skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The fact that you're willing to get under people's skin is an asset. Many of the problems we face in the tech community are due to a predominately male culture that lacks the assertiveness to resolve problems in their own favour. We write books that outline our struggles, like The Mythical Man Month, without realizing it isn't tactics that are the source of our problems, but our overall strategy of resigning ourselves to merely follow orders.

Take this very discussion as an example. How many men are secretly wishing that PG reads their application rather than it being read by a YC alumnus, but have posted ass-kissing comments anyway?

For some reason I've worked with far more female programmers than most programmers I know. Here are some things that women are up against in our industry:

1. Being coerced into "lighter" programming tasks like "front end" development, QA, or UX design when their interests lie in more complex programming domains.

2. An assumption of not being aggressive enough to manage a team. To add insult to injury, women that do show aggression are isolated and marginalized for having chips on their shoulders or being bitchy.

3. Dealing with what I call the "little sister" phenomenon. This is where a predominately male development team, in a bid to try to be nice to the one female team member, actually does more harm than good. They become overprotective, try not to hurt her feelings, and are generally patronizing. This affects the types of work loads that are placed on the female team member and what is expected of her.

If it's any consolation, there are men in this industry that have worked with a lot of female programmers and understand as best we can, where you're coming from. For what it's worth, I think you're already one step ahead of most of these other female programmers I know (many are friends so I know them well). Their problem is an unwillingness to shake the boat. You don't seem to have that problem.

Moreover, who cares if you're correct or incorrect? If people read your post properly they would have heard that you were merely describing how you feel. You can't change how you feel about this situation. And like I said at the beginning of this rant, if more men in our industry shared how they felt with others, we might not have to put up with ridiculous time/resource constraints, impossible project objectives, etc.
I interpreted it that way too, x axis is normally the independent variable
The number is correct, the wording is backwards. Studies have shown that waist-to-hip ratios (WHR) for women considered attractive within their cultures hover around average of 0.7. Interestingly enough, variation in attractive frontal WHR across cultures dissapears when using circumference as a measurement; in that case it collapsed down pretty reliably to 0.7.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waist-hip_ratio
More eyes means a more reliable result, so assuming I'm worth funding, then this can only benefit me.
Diagnose and Prevent AJAX Performance Issues (IE-based tool)
Exactly. This isn't the first cell phone / GPS combo; this isn't even the first version of Google Maps on a cell phone to integrate with GPS functionality.

Come to think of it, this drop probably has a lot more to do with TomTom's earnings than it does Google.
Ah, now I understand the distinction you are making. And I agree; get fewer servers, not the same number of slightly more efficient ones, and then you can talk about saving money on power.
Version 0.2, which should be out this evening, will call it "reduce", and alias it to "inject". Thanks for the feedback.
As an aside, Guy Kawasaki has spoken on the advantage women have over men in startups, namely not focusing on killing some company, but making something people want. I'd guess that a successful YC alum has a high probability of having read his work.
The idea that ranking real-time content is "the great challenge of the age" strikes me as hyperbolic.

Real-time content is great for some key things -- breaking news, planning a trip or outing, attention-addled entertainment -- but a distraction for most other productive activities. It deserves an arena -- but doesn't need to be mixed with my searches for reference information.

So the "great challenge" might be answered rather simply by: give real-time its own silo. Filter non-credible sources. Suppress duplicates. Forward 1-2 results to general search for applicable queries.
The moment
Tell HN: Check out my new note taking app, ScribbleJot
http://www.scribblejot.com

I've been playing around with Google App Engine for a few weeks and this is the result. My goal was to design a really simple app for quickly jotting down notes. It uses Markdown so that you can easily style/format your notes.

I've got several plans for version 2.0, most notably a dedicated mobile version. Let me know what you guys/gals think.
Clickable Link:

http://www.scribblejot.com
You're right, I must have gotten them mixed up.

But still they say they usually look at the video, and I think this implies that unless the rest of the application is good enough to justify spending another minute or two watching the video, they probably won't.

But then again it might just be used to give you another chance if your application is crap.
I concur with this editorial. I could have come up with the statements that Mr. Schmidt listed here.
I think author misses that the Chinese market isn't free and most of the western sites are blocked by the great Firewall. I think their market would look at lot differently if their market was free and anyone could compete on it.
Felice Varini's town-sized illusion
Hear, hear. I loved your comment. You too seem to be sensitive to the issues, and like me are unsure what is the correct solution, although are willing to discuss it.

The fact that you're willing to get under people's skin is an asset.

I hope that is the case, and that more people reading this thread are sympathetic to my position than are offended.

Their problem is an unwillingness to shake the boat. You don't seem to have that problem.

There was a book written in the 70's called "Women Don't Ask". It starts with a case study about grad school TA assignments, and why men got the best assignments in this particular department. The answer from administrators: "Well, we gave positions to everyone who asked for a specific one. And only men asked. So women got the remainders." (For a period of time, the book was given away to any woman who would ask for it.)

Since I read about that book in a review, I resolved that I would always ask for what I want. This is part of my entrepreneurial style. I get what I want because I try to know everyone, and I am good at asking for what I want directly politely and firmly.

[edit: this tends to work better for me in person than on the inter-web/twitter-scape/whatever you guys call it. ]
To clarify, my claim isn't that everyone in finance (or even above a certain pay scale) has a strong math background. My claim is that many of the engineer cum quants are doing technical work (not simply paper pushing) in a difficult environment.
A group from Garmin came to my school about 5 years ago to do recruiting. I asked their engineer and marketing people if they were going to make a phone, since everyone will have GPS navs on their phone in a few years.
They just laughed and said no. Made me quite happy when the iPhone first came out.
There's more to encouraging bike use than bike parking. I live in Seattle, where bike parking is plentiful - but yet I'm still apprehensive to ride many places because of snarly, downright dangerous traffic.

Bike parking will only be an issue once enough streets have bike lanes, and the law properly protects bicyclists against hostile drivers. As it is most of the city is still off-limits to me unless I feel like weaving through a crowd of fast-moving 1-ton pieces of steel piloted by irate people. I don't even get far enough to have to worry about where to place my bike.
How exactly would this work? The idea of doing a macupdate for web apps is somewhat intriguing, but with rolling updates, most web apps don't publish a version anywhere.
When did she accuse anyone here of prejudice?

edit:

Downmod me into oblivion if you like, but it's sad to me that she can't state her concerns and life experience without someone making it into an attack on the YC community.

Male privilege is real, discrimination is real. If downmodding and arguing that simple fact makes you feel better, go ahead.
"SuperFoam" block collapses into chair under weight
As a female in the tech industry, I actually don't think anyone has been sexist towards me - at least not in any way that has impacted my career or my desire to be in this industry. I feel that I've been judged by my merit, and Silicon Valley is actually at the forefront of trying to bring down this gender barrier.

If anything, the stereotypical hacker guy wants to see more women in the industry. If 99% of the industry was female, wouldn't you be ecstatic to see a guy come in? If tech was a female dominated world, I might subconsciously look for MORE reasons to accept a male founder.

Guys in tech enjoy the prospect of diversity and believe in women more than you give them credit for. Think about the plus side: having more male coders reading over your application might actually give you the upper-hand!
This makes me not want to apply; I guess I am just one of those people with bad ideas that YC would not have wanted to fund anyway.
1) I would be curious to see an experiment concerning the karma system, a downvote would cost you (2 karma) an upvote too (1 karma). You gain 1 karma per day if you visited the site, this means as you get to know the community and its codes more and more you get more control.

I think it could increase the value of the karma system, I am seeing a lot of downvotes that I can't explain or that I find unfair. I am also seeing excessive points on some comments.

2) Not related : if you browse someone's comments you may encounter truncated posts titles :

12 points by pg 1 hour ago | link | parent | on: Announcement: YC alumni will help us read applicat...

It would be nice to include the full title in the "title" attribute of those links.
http://mashable.com/2009/10/28/reocities/

http://twitter.com/#search?q=reocities

:)
As the public head of YC has written a book entitled "Hackers and Painters", I'd not worry to much about that. I doubt anyone with the attitudes you're worrying about would make his selection criteria as additional reviewer.
SAT is full of cultural bias. The classic example from years ago was a vocab question including yacht; inner-city kids may never have heard of a yacht, so scored badly.
So imagine my amusement when my son saw yacht-racing terms on the GRE last year.
The vaccine only helps for about 2 years. Then the effect wears off.
If this works, and it is cost-efficient, as is claimed, it's fucking epic!

I had a really good idea for a gadget, but it all fell apart because of the limitations on power storage, now my idea might actually be realistic. The person who starts selling this will not only make himself rich, but all the people who figure out new applcations for it will also have a chance to get rich.

I mean, it's obvious that laptops are going to get more awesome because of this, but think of all the things that didn't exist just because of power storage limitations!
For the application, I mean. Usually the convention is 1 user = 1 person.
Statisticians reject global cooling
What % of the population takes the SAT at all? Could one argue some sort of survivor bias since we don't include income for non-SAT takers? (sorry, I'm a stats noob so I honestly don't know)
That instantly limits you to 1 vote per day unless you yourself get upvoted.

I assume that was your intention ?

This in turn will give the few people that are very active lots of voting power.

The karma here is not so much 'quality' (though that is a component) as much as it is an odometer.
I'd be much more skeptical if this wasn't already the nations largest and best network. They bounce between #1 and #2 in subscriptions regardless of the phone selection. And by the time HSDPA is rolled out Verizon will be rolling out LTE.
That would be nice.

I also wonder if things are better on the West Coast. My experience has been on the East.
I'm not sure if you've said elsewhere, but are you a solo applicant? You talk about "I". You don't mention what sex your co-founder is. If you are a solo applicant then being female is the least of your worries - solo applicants seldom (ever?) get accepted to YC.

my co-founder (jlees) is XX. She was the face on our application video last time and we got invited over for an interview. I've no idea if Jessica was the one that looked at the video - to be honest the thought never crossed my mind that it might help us get to interview stage.

Lose the chip from your shoulder and just concentrate on making a confident, compelling application. :)
Mayhaps or not... via twitter @aetiology (epidemiologist) -- seasonal + H1N1 vaccine: good or bad? New study contradicts unpublished Canadian data: http://bit.ly/6FP2g (sounds like both are preliminary)...
Secure JavaScript: Caja now supports YUI Library
Thanks for the follow up. I checked the source shortly after my comment, but I forgot to came here and edit the "tied to jQuery" bit.
Python on Ice
I don't see your email address listed anywhere. Can you email me? Always a delight to talk to a self-identified artist. i.am@me.com.
Stock prices are forward looking, think how adopted and improved Google maps will be in a few years. A big chunk of Garmin and Tom Tom's biz is being swept out from under them not just by Google's new map nav, but by the convergence of gps and smart phones.

Garmin GPS's do have easy to use interfaces - but why do you think the android map won't be?
As JVM gets closer to being the de-facto VM for running any language (Jython, jRuby, Scala, Java, etc), the possibility of higher performance by running the VM "closer to metal" is quite exciting. I commend Sun on pushing JVM beyond just Java.
Our Stalled Phone Innovation
and another thing, I don't want to speak for jlees, but I've never got the impression she was treated as an "outsider". A novelty perhaps, but I think it wears off a second once she starts talking code. I'm a non-coder and I feel much more of an outsider. ;)

if anyone really wants to feel like an outsider, try being a guy at a "women in tech" event.
So basically the Govt blocks free western sites so that these entrepreneurs can make money. Nice.
What does Cloud Ready Mean?
The "Cloud Ready" movement is very important for infrastructure, platforms, and applications to converge across all networks. Although important and relevant, it’s early. The vendors that are open and innovative will win. The wildcard variable in all of this – the role "open source" plays. The maturation of open source is leveling the playing field. It’s opening the market and threatening the market incumbents that have historically been dominating.
In reply to adrianwaj:
For the application, I mean. Usually the convention is 1 user = 1 person.

I wasn't thinking about the Y-combinator application when I registered my account 450 days ago and when tianaco occasionally commented on threads.

I don't see this as a problem.
Seriously? You're kidding, right?
What Startups Need to Know About the VC Upheaval
Showers (and lockers if other lockable storage is not available) at work places would be needed, too, for bike commuting to be viable for a lot of people.
The thing that impressed me the most was the discussion of the quantitative work they have done. Song Li has generated an enormous database of pragmatic, mathematically proven advice about how to be successful with the opposite gender...somehow, using it for nothing more than a matchmaking service restricted to China seems small potatoes. Granted, it was gathered from a Chinese-only audience, so some of it is probably locale-specific. I'd be interested to see the same thing done on a more global scale and then adapted for other uses.
"as opposed to portable GPS devices with more storage."

The droid is rumored to come with a 16gb SD card, which can be replaced with a 32GB card. Pretty sure thats as much, if not more than any standalone GPS device.
Thanks for the informed response. The analogy wins!
Agreed. And while the article characterizes the matchmaking service as "a Chinese version of match.com", that doesn't really do it justice -- their methods are actually quite different, even if the end goal (finding a mate) is the same. In this respect, it's something like comparing eBay and Craigslist.
I think people that make a lot of money tell their children to focus on the important aspects of education. And prepping for the SAT has a much better payoff than most extracurricular activities.
It should also be educational for application developers who build their entire livelihood on the back of someone else's web application.
No, we had 2 submissions - One headed by my partner with 4 founders, another headed by me with 2 founders. The other founders are all men.

I am the first face on our application video. We did that to set us apart from the rest of the videos.

I'm done with my applications, and confident that we made good applications for the people that we initially thought were going to review them... but not for unknown founders whose personal biases we are unaware of, but I can only assume based on my personal experiences with men in tech.

Re: "chip on my shoulder" would you be offended if your peers wouldn't look you in the face? how about if they re-asked your business partners the same questions they asked you, only to get the same response?
I'm a non-coder and I feel much more of an insider

You meant outsider, right? Seems to me that's what you meant... if so, you've made a very good point.
If the technology can be scaled up...

And there it is. Call me when it's more than a press release.
I know this is not a popular opinion its really how I feel. I know lots of geeks and am very familiar with geek / startup culture. One of the coolest things about YC is the fact that there is so much input / guidance from PG. This decision seems like a shift away from that and toward more of a judged by peers model IMHO.
Let Kids Sleep Late on Weekends to Fight Fat: Study
Loss of data after 6 months did not seem that bad after I read that Amazon shuts down your MySQL (RDS) instance every week for up to 4 hours "for maintenance"

http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2009/10/introducing-rds-the-amazo...

Edit: wording fix
Look, if I'm submitting my application with my karma score and words alongside you (+ tianaco's score and words (under your name)), then if words and score are important to PG for the app, do you think I should feel the playing field has been even with the duplicity?
ATT prime example -monopoly for 100 years, no change in service. Broken up, and now we have cell phones.
Also if the capacity doesn't degrade as much as Li-Ion that would be great. Otherwise I'd hold my breath for those nuclear batteries.
A twitter worm’s brilliant variation
A twitter &#8220;worm&#8217;s&#8221; brilliant variation
Any way to get this in a format other than PDF (so we can play with the data)?
Presumably a true nerd would discount personal experience as anecdotal and get the shot anyway. ;)
Imagine a world that has always been populated entirely by p-zombies. By definition, that world should be indistinguishable from this world, so how on earth did they get started talking about consciousness and qualia?

The answer to the question "how did they get started talking about qualia" is: by definition, the hypothetical Z-world is indistinguishable from ours. In our world, people talk about qualia. Therefore, in the Z-world, zombies talk about qualia. What's more, the beginning of "zombies talking about qualia" would be the same as the beginning of "people talking about qualia".

I have a feeling I'm misunderstanding you.

In your example of the "ouch" printing program, someone had to have pain and say "ouch" before such a program was made.

Why? What if the program is the output of a random number generator? Does that mean the random number generator experiences pain?
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Sure, but that doesn't exactly explain the difference in performance between adopted and non-adopted children. Whether we like it or not, people are different, and many of those differences are genetic.
Sorry but if you've got breasts then you'll have to get used to guys looking at them. There was a recent study from NZ that found that 47% of men's first glances at a women were towards their breasts. It's just biology. Also take in to account your average male coder might not have seen any for a while - well it is male dominated (sorry - "got to wait for the liquidity event to have a liquidity event!")! ;)

wrt to asking your co-founders the same questions, my guess is that you are so paranoid about the "not looking in the eyes" thing that you appear unconfident and unsure, so people look to your co-founders for confirmation.
Everyone with worries like this should (re-)read http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=908612. From that comment, it sounds like no alumnus/a will have the power to get your application tossed. In fact, it sounds like the only effect they can have is to get your application a second look, which is something you should want.
Ah, people just thought I was weird. But they thought that anyway.

Besides, in D companies, all tank names have to start with D. People being who they are, 95% were named "Death .*" I thought "a place of utter misery and wretchedness" would be pretty accurate for just about anybody participating in a battle, regardless of side. I never got any closer than training, and even that sucked quite badly.
If your intent was to bring attention to yourself in the 11th hour, you may have succeeded. That attention, however, may not be what you wanted.

As a male, I will not pretend to imagine what you go through because of our differences. I can only speak from my experience as a wimpy appearing introvert who has had earn everything I've ever had because hardly anyone has ever given me anything.

I do not mean to offend and apologize ahead of time in case I do...

To me, this entire thread comes off as whining and can only hurt you. Entrepreneurs must treat obstacles as speed bumps to conquer, not roadblocks to complain about.

I suggest you redirect any energy you put into this thread into making your start-up better and put your trust into that effort. You'll probably have to make it so good that they can't ignore it. That's what everyone should do anyway.

I wish you great success doing that.
sorry - you're correct. ^^Edited.
Sounds like fun, I'm happy to hear about it...

I shouldn't be dogmatic about asking for an axiomatic development.

At the same time, it seems like the social attitude towards mathematics has reached the point where it would be useful for schools to ask students to put aside some of their initial attitude towards math.

The best teachers I've had often demanded more than I was initially capable of accomplishing. It's true that such teachers risked losing some of their audience. But if we don't have such teachers we risk even more.