skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Good god. People, you sound like teeangers, or worse, like those girls that are hot in their town, are all "that", and think they can be actresses so they move to LA. They quickly find out they are thousands of other hot girls, and they are just merely average. They try to find acting jobs to make it "big", but eventually will be forced to wait tables, or work at starbucks.

SO, to all you guys that are deciding to move to SV:

1. What stops your "idea" from being successful where you are currently at? Can't you get your business/idea off the ground to a certain point, where you CAN actually get some kind of funding, and maybe have move with VC money, and not your credit card.

2. Do you really think that just by the fact that you come here, you will find everything paved in gold? And everything is going to resolve itself somewhow, and you going to meet that VC/angel and give you money?

3. Are you actually preparing to move to the SF Bay area well enough? Do you guys realise that rents and living expenses are thru the roof in here (NYC/Manhatan is the only place more expensive). Do you guys know how HARD (like in months) is to find a decent appartment. Make sure you get some temporary housing BEFORE coming here, or you will get screweded big time by thinking you can stay in ah hotel, and find a place in a week or so.

People, I don't want to rein your parada, but be realistic. If you have a very good idea/prototype/initial users, tell VCs. that you have the willingess to move to SV, and maybe move here when you get some funding.

Otherwise, you can come to SF (visiting) go to those tech parties, demos, to connect with potential investors. You don't need to move to SV to do that.
"... something the magazine initiated, or a PR effort from your side? ..."

Most probably a critique of the article ~ http://www.paulgraham.com/webstartups.html There are no direct quotes inferring contact and the only refernces are to the article itself. if you look at his interests, blog and website (what is the diff b/w website & blog?) you'll see the interest in startups and ideas.

- http://www.businessweek.com/bios/David_E._Gumpert.htm

- http://www.thecompletepatient.com/

- http://www.davidgumpert.com/

Compare the article with this one by the same journo ~ http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/sep2007/sb20070...
I'm not suggesting people move to the bay area. I'm trying to organize those of us that are already here.

I've lived here for quite some time.
The Secret of Ning's Success
Great! Hope to meet you there. It should be a lot of fun!
You're off on several counts. For one thing, it does not take months to find an apartment. If you're willing to spend a month you can find a great deal (relatively of course), if you need an apartment in a week you can just pay a little more.

More generally, if you aren't tied down with family obligations, move to Silicon Valley.
"... >I got asked whether I was worried about the mafia. Seriously. ..."

Gambling related?
for a better understanding of the mindset read Matt Maroons, *"Advice for Y Combinator Interviewees" ~ http://mattmaroon.com/?p=283
Doerr Wants To Take Down The Telcos (And Save The Planet)
well, yes, but what method is best? google's adsense, yahoo's publisher network, or selling the ad space yourself?
James Watson, Black Intelligence, and New Research by Fryer and Levitt - Freakonomics
The paper was rejected!
OH really?
Renting is back to the dot boom craze levels.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/18/...
....
Average monthly rents in the region's financial and high-tech hubs have jumped more than 10 percent in the last year, and occupancy rates hover around 95 percent, according to a quarterly rental survey by RealFacts.

The average rent for an apartment in San Francisco stood at $2,243 in the third quarter, up nearly 12 percent from one year ago; in San Jose, the average rent also jumped 12 percent to $1,622, said RealFacts of Novato, which tracks rents in mostly large buildings across the nation.

....
A few years ago, after the dot-com implosion, landlords welcomed pets if it meant filling a vacant apartment. But Fougner, in his mid-30s, said online apartment searches turn up few that allow pets. Even then, he said, prices are usually at the very high end of his range - around $2,500.

Meanwhile, he has stopped going to open houses; even when Fougner would show up 15 minutes early, he found five or six people waiting.

"We might just end up getting a spot for $2,400 or $2,500 (a month), which will just make me sick every month writing that check," Fougner said. "But if it's not a dump and has a patio, then we'll want to stay home more anyway."
aptitude -v moo
Try with -vv, -vvv etc
I'm currently working on a site to help organize and keep this part of the community connected. I'll keep everyone updated if enough people are interested. Feel free to suggest any features you would like to see, along with any questions. pasterob@gmail.com
I think you're really making a lot of pretty backwards assumptions about the kind of people who would still move to the bay area if they weren't accepted into YC.

My startup has 6 people who all quit their jobs more than a year ago and have been working for free full-time since then. We have bet everything on our idea and we're running out of time and money but unfortunately where we're located the kind of investors who are progressive enough to appreciate what we are doing just simply don't exist.

Long before we even knew YC existed we had already planned to move to SV to search for funding and launch in early-mid 2008. We have a fairly extensive network of people who can help us there. Really, it would be insane for us to try to raise capital anywhere else.

If YC had been in Boston this cycle we wouldn't have even applied.
The Rockefellers and the Angry Commoners
"I believe Ballmer is just too smart for most people to understand and he uses his own language, he doesn't care if others understand..."

So he's Humpty Dumpty.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humpty_dumpty#References_in_pop...
Try all of them... Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Adbrite. See which one works the best. It doesn't become economical to sell the ads yourself until you get bigger, at which point it is much better to sell the ads yourself.
Should startups do everything in Beta?
Ever wonder why Google has so many betas. I started Gmail when it was in beta and now I see why they did it, this article goes into why they do it. Maybe Microsoft could take some cues.
I am tired of bootstrapping and am just ready to find the right funding and put the pedal to the metal. I am 4 hours away, but am more then willing to make the drive I signed up for the facebook group.
I agree that being a hacker and moving to SF to try to make it big is like moving to Hollywood to make it big as an actress. The difference is that, as risk/benefits go, it makes sense.
That is why you build a prototype, put it out there and get people to tell you what they think.
Might be from subliminal programming in windows itself that flashes on the screen so fast that you don't notice but your subconscious does. I use windows and I am just like him, I use lots of weird analogies that no one appreciates.
It's been part of Og for a while, perhaps from the beginning.

There seems to be some Ruby communal understanding that the use of [x] should follow Array-ish behavior, but when used with a class constant it's apparent that this is not simply an array, and that some other sort of indexing is going on.
I remember reading how Apple now turns hacked iPhones into shiny bricks when you update them.
They also charge an additional 300 dollars for black ibooks with slightly upgraded RAM. Now, you can upgrade the memory on the white ibook to match the memory of the black one, but if you don't pay an Apple technician 90 dollars an hour plus the cost of parts, you will void your warranty. These guys are even worse than Microsoft, mostly because Microsoft never pretended to be a good company. Perhaps "Assle" is a more fitting name.

And I don't know how Assle's philosophy will mesh with Google's "don't be evil."
Good to know that there are so many Romanians on YC. I moved from Romania in Bay Area 6 years ago. I just went back there for a few weeks in August. Life is getting more expensive there and from what my friends were telling me, there is an increasingly demand for programmers, therefore the wages are going up.

I was thinking about moving back for a while but I don't think this will happen very soon. If anybody would like to talk about Romania some more feel free to email me (email address in the profile).
Wow this is both encouraging and scary. Encouraging to know even those great people were once rejected. Scary to think I 'm also likely to be one of these editors, thinking I know the field fairly well and dismissing true gems.
Are these real? How did the author of this post get them?

It's a very well written post -- it would just be remarkable if they're, you know, actual reviews. I didn't think peer-review had such explicit 'votes'.
Hi! I'm from Russia! :)
And I also want to move to the Bay Area. Agree on visas problems! Let's try to solve these problems Together!
Feel free to drop me an email: bloodcarter@gmail.com
shit) stupid webapp! It doesn't support unicode...LOL on that!
I don't know the details about the hacked iPhone bricking, but it's not so far fetched that whatever Apple does to update the (hacked) firmware simply happens to brick the device. I don't see why they wouldn't simply revert the device back to the pre-hacked state if they could do it.

And by the way, you CAN upgrade the RAM and even the hard drive in a MacBook without voiding your warranty. I upgraded both in mine. They can be accessed by taking out the battery.
You guessed right. On March 2006 Computer magazine the author's letter was posted stating it was a fake.

<quote>
The reviews, I will state outright, are fiction, but with a twist: Most of the observations and attitudes they convey came from actual reviews (either of my own papers or of papers by my colleagues) that I found to be of unacceptably low quality.
</quote>
How wasteful are you?
Good catch. The line encouraging people to reapply is gone too.
I heard upgrading the RAM without the certification of a certified Apple technician instantly voided warranty. I guess not.
It sounded somewhat arrogant in the original version. It wasn't arrogant, of course, it was serious, but it could certainly be perceived as arrogant or smug.
Yeah? What's your information? Mine is spotty, but comes from a friend in Italy who is a registered accountant there, who told me in no uncertain terms that having DedaSys LLC in Oregon is all fine and dandy, but in terms of Italy, it basically doesn't exist. If at some point I would want to be employed by it, it would require creating a local subsidiary that then has all the same bureaucratic requirements that any other company would have. If you think about how governments operate, it does make sense. Even if you do business a lot in another US state, you're supposed to register to do business there - let alone another country.

The potential "loophole" is registering a company in an EU country that's not so lame as the continental ones (i.e. Ireland or the UK), but I don't have good information on that.
Apple is not "worse" than Microsoft because Microsoft is a monopoly and Apple is not. Not having your life affected by Apple is as easy as not buying Apple products. Not so with Microsoft.
When I've been asked to review papers, I've been explicitly asked for a vote of "publish", "reject", or "this might be worth publishing if improvements are made".
The end of Microsoft as we know it?
Nope. Apple publishes instructions to help users upgrade the memory of all Mac models (except the Mini?) and the hard drives of most models.
14 year olds suck!
IMO the reason that Microsoft managed to get its monopoly (one of the reasons, at least) is that they "settled" for controlling the software on top of an open platform, whereas Apple wanted control of both the OS and the hardware, thus biting off more than they could chew.
Everything I need to know about economics I learned from beer
I'm surprised we don't see this in other places. Why doesn't Craigslist have a completely open API? Why not ebay? Is there really no market for a completely open auctioning community?
History of Slashdot
Perhaps it's not as exciting, shiny or new as digg or reddit, but the recent stories on the history of Slashdot have been fairly interesting. It's worth noting that they were about as far from an SV startup as you can get.

Part 1: http://meta.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/02/1553218

Part 2: http://meta.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/10/1445216

Part 3: http://meta.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/17/1412245

Their setup, part 1, hardware: http://meta.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/18/1641203
Undercover Economist column: Did you pay to read this? (subscriptions vs ads)
Workers Bombarded With Phone Calls and E-Mails Suffer A Greater Loss In IQ Than Marijuana Users
is Marijuana is less dangerous than Email ?
So how do you get VCs to seek you out, instead of the other way round?
If you fail at being an actor, you can get a job....waiting tables, or something like that. If you fail at creating a startup, you can get a high paying job in someone else's startup.
Damn Cool Algorithms: BK-Trees
Warning: Fun ahead - Safety first, yes, but today's overprotected kids need to live a little
Navigating With Feedback From Fellow Drivers: Collaborative GPS Nav Software
The end of Microsoft as we know it? Microsoft to become a holding company?
Designing URLs for Multilingual Web Sites
What I Meant to Say Was Semantic Web
pandora.com is the only webapp (apart from google and reddit) that has profoundly affected how I spend my free time.

I feel a rush of adrenaline every time I discover a new artist in my areas of interest (some rather obscure ones: salsamuffin, anyone?)

The concept is so brilliant and offers so much potential, it's scary. Especially when pandora.com starts using AI pattern recognition/clustering instead of their 'human experts'.
Ugh. Dvorak. They still let that guy write?
Human decency as an economic motivator
An interesting article, but could they please have someone edit it before posting! Thats the most English errors I've ever read in a NY Times publication - in fact in any major newspaper.
My recent issue with IE6 (not IE7) is that if you make a checkbox and then set it, and then insert it into the page, it becomes unchecked, so you can't easily pass around nodes.

This was IE6 on Windows ME, understandably frustrating after Firefox 2/Safari on OS X.
Submarine?
Look for a reverse stock split to give Microsoft a $5000 share price. Now it's worth more than Google. Boom - a whole new company - problem solved.

Does this guy read his own stuff before publishing it?
Eh, I don't really expect the NYT to edit each and every blog posting on their site. Published articles from the print edition, sure -- but I'm willing to cut them some slack on blogs.
I've lived in SF for 3.5 years. You're grossly misrepresenting the rent situation.
Tim Westergen and his company Pandora are simply amazing, surviving failures of several business models, lawsuits, increasing music royalty fees, etc. Its pure example of perseverance, infinite passion and enthusiasm.
I agree.

On the last point, I'd start with even lower level - objects, how many, how large, etc, and only then try to figure out what those objects are.

Also, I think it's interesting that it appears that the first successful AI will come from analysis of visual information (computer vision) not textual (like the recent Twine, or semantic web in general).
That those errors cannot be automatically detected and eliminated is actually relevant to the overhyped semantic web, no?

Maybe it is some sort of Andy Kaufman level joke.
The risk level of an activity needs to be incorporated into today's hype. Not using a good carseat and driving like an idiot is probably the most likely way to get your kids really hurt.

Kids going off alone into a big park and playing in the mud is not very risky at all, but you don't see that enough. Fear of sexual predators also goes way beyond the likelihood of an assault.

I really wish people understood statistics more, and paid attention to likelihoods when reasoning about risk.

Maybe some good visualizations about risk by demographic would help out.
Ballmer - Microsoft Could Acquire Companies based on Open Source
Google News goes social
Sun bidding adieu to mobile-specific Java
The truth about Radiohead
What about Firefox extensions?
Startup hubs: Do you have to be in one? [video]
Treaps:  Binary Search Trees that are also Heaps
Web2Summit: Opening Up the Social Graph
Elsewhere I'm: Relationship Update Stream
> That those errors cannot be automatically detected and eliminated is actually relevant to the overhyped semantic web, no?

No. That would require your computer to understand sentences meant for humans; the whole point of the Semantic Web is that it's machine-readable.
The Web 3.0 label was a bad idea. The people that have the most to gain from the Semantic Web right now are technical types, and I think most of us are suspicious of the Web 2.0 label.

The Semantic Web has an (undeserved) reputation for being vapor or hype, "Web 3.0" just exacerbates that.
Radiohead Kicks the Middleman to the Curb: 1 Week, 1.2M Albums Sold
Building Assets in your Startup
This solution will become less relevant as the popularity of floating-bovine photography increases.
CouchDB first impressions
This is a good thing. J2ME is rather useless for real applications. For example, if you're going to write an app for Nokia phones, target Symbian so you can use the features that actually make those phones attractive.
Getting married saps your testosterone
Y Combinator interview advice (by Robby from Zenter)
Everyone knows the record company customers have been fleeing; with this example and other recent high profile examples like it, it seems that their suppliers (i.e., the bands) will also shortly start a stampede. This should considerably accelerate the decline in conventional sales.
Evolution - Live fast, love hard, die young
Robby Walker: The User Is Priority #1
Ask News.YC: Opinions on Linux distros, Helma, Java Frameworks
I've predominantly used Solaris/BSD on projects in the past (and then had Linux administrators take over if/when we had to deploy to Linux.) I now have a project that will require that I deploy on Linux initially, and I wanted to solicit input on which distro is best for server deployment. I'm looking for SERVER strengths, not desktop strengths. The only firm requirement is Glibc 2.3. We will be deploying to both x86-64 and PPC-64 if that is an issue. We use Python, Erlang, and Lisp for MOST projects, and I know Debian is popular in those communities. Any recommendations?

Also, we have an upcoming project that will require that we use Java for a portion of it. I have always been able to avoid using Java in web apps, but this project has to tie into a bank's existing infrastructure. We're looking at Seam, Rife, and Wicket. (Relative) flexibility is important to us. (Relative) elegance is important to us. Any recommendations?

Finally, I was curious if anyone has used Helma?
The E Language in a Walnut
E is a fascinating distributed programming language, designed explicitly for building secure systems. With E and capability security you can build digital currencies, mobile code, virtual worlds, etc and bypass many traditional security problems.
E is a fascinating distributed programming language, designed explicitly for building secure systems. With E and capability security you can build digital currencies, mobile code, virtual worlds, etc and bypass many traditional security problems.
I prefer CentOS (http://www.centos.org) as a server OS. It is well tested, secure, and reasonably up to date. CentOS is very nice for the sysadmin: configuration is well thought out, handy utilities like "service" and "chkconfig", automatic security updates, etc. Plus if you need support, upgrading to RHEL is trivial.

Unfortunately I don't think CentOS is built for PPC.
NASA cuts funding to private spaceship developer
Interesting take on the dollar weakness
Human sewage--the next source of electricity?
Sounds like a bit of a mess trying to deploy lots of different components to different architectures. Debian sounds pretty good. I like Ubuntu because I run it on both the server and desktop, so it's easy to have the same environment everywhere.
Also see http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_development/prev...
The man is a Windows user.
Very cool. Has anyone here used BK-Trees in their work?
Nice article Paul. I always get many forwards from my longtime friend Frank Gerhardt about your articles.
I like the way you compared the commodities and webstartups. I am in silycon valley and i know exactly what you are tallking about.
Not really sure what the point of posting this was; but..

"Testosterone levels are lower among married men probably because they are investing less in mating effort."

Yes, but this is true only in the average case. Short remedy: Don't stop investing in mating effort! Fight for your woman.

Also, start lifting weights with a focus on excercises that use all the big muscle groups (squats, bench presses, shoulder presses, pulldowns, etc). Start competing in martial arts. Kickboxing maybe?

Learn from the dating gurus how to become more of a man (so to speak). David DeAngelo does some interesting work in that field.

Your testosterone levels will be fine.
"Taylor Hicks won American Idol. QED"

Oh cool, is someone going to set up a "vote for the worst YC app" website like there is for American Idol? :)
Will stocks face another 'Black Monday'?
I'm a big Gentoo fan, and if you've used BSD's ports you'll like Gentoo's portage
I think that something with BSD-style ports is crucial.
And their PR keeps going, and going, and going... can't wait for the arena tour.

Have any non-fans felt motivated to listen to the album yet as a result of this PR? What did you think?
I am all for it, Lets do it!
Debian Etch for Server, ubuntu or kubuntu for desktop.

In my experience, any RPM based system is a strict no-no - like Red Hat, CentOS.
Someone famous talked about getting old and finally being free from the distraction of high levels of testosterone. Anyone know who I'm thinking of?

I sometimes feel that way. Testosterone is double-edged sword.
If you could make it understand sentences meant for humans, it would be machine-readable!

This was the topic of my degree thesis, but I gave up on it (far too complex to parse everything, and finding useful applications is difficult).

In fact, I think the Semantic Web has application problems. They say things like auctions, but I don't see what's wrong with SQL for those.

And if you used Google to search the web for millions of currently-listed auctions on webpages in XML format, you'd have a difficult time trying to find what you want.
This one's easy.

It's much better to develop software if you're a small company (only in terms of people, not capital). You're faster. Less bureaucracy.

But to sell software, it's easier if you're a big one. So Microsoft organises itself in several independent units to develop and one big entity to sell. Problem solved.

The Bungie incident is about creativity. Games are harder to develop than normal software, and require more creativity. Bungie programmers are tired of only making Halo. If Microsoft didn't let Bungie detach from the big company, then all Bungie employees would have quit and started another company. I'm tired of Halo too. Half-life is so much better that it hurts just to think about it.

Not all Microsoft employees can afford to quit and start a company.
Seconding this option. Gentoo is the way to go if you are used to BSD.
Evidently this guy is smart as shit: http://www.robbywalker.name/timeline.html
Mass Spectrometry for drug trials
How about this: http://www.diyseotools.com/images/site/yahoo_logo_white.gif