skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If YC could reliably pick the winners from a given set of applications they would be a complete outlier in the venture capital market.

I assume they're excellent judges of character, that they try to stack the odds as good as they can in their favour in the choices that they make.

Sure the selection process is better than random sampling, after all, you first get to discard the obviously bad stuff, I took it as read that we would not include those in any meaningful sample.

But the tremendous amount of applications means that YCs capacity to accept, mentor and nurture will probably be vastly outnumbered by the flood of people applying.

Let's say we reduce it to an extreme situation, two companies apply, there is only room for one. Both are 'pretty good', but there is a better personal click between one of them and YC. So, that company gets selected.

In the longer term that is not a way to predict success, the other company has just as good a shot at being successful as the one that got chose, in spite of the 'goodies' that YC brings to the table.

In the end it is mostly up to the market and the founders.

The very best time when it helps to have an experienced investor on board is in times of trouble, that is when it really pays off, after all, if the investment is large enough then it is their worry as well and they may have more experience.

At the level of investment that YC does I doubt that there is such a commitment that the problems of the startup are synonymous with a problem for the investors.

A second big benefit is that it may help to get further funding because of contacts etc. once a moderate stage of success is reached.

Of course the plain dumb ideas get taken off the top, but every now and then even a plain dumb idea gets to make it big.

There are plenty of well documented examples of VCs that said 'no' to a winning team.

If there ever will be a VC that manages to correctly identify only the winners then that would amaze me completely, as far as I can see they're as fallible as any other process to select 'winners'.

They do their best but in the end nobody gets to beat the 'industry average' by any considerable margin. Especially not in the seed stage investors.

VCs routinely hold the speech to say what it is that 'they bring to the table' and that their involvement makes a difference.

Maybe. For the most part the companies that I know of that were successful with an investment were only more successful, they would have succeeded anyway, regardless of whether they found a backer or not. The success factors that counts most are team and market, not the investors.

I'm sure investors would like to think otherwise, but that's the way I see it.

Any investor that wants to make the case that the company that they invested in would not have made it if they had not invested are discounting the biggest factors and overselling themselves.
That's willfull. Having the discipline to wait until spring (no matter what the cost) would have been determined.
An unpaid internship with a company like Berkshire Hathaway or Pixar could actually be worth a lot of money. It's incredibly valuable to point to work you've done for a respected organization, paid or not.
Congratulations. Seriously.
Pathological programming with primes
1.

Easy way to become better at controlling will power is controlling your diet. Yep - glucose increases will power.
http://psr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/short/11/4/303

2.

"Environment trumps discipline"

I'd read an article that said that for most people - their income will be very close to the average income of their 5 closest friends. Create the environment - and discipline will come on its own.

3.

Ambition either comes from having kickass heroes or from facing strong problems. England started becoming a super power only when King Henry read the book of King Arthur and his Knights of the round table. (King Arthur's story was a false story written by Thomas Malory - while in prison. A convict changed the fortunes of England which was until then a land of misfits and barbarians - by giving them a hero!)

When there is a lack of heroes, you need strong problems to build that burning ambition. Eg: how Chandragupta and Chanakya went on to unite India 2300 years ago - because Alexander threatened their existence. Up until Alexander showed up in India - no one even dreamt of uniting India...

4.

I think what is missing is luck - which can also be hacked somewhat. Book: The Luck Factor: The 4 Essential Principles:
http://www.amazon.com/Luck-Factor-Four-Essential-Principles/...
The article briefly mentions interval training as one possible way of increasing mitochondrial mass.
This has got to be, in my opinion, my 2nd favorite PG essay, right after the 'How Not to Die' essay.

So here in sum is how determination seems to work: it consists of willfulness balanced with discipline, aimed by ambition.

The essay is probably meant to help investors pick good investments. But I say that founders can use it to help pick good co-founders, as well as improve themselves. I would love to read more on things/characteristics about a person that might give evidence of a person's willfulness, discipline and ambition, or lack thereof.
Buy a 3D printer now for only $300 and get a free grey goo scenario on top of that!
Damn, that's a good post. I missed it. COuld you find the link to that fractal post?
You're programmed in Java? Ok, now I'm really heartbroken.
I don't find the classic version to be significantly different from the "new" version.
If you're "ambitious", you may be going where no one has gone before. These days, everyone knows that getting into a land war with Russia is a bad idea, but it may not have always been so. Same thing with lots of other people whose ambition caused them to push the limits (mountain climbers?). If you're at the limits, you may not know when 'determination' means pushing on despite everything to achieve some great success, and when that same pushing on will cause you to die, when turning back may have let you live to fight another day.

Not sure where I'm going with this, I guess I just like to play devil's advocate a bit:-)

It's a good essay, but perhaps what I don't care for in general terms is the vagueness that surrounds the whole issue. Some people are smart because they push on in the face of great opposition. Others win plaudits for "knowing when to quit" and changing direction. It's all a bit wishy washy, although I think that PG's elements for success are, in a generic way, about right. Just that that vagueness sort of precludes one from applying them to specific situations until after the fact.
Have the discipline to read the whole essay; it explicitly addresses that.
About 1: Glucose is necessary, not sufficient. You don't have it and willpower suffers. You have in excess and you just get fat.
Quite, but if I have a lab and the resources to keep myself alive and decide to cook up some off-brand S to keep myself alive that's quite different from an "entitlement" in the sense you're thinking of.
It's been mentioned before -- categories and adaptive thresholds (automatic gain)

I think every other site has categories. They seem like a natural thing to do.....
You mention the ease of updates as one reason to prefer webapps. I've used Google Chrome and have never noticed an update - it just does it in the background. If you had something like that in place, what other issues would you run into that would make the web app easier to update?
A calorie is a calorie is a calorie. Because a calorie is a measurement of the potential energy of a quantity of food.

The type of food is what makes a difference. Fatty foods are worse than the same caloric-quantity of fibrous foods (i.e., fruits and veggies).

And there's plenty of research to suggest that food in - food burned by activity (inc. exercise) - undigestable food = food stored as fat.
College is mostly (but notice I do not say entirely) a form of pampered post-highschool luxury resort living for American kids. Only a very small part of what you get out of it is so-called education, and a large portion of what you pay them does not go towards just paying to impart that education to you.

I think it is heading for a collapse, or at least a serious adjustment as new competition arises, especially in the form of all-online, or mostly-online-enabled education initiatives. If I were to simplify and distill down to it's core what having a degree means, to employers, it means that said degree-holder knows X, Y and Z, has applied that knowledge and accomplished some things with it, an external party has confirmed to the truthfulness of this, and said party are themselves trustable. Ie, they passed a test(s) by a trusted test-giver. This is clearly a generalization but that is the essence of it, and you can deliver that service much faster and cheaper today than ever before in history.
Solutions to problems lead to more problems.
there are of course applications like sumopaint.com that are quite good.

But they are a far cry from photohop, illustrator, 3Dmax, aftereffects and so on.

If anyone want's to create a WYSIWYG HTML/CSS editor that would use the browser's HTML as a canvas then I would be interested. Until that day, I am fine with apps like Fireworks for application and web design.
With a proper diet, you wouldn't be eating the burger to begin with...

Atkins is a diet for people who insist on eating the wrong foods. It attempts to minimize the harm of eating crap without actually encouraging the dieter to eat healthy stuff.
How about instead of having the submitter categorize the submission, everybody can categorize it, just the same as everybody can upvote?

Not sure what "the subreddit problem" is. Just wondering if that would help.
The most interesting part of that is the articles assertion that this is somehow unique to China. Really? It sounds like any number of meme's that have spread around our neck of the internet just this month.
You are trying to reach too far with this overly facile comparison. Let me show you how:

1. Sexual competition is not nearly as simple as job competition, for several reasons.

2. Many people have multiple sex partners, but a single job is staffed by a single person.

3. Sex isn't required to eat or keep a roof over your head.

4. Sex isn't taxed.

5. Sex doesn't go on your resume.

6. Sex is between two people (or so), not a person and a corporate entity.

7. People don't involve lawyers or accountants before having sex.

8. Trading sex for money is, in almost all parts of the US, illegal.

9. Individual's choices leading to STDs or pregnancy don't compare, on a magnitude level, with governmental regulation changes that affect employment because the majority of Americans who have health insurance are only covered thru their employers

And, as another commenter wrote, if there is a huge imbalance of power between two sexual partners, that is also often illegal.
A calorie is a calorie in a beaker in a lab, but not in the human body.

You should read the things I've referenced.
Good point.

I think it would also be interesting to ask religious folks how they get willpower to fast.

Fasting means lack of glucose in your body. Yet fasting is a showcase of willpower.

So maybe some interesting answers may come from them...
So did the widespread distribution of farmed pig products create the swineflu epidemic, as I said -- if the reports are to be believed.

I see what you're saying, but I don't agree that I misrepresented it at all.
Aren't video players and chat more popular on the web than they are in standalone apps?

Of the apps you listed, only image editing and software development seem like they have a future on the desktop, and software development only qualifies if you don't think there's going to be a sea-change in collaborative development and application deployment which will make people give up their favorite editors.
Don't Bother Rewriting It
It is a little weak sticking with the individuals. But look at Bob's incentives:

If you're Bob -- the duly-elected representative of the people's republic of west brokistan -- then you've got the following calculation:

- either you let Jim keep turning out off-brand tamiflu and (hypothetically) thereby saving hundred-k to millions of lives ("didn't mess with a good thing")

- or you shut Jim down, then have the fun task of explaining to your constituents that it's really better that they no longer be able to afford those drugs

...at which point either:

- Bob uses an argument like Joe's argument; this isn't going to be convincing to the public @ large b/c:

-- if they were buying Jim's stuff and now they can't the same counter-arguments as in the individual case applies

-- if they weren't buying Jim's stuff they now can't if they need it in the future

-- additionally Bob is taking away local industry and local autonomy so on in favor of foreign interests (which rarely fares well in any country)

...which is awesome for getting reelected; or maybe Bob tries the realpolitik strategy and explains:

- oh sorry I couldn't negotiate a good (i) option which is why we're forced picking between (ii) and (iii)

- oh but also sorry (oh, so very sorry) we can't pick (ii) even though we'd like to b/c doing so risks some terribly nasty trade sanctions that we just can't afford right now

...which is honest but makes Bob look so completely useless I wouldn't like Bob's re-election odds with this approach, either.

So I think given the incentives Bob's likely choices are obvious, assuming he's an elected official of some sort; a more dictatorial head honcho might make a different decision.

Whether someone more free to take a stab at long-term utility maximization ought to let Jim keep operating or not is pretty much a function of trade sanctions and so on first and only after that some calculation about "what amount of drugs will we be able to buy in the future that cover what % of what conditions will be significant in the future"?
Interesting post. But leave us wanting more. Because it doesn't answer or even attempt to answer the main question raised:

So how do you unlearn?
I can't imagine trying to read it via a feed reader. Like you said, that's a lot. What I tend to do is just use the site, not even use a feed at all. When I've got 15-20 minutes to spend reading articles, I'll come to the site. When I don't, I don't bother. If its a particularly good article it will be on the front page all day, so I'll get to read it then. If it isn't, well, it probably wasn't worth reading anyway.

Feed readers are good for something you want to read ever single post for. HN is not something you'll want to read everything on, you just (in theory) want to read as much as possible.
He hasn't taken all of them down:

http://blog.pmarca.com/2009/07/introducing-our-new-venture-c...

Given the inaugural nature of that post and the new design, I'd say the site is being repurposed.
Sorry if I was unclear...I'm not trying to compete with StackOverflow. I'm trying to borrow answers from places like Yahoo Answers, etc. My site is a question/answer site for a niche (think quilting, or folks who collect rocks, or home schoolers...that sort of niche).
>The only thing I'm saying here is that your counterexample does not make sense because Go-bots are famously bad at Go.

I don't think so. Please see the link below:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Go#Recent_results

Of course you can still refuse the recent results, and say they are not competitive :)
that one ?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=417463

It's quite a bit older than your account so I doubt you 'missed' it.
Posts upvoted by users who've been around longer.
TonidoPlug unboxing and first look gallery: your own private cloud-in-a-plug
I think that PG's elements for success are, in a generic way, about right. Just that that vagueness sort of precludes one from applying them to specific situations until after the fact.

That was my sentiment as well, after reading. Much of what is said is difficult to argue with on an ideological level; it's just that it's rather abstract.
The difference is that a CEO like Steve Jobs gets millions or billions worth of stock options which is equivalent to a salary except instead of getting taxed at the +35% bracket, it get's taxed at 15% capital gains tax (lowered from 20% by Bush).
Cue some johnny-b-goode to point you to the feature request link at the bottom of the page ;)

But you're right. For starters just two categories would do, hacking and everything else.
I've had the opposite experience, depending on what kinds of personalities are involved. Sometimes when you put several ambitious people together, they all destructively interfere with each other with the strength they radiate, particularly if they're young and inexperienced.

Ambitious people are almost always more granular and more preoccupied control freaks than people who are less ambitious. That can be a problem unless they are also diplomatic, pragmatic and wise.
But, presumably, solving capchas will be easy for AI by then.
Classic posts are posts upvoted by people who have been registered at HN for at least a year. I am not yet one of them.
Ok, to continue your (excellent) mountain-climbing analogy, the ultimate goal is to climb the mountain and return safely. Encountering potentially fatal difficulties near the summit will result in you turning back to retry later if you are "determined" to reach the ultimate goal. If you willfully abandon the long-term goal of returning safely to achieve the "ambition" of reaching the summit, that's reckless rather than disciplined.
What python framework do you use?
Referer blocking.
I thought they used Drupal?
That's usually how disruptive technologies start out though; the fact that Sun doesn't care makes Backblaze that more dangerous.
This really is a problem. At the end of the day when I'm reading the HN feed, I usually have about 50 tabs open—this stuff is just too interesting. I usually only read the ones that are quick reads though; i.e., a few paragraphs or a list or two or maybe some sample code. Any bigger than that and I'll just skim it, but I mean like hardcore skim so I just get the thesis of the article and not the whole substance. If it's over a couple of pages? Instapapered. My Instapaper grows at a much faster rate than it diminishes.

But this stuff is just too interesting to not at least open and skim. I mean, jesus, a blog post of the fractal dimensionality of the stock market? Come on.
> A good deal of willfulness must be inborn, because it's common to see families where one sibling has much more of it than another.

This is a non-sequitur. The hidden assumption seems to be that siblings in the observed families are treated exactly the same and have exactly the same environment, in every way, which is blatantly false.
If I understand correctly, HN has always had two categories. They just haven't been explicitly put into the UI: Hacking/startups and things that interest hackers.

We've kicked this can around quite a bit, and so far PG doesn't seem to be feeling enough pain to make a change.

Perhaps things will change.
Would be curious to know how he actually evaluates determination when analyzing startups. How can you tell?
Is that verified? It seems to me that a localized version would be lees likely to cause nausea, hair loss, and the myriad other side effects of chemotherapy.
England started becoming a super power only when King Henry read the book of King Arthur and his Knights of the round table. (King Arthur's story was a false story written by Thomas Malory - while in prison. A convict changed the fortunes of England which was until then a land of misfits and barbarians - by giving them a hero!)

I don't know much English history, but this is surely nonsense. Malory was a late compiler of the Arthurian legends, in no way their originator, and Henry V (whom I assume you have in mind?) was a generation earlier. Besides, history doesn't work this (fairy-tale) way.
Oh ok, I didn't know it always said that. I thought maybe it's some side effect of redesigning the site.
Are there any startups applying to YC that are a man short?
I'm 28, I'm from eastern Europe and I've been working with computers since I was a kid. When I was growing up server-side includes and CGI was how you did web. When I first saw FI I was amazed. I learned socket programming before I wrote my first line of Javascript.

Recently I've been working on my own as a developer-for-hire. I wrote my own compositing window manager for Linux, from scratch, in pure C. I'm working on a Mac OS X kernel driver for fun. I think Ruby is the next best thing after sliced bread and Common Lisp.

It's my belief that intuition, wide range of experience and persistence make better platform for a hacker than learning by rote.

What I lack is partners in crime. I remember working with my team at one of my ex-employers, when we pulled off amazing stunts to fix other teams' problems. We were united by our wish to put things right. We pulled all-nighters. We worked weekends. We moved mountains, and I was proud of them and the work we did together.

I'd like to work in a team like that again, but this time to work for myself, not for some faceless Company.

Does anyone think they could use my motivation, experience and love of technology?
Ask HN: Is it feasible to increase your productivity by 30% a year for 60 years?
>>> productivity = 1
>>> for i in range(60):
... productivity *= 1.3
...
>>> productivity
6864377.17274471
Contact-less Payment with Credit Cards?
So your solution to his "It hurts when I do this" is "don't do that".
I'm going to guess that's why they have 'potentially' in the title. The video also mentions that the next version of the RepRap will be able to print out circuit boards, which brings it one step closer to actually being a little self-replicating factory.
I'm just here to buy soy sauce... This is too funny!
Can't they get their audience from the same methods they always have? Reputation? Advertising? Local expertise?
Why can't old people do development? Because they have stiff fingers.
They're applied at parse-time, and they completely mask the def that they are applied to.

Yes, the function being used as a decorator could just as easily be called at runtime, and that does break the similarity to macros somewhat.
You do realize you're talking to a security researcher right?
In the simplest terms, it means that AI performance is less variable. A computer that can give you a good match on a good day will beat you on the days you're tired, distracted, or ill. And the computer won't have bad days.

Conversely, if you're a bit better than the computer and manage to find a few of its weaknesses, you can exploit them again and again and it will never learn how to stop you (in any AI I've played against).
Good talk on chip design issues to support lots of cores, particularly to support Java garbage collection. Azul has paid a lot of attention to avoiing cache misses, such a zeroing objects in the cache instead of with memory writes. It's interesting how cpu design has moved away from complex instruction pipelines to multitudes of simple cores.

Azul's market is enterprise Java (replacing Cobol) so massive support for threading makes sense. I dont think threads are a general cure for parallelism, such as with simulations, vision, AI, and the like. The brain for example has billions of processors and trillions of interconnects. Scheduling a few billion threads isnt going to cut it. Anyone have any thoughts on these issues?