skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> AGAIN: You made a claim that the sermon was an isolated event. You have a basis for that claim?

Umm, yes, my using English AJ as a news source. I think I would have noticed if they regularly advocated (note - a distinction from broadcasting) extremist views. :)

You, on the other hand, have noted that you have no first hand knowledge of AJ or their reporting. But have taken content from a website that exists to track down examples of anti-Semitic material to inform your view of them...

> Are you really claiming that they completely lied about something so easily checked...?

No, more bad rhetoric. You know I am not claiming that. I am explaining that they hunt down these clips, often presenting them out of context, with the agenda of exposing news agencies as anti-Semitic.

Point being made is; you should definitely treat them as circumspectly as you are treating AJ.

> They have aired lots of scandals in lots of president administrations

I'm mildly unconvinced that airing scandal is a good marker for neutrality & credibility :)

The BBC are pretty good - probably the best "simple" news source, although it has its biases (most notably it is often anti EU). NYT I am always divided over, but generally pretty good. They make up my four "preferred & relatively trustworthy" news sources along with AJ and the Financial Times. There is probably a slight liberal bias in my choice of news consumption, but I have yet to find a conservative media source that I am comfortable with.

BUT; you could pick up lots of examples of problems.. the BBC, for example, tends to be very "white middle class Christian" centric (and sometimes, ultra-politically-correct). They also, recently, broadcast some BNP interviews which had pretty nasty/racist comments in them - basically the same sort of lines as the first incident you pointed to with AJ.

We picks our source and then take them with a grain of salt. The point is not to find you a "source" to prove Al Jazeera's credibility to you, the point is I am giving you my opinion as a cynic and AJ watcher that I find them to be a relatively neutral and balanced news source. If you have respect for my opinions you might take that as an endorsement, or otherwise you might not :) I don't mind.

The points you have raised do concern me; enough that it will be at the back of my mind now when using them as a source, at least in the near future. I'm afraid it is not enough to convince me they are anti-Semitic and completely non-neutral/compromised.
There's a company in the UK that has been profiled on HN before-- their name escapes me now-- but they are famous for hiring Oxbridge liberal arts graduates and training them in computer science and software development. Anybody remember who I'm talking about?
What happens if there is no next funding round (startup fails)? Do the startup founders have to return the debt?
They'd be crazy not to, it basically boosts whatever runway they had by a considerably amount. What's more interesting than those that took it is those who didn't and if in the end there will be any that won't take it at all and what their reasons are. Likely the number will be '0'.
It seems unlikely; if they're not seen as doing something to fight piracy on the platform, even if that something amount to throwing some money down a hole, they could see publishers abandon them, which would cost them more money in the long run than paying a couple of firmware devs to play sisyphus.
I think you mean min(series A valuation, cap).
It's like the war on drugs. It's the small fish that get fried.

But it tends to be the small fry that make up the bulk "opposition"
Because there's no downside. You can take the $150k and stick it in a bank account and still be better off.
Wouldn't it already be full of cheaters using the PC version?
Generally not, and I'm quite sure they wouldn't have to for this deal.

Obviously any exit event would be a valuation and Yuri would get a cut. But in case of failure, everyone walks away empty-handed.
"Startup fails" is the reason why these companies have the so-called "limited liability". They file for bankruptcy, founders get on with their lifes, investors see nothing. This is, in fact the vast majority of the cases, and the reason investing is called "high-risk, high reward".
I'm not convinced you've thought this through properly. Beyond what geographic size, population count, and economic size does a state need to be split? And how do you know how many states it should be split into? I mean, Rome essentially split in half and ended up with two unmanageable nations. How do you know California doesn't need to be split into 3 or 4 states? Or for that matter, more states have more overhead (you need two legislatures, two cabinets, two of every cabinet position). How do you know the real solution isn't to combine California with Oregon and Washington?
All of this fueled by long nights pulled by young kids who's bodies can take the caffeine abuse for a while.

Don't doubt for a minute that some of us old farts are staying up late, downing obscene amounts of coffee, Red Bull, Monster drinks, etc., trying to get in on things. Hell, if anything, when you start getting older, and you look around and realize "I haven't done anything yet" a certain sense of, hmmm... I won't quite say desperation, but something like that, sets in. I've even spent a lot of time lately debating the merits of going ahead and ordering some black market "smart drugs" just to get a little extra edge. I haven't pulled the trigger yet, but it's awfully damn tempting.
You seem to be missing "Business 101" --The continuous
cracking-fixing-cracking cycle results in press coverage and hence, free
advertising for Sony as well as making the product more desirable to
some fraction of potential buyers.

The problem is, most of the revenue is made from licensing to game
producers rather from console sales, so unless there is some token
effort to keep the console "secure," the real revenue stream would
disappear.
Maybe not for you. I did a little calculation at http://listentotaxman.com/ and put in the minimum wage for a 37.5 hour week. If you need to take a few buses to get to work, over 10% of your £190 weekly pay packet gets eaten up on travel.

It's definitely cheaper (though less flexible) than running a car on your own, but some of the costs of a car can be spread between more than one person, which isn't the case with public transport.

However, I was pleasantly surprised to see that teenagers now get free bus travel and discounted Tube fares. I could've done with that a few years ago!
What made Berkeley Great?
It never was about the angels, it always was about the start-ups. If you don't see it that way, don't be an angel investor. Or grow some balls and dare to drop more than a few thousand on a promising project.
Have a war. Whoever loses has to keep Fresno.

Disclaimer: I got this silly idea from someone else, but I don't remember who or where.
YC still has limited capacity so that point is simply not valid. If you're not one of the lucky few to get in to YC and you want to do a start-up then you'll have to do without them.
Heard the same about Wendy's.
If those big companies continue to grow though there is no reason why they won't continue to make the acquisition's. For all the small acquisition's though your also generating new big companies that will be acquiring companies in the future.

A few years back there was no big social gaming company, now you have zynga cashed up and acquiring companies. Same thing could happen in the mobile space, a company that gets really big and then is able to acquire some of the many small new mobile development companies.
What ever you do make sure if it fails make sure it won't hurt you financly don't bet to much on it in the begining
If that happens, Yuri would be insanely profitable.
Five hundred trillion dollars are coming into the company. Then all that shares are bought back.
So now Yuri has substantial share of these five hundred trillion dollars. Even if Yuri's share would be just 1% -- 5 trillion dollars would allow Yuri never work again.
> The silly thing of course is, if Milner was making the calls, nobody would have a problem with it.

He's smart enough to get out of the way.
Local knowledge goes global with off-the-wall guided tours
Lessons Learned by a Solo Entrepreneur | Software by Rob
It's also been shown that you can maximize the throughput of a highway if the speed limit is 45mph. Too high, and you need to increase the space between cars.

Although 55mph != 45mph, it's pretty close. It also doesn't serve the individual, but if can't get the cars through fast enough, the traffic will build up eventually.
What happens if there is no exit or "liquidity event", but the startup is profitable and never takes additional funding? When does the $150K become equity?
I am not in a position right now to cite my sources but FWIW I heard a spokesperson from the muslim brotherhood on the phone to al jazeeera a few hours ago saying "we do not intend to contest any presidential election."

They have basically been saying that the events are not in any way caused or prompted by them, but they support them fully as participants.
Comcast Takes Control of NBC: In battle of Hulu and Netflix
Yeah pretty much this for NZ. I read that thinking "Man, I'm glad I don't have that risk for being self-employed". I also have private health insurance, but it costs me $11 a fortnight, so I get the best benefits of the public system AND private insurance for doctors visits and elective surgery.
Pneumonia strain has evolved 75% of its genome since 1984
> In reality it's just an illusion that it's something objectively better.

Why do you say that? They do seem to have a better and broader news coverage.

> "Israel: The ugly truth" ... Notice something out of proportion here?

No. I think it is a well written article. Are you implying that anyone criticizing Israel should be automatically discarded on the basis of intolerance?
I guess I could see Rovio go on an acquisition spree. Still, I think any market predicated upon acquisition rather than growth and profitability is inherently unstable. That instability allows for rapid growth, but it also allows for rapid and catastrophic failure, as we saw in the Banking industry.
Better to fuel your mind with the right foods, supplements, etc. B-complex, good quality sea salt, the right fats -- all good for the brain. And it isn't followed by a crash because it builds capacity rather than squeezing existing resources to get more out of them.
overview.txt:

http://camlistore.org/code/?p=camlistore.git;a=blob_plain;f=...
I always hesitate when someone says there's "no downside" to accepting large sums of money.
I didn't think it was obvious from context, either (though I've been watching the English Al Jazeera stream).
Likewise, with Borders following Barnes & Noble.

Very common tactic.
Several protesting mobs have used the masks, including at least one group in China.
Mac OS X package deployment via App Engine
"I'll often get a better cell phone connection out in the middle of [East Africa] than in San Francisco" My experience too.
What I still find hard to believe is that the whole "cracking" effort was based around the fact Sony removed OtherOS and they (the hackers) wanted to return it to the people who paid for it. I still can't seem to find a workable solution to re-enable it or install a custom Linux distro on my PS3...
I understand what you're saying. The human condition is relative. But I've lived where I had no spending power, no paycheck for another week, and only a pack of ramen in the house. I might not have been dying, but I was certainly suffering. It's just awful to wish that on anyone, especially when he would never in a million years wish it on himself. He's putting himself above the people who keep him in work. It's disrespectful to say the least.
Ask HN: The end of Ramen profitable?  Cash as crack?
Scoble has pointed out the end of ramen profitable with the recently announced flow of $150,000 cash guaranteed to all YC startups.

Will the next generation of YC startups be focused more on how to raise and spend money than how to get product out and revenue cash in? Will every YC business plan including office costs, hiring costs, graphic design costs, administration costs?

Perhaps a better idea might have been to give the $150K to match the startups first $150K revenue. Or some other idea?

Funding is like crack - once a company gets its first round of funding it's hooked, everything from there is about raising more funding, more rounds, A round B round, term sheets, valuations. The cash dealers want you to come back for more. Are all YC companies now dosing up on cash?
Also, with all the love and respect I have for YC, let's not forget that YC startups aren't all the startups in which investors can invest. They can grow some balls and go with startups they think will be successful and not just betting on the ones pre-screened by YC.
Can somebody give me an advice. We have a two person startup, that is making about 20k/mo and it's growing. I am the founder. The thing is, I do not currently plan to raise VC money. My goal is to achieve revenue of 200k/mo by 2013. It is very realistic, but the problem is that as the service grows, we spend more and more time on operations, since certain things were not timely automated. We need about 300k , so that we can hire a couple of contractors to automate operations, to accelerate product development.
But since I do not plan to raise a VC round, the convertible loan would not work. What is the right mechanism for this investment? I also believe the risk is lower than normal, since we have been making money for a while, and this should be reflected in the terms and in the valuation. Is this the domain of angels to make such an investment?
Saw some people wearing them in protest/demonstration/march for egypt down Massachusetts Ave in Cambridge & Boston today.
That's amazing, 4 years of hacking away to get to a functional working system.

The diaries are great and well worth the read, especially the bring up attempts.
What's the downside to thinking about it for a week or two to see if there are any non-obvious problems?
Seriously? I don't think you grok quite how disruptive this is. This is a better deal than any YC company has gotten... probably ever. The only way someone could top it is to pay founders to let them invest. Add to that the fact that YC almost certainly had piles of legal analysis done to protect the founders' interests.

Convertible debt paperwork is really only a few pages... Heck, they might've used YC's boilerplate docs to simplify things.
CoD on PS3 was full of cheaters before the console was "hacked" through manipulated saves.
Not that this is "universal", but I believe anon (from 4chan, etc) has been using them for the occasional public protest/event/whatever.
You are right. No-one gets in at a better valuation than YC. Of course they deserve it, they created the whole phenomenon.
Really? This was pretty easy to see from miles away. It's a simple investment strategy - YC does the weeding for them, they throw a bit of cash at each company and get a much better return. I've been wondering why people haven't been doing this for a while.
Some notes have automatic conversion at a given valuation (usually the 'floor', which in this case does not exist.) Others have no such clause, presumably under the incorrect assumption that a "liquidity event" will always happen if there is a success. I've dealt with both types of notes before and always insisted on adding an automatic conversion clause.
I wrote:

> AGAIN: You made a claim that the sermon was an isolated event. You have a basis for that claim?

To recap that thread in the discussion:

a. You claim AJ is a good news site.
b. I point out that they have racist content in non-English editions; suspect agenda.
c. You make claims about the racist content.
d. I ask multiple times for references to that claim.
e. Finally, you base that upon the English content?!?!

It seems you just made up a fantasy about that original sermon?

After that you claim I do bad rhetoric?!?! WTF?!

Either you're drunk or trolling.

>>Point being made is; you should definitely treat them as circumspectly as you are treating AJ.

WTF?!

I made that point in what you commented on, against you...

I wrote: "And since you don't have references and are literally claiming the right to say a news source is good, despite not knowing their agenda or how they spin etc, it is fun when you disqualify sources."

The rest of the comment looked like a total change of subject, I'm not going to read it. But I saw this ending:

>>enough that it will be at the back of my mind now when using them as a source

Again: (a) There might be be double messages to different languages/audiences and (b) Even if not, no one has a clue to the agenda/spin of Al J.

I don't know if the web site is the same company? Try reading it with translate.google.com, then.
That's indeed a good idea. It does not solve one real issue with recommendation, though: the objective measure is whether people buy more stuff, which means running experiments not only on real data but in the real business environment.
I'd like to see a graph with per capita numbers now.

On a per capita basis, California does slightly better than the US at large: about $50.8K vs. $47k US (according to the CIA/IMF):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_...
Right, god forbid we listen to anything other than pro-US and pro-Israel sources. And we all know that the BBC is a highly biased bunch of freedom haters, right?

Also, don't you love it when any group that is anti-Israel (ie. against the state) is labelled anti-semitic? Instant demonisation.
I think they mean the movie "V for Vendetta".
You're definitely right, solipsist has submitted 26 articles so far today!

The obvious solution is to limit the number of articles you can submit a day to, say, 1. Increase the scarcity of the resource to increase value of what it's used for and limit the power of karma farmers and spammers.
It is interesting because companies that pretty much wouldn't work on YC money would have a much stronger chance with the additional investment. I'm thinking hardware/software combinations like wakemate, which went through YC but I'm sure would have needed additional money to get past a simple prototype.
This was not really about their English content. Well, except about the agenda/spin.
Note that CNN International is a class better than CNN that you watch in the US. They carry less opinion and showbiz and more news and business, although go in-depth only in rare shows.

I used to switch between CNN and BBC in the 90s because of the great correspondent network they both had.
Derek Yu Uses This
I don't understand. They aren't diluting shares, they aren't liable if the company fails to reach Series A, and by all accounts there do not seem to be any strings attached with regard to oversight (ie. the founders don't need to "answer to" the investor in any way). All they are doing is giving a portion of their future shares to that investor now, at the same value as they would later. It's a no-brainer - what is the downside in your opinion?
I'd use RequireJS or LABjs before this, however it's based on a "microframework" called chain.js which looks pretty cool.
That doesn't mean much. First, if employers didn't pay it, they could increase compensation (either directly or via health benefits). Second, freelancers and temp workers pay both sides.
> Are you implying that anyone criticizing Israel should be automatically discarded on the basis of intolerance?

You don't seem to have listened. It wasn't about that one article, it was about their coverage of the issue, which is skewed in one obvious direction. And by the way, the article is nothing more than a bunch of anecdotes misrepresented as an accurate representation of the issue (the article itself even acknowledges this but ignores the implications.) When you take instances of violence by individuals and try to assert it's a general pattern, that is hate mongering, plain and simple. Quote from the article:

'Bayu says: "It's obvious that [things] can go to another level. This is what happened in Germany and many other places."'

Look, it even comes with allusions to the comparison of Israel and the Nazis!

>Why do you say that? They do seem to have a better and broader news coverage.

"They do seem" as a claim on it's own has no persuasive power.
For whatever its worth, plenty of people in this gig don't abuse caffeine and often don't have any at all. I rarely have more than one coffee a day, and often have none. I don't drink energy drinks or soda (except perhaps when out to eat). Francisco doesn't drink any coffee. Tom, on the other hand, has a bit of a red bull addiction. I'd guess anecdotally that most of my friends in startups behave more like me than like Tom or Francisco.
early morning. i get maximum work done between 6am-10am.
I don't know what point you're trying to make. You cited a payroll tax rate that was half what people really pay in, and implied that it was the same rate that wealthy people paid. Of course you were wrong on both counts. It takes no great insight to notice this; the same observation is at the center of Warren Buffet's complaint that his tax rate is effectively lower than his secretary's.

Your analysis is just dead wrong, and no hypothetical digs you out of it.
Well for acquisition's to happen their still needs to be growth and profitability somewhere, I guess the acquisition's are a way to gaining great efficiency in the market, if each need startup stays independent there is a lot of duplication in activities that support the main business operations.
I think what you're looking for is a loan.

Not sure if it's possible to get $300k on $20k/month revenue, though.
It's probably more accurate to say that the infrastructure has gradually become... less amenable to cars, intentionally and otherwise. Bus lanes, pedestrianised roads, roadworks, that kind of thing.
You expected them to add a feature like that overnight? That's a pretty big thing to hack into the firmware.
You are all acting as if the fate of news.yc is in your hands. It isn't!

If anyone here proves that he is not a good actor, he will be ruthlessly pruned from the site. This happens to dozens of people every week. This is all handled behind the scenes by pg and the editors.

That's the real reason this site has lasted as long as it has: pg and co are willing to be extremely ruthless about weeding out bad actors. That's the big difference. Other sites were more interested in growth, so they weren't as free to get rid of badly-behaved members.

This idea that news.yc is doomed to follow in the path of all other discussion sites that came before it: no, it is not. Not so long as pg is willing to keep pruning bad actors.
I believe you can enable billing and leave your cap at $0.
What people are pointing out is that nobody outside of this batch in Y Combinator has seen the paperwork, so nobody can actually verify that there isn't something hidden or sketchy present.

I trust Paul implicitly, and I suspect most YC Founders do, and that probably has a lot to do with the acceptance rate. I wasn't in the meeting obviously, so I can't know how I would have reacted to the specifics, but I can say knowing only what I know now I probably would have at least taken the weekend to do my homework.
It's obvious after reading the article.
You can still accept a convertible debt investment.

If you don't do a series A the valuation of the sale of the company will be taken. A sale without investments in between would mean a debt investor only gets his money back + interest.

Given your situation, the debt investor might negotiate a time limit for the conversion (and either a cap or a formula for the valuation at that point).
In what sense have you ever been in the AV industry? I'm not sure whether this account belongs to David or Dre, but neither of you have an AV company on your LinkedIn profiles.

I admire you for building a business on cleaning up hacked Wordpress installs (seriously), but that's not the same game that Kaspersky is playing.