skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Trying to recreate one aspect of Y Combinator
I'm fascinated about one aspect of Y Combinator - and curious if it is replicable.

Could you quantify the most meaningful motivations that help you build your companies during the week between YC dinners at YC HQ? Specifically, what drives you regarding peer review?

Paul Graham has written that one of the more amazing aspects of YC is the peer conversations that occur during the weekly dinner. Per Mr Graham, companies often "show off" progress made since the last dinner. This mechanism of friendly competition and perhaps accountability seems to drive dedicated company building in a constructive way.

While I'm certain that office hours with YC staff is just as important, that is difficult to duplicate for obvious reasons.

But - assuming that the odds are correct and we don't get into YC - I'm very curious about replicating this aspect of peer review and accountability.

We're planning on getting together with a few other pre-revenue startups that are trying to figure out problem-solution and product-market fit in their space - which is kind of where we are as well.

For lack of a better description, we're trying to form an accountability group - to give us the drive to hit our weekly milestones, and discuss problems encountered for missing milestones. Perhaps, prospectively over time such a group, as they all become familiar with one another, could offer meaningful trouble-shooting with knowledge of intimate details that are time and phase aware of your company's state.

This is perhaps the one thing I'm most jealous of YC companies that are actively in the program. I'd love to somehow recreate this. Access to amazing mentorship is certainly a close second.

My initial guesses on things that matter:

1. Companies should be in similar phases for all participants to get equal value - using "lean" startup lexicon, an example might be companies that are trying to figure out "product-market" fit.

2. Meeting face to face on a regular basis.

3. Are YC companies "showing off" to each other in cliques - meaning... is there greater value in us keeping our peer-review/ accountability meetup to just a few companies? If it is indeed clique dependent, what would you say is the optimal number?

Are there other things that aren't as obvious or intuitive? Am I dead wrong on some of the assumptions?

I'm hoping to start experimenting - any insight would be extremely helpful. For some reason if we can't get in YC, then I'm hoping something like this can help us a bit.

Thanks in advance.

Cheers,

Subbu
If history is anything to go by they will probably start out as status symbols, and become commodities as they spread into the market. Mobile phones are a good example.
I hate to say it, I'm not sure you have the necessary skills required to actually do what you're looking to do if these are the types of questions you have. A better question might be "what are good resources to read to get into datamining and machine learning".
I think, the issue is - we're still figuring out how to have conversations in crowds.

This is still relatively new to human society. Twitter provides a way to shout out sentences to the world in general - and to listen out for voices that we care about. Forums allow us to converse with multiple people and actually form relationships - relationships which might eventually cross over into meatspace.

The ability to converse in this way - in a 'third space', provides a lot of opportunities to encounter things that we're not used to encountering. This is an example of that.

What will happen in the future? Well - if there's a sharp increase in communication with people who are choosing to end their lives due to suffering, my guess is we'll all learn more about what those people are feeling and thinking. We'll all be a lot more educated and a lot more understanding as a result. It will be a positive thing.

I suppose that there's a chance that we'll become desensitized - but I think, when the stakes are this high and the subject is so earth-shatteringly significant to every one of us, it probably won't ever become so.

I really think that our society is worse off by treating death as a taboo. I don't particularly enjoy thinking about it, or talking about it - but I think it's worthwhile.
The Mac Mini is cheap.

At various times the iPod was about as 'cheaper than the competition' as the iPad is now.

The iPod touch has been cheap relative to comparable products. The Nintendo 3D hand held is launching at $350 here.
One thing I both do and don't understand is all this fidgeting around with the form factor. I think the Xoom is the closest to an iPad in form factor, but the rest are all over the map.

While I do understand the desire to test out different sizes/weights/features etc. to see if Apple was close but not quite spot on with their first shot out of the gate (who knows? an 8" $1000 tablet could wipe the floor with everybody), it overlooks the simple fact that in the mind of consumers the iPad represents what a tablet looks and feels like.

If you are going to make a tablet then, you must fit the consumer's expectations, not try and carve a niche somewhere else.

Make a tablet, the exact shape and size and weight of an iPad, make it $50-100 cheaper all around, toss in a regular 'ol USB slot and an SD card and you'll probably have a hit. none of the present, weirdly shaped and overly priced Android tablets have any appeal to me whatsoever.

Better to credibly compete in the market, then when you own some part of it, fiddle around with the form factor and see what else sells.
Nevermind, I see now that the actions are somewhat randomly generated.
Living without Adobe, a summary
I think the actions are somewhat randomly generated from a possible set - GotFuturama.com also came with something similar for me, but Nintendo.com changed its actions after the second time I got it.
Ask HN: Is Your Webapp in an App Store?
There are many things I've always disliked about SEO. One of them is the aspect of it which makes it a zero-sum game with respect to a competitor who is also doing SEO. I'd rather spend my time, energy and money on making my product as good as possible, and then maximizing it's potential to spread virally and through word of mouth. What Google giveth, Google can taketh away. Quality wins in the end.
It would be nice if the Favimon healed themselves over time, so I don't have to sit and click "heal... heal... heal..." over and over with a several second wait in between.

It'd be nice to go to bed, and wake up in the morning with my Favimon all ready to go.
Ask HN: Any events in the NYC area over the next two weeks?
I'll be in the NYC area until the 18th of March. While I'm up here, I'm hoping to hit up a programmer/developer/hacker event if I can.

I'm mostly a hobbyist, interested in an array of programming languages: Python, Ruby, Haskell, Scala, Javascript, Lua, Lisp, or anything interesting, really. I'm not necessarily looking for work, but I wouldn't be against finding something, either.

So... does anyone know if there is anything interesting going on?
Are you marketing your webapp in an app store (Google Chrome, Mozilla)? What are your results, lessons learned, and how has your experience been? Is it worth it, and should the rest of us consider doing this?
I always push back against this argument, because the general view is that "innate abilities" matter far, far more than they actually do, and this is the reason for many lost opportunities. Woe to the "smart" kid who quickly learns to avoid anything that isn't easy on the first try.

The examples that people give tend to be things like professional athletes and classical musicians, for the simple reason that these kinds of professions are exceptions that are dramatically different from just about anything else you can do with your life.

The reasons why professional athletes are exceptions are more obvious (how many kids want to be pro athletes vs. how many pro athletes does the world need?), so let's look at the professional classical musician.

How many clarinetists are there in the world that make a good living at it? If we rule out the ones making a fairly poor living teaching privately or in high schools, universities, conservatories, etc. (and I'm guessing your family member didn't want to go this route), it's an extremely small, extraordinarily competitive pool, and you need to be at the top of the game to get any chair at all in a good orchestra (and the "winners" may stay in the orchestra for many decades, so orchestras don't hire often...). You are competing against people who have all been in training since age 4, so whatever small influence genes have looms large... and like with pro athletes, there are certainly genetic factors -- musical performance relies very much on extremely fine control of your body, and the shape of your lips, natural size of your chest cavity, etc. etc. will also make some subtle difference beyond what you can achieve with training.

But now let's look at almost any other way to use your life. Almost everything I can think of is a completely different story. Look at what happened to your family member when he left the "pro classical musician" path and went into something else. He knew how to work hard, and he succeeded. I'll bet you he could choose some other field and also succeed.

It's telling that when I meet talented developers, I'm not tempted to hire someone to break their limbs (cf Tonya Harding). I want them to train others, and work with me. With programming (like with most jobs that are not reserved for a few elites in the world), most people currently doing it have done just enough work to be competent (or at least appear competent...), and anyone willing to put in some actual effort can do great things.

And what's even better is that if more people put in some actual effort, the result is that more great things get done, more cool businesses get started (and some actually succeed), and the world is a better place.

There's no end to problems in the world. Any job that's related to solving problems works this way (as opposed to jobs that serve as simple entertainment for the masses, a set of needs that can be met be comparatively few people).
You're right that there is a cost associated with having the stores but those are largely fixed costs and the amount of product Apple sells through the stores is so massive that the markup is pretty small compared to the markup associated with selling at Best Buy, et al.

Apple stores are among the most profitable retail venues in the world.
Best practices for getting sponsors for your hackathon
Is it ok? Sure. Does it show a general lack of respect for your friend? Yes.

I wouldn't do it but that doesn't mean you shouldn't...I suppose.
The funny thing is that anyone can rebut Chris just by citing some examples of companies that started post-2008 and got traction through SEO. But the only companies cited in that entire thread are: OKCupid (2005), Mint（2006), Github (2008) and Stack Overflow (2008). So right away we're down to two examples, neither of which was founded in the last two years and both of which arguably bootstrapped off large existing communities rather than organic web traffic.

Chris is right -- anyone doing a startup better have another way to acquire users than focusing on SEO and organic traffic. The alternative is being black hat and throwing user experience out the window, which is his point.
Triple Dead-Heat at Dog Race
Show HN: OS Pre-Launch Page with Heroku and Campaign Monitor
While procrastinating doing the ironing today I whipped up a Sinatra/Heroku/Campaing Monitor application for a Pre-Launch Page.

If you're following MVP/Lean Startup principles or preparing for launch, you should start gathering interest for your application.

In 5 minutes or less your new idea can start collecting e-mails (assuming you promote it).
Easy to follow directions are included.

http://vouched.heroku.com <-- Example (actually this is mine. Vouched: Recruitment with Social Proof).

On github: https://github.com/maxdemarzi/Camel
Previous discussion here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2254663
That fixed cost still has to be spread across all sales. Also, while the Apple stores are highly successful they are also a potential financial liability if things go sour since they only stock one productline.
I agree - noise will reach saturation point (no pun intended) .. and will eventually be forgotten about. When it's used properly, you don't notice it.

I sometimes wonder why we actually need trends. It's an interesting subject - in a way trends are a just part of the commodification of design. They provide a way to transfer values (through loose connotations) to an audience .. I think there's something quite cheap (throwaway) about the concept. Without trends, progress is less able to drive commercialisation and the need to update is less essential.
Researcher develops new networking model language
I have been a banking programmer for some large European banks, so whilst I can't speak for the US system I can describe the way ATM transactions work in the UK, Germany & Switzerland.

Making a withdrawal from an ATM/ePOS does not debit your bank account immediately, but it does reduce the limit (i.e. available funds) on your card immediately. Checking your "balance" at an ATM shows the card's total available funds, not your bank account balance.

ATM operators are often not the same as your bank, even though they may show your bank's logo at the top. There are fees at every stage of the transaction so ATM operators and ePOS transaction acquirers can decide whether to ask your bank/VISA etc whether you have the funds. For small, low risk transactions they will often wait, preferring to batch a bunch of debits to a single institution at a quiet (cheaper) time of day.

Your card is reconciled with your bank account daily (usually daily). A payment to a third party takes longer - the payee's bank needs to complete reconciliation too and, as other commenters have pointed out, the network breaks sometimes.

Banks can improve the time it takes to transfer funds to third parties and have done so in many countries but it has taken government intervention. The float does play a part, but getting competing banks to agree to a standard is almost impossible.

Side note: Your card has many, many limits most of which you will never encounter. Examples: total cash per ATM per day; number of cardholder-not-present transactions per day; total spent in gambling establishments per month.
Google's ubiquitous and omnipresent ways of doing things will win it's way on social.

It's kinda crude, but I think Google's plan is to make Google Profile (aka Facebook clone) ubiquitous and omnipresent blurring the line going to a social networking site and just searching for that person.

Kinda like Microsoft's thing with Windows 98 when everything can be used as Internet Explorer.
Thanks everyone for the suggestions, help, and direct info - this is much more than I imagined. I'll follow up directly with those who posted contact info tomorrow - I'll get my resume dusted and up to date first.

I've added an e-mail address to my profile. Spoiler alert: single.serving.hn@gmail.com
I think dribbble highlighted the use of noise to a wider group of people. I agree it can add to a design - but I think their use of it is largely stylistic.
The Mac Mini is cheap compared to other Macs. Not compared to comprable computers, IIRC, so long as we are considering performance an important metric.

I don't know if the 3D handheld is a good comparison. It's expensive because it has 3D for goodness sake.
Cliche, trend, or progress?
I would go so far as always. Power tries to hold onto power.
By the way, why does everyone seem to be poo-pooing that arsenic discovery from a few months ago? Did something about it turn out to be fake?
SEO is not a viable marketing strategy for everyone.
Do you think there were reasons behind such an infection coming from Iran? Were they an act of war?
If you haven't read Zakaria's "The Post-American World", I highly recommend it.

I agree with his assessment that the landscape is changing rapidly and profoundly, although I don't know if the resultant loss of economic and political weight means that we can't still have our best days ahead of us.

All that's necessary, I think, is the political will to move forward in the right direction. I would argue that large infrastructure projects in telecommunication and energy, and shifting education goals towards an information economy and away from it's Taylorist origins are most important to be able to compete in the future.

Although even with that, we will probably never have the kind of political dominance we've had in the past. I don't think I've ever had a problem with that.
A trend quickly progressing towards becoming a cliche :)
Interview With Jalila Bouchareb
I clobbered Google, Yahoo, and YCombinator with Reddit. I'm not sure I quite get this.
I think all this bragging about price and also about the number of apps is just premature. We are obviously at the beginning of the Android response. It took Google a year to release their response to the iPad and Xoom is the first product based on it. It was just released a couple weeks ago. You can argue that the competition has been slow to respond but this is not the full response yet, there is no way the iPad will own >90% of this market by the end of the year.

By the end of this year there will be tons of android tablets and tons of apps. As with the phones, the hardware will be all over the place in terms of price and quality, but just as with the phones the onslaught of announcements and features and price points will be too much and they will slowly but surely become more and more compelling.

It's been said that 2011 will be the year of the tablet. Apple is once again the king of the hill with a huge headstart. But the droids are coming. As Anonymous says, expect them.
A former employer of mine in the financial sector used Scalable Informatics[1] and Dell[2] servers for that sort of thing.

1- http://scalableinformatics.com/

2- http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/poweredge-cloud-servers
Almost Everything is Unprofitable (SEO and Startups)
It definitely could be different. That's why I'm working on FaceCash.
The NYC clojure meetup will be the 16th. You can signup on meetup.com. The functional programmers group is this coming Tuesday but already full. There is also the LispNYC meeting that can also be found on meetup is also this coming tuesday.

In general, meetup is a great way to find users groups is nyc.
Increase the opacity and look at the background.
Thanks for the feed back.
Now to have this post to a web service so that the user can simply email a link to report hours.
That is a pretty silly thing to say. My buddies business failed, and they used computers, so therefore nobody should use any computers to start a business anymore.
Is it ok to collude with your competitors?
Your "All that's necessary..." is a big "all." Looking at the political class today on both sides of the aisle, I'm afraid they just aren't capable of taking any sort of necessary actions Zakaria prescribed. In addition, a President who many saw as a savior who would transcend all of the pettiness has proven no better or influential than any other person who could have won.
Apple's iOS doesn't use windows, all apps are full-screen. IOS doesn't have a menu bar, only an info bar (time, power, cell reception, etc). It doesn't even use a pointing device, and there's no onscreen pointer -- you can use your finger to 'click' (touch) and drag, but you can't point.

Window, Icon, Menu, Pointing device. Only the icons survived.

There's no desktop metaphor either in iOS: no recycle bin, no central file cabinet to browse through, no desktop to arbitrarily place things on, no way to make file folders.
Didn't notice that. Good to know, I was thinking about using Posterous as a super super easy way for some of clients to populate their blogs. That would have been a big mistake on my side!
He directly addresses their key evidence: the pictures of the supposed organisms. He interprets the images as inorganic and and calls the paper's claims pareidolia. If outside observers look at the same data and don't see what you're arguing for, you're not making your case successfully.
I understand the cynicism, and in a lot of ways, I share it. And I'm not naive, I think that movements should be built to pressure politicians to move in those directions.

I don't think they will make those big decisions on their own. I think the biggest issue with Obama is that he was a centrist who was elected by a mobilization of progressives who thought their job was done on January 21st, 2009.

I do see things building to push that kind of grassroots pressure, though.
The fact that they sell primarily Apple products is an advantage even if things went sour.

The Apple store gives Apple promotional and marketing support, it is a support venue. The customer walks in to an environment designed to promote Apple products not dishwashers, Xooms and Xbox 360s.

Things might go sour at some point, but Apple is sitting on $50 billion in cash and liquid assets, even if everything went south sales-wise, the advantages of exclusively promoting their products is probably worth it to them.

Their retail partners have been fair-weather friends and more likely to be a negative factor if things went sour than any fixed costs of running the stores.
I agree 100% on the pricing. You may have your reasons, but whatever they are, an extra $50 is not enough.

Perhaps you've found that real estate agents don't like metered pricing. That's cool, but I think you need to develop some kind of value proposition for the high end.

I know a guy who owns student properties in my town. He's given me loads of advice on how to break into the rental market; he is fascinating, and he owns over 200 properties in my area. I think he could really benefit from your service, especially the credit checks etc.

Consider this: the average student property in my area houses 4 people. Each of those people pay him, on average, $100 a month. So let's call it 4x200=800 people. That's $100x(4x200)=$80,000 a month for his business. I think your service could really benefit him, and you would be charging only $100 a month.

Your pricing is really low event for this guy's business, and I'm talking about one landlord in one small town in the United Kingdom. Recognise your market potential and price accordingly for that segment, you owe it to yourselves.
United tried to do the same thing with it's Ted (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_(airline)) subsidiary.
The scientific method is based on the principle that peer review winnows out false hypotheses. If n observers each detect a falsehood with probability p then the probability of missing the falsehood is (1-p)^n. More reviewers and more accurate individual reviewers decrease the rate of false hypotheses being published. There are many flaws in the peer review system as it exists today. That said, journals with more peer review will publish fewer falsehoods than journals with less peer review.
* (W) You are presented with modal dialogs (a form of window) at various points in many iOS interfaces - ditto for Android.

* (I) The main way of representing an application is via an icon.

* (M) There are definitely menus in Android. I'd argue that there are also even menus in iOS - lists of options that are allow you select which operation you'd like to perform (e.g. mail settings menu).

* (P) You can point - you use your finger. You can't hover.

It's not really that ground-breaking - it's a relatively small iteration.
Web Application Design - A Reading List