skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Technically "2. ??? 3. Profit!" was a South Park-ism (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnomes_(South_Park) ) And I realise that this comment was perhaps what you were complaining about - but it was worth pointing it out none-the-less.

(And for the record: "1. Collect Underpants, 2. ????, 3. Profit" seems to be a more mature business model than some that are featured here on hn.)
You really think that those who post the most on HN would make the best hackers or founders?

No, but you've gotta filter somehow. There are thousands of HN users. At least the ones with a lot of posts are a known quantity. It's the same reason I like to hire developers that work on Open Source software. They may not be the best (or they may be), but I know with much greater accuracy what I'm getting.

I personally wouldn't start a startup with someone I met on Hacker News, and didn't know in any other way. But OP wanted to know, and so I told him how I'd do it if I had such an inclination.
I'll never understand the people who ask for opinions on a public forum and then get upset at the people who post their opinions.
Royalties is the word you are looking for.

Sell the site for a nominal cost. Take a percentage cut of all sales/profits whatever as per negotiation.

Low risk for buyer, you get to be lazy and reap the rewards of your site's full potential.
I hear you. And that's how it will be for more and more folks, no matter what happens.

Example, Megan Cotrell is a Chicago-based reporter who covers housing issues. She was with one news org (ChiTownDailyNews.org) for a while and now blogs for the Tribune company. Maybe in a year or so she'll be somewhere else. Wherever she goes, however, she takes her sources and contacts with her. So yes, she can pretty much get what she needs no matter who she's writing for. but getting to that point is a lot harder without a brand backing you up.
This thread is really fascinating, ranging from the hilarious to the intelligent. I agree that touching isn't THAT big of a deal that you need to get all worked up. However, there are legitimate reasons for not touching people's screens. I have a screen with a matte display -- that's without the extremely glossy and reflective glass covering. If someone has even the shortest of short fingernails -- and most people do -- they're going to do some kind of damage to the rather sensitive, uncovered screen. I'm not about to go get a mirror -- other people call them glossy screens -- just to protect my screen from your projectile fingers. If I do touch a screen, which happens because like some person said, you don't always think about it, I make sure to touch with the pad of my finger and not the nail. And pens are a complete nofuckingway no matter what kind of screen it is. They will ruin any screen. You ever try to get ink out of a tiny indentation in a glass screen? Because you can't. It's happened to me.

So in conclusion, if your screen isn't glass-covered and they're coming at it like an ICBM, definitely say something polite (Excuse me..., Please don't..., Umm...). But if your screen is protected and they're not using a pen/knife to point...let it go. Most screens are so bright you can't even see smudges.
Some things I've learned in the last month of promoting my app:

HN gave me a wide variety of feedback, some of it really excellent. Try posting a "Ask HN: Please review my startup vivekjishtu.com" or whatever.

Launchly is awesome but doesn't have a lot of eyes yet. Do post there, though, you'll get some great feedback.

Usefultools gave me a tiny little bit of a review, but mostly just regurgitated my copy. They yielded a good bit of traffic, though.

My best review thus far was from a random blogger who had reviewed a competitor. I sent him a personal email saying "Hi, I'm impressed with your candor and feedback, would you please review my site? Here's a promotional premium account."

Also, hang around Launchly or HN for a while (I see you just signed up for HN) and give other people feedback. Both have reputation systems. You might even have luck giving other people serious feedback and tacking onto the bottom "if you have a moment to spare, could you give me some feedback on three-year-project.com"

However, in terms of long-term recurring members, I can't say any of those paths have yielded much. This might be more a reflection of my service than the nature of the promotional channels, however.
Interesting use of JS: Copy text in an article, then check your clipboard
qualia has a physical description: simply describe a brain the moment that it is receiving sense data of light in the red spectrum.

that this is currently beyond us technologically doesn't mean that it is in any way a philosophical conundrum.
Ask YC: Would you deal with the guys on "Shark Tank"?
I just saw an episode of ABC's "Shark Tank" at my folks' house tonight.

I'm curious: would any of you consider selling controlling stake to these guys?
The fundamental problem is that even with enough velocity, and it would need to be substantially higher than even the Paris gun's, is the need to circularize the orbit, otherwise it will just dive back down to ground level on the other side of the Earth.
FWIW, after the little bit I saw, and after checking into their bios and backgrounds, I don't think I'd accept any offer that they would be likely to make.
The question is, how much are the original Startup News users doing to keep the site pure? Clearly not enough, or this particular thread would have never been started.

The article space is flat right now, but that hasn't been enough to keep the site pure either.

I think the battle for purity has already been lost. Now it's just a question of whether the site is going to be rendered useless because the number of submissions is going to be too great to slog through with a flat article space, or if it's going to be made manageable with tags.
Haven't seen this done before, but pardon me if it has. (I also didn't know the clipboard was accessible in Firefox, but perhaps they're using Flash.)

At least on my browser/config, the clipboard now has the text I copied, and a link to the story. Even better -- the link is to a version of the story with the text highlighted in it (using more JS + an anchor).

Pretty cool feature, although I could see some people being annoyed/surprised by it.
The [X] button in the top right corner does wonders for one's productivity. As a bonus, use a different browser for work than you usually do for "surfing". My Firefox is crawling with gadgets that each light up and pulsate with every "must see" action that happens in my extended family of RSS feeds, contacts, and bookmarks. My work browser is a light, crisp little Opera thing that has 10 tabs open all set to to various sub-URLs of http://localhost:8080 :-)
See my note above - the problem is the need to circularize the orbit so the projectile doesn't just hit the other side of the Earth.

EDIT: I just had a thought, if you have a facility in orbit, you could use a gun to shoot perfectly vertically to the orbital height, then capture the projectile before it fell back. Nope, that still wouldn't work - The capturing vehicle would need to add velocity to the projectile to raise its velocity from the eastward component of the radial velocity of the launch site to the orbital velocity.
The website is http://fefoo.com/

Add-on for Firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12886

Ways to add it to other browsers http://fefoo.com/add2browser
I'm on FF 2.something, and every time I go the site to view tweets, it shows me blurb to update to FF 3.5 so as to have a better Twitter experience.

Maybe they should stop that. That alone would give me a better Twitter experience.
Well, she's certainly not going to touch your screen again.
Precisely.

It took a while, but I realized that the more I talked about an idea, the less likely I was to actually make any progress with it.

On the other hand, not talking about it seems to make me reeeeaally want to actually do it, like an itch I can't quite scratch.

I don't understand the psychology behind it, but I'm definitely much more productive in recent months.
Venture capital's big headache
The problem with my text is that it almost sounds like an infomercial :P

Since am not very good with words, the service ends up looking like a cheap copy of Yubnub and Ubiquity.
What about letting people append to comments after the time limit? I've always thought that would be sensible: People could add to what they've said before in a visible way, but not "rewrite history".

After all, additions are already frequently marked as such (e.g., "EDIT:").
Reading dhouston (founder of DropBox) application - http://files.getdropbox.com/u/2/app.html, i think it's okay to continue working solo rather than settle for less than ideal when you apply for YC.

From my personal experience, i also recommend the same. It's like having a relationship. Great relationship > solo > lousy relationship. You spend much more energy and stress with less-than-ideal cofounder compare with going solo.
> The methods used in science have to be in some sense rational as well as merely effective

Well no, we just need methods leading to verifiable (ie predictive) results. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science

Any methods will do, it's the body of knowledge that is important. I'm sure in your scenario we'd want to know the reason why intuition works so well (and there would be a reason), but we'd use it so long as it works.

>

> Explain how the moral fact in (1) reduces to physical facts [...] You seem to think that they are limited to brain science, but why do you think this?

It's human behavior & human preferences, what else could it be? We can watch which parts of the brain light up when doing morality (eg google brain fairness). Even monkeys have a sense of fairness (google). If birds could talk they'd tell you it's a "moral fact" that birds should protect their young. Morality is clearly hardwired through evolution[1].

To see how frustrating this is, imagine you're arguing with people who are sure CPUs work because of "machine spirits." You don't have to be a chip designer to point out obvious circuitry, energy requirements, changes in function due to differing structures/damage, etc but they'll just believe whatever they want without evidence.

[1] And biology reduces to physics. Read selfish gene etc if you want to know how morality evolved, but it's clear it did happen.
1. If you can make a compelling case that there is more revenue with a little more work, then you should be able to get a higher valuation.

Even a shack is worth a million bucks if it's in down town Manhattan. It doesn't matter what YOU are doing with it, it matters what you both know they can do with it.
"can he touch my laptop screen?"

Absolutely. As long as he doesn't mind losing the finger he touched it with.

Of course, I'm assuming you meant with his finger...
The friction with the air at its highest speed (and where the air is densest) would still be a problem.
I find that my swapped CAPS-LOCK and CTRL keys are enough to boggle most people who try to use my machine.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=607285

edit: How often does Google reply with the answer when you comment that you can't find something using their site? Now that's service right there...
Damn, what a bunch of sissies. Don't apologise for stuff that isn't your fault, tell them not to touch your screen. No need to make an excuse. Don't be rude, but don't be ridiculous over the top apologetic either.
"Old and in the way": is engineering experience recognized?
hnsort.com, and the greasemonkey script for sorting, really help. I sort by comments or points to find where the interest is.

But I agree that the RSS feed can get cluttered. Maybe a yahoo pipes thing could create a delayed feed that only passed items with certain characteristics.
Since the "problems" in that chapter don't actually exist, we ignore them, how else?
Bicycles would win any day.
Voice of America developing 'Feed Over Email' technology (see sidebar)
Let's Open Source a Social Site
I read an essay a few years ago saying that the reason we aren't going into space or colonizing the oceans or any of that other neat stuff we were supposed to do, is that it is easier and more remunerative to make movies and games about doing it than to actually do it.
Twitter should treat urls, @reply, #hashtags, geographical descripters, etc as a separate metadata field outside of the message.
http://hackerne.ws -> http://news.ycombinator.com
Advertising your dog walking services
Today everyone is getting busier preoccupied with the thought of making money in these financially difficult times. Many pet owners feel guilty that they are running away from their responsibilities towards their pets and that they are not even able to take their pets for walks. However, it does not mean that they do not love their pets anymore, it is only that they do not have the time anymore to spare for their pets.
Good vs Great: Hiring and Maintaining Engineering Organizations
For a programmer on vacation, I wouldn't recommend a technical book. Go for something that will exercise the right side of your brain, the parts that don't get as much work day-to-day. Your left-brain is what you're trying to rest and refresh; that's why you're on vacation after all.

I'd go for something on the far end of the spectrum; some forgotten modern classic that won't let your left-brain to kick in, like Return of the Native.

If you absolutely must have something technical, the aforementioned Neal Stephenson books are great, as are William Gibson books. The Little Schemer is a good book to go through while you're NOT on vacation.
Give people something worth reading. Then: Product placment and Subtle, relevant, non-intrusive ads.
Physics does not reduce to atomic physics, nor science to physics, nor life to science.

-- Erwin Schrödinger
Would the right answer be niche reporting? Basically sites like Talking Points Memo or Techcrunch where a small but focused group produces quality reporting on a specific niche?
Calculator hackers crack OS signing key, opening a closed platform
For filtering, use greasemonkey with HN Toolkit script.
Shilajit powerful anti-aging for Men Health
Shilajit is commonly known as the youth of fountain. Discover the most powerful anti-aging and rejuvenating elixir ever known to mankind. Feel the amazing power of growing young and Increase your libido, stamina and prolongation in relation performance.
They spam with such mass they probably don't even care.
I just dug up this reference to Cramer's transactional interpretation. http://www.npl.washington.edu/npl/int_rep/ti_over/ti_over.ht...

I wonder if he's the same physicist John Cramer that has written a couple of SF novels; John Cramer's novel "Einstein's Bridge" is excellent hard-hard SF.
This is a relevant article about Politico and their model. http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/08/wolff200...;
11 Google Chrome Tips & tricks
Y Combinator targets news, US backs file sharing fines
Except Mr. Polo doesn't have to spend ten hours a day staring straight into his car's finish.
I like the idea. While crowd-sourcing is good in many areas, sometimes it "feels" good to interact with a company. I could definitely imagine myself using your service, especially with the no risk free license. On the usability side, I had to squint to see past the bright pink. Try a white background =)
We've been very happy with Google apps. It's nice not to have to think about infrastructure at all. It just works.

We run our own instance of Trac and svn on a slicehost slice, which is relatively painless to maintain. Using github or bitbucket would be another good option there.

For a distributed team, I do have to make a shameless plug for my own startup: http://shoptalkapp.com. Communication is key, and IM just doesn't cut it, we've found. We're always looking for feedback from fellow HNers, so let me know if you try it out.
I usually say "Here, you can use the mouse to point at the screen" and then clean the smudge in front of them.
There's a difference between describing the brain receiving data and describing me seeing red. I don't experience myself as a brain, and I certainly don't experience "receiving data", so your description of these things would not be of things I experience when I see red.
This sounds like a fairly typical list broker operation, with a somewhat crowdsourced twist. A bit more wired, but not particularly new. If you are thinking of selling lists be aware that there are lots of competitors and that the industry as a whole is not in good repute. You would be up against folks like http://www.infousa.com/
I see your point now, thanks for elaborating. As it stands, I use my desktop for dev work, which I wouldn't think of putting Chrome OS on, but, I still am eager to put it on my laptop.
Reva Car: World's Largest Car Manufacturing Plant in India
Not really a 'trick', but here are two cool bookmarklets for for visualizing polls:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=700669

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=528172
If you read any newspaper articles written from the turn of the last century they all read like today's op-eds. The idea that journalists shouldn't express their opinions was invented at the same time as the papers became supported by advertisements instead of readers. The only reason journalists use the phrase "journalistic integrity" is to distract you from the fact that this style of writing was invented so as not to offend advertisers, it has nothing to do with being ethical or balanced.

In a world where all the newspapers are owned by the same people who make nuclear weapons and prisons, the surest path to profitability is to support the status quo; the phrase 'journalistic integrity' is just a form of plausible deniability, propaganda to distract you from the truth.
Telecom
We Have The Telecommunications Bits On DS1 Internet, Voice T1 Lines, DS3 Bandwidth and T3 Lines, Gigabit (GigE), FastE, Metro Ethernet, Metro Fiber Connectivity, DSL, Cable, Business Broadband Services, Dark Fibre, Lit Fiber, OC1, OC3, OC12, OC48, OC192.
oh, yes please!
I just watched the trailer. My cofounder couldn't stop laughing. That's miserable.

We were joking that we should go on and come back at one of their ridiculous offers with technical minutae: "I'll give you $250,000 for 51%, you'll get 49%." "Preferred or common? Participating? Pro-rata rights? No board seat. Liquidation preferences?" That show makes a mockery of the actual process of starting a company.
Actually, Genius doesn't recognize most of the music I have, and Pandora can set up stations with long lists of artists and songs.

My library is large and varied enough I no longer use either. But I preferred Pandora.
Internet Search Engine Placement
Ask HN: Inspirational Biographies
Hey,

I'm looking for biographies to read. Some that have really inspired me are:

Nikola Tesla
Steve Jobs
Steve Woz
Larry Ellison
Lance Armstrong

HN have suggestions? In general I'm intereted in stories of how everyday individuals became great.

Thanks!
The v1.4.x series is stable but little except bug fixes because work is nominally focused on...

The v1.5.x is more or less a rewrite that has languished for a couple of years with little progress.
Very entertaining, really!
I'm not sure how accurate it is, but the description I saw of the Dutch system is that everyone has exactly the same plan for exactly the same costs, but the gov't does it through the fig-leaf of "private" insurance companies.
There is definitely money to be made from empowering journalists. But the underlying problem has to be solved on their end first, and all they need is pen and paper.

We can build things like Wordpress VIP, but ultimately it's up to CNN to provide the content that makes or breaks the final product.

The Internet is the new printing press. Paper is out, and bits are in. I think what PG is asking for is some kind of magical printing press. Changing the way failing newspapers' content is displayed, viewed, organized, ranked, etc. is not going to save them.

Whatever your idea might be in this market, I think it needs to be centered around delivering content that people actually want.

My friend and I applied to YC with a next-gen news aggregator idea (but didn't get accepted). Our idea was to create an individually tailored news feed from users' preferences. Kind of like an RSS feed that is built and filtered for you from the comfort of an easy to use web interface. I think something like this would be the future. I would like a computer to figure out what stories I would want to read (spanning all my interests from every source in the world) and display them on my screen every morning.

I just don't think something technologically (or business model-ly) innovative is going to magically make failing newspapers better reads.
Hey thanks for mentioning launchly jbr. That was very kind of you. Completely agree with everything you said too.

It took quite a bit of work for me to make all the necessary changes to get that reputation system in place last week and I really hope it has the positive effect that I think it will. Hopefully the amount of feedback will start creeping up.

Also note that registered users can provide additional profile details now on launchly such as a bio and link to a website. This is another possible way to promote your own startup by giving quality feedback to other startups. If people view your profile (either from your feedback or the leaderboard) they may just click through to your site/service!
If it's any consolation I felt bad about down voting you just after I did it but I thought you were trying to be obnoxious. Sadly, you can't undownvote (but I'll up vote this to try to supplement your newly discovered karma score)
Put Away The Social Media Hatorade | Social Media Vision
Reconstructive surgery and cosmetic surgery are not the same thing even though they use similar, and often the same, techniques.
Technically "2. ??? 3. Profit!" was a South Park-ism

I for one welcome our new television meme overlords.
Take out a piece of clear tape, put it where they touched the screen, take it off and put it on a blank piece of paper, then write their name and the finger they used on the paper. If they ask say it's "for my records."
Don't forget the bookmarklet, makes posting stories a piece of cake: http://ycombinator.com/bookmarklet.html
The sentence in the article (written in January 2005) that's supposed to raise your hair: "But 95% of respondents were under age 50."

Okay. So? If that's supposed to be 30 years of solid computing experience, then we're talking about people who started in 1975 (the year before the Apple I came out).

Compare the number of those early adopters to the tremendous increase in the number of people becoming interested in computing in the 1980s -- an increase that just kept growing. Even if we assume a strong bias in talent towards the early adopters, they're going to be quantitatively overwhelmed by the tails of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s distributions.
Building pikluk.com on top of IE was a bit mistake, IMO. I assume it doesn't run on OSX, and is stuck on whatever version of IE you built it on...
Scheduled twitter posts
Oh, wow. Not that I'm a fan of TechCrunch either, but somehow I didn't know about this.

The journalism RFS resonated with me -- a lot. A close friend and I are in the middle of very quietly developing a project related to this. He's a successful iPhone developer for AT&T (internal applications). We've gone through the business model extensively, and we can monetize the hell out of it.

I've discussed going to YC with him, but we really wanted a working demo first. This might prompt us to bump schedule a bit.
One general writing trick I learned - after writing a long comment, I'll usually go back and edit it so in the first sentence people know what they're going to read. Some of the best comments I've seen on here are detailed, long ones, but if it jumps right into the middle of presenting the argument and evidence and statistics, a lot of people will glaze over it. So the short intro that lets people know what you're writing about helps a lot.