skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Why don't more people post their startup ideas on HN?
After rereading PG's article on the value of an idea, I scratched my head and asked myself this question. Why, if the value of an idea is so low, don't more people post their startup ideas on HN?

Here is a play-by-play of how my thought process went:

1) The value of an idea is very low; the value of a strong team is very high

2) I should try to meet more smart people who share my vision and like my idea

3) The best way to meet people with similar interests is by telling others about my interests

4) Wouldn't I meet more smart people who share my interests if I posted my idea on HN?

I quickly realized that it isn't that people are afraid to tell others about their ideas-- heck, I've been telling everyone I meet about my idea without hesitation-- rather, I hypothesize, that people are afraid of the unknown, the risk that there may be someone out there who is more capable and who doesn’t need them to execute their idea.

But, I then wondered, are the risks significant enough to offset the benefits? What do you think?
People who can't code but want to earn big bucks on development projects always do :)
That's true, but the fact is that such a question would never be asked of a guy. That is what makes it sexist.

After all, if it is none of the employers business when they're talking to a guy why should that change when interviewing a woman ?
A quick google search suggests they do.

http://www.allbusiness.com/human-resources/employee-developm...

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/71-211-x/2009000/part-partie1-e...

Not all female absenteeism is due to children. Menstruation also plays a significant role (as evidenced by a 28-day periodic spike in absenteeism for women):

http://www.nber.org/papers/w12369
You're over-thinking this. My comment was a response to the idea that every lisp can that but there's no single standard.

My awkward phrasing was a reference to about 1:53 in this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCWA7uevo_Q
I've known people who had larger student loans 2-3 years after graduating than at graduation. Interest is really a killer for many people.
I'm pretty sure this is true of wal-mart. Where ever wal-mart builds a store, it doesn't take long for an Applebee's, Ruby Tuesday's or some other family-type chain restaurant to go in.
It depends on whether people want to profit from their ideas themselves (usually people that have no capability to actually execute are in this mode) or whether you'd be happy to see the idea realized at all, no matter whether you had a hand in it or not.

People that have ideas and are good at executing them usually have their hands full anyway, not much loss to them if they can get other people to run with their ideas. Also, they probably realize that their ideas are not all that unique.

If all you've done in your life is get this one 'great' idea then you're going to be much more protective about it.

And that probably kills the one chance you had at realizing it.
I think you're going the right way. Learning only what you like/want to learn in order to use it in complex/interesting projects.

About the new technologies, it's impossible to know about everything.
In my experience, OSX has much better thought-out keyboard shortcuts than Windows does. A simple example: you'd like to force-kill the focused application. In OSX, you type command-option-esc (one hand), return, return (other hand). I don't know what it is in Vita, but in XP, it would require quite a bit of mousework.
I understand you don't read many typical research papers? (5% abstract, 15% introduction, 15% history and justification, then comes the real meat...) I seriously felt like reading another HCI journal while watching this - almost the same structure :)
Do you think the benefits of posing an idea on HN offset the risk of seeing someone else run with your idea? Assuming that you're capable and interested in profiting from your idea.
Thank you very much for your reply.
Have dictation systems (like Dragon) gotten any better at switching between dictation mode and command mode?
Having played a lot of Bach when studied piano, I recognized a lot of parts sounding exactly like his pieces.
I know for some people that talking too much about something is a means to avoid actually doing it. I know one individual who seems to feel no need to really accomplish anything as long as they are getting sufficient attention for whatever the heck they are doing. I don't think that is all that unusual. I mean if you are looking primarily for an emotional payoff, why bother doing something hard if there are easier ways to get it?

I also think some things need to "incubate". And during incubation, it is detrimental to have certain kinds of inputs.
FTFA

> The Keiretsu Forum, meanwhile, said that while TechCrunch50 charges all but the entrepreneur to attend ...
The trouble with Android, cont'd
Me too. Been flailing away at TeleAtlas for 10 months now with no results. Just last week I got my County GIS Dept to directly contact a live body at TeleAtlas.

We'll see how fast Google's turnaround is!
The employer may believe it is their business (regardless of gender), but that the probability of a man missing work due to children is considerably lower than a woman doing so.

Similarly, employers might ask reserve officers about service obligations, while not bothering to ask them of civilians. They could do this not out of a bias against military folk, but simply because reserve officers have a considerably higher chance of missing work due to service obligations.
our switch from Lisp to Python
While I appreciate the offer (and I have a uservoice account myself), how does this qualify as "hacker news"? It's more of an advertisement, no?
I haven't seen statistics in a long time, but my recollection is that women are more likely than men to take time off work for caring for a sick child, taking the child to a doctor's appointment, meeting school counselors and so on. Women are also far more likely than men to quit their own job in order to follow their spouse to a new city when the spouse changes jobs. Quiting your job because you got offered a different one usually is a career move forward. Quitting because you are following someone else is a career setback. Married women are more likely than married men to attend whatever college is "local". Married men are more likely than married women to pick a college that suits their career goals and move the entire family there. Women are more likely than men to quit their job or take time off for caring other family members as well, not just children (such as elderly parents). And the list goes on and on...or did the last time I saw such stats.
It's not hard to imagine YC issuing an RFS about this.

Student debt, you are officially on notice.
Yes but that cuts both ways: Women can cover a long gap in their resume in a socially acceptable fashion far easier than a man can. I know first hand: I wasn't "too ill to work my whole life until recently". Instead I was "a recently divorced former homemaker entering the workforce for the first time".
the problem is that the value of a college degree has plummeted. 20 years ago, it was a guaranteed way to get a high paying job, now it's just another checkbox that doesn't separate you from anyone else.

Paying $60-200K for a checkbox is hardly worth it, when majority of college students(outside the hard sciences), will end up working in the same jobs they would have gotten w/o a degree.
Only 17 venture capital firms raise money in Q3 — fewest in 15 years
People used to - we used to get "review my startup" posts every couple days, and for the first few months people would actually get really good feedback on them. Then more people started doing it, and the average startup became lamer and lamer, until eventually people just stopped reading & voting up "review my startup" posts. Then people figured it just wasn't worth submitting them, so it sorta stopped, mostly.
I don't like to unnecessarily bash on Microsoft but the quote of today has to be:

"Microsoft releasing a half assed product? I find that hard to believe, sir!"
I've always found a good principle to be that functions should do something and classes should be something and it should be possible to explain what that something is in a short sentence. If an if or switch statement can become a map of function pointers or a polymorphic dispatch without violating this principle, go for it. If not, use "if". Even if you have to use a lot of "if", it'll make your code make sense.

A related principle is that a function's argument list should never be longer than its body.
Except the LOIs in this case are utterly meaningless. I've been on the customer side of LOIs that were signed on request, knowing that it obligated us to nothing.
Considering that most of the startups on Shark Tank (and the original, BBC's Dragons Den) seem to not get much room for negotiation from the Sharks/Dragons and end up taking funding for 40-51% of their company, the deal that NoteHall got was really quite good - 25% on terms that essentially make it a loan.
James Dyson's newest creation: the Dyson Air Multiplier (without Fan Blades)
Ask HN: Context-switching
Here's my problem: I find switching tasks, on the scale of hours to days, to be agony.

I am productive and feel good when I'm working on the same large project for, say, two weeks to two years, pretty much every day. (Releasing early and often, of course. ;) I have momentum. I get started the minute I get out of bed, and I have all the context there in my head, so I'm productive immediately. After the work day, my subconscious mind is merrily cranking away, understanding the problem more deeply, finding simpler solutions, seeing connections and opportunities. I track lots of little tasks and merrily bring them to completion. I've done this happily at several software companies.

Two or more simultaneous projects, though, and I have a problem. At a couple other software companies, I was a very bad employee: looking back, those were places that booked your time "50% on this client's project, 50% on that client's project" (or more subdivisions, even). Every time I switch projects, I have to exercise extreme willpower to absorb the situation and see what needs to be done. Each ramp-up takes a couple of days of agony to get some momentum. My subconscious creativity shuts down. The mental context never becomes rich and fertile. Work is just an attempt to force myself to do some error-prone hack. A couple days or a week later, it's back to the first project. After a few weeks of this, my head gets "noisy". I find myself losing track of details, unable to concentrate, making lots of dumb mistakes, feeling foggy and confused. Reading becomes slow and difficult. I find myself becoming stupid, lazy, and unimaginative, always craving some quiet time. Or better yet, some sustained focus time.

Right now, I'm in grad school (Ph.D., 2nd year). Grad school, it turns out, consists of running four projects simultaneously: three classes + teaching one class (or helping teach). It's all hurry-up-and-do-something-else. Each day is broken into three or four blocks, about one to two hours each: attending a class, office hour, grading, actually doing some classwork, blah blah. Each week is broken into about 20-25 blocks like this, sprinkled among the four projects. I seldom get much done during these blocks; they're too short to build momentum or finish something. The real work happens during all-nighters: dropping everything, force-feeding my brain for a couple days, delivering something hurried, and then flushing it out of my brain to catch up on the other stuff. (I remember almost nothing from my courses, even though I get A's.) I find this agonizing, unproductive, and demoralizing.

How have you dealt with this in your own work? Even outside of grad school, "makers" have to deal with "manager time". Don't start-ups involve constant context-switching? (Maybe it's not as bad as grad school, since the contexts are related.)

(If you know of any grad schools that run on "maker time", I'd love to hear about that.)
Some points to noodle on:

1) The emotional side of not wanting to call him a founder is something for you to get over. His title won't matter to you if he helps you become a billionaire.

2) He's part of your founding team at the very least.

3) 5-10% equity is very generous. More than I'd offer.

4) If he's the right guy, do what it takes within reason to bring him in. If he wants to call himself a founder, let him. The real story is known by you and that should be enough.

5) If you do bring him on board as a founder, you need to internalize it or you'll constantly struggle every time you see his name alongside yours in print or on the site and it will be a source of conflict.
They implied they were writing code by telling the customer that "development was progressing". Could you argue this was not a lie? Yes, if you are a weasel.
Milton Friedman's solution was interesting. Basically VCs fund your education in exchange for a certain percentage of your income over an agreed upon period. Similar to how VCs invest in your company in exchange for a fraction of ownership.

http://www.schoolchoices.org/roo/fried1.htm
So... which one did you mean?

Your other reply * seemed to indicate the latter (as I say in the comment); but here you're saying that you'd forgotten about that meaning, so I guess you can't have meant it...

* http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=875735 ah, now I see: the commenter gave two interpretations, and you replied "that's what I meant" without specifying which one. I didn't notice the ambiguity, and read you as meaning the "grey text in a HN post"; but it now seems you meant the other meaning ("linking to your own blog"). Wow. Confusion upon confusion, which I didn't notice even when asking about it. :-?
Where exactly is the argument? What I read was this:

The charge: Angel groups charging entrepreneurs to pitch are ripping them off. The incentives are all wrong. You are not getting your moneys worth. It is a scam fuelled by founders desperate to pitch, not a business connecting capital to opportunities. It is similar to modelling/acting agent-ing scams. You can tell it is a scam by the level of secrecy.

The defence: (1) Two of the named companies defend their practices. (2)entrepreneurs have “a sense of entitlement” (3)TechCrunch50 conference makes a lot more money off startups than they do (4)who are chosen to move forward get weeks of free coaching and mentorship on their pitches before they’re asked to pay. Also, entrepreneurs don’t have to pay — they can drop out if they want. (5)“We are not in this to make money,” a (unidentified) spokesman said.

1,2 & 5 do not actually say anything. 3 is neither here not there. No one ever said that startups are a no profit allowed world. That leave only 4, a relatively vague claim that these groups add some sort of value to the process.
There is no such thing as a Nobel Prize in Economics. There is a Bank of Sweden Prize in memory of Alfred Nobel, but it has nothing to do with actual Nobel Prizes.
How insightful. They are similar cases! So much so that it is also unlawful to consider an applicant's pending service obligations during hiring.
Absolutely. After all, you've had a long time to think about the implementation details, most others don't have that-start.

Also, without a doubt someone somewhere is currently thinking about exactly that same idea. But he/she might not have access to the crowd at HN, which is a huge asset.

An alternative to test the waters a bit would be to mail a couple of people and see how they respond. That way you get something in between without putting your idea out for the world to see.

Worst case it's a bad idea, knowing that sooner will save you time and possibly $, best case you might find yourself some enthusiastic co-founders.
It doesn't cut both ways. It may be socially acceptable to stay home with your children for 2 years, but it isn't career-acceptable. Read the thread: women are penalized for returning to the workforce.
how can i tell who knocked my comment down to -2
There have been some cases lately where I think the 'review my startup' line was just a ploy to get a spam link in under the radar. It seems to give a free pass to get a lot of people to look at some commercial proposition. Effectively it is hacking HN, in itself a funny thing.
What I've noticed over the years is that having awareness or an insight into a personality quirk or character defect or whatever you call it, doesn't automatically change it or fix it. And I've often made the mistake of thinking, 'if I could just figure out why I do x I'll be able to stop doing it'. And thats just not how it happens. After I've spent some time pyscho-analysising myself and figuring that "oh I do that because I feel y and I feel y because of this thing that happened when 9"...usually what happens is that the behvaiour doesn't change...but when I do the thing, I start feeling emo about the thing that happened when I was 9. And think this is because I sometimes end up pyscho-analysising the wrong types of things. I think what I'm saying is, trawling through childhood memories, past a certain point, is a fools errand.

But this isn't always the case. When it comes to my marriage for example, self knowledge that comes from 'putting myself on the couch' can actually make big differences to the relationship - especially when we talk it out.

So I don't know. I'm sure self knowledge is critically important to success in life, but there is a limit to how much pyscho-analysis one should do. I still haven't figured out when and when not to do it.

Anyone else relate?
Best part: "If you're not breaking things, you're not moving fast enough" [...] "The goal of building something is to build something, and not to avoid making mistakes"
FMS: Spam-proof anonymous message boards on Freenet
RentCycle Wants To Be An OpenTable For Local Rental Businesses
Except greasemonkey is very easy to modify if you're a programmer. I frequently modify the code in a userscript to my particular liking.
I didn't see a single ad while watching all three videos. I must be lucky or something.
This author seems to be trying to make the point "We are legit and we charge". But he never gets around to the "We are legit" part.
Dyson does it again. Its a plain old coanda air mover like we've had in the paint shop for 20 years. Dress it up, go on and on about super-duper patented technology and resell a freakin' fan for $300. He's definitely brilliant (for some value thereof).

Edit: Here's one. They look like this:

http://www.thermofluids.co.uk/mover.php
> I'm learning a lot every day

I like it. Fundamentals are always useful, new technology comes and goes. The most important thing is that you sound like you're enjoying yourself.
there are other models
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/magic/man2html/2/thread
Yes you'd at least want to tone down the language and call it a prototype, or a work-in-progress.
I am certainly curious what PG's and YC's take on this discussion is.
PrivAds: Behavioral Advertising without Tracking
I don't know if this just happens to be my computer, but every time I click on one of the feedback tabs on a site, and it's hosted by uservoice, the overlayed box loads really slowly. Once I see the 'X' button load, I quickly close it as I've grown tired of waiting the 5 seconds.
The interesting thing here is that as an employer you really don't want to go in to territory like that, because if you end up not accepting the employee for the position you are open to legal action because of having asked such questions during an interview.

Most larger corporations have a pretty long list of stuff that you have to familiarize yourself with before being allowed to interview people independently for exactly that reason. Or they'll have someone from HR breathing down your neck during the interview.

Seriously, these questions are off limits. At all times.

An interview should concentrate on the applicants capabilities, suitability for the job in terms of teamwork, qualifications and so on.

Go outside those boundaries on the asking side and you are in trouble.

If someone volunteers information like that and you use it to make your decision better be ready to back it up with a 'real' reason or you are still going to be open to trouble.

That's one of the reasons why rejection letters are such inane boilerplate, most companies are loathe to tell you why you were rejected for fear of opening themselves up to legal issues.
I'd be against that; on the other hand, I don't buy that trying to make an improvement for more people than just the fully-dexterous and ten-fingered means some massive sacrifice.

For that matter, I'm dubious that an interface that needs ten fingers to handle shifting between applications constitutes any massive improvement for anyone.
I'm the author. When I add new content, I'll make a note of it on my blog here: journal.stuffwithstuff.com. You can watch the RSS feed for that to see when new stuff is up.

I'm talking to a publisher right now, so it might be a little while before the next chapter is done, but hopefully I can get things squared away soon and get back to cranking out text.
They just mean you have a sales pipeline, nothing more.

Imagine you're an investor. Two guys with ideas of similar merit come in front of you. One has three signed (and admittedly meaningless) LOIs from potential customers and knows what to build. One has a prototype but is really unsure of the marketplace.

The investors I know pick the LOI guys every time, all other things being equal. It's the execution side of the "ideas vs execution" debate.
The Problem With Taking Seed Money From Big VCs
My book aims to cover sort of the code-between-the-features. It won't teach you too much about AI, physics, etc. (there are plenty of other books for that), but I hope it will help you get those systems to hang together gracefully.
Microsoft says it had Sidekick data backup, but it was hit, too
I've been considering this issue a lot lately since I have a kid and hope to have more in the next few years. I'm planning on saving for their future in such a way that leaves things flexible just in case college isn't the best option when they are adults. I will do pretty much anything to convince them not to go into debt for school unless they are going into an engineering field or something that we can clearly see how they will make it up and pay off that debt quickly. I'm planning on starting this lesson early with the hope that when it comes time they already are able to make an informed decision without me having to get worked up about it :)
I love Balsamiq. Demo of it here: http://www.balsamiq.com/demos/mockups/Mockups.html
They could have been talking about their returns on past investments.
It means when you have a thousand disks, you lose one every month (or a dozen every month if this paper is correct: "We find that in the field, annual disk replacement rates exceed 1%, with 2-4% common and up to 12% observed on some systems").
Ruth Frith set shot put world record at age 100
Moreover, they are usually very transparent about their investments.
Haha yeah seriously. That's kind of a silly rebuttal :p
I think this is an interesting attempt, but will fail when it meets a persistent spam group, like most anti-spam systems.

First, captchas can and will be broken/gamed or otherwise circumvented.

Second, trust networks are not new and are certainly not invulnerable to attack. Advogato has had one for a long time, and it was subject to a pretty run-of-the-mill but effective attack: http://www.squarefree.com/trust/trust.pdf

Combining several different anti-spam methods into a kind of layered approach is good, but it will hardly make it "spam proof."