snake117

Very well put. I remember seeing a post last month about the researcher from Duke University who resigned for similar reasons:

https://www.facebook.com/jfgariepyneuro/posts/46644277686075....

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10177775

It really is nice to see an organization like YC take an interest in research. I applaud Sam for making that considerable donation and hope the outcome is better than expected.

Can you give an example or two of what you got? I'm just curious to see some examples of what Quirky made, especially the more trivial items, like you described.

I had the same feeling when I read how they told Mark to keep the laptop.

I wish you guys all the best and hope this gets sorted out soon.

One really stood out for me:

> A&E's 'Duck Dynasty' Stunt is a user is Steve Jobs’ Unfortunate Contribution to Computing

I kept looking at the URL and thinking: "How are they using the same domain?" I came back an hour later only to realize that the i and n are switched in ycombniator.

That was a real "smack my head" moment.

You could try picking up a reading & comprehension test-prep book, like you would find for SAT/ACT, GRE, MCAT, etc and practice reading the passages fast and doing some questions for comprehension. This way, you have concise material (500 - 800 word passages), that are complex in wording and ideas, and you can test yourself to see how much of the passage you understood.

Reading fast is one thing and comprehension/retention of the material is another. Ideally, you would want to improve all three simultaneously. That's why I'm suggesting start off with smaller, more manageable passages and analyze your understanding as you progress. You may get every question wrong in the beginning, but don't let that bum you out. Keep doing a few passages every day and you should definitely see improvement.

Once you build up a strong base, you can move onto articles, like you would find in The New Yorker for example, that can span several pages and are littered with more complex ideas and examples. You really won't be able to test yourself with questions at the end, but you can ask yourself general questions, like:

"What was the main idea?"

"What side did the author take?" (if the piece was argumentative in nature)

"What were two examples that the author used to support their claim?" (again, if a claim was being made)

Be honest with yourself, if you find it difficult to answer questions like these, read through the article again and go through it with a highlighter (sparingly, mind you). Also, you can write little notes in the margin to help you gather the content and your thoughts as you go along.

I hope this helps and best of luck :)

I'm assuming your brand new to Rails so I would definitely check out "Agile Web Development with Rails 4" (https://pragprog.com/book/rails4/agile-web-development-with-...). It was written by DHH, Sam Ruby, and Dave Thomas. I started reading through this after I did the online tutorial and I have not been disappointed so far. There are some other books they have that seem interesting. I'm thinking of getting "Crafting Rails 4 Applications" by Jose Valim when I'm finished.

I also hear that Michael Hartl has written some great material (https://www.railstutorial.org/), but I haven't read anything by him yet.

Hope this helps and best of luck.

Art style is a great selling point for me personally. I often find my self reading articles on The New Yorker or Nautilus, not only because the content seems interesting, but because the accompanying graphic makes me intrigued even more. So when I see look at these posters, I try to take in the full message; something more than just the propaganda.

I'm learning Rails right now and this isn't the first time I heard how slow RoR can be. Hell, there's a whole site answering the "Can rails scale?" question (http://canrailsscale.com/).

A lot of what Rails does, and even the little things, like naming conventions in ActiveRecord, intuitively make sense to me. If RoR ever does expire because another language/framework displaces it (maybe Elixir/Phoenix?) or because of poor/no support from a big company, I wouldn't look at it as a waste of time. Overall, I'm seeing a tried-and-true method of creating web applications and I'm enjoying it so far.

RoR can still get you where you need to go and fast, which is what you need when starting out. And if you ever find yourself in the same situation as Twitter, then you can make the switch...or better yet, improve on Ruby and give back to the Ruby community.

Anyone else heading to the Ann Arbor event?

There is a better quality version of the video for those interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQZGppeO1lY

I like the "startup feel" that WhatsApp retained; hire few people that can solve immediate problems and roll out necessary features. This alone takes a great deal of work, but admittedly much more manageable because you don't have to deal with unnecessary features that could potentially hinder your customers experience.

So far I like the feature that new links are posted in green. That will give new sites the opportunity to standout against the larger, common sites posted (like bbc, wired, nautilus, etc). I just hope some users won't take advantage and scurry around for new sites to take advantage of this new feature.

Thanks for the changes. I'll definitely send feedback along the way.

> Today we know that a large population of cortical neurons are “silent.”

> This energy budget puts limits on how much of the cortex can be engaged at once

I passed over it during my first read through as well. But at certain parts the author did state explicitly that these were cortical neurons.

Glad you enjoyed it. I got lost in his site the first time I found it too so I know what you're talking about.

Already posted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10209966

It was interesting though :)

Here is the new link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10197486

That's odd. Thanks for letting me know. I thought it was a good read so I'll try again.

I was thinking of working in a lab that does research in the field of computational biology. However, I never took a linear algebra course before so I always felt like it would be a waste to make an attempt. I did a quick skim and this looks very promising. If I can comprehend this, then maybe I will be of some use in the lab. Thanks for sharing :)

This was a great read. I've always heard about Clojure and now I have a better idea as to what it is. I'm still going to stick with what I've heard all along: it doesn't matter what language you write in, it matters how you write it.

I don't really know what to think except the sheer amount of applications they receive. They received over 6500 applications for their YC Fellowship program alone and the application was open for only a week. Can you imagine having to write a personalized rejection letter for each application? That would take a much longer time as oppose of sending a template email. Believe me, I would love to hear personalized feedback as much as you, but I get why they can't do it. Angels and VCs don't deal with the volume that YC or TechStar do, so they can afford to personalize their rejection emails accordingly (if you're even lucky to get one in some cases). I found these two links to be particularly interesting:

https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/39kswc/vc_rejecti...

https://medium.com/@bchesky/7-rejections-7d894cbaa084

I haven't heard any stories where YC used their database nefariously and gave away ideas to other founders. This is interesting though, I'll keep this in mind.

Personally, I don't really see it like that at all. I mean they obviously will ask you for past accomplishments so they can see if you have the aptitude, but I don't see it as an application where you solely brag about yourself.

> YC always said it was more about the founders than the idea

I've heard this before. I do believe it's true, but only after the initial idea. They have had some cases where the founders applied with an idea, got accepted, and then found out that their initial idea wasn't going to take off. Now they are really investing in you, the founder, over your idea. The stories of Optimizely (https://soundcloud.com/akharris/startup-school-radio-ep-3-pe...) and Codecademy come to mind.

You're right, you can do all those without applying, but why not just hit submit anyways? It's not going to hurt you and even if you do get that soul-crushing rejection, who cares? You're going to face a lot more cruel rejections from angels and VCs so you might as well start building up your tolerance. And if you really can't tolerate it then pursuing a startup isn't for you, because it gets much more stressful as you go. This is a good explanation as to why they might reject your app: http://www.ycombinator.com/whynot/

They eventually do share the ideas; just not in the beginning. Some companies announce themselves in the beginning and some don't. Eventually we will hear about them when Demo Day comes around. This is a post listing the recent class: http://blog.ycombinator.com/congratulations-to-the-yc-summer...

This is a compiled list of all the companies that have ever attended YC and their status (though it seems it hasn't been updated yet): http://yclist.com/

In my eyes, the application is free and has a lot of benefit in just doing it. It makes you think about your idea in depth and asks questions targeting different areas. For example, you may have thought about how you are going to get a user base, but have you thought about how you are going to get the first user, the second, and third? Have you thought that far in the beginning? When I looked at the application this was the question that stumped me, because I had a general plan/idea as to how to go about getting users, but not something concrete that could help me get the first few. So now I'm rethinking my strategy and have some better ideas for my app.

I would still do it. The worst that will happen is that they say "no".

Bless you for sharing.

I bookmarked it for those off days when I need a good laugh.

With regards to your first question I was thinking the same thing so I did a quick search and found this post: https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1626175

Here he says: > Six pieces of information can be stolen from the RFID chip on a U.S. passport: your name, nationality, gender, date of birth, place of birth, and a digitized photograph.

I don't think he's talking about a trade. At the end, he was just saying that he's on the same boat as he's in the same predicament looking for a domain that with a different TLD.

I've never been in this situation before so I would just ask what he's willing to pay for it. That will probably give you a rough number to work with and maybe you can ask for a little more. Sorry I can't give you an exact number. All the best.

This kind of reminds me of something I almost ordered: http://varianto25.com/code-deck.html

Nice work by the way!

I haven't done anything linear algebra related since my high school Algebra II course. This was really simple for me to follow so thanks for posting. Its a shame that the authors don't update it, they have same great content and I would've definitely followed it.

I want to preface by saying that I am not an expert by any means in the blogging domain, but so far I like what I see. The homepage shows all the benefits of your platform in a clean and well formatted theme and has a nice flow.

The one thing that I will bring to your attention is that your platform seems eerily similar to that of Posthaven's, especially the page explaining your pledge. Don't get me wrong, I think it's great that you offer that. However, you may want to include a table that lists your platform's features vs that of your competitors. Just a thought.

All the best