skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Is Java?

Lisp?

Granted, there are genuine "critical mass" effects for programming languages, but the same can be said to an extent of pop culture. If one of the reasons people listen to music is to have something to discuss with their friends, then of course, they go toward the already established.

While the details are interesting, "cumulative advantage" looks like a new buzzword for an old concept. As if it was heretofore believed that people thought independently of one another...
does anyone want to share a hotel room for Saturday and Sunday night? Conversely, if anyone wants to house a Ycombinator interviewee for two nights, I would be eternally in their debt.

Thanks,
Mark
YC News participants are so civil -- very refreshing. Benja's apology is a great example of that.
Scribd folks are on to something. There is a need for posting short sections of text and getting people to vote on it. Forget about all that other document stuff (thinkfree has you beat there), concentrate on these short pieces of text... like Twitter but more than 140 characters.
Ok cool. Probably needed it anyway for putting the punchline in the title. :)
Microsoft Silverlight Takes On Adobe's Flash
Indeed: here are two of the original functions.

(defun lsb (n i)
(cond
((eq n 0) i)
(T (lsb (logand (- n 1) n) (+ i 1)))
)
)

(defun bits (n) (lsb n 0))

CL-USER (bits #B101100101101001010101101001010101001001111)

22
How to make something amazing right now!
What's the URL for news.yc search? (FOUND)
I remember someone posting that they wrote one, but I'm having difficulty finding it...
Nah it's fine. And you're right we do need need a inbox to warn us if we have a reply on our thread :-)
How so?

If you want close to home, think news.yc or other social news sites when it comes to cumulative advantage.
http://nycs.bigheadlabs.com
Off Topic But Important - Gunman kills at least 21 at Virginia Tech - CNN.com
I didn't hear about this until just now, I think everyone needs to read about it, this is terrible.
This was part of Paul's Stanford talk. It fits in nicely in regards to decisions from venture capitalists on investment and even Y Combinator on the founders program.
I thought about posting that here too - but I didn't think this is the right place as terrible as it is. Unfortunately, the death toll is even higher.
Followup - Paul Kedrosky: Microsoft calls for mommy
http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2007/04/16/google_rivals_c.html
Experiment: let's see if this gets a higher score here or on Reddit: http://reddit.com/info/1idib/details
Google's Matt Cutts on hidden links
I think this model implies a certain marketing strategy. While achieving a critical mass might be impossible (read unlikely and hard to control) if you try for the world as a whole, it may be possible for a smaller one. Once you have a small group that is largely converted you can add other groups in such a way that you don't put out the fire by separating members of the first group.

It may be that a large part of the success of Facebook comes from the way they were able to use student bodies as small, self-contained networks, and then build from there.

It reminds me of building a fire with charcoals. If you keep them together you can keep them burning. If you can get a nice group going you can add to it bit by bit and build as big as you want. If you disperse them they die.

Our world has a million little self-contained networks. If you try to win some over perhaps some will succeed to the point that the network works for you. Then maybe you can add others.
I'd downvote this just to be ironic, but in his infinite foresight pg removed the option.
Edward R Tufte - The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint
Extrasolar Planet Prediction Market
A lot of these Ask YC style questions get repeated because its hard to find old postings. Perhaps we should start adding these to a FAQ section on http://wiki.ycombinator.com/
Confessions from the mobile industry
Yeah we filed our own LLC formation for $90 in Delaware + ~$250 for our Registered Agent.
Microformats and portable social network
Your point is that news.yc and other social news sites are actually more useful when more people use them, right? I agree with that. But IMHO, that's missing the point of the article.

Music doesn't objectively get better just because more people listen to it; and yet, the authors' research appears to show that people's opinions of music is hugely influenced by what other people like. Recall their main result: They had one group of users who they didn't show any information about how often a song was downloaded, and then eight independent groups who were shown the download count of each song inside that group. "The song 'Lockdown,' by 52metro, for example, ranked 26th out of 48 in [the group not shown download counts]; yet it was the No. 1 song in one social-influence world, and 40th in another. Overall, a song in the Top 5 in [the group not shown counts] had only a 50 percent chance of finishing in the Top 5 of success." Their conclusion is that the reason why predicting the success of media products is shaky is that what's a success is hugely influenced by an unpredictable feedback process.

Thus, my question: Can we assume that Google's success is due in a large part not to anything that Google did, but to the (random) feedback process of people liking Google because they see other people liking Google?

Of course, one could argue that this is simply the truism that one needs luck as well as talent to succeed. But I come away from reading the article with the feeling that I've learned something that goes deeper than that, and I'm trying to figure out how to apply it to the tech world.
I think what Daniel is saying is that on social news sites, popular posts tend be popular because they're popular.

I don't think we can attribute Google's success to cumulative effects:

I suspect that you can see cumulative advantage effects only when objective quality is difficult or impossible to measure. Taste in music is extremely subjective - it's very difficult to measure the quality of music independent of its popularity.

On the other hand, the objective quality of search results can be measured by independent testing and feedback - it's not perfect - but you can get a much better measurement of quality for search than you can for music.
What does he mean by burning ships, though? Quitting your day job? Or quitting your day job and doing something so outrageous to make sure you will never ever get employed again (can't even imagine what that would be)? The latter would be kind of stupid, but quitting your day job doesn't seem so bad. Don't they say that younger people can afford to take more risks in their investments, because if they fail, they have enough time to make up for it? That seems sensible to me - I think it is far more dangerous to not take any risks and then regret it later when it is (seemingly) too late, like when you have a family support.

So no, I don't think I agree with that article at all.
This is a really well-written essay, which actually surprises me a little given how timely it is to the YC application process. When did you start writing it?
I agree, up to the last part that "at the same time reducing the amount of actual work they are able to do on a day to day basis". It is well known that time is not directly proportional to productivity. It's more like time x skill = productivity. So the most productive people probably work fewer hours, but are more productive than the average person working 8 hours a day. See Mythical Man Month by Brooks and Great Hackers by pg ( http://paulgraham.com/gh.html ).
Feature request: a way to escape an asterisk. Sometimes you do want to write a literal asterisk. (E.g. to say "a times b")
No. Only the second part of my statement "best startups will be formed" can be labeled as an assertion of my opinion.

The first part is fact. SV has produced more great startups than any other area in the world. Arguing with that fact is futile.

It's not just VC that SV has as an advantage. Its a high density of angel investors and young people wiling to take a risk and launch startups.

As for the assumption of taking venture capital not holding any longer, venture capital in the narrow sense i.e. VC firms - possibly but in the general sense of needing to raise investment at some point, name me a successful startup that hasn't.
Search is a business with notoriously small lock-in and network effects. Eric Schmidt comments on this all the time, it's a significant risk factor for Google.

Brand loyalty is a cumulative advantage, but it's pretty fickle. Customers will stick with a trusted brand as long as they continue to trust it, but all it takes is one or two screwups or a competitor coming out with a noticeably better product, and your brand evaporates.

I first used Google in 1999, and it was much better than the existing search engines. Not a little better, not even just noticeably better, but orders of magnitude better. I could immediately find results that I'd previously have to dig through 10 pages of links for.

They may not have that advantage now, but I don't care. Google is good enough. Until someone comes out with a search engine that's noticeably better, I'm not going to switch. I've already got my Firefox toolbar setup, and my habits - I see no reason to reevaluate them until there's clear evidence that I can do better.

Google almost pulled off the same thing with GMail, but Yahoo and Microsoft stopped them. When GMail came out, it was orders of magnitude better than the existing webmail solutions. It gave you 1GB of space instead of 4MB, it had Google search integrated, and it had a clean AJAX UI. Like many early adopters, I switched as soon as I could get my hands on an invite (you only got 1 or 2 back then), and have since made GMail my default e-mail client. But it didn't completely penetrate the mass market, because Y!Mail and Hotmail immediately upped their storage space to 400+ MB, and Yahoo came out with a new UI. IMHO, GMail is still better, but it's no longer an order of magnitude better, so people who are just getting GMail invites now often choose to stick with their existing e-mail.
Actually Lisp is so powerful that PG wrote an entire universe on the back of his napkin, out of which another PG has evolved who funded the reddit founders who first wrote reddit in Lisp, and later re-wrote it in what looked like python, but ultimately macroexpands into Lisp code through the quantum properties of the circuitry.
Oops, voted up on each. Do -1 (at least) on your count.
I disagree with the writers assumption that the committees judgements are only inaccurate for the borderline cases. I think there are plenty of examples of committees judgements being wrong about candidates, that should have been viewed as outstanding.
That must be one of the things he can do to influence the outcome. ;-)
Scaling to multiple databases with Rails
Yeah maybe, but compared to the gigantic number of C# and Java developers it's not even close. The average programmer is a much different beast than those working at our kind of startups.

That said, real startup programmers hack in Python.
Theres always django for pythoners. Great framework if you can get it installed.
We Do it Our Way Marketing (or Why Jack FM is Still in Business)
What is your stimulant of choice to keep you working through the night?
YC startup launches: Project Wedding
MIT: New Robot Eyes Humans with Human-Like Eyes
I like this part:

"Co-Founder: Within a few weeks of being out in SV we were introduced to the guys behind, YouOS. As fate would have it, one of the founders (Srini) was actually living in the building next to us and we started having informal hacking lessons where heÂd teach us how to hack... Once the three months were up he rejoined the YouOs guys to work on their new product, Project Wedding."

The synergies and group dynamics provided by Ycombinator is amazing. Best of luck to you.
I enjoy a nice mix a Vault energy soda while listening to the Chemical Brothers - Come With Us album.
The company name looked familiar, and sure enough: it's the YouOS company. https://www.youos.com/

So have they decided the web desktop thing isn't in demand?
Definitely coffee. I don't drink much of it so I'm not that resistant to caffeine. If you're a regular coffee drinker than those caffeinated candies or energy drinks might be a better choice.
I think they wanted to build a specific webapp as a way of learning what webapp developers need. I believe there's YouOS code under this.
Of course it will get a higher score on reddit, just because huge volume of traffic going to reddit.

But the scores themselves mean nothing, on absolute terms. What really matters is the article's relative rankings - which (roughly) determine the article's placement on the main page.

And that's what makes News.YC so appealing. Even though the community's smaller, we don't have to wade through pages of higher-ranked flickr photos to find the quality content.
Joel is wrong here. At the least, his goal, "software that works" is way off. "Software that people want" is way more important than how well it works.

This is a good example of how Joel is still mostly a big-company kind of guy.
Tazo Chai
Y Combinator continued
I Want To Claim!!!
Great essay.

I disagree that you can or should only protest those judgements about you specifically, but I do agree with the entire second half of your essay.

I agree with the idea behind the essay, that "If it doesn't matter to someone else whether they choose you, then the other party has the leverage. You want to put yourself in positions where you have the leverage." For example, if you apply to a college, and thousands of applicants are just like you, then you don't have leverage.

Your examples just ignore the fact that people get rejected from about 4 colleges a year, while they have a chance to correct their tests and homeworks about 1,000 times a semester.

This means that the numbers simply don't match up. If you appealed 1,000 college decisions, you would have a great chance to get into a lot of them. If you appealed 1,000 questions on a homework to one busy and egotistical professor, they would likely start avoiding you after the 10th question.

Therefore, people SHOULD appeal everything they want to, whether the judgement is specifically about them or not.

I saw that this was written originally as a post to a question about YC decisions. As far as advice about YC, I think the best explanation of why some people were rejected is that there is a hidden bias (though very well earned) to hang around with people you think you'll find interesting or ideas you think you'd love or have a lot to contribute to over the summer.
Netvibes Launches Universe: Customized Public Pages
No stimulants, just polyphasic sleep. I get the jitters if I try caffeine...
What happens when ad recession comes? Ads are cyclical too...
Hrm

I don't know how they're going to compete with theknot.com. I've thought of this idea before and searched out the competitors. Every women and girl out there knows theknot is where you go to plan weddings. theknot is featured in every women magazine available. Heck, I don't plan on getting married anytime soon and I even know you go to theknot.

But hey, it's cool they're trying new things out but they seriously need talk to women before diving into a woman industry related area.
Rockstar Juiced or Coffee but not the two mixed
If success is quantified, the market makes less sense
Social networking and search (is it really that crash-hot?)
Good stuff. I'm infamous at my local coffee shops for ordering it as straight concentrate. Not often, though. Usually just to keep me awake through classes following an all-nighter.
Tea, Earl Grey, unadulterated.
TechCrunch20 - New TechCrunch Event - Demo your startup
Web 2 Expo - Rise of the hybrid designer
Yikes! Ticket prices are steep $2,495.00 ($1,995.00 early bird).
A very important question... Celestial Seasonings Fast Lane tea.
Introducing Microsoft Silverlight
'... Tim Sneath: Musings of a Windows Vista Technical Evangelist ...'

worth adding just for the blog byline
Why People Hate Building Desktop Applications?
Ray Ozzie:  Adobe & software as a service
The Myth of Big Orgs and Innovation
Nokia, Widgetized - "S60 will be the first mobile software platform, they say, that allows for the creation of widgets using standards-based Web technologies"
Though this article is defending us, I disagree with it. What makes YC a good deal is not that we take common stock rather than preferred, but simply that we improve the average startup's outcome way more than the 6% we "cost."
Microsoft to Google: You Are The Monopoly Now, and We Are The Losers
The Man Who Would Change Microsoft: Ray Ozzie's Vision for Connected Software
Wow. Way to basically take credit for Nic Williams' contribution (extending Rails to do what you want is often much simpler than you think) while at the same time including in a completely unnecessary dig on the Twitter guys (I would of course rather have seen this work come out of Twitter).

DHH is so hilariously out of control. I'm torn between clapping and vigorously shaking my head. He and Zuckerberg are really trying hard to make a case for the efficacy of over the top arrogance. They do seem to be getting things done...
I disagree you should appeal everything you feel is unjust. Sometimes it's appropriate, but it is difficult not to react with emotion when there is a sense of injustice and not all of those feelings lead you in the best direction.

If your partner breaks up with you, for example, appealing to 1000 different committees is only going to make things 1000 times worse for you.

You've got to decide whether the reward is worth the effort. Sometimes the reward doesn't make sense if you had to fight to get it. (eg, if you're not picked for a team then bitch your way in, there might be resentment that brings the whole team down such that you'd have been better off not bothering)
Now that the storm of comments died down a bit, I'd like to say that I agree with you. I've been attending the yearly Fosdem in Brussels, Belgium (an open source convention) for several years now, and this year a lot of the people working on open source had Macs. As a matter of fact the Macs were everywhere. Like you said, the geeks already switched to Mac. Many people have a PC, because someone they know advised them to get one, and because they knew that they could get help from the geek they knew if they got in trouble, but the geeks switched to Mac now. Combine this with the fact that those same geeks are telling people to stay away from Vista, and it doesn't look good for Microsoft. Just my two cents from Belgium.
The knowledge that if I go to sleep, it will take me hours to get back in the zone again.
If I need a stimulant to keep me awake, I go to sleep.

Pulling an all-nighter when I'm already in sleep debt only produces code that sucks. The next day, I'm too tired to be functional and I've got a bunch of code that needs to be thrown out and rewritten. Sleep is a better use of time.
Emerging Countries and Mobile Phones: Kenya case study
I did NOT say you should try to appeal everything you feel is unjust. I said let the person decide. I'm saying there should not be a blanket statement about NEVER appealing certain decisions. People should appeal for anything they WANT to (obviously after using common sense, not everything) especially if it's NOT personal, like college admissions.

I also did NOT say you should appeal to 1,000 different places. It was an example to point out that Paul was comparing apples to oranges.

And, by appeal, I don't think either I or Paul meant just words, but whatever it would be (retaking the physical, sending videos to a coach of your performance, sending a college a picture of a national award you just received in March after you were just rejected, etc.)
I agree. There is some truth in it though, especially if you also read DHH's post on Twitter trouble: http://www.loudthinking.com/arc/000608.html
If I told you I might get arrested
I think 6% is a small price to pay. I am not sure why the blogosphere is making such a big deal about it. I would give away double of that to be part of YC.
Yeah. Did you see the translation:
http://diveintomark.org/archives/2007/04/16/dhh-translation
Dodgeball founders quit Google
There seems to be some confusion here with "the usual distribution of ability".

>"There will be a few stars who clearly should make the team, and many players who clearly shouldn't. "

Rather, there are a few who clearly should, a few who clearly shouldn't, and many in-between.

Moreover, this assumes there is a quantity called "ability" and that the evaluator is accurately measuring it. I note the later downplaying of accuracy, but before that, it says:

>"Probably the difference between them will be less than the measurement error."

How do you arrive at an estimate of "measurement error" in order to claim that? Did you first measure the evaluator's "measurement ability"? With what?

Even if we naively assume that we can order a group by "ability" with regard to start-ups, and that the difference between adjacent slots is small, it does not follow that your evaluation comes anywhere close to the presumed omniscient set-ordering.

The data you have is your self-selected subset, and even there you find that choice #30 is actually in the top few, which is a rather large measurement error; you might argue this doesn't matter in aggregate, but it still argues against any notion of small measurement error. If you can be off by almost your entire selection size then who knows what you missed in the numbers up to twice the chosen cut-off?

The statement "it matters least to judge accurately in precisely the cases where judgement has the most effect" seems self-contradictory. What I would guess you mean is that if someone is clearly good, they make the cut, and you don't need to scrutinize to find out how good; but it still matters that you put them on the right side of the cut!

It matters the most to judge accurately where judgement has the most effect -- given the nature of start-ups, your missed borderline case could be the one that would have been larger than all the rest put together. Remember your perceived borderline is not the same as the actual borderline. See Bessemer's anti-portfolio: http://www.bvp.com/port/anti.asp

The article seems to focus on accuracy initially, then semi-mea-culpa its way out of it later.

Reading hundreds of applications, your eyes glaze over, and you may only notice someone when they happen to push one of your buttons by chance.

It's fine to say you think you selected an "optimal subset" of people according to your checklist, biases, or opinions; but don't confuse that with "ability". You have an idea of what you want and pick according to resemblance to it: small teams that remind you of Viaweb's structure.

Using the game theory definitions, I don't find it discouraging that you chose an "optimal" set, which is clearly different in this case from "maximal" ;)

Just don't confuse maximal individual ability with optimal set selection, which is what you appear to do with your example of selecting players for a national team.

Tanenbaum would've failed Torvalds due to his own bias, which is clearly separate from Linus's ability.
Now that we know that Y Combinator is not a scam (I wonder how many established businesses applied to YC for the first round? PG?), I think it's clear you want to go with them.
YC is almost like a talent agent or broker -- finding the best hackers and setting them up with the logistical necessities, social connections, and advice. Taking a small cut of the transaction, entirely from the excess they create, is the only logical way to operate long-term.
To me, it seems muddled; I don't see the usual thanks to the usual suspects so I assume PG single-foundered it instead of running it past RTFM et al.
Agreed. I don't even drink or ingest any stimulants. Keeps my sleep much more regular.
my combination exactly.
Jasmine tea and Led Zeppelin.