skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
FoneScript is both a DSL for specifying simple telephone menu trees and call routing, and (eventually) a cloud platform for hosting them.

You can check out the syntax, try out a demo and sign up for our launch list, but right now we're not quite ready for customers.

If you have any questions, ask them here or email me: cam (at) fonescript [dot] com
I am not sure if typing can be added as a library. In terms of typed lambda calculus vs untyped lambda calculus, can we do this way?

But the idea of "layered" language is nice. In Scala, many features are not really from language itself, but from libraries.
I found CVE-2010-0539 (Safari remote code execution) by setting up a website that just fuzzed a ton of stuff. It had a meta-refresh setup so the browser would just keep reloading with a new random fuzz payload. I was in my 2nd year of a CS undergrad program, so I would do stuff like this when I was bored.

I think much of it is just a bit of luck that you're looking in the right place.
Do you work with remote teams? That is, teams that are remote. Can you believe the remote.ly page is not available? Tech only? Have you ever hosted an incubator? Y Combinator NE? Or is that X Combinator? Quantum Combinator?
Hey Sam,

What is the problem/market that you think about most when you aren't at work?
Could Pumpkin Seeds Reverse Balding?
How long until 'definitely not' ?
"Now, it's obvious that he made money in ways that aren't overly useful to society.."

FYI making markets more efficient is definitely useful to society by reducing costs / bid ask spread. In particular this helps those who get the most utility from this savings, the poor and middle class.

Obviously I'm setting aside the ethics of some of his ways and speaking in general. (Although you'd probably want this competition even more so in unethical markets because at least those markets are then more efficient for those getting scammed, ie the poor and stupid.)
I assume that part was implied.
Technically interplanetary space is a hot plasma too. The particles emitted by the Sun are very hot according to kinetic theory (which only depends on the mean velocity of particles) since they have a lot of energy. It's a plasma because the particles are charged and accelerated by the Sun's magnetic field.

Of course the density of these particles is very low, so if your definition of heat factors those in then space is cold.
What is YC roadmap in 5-10 years time?
People who exploit browser bugs do it as a profession, or as a passionate consuming hobby. They're generally connecting the dots between a series of lesser flaws. They spend weeks and months banking those lesser flaws, and the patterns that create them. Some of them can come from static analyzers, some can come from theorem provers, some are just lucky finds.

For awhile, a lot of them came from fuzzers; if you're interested in how that works, strong recommend for Zalewski's blogs on his open-source "american fuzzy lop" fuzzer.

Browsers are huge attack surfaces, as complex as operating systems, with different modules of wildly different quality. There are lot of bugs to find.

The process makes more sense when you grok how much effort goes into getting privileged RCE from a hardened browser. Nobody can sit down with that code and pull one of them out of thin air on the spot.
How did you arrive at any of those conclusions?

That doesn't strike me as a very straightforward interpretation of the offhand reference to the syntax's being natural, made without any further comment. Nor do I see why "def" being a macro makes the syntax "natural in its representation" (or even what you mean by that).

Just as a test: if that is what he meant by the syntax's being natural, he should be willing to claim that the syntax of Scheme is at least as natural.
A pratical guide to making up a sensation
We know you have a blog, but will you ever write a book sharing your secrets at a deeper and broader level?
In terms of "How will you make money", are you interested in the market for the initial product/use case or what we think the product can eventually grow into?

ie: We think our total initial market has the potential to be around $30M/yr but can grow to take on other use cases.
I did take your friendly note and go back through the post but I'm just terrible at catching those things.
Yeah, but i can buy the 1200 vodka also for 10 at the store. Does not work the same way with the laptop. Also, the laptop lasts longer. Also the writer wasnt and isnt rich.
How do you feel about the fact you employ the co-founder of a company that sells technology to the government that assists in the management of espionage data and has been associated with people crafting proposals to engage in industrial espionage? [e.g. Palantir]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2011/02/11/palanti...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8236762

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ralph-nader/corporations-spy-o...

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/02/17/144678/chamberle...
A naive attempt to do the same we do now just waaaaaaay more inflexibly.

The author needs to watch this a meditate on why Alan Kay said what he said about the web architecture:
http://youtu.be/oKg1hTOQXoY
Evaporative cooling ought to work really well?
Oh gosh, I forgot those!

I even wrote a airline-booking-system terminal program in Java, all before swing reared its ugly head!
We haven't updated our numbers in awhile. Current total is more than Uber.

We'll update again at some point.

It's not a perfect correlation, but the founders that build huge companies are extremely determined and smart, they have a very clear vision, they see things other people miss, etc etc.

That said, there is definitely a luck multiplier for the humongous companies. You cannot have a clear plan to build a $200B company.
They used to sell the hacker, but since they've stopped Pwn2Own is much more popular.
Hi Sam!

As a high school student / developer with a (seemingly great) idea and no same-age peers, would you suggest waiting until college to find a cofounder, or going through with the idea now alone?
There is an OkCupid question which asks, "what is more important in a relationship: passion or dedication?"

After 12 years as a web developer, the only true "programmer passion" I have felt were for my own side projects, ones I have complete creative control over. Everything else is just a job to get done. I will show up and be dedicated for the allocated hours. But don't expect me to fall in love.
can we have one drive for business integration?
10,000X returns are so rare, how do you guard against over-fitting your decision making processes on too little data ?
What is your favorite interview question to ask?
Are regular bug bounty programs simply not paying enough whereby researchers decide to hold onto exploits for high paying events like Pwn2Own? How much would these kind of exploits go for on the black market?
I'm one of those people who has approached content creation strictly "as a service to your users, not as an exploit of your users." All of my blog posts are very carefully researched, in-depth guides, sometimes literally taking over 100 hours of research and writing for a single post.

I made very little money for years and had just about given up until Panda 4.1 and Penguin 3.0. Since then, when I write well, Google is sending traffic my way, and my traffic and income have been steadily increasing by 20%-30%/month. I now have the incentive to keep adding more high quality content to my blog.

Prior to these Panda/Penguin updates (Sep/Oct 2014), I can totally understand why so many attempted to do what the author did. It made more money. Even if Google algorithm changes or Affiliate changes shut you down, jumping to the next thing seemed to work.

Hopefully Google is ahead of the curve once and for all, providing greater incentive to create great content than game the system.
When I search where I live :http://caniwearshorts.today/?location=Kad%C4%B1k%C3%B6y

UnicodeEncodeError at /

'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\u0131' in position 107: ordinal not in range(128)

Request Method:	GET
Request URL:	http://127.0.0.1:8002/?location=Kad%C4%B1k%C3%B6y
Django Version:	1.7.6
Exception Type:	UnicodeEncodeError
Exception Value:

'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\u0131' in position 107: ordinal not in range(128)

Exception Location:	/usr/lib/python2.7/urllib.py in urlencode, line 1332
Python Executable:	/opt/apps/can-i-wear-shorts/env/bin/python
Python Version:	2.7.6
Python Path:

['/opt/apps/can-i-wear-shorts',
'/opt/apps/can-i-wear-shorts/env/bin',
'/opt/apps/can-i-wear-shorts/env/lib/python2.7',
'/opt/apps/can-i-wear-shorts/env/lib/python2.7/plat-x86_64-linux-gnu',
'/opt/apps/can-i-wear-shorts/env/lib/python2.7/lib-tk',
'/opt/apps/can-i-wear-shorts/env/lib/python2.7/lib-old',
'/opt/apps/can-i-wear-shorts/env/lib/python2.7/lib-dynload',
'/usr/lib/python2.7',
'/usr/lib/python2.7/plat-x86_64-linux-gnu',
'/usr/lib/python2.7/lib-tk',
'/opt/apps/can-i-wear-shorts/env/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages']

Server time:	Cum, 20 Mar 2015 17:31:09 +0000
With you recently leading a round of investment for reddit, it seems you are quite optimistic about its success but as of late 2013 (and maybe now too), Reddit remains in red even after nearly a decade of its inception[1]. Reddit CEO once said, that ads are the reasons Digg failed[2], so I believe the site would be wary of using ads to the fullest.

How do you think Reddit would become profitable and would be able to sustain itself?

[1]: http://www.businessinsider.in/Reddit-CEO-Admits-Were-Still-I...

[2]: http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/08/reddit-digg/
What is your advice for people who don't have co-founder material friends (mostly non-technical/non-sales people, or conservative) and are out of college? I've experience starting companies with acquaintances, something that, predictably, didn't go so well.

Is there any alternative - that you have seen in YC - to getting new friends, getting to know them really well, and starting a company in a few years time?
No, I don't (I don't have a CS degree either--I dropped out after two years).

I'm skeptical about how much one actually learns in business school, and I think it's a bad investment of time and money. I think management is one of those things where you learn much more by actually doing it.

That said, I don't manage much at YC. Part of what being a partner means is that you're at the point in your career where you don't need a manager.
I built a whole website based on spitting out XML and using XSLT on either the server or (optionally; hidden behind a flag) in the browser to transform the XML to HTML.

It gave us 90% of our API "for free": On any page you could add an argument to the URL to spit out the XML data for the page, and others to get the items on the page as ATOM or RDF.

The developers hated the constraints it placed on them. But it was exactly because of the things the developers were prone to doing that was the reason for structuring it that way in the first place.
Hello Sam,

First, thank you so much for taking the time to answer our questions.

My question is about confidentiality of applications.
Today I am working at a YC startup. I (and two other friends) have a project in mind. But what prevents me from applying to YC is the fear that my application would fall in the inbox of our founders. Obviously I would prefer our application to remain confidential until if they we get accepted (which, I understand, is against the odds :)).

How can I ensure that this won't happen? How private and confidential are our conversations with YC partners and team?

I have also heard that YC alumni sometimes help filtering/interviewing the teams/projects that apply. Is this correct?

To be completely transparent, I have heard from 2 persons closed to YC that there is no way our founders won't know that I have applied. So this point really worries me a lot.

Thank you for your answer and again, thank you for taking the time to answer the questions of the HN community.
temperature in F. As we say in Europe: 'null points'
How would you look at a founder who has built something for the US market, but have never visited it?
I was curious, so here are the rewards:

Windows-based targets:

1. Google Chrome (64-bit): $75,000 (USD)

2. Microsoft Internet Explorer 11 (64-bit with EPM-enabled): $65,000 (USD)

3. Mozilla Firefox: $30,000 (USD)

4. Adobe Reader running in Internet Explorer 11 (64-bit with EPM-enabled): $60,000 (USD)

5. Adobe Flash (64-bit) running in Internet Explorer 11 (64-bit with EPM-enabled): $60,000 (USD)

Mac OS X-based targets:

1. Apple Safari (64-bit): $50,000 (USD)
Absolutely agree. I got that about 3 seconds into reading this. For example, I'm close to releasing a SPA application platform. Yes, that is "application" twice. This proposal doesn't square at all with what this next generation application platform is all about.
Taking Parking Lots Seriously, as Public Spaces
Is there a lower preference for college-dropouts today in YC? The average YC founder age has increased considerably and I think there might be some relation.
Is YC interested investing in international remittance startup?
Bach, my all time favourite. An absolute genius; his work was almost forgotten, thank goodness it was rediscovered and preserved. Excellent performance of Prelude and Fugue in C Minor; two pieces I played back in the day for RCM Grade exams.
I checked in with Jed (the guest blogger) and he told me that Band 8 of the data has the highest (15m) resolution. Per the post at https://www.mapbox.com/blog/putting-landsat-8-bands-to-work/ , you can use this to sharpen the images in the other layers.
> The "middle class" software engineering DINK couple in the bay area making $250,000 is absolutely in the upper class despite the fact that they still have to work every day.

While, to me, they are, as people working at wage labor, either working class or, if they have sufficient capital assets that they could reasonably subsist primarily or entirely on capital income for a non-trivial period of time if they chose to use it that way rather than saving it for the future -- that is, if labor is a practical (e.g., not economically coerced) choice rather than a necessity -- middle class. (If their capital is such that they can live comfortably on the proceeds while continuing to accumulate capital, then they are upper class -- whether or not they choose to work -- but I don't think many Bay Area DINK couples making $250K meet that standard.)

To me, economic class is about practical economic choices.
You're quite right. It's "Don't be evil."

Can one 'do' evil without 'being' evil? Maybe, if you think that the ends justify the means.
I have a good answer for this! Go work at a breakout medium sized tech company (i.e. a couple of hundred to a couple of thousand people).

You'll meet lots of potential cofounders. The people that are attracted to these companies are usually 1) really good and 2) interested in starting a company down the line.
Add operating systems, servers, and languages to your list for completeness. The reason they are unsafe is because they are created by humans, who make mistakes. You are basically proposing that all technology innovation should cease until these things are 100% secure.
"What is this shit, Gentoo?"

I did ask myself the same question. Very funny blog post.
We will definitely consider adding more data over time.
Hey Sam, can you give please tell us about the time you, sama, most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage?
Yes. "With Javascript" I mean via Typescript or Flow, you can have some static type-checking. You can use Sweet.js for macros with Javascript, but you can't use both of these tools together.

I'm unfamiliar with Ocaml, Scala and Haskell but OK.
No, if anything it's higher. I think the median age increase has more to do with us funding companies in different spaces that require more experience.

If you're starting an Internet company, I'm more convinced than ever that you don't need to finish college.
Wait, I thought this was the new Reddit... but I kid. Point taken. I think I've got a good feel for the culture around here, lately. I must have had a small lapse into snide sophomoric snipery.
What is your take on the health care industry? Where are the biggest opportunities and leverage points? Perhaps for a YC company
Docker removing popular “dockerfile” images – update to official images advised
What's YC's valuation?
It's hard to give a standard answer to this--it depends entirely on the specifics of each case.
When I think of upper class, I think of well-dressed gents and ladies who cruise around the world finding the next humble village that needs their charity.

Driving an hour each way to some kind of desk job to finance a McMansion in the exurbs, eh... maybe it's me but there's just no way I can line that up with any definition of "upper class".
IT just got a wakeup call to move faster to the cloud
Hi Sam,
I'd like to apply to YC, but my market is not in the US. Is it something rational? Does it worth?
0b111111
Almost any traditional music theory course or textbook will get you started. But the geek-standard for non-musicians is probably Hofstadter's Godel-Escher-Bach, which explains some of the clever things Bach did.

Bach was exceptionally good at writing parallel lines of music while keeping them separate and individually interesting.

The technical name for this is counterpoint. While counterpoint never quite died out - it's still used in pop and film scores - no one else has ever written counterpoint quite as dense and inventive.

And Bach didn't just write it, he improvised it, with six or even eight lines at a time.

WTC is an example of writing in different keys - identical note scales that start on different root notes.

Before modern tunings keyboards were tuned to a specific key. The other possible keys were always more or less out of tune.

With modern tunings the sourness was smoothed out. None of the keys are exactly in tune, but they're all similarly good-enough.

Bach's tuning probably wasn't quite the same as a modern tuning. But it was close enough to allow him to write a book of pieces that worked through all the keys on a single instrument without retuning - which was a novelty for the time.

WTC is also a kind of pattern book of contrapuntal and compositional techniques. So it made a huge impression - and still does.

If you're not a musician I wouldn't get too distracted by the theory. It helps to know what a fugue is and maybe a little about form, but the music is very good at speaking for itself as a self-contained experience without insisting that you understand how it was put together.
I am glad this is the top comment, people today are up in arms about inequality, but they fail to realize how much we have today that we did not have then. Not to say that inequality is not an issue, but many people are screaming from the top of their lungs with twisted facts and stats.
It doesn't have the get-shit-done reputation of Go, but it should. I personally find that OCaml is a very pragmatic language.
I've had way more problems with my MBP running Yosemite than my home built generic Windows 7 PC.

"Just works" is subjective so it shouldn't be a purchasing factor.
This is my plan B and it's heartening to hear you share this view.
A lot, but it's very illiquid.
What do you think. Sustained DDoS attack must at least generate enough revenue to cover sustained expenses if they are incurred or no?
Previously discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2477586
What should founders do about the rent?
We've funded many companies working only on non-US markets. Razorpay is an example of one in the current batch.
You're reasoning is taking a bit too much for granted that the best engineered solutions will be the ones coming off big corporations investments but in this field this has been proven wrong many times... that's not always the one and only win factor.. fortunately.
How do you spot grit and perseverance in an entrepreneur?
Oh man, I'm in the same situation, and I was kinda trying to not think about it! I'd assumed YC applications were a "safe" place? (No?)
Both. The best answer is something like "we have a path to be be doing enough revenue to cover our expenses in a year, but if things really work, here is how we could make $1B a year in 10 years."
That would put us at least 20 years from any new HTML features.
There's also solar heating of the station itself to worry about. Although to some extent you can make the station reflective (white) to deal with that.
:D That's what I like to hear! (Developer of Streamus here... thanks for using it!!)
No, I totally ignore this. We'll keep funding good companies no matter what the macro does.
> Considering that regularly writing secure servers or browsers seems to be beyond our reach for the moment, I think it's a safe bet to say that writing a secure sandboxing system is even farther beyond our reach. I doubt there is as much to gain in terms of security as we may think.

It is harder to breach two layers of security at the same time than one.

> I know that Xprivacy does that in a way that makes me seriously question its security ( if these guys are correct, at least: http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/59093/how-does-th.... ).

This is a vague argumentum ad hominem against a third party. I don't see relevance to my arguments.

> Not sure about PDroid and other solutions (my phone isn't supported by Cyanogen Mod). But it looks like a big pile of hacks over another big pile of hacks to me.

I don't see your point here in regards to this discussion.
Parallax eventually released the source for Descent 1 and 2, you know. It was C. (At least the majority of it?)

Edit: I can't access this domain from work, but perhaps somebody else can confirm this. http://descent2.com/ddn/sources/descent1/

Originally it built with some Borland product, and some folks put a lot of time and effort into porting it to MingW32.

Eventually, it gained SDL support, then OpenGL support... These days, you can apt-get install d1x-rebirth and d2x-rebirth. :)
Perl is dynamic enough to support this.

See http://search.cpan.org/~ether/Moose-2.1403/lib/Moose/Manual/... and http://search.cpan.org/~ether/Moose-2.1403/lib/Moose/Manual....

Competing type systems, competing Object systems, and enough internal run-time rewriting to do whatever it is you want.

See also http://search.cpan.org/~smueller/Filter-Simple-0.91/lib/Filt... for a simple rewriting filter, and the Acme namespace for all kinds of fancy experiments.
I didn't ask whether you use deterministic encryption, I asked whether your variant of mOPE is deterministic. It's possible to use randomized encryption for the leaves of mOPE and still construct a deterministic OPF.

EDIT: Also, you say the server does not know the tree structure. Do you mean it doesn't know the structure until you query, or the structure is always obfuscated (including access patterns and search patterns)?

EDIT2: What is the round complexity of a single query in your protocol?
The YC application asks teams to discuss their current equity split / legal situation. What happens to teams who haven't figured that out, or are looking for advice on those matters from Ycombinator? Will an uncertain equity plan or organizational structure kill an otherwise exciting application, if they are open to advice?
> I'm skeptical about how much one actually learns in business school, and I think it's a bad investment of time and money.

From what I've seen (and I haven't myself gone to B school), I think the people who seem to get the most (in terms of apparent skill improvement) out of B school are the ones that do it while working in management; I think that the combination of theory and practice is probably valuable.

OTOH, a major purpose of B school (and this is true of many other areas of formal education) is credentialing, networking, and social signaling, which can be important to success independent of (even if it is taken by others as a sign of) actual skill development. So, it may be a mistake to assess the value to the student as simply being about what one actually learns.