skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I thought about this about 5 hours ago, while reading this: http://clojure.org/state. I have never made the connection before.

However, it struck me that this is obviously the reason for Microsoft code-naming their PowerShell Monad.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_PowerShell
I agree. It's a myth the functional languages are simply more difficult. Once you learn to think functionally, it's just as natural as writing imperative code and doesn't take any more time. In fact, once you get really comfortable with the abstractions, you can move much more quickly, through complex recursion and all.
Interesting. It's a start, but I think the idea needs work.

What is the upside in completing a job then pitching for the contract vs. pitching for the contract then completing the job?
That's a hell of a story. I can't imagine that the book thing is what blew the application though, after all that could have been discussed in the interview if it would come to that.

Good to see you're still going!
Sweet. Add yourself to the RSVP as further discussion will continue there.
I disagree. The months or years you will spend learning a new language dwarfs the hour or two you may spend learning where the packages are and how to install them. These arguments are more relevant at the entry level (PHP, etc) but someone learning their third or fourth language should have less trivial considerations in mind than how nice its implementation of CPAN is.
This micrograph was featured in the 2003 EIPBN Micrograph Contest. The Grand Prize however was won by a micrograph of a thermally actuated serpentine MEMS device: http://www.zyvexlabs.com/EIPBNuG/2003MicroGraph.html#GrandPr...

Here's the contest page listing finalists from past years: http://www.zyvexlabs.com/EIPBNuG/uGraph.html
James Theodore Kirk wouldn't even know that.
Article explicitly says: "For example, the idea of producing a keyboard with screens embedded in its every button costs somewhere around minus two million."
You're right, and they've corrected the post to say that the median age was actually 27, not 34. See @TechStars:

http://twitter.com/techstars/status/10497096786

I hope an admin will correct the post title for posterity's sake...
it wouldn't be consistent with the other 'hinges' if it had just one finger, I guess. I could remove it, but I'm trying to be faithful to the original. Nice catch though :) If you notice, no hand goes into the NW and SE position either.
I can think of a few reasons why your point is not valid.

1) Who cares?

2) One perspective is that he was generous about sharing his opinion with HN. You, however, are accusing him of writing a DISHONEST REVIEW with the SOLE intention of MANIPULATING the reader into making a purchase.

3) Everyone is always selling something, you're selling a reputation of being the noble crusader of HN.

Incidentally..

1) For those who aren't as materially wealthy as you, a few dollars from an affiliate commission can be meaningful.

2) Aff link stats can be a useful metric of influence
I am actually making a serious point.
Complimentary currencies need to be backed, as frequent flyer miles/points or needs to be credit union of some sort?
I worked for a couple of 100 LETS when I was 14.
India for another green revolution
I think the concept of trading services based on karma points is good. If I can build a simple site for a plumber or mechanic, to have them fix a broken pipe or replace my clutch, that's pretty valuable. Things aren't that black and white or simple, but this is a start to getting back into a society where people help each other in exchange for services. This might be more of a local (think craigslist) thing too. I do think the name is pretty horrible though.
Ask HN: Are you a single founder ?
A small survey, please answer as many you want,

1) How long have you been working on your idea ?
2) Were you accepted in YC ?
3) Have you raised money from the VC ?
4) URL to your demo/company.
No; the biggest danger of people doing bad things to you is that it will make you paranoid, so we've made a conscious effort not to accumulate a lot of defensive cruft. E.g. to this day we don't ask startups to sign any kind of LOI at the the point when we agree to fund them.
The first time I used emacs, I thought half of its features were easter eggs. Even today I'm still not sure.
Come on... Tiberius
Freerunning (Dvinsk Clan)
Typing in "about:robots" into Firefox is an easter egg that could amuse your civilian friends. Useful conversational fodder.
Could you please list those rational reasons?

Surely trains only make sense when they get you from A to B faster than driving to airport A, flying to airport B and then driving to B. You could be delayed at the airports for a full day and still fly from London to Beijing faster than this train.

Trains are probably better for moving freight, but they don't have to be high speed. Unless JET-A fuel becomes so scarce that aviation is completely uneconomic (highly unlikely with current progress in biofuels IMHO), trains just don't make sense for distances over about 1000kms.

Bring in the security issues, where a large rock is just as dangerous as an IED and it's a non-starter.
We totally blew it that time. IIRC you did fix the thing we were most worried about when we were talking to you.
I have to add my idea to the mix. It's called the Pixelator. It's a site where you can upload photos of people and it returns to you the same photo but with all the faces pixelated.
1) Since September 2006.

2) No, but the fact that I couldn't relocate to the bay area was a factor in this.

3) No. I've been approached by a few angels, but (apart from one early attempt which didn't work) I've avoided going down that route in favour of bootstrapping.

4) http://www.tarsnap.com/
Ask HN: Where to find open source libraries?
Where do you look for open source code (classes and routines) before coding your own?

I check github, then sourceforge, then roll my own.

Am I missing any other major sites?

Thanks!
TechStars Grades Itself
Gorbachev has a tremendous command of Russian, but he used it in a way somewhat opposite to that of Hemingway. When he was first elected, people were glued to the TVs to listen to a man who could speak quickly, with an energetic voice, discuss the issues, and do it all without reading from a piece of paper (a huge novelty back then). But he could talk for hours without actually saying anything. The English articles are far more matter of fact - they get to the point much faster than Gorbachev ever did in Russian.
http://planet-source-code.com has been kind to me in the past, although it seems to be lower quality than most.
Not too sure Twitter has really transformed. Social media 'experts' can use Twitter however they want, I simply like to know what my friends are up to without having to always call/text them.
Generally speaking, I don't look. If I'm not already aware of a library, it's probably not mature enough for me to be willing to trust it.
Thanks a ton KVS for featuring this here. Much appreciated.
Alabama Health Insurance
The two-year delay applies to any new alabama health insurance policy, so changing your insurance will most likely mean waiting another two years before pre-existing conditions are covered.
Why The U.S. Economy Is Dying And Is Simply Not Going To Recover
We've definitely missed good startups. But one advantage of having so many competitors is that we're much more likely now to learn when we screw up. When a startup from one of the other YC-like organizations does well, I often check their YC application to see how we missed them. Usually it's because they were good guys but working on a terrible idea, which they later changed. So in response to that we now make a conscious effort to pay less attention to the idea and more to the people when we read applications.
Get rid of the first 5 seconds of the video .. "this will be a small screencast to demo functionality". It's redundant, the information is implicit.

i stopped watching after the first 15 seconds, you gotta get to the juicy parts quicker. Because after first glance i have no idea wtf your site does.
Didn't we just have this thread?

1) about a year

2) never considered YC (and I'm sure the feeling is mutual)

3) no

4) http://pinboard.in
I actually thought the article was very reserved at criticizing Putin. The point is basically that Putin destroyed all progress toward democracy, but the article never assigns blame to him exactly. It tends to refer to an abstract entity ("Russia") rather than a specific person (Putin).
Why would a great interpreter translate something pedestrian to something prosaic? (factual; dull; unimaginative http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prosaic)
1) Since late June 2006.

2) I have not applied to YC, and do not have plans to do so in the immediate future. (Never say never.) Nothing personal: I love what YC does, but to make the deal mutually beneficial, I'd have to take outside investment in my business, swing for the fences, and achieve an exit in the next few years. These do not match my personal vision for the next few years of my life.

3) My feelings on outside investment: I have had a relationship before where somebody could call me and berate me for the lack of progress in my projects. He was my boss. At least he had the decency to pay me money every month. I do not fancy having a relationship in which someone can call me up to berate me for my lack of progress and then say, at the end of the call, "Don't forget, we want you to pay us lots of money!"

4) http://www.bingocardcreator.com and more projects early in the pipeline
I never really liked twitter. Anything twitter does I can get from Buzz or Facebook.

Personally, I think the future is consolidation of services.
http://code.google.com/ has been a good place for me.
I have used pinboard.
Do you currently have a day job?
Which is odd since all the other fb connect logins I've ever encountered use a lightbox overlay type form.
I've been toying with the idea for a while, but there are still many obstacles to overcome:
a) Efficiency (communication, administration)
There's a reason most startups have 2-4 founders, and why certain open source projects eventually collapse under their own weight
b) Dividing the profits.
How do you measure User1233s? contribution vs. User252s?
c) More minds =/= better product
An enlightened leader (say, Jobs) is sometimes better than a democratic process. Also, massive collaboration tends to result in lowest-common-denominator results (ex. Digg, Reddit)

..but then again, a lot of these problems could be solved with some sort of (online web app?) system:
a) Basecamp tweaked for massive collaboration.
b) StackOverflow-esque reputation system + karma + uservoice demand identification?
c) No suggestions here yet, but HN seems to be doing a pretty good job at engineering away the Digg-problem.
If you're logged into Facebook it shows a lightbox for FB Connect, otherwise it shows a popup.
And you're still upset about being called out.
With all the flack airlines and air transport is getting now because of climate change, maybe China can try and sell this is action on that front? Trains are more efficient than airplanes, are they not? (not a rhetorical question)

Even so, I doubt this will happen in 10 years.
LaTeX would be much more practical for a human to write -- e.g. Wikipedia uses a subset of LaTeX.
In the case you describe, I think the author of the post would say he wouldn't blame you for not knowing the electrician would burn your house down, because in your case, you, the home owner, would be equivalent to the programmer manager and the electrician would be the programmer.
Our theories are sound but the locals are too rotten for our high minded theories

This isn't racism, this is realism. To use a simple example, America is full of all-you-can-eat buffets, but if you tried to pull a business like this off immediately after the fall of the soviet union, your restaurant would crash and burn. As a novelty, everyone in town would try to "game" it in Russia, until you adjust the written rules to the point where it isn't an all-you-can-eat anymore. I don't even think people would do it because they're particularly hungry, but because they're used to gaming the system every chance they get.

Russia has a multigenerational culture of bribes and gaming the system. You can never root that out in a few years - it takes many decades of very carefully constructed policies to root that out. Just look up the history of early Russian immigration waves to the U.S., and see the kind of scams the Russians pulled here that Americans would never consider pulling en masse (adding water to gas in the gas stations, car and health insurance scams, etc.)
patio11, I agree with you that bootstrapping is the way to to - the "Italian restaurant" software company
Isn't this model how open source development works? How are programmers motivated to do open source work?
No, that acquisition famously fell through.
1) 6 months

2) Applied last minute - No

3) no - going the bootstrap route investing 15k of my own money.

4) demo currently offline -will be up later.
I figured it was something like. I just thought maybe the original poster would like to come back and contribute something more educational for everyone than their rather unhelpful post title.
1) My idea is fairly new, so I've been working on trying to prove the concept first before I take it further with building a startup around it

2) No, I didn't apply

3) It wouldn't be appropriate at this time.

4) I'll make a note to add a link sometime in the future.
Here's an outline/summary of the book:

Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive

http://bookoutlines.pbworks.com/Yes!?SearchFor=50+scientific...

Edit: fix link
1) Since late 2006

2) No. Never applied.

3) No. Bootstrapped.

4) http://feedity.com

Feedity is a profitable startup. I'm currently working on a new project and hoping to go full-time sometime this year.
Thats one way of looking at it.

I like to learn and improve from my mistakes and failures. If he said those things, sure I'd try to refute them and convince him. But eventually I'd look at the criticisms in a more critical manner. I'm not above anyone's feedback or advice.
Tell HN: Lessons Learned from Y Combinator Rejection
Two words: Bigger fonts. There is easily room for bigger fonts on those and the photo was only ten feet away and already some words are too little and the graph is nearly useless. When I was making my own dashboard I kept making the fonts bigger and bigger. Because I made it on a screen that was a foot away from my eyes it took me a little while to figure out just how big the fonts how to be to be read from far away and bigger way always better.
http://www.neatco.com/ comes close as anything I've seen.
If it makes you happy, I answered no to those questions and still got rejected ;)
Blogger Introduces Powerful Template Designer
1) Started officially working on the project December '05 (before that, it was just a personal project for fun - no serious business intentions)

2) Never applied

3) No. Bootstrapped, launched running a single crappy tower server in colo (AMD XP 2100 with a gig of RAM). Started part time, on the side from consulting work. I was offered a pretty meager sum ($20k) in my earliest days, but I was already profitable, and turned it down.

4) http://www.dkpsystem.com

I've been profitable since the beginning, and went full-time January '07. Business has been much slower lately, but I'm working to adapt.
With YOU personally for calling me out? Yes, unfortunately.
With being called out? No, I needed it.
No, I earn my living from the site
1) Full time 3 weeks ;), thinking and planning, 3 years
2) No - YC isn't for me. Think bootstrapping is probably the better model, particularly for an Australian based company.
3) No - self financed.
3) http://knowtu.com
Thnx...this is really cool.
1) since December 2008 </br>

2)No, never applied</br>

3)No, I've avoid the route in favor of bootstrapping</br>

4)http://www.mcsquare.me</br>;
1) Jan 2009
2) Did not apply (not based out of US)
3) No, need to make a detailed case on how money could be used effectively.
4) http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/
Sounds like you don't want Lisp then. Lisp is the battery. It's the ultimate freedom of choice. Use libraries from: your friends, a coder you respect, or write your own.

You don't complain about not knowing where to look to get a Linux distribution do you? Freedom leads to fragmentation, but the fact that there are a million Linux distributions doesn't make Linux any less powerful.

If you want an Ubuntu, don't use Lisp. More power to you. Some people just want to get the job done quickly with at little thinking as possible. I know I feel that way sometimes. But if you want an Arch, where you built the system from the ground up, then you want Lisp. And at the end of the day when something breaks, you just might know how to fix it. ;)
Yes, you want to keep things open and honest at all times. In the case mentioned above, either quote a fixed price or quote an hourly rate and bill for actual hours worked.
How Google Works
Alice In Wonderland's Secret Ingredient: Math
FTA:

Nonetheless, China says that other countries approached it for help and that is how the idea got started. “It was not China that pushed the idea to start with,” said Wang. “It was the other countries that came to us, especially India. These countries cannot fully implement the construction of a high-speed rail network and they hoped to draw on our experience and technology.”
So by proxy it's built by an HNer.
Using Online Storage to Collaborate in Google Docs
Some of my thoughts on rejection, hopefully helpful:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1192204

Of course, I'll happily continue bootstrapping, iterating designs with potential customers, and building a market. Y Combinator is just an awesome way to accelerate parts of the process, not a sole gatekeeper of the startup world.
Western Europe is dramatically less economically centralized than any part of Latin America, and so there’s much more balance between the influence of the richest part of the society and the rest. (Which is to say, egalitarian policies are much less politically explosive.)

Allende’s politics were much closer to western European socialists than to say, Mao or Lenin. Maybe “center left” is a bad label for being ambiguous; the point is that his goal was not some kind of communist utopia with a completely centrally planned government, &c. &c.

In places where a tiny minority have a chokehold on a country's economy, land reform is a pretty essential prerequisite to general political and social equality. General MacArthur carried out massive land reform in Japan in the late 40s, and few people would call him a leftist, &c.

* * *

But all of that is getting away from the central point, which is that thinking that it was better for U.S. long-term interests to overthrow the government, without any legitimate justification, and replace it with a brutal fascist police state, is the height of hubris, and frankly despicable.
1) Varies... but let's say about 3 months.

2) Yes.

3) Not yet, but planning to.

4) Can't say quiet yet :) Launching this week! Currently working on the boring parts of the site like FAQ, Terms, Privacy, About, etc... the rest is pretty much ready to go!
Braintag: Storm The Celebrity Studio And Retake The Universe
Can you share your experience about having an SSD boot drive for your desktop? I've wanted to get one for a few months now for performance reasons. I run an Ubuntu desktop and have a 10G partition for /.

I would like to speed up some common tasks that are quite slow now such as logging into Gnome and opening Firefox for the first time and things like that. Most reviews i saw were running the whole thing from an SSD drive.
Ask HN: Viewing dead links
Hacker News, I was wondering- why can't we view dead links? I understand that some sources are auto-banned and some posts are killed; however, why not let us view the link and make judgement for ourselves on whether the link is trash or not?
1) since March 2008

2) didn't apply

3) bootstrapped

4) http://www.bulldogbyte.com
Simon Johnson on the Doom Cycle [video]
Pew research confirms preference for ads over pay walls
non-paywalled link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870344710457511...
About Juicy Couture for Maternity
Juicy fashions can be a little confusing at first because the name Couture immediately shouts high fashion – size 0 only etc.
I really don't understand that. It reads like 'shoot the messenger'.

I'm not selling anything Zack, I don't need to. HN is a resource and I don't like it when people treat resources this precious like just another thing to burn on the way to the top. I've spent a lot of time here trying to help and befriend people and it genuinely ticks me off when people play tricks like that.

It looked like that was your viewpoint and I strongly disagreed with it. If it had been anybody else my response would have been exactly the same.

I think no less of you because of that incident, in fact your response at the time was extremely candid and honest. To hold a grudge this long about something that you admit you needed being called out for is not consistent with that.
1) 3 to 4 months

2) Applied to YC10S, rejected

3) No, can self-fund

4) http://mercedhill.com, the product is in alpha and a newer version will be released soon.
Link is broken.
Social Media Marketing Event in Mumbai - March 27
Google-Success.com is organising their fifth SEO/SEM meetup on Saturday, March 27, 2010. meet other local people in and around Mumbai who are interested in Social Media Marketing (SMM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). There will be a featured presentation on the topic Is Social Media really worth it?You will find all agenda related to this meetup in this article.
1) Almost a year now

2) Never applied (not from USA)

3) Never raised any kind of money

4) http://www.kangasbros.fi
tl,dr: have a cofounder, remove distractions from the application.

Yes, I'm posting a tldr for my own post :).
1) 3 mo
2) never applied
3) nope
4) http://www.dailydealsdirect.com
If you're applying to YC, chances are you are a first-time entrepreneur or a "little guy." It's simply hard to get the attention of experienced folks like those that run YC. Every bit of feedback counts, so it's definitely valuable to get feedback, especially considering the time put into one's app.
Celebrity Vocal Coach - Branding with FREE content
You'll be getting the EXACT singing exercises used to transform singers like Macy Gray, Brandy, and Ray J (Just to name a few) into world class singing superstars.

These exercises will help you easily increase your vocal range, improve your tone quality, give you complete control over every note, and dissolve any tension you feel when you sing…
Ask HN: What accounting appz do you use?
Small business, future web app company...what do you guys use to track all accounting?
Your phone number is exposed.
How is that any different than how you would do it with MySQL? If both products have the same solution to the same problem (handle it in your application) then why aren't they on the same edge?
1) about 3 months

2) didn't apply YC, but graduated from founder institute

3) bootstrapped, maybe later planning to raise money

4) www.lellan.com
What is Gastrointestinal Cancer
FWIW, http://cld.ly/0f1o7m (Inside a train; in this case, the Airtrain from JFK to Jamaica) and http://cld.ly/ed1o7n (On the platform at Jamaica, transferring to go to the station in my town.)

There's a few (or, at least one) other picture, but thats on my phone (non-smartphone, so its a big of a dance to get pictures off of it).
Just a guess, but maybe it's a matter of providing traffic, PageRank, ad revenue, etc. to garbage sites. In the case of "stuff that's interesting, but not quite HN-appropriate", that argument falls down a bit. Maybe keeping the URL in text form without linking is a good compromise?
26-gigapixel panorama of Paris; try zooming in near the horizon
Thanks for all those essays Joel. They gave me a flying head start into how software development should be done when I got started.