skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The valuation isn't very good when you consider the option pool. It might not be completely awful though, depending on your background and means.

I agree with rms that it should be structured as convertible debt.

Push back hard on the board. 10% isn't enough for them to get that much power, and giving that away can make your life very difficult later on.

Generally, rights for the next round are pro-rata. That means the angel has the rights to put in enough money at the new valuation to maintain their position. It's rare to give rights to an angel to increase their percentage that much.
http://dyndns.org
I love this site but the solution you are suggesting are:

a) have people constantly moderate the new threads to see vote upcoming articles
b) be a yc company so the voting-ring is then approved by you
c) have you be the sole decider of what's valuable content for the readers?
d) just eat it?

thoughts?
In chapter 2:

"Some programmers follow a convention of prefixing and postfixing special variable names with asterisks, like temp-special. This is called the earmuff convention. For reasons explained in section 3.7, Duality of Syntax, this book does not use earmuffs so our special variable declarations look like this:

(defvar temp-special)"

Double-U Tee Eff!! I challenge you to find 5 serious lispers that don't use the convention and/or justify going against said convention convincingly.

edit: In chapter 3:

"So lexical and dynamic variables are actually completely different, deservedly distinct concepts that just happen to share the same syntax in COMMON LISP code. Why on earth would we want this so-called duality of syntax?"

What?! You're asking why we want this duality of syntax just after saying it's because they're completely different concepts that just happen to have the same syntax... (edit: oh, I misread that. You confused me because you said there was a duality of syntax when you probably meant there's a duality of semantics (edit: wait, I reread it a couple times and I think I may not have misread it after all. It simply doesn't seem to make any sense.))

And you seem to imply using the stars convention reduces the power of macros, while this is absolutely not the case.

"A traditional convention in COMMON LISP code is to prefix and postfix the names of special variables with asterisk characters. For example, we might've chosen to name our temp-special variable temp-special. Since this convention is almost like having another namespace for dynamic variables, diminishing their duality with lexical variables, this book does not follow it exactly."

Diminishing duality? That's diminishing unity and increasing duality. The stars convention establishes a duality of syntax where there is a duality of semantics and that's a good thing. Removing the stars only makes things more confusing because you're conflating two, in your words, "actually completely different" concepts.

* (function '(lambda (x) (+ 1 x)))

That looks wrong... Let's see what my REPL thinks:

Execution of a form compiled with errors.
Form:
#''(LAMBDA (X) (+ 1 X))
Compile-time error:
'(LAMBDA (X) (+ 1 X)) is not a legal function name.
[Condition of type SB-INT:COMPILED-PROGRAM-ERROR]

I thought so.

"Which is a lesser fashion crime: lexical variables with asterisks or special variables without? I tend to think the less verbose of the two."

Why not lexical variables without asterisks and dynamic variables with them, then? Lexical scope is used pretty much everywhere while special scope is used seldom in comparison (it's even hidden in expansions of "with-" style macros a lot).
runing a business. That why google buy the company
Well, obviously the US is next, since we're the current titan. The only alternative is that the US will remain predominant forever.

The question that matters is whether the US will lose its position in the immediate future. What hosed past commercial powers was that rivals did the most important thing they did better. The most important thing the US does is invent new technology, and I don't see any signs yet of anyone doing that a lot better.
What's up with the VIP code on the TOC page?

http://letoverlambda.com/index.cl/toc
You're right about the map function, it is slightly more efficient in this case. But if you're multiplying 2 numbers together 10 times instead of 5, is it really significantly more efficient to use map? I suppose map/filter vs. list comprehensions/generator functions is really a matter of personal taste.

And not to start a flame war, but the code:

numbers = [1,10,100,1000,10000]
if [number for number in numbers if number < 10]:
print 'Success'
# Output: 'Success!'

actually does say that it's less efficient... granted it's buried in a paragraph so it's maybe not too obvious ; )... if you're using Genshi or something similar though you need to be able to toss crazy things in one line sometimes.

And 'Test is False' doesn't have to evaluate to True... if it is false, it is still the value returned by the entire expression. Not the actual value 'False'. I actually disagree with your example

s = foo and "word: "+foo or ""

I tried it and "" got assigned to s...

And dude, the string in substring syntax is awesome!
It's because voting rings don't work that you like the site. If anyone could game their way to the top spot by asking their friends to upvote stuff (and believe me, people constantly try), News.YC wouldn't be worth reading.

The articles about YC-funded companies don't get voted up because of voting rings. (Forgive me if I don't explain the statistical differences by which I can tell this.) They get upvoted because practically every YC founder reads this site, and they're interested in news about their friends. At worst it's a bias in the composition of the audience, not people consciously gaming the system.
> Victimization in prison isn't part of the state's intent or action.

Let's assume for the moment that this statement is true.

That does not in any way absolve the state from moral accountability when it sends people there. Since prisons, in reality, are set up in such a way that brutal violence is a given, it is neither here nor there what they wish it were like. You sentence people to the prisons you have, not the ones you wish you had.

Imagine you have a time-out room for misbehaving children, which has been infested with human-eating alligators. "It's an unfortunate consequence of your running in the halls that you will be devoured by alligators, but it's not my intent or action. I just mean for you to have a 15-minute time out, and it's not my responsibility if my putting you there -- by force, into what I intend to be a nice quiet room -- is actually a death sentence."
I don't know, but my guess would be that he has (or had) the whole thing online, and has given some people passwords to view it all.
> 2. Because that kind of stuff is banned, the average digg/reddit reader, if he comes across News.YC, finds the content boring and leaves

I really think keeping it boring is key: not only keeping the stories boring to your average teenager, but keeping the site looking boring, like a book. :)
Or hundreds and thousands of dandy robot suits.
I agree I don't want this turning into Reddit (not that it's bad but it's now all politics & images focused) but I have a lot of friends in YC, my start-up is with a YC person (chris smoak) and non-YC start-up friends as well vote for my articles.

I think bottom line is that if the YC community doesn't like the articles<br />
a) they won't click or read it <br />
b) they won't vote additionally after I have asked my start-up related friends to vote (not spam in the least bit)<br />

so is the solution that i only ask my yc friends to vote for my articles?
Good answer. I like your interpretations of the advice. I also like the brain/mind analogy.

Unfortunately I'm not a 24 watcher so can't relate to Jack Bauer (yet); maybe I'll watch an episode or two now :)
This semantic inquiry is pretty trivial. They mean different things and carry different degrees of importance to different people. Who cares if they're the same or not? When reading advice, you shouldn't take the words literally, but rather come up with your own interpretation. My interpretation of this type of advice boils down to: 'When faced with a decision, think about it [your emotions and instincts come into play here] and do what you feel is right.'

P.S. As an aside: My personal interpretation paints them as fairly distinct, though related, things: Instinct tells you what you should do, Emotion tells you how you feel. They sometimes feed one another (i.e. You see a pretty girl and emotionally fall head over heels which makes your instinct tells you to do something before this angel walks out of your life forever) and sometimes are in conflict with one another (i.e. Your instinct tells you to sell your company because you've subconsciously crunched the numbers and outcomes and decided it's for the best, but you can't emotionally bear the thought of living another day without the baby you've worked so hard on).
well backwards notationa nd parenthesis is not how we normally write and talk and it is a turnoff for a lot of people.

i dont personally have a problem with it but id prefer the same language with normal syntax/notation.
How many friends did you have vote? If you get enough friends to make your story an instant #1, there is a problem. The story needs to float to the top on its own merit for it to be considered legitimate. If your content was great, things would be different, but this story is incredibly mediocre, especially compared to the current top stories. In some parts it is also wrong or at least incomplete, Hi5 became successful by very aggressively asking for gmail/hotmail/yahoo passwords and spamming everyone in the address book to join Hi5, MySpace had a pay dating site where they told everyone "use MySpace," etc.

Also, reddit, unlike digg, has yet to be taken over by voting rings which is one reason it is so much better than digg. If you suspect otherwise, please email me...
Really, a VC fund is going to put a partner on your board for a $25k investment? Is this a real VC fund, meaning they have at least tens of millions in outside investors' money?

I've never heard of a true VC fund doing anything like that before. Usually VCs look upon seed rounds (and for them a seed round means $100k minimum) as just a way to generate series A deal flow. So they don't care about the valuation or the board composition. At most they ask for right of first refusal on future rounds over a certain threshold. So it's weird that they seem to be trying to push so hard about such things so early.

I suppose I'd take the deal if it were a super-duper fund like Sequoia or KP. For most startups it would be worth giving them 10% of your co for nothing just to brag that you had them as investors. On the other hand, they'd never do something like this. And the fact that anyone is is ipso facto evidence that they're a bush league firm.

Obviously you can't mention the name here, but if you want to send me an email (my username at ycombinator) I'll talk to you about it privately. I have to deal a lot with VCs, so wildly novel types of VC behavior are very interesting to me.
0.10 | 0.X What's in a version name?
I am writing software that is currently at a 0.9.1 version number with the format of <Major release>.<release>.<bug-fix>.

I increment the release number when new features are added. The next release, although I am getting close to a 1.0 would be labeled 0.10 with that rationale. Personally I'm not big on the label 0.10 because 0.10 and 0.1 look very similar although there are 9 releases in between them. I wouldn't want someone that is scanning text quickly to think, oh it's the first release, when in fact it is the tenth.

I have been considering releasing the tenth release as 0.X to alleviate this problem but this seems quite unconventional.

Thoughts?
People like those from the singularity mailing list are the most likely to be working on projects that approach the singularity.
It's an absolutely awful and egregious to the point of malicious deal.

For a tiny investment, you are getting an overblown option pool, a 25% ROFR on your next round, and getting an investor leaning board.

When negotiating financing, you have to negotiate. In fact, not negotiating is a sure way of signaling that you don't know what you are doing. What you really want to do is to let the market price it out - you want a minimum of 2-3 term sheets to get a fair market value for it.

An actual, decent VC would just give you $25K as a grant.
Compare to these VC seed programs with about the same dollar amounts:

http://www.hcp.com/summer/,
http://www.lightspeedvp.com/summergrants.aspx
You know if you create an account on the site you can edit the article, like a wiki.
Seriously? Trolling for service invites on HN? How is this not dead?
Again, not knowing your whole business model.

But, supporting software you created is much different than supporting all the headaches/overhead of a mail server. If you want to do this, I would look at a formal resale agreement with a place like Mailstreet (not I heartily do NOT recommend them, but their name popped (haha, get it, popped...) into my head as an example).

Use the benefit of THEIR support department and setup instructions when possible. You could also run your own mail server (what I do/did), then you have full control of uptime/downtime, version upgrades, etc.

But still, I don't think this alone is much of a business you want to be in.
rms. I IMed about ~10 of them thinking that 50% would actually upvote. I do agree that getting it on the homepage and letting the community decide is good. I will try to not have my "ring" be so helpful. rms, vote for me:P
"OLPC XO Laptop 2.0 Has Dual Touchscreens, Looks Amazing and Future-y"
25K is what you get for about 1/3 a year of full time employment. Why not work weekends for 4 months?
You don't need to ask anyone to vote for your articles. If your friends are News.YC users and like your articles, they'll vote for them anyway.

I wouldn't advise asking even News.YC reading friends to upvote your stories because it is, statistically, flamingly obvious when people do that, and sites that do it repeatedly eventually get banned.
"yo let me out i give you all you want(jessica alba+10million$+etc) k thanks."

this is like one of those send me 20000$ and ill tell you how to make a million dollars and the answer is tell 50 people to send you 20000$ and you will tell them how to make a million dollars.

i guess the singularity issue is about you being religious or not.

if there is no God, why shouldnt we be able to create a life?
we come from dumb stuff and the brain supposedly is just an advanced computer.

what are the philospohical and mathematical limitations on AI/creating a more clever being?

on a related but slightly different matter:
i think i ahve read something about the matrix that it takes more atoms to simulate an atom so therefore a simulation can never be of the whole universe.
correct?
i think you missed what he was trying to say :)
I know Lightspeed and Highland are VCs that have incubator programs, but neither of them takes any equity for it.
"True, but can they pick up ruby quickly, and rails (rails is non trivial these days), and rspec, and rake, etc."

2 Weeks for Ruby & Rails. 1 to 2 weeks for Rspec & rake... especially if you're learning using Peepcode videos and a real project. Those numbers are from personal experience. Your learning curve may vary.
Did you mean 100M users per box?
Google Says It Will Defend Competitive Rationale of a Yahoo Deal
No ads on my Zune, please: MS to put ads on Zune
Set the eventual retail price over/under at $150?

Just like the OLPC XO would have been a success at $100, this will be a stunning success at $75 (or $100) but I just can't see them getting there. I'm glad they're working on cheap touch screens though; I'm really looking forward to the XO screen technology trickling down to the (Bourgeoisie) masses.
i understand the amount might be a big deal for u at this time. However, if you guys think long term. Its not a big deal. Since the amount is not big, i would rather raise the money from friends and family than going to VC Or ask for more money instead of $25,000.

Cheers,
Omfut
Microsoft Cashback Google-Killer Generates NO Revenue For Microsoft
Title Capitalization in JavaScript
"using map allows you to break at commas instead of embedding backslashes in your code"

I usually break list comprehensions before the 'for', and then again before the 'if' if they still need it. No backslashes. Implicit line continuation works as well within list comprehensions as it does in function calls.

"if [number for number in numbers if number < 10]:"

I would've used:

if any(number < 10 for number in numbers):

Or alternatively

if any(itertools.imap(lambda x: x < 10, numbers)):

'any' short circuits its evaluation if it finds a true item , and the generator expression doesn't need to be evaluated fully. (I think the first is more readable.)

I also didn't find all that much that was new and interesting in the article, but that's because I went hunting for articles like this when I first started getting into Python seriously, and have been programming full-time in it for 8 months now.
>on a related but slightly different matter: i think i ahve read something about the matrix that it takes more atoms to simulate an atom so therefore a simulation can never be of the whole universe. correct?

Well, you don't have to simulate the entire universe all of the time. If not every atom in the universe is an important observer, you can define the universe around the important observers. If they can't currently observe something at an atomic level, render at a higher level.
How do you make decisions when there are too many unknowns to make a logical conclusion?
Perhaps most AI's won't. But I'd imagine that people will come up with thousands of different AI designs. The AI design that will become most prevalent, by definition, will be the one that is best at reproducing itself. The real question is then, what kind of design will reproduce most successfully? A friendly AI? Or an aggressive one?
why do you want to kill it?
Then what would you do when you got to version 11? You'd have to wait for Apple to figure it out.

You should name it 0.10, like almost every other project would. How do you think the linux kernel got to 2.6.25?
Wow, I can be a part of the best of the best, if only I buy this book?!? Gee whiz, sign me up!
He should make it 0.10, and release a 0.11 the following week, to minimize the period of confusion :p
I usually break list comprehensions before the 'for', and then again before the 'if' if they still need it. No backslashes. Implicit line continuation works as well within list comprehensions as it does in function calls.

Wow, I learned more from this comment than I did from the entire wiki page. I wonder why I never realized this before... I tend to break my list comprehensions the same way, and for some reason I thought the backslashes were necessary.

if any(number < 10 for number in numbers):

Very nice. I need to start using some of these builtins a little more. In particular, I'm pretty sure that I've used

for foo, index in izip(list, count())

before instead of simply using enumerate. any is one that I'll definitely have to keep in mind.
This was referred to as the Stockdale Paradox in Good to Great:

"Confront the brutal facts of your current situation, but never give up hope."

http://www.jimcollins.com/lab/brutalFacts/index.html#
i've never really used phpcake or rails that much or to the point i've noticed, but i find django error msgs confusing and i'm left with information overload. that said, django is awesome and highly problematic to the point it's all i want to work on.

helpful article. guy mentions in comments gui debugger: http://winpdb.org/
0.10

You've got a plan, stick to it.
Upvoted for Ramaze and do try to use the Sequel ORM library. It's sweeeeeeeeeeeeet. None of that ActiveRecord magic for me.
0.X is so unconventional as to be nutty and confusing.

You could skip to 0.11 or 0.99. Numbers are free.

You could get over your "1.0.0" anxiety and just call it "1.0.0", knowing you'll have a "1.0.1" or "1.1.0" or "2.0.0" soon enough. Numbers are free and expectations of polish (especially if it's freely-available and net-related) in early releases are lower than ever.
I love CodeIgniter but it seems development for it is quite slow (I don't know about now) which is the reason why I decided to fork it in the first place. Still I find the code quite elegant except for it's hackish workaround found in the core engine.
Pick an option that seems reasonable given the information you have, run with it, and be prepared to change your mind as new information becomes available.
"Welcome to the dystopian nightmare of round the clock policing and advertising, that you are only willing to accept because you have no taste, vision or standards, and you desparetly cling to the past, that we euphimistically call the social."

Has a nice ring to it.
Grand Theft Auto IV Makes $600m. Lead Actor Makes $100k! Ridiculous...
After 0.10 comes 0.11. Similarly, after FreeBSD 4.10 came FreeBSD 4.11 -- which was unofficially called the "spinal tap" release.
Google Open Source Blog: Develop with Git on a Google Code Project
What makes Ruby, Python and Perl more secure than PHP?

The fact that those languages don't have "magic_quotes" or "globals_on"?
In the Meh-sh
Found the link "Hacker News" LinkedIn Group:
http://www.linkedin.com/groupInvitation?groupID=86116&sh...

Unfortunately I'm 4 karma points away from the required 20.
Ask YC: Is Twitter worth waiting for?
Twitter downtime and glitches continue to plague users, prompting complaints and even a Twit-Out. The majority of users, including many power tweeters, are remaining loyal to Twitter because of the large audience and diverse conversations. Leaving twitter is leaving the cool crowd.
Rather than complain on Twitter during the few functional windows of time or chatter in the FriendFeed silo, maybe the Twitterverse should migrate to greener pastures. What is more important - the conversation or the platform for the conversation?
This guy is completely delusional... people would play the game if my little sister did the voice overs.
"Your ever seen a zune?" "Ha either have I"

I'm sure we won't see the end of this zune.
Not news. I would've been utterly shocked to hear that Microsoft was making money by undercutting Google.
You're right about the map function, it is slightly more efficient in this case. But if you're multiplying 2 numbers together 10 times instead of 5, is it really significantly more efficient to use map? I suppose map/filter vs. list comprehensions/generator functions is really a matter of personal taste.

I don't understand what you mean here. No matter how many numbers you're multiplying, the result is that you're doing twice as many as necessary. Now, with list comprehensions (and a generator for efficiency), it could have been written

squares_under_10 = [sq for sq in (n*n for n in numbers)
if sq < 10]

That is the best of both worlds if you are against the use of map and filter.

And 'Test is False' doesn't have to evaluate to True... if it is false, it is still the value returned by the entire expression. Not the actual value 'False'. I actually disagree with your example

Hmm... very strange, you are absolutely right. I'm almost positive I've been bitten by a bug related to and... or before. It must have been something else, although I'm sure it wasn't the case where the "Test is True" value evaluated to False. Very weird...

And dude, the string in substring syntax is awesome!

I admit that is awesome, I just couldn't remember the last time I'd used index or find, anyways. I'll certainly be using it the next time the opportunity presents itself, though.
I suspect that the tricks used include getting the Gatekeeper to implicitly accept the exercise as a roleplay and working on their sense of fair play to require them to acquiesce to arguments about the friendliness of the AI.

The human sense of "fair play" can be abused in many ways.