skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
6% is a bargain, IMHO. Obviously, if it weren't, YC wouldn't be so popular.

Those who argue that YC is expensive, are saying it's not worth the upfront capital of ~$6,000. They're right - it's not. $6,000 is easy to come by.

However it's the rest of the package that's so valuable - the press / support / mentorship / etc. Heck, I'd give YC 6% AND $6,000 for a chance to be part of that...
I experimented with this choosing my tag, 'bootload'. When I first started the tag on bootload was dominated by information about bootloaders. [0] Now the namespace is 'polluted' somewhat [1] with my crappy blogposts.

So what's happening here? Search is stumbling when it has to differente the meaning between an object and a person [2] using a tag or handle. Winer gives other examples where 'Manila' a city of almost ten and a half million [3] people bumped by the popularity or RSS.

Maybe Spock is on to something?

Reference
[0] Process that starts operating systems, starting up by pulling up the bootlaces.

[1] This idea can be used for any keyword. Find a keyword that does not have much of a hit on google and use that keyword in all content you generate.

[2] Or better put, stumbling on the difference between, person and not-person.

[3] A quick search on google ~ http://www.google.com/search?q=population+of+manila
Zillow Becomes Illegal in Arizona
Did anyone use Groovy on Grails?
'... they dont pay a cent to do this. They will be selected to participate based on merit alone. ...'

But the companies/people demonstrating don't have to pay. Dave Winer is behind this and had a swipe at the companies asking for cash to slot in talks. [0]

But he also had another idea. It's called an 'Un-Conference' [1] and goes something like this ... 'The sum of the expertise of the people in the audience is greater than the sum of expertise of the people on stage'. [2] So swap the panel for audience members and maybe even pay people to listen. [3]

As for me most of the time I wait until ITConversations or the numerous other outlets release the talk to audio.

Reference

[0] Dave Winer, 'Tuesday, February 14, 2006, OReilly Sponsor's prospectus'

http://www.scripting.com/2006/02/14.html#When:6:30:11PM

[1] Dave Winer, '5th, March 2006, What is an unconference?'

http://scripting.wordpress.com/2006/03/05/what-is-an-unconference/

[2] Observing that if you swapped parts of the audience in the stage for the panel it would be smarter (but not necessarily better to listen to).

[3] Dave Winer, 'Disintermediate, Commenting on Jeff Jarvis suggestions for audience to be paid to listen.'

http://www.scripting.com/2006/02/15.html#disintermediate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kratom

Kratom is a great stimulant. If you take too much, you don't get jittery, you just get really happy.
Has anyone heard of these guys (Hakano) before?
Try limiting your naps to 20 minutes. This prevents you from entering the deep phases of the sleep cycle which is what causes you to be drowsy.

If you are really hardcore you can go all out and convert to the Uberman polyphasic sleep cycle. 6 20 min naps, every 4 hours apart. Once adapted you can code for 22 hours a day its awesome...
I disagree with PG. Not everyone is connected to the internet all the time. My application (juwo) is meant to work offline. I can now see that PG may have been biased against my YC application.
I just stumbled upon a link to their site when checking out Joyent. Side question: has anyone used Joyent before?
Writing numbers (23 or Twenty Three)?
How to make a difference
Are you doing a true uberman schedule? How's that working for you?
I think the bottom line is that the competition is envious - I don't know who could provide the kind of network that YC provides. There is also probably the fear that YC represents the new way to fund startups "sucking" all the talent from the old way. Fear and Envy are a powerful combination and a great motivator for lashing out with the hope that the lashing will create some dent in YC. But the effort on the part of the competition will come to no avail - in fact you could argue it is a sign of how successful YC is becoming.
They're not judging the candidate, they're judging the application. The candidate might be outstanding but if the application does not convey this then the committee won't know.

With any application the you write take a step back, leave it for a few days and then look at it as if it was writen by someone else. You'll quickly see where your assumptions lie and what you've missed.
Reddit: Language vs. Platform
Why Geeks Should Study Acting
Paul Buchheit: And there it is. Microsoft complains about Google being anti-competitive.
Django is goofy to install sometimes. Strange. Then again TurboGears with its n+ components can be tricky.

I might actually give Rails a try on my next short consulting gig. All these YCers can't all be wrong.
PG is just pointing out a general fact, which is well known to those who are constantly being judged. It doesn't change whether PG wrote this as a response to the post, or as a general advice. If you doubt that, ask anybody in the profession where being judged is in its nature (I sometimes audition as an actor so I think I know that business a bit.)

Your mentioning about hidden bias is somewhat true, except that it's not really hidden, but just implicit---in most of the judgement there are always some implicit criteria the choosers have, and good players know that. Assuming otherwise is too naive.

About appealing: As far as you're not in the few of the obvious top group or in the obvious fall-behind groups in terms of the primary factors, any arbitrary secondary factors can put you in either side. Those factors are so random and it's waste of time to appeal---sure, you may have some chance of the judgements reversed, but it is much wiser to spend that time to make yourself excel in the primary factors, so that next time such randomness will affect less to the outcome, because if you like to live a life taking challenges, you will be constantly judged, and you won't have time to deal with those randomness.
Yes, committees can do no wrong!!
Coghead: Visually create web apps online
To cure HIV: Start with some adult stem cells from the HIV patient to be treated, specifically the stem cells that produce T cells. We introduce the 32 base pair deletion in the CCR5 gene and grow the cells in culture. These can then be "transplanted" back into the patient. These transplanted stem cells will create HIV immune T cells. Once there are enough immune T cells, the patient will probably still have HIV, but it will not develop into AIDS. There will be no chance of rejection since they are the patient's own cells. Furthermore, since the body does produce antibodies to HIV, these modified T cells may even be able to fight off the HIV.

To test this, we would get a mouse line, which are genetically very similar to each other from inbreeding so we won't have to worry about rejection of the transplants, and introduce the human CCR5 receptor into them. This, in theory, will allow the mice to be infected with HIV since HIV attaches to the CCR 5 receptor to enter and infect the cell. If this works, we can then try the technique of taking some of their stem cells, introducing the mutation, transplanting them back in, and see if their T cell count increases or if the levels of HIV decrease. It could also be used as a preventative therapy, which we can also easily test on the mice.
One specific idea, pre-approved for Y Combinator funding
Caffeine actually makes me sleepy. So I just listen to happy electronica music or take a nap ;)
I agree that Microsoft is dead. The biggest reason is simply that Bill Gates is leaving.
Right now I have a core sleep of about 4hrs each night. I had to come off uberman when I started working as I cant really take naps at the office except for lunch. All the more reason to quit and found a startup right?

If you're really interested you should try to find a copy of Why We Nap by R. Broughton. There's a lot of confusion and general BS on the net about Polyphaic sleep. This book takes a scientific approach. The problem is its no longer in print so you might try a university library...

As far as how it works, I love it. Being awake for so much of the day is a huge plus, but the biggest improvement is actually in how you feel. Much sharper, better concentration, mood, etc. That is if you can make it past the adjustment period and you can stay on schedule. The big downside is that its still socially a "weird" thing. People will look at you crazy when you try to explain it...
Wouldn't this (supposedly) be the iPhone?
Where did I say that? All I said was that you can make mistakes in borderline cases at little cost.
Cool feature of NYT online I just discovered: If you double click a word, it'll define it for you in a pop up window.
The iPhone interface is certainly revolutionary but there's room for another player in the mobile GUI marketplace. I'm not sure how you could make money with this, but it's something useful that users want, so YC would say you can figure out how to make money with it later. Probably by licensing the interface to the major cell phone companies, they're going to want to catch up to the iPhone.
Yesterday afternoon. I was in the middle of turning that last Stanford talk into an essay. This was one of the points. During the talk I said this was important enough to be a separate essay, so I wrote one.
It could be bigger than that. I think it'd be huge if someone came up with some phone interface that didn't suck that could be found on the more common, more affordable handsets.
If you can point out a specific muddle I can fix, let me know.
I'd consider doing it but the unknown long term health effects really scare me. I did a biphasic sleep schedule when I was working an 8-4 last year. I would sleep for 3-4 hours before work, then take a "nap" for 4-5 hours after work. About once a week I would go to bed at 5PM and accidentally sleep through the night.
Modafinal is a drug that really intrigues me. Many militaries have switched to it from amphetamine. It's not really stimulating, but it eliminates any tiredness you might have. The perfect drug for a mandatory all-nighter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modafinil
Conde Nast Launches Portfolio.com, GigaOM Launches Found+Read
I think the challenge here is not to match the iPhone's interface, since that would require matching the iPhone's hardware.

What would be better is a plug-in-able OS that would make the RAZR's menus tolerable (and maybe could be used on phones with even worse hardware).
Do you need more than 15 minutes to tell your company's story? If so, you're grossly wasting time.
Actually I think the reason people attack us is cleverer than that. We've gotten a lot of press lately. Anyone who can establish himself as the canonical YC critic can thereby use the both-sides-of-the-story reflex of reporters to get mentioned in any story that mentions us.

Ustream is doing this to Justin.TV right now. They have nothing; just off-the-shelf hardware hooked up to a streaming service. If they'd launched by themselves, no one would have cared. They've achieved what prominence they have entirely by getting themselves mentioned in articles about Justin.TV. They matter more as the antiJustin than in their own right.
I love the look and feel of the iPhone UI but there are some niggles. The phones main 'dashboard'/start screen wont scale. Every app is an icon on a grid. As soon as you have more applications than screen space there are going to be problems. It's interesting to see that apple also has a poor application launcher UI (fidner) on mac os x too. I wonder if someone will be foolish enough to create a quicksilver equivalent for the iphone?
I was talking with one of the co-creators of Django the other day and even he cant get it to install!
How long do Y-Comb startups live before getting acquired or dissolving?
off topic, but the first thing that struck me was that "hakano" means "of cemeteries" in japanese.
The RAZR is quite locked down. I tried to create a better UI for it [this was several years ago when I had a RAZR. worst mobile UI ever] but the problem is that the only way in is to create a java app that has to be launched by the user. This java app is hidden deep inside the menu system your trying to fix.

Nokia S60's on the other hand are a dream to customise. I'm working on a new application launcher for my E61 right now and the difference is stagering. Being able to run python on your phone rather than java or C++ makes development tolerable. Hopefully nokias widgets coming this year will allow access to phone APIs from JS/CSS/HTML, then mobile will be as easy as web apps.
I have received many of of emails complaining about the insensitivity of the name "RunFatBoy.net".

Good or bad, RunFatBoy has enough shock value to make people take notice. And if I can make them take notice, hopefully with a sincere product, I can win them over.
Check out TAT[0], they make incredible looking mobile UIs. Also check out the concepts from the Nokia design team[1].

[0] http://www.tat.se/conceptlab/

[1] http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=NokiaDesign

(Just realised I'm posting far too much in this story. Mobile UI is a great passion of mine. I think it's been downhill ever since the Nokia 3310. If any one else is passionate about improving the mobile user experience then please contact me at mobilaunch@danshub.com, I wish to pursue a startup in this area soon)
The New Music Industry (A Band's View)
Thanks for pointing that out. I guess the competing VC did use his moment to advertise his counter offer while bashing YC at the same time. Media savvy is probably not a bad thing to master, especially if you actually have a product with really good value. Your MS article is definitely an example of amazing media savvy.
"There will be a few stars who clearly should make the team, and many players who clearly shouldn't. The only place your judgement makes a difference is in the borderline cases."

Jason13 is saying that there are plenty of cases where the "stars" often appear mediocre until they hit stardom, at which point it's too late to bid for their talent. It certainly makes a difference whether your team includes the stars or not, and since they often won't be obvious at the initial selection...
Most that die, die in less than a year. We don't have enough data yet to say what happens to the ones that don't.
Uh-oh, maybe they should be avoided then? :P
In WFP2007 the languages/platforms used, roughly in order of popularity) were:

Ruby on Rails

PHP

Java

Perl

That's not all of the technologies used, but I think that's a pretty good representation of the mix in order of popularity (there might be a Python group in there, too, but I can't think of who). One group is writing their own language and framework (Tsumobi, implemented in J2ME), while others are working predominantly in JavaScript (Zenter) or ActionScript (Heysan) for large parts of their product and the backend language is entirely unimportant (I'm betting Zenter probably only has a couple thousand lines of server-side code, versus tens of thousands of lines of JavaScript). Actually, nearly everyone is doing some of their work in JavaScript, and it's the one language that I know I can ask any of the developers in the program questions about.
Are you affected by food comas?
Logo is misleading. Wedding rings are traditionally plain gold bands. Engagement rings are the ones with the rock.
Chai is good. If you have free time it's fun to experiment with making your own. SpecialTeas.com has a variety of cheap black teas that work well, and the other decent site is uptontea.com, which is actually based just outside Boston. Then the rest of the ingredients you can get from the supermarket. There are a bunch of decent recipes online; I usually use the one from the rec.food.drink.tea FAQ
Adobe Launches Media Player to Feed Apollo Ecosystem
Translation From PR-Speak to English of DHH's Response to Alex Payne's Interview [dive into mark]
I agree with everything in this post. Also, stage acting gives you something very other things do--working together, face to face, with other people on a common problem. Helping each other, giving advice, and also being responsible for your own performance. What other activity does this?
This curiously reminds of "You and Your Research" posted here yesterday: http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html

The Nobel Prize committee, for instance, has to pick a handful prizewinners out of hundreds of first-class scientists. The ones that don't get picked are still first-class, but if the "Nobel Prize Effect" holds true, the ones that do receive the prize are the ones who don't sustain first-class work.

Of course this works differently for a sports team, because the feedback of your efforts are more or less immediate (from game winnings). But for things like startups then, if we really digest both these articles, I'd say the Nobel Prize analogy holds better. The ones who experience failure, or a lack of success, and obstinately jab at their problems, will still make a big kill. And the rejects are always far more numerous. For every Nobelist, there are probably a thousand others doing comparable work.

I once met a scientist who was considered Nobel-worthy. He came off mostly as a grumpy old man though, because he kept lamenting how his classmate got one but he didn't. If I was half as intelligent as him I would be doing cutting edge research as a hobby! Perhaps the world is better now that he didn't get the prize.
This is awesome and very close to our philosophy.

-Zaid
This is why I used picking an athletic team as an example. This is true with athletes, and I didn't want to blur together ordinary bad judgement with the specific kind of harmless miss that happens near the cutoff point.
Is an official "launch" necessary to get popular bloggers to write about your startup?
The ease with which libraries can be used appears to be the only metric that matters in high level languages.
With web apps, concepts such as "launch" and "beta" are pretty nebulous. Web apps are being improved and changed all the time and it's not clear when you might consider something a "launch" and/or a "beta".

On a related note, what does it mean for a startup to have "failed"? What if the founders make major changes and pursue a different direction? Is that considered a failure? How do you separate one startup attempt from another? Is it even important to do so?

It seems strange that bloggers like to label things like this when it does not even appear necessary or easy.
Great post. The point of my post is that I don't think there are two specific categories of judgement, where in one you appeal, and in the other, you don't. Reversing a rejection to 1 or 2 or 3 extra colleges, since you already paid the application fee, could be worth it. That's just one example. I'm not disagreeing with Paul' overall message, I just think the examples are very bad. I think sending a letter of appeal could be worth it in a lot of cases if the trade-off or risk-reward is worth it.
I'm sorry if I misunderstood the post you originally made.
Check out OpenMoko http://openmoko.com/press/index.html. I think most phone companies have a vested interest in keeping their phones closed but OpenMoko might be a good alternative. It might be the 'firefox' of mobile phones.
They fail if they lose almost all their users. They also fail if the company goes bankrupt.

Am I close?
What if there's a major change in direction yet they retain some of their users?
I agree with you people should not feel bad personally when they do not make the "cut". But when people do feel bad about not making the cut...they usually are not thinking "I should have been judged as #499 instead of #501". They are more likely thinking, "I am way better than #500".
Just buy an iPhone
Google Partners With Clear Channel To Serve Audio Ads
Seems like the data is insufficient to talk about them dying, too: You've been going for 1.85 years, so even if the survival rate weren't particularly higher for year-old startups, the ones that have died so far would still be mostly younger than a year.
Really any extracurricular activity is good.

If you want to learn how to manage a billion dollar company, go to business school. If you want to learn how to start a billion dollar company with only 300 bucks in the bank and a seven year old laptop, join the rowing team.
I only ever cringed at the idea of giving away music for free out of the fear that it would be stolen. I don't mean pirated, I mean I was afraid that a company would steal my copyright and claim it as their own.
quick question: where do you go for product reviews?
Twitter, apparently.
Yes.

What's the question? :-)
Microsoft Launches Silverlight, Takes Aim at Adobe's Flash
probably making something cool that people like is necessary to get popular bloggers to write about you
Yes, but that does not answer my question.
Didn't make it to YC? Check this one from TechCrunch.
Is platform selection premature optimisation?
This event is quite different from YC. It's for VC / Preferred Stock funding, not the true seed / Common Stock funding provided by YC. As you can see, the main sponsor is Sequoia.
Ok. this is not about funding, but it sure can get you more funding then you would want. The point is if you have a great product this launch pad could help you get tremendous attention.
The main way to do this involves hacking/cracking firmware. Go onto p2p and you'll find ready made images for a variety of phones. However, it is a painful process for each phone, and phone model type. You're basically working on many to get one, instead of working on one for many.
Fail/succeed is a VERY relative term.

In fact, fail is a very decieving word. I like to classify a lot of my previous sites as failures--but in many ways, considering the small amount of time I put into them and the huge lessons I learned, I can easily consider it a success.

Best way to get blogger coverage is to have something that is focused and highlights your KEY feature. For example, we are a music site so first thing we want to serve is GREAT MUSIC -- NOT social networking features. Now that we have a stable base of users and increasing, we can add more features. If we added those general social networking features at the beginning, it would dilute the main function of the site and be classified as yet another social network.

I suggest you have a launch date. For us it helped us feel internally hyped. It also means you will hold yourself to some quality standard if you do planned releases rather than code as you go. Do few things, do it REALLY well. That is my new mantra - there are so many sites at the moment trying to do so many things at once.
Cnet Reviews: http://reviews.cnet.com/?tag=hd_ts
The fact that startups don't have to pay to demo is a significant improvement over similar events. That pay-to-demo mentality is left over from the overfunded startups of the Bubble.
Argh, this whole common/preferred stock thing is really a side issue. It's not the distinctive feature of seed funding or a significant benefit of YC.
I see. I understood the original article's two categories maps to the case whether those "random factors" exists or not; I'm not familiar with school admission process in US, so I don't know if that particular example is good or bad.
Crap, the question is are they any good? I gotta cut down on the coffee...
You want to fail as quickly as possible. Startups are like dating. If its not going to work out you want it to bomb quickly, so you don't waste your time and so you can move on to the next one...
See my top-level post.
Hosting: Media Temple or Slice
I need cheap hosting that can handle massive trafic if I get lucky. I am tending towards Media Temple. I don't have time for Amazon EC. I am using Rails.

Any suggestions?