skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I understand your point, but mine was that she fluidly goes back and forth between various definitions. I do think that she realizes this, and it is probably inevitable, but it makes it hard for me to wrap my head around exactly what she is trying to say. Danah writes: "I will attempt to delineate what we see on social network sites in stereotypical, descriptive terms meant to evoke an image." I think I understand why she wants to take that approach (it's easier), but the problem with it is that it makes it very hard for her readers to disengage from their own stereotypes and prejudices and evaluate her ideas on the merits. Basically, it works just as long as she's preaching to the choir.

As for the working class art fags (I dislike the term, by the way, but that's another can o' worms altogether): I'm not saying art is the way to riches, but rather just applying the cultural, rather than income-based, idea of class that is, it would seem to me, implicit in the words "all of my anti-capitalist college friends who work in cafes and read Engels are not working class just because they make $14K a year and have no benefits."
She doesn't have the research to support the precision of her terminology. Or if she does, she's not sharing it in which case it doesn't help us. If she wants to make broad assertions, she should make broad assertions. Not specific assertions that sound carefully thought-out but in fact are not.
No need to apologize. I think your question was clear enough. Probably my lack of sleep plus me being not a native speaker. No rudeness intended from my side either. I'm not in a YComb startup, but was part of one (non YC :-)) that went down 2 years ago. So it's probably off-topic here but I think it might be useful so I just post (also writing about might help me get over it ;-)). Our project was a rather complicated Java thing. We started off with XP and everything was sort of fine. Running short of time we decided that we had to code at twice the speed(!). No more XP, no more Java doc(!), 6 months all went fine, then 2 new people in the team, and two old people out. Actually it was 2 old out (rather unexpected) and 2 new in, which made it worse. A total mess. A generic advice: Always keep an eye on the codebase and try to spread the knowledge of it. It's not only that the wrong person might quit for whatever reason, people get sick, stranded while travelling, crazy etc ... . Best luck with your venture
Neutralized.
If Paul Buchheit were reading this thread, he would say that pg should focus on more immediately important things first, and only when it becomes a real problem come up with a way to tweak karma to disincent posting lots of irrelevant links. Except Buchheit's wouldn't be a run-on sentence.
no offense taken, friend :-)

I was just trying to be clear about my purpose (I am not a native speaker of English either so I am not sure how much my intent gets through)

Your experience report is much appreciated! Thanks!
We use http://www.cose.org. There's probably a similar organization in your region.
Yes I totally agree with you. If they manage to take 50 percent, all of the informational queries from Google. Then they've kinda yeah done it. I just think that just achieving this will be super difficult. To get people to move their bottoms away from Google, PS will have to blow them away. And even if they manage to get 50 percent, it does not equal 50 percent revenue. So much less money to be made with "Who won the academy award in 2001"-style queries than with a dull "mortgage refinance" query.
"Looking at it some more, I am still convinced that there is some truth to it, but there really is also a lot of very, uh, fluid logic going on."

It's sociology, what do you expect? ;-) (I nearly majored in sociology in college, taking 4 courses before I switched first back to physics and then to computer science. This gave me both a basic fluency in the lingo and a healthy disrespect for its conclusions or lack thereof.)

Anyway, you have to understand the particular school of thought she's coming from. This article's steeped in the lingo of Gramsci and Spivak, who studied primarily power relations within society, particularly the question of "Who decides who can speak?" In sociology, there's the concept of a discourse, which is basically "What can you talk about without getting odd looks?" Certain discourses are legitimated: you can talk about Heroes or Desperate Housewives or Paris Hilton or the Red Sox and everyone will find it socially acceptable. Certain discourses are relegated to specialized niches, but still socially acceptable: you can talk about monads or CSS or DNA replication and people won't think you weird, but they may not listen either. And certain discourses are fringe: if you talk about how 9/11 was an inside job or put on eyeshadow and leather pants for a goth party, people will think you a little nutty, unless you're on Reddit.

In this context, the article's list makes a little more sense. What's considered socially acceptable discussion in high school? Pop music, the latest movies, that party at the class bitch's house, homecoming, cheerleading and school spirit, and apparently Facebook. What's not? Having to work to support your family and put yourself through school. Slacking off and doing lots of drugs. Weird art bands that nobody has heard of. Local music that nobody has heard of. Wearing odd clothing or odd makeup. Being gay, unless you live on the northern portion of either coast. And apparently MySpace.

Basically - ask yourself "Who would you want your daughter to date?" Unless you're one of those enlightened parents that believes in letting their kids make their own choices, you probably wouldn't want her going out with an art fag. You wouldn't want her dating a stoner or a gansta. You'd look at her a little weird if she brought home a goth or a punk.

This is different from the notion of social class that William Julius Wilson or Barbara Ehrenreich writes about. That's much more (though not wholly) economic and educational, and is closer to popular definitions of social class. The Gramscian notions of hegemon/subaltern are much more about power and people's unconscious reactions to cultural behavior.
Andreessen's a national treasure.
I'm not certain your definition of "art fag" and her definition match. I don't think she includes the Engels-reading baristas in that category - that's why she listed them explicitly as "not working class". Rather, I think she's referring to artists who basically give themselves up for art, delving into really esoteric tastes and edgy artwork.

To use a couple pop-culture examples that you may or may not be familiar with: none of the characters in Rent are art fags. Isaac Mendez from Heroes may be, but we don't know much of his history before he became a junkie or what he does besides paint the future. The characters from Scott Westerfield's novel "The End Days" are, as are the somewhat-caricatured characters in Terry Pratchett's "Soul Music".
This is not a luxury. Get some competing quotes from small business health insurance providers in your area and pick one.
Dig. That's what we're doing. Thanks for the comments I guess I just needed the YC warm and fuzzy.
Sounds about right :)
Staying in Canada ;) The downside is not being around silicon valley and not having access to a like minded support network in person.
Can India be next Y Combinator destination?
Monetizing Facebook applications
If you live in one of the qualifying states (CA is included), http://www.tonikhealth.com has fairly reasonable quotes for "catastrophic" insurance -- $77/mo for their base plan.
This is answered in the YC FAQ:

http://ycombinator.org/faq.html
then it doenst make it to the front page
The Dilbert Blog: Champagne Moments (the slow success of Dilbert)
Someone already said that and gave a response. Please read the whole thread.
Meditate. Seriously.
The Holy Crap Reaction to Competition
Seems like a wasted effort, but an incredible effort nonetheless!
That won't stop people who are trying to generate traffic; they'll just make more than one account.
How far does $20k US go in India?
Buxfer facebook app released - comments welcome!
In between summer and winter funding sessions, when does pg have time to take a break?
Also a good point. Then moderate by IP address.
Probably not, but YCombinator could be an Indian's next destination. I don't think India has the startup culture nor tech culture etc that is enjoyed by America. (neither does Europe, apparently)

sabhishek - You should apply to a YC funding cycle. Deal with the visa issues later! (but not too late)
Great entry. I know this "holy crap" feeling. --Ultimately, every company has competition --Here's my take: what's good about competition is knowing there are customers demanding the product or service I offer. The exciting gasp I feel is trusting in my intention to serve and satisfy all those customers to become number one.
If you felt all that, could you try and put some of it in the title when you submit the link. It would help a lot to know why something thinks a post is relevant, it may not be obvious to others.

bootload has started doing this. I think it's good. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26422
$10000 for a Successful Job Referral
A lot, lot further than it would in the US. Your average Indian worker probably earns somewhere between $75 - $150 USD per month.
We actually went to a good old-fashioned business insurance agent. We got a reference from someone who was happy with theirs.

Me and my founder have a Blue Cross HSA plan that costs around $150-$200 per month for a single employee. It's $200 if you want the HSA-minimum $1500 per year deductible. After the deductible is met, PPO network expenses are entirely paid by the plan, and before they're met you get PPO discounts. I recommend it.

We have the advantage of being in California, an extremely favorable environment for small businesses (2-50 employees) to get group health plans in. Couple things worth pointing out about our situation:

- It's an honest-to-goodness group plan, not an individual plan. Individuals have health coverage at the pleasure of the insurer. Those lovely stories about insurers (like Blue Cross) cancelling policies retroactively happen to people with individual plans.

- In California, insurers can't refuse to insure a small business based on employees' health or medical history. Do you know how difficult it can be to get individual insurance with less-than-average health, much less an actual medical condition? Basically, forget it. Small businesses in CA have no such problem. Even though we're healthy, it lets us actually rely on our health insurance.

- Also in California, insurers are limited to charging no more than 10 percent more than an index of what they charge large businesses, based on the employees' health. It's a great deal for small businesses. And again, it makes things very predictable even in a worst-case scenario.

- As a C corporation, we can deduct the premiums we pay as expenses. Some, especially S corps and LLCs, may not be able to -- in any case, consult your tax advisor.

- We can hire someone tomorrow and offer a health plan that we don't have to be ashamed of, and it's flexible. If we need to share costs, we can pay only half or most of it and deduct the rest. If we can afford to offer a premium health plan, we simply pay the premiums and fund their HSA every month.
If you know a top web developer in the Boston-area that might be interested in this opportunity, let them know about this job. It just might be worth $10,000 to you. Job Details are here: http://blog.standoutjobs.com/edvisors-web-developers/
We made something that at least one person really wanted.
http://www.xanga.com/FightToDeath

Collin is a user of likebetter.com. Maybe this won't tickle others as much as it does me, but just LOOK at how we've basically given this guy a purpose in life. Seriously, he's creating a whole world around likebetter.com.
10 Weaknesses of Your Intelligence (In Computer Language)
My suggestions to my engineer business partner is to talk about actually using our products not coding them.

1. Please don't use the YOU word to the customer. e.g. You need, should, could use this to help you do this. Instead my suggestion: I build this to help me solve this would it help you.

2. Please don't explain the tech functions. I don't want to build it, all I want is to push a button and have it work.

3. Tell me how long you've been using it or been needing it, not what it takes to build it and write the code.
I've been writing web analytics software for the last couple of weeks, that tracks users statistics, etc. Safe to say that there is no foolproof way to track users who don't want to be tracked.
i asked the same question to google's chris sacca -- i was wondering what could be done to have a Y combinator sort of a thing in India.
he shared a similar opinion to what ur saying, in india the entrepreneurial culture is a little missing + in addition he thought indians were very good at backend stuff and not necessary in aesthetics. it might be debatable you don't need the whole of indian IT engineers god in aesthetics to support y combinator - i was in silicon valley , and currently in UK. but u do see a difference in culture but yet i can tell u there are lot of people who do cool stuff here, in america people the impression i get the english is the only language people worry about here u are dealing with french, germans, italians, spanish and they are very different, no wonder u find clones of US starts ups in europe adapted for european markets.
I appreciate Guy's enthusiasm and concept of keep it simple:
- get something up = plan
- get some users, test the waters, give the users consistent support = model
- use Google AdSense = capital
- keep your day job = achievable
I can understand how this might eventually become an issue, but this is less unlikely because of the nature of YC (people here are trying to represent themselves well to the yc 'crew', and to others who they might work with one day). The size of the community is small enough that it is difficult to hide in the crowd.

If the community became much larger I think the most effective solution would be to require a minimum of X karma before you can submit. (To prevent 'gaming' you would have to couple this with preventing users with less than X karma from upvoting posts...)

As it is I think a exponential delay before posting (they would sit in a publication queue) would be reasonable, but probably unneeded.
YC startup Slapvid does P2P video from a browser
Do you mean YCombinator should come to India? Or have such a phenomenon work in India?

Personally, I think angel funding is not very relevant in India because the startup costs are extremely low. Also, VCs are not as prevalent as in the US (that seems to be changing with proto.in etc) so the VC contacts that YCombinator provides might not apply either. But the advice and ideas of someone like Paul Graham would do wonders, but I can't think of a resident Indian in that place.
I recently read that PlentOfFish had 5-10 servers in a nearby center. Hosting 12 billion page views (per year) off one server seems a bit much, but Kawasaki isn't a technical guy, so I won't hold it against him.

I am still very uncomfortable with the Google AdSense as a revenue model. In my experience AdSense is a very mediocre product; the quality of the ads served is simply abysmal. In contrast, I recently read about the "Deck" which serves adds for 37signals, daringfireball, and some other high profile blogs, and ya know, I actually want to click the adds they serve (these ads are selected by hand though, so the comparison is probably unfair).

I think there is still room for a startup that does contextual ads well. I think a large part of doing them "well" will be to have standards for both the sellers and buyers of ad space.
I was just wondering this same question today.
Thanks for the great advice.
The lesson? Don't hold the champagne. Joe Kraus made this point well at Startup School from his experience. While it seems less substantial than some other points about starting a business, like how to get to the champagne moments in the first place, it is important. It's important for what you remember and make the experience about when you're starting your business.

http://bnoopy.typepad.com/bnoopy/2004/10/moons_over_my_h.html
It's interesting to hear his perspective on the iPhone.

BTW, for folks who aren't familiar with Christensen's work, his books and ideas rock. (He coined the phrase "disruptive technology," and has done a lot of solid research on patterns of disruption.) Highly recommended for entrepreneurs.
This isn't really a hacker/non-hacker issue, its just an issue of having vision, and having good people with good ideas. A company that relies solely on its founder for innovation is not a healthy company.

I don't have much love for third party widgets. Their inclusion on Facebook has cluttered up the service. For people who are using websites as tools to accomplish tasks, I don't see 3rd party widgets as a compelling feature. Like Facebook, LinkedIn is also a social network, but it differs as it is fundamentally a tool rather than a toy.

So far widgets have been toys, some of them excellent toys, but toys none the less. Its a hell of a genie's bottle to open up in exchange for apps like TopFriends, iLike, and the option to draw a mustache on your friend's profile picture. I realize that the creation of tool-widgets is possible, but I am still waiting to see if the effort of developing a public API is worth the return in tool functionality (LinkedIn will probably survive without the inclusion of TopConnections, and ConnectionsIdTotallySleepWith apps ;).

To address a few other points, Friendster failed to get on the boat because it had immense technical problems leading to its stability/usability plummeting like Wall Street trader jumping out of a window on black Friday. They probably would have also missed the boat on developing an API, but this is what happens at poorly lead companies: they fail catastrophically. My last thought is that after a company becomes sufficiently large, having a hacker leader who wants to build the public API by himself may be less of an asset than a disaster. Facebook released their API quickly, and they released it incomplete and with shoddy support and documentation. They've happened to get a blankcheck for good publicity... but others may not be so fortunate.
Are "help files" useless, in light of Google?
I was helping somebody with a help file for a linux program and the first reaction was to just Google the name of the program and the issue and the solution that will come up will probably be more up to date and spot on since somebody else probably had the same problem.

What do you think?
I'd be curious if you think that of our new site at http://www.virtualmin.com

We were in WFP07, and just launched the new site this past weekend...it was designed during the time when we were talking to YC companies every week...I wonder if those discussions bred conformity.
IMO, YCombinator should fund startups in India. Contrary to popular belief there is significant entrepreneurial and IT activity happening here. I would not take anyone seriously who generalizes a whole nation, especially one as diverse as India, in one fell swoop. I am not saying the startup levels are anywhere on the scale of Silicon Valley, I am saying that there is sufficient talent of all types available in India.
Unfortunately, these questions come up for the wrong reasons such as Visa problems. If YCombinator helped with Visas, then I don't think this question or other similar ones would pop up.

In terms of finances, the dollar goes a long mile in India and that is a plus. Perhaps a YC startup will probably run out of India in the future, especially because web startups are allowed 100% foreign ownership and foreign direct investment in India.

I thought it might be interesting to start a google group for all Indians who read Ycombinator and similar stuff and maybe want do a startup - http://groups.google.com/group/TechStartups-India
Join in, lets find out how many Indians are around and lets chat/meet up :)
Good Point (I'll put comments in parens after the title)
A great startup to stay informed and connected
Create Your Own Twitter Network
I just don't see how getting users on facebook actually HURTS you. I can see how it might not help you, but not how it hurts you. ILike has apparently lost visitors to the main site... I guess that makes sense if there is nothing more to do on the main site than in the F8 app.
Google calls for more limits on Microsoft (Using Antitrust Legal Tactics - "A PR Stunt"?)
"We'll give you $600; you give us 6% of your company"?
Niklas Zennstrom - Founder of Skype, Kazaa & Joost on how simple propositions can get 100million users
http://www.ehealthinsurance.com/

It shows you what coverage is available where you live.

Definitely get health coverage. Even with a deductible on a PPO plan, you still pay LESS than if you didn't have any coverage, because your insurer negotiates with hospitals in its "network" so your rates are cheaper. That is, they don't cover your deductible in any way but the in-network hospital gives you e.g. 20% off because the Insurer made them agree to it.

People who have no insurance who DO pay get billed more to make up for the people with no insurance who don't pay. Health coverage is like paying union dues; large insurance companies have clout, unlike individuals.
Thanks for the background info! I never studied much sociology; all the social science electives at the college where I took them turned out to be about game theory.
I like it. Played with a bit. Quick comments:

1. After the first time I found it slightly tricky to find "new transaction" again, I think it should be a bit more prominent.
2. I think its really silly that it reports personal expense and income in my feed, i had to remove them manually and that would get annoying in the long run.
3. There wasnt an obvious way to pull in contacts or add facebook contacts, though I might be missing the point of the contacts section.
4. When I tried adding a shared expense it gave me a js error and wouldn't proceed. I am using FF 2.0.0.4
5. Seems like it could be integrated more with facebook so i can tell me people they owe me money. Possibly it is and i am just not seeing that feature.

Good work guys.
Google Developers Day - Theorizing from Data (Norvig on large data sets)
Looks like a cool solution to video bandwidth problems. I'd like to read more about the technology behind it..

These guys should consider trying AIR or Silverlight rather than a Java applet for a more transparent and lighter weight implementation. Java applets are quickly going the way of the dinosaur..
The solution someone posts probably came in part from the help file. :)
+1 to ehealthinsurance.

First, think of your health insurance plan as actual insurance, meaning something you will hopefully never have to use except in case of catastrophe. All your normal medical expenses will go through your HSA.

Search for HSA plans with high deductibles ($3k to $5k) and 0% co-insurance. Prices for such plans here in San Francisco are $75 to $110 a month. I chose the $75 option from HealthNet.

Then set up your HSA account. I use hsabank.com, but there are many options. Auto-fund your HSA account with $100 to $200 a month depending on your needs and pay all medical expenses from the account.

When the balance of your HSA account matches your deductible ($3k to $5k) then re-evaluate your monthly funding amount so it more closely matches your actual monthly expenses.
LiveJournal's Brad Fitzpatrick: Golden Handcuffs Removed at SixApart -- What's Next?