skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
These are very interesting statistics -- is there any chance that you could provide some more? In particular, I'd be interested in knowing the age distribution of all applicants vs. successful applicants and the distribution of education (high school/some college/undergraduate degree/some graduate/graduate degree) of all applicants vs. successful applicants.

I seem to recall that you've said before that the "average" accepted YC applicant is 25 years old and has an undergraduate degree; but more information is always useful.
That's a neat idea. If it is true that humans are better at solving certain problems than computers, maybe games could represent problems that the computer can't solve easily. Just think if the WoW fanbase were really number crunching!
In general, at this stage, the amount of flak that Arc has received is so disproportionate to the normal amount of flak that new ideas receive because it hasn't solved any problems that real hackers have encountered, well enough that they'd want to switch to writing programs in it. You haven't really solved the overlooked problem of core language design until people start using your cleaner core language, and to do that you'll have to give people compelling reasons to start using it. If you don't agree, the BeOS people have solved the overlooked problem of operating system design and are on their way to meet you, together with the people who invented Esperanto.
Yes, it's completely and totally off topic, and very regional in nature, but it's going to be a pretty cool event, and I think there are a lot of hackers who like cycling, and a lot of people from this site in that area, so what the heck. Feel free to remove the posting, completely ignore it, or otherwise castigate me.
Interesting idea, to save your best oration until after the first rejection. Does anyone here do this?

When I was involved in student government in college I successfully pulled off a stunt similar to this against an obdurate administration. A group of deans had started a process by which they were going to take some public, widely opposed actions that would be deleterious to campus life. They had started a series of negotiations with the heads of some major student organizations, plus me (as president of the student body), ostensibly to come to a mediated response with all of the stakeholders.

At the penultimate meeting, our student coalition came to the administration with a reasonable, but amended version of the plan that we were willing to accept. They thanked us profusely and told us and the student newspaper that they were reviewing the proposal and integrating it into their plan.

At the last meeting, they presented us with the "final plan" they were going to execute. It turned out that they had incorporated none of our changes; the series of meetings had been an elaborate kabuki designed for the illusion of "listening to the students."

I'd prepared the other students for what we'd do if this turned out to be the case. At the meeting, I told the deans that it was clear that they had no real interest in incorporating student opinions and that for them to unapologetically discard our changes meant that the whole thing was a farce. If they wanted to execute their plan while systematically disregarding student input, that's wholly their prerogative, but we have no interest in helping them with the appearance of gathering student input. If and when they were actually interested in student input, we'd love to help them but until then there was no sense wasting time with meetings. Every one of the student leaders got up and left the room as we'd done in contingency planning.

The deans caved 36 hours later.

Did anyone else not find the quality of discussion low? Poor logic and superficial, emotional responses. Reminds me why I stopped watching (almost all) television.

I think your analysis is superficial, actually.
The show is quite nuanced. This was a snippet, depicting one of the characters trying to sell a lipstick ad; I don't think anything in the scene is enough for someone to conclude that the show is plagued by poor logic.
Why does the lack of competition make it more likely you'll discover new things? (And what is things referring to?)

Because if few are looking where you're looking, there's more chance that things you discover will be new.

By things I mean pretty much anything that could be the object of "discover", from mathematical concepts to narrative techniques.
The raw performance between Sql Svr and Mysql are pretty much a wash. If you primarily base your decision on this, you are overlooking quite a few more important issues.
Hardware (Raid level, Ram, CPU), DB driver, programming language, and caching are all more important issues.

Non-speed issues:
1. Sql Svr 2000 had locking problems such that many transactions deadlock and automatically get rolled back. This was due to page locking. I think MS fixed this in 2005 with record-level locking.
2. Sql Svr has very nice stored procedure support. This can be extremely useful. If you think you may need this capability, then Sql Svr is the better choice.

If you do decide to go with Sql Svr, you will probably end up having to get a copy of VS 2008 and do some C# programming. It's almost impossible to maintain Sql Svr w/o it, unless you want to maintain the db by hand every day.

It doesn't sound like you have much db experience. Get a couple of experienced db admins in to talk with you before you make any big decisions, even if it's just a two hour consult.
SnOil - A Physical Display Based on Ferrofluid
Oh, right – overlooked problems.
Check it out!

http://web.archive.org/web/19970602013356/http://www.scrawls...

Wayback from 1997! I was lean before lean was in.

I'll rat myself out: I taught a class with the guy who ran the Lean Aircraft Initiative.
pure sand
Things I Learned At The Apple Store
A new crop of American dreamers are betting the farm on truffles. But can Yanks get them to grow?
I think this is just one of those annual down time days. It was only down 2 hours, not bad considering it has exceeded it's 99.9% uptime.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/amazon_s3_exceeds_9999_...
I see Paul beat me to the Instant Domain Search plug. Here are a couple of other sites I found useful.

http://www.nameboy.com (takes 1 or 2 words and generates a list of potential domains related to them.)

http://www.makewords.com (A little complicated, but if you figure it out you'll find some pretty decent domains available. It takes 1 word and generates domain names that include that word, along with a prefix of suffix that comes from a theme, like actions, education, business, etc.)
I think this leads into the next question, how should I go about finding a co-founder?

I'm in the same boat you are as far as co-founders go, though I'm at the younger end of the spectrum (19) and have 2 more years of college to do instead of a wife and kids to take care of.
How are you going to meet people if you don't have any information about yourself in your profile.
I dont know. Market for this kind of computer language vs eshop solution and funding is very small in comparison. Market means someone will pay for using Arc.
Pick a domain name that works and is available. Then put all you energy into your product. Squatting is for those who can't build.
well there we go! I need a co-founder you need a co-founder hehe. I'm not an old man eather im only 29.
BA in Education.
Married
Awesome baby boy ( wife is ok too :)
Born in Ohio but living in Egypt at the moment.

51ftyon3@gmail.com
if there is anyone who would like to hear my ideas. Maybe we can work together?
> so what? are you saying the reason poor people stay poor is their fear of starving?

I'm saying it probably doesn't help, and I can think of a couple situations where it would hurt.

1. You interview two relatively equally qualified candidates for a job. One is desperate for a job; he is broke and has a few days of food left. The other knows there are other opportunities out there for him, and has an emergency credit card in his pocket. As a result, the second is more relaxed and confident, and can talk to you as an equal. Maybe the first is a pressure player and would rise to the challenge, but assume he's not--you can tell he's desperate for the job. Who do you hire?

2. The same people now have similar minimum wage jobs. They make ends meet, but just barely. The situation sucks and they want to look for a better one, but taking time off for job hunting is likely to get them fired. In other words, it could land them back in situation 1. This is a greater risk for the first person than the second.

I don't know whether this is a major or minor factor. It's probably a complex issue. Still, I don't see that the guy in the article overcame poverty. He just won in a poverty simulator.
Your point about having a version 1 and iterating quickly based on real world input reminds me of my experience as a mechanical design engineer. The most costly mistakes made in that field resulted from too much design and not enough prototype phases. The typical design process back in the 80's was to meticulously draw every aspect of a component, send it to a machine shop for tooling, get manufactured parts and put them on the test stand. Only then would you discover that the gage was too light, the material was the wrong spec or the welds had to be moved.

I introduced the concept of prototype early and often. Actually re-introduced, as this is how most products were engineered in the olden days. Someone would suggest a new gage, weld placement, cross section, and I would don my overalls, head to the shop, cobble up something and demonstrate its feasibility before the draftsmen could decide what size paper to draw it on. When I worked at Chevrolet I took this to the max and prototyped entire vehicles years before the official prototype build phase.

When I transitioned to the world of networks and software I was shocked at how little prototyping there is. Website developers would deliver project plans that had two weeks of "QA" built in before the launch date. It was crazy, any major problem uncovered in that two weeks would delay the launch. It is still challenging to get a programmer to demonstrate a prototype early. So, I think you are on to something. Good luck with ARC!
Woman Sues Best Buy For $54 Million Over Lost Notebook
I think its important, but a few K interesting, not a few M. We got NewsCred for free (it happened to be available) and fit our business perfectly. You seem pretty obsessed about domain names... Channel that passion to building the actualy product/business, and you will be all set!
For the curious, this is Common Lisp from end to end.

Web serving by Hunchentoot.

TrueType font parsing/loading by ZPB-TTF.

Curve rasterization by Vecto (which uses CL-VECTORS).

GIF animation by Skippy.

Geometry and layout are application-specific, not part of any released library yet.
E.T. and his iPhone
Postgresql is free, it is less encumbered, possibly, than MySQL in the long run. Postgresql is more totally Open Source, whereas MySQL is owned by Sun Microsystems. And it is not free for all commercial cases. Postgresql is.

MySql gets its speed rep from the 'MyIsam' table type. But you don't want that for financial data. You want a stronger database. They have another several table types that are more robust and standardized, but not as fast.

Postgresql is plenty fast for large installations when well tuned. And it has good referential integrity, a long-enough history so you can trust it, and stored procedures. MySql is simpler to get started with.

I've never heard that SQL Server was faster, but I'd estimate they have very nice integration with .NET, as it's the same company. This nice integration will undoubtedly lock you in to using their database forever, though. And who knows how their price will change?

Whichever you choose, you will gain if you have at least one person around who has used the DB before and (for MySQL) table-type before. Even once in a while.

Paid consultants are available for any database you choose.
China Mobile running 400k unlocked iPhones
Tipjoy minimally needs javascript and cookies. It's like most other new sites in that regard.
Some ballpoint pen vendor agonized for who knows how long to come up with the name 'Pen Island' only end up with the domain 'penisland.com', so don't sweat the small stuff.
If you're going to create a new Lisp... you've gotta answer why it's superior to throwing a few macros on top of an existing Scheme or CL implementation.

If that were true, Scheme and CL wouldn't exist themselves. Everything you can do in those languages you could have done by writing a few macros on top of their predecessor, Maclisp.

What you seem to be saying is that the evolution of programming languages has now stopped. No one ever needs to make a new LFSP, because SPs can do whatever they need by writing macros on top of existing languages. Do you realize how unlikely this is, historically? Especially in a field like programming languages, which is at the moment in a period of ferment.

If you think CL is the last word in Lisp, you probably have a higher opinion of it than any of its designers. They were in the kitchen when it was being made, and they are all too aware of all the hacks and kludges that went into it.
That's a fantastic point! I completely forgot about that part. I put some stuff there now to fill in the white space, later on ill write something more clever :D
sell off all the companies that having nothing to do with the company.

Focus on search. Search is what made yahoo. Also they need to realize that the money is in search ads.
This is the sorting algorithm I like best:

data.sort()
Instant Domain Search Rocks! No more Register.com for me! :D
this a YC project?
DNA on Programming
Well, I like having constantly in my visual field the meter that shows me how much restricted time I have left for the day, but that requires only an inch and a half of toolbar linear real-estate, not a whole toolbar!
I disagree that money has anything to do with the service people use.
It's not just Turkey that does the date day/month/year. I believe only the US has the problem of being different.
A few days ago, I noted that encryption would be developed ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=114609 ).
I'm not entirely sure why such stats are all that useful. Trying to be closer to the average doesn't seem very sensible to me. (neither does trying to be as far away from the average as possible as a means onto itself)
Somehow I don't think it's that important anymore. The service seems to be far more important. But it probably depends on what kind of application you are building. Here's my take.

If it is a once-in-a-while application, then memorable is good. If it's daily, then it doesn't matter. This is because users will rely on the quickest path from recall. Anything that is written to long term memory will be quick, and anything you use on a daily basis will fall into this category.

I would say news.ycombinator.com isn't the most catchy name, but it doesn't matter because I access it regularly.

instantdomainsearch.com, however, is good because I use it once in a while. simpleweather.com also.
Why would I want to? I share my network and my neighbors share theirs. I get to help provide the kind of ubiquitus wifi I want everywhere and get connection redundancy while I'm at it. "steal?" that's just paranoid propaganda.
You know PG, you can't discuss Arc beyond a point - the whole discussion gets trivial - not the content but just the fact that there have been so many discussions on the subject that one tends to skip or hurry through it.

I think the best response will be your continued work at Arc as opposed to a well written essay.
1. Data for an stock/bond 2. Data for a certain day/time (across a bunch of stocks). The predominant concern here is : SPEED.

I'm a big fan of PostgreSQL but based on your description you might want to look into one of the existing kdb solutions from www.kx.com. Those guys have been solving stuff in that domain for the last two decades.
Toshiba to give up on HD DVD, end format war
They're not in SF this year! I'm disappointed.
Once it realizes you're inactive, does it add the 5 minutes back to the clock?
Now that the domain kiting free lunch is (FINALLY) over, I think it should be easier to find a good domain name that's not taken...
So we have a few entrepreneurial individuals hacking away in their spare time, but they need "co-founders" in order to increase their success odds?

Maybe an arrangement can be made. Why not form a company where each idea gets equal time and run with the one(s) that sticks. Think of a cross between an engineer board of directors and an incubator.
Introduction to the Grand Challenges for Engineering
Such statistics are useful because they give people insight as to how likely they are to be accepted, and thus whether it's worth applying. Just as the OP was wondering about his chances of being accepted as a sole founder, I can easily imagine someone thinking "gee, I'm 30 years old... there's probably no point applying... but I have a PhD and pg's statistics show that applicants with PhDs are far more likely to be accepted, so maybe I should apply after all".
Haha. The longest bio I've ever seen on a News.YC profile, and yet no contact info!
Are You Proud Of Your Code?
I've heard some people here describe finding a cofounder as analogous to finding a wife. It's not some ho-hum thing you just do; it takes time to build a relationship that can survive a startup.
Marketing clusters like those are nothing new..
If you have a good idea that you are committed to, why should the statistics matter? If someone says "gee, I'm 30, i shouldn't apply," that seems pretty weak of them.

Although, I think the statistics would be very interesting to read over.
If you have a good idea that you are committed to, why should the statistics matter?

Because most good ideas which people are committed to aren't "get accepted into YC". Why shouldn't someone say "I'm not likely to get accepted into YC, so I'll spend my time working on my good idea instead of filling out the YC application form"?
I chose SQL Server 2005 for Loopt, but that's because at the time I made the choice MySQL didn't meet all my requirements. I should have looked more into PostgreSQL, but didn't.

In your case, it sounds like MySQL should work just fine. For fast response times, just partition the data across a lot of cheap servers that can keep it all in RAM. This approach lends itself to a free database. That said, speed will be affected much more by what pre-processing you do before inserting the data (to optimize lookups), and how you design your schema than by your database vendor choice.

If you go with MySQL or PostgreSQL, be prepared to fix bugs in the ADO connectors from .Net to the database. I've used PostgreSQL with .Net and npgsql needs some work. Perhaps MySQL connectors are better.

I'd start with PostgreSQL or MySQL and only switch to SQL Server 2005 if you run into problems. The switching cost won't be that high if you don't use stored procedures and stick to using ADO.Net generic functionality.

Microsoft has been a great partner and their licensing model hasn't caused us any problems, so don't be afraid to go with them if they're the right choice. You'll take some heat for it though ;)
80% of the commentary on HD just dried up. Thank god. Maybe people will finally figure out how to cable their systems to actually get HD.
It solves the problem hackers face in every program they write, and which high level languages exist to solve: making programs smaller.

Try translating some Arc programs into Common Lisp or Scheme and you'll see what I mean.

And incidentally, I don't have to give hardened users of existing languages reason enough to switch. There are new people learning to program all the time, and to them, all languages are on a level playing field. If they look at Arc and CL and see that programs are 50% longer in CL, why would they choose CL?
As it is, you're not likely to get accepted, regardless of age and education statistics, due to the sheer volume of applications versus spots available.
I still wonder why RTM doesn't say anything at all.

People have been wondering about that since he was a small child.
You're more then welcome to stop by the Engine Yard offices if you wanted to. We will be having a hack night on tuesday ~8:30pm. We're located at 82 South Park St.
No, but it's by Beau Hartshorne, who founded Snipshot (http://snipshot.com), which was funded by YC.
you gotta watch this:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8246463980976635143...

about using games to get people to do useful computation
It sounds like your dataset will fit comfortably in memcached. Run that on top of whatever DBMS you trust and whose SQL dialect you prefer to work with. For me this means Postgre or Oracle, although MySQL 6 looks promising and I might have to drop my grudge against them once it's released. SQL Server 2005 is very buggy and sooner or later it will bite you in terrible ways.

Bear in mind when you take this advice that the DBMSs I dislike the most are also the ones I have the most experience with, so it's possible that Postgre and Oracle are just as bad, and I just haven't discovered it yet :-)

Don't store technical indicators in your database; compute them on-the-fly. Memoize them if necessary, but it's probably better not to since I don't think you'll be CPU-bound and the added latency will be negligible.

If you're dealing with live quotes, don't store them in your database. Just keep them in memcached and re-fetch them if your server goes down. Do all your DB writes at once, at the end of the day after the market closing bell. (Aside from user-specific data, which obviously needs to be committed immediately.)
We don't have much more statistics than that. Most of the things we try to measure are not easily represented that way. What we look for is people who seem energetic, smart, and practical, regardless of things like where they went to school or how old they are.
We try to make the questions on the YC application form sufficiently useful that it would be worthwhile spending the time to fill it out even if you never submitted it.
"spots available"

they don't have a standard spots available number.
The primary evidence that "internet addiction" is bad, or a waste of time, is that people like it more than the other things they could be doing.

Just like the primary evidence that video games are bad for children, is that children prefer them to what their parents want the children to be doing.
I realize that age and education do not cause you to select people; but there might still be interesting correlations.
How does this mesh with "don't try to create trends, find and ride them"? That's advice I've heard a lot.

The final note about Reddit seems to say the opposite: "The Reddits pushed so hard against the current that they reversed it". That is probably incorrect. They found a local maxima in the trend for social news before others spotted it.

This doesn't really repudiate anything you say in the essay. But people shouldn't get the idea that just because there is resistance, they are doing something good. There needs to be a reason why the critics fail to see the light for you to claim you're working on an overlooked problem.

The trick here is that while you're working on it, you don't know if it something that needs to be solved.
I seem to remember paul saying something like "we accept all the good enough ideas."
> If you go with MySQL or PostgreSQL, be prepared to fix bugs in the ADO connectors from .Net to the database.

Likewise for SQL Server and ODBC, but then the bugs are in SQL Server so you can't fix them. However, .NET has a perfectly good ODBC client library. Use that, not ADO, to talk to MySQL.
"Get back to Work!"

...

"Or click this link to buy quality merchandise at Amazon"

Something is wrong with that picture.