skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I've read many posts re negotiating the relationship/start-up gig. This article presents one solution; do it together.
True enough. What I meant to say is why does the group of elitist assholes that is the majority of linux backers care to have their OS accepted by people they obviously have little regard for?
yea, it's come full circle back dot.com retro
I'd consider submitting an application, except that the deal-breaker seems to be, "The Amazon judges' panel will review all applications and choose five finalists, based on ... implementation of pay-as-you-use Amazon Web Services." We'll certainly might use AWS in the future, but in prototype building mode, it seems like AWS would be a premature optimization.

By the way, I wonder if they are looking particularly for startups that use AWS in novel ways, as opposed to promising startups that just happen to use it on the backhand for scalability.
Facebook is poaching Googlers (Look at the Facebook Flyer)
The VirtualMin folks might be good candidates for this contest since they have what seems to be a slick integration with Amazon's Elastic Computing Cloud (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=52916). I know they're already YC'd, but it seems like it'd be a minimal time investment since they're already launched.
Why does this have so many votes?

Ok, the Google guys are wealthy and have lots of privileges. We already knew that.
Your First VC Meeting: Expect Straight Talk
In my last post, Give Striaght Talk, I explained that you need to be honest and direct when communicating with a VC. In that first meeting (and at any other time) you should also expect straight talk from the VC. To be clear, by 'straight talk' I mean blunt, direct and candid questions and comments.
The full report also says that international news is more prominent in the MSM than on social news sites, which is probably more evidence in favor of your point.

Big international stories are the ones where major news outlets can still add some significant value (although Lebanese bloggers from last summer might beg to differ), but I think you're right that this report doesn't mean much for them one way or the other.
I use linux, but I would never call someone an "elitist asshole".
"It found that the interests of users was markedly different to that of traditional editors."

By saying this the author makes a couple of assumptions:

1) By users, the author seems to imply the same people who use mainstream media. But really, in this case, "users" are dedicated communities built around digg, reddit and delicious -- which explains the propensity for technology related news items.

2) It could be that users dont prefer to promote mainstream news stories simply because old school media is an existing reliable source of such stories. For example, you could rely on BBC and CNN to report the latest natural disaster -- digg and reddit dont have to do this for their users.
Expect straight talk from VCs? Like this: http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/01/the_top_ten_lie.html ?
Not to defend this particular article, but all essays revolve around the viewpoint of the author. An essay is not a research paper.
I think this is an interesting use of the answers service as a marketing tool - but also for market research. Who knows if Obama is actually going to read the answers, but you can't say he didn't ask.

Nice to see some (positive) focus on tech entrepreneurship from a Presidential candidate. I hope this thread doesn't devolve into a discussion of the merits of the candidates though.
Why? Cash is cash. If it gets your venture through the tough beginning then why does it matter that it came through a contest. You will also get a bit of press.
Yeah, I agree with your interpretation. Read it multiple times myself.
> few (if any) will want to waste time with indirect questions.

They will nearly all, however, waste time with indirect answers.
There probably is some limit to our capacity, but I don't think we're at it yet.
Too bad LinkedIn doesn't seem to allow users to mod up the better responses, there is too much noise there.
I think this is an interesting use of the answers service as a marketing tool - but also for market research. Who knows if Obama is actually going to read the answers, but you can't say he didn't ask.

Nice to see some (positive) focus on tech entrepreneurship from a Presidential candidate. I hope this thread doesn't devolve into a discussion of the merits of the candidates though. (comment copied from my now-dead dupe submission of this same topic)
The venture industry has been cut in half - 50% of VC firms closed up shop in the last six years
Not at all. PG wrote an essay saying that not being funded by YC was not a judgment of you. Whereas the Amazon web thing is explicitly designed to be a personal judgment. (They even have judges.)
No; there are not a fixed number of winners.
Only open to people/businesses in the US.

Ah well.
I agree with you. It would be really interesting to turn the tables. How about having users post one question they would like to ask Obama and then collectively vote on the one they like the most?
This reminds me of Dr. Strangelove's post-apocalypse planning. I wonder if a conspiracy is afoot.
I don't know how to ask this and not sound ironic...I hope it doesn't.

Do you believe they would ignore a good startup and not invest in it even if they didn't win a prize?
As you say, there's little work involved until you become a finalist. And if you become a finalist, I would think the minimum $5k + publicity is a good tradeoff for the trip to Seattle.

A couple of other contests (Adobe, Facebook) were ridiculous because entering the contest, not even winning it, required signing away significant control of your web app and letting the sponsors make derivative web apps.
to you and the others who have asked: how many regular, non-geek people do you know who know what RSS is? my count: 0. they might use My Yahoo!, but they don't know what RSS is. there was a study by yahoo from awhile ago [1] that stated that 12% of internet users are aware of RSS, and 4% have knowingly used it. my bet is that those numbers have hardly shifted; have you seen a marketing campaign for RSS recently?

my goal is not to win over geeks, but to make RSS easy and useful for regular people, who have no idea what it is or why they should care about it.

[1] (http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=2&url=h...)
okay, you got me -- i'll admit it: i spent 30 seconds making the graphic, and .5 seconds looking at it. maybe i'll change it. i'm not a designer, and i didn't think it was worth my time.

but i would guess from our verification rates that it's not turning too many folks (besides you and the 3 who upmodded you?) away. who knows... maybe i'll do some a/b testing and see if it makes a difference.
I was only talking about the prize aspect of it. The rest is impossible to evaluate. All they say is that they'll make an offer of investment. That could either be good or worthless, depending on the amount, the valuation, and other terms.

FWIW, my guess is that they'd err on the side of ignoring good startups. Amazon has not so far been in the investment business, and I don't think that is their goal here. Their goal is to promote AWS to startups. They're raising the prospect of investment because they know that's something many startups are interested in.
Surely, every author has their own stand. I meant that in some cases making a statement without due facts or figures to back that statement, makes it assumptious and biased.
This started a bunch of associations for me. Remember the title sequence to that movie--try a little tenderness?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLjI_SgC2EY

Check out this classic performance of the same:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UlQVhMAbwg
I've always been curious to see if social networks geared toward the older crowd will ever catch on. My concern with this is that while there may be as many internet users in the 55 year old range as the 18-34 crowd, will they be willing to invest a similar amount of time on these networks?

Something tells me that these people won't rely on these services as much as the younger crowd, but I could be wrong...
My erotic game(s) site - comments? (contains nudity)
In addition to the $50k cash and $50k credit for AWS. The winner is also offered a business loan from Amazon described as such:

"Amazon.com, Inc. or one of its affiliates also will offer the first prize winner a loan in order to bring its Business Proposition to market (the "Investment Offer"). The Investment Offer would be in the form of a promissory note on terms to be determined by Amazon.com, Inc., in its sole discretion, including the conversion of such promissory note to equity in a future equity financing."

Now, I don't speak fluent legalese, but isn't this a lose-lose deal for the entrepreneur? It sounds like if your business flops, it's a loan and you have to pay it back, but if it succeeds, Amazon can convert the loan to equity and make out with much more then they would have by having the loan repaid.
That's beautiful; and I'm sure deeply disturbing to some. Hehehe. I need to watch that movie again.
I'm surprise this is for the "September 10, 2007 Issue" The idea that the eastern world does not look favorably upon risk taker might be true 10 years ago, but thing has definitely changed since then.
The people formerly known as informed
There's nothing sinister about this. It probably just means they'd invest as convertible debt, which is very common (possibly the default) for angel investments. You wouldn't have to pay it back if the startup failed, and the conversion would be into a predetermined number of shares.
I think his conclusions are perhaps off - reddit/digg/etc aren't "wise crowds" in terms of how the book describes them. Rather than independently voting, it's a cascade - most people only vote on things that have already been voted up by a lot of people.

It's interesting reading the snippets of the article he quotes, though.
I agree - it is completely the aesthetics. Non-web people may not know why.. but they will know something looks off.
Lies, damn lies, ...

All those LPs are taking their liquidated investments and putting them somewhere else. Probably in large part that somewhere else is more-successful VC firms.
A better way to think about this may be in terms of people with DOMAIN-SPECIFIC experience/talent learning how to apply "new" technologies (e.g. rss, wikis, etc) to solve problems.

I agree with the original post in that "hacker"-created apps seem to center around just a few domains:

- generalized business/productivity
- general social interaction
- general media consumption/prosumption

These are just my impressions, but I feel that there is something to them. I wish we were seeing more apps for, say, the medical profession, the poor, or for really specific target markets (maybe "bond traders" or "school teachers").

Clearly education is one field that could stand s'more revolutionizing...
Mortgage Market Collapse Threatens Nation's Banner Ad Industry
Thank God for The Onion.
Amazon has invested in at least one startup: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/02/25/amazon-invests-in-shelf...

Whether or not it's a good startup is another question.
But this is probably not the best solution. It's extremely difficult to draw a clear line between work and relationship especially when both of you are spending 90% of your waking hours on the same project. A problem with one side will very likely lead to a bigger problem with the other....
I have to beg to differ big time here. Just because people choose other interests than the media doesn't make the news dumb. For one thing, the reports of the media of allegedly important events are usually not that informative: usually they milk a subject for as much as possible, typically by endless repetitions of hollow facts. I doubt anybody would be able to understand what is going on in Irak just by watching the news, for example. Also, arguably many allegedly important topics don't bear any relevance to the average person at all. Like if some other state has been flooded, that information is pretty useless to me, unless I was just about to travel there.

Rather than concluding that crowds are dumb, perhaps the media should take this study as an incentive to rethink their program.
Now if they would only do a piece on how unsuccessful startups ruin relationships and destroy marriages...
Ask Hacker Newsies: What tool(s) do you use to "wireframe" your UI?
Any good tools out there for creating wireframe prototypes of web apps? With just HTML, trying different layouts of UIs is pretty slow-going.
For anyone interested in this topic, I very highly recommend _Carnage and Culture_, by Victor Davis Hanson. A fantastic book that destroys many assertions made in the more popular _Guns, Germs, and Steel_.
Ain't nothing wrong with contradiction
Hulu Makes First Acquisition; Chinese Video Startup To Form Backbone Of New Service
Sharpie and Paper.

Its quick and it helps you to focus on the bigger picture and not the details see: http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch09_Interface_First.php

especially this part:
The Orange Pen That Started Blinksale
Google To Invest $10 Million In Green Startups
plus you can't make a Myspace app :)
The Internet Ad Spending Not-So-Recession
200 Million Facebookers? Wishful Thinking
What LinkedIn Can Learn From Google And Build A Billion Dollar Business
Some ideas on how LinkedIn can build itself into a huge business.
Predictably,

http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2...
"Larger numbers of women and perhaps gay men will reduce the incidence of violence in their communities."

Prove it and don't say women and gay men are gentle. They are humans and humans can be ruthless bastards.
I'm not specifically saying that, (I was just using the parent comment's words) but let's be honest: the linux community as a whole is not exactly welcoming to the non-power user.

There's really nothing wrong with this. That's my point. Why does the community get all out of shape about being ready for the "average user"? Linux wasn't built for them, it isn't used by them, and it won't ever be good enough compared to OS'es that focus exclusively on them - i.e. Mac and windows.
I wouldn't be surprised if that somewhere else is currently hedge funds and private equity at the moment, though. Those sectors are huge at the moment, and their growth has to have come from somewhere. I think a more likely explanation is that money fled venture capital after the tech bust and came to rest in hedge funds and private equity, and now that those bubbles are about to burst, it'll likely go back to venture capital. Or maybe blue-chip stocks.
Microsoft swipes at Google Apps
In its statement, Microsoft laid out 10 questions it wanted users considering Google Apps to ask themselves.
Silicon Alley Insider: Absurd assumptions about the iPhone
This is silly. There are more Eastern "innovators" than Western ones. They just prefer to operate out of San Jose and Boston. Globalization works both ways, you know.

Why do the "innovators" make their homes in the USA? That's where the startup hubs are!

http://www.paulgraham.com/america.html

And we should distrust the word "innovator", which tends to be awarded to the engineers with the best English-language marketing team. When a product engineer in Malaysia invents a technique that doubles manufacturing efficiency, she is "skilled"; when an engineer living in Sunnyvale develops a web-based social network he's an "innovator".
That's Fred Reed. He's an oddball.

But consider: Who's the most famous Japanese American? A lot of people here might say, "Guy Kawasaki", but somebody did a poll asking just this question, and the overwhelming response was..."Bruce Lee". A dead Chinese actor.
To be frank though, it would be likely that if Amazon saw something in more than one startup, they would at least pursue them using other means.

They're only committing to funding one, which is basically one more than YC does.
It's an offer... nothing forces you to take it.
I didn't take it as one. I'm laughing because it's so painfully true.
Older, more experienced technology professionals are being sidelined downunder
Valid point. However, NewsGator, FeedBurner and FeedReader are all well aware of that fact. I've been part of a consumer-grade RSS startup myself. We were trying really hard to educate users (we made a big deal about it) we've been trying to avoid using RSS word, we had web-version (like yours), we had IE plugin and FireFox plugin (!), but ultimately came short of inventing a working business model. Too much competition, too few customers. My startup survived (switched to business customers) and I believe you're coming to the market too late.
I grow tired of people comparing MySpace's 'user' numbers to Facebook and other networks. There are so many spam/fake accounts on MySpace, yet they are reported in their member totals? (Have you guys even come across a spam Facebook account?)

Even if Facebook doesn't hit 200 million in the next year, they are surely taking away many legit users from MySpace and I think that's what matters most...not how many countless spam accounts they can add to their totals.
Pencil & paper, or occasionally pen & napkin.

At work we had a dedicated UI designer, and he'd occasionally use Macromedia Fireworks for UI mockups. But that was primarily because our boss wanted professional-looking mockups to show to prospective customers. For communicating and iterating on ideas, I've yet to find anything that matches the productivity of paper. There were times where a week's worth of Fireworks mockups and meetings were resolved in about an hour when I brought a stack of paper into the designer's cube, took 5 minutes to sketch out a couple screens, and had him iterate from there.
"Did you know that disco record sales were up 400% in 1976? If these trends continue...Aayyyyy" - Disco Stu
As others have said, pen and paper... I happen to like colour so sometimes I use coloured pencils but it's really not required.
Hundreds of Scientists Have Published Evidence Countering Man-Made Global Warming
Applying a Social Computing Strategy to the Entire Product Lifecycle
JetBlue: Chew on This
I hope this doesn't prove as prophetic as The Onion's "Our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is now at an end" piece from January 2001.
What Google Won't Let MS Click
His conclusions are off.

First, for his evidence he is using a study from the Project for Excellence in Journalism. Do you think the study might be biased? The crowd mentality threatens the entire profession of Journalism (I'm not saying it's going away, but they are less and less in control of what people read hear and see).

Second, he argument assumes the dividing line is "hard news" vs. "soft news" when it is really "I care" or "I don't." The problem is that nobody cares what's on the news. If we are to believe the study, the news is more consistent in what it shows. That means they are showing us the same thing over and over again. People care about things that are relevant to them or that provide some form of entertainment. Surprisingly, the mainstream news is just picking up on the fact that their product at the very best under-serves the needs of their market.

Third, the article paints the mainstream media as "informed" and everyone else as "uninformed." No bias there. Even if we assume they are right, it just points out that they aren't providing their customers with the information they want. If Google can target ads to me based on search, how come news can't be tailored to my desires.

Finally, the crowd based sites know the mainstream news exists. They don't have to cover the Iraq war for the 10,000,000,000th time. That's what the news is for. If you wanted to see information about Iraq you'd go to a mainstream news distribution channel. Haven't they considered that maybe there is no reason to rehash those stories already beaten to death in the mainstream media?
What's also interesting about the post, along with other news of B. Obama on social news sites is that he seems to get the new media. It's often repeated that the presidents that win are the ones that understand the power of the new media (i.e. Nixon lost in that debate when TV first came on board), and know how to utilize it.

He's got some advisor or campaign manager that knows what's going on here.
The changing value of a point and the stock market "highs"
I grow tired of people comparing MySpace's 'user' numbers to Facebook and other networks. There are so many spam/fake accounts on MySpace

Most people are counting the number of users (read: unique visitors) over a reasonable time period, not the number of registered accounts. http://siteanalytics.compete.com/myspace.com+facebook.com?me...

"they are surely taking away many legit users from MySpace"

Source?
Definitely yes. I had heard of YCombinator (look, they invested in another company), but I've never been interested in applying for the program. News gives me a reason to visit this domain, or at least have it in my feed reader, and provides a lot of useful links - even for us non-startuppers.
It would be interesting to gather some data about it. Offhand, what you say seems right - I don't think I'd want to work with my wife. Who knows, though.
The thing Sharpie has over pencil/pen is that it makes FAT lines. Just makes rough sketches feel better. You can get about the same thing with a whiteboard, as well.
Why do you say that? It would seem to me that editor choice can be as important as language choice, and understanding the features of the editor are important to fast, effective development. One of the most interesting articles I read this year was about editors.
The Emacs Problem (February, 2005)
i've had it for about a year. the idea for this site has been kicking around for a long time, but it's taken me this long to actually use the domain. :)
Please build an Apilatform
Lessons on shutting down a service from Yahoo! Photos
Just like Howard Dean.
Fred Thompson is doing something similar -- he asked a few bloggers for their best questions for him. There are actually a few substantive questions -- http://volokh.com/posts/1189206799.shtml . I don't think normal candidates want to talk about Federalism and Campaign Finance Reform.
Yahoo design innovation team
Why is it more common? One would expect angels and VCs to tend the other way (buying options and warrants, instead of making loans).
Some sex differences that look biological are really cultural
My yc news karma milestone
I would like to thank everyone in the YC News community for taking 1 second of their time to occasionally vote for my submissions and comments...sniffle..sniffle....I told myself I wouldn't cry, but reaching 100 karma points is such an honor.....sniffle
Neither choice matters much. Smart, flexible people tend to get the job done one way or another. If a bottleneck becomes apparent they work around it: revise, redesign, change languages, tools, editors as necessary.

Historically a lot of useless dogma and arguments have surrounded the choice of editor. There is a desire to avoid that sort of low-quality discussion.
I believe they also own a piece of 37signals
Seriously...the "truth in comedy" here is that 37 PERCENT of all online advertising comes from financial services.

http://www.adrelevance.com/intelligence/intel_dataglance.jsp...

Someone needs to address this sector of the online ad economy...
New York Times Launches Facebook App
>it won't ever be good enough compared to OS'es that focus exclusively on them

I disagree. In the long term, open source is going to win. Maybe it won't be in three years, but in ten years I expect Ubuntu/Linux to be solidly better for every single user. The unlimited time of smart people working for free eventually adds up to something really amazing.