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13,300 | comment | paul | 2007-04-16T14:31:30 | null | There's nothing wrong with being lazy. | null | null | 13,186 | 13,149 | null | null | null | null |
13,301 | comment | whacked_new | 2007-04-16T14:36:09 | null | intentional double pun? pure brilliance. | null | null | 11,045 | 10,748 | null | [
14970
] | null | null |
13,302 | story | Mistone | 2007-04-16T14:46:29 | Word of Mouth Is All About the Experience - People Want to Talk | null | http://www.promoterforce.com/2007/04/16/word-of-mouth-is-all-about-the-expereince-people-want-to-talk/ | 1 | null | 13,302 | 0 | null | null | null |
13,303 | comment | Mistone | 2007-04-16T14:55:46 | null | i really liked the article, the show business and restaurant analogies were pretty interesting. Web2.0 has churned out so many "me-to" companies, so I think this is very sound advice for any software/web app that is thinking beyond the flip. | null | null | 13,281 | 13,281 | null | null | null | null |
13,304 | comment | Alex3917 | 2007-04-16T14:59:38 | null | I was thinking the other day about why it was that so many of the smartest people work only a couple hours a day, which relates to the open door theory proposed in this speech. Joel Spolsky mentioned doing this in the article linked to from here yesterday, and I remember Chris Sacca saying that people really only did an hour or two of quality work every day at Google. My thinking was that the people we typically think of as smart are the people who are innovative and come up with new ideas. And new ideas tend to come from combining two or more fields. Which would give people who are a little bit ADD a huge advantage, though at the same time reducing the amount of actual work they are able to do on a day to day basis. | null | null | 13,218 | 13,218 | null | [
13371
] | null | null |
13,305 | comment | pg | 2007-04-16T15:12:21 | null | Lately the median co we fund uses RoR. | null | null | 13,289 | 13,289 | null | [
13622,
13323,
13307,
13445
] | null | null |
13,306 | comment | dyu | 2007-04-16T15:15:02 | null | Usually in those cases your domain name might reappear in a few days, since there are some 5 day money back policies that the domain hogging companies take advantage of. | null | null | 13,007 | 12,730 | null | null | null | null |
13,307 | comment | dottertrotter | 2007-04-16T15:15:55 | null | Is RoR favored due to its ability to allow for speed of development? As this must be a key factor for a company expected to produce a workable application in a 3 month time period. | null | null | 13,305 | 13,289 | null | [
13327
] | null | null |
13,308 | comment | cwilbur | 2007-04-16T15:16:55 | null | $500 for incorporation is a very low figure for some states. If I remember right, the cost of incorporation as an LLC in Massachusetts (which is what I was researching at the time, because that's where I am) runs about $1000 between what you end up owing the state and what you end up owing the lawyer; incorporating as an LLC in any other state means you need to register as a foreign corporation with the state if you intend to do business in that state (in MA: lease property as a corporation, pay salaries as a corporation, own property as a corporation), which in Massachusetts runs about $1000 between what you end up owing the state and what you end up owing the lawyer.<p>Other states may be more lenient on when you need to register as a foreign corporation or cost less to incorporate or register as a foreign corporation. Also, for some startup models, it can make sense to incorporate in Delaware when you start development and then worry about the whole foreign-corporation thing when it's time to start hiring employees rather than adding partners. | null | null | 13,155 | 13,140 | null | [
13365
] | null | null |
13,309 | comment | pg | 2007-04-16T15:19:40 | null | Buying domains rarely works. The owners either never respond to you or want a crazy price. Plus there are always good ones still untaken. | null | null | 13,144 | 12,730 | null | null | null | null |
13,310 | comment | cwilbur | 2007-04-16T15:24:03 | null | The UI for the project I pitched to YC. It's one of the two hard interesting problems in the project, and it's the one that has the most effect on the success or failure of the project. <p>(There's another hard interesting problem, but it's the sort of thing that can be tweaked and tuned.)<p>I'm not working on it at this moment because I'm at my day job looking busy, and I don't want to do any concrete work on that project here because of IP issues. (Any work I do off company time is not theirs, and I have that in writing; any work I do on company time is theirs. One of the advantages of working for a very corporate boss is that "company time" is defined as 9 am to 5 pm.) <p>I'm not working on it in code right now in general because it's still percolating in my backbrain while I am picking off a few of the more straightforward problems to get myself going. And because it's big and scary, and code seems more permanent than sketches. | null | null | 13,177 | 13,177 | null | null | null | null |
13,311 | comment | ido | 2007-04-16T15:26:57 | null | Good work ruining the punch line by putting it in the heading. | null | null | 13,280 | 13,280 | null | [
13315,
13321
] | null | null |
13,312 | story | pg | 2007-04-16T15:29:04 | Is Justin Timberlake a Product of Cumulative Advantage? | null | http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/magazine/15wwlnidealab.t.html?ex=1334203200&en=79be2f770fc76c6d&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink&pagewanted=all | 20 | null | 13,312 | 10 | [
13359,
13324,
13471,
13319,
13332
] | null | null |
13,313 | comment | danw | 2007-04-16T15:50:21 | null | dupe? similar to <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=13285">http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=13285</a> too | null | null | 13,286 | 13,286 | null | [
13317
] | null | null |
13,314 | comment | Benja | 2007-04-16T15:57:37 | null | Hey, death threats aren't funny, and being afraid of a death threat is something very different from being afraid that taking a stance might hurt your bottom line. | null | null | 13,297 | 13,296 | null | [
13330
] | null | null |
13,315 | comment | mattculbreth | 2007-04-16T16:14:33 | null | No reason for that kind of tone, we're all friends here. Besides, picking your own titles is half the fun at this.
| null | null | 13,311 | 13,280 | null | [
13337
] | null | null |
13,316 | comment | eli | 2007-04-16T16:25:38 | null | For those interested: Slashdot has a link to an article about the toll that people using this loophole have taken on the DNS system: <a href="http://slashdot.org/articles/07/04/16/1515244.shtml">http://slashdot.org/articles/07/04/16/1515244.shtml</a> | null | null | 13,039 | 12,730 | null | null | null | null |
13,317 | comment | yaacovtp | 2007-04-16T16:26:53 | null | Looks more like an rss thief. | null | null | 13,313 | 13,286 | null | null | null | null |
13,318 | comment | brett | 2007-04-16T16:27:16 | null | Yeah. I got lazy. The problem with comments is that many good ones only get 1 or 2 points so the average is less meaningful (not that there aren't all sorts of wacky aberrations in the submissions averages). | null | null | 13,259 | 13,239 | null | null | null | null |
13,319 | comment | Benja | 2007-04-16T16:29:49 | null | And closer to home: Is Google? | null | null | 13,312 | 13,312 | null | [
13338,
13350
] | null | null |
13,320 | comment | ralph | 2007-04-16T16:41:31 | null | The page showing the comments of a user should only show each post once. At the moment, if I have a conversation, me1 - you1 - me2 - you2 - me3, then m3 appears first as the most recent, then later me2 downwards, then later still me1 downwards. It's redundant clutter. The only benefit of this arrangement is my most recent posts are first instead of the most recent chain of my posts. I'd prefer the latter.<p>Cheers, Ralph.
| null | null | 363 | 363 | null | null | null | null |
13,321 | comment | timg | 2007-04-16T16:50:08 | null | Hah, some of those other parts were much funnier. | null | null | 13,311 | 13,280 | null | null | null | null |
13,322 | comment | zach | 2007-04-16T16:50:27 | null | Very true, she's had some effective illustrations of why you never want to be in the bland middle. For one thing, that's where all the big companies are, by necessity. | null | null | 13,297 | 13,296 | null | null | null | null |
13,323 | comment | keven | 2007-04-16T16:51:53 | null | interesting, for people that picked up RoR as a tool for 'beating the average' (<a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html)">http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html)</a> - RoR has become framework of choice for average startups.. | null | null | 13,305 | 13,289 | null | [
13380
] | null | null |
13,324 | comment | zaidf | 2007-04-16T16:52:35 | null | I blogged this last night about how it pertains to what we're doing:
<a href="http://www.zaid360.com/?p=143">http://www.zaid360.com/?p=143</a>
| null | null | 13,312 | 13,312 | null | null | null | null |
13,325 | story | kevinxray | 2007-04-16T16:56:22 | Marketing is More than Advertising. Get Better Results by Knowing the Difference | null | http://stirtzgroup.com/2007/04/16/marketing-is-more-than-advertising-get-better-results-by-knowing-the-difference/ | 1 | null | 13,325 | 0 | null | null | null |
13,326 | story | far33d | 2007-04-16T17:01:23 | UStream feeds the web's narcissists | null | http://mashable.com/2007/04/15/ustream-narcissism/ | 1 | null | 13,326 | 0 | null | null | null |
13,327 | comment | timg | 2007-04-16T17:01:59 | null | Nah, it's just because the lisp guys smell too bad to catch their flight to the interview. | null | null | 13,307 | 13,289 | null | null | null | null |
13,328 | story | danw | 2007-04-16T17:05:23 | news.YC Meetup: Future of Web Design, Wednesday 18th, London | null | 1 | null | 13,328 | 1 | [
13331
] | null | null |
|
13,329 | comment | timg | 2007-04-16T17:05:59 | null | Traffic seems to be a very poor metric for comparison in this case. | null | null | 13,248 | 13,248 | null | [
14021,
13555
] | null | null |
13,330 | comment | blader | 2007-04-16T17:08:08 | null | Sorry, I was referring to posts like this from Kathy:
<a href="http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/10/dilbert_and_the.html">http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/10/dilbert_and_the.html</a> | null | null | 13,314 | 13,296 | null | [
13333
] | null | null |
13,331 | comment | danw | 2007-04-16T17:08:13 | null | Is anyone else going to be at the Future of Web Design in London on Wednesday?<p>If anyone else is attending I'll be there all day and it would be great to meet any fellow news.YC'ers. You can find me either at the registration desk or in the speakers corner. If in doubt ask one of the Carson Systems folk to point me out. | null | null | 13,328 | 13,328 | null | null | null | null |
13,332 | comment | blader | 2007-04-16T17:11:07 | null | One word: MySpace. | null | null | 13,312 | 13,312 | null | null | null | null |
13,333 | comment | Benja | 2007-04-16T17:12:49 | null | Oops -- sorry that I misunderstood so completely what you were saying! Thanks for the explanation :-) | null | null | 13,330 | 13,296 | null | [
13340
] | null | null |
13,334 | comment | timg | 2007-04-16T17:13:14 | null | Very complex topic that I don't think the author evaluated thoroughly enough.<p>This advice sounds applicable outside of this example case though. | null | null | 13,296 | 13,296 | null | null | null | null |
13,335 | comment | timg | 2007-04-16T17:17:40 | null | Simple:<p>The cost of pursuing the idea outweigh the benefit, <i>considering risk.</i><p>More directly: burn money, cost of leaving present occupation. | null | null | 13,177 | 13,177 | null | null | null | null |
13,336 | comment | brlewis | 2007-04-16T17:32:43 | null | I don't think you can tell for sure until it succeeds. It's like the halting problem. | null | null | 13,035 | 13,035 | null | null | null | null |
13,337 | comment | ido | 2007-04-16T17:33:10 | null | I didn't mean for my comment to have "that kind of tone", I was just busting your balls buddy. | null | null | 13,315 | 13,280 | null | [
13342
] | null | null |
13,338 | comment | ced | 2007-04-16T17:38:03 | null | Is Java?<p>Lisp?<p>Granted, there are genuine "critical mass" effects for programming languages, but the same can be said to an extent of pop culture. If one of the reasons people listen to music is to have something to discuss with their friends, then of course, they go toward the already established.<p>While the details are interesting, "cumulative advantage" looks like a new buzzword for an old concept. As if it was heretofore believed that people thought independently of one another... | null | null | 13,319 | 13,312 | null | null | null | null |
13,339 | comment | blored | 2007-04-16T17:43:18 | null | does anyone want to share a hotel room for Saturday and Sunday night? Conversely, if anyone wants to house a Ycombinator interviewee for two nights, I would be eternally in their debt.<p>Thanks,
Mark | null | null | 11,459 | 11,285 | null | null | null | null |
13,340 | comment | RyanGWU82 | 2007-04-16T17:50:08 | null | YC News participants are so civil -- very refreshing. Benja's apology is a great example of that. | null | null | 13,333 | 13,296 | null | null | null | null |
13,341 | comment | nickb | 2007-04-16T18:03:24 | null | Scribd folks are on to something. There is a need for posting short sections of text and getting people to vote on it. Forget about all that other document stuff (thinkfree has you beat there), concentrate on these short pieces of text... like Twitter but more than 140 characters. | null | null | 13,149 | 13,149 | null | null | null | null |
13,342 | comment | mattculbreth | 2007-04-16T18:10:14 | null | Ok cool. Probably needed it anyway for putting the punchline in the title. :)
| null | null | 13,337 | 13,280 | null | null | null | null |
13,343 | story | dfranke | 2007-04-16T18:16:53 | Two Kinds of Judgement | null | http://paulgraham.com/judgement.html | 37 | null | 13,343 | 31 | [
13434,
13501,
13377,
13396,
13602,
13354,
13579,
13360,
13370,
13357
] | null | null |
13,344 | story | dawie | 2007-04-16T18:28:44 | Microsoft Silverlight Takes On Adobe's Flash | null | http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/microsoft_silverlight.php | 7 | null | 13,344 | 0 | null | null | null |
13,345 | comment | erdos2 | 2007-04-16T18:29:52 | null | Indeed: here are two of the original functions.<p>(defun lsb (n i)
(cond
((eq n 0) i)
(T (lsb (logand (- n 1) n) (+ i 1)))
)
)<p>(defun bits (n) (lsb n 0))<p>CL-USER (bits #B101100101101001010101101001010101001001111)<p>22
| null | null | 13,280 | 13,280 | null | null | null | null |
13,346 | story | jamongkad | 2007-04-16T18:31:17 | How to make something amazing right now! | null | http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/10/how_to_make_som.html | 1 | null | 13,346 | 0 | null | null | null |
13,347 | story | far33d | 2007-04-16T18:33:27 | What's the URL for news.yc search? (FOUND) | null | 1 | null | 13,347 | 1 | [
13348,
13351
] | null | true |
|
13,348 | comment | far33d | 2007-04-16T18:33:46 | null | I remember someone posting that they wrote one, but I'm having difficulty finding it...
| null | null | 13,347 | 13,347 | null | null | null | null |
13,349 | comment | jamongkad | 2007-04-16T18:36:05 | null | Nah it's fine. And you're right we do need need a inbox to warn us if we have a reply on our thread :-) | null | null | 9,568 | 7,775 | null | null | null | null |
13,350 | comment | danielha | 2007-04-16T18:39:51 | null | How so?<p>If you want close to home, think news.yc or other social news sites when it comes to cumulative advantage. | null | null | 13,319 | 13,312 | null | [
13367
] | null | null |
13,351 | comment | danielha | 2007-04-16T18:40:29 | null | <a href="http://nycs.bigheadlabs.com">http://nycs.bigheadlabs.com</a> | null | null | 13,347 | 13,347 | null | null | null | null |
13,352 | story | jamiequint | 2007-04-16T18:44:31 | Off Topic But Important - Gunman kills at least 21 at Virginia Tech - CNN.com | null | http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/16/vtech.shooting/index.html | 1 | null | 13,352 | 1 | [
13355,
13353
] | null | true |
13,353 | comment | jamiequint | 2007-04-16T18:45:20 | null | I didn't hear about this until just now, I think everyone needs to read about it, this is terrible. | null | null | 13,352 | 13,352 | null | null | null | null |
13,354 | comment | danielha | 2007-04-16T18:46:18 | null | This was part of Paul's Stanford talk. It fits in nicely in regards to decisions from venture capitalists on investment and even Y Combinator on the founders program. | null | null | 13,343 | 13,343 | null | null | null | null |
13,355 | comment | gibsonf1 | 2007-04-16T18:47:13 | null | I thought about posting that here too - but I didn't think this is the right place as terrible as it is. Unfortunately, the death toll is even higher. | null | null | 13,352 | 13,352 | null | null | null | null |
13,356 | comment | keven | 2007-04-16T18:53:54 | null | Followup - Paul Kedrosky: Microsoft calls for mommy
<a href="http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2007/04/16/google_rivals_c.html">http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2007/04/16/google_rivals_c.html</a> | null | null | 13,107 | 13,107 | null | null | null | null |
13,357 | comment | dfranke | 2007-04-16T18:56:25 | null | Experiment: let's see if this gets a higher score here or on Reddit: <a href="http://reddit.com/info/1idib/details">http://reddit.com/info/1idib/details</a> | null | null | 13,343 | 13,343 | null | [
13391,
13376
] | null | null |
13,358 | story | jcwentz | 2007-04-16T18:58:49 | Google's Matt Cutts on hidden links | null | http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/hidden-links/ | 4 | null | 13,358 | 0 | null | null | null |
13,359 | comment | dhbradshaw | 2007-04-16T18:59:23 | null | I think this model implies a certain marketing strategy. While achieving a critical mass might be impossible (read unlikely and hard to control) if you try for the world as a whole, it may be possible for a smaller one. Once you have a small group that is largely converted you can add other groups in such a way that you don't put out the fire by separating members of the first group. <p>It may be that a large part of the success of Facebook comes from the way they were able to use student bodies as small, self-contained networks, and then build from there.<p>It reminds me of building a fire with charcoals. If you keep them together you can keep them burning. If you can get a nice group going you can add to it bit by bit and build as big as you want. If you disperse them they die.<p>Our world has a million little self-contained networks. If you try to win some over perhaps some will succeed to the point that the network works for you. Then maybe you can add others.
| null | null | 13,312 | 13,312 | null | null | null | null |
13,360 | comment | Alex3917 | 2007-04-16T19:03:10 | null | I'd downvote this just to be ironic, but in his infinite foresight pg removed the option. | null | null | 13,343 | 13,343 | null | [
13378
] | null | null |
13,361 | story | jamiequint | 2007-04-16T19:14:19 | Edward R Tufte - The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint | null | http://www.scribd.com/doc/5557/Edward-R-Tufte-The-Cognitive-Style-of-PowerPoint | 1 | null | 13,361 | 0 | null | null | null |
13,362 | story | npk | 2007-04-16T19:17:35 | Extrasolar Planet Prediction Market | null | http://oklo.org/?p=190 | 2 | null | 13,362 | 0 | null | null | null |
13,363 | comment | danw | 2007-04-16T19:19:46 | null | A lot of these Ask YC style questions get repeated because its hard to find old postings. Perhaps we should start adding these to a FAQ section on <a href="http://wiki.ycombinator.com/">http://wiki.ycombinator.com/</a> | null | null | 13,289 | 13,289 | null | null | null | null |
13,364 | story | danw | 2007-04-16T19:20:33 | Confessions from the mobile industry | null | http://www.mobileuserexperience.com/?p=394 | 2 | null | 13,364 | 0 | null | null | null |
13,365 | comment | jaed | 2007-04-16T19:31:12 | null | Yeah we filed our own LLC formation for $90 in Delaware + ~$250 for our Registered Agent. | null | null | 13,308 | 13,140 | null | null | null | null |
13,366 | story | danw | 2007-04-16T19:35:27 | Microformats and portable social network | null | http://www.glennjones.net/Post/820/Microformatsandportablesocialnetwork.htm | 2 | null | 13,366 | 0 | null | null | null |
13,367 | comment | Benja | 2007-04-16T19:36:22 | null | Your point is that news.yc and other social news sites are actually <i>more useful</i> when more people use them, right? I agree with that. But IMHO, that's missing the point of the article.<p>Music doesn't <i>objectively</i> get better just because more people listen to it; and yet, the authors' research appears to show that people's opinions of music is hugely influenced by what other people like. Recall their main result: They had one group of users who they didn't show any information about how often a song was downloaded, and then eight independent groups who were shown the download count of each song inside that group. "The song 'Lockdown,' by 52metro, for example, ranked 26th out of 48 in [the group not shown download counts]; yet it was the No. 1 song in one social-influence world, and 40th in another. Overall, a song in the Top 5 in [the group not shown counts] had only a 50 percent chance of finishing in the Top 5 of success." Their conclusion is that the reason why predicting the success of media products is shaky is that what's a success is hugely influenced by an unpredictable feedback process.<p>Thus, my question: Can we assume that Google's success is due in a large part not to anything that Google did, but to the (random) feedback process of people liking Google because they see other people liking Google?<p>Of course, one could argue that this is simply the truism that one needs luck as well as talent to succeed. But I come away from reading the article with the feeling that I've learned something that goes deeper than that, and I'm trying to figure out how to apply it to the tech world. | null | null | 13,350 | 13,312 | null | [
13368,
13374
] | null | null |
13,368 | comment | blader | 2007-04-16T19:44:41 | null | I think what Daniel is saying is that on social news sites, popular posts tend be popular because they're popular.<p>I don't think we can attribute Google's success to cumulative effects:<p>I suspect that you can see cumulative advantage effects only when objective quality is difficult or impossible to measure. Taste in music is extremely subjective - it's very difficult to measure the quality of music independent of its popularity. <p>On the other hand, the objective quality of search results can be measured by independent testing and feedback - it's not perfect - but you can get a much better measurement of quality for search than you can for music. | null | null | 13,367 | 13,312 | null | null | null | null |
13,369 | comment | Tichy | 2007-04-16T19:46:12 | null | What does he mean by burning ships, though? Quitting your day job? Or quitting your day job and doing something so outrageous to make sure you will never ever get employed again (can't even imagine what that would be)? The latter would be kind of stupid, but quitting your day job doesn't seem so bad. Don't they say that younger people can afford to take more risks in their investments, because if they fail, they have enough time to make up for it? That seems sensible to me - I think it is far more dangerous to not take any risks and then regret it later when it is (seemingly) too late, like when you have a family support. <p>So no, I don't think I agree with that article at all.
| null | null | 13,260 | 13,260 | null | null | null | null |
13,370 | comment | brlewis | 2007-04-16T19:50:29 | null | This is a really well-written essay, which actually surprises me a little given how timely it is to the YC application process. When did you start writing it? | null | null | 13,343 | 13,343 | null | [
13473,
13437
] | null | null |
13,371 | comment | jey | 2007-04-16T19:57:01 | null | I agree, up to the last part that "at the same time reducing the amount of actual work they are able to do on a day to day basis". It is well known that time is not directly proportional to productivity. It's more like time x skill = productivity. So the most productive people probably work fewer hours, but are more productive than the average person working 8 hours a day. See Mythical Man Month by Brooks and Great Hackers by pg ( <a href="http://paulgraham.com/gh.html">http://paulgraham.com/gh.html</a> ). | null | null | 13,304 | 13,218 | null | null | null | null |
13,372 | comment | jey | 2007-04-16T19:58:40 | null | Feature request: a way to escape an asterisk. Sometimes you do want to write a literal asterisk. (E.g. to say "a times b") | null | null | 363 | 363 | null | [
13627
] | null | null |
13,373 | comment | Harj | 2007-04-16T19:58:56 | null | No. Only the second part of my statement "best startups will be formed" can be labeled as an assertion of my opinion.<p>The first part is fact. SV has produced more great startups than any other area in the world. Arguing with that fact is futile.<p>It's not just VC that SV has as an advantage. Its a high density of angel investors and young people wiling to take a risk and launch startups.<p>As for the assumption of taking venture capital not holding any longer, venture capital in the narrow sense i.e. VC firms - possibly but in the general sense of needing to raise investment at some point, name me a successful startup that hasn't. | null | null | 6,702 | 6,302 | null | null | null | null |
13,374 | comment | nostrademons | 2007-04-16T20:00:04 | null | Search is a business with notoriously <i>small</i> lock-in and network effects. Eric Schmidt comments on this all the time, it's a significant risk factor for Google.<p>Brand loyalty is a cumulative advantage, but it's pretty fickle. Customers will stick with a trusted brand as long as they continue to trust it, but all it takes is one or two screwups or a competitor coming out with a noticeably better product, and your brand evaporates.<p>I first used Google in 1999, and it was <i>much</i> better than the existing search engines. Not a little better, not even just noticeably better, but orders of magnitude better. I could immediately find results that I'd previously have to dig through 10 pages of links for.<p>They may not have that advantage now, but I don't care. Google is good enough. Until someone comes out with a search engine that's <i>noticeably</i> better, I'm not going to switch. I've already got my Firefox toolbar setup, and my habits - I see no reason to reevaluate them until there's clear evidence that I can do better.<p>Google almost pulled off the same thing with GMail, but Yahoo and Microsoft stopped them. When GMail came out, it was orders of magnitude better than the existing webmail solutions. It gave you 1GB of space instead of 4MB, it had Google search integrated, and it had a clean AJAX UI. Like many early adopters, I switched as soon as I could get my hands on an invite (you only got 1 or 2 back then), and have since made GMail my default e-mail client. But it didn't completely penetrate the mass market, because Y!Mail and Hotmail immediately upped their storage space to 400+ MB, and Yahoo came out with a new UI. IMHO, GMail is still better, but it's no longer an <i>order of magnitude</i> better, so people who are just getting GMail invites now often choose to stick with their existing e-mail. | null | null | 13,367 | 13,312 | null | null | null | null |
13,375 | comment | papersmith | 2007-04-16T20:00:21 | null | Actually Lisp is so powerful that PG wrote an entire universe on the back of his napkin, out of which another PG has evolved who funded the reddit founders who first wrote reddit in Lisp, and later re-wrote it in what looked like python, but ultimately macroexpands into Lisp code through the quantum properties of the circuitry. | null | null | 13,292 | 13,280 | null | null | null | null |
13,376 | comment | mattculbreth | 2007-04-16T20:01:22 | null | Oops, voted up on each. Do -1 (at least) on your count. | null | null | 13,357 | 13,343 | null | null | null | null |
13,377 | comment | jason13 | 2007-04-16T20:02:35 | null | I disagree with the writers assumption that the committees judgements are only inaccurate for the borderline cases. I think there are plenty of examples of committees judgements being wrong about candidates, that should have been viewed as outstanding. | null | null | 13,343 | 13,343 | null | [
13456,
13470
] | null | null |
13,378 | comment | nostrademons | 2007-04-16T20:04:36 | null | That must be one of the things he can do to influence the outcome. ;-) | null | null | 13,360 | 13,343 | null | null | null | null |
13,379 | story | dawie | 2007-04-16T20:13:59 | Scaling to multiple databases with Rails | null | http://www.loudthinking.com/arc/000610.html | 8 | null | 13,379 | 3 | [
13422
] | null | null |
13,380 | comment | mattculbreth | 2007-04-16T20:18:25 | null | Yeah maybe, but compared to the gigantic number of C# and Java developers it's not even close. The average programmer is a much different beast than those working at our kind of startups.<p>That said, real startup programmers hack in Python.
| null | null | 13,323 | 13,289 | null | [
13381
] | null | null |
13,381 | comment | danw | 2007-04-16T20:25:28 | null | Theres always django for pythoners. Great framework if you can get it installed. | null | null | 13,380 | 13,289 | null | [
13460
] | null | null |
13,382 | story | kevinxray | 2007-04-16T20:35:36 | We Do it Our Way Marketing (or Why Jack FM is Still in Business) | null | http://www.allbusiness.com/marketing-advertising/strategic-marketing/4057451-1.html | 1 | null | 13,382 | 0 | null | null | null |
13,383 | story | ACSparks | 2007-04-16T20:54:45 | What is your stimulant of choice to keep you working through the night? | null | 7 | null | 13,383 | 28 | [
13426,
13398,
13389,
13387,
13919,
13447,
13430,
13408,
13441,
13412,
13718,
13404,
13393,
13402
] | null | null |
|
13,384 | story | herdrick | 2007-04-16T20:54:58 | YC startup launches: Project Wedding | null | http://www.projectwedding.com/ | 16 | null | 13,384 | 13 | [
13388,
13403,
13905,
13496
] | null | null |
13,385 | story | nickb | 2007-04-16T20:55:52 | MIT: New Robot Eyes Humans with Human-Like Eyes | null | http://www.livescience.com/technology/070416_mit_robot.html | 1 | null | 13,385 | 0 | null | null | null |
13,386 | comment | supahfly_remix | 2007-04-16T20:55:57 | null | I like this part:<p>"Co-Founder: Within a few weeks of being out in SV we were introduced to the guys behind, YouOS. As fate would have it, one of the founders (Srini) was actually living in the building next to us and we started having informal hacking lessons where heÂd teach us how to hack... Once the three months were up he rejoined the YouOs guys to work on their new product, Project Wedding."<p>The synergies and group dynamics provided by Ycombinator is amazing. Best of luck to you.<p><p><p>
| null | null | 13,125 | 13,125 | null | [
14078
] | null | null |
13,387 | comment | ACSparks | 2007-04-16T20:56:17 | null | I enjoy a nice mix a Vault energy soda while listening to the Chemical Brothers - Come With Us album. | null | null | 13,383 | 13,383 | null | [
13439
] | null | null |
13,388 | comment | herdrick | 2007-04-16T20:57:01 | null | The company name looked familiar, and sure enough: it's the YouOS company. https://www.youos.com/<p>So have they decided the web desktop thing isn't in demand? | null | null | 13,384 | 13,384 | null | [
13390
] | null | null |
13,389 | comment | nickb | 2007-04-16T20:58:21 | null | Definitely coffee. I don't drink much of it so I'm not that resistant to caffeine. If you're a regular coffee drinker than those caffeinated candies or energy drinks might be a better choice. | null | null | 13,383 | 13,383 | null | null | null | null |
13,390 | comment | pg | 2007-04-16T21:02:25 | null | I think they wanted to build a specific webapp as a way of learning what webapp developers need. I believe there's YouOS code under this. | null | null | 13,388 | 13,384 | null | [
13817
] | null | null |
13,391 | comment | Sam_Odio | 2007-04-16T21:03:42 | null | Of course it will get a higher score on reddit, just because huge volume of traffic going to reddit.<p>But the scores themselves mean nothing, on absolute terms. What really matters is the article's relative rankings - which (roughly) determine the article's placement on the main page.<p>And that's what makes News.YC so appealing. Even though the community's smaller, we don't have to wade through pages of higher-ranked flickr photos to find the quality content. | null | null | 13,357 | 13,343 | null | null | null | null |
13,392 | comment | herdrick | 2007-04-16T21:03:46 | null | Joel is wrong here. At the least, his goal, "software that works" is way off. "Software that people want" is way more important than how well it works. <p>This is a good example of how Joel is still mostly a big-company kind of guy. | null | null | 13,281 | 13,281 | null | [
13581
] | null | null |
13,393 | comment | pg | 2007-04-16T21:04:39 | null | Tazo Chai | null | null | 13,383 | 13,383 | null | [
13497,
13407
] | null | null |
13,394 | story | python_kiss | 2007-04-16T21:11:29 | Y Combinator continued | null | http://venturebeat.com/2007/04/16/y-combinator-continued/ | 10 | null | 13,394 | 8 | [
13419,
13436,
13435,
13399
] | null | null |
13,395 | story | msgbeepa | 2007-04-16T21:11:37 | I Want To Claim!!! | null | http://web2.reddit.com/goto?id=1if3l | 1 | null | 13,395 | -1 | null | null | true |
13,396 | comment | vlad | 2007-04-16T21:11:43 | null | Great essay.<p>I disagree that you can or should only protest those judgements about you specifically, but I do agree with the entire second half of your essay.<p>I agree with the idea behind the essay, that "If it doesn't matter to someone else whether they choose you, then the other party has the leverage. You want to put yourself in positions where you have the leverage." For example, if you apply to a college, and thousands of applicants are just like you, then you don't have leverage.<p>Your examples just ignore the fact that people get rejected from about 4 colleges a year, while they have a chance to correct their tests and homeworks about 1,000 times a semester.<p>This means that the numbers simply don't match up. If you appealed 1,000 college decisions, you would have a great chance to get into a lot of them. If you appealed 1,000 questions on a homework to one busy and egotistical professor, they would likely start avoiding you after the 10th question.<p>Therefore, people SHOULD appeal everything they want to, whether the judgement is specifically about them or not.<p>I saw that this was written originally as a post to a question about YC decisions. As far as advice about YC, I think the best explanation of why some people were rejected is that there is a hidden bias (though very well earned) to hang around with people you think you'll find interesting or ideas you think you'd love or have a lot to contribute to over the summer. | null | null | 13,343 | 13,343 | null | [
13461,
13423
] | null | null |
13,397 | story | farmer | 2007-04-16T21:11:57 | Netvibes Launches Universe: Customized Public Pages | null | http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/04/16/netvibes-launches-universe-customized-public-pages/ | 1 | null | 13,397 | 0 | null | null | null |
13,398 | comment | jsjenkins168 | 2007-04-16T21:13:14 | null | No stimulants, just polyphasic sleep. I get the jitters if I try caffeine... | null | null | 13,383 | 13,383 | null | [
13425,
13454
] | null | null |
13,399 | comment | farmer | 2007-04-16T21:14:59 | null | null | null | 13,394 | 13,394 | null | null | null | true |
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