skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
As an interesting aside, Australia's taxation department, the Australian Taxation Office, provides a completely free piece of software each year called e-tax (http://www.ato.gov.au/Individuals/Lodging-your-tax-return/E-...).

It walks you through filling out your tax lodgement step-by-step and even calculates your expected return. It's not the nicest piece of software, but after having read this article, I am greatly appreciative that it exists at all.
Make Money For every name and email submit
If you have suggestions on fixes, please feel free to submit a pull request. theunitedstates.io/contact-congress is on the gh-pages branch [1]. I wrote the instructions page and realize there are a few grammatical errors, any help fixing them would be really appreciated.

https://github.com/unitedstates/contact-congress/tree/gh-pag...
Use:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

Instead of:

#!/bin/bash

This makes the script more portable as you don't rely on bash (or any executable) to be in /bin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shebang_(Unix)#Portability
I wonder how many visitors of HN, like myself, sometimes forget that there's all of the Y Combinator stuff going on behind it...
Yes, missed the link. Thanks for pointing it out.
In my case I found it under the "Updates" tab in Gmail, only after I read this thread and went looking for it. It might be worth checking it out if you haven`t already.
Suppose you haven't released your app yet, or you have major changes to make to make your app as successful as it might be. You might have some revenue or none, but you probably won't have enough to hire 3 full-time developers (as an example).
Good observation. I suppose that there's this expectation that one must achieve success first before a viable story is created.

I think that we, as a community, need to change that. As personally, the stories, & anecdotes that I've benefitted from the most were mostly shared by entrepreneurs still in the trenches--in the process of building their startups.

Plus to be fair, I haven't quite gotten anything "going" yet.
Just to clarify for anyone who isn't familiar: With Faster Payments you can make a transfer between any two accounts of different banks and it will arrive within 4 hours. It's usually free too and works 24/7.
Hmm. Canadian here, our SSN is called an SIN. NETFILE, which I didn't think was that innovative, matches SIN number to date of birth on file (which can be changed by phone call) and regardless, sends a refund to the address on file (which, like Direct Deposit settings, can be changed through a web interface). That said, I've never heard of someone committing tax fraud electronically, given the barrier to change an address. Google revealed no reported incidents, not even on forums. And if I had to submit on paper, as only 25% or so of Canadians do now, the software will let me print out all the forms I need, and if necessary, the PDFs from the CRA have fillable fields, IIRC. That said, there are still too many form types, even though most don't apply to me.
I imagine that the types of feedback you're suggesting, such as "market already saturated", would only be half of the story. A founder who is making such a mistake is automatically making a second mistake: not being good enough to realize the mistake in the first place.

A founder who fixes the one mistake pointed out by YC would be missing the big picture, likely making numerous other mistakes. I don't think that most applicants want to hear the truth, which is effectively, "Based on problems X, Y, and Z that we can see after a cursory analysis, we can only assume that you're not smart enough for other program, else you would have realized those problems yourself."
Web apps are a hack on a hack, yes. But it's kind of ironic he hates Javascript so much when Javascript is a pretty cool programming language heavily influenced by Scheme, which is awfully similar to Racket.

But hey, I like people who call it like they see it, and there certainly are some drawbacks to Javascript too.
You claim that the concepts of left and right are not useful because both sides are in fact being manipulated into fighting each other, rather than the true "responsible parties". Who exactly do you think these "responsible parties" are?
> You mean the "red tape" meant to ensure that buildings don't collapse on you while you work

No, I mean the red tape that allows anyone to block the construction of a new building just because they don't like how it will look. Work on your reading comprehension, I have no problem with building codes to ensure safety.
> This is basically saying, "Let's package together a bunch of volatile high-risk, high-return investments in a completely unregulated market and sell that to people".

1. Your "unregulated market" claim is baseless. This fund, which is no different than any other venture capital fund, has registered with the SEC in accordance with Regulation D. You can find the filing on the SEC website.

2. Angel investing is not exactly "high-return" these days. See http://gust.com/blog/2012/03/27/the-reality-of-returns-on-an... and http://rightsidecapital.com/assets/documents/HistoricalAngel... for some data points. For reference, the S&P 500 gained nearly 30% last year.

3. In regards to your overall concern that people are being sold "volatile high-risk, high-return investments", consider that there are variety of leveraged products, including triple-leveraged ETFs and double-leveraged ETNs yielding 15-20% annually, that retail investors can purchase on major stock exchanges. Notwithstanding the fact there's nothing inherently wrong with "volatile high-risk, high-return investments" and there is a place for them in many portfolios, picking on a tiny pseudo-fund of funds targeting accredited investors is not the most effective way to make your argument.

4. As for "Silicon Valley financiers are beginning to think like Wall Streeters", the notion that Silicon Valley venture capital has somehow existed in isolation until now is simply not accurate. That said, my personal take is that this fund, when compared to some of the exotic financial instruments developed/popularized by "Wall Street" in recent years, is more novelty than anything else. I wouldn't even call it innovative, let alone exotic.
ShowHN: Android Realtime Visual Editor for A/B testing
I have used this. I saw a demo of their config management and easy deployment of configurations - very promising.
IMO biggest issue - creating a product no one really wants. How many startups create "next Facebook or Google" that no one really needs/use.
http://ballingt.com/2014/03/17/python-javascript.html makes an extended comparison.
I disagree - but even if I concede, you're proving my point.
The problem is that pretty much anything we do differently from our ancestors harms the brain while it is still growing. Using sugar casually probably harms the brain just as much as smoking pot casually does.

Sitting all day harms the brain. Heck, living in certain parts of the country can harm the brain.

I agree with limiting pot use until the age of 18 but that applies to everything else that's unnatural as well, such as sugar and salt (assuming we set a limit that's healthy based on ancestor's diet and no BS chemicals).

So many things changed in the last century that our bodies can't adapt quickly to support our diet and lifestyle. It takes tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years for the body to adapt to the environment we're living in and how we're using our bodies. That's why obesity is starting to become #1 problem for the whole world as we continue to go further into the information age.
It's easier to see where "my" money is going. I'm doing the spending. I don't however, have a clue, where "our" money is being spent. So why would I donate money to the cause?
Ah I see, never thought about hiring people. I ask because I'm working on an idea too (just released beta), but doing all the work myself after my full time job. I guess doing it full time would be best case scenario, but then again getting involved with investors can be a huge pain ( used to work at a startup, it did not end well ).
neither did I, couldnt find it in spam too.
You clearly clicked the link, saw the headline, and got all pissy. Read it through.
I'm more interested to know how mozilla made firefox faster than chrome
Don't forget how things used to be -- a single earner working at a factory could buy a house comfortably. Those were the folks impacted.
whats the email id they are sending email with ? We can search with that.
EDIT: Got the mail, Rejected.
Patrick - what's the product your Internet buddy is selling?
This is a somewhat uninspiring attitude. There was nothing wrong with the PS/2 mouse and keyboard plugs either, nor the 25-pin printer plugs, nor some barrel plug for charging phones. But the problem is there were so many different things that all needed their own plug. Now there's no mouse plug or phone plug or printer plug since they all use USB. Laptops with a standard non-USB plug will still add to the duplication and inconvenience just like those old keyboards did. You won't be able to charge your phone with your standard barrel plug laptop charger, so you'll still have to carry two adapters when you travel.
Has anyone else STILL not received any email yet? I've checked all over my inbox and misc folders (junk, spam etc.) and couldn't find anything
Applied with http://astute.io and http://regular.io, got help from YC alums in our application and it was pretty solid, weakest parts of the application were we hadn't launched yet and didn't have a demo, users, or traction. We've quit our jobs and finish up soon to go all out on http://astute.io regardless. Fun times ahead, so excited :)
Slightly misleading, they don't actually run Racket on the PS3. IIRC, they created a DSL for game logic in Racket and wrote a special compiler for that DSL.

That's still a good example of a "real" program written in Racket, but it doesn't prove that Racket is a good choice for programs that need all the resources they can get.
In Canada, 8 business days vs. 4-6 weeks: http://www.netfile.gc.ca/fq_rfnd-eng.html

For me, personally, it was 7 business days this year, and I did the filing in all of an hour and a half, in an afternoon. And that includes the time spent trying out two other free apps to decide which ones I liked better.
Based on http://ycombinator.com/howtoapply.html, it seems that there's a point in the application where if you're impressive enough, they'll spend more time on it and if not, they'll disregard it.

> If the founders seem promising, I'll now spend more time trying to understand the idea.

It might be a good idea to put the applications that don't get past that point in one pile, and send them a different and more specific rejection letter. (I was just rejected and am naturally wondering how close I was, and this idea came to mind.)
It's interesting that you've always found yourself having too many good candidates, it doesn't seem like a common problem.
I generally, whatever I'm writing, start with bash or considering bash. Usually that means I start with bash, excluding the obvious cases such as graphics or doing heavy data processing where I know from start that line-based approach isn't enough.

Then, when bash isn't enough, I write the difficult parts in Python as standalone utilities and use those from bash. Consequently, I already have a library of little tools in my ~/bin that are generic enough so that I can just use them from bash right away. But every now and then I need to write a special tool that my bash program can use.

Most of my programs "finish" after this stage and they can live for years as a completed bash script calling helper programs. They do their job and there's nothing to add. As long as the program continues to "live on" I just make changes to the bash script or the helper programs.

If at some point I need features that bash can't offer, such as more speed or more complex data processing, I begin to consider rewriting my program in one language. But this is only after the first revision of the program is already complete and I know exactly what to do when porting.

Thus, porting the program is initially only about rewriting in another language, not developing it further at the same time. The first months or years of using the bash script turn into a prototyping stage, and this allows my rewrite be concise, well-thought and clear-partitioned.

In other words, the rewrite becomes a new stable baseline that contains only the best of my bash prototyping, and only solves a perfectly scoped problem. As soon as the port becomes a drop-in replacement for my original bash program I switch to using it and start a development branch to support the new features, if any. Usually the newly gained speed is enough already.

And usually the rewrite happens using C or Scheme. There's rarely enough point in rewriting the script in Python which may already be used to some extent in utility programs that the script calls. At that point I don't want to extend the program but lift it onto a new platform to cut some old baggage that's not needed anymore. There's a certain kind of joy rewriting in a new language something that you know completely before hand. This allows you to only work with the language since the underlying problem is already solved.

Coincidentally, this new C or Scheme program might then, one day in the future, be called from a new bash script...
Postscript. I see I've been downmodded for identifying Communism as such. I blame the communists. There are a lot in San Francisco. :P
When do late applicants find out?
I come from a background using Common Lisp for system and web development so I may see things differently than people who were introduced to it academically. Your code looks great, mine just needed to compile :)

The cons pair is a a really powerful primitive data structure, it is the linked list of Lisp. You can build a lot of powerful structures given this great base. I really don't it matters what architecture your running on.

Do they really confuse people new to Lisp? car+cdr is a pretty simple concept, when talking to new Lispers they usually don't complain about this.

Hash Tables are part of the Common Lisp Hyperspec so that is a non issue, they have been first class citizens since before Clojure existed (and are nicely integrated into things like loop)
I'll go out on another limb and say that the biggest benefit of having a cofounder isn't another set of hands to do the work, it's another mind with significant skin in the game who will challenge your thinking and point out all the flaws in your ideas - and, of course, who you trust enough to actually listen to when they point out those flaws.

No matter how much business experience you have, you will face situations in a startup where you have to make decisions with highly imperfect information. Having someone by your side who is willing to point out things you may have missed or cases where you have gone seriously off the rails can be invaluable here. After all, nobody seriously believes their ideas are wrong - it usually takes somebody painstakingly pointing it out.

I worked at a startup, early in my career, where the primary founder had cofounders, but they had low enough equity stakes to not be seriously incentivized to challenge him. This was not a wet-behind-the-ears 25-year-old; he was nearly 50, had finished an Ivy League Ph.D in 3 years, had worked as a professor and a quant on Wall Street, and had both technical chops and deep domain experience. But while I worked there, I saw him make a bunch of boneheaded technical moves, simply because there was not enough time in the day for him to both keep tabs on the market and understand the technology in enough detail to make informed technological choices. When I went to the other cofounders about this, they were like, "Well yes, I agree, but it's his company, he gets to call the shots."

He kept at it for 11 years total. He called me up a couple years after I'd quit - not just one job later, but two - to admit that he'd been wrong about the technology I'd been complaining about. By then it was too late; the tech world had passed him by.

Startups are hard. Use all the resources you have available, including the people who challenge you.
> You can also customize and improve a home you own. Many people have housing needs that cannot be met in the rental market. With a home you own, you can make the modifications you need, and accept the impact to your home's value.

Sure, I agree with all of that. However, none of these qualify as economic investments IMHO, unless you decide to start a business out of your home.

Keep in mind I'm focusing strictly on investment in economic terms (production of goods or services). I agree that the house provides various benefits to its owners, just that none of them are economic returns.
For three branches you can use the git-flow model.[0]
Create a public repo, pull it on your local development machine and only push the main and development branch back to the public git repo.
On github it is not possible to have private branches.
[0]http://danielkummer.github.io/git-flow-cheatsheet/
WHAT? a corporation that capitalized on the government's incompetence, is doing everything in their power to make sure things stay the same.

No come on you guys, April first was two weeks ago.
I don't mind paying taxes. But I was definitely cursing this last week as I spent hours filling out forms to calculate numbers that the IRS has already calculated on its own.

I want a letter in the mail saying, "If you don't fill out any paperwork, this is the amount we will return to you/ bill you for. If you get a different number, send in your paperwork by 4/15."

Doing taxes is a ridiculous waste of most people's time.
God yes. I spent a year maintaining ~90k lines of bash. Interesting experience...
WHAT? a corporation that capitalized on the government's incompetence is doing everything in their power to make sure things stay the same.

No come on you guys, April first was two weeks ago.
There once was a lonely developer. Who got rejected by Y-Combinator. Paul Graham said "No!" But it don't make him feel low. He'll make next year's attempt so much better...
I get that error too. Reloading doesn't work for me.
Interesting, rerunning your simulation you lose a planet at 140.9 years (44m score). I wonder if there have been some subtle code changes that affected the results.
The Sharing Economy Taxonomy
Link? The high scores on the page top out around 400m.
I also like http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/shell.xml but of course some things that work well for Google might not work for you.
FWIW, it is quite easy to write Verilog code that ends up being unsynthesizable, since the language wasn't originally designed to be an HDL. Many of the alternative HDLs, such as UC Berkeley's Chisel (https://chisel.eecs.berkeley.edu/) are designed with the express goal of making it impossible (or at least quite difficult) to write unsynthesizable code.

Also, though figuring out what Verilog to write is not difficult if you've properly thought out the microarchitecture, it can be rather tedious and error-prone to actually write it. I'm not sure how CLaSH works, but Chisel allows you to essentially script generation of hardware using Scala. This removes some of the tedium of writing Verilog and also encourages code reuse (for instance, by allowing you to generate a 32-bit adder and an 8-bit adder using the same code but with different parameters).
Why I Went From Python To Go (and not Node.js) (2012)
Birthde – Never miss a birthday
Is this a for-fun-and-interest project or do you expect to make money off of it?

Because while I'd enjoy taking a gander over the site, I don't want to give you my email address, and if the site is just a free thing I'd kind of expect to be able to read it without giving it to you.
California's ReadyReturn program does this already for state taxes. I wish federal taxes could be that easy...
Weird, I replayed your simulation and you lose a planet at 336 years (89m score). I wonder if the game was subtly tweaked since you played it, or maybe your browser produced slightly different results than mine.
I got rejected. Then rereading the email, i remembered Drew Houston didnt get in the first time. The best way to experience success is to overcome rejections and go on to succeed. I personally think between the YC partners blogs, we have enough advice to continue working with our product. In 5 years YC or not, the target is at least 20m users or whatever else is your targets. just target 5% growth.
You know, if you call yourself a web developer on your Linkedin profile and you list "Ruby, Ruby On Rails" as skills & experience you'll probably get hit up by a lot of recruiters for web dev jobs. This shouldn't be surprising.
thanks man , sent you email for our yc-reject startup "Helping Faceless" :)
Major Update to Workflow by Kourosh Dini
That is what UC Berkeley's Chisel (https://chisel.eecs.berkeley.edu/) does, and it seems to be what CLaSH does as well. The issue is the same as in the various compile-to-JS languages. The additional level of indirection can make things difficult to debug (and heaven knows HDL code is hard to debug already).

Also, there is the issue of interfacing with third-party IP blocks or builtin FPGA hardware slices. You either have to stub these out in your high-level description or simulate using the generated HDL.
This is based on a ball lens. There are several ball lens hacks floating around the internet, like this "iPhone Microscope" research paper[0] and this DIY[1] to build your own. Ball lenses are cheap and you can attach it to cellphone camera lens with a little M3 tape.

The cutout paper part seems to just hold the slide, and pane it in front of the lens.

[0] http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna...

[1] http://www.instructables.com/id/Cheap-and-easy-iPhone-micros...
I recently used the product and particularly I was very impressed by the deployment planner feature. It has a visual designer where you can drag and drop various cloud assets(such as server, volume, rds, load balancer etc..), configure and deploy them. Currently it only supports rackspace cloud, aws and digitalocean. But as a heavy user of AWS, I can say that it has most of the features of classic ec2 and vpc. I would definitely recommend everyone to give it a try.
Should've probably clarified that on the website, it's a for-fun-and-interest project.

The standard disclaimers apply, your email won't be sold into slavery or used for anything bad other than a weekly newsletter or something of the sort (aligned with the expectations you had when you signed up).
They can be this easy, but companies like Intuit lobby (successfully so far) against it
A friend of a friend has considerably code in Scheme, Common Lisp and Clojure, when you ask him which is the true Lisp, guess what will he answer? Haskell!

Haskell does really create a big impact on some developers.

Just an anecdote ;)
YC is in a difficult position here. Aside from being terribly labor intensive, specifying the reasons for rejection may serve to discourage teams from reapplying in the future. Seeing how often founders get accepted on their nth attempt, it's really in YC's interest to let you down softly.
Are there any situations where you wouldn't be able to find bash in /bin/bash? I haven't ever seen such a system, but I'd like to know if it's something I might run into...

The other thing is, if you're targeting obscure systems, wouldn't it be just as likely that there wouldn't be a /usr/bin/env, /usr/ might not be mounted, or that bash might not be installed at all?

I suppose what I'm asking is: for practical purposes, is the lowest common denominator /usr/bin/env or is it /bin/sh?
For all the women out there who love inbound marketing
That makes me wonder, are there any other examples of a regular business' forum spinning off like this? And to dive into it a little further, in hindsight this can be seen as a brilliant marketing move by pg, but was this intentional?