skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Well, my biggest piece advice is not to do a startup unless you have a particular idea you really think needs to happen.

But if you want an answer other than that:

Start learning programming tonight. There are a lot of tools online, and it takes awhile. While you're doing that, start making an active effort to notice problems in the world.
Typed Redux Reducers in TypeScript 2.0
> This is simply a list of things the author doesn't like about JS, very much of which is practically solved by Flow/TS and ESLint.

That's definitely not a fair characterization of this article.

Concerns about roadmap and patent usage show up before any concerns about JS.

Edit: Though I agree, a strangely large amount of the article is dedicated to "Why I just don't like Javascript."
Apple's Relationship with Pro Music Needs Mending
So long as journalists are paid with ad dollars, content will always trend towards the lowest common denominator.

This applies to all media in general; but there really needs to be a better metric for quantifying impact than clicks. If writers, etc. are rewarded for advancing knowledge, then many many more people would be enabled to do so.

Hell, perhaps we don't even need a new metic, and instead just subsidize everyone with UBI. Those who provide long-term value will outweigh those who only consume.
Sounds great, let's try that. We're all doomed to death, anyway. Clearly we're not all doomed for greatness.
TS over JS isn't best practice yet: Some of us like dynamic typing.
I wish they had used GO. If you worry about distribution and dependencies, GO static binaries are clear winner. One issue with GO binaries is that they can become very big.
Some subjects aren't really fun until your good at it though. I used to hate it until I forced to do it and found it was fun after I got the basics down pat.

When I think of somebody who enjoys programing, they usually have a goal or task to compel them. Just solving random CS questions and math is pretty boring to the majority of folks.
Rust would actually be problematic with most distros.
>> So I guess it depends on your definition of "high quality code". I don't think quality code is about some arbitrary coding aesthetic. It's about results, and it's about what your code does, and how it creates value.

Moving the goal posts so that the definition of 'high quality' is basically code that compiles and runs as long as it 'creates value'? What about when you have to change it later? What about if it has to be really fast?

People who think that Javascript and PHP are crappy languages aren't just comparing these languages to 'arbitrary coding aesthetics'.
What do you look for in a single founder (non-tech) when they apply with their company being very early stage. What helps you determine they'll be a good company even if they are early?
Super helpful, thank you
When they release a version of it with US 3G/4G bands, it would be an option.
The problem with Patreon style is you have to convert every single transaction between Author and User. By direct payments I mean, Platform -> Author not Platform -> NYT (99% of the profits) -> Author (salary)
Because it gives Facebook legal leverage over your company.
Have to admit, I laughed my ass off at:

"Hey Elon, I've got my electric bus parked outside. Want to take a look?"

Elon/team deserved much better.
You are absolutely correct. JavaScript is by no means as easy for a beginner than Python. Once you get beyond the most basic of programs , JavaScript starts throwing a lot of crazy concepts at you like prototypical inheritance,hoisting, and this (and I'm only counting es5)
I can't up vote this comment enough. I stopped taking code tests waste of my time and money.
What if you're also cash strapped? :)
Relativity... its a thing ;)
What universities stand out to you in particular, if any, when gauging talent from institutions across the world?
Then we can push the introduction to Computer Science into high school so that we can get directly to what's important in semester 1: databases and web UIs.

:-)
How to Write To-Do Lists That Make You Happier at Work
You say a south pole colony would be hard enough as though we don't have one. We have a south pole colony [0], and there are a half dozen multi-million dollar experiments there that must be manned year round.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amundsen–Scott_South_Pole_Stat...
How do you make a product that is profitable while serving an underserved poor market? i.e. if a market is massive but has no money to spend - is the business model different?
I encourage folks to stop wasting time on this flame war sub-thread and focus on choosing the right tool for the job.

...hopefully that quiets down the nonsense :)
Auto Layout Demystified
Hi Sam,

My cofounder and I don't live in the same country so we're each recording half the video separately and then editing the pieces together. Does this affect us negatively in any way?
A lot of large engineering projects have killed a bunch of people before succeeding. It's fine, as long as the people accept the risk, and aren't deceived.
Sam whst mean the word hustling to you??
Does the general public care though?
What mean hustling to u sam?
I just took a hacker rank test let me know if you the questions and answers to there stupid test. 2 1/2 hours gone from my life. #neveragain
What will be included in the Startup Class MOOC?
How will the MOOC differ from the previous Start-Up Class?
You beat me to it. I was going to write:

Node.JS === Javascript
We're two sides of the same coin - I know some JS (can't say I have any sort of mastery though) but don't have good HTML/CSS foundations. Let's trade resources?

Here's the one I found to be the best by far - Anthony Alicea's Javascript Understanding The Weird Parts course. It's rigorous, and develops and intuition while not being long and boring. You can quite comfortably finish it in a week.

Also, one thing that would really help if you're doing said course is is Joan Mira's notes[2] which I will myself be compiling into a Gitbook for future reference.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bv_5Zv5c-Ts

[2] joanmira.com/javascript-understanding-the-weird-parts/

If you find anything similar in style to Tony's courses, I would love to start them right away. The thing is I'm right now in a patch of analysis paralysis of not being able to decide which course I should invest time in rather than just starting something.
Man, I feel like I'm going to have to upvote everything you've written in this thread.
If you were in early 20's, what 5 things would you deem most important to work on to help the world?
Are there any books on Start-Up Market-Research a.k.a Talking to users?
If not, what are the top mistakes startups make when talking to users?
The reason why it solves clickbait vs investigative journalism is because its an apportioned revenue share. click bait is easy to write and has more competition if a user reads loads of clickbait the revenue the author makes from that user will be low per article. On the other hand if you have a user who reads "investigative" high brow content its more expensive so there is less of it so you would expect the per user revenue would be much higher per view.

Imagine if spotify paid artists based on minutes listened apportioned based on each users listening habits instead of a fixed rate of N cents per listen.

So one user listens to Nirvana exclusively all month on spotify you would expect 100% of the 70% rev share to go to the owners of that nirvana content.
Any of these is possible, but the character of the founders really does matter.
Around 6 minutes via car each way.
I had an HTC Droid Incredible. Facebook was included in the factory build, was always running per the process list even after force quitting, and with the exception of rooting the phone [0], was impossible to remove from the device.

http://forums.androidcentral.com/verizon-droid-incredible/10...

[0] Corporate-provided and payed-for phone, so I was prevented from rooting because of "security reasons." Even after (or, especially because) the phone developed the surprising habit of snapping pictures at random times -- as evidenced by the distinct sound made by my DInc's shutter -- after the corporate-required malware was installed. I'm sure someone, somewhere really enjoyed the view of the inside of my pocket.
My point was not about the details, but about the uncertain nature of an open source project driven by a company. The patent issue is just one of the "symptoms" of this problem. When someone open sources their technology and adds a set of detailed clauses that adds some restriction (doesn't matter if it's a "real" restriction or not), it means they couldn't go all out. It also means as a user, you do have reasons to be cautious about it, not because of what the license says in detail, but because of the reason behind the behavior.

But anyway, this patent issue is just one part of the larger issue, which is uncertainty. When Apple or Android changes the API policy in the future, you'll be struggling to adapt to the new reality with what you have. Sometimes it works, but sometimes it doesn't. Currently it does make sense for some people to build using react native, but if I were you, I would rather learn Android. Really, if you already have iOS experience, a lot of the paradigm is pretty similar and it won't be super difficult to learn.

This "cross platform" concept used to be valuable maybe in 2010 when it wasn't clear what mobile platforms would be dominant (with windows phones, blackberries, and even samsung launching their own developer platforms). But it's 2016 now, and we're pretty sure it's either iOS or Android. All you need is just those two platforms.
>and just more advanced evolved //

Except not evolved at all, just genetically engineered by humans. Unless evolved now means semi-intelligently designed by someone with half the necessary information?
If you're going to write any sort of cli in Python, you really should use click http://click.pocoo.org/5/

Why click? http://click.pocoo.org/dev/why/
Thank you for sharing your opinion which is really quite contrary to mine. To me a portfolio signifies where their interests are and what they are clearly capable of achieving without help.
> So the whole issue boils down to "what if you get into a patent dispute with Facebook over a patent that doesn't relate to their core web UI tech". Which...I dunno, is that a real concern?

Yes!

On one hand, tons of HN commenters claim to be opposed to 1) NPEs going after smaller software concerns 2) giant ecosystem software vendors being the only choice when it comes to mobile/web technologies, but then this amateurish ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ mindset carries the day on easily graspable concepts that directly affect the likelihood of patent infringement.

> But if my core business is making apps, then every patent I might have is likely to be covered by both patent grant termination clauses. So the issue is...?

Given the increasingly broader markets that Facebook, Amazon, et al. want to break into, the issue is for businesses whose core business doesn't relate to apps but that still want to leverage modern software (aka all of them).

Stop brushing off issues you don't understand and calling them FUD.
Yep. And depending on the details of the concern, so would an Apache or Mozilla licensed project, since they have explicit grants with termination clauses only slightly narrower than React's.
Merchant security is Tyro’s priority
Will you fund a startup that has no idea about monetizing, like AI research companies?
Honestly, that's a tough combination.

We'd look for evidence that he or she could execute and make stuff happen.
Funny. I know it, and still hate it. For every opinion that is held universally true, there is at least one person (but far more likely, many people) for whom that opinion is demonstrably false.
>> My understanding of the timeline and Guido's writings on the subject make it seem very unlikely that C++ or Perl had any significant impact on the decision to create Python or the design of Python.

Look at slide 4 of http://www.aleax.it/Python/ep03_meta.pdf:

>>> "Putting Metaclasses to Work", by Ira
Forman and Scott Danforth (AddisonWesley
1998)
/ strong influence on Python 2.2 & later
/ based on IBM SOMobjects & C++

That's only one thing coming to mind :)
(immediately followed by the quote: "In the past, the subject of metaclasses in Python has caused hairs to raise and even brains to explode (see, for example Metaclasses in Python 1.5). Fortunately, in Python 2.2, metaclasses are more accessible and less dangerous." by Guido at https://www.python.org/download/releases/2.2/descrintro/ -- referencing same C++ book(s), actually)
Great! No, please just do that.
Well then, if no true programmer likes dynamically typed languages, I'd better make some calls...

Hey, RMS, Abelson, Sussman, Steele, Guido, Larry, Matz, Richard Gabriel, ESR, DHH, Flatt, and Felleisen, it turns out you're not true programmers! Okay, cool.

Needless to say, I claim No True Scottsman.
The computerized GMAT and LSAT attempt to do this - the difficulty level of questions dynamically adjust to your current performance level (higher means harder questions).
DJI MAVIC PRO REVIEW
Non SE programming is often very naive, so many long sequences of statements.
It happens but big companies are often slow. We can usually but not always help with it.
You're so right. I had to stop watching after they started the Q&A. That was impossible to watch without self-harming.
Are you planning on another project to fill the void left by the YC Fellowship? Especially on the "a little funding" part, and the "remote" part.

I understand you have limited resources and that YC's core is focused on fast growing companies, but some early-stage ideas/prototypes need a little help before becoming something YC would accept (and, it looks to me, the bar is higher every year).

The MOOC fills one part of the gap, but, will it enable promising students to get some sort of funding?
In my view the ethical problem is the process of finding out if "designer babies" can be made without condemning a certain number of them to extreme suffering. In essence, the term "designer" is somewhat of a misnomer, unless we can precisely predict what we're going to get. And it's true that normal reproduction is also unpredictable, but at least we have a general sense of what can happen, and how often.
What do you think about younger people under 18 applying to YCombinator?
Only if the founders wanted to eventually monetize in the future.

If not, it would be more appropriate for something like YC Research, which is a non-profit.
Colorado is full thank you to move somewhere else and transform some other state into california.
Can someone please explain why the fact that it was in Node and is now in Python matters in the slightest, given that it's a command line utility that doesn't seem to, in any way, expose the language it is written in?

This could be in haskell or F# and it still wouldn't matter because it's the CLI itself that matters. (to which the question must be: is Azure popular? Is a new version of the CLI utility big news?)
> It was about providing a metaphor for digital content on screens.

Sounds complicated. Why not just directly provide the digital content on the screen?
I think in future versions of the MOOC we will explore ways to give some funding.

Though I think the answer to this is just to apply to YC. We fund lots of very, very early companies all the time.
Just to complete your comparison, Azure has some great MS-based PaaS offerings (e.g. hosted DB, hosted IIS, etc) and great integration with MS environments, but I find their interfaces (API and portal) more clunky than AWS.
Funny definition of tyranny. Going back to the case itself: a) the German government is elected; b) most Germans are glad to have strong privacy protection rules in place. So it is simply democracy, and agreement on a different set of social rules than the set you would prefer.
I agree completely, but doubt I could have put it as eloquently as you did.

I personally have found my go-to tool for web development - Scala. It is a breeze to work with, and I advise anyone looking to develop web apps to give it a try, especially if you're tired of dynamic languages
I have big problems with US foreign policy and the treatment of blacks. But stuff like this makes me want to move to LA and work at SpaceX. I guess I'd essentially be living at work, so ...
No. I'm sorry, I'm sure that you think Angular 2 is great. It might even be faster than React. But I'm not falling for it this time. Never again.

Fool me once, Angular team...
At least one founder has to be 18 or older, otherwise no one can sign the legal documents. But we've funded teams with 15, 16, or 17 year olds on them before.
Empathy might help you find and understand their problems; the problem seems to be how to finance the solution. When selling to a well-to-do middle-class professional, you're probably competing for cash that would otherwise go to purchase some toy or extra night out. When selling to the working-class, you're often competing against rent and food.

Essentially, how to sell to someone who has no discretionary income?
> Nah, only 3. So much for Microsoft and it's legendary backwards compatibility.

Microsoft tends to build tools that are backward compatible with earlier versions of the same tools; it doesn't particularly tend to build tools that are compatible with outdated versions of the platforms they are implemented on top of, though.
>Y is valid, and when Y is a problem

Here is my issue with this reasoning: Y could turn into a problem in production and cause real impact of the business before you know it's a problem. You're writing hundreds of Y's over the course of months as the project goes on so some amount of first-guessing is good to have. You don't want to play wait-and-see with all of them. If it is a product where demand can spike very rapidly then it is more important to take the time to find a best solution first. One day, you thought Y would never reach this magnitude but it just did because something went viral and the internet is essentially DDOSing you (happens all the time with sites posted here going down). And some companies may take to this approach on the first step and don't want to wait until things fail to realize they used the wrong data structure for this demand. Because often, it only takes a single thing to break a product or produce the wrong output or fail gracefully.

Now naturally if your interviewer wraps this problem up in vagueness, confusion, and gotchas then you aren't going to do well. A sane interview should be more than willing to answer questions about magnitude and that tells you that Y is now a problem and you need to think of a better solution than your first one even though it is fine for most use cases.

If it seems like they were trying to confuse you or just throw their ego around, just write this business off. They are only interested in playing slots. They pull the lever until eventually someone walks in and just happens to know the answer and also wants to work there.
I'm going to work on the course plan next month. It will hopefully be more 'hands-on' and like a YC batch.
http://howtomakeanrpg.com/a/how-to-make-an-rpg-release.html

This was posted here earlier this summer. I've been working my way through it and it's really quite well done. Really goes over the whole process soup-to-nuts.
Could you give examples of such companies that have stood out?
On Receiving and Truly Hearing Radical Candor
What does this have to do with the case in the article?
Native Washingtonian.

We're also full.
Self promotion, but I recently wrote an iOS app that allows you to download YouTube videos for offline use and play them in the background. Unfortunately not on the App Store, but you can still put it on your device through Xcode.

Link:
https://github.com/MrAdamBoyd/DownTube
One of them I think is to establish the standard for true international wireless transfers protocol since they don't really exist today[1]. This makes a huge difference when it comes to something like remittance and would allow for a whole new kind of international companies and collaboration to be built.

[1] http://paymentsviews.com/2014/05/15/there-is-no-such-thing-a...
They are read by some alumni and YC staff. We try hard to keep things confidential but the group of readers is large--I wouldn't put nuclear launch codes in them, just because of the risk of accidental breach.
For what purpose is dynamic typing ever useful except "it’s faster to develop"?

With a proper type system (see: Haskell, Scala) and parametrized types, you can do everything that’s reasonable in a dynamically typed language, too.
Who makes the AI?
New ARM IP Launched: CMN-600 Interconnect for 128 Cores and DMC-620
If you measure income as change in net worth minus expenditures, it could go below zero. That might not be an appropriate definition in all cases, but, for example if you incur debts without acquiring an offsetting benefit (maybe by being compelled to pay damages to someone for something you did that you didn't derive much or any value from, like causing an accident?), it might be reasonable to say that you had negative income. Or maybe due to capital losses -- you own something that gets stolen or destroyed or damaged, or whose market value falls a lot.

(That doesn't mean that it will follow a Gaussian distribution, just that it could be defined in a way where it makes sense that it can sometimes be negative.)
I'd be very interested! This is a field that I recently became extremely interested in and even met up with my lawyer earlier today to discuss a bulk FOIA research project. I left a comment on your blog with contact info if you're interested in talking. :)
A recent one that is top of mind because Chad just spoke at Startup School is Rigetti Quantum Computing. He had nothing but an idea when YC funded him in Summer 2014, and now is one of the leading QC companies in the world.
Haha, yes, but with a little bit more of the pipeline automated. I would love to start with a messy stack of dishes on one end of a table, have the automation to sort out trash, then separate and rack silverware, dishes, cups etc into a 'dishwasher', then unrack it into a nice organized output area (where other staff could just pull clean items out of).
The result you got isn't actually what you'd get with proper cons cells. With real conses, you wouldn't get a list, you'd get an improper list, or a pair: i.e:

Scheme:

(define x (cons 'a (cons 'b '())))
;> (a b)
(define y (cons 'a 'b))
;> (a . b)
(cdr x)
;> (b)
(cdr y)
;> b
(eq x y)
;> #f

If clojure doesn't behave like that, that it's not using real conses.

As for why a uniform cell structure is preferable, it's a preference thing, but I feel it makes dealing with lists and other cons-based structure (mostly lists, but you get the occaisional alist or plist or tree in there too) much nicer.
But in this case, that was already the alternative. The parents had four miscarriages and two children die as infants. They probably weren't going to be worse off if the procedure failed.
No, that's fine.

If you haven't spent significant time together in person, that's a red flag for us, as we've found those teams often (usually, even) fall apart.
> it's also my prerogative to advocate for what I believe to be a better allocation of resources.

Honest question, not trying to be rude: what makes you believe you have a better idea of what a good allocation of resources (and Elon Musk's / SpaceX's skills) would be?

If you're so smart and good at allocating resources, what prevents you from pursuing that other project instead of demanding from other people to follow your lead?
We can't solve simplest problems on Earth (like re-capturing CO2 for example)

But we can. There are these nanomachines that take in CO2, store the C, and release the O2 (on a simplistic level)... called trees. For the average American, $15/person/year will plant enough trees to offset all the CO2 released into the atmosphere. http://shindyapin.tumblr.com/post/141034501197/climate-chang...
Your shit is greyed out so I guess it's working pretty well.