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Was Y Combinator worth it?

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Re: Was Y Combinator worth it?

#91

Post by rytill »

KerrAvon wrote: post #51
fragmede wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a rounding error in some of the budgets that startups deal with. It becomes closer to the situation with the Long Now, which is a clock to last 10,000 years. With LLMs, even the moderation becomes an fixture in the project that can endure. With Solar and a GPU and some Internet.

Did someone invent working LLM-based moderation? Serious question; it'd be interesting.

I’ve found this API useful. It’s a classifier: https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/moderation

Re: Was Y Combinator worth it?

#92

Post by GravityLab »

inopinatus wrote: post #80
btown wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why the lucky combinator

y = ->(f) { ->(x) { x.(x) }.( ->(x) { f.(->(v) { x.(x).(v) }) } ) }

This is very beautiful. TIL about Y combinators. Thanks for sharing. I looked it up with ChatGPT to learn more about what it is and then compared it with versions from different languages.

JavaScript:

    const Y = f => (x => f(v => x(x)(v)))
                   (x => f(v => x(x)(v)));
Lisp:

    (define (Y f)
     ((lambda (x) (f (lambda (y) ((x x) y))))
       (lambda (x) (f (lambda (y) ((x x) y))))))
Haskell:

    y :: (a -> a) -> a
    y f = f (y f)
OCaml:

    let z f = 
      let fn = ref (fun x -> x) in
      fn := (fun x -> f (!fn x));
      !fn;;
I think I still like the Ruby the most since it's easier to grok due to the Lisp having so many parens towards the end. The Haskell is beautiful to look at too.

Re: Was Y Combinator worth it?

#93

Post by SL61 »

momothereal wrote: post #18
electricduck wrote: post #5

You know, I've been reading Hacker News for god-knows-how-long, and it never occurred to me to look up what Y Combinator even was.

I feel like I used to see a lot more Launch HN, Y Combinator batches, etc. Or maybe I started tuning them out

I've been on here for a decade. Back in the day, HN really gave off a sense that most users were aspiring entrepreneurs, with a lot more discussion about YC, et al.

Re: Was Y Combinator worth it?

#94

Post by lintcoder »

GravityLab wrote: post #92
inopinatus wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

y = ->(f) { ->(x) { x.(x) }.( ->(x) { f.(->(v) { x.(x).(v) }) } ) }

This is very beautiful. TIL about Y combinators. Thanks for sharing. I looked it up with ChatGPT to learn more about what it is and then compared it with versions from different languages. JavaScript: const Y = f => (x => f(v => x(x)(v))) (x => f(v => x(x)(v))); Lisp: (define (Y f) ((lambda (x) (f (lambda (y) ((x x) y)))) (lambda (x) (f (lambda (y) ((x x) y)))))) Haskell: y :: (a -> a) -> a y f = f (y f) OCaml: let z…

[flagged]

Re: Was Y Combinator worth it?

#95

Post by armini »

lettergram wrote: post #74

As someone who was recently rejected from YC and still went on to raise >$1m in the last 6 months -- I have mixed feelings. We incorporated in April, started with nothin' and had funding by the end of June. Raising Capital is _very_ time consuming & distracting. I did a bunch of up front work; the first month (April - early May) I had to build designs, meet potential customers, build out profiles, get them to write l…

thanks for sharing your experience, hope the venture goes well....

Re: Was Y Combinator worth it?

#96

Post by somenameforme »

KerrAvon wrote: post #51
fragmede wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a rounding error in some of the budgets that startups deal with. It becomes closer to the situation with the Long Now, which is a clock to last 10,000 years. With LLMs, even the moderation becomes an fixture in the project that can endure. With Solar and a GPU and some Internet.

Did someone invent working LLM-based moderation? Serious question; it'd be interesting.

Yeah, there was finally a proven and actionable model developed at the end of 2024. [1]

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrQyMrmRBsk

Re: Was Y Combinator worth it?

#97

Post by creamyhorror »

seabass-labrax wrote: post #50

One thing that makes me sceptical about Y Combinator is their emphasis on in-person meetings and USA-centric approach in general. Firstly, unless you and your co-founders permanently relocate, you could start to burn through that $500k pretty quickly in travel costs. Is relocating to the USA legal for you? Will it cost you more money compared to your current cost of living? Do you have existing staff or facilities th…

Back in 2012, partly to address the non-US HN audience and bring them together as a community of startups, "N Combinator"/nReduce launched: https://venturebeat.com/entrepreneur/nreduce/

It shut down over a year later, but it was an interesting effort.

Re: Was Y Combinator worth it?

#98

Post by 6510 »

seizethecheese wrote: post #59
momothereal wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like I used to see a lot more Launch HN, Y Combinator batches, etc. Or maybe I started tuning them out

They moved launches here: https://www.ycombinator.com/launches

imho it should be a video page like ted talk

Re: Was Y Combinator worth it?

#99

Post by TheDong »

GravityLab wrote: post #92
inopinatus wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

y = ->(f) { ->(x) { x.(x) }.( ->(x) { f.(->(v) { x.(x).(v) }) } ) }

This is very beautiful. TIL about Y combinators. Thanks for sharing. I looked it up with ChatGPT to learn more about what it is and then compared it with versions from different languages. JavaScript: const Y = f => (x => f(v => x(x)(v))) (x => f(v => x(x)(v))); Lisp: (define (Y f) ((lambda (x) (f (lambda (y) ((x x) y)))) (lambda (x) (f (lambda (y) ((x x) y)))))) Haskell: y :: (a -> a) -> a y f = f (y f) OCaml: let z…

> The Haskell is beautiful to look at too.

As you might expect for a moderately complicated topic, ChatGPT is hallucinating. That is beautiful because it is not the Y combinator.

That is the Fixed-point combinator. The Y combinator is used to implement recursion when you can't directly reference the function binding.

In the haskell solution, y is used recursively on the rhs, so it's not the Y combinator, and so it's defining something different and simpler, so of course it looks different and simpler.

Do not trust ChatGPT without first giving it a brief bit of thought yourself.

And also, please don't just post ChatGPT's ramblings here if you have nothing worth adding. Most of us, I think, are here for human discussions, not to talk to chatGPT indirectly. If I wanted chatgpt's ramblings, I would go to that site instead.

Re: Was Y Combinator worth it?

#100

Post by issung »

How do I get involved in the community? I have no real passion for founding, but could be considered by most to be a "10x developer" I enjoy working on challenging projects, not necessarily coming up with business ideas.
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