skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
On what basis? We have a low pool of female talent (in tech), I have given you a mechanic whereby women would be less disposed to getting involved in startups.

That gives us (statistically poor) evidence of an outcome and a mechanism which could cause it.

Why do you feel there must be some extra discrimination that must be limiting female Y-Combinator applicants with no evidence to back this up? What is the mechanic? How did it not apply for the 7 women who did get in?

btw - I am ignoring the 'not enough women in technology' point since it isn't the topic of the OP and is too large in scope for the time available.
He earned it so he can spend it anyway he wants, but it would probably help a lot more people if he used the money to become an angel investor in a lot of small businesses that would employ a lot of people. Funding startups in bio and space that would advance the technology, but probably wouldn't get funding from other sources.
Ok, yes I agree with that. They gave a rather bad answer to that question. I am surprised that a follow-up question was not asked to bring it back around to the shorting issue.
You should head over to Reddit and see how bad that one statement managed to keep up your perma-trolling. It's pretty intense.
When confronted with uncomfortable truths, most people will resort to the “cultural conditioning” argument. It is fear of the unchangeable that motivates them.
Look, I didn't want to be blunt for obvious reasons, but now that you ask, I will give you a hint.

The reddit crowd is not exactly advertising friendly. What we got was direct human traffic, and 92% of them were blocking javascript. The only bots we saw were the first 10 hits, most of them familiar from our twitter links; shave 2% for the bots, that still leaves you with 90% of the traffic that's worthless.

The reddit staff are aware of this; why else would they thank you for not using a NoScript or ad-block whenever you visit the site with js enabled?
Not to be that guy - but it's capisce for your future uses.
I think Steve has handled this really well (I'm not a massive fan, but happy to acknowledge some smooth PR work going on when I see it).

Taking the line that other phones have the same issue was clever, but in reality it's actually only phones with metal cases that suffer this problem. The plastic cases on other phones (or the "bumper" outer-case in this solution) insulate the user from the circuitry, of course.

What's interesting is that most other top phones (EVO, Nexus One, etc) don't have metal in the cases = no problems. Perhaps Apple needs to realize metal isn't a great material to make un-grounded, wireless, hand-held products from?
They did the same with the wii controllers when they started slipping off and breaking big-screen tvs during a furious game of tennis.

Free rubber Wii controller wrappers.

(... having hard time not calling them controller condoms as I try to describe them)
Its the greater point which you have missed. He is not being some great guy, he is not being awesome, in this drunken state I am free to say that which I wanted to all along, he is a thief pure and simple, it is not HE giving away money, HE is not being ethical, some kind of god we should all adore for being so nice to us paroles.

He stole this money. He charged much more for his products than he clearly, plainly knew he should have. He is not some guy who might have guessed how much he should charge, thus through trial and error trying to find out. He knew full well that he was making obscene amounts of money because he was charging highly for his products.

So my point was not about charities. They are a matter for a different discussion. My point was, why on earth was he able to make BILLIONS, you know an amount that millions of us together need to work our Ass off to gain in perhaps our life time.

Its legitimised theft and nothing else.
I'm really just a mediocre programmer with really good domain knowledge

I know the feeling. I've struggled with this. Here's the conclusion I've come to: you don't need to be a great programmer to make great products.
This is a good quote, from the Q&A session:

You could make a really big smartphone that doesn’t have this problem — some of these guys are making Hummers now — so big you can’t get your hand around it. But no one’s going to buy that.
I completely agree - I studied algorithms because of a fascination with general problem solving and this idea came up frequently with my advisor.

I think problems occur at various levels of granularity and only those of a sufficiently fine grain are actually solvable in any real sense. I see it as breaking down the probability space of answers until a concrete solution emerges.

Extremely high level problems are extremely easy to write down:

1. How can a ship travel faster than the speed of light?

2. How do I live to be 500 years old?

3. How do I make $1M?

These problems have appropriately trivial sets of solutions:

3a. Steal it

3b. Make an advertising supported web app

3c. Make a freemium web app

3d. Make an iphone/ipad app

3e. Work hard and slowly invest

3f. Write a facebook app

and so forth. Then it's a cycle of prepending "How do I" until a feasible solution appears.

3ai. install a virus that steals fractions of pennies from each transaction

3aii. rob a bank

3aiii. blackmail a rich guy

3aiv. atm muggings (some solutions are more feasible than others)

3av. hijack a truck full of computers

3avi. rebill scams from spamming morons

3avii. steal CC #s

and on and on. At this level of granularity, sequential high level plans start to emerge. I realize these are very different than physics problems, but it's the same basic process of breaking down the solution space by writing it down from high level to concrete implementation problems to which insight/intuition can be applied.
Likewise. I was considering getting an Android phone when my contract with AT&T was up, but nobody seems interested in building a good one. No wonder Apple was able to walk in and slap these guys around so effortlessly.
What does this borderline-sexist generalization even mean?

Are you asking rhetorically? It means "the average woman would want more experience in a field before starting a business in that field than the average man would." I'm not saying I agree, but why not address it on whether it's true or not than with borderline-namecalling?
Understand the effect of the constant factor hidden within the Big O. Often a O(n) algorithm is faster than a O(1) algorithm, because n is too small. E.g. arrays vs hashmaps.

Make sure what n is in each case. For example a graph algorithm with O(n^2) and n being the number of nodes may actually be O(n) for n being the graph size (number of edges).
> What's wrong with resisting the idea until we actually know?

Nothing at all.

> But the idea that women were fundamentally incapable of X for biological reasons has been the norm in history, and the history of women has been repeatedly proving that they can, in fact, do X.

No doubt, and I don't intend to assert that - in general - there is any specific thing that women can't do. But the idea that women would be more inclined/able/interested to do certain things, at certain times of their life, and that it might be different from men, for biological reasons, does not strike me as absurd. Look at the whole "biological clock" issue that prompts women to worry more about when they have kids, versus men, who mostly don't have to worry about that issue. (I'm just throwing that out there as an example, not saying that specifically means anything).

Anyway, to reiterate what I said in the other thread, in case anyone might misunderstand where I'm coming from: I am 100% in favor of gender equality and the idea that men and women should have equal access to opportunities and the ability to pursue their dreams.
Great move in acknowledging the problems and in providing free cases. This is good news for Apple and for its customers (I haven't had any reception issues and think it is better than my 3G iPhone, but I plan to get the case)

OTH this is very bad news for accessory companies that manufacture cases for the iPhone. They're going to have huge unsold inventory (unless Apple buys from them and they're able to sell to Apple with reasonable margins)
Strangely enough, despite being thoroughly american, I am given to british spellings and mannerisms in my writing and speech. I think it has something to do with being really into british humor and fiction for most of my life. (british comedies, Terry Pratchett, Dr. Who...)

I constantly get teased by friends about my british spelling s of common words.
Besides the pure randomness, I find it interesting how a lot of the conversations end up taking on a hostile tone.
With those support call numbers about the issue and the return rates for the phone, it doesn't seem to be unavoidable to most people.
This is not an easy issue and this is why advertising exist. (and companies like Google with billions $$ of profit means that advertising is really a huge issue).

Unless your product is making people money, you need a strong argument so that people subscribe to your product. To show you the effect, offer two products: One free and the other cost as little as $9. Post the product (can be any crap) on a forum and watch the downloads/buy.

People are curious about products, but they are very unlikely to pay. They are serious about money.
BUT for a _good reason_, they'll pay. Find that good reason, find the targeted audience, build the reason and they'll come and pay.
> a small performance penalty attached, which mostly static languages like C++ don't have to pay.

Then code the performance sensitive parts in C and link it from the language that is best suited to express the solution.
Could you try Awesome Screeshot https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/alelhddbbhepgpmg... and give me some feedback?

Thanks.
Apple to Offer Free Cases for iPhone 4 Customers
Is it? When you are selling services for enterprises, shouldn't your focus still be on making those businesses happy? I've never been in such a market, so maybe I don't know, but it seems to me like your focus should be similar.
Physics is the problem? So like he walked into the headquarters going "Ok, very funny guys! Who made physics apply to our products again?".
It's about time someone did . I have to say, the Google News improvements recently released were not improvements.
this will make absolutely no difference to him in terms of how he lives his life.

You are conflating the suffering usually accompanied with a a good deed with the deed itself. The fact that he may not take any hit to his lifestyle means nothing. The fact that he is giving away his own money should be enough for you.
This, I think, will be the major downfall of Android. Similar to the destruction of the Windows brand by letting OEMs install trialware, shovelware, etc, the carriers will do anything to make an extra buck. This is why Apple put their foot down and refused to let the carrier touch the software on the phone. And rightly so... In the carrier world we'd all have trial versions of Norton Antivirus that ask for your credit card number when you're trying to make a call...

Watch, it will happen with Android. The carriers have just figured out how to write Android apps, and Google is doing nothing to force them to keep their phones clean.
Also, down vote the comment all you like. I was fully aware you would.

Engage however if you dare :), that is what shows your worth.
Except the loss being your beautiful phone (and the iPhone 4 really is a beautiful piece of phone) is now hidden inside a case. The fashion conscious who are having reception problems won't be happy.

And if you argue these phones need cases to protect them, my 3 year old first gen iPhone that never had a case and still looks great disagrees with that sentiment.
FYI: There is no reason to use url shorteners on hn and many people will not click on them.
I run a B2B company and I think customer focus is effective there as well. I'm in a small niche but with enough competitors to see other approaches. I've seen competitors with what looked like great marketing, great sales efforts, and important looking partnerships.

We don't do any of that. We just try to do our best with each customer and grow from word of mouth. For awhile I thought we were going to get creamed by all these other companies that seemed to have the sales/marketing activities nailed. But in the end we seem to be growing much faster and most of the efforts from other companies to ram their product down people's throats weren't just less effective, they completely failed.

I think in B2B, customer focus leads to repeat business, expanded scope of business with existing customers, and word of mouth. Normally once you have a sale your margins are really good. Keeping customers happy is where your profits are.
There never can be enough Apple related news-stories on HN's front-page!
Trade chat group - Trade Xats, Days, Powers-Safely and Easily
They may have won that battle, but on other fronts things aren't looking so hot:

http://www.infoworld.com/d/mobilize/windows-phone-7-dont-bot...
I spent literally 35 minutes writing my first iPhone app and it's brought in over $4k in sales over the last two years. That works out to ~7k/hour.

Alternatively, I've spent weeks or months on projects for zero revenue.

The moral of the story is: there is only weak correlation (at best) between effort spent and revenue received. Entrepreneurs do not get paid by the hour.
What's interesting is that most other top phones (EVO, Nexus One, etc) don't have metal in the cases = no problems.

Except the Nexus One does have this problem (to the tune of 17 dB of signal loss, according to Anandtech).
Hey, neat. An Apple comment by ergo98 that I agree with.
They did. Google basically says: "Use our OS for free and you don't have to pay for a Windows license; plus it's open source so you can modify it in any way you want."

So we end up with a carrier free for all. Marketroids gone wild, infesting your phone with a million "punch the monkey" and Banzai Buddy adware, spyware, and pop-ups. This is the future of Android.

I have a feeling it will become easier for hackers to root their phones and install a clean OS, so it will be just like buying a cheap Dell computer - wipe it clean, put Ubuntu on it, and you're golden.
That's why I put "open" in quotation marks. I'd like open platforms to succeed, but I think there are some inherent problems - namely at the hardware level any platform will likely tend to get closed off.

The carriers are to blame this time, but we saw a similar thing happen with computer manufacturers putting all sorts of crap on the desktop.
This looks really neat.

I have a few minor suggestions.

1. You might want to have a more prominent link from your blog to Listiki, instead of the small link buried down on the left.

2. The front page of Listiki still has 'Save list' in the 'Things to do' section, despite what it says in your blog about making any content save whenever edited.

3. You might consider either dropping the video from the front page (or at least making it HTML5), in favor of animating a little CSS showing a new list being created.

I really like it though.
I vote for the moonbase.
Your statements appear to be based on the idea that traditional media is telling us what "local and regional government is up to". While this is true in a sense, they leave out what our local and regional governments are actually up to. ESPECIALLY when it comes to actual corrupting influence and the effects. I see independent journalists as more willing to confront that.

Current media gives us certain facts and certain angles, but there is too much left unsaid, untouched, analyzed, due to their corporate policies and the nature of the establishment. The relationship between politics, industry, media corporations and the government has become much too overlapping and incestuous for my comfort.
I wonder how much of the human-responses are used to train the bot. It'd explain a lot of the hostility and randomness... I know I tend to make weird responses to bots, to see what kind of weird responses I can get back.

bot: what are the ingredients to that?
me: Tea. Earl gray. Hot.
"I'm prepared to stick to this diet for 3-4 months or so before giving up."

The goal here is to determine if you have the disease, not to live as if you do. If you have the disease, then proceed to the part where you live as if you have it. :)

This is especially true if it turns out this isn't it! You really only want to pursue one avenue at a time so you don't get interference, and you don't want to tie yourself up for 3 extra months for no gain.
Toyota RAV4 EV with Tesla Powertrain Coming to the U.S. in 2012
Something no one is mentioning or commenting on: When the 3GS launched the majority of buyers walked out of the store with a case in hand. When the iPhone 4 launched 80% of buyers were not able to take a case with them as well (due to their being no third party cases at launch and a shortage of bumpers). If it would have been the opposite, and 80% of customers walked out of the store WITH a case, I'm guessing that "less the 1%" stat about the iPhone 4 vs 3GS would actually flip to the iPhone 4 as having the better ratio of dropped calls.

I'm willing to bet you'll see @Gruber focus on this point heavily, which is a good thing, because it's a great point by Jobs.
cd do/stuff/now works for me on winXP. You can't reference the root of a drive as / (it must be \ or drive letter:\)but all other path separators can be flipped.
I seriously thought that the response would have been to offer a free service where they applied a thin clear layer of insulating material around the phone's edge. If people start believing that "iPhone 4s must be in a case" it greatly diminishes the fashion/status value of the phone.
Saying "people who are motivated to do something will do what's necessary to achieve it" presents a false dichotomy. I learned the magnitude of this mistake from building websites. Adding just one more step to a sign-up process can greatly reduce the number of signupse. That means there are people who were "motivated" to sign up, but gave up. Maybe sexism or lack of role models are like those extra steps.
Considering that people constantly complained about call reception and dropping on the 3GS and the iPhone 4 was heralded as the solution?

Yes, I was shocked. I thought Apple handled this all well, but I was really expecting them to say that the "iPhone 4 still provides better reception than the 3GS". I guess they can't actually make that claim and I still find that a bit funny.
I've never had any trouble rooting my HTC phones. Rooting the Sapphire involved installing an old OTA update that had a local root hole (keep writin' those OSes in C!), exploiting that hole, and overwriting the bootloader with one that doesn't care about signatures. I don’t know the technical details about the Evo 4g, but I just flashed a firmware via the official mechanism, overwrote the bootloader, and then installed the firmware I wanted.

I bet HTC's deal with Google has something to do with the ease of rooting their devices.
Motorola: no e-fuse in DroidX
New iphone hype on the way. Turning HN filter on.
Objectifying tech people as reusable and throw away nerds seems to be a recurrent pattern along non-tech folks trying to create a startup.
I disagree, I think it's a perfectly legitimate request. I know Tereza personally, and I also went through YC, so trust me when I say that she is definitely more talented than the average YC founder. That being said, she would still benefit greatly from having some additional resources, a community, and a push in the right direction, but the resources and community that YC provides don't quite fit her needs.

Don't get me wrong, moving out to silicon valley and eating ramen for three months is a lot of fun. But at the end of the day, YC is still kind of an existential solution to a monetary problem. Which is great, and it's the best thing for a lot of people including me, but there are other people with other needs who are just as capable of being successful given the right environment for them.
The Nexus One is a poor example.

It suffered it's own 3G related issues and also suffers similar signal degradation as the iPhone 4: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/android/thread?tid=0c0...

There was a little bit of buzz surrounding it, but never got quite the same exposure as the iPhone's problems. I'm pretty sure it's 3G problems made the gadget blogs though.
Who does it belong to?
I was surprised to receive $5k in donations this year, while working towards our premium featureset. It has created high hopes for some real recurring revenue in the next 1-2 months when those premium features are released. But yes, the donate button along with a simple paypal payment setup was very easy and the amount of donors continues to surprise me.

Then again, if you count up the hours spent with no revenue, the $$$ per hour is very small.

We were recently surprised to be approached randomly by a second company (first company approached out of the blue as well) asking if we would license our stuff. I guess this is a decent example of an unexpected revenue stream, requiring a slight pivot in revenue model.
Imagine that something is dribbling fuel for a fire into a container. This is your intestines natural healing process. Then, every time you eat, someone tries to catch the fuel on fire. A untreated celiac patient's intestines don't "catch fire" with every meal with gluten in it, because there isn't always even enough fuel to light a fire. Waiting three weeks lets enough metaphorical fuel build up to catch on metaphorical fire. (This metaphor isn't perfect but should demonstrate the point.)

Three weeks is even a bit generous; two is frequently recommended.

If you can go without gluten for three weeks, then freely eat gluten again, it is almost certainly not celiac. Or it's very, very weak, and can't be wrecking your life like savemylife's.
"... but anyone ever leave the software world to do something unrelated?"

Yes, however I don't know how large the number of people who leave programming related jobs is. It would be interesting to know some numbers about this topic.

Anyway, I don't think these numbers really matter for your decision. What matters is how you feel about that. I think the best thing you can do is talking to people who were in a similar situation before deciding what you're going to do next.

Some time ago I posted a quite interesting story here on HN of a game programmer at Electronic Arts who left his job to be a coffee farmer:

http://www.konaearth.com/Life/2006/060430/

Worth taking a look.
And this is exactly why the GPL3 is necessary. Brick my device for modifying my GPL3 firmware? See you in court.