skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Beware the exclusive (web2 product roll-out howto)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxRLyiBs3XA

I'm surprised the stock M5 alternator can supply enough current to drive all of those electronics. That is just totally ridiculous..
I hope aliens know the trick to cheat death, because I'd sure love to see that discovery.
you have me there - i just felt that you were making light of their fixed/sunk costs

[to be fair - I didn't specifically mention marginal costs in my arguments =) hehe ]
I think PG and this group are too focused on Web 2.0 companies. So all his talk of superiority of the valley ecosystem is probably right in the consumer-web space. Boston stills kicks ass for enterprise software and biotech.Unfortunately you can't build those with college dropouts.
Isn't that a violation of GPL? If you include GPL-licensed code into your product (and they claim that Ruby is built-in) you are supposed to have your entire source code available.

Ruby interpreter is GPL, how come they can bundle it with proprietary OS?
In the "good old days", a smaller fraction of the population lived in major metro centers than does now.
A great VC can say more than just 'no' but can pinpoint exactly why they said no. If it is a gut feeling then they should be able to elaborate on that gut feeling.

I got comments once from judges in a startup competition and they were harsh, and offered no imaginative answers.
No Slouch Itself, Intel Helps Others Innovate
EFF Publishes Patent Hit List
From my experience of hanging out with friends in India, every conversation ends with something like "give me a missed call."

Though it originated as a way to save money especially for pre-paid mobile users, it has come to mean a whole lot of things now. ie. if you are to meet someone for coffee and he hasn't shown up yet, instead of calling you give him a missed call so he knows you're waiting.
Intelligence: More Nature Than Nurture?
Rumor: GPhones Shipping Out for Christmas?
Google is the new Microsoft. They won't really do anything revolutionary anymore. They have become too conservative.
For $800 million? No.
This article even says that they know it is a bad tip, yet they printed it anyways...
Silicon Valley Start-Ups Awash in Dollars, Again
But, if all publishers gave feedback then the 'poor' authors would each save themselves from submitting to multiple publishers, and the 'poor' publishers deluged with submissions would instead have more refined manuscripts to evaluate and in lesser numbers. Thus, a little feedback can go a long way. This is because ideally manuscripts would improve only after a few submissions due to the feedback given and then they would either be accepted for publishing, referred to a more appropriate publisher, or shelved due to uninterested publishers.
um, talk about fuzzy math, how about fuzzy copy-editing at the IHT:

the caption reads: "Right Media, co-founded by Brian O'Kelley, was valued at $200 billion when Yahoo invested in 2006...."

the article reads: "Yahoo's investment valued the company at $200 million."
The next Great Masters- Software Programmers
Automated bug isolation via program "Chipping" (pdf 500Kb)
RenderMan does. The extra-large instance would be a good choice for rendering movie-quality 3D graphics.
I know I am moving. I am almost sure that there is less evil, hatred, jealousy, envy and competition anywhere outside this world.
All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the right one...
This is a clever hack often used by university students on unprotected printers. It's much cooler if you combine it with another option that disables all the buttons on the printer.
I'm a cofounder of a startup in the Los Angeles area (YellowBot in Burbank, CA). I believe that although your location has an impact on how well or how fast your company can make it, the people behind it has an even greater impact. The quality of people you choose is a much larger factor than your geographic location.
I think Orson Scott Card wrote "Speaker for the Dead" first and decided he needed another book just to set up the backstory. That book became Ender's Game, and he found it a bit ironic that he's remembered more for the prequel than the book he really felt compelled to write.
It's a generalized statement about a principle. See my remark below (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=68962) about publishers/authors.
When I was a kid we used to call it "pranking"
But they're only going 90MPH on average! I used to have a manager who claimed to drive from the Netherlands to the south of France at 120MPH all the way. With his wife and 3 children...

Seriously, "For occasional spurts, 90MPH is not uncommon on the highway," I mean, that's below the average speed on French or German highways!

Why the enormous difference? Deer?

PS: I realize that their biggest challenge by far is to evade law enforcement.
Ok, don't confuse the cases where giving feedback benefits both parties and where it doesn't.

In most selections that draws a "pass or fail" line among applicants, giving feedback benefits neither. I explained the reason in my comment in this tree ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=68895 ). I assume whether you're called back for YC interview or not is this kind.

What I didn't explain is that there are other cases; where "the few stand-outs" compete and ultimately the winner is chosen. If you couldn't win because of your shortcomings (that is, you would've won if you hadn't had them), then you should know what dragged you. But you don't need to worry; in such cases, somebody will tell you the reason you couldn't win. Most likely, in such circumstances, the officials make comments on each candidates. Even if there's no official comments, sombody inside will eventually tell you that you were so close.

Of course anybody who wants to improve himself needs feedback. But when you're in the first kind of selection and can't make it, those who made selection are wrong person to ask feedback.
I can't speak for adrianwaj, but here's my approach:

In general, I'm not seeking sexual interest from every woman in the room. In fact, there's quite a few I'm specifically seeking to avoid.

For those I am interested in, I make every effort to look good and be an engaging, interesting person. I'm fit, I dress well, I'm good looking and can engage strangers in conversation easily, and usually make them laugh.

If a woman I'm interested in still isn't interested in me after I've engaged her (and provided I'm still interested in her after the conversing with her) I ask myself why. If I don't know the answer, I think it's quite reasonable to politely ask her.

Conversely, though, I'm prepared to accept her reasons why. For example, she might believe that I'm rough, but even if I know this not to be the case, I know there's a reason for this perception.

Or she might prefer something I'm not willing to be - eg, really big guys - I'm tall and thin and can't be bothered spending more than a few days at the gym. Fair enough, it would have never worked out.

But sometimes I find out something that's really valuable, and I can take that and work on it. I have to be in a frame of mind that makes her comfortable to be honest and direct.

Unfortunately, there's probably a lot of guys who don't realize there's a reason behind her perception, or who would argue about why they're they the right guy. These guys make it hard for girls to be honest for those of us who are interested in the basis for a perception, rather using it as a pretext to continuing to attempt to be accepted.

These also have no idea how many other great looking, witty girls there are, and put too much value on one opinion.

Everything above is applicable to YCombinator.
I remember a story about a Swedish manager accepting job applications for software developers in 2003. Typically permanent job postings would get hundreds of applicants back then.

In any case, this busy manager had 200 unread applications to evaluate. He had perhaps a day or two to do this in. The first thing the manager did was to grab half of the applications from the pile and remark, "you see these people. They are unlucky. And we don't want to hire unlucky people." And with this he threw these applications into the trash.

A lot about success is playing the numbers game and not freaking out/wasting time over rejection. Of course that is easier said than done.
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This page offers advice about the best Male and Female Grooming products on the market in the UK. It also shows the best places to buy from and also the best deals available at the moment. Any feedback about new deals is more than welcome.
That depends on how much we know about them and how much they know about us. They might not even know how to act friendly and we might not know whether our potential shock and awe attack would be either shocking or awe inspiring. Knowing nothing, I for one would simply walk away and buy a pregnancy test ;-)
How can Computers be this cheap? Is it worth buying a cheaper computer?
Furniture Covers or reupholstery? which would you choose?
The 20-terabyte size of the Library of Congress is widely quoted and as far as I know is derived by assuming that LC has 20 million books and each requires 1 MB. Of course, LC has much other stuff besides printed text, and this other stuff would take much more space.
Thirteen million photographs, even if compressed to a 1 MB JPG each, would be 13 terabytes.
The 4 million maps in the Geography Division might scan to 200 TB.
LC has over five hundred thousand movies; at 1 GB each they would be 500 terabytes (most are not full-length color features).
Bulkiest might be the 3.5 million sound recordings, which at one audio CD each, would be almost 2,000 TB.

This makes the total size of the Library perhaps about 3 petabytes (3,000 terabytes).

-Lesk.com
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Money from Facebook apps
I think the greatest danger by far would be viruses. Culturally I'm not as pessimistic. Our perception of historical events is influenced by what historians find interesting. All the boring, more or less peaceful, mingling, cohabitation and assimilation going on for thousands of years is rarely mentioned.
This article is a little inaccurate. For the record:

- Enterprise Ireland never actually turned us down (though I guess investors rarely explicitly do).

- Auctomatic was a WFP '07 company, and myself and John didn't merge 'till April. A lot of the money was raised before we joined.

The overall point -- that EI are doing a terrible job of investing in Irish start-ups -- is on the mark, though.

--Patrick
Difficult takes a day, impossible takes a week
My family used to "Scotch-ring", a play on the Scottish reputation for frugality.
I guess VCs do become consultant-like, but only once a company is funded. Up until that stage, there may be no point, unless of course the relationship with the entrepreneur is valued enough to do so. As a solution, how about YC offering public feedback to the rejected applicants willing to expose themselves publicly. Also, I am curious to know if scorecards are used.

Also, it would be great to see a YC applicant actually develop a system for the applications themselves making feedback and follow-up easier for YC staff.

So, if systems were in place to handle these types of apply-check-judge-accept/reject-feedback-followup processes better, I'm confident better outcomes could be reached.

Anaphoric's comment (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=68979) such a system could be used by that manager who rejects at random.
I was thinking the same thing.. he must have left out some power modifications/extra batteries
I think that article was quite stupid. Sorry, but I didn't pay because I felt like tipping. I paid for inrainbows for the following reasons:

1.) I want radiohead to make more albums, so I wanted to show them that it is worth doing so.
2.) I want to hurt the RIAA (and other evil players) by showing them that they are not necessary anymore. Ideally, the success of the inrainbows scheme would lead to copycats, meaning more cheap and free music for me.

I think those reasons are perfectly rational. It pisses me off (sorry, but really!) if wannabe economists claim that rational beings should pay nothing.

Nor is tipping very puzzling: it guarantees that I get a friendly waitress in the restaurant, because if she is treating me badly, there will be no tip. OK, you have to think around several corners (ie pay it forward) to realize that, but the whole society works that way. It is not an impossible train of thoughts. If I don't tip, my fellow humans will suffer (angry cab driver), so if they hear about it, they will punish me. I think in the US waiters even come after you shouting if you don't tip.
All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the right one -- but not in this case. Graphite pencils are a really bad idea in zero gravity: They can break easily, freeing hazardous splinters (not a problem with gravity, since if you encounter them it's likely to be with your feet -- but without gravity, splinters could easily end up in your eyes), they are flammable (obvious issues here), and when you use them graphite dust is released which (in zero gravity) can end up causing short circuits in electronics.
WeatherBill, a site for betting against bad weather, gets $12.5 million
Samwer Brothers Invest in Homepage Builder Jimdo
It's a bit more complex than that though...

You have to consider that your actions won't change the overall situation much, unless you paid hundreds of dollars for the album. So, whatever happens will happen with or without you paying. From that point of view, you might as well save your money, no?

Of course, if everyone thought that way, things would go differently, and the experiment would fail. So, yes, homo economicus is too simple, but does provide food for thought.

I'm a lot happier with restaurants in Italy, where there is no tipping. You pay a fair price for the meal, and that's that. Most of the time you get good service, sometimes you get bad service, but not out of proportion to how things are in the states or here in Austria. And the food is way better in any case:-)
Sheesh, I'm getting old:-( I watched the video and wondered if any grownups work there.
whether YC will do something or not is beyond my concern, but as a general remark, could such feedback loop encourage applicants to fit into criteria to pass that particular system instead of their actual goals (building successful startup)?

The same remark can be applied to other fields; recruitment, record companies, auditions to cast a role, men/women relationships, .... what's common here is that, although you can tell success or failure retrospectively, you cannot nail down the systematic criteria beforehand.
WeatherBill Announces $100 Million One-Day Snowfall Deal with itravel2000.com
Dalai Lama brushes off China's ire
Some time ago I was thinking that it wouldnt be hard to make software and connects phone to computer and sends the text as Morse code trough prank calls. So you would have free international communication device. Only extremely slow.
a good collection of (probably correct) cliches, scraped from other sites, coming to a conclusion about subversion which I didn't quite follow.

What is everyones beef with SVN? its just CVS with atomic commits, and a few other nice things. It doesn't claim to be any more - if you don't like it, shut up and don't use it. I don't understand this desire for endless whining.
the mistake some people make is that they think the product is the company or the company is the product. they're two separate entities. starting a company is independent of having a product. it's the sheer will of a group of people dedicating their time and efforts to the company that fuels it.

any given day, with enough bravery, you can switch up whatever product you have, be it tangibles or intangibles. that's the beauty of having your own company. there shouldn't be any magical metamorphis. if your company's survival is pivotal on the continuation of one product and you can't see any way at making it work without that one product then you're too big. go small, make brave calls.
> I was under the impression that it is in bad taste to submit your own articles to social sites like news.yc, reddit, and Digg.

If you took the time to write it, and are willing to share it, why not submit it? That's always seemed silly to me.
Yeah, it is only against social convention here to submit your own stuff if it is plagarized or linkjacked or bad.
not much of a difference, maybe. But by the same logic, I did not pay very much. It is not like I gave them half of my income or something. So I might as well pay. I am not saying that it would be irrational to pay nothing, but to say it is weird that anybody choses to pay at all is too much.

I also like it better without tipping, and granted, it would also work if people just stay away from restaurants with unfriendly waiters.
Interesting, why is the topic-comment structure considered lazy and weak? Does this apply also to topic-prominent and free-word-order languages?
A Yorkshireman says "Where there's much, there's brass, lad".

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/408900.html
Robert Shiller was talking about this too, yesterday: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/july-dec07/jitters_1... (scroll down to the part starting "Public confidence in the economy").
Do you have examples to back your assertion?
save some for me.
Will Apple Open the iPhone? An official SDK may finally be announced at January's Macworld
Sapir-Whorf and Hackers
Out of options - Why executive stock options are bad for business
Interesting quote by Marc Andreessen at the end:

"The upward valuations pressure is the result of decisions being made by people wearing suits in cities like New York and Boston who would never ever meet with start-ups"

Really? Aren't most of the big acquisitions being done by EBay, Yahoo, and Google?
YouTube Installs Copyright-Protection Filters
Commodity Web Startups (personal reflections on a web startup's fundraising)
Current TV expands limits by having users create broadcast content
Watching TV on the laptop--and on the cheap
Erlang and MochiAds
Interesting bit of information.
It's Official? The NYTimes says it's a bubble.
Do Your Mistakes Create Ticking Time Bombs?
If you ever use CRM software you probably know about time bomb errors. This article is about those errors and how they can generate time bombs when something as minor as a description on the rule changes.
An Introductory Guide to Startup Funding
etting a startup funded isn't easy. There's no shortage of hype, and multiple announcements daily of new companies getting money. And there's an equal (and growing) amount of chatter about a "new bubble" that we're entering. Still, raising money is far from a cakewalk.
Hackers, Startups and business in uncertain times
Its the classic "how do I get from here to there" issue. The current S curves are stuttering, the new ones are starting up, but:

(i) the current value of new business can't make up for the loss of old (usually exacerbated by new business being sold at a discount to gain market share by newer startups).

(ii) it is unclear which stepping stones are going to lead to the new S curve, and which are dead ends.
Although we're not entirely there yet, I think the 'socialization' of the web has begun to pave the way for online tipping. As we begin to see the people through the content, we will become more apt to support them in order for them to keep supplying the content we enjoy.
The size of the enterprise is not always in proportion with the size of the datasets.
This is about ten years old:

http://www.irongeek.com/downloads/hpnt.c
Boston: The Hidden Hub of Music and Technology
I don't know why I expect good writing from programming blogs. I should stop being surprised.
Not quite pocket-sized yet, but frighteningly close. If the LoC is 3 petabytes, we're at the point where I could mindlessly surf to Buy.com and get 3,000 1TB external drives for $200 each:

http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=205001869&Sear...

...and store my own personal LoC for $600k. That's cheaper than a lot of houses here in Boston. And that's just the stupidly inefficient way to store a personal LoC.

(With peer-to-peer, of course, the problem of giving me instant access to the LoC from my portable phone is essentially solved. The movies are still a bit slow.)
How to run an advertising campaign for your launch with a shoestring budget
Once again, I would caution anyone who draws a line in the sand between Web 2.0 and the enterprise. It won't be too long before that line is blurred forever.

(Aside: Ask Bill Gates what can be built by a college dropout.)
When Ellie (or is it another scientist?) finds a message from God buried deep inside Pi.
Paul,

Great essay as always :)

"Seeming like they will fund you one day is the way investors say No."

We learned this the hard way - by expending our energy and enthusiasm on an investor who really was saying no. Hope the new startups remember this.

Praki
How to protect yourself and your start-up
Search Engine Marketeers are the new script kiddies
Amazon Business Solutions - Fulfillment by Amazon
All Enterprise companies need sales forces. In a post SOX environment, you can't just get adoption by setting up a viral chain. Then there is the large subset of enterprise world which is infrastructure and that will never look like Web 2.0.

As for Bill Gates, that is an old example. If you look at even the last 15 years, the most successful enterprise companies (VMWare, Siebel, SalesForce, ...) were founded by seasoned, college-educated founders.
With slow motion on my side, I too can beat any attacker!
Yahoo Searches--for Profitability
Will yahoo be able to make the most of its advertising assets and become more profitable?
USPTO Rejects Amazon's One-Click Patent
I love posts like this! Finally, case studies that make sense for this audience. Keep 'em coming.
Just to jump in here, there's also a measure of agility that is required. Having any sort of formalized system based on criteria assumes by its nature that those criteria are always going to be true. Anybody who's been watching the tech world for more than five years knows that's not true.

Not to mention the issues that come up once the system is changed. If the system is changed next year, and some companies that failed under the old system would pass under the new system, wouldn't that be a huge problem?

You're taking people at the top of their game, with knowledge in the industry and technology, and having them make a fine-tuned judgment call.All this for a dynamically changing business environment. If the decision is of a well-considered and thoughtful nature at all, that's going to be very hard to systematize. The more you formalize it the more you lose your special sauce. There are qualitative scorecard-type solutions, but those by nature are personal opinions and would have to remain proprietary.
Last week, in a stroke of breathtaking arrogance, Apple redefined "web apps"
Develop Lisp applications using the Cusp Eclipse plug-in
Anecdotally, three people have asked me if they could invest in our startup in the last six weeks. None of them even understand what we are making.
Wow. very interesting and scary, for those of us, like me ,that don't really worry about security.
The Quest for the perfect Online Ad