skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
FORA.tv - Mike Rowe: Reclaiming Our 'Dirty Jobs'
Can't read the article even after logging in. What the hell is the matter with these people?
Prototype url: http://yc.ethanjfast.com
Pretty much every time there's a discussion of dogs on the internet there'll always be at least one guy who pipes up and tells you you're a monster because you haven't sold your house, moved to the country, bought a farm and spent all day carving statues of the dog out of marble.

It's quite annoying given that there's a lot worse that can happen to a dog than being owned by an attentive and intelligent owner in less than ideal circumstances.
Off topic, but wow I was surprised to open this link up and find that the author and I sat next to each other in 9th grade Physics :D
It's all in the mind. Framing is essential. As you've worded it, "[I need to] buckle down and start working" sounds like the beginning a painful trek that anyone would try to avoid. Instead, thinking about the exact same thing as "[I] finally have the chance to play with this interesting problem" will do wonders for self-motivation. As others have mentioned, it's not something that changes overnight, and requires daily practice.

Now, I can already hear the little voices whispering in a few of your heads "that's some optimistic bullshit, lying to yourself, etc." If you've read Self-Discipline in 10 Days, this nagging is said to come from a part of your subconscious dubbed "Hyde." Here's a brief description from the book:

=== BEGIN ===

This Jekyll/Hyde approach is one of the more important
concepts to understand in your attempts to develop self-
discipline. Time and time again, participants in my workshops, seminars, and courses have reaffirmed that this concept, understanding it and applying it, has been instrumental in their self-discipline successes. So, you will begin by learning about how your personal Hyde operates.

Hyde believes:
If I begin a structured, organized journey toward any
chosen goal:
- I'll become a slave to routine
- I'll lose my freedom
- I'll lose my sense of fun
- I'll drown in a sea of responsibilities
- I'll put too much pressure on myself

We all have a rebellious side to our personalities that resists any form of structure. We bring this rebellious seed from our childhood. One of the first words a child learns to say emphatically is "NO." The child we once were still lives inside us, and every child battles authority. Hyde, the name we will call your inner childlike rebel, battles any form of authority, even if the authority is you. Hyde subconsciously says: "Nobody can tell me what to do, not even me."

=== END ===

I find that similar to the framing-work-tasks-as-WoW-quests mentioned above, if I can tell myself that my projects are fun (and it helps if they are, which is why I code as a hobby), I'll be eager to get cracking. That childish Hyde character is still out for a good time, and mine still enjoys solving puzzles if he thinks it'll be fun. A good litmus test is to try and explain what you're doing to a non-techie. If you want to energetically share the details of your project, you're doing something right! If you'd rather not discuss it because it's "boring" or "work"... well, it's obvious where your procrastination stems from.
Ask HN: Web app to monitor all receipts for tax purposes?
Is there a web app that allows me to, somehow, store all my paper receipts as a digital copy (either scanning them, or taking a picture) which will then be added to some sort of cash flow management tool, that allows me to easily see my cashflows and keep good records of all expenses & income (also being able to generate a nice print-out of my expenses over different time periods would be nice).

Also note that my income isn't necessarily from invoices sent out that are paid, but could be a variety of different activities - both online and offline.

Thanks.
Happy PI day/night (in assembly)
What are your chances if you went to an Ivy but were a biologist there? ^-^
22 yrs old just finished university.
The best description of how to react to a decline I ever read was from Yegge talking about Google interviews (and the large amount of false negatives built into their process).

His conclusion was that while it's fine to feel bad, you shouldn't ever feel meta-bad about it.
Seems like a spam blog or moral equivalent. Original quoted here:

http://mail.evilsoft.org/pipermail/tangent/2005-March/003063...

(Actually, original from here, but now 404: http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~hillson/master_lock.html )

Submitter user seems dodgy too: young account, only submitting stories from makeahistory, and they all seem to be aggregated from elsewhere.
You'll live to be embarrassed by that; this is actually going to be built. I've heard from six people who've started working on something like it already.

It's not even that hard: Facebook for the platform, directed edge for the recommendation engine, something like camarades.com / ww.com for the webcam plugin.
You're going to have to get a new account and a fake name if you want to apply again.
Wow, I wonder what those "eastern block satelites" where it "worked extremely well" are.

I was born in an eastern block country and still follow the news there, and let me tell you it did not work very well there. In fact it was very similar to a miniature version of what happened in Russia (except for the oil and gas money).

Your last sentence is the typical way the Chicago boys excuse themselves after their repeated failures -- just by using racism. "Our theories are sound but the locals are too rotten for our high minded theories" ...
Doh! My bad. the 140 per 100,000 rate I cited is for the capital, Caracas. For the country as a whole the rate is 54 per 100K, second highest in the world.

The 4x increase under Chavez stands. See:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03...
I generally agree with you but I wonder if this is a generational issue. I personally would never leave a video comment to somebody's YouTube video. But I see a lot of younger people (e.g., under 23) who are absolutely comfortable doing so.
Fear sells news and news is as much about money as it is journalism.
Why it rocks to work at google.
good. in general with startups its not about what you studied its about where you went.

wow. im very cynical this evening. I shall spare you all my wrath and go to sleep now. I better go to sleep soon or I will have more enemies than Jason C pretty soon...

zzz...
Podcast/Justin.tv covering top articles and ask HNs of the week, Showcases new developments or ideas from the community, interviews past/present YC founders.
a more salient consideration is the already existing tension between China and India over their border. You cannot currently get between India and China directly by train.
We already breed dustmites; just by accident. The incubators are homes, the climate controlled by the choice of laundry detergent and thermostat. This wouldn't be much different. A starting point is just measuring the allergen content of the particulates.

In any of these projects the dominant cost is salaries, which are not so high if you hire great young people who care about it. It only seems impossible to those with a lack of imagination.

As for selling them, here a market for you: ecologists with asthma. These probably number in the low ten thousands, they probably spend close to a thousand dollars a year in medication, and four years in lifetime. That's hundreds of millions in that market category alone.
But terrorism isn't about the number of people killed. It's about creating a state of fear.
Funny. Not going to apply again.
Robotic Warfare: 'The Soldiers Call It War Porn'
I'm sure that the makers of FaceRoulette are perfectly okay with competing in the 1% market niche of non-cock oriented videochat. The 99% cock oriented niche can be left to ChatRoulette; it is only fair, they are the first to think of it, and first to lose their pants.
Coral Bay Beach & Dive Resort website - Palawan
London to Beijing takes about 9-10 days as of right now. You could easily get that to 5-7 days if you cut out stops (especially between Moscow and Beijing) and if you tripled the average speed of the trains from ~30-40 mph to 90-120 mph... there you go, although the latter part is what requires so much money and engineering.
I don't have a "YC missed out on investing in our insanely profitable company" story, but I did get rejected before finding myself at a YC company anyways.

Evan Miller (emiller) and I applied for Summer 06. Evan had to do most of the work on our application because I had deadlines with my publisher on my Ruby book. I was proud that I was writing a book, so I mentioned it in my bio.

In retrospect, I wonder if that doomed us. Sorry, Evan. If I was reading applications, I'd have been like, "This guy thinks he's writing a book and starting a company? Fuggedaboutit."

But another one of my friends got into Winter 07 and he's very persuasive. A year after their session ended he convinced me to leave the corporate world and join him and his cofounder.

Wish I could finish the story by saying we're insanely profitable already, but hey, we're still alive, we've got a great product, and that's awesome.

There are a ton of ways to get a business off the ground, so one rejection from one incubator is really just the beginning. To everyone in that situation, don't give up. And if this one doesn't pan out, maybe you'll go even further with the next one!
I think that physics class was the highlight of our freshman year :)
Social Media Disruption in the Commerce Space
And it seems like a prime example of where a more widespread programming literacy would be beneficial. You don't need any sort of deep CS knowledge to be able to use the superior tools out there, just a foundational literacy.
Thats hard to say. No startup is ever "beyond" the opportunity of demoing in front of a room of well connected, experienced silicon valley VCs which is one of the perks of YC. Some of us don't live in places where there are VCs who get it.
This looks awesome. To me it seems as if they have perfect tasks already.

I think this is going to skyrocket.
I'm a little surprised by the positive tone of the comments here thus far. This article reads like a futurist article from 100 years ago—it's a compelling fantasy, but it's clear that technology is still largely in the realm of magic to the author.

You simply can not conflate technological literacy with programming. If you consider basic application configuration and usage to programming then the thesis makes sense, but that also guts it of any significance—of course new generations will naturally learn to use new technology better than their predecessors.

The reality is that programming itself is becoming more complex and varied as technology progresses. So while the average person will much more computer "savvy", programmers will become more and more specialized, and the needs of the masses will be met by an ever widening range of devices and applications. The majority of programming will be the realm of geeks at least until the advent of true AI, at which point I'm afraid our fun in the sun may be over.
Ask HN: VC is to startup like a major record label is to an artist?
A comment on Gizmodo's "Record Labels: Change or Die": http://gizmodo.com/5481545/record-labels-change-or-die

"And that is where labels are a major help. Labels can coordinate to have you support a bigger band on tour. They can foot the bill when you are making $150/show while driving yourself around the country. They will pay the record producers that make your songs stand out from the static of 1,000,000 other indie rock bands."

got me thinking, VC is to startup like a major record label is to an artist?

I'm a first time entrepreneur (Penn State Junior). I just recently discovered the hacker news and startup community and have been working on my own startup, http://currenthiphop.com, in my spare time.
A lot of ostensibly talented developers do the same thing—it's not always easy to predict in advance what is the most efficient expenditure of effort.
Twitter, As We Knew It, Is Dead: The 7 New Dependable Ways to Use Twitter
Oh my god yes! This is exactly the kind of tempting I've been gravitating towards lately. In Lisp, with macros no less! Thank you so much for putting this tutorial together.
ok, Feedback:

- great idea!

- I think the homepage needs to show better what the site is about, above you have a nice start of a blurb, if you can trim that a bit it would make for a nice sub-title

- Why does looking at the entries for awesome work require registration ?

- why limit yourself to 'free' ?

- how will you monetize this ?

- I don't understand the link between the name and the product. Maybe there doesn't have to be one but then you could pick an easier one!
> That literally blew my mind, even though in hindsight it is a blindingly obvious thing.

Must have been messy.
The argument goes that understanding how programming works, (not any particular tool set per se. but more the foundation necessary to learn one) is becoming the equivalent of reading and writing. 300 years ago, you could easily perform most jobs without these skills, but recently they became absolutely necessary. The point is that "living a life" is a dynamic notion, and that perhaps in the future, programming skills would become requisite knowledge.
+5 to -3, that's got to be a record.

Now for the why of it?

The fact that the article got changed after I posted this doesn't make it any less valid.
Nintendo's Sakamoto's Four Creative Tenets
Rather annoying is the fact that directories like Program Files, ProgramData and some others cannot be moved to another drive and replaced with junctions (the moral equivalent of a mount point), because some MS application installation features rely on hard links for some kind of checkpointing, and these cross-device links fail silently.

This is what the Microsoft Tax really is. I have a full Linux desktop install in 7G, but a basic Windows 7 install is awkward in 30G -- with no easy way to fix the problem except by purchasing a larger disk.

At least all those Windows users bring down the cost of beefy hardware for me ;)
I think this is nothing but a fluff piece, the media trying to find a story.

I'm sure (and hope) that Microsoft workers use iPhones, Blackberrys, Palm, Androids and other devices.
The best way to learn how to beat your competition is by becoming intimiately familiar with their products.
Just grabbing a competitors device and playing with it once isn't the best way to make your product better.

Also, if 10% of Microsoft employees have an iPhone, that is probably about right, with iPhone about 20+% of the market, and I'm sure Microsoft has incentives for using a corporate device. Plus it is clearly all business users, so RIM may have a pretty solid presence, and maybe even Danger.
The video is a bit long. You want to say in a nice way: People offer job and trade karma. People accept job and get karma. I don't need to watch a 2min video with login, logout, login, logout, login, logout to understand that. Otherwise, I like the idea.
I think you should rework your contracts in such a way that you offer your clients a discount if you get title to the rights of the code you write, then select one of the projects in your pipeline and pitch that concept to the customer.

If they bite they'll pay for the development, they get a good discount and you have your first product.
It is probably not an accident that this is phrased in such an odd way, with the subjects of the sentences missing. It should read "we got in the second time, but I dropped out a week later." What happened is that Siqi and a cofounder started YC, then a week in Siqi bailed and left his cofounder in the lurch because a side project of his had unexpectedly taken off. We suggested making the side project be the focus of the startup they were doing, but Siqi didn't want to share it with his cofounder. His poor cofounder kept going and managed to recruit someone new, but the startup limped along without Siqi and didn't live much past demo day. It was probably the most treacherous thing one cofounder has done to another in YC so far.

I would never have said anything publicly about the matter, but I can't stand to hear it described in this misleading way.
2 separate browsers for the 2 users (preventing the login ping-pong) would go a long way
China Issues Warning to Google’s Partners
Not trying to be too harsh, but since you asked:

What makes your site different than a Stack Exchange site?

How do you plan to entice users to do work, for free?

If you plan to entice them with Karma alone (i.e. no monetary pay-out), how do you guarantee that there will be something they wish to purchase with the Karma they earn? (i.e. How are you going to build to critical mass?)

For that matter, if I'm going to do work for others to earn Karma, and then spend that Karma to hire work from others...why wouldn't I just do work for others to earn money, and then spend that money for a whole range of things beyond just what I can find on your site?

Edit: Just realized I wasn't very constructive there...to expand on my last point: there are downsides to doing work for money (i.e. finding buyers/sellers/clients/contractors, contracts, rate negotiations, tax forms, etc.). So, I'm not saying your idea couldn't work, but as it is presented now, it's just not horribly interesting.
Idea: LeaderBoard.com | A cool place to hang out...
Legal obstacles to online movie streaming in India?
Wanted to understand why many of the legal movie streaming sites like hulu.com, netflix etc are not supported in countries like India. Does anyone have any information on why this is the case? On a related note, where would someone have to start to setup a legal streaming site for India?
thanks for the comments, we just got an email for a ycombinator interview :)
By my math, 8.8 µm * 1e9 = 8.8 km. Wikipedia says the Enterprise is about 650 m long (thank god I had to check), so I assume they meant to say a 1:1e8 model.
Very insightful. It's like standing on a trampolin. The higher you climb, and the longer you wait, the harder it is. And if you start off too high, it gets even worse.

Great blog, this other article on why smart people are reluctant to share their thoughts and knowledge is also a great read:
http://www.lifebeyondcode.com/2010/03/2009/12/26/why-some-sm...
I thought about it more and I think it's better that YC doesn't give more feedback other than "no."

Think about it. Let's say they said, "Your team was too weak." What's the result of that going to be? It's going to be ugly and messy.

What if they said, "Your idea is too weak." Then you'd probably email PG yourself on why your idea is not weak with the following proof why. Same goes if he said there's no market for it.

Basically anything they say can result in a lot of backlash and the blame game when maybe the reason was that it was a little bit of everything.
Charlie Rose - Gina Bianchini, CEO of Ning
I don't think so. A record label is more like a specialized bank with a distribution network grafted on.

A VC is more like a partner that brings money to the table, and possibly contacts and advice and they don't take the largest cut by default.

Your negotiation position with a VC is much stronger than a typical no-name artist that wants to get distribution.

Very few artists have the capability to outmaneuver the system, but plenty of start-ups get to a strong negotiation position without funding.

By the time they do take on capital they're strong enough to get a good deal, whereas in the music industry the vast majority get the short end of the stick, even some surprisingly big name artists.

A typical record costs about $100K to $200K to produce, that's not including snazzy videos or other extras. For that an artist basically gets a loan that they can 'earn back' using the proceeds (if any) from the record company.

The record company controls the distribution, and it is not rare to have extra riders including multiple albums and a cut of the proceeds of merchandising and such added on.

And if your record doesn't earn back the investment it isn't rare that you are now in hock to the record company. There are plenty of 'fast' operators that will sign up new artists to draconian terms, get them a 'demo' grade recording and a few hundred cd's cut then spit them out again, in the hope that they get some play somewhere. Then afterwards they find out that their 'friends' that got them the demo need to be bought out before any major label can touch them.

These are extremely lousy deals (the major label ones less so but still very bad for the artist), but since everybody is doing it there are very few alternatives.
Agreed but it's a rhetorical point. Fact is that 90% of the people applied feel the same way and a good percentage are probably just as smart and motivated as you (if not more so). If you went to a top tier school and majored in something the school is good at, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.
Welcome to the high tech era, where "Mine is smaller than yours" is usually something to brag about.
I was under the impression that that was fraud.
The solution is to not be afraid.
This is a repost and according to microsoft employees here on HN a bs story.
YC has connections, but in the end its up to you to make your startup successful. With your experience, you should be able to bootstrap yourself into a profitable software business. But this "Italian restaurant" style of a software company doesnt interest many VCs. Most VCs are looking for the next big thing.
Poland, Hungary and the Czech republic.
>I don’t blame non-technical managers for not knowing this stuff.

So if you hire an electrician, and he also doesn't know how to do his job and ends up starting a fire and burning your house down, do you not blame him either?

A manager's job is to manage programmers. If he doesn't understand important principles like, "there's so much variation in programmer productivity that, if you know this guy is really good, it might be worth it to pay him 5x as much as the other guy we're considering", he doesn't know how to do his job effectively. Blame him.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Less surprised than when I saw him in a Pizza Hut ad in the 90s. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9lvzzH0STw
Garden sheds
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This reminds me of a recent HN post that contrasted product vs. technology vs. business. I get your product but not your business.

A business turns something into money. What is it that you are turning into money? How are you turning this into money?

This also reminds me of a not-so-recent HN post describing different business personalities that are needed in a startup: the entrepreneur, the manager, and the technician. It looks like you're strong in the technician area, but what about the entrepreneurial area? Your video describes how your product works--that's how technicians think. It doesn't directly address the user's problems--that's how an entrepreneur thinks. What problem are you solving for your users and is their problem bad enough that they will pay someone money to solve it?
That's pretty low.

Has YC changed its contractual agreements with new YC companies to avoid such treachery in the future ?
Got this from someone in my network, http://broadband.bigflix.com/home - This initiative by Reliance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIGFlix) seems to one of the good legal video streaming sites for India.
That sucks.

Oddly enough I actually know (well, actually met) Siqi back in the day when he was at Powerset. It's interesting to hear this kind of story.

Go figure. :\
If you've got an itch, scratch it. If you're thinking about it, and you keep thinking about it, and it won't let you go, then do it.
More like treacherous business. (Sorry, I could not resist.)