skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> GPL is a better route because commercial entities that want to use your software now have to get the commercial license

They can use your software all they want. They just can't link to it or otherwise tightly integrate it with theirs (the line is a fuzzy one, but generally drawn at linking, IIRC)
We haven't decided for sure, but we have to change something, because reading all the applications is becoming overwhelming.

Why not have someone create a simple, private site which makes salient application information: a screenshot which may lead to the site's demo, video of founders, answers to questions. Then certain trusted people, partners or alumni, can rate the applicants over time. Instead of going days without shaving and being exhausted, you could spend a few minutes each day flipping through applications. Surely over time those you are interested in for an interview will be apparent. I'm pretty sure there was a reason not to use this approach, but it may be worth it to bring it up again.
Windows 95 running on iPhone
Unreadable is 'sIFR' http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/sifr/
It's an object lesson that in order to create a winning new product, it has to be 100-200% better than the existing ones, not just 10-50% better.
The amount is more solo-founder friendly than before. Has YC become more solo-founder friendly than before?
This maybe the case that you are looking for homosexual/asexual astronauts for avoiding problems.
Typography App for iPhone
Basic Composite Fabrication
That is one unprofessional-looking web page -- using paragraphs starting with 'O' in super-narrow columns to represent a table rows? It's the most important thing in the post and it's a confused wrapped jumble.
I'd guess the answer to the isolation problem is increased reliance on virtual worlds and online interaction. Though the lag might be dreadful when communicating with the Earthlings.
According to the rules you can append up to 5 random chars. But you don't have to.

The potential for case changes in the words really makes the keyspace much larger, since we currently don't know the length of the words.
Whenever I hear about some open source volunteers who "did the hard part" and then someone else came along, "slapped a GUI on it" and made big bucks, I wonder why the original developers didn't bother to do that part. Maybe the real value isn't where a lot of people think it is.

After reading all these stories, I conclude that if you build only infrastructure you are going to get nothing back. Maybe the DHH approach is better: Build an app and then factor some infrastructure out of it later.
The Death of the Download?
a little servant boy?
I don't think it's so crazy. A solid digital delivery system would be a great compliment to the Amazon Cloud. Beyond digital delivery, I would think that Amazon would be able to make some great use out of the Netflix recommendation system.
Depends. Many shareholders may be willing to take a 30-40% price premium, particularly in this market -- and that would raise their price to $2.3bn to $2.5bn, which, if $1.8bn is a steal, is still a good deal.
"Starting in winter 2010, we're going to invest $11k + $3k per founder, for up to 3 founders.
So now 1 founder will get $14k, 2 $17k, 3 $20k, and 4 $20k."
Thanks. I'm hiring devs also. And I don't think any less of you for disagreeing with me, even though I am clearly right. ;)
Misinterpreting Copyright
It' doesn't take much for Google's web search to support an outdated browser since it uses minimal javascript, so Google will only lose out by blocking IE6.
That quote is hanging in my cube at eye-level.

Related: "A plan is a list of things that don't happen."

(which Google tells me is from a movie called "The Way of the Gun")
!! I am curious under what circumstances this was. Assuming identification was required, in what way was a gif acceptable?
Suvery Predicts: Bing Will Bomb

I agree that it probably will bomb, but you can't confirm something that hasn't happened yet. You can only predict it.
But when you study you need to be strict about it.

I happened to be distracted with the world of IT when I study in school. -> Limiting yourself and putting borders is a must.

Thanks for taking care and replying.

Just by curiosity: Are you a doctor?
Shouldn't big name VCs like Sequoia do the same? I think confidentiality is probably the biggest reason. Who else would YC trust better than their previously funded startups?
While this has a marginal effect on the total number of possible hashes, repeated words are still an important consideration: If you can guess even one word that is likely to appear in their 1000-word dictionary, you can precompute the hashes for all possible variants of the corresponding phrase (that word repeated twelve times) prior to the contest, giving you a jump on other contestants.

I'd guess that we'll either see the rules revised to prevent this or see a dictionary filled with non-dictionary words.
Interesting. How many states does Netflix have tax nexus in? Amazon already has DCs in ten states.
How long is "long enough"?

I've had a dedicated server running my (personal) web site, mail, and a variety of other services, directly connected to the public internet, with no firewall, for five years.

My domain is #95k in alexa, #69k in Compete and #35k in Quantcast. Just to say, while it's no heavy hitting destination site, it's not just a tiny personal site either.

I've never been hacked. I just don't set up insecure services.
not 1 alumni review 5 applications, but 5 alumni review 1 application. There gonna be much opinions, which is better.
>> The GPL is a legal tactic of the FSF movement, who believe that intellectual property in software is immoral

> This is not correct.

Well, it is basically correct. The core idea of the Free Software movement is that all software should be free. They believe that software not fitting their subjective definition of "free" is immoral (or evil).

This has been declared quite a few times by Richard Stallman; for example, here:

“The free software movement aims for a social change: to make all software free so that all software users are free […]. Every non-free program gives its developer unjust power over the users. Our goal is to put an end to that injustice.” -- http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/compromise.html

I admit, the word "intellectual property" was an unlucky choice by the previous poster.
Is it me or is this application coming out much sooner than it has in the past? Not complaining though- this is always a welcome YC submission.
FPGAs for fun & hacking
there are 58 dvd distribution centers or hubs. most states have at least one.
Can you expand on what these consequences are a bit for those of us unfamiliar...?
I don't see anywhere on the page where they suggest Ruby. As you mention, it is a terrible choice.
If I understood well, 4 = 3 because the costs of 4 persons are near to the costs of 3 (in YC point of view)
The great debate of HDMI cables
There has been a wide debate about whether or not “discount” <a href="http://www.optimization-world.com">HDMI Cables</a> cables are the same as “expensive”, or if there is notable difference in quality. There is one noticeable difference, and that is price. While premium cables can cost upwards of $100, you can get the same length generic cable for around $13.

But what about quality? I think to understand, it helps to know what HDMI cables are. HDMI cables transmit a digital signal (both audio and video) between a HD source such as a cable box and your TV. Digital signals transmit to TV’s using a simple code of 1’s and 0’s, the TV then determines the 1 or 0 and broadcasts the signal. There really is no gray area, they either transmit the signal or they do not, and honestly speaking, your $13 cable will carry that signal just as effective as your $100.

All HDMI cables are certified by the same standard testing at the HDMI Authorized Testing Center. That means that the generic cables receive the same HDMI certification from the same testing as the premium cables.

The reality is there is absolutely no difference in quality. I have seen both side by side, and have not been able to tell any difference. I recommend as well doing some research of the specs, you will see that most discount cables have the same specs as the expensive HDMI cables. It is just like buying a generic brand of cereal, same ingredients, different packaging, and a lot cheaper price.

Some people do wonder how companies are able to sell cables for such a cheaper price. As I can not speak for all, I can tell you how we save the consumer money, and still offer an excellent cable. Our cables come in a plastic sleeve, in a bubble wrapped envelope. There is no fancy packaging, or expensive branding to place our logo on the cable. We simply put a stamp on the envelope and it is out the warehouse door. We have no expensive marketing campaigns; we simply try and keep our overhead costs as low as we can, so we can pass the savings on to the consumer.

Buying a discount cable may leave you without bragging rights, but it will also leave you with a lot of extra cash in your pocket and a clear signal to your HDTV. The place to find these and all your cable needs? http://www.optimization-world.com
7 Mistakes Any New Business Should Avoid
you mention music.
Would you pay for music on your iPhone and have you looked at any of the apps in the "Music" category
The low level waste you describe is not strongly radioactive.

Although obviously a political impossibility, a safe way to deal with it would be to pulverize it and spread it evenly throughout our national parks. This would not even measurably increase the radiation level above the background level.
Maybe the site could run news.yc. YC alumni get accounts and vote up good applications. The cream rises to the top.
What an incredibly disingenuous article. Basically the author takes a big pile of data suggesting people like Bing, that Bing is better for some things, and that Bing is drawing users away from the segment of the market that is not already using google.

Armed with that data and a few baseless assumptions, the author churns out this vat of tripe. For example, he says that Google will simply copy anything Bing does better. But will they, really? Google could have bought any of the technology companies Microsoft bought, but they chose not to. Google has the technical acumen to make a much more rich search experience, but they've chosen not to.

I think that Google and Bing are opposed more philosophically than technically. Search results are all close to the same save in a few minority interest domains (e.g., google is demonstrably better for medical research), so it all comes down to integration, experience and philosophy. I think thats how Bing has positioned itself as something different. Their marketing efforts, while some are hamfisted, also stress that Bing is a project with a new philosophy as well as a refresh of the underlying technology.
I wonder how many solo founders are there in YC. Anybody know any of them?
No, women would go on the Venus mission.

(I'm sorry, I tried to stop myself, I really did.)
Good luck introducing that bill to the voting public..
I'm aware that this is what hashes are supposed to avoid. However, many crypto attacks seem to build on weaknesses in their design.

Hence my question.
Netflix has facilities in most states. Amazon would have to collect sales tax in most (if not all) of these states.

http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090714/amazon-buys-netflix-micr...
Engine Yard seems to suggest that renting cloud computing resources is the key to win this contest, but I'd suggest using parallel computing resources to anyone doing this. If you have an Nvidia CUDA-enabled GPU laying around, this might be perfect for you.
You can outsource all the infrastructure to a real registry. (Like how the "non-profit" PIR outsources all operations to Afilias.)

I agree that trying to buy a TLD specifically for the purpose of domain squatting is very risky. But in case anyone wants to try it, may I suggest .con?
their words, not mine. the caste system is alive and well, now it just has a capitalist tinge to it.
PG, just outsource the entire selection process to Mechanical Turk. It could be an experiment similar to that proposed in the finance classic "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" in which a blindfolded monkey throwing darts at a stock page out-invests stock-picking experts. If Mechanical Turk picks a more successful crop of startups than the YCombinator average, you will have succeeded in making yourself completely redundant -- a worthy goal of any enlightened manager.
The next step will be in creating a PHP script that auto generate this map by parsing the site pages. It would be great.
I don't know any examples, people have asked on several occasions how many single-founder companies YC funds, and IIRC pg said it was roughly 5% of the companies.
Or build schools with it :) I know the statistics.

Steven Chu sounds like an interesting guy. We'll see what happens.
I know you're joking but I'm not sure if it wouldn't be better to only have a 'dns' that maps anonymous 10 digit numbers to ip numbers. You could then use your own 'local' address book (much like your cell phone address book) to map those numbers (that are portable) to your own descriptions.
All events given in the article are independent of each other and future outcomes. There's absolutely no reason to bet money on Chrome because of Ballmer.
I would definitely like to be able to look into the contents of my fridge before I left work (to know what to pick up). Expiry dates, especially for items in the pantry that don't get turned over as often as the fridge contents would also be handy.

Recipe suggestions don't work that well in my opinion (you can do this already to some extent, for example with bigoven.com but also with a simple google search). You need non-trivial intelligence to do that automatically. The one thing a cook knows is what ingredients are important. For example if I have shrimp in the freezer and orzo in the pantry, I can google for "shrimp and orzo recipe", end up with a recipe with 8 additional ingredients of which I have only 2; and yet I would know whether I could make it (eg. I don't have fresh basil but I could throw in some dried thyme and it would still be edible, skip the olives, etc etc). So I don't see this as a big selling point.

The other thing I look forward to with ubiquitous RFID is whether we can eliminate the unload cart/scan/repack groceries hoopla. I use reuseable bags, some insulated for frozen goods - I'd like to wander round the store, back my bags as I go along and as I like them packed (anal? moi?) and just pay and stroll out.
Netflix's current market cap is actually $2.5 billion: http://www.google.com/finance?q=netflix
First, let me point out that "hopelessly ignorant" seems pejorative, and since I'm in the category I was describing for most of the technologies of which I'm a user, I'd prefer "rationally ignorant". It's not a good use of my time to learn everything about the inner workings of a tool I'm using, if I'm not already interested, and most non-programmers are not interested. There are, as you note, exceptions, such as your dentist.

I don't even disagree with the bulk of your post, nor am I interested in discouraging use of the GPL (at least, before free software is the default, whereupon I'll encourage people to use licenses with fewer restrictions, or public domain, as I do, licenses and contracts permitting).

I also prefer for the source code to be available, but I don't think it's properly a legal matter to make sure that it is. I have a lot of sympathy for the view that the GPL's source code requirements are necessary to make enforcement of the other terms practical, thus aiding the copyleft, however, which is a good reason for me not to complain about GPL software or licensing, and I don't.

I do, though, think that it's somewhat beside the point to talk of the needs of the end user regarding the license provisions about source code, which was my original reason for replying. As a practical matter, few end users ever care about the source code, and few end users pay any attention to the licenses of software they use anyway, and that last is a behavior I'd like to encourage. If enough people ignore bad laws, they cease to be effective.
They don't seem like experts in this particular field... and it's not really a discussion. More like a very good indicator of what people with both brains and influence think - but even so it is deeply flawed by the selection.
According to our survey, it seems that most of Bing’s market share gains came at the expense of AOL and Ask

Statcounter's data begs to differ. The google/bing lines are almost exact mirror images:

http://gs.statcounter.com/#search_engine-US-daily-20090501-2...

That's the problem with surveys... they are useful for gauging interest, but terrible for predicting behavior. If you had asked people in 1999 if they were going to switch to Google from Altavista, I bet the results would not have predicted reality.
The other thing is to judge your customer base properly. Once customer satisfaction is positive, it is a big hurdle to overcome. To supplant "Good enough", it appears that the new product has to be the 100-200% you stated.

Microsoft has had the same issue with its own upgrade (Windows XP), although that's a bit more debatable. I think it's a similar lesson though.
It should be an auction process for each name.
Startup to IPO: Why Few Companies Make the Leap (Part 2: Obstacles)
I'm half-joking. Obviously, there are benefits to domain names; however, I'm not sure how we can return to the egalitarian nature of web addresses, what with most normal domain names taken. We'll go through a few more years of Socialisrs, Ooookies, StupidCombos, and ReallyReallyLongDomainNames, but then what? Domain names that cost tens of thousands of dollars on average? I'm not looking forward to that future.
Or if they can put you into a 'sleep like' state...
Is this available in a convenient desktop format? I don't do web design on my phone but I do do it on my computer ;)
The name of a product is really, really important to the product's success. The reason that three-hour long discussions about it are frustrating that they aren't a good way to find a good name - all the names you've heard in the discussion blur together and it's not possible to "get" the quality of any uniquely good names.

A lot of design is like that - it is the art of just having a simple thing that "works". The simple thing seems easy but is really hard because you have to consider many factors but not do a simple compromise. It's also something that more less can't be done by a simple committee.
I don't think voting would be a good way to do this. Now, YC applications are different from scholarship applications or honourary degree nominations (which are the areas where I have the most experience judging); but if they're not too different, there are going to be some very good applications which most people don't immediately recognize as good. I often find that out of a large committee, some of the best applications are only noticed by one person -- but when he/she says "seriously, I think this one is really worth looking at", everybody else will look closely enough to recognize the application's merits. Simply having everybody vote yea/nay will result in obscure applications being lost when people default to nay.
You must be using some definition for "correct" of which I was previously unaware. The FSF opposes the term "intellectual property" because it is vague and confuses several unrelated areas of law. However, I have never heard them argue against copyright, trademark, or patents -- only specific, poorly-considered applications of these such as patents on equations.

Furthermore, the only way to have capital-F Free software requires strong copyright protection. In a world without copyright, Free software would be impossible because there would be no laws to prevent distribution without the source code.
Yikes. You've undermined my faith in the Google quick answers. I should be more skeptical, should've looked at the source.

Still, the point stands even more firmly :) I suppose I don't think it would be worth that much to Amazon, proportion-wise.
[Disclaimer: I work on Windows Azure]
This is just a blog post. My guess is that their blog authoring tool messed up formatting. There should be some prettier web pages out soon.

Though I wasn't involved with this one, I've been involved with past rollouts and it is always a hassle to time the blog post along with the announcement and something always slips by.

I will try and get the formatting fixed though.
We actually already support oEmbed -- the big problem with it is discovery. We have to hard code lists of sites that support oembed -- which really defeats the purpose.
It sounds like a classic case of groupthink, something I would think YC founders would be highly susceptible to.
the lag might be dreadful when communicating with the Earthlings

That was an interesting aspect of the experiment. It's hard to phone a friend when each exchange of the conversation takes twenty minutes each way

http://athena.cornell.edu/kids/bn_special_report.html

to travel to the other end of the conversation.
This is true, but it's also true of any site that allows user-generated content. I would assume that it's easier to detect that bit.ly/gibberish leads to viagraaffiliatescam.com than to detect that randomblog.blogspot.com is a splog with 400 links, one of which goes to viagraaffiliatescam.com.
I think they just don't want to financially incentivize bringing on unnecessary people as founders.
I always figured the absolute best way to support old IE6 developed intranet apps would be a single site browser tool with embedded IE6. Like fluid for windows.

The problem is Microsofts boneheaded decision to make IE systemwide. Upgrading to IE7 also upgrades all webcontrol instances. So this doesn't seem feasable.
Hats off to the volunteers. That's a lot to do and not even get to go to Mars.
The thing about meta-discussion is, to an extent, it is people talking to hear themselves or each other talk.

That sounds terrible but is it? Suppose instead of just talking, people sang? Singing to hear yourself sing is wonderful. So the question isn't just whether you are accomplishing anything with meta-comments. The question is whether you either accomplishing or whether you are just enjoying what you're doing in a somewhat rich, creative or satisfying way. This seems more likely when the meta-discussion is humorous and good spirited than when it is angry and mean-spirited. But perhaps some people enjoy trying to destroy other people's intellectual position on some level or other.
Learn Emacs in Ten Years
I think PG's advice against solo-founder companies would remain true, hence not rendering YC any more solo-friendly. I'm surprised that number is even 5%, considering the number of high-quality YC applicants that could potentially be paired together.
Google Maps – the $10k gotcha
Actually this is so spot on!

I ADMIT!
I have been living a meta-life for far too long now.
A life where I ponder about HOW I want to/should live my life.
In a sense it has given me much - a perceived knowledge and understanding about me, life and the world.
All in theory.
Lately in my meta-living I've come to the conclusion that that's just what it is. A meta-life.
I need to stop meta and go out there, to actually get things done.
Get practical.
All the more reason to make sure that everyone hears you.
Doesn't Amazon have facilities all over the country as well?
Debugging. In comics.
Every phisher's dream. I wonder if ICANN would be short-sighted enough to let that one through the application process.
Yes. It was an up-to-date install of Wordpress, about two months ago. Luckily, the domain was being scanned for vulnerabilities by Duke University OIT, and they let me know about it; it was non-obvious that the hack was there. There were certain URLs that had lists of keywords, mostly pharma scams.

I don't use Wordpress any more.
NSA@Home: Fast SHA1 Generator Using FPGA  (RE: Engine Yard Hashing Contest)