skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> That's sort of a semantic debate, isn't it?

No.

There's one very significant difference between a VC and YC. VC's invest other people's money. YC doesn't. VC's may also invest their own money, but this is incidental to their primary business, which is to assemble investment portfolios for other people to invest in. They charge a fee for this, and many VC's make most of their money from these fees, not from the returns on the investments.

This has real consequences. VC's are much more risk-averse than YC, because if they have a bad year it can put them out of business. (No one will want to invest their money in a VC which lost money for their previous investors.) If YC has a bad year they can just shrug it off, learn from the experience, and try again.

This dynamic also changes the VC's risk posture in another way. A VC has much more to lose from a loss than they have to gain from a really big win. If a VC has a really big win, most of the money goes to the investors, not to the VC. The VC's primary benefit from a Really Big Win will be that more people will want to participate in their next round of investments, which is nice, but that in and of itself doesn't make you a billionaire. So VC's are much more interested in avoiding loss than in going after a Really Big Win. YC, by contrast, has nothing to lose from a loss except the money they put in (which is not much), and a lot to gain from a Really Big Win (since they are the investor). This makes YC willing to take much bigger gambles than a VC would. It also aligns YC's interests with the interests of the companies they invest in, since the bigger the company wins, the bigger YC wins.
Bitterness, thy name is Donna Bogatin (whoever that is).
point taken, but surmising about how a society would operate in a fictitious world is a bit pretentious -- what real world value does that create?
yc has time and effort to lose in addition to money. not the end of the world, but they do have a limited amount of those. i agree yc has less to lose than a big VC investing other people's money, but it does matter to them whether they are making good funding choices or not.
Missed it here to. Can't believe it, I was hacking all night...

Anyway, 16th? Great, I'm there.
Do you think it's possible for Java applets to make a comeback, or has that ship sailed for good?
The proper way to read this article:

1. Read the last two paragraphs and realize it's an ad.
2. Omit to read the rest.
The browser might be ready but the add-ins are not. I just installed Unbuntu 8.04 Hardy and the FF v3 beta 4 worked great, however 70% of my add-ins didn't work. Including things like Filter-set G (must for add blocking), Tab Mix Plus and FoxMark book mark Synchroniser, CustomizeGoogle. Things I can't live without. SO I went back to FF2.
By the way you can have both installed and only minor problems using them with same settings. Don't launch at same time though
Sounds about right from everything I've read. The disparity is coming from PG aiming for a system that works, but isn't really in equilibrium, and the poster's looking for a system that might be more broadly applicable on a long term basis, if not everyone can be big winners.

I think one thing that makes sense about PG's general tactics is that hackers can probably figure out enough business to do a good startup, but as things drag on, and you're called on to be more of a manager, hackers are going to be at more of a disadvantage.
Maybe Large Companies are Fundamentally Flawed
1. DO NOT go without coverage.

2. Get a catastrophic health insurance policy ($5000 deductible) for $100 to $200 per month. (Mine is with United).

3. Pay cash for dental (unless someone knows about a great policy I'm unaware of)

4. Eat right, exercise, quit smoking, don't take drugs, wear your seatbelt, don't ride a motorcycle, and don't do anything stupid for thrills, so that...

5. You probably never have to use your policy.

6. Keep your policy paid up. This is a necessity, not a luxury.
The investment banks didn't have to evaluate all mortgages: they should have been _sampling_ those mortgages and evaluating the firms that supplied them with mortgages however. The wise firm that did would have anticipated problems well in advance.

And it was the IBs' responsibility when they retranched high-risk CMO's into 2nd-tier CMOs and then got those CMOs certified by the bond firms as good as gold. That was criminal, in fact, and charges should be filed against the IBs and the bond rating firms as appropriate.
Re-generative medicine: Man re-grows fingertip and fingernail
If you're getting 2433 emails a day, you should be in a position to hire an assistant to help you deal with it.

If you get 2433 phone calls a day, do you not do the same?

The problem with a fully automated solution to this is that the edge cases can contain critically important information which will undoubtedly be buried.

So Michael, Mark, etc, cough it up, and just hire someone who can effectively manage this for you. That is, until your desktop has a complete semantic understanding of context that works 100% of the time.
Measuring code quality- a scientific approach
I don't see how you could come to that conclusion. His products are in damn near every home and office in the first world. They helped bring PCs to the masses and make computing affordable.

Love 'em or hate 'em, his company is one of the most significant of modern times. He generated lots of wealth.
"The utility of the maxim is remembering that the complexity of the user manual is an imperfect but helpful proxy for complexity of the [interface]."

I think you can have incredibly complex software with an intuitive interface. I don't doubt the author agrees, but I wanted to make that point first.

The clearest visceral experience of that valuable lesson came from playing through the 'commentary' track of Valve's _Portal_. The designers really understood how to teach the user the rules of the game without saying, "Here are the rules of the game in 28 pages of color photos and tiny text." Listening to their commentary made me start asking questions as I design, too.

But shortly thereafter, I came to a more profound realization: Valve's so successful in their design mechanism because they never change the rules of the game. So often, whether in games or in applications, the 'rules' change from one iteration of the software to the next. This creates bad code, bad maintainability, and a bad end-user experience.

(Oh, and: I sometimes wonder if our company began it's $10 million ERP "as an indirect way to force this review [of business processes].")
How have people reconciled being able to work on your startup part time while at a large company full time? By reconcile, I mean in terms of legal contracts, etc. I'm pretty sure most people sign a non-compete clause in their employment contract.
Good advice in the first part. Bad opinion in the second.
Install Mr. Tech Toolkit https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/421

Under "tools" in the extensions manager, there will be an option "make all compatible". It'll disable the compatibility checks. Works great for me so far.
I am assuming you are using MySQL. If so, there is a very nice mysql performance blog. Definitely check that out. There is also a Mysql tuning book by mysql press itself and then there is Mysql High performance Oreilly book as well.

Plus, there are many simple rules to keep in mind as well. Use innodb when transaction (acid-properties) is important, but MyISAM when reads needs to be efficient. Normalize first and then denormalize (and duplicate data) later when you hit a wall. From the beginning, start with the assumption that there will be many databases and there will be many servers.
There is also memcache which is just plain awesome.

Lastly, seriously think when and where you really need a db and where you can just use pickled-data/file-systems. [PG has said this many times as well].

Hope that helps.
Fixing the unfairness of TCP congestion control
I think treating karma like currency will only exacerbate the situation. I feel like the underlying problem is that the audience HN targets is a generally outspoken one - we have lots of opinions and little problem expressing them. That being said, what we say is not always accurate or worthwhile. So, the more people that are attracted to HN, the more comments there will be and thus, the more inaccurate/worthless comments there will be.

Most of the members of HN seem to have their own blogs, each with at least some readership. If it were just really insightful comments all the time, they would probably mention HN on their blogs, and word would get out. This isn't that hypothetical as that seems to be exactly how HN got where it is today. Anyhow, the growth will always be substantial, so the only way to keep it how it was would be to apply some sort of invite only membership or externally limit participation.
Investment bankers trashing hackers. What to say.
In Defense of Beer-Drinking Scientists
Excellent point, and there's plenty of evidence to support the idea that it's very easy for hackers to grow a business to the level of their own incompetence (an entrepreneurial Peter Principle, I reckon), and thus achieve fail via success. So, early acquisitions can be a very smart way to avoid that problem.

Of course, now that I think of it more, loopt didn't go the fast acquisition path (and though Sam raised 5mil, he's still taking a long view of his business and building it the old-fashioned way without aggressively pursuing a fast exit of any sort, or ramping up head count faster than necessary), and I believe pg still considers loopt the biggest success story out of YC, so far. So, perhaps we already know where pg stands on the issue.
Sorry, we're using MySQL - should have specified. Thanks for all the tips so far.

We're definitely exploring all caching options. Any suggestions for database load balancing/building out the DB farm? What about database sizes - we're probably adding 10,000 records a day. Thinking about using Amazon WS for storing all old data.
I replied to this a couple days ago in a comment thread:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=143480
Best line:

"Thus, the entire study came down to only one conclusion: the five worst ornithologists in the Czech Republic drank a lot of beer."
Craigslist Prank
the voting system is wrongly designed. you should be able to vote while you are reading the post/site you are voting for.

it should be easy to implement as a bookmarklet.
The funny thing about Blub was (if I recall correctly), pg introduced the concept explicitly to avoid offending the users of any specific language. When someone is offended by what you're doing to avoid offending them, you've clearly touched a nerve.

Personally, I like this whole discussion because, agree or disagree, the frame of the debate is exactly what I'd like it to be: what creative people can do about the soul-destroying culture of most software jobs. Paul Graham's essays have done an amazing job of raising this question. The emotions they've provoked (or more precisely, the emotions people already feel which they believe the essays have provoked) can't and shouldn't be factored out of it.
The RIAA sees it the same way as Arrington and it's how musicians have always been considered for compensation. Record labels make money off album sales, not musicians. The musicians will really make their money from tours, promotions, and merchandise.
Sure -- but this site focuses nearly exclusively on Web 2.0 news and gossip. There's nothing wrong with a site focusing on Web 2.0 gossip, obviously tons of people are interested in it. I just think it shouldn't pretend that it's a hacker news site.
I think you should view the demo as a much more efficient way to express your vision, rather than thinking of it as a way to impress. The latter doesn't hurt but it isn't as useful towards conveying what YC would like to hear.
I would seriously consider changing the appearance of the colored header bar. There are 9 items on this bar, but they are not all the same kind of item.

The first 4 (Hacker News, new, threads, and comments) are different views of the same data, so they should be tabs.

Leaders, jobs, and <login id> should be links (blue underlined) because they take you to another page, not another view.

Submit and logout should be buttons.

I would change "Hacker News" to "Popular" and I would put the "New" tab first, because the Popular view is the default. I still get confused by the "threads" and "comments" tabs (now what are these, again?)

Why do I make these suggestions?

Because we are all so used to the site, it's almost impossible for us to visualize how noobies see it. We really need to think about how to better direct people to the new page more often and more easily, without making it the default page. I think the biggest problem is that too many good stories never gain enough traction to graduate to the popular page. If a good story falls to 31st on the new page without an upvote, we'll probably never see it again. This happens often because new posts come in faster than people get to vote for them.

I often read a story that I think is fascinating and wonder how people here will react to it, so I submit it, only to find it disappearing without any upvotes or comments. On the other hand, sometimes my submission takes off to the top of the front page. I realize that I probably think a little differently that a lot of people, but not THAT MUCH differently. Sometimes, I think, it's just timing. Thus, the "It fell off the new page too fast" hypothesis.

Just a thought. Of course, if the data suggests otherwise, then never mind.
Those aren't the same URLs; the dupe detector currently only rejects exactly duplicated URLs.
Java applets? Yeesh! I hope not.
I'll drink to that!
There isn't unnecessarily a duality here. After all, he is doing the lions' share of the creative and coding work before the startups get sold.
Thanks I will try that
7 Uncommon Questions I'd Ask A Startup If I Were A Venture Capitalist
I don't know what I should be annoyed with more: the fact that idiots like this person are making pointless (or argument-less) noise or the fact that such noise is making it to the top of HN! I mean, anti-YC news is absolutely fine, but it should at least be making some point!
It didn't work. Not compatible with version beta 4
Things That Are Important: Where Clauses
I choose to remain emotionally neutral about this article simply because taking it to heart either positively or negatively is counterproductive. I believe others have already pointed this out, but use of the lion metaphor is not unintentional. Lion is widely recognized as being the "King of the Jungle" -- a powerful and virile animal.

This is an undue specialization, a form of flattery. If anything, this alone should leave all programmers satisfied, because naturally, not everyone fit this definition or can duly ascribe it to themselves, whether they formed a successful startup or not.

A more general "animals in the jungle/zoo" might have equally well served to enrage both camps. In that instance, the onus of deciding which animal is being spoken of would lay on each individual -- some of whom would wind up with rather silly characterizations such as: ape, rat, etc.
The situation with reddit is a unique one. I think I'm
the only person who both writes a lot and started a news site. Not
surprisingly, people who like what I write tended to switch to that
news site. The switch was particularly extreme in the case of
reddit, because News.YC is in a sense an offshoot of reddit: most
people who switched from another site to this one came from there.

The result is that practically anyone left on reddit who has an
opinion about me has a bad one. At this point, I could write an
essay saying 1 + 1 = 2, and the reddit comment thread would be pretty unanimous that I was mistaken, and moreover, an asshole for saying so.

Usually this doesn't effect anything much, but I think you're right that it did in this case. I exchanged email with Atwood and it seemed clear he'd been influenced by the tone of the reddit thread.

I don't think there's anything one could actually do about this
problem. I only mention this because it is so far as I know a novel one.
We don't need a second type of voting, just let us unsave stories later.
Hmm, I must've installed it before the upgrade.

See if you can install it on firefox 2, disable compatibility checks, then open firefox 3.
<Disclaimer> I work tangentially in the health insurance industry.

I'd highly recommend getting a broker to help you find the right insurance for you. They can take care of all the comparisons for you, etc. It won't cost you any more to use a broker than it would to go directly with the carrier.
You're confusing being a VC with the standard VC fund.

You don't need to have the latter to be the former. A VC can use their own money exclusively, and do so all the time. The professional VC's that manage pooled investments of other people are only a subset of the term Venture Capitalist.
Actually, try this instead:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6543
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070906_0028...

Since reading this bit by Cringely last Autumn, I can't help but think of a lot of Apple's output through the prism of "being alternately seduced and tormented"; e.g. the iPhone SDK which is only supported for use by recent customers of Apple's (Intel) personal computers.
Of course there is something you could do. People aren't static. So what if the people who like you came here, and the ones who didn't stayed there? If you say good enough things everyone will like you and it will be a mute point.

Sure it's harder because there is some initial negative reaction to overcome from the reddit group. And it may not be the best use of your time. But it could be done with sufficient skill.
This is a great post, by far the best response to PG's post. I had much the same question, but I am not as good at formulating it the way this guy has done it.

I have a feeling PG was aware of this logical implication when he wrote his essay ("if large companies constrain, err, even cage people, why put heart and soul into something just to deliver it to them?") Yeah, there is the money, but most people I know don't put heart and soul into work only for the money, and PG himself is doing Arc, YC, Hacker News etc. without any particular monetary goal. I wonder what his response would be!
I completely agree with you. I recently left my career at one of the larger banks and the additional time has made all the difference. Now I get to spend time prototyping various ideas I never would have been able to otherwise with very small blocks of time. Best decision, ever.
What if the other person is just being an idiot? What if you think he's not capable of understanding? What if he's a child? What if you think he's trolling? Is better argument still the way to go?
There's Plently of Value in Awareness
My Bag is Obsolete - Has anyone found a good MacBook Air Compatible Bag?
Ouch. Jacksonville's a beautiful area... wish my wife could find work in that area... I'd love to live in Ashland.

Probably !NH, though.
Ok so based on all comments there are some persons that will be around for the April 19th meeting and others that wont get to go to the Startup School and won't mind meeting the 16th.

For April 19th, gibsonf1 offers his office @ 240 2nd street

For April 16th any takers? Our friends from SF have an idea where we can hang up and have fun?
It catches most dupes, just not on sites like the NYT that have so many different urls.
To be fair, Y Combinator is about startups and startups are, typically, Web 2.0 :)
I'm personally using flex for my current app. I don't recommend it for every app, but for what I am doing it makes perfect sense. It makes doing a lot of things that would be difficult in AJAX extremely easy. But like I said, not for everyone.
What about the other possibility, Paul? 37Signals or Smugmug stay small & profitable, grow organically, but never straying from their true self. There is no big exit, but people (founders as well as other employees) are happy. Would that be another logical outcome of your original essay?

In fact, going public introduces all manner of considerations that often inherently introduce "bossiness", so this alternative seems even more logical to me! For one, public companies have to grow, grow and grow and a lot of the bad stuff about companies you point out in your essay arises from that one source. They do bad deals, they start to think very "strategically" (ignoring the human element) and so on.
Alternatively, you can add a boolean "extensions.checkCompatibility" field in about:config and set it to false.
Usually, the term "venture capitalist" refers to those people who manage other people's money by investing in startups, and the term "angel investor" refers to people who manage their own money by investing in startups.
> All this no-restraint bashing of an interesting article ("you shouldn't have used the 'lions in cages' metaphor! Now I feel terrible! Bghwaaa-waaa-waaa") is really getting on my nerves.

Yes, I think Jeff overreacted too :)

Anyone would love to get (really) rich, and founders have a lot better chance of that happening than employees do.

So people are upset about not having that chance (at least while they're employees).

It's natural to feel like founding a startup is just more than you can handle, and maybe that's what's bothering most people.

Knowing that them founding something is very unlikely to happen, they insist that working on cool stuff is way more important anyway.

Something like the software equivalent of a cure for cancer can only be deemed more important than founding a startup, that's for sure.

But what most people seem to be missing is that being a founder doesn't prevent you from doing something noble later on - rich or not.
If DNA came about as a product of chance, would it be possible to create a computer coding language through some sort of electronic evolution/iteration system?
So true. And the most useful line:

"I was making two cardinal mistakes in my approach to this startling scientific development: 1) I trusted my limited anecdotal evidence over a statistically valid scientific study, and 2) I based my understanding of the science on a journalist’s description of a technical paper."
The wrappings are what exposes how good (or bad) the applicant is. Thinking that your natural wonderfulness will be obvious no matter how you fill out your application sets yourself up for failure.
reminds me of Xobni for cell phones. Worth a closer look...
Much more elegant solution, modded up! :)
> what we say is not always accurate or worthwhile

Comments that are inaccurate or worthless can be voted down. An increasing number of low quality links has no real cost to the submitters but it has real cost to the quality of the site.

Right now there is nothing to stop the number of low quality submissions from continuing to grow. I don't think invites or membership is the answer. The challenge is to be open and high-quality.

How would treating karma like currency exacerbate the situation?
In E. F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_is_Beautiful) there is a corporation described chartered in such a way as to not get "too large." In this case, "too large" is considered to be more than 350, which was considered by some to be the upper bound for a functional "village." But the particular value of N is not important. What is important is that this corporation was chartered to undergo mitosis and divide in half, forming two new companies with an equivalent charter. In _Small is Beautiful_ each corporation would have a relationship with one being a subsidiary, which would introduce "bossiness." Perhaps the charter could be modified so that neither spawn was subservient to the other?
These work great. Cheap, too!

http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/250563/Grip-Catalog-En...
Social site for people with chronic medical conditions