skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
As Pmarca wrote: attempting to improve your batting average of hits versus misses is a waste of time as you progress through a creative career. Instead you should just focus on more at-bats -- more output.

Link here: http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/08/age-and-the-ent.html

The ratio of success to failure in tech startups ranges from 1:3 to 1:10 depending on who you read. That means pace yourself, you might have to do this a couple of times before you get a home run.
i should think we'll spend more of our time building than trading
The 25 Most Valuable Blogs
It took me a moment, but I thought BigDog had traveled even deeper into the uncanny valley before realizing it was two guys in black tights.
Microfunding for MicroISVs: Y Combinator.
Funny how this showed up on reddit today:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/25036088@N06/2362618676/sizes/o...
Yeah, talk about an inflammatory title...

Now, if he had said that "The MacBook Air Is Wearing Those Awful Low Slung Jeans That I Hate", rather than claiming that it is actually naked, maybe he would have a point.

Jason, maaaate, let me explain something to you: with your needs, the MacBook Air is not a good choice. Apple makes a machine for you, it's called a MacBook Pro. Three types of spaghetti sauce and all that good stuff...
Thanks for the feedback! Speed is a significant issue that we are working on, especially when a bunch of people hit the site at once.

A FireFox plugin will also definitely happen in the not too distant future.
I couldn't find the proper link, but it was only 2 months old.
Ask YC:  Does anybody actually use UML?
My own experience is that class diagrams are good for organizing my thoughts about the structure of the code, but I almost never do a complete class diagram and I don't pay too much attention to the syntax. I just use whatever notation seems reasonable.

I find activity diagrams are far less useful: when I'm done I find that the act of building forces me to considerably redesign the methods.

And I find use cases nearly pointless.

So, I really have two questions: 1). Do you use UML in the design process (if so, how)? and 2). Do you use UML to document--that is, do you find others can understand the code more easily using UML?
Obscurity in the sense of "how many people know about this site" is not binary - every inbound link makes it a little less obscure.

Popular forums (at least in my experience) stop being worthwhile to me past a certain point, and sometimes do just die outright from the problems caused by their popularity.
Look at the relatively lengthy comments on this, and yet almost all of them are intelligent and a relatively nice portion of them add more to the discussion.

So we aren't dead yet. I don't see much discussion of the importance of avoiding massive comment threads, yet I think this is one of the main problems with site growth. Over time the volume of comments that are detracting or repetitive on a site grows to overwhelm the amount of time required to find the good comments, or even maintain a thread of back and forth replies.

A good rubric for looking for solutions might be finding how to penalize comments that would not be acceptable in a face to face discussion.

Sites often resort to banning bad users, but it is too easy to just generate a new account, so it would be encouraging to see some way to make it much harder for the same person to masquerade as a different real user. (I have no idea how, but geolocation tools seem to be getting ever better)...
It makes me uneasy too. Boy, did I cringe reading those bits.

One thing that will protect us against YC getting cultish is that the qualities you'd want in a cult follower and a startup founder are exactly opposite. To succeed, startup founders have to be very determined and independent-minded. And since we want the startups we fund to succeed, those are the people we try to find.

Basically, we're looking for more Sam Altmans, and Sam Altman is no one's follower.
My set theory knowledge just says that the union of two sets gives you all the elements in them, with no repeats, so I would also follow your thinking. Even when I work with mathematica, I often union two lists to remove duplicate entries, because mathematica makes sure to remove duplicate entries.

The no-duplicates would seem to be a very important thing about union, and when they are removed or not. Union is just the complement of intersect, which would be the empty set for (a a) int. (b). So the union would be all the elements: (a a b) and after removing all duplicates you'd get (a b), which is exactly the behavior what you and I expect. Must be something with the duplicates rule.
Any mobile entrepreneurs in the house?
Fellow mobile hackers,

I am looking for some partners for summer YC. If you are passionate about the mobile scene, hit me up.

Cheers!
each place has some kind of tax benefit - it makes me wonder why Deleware is not included OR why most of the startup is incorporated in Delaware if it is not the top 10 place to start business??
It's because it takes a lot more money to get through the FDA's approval process. Biomed companies need a lot more money, and VC's are hungry for places to drop a bundle of cash now that Software companies don't need them any more.
That's an interesting observation on the correlation between the Meyers-Briggs results and the population of the Objectivist forum. I'm an INTJ myself and have the understanding that it's a fairly rare personality type. (For my part, the Objectivist viewpoint does have some appeal, but also deep flaws which keep me from embracing it.)

Anyway, I think that it's inevitable that the YC society will take on a life of its own which is oriented with pg's viewpoints. His writings are very charismatic and draw like-minded individuals. Those founders who resonate strongly with the essays and concepts of pg are even more likely to apply for and be accepted to YC.

Fortunately some of the mentioned aspects of the YC culture are independent thinking, self-analysis and critical analysis of others' ideas. Hopefully these attributes will prevent a simple cult of personality from developing. If YC has positive benefits for both the founders and the greater society (via the creation of Things People Want) then inculcating a culture which can accelerate the development of successful startups is an excellent achievement.
Congrats guys, that's awesome news!
Maybe you should write an article titled, "Get it in Writing."
I'm working on a programming language for mobile phones, Hecl: http://www.hecl.org. I'm pretty sure I'm a hacker and not an entrepreneur, though, and in any case I'm not available this summer. I am starting to think about the winter session.
How Do You Listen to Your Users?
I think it's generally agreed that listening to your users is a good thing. For folks that have apps with users, how do you listen to YOUR users? Emails? Watch forums? Watch people using your app at trade shows? If you're using analytics, then how are you using it to derive a clear message from your users?

If you're using multiple techniques, how do you synthesize the information?
Yes. It's the same with every portable device: Customers complain if the thing weighs too much, they complain if the thing runs too slowly, and they complain if the battery life is too short. Unfortunately, since it is nigh-impossible to improve all three of these factors at once without fundamentally improving battery technology [1] -- a glacially slow process compared to Moore's Law -- to build a portable device is to sign up for a torrent of customer complaints.

I'm sure that various aspects of the Air's performance have been deliberately throttled to ensure that its cute little credit-card-thin battery doesn't crap out after half an hour. One thing to try is simply plugging it in. There's no mention here of whether that made a difference.

And Parallels? Geez. How many computers worth of computer does this guy expect to fit in a manila envelope?

[1] You would think that each generation of improved processor designs would improve performance. And it does. But every time processors speed up, our desktop-wielding developers dream up an incredibly fun, more-processor-intensive thing to do with all those new cycles, like render more polygons or playback multiple Flash videos or use IMAP or do real-time JOINs between your friends' friends' Facebooks, and these two factors roughly cancel out.
There are hybrids. Talent at one does not imply a mutually exclusive lack of talent for the other. Perhaps we were an exception in the past, but students who are savvy at both business and technical things are becoming increasingly more common today, thanks to Universities. Technology spurs change; people who adapt survive. People who spend a bunch of time whining about change don't tend to survive. Universities teach people ways of adapting to change, and different ways of thinking.

It does take a bit of forward thinking, and that's where I think business students have a slight advantage. Writing code is great, wonderful, and something I love to do. Many business students would say that in the grand scheme of things, it's a useless talent unless it solves some kind of problem. Many techies would say that in the grand scheme of things, it's an incredibly useful talent, as it involves understanding the underlying structure or system. Although my formal education is in business, guess what? I agree 100 percent with the latter; I don't know where people get their stereotypes about MBAs, but there's really no such thing as a "typical" MBA. Most of us are, on some level or another, systems people.

Indeed, one of the more valuable lessons I gained from mine was to stop seeing "problems" and start seeing "opportunities". There have been so many times I've used a search engine to look for something, not found it, and
thought 'now _that_ would be a great idea for a business'.

So yeah, it's very true that in business school, we're taught to seek out competitors' weaknesses, and "exploit" those weaknesses. But as every hacker knows, just because you _can_ do something doesn't mean you _should_. And then are there those (the majority) who just don't care: what I find quite humorous is how some people consider themselves "programmers" if they know how to set the TiVo to record 'American Idol.' A little bit funny, b/c the original rant reminds me a lot of a high-school cliche about cliques. Nonetheless, cheers to Mr. Yates for his frank opinions. :)
I suspect the 4200 RPM drive to be the culprit of most performance woes on the MBA.
I went back to school, studied a year of Philosophy and Business Administration, relaxed unwound enjoyed the sedentary pace of the academia. Worked like a charm.
Don't know about wufoo, but as nice as that blog looks, it does freeze my browser (iceweasel) when I scroll the page. Even after it's loaded completely. With opera it's even worse - it's getting so slow that the side is nearly impossible to browse.
Eugene?! Hah! (With a picture of a Rodeo most likely in Springfield at the Filbert Festival). Eugene is a good place to start a business if you want to do alternative-eco-bio-friendly hemp clothing or something like that. But even in that case, you'll get someone loudly complaining about how you're not alternative-eco-bio friendly enough.

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fsb/0803/gallery.best_pl...
Stop thinking that any single project will bring you success. Your goal should be to go through this process as many times as is necessary, from beginning to end.

Even if your first project is a smashing success, the chances are high that you will want to go through the process of starting something new again (and with this process comes the possibility of risking failure -- don't forget this!). There should be no difference with the outcome with any project.

Embrace your failures as they will teach you better and more thoroughly than anybody on a message board!
He has a pretty mature take on it; what a good sport.
As he says, congrats! I agree, with many of the comments. Relax, take a deep breath. Think about what went wrong, whether it was a bad product, bad marketing, bad team or no funding and recognize what you learned.

Take that knowledge and try again. If they say that 1 out of ten startups make it past the first 3 years, then you are one more closer to the 1 out of 10. On the flip side if you never reach the one out of ten, it may be time to consider becoming a career politician :D

Chris
http://blog.itrealm.net
http://www.propertystampede.com
Sounds like Animal Farm on a massive scale.
Whole genome sequencing costs continue to fall: $300M in 2003, $60,000 now, $5000 by year end
UML, or any other sort of high-level design planning, is a bit against the hacker spirit so my guess is you wont find many here who use it. Hacking is more bottom up, start with something simple and just keep iterating it into something larger.

The only instances I've seen UML being useful is in very large software projects with many people involved. Having an abstract way to convey program structure can be useful there. But for anything less it will probably slow you down and restrict your freedom, IMO.
"I know I enjoy reading PG's essays because it's like reading an older, more experienced version of myself."

That's the best description of a role model or mentor I've ever read.
Union seems to be implemented in clisp by copying the second set, and adding to the copy any elements from the first set that aren't in the second. If there's a duplicate in the first set, they both get added because it's the original of the second set that gets tested against rather than the copy.

So (union '(a b) '(a a)) gives (b a a).
That sounds pretty computationally intensive, if each page load is going to result in recalculating all scores for a relatively large universe of objects, but maybe "people who have similar voting habits to pg (or some small, select set of trusted quasi-moderators)" would be feasible.

I'm not so sure a technical, mathematical, and purely self-organizing solution exists -- I think at some point, standards have to come from the top. In the past, I think pg has exerted his influence by commenting on things he likes to see and doesn't like to see. He continues to do this, but either his comments will continue to occupy a diminishing share of the site as its user base grows, or he'll spend too much of his life commenting -- even lecturing and nagging.

I like the idea of giving each user a weight, calculated from how similar their votes are to some trusted set of voters. Each user's vote would then count for some fraction between 0 and 1. Scores could be updated periodically en masse to reflect new weights instead of with every page load.
and your email contact is??
Open Source "Social App Server" Might Crack Garden Walls?
From the point of view of designing unit tests, I think class diagrams in UML are very helpful. For example, if I need a test suite in JUnit to cover classes A,B, and C, then looking at the class diagrams for these, I can make sure I have a unit test for each public method in A,B,and C. Obviously one could just look at the code being tested as well, but when one has lots of classes, each with lots of unit tests associated with it, keeping track of these with some kind of diagram structure is helpful.
Ask YC: Feedback From Fellow Hackers On ShowFilter.com
I wanted to obtain some feedback on what some fellow hackers think of ShowFilter.com. The goal of the web app is to provide personalized TV show recommendations to one person or a group of people (e.g. what should you watch if your friends and your significant other’s friends/family are all in a room together). The overarching goal for the UI is simplicity (e.g. the user should be able to provide ratings on 150 items in under 3 minutes). I'm curious to see what you think of features like "Who's In The Room", the toolbar for navigation, and the "one-pager" style of the app among other things.
OK, so you find them more helpful as a system-overview tool after it's designed than you do in the actual design process? (I am inferring that you build a bit, then test, rather than the XP method of write a test--then build to the test.)
Searching for ZAP's fleet of no-show green cars
Another Google Executive Defects to Facebook
for my own personal work? no, i find it to be a waste of time. however, i do diagram and plan and such. its just not structured, like UML, its more free-form to help me plot my ideas.

for my real job? as a software engineer, yes, some, because artifacts are required by the company (and often written into contracts), and things are often designed by one person and coded by another. documents are required to communicate how it "should" work, and UML is a good standard so that a specific document can be understood by everyone.

having said all that, i can see the need for planning and structure documents if your ideas need to be coded by others. however, if you're creating the documents and cutting code yourself, i think they're a waste of time.
+1, Even-Handed: for your willingness to compare your own suggestion to the antics of a crazy guy. ;)
1800sam@gmail.com
In any case, kudos with hecl - sounds cool.
That's why I thought this was an interesting post. If I were doing live video switching or something it would have been obvious that an Air might not get the job done.

But I would have expected the kinds of things he describes doing -- some tabs in a browser, mail, Parallels -- to be fine.
On the travel aspect, I wish Apple had made a "MacBook Mini" (something with a form factor closer to the Asus EEE) instead of the MacBook Air.
Not really a good idea to co-found with someone you've known for only a few days.

Either aim for the Winter session, find a co-founder and start working with him (even if it's only part time) on your project or try to go solo now.
Hi Mike-- big of you to ask, first of all.

I don't think so. The problem is associated with growth, and HackerNews was already experiencing growth before you came along. You might be speeding things up a bit, but word will get out. It always does. And that's why this thing exists, right? Otherwise, it'd be members-only.

So Paul will have to use his big brain to solve the problem community dilution... Perhaps a little sooner than he would've otherwise, but he's going to have to solve it.
there is no one way to listen to your users. use all ways. all data you can obtain is meaningful and can be used to make decisions.

also, let them know your listening by communicating with them via whatever method is available to you. communicate simply, though, as writing novels will discourage user input.

also, know and use the pareto principle, aka the 80/20 rule. but i'm sure you do already.
BW == Bandwidth.
It took me years of brooding in a corporate job to get over my first failed startup. But people aren't kidding when they say it's valuable experience; I've seen enough entrepreneurs who didn't fail soon enough or often enough. Their first big idea happened to stay alive long enough that they lost the fear and thought they were going to go all the way; they weren't sufficiently paranoid and able to think in contingencies. Then, failure came when they already had plenty of people depending on them; they became bitter and never recovered their spirit.

Guy Kawasaki gives experience in startup failure +3 points on his venture capital aptitude test:
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/11/the_venture_cap.html

But the economy being what it is, don't wait too long if you want a decent choice of corporate jobs.
I have a laptop with similar specs that I use for Linux, and I have no real problems at all. I have a 1.6 GHz Athlon 64 X2 with 1 GB ram. The only major difference (other than memory) is that I have 2 better hard drives, with the root directory on an 80 GB 7200 RPM drive, and a 100 GB 5400 RPM drive for music and backups. Moreover, I use cpufreq to scale my frequency down to 800 MHz during low usage.

With all that said, I can kill and restore Firefox (with 20 plugins) with 16 tabs open (including a YouTube video) in about 10 seconds, at the same time that I am running Pidgin (IM client), 4 terminal sessions, compiling a kernel, and copying /dev/random to another machine over SSH (through fuse). In my opinion, that is quite acceptable, considering that such extreme usage is completely atypical.

To call a dual-core, 1.6 GHz processor with 2 GB ram "pokey" seems to me to be a bit absurd. This coming from someone who's never owned a Mac and who would never buy an Air. (I tend to use my DVDRW drive a lot, and occasionally use Gigabit Ethernet.)
Sun Announces MySQL Bundle
I apologize if I'm putting a damper on the congratulations, but it sounds exactly backwards: it seems like the reason to start a shopping site in a vertical should be because you have insight or value-add in that vertical, not because you own a domain name.
Nvidia Processor Has New Niche: High Perf Computing
Embedded Linux Conference courts developers
PlayCoed.com acquired by Sportsvite.com
>>> A CS major can easily go to MBA and be good at it, will the reverse is very rare

The technical/science degree to MBA path is there for a reason and is extremely common. A lot of people work in a technical job for five years and then decide that they'd rather move on to management then spend the rest of there careers as programmers, engineers, biologists, etc.

If there was an good enough reason for a business undergrad to pursue a masters in CS or engineering, you'd probably see more of it. However, there really isn't. I don't know any marketing undergrads who just decided to get into quantum physics because it would help their career path either. It doesn't mean they can't, it just means there isn't a practical reason to do so.

There are MBA's who shouldn't be involved in startups just as there are PhD CS's who shouldn't either.
A destroyer :) and I'm sure that's exactly the way that recruiters for large boring companies think of their competition when they go up against cool workplaces and try to land young programmers.

YC expands the scope of cool workplaces beyond the Google-like perks that a handful of companies might offer and get people to consider entrepreneurial options as well. And it's not a problem solely for technology companies, even Pixar has this problem - talented people have to leave to get opportunities elsewhere because only a handful of inner circle elite ever get to direct a film:

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-pixar12mar12...

Which is ironic because Brad Bird's big break with The Incredibles came from his experience not getting a chance for creative expression with the old traditional animation studios like Disney.
Bringing Outlook and Gmail Closer Together
> It makes me uneasy too. Boy, did I cringe reading those bits.

Not meaning any offense, but boy am I glad to hear you say that.
right - after the thing is built, then uml helps to write unit tests i find - i haven't worked anywhere where people actually do the write tests first approach - sounds good in theory but in the fast world of iterative development it probably is too slow/inflexible in some cases
Exercise. Seriously. Endorphines are really good for putting life in perspective.
Will Gmail Ever Catch Up? A New App May Help Google, Hurt Microsoft
I agree with you on the testing bit. I tried, and it seemed foolish to waste time writing simple tests for simple things.
The laptop and the notebook: A fable
I think Jeff Atwood has a good point, in that your essay does have this sort of lofty view of startup founders, and implied condescension to the poor sods who didn't do that. That may not have been what you meant, but that's certainly how it comes across to someone with a more neutral view of startup culture. Your addendum doesn't really change that, because you're still positing a dichotomy of what software engineers can be: EITHER we're go-getter startup founders, XOR we're caged animals suffering as our souls slowly die, depending on which environment we end up in. In drawing those lines, I think you're missing a pretty wide range of human experience.
AOL Ad Project, 'Platform A,' Plots Plan B