skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Let me add a bit more then.

It doesn't matter why you're closing yourself off.

You start wondering about the why, you'll set out on the path of trying to figure out what people are thinking ... and let me skip to to the end, that path is a dead end. People feel and think things that are based on their experience, but you have no idea what the totality of that experience is.

You mention you like jazz. The other person crosses their arms because they stubbed their toe in the morning and jazz was playing in the background, now they remember their toe hurts and they're feeling shitty. How can you possibly foresee that? That sort of random stuff comes up in conversation all the time. The proper response isn't to try to mind read or to convince them that jazz is wonderful.

It's to talk about something else.
Hi Sam, you just replied to a question with this : "Having a cofounder you don't know well is usually a very bad idea. It's much more important to trust someone and know they are great than to 'hire' for a specific skill."

What do you recommend for someone who isn't a friend with a good developer ?
Is it better to subcontract the development of the site/app to a good software development company ?
I was refering to the expansion behavior, which was the point in contention. I've clarified the original comment.
Doesn't matter, my friend who got an offer from Amazon fresh out of school back in 2008 was offered 80k a year. These days total comp for senior software engineers at Amazon is > 200k a year total.
Yes.

No--he does office hours at his office.
A friend of mine when he graduated got a base developer salary of $90k in 2011, shares & benefits (whatever that works out to), and I think $10k bonus for every year he stayed with Amazon. He worked in the Seattle, WA, area.
Honestly, we're still somewhat figuring that out.
Maybe in a small company, where your efforts can have a direct, meaningful impact on the company's net worth. For a company as large as Amazon, though... there's so much going on, and so much of it completely unrelated to your personal work, that I feel like it'd be kind of meaningless unless you were in a really high-level management position.
What's riskier? Systems that are never patched with still plenty of potential surface attack area, or systems that are uncontrollably patched with still plenty of potential remote and MITM attack area? I can't decide, but in both cases, removing remote access removes the problem. My car and toaster wouldn't be much more useful with Internet.
That's actually not a joke. Oracle liked to argue you should accept server licences as being a fraction of your budget, so when it went up you'd automatically pay them more.
Canada just accepted 25,000 Syrian refugees fleeing war and something much worse than communism.

The social and economic climate has changed dramatically, you're right. We no longer have a climate condusive to a free-for-all exploitation of Aboriginals, Africans, and the environment.
To a great degree, these complaints should be familiar to anyone in a large bureaucracy: Endless procedure, imcompetence that can't be fired, decisions made for political reasons, etc.

Now imagine a bureaucracy run by and accountable to all the national government bureaucracies in the world! And remember that the ones most HN readers live under are, despite our whining, the most efficient and least corrupt in the world - the others are often far worse.

That's the UN. If you are going to have an association of the world's governments, I think that's the way it's going to be.

Like democracy, it's horrible but better than all the alternatives. It's primary purpose, IIRC, is to prevent international war (i.e., wars between nations, as opposed to civil wars). After all the war of human history, after WWI and WWII occurring within a 31 year period (think of that: that's like 1985 until today!), international war has almost been put to an end. It's now a major exception when it happens, and that fact is really a miracle.

They also achieve many other very important things, though expensively and slowly.

Remember that the UN is no fuzzy-minded idealist's fantasy. It was built by the survivors of WWII and WWI, while the ashes were still smoldering. Those people knew far more of war and the realities of man's inhumanity than we can imagine.
How did you learn to communicate so well? Any book recommendations?

What do you recommend to get great at building products? Any recommendations for college students? Engineering courses don't seem to do justice.

(21, in college)
Precisely. People need to be where their customers are.
A spreadsheet about Amazon salaries in Google Docs, or a spreadsheet about salaries at Google? (Or both?!)
Doesn't the right of first refusal mean that company has the right to buy the shares (at the same price)?

Still not a wise thing to do if you're employed there.
What is your plan for AI safety, and how does OpenAI fit into it?

In http://blog.samaltman.com/machine-intelligence-part-2 you laid out sensible requirements and safeguards we should demand of late-stage AI development when it gets further along. But OpenAI's founding statement seems to have baked in a mission and vision that's incompatible with those safeguards, requiring immediate sharing of breakthroughs even if the technologies required to use them safely aren't ready yet. That founding statement used to have the word "safely" in it, but this was edited out without any sort of announcement or comment, and, to the best of my thirdhand-rumor knowledge, OpenAI is not currently doing any safety-related research.

(I wrote a blog post on this back in December, and no one has given any plausible answer: http://conceptspacecartography.com/openai-should-hold-off-on... )
How do you respond when they ask you for your salary information? Would it be perceuved as rude to say "I decline to state"?
> 140 characters makes twitter unique. It shouldn't be used as a platform for long form stories

But it is (used as such). People try to have lengthy (arguments) discussions on Twitter. It ends up badly most often because people can't express themselves properly, the discussion lacks of context then it provokes outrage then people cry they are being "harassed" publicly. The way Twitter works cheapens communication. And when communication is reduced to the lowest common denominator anything can be considered harassement or insult. 140 characters works with SMS because people who send each other SMS usually are acquaintances, so there is some context. Publishing SMS out there in the wild is often a recipe for disaster. Now take any forum like this one. People don't know each other, however, they have enough space to at least attempt to convey their thoughts in an accurate way. I admit that the fact that is it a tech centered, well moderated forum helps to create a proper environment for discussion too.
I will have to tinker with that then...
Yes, but Mark Stephens (this Cringely) is arguably the Cringely, in that he was the one who made the column popular, and he published a book (Accidental Empires: http://www.amazon.com/Accidental-Empires-Silicon-Millions-Co...) under the name. So there have been other Cringelys, but when people say "Robert X. Cringely," they almost always mean Mark Stephens.
I love ETL. I've worked with real Big Data (5PB+) and working on the data pipeline was my favorite part. The feeling you get when you rewrite a job to run 1000x faster so the company can make way more money.
Looks like HN doesn't support the * bullet point markdown syntax.

EDIT: Ha, did you just directly edit the html there, or something?
I'm pretty sure that you comment is down-voted due to choice of words.

Taleb is a snake oil salesman and other than catchy term "black swan" his words should be ignored as much as possible. There are many blog posts on web that go into details to prove this. In addition to the above link, here is another set of links:

http://theweek.com/articles/453558/nassim-taleb-used-hero-bu...

http://www.cnbc.com/id/31386309

https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2009/07/17/nassim-taleb-c...

https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2014/11/03/is-nassim-...
I decided to try bitbucket for a project I started about a week ago because I wanted a private repository.

It's not horrible but one of the things I don't like is the listing of open Issues.

There is a 'T' heading and a 'P' heading. That's not descriptive enough. Then the items under those headings are icons that aren't easily identified.

I can never remember what the T and P stand for and I still don't know what the icons mean. Some of the icons seem to be the same for different things. I'd rather see the name.

While I don't hate Bitbucket these items are confusing enough for me to try something else (probably GitLab) the next time I need a private repo.
If that founder is a director of engineering/product in an enterprise software company in Atlanta, has a spouse, two kids and a mortgage, and the health insurance is dependent on her/his employer, then they will probably have a higher sacrifice than if they are a single Stanford grad living in SF with a year of saving after working at Google. They both need to make a sacrifice but it's not the same scale. If you make it easier for the enterprise founder to go and do it, and they know their industry and customers from the inside out, I think YC are increasing their odds a little bit of getting an enterprise software unicorn then if they don't. Nothing is guaranteed, and that enterprise person will have to make even worse sacrifices probably if they gets funded, but I'm pretty sure it will increase the number of them who will make the leap.

However as Sam said he doesn't feel they are underrepresented, and that they can use the fellowship which sounds great :)
I'd try to meet good developers, and I think the best way to do this is either at school or by working at a tech company.
On the C64, when scrolling, the fastest way to update the screen colour RAM (which cannot be pointed to another address, unlike the screen character map) is to do it all with immediate LDA #$xx / STA $D800 / LDA #$xx / STA $D801 / etc (where xx are your colours, and $D800 is the base address of the colour RAM) - then during the 7 frames of pixel scrolling, you both offset-copy the screen characters to the second screen buffer, and also move all the character colour info (the values throughout the previous LDAs) through the colour RAM update code, and on the 8th frame you flip character screens and then call the colour RAM splat subroutine.

[edit] It's much faster than the obvious solution, which is to do LDA $D801 / STA $D800 / LDA $D802 / STA $D801 / etc. Or, even worse, a loop incrementing the X register with LDA $D801,X / STA $D800,X / etc. Or worse still: indirection via zero-page (though no-one should really ever consider that for colour RAM updates, even though at first glance it seems clever for moving the characters between screens, it eats too much time)

(This technique is pretty much only applicable if your scroll is fixed-direction and fixed-speed)

[edit #2] Credit for that goes to Jon Williams (Shadow Dancer, C64 - and others) for adding that optimisation to my scroll routines that he used in SD - and for then telling me the trick :)
> Negative is obviously more dramatic than positive.

I agree in the general case, but not everywhere. Shit like "Scientist cures cancer!" is equally dramatic and clickbaity in spite of being hugely positive.
That's kind of low for L4, many L3s make more than that.
This is also one of the big reasons why someone might choose to work for, say, Google X instead of found a startup. Google's famous for taking care of every detail of employees' lives - food, laundry, haircuts, oil changes, dry cleaning, gyms, social events, and child care are all available on-site, and it seems like they may soon offer housing soon. Many people who are highly proficient in their fields like to concentrate on their fields, rather than on extraneous details of their lives. When I've approached former coworkers about whether they'd be interested in founding a startup, usually the top answer is "I can have more impact at Google, because they take care of all the stuff I'm not good at so I can concentrate on what I am good at."

Something to think about, particularly if you want to fund more hard-tech. For soft-tech founders (marketplaces, delivery startups, etc.), it's often good to do the routine chores of life yourself so you know where the pain points of potential customers are, but for hard-tech, you really want to be able to concentrate on the technology.
> Canada just accepted 25,000 Syrian refugees fleeing war and something much worse than communism.

This is to my point, there is less scrutiny for immigrants in 'dire straits'.

> The social and economic climate has changed dramatically, you're right. We no longer have a climate condusive to a free-for-all exploitation of Aboriginals, Africans, and the environment.

Unclear how this goes to show that anybody should be allowed to immigrate anywhere under any conditions.

Edit: straights -> straits
Do you think that "STEM" is a meaningful term for setting national policy? I don't. Rather, I don't see it as any more useful than saying there's a "PhD shortage."

It can take a while to hire someone for a history department position. If a department wants to hire someone with expertise in, say, Bhutan history during Jigme Dorji, and it takes two years to fill that position, and the best candidate is from Argentina, would you say there is a general shortage of history majors and we need to change immigration policy because of it?

No, I don't think you would, because you realize that "Given any specialized skill with enough demand in the job market, there will likely be shortages because there are so few specialists".

"The immigration system is full of unfair and arbitrary roadblocks"

Totally agree. But I still say that "STEM" is a nonsense term which should not drive the change to that policy.

What's worse is that "STEM" means two different things. I think you'll agree that a paleontologist who studies whale evolution is solidly part of the "S" in STEM. There's one group of people who look at STEM broadly, as a way to encourage others to enter a complex and challenging field. They might say, "you should study whale evolution because STEM is important." This comes out the liberal arts and humanist tradition. I am more a member of this group, except I don't limit myself to STEM appreciation.

There's another group which sees STEM more in terms of the subset that can be applied to business problems, like quant, materials science, and fluid mechanics, and be very confused about why someone would want to travel to India to dig up whale fossils, much less why the government should pay for it.

I believe most policy makers are in the latter group, and more concerned about STEM helps business. This leaves out most of the "S" fields in STEM, and likely most of the "M" fields.
What is a failure you are most proud of?
Hey Sam,

Any comment regarding Jason Calacanis being banned from YC's upcoming demo day? Jason tweeted[1] his side but didn't know what the YC side of it was and was curious.

[1] https://twitter.com/Jason/status/710176806184349696
Yeah, there are a lot of variables to consider. Sadly the great expense of implementing it means that experiments to verify these issues are hard to come by.

Another interesting feature that I can see happening is that "undesirable" jobs like cleaning/garbage/sewage/etc. might start becoming high paid jobs instead of minimum wage. Afterall, who will want to clean toilets for only a slight increase over UBI? Versus getting an education and finding a job they like?

Edit: Also note that "job you love" doesn't exactly have to mean "follow your passions", it could just mean getting away from a terrible boss or awful company. I've had a job where the work was fairly trivial, but the team I got to work with was excellent and my boss was one of the best I've ever worked for. If people can afford to hunt for a job like that, it's an improvement.

Edit 2: I just want to follow up with another point. Undesirable jobs being highly paid means that there will also be an economic drive to automate them first. Currently low paid jobs stick around because the labour is cheaper than automation. If the really dirty jobs get eliminated this way, that might be a good thing too.
> No. I'm saying every country has its problems, and that to say one specific problem must be focused on before any of the problems can be solved is disingenuous. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

So why is it that we must focus on the problem of NSA wiretapping before we are even allowed to talk about the problem of millions of people being oppressed by a Communist dictatorship?
You might want to reconsider the strong language.

Firstly, do you know the individual concerned? If not, the assumption about someone's motivation for living and working in the US is problematic.

Secondly, I find a contradiction in these remarks. You "take issue with the sentiment", which is clearly one of feeling trapped by the visa rules. But the line of "it's a privilege, not a right" and the demand to "prove value in allowing you to remain" simply reinforces the systematic entrapment, by threat of withdrawal of privilege. In particular, it denies the individual any moral right to change the system.

So I suggest those remarks actually reinforce the sentiment, rather than challenging it.

Such a scenario is commonplace in many jobs, and the more toxic the boss, the more likely it is to occur.

A more creative suggestion out of that logical trap might be that a visa should be a right, not a privilege, since it permits a broader range of contribution towards both GDP and cultural wealth. But now I betray my own leaning towards high levels of international migration for all.
Hi Sam

Do you think non-venture backed companies can change the world?

Does YC want to help founders who do not want funding?
My company Krewe (https://www.gokrewe.com) is aimed at helping people make a new group of close friends in their neighborhood that they can see every day and build a strong local community. I only have a couple hundred sign ups (after about three weeks) so I don't know for sure that the concept will work. I also don't have a cofounder. Should I apply to YC now, or potentially wait for the next batch when I would (hopefully) have more traction?
Admittedly I'm American and I've never worked for Amazon, so my situation might be different than yours.

But what? Returning to the employer you quit from seems like a terrible idea. If it was years later, maybe you could explain it away with interview BS like "changing direction" or "finding your place."

But months later makes you not much better than the guy who shows his boss an offer from another company to negotiate a raise. It might work in the short term, but then you're branded as a flight risk. The next time they need to lay someone off (or if you slip up and they have a legitimate reason to fire you) you'd be high up on their list of disposable employees, perhaps moreso because you're more expensive than you were before.
Just a couple of days ago the local TV was re-running an episode of the "Yes Minister" documentary on that topic.

Actually, the TV show was released before the events you mention, so the details don't match exactly, but it's close enough for government work, so to speak.
It's definitely true, but anything you to make a startup feel like an undifferentiated cog in a machine (in the extreme case, throwing everyone into a coworking space) is really bad. We just want to be super careful not to break the important parts of what makes YC work.
Not a HN mod, but been around long enough to take a guess:

HN penalizes entries (topics? articles? discussions? whatever) that gain a lot of comments really quickly. I think I've seen dang refer to this as the "flamewar penalty". The penalty was probably removed manually, because it was a false positive.
Hi Sam. The social graph, interest graph, and professional graph have all been successfully mapped online. When do you believe the location graph will also be mapped at scale, and by whom?
Yeah. That makes sense.
It's possible; without getting into specifics of any given company's compensation policy, one common compensation scheme involves cash + equity where the equity doesn't begin to vest until some tenure has been reached with the company. Let's assume base cash comp stays more or less constant (or has a some small raise to adjust for inflation).

Now, consider an initial stock grant that is 800 shares vesting linearly and monthly but with a one year cliff. If you started in January 2015 you would have seen zero of those shares in 2015. In 2016, however, you'd see 200 shares in January plus roughly another 200 shares throughout the rest of 2016.

If you also assume that the company in question provides annual stock refreshes, that those begin vesting immediately, and that the stock is on an upward trend it becomes apparent how such a large increase is possible.

Other factors could include non-salary cash comp like bonuses, etc.
Any advice or observations regarding doing one's first startup in one's 30's and up?
Oh please. There are much better links for showing that.

https://archive.is/7Bjqc
I saw someone post this googleblog entry over a month ago on the Freenode ##re channel. Then it was quickly taken down again. I guess they must have pulled the trigger a little early.
This article is a very accurate depiction of the UN in Geneva based on my experience there. I was working much higher up the food chain, not an intern, but the experience was the same. You have a few true believers trying to get things done surrounded by a vast sea of bureaucrats, a significant fraction of which are corrupt, with no obvious skills nor offering even a pretense of doing useful work for anyone.

It makes the most deadwood-collecting US government bureaucracy (I've worked there too) seem almost startup-like by comparison.
Is it possible to apply with no idea?

Assuming that the applicants are able to demonstrate:

- they can build stuff

- they're a good team fit (e.g. showing a small project from the past)

- they can generate ideas which they're passionate about

If not: do you have a tip for improving these nearly graduated* university applicants?

* 80 hours of course work left
I believe:

"I can be a real pain" = "It can be a real pain"

If so, I totally relate. In addition, I avoid most people, including family, b/c they overwhelm me. Manipulating/imploring me to do/see/think the way they do, ad infinum. It's a constant barrage.
Hello, Animex. I saw your question and I had this same question the other day. The average age of YC founders is about 29 (Source: https://www.ycombinator.com/faq/). I suggest you apply, what's the worst that could happen?
OK, so... what have you ever done for the world?

(As per my usual disclaimer: I'm not being facetious.)
No, $@ is special where $* is regular. Consider the following script foo.sh and call it like so:

./foo.sh one "a b" two

The $* part will print one line, the $@ part will print three lines.

#!/bin/bash
for x in "$*"; do
echo $x
done
for x in "$@"; do
echo $x
done

I use "$@" often, but to this day I don't fully understand how $@ works...
In a way we do, in that it's one (of many) examples for someone doing something impressive in the past. We definitely look for founders who have shown some evidence of doing something impressive (and we try to adjust for whatever life circumstances people were born into).

But the main reason we don't is that there are important counterexamples in our portfolio, and if we said "we're only going to fund founders from top schools" we'd miss out on some big successes.