Welcome x 11(blog.ycombinator.com)
blog.ycombinator.com
Welcome x 11
https://blog.ycombinator.com/welcome-x11
42 comments
My immediate reaction when I saw this on twitter: "YC is funding x11? But I thought it was Xorg now...".
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Since Sam has taken over at the helm, the expansion of YC including adding partners and employees has been dramatic. The YC website got an overhaul, added (the macro), created YC fellowship and Y Research. It seems like Sam's vision for YC is much larger than PG's was.
While under PG, YC kept things small, specific, and focused. Don't get me wrong, I think Sam is doing an absolutely fantastic job. However there is a stark contrast in scale, speed, and vision.
While under PG, YC kept things small, specific, and focused. Don't get me wrong, I think Sam is doing an absolutely fantastic job. However there is a stark contrast in scale, speed, and vision.
I agree that there has been a big difference, but I think you may have cause and effect backwards. I was under the impression that PG handed over the reins largely because YC was growing and he wasn't interested in running a large organization.
Yes - Sam was hired to scale it.
Darn, I thought they were setting a trend in windowing systems away from Mac...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System
"Chris Clark [...] was Mayor of Mountain View.View"
Is that a typo or a file name? Hmmm, I might just add "Creator of the Universe.txt" to my resume.
Is that a typo or a file name? Hmmm, I might just add "Creator of the Universe.txt" to my resume.
A few Loopt and ImagineK12 alum being brought in to the tent. What's the connection?
Sam Altman was a co-founder and the CEO of Loopt
YC and ImagineK12 merged (http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/10/y-combinator-absorbs-edtech...).
Geoff is/was a partner at both YC and ImagineK12.
Geoff is/was a partner at both YC and ImagineK12.
Will someone please explain what is an associate at YC compared to traditional firms?
Brad has a more traditional Associate role since he's on a finance team (Continuity). I'm responsible for the day-to-day of the founders in the current batch and keep my finger on the pulse of our alumni community (in associate-speak, on our portfolio companies). There's very little financial modeling for me (thank god) and a lot of figuring out how to 1/ scale our resources and 2/ make our growing network feel connected.
Did YC research ever find someone for the universal income study?
Matt Krisiloff?
https://www.facebook.com/events/1088219411199460/
https://www.facebook.com/events/1088219411199460/
At a talk in SF this week Matt Krisiloff said they've narrowed down the around 1000 applications to about 10 at the moment.
"Well, that's a funny way to spell X11"
I was like "Welcome X11? You mean there's someone at YC who hasn't boarded the Wayland hypetrain?"
Maybe its a cross product? If we assume "Welcome" is a 2x1 matrix and "11" is shorthand for [1 1]
I had two contrasting reactions/thoughts.
The first was that these additions seem excellent and that YC will be much more capable and robust by virtue of them.
The second was a reflection on the criticism written against VC in the press for investing in "their buddies' companies" (ex: a16z partners investing in their friends' --who are experienced entrepreneurs with big visions-- companies) and whether we will see a narrative in the future against the common practice of VC firms hiring what can be seen from the outside as "their friends".
(personally I think the practice makes sense since you've often worked with them before and know their character and abilities)
The first was that these additions seem excellent and that YC will be much more capable and robust by virtue of them.
The second was a reflection on the criticism written against VC in the press for investing in "their buddies' companies" (ex: a16z partners investing in their friends' --who are experienced entrepreneurs with big visions-- companies) and whether we will see a narrative in the future against the common practice of VC firms hiring what can be seen from the outside as "their friends".
(personally I think the practice makes sense since you've often worked with them before and know their character and abilities)
What's the purpose of the YC software team?
A lot of things! They're making some amazing software for applications and all the data that comes with it, internal tools for office hours and events, and ongoing improvements to our security and infrastructure, just to name a few things without going into too much detail. They're also there to listen to all of us complain about not having this-or-that feature :)
Congrats to all the IK12 folks! Can't wait to see more of your amazing work as part of YC.
I'd like to have more details about YC research and YC software.
Confusing or misleading titles aside, YC has made literally billions of dollars off of free software and the under- or unpaid labor that produces it. They absolutely should be patronizing free software projects, perhaps not X11/X.org/Wayland, but certainly outfits like the Debian, OpenBSD, or FreeBSD foundations that make their startups possible.
Instead of laughing at ourselves for having misread a title as suggesting that YC might actually contribute something back, we should be publicly shaming them for not doing so and being an open source free-rider.
Instead of laughing at ourselves for having misread a title as suggesting that YC might actually contribute something back, we should be publicly shaming them for not doing so and being an open source free-rider.
Hi, I'm Tom, one of the folks joining.
I actually work a fair amount with FreeBSD and its surrounding organizations and have helped several projects get financial backing including paying for code updates.
You can look forward to more updates as time goes on :)
Congrats to Tom Brady on venturing into the VC world!
Haha, I definitely thought this was going to be about investments in the X Window System, not 11 different people joining YC.
I thought the exact same thing.
Yep. I was thinking "X11 again? Is X.Org forking?"
haaaa. me too.
Welcome * 11 instead, perhaps?
Welcome × 11. There have been some developments in character sets since the 60s, not that you’d know from our programming languages.
Julia has support for unicode in the language (unicode identifiers, etc) and even has some operators/functions (they are the same thing in julia) aliased as their usual symbols, like "in" is aliased to "∈".
[0] http://docs.julialang.org/en/release-0.4/stdlib/collections/...
[0] http://docs.julialang.org/en/release-0.4/stdlib/collections/...
That doesn't look very different from the letter x though, I think I'd still prefer the asterisk even if there was a × button on my keyboard.
There has been a × key on the normal PC keyboard since 1986, on the numeric keypad section.
[citation needed] I'm looking at my 1992 Model M right now and it has just a "*", unless you count "+" as a lopsided "×".
Depends on the manufacturer – some, like a Keytronic I can see from here, definitely have a × glyph.
We added a space to the title with a dismaying feeling that it would not be enough.