skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I've spent some time on card counting and it's anything but fascinating. The theory behind it is easy to grasp, and the implementation is pure drudgery. You learn a card counting system, then you crank away at it. All the big casinos know what to watch for, and if you are successful they will ask you to leave.

Poker, on the other hand, is much more difficult, and just as dependent on mathematics. Your strategies depend on who you're playing, and how they're playing against you in any particular hand. Much more fun. And with poker, you're playing against other individuals, so you don't have to worry about the house shutting you down if you're playing too well.
An Interview with Virgin’s head of In-Flight Entertainment
1. If your email servers are compromised, than it makes them a single point of failure as most web accounts are accessible through forgotten password procedures.

2. Most people (66%) of users use the same password on all websites. Which is a far worse multiple trusted party single point of failure. Which is what I meant by "better than whats currently out there".

3. For services that really require a significantly increased level of security, like banks, it is very easy and likely that further security measures that don't rely on the OpenID provider will be built in on the websites.

4. It is important to figure out the security issue and make a rewarding web experience than hold up ones hands and decrease data portability and increase friction on the web. We are hoping to help that process along and are very open to suggestions on how we can improve that.
I've been out to a club with the author and his wife. I dated his wife's best friend before I met my now-wife. Ben talked about how the story came his way. Basically, it started with someone saying "You know what would make a great book..." which I thought was funny because it reminded me of "I have a great idea for a website..."
For those of you who are interested in learning what REALLY went on with the subprime mortgage crisis, the NY Fed has provided the best description yet. It's long (82 pages), but not too technical. You don't need to be familiar with securitization or the mortgage-backed securities markets to understand it.

Abstract: "In this paper, we provide an overview of the subprime mortgage securitization process
and the seven key informational frictions that arise. We discuss the ways that market
participants work to minimize these frictions and speculate on how this process broke
down. We continue with a complete picture of the subprime borrower and the subprime
loan, discussing both predatory borrowing and predatory lending. We present the key
structural features of a typical subprime securitization, document how rating agencies
assign credit ratings to mortgage-backed securities, and outline how these agencies
monitor the performance of mortgage pools over time. Throughout the paper, we draw
upon the example of a mortgage pool securitized by New Century Financial during 2006."
It would be interesting to see if these guys actually get work from this. It's a nice thing to do, but if you're hiring people you still are going to need a lot more information than this.
>can recognize a cat from a dog (as that kitten can do)

The kitten did not recognize the dog as a dog. Just as a threat. Anything alive, moving, new and bigger is automatically labeled a threat until some clues (chemical = familiar smell, elapse of time without attack) teach the kitten otherwise. So there you have it.
True, but what I'm getting at is if we were the "same" we wouldn't care.
Thanks for tolerating my twisted sense of humor.
Also now using Clickpass :). Easiest to get to from your Clickpass homepage.
Then it would seem like you have more than a passing interest! Which is fine too. I haven't played too much poker, I kind of missed the fad a few years ago while I was overseas... but it seems really interesting, and it gives me something else to go research ;)
See also http://www-tech.mit.edu/V128/N12/blackjack.html for an interview with Ben Mezrich, author of "Bringing Down the House" and Jeffrey Ma, the person that Jim Sturgess' character is based on.
Tahoe: A Secure Distributed Filesystem
Somehow there seems to be an inverse correlation between the size of the contract and the ability of the contractor in these large projects.

Very interesting.
I worked with that Matt Phillips guy. Glad to see he spent his Yahoo money on becoming immortal.
Found this via a twisted article & remembered that http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=secorp is working on this as well ~ http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=108139
I don't think it is possible to suggest that you could live forever in a world that will be completely different without appearing a bit religious/cult-ish. That really is pretty much exactly the same message as many religions. But I don't this this alters the merits (positively or negatively) of his argument.
Adobe launches Splashup (YC summer 07) competitor
I'd be interested to see how the BUG compares to other small embedded platforms such as the Gumstix (http://gumstix.com/) and Virtual Cogs (http://www.virtualcogs.com/)

Just from a quick glance the BUG seems to be faster over all and includes polished packaging. However, I don't like how the BUG dev kit looks to be very Java Eclipse centric. The Gumstix provides a complete buildroot build environment which is probably more conducive to serious low level hacking, if the bug provides this they don't make it obvious on their website.

The BUG is also twice as expensive at the Gumstix though it does have better specs.
Thats a good point and I actually did look into that a bit ago. Not one of our affiliates at least, but maybe one of the competitor's.
Coding, telecommute, 9AM start. Choose any two.
Saying that YC companies are less ambitious is like saying that an 18 yr old lacks ambition because he wants to go to college instead of trying to get a job as the CEO of IBM.

You go to YC to learn and to meet people. Generally our ideas aren't world shaking, but there is a reason for that. We're generally young and still trying to learn and gain experience. You wouldn't expect a YC startup to be a magic AI that can solve the world's problems. If you can do that...why would you need to go to YC? There is a different between a lack of ambition and a desire to learn.
What's the deal with the schedule? I'm not understanding. I thought YC kind of let you do whatever you want during the week (with goals and progress checks, etc) and the biggest demands they placed on you were the weekly dinners and demo day.
A student group I am a member of screened this on Tuesday for the campus. Good stuff, I liked it more than I imagined I would. I've been told it deviates somewhat from the book, which I need to pick up.
Obie Fernandez: SAP Sued for Typical Ghetto Behavior
You're right, but this doesn't necessarily prove it. It would depend where weighting happened.
Dangerous to use Alexa since there is a credible inverse correlation between likelihood of contributing to Alexa statistics and choice of news site.
Wow that would be awesome. BTW, I like your startup (bug.gd)... Thanks for that.
Waste Management sues SAP over ERP implementation (original article)
I could see this as a handy web service.
Mozilla Labs: Weave
Why the startup market is like the real estate market
Well, it's nice to see the snowjob that is enterprise software finally being help to account, but I doubt this suit is going to very far.
Busting a Rogue Blogger
The (vision for the) future of schooling
Secondary education resembles apprenticeships: the student applies to work at a company of choice, and continues learning the needed subjects part-time. (Such apprentices start little higher than minimum wage, and get raises with the gain in experience and upon completion of certain courses). When the student completes the required courses, s/he receives a certificate or a diploma that is equivalent to the present-day associate’s, bachelor’s, or master’s degree. The practical application happens immediately: the knowledge is needed to do the work at the company.
Philip Greenspun: Giving XM and Sirius a monopoly on data
Its not the first month thats critical, its the last month. Any plan with an extra month at the end has more chance of success. The problem with a startup is that the total amount of time available is rarely known in advance.
"If the news is that important, it will find me"
Yes, Brian presented at PyCon a couple weeks ago. Tahoe is the open-source project that we are working on together along with a few other guys. We also are involved in the commercial entity Allmydata.com which uses Tahoe as a back-end. We sell a managed storage service on top of a grid of servers that we maintain.

Oh, I should add that we are having a HackFest at our office tonight! I know it's short notice, but every month or so we order pizza and beer and have a couple loose presentations, usually about distributed systems. Anybody is free to come, consume, present, or just sit in a corner and program. Logistics are below:
http://allmydata.org/pipermail/tahoe-dev/2008-March/000462.h...
Google now finds 37,000 results for the phrase. So either they're 16 times as evil since January, you caught them on a bad index day, or they read your post and stopped filtering as you caught them out.

As an Adwords user I was sent a survey by Google a few weeks ago and one of the questions asked me to rate how evil I thought they were.
where did anyone mention submissions except for a measurement to see if you have the downvote arrow?
congrats! great idea...
This talk puts the eccentric absent-minded professor stereotype to rest once and for all.
i agree about what aging is, but people aren't trying to advocate diseases like that, they are usually just skeptical or ignorant about technology and what is possible, and bad at changing their minds to keep up with progress.
How do posts get NEGATIVE points when we only have "up" buttons for voting?
What would be really cool is if you could make it send an email when something happens. Few examples:

- Let me know when the weather forecast for Boston is above 18* C (so I could plan a picnic for tomorrow, for example)

- Notify me when the next episode of my show is on/next time my team is playing

- Notify me next time Paul Oakenfold is playing in Boston (which may be far away, but I sure don't want to miss it)

- Let me know when the USD/GBP exchange rate drops under 2 GBP for 1 USD (again, far, far way:) )

I know each one of those would require extra programming, but that would be a VERY cool service. You could set up some kind of platform, so people can write their own conditions/event checks.

Plus, amassing all that interest data could be quite valuable if, for example, I'm Paul Oakenfold's agent.
From a Student's Guide to Startups back in 2006:

"Speaking of cool places to work, there is of course Google. But I notice something slightly frightening about Google: zero startups come out of there. In that respect it's a black hole. People seem to like working at Google too much to leave. So if you hope to start a startup one day, the evidence so far suggests you shouldn't work there."
Rickmob = Flash mob + Rickroll
Ah, the old "different forms of equality" problem. You're thinking === (same object in memory) while I'm thinking == (identical copies).
Irish teens make millions in computer start-up deal
More:

- Notify me when this movie comes out in theatres/on DVD.

- Notify me when somebody mentions me on Hacker News :)

- etc., etc., etc.
Not exactly my point, more like encouraging kids to become a pilot instead of an astronaut. You can do everything right and still not become an astronaut, but if you're smart and work hard you can probably become a pilot.
Ask YC: Partial/No Funding Arrangements?
Maybe YC already does this, but has YC ever considered accepting some applicants w/o giving them funding (or some type of partial funding)?

These accepted applicants would still be invited to all the YC stuff, but they would just be at different funding levels. This type of arrangement could increase the number of YC startups per round and subsequently increase the odds of finding a “home run.”

This, of course, assumes that the YC can handle more founders per round.
No.

From the article: He says most Googlers' options vest under four- or five-year plans

Google floated in Aug 2004. Here's looking forward to Aug 2008. That may be why Quaero recently got US$306 million investment ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=136759 ) and why SearchMe recently got US$31 million from Sequoia ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=134291 ). The latter is quite telling.
Here 'tis the compete data:

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/ycombinator.com+digg.com+re...

We're still niche.
You missed one of the biggest: the YC alumni network.
I cannot convey how painful an experience I had implementing SAP at my last company. Big companies that aren't technology focused still need a way to keep all their information (orders, customers, inventory, invoices, sales, manufacturing, financials, accounting) organized. With SAP, the cure is worse than the disease.
Because you have to have 25 karma to downvote.
I had a manager write a recommendation for me once. It was an embarrassing mischaracterization, and I never used it, since I couldn't live up to it.

On the other hand, at least I didn't get called a "geek" or "code monkey".
Seems like it would dilute the pool of companies and create enmity between founders. As far as I know, funding levels already vary between accepted startups, but the whole point of investing is the hope of return -- if YC invested nothing, what would they even get out of a "home run"?
The Cliff-notes version is that in black jack you have a slight statistical advantage since you know what cards have already been played. If there are lots of face cards left in the deck, then the dealer has a higher chance of busting. It's too small for a single player to make much money consistently (just a couple % advantage), but the MIT guys would have several people ("spotters") playing small hands, watching for a deck with lots of high cards left. They would signal to the "Big Players" who would come in like they owned the place, play $10K per hand and make a killing on the hot deck. Then when the cards ran out and were reshuffled, the Big Player would split and look for another hot deck at another table. This way they could multiply the gain when they found a hot deck.

"Bringing Down the House" (the book the movie was based on) was one of the best of the 100 or so books I've read in the last year.

PS How cool is it that Kevin Spacey reads Wired?
There's no schedule in the sense of having to do specific things at specific times. The only scheduled thing is Demo Day, and even that's optional.

I think what he meant is that everyone tends to buckle down and work really hard. But it's the situation that makes them do that. You have a demo to around 130 (= practically all) top startup investors coming up in 10 weeks; you're surrounded by other people working hard; so you end up working hard yourself.
Microsoft vs. Apple: Who patches zero-days faster?
Money is not the limiting factor.
Saul Griffith's ETech talk on engineering solutions to climate change
It would be very hard to argue that the singularity won't arrive eventually

Really? What if consciousness is not an algorithm?
Object oriented models mirror the real world

But that's only useful to the extent that programming is modeling something in the real world. Much computation doesn't.
This is wild, but terrific too.
Nice! Dave Winer used to run one of these at http://www.mailtothefuture.com/ but shut it down because the idea only "sort of worked". Here's hoping it sticks better this time.
A dumb branding strategy
I think the biggest useful thing Y Combinator provides is the marketing/publicity at the start. As someone else mentioned, many online blogs will write about you, as you are a y combinator startup. Also I see a tendency of other yc startups promoting other startups (like justin.tv clickpass, disqus clickpass, etc...)
What's the use, when you can get terabyte USB drives these days? It's impressive engineering don't get me wrong, but..
Speech rec with Naturally speaking, as of a year ago when my buddy broke his arm and tryed it, was getting there, but still not usable for him.

Speech is not as nice as typing for entering data. Typing seems [citation needed] faster and like less work. Also, in an office, the voices absorb mental bandwidth from everyone in earshot. So I think in this case Kurzweil may or may not be wrong about the quality of the technology in a year, but he's definitely wrong about speech being a preferred method for interfacing with a computer.
I would definitely use it as a single person to organize my life, and reduce alot of stress (and get a hell of a lot more done). The GTD functionality will be the best available in any application soon (The only missing item are contexts, which we will add shortly). We also have a growing list of templated workflows - we'll put a library up on the website soon that save a great deal of time.

We've built a great deal of logic into the UI - we try to make it do as much work for you as possible. Nothing like the power of lisp! :) We have a spot for you if you want it - I would really like to hear your feedback.
I was lucky enough to travel with a friend who grew up there. So I was shown around to all the best places, ate at a place that had a 5 star chef (it was his house, he works at a hotel) that cost a few dollars, and so on.

I agree traveling can work well by really experiencing the place. Living somewhere cheaply and getting paid in North American wages is truly ideal. Great story.
I can think of several reasons:
1) How often do you remember to plug your USB drive into your laptop to do your backups
2) What if your machine and your USB drive are caught in a fire, burglary etc

I could go on, but whats the point :)
I don't understand why managers don't do stuff like this more often. Good people are always in demand, and if you must get rid of people, then do it in a way that they'd want to work for you again in a heartbeat.

And not to mention, someone should hire the guy who just posted that listing to Craigslist. Really. That's the kind of guy that you want to wrangle your engineers. (Code Monkey and Geek comments aside).
Motorola : Open letter from insider related to mismanagement on a grand scale
Is Twitter's time at hand? Facebook has to hope it's just a fad
What's implied in the question is that the YC would still get some percentage of the company. I'm assuming that people aren't applying to the YC just get money to live for a few months. If this assumption is the case, then, theoretically, people would come, give up some part of their company, take no money, and be perfectly happy.
"Currently United States Only."
Dont understand why this is US only even if temporarily. How does it matter what country I am in ?
Is There Room for a Security Browser?
Thanks :) We have customers already willing to pay, and excited to start using the system, so we are definitely hoping for the best.
It took us a lot longer to deploy than we had first imagined. The first big hurdle was understanding conceptually how the system should work, then understanding how to code it, then realizing that the UI was one of the biggest issues to solve and switching to that, etc etc. I don't think it would have been possible without having a complex company using it all along with multiple users to get inductive feedback. But, wow, we're glad to be finally launching.
It is amazing and inspiring to see such energy and enthusiasm in another human being. I gave him a standing ovation when the video finished, not because he would care but because I had to show my appreciation.
Thanks!
This saves me some work!
I've had the same problem with Hulu and some other websites. What the fuck is the problem? Just let others use the website while you sort the legal stuff out...
Why can't I send them to the past? It seems like a really obvious and useful feature. And isn't it supposed to be spelled timemachinr?
I'll write my review of this on Dec 31 2030.
Tahoe is aimed at the issues that arise after you buy your 1TB drive which provides local storage quite well. We try to provide data reliability and availability that can survive colocation outages, computer and hard disk crashes, complete local data loss due to natural disasters, etc. Because the encrypted data is distributed over a wide number of servers, it is very difficult to lose data once it is stored in a grid. Also, it allows you to remotely access your data from the web or other authenticated clients.

For our production servers, we can lose up to 66% of all of our servers simultaneously before any data loss will occur. This parameter is tunable such that you can make it even more robust at the expense of more data being stored and pushed around the network.
I surely would love if YC did this. I have a design for a database/social net/marketing product for a niche of 100,000 executives just like myself. I will be late for this round of application submissions. I do not need the money, but would love to have the mentoring and interaction with other founders as I am not a software developer. I know exactly 2 programmers that worked in good startups and while they gave good advice they have their own life. One of them wants nothing better than to walk around in South East Asia and the other has his own product he spends 110% of his time on. While friend suggestions are helpful I would be delighted to get get some pointers. One of which I need most is how to find a developer co-founder
He needs one of those nourishment pouches that adorn marathon runners. His will have Ritalin.

Also, listen to him and pay no heed to his ideas about the future; he wrote a book about why the internet was going to be a dismal failure.
He has these eery calm moments when he's focused enough to stop the twitching. Like when he was saying that to know the future of society, we should ask kindergarten teachers.

All my professors are just super smart and busy all the time. No time for absentmindedness for them.
I went to a screening last week. Also enjoyed or more then I expected. It's no oscar winning movie, but definitely worth 2 hours of my time.
High leverage development
Does this mean YC would make a no-cash investment if the right circumstances arose?

If so, is it safe to assume that YC's target equity position would not differ significantly given to the relatively low value of the cash component vs. mentoring/networking?
Clifford Stoll on Internet: http://www.newsweek.com/id/106554
That would be the guy who produced this:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=143333
It's fun to see him live having enjoyed his books.
Damn. Same thought, less karma!
Export version of Lotus Notes provides trapdoor for NSA.
Multitasking for Common Lisp
Fark.com's Curtis says "I'm From Kentucky, What Do I Know?"
misleading title. It took a few more than 2 minutes to hack the box. FTA:

"Nobody was able to hack into the systems on the first day of the contest when contestants were only allowed to attack the computers over the network"
I found it weird to put comments ON the video...but after the first one, it's addictive.
So, in a nutshell, you trust ClickPass security less than you trust your email provider's security. And, the margin is great enough to overcome whatever ease-of-use gains you might get from ClickPass over email.

Did I get that right?
My achievement!
No big deal...But still, winning something from a Turing Awardee makes you feel high :)
In my case I have money from a previous successful startup, will be moving to the US, and put a premium on local knowledge and the right introductions - for me and others in the same position there is little value in taking small amounts of cash, but the value of everything else YC offers could be quite significant. Surrendering a percentage of your company for a higher value return is quite reasonable.
So, what was your answer?
Breakdown of referring traffic my startup received from the blogosphere
"send a message back if you can"