skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm not really what he means either. If he was talking about kernel launches, there'd be no way he was getting 200k/sec since there's a bit of a launch latency (tens of milliseconds); the EngineYard program that one of the members posted on the CUDA forum can do over 200 million SHA hashes on a good card. One member said that he was getting over a billion hashes/sec on his multi-GPU setup.
I think we can also thank the open-source community for forcing them to adapt.
The BURN_BABY_BURN--MASTER_IGNITION_ROUTINE.s filename is pretty good, as is the end of the header comments:

# HONI SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSE
# NOLI SE TANGERE

http://code.google.com/p/virtualagc/source/browse/trunk/Lumi...
That depends on the movie, harry potter pulled in 139.7M over its Wednesday-to-Sunday debut period. I don't see free with advertising adding enough people to make close to that much money.

However, a movie like clerks could be vary profitable online.
The point of this question is just to alert us to go back and check the application for problems. Before we added it, we often used to miss these things.

Here's how the question is used in practice. We vote on applications without necessarily checking it. Then at the end when we have a ranked list, we go back and check to see whether any of the top ranked ones have any signs of breakage. (That's when we check the answer to this question.) If they do we dig deeper, maybe asking the founders questions. What we decide depends on that digging.

So it's not as if we have some kind of rule that if a startup answers this question yes, 30% gets subtracted from their score, or anything like that. This question acts more as a warning light.
What Happens To Copyright?
I'm not a hardware guy (so please correct if I'm wrong...seriously), but if it's just that one instruction that has unknown functionality, couldn't they look at the code and the specified functionality (of all the code) and sort of reverse engineer the logic of it? Or find one of the old computers (in a museum or something) and examine the hardware in it?
Body Kits
Selection of Body kits for all major vehicles by Essex Racing.
Same-name couple to wed after Facebook meeting
Not really. It matters much more how good the people are than what type of group they are.

The reason I want to know the type of group is that it helps me to interpret the answers to the other questions. E.g. if the founders are undergrads, I shouldn't have as high standards for what they've achieved; if they're colleagues who worked together, I'm curious about whether the idea grew out of some need they had at work; etc.

If you want to know who to pick as cofounders, pick people who are smart and energetic and that you can work well with. Also try to pick people you've known for a while. You need more holding you together than the startup, because there will probably be some point when you dip below the x axis and the startup seems worthless.
Yeah the guy is truly obnoxious. Too "slick" to be taken seriously.
Yes :). Ah, college. I miss it.
Not sci-fi, for flies at least:

Genetics of life history in Drosophila melanogaster. II. Exploratory selection experiments. Genetics. 1981 Jan;97(1):187-96. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6790341?ordinalpos=139...

...and a long line of work following from there.
Self-Destructing E-documents
Anybody know how many 'hot-spots' like this would be predicted due to clustering at levels predicted by chance?

"The only way to determine whether a cluster is a "real" cluster or just a "chance" cluster is to do a full scale epidemiological study, which is an expensive and time consuming process, and may still give disappointing results." http://pmep.cce.cornell.edu/profiles/extoxnet/TIB/epidemiolo...
PG, please tell us about the time you most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage.
the point, though, is not that that there is anything special in the water or something. its just circumstances that promote general health as we currently understand it. want to live longer? exercise and eat right.
That's really interesting. Give the enormous size of the Greek expatriate population, I would have expected stronger showings from some of the countries with immigrant Greeks (eg. Australia - cue the joke about Melbourne being the second largest Greek city in the world), especially since they would have less access to traditional forms of recipe sharing (such as cookbooks, friends).

Assuming you are interested in attracting more traffic (which granted you may not be), you might want to look at targeting some of those communities via some well placed advertising.
Even though I don't intend on reapplying, this was thought provoking; thanks.

Why would your project be hard for someone else to duplicate? I think this is a critical question.

Several weeks ago I was at a coffee shop and some girl was complaining to her friend about saving her data as they were leaving. Her friend said, "I just use DropBox." Had to smile as it was the first time I saw a (presumably) lay person mention a YC-funded company. It was nice to see an indication of such a breadth of success.
Thanks, this is pretty handy. I'm trying to learn emacs after using vim for 5 years. It's not easy going.
I really can't understand the sense of entitlement people feel towards free software other people write. If you don't like something, report it. If the maintainer decides something else is more important, you have three options:

1- you live with it

2- you stop using said software

3- you fix it
10 Great reasons to switch to the Green Smoke electronic cigarette
Emergence of a Stable Cortical Map for Neuroprosthetic Control
Check out the program run by The Funded. I think they are probably the only program out there for very early stage companies that really lets you keep your day job. http://www.founderinstitute.com/
Wow, great list. I'll definitely be using those sites.
I'm with the parent poster. The myths are not busted until some hard facts come out.

There are artful ways to say true things that make the reader jump to conclusions that they intend, but are false.

For instance, by claiming that they are in a position that growth is good, they make us think they are making profit per view, but that isn't what they said. They could have any number of non-profitable reasons to like growth, like strategic market share or building a huge content database.

Further, their refutation that advertisers are not afraid of YouTube may lead some readers to conclude that 70% of Ad Age Top 100 Marketers are paying YouTube directly, whereas many (most?) are not. They are either using YouTube as part of a social media campaign or advertising within some user content hosted on YouTube.

It's not clear at all what's happening on their balance sheet, so speculation will continue. To what end, I don't know, but after "What is Twitter's business model?", guessing how much money YouTube burns a year is the Valley's favourite party game. ;)
WOW - Excel running in a Firefox browser (see video on page)
So basically... anyone who wants to do YC is doing it wrong.

Sure, if you have a stress free life you'll live longer. If you eat 30% fewer calories, you'll live longer as well.* But you'll be poor and hungry.

*Although that was a really crappy study. They excluded all the primates that died from the statistical analysis.
" I also would not want your average avionics software developer writing consumer web software."

I am not sure of that part. I think I would like to be able to trust my software just a little more. Not working properly is NOT OK.
Great.

Now I just have to get an Apollo to use it. ;-)
Mount & Blade did this. They allowed players to buy the game while it was still in development. Early versions started off quite cheap, and they raised the price as they did releases (culminating with version 1.0 at the final retail price). Some info here:

http://www.taleworlds.com/mb_buy_en.html

Cortex Command is another game doing the same. The message on their website reads:

"Please note that Cortex Command is currently a work in progress and NOT a finished product! The campaign mode and missions are not yet present in the version available right now. However, you may buy a discounted license today, which will unlock the features of all future versions up to and including the final with the full campaign in it!

As we at Data Realms continue to release more complete builds of the game, we will also be reducing the discount gradually until we reach the final version and full price of the product. So the earlier you buy, the better value you get! Although we are very passionate about this project, we cannot guarantee that it will be completed - that's why we offer the discounted price instead of a pre-order deal at full price."

http://www.datarealms.com/games.php

Cortex Command is basically a one-man operation. Dan currently sells the game at $18, with identical bits at $38 labeled as a "support data realms" version. He is very clear that the versions are the same; only the price is different. A nontrivial amount of people buy the $38 version! Full disclosure: Dan is a good local friend of mine.
How is bandwidth pricing built from scratch? You're transferring bits like everyone else. Sure you might be doing it CHEAPER, but they didn't rewrite the rules to peering.

These myths aren't "busted," they just refuted reported numbers with "that ain't true!"
Perhaps. But the cost-of-adoption model is different. There's little cost to switching, or using both.

I find myself paying more attention to FF than Twitter. FF not being in the spotlight may be a blessing.
Pure CSS Shapes: Triangles, the Del.ici.ous Logo, and Hearts
Why is h264 pointless?

I know that you can stream live video to the phone. There was an entire session dedicated to it at WWDC. Check out MLB at Bat for an example. http://mlb.com/mobile/iphone/ CNN also has a streaming app.

Why do you guys think it's not a good idea right now.
Line 666 of http://code.google.com/p/virtualagc/source/browse/trunk/Lumi...

"GAINBRAK,1	# NUMERO MYSTERIOSO"
http://ycombinator.com?
Strange New Air Force Facility Energizes Ionosphere, Fans Conspiracy Flames
This is the entire business model of indie games in many cases.
You’ve Got a Popular Story on Digg
I can second at least one article by Clay Skirky "Thinking the Unthinkable"... Its not just that the newspapers and MSM have a revenue problems, its that we are in the early going of a radical change in the very institutions that, in the past, sustained and maintained the culture. It is going to take years to reform new institutions and its doubtful that anyone can say with any certainty how it is going to turn out. Welcome to the new reformation.
I think GPU's are going to win this "Yeah, my 5 GPUs are currently cranking at a total rate of 800 M/sec" they are are already looking at the low 30's.
"I'm with the parent poster. The myths are not busted until some hard facts come out."

If you adopt this position, then even "hard facts" won't satisfy you, since, again, they'd have to come from YouTube, a source you don't trust.

To be honest, that's the position I'm in; I don't trust them on this point, though I don't particularly care, either. I quite carefully didn't say that the claims are true in their most obvious form, merely that this is as good as it is going to get for now, and in particular, that there is no applicable "science and testing and experimentation" to be done.
are you using Firefox 3 or 3.5? My tab bar sure changes color when the app is in the background. I'm using OS X 10.5.7.
I thought neilk's analysis was sensitive and intriguing, and it struck me as based on knowledge (edit: I mean knowledge of PR, not of the MS piece). Whether he's right or wrong, he obviously wasn't being disrespectful (witness his restraint in response to your rather inflammatory first sentence). I think highly of most of your posts too, but you have some nerve accusing him of misogyny when Ariel's photo depicts her in a t-shirt that says "My job gives me special feelings" and the text talks about her "creeping around campus".
A High Level Comparison of Hadoop and Dryad
I would think that the most likely thing to happen is that no-one would ever know that GPL'd code was used. This is one feature of binary releases: copyright infringement is easy, widespread, and largely undetectable.

I don't know of large damages being awarded for violations of the GPL. Is there must history of this?

I would have thought Microsoft could write a replacement in house while their lawyers stall, then they would pay a fine quite small compared to their issues with proprietary IP, such as double space.
What people won't pay for is management and distribution of bits. If your job is to make sure that a bunch of atoms get from Point A to Point B, then sure. It's challenging. If your job is to get bits from Point A to Point B, then the magic word "scalability" becomes your job description. If you're not delivering those bits for near zero cost, then what are you good for?
Here's how the question is used in practice...

Well, yes. I more or less understood all of that based on comments you've made in the past and what happened last time I submitted a "I can't move to the bay area" application -- my point was that it might be a useful thing to explain in your essay.
Adobe Unveils New Open Source Initiatives Targeted Towards Media Companies
Crazy... anyone have any theories on this? Especially why MS chose JS over Silverlight?
Venture Capital Dollars Stabilize in Second Quarter at Mid-1990s Levels
You get what you measure. The application selects for the ability to communicate in pithy statements. Fortunately, this is likely to be somewhat correlated with intelligence. Unfortunately, there are no obviously better methodologies.
Digg User Voted Ads In The Wild. Mmmmm, IHOP
Todos los derechos reservados - brief overview of copyright law (in spanish)
Barnes & Noble unveils online bookstore
Isn't the issue that Apple won't let such an app on the store? (i.e. not a technical issue with the phone)
My experience has been that the suburbs were dull, allowing me to get really great at programming.

But even better, when I had the opportunity to move to big cities, they were even more fantastic and exciting because I was from suburbs. I can't imagine growing up in a city and getting bored with it, before I'm even old enough to take full advantage of life there!
The software, of course, was amazing. But I was more blown away reading this article and seeing it was a bunch of engineers in their late 20s and early 30s running the show. Geez.
I don't have a startup, but it seems to me that this article misses a large part of why YC is so successful -- YC companies get great advice. Generally, if a group of people is simply cloning another, they're going to be also-rans; if they aren't able to bring anything new to the table regarding their investing group, what are they going to bring to the companies they invest in?
There wasn't much interest so we're not keeping the house. Sorry.
Oh? I'm somewhat supportive of youtube but my experience with large well funded startups from Northern California is that they don't lie, they spin. And spinning doesn't have legal repercussions.

So on your particular quote, the spin is simple. Define "more money." I would guess that the sentence that inspires that is "We are at a point where growth is definitely good for our bottom line, not bad." Which basically doesn't say much of anything. How much growth is good for the bottom line? How do they define the bottom line? If you invested 2 gazillion dollars in hardware and it's all sitting idle, then any growth at all (even 1 extra view) is good for the bottom line.
You can ask yourself: Can your startup make 500M in 10 years time?

If the answer is YES, then, you're in that group.
YC is pretty recent and he did it in his forties.

I was thinking about what he did when he was younger, just like the situation of someone that would apply to YC.
You don't need an app to stream video to the iPhone; you can use the existing video player.

For video streaming from the iPhone, I'm not so sure, but I'd think you could use their existing functionality (but don't quote me on that).
I think you should treat it like a business. Profit will maximize the impact of your change, and allow you to sustainably provide this solution to many more people than you would otherwise.

Google "Social Entrepreneurship" for more details.
How One iPhone App Could Save Public Radio
I'll admit that I often post in anger about digg and about the blogosphere. Why? Because I've never seen so much shit thrown around since the last time I went to the monkey cage at a zoo. Pretty well every fact about the early origins of digg has been misrepresented. I've somewhat gotten past the personal insult in that. Now I'm just insulted by the fact that the promise of "democratizing the news" has been hijacked.

What we had before was, if more expensive, better. There was more integrity, more craftmanship, more creativity.

Here's a classic example: http://www.statesman.com/business/content/business/stories/t.... I'm sure that Mike Maples isn't a complete moron, nor completely dishonest, but somebody give me an explanation for

"When I invested in Digg, Kevin Rose had started the company for $1,500 over a weekend."

I was there. None of that is in anyway accurate. Just the fact that Mike Maples, reporters and editors at that particular publication are willing to say it's true says a whole lot about corruption and dishonesty. How can they even call themselves "The Statesman?"
True, and I had one very large company back off after the equivalent of a staredown. My lawyer, when first seeing the contract, left me a one-word voicemail: "Egregious".
Or you can use the AGC emulator linked to in the blog post:

http://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/
Um, dude, back in the day, all you got were CAPS. (And that was still true ten years later, in 1979, with my Apple II Plus.)
The command for split-windows-vertically, currently C-x 5 in this cheatsheet, should be C-x 3.
Not when you're really tiny, and they're one of the largest employers in the world. I am a one man software shop and my dealings with one of the world's largest beverage producer has been anything but negotiation. The lady I have been dealing with has been really hard, I am not exaggerating, but it's very close to them ordering me around. Every few weeks I get 20 pages of crap for me to go thorough, and I usually have a day or so read the fine print, sign and fax it back to them. I am not even sure what I promised anymore, however, the pay, when it comes around in about a year or so is well worth it (not exactly retirement, but enough to live off of for 5+ years.)
In the middle of GEB,
That's a question we think about a lot, because bias basically equals things we judge wrong. I like energetic founders, for example, but one wouldn't call that a "bias," because energetic founders are good. So what you're really asking is what makes us pick wrong, which is something we're constantly thinking about.

When I pick wrong, it's often because the founders seem really nice. That's probably my biggest weakness. The other YC partners have it too. It's much harder to get funded by YC if you're an asshole. But who knows, maybe this is actually an advantage. It means the atmos within YC is really good. Everyone tends to trust one another. So maybe it's a win overall, even if it decreases returns in individual cases.

It's a complicated problem.
People with the ability to give good advice are probably an indispensable part of the system. But it does not necessarily follow that these specific people are. Then again, maybe that is the case.

If so then the answer to the main question is no, the success of YC does not have implications that are useful generally. I don't discount that as a possibility.
Firefox is not some 17 year old's side project. It is a product, and a product that makes a lot of money from its customers btw, and the goal of any product is to satisfy users (as a means to and end to generate additional profit). I can guarantee you that Mozilla wants to make people happy, not to tell them to "hit the road" if they don't fix the bugs themselves. You can't on the one hand evangelize like crazy and get people to switch over to your product and then on the other tell them tough luck when they don't get what they want.
As I understand it, speakers of non-Latinate languages tend to use mail clients which can guess encodings, because there's still a lot of legacy code which does MIME incorrectly or not at all. Hell, Firefox 3 can still do this, and displaying a Web page incorrectly is nowhere near as serious as not delivering email.
Apple Preparing iPod Touch With Camera, Microphone
Game developers many times use third-party IP (for example game engines). In such a case, open sourcing is worthless.
Canonical's Launchpad now open source (AGPLv3)
most of the stuff doesn't play for me in NZ so we're still a ways from upload-once-play-anywhere
Ask HN:  I have a Viral Video (I Think) - just posted it - how can I make $?
So we were screwing around in Canada one day and well this video happened. First off, is it 'funny enough' to be viral? If you think so... what should I do? I just bought the domain name JeepDiving.com I want to build up the webpage over the next couple of days, maybe make it like Jorts.com, have it get user content, submissions, and maybe just have a couple banner ads? Got the twitter name now 2... but any one have any other creative ideas?
Announcing YC funding is newsworthy, and you'll get a press hit for it any time you want.
I should note, what are your thoughts on actually contacting JEEP if this gets big enough?
Was Mondrian an arc hacker?
I don't think it's obvious enough to really have viral appeal. Also, it makes you seem like a sociopath (jumping into a stranger's car, while they're driving, seems more like a crime than a prank.)

On the other hand, it is funny.
He means most people are not willing to pay for their web apps to be as well-specced and thoroughly tested and verified as serious software. That goes both for dotcom companies and end-users who votes with their dollars and simply don't care if a website crashes from time to time.
No he primarily programmed in Piet See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piet_(programming_language).
Wow, that is a great application. This is exactly what I meant about being clear and concise. I linked to it from the essay.
Okay, it's sorta funny.

But at the same time, it's sorta creepy too.
In this video, Chris Bryant of Microsoft makes an offhand comment that the components of the new Microsoft Office 2010 for Web are "some of the biggest Javascript applications ever built"

Yuk, big does not necessarily imply good. From the video, it looks like they've ported as much of the Office applications as possible directly into the browser. The only UI changes are the pieces they had to disregard because the browser didn't support them.

Whatever "web 2.0" is, it isn't the same old applications now running in the browser instead of MFC.
Good catch. It's not a coincidence; he had similar goals.
Would you consider a competitor to an already YC-backed startup?
Are you using 3.5?

On my Mac, both FF and Safari take exactly the same time to launch. This is with many addons (7 or 8 at the last count). Also, FF is very snappy. In fact, it works better with large pages having a bunch of media content than Safari. Except for a few very small glitches, FF 3.5 is as native as you could want it.

I just switched back to FF from Opera. I chose Opera over FF for my Mac because it looked native and was snappier than the OS X version of FF. Now Opera seems to be going in the opposite direction (choosing a horribly non-native skin, adding everything and the kitchensink to the browser, becoming painfully unresponsive with every new version).
This is the best hack that I've ever seen posted on Hacker News. It really serves as a reminder that making a difference in the world is about solving real problems for people. Solving real problems won't always make you rich, but they are just as important. Inspirational -- thanks my friend.