skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I agree times have changed for the better, I'm not sure that can be counted on continuing forever. We have a morality of the here and now and whether the morality of tomorrow is the same or better is up for debate.

I don't think that STD's, alcoholism, drug abuse or mental health issues are ever going to be considered badges of honour over the course of people's careers.

If you don't believe that the "delete" and "mark private" features of these online publishing things work, well there's a lot of juicy info there for the taking on tomorrow's public figures.
Hey, "AMA" does mean "Ask Me Anything"
Water crisis coming in 15 years unless the world acts now, UN report warns
Why do you want to spend the next 10 years of your life working on this?
There have been successful attempts at simply grinding the insects and making them into "meatballs" etc. All that's left over is a sand-like form of them that is highly nutritious and can be processed further.

Sustainability may be a choice today, but it won't be in the future. That's not even a debate.

Looking at r/fitness and trillions of similar boards online, people are readily willing to chug down any sort of powder without need for control through FDA etc. You know, for them "gainz".

So if insects' weird forms are never even detectable by your eyes or tongue, than why should people shy away from them?

I find it pretty crazy that a mental image of a cricket is considered more unappetizing than a bleeding out cow, than a pig kept in a 5ft x 5ft space for all of its life, than newborn chicks ground to shreds by some vacuuming grinding machine because they aren't profitable etc....
Quality far above quantity.

A large number of weak endorsements really hurts your chances.
I'm happy to see this in the preface (where EY looks back and details what he thinks he did wrong):

"Today I would write more courteously, I think. The discourtesy did serve a function, and I think there were people who were helped by reading it; but I now take more seriously the risk of building communities where the normal and expected reaction to low-status outsider views is open mockery and contempt.

Despite my mistake, I am happy to say that my readership has so far been amazingly good about not using my rhetoric as an excuse to bully or belittle others. (I want to single out Scott Alexander in particular here, who is a nicer person than I am and an increasingly amazing writer on these topics, and may deserve a part of the credit for making the culture of Less Wrong a healthy one.)"
Users lash out at Reddit boss for ‘deleting’ posts on hubby’s lawsuit
It at least gets seen by our alumni reviewers, and at least 3 of them. They pass about half the applications on to the YC partners.
From the article: "Yes, I know, I know, many of you think that a Chromebook is just a Chrome Web browser on a laptop. Sure, and a Porsche Cayenne is just a car.

The 2015 Chromebook Pixel's 2.4GHz Intel Core i7 is as fast a processor as you'll find on any laptop today. By comparison, Apple's brand new MacBook tops out with a 1.3GHz dual-core Intel Core M processor. It's like comparing a dirt-track car with a Formula One racer."

Stopped reading right there.
Ask HN: DigitalOcean won't accept my debit card. Any alternative?
I'm an aspiring web developer living in Ghana.

I bought a domain last year and while I haven't really developed much yet as a developer I have decided to host a project on Digital Ocean to get the motivation to work on it.

Today I went to the bank to make some deposit to pay for a couple of months on Digital Ocean but once I added my card, which allows online payment by the way, I got the feedback that Digital Ocean does not accept Debit cards.

I was really disappointed but nothing I can do.
Is there an alternative hosting service that I can use for a casual project?

Thanks in advance.
Thanks Sama.

This is something I've always been curious since VCs are an investment structure and measuring performance is critical when selecting the right VC.
Energy, existential risks to humanity, and wealth inequality.
> When the LHC resumes bashing particles together in May, LHCb scientists will continue tracking penguin decays in hopes that the anomalies in the data will climb to 5-sigma certainty, signifying an indirect discovery of “new physics.”

Large sigma values only rule out statistical fluctuations, not systematic errors.

Adam Falkowski's Resonaances is the go-to particle physics blog for these sorts of stories. On this particular anomaly he has this:

> The measurement moved a bit toward the standard model, but the statistical errors have shrunk as well. All in all, the significance of the anomaly is quoted as 3.7 sigma, the same as in the previous LHCb analysis...So how excited should we be? One thing we learned today is that the anomaly is unlikely to be a statistical fluctuation. However, the observable is not of the clean kind, as the measured angular distributions are susceptible to poorly known QCD effects. The significance depends a lot on what is assumed about these uncertainties, and experts wage ferocious battles about the numbers. See for example this paper where larger uncertainties are advocated, in which case the significance becomes negligible. Therefore, the deviation from the standard model is not yet convincing at this point. Other observables may tip the scale. If a consistent pattern of deviations in several B-physics observables emerges, only then we can trumpet victory.

http://resonaances.blogspot.ca/2015/03/lhcb-b-meson-anomaly-...
Join a rocketship. (ideally one in the YC portfolio :) )
Any specifics on the amount of equity offered? That's an interesting concept.
Sure, they are commensurate at some point. I'd pick one nanosecond of torture over the dust-motes, for instance. But I'm not certain that I would ever choose the 50 years of torture over the dust motes for any number of dust-moted people. That's because it's not continuous, so you can't do the sort of epsilon-delta proofs that Yudkowsky's argument depends on.

At least, in my opinion.
I'm a lot freer with upvotes than downvotes - I use upvotes for both agreement and good comments, but will downvote only for clearly poor quality comments / trolls.
The first and the third work though. The first is from Brennan Dunn. Haven't seen him on here in a bit, but I used his program. Really helped improve my tutoring business.

I've actually had to tell some freelancers I use to RAISE their rates, because they were too busy and frazzled. The kind of advice in Brennan's book is something a lot of freelancers need.

The third is probably Patrick Mckenzie. He advice helped me create an email course that is very popular on my site. It's not spam if you write good stuff and people ask for it.

Everyone on my list explicitly signs up to get an email course, and I get tons of excited emails from happy users.

That stuff is popular on Hacker News because a big percent of the audience here genuinely needs help with those problems.

(I agree that the second one can be an issue, if they actually lack expertise. On the other hand, lots of startups are good even though I've never heard of them. It all depends at what level you're giving advice. If you're giving advice about a solo business, you don't need to have founded Facebook)
wat? dullspace is someone from rapgenius or?
Most startups don't work--everyone understands the odds are long. What makes it worth it is that when they work, they really, really work. So we try to give advice about how to maybe become a huge company.
We are a bootstrapped ~2.5yr old company that is doing $5M in Revenue and ~$2M in PBT. We have fallen into a bit of a funk in the past 6-12M or so growth-wise and basically flat-lined. We are talking to a few funds to raise a ~$10M round (mostly secondary) to bring the PBT down to 0 and really swing for the fences. We've thought about applying to YC but the 7% seems high for us at this stage. Is YC interested in co-investing the standard YC amount in such a round at the market valuation instead of standard YC valuation?
Did opened a support ticket? I had a similar issue, but it was solved quickly with an email to support.
Possibly naive question:

I'm a married guy in his 30s working at a major investment bank in NYC (lead quantitative role). I have a graduate degree from a non-elite school. No experience at top tech firms (had offers but didn't go).

Now, I have some cool side projects that I believe could become great consumer apps given enough care and resources. Is there any reason for me to apply to YC, and any chance of getting seed funding from you, or am I completely out of your profile for typical candidates / startups?
Sidekick – email recipient analytics
Jeremy Clarkson Petition Is Ridiculous #BringBackClarkson
Diversification only lowers risk. The expected value doesn't change.
I think it was a bad idea to write the best answer here :)
Hey Sam,

What would you recommend to entrepreneurs from post-Soviet states and the 3rd world, where they have almost no VCs and limited access to global resources. Should they think big and target the global market or just copy the ideas that work in the US for the local market?
Kerned properly, you absolutely can. Please don't make authoritative statements if you've only ever justified text by highlighting a paragraph and having the computer do it automatically.

editing to be a bit more descriptive:
Here's an example: http://i.stack.imgur.com/ahM5C.png

With hyphenation and acceptable kerning, the justified text has more characters per line.
Back in the 70's when you had people phone phreaking, the barrier to entry was high. You would need access to a box of Cap'n Crunch along with the knowledge on how to phreak. The barrier to entry was low with DRM-bypassing. You didn't need special knowledge; all you needed was a computer and the right software program. In this case the barrier to entry is high: by necessity you need to be a scientist with years of training. The principle, however, is the same. Once set lose, technology cannot be put back in the box.

Unless you're the steam engine.
As someone who has never needed to write device drivers, this is pretty interesting toy example.

I was a bit confused when it got to the part about
> detach (unbind) the kernel driver
Does this mean there is a default kernel driver on the interface and we must detach it first to make it available?
Yes, I'd call that successful too. The expectations were too high, tough.

I'm not sure why people are focusing so much on the fact that the money was obtained, but nothing useful was created. How different is it from, say, high frequency trading?
have you tried paypal?
Zimbabwean Woman Burnt Alive Near Pretoria
Mobile Phones, Participation and Political Accountability in South Sudan
Couldn't it be more accurate to position this as follows?

"At a funded startup, a VC is investing money expecting a 30+% annual return. One condition of your employment is to invest along side of them via less cash compensation. If you can't take the risk, or don't believe in the upside, other places are better."
The annoying thing with this is it's been done and redone to death and yet no one has gotten it right.
Unclear communication. It's surprising how often we get 5 minutes into an interview without being able to really understand what a startup does.
We may have some communication problems! ha
This article was like a trip down memory lane for me. 10 years ago it was Hoodia diet pills, pay day loans, and blockbuster trials that filled my war chest. Difference is after I multiplied my initial 1K, I invested the profits in starting a legitimate business. I treated every success in affiliate marketing as a fad, and I'm so glad I moved on after a few years. I've never "worked" with scummier people then those that ran CPA sites.
Google Wins Patent for Cancer Treating Wristband
Vibrations are a constant worry for the ISS. The structure is pretty stiff - each module is connected with a series of bolts (20 I think) and very stiff steel rings.

One of the long term fatigue problems they have to worry about is the impact of space ship docking - the existing APAS-95 docking ports require a significant force to initiate mating which causes the whole structure to flex, especially the truss as it's perpendicular to most docking ports.

NASA are planning to solve this with the low impact docking system (LIDS), but that's not going to be deployed until the Orion capsule flies, or perhaps the SpaceX crewed Dragon.

Day-to-day all the exercise stations are mounted on special vibration reducing mounts, even the treadmill. Back in the Space Shuttle days there would be blackout periods for exercise to reduce the vibrations transmitted through the docking port to the shuttle.

Space is a harsh mistress.
Indeed - raise your kids to eat insects or insect products, and they won't think twice about it. My wife grew up in Eastern Europe and savours the thought of chowing down on blood sausage, whereas I grew up in Australia and it just seems like a 'scab tube' to me! Besides more extreme examples, most food is an acquired taste, and inspect / insect products would be no different.
I always used to make offers like this--I think it's a good way to do it.
http://caniwearshorts.today/?location=Jyv%C3%A4skyl%C3%A4
As birdmanjeremy posted below, you have to discount for risk. This year he got $225k, next year he may get nothing.

In any case I think you're underestimating the value of benefits provided by large tech companies. Free food, top-end health insurance, maternity/paternity leave, gym memberships, retirement contributions, bonuses, etc. all add up. I've commonly heard the rule of thumb that total cost-to-employer is roughly $2N for an employee making $N in nominal salary.

The point about location is reasonable: it's harder to get a six-figure salary doing remote work, which is effectively what this is. Still I think people shouldn't be shocked about the amount of money in play here. Given the risk, it's a good payout but not a great one for someone of his (clearly very high) skill level.
Definitely looks like a killer feature of recommending emails to archive as soon as you open the app.

When you're looking for Android beta testers let me know :)
it's saying Longwood, fl is 32* F snowing, but in reality it's 86* F mostly sunny. A few other cities I checked looked correct, though
Sure, but it was necessary. I'd do it too if it meant my startup would survive.
Kant already clued me in thanks.
Do you accept some teams without a business model?
Someone has been reading too much Ayn Rand.
I see alot of criticism in this thread, but basically he ran ads against content, which is the business model of many people reading this. Vice does the same thing. AOL has become America On Listicles. Facebook and Google also run ads against content - they both made hundreds of millions from acai berry ads being run by affiliates like this guy.

I suppose the difference is in the value of the content, but then Facebook got their start by spamming everyone to death and even today actually has negative value to me. They make a significant portion of their revenue from scammy affiliate ads, so they aren't all that different (except that Facebook is worth $230 billion because they sit at the top of the affiliate marketing food chain).
em and strong would be removed in a strict HTML5 standard. All stylised elements would. Span wouldn't as span doesn't impose styling directly.
That means you'll REMOVE range-sharding right? I just thought that issue was already completed.
Not many but they're deprecated/obsolete for a reason, don't you think?
What's the story for building a little HTTP server or command-line tool ? Go has a great batteries-included standard library.
We have funded lots of people with similar backgrounds.

What will matter is the quality of your idea and progress so far.
Of course it can. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/president-lincoln...
You missed my point. By pre-exercising my ISOs and filing an 83(b) with the IRS showing that the exercise price and the market price were in fact the same when I exercised, the gain was zero, even for the purposes of AMT. Not everyone will be so lucky to be in that situation where the prices match, but I was.
It'd be cutting it close...but if you have no other debts I don't see why not. I suspect the biggest thing holding people back is that they have student loans and/or are not being offered $100k.

You can get a decent studio in the bay area for $2500 or so. If you don't have pets and you bike/pt everywhere then $100k is plenty.
Hey Gordon, I'm fascinated by your challenges with scaling applicant evaluations.

Could I learn more about it? We conduct blind auditions at scale for companies and it's a problem we're keen to learn more about.

Could we connect?
It's also the reason for Night Glider Mode: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Glider_mode

Laying the panels 'flat' with regards to the orbit saves significant amounts of fuel. There's also a mode where they do the same during the day if there's a critical shortage of fuel.
Sir/Madam, that is incorrect. Diversification can easily lower expected value, or raise it. It should maximize your signal to noise ratio, if properly done.
Really depends on the specifics, but generally it's something we like.
I help out as a mentor at an accelerator in upstate NY. Unfortunately, we see solo founders rushing to find a co-founder just to go through accelerator programs.

I wish your reply was shared widely with anyone applying to any accelerator anywhere...
Or perhaps 'at home, always yes - going out, probably no'.
That's what we have Planetary Resources for ;).
When will crickets NOT be $40 a pound? And then I'll consider it...
What are the differences in YC (good and bad) between the most recent batch and the batch you got in YC?
Lee is clearly extremely talented. He wouldn't be making 'standard' salaries, he'd be getting paid extremely well. And, I imagine he'll be getting some pretty impressive job offers now...
Yes, we will fund hardware companies with only an idea in some cases. However, the cost and time required to make a prototype has come down so much that most applicants have something built.
When you held Startup class in NYC. You brought up a few founders who were invested in... and what struck me was that each of them had previous relationships to their investors.

For example I heard at least twice from an investor: "I've known john for years prior to him coming to me with [insert company name here]."

So my question is, do you think there exists a "good ol boy's club" in SV that increases the chances by a great deal of getting funded? Or do you believe the playing field is even for those who don't have those kind of connections?
Enterprise Site Discovery Support on IE8, IE9, IE10 and New Privacy Enhancements
> If reddit gets to a billion users

What makes this number significant? Can you talk about some of those opportunities that aren't available to reddit now, but will be when they reach that scale?
Thanks, Sam!

Q: I was curious what types of tools or applications YC uses to operate (manage applications, track feedback, or schedule meetings, etc.)? Can you share your stack?
A decade in, the “Quantified Self” is still more hope than reality
Or the opposite -- get rid of zoning restrictions. Laissez-faire.
The only hard disqualifier is if no founders are 18 or older, because you can't sign contracts in that case.

I generally do not think it's a good life decision to start a company when you're 16 or 17, and I'd suggest waiting a couple of years.
Yep: http://caniwearshorts.today/?location=S%C3%A3o+Paulo

Love how some sites hate unicode...
Grandparents/other family might not want to take care of your kids every day while you're at work, which is understandable.
Business strategy for growth
Hi Sam, what is a good growth / revenue / number of users to have before applying to YC? We are in a private beta for a kind of social network, 1 month with ~700 users and ~10% weekly growth, is it good or should we wait? We are also starting in another country (not in the US) because all our contacts are here
My honest feedback:

What differentiates this from Mailbox or Google Inbox?

On the UI side, its a pretty clear clone of Mailbox (I saw you work with one of their designers, so not surprising — also not a bad thing since Mailbox has a great paradigm.)

I see you're focused on personalization. Google's priority inbox does exactly what you talked about, prioritizing those messages you're more likely to read.

Following up on that, if I'm not a power user (your target market) then do I have the email volume to justify personalization? Sure, maybe I have a bunch of new things in the Promotions tab in the morning, but I'm not sure that is a hair-on-fire problem for self-identifying non-power-users.
Yes, but not without an idea.

We tried funding teams with no ideas at one point. It didn't work. It turns out that good founders always have ideas.
I consider the purpose of competitions like this to be as much about finding bugs as the purpose of running a marathon is to get people from point A to point B. That is competitions like this are mainly about public relations in the form of what is intended to be enjoyable community involvement, finding bugs is a pleasant side effect, like the transportation aspect of a marathon.
That's just a generic argument for no new HTML ever.
If after that point things go downhill, we're out on money, but also years of our careers.

Maybe if you're thinking about a career in terms of building seniority over a long period of time at a single company. Working at a startup usually involves a good bit of responsibility and a diverse set of technologies compared to working at a larger company. It seems to me that's going to look good to most prospective employers.
> someone can get SYSTEM access on a windows machine just by getting someone to visit that site in Chrome?

Or, I believe, through any of the other Windows browsers. There was nothing Chrome specific about getting SYSTEM access.

All browsers were pwned, and Lee used kernel driver bugs to elevate privileges. That exploit could have been used in tandem with any of the browser exploits on Windows. Once you can run arbitrary code...
There's plenty of land if you build vertically instead of flat. There's a bunch of 2-4 story buildings that could be 10-20+ story buildings.
How else is the startup scene broken in Boston?
I have lived very comfortably in Oakland for the last year on a ~100K salary. 30 min commute door to door, eat out a lot, travel, etc. With a quite nice 1bed apartment with a view.
This is very timely. We are just starting to work on a new centralized logging system using logstache->kafka->elasticsearch->kibana, we may also use kibana for some other tasks as well. Anyone have any experience using that setup? Pros/Cons?

We used graylog for a while but ran into some issues with back pressure on elastic search (hence kafka).
I don't know anything about this data, so excuse my ignorance. What's available in terms of historical data? Can I get images for a certain region for the last 10 years, say?
Does YC consider the potential of bad press to itself when funding a company? If a founder were to apply with a startup such as Bad Dragon (dildo manufacturer), abortion clinic-specific software platform, wikileaks-esque platform, or any other such controversial idea, would it reduce the founder's chance of being accepted?

Are there any startups that have been funded by YC that led to publicity fallout?
Not stuck, I choose to be an employee. There's also a sense of loyalty since the leadership treated me well even when it wasn't clear we were going to make it, and I still enjoy the work I do. In some ways I picked the right company even if we would have never IPO'd.
When should a startup start to monetize? Currently we are building a user base and iterating the product based on feedback. What do you think about delaying monetization?
Have you ever had a bug burger? They're NOT bad at all.
People in that situation usually save up money before applying to YC. I think this is the right answer--it seems important to startup's health that they get started on little capital.