skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
So, without commenting on the "ethics" of this --- I don't care that much --- it's worth it for readers to consider the practical implications of your approach.

(1) Most interviewers won't ask for a 10 hour sample project.

(2) Most interviewers won't ask for 10 references.

(3) Good serverside web dev talent, even in this economy, is not in surplus.

(4) There are extremely talented developers who are just going to say "no" to these weird requests.

Your loss.

I don't mean "unprofessional" as in, "you'll get kicked out of the guild". I mean, "this will make you look bad". It's as much an interviewer's job to sell their company as it is to qualify a candidate. Perhaps if you're getting a stream of people that's so bad you feel like you need to talk to their Mom and get them to work on spec for you, your real problem is that you just have a really crappy hiring pipeline.
You might not be able to convince the deniers that have other interests in mind... but you might be able to enlighten the less informed among them, or the people that feel they don't have enough information.
10 of the Best Social Media Tools for PR Professionals and Journalists
Garry from Posterous said it best last night on IRC:

You don't need a permission slip to start a startup :)
Android has more developers in it's first year than iPhone had in it's first year.

Give it some time... As usual, Apple won't be able to offer you as much choice in hardware as will be available for Android. And, we can already see that there will be more software choices and flexibility for Android.
Giving Up for Effectiveness
I guess it's just a matter of infrastructure cost (big) overshadowing profits (small).

That being said, Scribd does a GENIUS SEO trick that I haven't seen anywhere else. Scribd tracks all search terms that lead to a document, and then embed a link in that document's page with the search term as the anchor text. To see this in action, go to a Scribd document (http://www.scribd.com/doc/918737/Ruby-on-Rails-Simple-Exampl...), go to the "Indexing" box in the lower right, and scroll through the list.
Well done on the new accounts. Are you far along with your product I assume? What is your product btw?
Recession and YC Rejection.... sounds like part of some hit new rap single for Wall Street.

It's been said a lot lately as a reminder, not only by people of this community but also by pg himself in the letters and in HN comments. Don't stop doing what you love because pg and co didn't have space for it out of the estimated (no official numbers) 700 applicants that applied at the same time. PG will tell you that they aren't exactly the best at necessarily "picking the winners" and neither are most other investors.

The important thing is to move forward. As the OP shows, you don't NEED YC to be a successful and thriving business, even in troubled times. YC is a stepping stone and sure shot at opening doors that most of us have to pry open ourselves. YC != Success... YC is the beginning, but it should not be the end.
Even if you don't agree with The Economist, you have to admire its talent for making an argument. It's one of the few voices of reason in the global media circus; its coverage is always insightful and nearly always balanced; and, having read it, you come away with a much better understanding of the issues.

For anyone who appreciates good writing, their Style Guide is invaluable: http://www.economist.com/research/styleguide/
I don't think you understand that:

* It's Jesus who makes the weather

* Minnesota needs some warming up

* Polar warming creates a lucrative new northern shipping passage
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=152559

20 points by pg 211 days ago | link

Damn. Forgot that. Yes, sorry, it's not an April Fools' joke. I am actually nickb.
Linux != Gnome or KDE

That's precisely his complaint. New features are being created that aren't accessible from the command line (e.g. NetworkManager). You have to use GNOME/KDE.
Yeah... guess I should have explained it that way. Good feedback, thanks.

Hopefully the point remains: review as much code as you can, and don't be shy of asking them to demonstrate their skillz.
A pink slip might help though ;)
Blue Cross Blue Shield --- Free Blue Cross Blue Shield Health Insurance Quotes
From my experience, when talking about issues like global warming, people tend to form an opinion first and only then selectively seek out data to support it.
It's of course possible that YC thought it was a promising idea; with the number of applications they received it sounds like many solid ideas had to be turned down.
Why do I want lots of choice in hardware for my phone?
So post election news, just don't talk about it?
It doesn't seem to me that most people want to be informed or knowledgeable. While the Internet has made information and knowledge much more accessible it has helped in another area much more: rampant, mindless consumerism.

While I don't care to debate Obama's policies in this forum I would like to point out that advances in battery technology will help with both the foreign energy issue and many of the technological issues you mention. There is also the issue of powering the countless servers that are used.
IT manager candidates seem a lot like presidents
cough FreeBSD! cough
I love that magazine. It's hard to get such a global perspective from any other periodical.
Windows Azure offers developers iron-clad lock-in
And from Nature,

"This journal does not have a vote, and does not claim any particular standing from which to instruct those who do. But if it did, it would cast its vote for Barack Obama."

Would any other respected British publications like to chime in?
this is so hard to use, so hard, so hard... type in username. So hard to use: ignores "usability standards"... type in password. How can anyone use this?! Completely unconventional... type in email.

I hate to see a novel approach like this poo-pooed because it's not a rubber stamp copy of big-web design principles, and without justification, no less.

The fonts changes are a little funky, and that's about the only criticism I have. It's easy to follow and usable. I really like it.
Uptime is great. What about Trust though?

Can you trust a another company like Google or Amazon with your personal/private data or your company or client's sensitive data?
Financial Times endorses Barack Obama
Supposedly, but if pg and company are not willing to enforce it, then I suppose it's ok.

If you can't beat them, join them, I guess:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=349139
Virtual Protest Threatens Linden Lab’s Profitability
3x5 Cards - smaller and more versatile than a moleskine, you can give away the card without ripping a page out. When I had a moleskine, it was like ripping out a little piece of my heart each time. Easy to sort and throw out the ones that are garbage.

I like the ones with a graph pattern printed on one side or blank on both sides. Can take great notes in meetings. Can vary the number of cards that you bring with you. Several times I've been with people and we've mapped out entire projects with them on a bar tabletop. I'll never go back to a moleskine or a handheld app.
PG et all are only human. There are tons of businesses that don't fit their mold or that they won't be able to divine the greatness of, in advance. Not to mention that the sheer size of the applicants pool guarantees they will turn down good ideas and good teams.

Looking over their past companies, it seems revenue-focused businesses are less favored in their mix than one might expect, so perhaps there is less of a leaning toward that criteria than one might expect in their evaluation.
One question you don't see in their application is "do you have revenue or paying customers?"

I am sad for applicants who are able to, but don't, start something because they didn't get "validation" by way of a PG nod, but those are the people who, if I were PG, I would least want to fund.

So I guess what I'm saying is, don't take the lack of acceptance personally, like I did. :-)
... are you serious?
I like to keep my work life and my personal life separate. If I gave you references of my previous supervisors and a couple colleagues (3-5 references) will those extra references really matter to you? They certainly would to me. I would have to be pretty hard up to do anything but walk away if someone asked me for 10-15 references, unless it was the opportunity of a lifetime. Maybe that's what you are trying to screen though... On a related note, there are plenty socially inept hackers that would have issues with this.
I hope I'm not repeating something others have said, but I am at work and unable to read all the detailed replies (: I was in a PhD program and decided to leave after finishing my MSc, a decision I now somewhat regret. My advice to you is that if you are to finish a PhD, you must own your own research and be very passionate about it. If you are not happy with your advisor and still early into the process, by all means switch - there is no shame in that. Ideally, you should love your research topic but many people don't. If you are further along and could finish your degree soon? Just do what is required of you and get it! The point of the PhD is to show how you can do independent, significant research and if you can get funding and publications out of this just take the shot and do it. You should absolutely have your own research agenda. That may require working 60-70 hours a week, but so what? That is often what it takes to get ahead in life. Find a contribution that you can make and find a professor interested in that topic and try to get a paper published on it. Once you have finished your degree, you will be certified as an independent worker and you can then pursue your own research. All that being said, if you are a first year change advisors now! If you are a second year, maybe you can get an MSc out of this and move on to a new advisor. If you are past that why not just get the PhD and publish more work? (repetitive...)
I feel that critiques of regulation focusing on quantity instead of quality miss the mark. Regulation to protect and empower consumers usually differs substantially from regulation designed to create barrers to entry. Regulation protecting the environment and other third parties can have barrier-type consequences, especially if its creation is influenced by corporate lobbyists, but it's certainly possible to do well.

What we need is intelligently designed regulation; more "source lines of legislation" isn't necessarily worse, if it covers edge cases well.

The real problem, of course, is the incentive structure for the people who vote on the legislation. It needs fixing, probably by some large, concerted effort of very smart people and a national referendum.
I was actually under the impression the economist leaned towards the right.
Lifestreaming Evolves with Storytlr
Despite Recent Outages, Google Claims 99.9 Percent Reliability For Gmail
I haven't gone looking for specific companies we missed, but there must be some by now considering that we've read thousands of applications and only funded 102 of them.

If startups funded by "YC clones" succeed, those are probably ones we missed, since most people who apply to them apply to us too.
I think the point he's making is that if the hardware is sufficient enough in the iPhone, then it doesn't matter that you can't get it in a variety of various systems. In fact, as it is with all Apple products, I'd say that's an advantage in Apple's favor. Not everybody agrees, but it suits me fine, and it suits a lot of other people pretty well, too. So I get your not liking Apple, but don't get condescending about it.

Apple's theory has always been that if they control the hardware, they don't have to compromise their software. That results in really remarkable things.
The CD issue is a known bug (read the release notes). The temporary fix (until an SRU can make it to the repos) is to press eject again before the CD is remounted, and then it won't pull itself back in again.
Of all the sources of funds for an early stage venture, revenue is the most compelling demonstration of traction. Too many entrepreneurs view fund raising as an accomplishment in an of itself. This is a great story!
How to make money with free software...
Fro what it is worth, from my experience doing research it is very important for your sanity to work with other people that are about the same level of competence as you. That means other grad students or young post docs. Working with professors that "have achieved ground-breaking theoretical results" is very frustrating. The difference in knowledge between you and them is enormous; what is hard for you is trivial an uninteresting for them. So they are not very interested in working with you for the same reason you are not very interested in doing research with a first year student.

With somebody that is about as advanced as you, you can bounce off ideas, have interesting discussions, and learn a lot. And then got discuss with the professor.

Another problem with working with world class researchers (as a grad student) is that you will not learn the most important part of research. The hardest part of research is finding questions, not answers. Good questions that is. Questions that are interesting and unsolved, but solvable. This is very hard. If you work with someone that is really very strong he will have more ideas than time to investigate them. So you will at best become good at solving problems, but you will not learn how to find problems. In mechanical_fish's comments, he says that most researchers "publishing over-complicated solutions to easy problems, or non-solutions to difficult problems, or incomprehensible solutions to niche problems". This not because they are dumb or lazy, it's because they can't do the hardest thing in research: find good questions.

Another thing (that others have already pointed out): expect failure. Good research is hard. In fact even bad research is hard. Doing new things is hard, doing interesting things is hard, and doing new interesting thing is incredibly hard. So most of what you try will end in failure. Get used to it or get out of academia as quickly as possible. Not many people have the right mental constitution to live a happy life while they continuously fail. Look around you; you will probably see many people that are not happy with life. I think this has something to do with it.
This is talking about "portable" as in "carry it around with you", i.e. thumb drives.

Not running Ubuntu on PowerPC.

:(
This doesn't even come close to conclusive proof:
"Now, a newly updated data-set of land surface temperatures and simulations from four new climate models show that temperature rises in both polar regions are not consistent with natural climate variability alone and are directly attributable to human influence."
You've updated your excel spreadsheet and your python program and that's conclusive proof?

Science is only science if it can be tested and proven false. Computer models fall short.

You wonder why people don't believe this theory? If this is conclusive proof what would I need to do to convince you of the tooth fairy's existence?
Yeah, but you and I are in a minority there. The vast majority of people prefer people they know, even barely, to people they don't know.
MOTOROLA RAZR V3I GREEN UNLOCKED
Motorola RAZR V3i is favailable with lots of outdo features. Designed for an enhanced imaging experience, this sleek handset comes complete with an integrated 1.23 megapixel digital camera with a full screen view-finder.
Paulson's Swindle Revealed
When trading stops - Major stock exchange outages this decade
> What, besides free trade and free markets, does The Economist believe in? "It is to the Radicals that The Economist still likes to think of itself as belonging. The extreme centre is the paper's historical position." That is as true today as when Crowther said it in 1955. The Economist considers itself the enemy of privilege, pomposity and predictability. It has backed conservatives such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. It has supported the Americans in Vietnam. But it has also endorsed Harold Wilson and Bill Clinton, and espoused a variety of liberal causes: opposing capital punishment from its earliest days, while favouring penal reform and decolonisation, as well as—more recently—gun control and gay marriage.

http://www.economist.com/help/DisplayHelp.cfm?folder=663377#...
When I did a test upgrade on my slice a couple weeks ago ( same reasoning as yours :P ), I ended up with a lot of .sh scripts in my `rcconf` listings as things that would start up with the box. Any idea if you have those on your machine now, or if it was a fluke of upgrading back before the RC/final?
So I wonder, if they sent such a letter, does this mean they already started to see a decrease on AdSense use?
There is no such thing as consumerism. We have come this far as a species because we want new things - new toys, new explosions, new entertainment. The more people want, the more money there is for invention and science.

I'm not saying that energy as a technological focus is wrong. But there are things that are closer to my heart - like robots. It's expensive and time consuming to develop a robot more advanced that what currently exists. The companies do it, but they think of their commercial gain first. Government should also have labs which does research this area, and there should be a reasonable amount of focus there.
Ah, EU projects I guess. Been there. Actually, your situation is quite common. I have yet to see something really useful coming from EU project.

Try to find something at least marginally related to the project that really interests you, get together with smart people in the lab and have fun. If you can put it in the reports, it counts.
Unless a political story is big enough to affect hackers, or related to things hackers care about. Tim O'Reilly endorsing Obama seems safely in the territory of hacker news. The Economist is closer to the borderline, but arguably ok as the newsmagazine whose articles appear most here.
"Our main doubts about Mr Obama have to do with the damage a muddle-headed Democratic Congress might try to do to the economy. Despite the protectionist rhetoric that still sometimes seeps into his speeches, Mr Obama would not sponsor a China-bashing bill. But what happens if one appears out of Congress? Worryingly, he has a poor record of defying his party’s baronies, especially the unions. His advisers insist that Mr Obama is too clever to usher in a new age of over-regulation, that he will stop such nonsense getting out of Congress, that he is a political chameleon who would move to the centre in Washington. But the risk remains that on economic matters the centre that Mr Obama moves to would be that of his party, not that of the country as a whole."

Here's hoping the Republicans keep 41 seats in the Senate, or else the economy restrains the Democrats from doing too much damage in their likely unopposed 2 years in power.
Project Playlist Hires Owen Van Natta As CEO. They Just Won’t Admit It.
Congratulations! Want to share with us what your startup is, or is it hush-hush still?
Science is only science if it can be tested and proven false. Computer models fall short.

And yet, you can prove that the predictions made by a computer model are (or aren't) false.
honeyman, is your group still waiting on a response? Am I the only one left that can't find a response email?
Alternative energy gets you votes. Ethanol especially.

And I don't think a marginal few $ billion from Washington will do much good in this area. If it did, we'd all be driving around in the Hydrogen powered cars that Bush and Clinton lavished such unimaginable sums on.
20 years ago they used to be considered a conservative publication, but now that the US has shifted rightward they seem liberal.

What they really are is liberal in the original 19th century sense of the word. I.e. Whigs.
Yes... I have seen this type of situation before. Is this a semantic web project?

Look I will be direct. Do you have an advisor yet? Is there anyone who you want to work with at the institution? Is it politically possible for you to switch to work under that person. If you can't name anyone at your institution, then is there anyone anywhere? If so, then you need to get there.

Getting a Ph.D. is a mentoring process. And you need to find someone who is the right fit. And then you need to become a world expert in a very specific area. That is how it goes...
But Dell offers an open platform. Blocking a particular app would require making an exception. The iPhone is closed; every time Apple approves an app it's making an exception. And Apple's already stated that they won't accept JavaScript interpreters.
It's just the same as a billion other areas - mp3 players, tvs, phones, games consoles. The PC is pretty unique in terms of its openness to 3rd party software.

But IMHO it's a moot point - the iPhone has a fantastic fast fully featured browser which can do most stuff.
It's called the search for "corroborative evidence", where the latter is an oxymoron. Labels a non-scientist like nothing else, although we scientists catch ourselves doing that mistake just about every day.
Credit card charges are much higher in Europe. Because of the ubiquity of credit cards in the US, it drives prices down; incidentally, that's why bank transfers are expensive in the US and cheap in Europe.

I always either payed my rent in the US by mail or by putting a check in a drop-box that we had at the building where I lived. (Note that I haven't lived in the US since 2002, so things may have progressed since then.)

<minirant> This is the problem with most US-Europe comparisons -- and honestly, something that Europeans are especially bad at. They tend to look at the US with a set of assumptions and bemoan that the US is backward without realizing that the some of the things being used as a basis for the comparison are out of whack. That's not to say that there aren't huge problems in the US, but they're rarely as simple as portrayed in the European media. </minirant>
Stormpulse was politely turned down by YC in 2007. I'm sure getting accepted would have changed things in a good way, but I can't complain about the way things are going; a YC-no-thanks is not a fatal judgment.
I didn't realize that the headline would be so.. literal.

Very inspiring modern design.
The US government shouldn't be able to get as good terms as Buffett. He is a marquee investor whose investment improves Goldman's image, whereas taking money from the government makes it seem like the company is in trouble. He also invested earlier, when they may have been in more of a pinch.
This is not the world's best rails hiring process - there's no such thing. The title makes you sound arrogant; it will surely turn some potential hires off.

Anyways, here are a few assumptions your process makes:

1) Of the pool of Rails developers world-wide that you could hire, the smartest/best ones are among the 10-50 devs that show up to a local rails/pub nite.

2) That there is a strong correlation between the number of reference checks (beyond 3), and the quality of a hire.

3) Bloggers and open source contributors are better programmers than those that aren't.

Here are a few things I would change:

1) A take-home project is fine, but I would not expect a potential hire to spend 10 hours. Why can't you think up a problem that takes an hour or so to solve instead? I've hired plenty of sharp engineers by asking them to perform a short take-home.

2) Because your project is now a lot shorter, you could have the candidate do this before they meet face-to-face. This would save you time, and moving the face-to-face near then end of the process allows you gather the most info before committing to a whole day of interviews.

3) A much more interesting phone screen question would be 'What are the disadvantages of TDD?'. I want flexible thinkers, ones who can argue both sides of a point.
If all readers were in the US, perhaps. But we're not.
Closer to libertarian, like many economists.
Some Shed Their Gadgets by Turning to One: iPhone
Commonly used in conjunction with vigor - "with vim and vigor"