Linkseed/hacker_news_with_comments · Datasets at Hugging Face

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47,552	47,549	vlad	You have a 1 in 20 chance of being chosen by YC. Pretty good odds!	palish	Thanks for your advice; I just submitted 20 applications. :)On a serious note, can one apply as a single hacker who doesn't care about which project he takes on?	If we assume there will be 500 applications and that YC will be accepting 25 of them then that's a 1 in 20 chance.Throw in the fact some applications, maybe as many as half, are broken (thirteen year old founders, clones of existing ideas, etc) and you've got a great shot.Anyone that still has cold feet, get in there and apply!	0	17	2007-08-28 19:44:54 UTC
47,554	47,236	langenu	Google Launches Official Facebook App	dawie	It seems to have stopped working (at least for now).	null	2	14	2007-08-28 19:46:58 UTC
47,556	47,523	run4yourlives	How to Blog on Company Time Without Getting Dooced	eastsidegringo	There is really no content in this article. I'm a little disappointed.	My SXSW panel, Blog on Company Time Without Getting Dooced, will discuss the various ways you can avoid being fired (or not being hired in the first place) for your blog/online profile. And ways you can use your on-the-clock Internet time productively; by blogging or pursuing other online business ventures withouth nailed.	0	2	2007-08-28 19:47:51 UTC
47,559	47,442	RyanGWU82	Crystal Tower, the startup dorm, loses elevator service	nickb	I have a couple friends who live there (hi guys) but OMG, THIS IS THE LEAST NEWSWORTHY STORY EVAR!!	null	0	6	2007-08-28 19:52:41 UTC
47,564	47,310	myoung8	How valuable are designers to a startup team?	kyro	Our team is just two guys. My co-founder is a rockstar hacker. I wouldn't call myself a rockstar designer, but I'm taking care of all that stuff (graphic design, UI, copywriting, etc.) as well as marketing.I've always liked designing things, so even though I'm no rockstar, what we've got is good enough (read: design that won't be noticed by the user--not horrendous, not stunning). If I was just doing business stuff and my co-founder had to do design as well we wouldn't be getting anywhere fast. Good design takes time, but it doesn't have to be flashy. Find someone who understands usability (Fitts' Law) and knows HTML/CSS. Like everyone else has said, if they can hack, even better. I'd also add that if they like the b-side and understand what hacking involves (even if they can't do it well) they will be very useful to the team (read: deserve full equity).	Compared to the value of having coders on a team, how do designers stack up? Is it common to have a designer on board, or to just a design firm? Also, have the majority of teams accepted to YC had designers on the team, and if not, what have they done? Perhaps pg can best answer that last one.Thanks.	3	17	2007-08-28 20:07:22 UTC
47,569	47,497	Kelevra	Boingboing redesigned: nicely minimalist, despite all the ads	rms	"All the ads?" The ad count is way, way down. Where they used to have a dozen mini-banners, they've now got one big square box.	null	1	8	2007-08-28 20:12:32 UTC
47,571	47,549	SwellJoe	You have a 1 in 20 chance of being chosen by YC. Pretty good odds!	palish	Where'd you get the "accepting 25" number? Just curious. It seemed like 19 was a bit overwhelming for them this time. But since the CA office is bigger, and there are more former founders out here that would be able to relieve some of the advisory role pressure, they might be willing to bump the number up again, assuming enough of the applications are good.	If we assume there will be 500 applications and that YC will be accepting 25 of them then that's a 1 in 20 chance.Throw in the fact some applications, maybe as many as half, are broken (thirteen year old founders, clones of existing ideas, etc) and you've got a great shot.Anyone that still has cold feet, get in there and apply!	5	17	2007-08-28 20:18:59 UTC
47,573	47,482	mynameishere	The Surprising Truth About Ugly Websites (they perform better)	nickb	When "pretty" equals "childish", ugly will of course always win.	null	6	18	2007-08-28 20:21:15 UTC
47,577	47,376	mynameishere	New hydrogen generating technology "competitive with gasoline"	charzom	For all of CO2's bad rap, it is a known quantity, and its effect of the atmosphere is largely non-disruptive. The potential for releasing billions of kgs of hydrogen into the atmosphere, well:http://www.physlink.com/Reference/AirComposition.cfm...there isn't much of it, and I'm not sure we can predict what will happen if the amount goes up 100 fold.	null	1	13	2007-08-28 20:26:58 UTC
47,579	47,549	portLAN	You have a 1 in 20 chance of being chosen by YC. Pretty good odds!	palish	Why wait for someone else's approval? Don't leave your fate up to someone else's whim.And don't forget there are many, many other investors.[Edit: Also don't forget you can set up Google ads on your own; or have actual paying customers. You may not need any investment at all.]	If we assume there will be 500 applications and that YC will be accepting 25 of them then that's a 1 in 20 chance.Throw in the fact some applications, maybe as many as half, are broken (thirteen year old founders, clones of existing ideas, etc) and you've got a great shot.Anyone that still has cold feet, get in there and apply!	3	17	2007-08-28 20:29:56 UTC
47,581	47,560	run4yourlives	Facebook Rival ConnectU.com's SQL injection vulnerability: a story of pathetic hubris	tomh	DO NOT STORE PASSWORDS IN PLAIN TEXTDO NOT STORE PASSWORDS IN PLAIN TEXTDO NOT STORE PASSWORDS IN PLAIN TEXTDO NOT STORE PASSWORDS IN PLAIN TEXTObviously, this still needs to be said. Every modern database has an encrypt function that you can build right into the SQL string.	null	0	12	2007-08-28 20:32:03 UTC
47,582	47,549	aandreev	You have a 1 in 20 chance of being chosen by YC. Pretty good odds!	palish	You make a surprisingly random assumption (500 apps) and then base your entire post around statistical interpretations of that assumption.Bravo!You should become an economist.	If we assume there will be 500 applications and that YC will be accepting 25 of them then that's a 1 in 20 chance.Throw in the fact some applications, maybe as many as half, are broken (thirteen year old founders, clones of existing ideas, etc) and you've got a great shot.Anyone that still has cold feet, get in there and apply!	2	17	2007-08-28 20:33:25 UTC
47,596	47,232	huherto	do not. I am just letting it out.	rokhayakebe	Sorry for the lost of your girlfriend. I can only quote Joaquin Sabina."...Y una manana comprendi, que a veces gana el que pierde a una mujer""...and one morning I understood that sometimes you win when you loose a woman"	O boy. I am not writing for anyone to enjoy or even read this. But this is the only place I am socially active on a daily basis. I kinda feel secure here. Last Tuesday I lost my job ( well I quit, but I did not like it and they were treating me poorly). Wednesday I lost my car. It stopped in the middle of the freeway. I managed to take it home after 3 hours ( the normal ride is about 5 minutes top ). Thursday I lost my phone. If you are addicted to mobile IM and push email, then loosing your phone is like loosing your ability to breath and now you must live with a tube stuck in your throat. Friday I lost my girlfriend. O boy. Now that one hurt. Can you imagine seeing someone leave you when you need them the most. My girlfriend knows me more about me than anyone outside my family. I thought she was sweet. I never thought she really loved me, but we had this rule of "no lie" that made it all smooth. She lied to me. Big time. And to make matters worst, I found she did for a long time. O boy. I am not even mad, but I am hurt and unpleasantly surprised. Saturday and Sunday were tough, but I managed. Today, I found out more lies from her. O boy. And today, the one person I called my best friend let me down. I called him and say I needed his help. O boy. "Hang on" he told me, "You will do fine". O boy. I keep wishing that I will wake up soon. I wished this is a dream. Somebody wake me up please before it is too late. Wake me up.	13	31	2007-08-28 20:58:32 UTC
47,601	47,482	tx	The Surprising Truth About Ugly Websites (they perform better)	nickb	I disagree with him. Professional looking web site is yet another step higher in delivery of "quality feel" your business may either project to customers or not. I am inclined to think that craigslist, ebay an plentyoffish are rather exceptions. Every single one of them has very significant reasons to explain their success. So significant that design got irrelevant. Certainly there is more to succes than a pretty looking HTML/CSS, but saying that ugliness sells is just wrong.	null	2	18	2007-08-28 21:07:54 UTC
47,606	45,698	Radovici	Holding a program in one's head	eposts	Wow. Nothing short of epiphanic.	null	73	142	2007-08-28 21:20:45 UTC
47,609	47,147	steve	Teenage Girl's MySpace Layouts Worth Millions, Drops Out Of High School	vlad	So how does she make all that money? Advertising? Contracts she's won?	null	8	88	2007-08-28 21:29:03 UTC
47,611	47,415	christonog	Top 100 "Undiscovered" Web Sites	jkush	This is a pretty neat list, although I would think meebo and kiva are more "discovered" than the others. I agree with the amie st and indeed picks. But more than five food related sites? And is whoissick.com? Social networking for the sick; maybe there's value in that...	null	1	9	2007-08-28 21:33:39 UTC
47,612	47,531	davidw	Sony Ericsson's new Virtual Lab enables testing of phone apps through your browser	jsjenkins168	I've been offering this service for Hecl for something like a year:http://builder.hecl.org/	null	0	2	2007-08-28 21:35:28 UTC
47,617	47,482	samson	The Surprising Truth About Ugly Websites (they perform better)	nickb	In some ways I feel compelled to agree with his point, even though almost every thought in my mind goes contrary to that. People trust the Wall street journal which has a fixutre of using Times Roman for most of their articles. I think it would advantagous at least intially for some sites to jump on that where their content depends on trust that the site has not yet acquired on their own. Ugliness (if you want to call it that) may work over a bubbly fonty web 2.0 site.At the same time I agree with brlewis expectations idea of the user. If I wanted to put my photos anywhere it would be a disney like bubbly, fonty like site.But all this is just a view on what works initially (or on first glance), afterwards it still up to the site to retain and grow their user base. And thats based on content not ugliness or beauty.	null	5	18	2007-08-28 21:53:01 UTC
47,624	47,622	eusman	What's the best startup story you ever heard?	eusman	James Dyson's story is one of the most interesting startup stories I know. Trying to sell your technology and everyone ignoring you...http://www.bestchoicevacuums.com/dyson-story.html	doesn't have to be about software	1	9	2007-08-28 22:00:46 UTC
47,633	47,618	nmeyer	Y Combinator Companies Didn't Like Boston?	knewjax	I threw a party over the summer at my place in Cambridge, and there were a few of us who actually went out often. But we had gone to MIT so we knew what was fun. So, yes -- it has everything to do with investment opportunities. There are a few companies planning to go to New York for the music companies. (This includes us)	Did any of this sessions YC group enjoy the city of boston? Im a Boston native and out of everything I have seen so far it seems that the overall feeling was that Boston doesnt make the cut and most of the YC companies will be moving to the Valley. Is this mostly based on investment opportunities. Or your experience here as well. Did you guys even really have a chance to go out and have a good time in the city?	0	1	2007-08-28 22:29:58 UTC
47,634	47,597	mkull	MySpace runs on IIS? Really?	andreyf	Yes, they were running coldfusion until about 2 years ago, at which point they switched to a hybrid solution of Blue Dragon (ColdFusion running on .NET) and ASP.NET.http://highscalability.com/myspace-architecture	null	1	11	2007-08-28 22:33:13 UTC
47,638	47,616	cellis	Joke about how software developers are hired	vuknje	Guy Kawasaki is sorely mistaken. I do know all of those applications (illustrator, photoshop, dreamweaver, flash, etc) and all of those languages (javascript,actionscript) and did learn them on a pc.	null	0	2	2007-08-28 22:56:48 UTC
47,640	47,310	menloparkbum	How valuable are designers to a startup team?	kyro	If you ask myspace or ebay, not very.	Compared to the value of having coders on a team, how do designers stack up? Is it common to have a designer on board, or to just a design firm? Also, have the majority of teams accepted to YC had designers on the team, and if not, what have they done? Perhaps pg can best answer that last one.Thanks.	13	17	2007-08-28 23:01:58 UTC
47,642	47,390	Hexstream	What Really Buys Happiness?	kkim	Freedom. And money can buy you a lot of freedom indeed, unless it has lots of strings attached.	null	2	9	2007-08-28 23:04:47 UTC
47,643	47,597	aston	MySpace runs on IIS? Really?	andreyf	It's not like Microsoft's web stack sucks. Obviously C#'s not en vogue, but it's a fine way to put together a website. There's actually some really good stuff in there, and they've had the presentation/code-behind separation in since before people though it was a good idea.	null	5	11	2007-08-28 23:06:16 UTC
47,645	47,391	adrutledge	The Art of Bootstrapping	drm237	Very good article, some of it is reiterating things I would take as a given, others like the bottom up market size estimation are very useful points that are easy to miss when caught up in the hope and dreams.	Someone once told me that the probability of an entrepreneur getting venture capital is the same as getting struck by lightning while standing at the bottom of a swimming pool on a sunny day. This may be too optimistic.	0	7	2007-08-28 23:08:24 UTC
47,649	47,415	kingnothing	Top 100 "Undiscovered" Web Sites	jkush	Some of those companies should have thought more about their name before setting up shop.	null	2	9	2007-08-28 23:13:23 UTC
47,655	47,622	german	What's the best startup story you ever heard?	eusman	Once someone told me about a guy who invented the disk brake, he went to a racing team to offer it, but they told him "we're looking for something to speed up our cars, not to slow them down."At the end, disk brakes helped a lot in racing because drivers could reduce speed in less time which gave them more time to accelerate.(I don't know if this is a true story or just a joke, but its a great story!)	doesn't have to be about software	2	9	2007-08-28 23:29:33 UTC
47,656	47,390	adrutledge	What Really Buys Happiness?	kkim	I do agree with the article's point. Money is an abstract representation of wealth, a way to procure wealth -- the things we may want. Now, that said, money and wealth both tend to have strings attached. Investment, at least, is honest about that. On the topic of "acquiring" freedom, its been my experience that unspent money, potential for wealth, does more for providing freedom, because it provides the flexibility to react to a changing situation in a way that allows one to take the path with the fewest consequences. Not always the path that costs the least or that requires the smallest effort, but there are opportunity costs in everything.	null	1	9	2007-08-28 23:30:38 UTC
47,657	47,310	bdr	How valuable are designers to a startup team?	kyro	Q: How does startup by two hackers get a well-designed website? How much does it matter?Paul Graham: Matters different amounts depending on the application. The solution Google uses is just to make pages very bare and functional. They have no design sense, but they try not to need it.	Compared to the value of having coders on a team, how do designers stack up? Is it common to have a designer on board, or to just a design firm? Also, have the majority of teams accepted to YC had designers on the team, and if not, what have they done? Perhaps pg can best answer that last one.Thanks.	9	17	2007-08-28 23:31:43 UTC
47,664	47,636	donna	A Comparison of Push and Pull Techniques for Ajax [pdf]	damien	Thanks, i know a couple of guys who will appreciate this. ;-D	null	2	13	2007-08-28 23:46:36 UTC
47,665	47,652	twism	05/11/01. When did u know you wanted to do a startup? (for me..)	rokhayakebe	04/18/2007	For me it was somewhere between reading that article and December of 2005.	4	6	2007-08-28 23:51:56 UTC
47,668	47,652	rms	05/11/01. When did u know you wanted to do a startup? (for me..)	rokhayakebe	12/22/2005	For me it was somewhere between reading that article and December of 2005.	3	6	2007-08-28 23:58:51 UTC
47,670	47,482	mechanical_fish	The Surprising Truth About Ugly Websites (they perform better)	nickb	Besides being ugly, what do PlentyOfFish, Ebay, Craigslist and MySpace have in common? They are sites which are built entirely around user-created content - the more of it, the better.Ugly works well for these sites because it's inviting. There is no shame in posting blurry pictures, poorly spelled prose, or badly edited movies on an ugly site. After all, ugly is the norm there.It's kind of embarrassing to see your own clunky prose and ugly photos stuck in the middle of a beautifully designed page. Unless, of course, you are a troll or a vandal, but what site wants to attract those?Would you feel comfortable holding a yard sale in an upscale mall, a few steps from the Apple Store? Probably not. The junk from your basement would look pretty shabby by comparison. The clientele is all wrong. People might laugh at you. You would feel better - and maybe have better sales - if you set up shop at the flea market, or on a street corner. PlentyOfFish, eBay, and Craigslist are in the flea market business.Of course, if you're trying to sell your legal services, attract paying subscribers, or encourage your users to contribute only the highest-quality content, ugly is probably the wrong design for your site.	null	1	18	2007-08-29 00:07:23 UTC
47,680	47,442	gaborcselle	Crystal Tower, the startup dorm, loses elevator service	nickb	This was really annoying. The residents were also practically staging a revolution, with flyers asking to file complaints about violationgs against the Americans with Disabilities Act.Only upside: When you're doing laundry, this is quite a workout (3x up and down).	null	1	6	2007-08-29 00:23:09 UTC
47,688	47,549	jkush	You have a 1 in 20 chance of being chosen by YC. Pretty good odds!	palish	Yeah, great. That just made me feel worse.	If we assume there will be 500 applications and that YC will be accepting 25 of them then that's a 1 in 20 chance.Throw in the fact some applications, maybe as many as half, are broken (thirteen year old founders, clones of existing ideas, etc) and you've got a great shot.Anyone that still has cold feet, get in there and apply!	6	17	2007-08-29 00:36:16 UTC
47,712	47,619	daniel-cussen	Sequoia Capital to Yale: "Invest or else"	brett	The beginning of the end of Sequoia?	null	0	12	2007-08-29 01:45:23 UTC
47,713	47,597	ratsbane	MySpace runs on IIS? Really?	andreyf	It's not completely impossible to do good work on the .Net platform.But it is very, very unlikely..Net teaches programmers to write code to .Net, to Microsoft rules. It teaches its victims to use the excreable "viewstate" and POST when they mean to GET and pass volumes of unnecessary and poorly-encoded data back and forth between the server and client. .Net programmers learn to drag and drop things onto forms which Visual Studio then clogs up with layers of absolute-positioning tags, ensuring that the resulting pages will only display correctly on certain browsers with certain window-sizes and absolutely will not print properly, even when the planets are properly aligned. But that's okay, with .Net you can use Reporting Services to design hundreds of divergent "reports." .Net teaches programmers to code to Microsoft's api, not to web standards, fundamental principles of math and computer science or, frequently, to common sense.It isn't to Microsoft's advantage for developers to consider other options and thus they try with great success to prevent .Net developers from realizing those options even exist. Microsoft documentation almost never refers to RFCs, even when doing so would be helpful. They hide the browser object model as much as they can and instead present the .Net wrapper for the browser object model as the only truth, with a Microsoft registered-trademark character after every thought.It is possible to do good work on the .Net platform; it's just very, very unlikely.Perhaps I've gone too far with this rant. As you may guess, it results from great frustration with well-funded idiocy in the wasteland of corporate American IT. Also I just tried to pay my property taxes online and the lovely .aspx page blew up with a CLIENT-SIDE VBSCRIPT error.Good grief.But here is a final and positive thought: quite a lot of business in the world is run on very poorly-designed systems, whether .Net or otherwise. Perhaps there much opportunity and advantage to be gained in creating better systems to replace them.	null	0	11	2007-08-29 01:54:30 UTC
47,724	47,597	steve	MySpace runs on IIS? Really?	andreyf	Myspace runs? Really?More like limps along..	null	2	11	2007-08-29 02:31:23 UTC
47,725	47,636	jsjenkins168	A Comparison of Push and Pull Techniques for Ajax [pdf]	damien	Has anyone experimented with a hybrid push/pull setup? If your data refreshes are bursty in nature, then this could be good idea, judging from the data in this paper. Poll regularly for the server status using pulls, and in the event new data is published (start of a burst), initiate a push connection for a preset amount of time (this can be server controlled, depending on load). If the burst is not yet over after the thread is closed, it will just be resumed after the next pull indicates there is new data.This setup would help minimize the mean time that threads are tied up, thus decreasing the thread pool size and server load. But again this is only beneficial if your data updates are bursty in nature.. There is one thing this paper did not mention.. Unfortunately, due to browser security restrictions, AJAX calls must occur with the same server where the javascript originated. So this means when you are using a push setup and your server is beginning to max out, you are affecting the performance serving pages too! The HTTP keep-alive settings will keep those threads open for a while each time a page is served. Normally you can proxy and forward calls to other servers, but in this particular example the web server MUST maintain these open threads.. I think..Just thinking aloud with this, but I'm interested if anyone else has comments.	null	1	13	2007-08-29 02:35:49 UTC
47,728	47,618	weebro	Y Combinator Companies Didn't Like Boston?	knewjax	I worked in Boston for a summer once - Joe's American Bar and Grill on the waterfront (next to Marriott and Aquarium). I can safely say that I wouldn't rush back to living in Bean Town. Sorry but the Blue Laws suck, if you're going out you had better know of a party cos 2am is a bit early for a European. I also worked in a Law firm in New York for a yr or so and can safely say Boston, as a business and legal center, has a bad rep for being stuck up for no apparent, earned, reason. The weather sucks, the city doesn't have enough clubs and it's nightlife centers around that square which really is square. There's my tuppence worth. Woohoo Red Sox!!!!!!!	Did any of this sessions YC group enjoy the city of boston? Im a Boston native and out of everything I have seen so far it seems that the overall feeling was that Boston doesnt make the cut and most of the YC companies will be moving to the Valley. Is this mostly based on investment opportunities. Or your experience here as well. Did you guys even really have a chance to go out and have a good time in the city?	1	1	2007-08-29 02:51:08 UTC
47,729	47,494	cellis	How Google could beat Facebook at its own game	amichail	ok...so? not be a smart ass, but really, who cares if goog is going to take on fb? i've got to pay my cell phone bill, and find a cofounder. When they actually release something, i might just check it out. But uh, goog hasn't been so hot on the social networking/soft side of things. see: orkut.	Google could obtain a social network graph quickly from gmail accounts. Moreover, it could release a platform similar to Facebook but take it another step further by providing free hosting on its massive computer cluster.There would be some sort of revenue sharing system in place for apps created using this platform.	1	2	2007-08-29 02:52:20 UTC
47,730	47,383	cellis	Digg Gets A Major Makeover	transburgh	whats digg?	null	1	3	2007-08-29 02:55:10 UTC
47,731	47,652	nostrademons	05/11/01. When did u know you wanted to do a startup? (for me..)	rokhayakebe	Geesh, you expect me to remember these things?Sometime in November, 1995.Actually, that's a little inaccurate. I had entertained ideas about being a professional shareware developer when I first learned Pascal - that was when I was 12, so about 1993. The November date in question was on the way to a WoCoMal math meet. One of my teammates asked our driver & math teacher "Are you a millionaire?", to which he replied, "No, the only millionaire on the faculty is John [one of the school founders, and another math teacher]. He founded and sold a company for like $40 million." That kinda planted the seed that yes, owning a business was achievable and it did happen to people like me.It kinda grew into "I'm going to start my own startup" over time. I was writing a MUD at the time, and about a year into the project (which I eventually gave up on), I found out "Hey, people actually pay for games like this!" Then after high school, I worked for a tech startup founded by the aformentioned math teacher/school founder, and found I liked it. Then I took a long holiday from startup stuff while I was in college, though I did have primary implementation responsibility for a non-profit. Then I came back to it my senior year, because I realized "Oh shit, I have to get a job now" and realized how sucky most jobs were. Applied to SFP05, wasn't really ready for it, was rejected, took a job at another startup that I'd interned at instead. Then this year I started letting it be known that I was interested in starting a company, and got 3 overtures for cofounder positions within 8 months. Took the most promising, applied to YC for SFP07, was rejected, going ahead anyway, and we'll see about WFP08...	For me it was somewhere between reading that article and December of 2005.	0	6	2007-08-29 02:59:08 UTC
47,732	47,482	tipjoy	The Surprising Truth About Ugly Websites (they perform better)	nickb	In the end of this article, the author states that "In Conclusion X It's Not Necessarily Ugliness That Sells." He then goes on to plea with people to consider their usability over their aesthetic design. This seems a somewhat weak ending given the rest of the article, however reasonable this conclusion may be. Furthermore, to quote myself: "...one of my favorite anecdotes from Blink is the tale of the identical ice cream: the same ice cream was wrapped in two different packages, one plain, the other fancy, and taken around to the public for taste tests. People actually reported that the ice cream in the 'fancier' package _tasted_ better. What's great about this story is that it's an excellent way to explain to someone the value of beauty to usability. Given two functionally identical products, users will believe that one is _easier to use_ simply by virtue of it being aesthetically pleasing. I once saw a presentation at a UPA (Usability Professionals Assoc) Conference where a study showed just that - a product with identical information architecture was run through two usability tests: one where the product had a rudimentary look and feel, and one where the look and feel had been touched up by a graphic designer. User data showed that people felt the prettier version was easier for them to use, even though it took them the same time to complete tasks in both versions. Now, as an interaction designer myself, I would hope this argument is never used to dismiss the importance of interaction design and information architecture. We can't use aesthetics to 'put lipstick on the pig,' as one of my coworkers is fond of saying. But if you've taken the time to make a really usable product which meets a user need, imagine how much people will love it if you ALSO make it beautiful. That, for me, is the definition of a "delightful experience." " (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38839)	null	4	18	2007-08-29 02:59:39 UTC
47,740	47,449	mynameishere	Fred Wilson: Favoriting Ads	charzom	As the people commenting at fw's blog say, it just isn't going to work. It's also been done quite a few times.Maybe if you tried a "fun" twist instead, like a link that says, "Don't bother other people with this ad". Make it explicit, you know.BTW, I'm a consumer of web ads, and my ctr with adwords is usually between 2-3 percent. (For certain keywords, as high as 50 percent.) My adsense ctr? For this month... 0.02 percent. One click total. So, there's definitely room for improvement.	null	0	11	2007-08-29 03:33:19 UTC
47,745	47,744	jl	How to keep the lid on a good idea	jl	I was quoted in this article, but the point I really wanted to make (that ended up on the cutting room floor obviously) was that a startup should be more concerned about the 3-person startup working on the same thing than an investor or big company stealing their idea.	null	0	14	2007-08-29 03:49:10 UTC
47,749	47,652	aswanson	05/11/01. When did u know you wanted to do a startup? (for me..)	rokhayakebe	Around 1980.	For me it was somewhere between reading that article and December of 2005.	2	6	2007-08-29 03:54:47 UTC
47,751	47,746	rms	Black Plague and HIV resistance in Europe	aswanson	It is incorrect to say that the CCR5 delta32 mutation came exclusively from the plague. It is more likely that it came from smallpox.The title of this article is even worse, ~10% of people of European descent are resistant to HIV and 10% of those individuals are practically immune to HIV. The mutation is more common in people of northern European descent and some eastern European ethnic groups, like Ashkenazi Jews.This summary of a paper published in Nature shows that mice with the CCR5 delta32 mutation still get the plague. http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?DR_... Subscription/university tunnel required for the real paper.This is another study concluding that smallpox was the more likely selecting factor for the mutation. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=29... http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=12...This is a personal interest of mine because testing for this mutation is my startup. http://www.hivgene.com There's an enormous amount of untapped potential with the CCR5 receptor; I wish I had the money to do private research.To cure HIV: Start with some adult stem cells from the HIV patient to be treated, specifically the stem cells that produce T cells. Introduce the 32 base pair deletion in the CCR5 gene and grow the cells in culture. These can then be "transplanted" back into the patient. These transplanted stem cells will create HIV immune T cells. Once there are enough immune T cells, the patient will probably still have HIV, but it will not develop into AIDS. There will be no chance of rejection since they are the patient's own cells. Furthermore, since the body does produce antibodies to HIV, these modified T cells may even be able to fight off the HIV.To test this, we would get a mouse line, which are genetically very similar to each other from inbreeding so we won't have to worry about rejection of the transplants, and introduce the human CCR5 receptor into them. This, in theory, will allow the mice to be infected with HIV since HIV attaches to the CCR 5 receptor to enter and infect the cell. If this works, we can then try the technique of taking some of their stem cells, introducing the mutation, transplanting them back in, and see if their T cell count increases or if the levels of HIV decrease. It could also be used as a preventative therapy, which we can also easily test on the mice.(HIV curing idea is courtesy of my partner, his username is ingenium on here. If anyone with money is interested in branching out into a different kind of biotech company, please get in touch with me.)	null	0	8	2007-08-29 04:00:15 UTC
47,759	47,442	rrival	Crystal Tower, the startup dorm, loses elevator service	nickb	Interesting implications - would expanding / changing locales to include some CoWorking space and possibly improving the amenities (in light of elevator issues) inspire even more to move into a post-college startup community?	null	2	6	2007-08-29 04:21:28 UTC
47,765	47,763	cperciva	Percentages for New Hires...	far33d	It depends.A company such as you describe ("Product close to launch, series A finished, in a specialized field") might have 20 engineers building the project; or it might have 3 people and several million dollars of hardware. Obviously in the later case a new employee would make a greater impact on the company and thus be able to demand more options.An engineer such as you describe ("engineer, 5 years experience") might be a 23 year old who got an entry-level programming job straight out of high school and has no particular expertise; or he might have a PhD and be a world-recognized expert in the particular specialized field in which the company is working. Obviously in the later case he would be able to demand more options.All I can say with confidence based on the information given is that he should probably expect somewhere between 0.01% and 25%.	Engineer, 5 years experience. Product close to launch, series A finished, in a specialized field. What option percentage should this engineer expect?	0	9	2007-08-29 05:11:00 UTC
47,767	47,744	henning	How to keep the lid on a good idea	jl	It probably doesn't matter whether someone hears about your ideas, actually. It's tremendous hubris and a non sequitur to think that someone will overhear your idea, immediately think it's fantastic, and go and start a successful company based on that, leaving you totally unable to act."Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats."Ideas aren't "worthless" but there's tons to building a successful company besides building the right product for the right audience at the right time.	null	1	14	2007-08-29 05:18:48 UTC
47,781	47,746	michaelneale	Black Plague and HIV resistance in Europe	aswanson	I don't think this is appropriate for hacker news. reddit.com is a better place for stuff like this.	null	1	8	2007-08-29 07:33:08 UTC
47,786	47,771	staunch	Dot-com names get dottier: X is the new Z	zach	The photo, with the awesome title of "Coder" is better than the story itself:http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-names29aug29_jng4hwkn,...	null	1	8	2007-08-29 07:57:24 UTC
47,790	47,789	german	New gmail video (passing the gmail icon among people)	german	I found it also in TechCrunch http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/28/what-do-you-get-when-yo...	This post is in Spanish but you can see the video. Looking good...Update: I found it in techcrunch also: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/28/what-do-you-get-when-yo...	0	2	2007-08-29 08:16:59 UTC
47,792	47,652	davidw	05/11/01. When did u know you wanted to do a startup? (for me..)	rokhayakebe	When I realized that it's difficult to find places to work where you're not working for a fking moron. I want to make cool things and work with people who don't suck. I don't really care if that means a startup, but things certainly seem to point in that direction.	For me it was somewhere between reading that article and December of 2005.	1	6	2007-08-29 09:46:30 UTC
47,794	47,622	prakash	What's the best startup story you ever heard?	eusman	I would say Viaweb and/or Vermeer purely because there is so much information about them.	doesn't have to be about software	6	9	2007-08-29 09:54:59 UTC
47,795	47,425	jgamman	Oh the Irony	transburgh	a case can be made that advertising at the correct moment in time for a particular individual is information. you want a new mattress, open the pipe, mattresses galore, buy, close pipe. the key is to figure out the when and the personalisation, search is the first to get close to it (and it's still not perfect - the next thing i'd like to see is trimming but i assume that'll take that semantic web thing i keep hearing about)	"We expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers." -- Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, 1998 http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html	2	9	2007-08-29 10:08:34 UTC
47,799	47,566	michaelneale	In the Beginning Was the Command Line	byrneseyeview	An oldie but a goodie. Has a bit of open source myth in it though. He kind of believes that it magically congeals out of the ether, rather then by frequent (and paid for) hard work of hackers and engineers in a deliberate fashion.	null	1	11	2007-08-29 10:29:52 UTC
47,806	47,804	bootload	HackrTrackr now has area based forums for Y Combinator Readers	dottertrotter	I posted a bug to brad. Anyone having the same trouble? ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/1264094177/	null	5	17	2007-08-29 12:29:20 UTC
47,807	47,597	mpc	MySpace runs on IIS? Really?	andreyf	We're using .net, which has worked out good for us. Yes, the default settings are designed to lower the bar for IT shops to build apps easily. If you know what you're doing, you can avoid the muck and get right to the extensive and powerful features.Our configuration....- Lots of JS, homegrown ajax framework that extends YUI - asp.net but with custom controls that we wrote- custom http handlers take care of the call backs- deployed on apache with mod_mono. mysql db	null	3	11	2007-08-29 12:33:12 UTC
47,808	47,804	joshwa	HackrTrackr now has area based forums for Y Combinator Readers	dottertrotter	Idea: if we've already specified our location, give us a link to our "home area" forum on the homepage, rather than making us browse the map (which is starting to get crowded!).Also, is it possible to enable mousewheel zoom on the google map? I find that a really convenient way to zero in on an area of the map. also, byrneseyeview and I are both listed twice in NY..	null	2	17	2007-08-29 12:42:58 UTC
47,810	47,744	edw519	How to keep the lid on a good idea	jl	For Web2.0, this issue is quickly becoming unimportant. It only takes 1 or 2 people and a couple of computers to build something earth shattering. By the time you need capital, you should be at least 6 months ahead of any potential competition. If not, go back and code some more.	null	2	14	2007-08-29 12:47:56 UTC
47,813	47,636	axod	A Comparison of Push and Pull Techniques for Ajax [pdf]	damien	Here's a work in progress of mine that uses long polling and keep-alives.http://www.zchatter.comIt works quite well.. pretty much like having a conventional tcp/ip connection for receives, (interlaced with HTTP traffic), and using a separate series of POST requests to send data to the server.	null	0	13	2007-08-29 13:37:20 UTC
47,814	47,798	jsjenkins168	GWT 1.4 release and out of beta	iotal	That was quick.. RC2 just came out last week! Google never ceases to amaze me..	null	0	2	2007-08-29 13:42:49 UTC
47,816	47,597	rustartup	MySpace runs on IIS? Really?	andreyf	All spoken here do not understand .Net enough. I worked for tagworld.com and this web project is "quite" big. Viewstate and drag'n'drops and the like are nowhere used. .Net is NOT for web sites, it is for web projects, really big and heterogeneous, with lots of services behind. For other please use php and the like, with "quick submit to db" approach.	null	4	11	2007-08-29 13:44:07 UTC
47,818	47,622	bboland1	What's the best startup story you ever heard?	eusman	I just read about the 17 year old founder of whateverlife.com yesterday. That is a great story.	doesn't have to be about software	3	9	2007-08-29 13:48:55 UTC
47,823	47,622	falsestprophet	What's the best startup story you ever heard?	eusman	"The New New Thing" by Michael Lewis	doesn't have to be about software	11	9	2007-08-29 14:18:05 UTC
47,824	47,812	Alex3917	What Makes Twitter Twitter?	Alex3917	This is my first ever compulsory blog post. I am taking a 'psychology of the internet' class at college that compels us to write a blog post about something Internet related each week. The class policy is such that if you say anything offensive or untoward you automatically fail the class without warning or chance for appeal. This is a bit upsetting since the way things work, if I fail the class and drop below 12 credits (a full-time student) I am no longer covered by my family's health insurance. So if I, say, link to that JWZ post about sex or the Wikipedia article about DeCSS then potentially I don't have healthcare anymore.For historical comparison, last semester at Cornell there were two classes with about 50-75 students total who were forced into compulsory blogging. This semester it is somewhere between 300-500. So this seems to be a trend that is taking off. Now instead of people writing about their cats out of love, they'll write about their cats out of fear :-)But anyway, this is the reason why the post contains a slight non-sequitur toward the end. I ran up against the hard word limit and there was really no way around it. If I were blogging for myself then I would have simply finished up the post the next day. As it were, it was 3am so I really had no choice but to post. Hopefully it kind of makes sense though. heh.For reference, you can see what everyone else wrote here: http://comm245blue.blogspot.com/	null	0	5	2007-08-29 14:21:38 UTC
47,826	47,804	kashif	HackrTrackr now has area based forums for Y Combinator Readers	dottertrotter	What language are you using? How many lines of code did this take? How long? Who are you hosting with and what plan? Just curious...	null	1	17	2007-08-29 14:28:36 UTC
47,830	47,804	danteembermage	HackrTrackr now has area based forums for Y Combinator Readers	dottertrotter	I feel kinda alone in my forum, do you think you could maybe fold Mississippi, Arkansas, Utah, Idaho, and South Dakota into the Wisconsin forum so I can have someone to talk to?	null	0	17	2007-08-29 14:42:25 UTC
47,831	47,804	brlewis	HackrTrackr now has area based forums for Y Combinator Readers	dottertrotter	I get silent failure when I try to create a forum in MA.	null	7	17	2007-08-29 14:45:27 UTC
47,836	47,549	pg	You have a 1 in 20 chance of being chosen by YC. Pretty good odds!	palish	Actually, if you're reading this, you probably have better odds than that. A good fraction of the people who apply clearly have no idea how YC works or what we look for. If you're reading this comment you're probably over that threshold, at least.	If we assume there will be 500 applications and that YC will be accepting 25 of them then that's a 1 in 20 chance.Throw in the fact some applications, maybe as many as half, are broken (thirteen year old founders, clones of existing ideas, etc) and you've got a great shot.Anyone that still has cold feet, get in there and apply!	1	17	2007-08-29 14:57:46 UTC
47,845	47,804	tocomment	HackrTrackr now has area based forums for Y Combinator Readers	dottertrotter	How about forums by language?	null	8	17	2007-08-29 15:23:28 UTC
47,859	47,622	alex_c	What's the best startup story you ever heard?	eusman	Gary Dahl, "inventor" of the pet rock.http://www.petsdo.com/blog/pet-rock-made-man-multi-millionai...	doesn't have to be about software	4	9	2007-08-29 15:59:42 UTC
47,862	47,856	sweeper	Does any ruby/rails IDE have breakpoints?	twism	netbeans claims to. not played with them much.	Breakpoints are HUGE for me, the ability to stop your program in mid stride and view, traverse, and manipulate data and variables ala keanu reeves in the matrix.	1	1	2007-08-29 16:04:15 UTC
47,863	47,362	whacked_new	Max Levchin at 2006 UIUC Talk "You should start a company right now" (video)	staunch	This is awesome. Thanks. I wish there are more comments here though, especially from people who can offer a contrasting perspective.	null	1	21	2007-08-29 16:05:23 UTC
47,870	47,754	aston	Sparklines for members of online communities	tipjoy	I like this idea. For the purposes of a forum, you might want it to be more iconic (read: smaller), so maybe a really rough bar graph of like one bar per week over the past month or so. At that rough of a level, you can also easily push the generation to a weekly cron job (rather than trying to keep up with every new post).	null	0	4	2007-08-29 16:21:11 UTC
47,871	47,622	aandreev	What's the best startup story you ever heard?	eusman	My personal favorite is the story of the Lycos founder in "Founders at Work". The guy just got a call from a VC, saying "we will give you money if you run a company with this great search technology we bought".	doesn't have to be about software	7	9	2007-08-29 16:30:35 UTC
47,872	47,622	toisanji	What's the best startup story you ever heard?	eusman	Please help keep all these stories at: http://startupflames.com/	doesn't have to be about software	10	9	2007-08-29 16:31:18 UTC
47,876	47,875	jsjenkins168	Nokia announces Ovi - music, maps, games, and mobile social networking in one	jsjenkins168	Nokia continues push as a mobile content company, with ambitions to compete with Apple and Google.More coverage here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08...	null	0	1	2007-08-29 16:44:16 UTC
47,878	47,622	abstractbill	What's the best startup story you ever heard?	eusman	I enjoy reading about the early days of Netscape:http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nscpdorm.html	doesn't have to be about software	9	9	2007-08-29 16:54:03 UTC
47,881	47,803	nickb	R6RS Ratified (Let the complaining begin)	apgwoz	Scheme wants to be Common Lisp.	null	1	12	2007-08-29 17:03:10 UTC
47,883	47,482	Goladus	The Surprising Truth About Ugly Websites (they perform better)	nickb	I think this guy also just has weird ideas about what's ugly. I don't think plentyoffish is ugly. It's not gorgeous, but it's far from ugly.There is definitely a point when certain kinds of beauty become uninviting to certain kinds of people. It's like room with furniture so fancy that one feels uncomfortable, like an intruder, just by sitting on it. But I don't really think his argument conveyed how that happens with websites.	null	7	18	2007-08-29 17:07:45 UTC
47,884	47,622	ballred	What's the best startup story you ever heard?	eusman	If you've never read how Kenneth Cole (shoe/fashion company) started out by launching a movie production company, it's a great story: http://www.kennethcole.com/scripts/aboutus/ourstory.asp	doesn't have to be about software	0	9	2007-08-29 17:07:57 UTC
47,891	47,622	byrneseyeview	What's the best startup story you ever heard?	eusman	Epiphyte: http://zgp.org/pipermail/linux-elitists/1999-December/000074...	doesn't have to be about software	8	9	2007-08-29 17:19:26 UTC
47,893	47,856	luccastera	Does any ruby/rails IDE have breakpoints?	twism	From the Netbeans page at http://www.netbeans.org/community/releases/60/"Ruby Debugger. Single-step or run through Ruby code, set breakpoints, look at local variables, navigate the call stack, switch threads, and evaluate expressions by just hovering the mouse over the variable in the Editor. There is also support for the "fast debug" extension."	Breakpoints are HUGE for me, the ability to stop your program in mid stride and view, traverse, and manipulate data and variables ala keanu reeves in the matrix.	0	1	2007-08-29 17:24:03 UTC
47,894	47,763	theremora	Percentages for New Hires...	far33d	a tenth of a percent .001 to a quarter of a percent .0025 at best.	Engineer, 5 years experience. Product close to launch, series A finished, in a specialized field. What option percentage should this engineer expect?	1	9	2007-08-29 17:25:55 UTC
47,897	47,566	gebloom	In the Beginning Was the Command Line	byrneseyeview	"I embraced OS X as soon as it was available and have never looked back. So a lot of In the Beginning...was the Command Line is now obsolete. I keep meaning to update it, but if I'm honest with myself, I have to say this is unlikely."	null	0	11	2007-08-29 17:35:38 UTC
47,898	47,803	dfranke	R6RS Ratified (Let the complaining begin)	apgwoz	About time. I hope it isn't another decade before R7RS.A lot of people are complaining because R6 is so much bigger than R5. While a clean, tiny spec is a beautiful thing, it is empirically not a recipe for being able to get real work done without compromising portability. If you care about minimalism more than you care about that kind of portability, R5RS isn't going anywhere. This isn't Windows; there's no end-of-life schedule that's going to force you to upgrade.My gripe about R6RS is that it doesn't go far enough: any sufficiently large project is still going to require non-portable extensions. But it's a leap in the right direction and we've been waiting long enough. As long as we'll eventually see an R7RS, I'm glad this revision was ratified.	null	0	12	2007-08-29 17:40:02 UTC
47,899	47,874	nostrademons	Why You Don't Want to Code for a Government Department	dfranke	It can be lucrative, however...One of my coworkers once worked for a company that sold software to the government. Their software didn't work - at all. It didn't run. However, this being the government and the company being staffed with excellent salespeople, they didn't find that out until they'd already forked over their million dollars or so. They just ate the cost and never used the software.The kicker was that the project was classified, and so the government agency couldn't tell anyone that the program didn't work. Not even other government agencies. So this company went right ahead selling the same software-that-didn't-work to multiple government agencies. Your tax dollars at work.	null	0	7	2007-08-29 17:40:40 UTC
47,927	47,804	uuilly	HackrTrackr now has area based forums for Y Combinator Readers	dottertrotter	Well played dottertrotter, thank you. Myself and a number of others have duplicate location entries. One where you determined my location by IP and one by zipcode. The zipcode one is right. How can I delete the IP one? It seems many others have the same problem...	null	3	17	2007-08-29 19:15:17 UTC
47,928	47,915	ivankirigin	Is college worth the cost?	jyrzyk	There is an interesting group of ideas around intelligence, education, credentialism, and signaling.Getting a degree is a sign that you are smart enough to get a degree. Getting one from a good school is that much better. The biggest loss if you learned the exact same material on your own outside a university is that others aren't signaled that you've received that education.If you build something good, it doesn't matter where you are. People know you're smart from what you've done.There are millions of people paying for a credential that means less as more people get it. Companies treat college degrees as a sign that you're not a total failure.It would be nice if there were better tests for ability. They work for things like the SAT II, but I can't imagine an accurate test for post-graduate ability besides a review of what you've made.But companies are lazy. They don't have the time or money to really look at the quality of most candidates, so they use signaling tools as filters.	null	1	21	2007-08-29 19:16:13 UTC
47,931	45,698	SteveSanderson	Holding a program in one's head	eposts	Wow... this is a great description of what's happening inside a good programmer. It may even be good enough to help non-programmers understand what's happening and therefore what to do about it. This should be on the short-list of reading for managers and others who are responsible for the software development working environment.On a seperate tangent, Paul referred to some mental techniques (e.g. 'black box', 'solve a subset) and I can think of others (e.g. hold this portion 'constant' and change a different portion).What if we had a catalog of those mental techniques - would that be interesting? Usefull? Who would use it?Thirdly - my experience of loading the whole program in my head extends beyond programming - when I've participated in the business side, along with programming, then the scope of what I consider becomes larger (and involves some new elements) but the underlying approach and way of thinking about problems/solutions appears to be the same. Have other folks had a similar experience?	null	31	142	2007-08-29 19:21:31 UTC
47,935	47,915	jraines	Is college worth the cost?	jyrzyk	Private, no. (Northwestern and NYU are up to $48K a year just in tuition. Are you kidding me?)Public, especially an in-state school if your state is fortunate enough have a quality one, definitely yes. College: still the best four years of your life. (Then again, I've yet to live the four years one would experience after selling a startup for big money. Maybe we could get input from pg or that Broadcom guy who built the underground party den)	null	4	21	2007-08-29 19:30:31 UTC
47,937	47,915	dawie	Is college worth the cost?	jyrzyk	Yes it is. I believe that the best investment you can ever make is in yourself. Colledge cost me $40K and I have made more than $160K in 2 years after Colledge working. I have made an 33% ((40/120) * 100) on my investment in myself and its still growing. The growth of my investment in myself is infinite and way bigger than any other investment.	null	10	21	2007-08-29 19:36:53 UTC
47,938	47,915	cperciva	Is college worth the cost?	jyrzyk	This article includes one of the most misleading statistics concerning higher education: "People with bachelor's degrees... still earn an average of about $1.2M more than high school graduates over a 40-year career". Yes, there is a correlation between higher education and higher salaries -- no, this does not imply causation!There are many confounding factors: People who are more intelligent, have parent(s) who pursued higher education, have parents with higher income, or are white are both more likely to receive a bachelor's degree AND on average earn more than other people with the same amount of education. (In the past, being male was a predictor for both higher education and higher earnings, but this is not a significant factor for people born after 1980.)In addition, the statistic ignores the fact that pursuing higher education shortens one's career -- people who spend 4-5 years in college on average work for 2-3 years less than those who started their careers immediately after high school. As a result, comparing "40-year careers" is bogus -- the only reasonable comparison is between the total careers of individuals, including the time when one person is at college while the other is working.Finally, even if the statistic were computed correctly and reflected causation, it would be misleading: Different careers are not influenced equally by education. Generally speaking, people don't finish their education before they start thinking about what career the will pursue; someone who was planning on becoming a plumber isn't likely to suddenly decide that he wants to become a brain surgeon just because he finds that he has a bachelor's degree.Decide what you want to do (either as a single career, or more likely thinking of a number of careers which seem interesting), and look at what qualifications are needed for those. And never forget what Benjamin Disraeli said: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics".	null	0	21	2007-08-29 19:37:15 UTC
47,940	47,147	Kelevra	Teenage Girl's MySpace Layouts Worth Millions, Drops Out Of High School	vlad	Wow. Good for her and all that, but I think skipping out on school is a mistake, whatever she's earning.	null	11	88	2007-08-29 19:40:54 UTC
47,943	47,930	twism	"Why netbeans' rails support is so creamingly good"	r7000	i posted something on this a couple hours ago... this is the only way anyone should work on RoR	null	3	15	2007-08-29 19:48:34 UTC

47,552

47,549

vlad

You have a 1 in 20 chance of being chosen by YC. Pretty good odds!

palish

Thanks for your advice; I just submitted 20 applications. :)On a serious note, can one apply as a single hacker who doesn't care about which project he takes on?

If we assume there will be 500 applications and that YC will be accepting 25 of them then that's a 1 in 20 chance.Throw in the fact some applications, maybe as many as half, are broken (thirteen year old founders, clones of existing ideas, etc) and you've got a great shot.Anyone that still has cold feet, get in there and apply!

0

17

2007-08-28 19:44:54 UTC

47,554

47,236

langenu

Google Launches Official Facebook App

dawie

It seems to have stopped working (at least for now).

null

2

14

2007-08-28 19:46:58 UTC

47,556

47,523

run4yourlives

How to Blog on Company Time Without Getting Dooced

eastsidegringo

There is really no content in this article. I'm a little disappointed.

My SXSW panel, Blog on Company Time Without Getting Dooced, will discuss the various ways you can avoid being fired (or not being hired in the first place) for your blog/online profile. And ways you can use your on-the-clock Internet time productively; by blogging or pursuing other online business ventures withouth nailed.

0

2

2007-08-28 19:47:51 UTC

47,559

47,442

RyanGWU82

Crystal Tower, the startup dorm, loses elevator service

nickb

I have a couple friends who live there (hi guys) but OMG, THIS IS THE LEAST NEWSWORTHY STORY EVAR!!

null

0

6

2007-08-28 19:52:41 UTC

47,564

47,310

myoung8

How valuable are designers to a startup team?

kyro

Our team is just two guys. My co-founder is a rockstar hacker. I wouldn't call myself a rockstar designer, but I'm taking care of all that stuff (graphic design, UI, copywriting, etc.) as well as marketing.I've always liked designing things, so even though I'm no rockstar, what we've got is good enough (read: design that won't be noticed by the user--not horrendous, not stunning). If I was just doing business stuff and my co-founder had to do design as well we wouldn't be getting anywhere fast. Good design takes time, but it doesn't have to be flashy. Find someone who understands usability (Fitts' Law) and knows HTML/CSS. Like everyone else has said, if they can hack, even better. I'd also add that if they like the b-side and understand what hacking involves (even if they can't do it well) they will be very useful to the team (read: deserve full equity).

Compared to the value of having coders on a team, how do designers stack up? Is it common to have a designer on board, or to just a design firm? Also, have the majority of teams accepted to YC had designers on the team, and if not, what have they done? Perhaps pg can best answer that last one.Thanks.

3

17

2007-08-28 20:07:22 UTC

47,569

47,497

Kelevra

Boingboing redesigned: nicely minimalist, despite all the ads

rms

"All the ads?" The ad count is way, way down. Where they used to have a dozen mini-banners, they've now got one big square box.

null

1

8

2007-08-28 20:12:32 UTC

47,571

47,549

SwellJoe

You have a 1 in 20 chance of being chosen by YC. Pretty good odds!

palish

Where'd you get the "accepting 25" number? Just curious. It seemed like 19 was a bit overwhelming for them this time. But since the CA office is bigger, and there are more former founders out here that would be able to relieve some of the advisory role pressure, they might be willing to bump the number up again, assuming enough of the applications are good.

If we assume there will be 500 applications and that YC will be accepting 25 of them then that's a 1 in 20 chance.Throw in the fact some applications, maybe as many as half, are broken (thirteen year old founders, clones of existing ideas, etc) and you've got a great shot.Anyone that still has cold feet, get in there and apply!

5

17

2007-08-28 20:18:59 UTC

47,573

47,482

mynameishere

The Surprising Truth About Ugly Websites (they perform better)

nickb

When "pretty" equals "childish", ugly will of course always win.

null

6

18

2007-08-28 20:21:15 UTC

47,577

47,376

mynameishere

New hydrogen generating technology "competitive with gasoline"

charzom

For all of CO2's bad rap, it is a known quantity, and its effect of the atmosphere is largely non-disruptive. The potential for releasing billions of kgs of hydrogen into the atmosphere, well:http://www.physlink.com/Reference/AirComposition.cfm...there isn't much of it, and I'm not sure we can predict what will happen if the amount goes up 100 fold.

null

1

13

2007-08-28 20:26:58 UTC

47,579

47,549

portLAN

You have a 1 in 20 chance of being chosen by YC. Pretty good odds!

palish

Why wait for someone else's approval? Don't leave your fate up to someone else's whim.And don't forget there are many, many other investors.[Edit: Also don't forget you can set up Google ads on your own; or have actual paying customers. You may not need any investment at all.]

If we assume there will be 500 applications and that YC will be accepting 25 of them then that's a 1 in 20 chance.Throw in the fact some applications, maybe as many as half, are broken (thirteen year old founders, clones of existing ideas, etc) and you've got a great shot.Anyone that still has cold feet, get in there and apply!

3

17

2007-08-28 20:29:56 UTC

47,581

47,560

run4yourlives

Facebook Rival ConnectU.com's SQL injection vulnerability: a story of pathetic hubris

tomh

DO NOT STORE PASSWORDS IN PLAIN TEXTDO NOT STORE PASSWORDS IN PLAIN TEXTDO NOT STORE PASSWORDS IN PLAIN TEXTDO NOT STORE PASSWORDS IN PLAIN TEXTObviously, this still needs to be said. Every modern database has an encrypt function that you can build right into the SQL string.

null

0

12

2007-08-28 20:32:03 UTC

47,582

47,549

aandreev

You have a 1 in 20 chance of being chosen by YC. Pretty good odds!

palish

You make a surprisingly random assumption (500 apps) and then base your entire post around statistical interpretations of that assumption.Bravo!You should become an economist.

If we assume there will be 500 applications and that YC will be accepting 25 of them then that's a 1 in 20 chance.Throw in the fact some applications, maybe as many as half, are broken (thirteen year old founders, clones of existing ideas, etc) and you've got a great shot.Anyone that still has cold feet, get in there and apply!

2

17

2007-08-28 20:33:25 UTC

47,596

47,232

huherto

do not. I am just letting it out.

rokhayakebe

Sorry for the lost of your girlfriend. I can only quote Joaquin Sabina."...Y una manana comprendi, que a veces gana el que pierde a una mujer""...and one morning I understood that sometimes you win when you loose a woman"

O boy. I am not writing for anyone to enjoy or even read this. But this is the only place I am socially active on a daily basis. I kinda feel secure here. Last Tuesday I lost my job ( well I quit, but I did not like it and they were treating me poorly). Wednesday I lost my car. It stopped in the middle of the freeway. I managed to take it home after 3 hours ( the normal ride is about 5 minutes top ). Thursday I lost my phone. If you are addicted to mobile IM and push email, then loosing your phone is like loosing your ability to breath and now you must live with a tube stuck in your throat. Friday I lost my girlfriend. O boy. Now that one hurt. Can you imagine seeing someone leave you when you need them the most. My girlfriend knows me more about me than anyone outside my family. I thought she was sweet. I never thought she really loved me, but we had this rule of "no lie" that made it all smooth. She lied to me. Big time. And to make matters worst, I found she did for a long time. O boy. I am not even mad, but I am hurt and unpleasantly surprised. Saturday and Sunday were tough, but I managed. Today, I found out more lies from her. O boy. And today, the one person I called my best friend let me down. I called him and say I needed his help. O boy. "Hang on" he told me, "You will do fine". O boy. I keep wishing that I will wake up soon. I wished this is a dream. Somebody wake me up please before it is too late. Wake me up.

13

31

2007-08-28 20:58:32 UTC

47,601

47,482

tx

The Surprising Truth About Ugly Websites (they perform better)

nickb

I disagree with him. Professional looking web site is yet another step higher in delivery of "quality feel" your business may either project to customers or not. I am inclined to think that craigslist, ebay an plentyoffish are rather exceptions. Every single one of them has very significant reasons to explain their success. So significant that design got irrelevant. Certainly there is more to succes than a pretty looking HTML/CSS, but saying that ugliness sells is just wrong.

null

2

18

2007-08-28 21:07:54 UTC

47,606

45,698

Radovici

Holding a program in one's head

eposts

Wow. Nothing short of epiphanic.

null

73

142

2007-08-28 21:20:45 UTC

47,609

47,147

steve

Teenage Girl's MySpace Layouts Worth Millions, Drops Out Of High School

vlad

So how does she make all that money? Advertising? Contracts she's won?

null

8

88

2007-08-28 21:29:03 UTC

47,611

47,415

christonog

Top 100 "Undiscovered" Web Sites

jkush

This is a pretty neat list, although I would think meebo and kiva are more "discovered" than the others. I agree with the amie st and indeed picks. But more than five food related sites? And is whoissick.com? Social networking for the sick; maybe there's value in that...

null

1

9

2007-08-28 21:33:39 UTC

47,612

47,531

davidw

Sony Ericsson's new Virtual Lab enables testing of phone apps through your browser

jsjenkins168

I've been offering this service for Hecl for something like a year:http://builder.hecl.org/

null

0

2

2007-08-28 21:35:28 UTC

47,617

47,482

samson

The Surprising Truth About Ugly Websites (they perform better)

nickb

In some ways I feel compelled to agree with his point, even though almost every thought in my mind goes contrary to that. People trust the Wall street journal which has a fixutre of using Times Roman for most of their articles. I think it would advantagous at least intially for some sites to jump on that where their content depends on trust that the site has not yet acquired on their own. Ugliness (if you want to call it that) may work over a bubbly fonty web 2.0 site.At the same time I agree with brlewis expectations idea of the user. If I wanted to put my photos anywhere it would be a disney like bubbly, fonty like site.But all this is just a view on what works initially (or on first glance), afterwards it still up to the site to retain and grow their user base. And thats based on content not ugliness or beauty.

null

5

18

2007-08-28 21:53:01 UTC

47,624

47,622

eusman

What's the best startup story you ever heard?

eusman

James Dyson's story is one of the most interesting startup stories I know. Trying to sell your technology and everyone ignoring you...http://www.bestchoicevacuums.com/dyson-story.html

doesn't have to be about software

1

9

2007-08-28 22:00:46 UTC

47,633

47,618

nmeyer

Y Combinator Companies Didn't Like Boston?

knewjax

I threw a party over the summer at my place in Cambridge, and there were a few of us who actually went out often. But we had gone to MIT so we knew what was fun. So, yes -- it has everything to do with investment opportunities. There are a few companies planning to go to New York for the music companies. (This includes us)

Did any of this sessions YC group enjoy the city of boston? Im a Boston native and out of everything I have seen so far it seems that the overall feeling was that Boston doesnt make the cut and most of the YC companies will be moving to the Valley. Is this mostly based on investment opportunities. Or your experience here as well. Did you guys even really have a chance to go out and have a good time in the city?

0

1

2007-08-28 22:29:58 UTC

47,634

47,597

mkull

MySpace runs on IIS? Really?

andreyf

Yes, they were running coldfusion until about 2 years ago, at which point they switched to a hybrid solution of Blue Dragon (ColdFusion running on .NET) and ASP.NET.http://highscalability.com/myspace-architecture

null

1

11

2007-08-28 22:33:13 UTC

47,638

47,616

cellis

Joke about how software developers are hired

vuknje

Guy Kawasaki is sorely mistaken. I do know all of those applications (illustrator, photoshop, dreamweaver, flash, etc) and all of those languages (javascript,actionscript) and did learn them on a pc.

null

0

2

2007-08-28 22:56:48 UTC

47,640

47,310

menloparkbum

How valuable are designers to a startup team?

kyro

If you ask myspace or ebay, not very.

Compared to the value of having coders on a team, how do designers stack up? Is it common to have a designer on board, or to just a design firm? Also, have the majority of teams accepted to YC had designers on the team, and if not, what have they done? Perhaps pg can best answer that last one.Thanks.

13

17

2007-08-28 23:01:58 UTC

47,642

47,390

Hexstream

What Really Buys Happiness?

kkim

Freedom. And money can buy you a lot of freedom indeed, unless it has lots of strings attached.

null

2

9

2007-08-28 23:04:47 UTC

47,643

47,597

aston

MySpace runs on IIS? Really?

andreyf

It's not like Microsoft's web stack sucks. Obviously C#'s not en vogue, but it's a fine way to put together a website. There's actually some really good stuff in there, and they've had the presentation/code-behind separation in since before people though it was a good idea.

null

5

11

2007-08-28 23:06:16 UTC

47,645

47,391

adrutledge

The Art of Bootstrapping

drm237

Very good article, some of it is reiterating things I would take as a given, others like the bottom up market size estimation are very useful points that are easy to miss when caught up in the hope and dreams.

Someone once told me that the probability of an entrepreneur getting venture capital is the same as getting struck by lightning while standing at the bottom of a swimming pool on a sunny day. This may be too optimistic.

0

7

2007-08-28 23:08:24 UTC

47,649

47,415

kingnothing

Top 100 "Undiscovered" Web Sites

jkush

Some of those companies should have thought more about their name before setting up shop.

null

2

9

2007-08-28 23:13:23 UTC

47,655

47,622

german

What's the best startup story you ever heard?

eusman

Once someone told me about a guy who invented the disk brake, he went to a racing team to offer it, but they told him "we're looking for something to speed up our cars, not to slow them down."At the end, disk brakes helped a lot in racing because drivers could reduce speed in less time which gave them more time to accelerate.(I don't know if this is a true story or just a joke, but its a great story!)

doesn't have to be about software

2

9

2007-08-28 23:29:33 UTC

47,656

47,390

adrutledge

What Really Buys Happiness?

kkim

I do agree with the article's point. Money is an abstract representation of wealth, a way to procure wealth -- the things we may want. Now, that said, money and wealth both tend to have strings attached. Investment, at least, is honest about that. On the topic of "acquiring" freedom, its been my experience that unspent money, potential for wealth, does more for providing freedom, because it provides the flexibility to react to a changing situation in a way that allows one to take the path with the fewest consequences. Not always the path that costs the least or that requires the smallest effort, but there are opportunity costs in everything.

null

1

9

2007-08-28 23:30:38 UTC

47,657

47,310

bdr

How valuable are designers to a startup team?

kyro

Q: How does startup by two hackers get a well-designed website? How much does it matter?Paul Graham: Matters different amounts depending on the application. The solution Google uses is just to make pages very bare and functional. They have no design sense, but they try not to need it.

Compared to the value of having coders on a team, how do designers stack up? Is it common to have a designer on board, or to just a design firm? Also, have the majority of teams accepted to YC had designers on the team, and if not, what have they done? Perhaps pg can best answer that last one.Thanks.

9

17

2007-08-28 23:31:43 UTC

47,664

47,636

donna

A Comparison of Push and Pull Techniques for Ajax [pdf]

damien

Thanks, i know a couple of guys who will appreciate this. ;-D

null

2

13

2007-08-28 23:46:36 UTC

47,665

47,652

twism

05/11/01. When did u know you wanted to do a startup? (for me..)

rokhayakebe

04/18/2007

For me it was somewhere between reading that article and December of 2005.

4

6

2007-08-28 23:51:56 UTC

47,668

47,652

rms

05/11/01. When did u know you wanted to do a startup? (for me..)

rokhayakebe

12/22/2005

For me it was somewhere between reading that article and December of 2005.

3

6

2007-08-28 23:58:51 UTC

47,670

47,482

mechanical_fish

The Surprising Truth About Ugly Websites (they perform better)

nickb

Besides being ugly, what do PlentyOfFish, Ebay, Craigslist and MySpace have in common? They are sites which are built entirely around user-created content - the more of it, the better.Ugly works well for these sites because it's inviting. There is no shame in posting blurry pictures, poorly spelled prose, or badly edited movies on an ugly site. After all, ugly is the norm there.It's kind of embarrassing to see your own clunky prose and ugly photos stuck in the middle of a beautifully designed page. Unless, of course, you are a troll or a vandal, but what site wants to attract those?Would you feel comfortable holding a yard sale in an upscale mall, a few steps from the Apple Store? Probably not. The junk from your basement would look pretty shabby by comparison. The clientele is all wrong. People might laugh at you. You would feel better - and maybe have better sales - if you set up shop at the flea market, or on a street corner. PlentyOfFish, eBay, and Craigslist are in the flea market business.Of course, if you're trying to sell your legal services, attract paying subscribers, or encourage your users to contribute only the highest-quality content, ugly is probably the wrong design for your site.

null

1

18

2007-08-29 00:07:23 UTC

47,680

47,442

gaborcselle

Crystal Tower, the startup dorm, loses elevator service

nickb

This was really annoying. The residents were also practically staging a revolution, with flyers asking to file complaints about violationgs against the Americans with Disabilities Act.Only upside: When you're doing laundry, this is quite a workout (3x up and down).

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1

6

2007-08-29 00:23:09 UTC

47,688

47,549

jkush

You have a 1 in 20 chance of being chosen by YC. Pretty good odds!

palish

Yeah, great. That just made me feel worse.

If we assume there will be 500 applications and that YC will be accepting 25 of them then that's a 1 in 20 chance.Throw in the fact some applications, maybe as many as half, are broken (thirteen year old founders, clones of existing ideas, etc) and you've got a great shot.Anyone that still has cold feet, get in there and apply!

6

17

2007-08-29 00:36:16 UTC

47,712

47,619

daniel-cussen

Sequoia Capital to Yale: "Invest or else"

brett

The beginning of the end of Sequoia?

null

0

12

2007-08-29 01:45:23 UTC

47,713

47,597

ratsbane

MySpace runs on IIS? Really?

andreyf

It's not completely impossible to do good work on the .Net platform.But it is very, very unlikely..Net teaches programmers to write code to .Net, to Microsoft rules. It teaches its victims to use the excreable "viewstate" and POST when they mean to GET and pass volumes of unnecessary and poorly-encoded data back and forth between the server and client. .Net programmers learn to drag and drop things onto forms which Visual Studio then clogs up with layers of absolute-positioning tags, ensuring that the resulting pages will only display correctly on certain browsers with certain window-sizes and absolutely will not print properly, even when the planets are properly aligned. But that's okay, with .Net you can use Reporting Services to design hundreds of divergent "reports." .Net teaches programmers to code to Microsoft's api, not to web standards, fundamental principles of math and computer science or, frequently, to common sense.It isn't to Microsoft's advantage for developers to consider other options and thus they try with great success to prevent .Net developers from realizing those options even exist. Microsoft documentation almost never refers to RFCs, even when doing so would be helpful. They hide the browser object model as much as they can and instead present the .Net wrapper for the browser object model as the only truth, with a Microsoft registered-trademark character after every thought.It is possible to do good work on the .Net platform; it's just very, very unlikely.Perhaps I've gone too far with this rant. As you may guess, it results from great frustration with well-funded idiocy in the wasteland of corporate American IT. Also I just tried to pay my property taxes online and the lovely .aspx page blew up with a CLIENT-SIDE VBSCRIPT error.Good grief.But here is a final and positive thought: quite a lot of business in the world is run on very poorly-designed systems, whether .Net or otherwise. Perhaps there much opportunity and advantage to be gained in creating better systems to replace them.

null

0

11

2007-08-29 01:54:30 UTC

47,724

47,597

steve

MySpace runs on IIS? Really?

andreyf

Myspace runs? Really?More like limps along..

null

2

11

2007-08-29 02:31:23 UTC

47,725

47,636

jsjenkins168

A Comparison of Push and Pull Techniques for Ajax [pdf]

damien

Has anyone experimented with a hybrid push/pull setup? If your data refreshes are bursty in nature, then this could be good idea, judging from the data in this paper. Poll regularly for the server status using pulls, and in the event new data is published (start of a burst), initiate a push connection for a preset amount of time (this can be server controlled, depending on load). If the burst is not yet over after the thread is closed, it will just be resumed after the next pull indicates there is new data.This setup would help minimize the mean time that threads are tied up, thus decreasing the thread pool size and server load. But again this is only beneficial if your data updates are bursty in nature.. There is one thing this paper did not mention.. Unfortunately, due to browser security restrictions, AJAX calls must occur with the same server where the javascript originated. So this means when you are using a push setup and your server is beginning to max out, you are affecting the performance serving pages too! The HTTP keep-alive settings will keep those threads open for a while each time a page is served. Normally you can proxy and forward calls to other servers, but in this particular example the web server MUST maintain these open threads.. I think..Just thinking aloud with this, but I'm interested if anyone else has comments.

null

1

13

2007-08-29 02:35:49 UTC

47,728

47,618

weebro

Y Combinator Companies Didn't Like Boston?

knewjax

I worked in Boston for a summer once - Joe's American Bar and Grill on the waterfront (next to Marriott and Aquarium). I can safely say that I wouldn't rush back to living in Bean Town. Sorry but the Blue Laws suck, if you're going out you had better know of a party cos 2am is a bit early for a European. I also worked in a Law firm in New York for a yr or so and can safely say Boston, as a business and legal center, has a bad rep for being stuck up for no apparent, earned, reason. The weather sucks, the city doesn't have enough clubs and it's nightlife centers around that square which really is square. There's my tuppence worth. Woohoo Red Sox!!!!!!!

Did any of this sessions YC group enjoy the city of boston? Im a Boston native and out of everything I have seen so far it seems that the overall feeling was that Boston doesnt make the cut and most of the YC companies will be moving to the Valley. Is this mostly based on investment opportunities. Or your experience here as well. Did you guys even really have a chance to go out and have a good time in the city?

1

2007-08-29 02:51:08 UTC

47,729

47,494

cellis

How Google could beat Facebook at its own game

amichail

ok...so? not be a smart ass, but really, who cares if goog is going to take on fb? i've got to pay my cell phone bill, and find a cofounder. When they actually release something, i might just check it out. But uh, goog hasn't been so hot on the social networking/soft side of things. see: orkut.

Google could obtain a social network graph quickly from gmail accounts. Moreover, it could release a platform similar to Facebook but take it another step further by providing free hosting on its massive computer cluster.There would be some sort of revenue sharing system in place for apps created using this platform.

1

2

2007-08-29 02:52:20 UTC

47,730

47,383

cellis

Digg Gets A Major Makeover

transburgh

whats digg?

null

1

3

2007-08-29 02:55:10 UTC

47,731

47,652

nostrademons

05/11/01. When did u know you wanted to do a startup? (for me..)

rokhayakebe

Geesh, you expect me to remember these things?Sometime in November, 1995.Actually, that's a little inaccurate. I had entertained ideas about being a professional shareware developer when I first learned Pascal - that was when I was 12, so about 1993. The November date in question was on the way to a WoCoMal math meet. One of my teammates asked our driver & math teacher "Are you a millionaire?", to which he replied, "No, the only millionaire on the faculty is John [one of the school founders, and another math teacher]. He founded and sold a company for like $40 million." That kinda planted the seed that yes, owning a business was achievable and it did happen to people like me.It kinda grew into "I'm going to start my own startup" over time. I was writing a MUD at the time, and about a year into the project (which I eventually gave up on), I found out "Hey, people actually pay for games like this!" Then after high school, I worked for a tech startup founded by the aformentioned math teacher/school founder, and found I liked it. Then I took a long holiday from startup stuff while I was in college, though I did have primary implementation responsibility for a non-profit. Then I came back to it my senior year, because I realized "Oh shit, I have to get a job now" and realized how sucky most jobs were. Applied to SFP05, wasn't really ready for it, was rejected, took a job at another startup that I'd interned at instead. Then this year I started letting it be known that I was interested in starting a company, and got 3 overtures for cofounder positions within 8 months. Took the most promising, applied to YC for SFP07, was rejected, going ahead anyway, and we'll see about WFP08...

For me it was somewhere between reading that article and December of 2005.

0

6

2007-08-29 02:59:08 UTC

47,732

47,482

tipjoy

The Surprising Truth About Ugly Websites (they perform better)

nickb

In the end of this article, the author states that "In Conclusion X It's Not Necessarily Ugliness That Sells." He then goes on to plea with people to consider their usability over their aesthetic design. This seems a somewhat weak ending given the rest of the article, however reasonable this conclusion may be. Furthermore, to quote myself: "...one of my favorite anecdotes from Blink is the tale of the identical ice cream: the same ice cream was wrapped in two different packages, one plain, the other fancy, and taken around to the public for taste tests. People actually reported that the ice cream in the 'fancier' package _tasted_ better. What's great about this story is that it's an excellent way to explain to someone the value of beauty to usability. Given two functionally identical products, users will believe that one is _easier to use_ simply by virtue of it being aesthetically pleasing. I once saw a presentation at a UPA (Usability Professionals Assoc) Conference where a study showed just that - a product with identical information architecture was run through two usability tests: one where the product had a rudimentary look and feel, and one where the look and feel had been touched up by a graphic designer. User data showed that people felt the prettier version was easier for them to use, even though it took them the same time to complete tasks in both versions. Now, as an interaction designer myself, I would hope this argument is never used to dismiss the importance of interaction design and information architecture. We can't use aesthetics to 'put lipstick on the pig,' as one of my coworkers is fond of saying. But if you've taken the time to make a really usable product which meets a user need, imagine how much people will love it if you ALSO make it beautiful. That, for me, is the definition of a "delightful experience." " (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38839)

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18

2007-08-29 02:59:39 UTC

47,740

47,449

mynameishere

Fred Wilson: Favoriting Ads

charzom

As the people commenting at fw's blog say, it just isn't going to work. It's also been done quite a few times.Maybe if you tried a "fun" twist instead, like a link that says, "Don't bother other people with this ad". Make it explicit, you know.BTW, I'm a consumer of web ads, and my ctr with adwords is usually between 2-3 percent. (For certain keywords, as high as 50 percent.) My adsense ctr? For this month... 0.02 percent. One click total. So, there's definitely room for improvement.

null

0

11

2007-08-29 03:33:19 UTC

47,745

47,744

jl

How to keep the lid on a good idea

jl

I was quoted in this article, but the point I really wanted to make (that ended up on the cutting room floor obviously) was that a startup should be more concerned about the 3-person startup working on the same thing than an investor or big company stealing their idea.

null

0

14

2007-08-29 03:49:10 UTC

47,749

47,652

aswanson

05/11/01. When did u know you wanted to do a startup? (for me..)

rokhayakebe

Around 1980.

For me it was somewhere between reading that article and December of 2005.

2

6

2007-08-29 03:54:47 UTC

47,751

47,746

rms

Black Plague and HIV resistance in Europe

aswanson

It is incorrect to say that the CCR5 delta32 mutation came exclusively from the plague. It is more likely that it came from smallpox.The title of this article is even worse, ~10% of people of European descent are resistant to HIV and 10% of those individuals are practically immune to HIV. The mutation is more common in people of northern European descent and some eastern European ethnic groups, like Ashkenazi Jews.This summary of a paper published in Nature shows that mice with the CCR5 delta32 mutation still get the plague. http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?DR_... Subscription/university tunnel required for the real paper.This is another study concluding that smallpox was the more likely selecting factor for the mutation. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=29... http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=12...This is a personal interest of mine because testing for this mutation is my startup. http://www.hivgene.com There's an enormous amount of untapped potential with the CCR5 receptor; I wish I had the money to do private research.To cure HIV: Start with some adult stem cells from the HIV patient to be treated, specifically the stem cells that produce T cells. Introduce the 32 base pair deletion in the CCR5 gene and grow the cells in culture. These can then be "transplanted" back into the patient. These transplanted stem cells will create HIV immune T cells. Once there are enough immune T cells, the patient will probably still have HIV, but it will not develop into AIDS. There will be no chance of rejection since they are the patient's own cells. Furthermore, since the body does produce antibodies to HIV, these modified T cells may even be able to fight off the HIV.To test this, we would get a mouse line, which are genetically very similar to each other from inbreeding so we won't have to worry about rejection of the transplants, and introduce the human CCR5 receptor into them. This, in theory, will allow the mice to be infected with HIV since HIV attaches to the CCR 5 receptor to enter and infect the cell. If this works, we can then try the technique of taking some of their stem cells, introducing the mutation, transplanting them back in, and see if their T cell count increases or if the levels of HIV decrease. It could also be used as a preventative therapy, which we can also easily test on the mice.(HIV curing idea is courtesy of my partner, his username is ingenium on here. If anyone with money is interested in branching out into a different kind of biotech company, please get in touch with me.)

null

0

8

2007-08-29 04:00:15 UTC

47,759

47,442

rrival

Crystal Tower, the startup dorm, loses elevator service

nickb

Interesting implications - would expanding / changing locales to include some CoWorking space and possibly improving the amenities (in light of elevator issues) inspire even more to move into a post-college startup community?

null

2

6

2007-08-29 04:21:28 UTC

47,765

47,763

cperciva

Percentages for New Hires...

far33d

It depends.A company such as you describe ("Product close to launch, series A finished, in a specialized field") might have 20 engineers building the project; or it might have 3 people and several million dollars of hardware. Obviously in the later case a new employee would make a greater impact on the company and thus be able to demand more options.An engineer such as you describe ("engineer, 5 years experience") might be a 23 year old who got an entry-level programming job straight out of high school and has no particular expertise; or he might have a PhD and be a world-recognized expert in the particular specialized field in which the company is working. Obviously in the later case he would be able to demand more options.All I can say with confidence based on the information given is that he should probably expect somewhere between 0.01% and 25%.

Engineer, 5 years experience. Product close to launch, series A finished, in a specialized field. What option percentage should this engineer expect?

0

9

2007-08-29 05:11:00 UTC

47,767

47,744

henning

How to keep the lid on a good idea

jl

It probably doesn't matter whether someone hears about your ideas, actually. It's tremendous hubris and a non sequitur to think that someone will overhear your idea, immediately think it's fantastic, and go and start a successful company based on that, leaving you totally unable to act."Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats."Ideas aren't "worthless" but there's tons to building a successful company besides building the right product for the right audience at the right time.

null

1

14

2007-08-29 05:18:48 UTC

47,781

47,746

michaelneale

Black Plague and HIV resistance in Europe

aswanson

I don't think this is appropriate for hacker news. reddit.com is a better place for stuff like this.

null

1

8

2007-08-29 07:33:08 UTC

47,786

47,771

staunch

Dot-com names get dottier: X is the new Z

zach

The photo, with the awesome title of "Coder" is better than the story itself:http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-names29aug29_jng4hwkn,...

null

1

8

2007-08-29 07:57:24 UTC

47,790

47,789

german

New gmail video (passing the gmail icon among people)

german

I found it also in TechCrunch http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/28/what-do-you-get-when-yo...

This post is in Spanish but you can see the video. Looking good...Update: I found it in techcrunch also: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/28/what-do-you-get-when-yo...

0

2

2007-08-29 08:16:59 UTC

47,792

47,652

davidw

05/11/01. When did u know you wanted to do a startup? (for me..)

rokhayakebe

When I realized that it's difficult to find places to work where you're not working for a fking moron. I want to make cool things and work with people who don't suck. I don't really care if that means a startup, but things certainly seem to point in that direction.

For me it was somewhere between reading that article and December of 2005.

1

6

2007-08-29 09:46:30 UTC

47,794

47,622

prakash

What's the best startup story you ever heard?

eusman

I would say Viaweb and/or Vermeer purely because there is so much information about them.

doesn't have to be about software

6

9

2007-08-29 09:54:59 UTC

47,795

47,425

jgamman

Oh the Irony

transburgh

a case can be made that advertising at the correct moment in time for a particular individual is information. you want a new mattress, open the pipe, mattresses galore, buy, close pipe. the key is to figure out the when and the personalisation, search is the first to get close to it (and it's still not perfect - the next thing i'd like to see is trimming but i assume that'll take that semantic web thing i keep hearing about)

"We expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers." -- Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, 1998 http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html

2

9

2007-08-29 10:08:34 UTC

47,799

47,566

michaelneale

In the Beginning Was the Command Line

byrneseyeview

An oldie but a goodie. Has a bit of open source myth in it though. He kind of believes that it magically congeals out of the ether, rather then by frequent (and paid for) hard work of hackers and engineers in a deliberate fashion.

null

1

11

2007-08-29 10:29:52 UTC

47,806

47,804

bootload

HackrTrackr now has area based forums for Y Combinator Readers

dottertrotter

I posted a bug to brad. Anyone having the same trouble? ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/1264094177/

null

5

17

2007-08-29 12:29:20 UTC

47,807

47,597

mpc

MySpace runs on IIS? Really?

andreyf

We're using .net, which has worked out good for us. Yes, the default settings are designed to lower the bar for IT shops to build apps easily. If you know what you're doing, you can avoid the muck and get right to the extensive and powerful features.Our configuration....- Lots of JS, homegrown ajax framework that extends YUI - asp.net but with custom controls that we wrote- custom http handlers take care of the call backs- deployed on apache with mod_mono. mysql db

null

3

11

2007-08-29 12:33:12 UTC

47,808

47,804

joshwa

HackrTrackr now has area based forums for Y Combinator Readers

dottertrotter

Idea: if we've already specified our location, give us a link to our "home area" forum on the homepage, rather than making us browse the map (which is starting to get crowded!).Also, is it possible to enable mousewheel zoom on the google map? I find that a really convenient way to zero in on an area of the map. also, byrneseyeview and I are both listed twice in NY..

null

2

17

2007-08-29 12:42:58 UTC

47,810

47,744

edw519

How to keep the lid on a good idea

jl

For Web2.0, this issue is quickly becoming unimportant. It only takes 1 or 2 people and a couple of computers to build something earth shattering. By the time you need capital, you should be at least 6 months ahead of any potential competition. If not, go back and code some more.

null

2

14

2007-08-29 12:47:56 UTC

47,813

47,636

axod

A Comparison of Push and Pull Techniques for Ajax [pdf]

damien

Here's a work in progress of mine that uses long polling and keep-alives.http://www.zchatter.comIt works quite well.. pretty much like having a conventional tcp/ip connection for receives, (interlaced with HTTP traffic), and using a separate series of POST requests to send data to the server.

null

0

13

2007-08-29 13:37:20 UTC

47,814

47,798

jsjenkins168

GWT 1.4 release and out of beta

iotal

That was quick.. RC2 just came out last week! Google never ceases to amaze me..

null

0

2

2007-08-29 13:42:49 UTC

47,816

47,597

rustartup

MySpace runs on IIS? Really?

andreyf

All spoken here do not understand .Net enough. I worked for tagworld.com and this web project is "quite" big. Viewstate and drag'n'drops and the like are nowhere used. .Net is NOT for web sites, it is for web projects, really big and heterogeneous, with lots of services behind. For other please use php and the like, with "quick submit to db" approach.

null

4

11

2007-08-29 13:44:07 UTC

47,818

47,622

bboland1

What's the best startup story you ever heard?

eusman

I just read about the 17 year old founder of whateverlife.com yesterday. That is a great story.

doesn't have to be about software

3

9

2007-08-29 13:48:55 UTC

47,823

47,622

falsestprophet

What's the best startup story you ever heard?

eusman

"The New New Thing" by Michael Lewis

doesn't have to be about software

11

9

2007-08-29 14:18:05 UTC

47,824

47,812

Alex3917

What Makes Twitter Twitter?

Alex3917

This is my first ever compulsory blog post. I am taking a 'psychology of the internet' class at college that compels us to write a blog post about something Internet related each week. The class policy is such that if you say anything offensive or untoward you automatically fail the class without warning or chance for appeal. This is a bit upsetting since the way things work, if I fail the class and drop below 12 credits (a full-time student) I am no longer covered by my family's health insurance. So if I, say, link to that JWZ post about sex or the Wikipedia article about DeCSS then potentially I don't have healthcare anymore.For historical comparison, last semester at Cornell there were two classes with about 50-75 students total who were forced into compulsory blogging. This semester it is somewhere between 300-500. So this seems to be a trend that is taking off. Now instead of people writing about their cats out of love, they'll write about their cats out of fear :-)But anyway, this is the reason why the post contains a slight non-sequitur toward the end. I ran up against the hard word limit and there was really no way around it. If I were blogging for myself then I would have simply finished up the post the next day. As it were, it was 3am so I really had no choice but to post. Hopefully it kind of makes sense though. heh.For reference, you can see what everyone else wrote here: http://comm245blue.blogspot.com/

null

0

5

2007-08-29 14:21:38 UTC

47,826

47,804

kashif

HackrTrackr now has area based forums for Y Combinator Readers

dottertrotter

What language are you using? How many lines of code did this take? How long? Who are you hosting with and what plan? Just curious...

null

1

17

2007-08-29 14:28:36 UTC

47,830

47,804

danteembermage

HackrTrackr now has area based forums for Y Combinator Readers

dottertrotter

I feel kinda alone in my forum, do you think you could maybe fold Mississippi, Arkansas, Utah, Idaho, and South Dakota into the Wisconsin forum so I can have someone to talk to?

null

0

17

2007-08-29 14:42:25 UTC

47,831

47,804

brlewis

HackrTrackr now has area based forums for Y Combinator Readers

dottertrotter

I get silent failure when I try to create a forum in MA.

null

7

17

2007-08-29 14:45:27 UTC

47,836

47,549

pg

You have a 1 in 20 chance of being chosen by YC. Pretty good odds!

palish

Actually, if you're reading this, you probably have better odds than that. A good fraction of the people who apply clearly have no idea how YC works or what we look for. If you're reading this comment you're probably over that threshold, at least.

If we assume there will be 500 applications and that YC will be accepting 25 of them then that's a 1 in 20 chance.Throw in the fact some applications, maybe as many as half, are broken (thirteen year old founders, clones of existing ideas, etc) and you've got a great shot.Anyone that still has cold feet, get in there and apply!

1

17

2007-08-29 14:57:46 UTC

47,845

47,804

tocomment

HackrTrackr now has area based forums for Y Combinator Readers

dottertrotter

How about forums by language?

null

8

17

2007-08-29 15:23:28 UTC

47,859

47,622

alex_c

What's the best startup story you ever heard?

eusman

Gary Dahl, "inventor" of the pet rock.http://www.petsdo.com/blog/pet-rock-made-man-multi-millionai...

doesn't have to be about software

4

9

2007-08-29 15:59:42 UTC

47,862

47,856

sweeper

Does any ruby/rails IDE have breakpoints?

twism

netbeans claims to. not played with them much.

Breakpoints are HUGE for me, the ability to stop your program in mid stride and view, traverse, and manipulate data and variables ala keanu reeves in the matrix.

1

2007-08-29 16:04:15 UTC

47,863

47,362

whacked_new

Max Levchin at 2006 UIUC Talk "You should start a company right now" (video)

staunch

This is awesome. Thanks. I wish there are more comments here though, especially from people who can offer a contrasting perspective.

null

1

21

2007-08-29 16:05:23 UTC

47,870

47,754

aston

Sparklines for members of online communities

tipjoy

I like this idea. For the purposes of a forum, you might want it to be more iconic (read: smaller), so maybe a really rough bar graph of like one bar per week over the past month or so. At that rough of a level, you can also easily push the generation to a weekly cron job (rather than trying to keep up with every new post).

null

0

4

2007-08-29 16:21:11 UTC

47,871

47,622

aandreev

What's the best startup story you ever heard?

eusman

My personal favorite is the story of the Lycos founder in "Founders at Work". The guy just got a call from a VC, saying "we will give you money if you run a company with this great search technology we bought".

doesn't have to be about software

7

9

2007-08-29 16:30:35 UTC

47,872

47,622

toisanji

What's the best startup story you ever heard?

eusman

Please help keep all these stories at: http://startupflames.com/

doesn't have to be about software

10

9

2007-08-29 16:31:18 UTC

47,876

47,875

jsjenkins168

Nokia announces Ovi - music, maps, games, and mobile social networking in one

jsjenkins168

Nokia continues push as a mobile content company, with ambitions to compete with Apple and Google.More coverage here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08...

null

0

1

2007-08-29 16:44:16 UTC

47,878

47,622

abstractbill

What's the best startup story you ever heard?

eusman

I enjoy reading about the early days of Netscape:http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nscpdorm.html

doesn't have to be about software

9

2007-08-29 16:54:03 UTC

47,881

47,803

nickb

R6RS Ratified (Let the complaining begin)

apgwoz

Scheme wants to be Common Lisp.

null

1

12

2007-08-29 17:03:10 UTC

47,883

47,482

Goladus

The Surprising Truth About Ugly Websites (they perform better)

nickb

I think this guy also just has weird ideas about what's ugly. I don't think plentyoffish is ugly. It's not gorgeous, but it's far from ugly.There is definitely a point when certain kinds of beauty become uninviting to certain kinds of people. It's like room with furniture so fancy that one feels uncomfortable, like an intruder, just by sitting on it. But I don't really think his argument conveyed how that happens with websites.

null

7

18

2007-08-29 17:07:45 UTC

47,884

47,622

ballred

What's the best startup story you ever heard?

eusman

If you've never read how Kenneth Cole (shoe/fashion company) started out by launching a movie production company, it's a great story: http://www.kennethcole.com/scripts/aboutus/ourstory.asp

doesn't have to be about software

0

9

2007-08-29 17:07:57 UTC

47,891

47,622

byrneseyeview

What's the best startup story you ever heard?

eusman

Epiphyte: http://zgp.org/pipermail/linux-elitists/1999-December/000074...

doesn't have to be about software

8

9

2007-08-29 17:19:26 UTC

47,893

47,856

luccastera

Does any ruby/rails IDE have breakpoints?

twism

From the Netbeans page at http://www.netbeans.org/community/releases/60/"Ruby Debugger. Single-step or run through Ruby code, set breakpoints, look at local variables, navigate the call stack, switch threads, and evaluate expressions by just hovering the mouse over the variable in the Editor. There is also support for the "fast debug" extension."

Breakpoints are HUGE for me, the ability to stop your program in mid stride and view, traverse, and manipulate data and variables ala keanu reeves in the matrix.

0

1

2007-08-29 17:24:03 UTC

47,894

47,763

theremora

Percentages for New Hires...

far33d

a tenth of a percent .001 to a quarter of a percent .0025 at best.

Engineer, 5 years experience. Product close to launch, series A finished, in a specialized field. What option percentage should this engineer expect?

1

9

2007-08-29 17:25:55 UTC

47,897

47,566

gebloom

In the Beginning Was the Command Line

byrneseyeview

"I embraced OS X as soon as it was available and have never looked back. So a lot of In the Beginning...was the Command Line is now obsolete. I keep meaning to update it, but if I'm honest with myself, I have to say this is unlikely."

null

0

11

2007-08-29 17:35:38 UTC

47,898

47,803

dfranke

R6RS Ratified (Let the complaining begin)

apgwoz

About time. I hope it isn't another decade before R7RS.A lot of people are complaining because R6 is so much bigger than R5. While a clean, tiny spec is a beautiful thing, it is empirically not a recipe for being able to get real work done without compromising portability. If you care about minimalism more than you care about that kind of portability, R5RS isn't going anywhere. This isn't Windows; there's no end-of-life schedule that's going to force you to upgrade.My gripe about R6RS is that it doesn't go far enough: any sufficiently large project is still going to require non-portable extensions. But it's a leap in the right direction and we've been waiting long enough. As long as we'll eventually see an R7RS, I'm glad this revision was ratified.

null

0

12

2007-08-29 17:40:02 UTC

47,899

47,874

nostrademons

Why You Don't Want to Code for a Government Department

dfranke

It can be lucrative, however...One of my coworkers once worked for a company that sold software to the government. Their software didn't work - at all. It didn't run. However, this being the government and the company being staffed with excellent salespeople, they didn't find that out until they'd already forked over their million dollars or so. They just ate the cost and never used the software.The kicker was that the project was classified, and so the government agency couldn't tell anyone that the program didn't work. Not even other government agencies. So this company went right ahead selling the same software-that-didn't-work to multiple government agencies. Your tax dollars at work.

null

0

7

2007-08-29 17:40:40 UTC

47,927

47,804

uuilly

HackrTrackr now has area based forums for Y Combinator Readers

dottertrotter

Well played dottertrotter, thank you. Myself and a number of others have duplicate location entries. One where you determined my location by IP and one by zipcode. The zipcode one is right. How can I delete the IP one? It seems many others have the same problem...

null

3

17

2007-08-29 19:15:17 UTC

47,928

47,915

ivankirigin

Is college worth the cost?

jyrzyk

There is an interesting group of ideas around intelligence, education, credentialism, and signaling.Getting a degree is a sign that you are smart enough to get a degree. Getting one from a good school is that much better. The biggest loss if you learned the exact same material on your own outside a university is that others aren't signaled that you've received that education.If you build something good, it doesn't matter where you are. People know you're smart from what you've done.There are millions of people paying for a credential that means less as more people get it. Companies treat college degrees as a sign that you're not a total failure.It would be nice if there were better tests for ability. They work for things like the SAT II, but I can't imagine an accurate test for post-graduate ability besides a review of what you've made.But companies are lazy. They don't have the time or money to really look at the quality of most candidates, so they use signaling tools as filters.

null

1

21

2007-08-29 19:16:13 UTC

47,931

45,698

SteveSanderson

Holding a program in one's head

eposts

Wow... this is a great description of what's happening inside a good programmer. It may even be good enough to help non-programmers understand what's happening and therefore what to do about it. This should be on the short-list of reading for managers and others who are responsible for the software development working environment.On a seperate tangent, Paul referred to some mental techniques (e.g. 'black box', 'solve a subset) and I can think of others (e.g. hold this portion 'constant' and change a different portion).What if we had a catalog of those mental techniques - would that be interesting? Usefull? Who would use it?Thirdly - my experience of loading the whole program in my head extends beyond programming - when I've participated in the business side, along with programming, then the scope of what I consider becomes larger (and involves some new elements) but the underlying approach and way of thinking about problems/solutions appears to be the same. Have other folks had a similar experience?

null

31

142

2007-08-29 19:21:31 UTC

47,935

47,915

jraines

Is college worth the cost?

jyrzyk

Private, no. (Northwestern and NYU are up to $48K a year just in tuition. Are you kidding me?)Public, especially an in-state school if your state is fortunate enough have a quality one, definitely yes. College: still the best four years of your life. (Then again, I've yet to live the four years one would experience after selling a startup for big money. Maybe we could get input from pg or that Broadcom guy who built the underground party den)

null

4

21

2007-08-29 19:30:31 UTC

47,937

47,915

dawie

Is college worth the cost?

jyrzyk

Yes it is. I believe that the best investment you can ever make is in yourself. Colledge cost me $40K and I have made more than $160K in 2 years after Colledge working. I have made an 33% ((40/120) * 100) on my investment in myself and its still growing. The growth of my investment in myself is infinite and way bigger than any other investment.

null

10

21

2007-08-29 19:36:53 UTC

47,938

47,915

cperciva

Is college worth the cost?

jyrzyk

This article includes one of the most misleading statistics concerning higher education: "People with bachelor's degrees... still earn an average of about $1.2M more than high school graduates over a 40-year career". Yes, there is a correlation between higher education and higher salaries -- no, this does not imply causation!There are many confounding factors: People who are more intelligent, have parent(s) who pursued higher education, have parents with higher income, or are white are both more likely to receive a bachelor's degree AND on average earn more than other people with the same amount of education. (In the past, being male was a predictor for both higher education and higher earnings, but this is not a significant factor for people born after 1980.)In addition, the statistic ignores the fact that pursuing higher education shortens one's career -- people who spend 4-5 years in college on average work for 2-3 years less than those who started their careers immediately after high school. As a result, comparing "40-year careers" is bogus -- the only reasonable comparison is between the total careers of individuals, including the time when one person is at college while the other is working.Finally, even if the statistic were computed correctly and reflected causation, it would be misleading: Different careers are not influenced equally by education. Generally speaking, people don't finish their education before they start thinking about what career the will pursue; someone who was planning on becoming a plumber isn't likely to suddenly decide that he wants to become a brain surgeon just because he finds that he has a bachelor's degree.Decide what you want to do (either as a single career, or more likely thinking of a number of careers which seem interesting), and look at what qualifications are needed for those. And never forget what Benjamin Disraeli said: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics".

null

0

21

2007-08-29 19:37:15 UTC

47,940

47,147

Kelevra

Teenage Girl's MySpace Layouts Worth Millions, Drops Out Of High School

vlad

Wow. Good for her and all that, but I think skipping out on school is a mistake, whatever she's earning.

null

11

88

2007-08-29 19:40:54 UTC

47,943

47,930

twism

"Why netbeans' rails support is so creamingly good"

r7000

i posted something on this a couple hours ago... this is the only way anyone should work on RoR

null

3

15

2007-08-29 19:48:34 UTC