skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Systematic overvaluation vs equivalent non ycomb companies plus the real value created by the network but not a bubble.
On the application instructions page, the original 'how to make a YC application video' is the pitch video for Directed Edge -- both of whom were out of Berlin.
I sell my skills for money. It is all I have, my skilled time. I exchange that time for money. If my pay ends at 5.30, so does my time. No employer has ever given me free money, so Im not about to give them my time for free.

The day the free cash is handed out is the day I dish out some free time.
Rejected as well.
My husband and I were trying YC first but would love to hear about other options for our early stage startup. We live in the DC area if anyone knows of any development options in the area, please share
Here's Why Amazon Should Buy Pinterest
2 PhD's of quantitative fields (lots of coding experience)

2 MS's in CS that were already in a startup (<20 ppl) that sold for several $M's (as early engineers)

we are all 30-32 yo. (no family/kids yet) but maybe the age?
seems like a good team (and a good idea), but oh well...
Thank you for that. I will now find out the real implementations of Haskell's pure, <$>, and join.
I haven't applied this year but I really hate that rejection email. I hope one day YC could man up and tell why it was refused rather then giving a "You don't need to get in to create a successful business" bullshit. Even if it's only one sentence.

I feel like not doing so is really lacking respect for the teams who put hours filling it up. Add on top of that the fact that some demos are not even tried.

As some people like to say, applications are only for the people who didn't find a better way to get in.
I don't know of any other online ones for .NET. Do you have a link?
I coded Streamenizer.com to learn Flash. Its a video chat with 4 people and a queue of waiting to stream, but never got around chicken-and-egg problem. Planning or redesigning it to one streamer plus users willing to ask questions. If anyone is interested in participating anyhow, drop me a line via HN profile email.
Note: This link goes to a "Page not found". To see the article, make the extension ".html"
We received our rejection as well. As much as you try to tell yourself say it is not a big deal, it still hurts. You question much of what you are doing. I have been grinding on many unsuccessful projects for a while now, and it's hard to stay positive.

The funny thing is, we had no intention to apply to YC originally, but once we did, you start to dream about how it could change your life. How that might be the defining boost and help you need to succeed.

The nice thing about cofounders is they help you stay positive. We are currently working on game related software, which is not exactly your typical YC company, but we thought it was a decent enough concept. We plan to keep pushing forward, maybe try a kickstarter.

Unfortunately this means I will have to go back to getting a job again, with $36.43 in my bank account, I pretty much am on empty...
Rejected. But the application process was worth it in itself - it forced us to make concrete goals and discuss our plan going further in a deeper way than we would have otherwise.
Unless of course the lowest option, functionality wise, isn't less than $30.
I'm glad and grateful they've open sourced their stack.

Yet it sheds some amusing light on their pricing;

Openstack at Rackspace: 30G Ram, 1.2T Disk = $1314/mo

Rent a box at Hetzner, take the time to install Openstack;

Openstack at Hetzner: 32G Ram, 2x3T Disks, probably faster CPU = $77/mo

Obviously that only makes sense when your time is "free", and Hetzner is not exactly as solid as Rackspace. And you should rent a couple more boxes for redundancy.

But still, I'm almost tempted to start a little Hetzner-Cloud...
I don't get how that graph is compatible with this one: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=gdp+per+capita+united+s...
I don't need it, but thanks.
Yeah. We noticed that a few weeks ago.
It doesn't have to "stick". The results have already been achieved. These app developers likely don't have the means to defend themselves.

This is another excellent example of patents being issued for implications of technologies, instead of actual inventions. The inventions were USB, wifi/bluetooth, and online databases. Collecting data and storing it was simply the use of those technologies for their intended purpose, and a stupid-obvious one in this case. Its like patenting "driving my car to grandma's". The car was the invention, not deciding to use it to go to grandma's.
Of all the dozens of social networks in existence, none of them truly define us. They're always about your friends or family rather than yourself. Persona solves this problem because it brings back the importance of the About Me Page section in social networks with images that represent your life.
Narrower, but longer.
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I always have my multiple Gmail accounts open in different tabs using these URLs.
No 'features for encryption' for "regular Windows." seems short sighted.

This is something that is only going to become more important as time goes on.
See, fortunately for me we use Java at work, and these day long excursions turn into 40 hour weeks. ;)
Also sounds similar to Chomp (http://chomp.com) which focuses on mobil. Apple recently bought them (http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/23/apple-chomp/)

Very nice interface. Where are you located?
I agree that fewer editions is the way to go, but note that OS X has always had multiple SKUs as well:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/os-x-lion/id444303913
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/os-x-lion-server/id444376097

And customers first need to buy Snow Leopard separately, because you can't install Lion on its own, you can only upgrade to it (somewhat amazingly):

http://www.apple.com/macosx/how-to-buy/

On a related note, over the weekend I tried to install Lion on a 5-year-old iMac. Was surprised to find out it's not supported on hardware even that far back. I hope they don't continue either trend with Mountain Lion.

(And a footnote, Windows RT is for an entirely different architecture—ARM—and an entirely different class of devices, so no surprise there's a separate SKU for it.)
There is no pre-selection.

The checkout takes place on one page.

The only elements that are extras are standard for the industry: inside the fridge, inside the oven, and inside the windows.
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I hear you, but if there is an industry trend of showing QR codes instead of urls, then so be it. No reason to do things two ways. Or at least, you might as well put the QR code in addition to the text URL if that is what consumers expect.

However, I do feel that the QR code really is overkill for encoding a URL. At some point, couldn't we just standardize on some easily OCR'd font in a some sort of graphical frame and have software recognize/parse that?
Windows Research Kernel. It's an almost-complete source code of Windows ~2003. There's a few omissions, like the TCP/IP stack.

https://www.facultyresourcecenter.com/curriculum/pfv.aspx?ID...
In theory that sounds great. What I've seen and heard from practice (surprisingly) isn't.

I think a better idea is to have excellent communication between the two groups, whether on channels or in the same room. Both specialize, but both have the ready support of the other. It's unnecessary to go further.

That's what we do at my current gig. It has worked out well.
Also a possibility: They did not sue because the cost of litigation is more than the revenue lost from the widget.
Hey-o. My co-founder and I got rejected.

We're making an iOS universal app (we call it Cook) that uses grocery lists and recipes to keep a current record of all the food in your kitchen. With said current record, you can do cool things like reccommend recipes you have all the ingredients for, or tell them to use an ingredient before it spoils :)
YC batch s2012, not
Some of you received good news today from YC, some haven't. I'm in the batch that will serve to highlight deficiences in the screening process, by making it without YC' s involvement. For others in similar situation, let me cheer you up by reminding that the most important validation of your idea comes from users and traction. Application screening is tough intelligence test for screener, and they do make mistakes right and left. As Om Malik puts it: "I am old fashioned re startup contests. Good companies can manage w/o them. Angry Birds did not need them". As well as Google, Facebook, Instagram, and thousands other great businesses. Now, have a drink and get back to building whatever empire you were building. Good luck!
Funny Random Pictures and Images
1st Chapter of New Sci-Fi Thriller, "Strange Flesh"
Why should I make a job my primary focus in life?
This job ad doesn't make sense. Why would you make a job your primary focus of life?
You want the meritocratic and entrepreneurial spin? Here it is. Unless your business is selling sex or trying to gain lots of adolescent boys you are doing your brand, your product and your career damage. There is no merit in displaying pictures that will marginalize part of your audience in a presentation unless you are aiming for a narrow market and you have no aspirations of long term growth into other markets.

You have something of value to contribute to the world of technology? Do it.

Yes, do it but with some maturity and professionalism.

If you want to be respected start by acting respectfully towards others.
'Windows Media Center will be available as an economical “media pack” add-on to Windows 8 Pro.'

Does this mean it is not available for the non-Pro version of Windows 8?
They need to integrate RT to remote very well to a real win8 or win7 machine and then I'm sold.
Ask HN: So why is it that usernames are always 5 characters or more?
I've never really understood why usernames are always 5 characters or more. Why not 3 or 4? Is it because it's more relevant to searches in a user database? What's the reasoning?
Yeah I definitely agree. I can't believe they got it down to 3. But I also can't help thinking "what the hell. haven't they learned?"

It probably makes them more money overall. But with the cost of user confusion and possible frustration. I guess that's a tradeoff they're willing to make. Which is why I won't buy it for $100 bucks.
Yes but the fact that Google and Facebook seem to endorse it is not helping.
I have not taken a detailed look at this Win 8, but from an "ignorant dumb punter" POV, from a brief look, it looks like it turns my expensive PC in to a dumbed down toy. It sort of reminds me of an old heavily restricted Win Terminal Server session with flash bits.

Am I only seeing one mode and one can have the traditional windows look, or is that what we are all supposed to use now? If so, it look like a horrific wrench to get used to and there for very off putting.
I am interested in knowing this too. We want to create a private space where all who have applied can talk about their experience and provide input. For now just leave a comment here http://www.i4edge.com/ycombinator-apply-list/
Anyone thought they were pretty good at reading source until they encountered a Spring application context spread over multiple XML files.
This is actually not true. Previous bubbles were surprising to most everyone, because the general accepted reality was that of a "New Economy." The previous tech bubble did not become widely known as a bubble until it popped.
Moneyball & the HR Department
Same. Congrats to those that made it.
I'm the author of this post, and I'm building a way for people to annotate online video. Hopefully in a way that isn't annoying! The grand ambition is to be able to search inside video based on annotations. Check it out: http://www.quipvideo.com

Who am I: I'm getting my PhD in 2 months in applied math at UCSB. I'm always looking to meet interesting people. I think I'm interesting myself. As proof, I can show you some of my fire sculptures :-)

Check out my blog: http://www.davidvaldman.com
With AI, there's also the problem of being more accurate than you want to be. A triple-A title like MW3 or Skyrim is essentially "a movie you walk through". NPCs have lines, they follow a script.

You could easily have NPCs that run a little life simulation, (like in the early versions of Oblivion) but then you have the problem of NPCs going off the script. If you accurately simulate mental states, and some villager rolls a 1 on the d2000 mental state die, then proceeds to kill all the plot-critical NPCs in their village? Now you've got a more realistic, yet completely broken, game.
"That's just your lizard brain freaking out." True. All sounds like sane advice to me! This thread has been a much needed re-balancing of my freaking out on the whole!
I'm sure I'm not the only one that wants a good tool that would convert arbitrary source-code to Lulu-sized PDFs that could be printed on demand.
Us three. Four views :)
> Honestly, this (and a lot of the other posts here) sounds more like sports cheering to me than analysis. Dropbox is part of the "YC team", so their competitors are the bad guys?

Holy crap. I finally understand why Hacker News users hate Google.
I'm curious to know what compensation people receive for being on-call, either as a percentage of salary or flat rate.

(I'd submit a poll, but it appears from http://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll that polls are currently turned off.)
Yea, you can switch to the Windows desktop from the Metro start screen, though the old Start menu is gone and the start screen replaces it.
The idea that people who make dents are the only ones that work hard, and people who don't make dents don't want to work/don't work hard is part of the worldview of libertarians.
The local store ran out of single licenses for Snow Leopard so I just bought the family pack for something like $59. I didn't even feel ripped off. It used to be $120 for a single copy, so this is like half off!

Microsoft still has the audacity to charge several hundred dollars for their OS. How is it that the cost of Windows keeps going up, but the cost of computers keeps going down?
Well, if you look at the text at the bottom of the table, they've actually got it down to four, Windows 8 Enterprise will still exist as a separate SKU.

So really they've only eliminated one edition (Ultimate) and changed the name of another (Starter -> RT).

Not that it isn't an improvement. And the simplified naming is a big deal as well. Seriously, who thought "Home Premium" was a good idea? Premium compared to what?
There are thousands of people who apply. They can't possibly find the time to reply to all of them. Maybe a few of the borderline ones, but in reality you can't expect them to spend weeks responding to everyone.
I don't know why you're on the bottom. I think this is neat!

One big problem is that drawing anything details is hard without a tablet.

I'm also using Node.JS on Quip. Configuring it on EC2 wasn't that difficult if you've considered it.
Question is whether people would rather get a rejection letter that actually showed who reviewed app, if even at all. From what I have read there are so many applications it isn't even possible for main guys to review and ones that do get reviewed are through referrals. I think it would provide solace that only an intern read your app so don't take it too personally. The dream of YC is great but don't forget that 25k and access to mentors is attainable through some creative emails and networking. Attend events and above all don't b afraid to ask.
Mitt Romney's Tax Plan is Still A Mathematical Failure
You can be religious but not have it dictate everything you do in life. Sorry, but that was the distinction I was trying to convey.
Two things you can learn reading Albert Einstein's personal correspondence
I agree with your sentiment. I feel that a massive part of the potential for startups is in doing boring, everyday things much better. If there are already lots of providers that means there are already lots of potential customers.
One of the things that I've seen bother people is that the source code ends up in a directory named PROJNAME/PROJNAME. Once you understand how the module system works in Python, it makes sense that things are this way, but it can be kind of a redundancy shock.
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i cant stress this enough PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do NOT do image embedding within QR codes BUT instead use image overlays where the QR codes are part of the image.

T have a ppt deck on my site www.Cognation.net/QR where i explain the difference 9as well as a few blog posts) keep an eye out for the IronMan2 example which is a perfect example of how to do QR image overlays.
Good idea. Half an hour on 3 different subjects may not be the right format. I'd rather listen to ONE subject I am interested in for 20 minutes with the right participants, than 3 subjects with less depth and less relevant members.
I like the quote, but am always turned off by the use "good taste" there, where it seems more appropriate to say "a particular taste."

You create because you have a particular taste, you are successful if you have "good" taste as measured by the market. Also because you are self-critical and self-aware; you can't improve until you realize that your current output is crap.
Also http://compilr.com.

Edit: here's the one I've used before, complete with integrated debugger:
http://www.coderun.com/
You mean like cable companies where if you want ESPN you can buy it, but if you don't want the History Channel you can opt out?

If your product aspires to be that complicated, you're probably doing it wrong.
Ask HN: Would a Hacker News type forum work for different interests?
...would be interesting to see if the style and community of HN could be adapted to different areas of interest (i.e. finance, art, etc.)
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That is one of the top problems! And I have many ideas. One of which is limit the number of comments by building a social networking feature where you only see the comments of people in your network. This could be Facebook, or it could be "Hacker News people" or IBM employees.

There's also user interface ways to make things less jarring.
Maybe they're following the grandmother rule, where if someone's grandmother can't figure it out after a ten minute explanation, they should go back and try again with a different plan.
Mission: Explore puts the fun back into checking in
The iPad was lifted (and traced) on Jan 24... why nearly 3 months to charge him? I'd think that if my iPad was stolen and I could use the "find my device" feature to track it to a location, that would count as probable cause for a search.

A bit of an inflammatory title, but you've really gotta be inept not to know about the tracking capabilities of modern smartphones.
Hi guys,

Keep building!

I'm a founder located in Seattle looking for co-founders. If you're around here and interested please ping me on: elkhourygeorges@hotmail.com
This could definitely be an interesting podcast. My only bit of feedback is that the chosen topics seem to be the events and topics that have already been discussed to death already. How are the featured topics being decided upon?

There have been some other very interesting topics I'm sure people would like at least an overview of within the week you based the outline on. There have even been some Show HN posts with peak scores higher than the Instagram acquisition. If this is going to be an HN based podcast I think it'd be very important to include some things like this directly from our community.

Here is a list of the top posts from week 2 of april, and week 3 (this week) http://postheat.com/top/hacker_news/
Finding life will be the prequel to finding intelligent life. You're right that finding life itself won't change the views of people who choose to close their minds, but it will be the start of many realizing we're nothing special, but rather, something very common.

Also, I'm almost certain there are life in other planets in our solar system. It'll just take a few (relatively speaking) more years to prove it.
Sory to hear about your work situation. Hope something pans out if you decide to go back, but yeah in the meanwhile, it may be a good time to start something.

Thanks for the kind words of encouragement. I tried to email you but didn't see the link to do it after I got to your profile (not sure if it's because I'm so new here or I'm just blind).

Please send me a message on the maid site and I'll respond right away.
Have it at all occurred to you guys that some people might be running AdBlock and alike, so MixPanel/GA scripts won't even have a change to load? Hm.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/282470/which-books-have-r...
The position I was talking about is very explicitly that, whether or not you work at all, you deserve food/shelter/healthcare/education/etc.

I misread you then. What you wrote sounds like the typical libertarian spiel of 'skilled work = hard work' and if you're not skilled, then by definition you don't work hard, with the corollary that you are then not deserving of wealth or esteem.

You are welcome to accuse me of being stupid, or to point out that these opportunities are incompatible with my other (unstated) requirements, but it's not fair to claim that I've not thought about the problem seriously.

I don't think you're stupid, but I do think you're hand-wringing (that is, not serious about doing it) if you're having trouble figuring out eays of doing it.
Can you clarify who is "us"? Facebook employees? Or programmers working in American tech companies in general?

I live in Japan. In 99% of Japanese companies, and even most of the foreign ones, there's no such thing as flexible working hours. I'm curious to know how common it is in the US.
And on top of that - most of the borderline projects would probably get an interview if they didn't have so many applications, so even those would be impossible to give a clear reason as to why they weren't picked aside from saying "we thought X other projects were more promising"
I neither own Dropbox stock nor know anyone employed by them, so the poisoning the well wasn't necessary.

I'm talking strictly about Google. It's not 2004, Google is sitting at enough poker tables right now, they don't need to join another unless there is a very good reason to do so (a hole in their ecosystem, for one).
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This is very well done. I've gone to Coachella the last three years (before this one) and I wish I had this. Your interface is already better than theirs.

Clearly YC applicants are getting much better for them not to even give you an interview.

Where are you located, and who is your team?
It is just an argument about syntax.
don't forget you cost your company more than your salary and compensation.
Programmers shouldn't be on-call, but they should probably listen to the sysadmins who are.

I'll never understand why it's so common to use programmers as IT/Sysadmins. Operating a working system is fundamentally different than building it. No one would expect a ship designer to be a captain. Sure there is enough overlap to make it possible, but why not have them each handle their specialty?

If you've never experienced a good IT person backing you up I encourage you to try it. Detailed reports of failures/bottlenecks/repeatable issues. Problems already localized, and identified. No getting up at 2am!
This is exactly what I'm complaining about. How vague is that? What is the specific problem here that people are having with Google Apps and how will yet-another virtual drive fix it for the customers. Specifics please.
The ability to do about 4 Dragon flights to the ISS for the incremental cost of a single 2011 Shuttle launch does mean the raw down-mass capability is actually pretty comparable, though.