skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Apple innovates on the experience, but they've also refined their supply chain (actually, Cook's main contribution). That is more good engineering than innovation (we can even argue if good engineering is innovation in itself, but its kind of pointless). Amazon has come up with an interesting business model by focusing more on content sales to offset low hardware prices, whereas Apple's thinking is quite the other way (content supports hardware sales, not the other way around!). If you want to call that "innovating on business model", I won't argue with you, but now the term is so diluted that its not very meaningful. My original point was that Apple did a lot of work to bring products to market that were usable and didn't suck, and that is really the innovation that most people acknowledge and notice.

"just as much innovation" is such a weird term, how do you actually measure innovation? At least this isn't another "Apple is successful b/c of their marketing" argument, which is bogus since their marketing budget was (until recently) absurdly low compared to other companies in the same industry.
In gmail: click the down arrow thingy, then "Show Original Email". Look for the line that says "Delivered-To: XXX@XXX.COM", and that the email it was delivered to.
Over 10 years ago the company I was working at bought everyone the chair of their choice. I spent a lot of time testing and trialing a number of different high-end models and ended up with the Steelcase Leap. It doesn't look as "techno" as the Aeron but I feel it's superior in every way.

The company I worked for is long gone but chair's moved on with me and is still serving me well. A good chair is probably an even better productivity investment than a fast computer - especially in the long run.

[Edit for clarity.]
From the essay: "And since risk is usually proportionate to reward, if you can afford to take more risk you should."

I think I understand the intent of what you're saying here, but it could also be read to mean that you can increase your reward simply by taking on more risk. It might help to clarify that whenever a market isn't perfectly efficient (which is apparently always, unless P=NP), there will be investments that carry more risk without offering a higher return (i.e. that have a negative alpha). Perhaps it's better to state that as the potential reward (or return) of an investment increases, you can tolerate more risk.
This is a great example of one of the new challenges of crowd sourced works. Basically Wikipedia is stuck between a rock and a hard place, if they let the Author run rampant through the article changing things, well he could lie, but they don't and they lose relevant data.

In the "bad" case the author removes or rewrite critical commentary or errors in their own writing, in the "good" case they correct facts (like Roth is trying to do). But it is hard to apriori distinguish the two.

What Wikipedia is missing has been some sort of formal editorial board for which potential editors can escalate disputes to get them resolved. Interestingly such systems exist today as judicial systems and re-implementing them here would seem to be motivated by the desire to get the best possible work out.

The 'fix' points out another problem though, which is Wikipedia has a feedback loop issue. Stories abound of things that were put into Wikipedia, contested because they didn't have external sources, had some print publication make the same claim (because that author saw it on Wikipedia) and then validating the original claim with that new 'source.' That is pretty messed up.

But for all of that, Wikipedia is often a great jumping off point for finding out about something if it has a few links collected.
Devaamo Hack Day with Jolla and Friends
OSX does have homebrew (or macports if you're so inclined), which IMO is better than the usual package manager in a linux distro; it doesn't litter the disk with init scripts or config files, you always know where things are being installed to. Copy to install is only for GUI apps.
I'd like to add two more:

1. Installing everything from source (normally I don't mind compiling, but large packages can take an hour or two. Ironically, OS X doesn't need to support many different architectures, so there's no excuse for not having binary compatibility like Linux does).

2. It doesn't manage the entire system. The process for installing from a .dmg or from the app store is completely different from homebrew, and the two don't talk to each other well (or really at all). I want a single source to manage all of my executable files and their configurations, not a small handful that each manage part of it.
Good ol' Windows
That was my knee-jerk reaction to it too, but I re-read it more carefully and paid attention to the parts that specifically say that that's not what they're looking for. e.g.:

> I'm not saying that the big winners are all that matters, just that they're all that matters financially for investors. Since we're not doing YC mainly for financial reasons, the big winners aren't all that matters to us.

Also,

> If we ever got to the point where 100% of the startups we funded were able to raise money after Demo Day, it would almost certainly mean we were being too conservative.

(and the entire rest of that section talking about how they can afford to take huge risks, and should be.)

On the whole, this piece sounds like some observations and thoughts from pg, and nothing more. I think founders shouldn't try to read too much into it, specifically whether or not YC would be interested in their business.

YC might choose to fund you just because they like you.
It's pretty grim. I think that's one of the reasons I write fewer essays now.

After I wrote this one, I had to go back and armor it by pre-empting anything I could imagine anyone willfully misunderstanding to use as a weapon in comment threads. The whole of footnote 1 is such armor for example. I essentially anticipated all the "No, what I said was" type comments I'd have had to make on HN and just included them in the essay.

It's a uniquely bad combination to both write essays and run a forum. It's like having comments enabled on your blog whether you want them or not.
>San Francisco is now for all intents and purposes a boom town.

Yes. This happens every decade or so. It comes and goes with the business cycle. Just like commodity prices won't always be way higher than everything else, people won't be investing in 'social media' at inflated P/E ratios forever, too.

(what I find interesting is that housing prices did not fall that much during the '01 crash, not for another what, 7-8 years.)

>This low density is ultimately shortsighted as it comes at the expensive of amenities and will at some point impact the ability for employers to stay in the area as the rising property prices make commercial activity increasingly untenable.

I think this is our real long-term problem, especially in the silicon valley, south of SF. (I mean, the problems with caltrain are an issue, too... but I think it's going to be easier to just run caltrain more often than it is going to be to build more high density housing.)

>The whole rent control and construction limits is going to have to end. The longer it goes on, the worse the correction will be (IMHO).

Personally? I think the boom will end before the lack of construction becomes that huge of a deal.

I mean, sustainable businesses that don't depend on investor dollars are not what's driving this boom; unless we generate several new google/ebay like profitable powerhouses, the crash is coming and it's going to be big. Even then, right now? everyone, including "i take no investment" bootstrapped companies like mine are getting a boost from the torrents of investor money flowing into the area. I am personally a little bit frightened for my long-term contracts.

If anything, the fact that we can't build a lot of new stuff is going to have a dampening effect; It's going to tend to dampen both the upswing, as it means there won't be a huge construction boom, and it's encouraging companies to spread out, and it will temper the inevitable downswing for similar reasons. There won't be as far to fall.

There is a /lot/ of talent in the area, and eh, yeah, a lot of them will leave when the investment money leaves, but there will still be plenty of us left. If "social" investor money leaves and pushes down the price of space and labour, it will be fertile ground for other industries that need Engineering talent. We will come back, we always do.
Animation by single moving Pane
This animation consists of a solid pane and a moving pane creating 6 animated positions based on location of striped pane. Cool stuff.
I just moved from SF to Manhattan. Apples to apples (insofar as it's possible), SF is more expensive.

Obviously I wasn't looking at single-family homes in Manhattan, but when it came to studios and 1BR apartments, the busy parts of SF (e.g., not the Sunset or Outer Richmond) are probably marginally more expensive than Manhattan.

If you want to get as close, lifestyle-wise, as possible, you're comparing Rincon Hill to Midtown, and Rincon Hill will be more expensive. Even if you expand the parameters out to the high-rises in western SOMA (towards crack-stab-town) SF will still edge out.

If you're comparing more residential-y areas, like, say, the Upper East Side to Hayes Valley or the Castro, SF will still win out, though you will probably get a tad more space in SF for your troubles.

It's hard to declare with great certainty who is the clear winner (or rather, loser), but SF is definitely neck and neck with Manhattan.
I've been rejected from YC several times, two of which were in interviews. The most recent rejection was supposedly because they thought it was unclear we could become a large venture backed company. I've also had YC founders trying to hire my co-founder and I, questioning why we were still running our company after the rejection.

Despite the rejection we are growing each month, turning down acquisition offers, our customers love our products, and at 24 years old, we are learning a ton. We have no investors, are profitable, and have a lot of time to grow the company and work on crazy ideas. I am having the time of my life.

It's really important to understand the business YC is in, and to separate your self-worth from it. It's also important to not hold any negative feelings towards them, since they are merely trying to maximize their outcomes, and they know the market quite well.

Go follow your passions and make stuff people love. The rest will follow.
Yeah... Warmer is kind of mixing metaphors since warmth is just a statistical aggregation of stuff moving around. The point is that photons result from electrons changing energy levels and disappear when they hit an electron and change its energy level. A big change makes a high energy photon which might bump into an electron, resulting in a higher energy electron and a new, less energetic photon. This keeps on happening.

Seen purely as electrons -- one electron had a lot of energy, now a lot of electrons have a little. Seen purely as photos, one photon had a lot of energy, now there are lots on very low energy photons.

Overall, the collective term for this is entropy -- over time we get fewer opportunities for big photons to get created, until it's all small changes in energy and small photons -- total entropy -- and everything is background radiation.
Missing option: no, because I hate it.

That's essentially my answer. I have accounts with both Facebook and Twitter. I understand how the authentication works, and I'm not afraid such requests are scams (note: that's mostly a subset of not understanding how it works). I don't want my online identity tied to a third party account whose operator has few obligations to me.
> San Francisco is a city of neighborhoods, each with their own character, and it's probably most reasonable to look at development on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis.

I think this is what SF locals like to invoke as a reason. I don't really think it bears out. Paris is full neighborhoods, but it's a dense city. Tokyo is dense with thousands of small neighborhoods. Taipei is dense with hundreds of small neighborhoods with their own character. all these cities realise they are urban and they need to accommodate growing populations. Basically, it's red-herring.

>...but building a residential high-rise in the FiDi? Look at the Transbay Terminal project

SoMa is the only place where it's somewhat less onerous to build. But the FinDis? Not quite, even if it was historically amenable to tall buildings. Last time a tower was attempted, it was rejected on the basis of "character" and casting shadows[1]. I really dislike the "character" argument. It's as if things were not meant to grow and change. It's as if they'd want the city to be a "living" museum. It's a romantic, but unnatural notion, to me. I want some progress, sure, manage it, so it does not end up like Mumbai, or something like that.

>any time you're talking SF, there is the elephant in the room...

Lots of cities live on fault lines. LA, Seattle, Tokyo, Taipei, MDF., etc. You need to build them to code. And, not only that, but we already have tall buildings, it's not as if this is Phoenix, so this is beside the point.

> Bay Area is better than most in that regard

I would disagree with that. The Bay Area has 6 million+ residents. It's one of the most poorly coordinated regions with such a large population.

W/re views. I realize that's how it is, but I think it should be more a public good. How does NYC, Tokyo, MDF, Paris and so on deal with this? Obviously it's not disallowing growth in those cities. As long as they don't build monstrosities like they do in Caracas, I think sensible blending is okay and if you lose some view, so be it and be happy you had something which wasn't actually yours. I mean, SF thinks of itself as "progressive" but then, something as vain as "view" is like a sacred cow. how does that make sense?

[1]. http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/nevius/article/Tower-new-front...
Misandry: alive and well at the NYT.
Google charges retailers for Google Shopping
A lot of office chairs enforce a sit-up-straight posture which I really don't like. When sitting at a computer for long hours I like to lean the chair far back and put my feet up or out in front of me. I've found that I never get back or wrist pain this way and have run across some articles that say this is better for your back.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/57654.php
http://rsna2006.rsna.org/rsna2006/V2006/conference/event_dis...

The only downside is that many people will associate leaning back in your chair with your feet up as being lazy. For this reason I printed out that article and pinned it to my cubicle wall.
12 years? /dev/null must be pretty full at this point :)
I think you are making an assumption that I am suggesting there's a link between what people watch and what they do. I would expect that such assumptions would be made. It is an issue that is debated ad nauseum. No surprise you brought it up.

But I am not suggesting that, nor am I contemplating that issue. I am merely suggesting there indeed appears to be strong "market" for watching violence and murder, whether it is Hollywood or whether it is for real. And I might hope that the reader would question why that market exists. Issues of whether or how it should be "regulated" are besides the point. The question I'm asking is: Why do people want to watch such things to begin with?

And maybe this leads to thinking about the idea of "Hollywood" versus real life. What is "reality TV"? Why would "reality TV" be marketable?
> On Linux, there are a thousand ways to launch daemons.

Depends on your distro, really - Arch keep things fairly centralized and simple.

I never really got the hang of Ubuntu, though, by comparison.
The PC market is not growing at any significant level, while the tablet market is exploding. Many analysts out there believe the tablet <$400 tablet market will be bigger than the PC market in just a few years. The PC market might remain at its current size, tablets won't replace PCs, but there will just be a lot of tablets out there.

Of course, you could be right, people could be looking for fuller PC experiences in their tablets, and then Microsoft will win big (and my stock as a MS employee will go up, yeh!). But this trend of going lower price/smaller screen doesn't really indicate that this is happening, although we really have to wait for the iPad mini to see how that really plays out.
I can't think of anything in software lagging as much as personal finance. I use GNUCash, which is a glorified balance sheet, and my online bank accounts. This sucks, but only slightly less than Mint which sucks slightly less than Quicken.

Making personal finance decisions should take seconds, not hours, and yet data collection by hand remains the only reliable method to make such decisions. This is unacceptable in 2012.
not mentioned in the article, but I like the swopper. it's a wobbly stool that uses a car spring. think medicine ball without the ball crushing. costs about 400ish.

beyond that i just work standing up on a kitchen counter.
It strikes me as smacking of old-school fatalistic "some are born winners" type thinking which is fundamentally contrary to everything we are led to believe about startups (namely; success is a function of smarts, hustle and luck).

I have not met either of them. And while I have met a few individuals who have achieved success I can honestly say I have never met anyone who I thought radiated success or was otherwise predisposed to success.
Good work mate. Nice and simple.

One suggestion is to make it easier to look up the artists/songs that you enjoy. I find it hard to select the text of the artist/song because the anchor tag fills the entire width of the screen. Perhaps a nice way to approach it might be a "Info" link somewhere, maybe just when the song is playing, which just sends the query to Google or something.

Later on, you could hook it up to some other sort of service which provides better info.

Keep up the good work.
Do you think YC helped the Black Swans become Black Swans, or were the founders unstoppable?
Can online events replace face-to-face networking?
Yes, though the justification behind those are the negative externalities for society at large; ie, destroying a rainforest/killing off an endangered species, etc. And even then, they're limited. (They have them in the US too - homeowners' associations are an example).

But outside of real estate, I can't think of any analogous practice outside the information market - you don't sell me a book on the condition that I not loan it to a friend, write notes in the margins, or even burn it.
All a color table is is a series of integers. Any random byte, or two, or four, is a valid integer.
If the statistics show that creative people are correlated with longer life, but that longer life is only correlated with creativity if factors X, Y, Z are also present (but not necessarily just X, Y, Z without creativity), then it would be correct to say "creativity predicts longer life" but not "longer life predicts creativity"; while not implying any causation.

Also it could be that some long living people are creative and all creative people are long living; while creative still not being a cause of the longer life. (let's say all creative people eat peanut butter sandwiches, and it was infact the peanut butter that caused a longer life.)

"The weatherman predicts the weather". Are you saying in this sentence, causation is implicitly referenced?

...
I was replying to the comment that claimed Coca-Cola was Wal-mart's customer instead of their supplier -- I wasn't taking a stance on Amazon.
Dropbox and AirBnB may currently have the biggest valuations, but I imagine it would be difficult to say they are YC's biggest successes (both in financial and historical terms).

If YC had funded Paypal, they would have made a nice return with the $1.5B eBay acquisition. But their valuation would've ended there. In reality though, they currently make up 44.9% of eBay's revenue. eBay is a $63.45B company.

I don't know YC's policy on holding stock in the acquirers company after someone in their portfolio is bought out, but assuming they keep stock, a company acquired by Google a few years ago which allowed YC to accrue a few million dollars worth of Google stock could very well be their biggest financial gain in 50 years.
Yeah, I've been using Linux for years, and I currently have a System 76 laptop that comes with Linux installed.

I'm more worried about switching to the "GNU Approved" OSes, like Trisquel or Parabola. They have a modified "Linux-libre" kernel with non-free modules removed, and they usually block non-free software by default in the package manager.

I want to do it, because it does make me feel better to use all free software, but I don't want a crippled user experience. I'll put up with a little extra work to get things like Gnash working instead of Flash, but if certain drivers just aren't there, I'm not comfortable just giving up core functionality. Not yet, at least.
Is your hard drive almost full? I've found that when drive space is running very low, OSX deletes some of Spotlight's cache, probably to make sure there's space for hibernation and swap. When it gets back enough space, it rebuilds the cache again.

The problem is that if you are constantly orbiting a certain point of fullness, it goes crazy and keeps deleting and rebuilding all the time, causing slowdowns.
just might do it - thanks for the suggestion!
So it seems for investors, the big winners are simply based on luck, there is no logical factor that you can easily pick out that will give you a better chance of winning accept for possibly experience over a number of years that allows you to pick the features of a successful startup that initially doesn't look like they are going to be successful (maybe a glimmer in the founders eyes, something that isn't completely obvious to the general investment population).

But whats the thought process and how does it change given this insight ? It should still be the case that as an investor you still should focus on the best opportunities and try to maximize a decent return from the majority of your investments then focus on picking that facebook, dropbox or AirBnB right, just as you would if you were a trader in the stock market ... otherwise your just gambling ?! Focus on the technicals and data that give you the best odds and just take those trades cause taking trades where you are waiting on information from the fed chairman or draghi without insider info for example (even though they have big pay offs if you swing the right way) will earn you pretty much the same amount of returns as losses in the long term.

If the potential to win big time is counter intuitive what do you trust from data in front of you to make the decision to invest other than the "gut feeling" ?

In any case, i would think with dropbox it never really sounded like a bad idea and the founder/founders (Drew and Arash) sounded very promising even from the start. If this is the case even good bets do pay of big time to :) maybe these are easier to pick then the facebooks where at the time it does look like a bad idea.

Basically, Im curious as how this insight in PG's essay would change how an investor should invest or is it just an FYI and something to keep in the back of your mind as an investor ?
It's funny how this focused on "making it" and not disruption, which is what I assmed by the title and was wishing for.

I am still surprised how YC hasn't transitioned to that entirely. They already have the money; optimizing for that is tryin to play a financial game that others have already mastered.
Cmd-W in OSX is default for close window, so that's probably it.

You say you've tried to fix it.. Have you tried these?

In Terminal.app, find the setting for "don't close this window unless no commands are running", and select it.

Or, in System Prefs/Keyboard/mappings or somesuch, override Cmd-W in Terminal.app to a noop.