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YC Changes

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: YC Changes

#91

Post by reflexive »

exolymph wrote: post #87
reflexive wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an English-speaking primarily Western audience Fair point, although it hinges on the assumption that HackerNews is mainly of interest to Westerners who are primarily English-speakers. When it comes to casual assertions of racism - most often the one who smelt it, dealt it.

Since you just made an accusation of casual racism, by your own reasoning, you must be casually racist. > although it hinges on the assumption that HackerNews is mainly of interest to Westerners who are primarily English-speakers. This is almost definitely true. I would bet money that the majority of HN readers speak English as a first language. Not all, of course, but greater than 50%.

Paul's meaning was to say "a completely alien group of people" and made the assumption that nobody reading his blog was a cannibal. If he had said "Sam would even impress a group of people of color", that might be racist. Certainly equating cannibals with people of color is racist.

The racism at play is not found in Paul's original phrase, but rather is latent in the listener's mind. Don't blame the messenger.

Of course it may be that, today, 51% of this site's readers are white native English speakers. Do you believe we should therefore interpret every statement according to how it's likely to be understood by this particular group? Remember these posts will be archived for posterity.

To fight racism is to promote racism. To ignore racism is to destroy racism.

As for your subtle quote-fudging: a "casual assertion of racism" isn't an "accusation of casual racism", so I don't think I can address that assertion.

Re: YC Changes

#92

Post by unclebucknasty »

jonnycowboy wrote: post #28
maxerickson wrote: post #3

The theme of YC Research seems to be futurology.

I would say: automation & AI: - automated cities & robotic workers - HARC working on the interfaces for the "workers" - basic income to replace minimum wage earners' incomes Would love to work on this path!

Earnest question: do you believe that full automation and mass displacement of workers, combined with a basic income will lead to anything resembling a decent quality of life for most?

Because I want to believe it, but all contemporary evidence points to an outcome that includes an even more extreme stratification of wealth and masses of struggling, impoverished people.

Re: YC Changes

#93

Post by afinlayson »

vinceguidry wrote: post #76
afinlayson wrote: post #54

So YC is the new Alphabet?

My guess is that just about any organization that's using it's business as a vehicle to push social changes is eventually going to start adopting such a structure. You want to keep the business profitable while at the same time making room for new efforts. If you just started opening up new departments in the already-profitable organization you risk watering down what makes it magical.

I actually think it's a great idea. So far the people who don't like it are they smaller is better crowd. The run it like a 3 person coffee shop crowd.

Re: YC Changes

#94

Post by brianliou91 »

I would personally seek Michael's advice when I was in the S15 batch because of how earnest his advice was. Even for companies outside his group you could really tell the effort he would give to provide quality guidance. One example of how much Michael cares was in the days before our demo day, I was the first to come in at 8AM and Michael literally had slept on the couch having stayed up all night providing feedback the night before. He comes out of the partners office, sits down, and has me pitch maybe 10 minutes after he probably woke up :) Congrats!

Re: YC Changes

#95

Post by pb »

anonymoose7191 wrote: post #60

I expect to be downvoted but my YC interview with Michael a couple summers back left a bad taste in my mouth. I'm not really sure he asked more than "how is this a billion dollar company?" multiple times during the 10 minutes. I'm not sure why YC would pay $1k to fly us to Mountain View if that question was that important and wasn't already answered by our application. Hope that was just a fluke though... Good luck Y…

It's very difficult to truly evaluate a business without talking to the founders. Sometimes a bad sounding business (such as air mattress rentals) will turn out to be a really great business (such as AirBnb).

That said, I'm sorry you had a bad experience. We're working on better ways to pre-screen startups before interviews so we can hopefully avoid as much unnecessary travel as possible.

Re: YC Changes

#96

Post by btilly »

Seeing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Buchheit in the announcement is a fun coincidence. He founded gmail. One of the things he did with gmail is gave it a command-line user interface.

I recently found out that a lot of people I would expect to know about it, don't. If that includes you, go to the gear on the upper right of your gmail, select that, then Settings, then turn keyboard shortcuts on and save.

Typing "?" randomly in gmail will let you know what shortcuts are there. It takes time for your fingers to learn them, but scanning email with j k [ ] is so much faster than a mouse. I don't even think before using / to search. :-)

Re: YC Changes

#99

Post by dangero »

snowmaker wrote: post #40
errythingisneat wrote: post #35

What the world needs is a solution to funding orders of magnitude more startups than currently get funded. YC is in the incredibly fortunate position of having this opportunity but instead it looks like Sam Altman is falling into the same trap Larry Page did with Google. He's turning it into a bit of a rich guy's playground... On behalf of the world that wasn't born into a world of wealth and elite connections: Pleas…

YC would like to fund a lot more startups. We're working on this. Also, being connected doesn't help people get into YC. We have no connection to most of the companies we fund.

being connected does help people get in:

-Connected people can more easily get an interview slot

-Connected people can get feedback on their application before submission

-Connected people can more easily coaching and advice before their interview from alumni and partners

Re: YC Changes

#100

Post by gmarx »

reflexive wrote: post #55
gmarx wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know of an island of cannibals which are white Europeans?

Yes, Pitcairn and Roanoke come immediately to mind. Notice also that Paul writes "an island full of cannibals", not "an island of cannibals", so you may want to avoid making subtle and potentially misleading distortions to the original text. Edit: When you say "island of cannibals" it implies an indigenous, or at least long-established, population, but "island full of cannibals" could easily mean a group of recent se…

You are the one distorting the meaning. The joke clearly implies an existing culture of cannibals, a society entirely hostile and dangerous to outsiders and yet somehow brought to heel by Sam's super amazing charisma or work ethic or whatever else is the criteria by which cannibals choose their leaders. If a shipwreck situation were intended he would have stated it that way.
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