skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I've never heard of those, and the last time I tried to edit an OS X keymap I gave up in frustration, but for HTML, a workaround is to type &#39;
I'm making computers and software for babies.
I would disagree with your sentiment. I think the sense of wonder and endless opportunities put forth by the author perfectly describes a nontechnical user of new web services. While you may say it is naive, I would say it is genuine and pure.

Consider the "Epidemic Watcher" idea. This could be easily implemented with the Google Maps API, tied to a medical news aggregator and partnered with WebMD. Now it may sound silly to watch a particularly nasty strain of the common cold march its way across the Midwest, but the idea becomes vastly more interesting when you start to plot SARS, Avian Flu, West Nile, etc.

Combine News articles and a graphical geological representation of an infections march and I think you might actually have a winner on your hands.

Although, the vast majority of the sites visitors may be hypochondriacs at least you have a good idea who to target your advertising to.
"I am aware I have started a thread that is drifting way off topic and can potentially get very personal"

You sound like a nice guy, I just hate these myths that the US is somehow a hellhole compared to Europe. And you failed to demonstrate why the US is less free than Europe.

"We can then talk about why I pay almost identical income taxes in the USA and in Spain"

USA: top income tax rate and the top corporate tax rate are 35 percent.

Spain: top income tax rate is 45 percent, and the top corporate tax rate is 35 percent.

Now for the jugular (from heritage.org)!

USA: Unemployment: 5.5%, $39,676 per capita

Spain: Unemployment: 11%, GDP per capita $25,047

It would seem that Americans are almost twice as wealthy as Spaniards, pay less income tax, and have more than half the unemployment.
http://www.pylonshq.com
you're not taking into account short-term capital gains tax
That comment is by Ian Clarke, a founder of a bunch of failed startups. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Clarke_%28computer_scientist%29

He's just jealous/jadded/overly-arrogant.

Safely ignore him :)
Is there a web 2.0 porn site yet?
Co-founder status on Revver isn't bad... we can safely ignore him because everyone here understands the value provided by Y Combinator.
It is my understanding that most purchases of companies are not done for cash. They are done for stock. It is in your best interest to help the acquiring company grow because that will only increase the value of your stock more. At the very least, you don't want to screw them over. I also believe a lot of the terms come with so called golden handcuffs, large salaries and more stock bonuses, if you stick around.

Of course, you should help out getting things running smoothly because it's just the right thing to do.
A friend of mine is using Squeak to prototype financial applications requiring rich user interfaces. I'm betting coding the same kinds of interfaces in Java or C++ would take a lot longer. It's something to think about when you're trying to get demonstrations ready on time.
You guys still bother reading the comments on slashdot?
Andrew Chen: Want a Web 2.0 idea with a strong business model? Here's how to go upstream
David vs. Goliath is a nice story, but it's always better to have someone bigger on your side. MSFT has a huge warchest, and therefor a big advantage going against the FSF. I'd look for support for the cause of free software from the likes of GOOG, IBM, and YHOO (assuming the latter isn't bought by MSFT); companies that make a lot of money by not paying the MSFT tax.

Now, could MSFT acquire/bribe all its deep-pocketed natural adversaries in a patent fight? My opinion is not; they don't have _that_ much money, and the GPL limits their ability to engage in cross-licensing maneuvers.

Still, this story makes me want to chant: "Hey, hey, ho, ho, software patents have got to go." I can't think of a damn thing s/w or business process patents have ever contributed to innovation. (Counterexamples welcome.)
It isn't really a significant step. You just plug in another web server and make sure the load balancer and DNS settings are right.
Slashdot commenters mindlessly bash subject of article. News at 11.
Yeah, but startups, for most founders, are a HUGE schlep. And, the return on the schlep is nonlinear in the size of the schlep; it's more like exponential, assuming you keep winning your rolls of the dice. And, the n+1th roll of the dice has a much higher expectation than the nth. In other words, they've come all this way, and they're ALMOST at fuck-you money-- they wouldn't want to come back 20 years later and go through the whole process again.
I guess the issue I have with the quote is that it ignores all the other variables that can contribute to a person's decision. You are arguably correct that turning down an offer with reasonable terms would indicate a low IQ, but its also a personality litmus. I don't see how after completing the necessary steps to even get in a position where they could even entertain the idea of accepting an offer they would turn it down. Especially considering that the general structure of the offer is already a known factor before they even walk in the door. So IQ couldn't be the only determining factor, in fact it can't even really be on the plate. Verily, denying a YC offer should be a DSM-IV criterion for a major psychosis.

With a nod to ecuzzillo - They're just crazy.
The idea of auctioning users is a dangerous game. It reeks of an evil empire manipulation. Social networks are built on trust. The user needs to feel that their community is safe and regulated by ethics similar to their own. A few public debacles involving said user auctions could seriously damage a sites reputation and adversely effect its presence in general. It would be much safer to build in the transactional side of the operation. This wouldn't have to be a ground up operation either, partnerships that would allow a site to reface existing transactional portals would be ideal. For example take a social network of bibliophiles. This example site has a strong sticky content with syndicated book critics and authors along with established "user2user" interactivity. The site then works out a deal with amazon that allows the biblio-site access to the amazon backend for placement and fulfillment of orders for a piece of orders driven from their site. To the book loving user the process seems seamless. This way the site reduces exposure to risk due to bad public sentiment of their intentions and operating procedures.
Sure, your advice and connections are worth more than the 15K. Let's say they're worth 100 thousand. Then, you're giving away 115K in exchange for x% of the company. x would still be negotiatable in a normal setting. Some startups are worth more than others.

Ralph is right. You are providing a service for startups. Right now, you have a monopoly on that market, but eventually, other YCs will rise up, and you might have to lower the amount of equity you take. Competition.

I'm not even saying that YC is being unfair. I think it's a great deal. But the "IQ test" bit reminds me of something you wrote about Viaweb: "My message to potential customers was: you'd be stupid not to sell online, and if you sell online you'd be stupid to use anyone else's software. Both statements were true, but that's not the way to convince people."
What do you think Google is doing when they auction you as a click to the higest bidder?

Or what do you think Priceline is doing when they auction you to the highest bidder for a hotel or airline?

In the scheme of things, Search is really brilliant because it's upstream to EVERYTHING transactional. That's the key to controlling the stream of users coming in and out of transactional places on the internet.
The "Epidemic Watcher" could be a "winner" in what sense? Even if it was popular it would only play a minor (mostly unimportant) role in most of our lives. This kind of idea is like paying your parking tickets online. It'd be nice, but it wouldn't be life-altering.

Things like YouTube/Flickr/MySpace influence lives and cultures in significant ways. Those are the kinds of things that make the internet so exciting to me.
Not sure why you got modded down. That's definitely a valid question. If we do put our lives on the internet, all the major world governments will certainly build and maintain profiles on all of us. They'd be stupid not to given how relatively simple it is. And the spy agencies have far better point of view. They can even do the difficult IP address -> SSN mapping.
Oh snap you got me, I never thought of that. But wait we weren't talking about search were we? No... Also the methods for upstream sales; in particular with Google are passive and common knowledge.

You are right. But Google isn't a social network; neither is Priceline. Auctioning users of a community, and auctioning users of a tool or service are two different things. There is no expectation of trust, except for privacy, when using web services such as Google, or Priceline. Whereas a user in a "web community" gains trust in a particular site. If the site uses that trust for gain, without being completely open about it then its akin to forced spam.
At least it's down from 283 mentioned in 2004:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/02/1459211&tid=155

With IBM backing Linux, all Microsoft can do is start a nuclear war that will not end well for it.

"I'll see your 235 and raise you 6,000."
It would be a "winner" to me, not only because it played a "minor even completely useless" part to your life but because it would be interesting to even a small sliver of people online. Look at the long-tail on a site like this. You could host it easily without major snags for three hundred bucks a month. If you only play a 0.5% margin for 10 years this application could very well pay off. It's niche I understand, it doesn't have the mass appeal of the "major" players right now. But consider the vast amounts of people that are getting online each year. That niche sites user base grows proportionately. And the real kicker is that a niche site has a very narrow set of users. Making them easier to profile and easier to sell adverts too. Think of the deal you could make with TheraFlu or Tamiflu. Thats why its a winner.

If everyone waits to make the next big thing then most of us will be waiting the rest of our lives.
and it'll be even easier with wider adoption of IPv6
Thanks to SwellJoe for setting it out straight, really why I bothered posting this - so slashdotters could have an inside opinion on the process. Yes they are angry sheep, but they are our geek brethren.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=234583&cid=19110535
At least it would be very interesting to watch. Recently researchers used "Where's George", a page that tracks dollar bills, to gain new insights into epidemics. Maybe it would be like with Mathematics: often it is only centuries later that a useful application for a mathematical theory is found (for example number theory - cryptography).
Yes in theory you're correct. In practice things are usually dirtier.

What if they don't have a load balancer? What if they want redundant load blancers? What if they use round-robin DNS and then need a failover procedure? What if round-robin DNS isn't balanced enough for them? What if logs files need to be merged? What if the web servers aren't 100% identical? Data needs to be sync'd? Load distributed more intelligently? Cron jobs modified? etc, etc.

Perhaps they kept things unusually clean and simple, but most sites require a little finagling when they go to multiple web servers. I'm not saying it's difficult, but I do think it's wise to expect a few bumps.
Are they using Seaside or rolling their own framework (I'm assuming they're doing a webapp)?
I disagree. I think that it's who you know.

http://siliconvalleystartupjournal.blogspot.com/
I think if you honestly don't want to be someplace... well, I guess that's ok, but you should probably be up front about it - define how long you'll work to transition things to a new team, and be professional about it.

But I think most companies want you to stick around for a while.
VC tech startup firm YEurope launches
2006  Aho Group Report "Creating an Innovative Europe"
The incubator bubblet: YEurope, Techstars, HitForge
Web 2.0 'distracts good design'
I do think the remark about 5 minute IQ test is a bit arrogant. I am not sure if Paul really said this (haven't read the article) or it was just journalism as usual...
Virtualmin Founder Joe Cooper Explains Y Combinator to Slashdot Trolls
This agreement could never be fair. Management has hordes of resources at its disposal that can be used to fight workers against improving their conditions. Workers cannot afford the type of representation a company has. Moreover, in an economy with a poor job market, you are bound to find someone to work a given job no matter how bad it is. This does not mean that the given wage is fair, you are simply taking advantage of a deficiency in the system.

You are also neglecting the fact that many of these manufacturing jobs pay a wage that is typically barely enough to support a family. What's to stop management from suddenly cutting workers' pay? Even in the presence of unions, many workers are forced to "grin and bear it" when certain changes are enacted, because they cannot afford to stop working there (their family would go without). In a market with no union protections, management would be free to jerk workers around at will... when the market goes a little sour, they could just lower pay, some workers would quit, others would stay and pick up the extra available hours so that they could still get by, and the company would do fine. When the market improves, management could advertise positions and temporarily raise pays in order to get more people working there. This may seem fair from a supply-demand economics perspective, but when you're talking about the lives of the workers who are not far from poverty, a slight change in pay leads to a dramatically different quality of life. Unions help to deaden this "yo-yo effect" and make the condition of the worker a little more livable and realistic.
BBC NEWS | Technology | Web 2.0 'distracts good design'
The top five VCs under 40 -- What Do You Think?
ClickTale Presentation at the TWS2007 Startup Competition [video]
I'd rather they did that than just copy the off-topic stories from there to news.yc.
So what you're saying is that you'll get funding for your idea if it's good and if you're good and if the VCs are good. Not the most helpful counterpoint to the list of proven YC/angel benefits.

Instead of just saying it's "not hard" why don't you provide some actual instruction? Tell us what "...if you know what you're doing" really means in practical terms.

The reason for getting assistance from YC/angels is that they're generally great hackers themselves. They're holding the private VC club door open for other great hackers, and they don't care how slick you are (when you come to them). They're reputation-based sponsors to VCs.
Pibb - it's not just a great soda, it's also a new comprehensive communications tool
I just recieved info from LinkedIn that the site will be updated May 29th. I'll email everyone as soon as it is up!
Thanks,
E
I just created a blog for my upcoming web site!

They've REALLY improved since the last time I looked. I thought back in March that they really needed to have a blog, and they have it! Here's my site:

ratemyapp.weebly.com
I don't know a lot about getting funded but I know posting a snippet of information on your blog (for two companies no less) and then spamming the URL is not likely to be very fruitful. Have you considered a picking a single idea then creating a prototype, web site, and full pitch? Investors like that kind of stuff.
My Experience Using Weebly:  The Official 'Rate My App' Blog
I created the blog in a short amount of time. Had I realized there was a blog feature, I would have saved myself some time.

In fact, I thought, "you know, you'd think they would have added blog functionality by now!" Let me just take a look! And on the pages popup, there was a Blog button! Hooray!

Weebly is very easy to use. Just remember to give it 2 to 10 seconds if your changes aren't always reflected right away. They'll come up. Most of the time, everything is instantaneous. At the very least, it doesn't lose track of what you're doing and I never had to exit the 'program' and re-enter it.
I'd recommend taking quotes from a news article with a grain of salt. It's out of context, and you don't get to hear tone of voice or see the expression on his face.

My impression is that there are lots of insecure people who are way overreacting to that comment. He took the sentence "we think the deal we offer is great for the startup companies" and made a geeky joke out of it.
So, in other words, they're not stupid, they're crazy?

You could have just said that, you know.
Who the hell even reads slashdot anymore? It's been years, for me. Digg and Reddit pick up the stuff I actually want to know about, and I don't have to put up with Cmdr Taco's government-conspiracy pontifications.
MIT Intro to CS Course: 20 Videos and Free Textbook (and Intro to Lisp)
FYI: Most or all of these are available for easy streaming on Google Video with the tag "sicp". Not all of you have vdsl to download a gigabyte file in 5 minutes with :-)

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=label%3Asicp
trustedplaces -  raising $1 Million in 83 days
Faroo Employs P2P Technology to Search and Index the Web
The greatest living American on Google
Mousing around in search of a better solution
THE SHAPE OF THE FUTURE REMOTE / Round device can control digital content from TV and movies to photos and Web
Browser-based Tracking is the Stats Answer
Casey Serin: The world's most hated blogger?
I wish 'em luck but distributed searching is a tarpit with four fundamental problems.

One is speed: a search may touch on many 'shards' that then have to be combined and ranked somewhere. That's hard enough to do when you have 100K machines linked with 100Mbps up and down.

The second is honesty: search ranking is a high-value target. It's ripe for a takeover by zombies, even if each node's keyspace is assigned by some trusted authority.

The third is coordinating a web-wide crawler: how to avoid floods, duplicate work, spammy submissions, etc.

The fourth is most important: the system has to work much better than Google for people to care enough to use it. Simply being P2P (i.e. cheaper for the operator) is not enough.
Report: Microsoft says open source violates 235 patents (Open Invention Network)
CodeGear goes Ruby on Rails route
I've just started going through this course, and I found that in addition to the video lectures and book there is a tutorial on the MIT OCW website:

OCW website: http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-Computer-Science/6-001Spring-2005/CourseHome/index.htm

Tutorial: http://icampus.mit.edu/xTutor/content/?more6001

The tutorial provides sample problems and will grade them on-line to give you instant feedback. They also give an estimate for when the assignments should be due, which is helpful if you're attempting to go through the material as if you were taking the class.
Undergrads' 25 Most Wanted Employers (Google #1, MS #9)
Which Lisp?
At least he's persistent :D
hmmaa, I don't like what I wrote (upmodded? why?)

If ever YC started abusing their spring chicks, the argument would deserve to be brought up, but since YC alumni seem very happy about the deal they got, it's all rather pointless.

Ah, la la.
Anywr Allows You To Access Your Contact Data From AnyWhere
It uses MIT Scheme. There are important differences between CL and Scheme, but IMO those are much less important than their similarities as compared to non-Lisp languages.
DISCLAIMER: THE VIDEOS WILL TAKE TIME AWAY FROM CREATING SOMETHING PEOPLE WANT.

This is something I would have found very interesting when I was 17 years old, but I decided I am not going to let a 20 hour long video Introduction to CS course, no matter how free, keep me from programming my startups, not even if it's from MIT. Plus it'll still be around for me to watch it in another 22 years.

I've tried leaving it running in the background so I could listen to the audio, but it's just so distracting and the presentation is so interesting, that I had to leave the room before I could decide to come back, close it, and write this. :)

It was kind of like the video course "Physics for Presidents" from Berkley. Although it's very interesting, and the professors are so very smart, I had to shut it down because it's a time sink.
I had to give that a point. I guess what I'm trying to say is that there must be a deep personality flaw with someone that takes all the necessary steps and then refuses to go with it.
Resolio Brings Color and Portability to Web Resumes
"It's because they are 20 years old that they act differently to 40-year-olds," said Mr Nielsen.

I think he missed the mark. Design has little to do with popularity right now (think MySpace). Sure we can scale everything back so that my one finger typist dad can surf the web without learning something new. Or we can design to the next generation of users that will most assuredly use the web for the rest of their lives.
The point isn't which Lisp. It teaches all the concepts common to both Lisps; of the ones from CL, it only misses the idea of a generic function model of OO, and macros. And honestly, once you've had your mind expanded enough by SICP, learning the rest of CL is a snap. (I know; it took me only a couple weeks to become proficient at CL after taking Berkeley's SICP-based course. I wasn't blindingly amazing at macros, but there's On Lisp for that.)
Clothing tops computers in online sales - Business
Stanford students vie to be 'Entrepreneur Idol'
Mobile Web is 19% of PC Web: "5.7 million people in the UK use the mobile web, as opposed to 30 million who access the web by PC"
Anyone from that class on yCombinator? Would love to hear a first hand account.
He did explain further on news.YC:

http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=21791

It's still hard to tell tone of voice over the Internet, but it sounds like he was serious about the IQ test part.
Charles Stross: Inside the MIT Media Lab
I can think of several situations where that 6% could get a better return than YCombinator:

If it's the difference between attracting a top-notch cofounder and a take-what-he-can-get cofounder. PG isn't going to write your code for you.

If it goes to an angel investor with even more experience and connections than YCombinator. I'd take Ram Shriram or Peter Thiel over Paul Graham any day...not that I could get them, but apparently I can't get PG either. ;-)

If it lets you hire key early employees. For an employee, the difference between 1% and 3% of equity is huge, and you'll be able to attract much more talented people if you give them more equity. A team of 5 "A" players will likely beat a team of 2 "A" players, 3 "B" players, and YCombinator.

I agree that it's silly to turn down YC just because the money/equity ratio is fairly low. But YC's not the be-all-and-end-all of seed funding: there are other resources out there where your equity may get better returns.
Mine are based on Morality (which are based on Philosophy), one key principle of which is individual responsibility.
Bubble2.0? Not anytime soon
I have hope for facebook being the new google
Where the Next Big Bets Lie for Venture Capitalists
Interviews are two way things. Perhaps the interviewee isn't so keen having had more contact in person, or doesn't like the suggestion of dropping their idea and going with an alternative. Perhaps they just think the gasps of admiration and amazement from the interviewers means it's a can't fail idea that they're already executing well.

Saying it's an IQ test is wrong IMHO. But it may be a good negotiating stance.