skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The submitted graph only shows mean SAT score (central tendency) for each test-taker's self-reported income band, and doesn't show the full score variance in each income band. See also

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1995-SAT-Income2.png

(from a Wikipedia article that reports 1995 score correlations) for another relationship in the data that doesn't get reported as often by College Board.
It's easy to pride oneself on being open-minded when one is surrounded by the same type of person.

I wish my gender wasn't important, but the way I've gotten treated by a majority of men in tech has spoken volumes.
i love how that article cites zero references. anyone interested in what the DoD actually released, see here: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10384067-16.html
An airline pilot has a really boring job thanks to automation.
webfaction is a great shared host. They do let you run long-running processes and are Django and Turbogears friendly.
What announcement?, and why would that make Garmin's stock tank?
"I've never understood [...] why talking about qualia and consciousness depends on having them"

It doesn't, but someone has to have them in order for the concepts to get introduced in the first place.

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?

In your example of the "ouch" printing program, someone had to have pain and say "ouch" before such a program was made.
"men are universally attracted to women with a .7 hip-to-waist ratio"?

I suspect that this ratio has been reported backwards.
Might be a great time to buy Garmin stock.

I bought a GPS unit for my parents, because my parents can actually use it (and they do). The same can't be said for an Android cell phone. I don't think the Android announcement is as much of a threat as the stock plunge suggests.
No. I think SAT score would be correlated with IQ, but not too strongly on its own (many not particularly brilliant people get high scores by preparing excessively). I think measured IQ and family income would, together, be quite good predictors of SAT performance. But what leads me to believe that also leads me to believe that predictive strength would tail off as family income (or IQ) got extremely high. E.g., for very smart people, the SAT is probably not a challenge, so their score wouldn't benefit much from 10 more IQ points. Similarly, very rich people can't use their money to do much for their kids SAT score than those making $150k / year can.
SAT Data Tables
An epic bug story
Seconded. I have done resource allocation for companies from 1 employee to 100k employees and the one common factor is that there is always too much to do and too few people to do it.
For the Canadians here on HN:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuddle_duddle
So you know, Robert Morris is also a partner. Your chances were one in four.

http://ycombinator.com/people.html
Müzik İkonları
Prejudice is a loaded word, but everyone is prejudiced. It's not unreasonable to think that people with totally different life experiences than yours are going to see things in a different light.
We've spoken to a few YC alum and they suggested RTM isn't so involved in the selection process. Perhaps they were misinformed.
Also, TomTom disclosed their 3rd-quarter results today, with profits down 47% compared to last year. So the GPS industry seems to be hurting even before Android 2.0...
The announcement that Droid/Android 2.0 will use a mapping/directions system based on google maps/street view, with realtime data on traffic, and real-view street-view photos of intersections to reduce the chances of getting lost/making a wrong turn.

Basically, traditional 'non-connected' GPS driving aids just became obsolete today. It'll be hard for Garmin/Tom-Tom to compete without the infrastructure google has built around maps/street-view, or licensing it.
Amazing that volume is ten times above the average today; this definitely seems like over-reaction.

Vol / Avg. 11.07M/1.87M
when I occasionally wanted to comment I used bravura's account. I created an account only because the application required one.
Dave took the gut instincts approach for the current version because he built Carbonmade for himself originally rather than for anyone else. The new release that we're working on is a combination of gut instincts and user feedback. Your users don't always know what's best, so you can't base new features or approaches on user feedback alone.

I think we'll get more heavily into some A/B testing, but really only on select pages. For example, I want to set up A/B testing for our new sign up page. Right now you can't upgrade immediately when first signing up. You instead need to sign up for a regular Meh account and then upgrade to Whoo! later. I want to test allowing people to upgrade immediately when they first sign up and see how that goes.
The announcement a few posts up on the main page of Hacker News... http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/announcing-google-map...
That's true. The virtual good actually made Tencent, the largest IM provider became the most profitable company in China. And few months ago, one of my friends still argued that online-casual game has no market in U.S. because "the market was dominated by game console". The first widely-adapted webgame invented in China (www.mop.com), the company behind renren.com(largest facebook.com copycat in China). Those randomness (copycat vs. innovation) just amazed me how dynamic Chinese market is. There are too many innovations, but just too many are failed too early.
It depends on what country you reside. In the USA, UK, Israel etc, you have a fair use clause and you might be allowed of doing it.

In other countries, alone the fact that you are storing the content (without publishing it) is blatant theft.
Would you prefer to have gender hidden in the initial phase of the application?
Interesting. I think most banks and building societies in the UK are on Cirrus, so get free withdrawls almost everywhere. I guess building societies are our equivalent of credit unions, but I'm not sure.
Yeah, Garmin makes a lot more than turn-by-turn driving direction devices. Marine and aviation equipment, for example.
Lessons Learned in the Startup World
> many older cities don't have the most logical street plan.

Err... yeah, Europe has that issue too. In spades:-)
Since the beginning, I have found this sexism.

Yes, it's incorrigible and often justified with sophomoric platitudes, even here on HN.

... well, you learn from past experiences.

However, the presupposition that someone will be prejudiced against you on the basis of their gender can also be damaging to social interactions -- such as this one.
Do you honestly feel PG and co. are incapable of selecting people that aren't naive nor idiots?
Okay, so here's what I don't get:

If you think the fact that you're a woman will somehow come out as a negative in the YC application process for you, how do you expect to survive as a startup? I guarantee you succeeding as a company is a lot tougher than filling out a form.

Either what you're working on has merit or it doesn't. That doesn't change depending on who reads about it.

I don't doubt that you have had challenges in the technology field as a woman, but that's not going to change inside or outside of YC.
Looks like a copy of the chart available here:

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/sat-scores-and-...

That post created a lot of debate a couple of months ago which was summarized here:

http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/08...

The chart on that second page appears to show that "higher parental income predicts higher child income but only for biological children and not for adoptees."
I would be interested to hear how you see your art and technology interests converging.
The submitted link includes sublinks to such details as the exact count of perfect scorers on the SAT in class of 2009 (184 males and 113 females)

http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/sat_perce...

and other details. The College Board 2009 College-Bound Seniors: Total Group Profile Report

http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/cbs-2009-...

reports mean scores by student self-reported income category on page 4, table 11. The number of students with no response on family income is fairly high, and the mean scores of students in that category are similar to the mean scores of students in middle-class income categories.
S-curves usually form in situations where the people doing the selections are trying to impress a third party, e.g. US News & World Report, future dog purchasers, other peahens, etc. Fortunately that shouldn't be a problem here.

Also, because YC isn't very bureaucratic it should be relatively easly to design a process that ameliorates this. It's an interesting problem to think about though.
Cool.

It seems that the kind of folks who are scared off by this might be doomed anyway. If you're going to be successful, then at some point you've got to take up the attitude that you're going to eat the competition's lunch - even if they know what you're doing. Because you're just that good.

Good luck.

(Have not applied. Am not applying. Just a member of the peanut gallery.)
There's definitely subtle and persistent sexism on HN, but that doesn't make the original commenter's complaint about the new YC process any more valid. I agree that filling out a YC application is the least of your real-world problems.
well, that's a nice hack. But lessens your karma for the sake of bravura's. A tad shady.
I think Chinese people will just relate better to homegrown stuff.

Good thing I'm Chinese. Hopefully I will have a cultural advantage if I decide to operate there one day.
That's impossible with the video aspect.
Python is a nice language because of the everything and the kitchen sink approach to the built-in libraries. It also has a clean look because of the significant whitespace. Ruby is another nice language. It seems to be a bit more esoteric as far as some of the more advanced language features but for the beginner the language lets you accomplish it in more than one way. C is a fine language too but you will spend your time working on memory protection instead of getting things accomplished fast. It is more useful on memory constrained systems.

Every language is useful in a different way and each have a domain or two in which they excel at.

The real takeaway is that the shift from knowing one language to another is fairly easy. The real trick is knowing the idioms of the particular language and how to use them.

http://www.pythonchallenge.com or http://rubyquiz.com/
It's interesting - hosting/bandwidth costs should decrease more or less exponentially over time. (after correcting for inflation) That fixed fee should therefore be substantially less than 100 * (hosting for a year).
This nerd will simply wait for his (non-US) government to take that decision for him. I don't have any insight into the current state or effects.
Not sure if you did it on purpose, but your double negative is the converse of my sentiment.

Do I think YC is capable of making poor selections?...Absolutely.
This is some interesting analysis, but it only considers the negative effects of not getting the flu and neglects the negative effects of getting it.

Consider this poor woman who got dystonia after receiving a flu vaccine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEN5KGwNGeo

She was a cheerleader and how she can't walk.

The nerd logic also neglects the probability that the flu vaccine will actually help. In the lab, 50-80% of the vaccinated resisted the exact same strain, however in the wild, only 10% did not get the flu and the number of hospitalizations was not affected at all.

To do a proper analysis, one must use proper probabilities and statistics and consider the probabilities of outcome with the benefit/harm that could be caused by that outcome.
The primary source for the self-reported SAT and income band correlations,

http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/cbs-2009-...

the annual College Board report for class of 2009, is linked to from

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=908779

along with links to other SAT data reports.
15 Greatest Enemies of Net Neutrality
And by the number of 7-line sequences produced by each.
I agree that succeeding as a company is tougher than filling out a form.

The YC application seems to be more focused on who you are as a person than on your technology. I highlighted that on the application.

But I have a feeling that my accomplishments are not going to be as appreciated by a given YC alum than the original people that wrote the YC application. That's all.
Most people have trouble doing that for investors, let alone potential competitors.

That's because most people don't understand just how unimportant ideas are.

Seriously, even if pg & co decided that the next application process would be completely public, I still wouldn't consider it a big deal.

Anyone can say "I have an idea, I'm going to build X". Fewer can actually do it. Fewer still have the drive (masochism?) to keep trying and trying to get people to actually use it for months and months when it looks like nobody cares at all.
I think it says on the app that they view your video if they think the application is promising.
Odds of getting the flu, feeling like absolute crap for a week

The few people I know that have had H1N1 reported that they actually felt like crap for more like a month, The initial 'flu symptoms' passed after a week, but they were left feeling weak and 'drained' for another 3-4 weeks beyond that.

Personally, I'm tempted to get the shot, and I've never bothered with flu shots in the past out of fear of the side effects (I have a barely functioning immune system).
You don't think the market had already priced in the idea that cellphones were inevitably going to displace handheld GPS?
Ask HN: Verizon Email to SMS delivery, Network and Voice in Southeast Florida
With the impending release of the Droid on Verizon on 11/6, I am considering switching from AT&T to Verizon.<p>AT&T's email to SMS gateway performance has been excellent. Messages are almost instantly delivered, every time. There have been slight outages over the last nine years, but, in South Florida, their voice/SMS network has worked extremely well for me. Compared to an employee with TMobile, my SMS delivery is much more reliable than his.<p>If I could get a few readers in the West Palm Beach/Ft Lauderdale/Miami Florida area to let me know their experiences on the 3G network on Verizon, call performance, and most importantly Email to SMS delivery, I would greatly appreciate it.
pg and his team ARE going to review them. They state elsewhere that they are looking for a second set of eyes to make sure they don't miss things, (both for good and bad).

Remember, by applying, you are saying you trust the judgment of the YC team. If you don't trust their judgment, including when/when not to delegate, you are probably applying for the wrong reasons.

I mean, jeeze, you're asking them for money. They have been upfront about the change in the process, gave everyone a way to back out, said they'll be reading all applications themselves anyway... If you can't deal with changing and uncomfortable circumstances, why are you thinking about a startup in the first place?

(This is not just to the parent post, it is directed at the critics in this thread in general).
Prelude golf: what can we learn by rewriting the partition function?
*Partition> partition even [1..10]
([2,4,6,8,10],[1,3,5,7,9]

it's not as simple as it sounds.
Very cool, but I think that the heel-toe landing move is a bit exaggerated.
Tho' I can remember when Magellan dominated this industry, so much so that we all said Magellan when we meant GPS, like Xerox, Sellotape, Hoover and so on. Now no-one I know has a Magellan (tho' they do still seem to be in business).

I don't see any IPX7 rated Android devices, tho', that's the bare minimum for a GPS for real outdoor use.
Yes, it's incorrigible and often justified with sophomoric platitudes, even here on HN.

I can't tell if you're insinuating that I am using sophomoric platitudes, but I hope you respect that I have been trying to speak mostly about my personal experiences.

However, the presupposition that someone will be prejudiced against you on the basis of their gender can also be damaging to social interactions -- such as this one.

I think we all know that people are prejudiced.

Confronting people on their prejudices can be damaging, or it can jolt them out of their complacency and get them to view you with a fresh set of eyes. It usually depends on the person and also how honestly and straightforwardly you present yourself.
iPhone fanboys don't need evidence to justify the superiority of their phone.
I would go further and not only teaching probability and statistics, but also teach basic calculus with simple polynomials, programming, Monti Carlo simulations, sines and cosines, computer simulations, all starting around age 13.

Advance algebra, geometry, and full trigonometry are not required for any of that.

Why make students wait until senior year or college to experience the fun stuff?
A new venture capital alternative for entrepreneurial small businesses
Personally I highly doubt their biases will be large enough to discredit, or even affect, the merit you show in your application.
That might work for your, but I have the interesting problem of not being in the risk group in my country but for some reason being in the risk group in the US. So which government should you trust?
Marine and Aviation equipment together account for about 15% of Garmin's revenue. The overwhelming majority of their business comes from exactly the segment Android is targeting.
The existence of craigslist singles doesn't support the assertion that everything sexy to someone, it supports the assertion that there are a bunch of people who have not found someone who finds them sexy -- in fact, that it exists at all and has new postings could almost be proof that there are things that are globally considered non-sexy. If everyone on craigslist singles, 100%, found a match, that would support that everything is sexy to someone.
How decent bike parking could revolutionize cities
News gets worse for the mainstream media
I thought it says they're likely to view your demo if the application is promising... and they like viewing videos.
People underestimate the pain of database administration. If I can get a ready-to-go database in seconds my life is so much better. My only grudge against RDS is that it doesn't scale up from 0. It adds at least $80/month to your regular server cost.
Where I live we have it much like you describe it. I live in a suburb of Stockholm, Sweden.

I paid for the connection to the house from the street (US$2k). The fibre in the street is owned and operated by the municipality/local government. They also own the local multi-gigabit ring and provide redundant connections to the rest of the net.

Then we have four different ISPs offering IP on this fibre at reasonable prices for "home use":

0.5 mbps @ $10/month,
10 mbps @ $23-28/month,
100 mbps @ $33-36/month. Un-metered.

They also offer commercial contracts. I am paying under $100/month for 10 mbps. You can also get VOIP from the same operators and cable TV over the fibre from four different operators.

I currently have 1x 10 mbps for the company, 1x 100 mpbs for everything else + TV and VOIP. A bunch of fixed IP addresses and capacity to add several more connections in the fibre modem.

I know this is not exactly a rural town, but having the local municipality build the IP infrastructure and let companies sell their services on it has been a great success. The local municipality also owns and operates the local roads, water and sewage system, district heating, waste, as well as the local electricity grid. I can choose who to buy IP and electricity from, but water, district heating and sewage has only one supplier.

Works well for us.
What side effects did you get from the shot?
Compressing CSS on the fly
I can't tell if you're insinuating that I am using sophomoric platitudes, but I hope you respect that I have been trying to speak mostly about my personal experiences.

No, my intention wasn't to slight your concerns; I was attempting to articulate my opinion of sexism in technology and the justifications often used to support it.
Everyone gets judged. Everyone has prejudices. It's much easier to recognize when others are prejudicial against you than when you are against others.

You know how it is when you discuss technology with men, and first of all, they hold back, assuming you likely don't know or are not interested?

Do you realise you likely do the same thing? If you meet a Mexican gardener, do you not do the same? Why? Why not just starting talking web services with him?

Because you don't expect him to know about the topic. It's your vorurteil, your judgement before knowledge, and it's an essential part of being human. We observe a pattern, and we act on this pattern.

So, yes, there is prejudice. But it's not malicious, it's simply the observation of a way things are, and an expectancy on how they will be. This form of prejudice, you have to accept. They do it to you, and you will do it to me.

That does not mean that in such a case as the YC applications you will be judged differently. You will be judged the same, because the fact that you have gone through the steps that brought you to that application level, means that you are at the same level as all the other people. So this invisible prejudice, this pre-judgement has already fallen away, as the people know what you are already.
It's only shady if you care about karma.
Let's not go overboard. I'd much rather pg and co. put their time into reviewing applications than adding "features" like this. This is, at its heart, a social problem, not a technical one, and needs to be addressed as one.
Why Do Financial Crises Happen in the Fall?
Using Redis and Rack for Affiliate Click Tracking
Whether or not GWT is the future of (client side) web development is left to be seen but I think its very existence frameworks like it suggest that there is a need that needs to be filled.

More and more advanced applications are being built in the browser and Javascript doesn't provide the tools to build applications of that scale. Java has been proven for these type of applications in the enterprise and it's not surprising to see efforts being made to apply it to rich ajax applications.
I'm skeptical of how well Verizon's network is going to hold up. Out of the 4 major US carriers they are probably the least tested due to their historically awful handset selection. There is such a huge difference between a modern SmartPhone and the last-generation of e-mail centric devices. AT&T has got a bad reputation in the lat 2 years but they are moving ahead with their 7.2Mbit HSDPA upgrades at a pretty good pace. Assuming they can fully utilize those channels and beef up their marginal coverage areas they will have have a pretty big advantage over EV-DO Rev A.
12 hours after the shot. None so far (other than a slight pain around there area where the needle was inserted, which was expected).
Designers don't understand what science is capable of, and the scientists don't know how to deliver a consumer-facing product. It's especially good if you have design, technology, and business all in one. By understanding business, technology, and design, I feel like our venture is poised to have a disruptive impact.

If you email me, I will send you a link to our demo.

[edit: My profile plus Googling my name will lead you to my email address.]
Well, hopefully you'll see this as an opportunity to turn this into a chance to work on your marketing skills to a larger audience. I get the feeling that PG is a tougher person to sell an idea to than most startup founders are.
Based on the 15% drop today, no.