skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: My idea has just been launched...by someone else. Now what?
I know, some of you are sick of too many "Ask HN"-submissions. However, this is something that bothers me and I'd like to have your opinion on this.

I have an idea for a startup for quite some time now. I'm still convinced that this idea is 1) very good and 2) could be easily monetized. Long story short: I just found that another startup has launched a service similar to my idea. When I discovered that startup I lost all my motivation to keep on working on this idea. I have to admit that it really was just an idea so far, i.e. I was working on the wire framing and trying to get a team together.

Now my question: What would you guys do? Since it is not exactly executed like I would've done it and I could try to launch it first in my country (Germany), I'm not sure whether to give this idea up or just go for it. It would be easy to dismiss, since it is just an idea so far. On the other hand, I'm really convinced that this idea is very good.

On what criteria would you guys base your decision whether to go on or dismiss that idea?
I'd be interested if it would run on my slug/NSLU2, though I suspect the RAM requirements are a bit too much...

edit: I take that back:
https://wiki.edubuntu.org/ARM/NSLU2
Totally OT but I'll try. You don't also happen to know the name of a SF novel about some project Australia. Somewhat resemblant to what you describe. Physical work unneeded, robots doing everything, energy problem solved, people VR'ing with some spinal implants. Whole thing started as a corp. venture witch sold stocks at a dollar the unit?
Beautifully composed. Makes me a little more graphically talented...
Isthisyourluggage - makes losing your luggage beautiful
Being in Canada, everything but health care/benefits.
Dogs and cats can and do lie, by trying to cover up things they've done (literally, usually), and by trying to direct your attention away from where it's covered up.
I practice this on a daily basis as I don't even believe in using lying as a social tool.

Sometimes it's best to not saying anything when you don't have a good answer, or the answer is inappropriate.
There are definitely a lot of successful startups that take an idea from one country and do it in another. Sure, they may not be huge, but might make some good money in any case.
The Benefits of Corporate Gifts 
Corporate gifts, when chosen with the recipients in mind, can be advantageous to even the smallest companies as they seek to gain recognition and new contracts. Some of our best contracts followed meetings where corporate gifts were presented. Most recently, the gifts we chose were geared specifically for both the vice president of new business as well as the director in the same department of one of the larger electrical power co-ops in the country. We know they travel extensively for their company and our small, but capable, marketing department believed something that would be both convenient and allow for organization, even for hastily planned trips, would be most beneficial. What could be better than a rolling travel bag? It was roomy enough for a change of clothes and also had compartments for the kinds of things they'd grab on their way out the door, such as the always-forgotten laptop charger or cell chargers. It was ideal for those quick business trips, such as the one they had taken for our own meeting. We had our company logo placed in the upper right corner and chose a navy blue fabric.

It's our belief the forethought put into the right corporate gifts, coupled with our own strong business presentations, can present the right image as companies seek to gain their footing in this unpredictable economy. We knew our plan was solid and we knew the co-op was narrowing its options. We believed, and still do, the best way to extend our appreciation for their consideration was best relayed through a thoughtful gift that would keep us visible long after the business meeting had ended.

Our company was chosen and we've just signed a large contract that will take us well into the next decade. Clearly, a well-coordinated marketing effort with a solid budget set aside for promotional gifts goes a long way as businesses move forward in their growth and expansion plans. Plans for the very near future include adding another to our marketing department and increasing our promotional budget as well.
Frankly I don't care about its w3c standards and fast JS - those are problems people are working on, and it's not the interesting part about this browser. It's not meant to be a "production" browser that you will be using tomorrow to surf to facebook.

It's about applying the principles of operating system design to better use the browser as the next platform for applications to be built on. Google started this with chrome, and Gazelle takes it to the next level. Hopefully a major browser will utilize these principles for their next generation browsers.
EBay Spinning Skype Out Public
eBay Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY) today announced that it plans to separate Skype from the company, beginning with an initial public offering that is intended to be completed in the first half of 2010.
Ah, yeah, all good points. The 100% thing is definitely a bug, and the USA thing is annoying, I agree.
Actually Microsoft has pretty terrible marketing. Can you imagine those dinosaur ads actually making someone want to buy Microsoft Office?

He's confusing marketing with advertising, a tiny portion of the marketing process. From Wikipedia:

Marketing is defined by the American Marketing Association as the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large

Advertising is a tiny part of marketing. More important is developing the right products at the right time for the right market, and Microsoft does that very well (their bottom line proves it).
Perhaps panic-suppression is actually a disadvantage in most life-or-death situations?

I've done offshore survival training, dive training and worked as a lifeguard and one thing that's very obvious is that what usually kills people who get themselves into a situation (that on paper they're equipped to deal with) is panicking and/or refusal to accept the reality of that situation. Basically I cannot think of a case in which a trained person would benefit from losing control like that.
"Money, but until a certain threshold."

You're referring to backward-bending supply curve of labor[1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backward_bending_supply_curve_o...
There's Silicon Valley Geek Breakfast at 8am on Friday in Sunnyvale. See:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=194749365592
Translation: come work for us, because if we deign to hire you, we'll treat you like the young god you are.

Joel knows marketing. 'nuff said.
I appreciate the idea behind Joel's article--that developers need to have everything available to do their jobs and not be bothered by corporate minutia. The best software companies are organized this way. What I have always found dissatisfying by this sentiment is that it implicitly denigrates all of the other people in the "supporting roles" and it elevates the developers to prima donne.

I found his introductory parable somewhat compelling, as it mirrors, somewhat, the lives of many of us here. I only wish he would have focused more on how that lone developer could have succeeded with more "marketing" instead of diverting to track B and talking about how to successfully structure a small to medium sized company (like his).
i assume the next step after hello world is to learn java... :D

very cute though
It's better to consider total compensation. A $100k salary with up to 5% 401k matching is roughly the same as a $105k salary with no 401k matching.

The latter might be preferred since it gives you the choice of what to do with that extra $5k, but it gets tricky if you're nearing the contribution limits.
Pleural Mesothelioma Treatment
Treatment options for mesothelioma cancer. Malignant mesothelioma cancer treatment options.
The essay's stated thesis is that the Valley is and will continue to be a hub for startups because of the abundance of Venture Capital and talent, both of which are produced by previous startups, maintaining a strong cycle of success. At the same time, the essay points out that Seattle is a center because Gates and Allen wanted to move back home, and it has been suggested in past essays that Venture Capital is increasingly less necessary for startups.

My impression is that PG has unintentionally suggested that the current state of high housing prices and less Venture Capital could easily reduce the Valley's role in the startup market. The way for other cities to capitalize on this is to convince smaller, upcoming companies to move "back home", or not relocate to the Valley in the first place. As some commenters have pointed out, other states may have legislation that is less inviting to startups, and these should be repealed.

Ultimately, startups will probably flourish wherever smart, ambitious people want to live, as long as the government treats them well.
Why is it bad that in order to automatically generate binding legal documents, someone involved needs to be educated in the subtleties of legal language? A walking, talking lawyer should be personally responsible for the quality of the documents being generated. If there's no such person, you're putting the onus of validation on the client, which I think misses the entire point.

In most of these cases, it's not the government protecting existing companies, it's the government protecting the naive population. You won't fire someone after six months of unpaid labor, but someone else will. Your expert system might create air-tight contracts, but someone else will cut corners.

These laws do not exist solely to frustrate you. Part of being in a uniformly free society is ensuring that naive people are not at the mercy of the better informed or less scrupulous. Things can't work any other way.
Locally to me, Verizon wholesales DSL at retail prices. So it is $30/month to get it from Verizon and $60/month to get it from anyone else.
Not being a nine-year-old girl forging lead hand tools in a communist sweatshop tops my list.

After that, challenging work is the idyllic and romantic answer. But damn, that compensation sure is alluring.
Do u go to Waterloo? I'm an alumn there and have been through this many times.

My advice is that your first few jobs are very important. I have done countless interviews (as an interviewer) myself and when it comes to selecting students to interview, the coversheet with the companies you worked for and the titles on them usually count the most. So if you want to be a dev and get leg up on the competition then make sure that you get a dev job as soon as you can and this way you can jump ahead of the curve. I have seen a lot of people take an IT job early in their co-op careers and they paid for that mistake later. But all said and done, no matter what happens its what you make of it. Let me know if you want some hints on how to get noticed. There area lot of things that you can do to stand-out and get noticed.

In principle, here are the basic 3 steps.

1. Submit kick-ass resume that gets noticed and selected.
2. Interview for the job.
3. Negotiate terms of your offer. This is more-so for FTE, but interns can negotiate a lot of things too if they choose to do so.

To answer your question though, do you think that this company can help you learn and explore an area that you are interested in? If so, then go for it. Co-op is the time to explore and really go out there and try things out with little risk and to network. My biggest regret from my co-op was not going to Europe, Japan, and other places for opportunities. I did 5/6 of my internships in the US and I felt that really hampered the opportunities that I would have had now if I went further out.

Good Luck!
Some combination of it not being our only project and not yet feeling like we'd achieved that "quantum of utility" Paul Graham talks about.
Two nit picks:

1. Innovation over the past couple centuries has not spread evenly. Cities always got a disproportional deal. That is why even today small towns all over the developing AND developed world are still losing people to the big cities.

2. A big part of the high-tech startup concentration seems to be VC clustering. But if startups are to be a truly revolutionary change I hope we get away from the investor model and move closer to the paying customer model. And this would make the valley's regional advantage smaller.
Beautifully composed. Makes me want to go back and revamp most of my designs.
10 years later, the real story behind Columbine
FFS, this "why was so and so downmoded" conspiracy theory bullshit has to stop. Give it time, it will usually balance itself out.

[quick edit 3 mins later]:

And while I wouldn't go so far as to downvote the comment, saying "I can't wait for X" really doesn't add anything to the conversation, IMO.
Response.Write("<html>");
Response.Write("<body style=\"" + styleString + "\">");
...
I completely agree that total compensation is paramount. That is why i said "Next to base compensation..."

I take both into consideration.
Life as "Relentlessly Resourceful" Training
This works well in Asian markets due to emerging markets and Asian culture. While it is more understated in Western culture, Asian culture is all about progress, and monetary progress is reflected by conspicuous consumption. Therefore, virtual gifts/goods is a display of that same progress. Furthermore, Asians are educated through a largely abstract approach, which allows them to understand the worth of virtual items without tangible interaction. From a Web 2.0 perspective, Asian web clones have made more money than its Western counterparts due to virtual gifts.

Personally, I don't think monetization through virtual goods is going to work for Western markets unless its a very specified niche market which relies on virtual goods already (i.e. gaming). There isn't enough social/cultural value in virtual goods that justifies the price (even if it is just a few dollars).
Could you possibly improve on the idea, in a way which would give you a significant edge over you competitor?
see, that's why there should be an API.
This has huge implications for european entrepreneurs. My Angle is that this great news for them. EU startups will be the dark horse in this new market reality. Right now EU startups need more zero and early stage financing. Skype will be the EU bellweather over there. Congrats to Josh and his team for executing like a startup and not letting a corporate structure stop them from doing great.
This is academically interesting but probably not of much practical use since parallel relational databases are not free (and may never be).
One of the best resources for getting typography right on the web: http://www.webtypography.net/.
Am I the only one who sees the irony that so much localization is required for an industry that specializes in remotely connecting resources?
Clearly the size of the market is going to be a huge factor (if not the primary). If the market cap is $100mm and you think both you and your competitor can only get 1%, then sayonara; it's probably not big enough to carry both of you. If, however, it is $100mm and you think that, between you, you can both capture 20% of that market, then it might be doable provided that you think you can capture about an equal share.
I really enjoyed reading that. As russell said, it is far outside my experience, but it is more like I wished my experience would have been.

I read an article on APL back in the early 80s and it sounded wonderful, but I never had an occasion to learn or use it. The closest thing for me now are list operations in Python and the collection functions I'm learning in Clojure right now.
They say that a design is perfect when there is nothing else left to remove.

I think this guy successfully stripped Twitter naked down to its bare essence.

Perfect!
I am planning to put it up, but it is basically does what I want it to now so I am not going to put a lot effort into it to go the extra mile for consumer grade usability. You have to create a pcx file for every question/answer card, which makes it a bit difficult to use if you can't program a script to render them from a csv file. I was thinking of putting the program up with a couple of premade decks like remembering the kanji and perhaps some other textbooks.
"Heroics should describe soldiers, not software engineers."

Then again, I keep reading analogies comparing business to war, especially with startups. I hear how we are to release early and often, which means less testing.

Certainly, there are situations for the brutal speed of war tactics, and situations for the precision of brain surgery. Unfortuanately, I've been in situations where the wrong approach was taken for the situation given, and the results can be as effective as a grenade in an operating room or a sugeon in scrubs facing machine gun fire.
Funny story: I was sitting at a bar out here in Bushwick, Brooklyn, just finishing up my dinner and sipping on a nice stout. Woman next to me glances up from her book and says, "You aren't a programmer, are you?"

"Um.. yes, actually. I do user interface development. How'd you know"

"Oh, I just moved here from the Valley... I guess I just know the type when I see it."

Weird, but eye opening!
Nuance won't kill you.
Terracotta 3.0 Server Released With Dramatic Throughput Gains
It probably won't take too long for someone to implement an open source version of Greenplum using Postgres. And there are a lot of people who are willing to pay for high-performance analysis of large data sets (as the success of Teradata, Netezza, et al. confirms).
I'd still like to see you talk some more about the economic factors that point to startups being very common (Coase et al). In other words, what fundamentals have changed so that starting your own company is the best option for a sizable number of people. I think to predict a true revolution, you'd have to demonstrate that these conditions don't just exist in a particular high tech sector with amazingly low capital requirements, but across a much broader swath of the business world. For one thing, will capital requirements drop in other sectors too? Or is the web just a blip, and eventually capital requirements will eventually rise again as it takes more 'stuff' just to get off the ground? What other things come into play that mean that more people will strike out on their own. Are there historical precedents?
Could Quantum Mathematics shake up Google?
I agree, but I think that over time, you can also learn to be not-awkwardly-social in spite of it. It does take a conscious effort to "context-switch", and I find that a walk outside often helps.
He means even fascinating work can't make working with the wrong people awesome.
Government was much smaller at the time of the Industrial Revolution.

Is this true? Is it really such an open-and-shut case?

In some senses it is obviously true: There were a lot fewer people, a lot fewer filing cabinets and a lot fewer regulations. A lot of the tools needed for our big modern system -- hygiene, communications, literacy -- just weren't there yet. There were essentially no worker protections in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution; there were few environmental regulations. And travel and communications were harder, which made it easier to evade certain regulations -- they say that, as late as the 20th century, movie companies relocated to Hollywood in large part because it was the US city farthest from Thomas Edison's patent lawyers.

But government-sanctioned monopolies are not a new invention. (That's what the British East India Company was all about.) Enormous tariffs levied on mass-produced goods are not a new invention. Taxes are not a new invention. Gangs of Luddites (not metaphorical Luddites -- the real thing) who break your equipment and sabotage your business model are not a new invention.

Wine monopolies? Here's a book that deals, in part, with how the English ban on French wine imports boosted the English brewing industry in the 17th century:

http://www.amazon.com/War-Wine-Taxes-Political-Anglo-French/...

And here's a Wikipedia article on mercantilism, the dominant theory of international trade for over 250 years, starting in 1500:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism

Mercantilism was all about big-government management of the economy through tariffs and subsidies. But, of course, that was arguably a big improvement over the medieval model: Small-government "management" of the "economy" by private armies who threatened to burn your crops and besiege your house unless you paid tribute.
I agree technology may represent a new economic phase -- but startups are just the way they're introduced. And it has nothing to do with productivity and everything to do with uniqueness of vision. If big companies did more things like Google's 20% project, you'd have the same effect.

Also, I think you ignored that VC is becoming less and less important. And as it gets less important, the big funding hubs will become less important. I see a future of micro-equity and the big hits coming out of everywhere.

Also, the hubs have a horrible self-delusional feedback loop. Once you get an entire environment that thinks the same way, these feedback loops are inevitable and you spiral into silliness, e.g. Twitter.
It is pretty neat to wonder if, during the Industrial Revolution, people had nearly-free ways to ship their manufactured products and electricity, if there'd have been more than a few hubs, or if it would have worked out about the same.
Yea, verily, readability is all but slain! Yonder polecat be varminting my hullabaloo. Thy verbiage dost wibble mine bugbear.
People are going to be nitpicking this to death, but I'm happy that people are willing to put it on the line and actually experiment with things like interface and interaction.
"The importance of words in a document can be based on where they appear, rather than on how often"

Umm, this is already taken into account. Search is so far beyond basic 'this word appears 10 times so it must be important' that it's not even funny.
Paul, this post gives me hope. I'm now in a university belt and we're about to turn up the research heat and our students are seriously looking into startups - perhaps your localization will materialize before our very eyes. And yes, still no Silicon Valley equivalent to contend with at the moment!
Ahh, toilet humour always evokes a reaction, not a great one.
I think it's reasonable to allow duplicates, otherwise I wouldn't have found out about this tutorial
>>In most of these cases, it's not the government protecting existing companies, it's the government protecting the naive population. You won't fire someone after six months of unpaid labor, but someone else will. Your expert system might create air-tight contracts, but someone else will cut corners.

This untrue, throughout history companies get laws to make upstarts more difficult. There is no reason you need to go to law school or even pass the bar, if the buyers don't think it is a good tool they won't use it.

In fact things can work the other way, you are protected the few who may be swindled (they're clearly visible), but ignore all those who are harmed by the lack of new products. It's very hard to look at the other side of the equation, but it is normally quite significant.
The guy that sells the virtual flowers says that buying them will get you laid? Shocking!
I would argue that "this sucks and needs to be better" is actually not included in Ferriss's definition of a complaint. By saying that it needs to be better you are 90 percent of the way to also stating the steps you'll actually take to improve it.

I like this concept not because of its "negativity-fighting" aspects, but because it tries to cultivate a problem-solving mindset. That, at least, should be near and dear to most of us.