skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
'Blub' from a linguistic point of view
The Language Log, a blog populated by linguists discussing interesting and controversial quips about language, was introduced to the Blub Paradox today. It's very interesting in consideration with the Piraha.

Additionally, LL has a habit of exploring topics repeatedly, so there may be more articles concerning how Blub applies to human language soon.
I found this post quite inspiring as I put the finishing touches on my application. Thanks, dude.
This question was asked 3 days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=64112

plusbryan replied to say that he was rejected in Winter'06 but accepted in Summer'07: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=64132

My personal opinion is that it's very unlikely that pg et al. remember all of the 500+ applications they reject, so I wouldn't worry about this.
We use colocation for now.
Virtual air travel - plane doesn't leave ground
I just pushed all the javascript into a .user.js file and put in the correct header, and got a working greasemonkey plugin:
http://akkartik.name/newsyc-comment-tracker.user.js

Wow!

Currently autoadds every comment thread you ever visit. I'll add support for seeing monitored threads now, and maybe deleting some threads if others want that.

It's still Waleed's baby, though.
Hosting a lot of startups doesn't turn a particular town or region into a startup hub. I don't know China well to talk about it, but I've never heard about cool successful startups in China. Maybe it's like here, in Academgorodok, Russia: a lot of IT companies, but they all are outsourcers or small players. Have you ever heard about startup from Academgorodok?
A simple greasemonkey plugin: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=65382
Thanks!

BTW -- I looked around for a search button on news.yc, but heck if I can find one. If I could have, I wouldn't have duped.
Anybody from Mexico?
I'm surprised that nobody brought up the calvin and hobbes strip that works really well with this article. http://www.c2i.ntu.edu.sg/AI+CI/Humor/AI_Jokes/Academia-Bill...
I would also say that you are not the exact same person the second time you apply. You've had 6 months to grow as a person, learn more, and think more. Also, to apply twice there must be some level of commitment to the startup ethos. You aren't just applying on a whim -- a startup is something you genuinely want to do.

At least, this is what I hope Paul Graham thinks, as I'm applying for the second time myself. ::grin::
Just for fun: a graphical lisp editor where instead of () you use div and /div with different color. Something like turing-complete divs. (Then write a lisp tutorial called divintolisp)
Ask YC: Thoughts on funding non-US ideas?
Given YC's precedence of funding only US based startups, how do you feel about funding a startup targeted at the Indian market? The founders will be in the Bay Area through the end of March to work with the YC team and relocate to India shortly thereafter.
Especially because Natural American Spirit was acquired by a Big Tobacco company.
Hey, dude! You right. Never surrender.
I'm 21 from Novosibirsk, Russia. When I decided to start the startup it was REALLY hard to find co-founders. I thought that my friends will join me. But they was too scared about the need to drop out the college and do something cool and undiscovered. Other often very smart people in Russia already had thier reliable jobs....And one day suddenly I found not one but two co-founders! One of them found me from my ad at some RoR website. The second co-founder was found by me from his blog. The are really cool guys and I'm enjoying working with them. One of them from Denver and the other from Dublin, Ireland. So, we are distributed across the globe)

You right, I couldn't ever imagine where I'll find co-founders.

More. I met a lot of cool smart people in Silicon Valley and in the US. I even found one Russian guy who moved to US 9 years ago.

This SOOOO exciting! And the things become more and more interesting.

I hope we meet one day and eat that sushi)

Good luck :)
Super. Thanks akkartik. Can't wait to see the monitored threads list, that would be awesome.
Hindsight Devalues Science
I agree with you. Although I believe the real value of this dictionary and communication tool may be well beyond what all of us are thinking of right now.
If he stopped doing it after the rejection, then the criticism is hugely valid.
Hi. I think they can do it. Read the FAQ here http://ycombinator.com/faq.html

The main question is not a location. The question is if they understand your market.

Also there is a question: is you product only for India? Why don't you want to push your product on the global market?
Way to be. :D
Just apply, and make your case in your application. You can talk to them about it more if you get the interview. I bet it ultimately just depends on your specific product and how well you can support your argument.
eBay Should Sell Skype to News Corp
There are too many competitors in this area. The web market in India is relatively nascent and good for "me-too" ideas.
I think advertisement is totally different. For example, when you have basketball player selling you a Gilette razor, it makes absolutely no sense to me, same as Tiger Woods selling me a buick. That's wack. I mean a graphical representation that actually has a meaning, like the simple ;) When you see a picture of someone who smiles no matter where you are, it means happiness.
I've been dying to try poliphasic dream for a long time (that's kinda why I asked). Too bad the rest of the world is monophasic :-(
I see. But maybe it is better for you to find a local investor then? YC team and YC crowd may just don't know India market well to help you with advices, etc. Or it's a big problem to find money in India?
Mmm...around 6 hours in average.
For an experienced team -- probably not. A bunch of 26 year olds will definitely have a crisis of credibility -- even with a functional product (which is the case with us). To a very large extent, a group like YC will give us the kind of credibility we need to approach the Indian angel/VC community. Not to mention the fact that the Indian press will love it :)
Women and Minorities in Science (Warning: Basic calculus and statistics; political incorrectness)
Probably means you're missing some critical usability feature, i.e. you're not solving the whole problem. Few ideas are all bad or all good, and things rarely tip all by themselves. But people don't use a product unless it solves their whole problem without making them hunt for missing pieces - that's really the difference between "project" and "product". If you're missing a piece, it'll never get off the ground.

The missing pieces are usually pretty subtle too - FaceBook took off largely because it was explicitly designed around existing physical social networks, like colleges. Many other people had done similar sites years earlier, but they always focused on building a social network out of thin ether, rather than leveraging offline social contacts.
IQ and SAT might provide benchmarks for intelligence, but they have no correlation with the desire and ability to complete a large task. Everyone knows that smart kid in high school/college who sat around playing WOW and drinking Mt Dew all day. Y Combinator does not want him.

In addition, sometimes the not-as-smart kid who has a good idea and a lot of motivation can accomplish something great.

If you did not spend months working on something, possibly crying at times with frustration and jumping around euphorically when you hit a new milestone, you have not done something with a high level of ability.
I slept 4 hours for about a month. It was a great thing to do--once. Now I know how little I can sleep and still function.

I think one thing I've learned though more than anything is that startups take a long time and its better to work from 8-10 7 days a week for 2 years than to work 6-12 everyday for a few months.

So I average about 6 hours a sleep a night now, and make sure to exercise everyday.
I've been using layeredtech for about two years. For a while I was concerned because of their APEWS blacklisting, but no longer am, since APEWS has lost credibility:

http://www.dnsbl.com/2007/08/apews-news-and-commentary-round...

I had one hardware issue during that time -- bad memory. They responded quickly.
I'll send you my instance.
Me too. I totally remember waiting in line for a taxi and then offering you my place.

;) Seriously, though. Very nice post. Thanks.
How many laptops were donated to needy children?
What for? Doing so you just trying to fight a trend. Don't fight the internet, use it.
You seem to have a talent for getting banned from various places.
just on the internet
http://www.uncov.com/2007/9/27/zlango-s-picture-language
That's an excellent question. Express it in a series of pictures and I'll answer it.
Thanks for sharing your inspiring and uplifting story. It makes me hope to be lucky enough to be chosen for the interview stage. =)
I'm not criticizing anything. Not needing funding is a good thing.
Superficial: A Craigslist posting from an enterprising young founder
whatever the default on gedit is. Sans 12pt maybe? 14" laptop screen. I haven't really had problems with this, but I've also never considered it.

There is probably a balance between font size and ease of scrolling around that would be optimal.
I did biphasic when I was working full time. It mostly worked.
Few people need YC's money but it takes a lot of confidence to think that their support won't help.
What about a "Windows Update" service that works with 3rd party software. Like apt-get for Windows?

For the software developers who won't change to the new installer, you should at least provide a feature that notifies the user when an update is available and downloads it in the background.
I agree. There are must be some losses in translation, cos pictures are just approximations to the elements of thinking process. Pictures have some "cross-platform" features, but their expression power much lower than language's. Ex. consider that language 1 has expresson power x, pictures have expression power y (x > y). And language 2 has expression power z (x = z). Then we're trying to reduce x to y and then take it to z again.

Instead of this we must take x to w (w > x) and then reduce w to z.
A human translator going exactly this way.
I used to work for a huge community site and we would ban people we didn't like just because it was fun to watch them panic. It sounds like you actually broke their TOS (fake name, spam group) so you're probably out of luck.
fake middle name, it was in between my real first and last name
I sleep 8-10 hours per night, on average. I have bouts of insomnia, but my productivity drops significantly if I sleep less than 8 hours. I also start to have very odd - and dangerous - physical symptoms. Yes, I have a sleep disorder. For a period of time right before I was diagnosed, I actually slept 14-20 hours per day.

As with most constraints, it has turned out to be an advantage in some ways. I focus on working smarter instead of harder, and I really value the hours I have to work with in each day. I have some employees that can accomplish more in one hour than other employees can accomplish in a month. A few hours each day can just be a rounding error if you are really conscious of productivity and smart about how you use your time.

The idea that you can only sleep 3-4 hours per night if you want your startup to be successful is complete BS, and is part of the counterproductive macho aspect of startup culture. If you can get by on 4 hours of sleep, and aren't lying to yourself about your productivity and performance, then good for you...but such people are rare.

I wish I didn't have a sleep disorder, of course, but I would still sleep 7-8 hours per night even if I didn't. Brains function best when they are well-rested.
Good luck you guys :)
We have a similar problem here in Russia. The investors or too small to fund you or they too large to work with you)

Hopefully we dont't need money to start a startup)

My advise - submit your application. I've submited mine yesterday.
that's enough for a bored fB employee to nuke your account.
Few people need YC's anything.

Quit arguing with me. Jesus Christ. I was trying to be encouraging, as in "You can sell your product without pg and company."
I gotta put Vancouver BC on that list. There are way too many startups coming from there not to make mention of it.
I may be wrong here but...

I dont think chimpanzees have a firm grasp on economics or even an analogous example; chimps don't think about spending banana's to make more bananas in the long run. Chimps arent thinking about trading banana's for shelter or safety or manual labor.

"In the game, a human or chimpanzee who receives something of value can offer to share it with another."

Also, from what I gathered from that article the people and chimps have to work to get something, then they can choose to share it. Why would they share? Person or Chimp? That would be real self-interest.

I mean if you are forced to make an offer and you know your counterpart is not as smart as you...let's say a chimp, you would be dumb not to offer less.

That's just my two cents.
MediaTemple DOS Attack
I was up coding last night, and SSH latency skyrocketed around 2AM. Sent a support request to mt and got this response:

"There was a brief episode of latency due to a DOS attack, as a result our system engineers did a firmware update to the firewall. Our System Engineers have completed the emergency maintanence and all services are now running normally again. We will update all of our affected customers with details of this outage as soon as we have made a complete investigation."

Still nothing posted on their System Status page. We're using a Grid-Service account for dev. This plus the recent "storage performance" issues means we're definitely switching to another host.
This entire article appears to be based on the assumption that standardized tests can be used to determine anything useful.

I suspect everyone can see where that's going.
It was encouraging. I appreciate it.. Thank you!

And yeah, we're saving up money. One day, we'll go full time regardless of what our situation is. But we'd love to work alongside a group of really talented people. Plus applying to YC is fun, regardless of the chances of getting in.
I would also assume that Tallinn might be a good place for startups (definitely a fun place in any case). Didn't Estonia provide free high-speed wireless to the entire population? Plus, it's a beautiful area -- I loved my visit there.
Bleh, so what. This guy claims to have measured something, but who knows if it's even interesting. At the end of the article, do you even understand what the point in reading it was?

I think what is interesting is tagging the article as "politically incorrect." I really hate this term. It forces people to think, "If I don't agree, or find this offensive, I'm small minded."

What makes this particular article reek of crackpotdom is that it offers no references to any other pertinent articles, yet it acts as if it is "scientific" you know, with all that math.

Don't bother reading this thing.
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000969.html

Check this out, hope it helps.
I hate the term 'politically correct', but you've got to admit that it drew more viewers (and votes) than some other adjectives I could use. And if you don't tag something like that, people whine.
Thanks. Yeah, we'll try again each time until we're accepted, or until we take the plunge anyway. If you don't mind if I ask, what business are you building? It's always fun to learn what everyone else is working on.

When we realized that making something for public schools was a really bad position for a tiny startup to be in (if you've ever wondered why the technology tools that teachers use are so bad, it's because a public school's buying process is broken), we wondered what to do about it. All Emily and I knew is that we have a huge, overpowering desire to start a company. So I looked at my strengths to find something that I could be really passionate about. I've made random little video games for a long time, and I've held a job in the gamedev industry for the last two years, so I realized, "Hey, you don't have to work on a webapp. Just do what you really love."

Emily and I talked for awhile, and we realized that a lot of people want to create their own game, but don't want to deal with the complicated details. I don't blame them. Game art is complicated to create. And not only are most games created in C++, which is a horrible language for a beginner to use, but the complexities of the graphics libraries make it almost impossible to just create a cool little thing to show off to your friends quickly. Plus, cross-platform is really messy to accomplish.

So we're building something to make 2D game creation suck less. Making multiplayer Mario has always been a little dream of mine. And imagine a day when you can just read through some simple instructions and make something right away, then have your creation show up where your friends can play it. Or you're playing through someone else's game and spot a cool-looking character, so you press a button and you can use that character in your games, too.

But, one step at a time.

It's not concerning that it's a huge project. And Emily doesn't mind that she has no idea how to contribute. We're just working on it part of each day and saving up our money, and trusting that one day, with a lot of hard work, things will fall into place. And heck, our idea is for video games, something that YC has already said everyone and their brother tries to apply with. But we applied, even if our chances are nil, and had a lot of fun hammering out our application and doing our traditional loud ten-second countdown before submitting.

So however crazy your idea seems, let's apply anyway! If we all do, then at least one of us will get in, which is really cool.

What's everyone working on?
Well, here's the approximate conversion between SATs and IQ: http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/002360.html . And here's an interesting scatterplot: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:IQatWoN_GDP_IQ.png . Put those together, and...

Also, assume they don't determine anything useful, but that schools have been magically fooled into thinking they do: what part of the conclusion to this essay changes?
Hilarious. They did a great job providing the same satire from the original New York woman's post.
Maybe Google does not want to deal with Evan Williams a second time
excellent post - it takes a lot of guts to jump into an experience like this full force: create a demo, complete the app, fly off to CA - maybe it didn't click that time but your on your way bro!
Kaizyn:

The whole entrepreneurial system is based on competition, my friend. However, there's no need for each startup to re-invent the wheel. I, for one, welcome a change and a bit of experimentation of the startup variety is definitely keeping with the spirit of things. Why not see if a kind of parasitic, symbiotic relationship can be setup? I cross-posted on your piece to http://blog.innovators-network.org The Innovators Network is a non-profit dedicated to bringing technology to startups, small businesses, non-profits, venture capitalists and intellectual property experts. Please visit us and help grown our community!

Best wishes for continued success,

Anthony Kuhn
Innovators Network
1) IQ tests are also standardized tests. If they are somehow beyond question, why do schools just not use IQ tests?

2) Nothing. I just doubt that schools have actually been magically fooled into thinking they do: They actually get to do the regression analysis, and see that past grades are a better predictor than standardized tests. This has been well known for a long time. If applicants have been fooled, however, it allows the school to get useful effects from the test (even if the effect isn't predicting future performance).
ya, fun for me too.
Consider it a blessing. I got banned for setting my personal name to the name of my FB app development project. Now I can't control my FB app so I stopped supporting my FB app. It was a waste of time anyway.
That scatterplot comes from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations

Which by the way predicts that the average IQ of Ethiopia is 63. Note that an IQ of 70 is considered mentally retarded. Anyone see a problem with this?

Edit: my point is that it's absurd, and the study is nonesense!
Hm, in one sentence he claims that the gap shows up in all tests across all cultures, but then he goes on talking only about SAT scores. Some citations would have been in order... I don't think the SAT thing is very interesting: presumably (or possibly, at least) it is still a culture thing that women are less interested in maths, which would explain the gap by the end of high school.

Several years ago I took some interest in the Bell Curve and IQ tests. The IQ test people also claim their tests are culture insensitive, but that is definitely not true. Just think about the following kind of test: show 10 kanji symbols on a page of the book and on the next page ask the reader to identify them. Clearly people familiar with kanji will have big advantage. That might sound constructed, but there were times when IQ testers concluded that people from primitive societies can't think in 3d because they would build a drawing of an abstract box as a 2d structure. That's so obviously a culture thing... Anyway, not refutations of IQ testing, but enough to let one be sceptical.
You mean Flickr tags?
Bubble Indicators
I don't know if fortune decided to smile upon me or what, but since I posted this the three people I've been trying to get to join me all spontaneously decided to do it.

Thanks for the encouragement =)
Done.

http://akkartik.name/newsyc-comment-tracker2.user.js
I don't think they're beyond question. Certainly, there's room for improvement (the cutoffs are too low. A physics PhD program isn't really interested in a test that has no measurement value for IQs over 120, or wherever it is -- and the analogy section was pretty g-loaded, so it's a shame that's been removed from the SAT, too). And schools don't just rely on standardized tests; they'll look at outside achievements, school grades, and maybe essays -- a competitive program might want people in the top 5% of intelligence, determination, and charisma -- which still means their students' academic test scores will need to be in the top 5%.

2) That holds true for studying results within schools, but not for test results overall. This is because schools admit people with roughly the same ability -- so they might have one person with test scores .5 stdev below the mean, but with a really brilliant essay. Fortunately, you don't have to take my word for it -- just look at the dropout rate among people who are admitted despite lower test scores and lower grades: http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?id=1635
Are you saying the data are surprising, or that they're wrong?
Looks like Obama's gotta start working hard to take the big states (CA, NY, TX, FL) away from Hillary!
Been using Voxel.net since July. No complaints.
Wait. Wait. Wait. A glyph-based Esparanto isn't good for anyone. A poor person communicates in whatever language that poor person is located. Why would they ever need to communicate in English? Why does giving them images to look at empower them for anything?
Site5. Excellent support. They answered a question of mine 2AM on Christmas Day.
It is wrong. It is funny how much the descending list of IQs corresponds to the economic freedom of a society.

It is known that IQs are culturally biased. Residents of Zimbabwe and Equatorial Guinea aren't functionally retarded but they aren't good at taking IQ tests and they happen to live in a society where it is impossible to generate wealth because of insane autocrats.
2.5

Duh!