallel with the code is quite brilliant; only then do we see all possible conditions that can occur.

Beck argues for building tests first and deriving the code from these tests. It's sort of like building a comprehensive final exam and then designing a class from that. An intriguing idea.

But X what if the test is wrong? Test driven development (TDD) then guarantees the code will be wrong as well.

Worse, TDD calls for building even the smallest project by implementing the minimal functionality needed to do anything. Need a function to compute the Fibonacci series? Create the simplest possible test first X in this case, check to see that fibonnaci(0) is 0. Then write a function that passes that test. Try fibonnaci(1); that breaks the test, so recode both the test and the function. Iterate till correct.

The book shows how to build a factorial program, which results in 91 lines of code and 89 of test... after 125 compilations! Klaxons sound, common sense alarms trip.

Agile proponents love the interactive and fast action of this sort of method. But programming isn't about playing Doom and Quake. If you're looking for an adrenaline rush try bungee jumping.

125 compilations for a trivial bit of code is not fast. Dynamic? You bet. But not fast.

"

Test Driven Development is not quite the same as having unit tests or automated tests, which I believe the poster asked for. The jury is still very much out on how useful TDD (and XP for that matter) really is.

Many talented programmers believe XP/TDD is essentially hype.
.
This is not to say Pius is wrong, just to add a note of caution, be skeptical of the XP hype machine.

"Try it and decide for yourself" is probably the best advice possible
I'd rather talk to my kids and explain to them how the internet can be used safely.
Using color in information display graphics
I agree. It is very sad if parents feel that the only way to deal with porn is censorship. I think we can do better. Yes, kids need to be protected from dangers, but shielding them from information is an awfully ineffective way of protecting them against real dangers.
That is not really accurate. High skill jobs with finite metric's can pay well because it's easy to find your worth.

EX: A sales guy for a consulting firm that brings in 100 million a year in business can make a few million a year.

However a low skilled sales guy at the local Fry's is limited in how much he can bring in. The real trick is to find a <B>highly valuable</B> skill with finite metric's where you can be unusually productive. One of the best examples of this is Linemen in football vs. running backs. It's hard to demonstrate the difference between the best 99.99% and the 99.98% Linemen, but if you average .2 extra yards per play as a running back you can and will get payed for that.

PS: At some point it all comes back to basic economics. Find something in limited supply that people want and you will get payed for it.
Whats wrong with having things checked in? If you are a real development shop, checking in is your lifeline.
Most of his speeches (and Nandan Nilekani's for that matter) are ghost written, by a small team of smart MBA s from local elite schools like IIMs(Indian Institute Of Management). One of my school buddies is on that team that's how I know. I
f someone has a video, you can see whether he is reading a speech or delivering one.

And the speech itself is the usual CEO bullshit. Why has this been posted here?

Just something to be aware of.
I switched from bzr to darcs for two reasons; `bzr pull` over HTTP is incredibly slow and darcs lets you cherry pick individual changes to record. Oh, and darcs bugs out sometimes and refuses to let me apply certain patches.

As far as I can tell, they're identical otherwise.
I don't think pg's position contradicts the claim that startups can happen anywhere. All I've ever seen him claim is that a startup is far more likely to be successful in the bay area rather than elsewhere -- just like he has said that a startup is far more likely to be successful if it has 2-4 founders rather than a sole founder or more than 4 founders.

Given sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine -- but most pigs don't have sufficient thrust, and as a result most things which fly aren't pigs.
The Blurring Line Between Home And Business Tech
User Generated Advertising: Zooppa
Are you tired of creepy, stupid, buggy commercials?

Think you could do better?

Do it!

Shoot a video, draw a p'shopped ad, write an idea, get voted, get cash. Every month. And, if you like it, vote my entry for the C1 Citroen Contest:

http://zooppa.com/ads/14_c1deejay/video/553

Backstage:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bplOTS1xK_o

Don't wanna vote? Nevermind, I didn't spend a cent for that video. I'm becoming a master of zero budget short films. :)

Thanks!

ps Zooppa = italian mistranslation for "soup".
> Y Combinator is going to open source their angel money paperwork, to make it easier for "rich hackers" to invest.

Wow, that would be a great help to a lot of people. Any thoughts on when this will occur?
Thank goodness he didn't mention Plato.
I'm going to ignore 1&2 because they're snarky and unhelpful. And I have zero personal interest in making the rich richer.

But the last two are valid points.

The balance of power has changed. PHBs looking for technically brilliant but real-life-stupid engineers are going to fail. To lure talented tech away, you're going to have to pay for it. A lot.

The subtext I read into the plaintive pleas about "I can't find a technical cofounder" is "who will work for a pittance, both in money and options."

Which is what #4 is saying.

To hire brilliant coders, you have to treat them like equals, if not more than equals given that they have the mad skillz.
The guy at Fry's is a hourly wage worker, despite his title.

But the salesman who can convince Fortune 500 firms to spend millions on software licenses is an example of the type of person I was talking about, because there are no limits placed on him as to how much revenue he may bring in.

Also, not sure your if football example makes sense: if what you say about linemen is true, why do some get drafted in the first round?
Nine Steps to a Successful Online Community
Let's build a compiler (dated, but very good)
I can say from experience that those tips are all very true
I just went through half of this tonight, and it's superb. I had a working "compiler" in about an hour. Except I wrote it in C instead of Pascal, and it compiled to Forth (or really "stack computer bytecode").
Ruby on Rails vs ColdFusion - Hilarious Parody Commercial
The Inevitable March of Recorded Music Towards Free
Verizon to start calling and texting advertisements to customers? (pic)
Can't wait for those viagra text messages to start rolling in! A scan of the letter received is included on the page.
Don't give Google double the power
I seriously doubt it. Doctors have always had gentleman's agreements to refer patients to each other, and then refer the patient back once the specialist is done.

The only kind of payola that I've ever seen after 14 years in health care are drug companies purchasing cruises/lovely dinners, etc... for doctors.
Ironically, I think the position taken in this article is what threatens our democracy, not Google innovating in the advertising marketplace.
I am definitely interested in following this link - but it seems to be completely broken.
Within the next month, I hope.
It was a joke, people.
"I think acquirers may eventually have chief acquisition officers who will both identify good acquisitions and make the deals happen."

I know of one company that already has this, with a different title.
Its up on PGs site:
http://paulgraham.com/webstartups.html
I think one has to be flexible enough to understand the pros and cons of the modified idea/design suggested by YC ... Paul and his team are experienced enough to have clear big picture about how market (including angels and VCs) will respond to the your idea and whether little bit of tweaking can help !! Flexibility is also directly linked to the listening skills !!! Also i understand that chances of getting selected are high if you have a great team and they may invite you for completely new idea that they have in their mind and they think that you can deliver it, to this I think its a testing time whether you want to give-up on your idea and join the YC team to develop new idea or do you still want to stay with your original idea because you are passionate about it (catch-22 may be) ...
This is common practice in biotech and life sciences businesses, and probably in any other field where innovation happens at a rapid rate.
Typically when someone points out a "pattern" on yc, it's also just mainly based on their own personal experience... instead of say research that spans companies or even regions.

Ofcourse it's possible someone could prove me wrong with several examples...
REAL FREE CODE SOURCE !!
Is this going to be limited to standard paperwork for investments, or are you going to release standard paperwork for other things as well (e.g., startup incorporation, NDAs, etc.)?
In Facebook, Investing in a Theory
Was this talk filmed by chance?
"Then the effects of being measured by performance would propagate all the way back to high school, flushing out all the arbitrary stuff people are measured by now. That is the future of web startups." What an impressive conclusion - I hope it happens.
Ask YC: Non-US Founders, What's Your Story?
According to pg, there's been various non-us founders who moved to the valley. So, what's your story? What challenges did you have (legal or cultural)?

I'm asking because I'm considering doing the same (I'm from Amsterdam).
You're right. It completely creates a multi-tiered health care system. Those who can pay more get better care, and those who can't get worse care. But that system already exists. It's just off the record and off the books. You'll see more and more of this as the health care system worsens.

People who are wealthy have better insurance and congregate in wealthy neighborhoods. So, doctors and hospitals in that area are better funded and provide a higher quality of care. The brightest doctors compete for jobs in these areas, because they know that they will have more insured patients and get paid more over the course of their career. If you want the best doctors in a city, go to a clinic/specialist in the richest neighborhood.

Low income areas have a high concentration of low/no health insurance patients. So, the health care system in those areas tends to be underfunded and the doctors often get paid less. So, you'll see less competition for doctor jobs in those areas as well.

Everybody has access to Emergency Rooms regardless of the ability to pay, that's mandated by law. But, in low income areas, the Emergency Room generally looses money for the hospital, so it's underfunded and understaffed. In the wealthy areas, patients have insurance and can pay so the ER makes money for the hospital and is staffed accordingly.

Here in California if you have no or low insurance, good luck seeing a specialist unless it's a life or limb threatening Emergency. It's next to impossible to see an orthopedist or a dermatologist in LA unless you have great insurance or pay up front with plastic.

If you don't have health insurance, you get referred to the county health system which is generally terribly overburdened. ER's at County hospitals can routinely have a 12-24 hour waiting time. That is, if you break a leg, and go to a county ER in California, chances are, you'll sit in the waiting room for half a day before getting anything for pain.

What this guy is doing is simply calling a spade a spade, but at least he is advertising his rates, and he helps his uninsured customers know where to go for low cost services like X-Rays and Specialist referrals, and he tells them how much it's going to cost his patients.
An audio recording is supposed to be released at the end of the conference. I'm not sure if it was filmed, but the essay on PGs site is probably almost word for word. The nice thing about the recording is hopefully it will include the comment and answer section which I heard was good.
You are right, while startups can happen anywhere, they are most likely to succeed in the bay area, for example, our startup is based in Lima, Peru.

It's difficult to raise money here, or even getting media coverage.

I believe that if you have the right environment you have more chances to succeed.
I wish acquisition was this easy. I worked at a very large bank in Emerging Technology and I pushed our group to buy 3 startups. We passed on all of them because of bureaucracy and lack of vision. Heck, the same bank passed on paypal (and tried to create their own), and now they have to compete head to head with a company that could be in house.
What Paul ignores is the fact that most people out of college are faced with seemingly insurmountable debt as a result of having to pay for an education - esp. in America (and to a lesser extent in Canada). This is one problem that will prevent startups from happening at such a rapid pace as he anticipates. In fact, most graduates want to find stable jobs to pay off their debt -- startups are not really on most graduates' radar. On a somewhat related note, Businessweek had a survey of the top ten desirable places to work for new graduates -- three were govt. agencies, one accounting firm, google, etc.
And you know a startup is lying when they say "We are unique"!
It is apocryphally said that Benjamin Disraeli said that there were three kinds of lies X lies, damned lies and statistics. He was referring to the persuasive power of inaccurate but well presented arguments. Entrepreneurs will do well to remember this and some other obfuscatory arguments as they make their presentations to VCs.
[quote]
What Paul ignores is the fact that most people out of college are faced with seemingly insurmountable debt as a result of having to pay for an education
[/quote]

Yeah, but you get a 6 month grace period after school's over before repayment begins, and you usually have several financial hardship forbearances you can take to postpone repayment. Even then, you can go back to school for one semester, and reset the grace period and financial hardship forbearances.

So, you have at least 18-24 months of forbearance/deferment before you have to begin repayment, and that can be hacked indefinitely by taking 6 credits at your local community college.
So why would anyone need a VC?
Remembering Sputnik: Sir Arthur C. Clarke
So wouldn't those people drop out earlier? If you strip out the emotional content of your post, it's quite banal: the price of a product (college) is going up, so people who buy the product (students who pay full tuition) have less money, and since money is a transportable, transferable form of freedom, they're less free.

" In fact, most graduates want to find stable jobs to pay off their debt -- startups are not really on most graduates' radar."

That's irrational. If they're already way in debt, shouldn't they want to take more risks? Why the hell would you do something boring for ten years to pay off your debt, when you could do something fun for one year and have a 10% chance of more than paying off your debt. Also, employers are impressed by people who start their own businesses.

" Businessweek had a survey of the top ten desirable places to work for new graduates -- three were govt. agencies, one accounting firm, google, etc."

Right, because Businessweek can't say "The best place for you to work is that company you start in your apartment with your pals," because 1) that doesn't appeal to BW's audience, and 2) startups are small and varied, so it wouldn't make sense. It's like taking a survey of the most popular restaurants (McDonalds, Burger King) and using that as proof that the swanky new sushi place down the street is an awful place to eat.
Google has by far the best programmers of any public technology company. If they don't have a problem doing acquisitions, the others should have even less problem. However many Google does, Microsoft should be doing ten times as many.

I actually think Microsoft does.
Cars Get Street Smart
Automated driving is the single biggest opportunity in robotics in the next decade.
It's the latter that I think happened.
Not to disregard the benefit of community, but a reason the bay area may appear a more successful location is that there are many startups there. For each success, how many failures?
Biotech in the US happens either in Boston or the Bay Area and to a lesser extent in the DC/MD/NOVA hub. I have heard that Boston is more an old boy network and that the Bay Area biotech start ups are more receptive to hiring younger people (not MD or PhD) as early employees. For starting your own biotech company, it will be very difficult to garnish credibility without a terminal degree or board of big name collaborators.

A good approach to starting a business in this space is to pick your target audience, and find out if your team can easily fix any of their biggest problems. If not, iterate to a different target audience until you find a good problem for your team.

In the medical device realm, I know of a couple groups of undergrads that have developed technologies that attracted VC attention. Titles and credentials are not deal breaking obstacles.
I'm not even really sure what biotech is.

The biggest concentration of pharmaceutical and medical device companies is in the Delaware valley.
I've seen the opposite twice. Rock solid old mainframe systems are replaced just for the sake of replacing them, with poor outcomes.

For the most part I've been impressed with mainframe systems. The old languages suck, but if I had a big IO bound problem with very high reliability requirements I'd give IBM a call.
Defense, Homeland Security, and Intelligence contracting and product development are huge growth markets. But that's probably not what you have in mind.