skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Just because something has value does not make it a currency. If that coupon ONLY gets you a reduction in price off something then its a discount. Here is another tidbit that makes it not a currency: coupons are intended to not be redeemed more than once.

If only one person can ever use it then it fails at its intention of goods exchange. It's not currency.
Local regulations often have a very significant effect on housing prices and building. See: New York Rent Controls
I largely find them through networking connections - I know a bunch of people in the "start up" community and subscribe to a few networking mailing lists.

Digital Alberta and Pints & Pixels are both good sources for information.
By and large, the government doesn't put poor black kids in jail without proof. A lot of my friends are public defenders working with these sorts of people, and by and large they commit the crimes they're accused of committing. The problem isn't that the government jails these people without proof, it's that you and I as voters, along with "just say no!" moms, etc, have continually voted for "tough on crime" laws that punish these people vastly out of proportion with what they did. But they did do it, and the police have proof because it's easy to prove "poor black kid" crimes. It's easy to prove it with evidence like "you tried to sell drugs to an undercover cop" or "we found the stolen car at your house."

With white collar crime the situation is different. Those laws make otherwise innocuous acts and omissions criminal to achieve broader social purposes. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with saying an incorrect fact to a shareholder, or making a killing on a lucky trade, or getting the better end of a big deal. All those things only become wrong with proof of criminal intent (you knew the fact was wrong and intended to defraud investors--you didn't just make a mistake or restate a bad projection, you had inside information about the trade--you didn't just get lucky, you didn't disclose information you knew to be material to your counter-party).

We require intent for these things, because they are otherwise quite ordinary. They happen all time. People make mistakes all the time. People get lucky on trades all the time. People get the better of a deal all the time. It's only intent that makes them wrong.

But intent is intrinsically hard to prove. If you want to nail a "poor black kid" for grand theft auto, you just have to prove that he has the car and it's someone else's car. The intent requirement (that he didn't do it involuntarily) is easy to prove from circumstances. If you want to nail a banker for insider trading, you not only have to prove that the trade physically happened (which is easy), but you have to prove that the banker knew insider information. And proving what was inside someone's head is hard.
In a couple of those sequences, it looks like the robot is shod with rock climbing shoes.
1. As you probably know by now, the idea matters much less than you/yourteam. Probably to the extent where the difference between a web or mobile app idea is irrelevant.

2. You can look for yourself at the YC startup index (http://www.daniellemorrill.com/2013/03/the-y-combinator-inde...). Look at the app MAU.

3. Keep in mind that many startups will have a mobile app AND a web app, or they'll offer a web API AND a mobile API. Like Dropbox, for example.
No, it's not. The government can throw you in jail if you don't pay your taxes. Money is a get out of jail free card. That's what makes money valuable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartalism
> Reminds me of Rudy...

In case you did not get the reference, the story of Rudy is a famous, sensationalized true story of the power of perseverance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudy_Ruettiger
ping me niftylettuce@gmail.com
The question I have is "Win what?" There's no doubt getting into YC is a feather in one's cap. But for what purpose? What's the plan here? That's what struck me as surprising in this story. "I want to be a YC startup to say I was a YC startup and I'll do anything to get it" doesn't make a lot of sense. If you aren't, to use your terminology, leveraging that for something bigger that you already had your heart set on, why go through all the effort?
Failing in College and what to do about it
Streaming Diagnostics Trace Logging from the Azure Command Line
I'm sure there are many companies and government agencies fucking me in all sorts of horrible and unexpected ways every day, in fact I basically expect it.

But then at the end of the day when I go to my favorite bar and they serve me warm beer in a plastic glass, guess what I spend the most time bitching about?
This triggered a Deja-vu moment for me from pre-tablet times when there were entire web-sites sprouting up around the no-click movement. You could do everything without clicking, until touch-screen devices came out and roll-overs stopped being an option.

I think real-time updates can work really well in a google glass world, especially with smart watches. Although they can cause trouble if you're trying to focus on something. I foresee a hide-notifications button next to the mute button one day.

Just like the no-click movement, a notification-heavy world will probably piss off analytics people, until metrics on data displayed/consumed notifications come out.
Safebit is growing virally
Also, to remark on recent happenings… given the recent flurry of news surrounding asm.js and OdinMonkey, there have been concerns raised (by important voices) about high-level JavaScript becoming a lesser citizen of the optimization landscape. I hope that in some small way, this landing and ongoing work will serve as a convincing reminder that the JS team cares and will continue to care about making high-level, highly-dynamic JavaScript as fast as we can.

Great answer.
I'm not convinced of that. In either case, the random element just makes the game tree larger.
What I like about randomness, is that adding it makes each of the individual games a unique story, which can have a great appeal (just look at the success of MtG,or Binding of Isaac for example). Obviously, designing such games (so that they're balanced) can be an order of magnitude harder than designing a game without randomness.
One thing that strikes me is the person with the most coupons happens to be the person with the least amount of need for the coupons. Therefore they will never redeem them and eventually everyone runs out.

A true currency (and Bitcoin if its a true currency) allows the most avid babysitter to get other things with it instead of what she already has a surplus of.
One way to look at getting into YC is like a marketing channel. They help you shape your startup into something that looks fundable. The press will get you eyeballs. But it's still up to you to successfully convert those eyeballs into paying customers. Your startup won't just magically become successful.
> The question I have is "Win what?"

I was fairly explicit: VC and media coverage. YC is much (much) more than a feather in one's cap. Most astute start-uppers understand that exceedingly well. That's why YC is so competitive.
"I thought having a female co-founder might help, but alas, YC isn’t like college admissions, and demographics don’t help your application" <-- that doesn't came out very good actually. I don't see any explanation about the skills of your co-founder.
Seems like an strategic addition, which doesn't look good either.
The value of "bitcoin frenzy" articles will only rise and never stop! I'll bet you ten bitcoin articles that this will be the case.
Well, the "Featured Systems" tab conveniently lists the GPU. It happens to be a GeForce GTX 645 on the cheap end and a GTX 660 on the high end. A 660 costs roughly $200. In addition, if your 'scientific computing' includes hashing or any of a number of other things, it will be orders of magnitude slower than an AMD card.

Overall, it's slightly overpriced. In addition, OEM hardware is invariably uncustomizable (no extra PCI-E slots, lowest end power supply possible). If you wanted to do scientific computing then there would be much more efficient options. This is no better an option (and probably worse) than other run of the mill OEM hardware. I especially like how your comment began with "I don't know anything about <related topic>. But...".
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In a sense yeah. The share option agreements I've seen haven't provided a way to flip the options into proper shares in the company that are under my name.

So the company boasts to me that I have "stock" in the company - I am a "owner" when in reality I'm not at all. I find it disingenuous.

Unless I'm completely misunderstanding this - I can never get a clear answer on any of this stuff.
This must be what older generations felt like when music kept getting redefined by younger generations.

Here I am, screaming at my screen "Why can't you whipper snappers just leave it the way it is! I like the floppy disk icon! This is the devils work I tell you! You're going to ruin the internet!!"
This really isn't anything like Gen 1 for Linux gaming. People have been buying and playing games on Linux using Wine for years. That's been a pretty small market, but it has existed for a while.

Another thing is that Linux is a significant contender in the developer workstation market. I'm typing this right now on a Linux machine that I use for just about everything, including as a development server and a television. The only reason I haven't played any games from Steam on it is they haven't released Portal yet.
Facebook did not fork Android.
My impression of the focus on exiting is that it represents the highest profile "winning" that a startup can achieve - it gets media time, [edit: possibly] large amounts of cash and validation from others that the idea and business is "good". Growth is unique while an exit is even more unique.
> Tumblr is a social hegemon and is making money

Is it? I know it has revenue, but is it turning a profit?
I wish people wouldn't treat us like an oracle that can predict startups' success. If only. The fact is we read applications fast and make plenty of mistakes.

One thing YC has taught me is that this must be true of practically every application process. For some reason, both the people who are accepted and rejected in any application process tend to read too much into it. (Is there a name for this phenomenon?)
In Defense of Failure
The wrong companies.
This callout strikes me as ridiculous. The video could have been shot on an iPhone and probably had a budget of $50 (for coffee and cheap plastic sunglasses). As for the participation angle, unless there's any evidence that other students wanted to participate but were excluded then I don't see a problem. It's entirely likely that other students simply weren't interested in participating.
Agreed. Plus, I think the only people who worry that they're going to look like kids for enjoying it are kids.
I often take for granted that most other people in the world didn't grow up in Indiana
I think it looks promising if you have an external monitor and considering to buy the box alone for your dev/day-to-day purpose, more like an alternative to desktop. You get 1 TB additional for 50 bucks as well.
There's something to be said for having a clear goal, but there's also something to be said for establishing the conditions such that when you do identify your goal, you're in a better position to be able to meet it. Years ago, people weren't doing MBAs at Harvard because they already had a business plan. It was because it made it more likely they'd succeed later one when they had their plan.
I'm in a good position to answer this: because they're AWESOME.

My girlfriend's never been a gamer, but she's been playing some games recently (specially Minecraft spiked her interest).

I finally convinced her to play some Lucasarts classic adventures some months ago. She loved them. Went through the whole Day of the Tentacle in three days on her own! No walkthroughs. I didn't even help her once. She was obsessed with it! Now she's eager to play more adventure games and looking forward to the new release of ResidualVM (Grim Fandango's engine reimplementation) which she left halfway through because she met a nasty blocker bug.

Lucasarts adventures are and will be all-time classics because they're genuinely good. The plots are engaging, the dialogues are real fun and they're good intellectual challenges.

I play the games regularly, at least once a year (the whole collection!) and I still enjoy them. There's always something left to explore, an action you didn't try, a line you didn't pick... and just like The Simpsons, you can re-experience them several times as you grow older (the funny jokes are not the same when you're 8 then when you're 21).
Well, go right ahead and use cp and mv for your source control!

No one (except maybe linus) ever said git is easy. But it is flexible and powerful.

Anyway, this whole thing comes down to the user ignoring clear warnings. It seems clear to me that using "force" can break things.
Hacking E.T. for the Atari 2600 using a hex editor
Agreed.

My startup builds big sensor networks - but the sensor side of things is where the real innovation is. Microfluidics, 'labs on a chip' in CMOS, infrared spectroscopy, etc...

Sadly it's worlds different than using thermocouples or reading i2c type buses.
Wow. So of all the companies in the US, the "worst" one will be either EA or Ticketmaster? Not Lodsys or any of the other patent trolls; not any of the banks or oil companies; not any of the weapons manufacturers or dealers. A video games company or a company that sells tickets to gigs online. OK.
I feel like its something we'll see in the not to distant future given the amount of interest in that sort of thing, especially for medical purposes. What's your thought?
They did, sort of.

http://green.autoblog.com/2012/12/29/fisker-sues-insurance-c...
Why does Skype even have any clickable links in it at all if Microsoft can't be bothered to keep the obvious malware out?
No reason www. couldn't be stripped off.
Who said anything about malicious intent? I just think it was a sloppy argument. The misquotation is (or was) a matter of fact.
> What I had in mind when writing the original post is that there are many places on Earth that are far more accommodating which we will probably end up settling first

It's not a matter of "how accommodating." It's a matter of how accessible. It's the space equivalent of geography. There are vast energy and material resources in the solar system off-Earth. A Mars-centric civilization will have much better access to those than an Earth-centric one.
Yes, it's known as the "Spotlight Effect."

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotlight_effect

- http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-big-questions/201111...

We humans tend to assume that everyone sees something about us, when a much smaller amount actually notice (and an even smaller amount actually care). This has rejected startups thinking "What did I do" when it really has nothing to do with them at all (just that someone else was better).
Perhaps you are to 'blame' for the reading too much into decisions.

When we read your essays, you kind of open up a window to your mind and thought process. Process being the key word. It would seem that there is a methodology to what you do and do not necessarily 'wing it'. So therefore, people would certainly think that process applies to them when you decide their 'fate'.

As for YC being an oracle, it is a great brand that will almost certainly do more good than harm for startups to be associated with it.
Bittorent and Bitcoin make a millionaire every week, it's high risk though. You could start a tracker like Demonoid and your only job would be to move the servers around and cover your tracks (ie: pay with visa gift cards, use chained proxies)

Another high risk option is becoming a vendor on Silk Road. Those guys are getting more orders than they can handle. Even the guys who just resell/repackage are making a killing.

You could even open your own Silk Road, which is lower risk than being a vendor. Just collect your small fee off every transaction, while staying completely anonymous.

Most of this stuff probably seems pretty shady to most people. But anyone with 10-20k, some balls and smarts can become a millionaire from it, very quickly.
No, it is proven a total waste of taxpayer money. It did however made a few insider super rich.
My 02 cents, you need to worry about security, but it's more like wearing seatbelts on a sunny day. The odds you'll need them are remote, as long as you exercise care and diligence.

When you're running an MS system, I guess the analogy would be you're driving in a demolition derby. It's not 'if' you'll get hit but when ...

- Turn services off you don't need or use.

- Delete services you will never use.

- Firewall with iptables.

- Setup SSH to disallow login for root. Or turn SSH off if you won't login into it from another host. You can always _start_ SSH again if you need it.
>it's price is entirely determined by speculation and nothing else

Its price is based on the work required to make the coins and the properties of a minted coin (can't be forged, etc). The coin has virtual properties, but they're still useful properties.
It should be mentioned that Go 1.1 is about to be released, which includes really big speed increases (sometimes over 30%)
You know, the one thing that I think even PG would agree with is that the best way to figure out some of this stuff is to ship product, talk to customers, fix stuff, and repeat the cycle of shipping, talking, and fixing.

The OP is lucky they finally figured this out and shipped regardless of YC.

Getting VC or getting in YC can be great, but plenty of great businesses are built by people just putting their head down and building stuff.
Attribution bias? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_bias
The Obvious Corp. Takes Backseat Shift Focus To Individual Startups
Understandable... but perhaps you need to accept that you have put yourself in a position that has a serious effect on not only people's success but also their perception of you and their own efforts.
If you are interested in using this for your own project look at the previous version at https://github.com/overshard/pinry, which has more friendly licensing terms (BSD, vs AGPL).
I follow a fairly large number of conservatives / Tea Party and libertarians (who would complain about the conservatives in this context) on twitter and the only mention of EA has been Sim City's problems. Must be the same people bitching to the FCC about TV shows.
No moderators are removing anything. (Except this, which I'm about to kill, because in the site guidelines we explicitly ask users to email us if they have a complaint about moderation, even a mistaken one.) All the stories in question are either from sites that were banned long ago, or have been flagged by users.
In case it saves anyone some headaches, I was rejected from YC 3 times (though with useful feedback and connections arise from the experience each time).

Our startup (LightSail Energy) is currently among the best poised to change how the world gets its energy. Investors agree; our startup is currently valued above $100MM, with Peter Thiel, Bill Gates, and Khosla Ventures among those who have invested. So things are going well.

Paul's essays, advice, and YC really did help me get started. But people should remember that the road doesn't stop there. Success is self-determined.
For better or worse, it's often likely the only metric people have to go on. You command a lot of respect and admiration from people who follow YC and read your essays. It's easy to dismiss criticism from peers and institutions who "don't get it", but to hear it from somebody you respect deeply can give a disproportional weight to your feedback, even if it's ridiculous to expect your feedback to be the final word on an idea's success or failure.
Hilarious. The world hates you because of how you treat PEOPLE. Yer a record label, idiots - you fuck people over for fun and profit: coders (artists - remember when you pioneered thinking of coders this way?) and players (you understand the analogy at this point, right?)
If you are talking about people who get hired in India, then yes they continue to work for Infosys. I am not sure about what will happen to people who get hired in the US(like international students).
Companies like Infosys are large enough that there is always another project where you can move to even if you dont get a visa.
Am I the only one who thinks the poster sounds like an oblivious narcissistic bro jock?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisker_Automotive#U.S._governme...

They spent $193 million from the $500 million before the US government cut them off. The "loan" was part of a 25 billion dollar DOE program.
Nice, but lose the font. The footer's contrast is a bit low. I also find the fixed background image on the landing page to be confusing, since the rest of the page does not use any parallax effects.
And Mike Pall is a superhero when it comes to writing JIT compilers.
I've read a few of the articles, and so far, there doesn't seem to be anything there that has been substantiated beyond Calacanis and the other guy saying they've heard those rumors too. No charges have been filed. Arrington has made no public comment. Few mainstream reporters have reported on it.

It seems unlikely that at this stage a productive discussion is to be had at Hacker News.
> I think that this in and of itself was the reason we were rejected. We hadn’t done a whole lot of customer discovery, didn’t have a fleshed out business model, and were banking on the idea that once we got into YC we would take care of all that. We were counting on YC to create our business, not just accelerate it. I believe this showed in our application, and is ultimately what hurt us the most.

I'm learning this now. We've been working this idea over for months so we think we know it. And sure we've talked to customers, but we have not focused on rigorous customer development.

All I can say know is if you are getting started on an idea start with customer development, do it early, do a lot of it and actually learn to get good at it. It's everything when you're talking to investors or customers. It helps define all the fuzzy details of your product and business model. It helps determine distribution, positioning, marketing and yes features.

Do not underestimate this part.
Business Models for Entrepreneurs and Innovators
Most of the time the information is not lost, and if you act quickly, it often just takes some git-reflog-foo to wrestle it out (or possibly as simple as looking at ORIG_HEAD, depending on how you 'lost' it).

History not referenced will eventually be reaped by the garbage collector though.
Don't miss the forest for the trees. If it wasn't skype, it'd be some other channel. The point here is that mining malware is a rather new and troubling phenomenon.
EA is my first blacklisted company. I stopped piracy last year and now every piece of software on my laptop is purchased or Open Source and Free. This in a country where software is still thought to be free by most people.

BUT I am pirating EA games. Their policies are anything but customer friendly! So while have a 70 game library on Steam, I still have pirated Lord Of The Rings: Battle For Middle Earth 2 and Mass Effect series.

And I can play my games when I want, the way I want without that draconian policy of always on DRM in a single player game.

I am sure I am not alone doing this. With Sim City, they have pissed a lot of people. And with PR like this, they are making this worse.
Sequelize (used for the node-mysql tests) is the slowest ORM out for Node, others are much faster (i.e. the node-mysql module).

And I would love to see node-mongodb tests with the native Mongo driver and not with Mongoose (which is slower).
> There's a big difference between "my use case" and "all use cases".

Yes. This is an appropriate response to a significant fraction of the complaints on this site and all other tech sites. I usually think of it as "your experience is not universal".