skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"Y Combinator's been huge and encouraging a lot of young entrepreneurs and guiding them and mentoring them, but that's a knock I hear about you guys a lot, is that there aren't really big ideas that come out of it, it's more just kind of web apps---"

"You know, the problem is that you read your own columns."
I'm also up for it - e-mail in my profile as well
What version of Windows?
It also analyzes what sort of language people tend to be receptive to (at least on dating sites... possibly elsewhere, too).

This could be useful if you're trying to create a rapport with users on your own website (albeit through one way communication).
Is Knowledge Enough? Hunger, Stress, and Other Roadblocks to Healthy Eating
I think I agree with you on this one. I used to tweet a lot but for the last two weeks, somehow facebook is back in business. I have been updating my status with links more than I tweet.
Your intro is really too harsh, and as rw pointed out (just) a rhetorical trick. Aaron didn't even submit the article.
Interesting...bartering might help you avoid taxes and regulations.
5 Ways to Buy Yourself a Good Mood
This is really only marginally useful information. Interesting, but not as practical as it seems.

The writers' profile does not seem to have been taken into consideration. Rarely does anyone respond without first checking out the profile of the person who just sent the message. Is saying "hi" really a problem, or is it more that people who typically say "hi" also have a boring profile?

Also, getting a single response doesn't mean much. You might say "sorry" and a woman might respond "that's ok" but when you try to continue the conversation it'll go nowhere. Real life dating advice doesn't discourage saying sorry because you'll get ignored, it's discouraged because it makes you boring and lower status. If you can do it without falling into that trap, it works in real life. (Accidentally bump into her shopping cart and say "sorry" and then smile and change the subject)

My okc stats are: 26 attempts to initiate contact, 9 responses. 1 live meeting and 2 open threads(1 fresh, 1 getting stale)). I don't have numbers for people who tried to iniate with me, except that I've met at least 3 others.

So that means while I get a 35% response rate there's only an 11% meet rate after that (though it may be 22% soon). So 4% total. While getting a little feedback feels good and can be useful, a few polite responses is not generally what a user's goal is. How many messages result in meetings, that's what I want to know.
Staging, Lighting
Metro Audio-Visual Productions Inc specialized in Audio-Visual Production, Event Management, and offers Services which includes audio, projection, web casting and satellite broadcasting, special effects, event production and many more.
We have asked that many times. Paul still doesn't answer, probably because he thinks that signing multiple deals with phone companies speaks for itself.

(I've asked repeatedly why PG focuses on sama rather than Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook fame, and many interesting arguments have sprung up from my making that comparison, but sadly Paul hasn't joined in.)
In which talk was pg being mean? Was it for that sports ticket predictor? He asked the question I was thinking - if I were trying to decide how much I wanted to pay for this thing, I need to know what its overall value proposition is to me.
I think they're interrelated. Look at how the European colonization of the Americas coincided with the Renaissance. They only happened because of a few key technologies reaching a certain point of evolutionary maturity. You needed the square rig, pintle-and-gudgeon rudder, compass, star charts, oil paint, double entry accounting... (See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hukkfbevWM)

We still have more problems to resolve (such as the finite nature of terrestrial resources) before all undesirable but necessary tasks are automated, and we can spend our lives entirely on art/science.
I'm under the impression that it's not pure speech recognition, but speech recognition within a specific category. The lexicon is dramatically reduced.
The interviewer was kind of annoying in general, and "the problem is that you read your own columns" was pretty good (how long have you been saving that one for, PG? ;)...but there is a little something to that knock.

Edit: Also, the transcript sort of implied a harsh, conclusive interruption from PG, which would've been awesome. The video is much friendlier in tone. :|
Minnesota Criminal Law: Underage Alcohol Consumption Laws
With many 18-22 year olds heading to – or back to – colleges throughout the state in the next couple of weeks, dorm life kicks back into gear. Regardless of whether the campus is dry or not, chances are, most college-bound individuals will encounter alcohol in a social setting this fall whether as a guest or a host. Minnesota Underage Consumption laws are clear: Drinking alcohol while under the age of 21 is a crime,
Isn't that part of the complaint about western economies?

Too many middle managers, not enough people doing/making things.
I won't even pretend to begin to understand the politics behind all this but I am confused - in a nation of over 300 MILLION people, we don't have enough skilled workers? Seriously? I'm not against immigration at all if people want a better life and they somehow believe it's here, but we also have double digit unemployment. I'm definitely missing part of the picture.
Not what I was expecting. PG doing some mid-interview facial exercise?
Zenloc Container Security Alarm Could Help Solve Growing Truck Theft Problem
MSN audio/video chat in Linux(Telepathy)
Wow! This article contains a lot of good advice for the hackers who want to learn another language. I've done some research myself on language learning,

http://learninfreedom.org/languagebooks.html

and this article mentions a lot of significant issues with good citations to current research.
But Facebook has all of those other "niche" services you mention. Doesn't that make it not a niche?
Jesus, you think Facebook will be forgotten for fucking Posterous?

I think the Posterous team is terrific. They add shitloads of features, work hard, and Garry gave me a ton of useful advice when I applied to YC. But you're comparing a fairly amateur service with possibly the best-designed web site of all time.

Posterous still hasn't beat Tumblr, which is rapidly becoming the most popular blogging service. For all its features, it looks like shit and doesn't have a rich user experience whatsoever.

Facebook, on the other hand, has struck with the force of a goddamn atomic bomb. I must think that the people who criticize Facebook either have small friend circles or have extremely peculiar friend circles, but I've got a diverse bunch of contacts and the one unifying factor is that they use Facebook. Some people use it to hook up, some people use it for class information, some people debate politics on it, some people write long confessionals, some people waste class time, but they all use it and they use it obsessively.

Facebook has become a medium unto itself. As in, my mother will write friends on Facebook instead of calling them. My grandfather will comment on photos. I will create an Event on Facebook rather than calling or emailing people. I will collaborate using a Facebook message.

Facebook's not Twitter because Twitter's designed for minimal communication. Facebook's goal was to create private social worlds; Twitter's goal became a public massing of information. But users on Twitter (not Twitter itself) developed terrific methods of communication, and Facebook's adding them to its arsenal of features.

Guess who is killing Flickr? Facebook. Guess what currently has the best chance of killing part of Youtube's clientele. Facebook (though I wish here I could say Vimeo). My friends send video messages to one another constantly, or record video when nothing's going on. All of my public photos are stored on Facebook, and once it offers public video that's where my videos are going.

Facebook offers one service, and that service is intimacy. It's talking to friends and only friends. If I had to bet on one service surviving every other one online, it would be Facebook. It's the only service I've seen where I can't imagine it being dropped for something else. I thought that within a week when I joined it in 2005, and since then I've seen nothing to convince me otherwise. It is leagues beyond anything.
Perhaps not quite in the same league as those mentioned, but have a look at Dr Karl ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Kruszelnicki ) He does exactly that - and while not completely a household name, he is reasonably well known.
I'm sure they'll work on a solution. Knowing Facebook, they'll have two solutions that utterly bomb and then one will catch on and look ugly, before they fix it up.
He looked at a Lamson release several versions out of date and several of his points are incorrect. So not only did he not take the time to check the newest version, he didn't take the time to properly analyze the version he did check.

Choice example: command function (can’t invent better name, sorry) need to have preformatted name (like command_ping).

This is incorrect. From the documentation: Note that the _command suffix is optional and configurable, but it is there to disambiguate your commands so you can use Python reserved words and base types as your command names. Without it, you can do a list_command or a for_command. This is after line 10 of the Lamson argument source file. Couldn't read that far I guess.

I wont bother addressing his other points. Putting in effort to refute an argument put together with no effort is nothing something I enjoy doing.
As someone who owns a hard drive iRiver from when the original ipod was available (with clicky-wheel and all)... I'm not so sure about your statement.
Apparently his faux pas was asking serious business questions at a dog and pony show.
Not only is it an awesome game, it can be a true art. I have seen four-square players who turned the game into a noncompetetive sport, similar to hackeysack, which allowed them to pull tricks you'd never imagine.

Ever seen someone do a flip after deflecting a four-square ball, land in a push up position, and then deflect it again with their head? I'm telling you, these guys were amazing.
Tony Hsieh on Why You Should Be Changing the Worldsh
In case anyone hasn't seen this yet: http://www.paulgraham.com/5founders.html

The list has some questionable entries even before you get to #5. At that point it just seems comical. But I could be wrong, of course.
Google only makes roughly 1-2B in profit per quarter.

FB might get there in revenue, but profit ... not sure
Ideally, the presenters should have ready answers for most of the questions that were posed after the presentations ..wasn't there a selection process per se? it was odd that many presenters were not prepared for answering market size/distribution etc questions
Actually, I dont think real AI will be modeled on the brain, but I do think understanding the brain will be key. There are 100 billion parallel processing components with some significant fraction of a quadrillion interconnections. I think that there is a lot to learn there.
And the discussion thread, in which I ask this question for the first of many times: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=542291

Half a year ago, jeez. It feels much longer ago than that. It's one of those cyclical HN debates that I always feel compelled to say my line in. Kind of like the Metafilter threads where certain users always have to say certain lines.
AT&T to FCC: gaming is not "broadband," but an added service
You're probably right, but I don't want anyone to think that speech recognition isn't good now, it just isn't good generally. There are plenty of doctors who expect programs like dragon to replace expensive transcriptionists.
Yeah, it's a puzzle. But then, of the five entries, I think only one really belongs there. (No prize for guessing which one...)
The Flip is already in HD. They're much more flexible than Apple because they have only the one product focus. So far Apple doesn't have a camera good enough to detract from the Flip, and the people who get nanos for the camera won't be in the Flip's market.
When I read the title on HN I thought it was going to be about military occupations :-)
I believe that Apple's real contribution to the MP3 field was the massive amounts of money it spent on advertising. Apple spends more per year on advertising than every other electronics company in the world...combined...$500 million+.

Apple doesn't make quality products. It makes quality marketing. And it proved that style trumps substance.
Two words. DREAM Act. http://dreamact.info

I was brought to the United States by my parents at a very young age. In the process I have inherited the title of an "illegal immigrant" from my parents. The DREAM Act is a legislation 10 years in the making. We have thousands of enterpreneurs, scientists, engineers, nurses, doctors, talent in every field imaginable going to waste in the United States; living in the shadows. Myself included.

Last year I graduated from NYU with a dual degree in electrical and computer engineering. My graduate school plans were shattered because I could not prove my identify for the purpose of taking the GREs. I cannot work, open a bank account, drive, get health insurance, go to a bar, take an interstate bus or train, fly, live or breathe. Yet, I am lucky, because I live in New York City. Those living almost anywhere else in the country cannot go to college or call the police at fear of deportation.

There are hundreds of thousands of us in the United States. I personally know hundreds of children, teens, and now young adults that have had their lives put on hold for Congress to "feel right" for immigration reform. I also know quite a few individuals who could not live like this anymore and have taken their skills elsewhere by going for voluntary departure (a path not open to all).

Next time your legislator tells you that this is not the right time for immigration reform, remind them of the experience of our butchered youth, remind them of the DREAM Act. I am a 23 year old American with no relief, rights, or equality in sight. Tragically, I am not alone.
Microsoft too powerful... sure.
Google too powerful... maybe.

Apple? They make MP3 players and cell phones.
They get their control through hardware.
There's lots of other companies that make similar hardware.

(Maybe without as many crappy games that I can buy for a dollar, maybe without as expensive an ad campaign, but similar nonetheless).

I feel like from a strategic point of view, someone who does proprietary hardware will never be in as good a position as someone who does open platform software.

I mean, imagine if apple had marketed the app store not just to their own iphone,but managed to get it on every 'smart' phone.

I'd bet that the profit margin from taking a cut of app store apps on a every smart phone would end up being much more than the amount that they make selling the iphone.

That apple is still running closed platforms kind of feels like proof that they haven't learned anything from the 1990s.

I feel that they could do amazingly well in the desktop market if they'd allow their OS to be installed on non-proprietary hardware. Of course, they (foolishly) want to be a hardware company, so they'll never do that.
The instructions said to disregard daylight saving time when voting.
Well, like I said, we've got other tricks yet, and it's still a fledgling system.

We just thought that we had a better UI for browsing content than anyone else had yet, and then Google debuted something that was uncomfortably close.

But, I'm hoping that the really surprising thing will be the ... naaaah. :-)
Probably too well.

That guy's married, and his wife's the jealous type!
Burners on high, let's turn this ocean into steam... internet steam..
More fuel on the BFS vs. CFS fire
Hey! I didn't know who else around here might be working on something in the same market, but I'm not at all surprised that someone is.

I wouldn't mind "competing" with someone in the YC or HN crowd, it would be fun -- and it's a big enough market, there's room for a couple of people to steal some lunches.

Hope to hear more from you and what you're working on. We might start releasing some teasers around the end of October; I haven't figured out yet if that would ultimately help us or hurt us, but it might be fun either way.
Unlimited Calling, Skype or Vonage?
Elon Musk, or John Carmack.
This is why I find comparisons between Twitter and Facebook ridiculous. Facebook is sticky, and they are delivering tons of value to all kinds of people. Twitter on the meantime hasn't left fad territory and its growth since the Oprah spike is significantly comprised of spam. Plus, whatever Twitter does to monetize is likely to kill the golden goose.
Taiwan President goes to Jail for Life
pg was mean? Makes me wonder if she was watching the same show as me.

I found pg to be WAY more thoughtful compared to other judges who seemed to be more in "quiz" mode("How will you solve chicken egg problem?") or "nice" mode. pg's tone was more like "I wonder if you can do blabla with this. hmm." That is also how he communicates with his own startups.
"More right than the alternative" is much different than "this is the right answer." It gets to the crux of "ultimate truth." I am not a moral relativist by any stretch of the imagination, but even working within a moral and ethical framework, very few -- if any -- problems have a right answer. The reason we are even still discussing these issues thousands of years after they were first raised, is because there is no right answer. Only better answers than others.
Iphone and Itouch paper stand / dock
Security pros are focused on the wrong threats.
by "NIA" the parent of this comment means the National Institute of Aging.
Google's Fast Flip or Microsoft's Plex
If AI surpassed even lobster intelligence by that date it would be quite an achievent.
You're talking about the past and present, I'm talking about the future. Facebook is Tyrannosaurus, Posterous is Eomaia.
Free MP3 Ripper
How to find a free mp3 ripper
Sam and Mark seem quite similar actually. The reason I talk about Sam more is that I know him so much better.

What sets Sam apart (and Mark as far as I can tell) is great force of character.
Perhaps a mandatory nag screen at startup for binaries generated with the evaluation edition?
Ask HN: Novice developer looking for weekly LAMP dev lessons
I'm a web designer and writer who started a site using open source, off-the-shelf stuff about 8 months ago that's starting to see a little uptake. We're only getting around 3,000 visitors a day, but they're spending a decent amount of time on site (4 minutes/visit) and telling their friends to check us out. The site was recently mentioned on a local broadcast after some news broke in one of our discussion areas. I'm having fun and supporting myself off $3-4,000/month in ad sales to small businesses. I think this can grow a lot bigger and make even larger waves but there's a big problem.

I have no #(*$ing clue what I'm doing on the tech side. I've been sneaking by so far, but I don't see any real growth happening without changes to my approach.

For awhile, hosting was an issue until I found a local sysadmin who got me set up on his linode account and helps with some basic admin stuff in return for splitting his hosting costs.

But now my code itself is a problem. I don't have the php literacy and know-how to make my site do the things my users want it to do.

Example: The system I went with says it has a reputation system that works a lot like the one on this site. In reality it just doesn't do what it says it does. When someone recommends a story, the score of the person who wrote it doesn't budge. A look at the issue queue for the component shows someone else noticed this as well. Unfortunately, the module developer stopped responding to support requests 3 months ago.

I just spent 3 hours staring at the php code for this component. Something is broken. I don't know what, and I don't even now how to go about finding it.

I'm not making enough to hire a developer to work with me, but what about a coach? Is there an experienced LAMP dev out there who could tutor me for an hour each week and help point me in the right direction when I get stumped like this?

If this sounds interesting, drop me an e-mail at rexfaraday@gmail.com. I'm happy to answer questions below. I really want to learn how to do a lot of this stuff myself, I just need a resource in my corner who can put me on the right path and hit me with some knowledge now and then.
In the first paragraph I explained the criterion I used to make the list. It's just the 5 founders who've influenced me the most.
There are a lot of reasons, but here are the two largest:

1) We've modeled how much we could make as a "hedge fund". We think we could turn $500k into another $500k in a year. We'd need to raise money to be able to do that. The upside for the business in its current form is far larger. This is an industry with huge transaction fees--a "round trip" transaction of buying and then reselling a ticket on StubHub will cost you at least 30-35% of the purchase price. Just because you can accurately forecast prices doesn't mean you can become an instant millionaire.

2) Buying and selling tickets is a far cry from trading stocks. You have to hire a staff to actually open envelopes, manage the physical inventory, deal with individual buyers, make runs to FedEx, etc. There are thousands of brokers out there who have mastered these logistics, whereas we have no experience with them. So we'd prefer to serve as a platform to enable all those brokers to make money, keeping a cut for ourselves.
C:\Users\bmm6o>ping www.penzba.co.uk
Ping request could not find host www.penzba.co.uk. Please check the name and try again.
We cited the variation is for sold out tickets. That's the segment of the market that we deal with.

We have the data to figure out this number, it just wasn't a stat I had on the top of my head since we focus on sold out events.
Why Kanye West Should Of Had A Twitter Presence At The VMAs
Lambda the Ultimate on "Coders at Work"
But Facebook encourages/allows behavior that users will later regret. This will create negative feelings toward the brand by osmosis.
The cow thing was not a counter argument. Anyway, we do have wild animals, just not cows. That wild cows exist is news to me - I almost suspected that they are a human creation and not fit for survival of their own (unlike buffaloes).

" I don't think their goal was to reduce birth rates."

Their goal was to feed the hungry. I mentioned that even feeding the hungry is not as simple a mechanism as it sounds, for example because of rising birth rates. In short if you think about eliminating hunger, you should probably think about birth rates. Is that really so uncohesive a line of thought?
Compare "Oh, hey, I see you're a Christian too." and "I hope we can grow and enjoy God's love together.". The latter seems to connote much more devotion than the former. I would bet that "God" is more likely to be used in a devoted sense than "Christian". I would further bet that the devoted can find each other at church and/or devoted language from a man to a woman in the first contact doesn't come off well. (Disclaimer: poster is an atheist who was raised Christian but does not intend to bash religion in this particular post.)
For a privately held entity, how exactly would you like a 3rd party to provide evidence?

That's what "audited financials" are all about. You think it's any different for a public company?
I couldn't understand what they were doing during the presentation, but the founders explained afterward and it seems pretty impressive.
Because attention spans aren't short enough.
You're right. I only meant niche in the case of Flickr, Delicious, and YouTube; Twitter and Facebook are specifically the brand. I edited my comment accordingly.
This one's easy: anyone making a clear, testable predication about what's going to happen 10 years from now is going to be Wrong.