skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
(I probably should have put that as "women clubbing their apes"... oh well.)
I think you've been downmodded because the thoughtful point you raised is shrouded in rhetoric.

Is investing more valuable than charity? It's an interesting concept worth exploring, but clearly if you compare instance to instance you're going to look stupid. Take a look a nostradamous's excellent rebuttal to your comparison.

I think though, that the point Lewis is making is based on a simple fact: Charity is done for the direct benefit of others and investing is done for the direct benefit of self. If you take this theory, and allow for a better self benefit by increasing charity contributions, you should be able to have a net gain for both the givers and the givees.
The RSS feed for this site doesn't offer a link to comment pages; I've only commented on a few submissions that were themselves just links back into new.ycombinator.com.

There is an element of suck-upness ("I hear what you're saying but what I think Paul Graham is looking for in a submission is XXX") that is off-putting, but, I mean, it's Graham's site.
Thanks for the link. You've confirmed everything I've said and more:

The Gates Millennium Scholars fund, according to its official website's frequently asked questions section, only provides scholarships to African American, American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian, Pacific Islander American or Hispanic American applicants.

What a tool. Maybe I will buy that Macintosh, after all... Imagine an investment firm with the above policy. Imagine!
Low maintenance? Huh! sometimes they can be positively exhausting...

Anyway, I think we'll have to agree to differ here, since both of us appear to have have reached our conclusions through observation. All I will add is that I have no doubt that my love for my cats is reciprocated... you can draw your own conclusions about my objectivity thence. :)
170+ Expert Ideas From World's Leading Developers
Steve Jobs tells iPhone buyers to drop dead
True, but the limit need not be anything aggressive. Just simply having it and users knowing it is there could subconsciously promote more thoughtful postings. If anything, its good protection against a malicious flood attack (since users currently cant bury posts). Just an idea.

Also, some of the most interesting postings to me personally never got upvoted by others very much. Was I not watching the new queue all the time I would have missed them completely..
In my case, the toxoplasmosis didn't have anything to do when it got there. :-P
"Do you think the presence of a well-run Emerging Markets investment fund through Gates' money would help Africa more or less than free Vista-loaded computers?"

Until Africa has the institutions necessary to support a free market, Gates's philanthropy (which actually is aimed more towards health and basic literacy than free computers) is much more useful than an Emerging Markets fund.

Many die-hard free-marketers don't realize this, but markets require significant institutional support before they even become workable, let alone efficient. You need private property rights. You need contract law. You need courts that enforce laws in a predictable, non-arbitrary way. You need literacy. You need a culture that believes that it's worth sacrificing today's pleasure for tomorrow's happiness. You need a rational belief that there will be a tomorrow, and you won't die from some random illness or machete-toting warlord in the meantime. You need transportation infrastructure to move goods and services between locations. You need a stable currency that's accepted by everyone you're likely to do business with and won't be hyperinflated away on a warlord's whim.

Africa has none of these.

So pouring any sort of money into Africa, whether it comes from charitable donations or a hedge fund, means pouring it down a black hole. There's nothing special about the private sector that makes it immune to this. Normally, private firms do better because ones that fail get replaced by ones that succeed. Well, fine. They'll all fail, as will all their replacements.

Gates is working at trying to supply the basic infrastructure necessary for a market economy to emerge. In order to have markets, you must have contracts and private property. In order to have contracts, you must have literacy. In order to have literacy, you must have education. In order to have education, you need a reasonable belief that you won't die next week from a random illness.

So the Gates Foundation starts the process there: ensure that people have a reasonable belief that they won't die next week. It finds villages that already have a reasonably stable food supply and are not in the middle of a civil war (those, for the moment, are beyond help unless you get the U.S. military involved). It then vaccinates the children, installs pumps for clean water, teaches them some basic sanitation rules like "don't shit upstream of your water supply", and so on.

Education only becomes realistic once children have a reasonable expectation that they won't die. Once they do, you can work on literacy. Once you have literacy you can try to change the institutions of the host country. More likely, you'd want to get some small-scale trade going among villages and between villages and the West. This is why the Internet is potentially so important over there - it lets African villagers bypass the corrupt warlords and governments above them.

But not before they have the basics down. It's meaningless to speak of an Emerging Markets fund going into many African countries. There's no market at all, let alone an emerging one.
Okay, so the 4 steps to "perfect" software break down to:

1. Big-Design-Up-Front

2. Have a testing department

3. Use Source Control and Bug Tracking

4. Fix all instances of systematic errors and fix the process by which those errors were injected into the program.

Most of those sound familiar:

http://joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html

I admit that this article isn't written as a technical instruction sheet for writing perfect software, but they could at least come up with something we haven't heard of before. You mean NASA actually has the funds to do a full BDUF and to have a testing department? No kidding.
What I think Paul Graham is looking for is for news.yc to have a life of its own apart from him.
While the number of "10 ways to do x", "10 x about y" , articles have decreased, there are still a lot of links that, frankly, I could find on another site, and have little or no relevance to software/web startups or hacking.

I come here mostly for the discussions, essays, and new idea posts, not to learn what I can get on google/news
Do You Invest For The Long Term?
Personal Investment Strategies.
If you're gonna respect anyone's opinions on social networks Danah Boyd is she. I think she's highlighting some excellent points, the punchline of which is that Facebook's caught between two opposing sides: pleasing their users versus opening up themselves to more promising business ventures. Luckily, Facebook's got great street cred and pretty good public relations, so in general what might be unspeakable by another company seems alright when they do it. If they can start making money before the users figure out they're being profited off of in potentially unwanted ways, they'll be pretty good off.
Sublime Photographs with some Interesting Business Insights
Brands Can Last Forever
A brand can last forever if it follows a two-pronged approach.
the $100/month individual plan doesnt get you anything.
However a group plan gets you much cheaper coverage and much wider benefits.

I know it too well - been on both sides of the fence with the same provider (Blue Cross Blue Shield).
"Charity is done for the direct benefit of others and investing is done for the direct benefit of self."

I think it's a bit more muddled than that. For example, YC "investments" have a predominantly benevolent motive: help more people found startups, which increases consumer welfare and lets the founders get rich. PG et al really don't need and probably won't use the money. The Grameen Bank invests in projects, but its primary goal is to help economic development, and it only turns a modest profit.

Meanwhile, when I give money to beggars on the street, I have a reasonable belief that they're going to use it to get drunk. I don't do it for them, I do it because I don't want to feel like an asshole. Yet most people would still consider this charity.

I think a better distinction might be:

Investments measure their success against the market. Charity measures its success against the world. Because evaluating charity is so much less precise, you need to be extra careful when making charitable contributions (assuming you're doing it to do good, and not just to make yourself feel good). However, since not everything that counts can be counted, some benevolent activities can only be pursued as charity. Invest when you can and give charitably when you can't, and be extra careful with charitable contributions, because it's much harder to know that you're successful.
Africa has none of these.

Wrong. South Africa is a passably modern country, and it became that way through its sheer money-making opportunities. The existence of rich resources, mixed with a decent climate made SA more workable than other countries. The Africans in SA didn't need handouts in order to work in mines. But currently, you have two types of prospering Africans in SA: Those who made it on their own, and those who received "handouts" from the affirmative-action-drunk post-Apartheid government. Guess which group might eventually sink the ship? Which sunk Zimbabwe?

Improvement comes through mutually beneficial exploitation, like it or not. I'm an asshole, but I'm right. My (little) money's where my mouth is: Almost all of my investments are in foreign companies, with a large share in undeveloped countries. I've done quite well... I don't give a fly about Africa's well-being (believe me), but there's growth opportunities there.
It is a benefit that YC being a fairly large entity, can provide to their founders to reduce some of the stress and worry.

What about employees who own their business - would that still mess things up for them vis-a-vis VCs?

YC would be a loose umbrella of organizations.
Steve Jobs - To All iPhone Customers
Which companies are profitable, the enterprise software companies or the corporations that buy their software, or both? I'm not blaming enterprise software companies for making money selling mediocre technology that doesn't work as well as advertised. I'm more upset with the companies that continue to buy such software, even when they know going in that it doesn't work as well as advertised. It's exactly what PG describes in his "News from the Front" essay (http://www.paulgraham.com/colleges.html). A lot of these enterprise software companies rely on corporations trying to cover their asses by buying enterprise software from big companies. It makes everyone feel safer in terms of perceived job security, but does it actually work well? Most of the time, the answer is no.

I'm not saying it won't take time to retrain people on better technology. I'm saying that, in a world where IT departments aren't seen as cost centers, better technology (meaning that it works well, is easy to setup and maintain, and is robust enough to work with other technologies not created by the same company) will yield better results in all aspects.

I realize that IT departments and enterprise software vendors won't do such things. I guess that's why I come here so often.
Why would we want to use your messaging system instead of just posting our email address?
Virtual Reality, Real Goggles. Real-time filtering of video streams into a head-mounted display
I thought I'd left in a clause where I excepted a few African countries, but it looks like I edited that out. There are some African nations that are not doing too poorly. South Africa, Egypt, to a lesser extent Kenya, Botswana, and Ghana. What I wrote above does not apply to them.

I'd very much disagree about your assessment of why South Africa developed, though. The rest of Africa is rich in resources too, and many of them have free (as in lack of regulation) markets.

South Africa became a passably modern country because it was colonized by the British. Unlike other European colonial powers, the British brought their institutions with them and trained the local natives to govern them. When other European colonial powers pulled out, they took all trained administrators with them.

Take a look at the list of British colonies in Africa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decolonization_of_Africa): Egypt, Sudan, Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Malawi, Zambia, Gambia, Botswana, Lesotho, Mauritius, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. Now take a look at the most successful economies in Africa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africa#Economy): South Africa, Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Cameroon, Egypt, and until recently, Nigeria. Notice any similarities?
Wow. This is why I like Apple. Despite all of the business rationale for this move, it actually feels like Apple cares for its early adopters. Whether they do or not is immaterial; the effect is still the same, it feels sincere.
I think most early buyers would prefer a $200 cash rebate rather than a $100 gift certificate to the Apple store. Especially since almost everything in there is above the $100 level.

I think the gesture's nice, but it's definitely not completely fair.
What's fair about buying something at a price that you think is worth it, then going back a month later and complaining you aren't happy anymore?
Oops: http://www.apple.com/hotnews/openiphoneletter/
"even though we are making the right decision to lower the price of iPhone"

what a fantastic line to put in an apology email. there's only one steve jobs.
Whenever I am tempted to buy some new and cool high-end electronic product, I ask myself, "Since this thing will probably cost half as much a year from now, do I really need to own it right now?" The answer is almost always "No."

(Of course, that new iPod Touch is--SLAP! Bad consumer! No retirement fund!)
> The site has lost some of its appeal since it was opened up to topics that aren't strictly startup related.

To you perhaps, but pageviews per visitor are conspicuously up since that change.
Yeah, I was just having a conversation with someone yesterday about how I would be somewhat upset that the price had dropped so much in such a short period of time. I mean there is risk involved with being the first customers of any product, but even understanding those risks you don't expect such a sharp price drop. This is really cool that they not only realize this, but respond as well.
Thats life - you want to be the first one to use a technology, you pay more and get less. The next version will be always chipper and better.

Apple is known to try a higher price on first releases. Thats why I never buy the first release of a product.
A good, in-depth background on the company and their methods: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/115/open_features-flight...

Seems like domain expertise in difficult fields is increasingly being valued.
This is great! I'm pleased as can be. Hereby stating publicly to spend the money buying something else from them. :)
This is the reason that Apple is going to be the next Microsoft
Welcome to how humans work. The concept of "fair" isn't about economic utility, unfortunately.
Need to prototype fast for this YC funding period? Check out this Rails app generator.
I've seen stuff like Hobo and Goldberg, but s3 integration out of the box is a first (or at least I think it is).
The RSS feed for this site doesn't offer a link to comment pages

Yes, it does: the comment tag is defined in each item.
Ha! So true. And it makes even less sense to buy software right now when the same content will be cheaper within months -- DVDs that you know are going to end up in a box set, single-player video games, even hardback books.
New Mexico Spaceport Design Unveiled
How's your YC Winter 2008 application coming along?
We finished the first draft of the application questionnaire, and we implemented about half of the features we'd like to show in our demo.

We are a team of two awesome cofounders, and our idea is not technically heavy.

How's your application coming along?
Good post. This forum is slanted heavily towards consumer-based web apps. Certainly nothing wrong with that, and I'm a big user myself. But I'm not sure that there's really a lot of experience here working in the enterprise space. The ages alone (from another recent thread) would seem to back that up.

That said, there's some dreadfully boring, stodgy software out there that companies spend quite a bit of money buying. My startup is aiming directly at this space (BI, as you've pointed out).
If you didn't get $100 of schwing factor out of your iPhone over the last 3 months (that's only about $1/day for schwing!), then you've got only yourself to blame.
Buying the 1st generation of an apple product is never a great idea, if you are going to be pissed off about problems or future price drops. Its just something that hardcore apple fans expect from apple and love about apple. I try and let others find the problems and buy the 2nd lot which either has more capacity or is slightly cheaper.

I guess with the iPhone a lot of the customers are first time apple customers, so they don't know how the system works.
Damn... now that's a business. Screw people out of $100 and people like you for it.
Apple Brings the Lemons and Makes the Lemonade
Any body working on this longterm new market?

From http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3576594.stm

.......The Austrian team encoded their qubits using a property of light particles, also called photons, known as polarisation. This property describes the direction in which they oscillate.

Quantum teleportation relies on an aspect of physics known as "entanglement", whereby the properties of two particles can be tied together even when they are far apart. Einstein called it "spooky action at a distance".
Isn't it nice that he offered some money back? I think this is unprecedented, I don't remember any company lowering prices in retrospect.
And they'd prefer a $20,000 cash rebate and a Macbook Pro even more. Especially since Macbook Pros are nice.

What of it? They thought $599 for an iPhone was fair. They're getting at least $100 more than they expected.
The rap on Rapleaf, the "trust meter" you can't trust
Isn't Your Kid a CEO?
Zoho's Business Suite Taking on Google Apps
Do you think there is a relationship between the two things, or could other factors be involved (appearing on reddit, essays linking to yc.news...?).

To tell the truth, it seems that things have "got back to normal" - the meta discussions have died down, thankfully not too many political discussions have been started, and things seem to be going pretty well.
NBC tries to make up with Apple
Yes, this hasn't escaped me. But still, I just don't know anyone on the site (at least I don't think I do) and I'd like to check it out. If you want to talk credentials or whatever, just email me.
If only I had a co-founder.
Your last clue should've been the biggest. If you read the article through to the part about dressing poor people up as clowns and seeing how many you could shove into a Maybach as entertainment at rich kids' birthday parties and still thought the author was being serious, your satire detector really, really needs a tune-up.
In "Growing the business" Paul Hawken says that if people tell you that something is a great idea then it is to late. It means that it already exists that is why the people who think its a great idea could recognize it in the first place.

So if people tell you that's nuts or that you are too late or that it would never work, then you might be on to something.
In that case you don't need to worry about any one copying it as it will be absolutely unique to you.
Nothing sinister, just network effects. If twice as many people read PG's essays, that's four times as many potential conversations.
10 ways to make remembering to read your feeds easier
I don't have 3000 feeds, but I do use iGoogle to keep and eye on my feeds
Yes, I meant to qualify that statement. An increase in page views per visitor isn't surprising. There's so much more to read.
I always wondered if you had a log of all those comments I posted and then deleted five minutes later. :-)
I sent an email asking to withdraw my application (I doubt it would be accepted anyway; but it turns out that I'm going to be busy on the "fly to Cambridge" weekend, and I don't want to waste their time) last week. I haven't seen any response, but I assume that someone reads the info@ address and has removed my application from their stack of reading materials.
Giving money to Mugabe and his ilk is not charity. It is stupidity.
I'm not on there either =) I went to school with some of the kids who are, but really, if you're on there and not on facebook you're too full of yourself to matter, imho.
that's easy, he stole it
Hooray for Barcelona :-)
I'm on FB :)
Steve was damned if he did, damned if he didn't.
I think buyers of the iPhone would have been reasonable in assuming that their device would remain at its launch price for at least three months. It's really atypical to drop the price on electronics so quickly, and it really does slight early adopters. If I were one, I would be pissed.
How to Find What You Love to Do
This was part of a submission here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50931 but I thought it important to post separately.

It may get some to really do that startup.
Facebook: Opening Up, But on Its Own Terms
It isn't. I'm a wage slave for now.
Exactly :) This was a nice gesture by Apple and should soothe the restless early adopters.
hackermatcher
I'm getting modded to hell here. Some real Apple lovers in the crowd. Not allowed to express an opinion anymore?
Justice Department Says ISPs Are Like The Post Office
The Impending Social Search Inflection Point
You have to be more proactive in your search. Have you ever posted to any of the numerous "I need a cofounder" threads? Have you blogged about it? Have you discussed anything that interests you with any of the people who comment on here? Has anyone's comment or story they posted interested you? Why not email them? Most people have emails in their profiles.
Wired: Four Mistakes Apple Made Slashing Pricing
I like very much your statistics:

1.- 50 % of YC startups will get success.

2.- Only 1 of 1000 of startups will get success.

3.- you can foresee the future of your startups:
disaster perhaps with one exception, the one
that thinks by himself.
Q&A with Jobs: 'That's what happens in technology'
I agree with Jobs over this article. Thousands of customers have already decided that $2,500 was the right price for a cell phone with 900 minutes a month for 2 years. They didn't care that this product had no third-party software available, nor that it was new, unseen, expensive, and locked to one phone company and music service.

Such users don't want a price cut--they love voting for usability by paying $599 for a phone. They expect others to pay less. All they want is to have tons of great new features and apps to come out over the next 2 years to justify _their_ purchase.

Thus, the more users and developers own the iPhone, the better. The more marketshare an Internet-enabled application or device gets, the more resources that the company and 3rd party companies will dedicate to supporting the product. And if the owners feel they got their $599 worth of fun and productivity, they'll be happy.

It's likely the complaints are coming from price-sensitive individuals who recently purchased the iPhone on the news that they could get out of the $1,920 contract and use it on a $30 T-Mobile plan. I think early adopters want this product to take off and will not hate Apple; it was clear that $599 was going to be the price-point for only a short time.

For me, $399 is too expensive as I like my current phone and plan.