I have just scraped the comment section of the recent "Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch" announcement:

- Aditya and Karan (Warrant)

- Anta and Karthik (Inai)

- Nishant and Pranav (Nino Foods)

- Jan and Anahi (Perfekto)

- Bruno and Guilherme (Jestor)

- Antonio, Felipe, Joaquin and Francois (Chipax)

- Ali and Omair (Abhi)

As with every place "you need to fit in": Do you fit in here?

I have the feeling that YC have "their favs": Kind of: Young, global and more and more very "boring"/normal business. They rather replace existing businesses with something better, than to innovate/disrupt. It works for them now, since they are such a household brand.

A few things.

- it's misleading to cherry-pick a single post. The analysis for all 400+ Launch HNs would look entirely different (https://news.ycombinator.com/launches).

- the type of startups you mention (extending an existing business to a large market) are more likely to be in an aggregate thread than a standalone Launch HN [1], so you've effectively assumed your conclusion.

- you presumably know nothing about the ages of those founders, so bringing them up in a post alleging age discrimination (or more precisely, not alleging age discrimination) and misleadingly adding the word "young" is... dubious.

- you list the founders' names but nothing about their startups. Why? Obviously because they have international origins. Following that with "do you fit in here" strikes me as a veiled slur.

- it's also pretty silly. Why shouldn't YC fund great startups regardless of where they come from? You'll find YC doing exactly that in every category: national background as well as all the others (race, gender, class, and yes, age).

[1] That's because, for this batch, we've been trying to give every YC startup who wants to launch on HN a chance to do so. That requires a huge number of editorial decisions because there are so many more startups than front page slots. I make the editorial decisions based not on the quality of the startup or their market (let alone irrelevant attributes of founders), but on how interesting the HN thread is likely to be to the community here. Mostly that has to do with avoiding repetition (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...). In other words, the considerations are completely unrelated to everything you're implying. I explained all this when announcing the aggregate launch threads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27877280.

I deleted that sentence because it made my post too long, but since you've quoted it, I'll put it back. I was talking there about the editorial decision surrounding HN launches. That's not related to YC's funding decisions.

It's not clear to me what your point is, unless it was simply to mention unconscious bias. Saying that you or anyone would somehow be risking yourself by posting to HN is also a little obscure.

It's a risk any time I speak to you, because a large part of my life is HN, and speaking to you risks another penalty. I didn't mean it as an accusation, it just seems to be the mechanics of me-speaking-to-you.

I also apologize for quoting a sentence that you cut. That happened to me earlier, and it's always frustrating, even if it was unintentional.

My point was, your comment seems to be mistaken in a revealing way. If it were true that YC was biased, then your editorial decisions wouldn't be able to influence anything in relation to the bias. The bias would already have an impact on the startup pool that you can select from.

In other words, your decisions about HN's "Meet the Batch" threads seem unrelated to the question of YC's alleged age discrimination. But you felt that your decisions were related, since you were saying "We don't select for age" in regards to the Meet The Batch threads.

Bias is something that you can't force someone to care about. I'm hoping that it may be a lightbulb moment for you, as it once was for me. It's never any fun to be a part of an organization accused of some form of bias, but asking yourself "Could it be true?" is a mental exercise that personally I found helpful.

That said, you were correct that this commenter posted those startups without knowing the ages of the founders. It could be possible that those startups have older founders. But no one seems to be quite sure. It's lame of them to make an insinuation like that without knowing the ages of the founders – burden of proof – but it's also worth considering whether it's true, even if it was a lame accusation.

Anyway. I didn't say any of this to put you on the defensive. That'd be the opposite way to change your mind. Just think it over a moment, is all I ask.

EDIT: After re-reading this chain, perhaps I'm off the mark here (a common theme). From my perspective, it sounded like someone was saying "Well, it might be true; these startups do seem pretty young and trendy..." and then you were listing reasons why that was mistaken.

It sounded like you didn't necessarily care about whether YC is age discriminatory. My goal here was to convince you it may be worth caring about it.

If you already do care about that, then never mind. My mistake. I see now that your point about editorial decisions was an expansion of a different train of thought.

One last point to give a moment of pause: If you list N random politicians, most of them will probably be pretty old, because politics is biased against youth. If you list N random YC companies, will the ages of their founders tend to skew younger or older (relative to the proportion of those age groups that apply)? That might be one way to investigate the claim.

Populating a place (making babies) is not a problem and if it starts to be one, then something is wrong with the place: If future prospects are very grimm, then people stop having kids. This is something seen across the entire western world. Wages are too low and to add insult to injury people outside the west (Jews, Arabs, PoC) demand immigration to solve the (wrong) problem, but serving their own interests.

This became such an accepted narrative, that it is hard to correct (I just did) and gets pushed and used else/everywhere, like here, in a small island: Pitcairn.

Something is wrong with the place itself: "As of 2012, just two children had been born on Pitcairn in the 21 years prior."

Which is also shown in the absolute migration numbers: "For a recent survey that contacted hundreds of islanders who have left Pitcairn over the years, only 33 participated and just 3 expressed a desire to return."

It's like a company which pays peanuts having 80% of their positions open and complaining about not being able to find new employees and "HR (desperately) searching".

The article is out of the category that HR pulls all the time ala "Why you should work at place XYZ". But the reality is, that they only hire one specific person out of 100, that has exactly the skill they need.

So, fundamentally everything is going the right way on Pitcairn: A harsh place gets depopulated. And someone is spinning the fairytale and roses story, because it's one of the rare things there is to do: A payed (government) job on the island.

And: Everyone is just so isolated on that island and super-welcoming (of course) to someone new (and nice, ... he needs to be "a nice chap") arriving, because... excitement.

You make a lot of typical western assumptions here and also assumptions because you have a migration background yourself ("they want to (re)populate the island" - Why would they "want that"? - Edit: Now I got you, but the island is just small and populated already and also: Populating a place (making babies) isn't a problem for most people ;-), they actually enjoy it and in the case with this island they even start very young :-O. The website offers relocation to a super-remote, poor and harsh place. It's out of the category that HR pulls all the time ala "Why you should work at place XYZ". But the reality is, that they only hire one specific person out of 100, that has exactly the skill they need. I think the "child rape" cases are rather a symptom: Life is hard, there is nothing to do. If your life expectancy is 25 years, then you rather reproduce early. Reproducing (populating) a place is not a problem. If it starts to be one ("As of 2012, just two children had been born on Pitcairn in the 21 years prior.") then something is wrong with the place itself. And as the migration numbers show: "For a recent survey that contacted hundreds of islanders who have left Pitcairn over the years, only 33 participated and just 3 expressed a desire to return." something is wrong with the place.

It's like a company which pays peanuts having 80% of their positions open and complaining about not being able to find new employees and "HR (desperately) searching".

So, fundamentally everything is going the right way on Pitcairn: A harsh place gets depopulated. And someone is spinning the fairytale and roses story, because it's one of the rare things there is to do (a payed (government) job on the island).

> still had a hand written note taped to the side of it, something to the effect of "Please don't turn this computer off."

You sound like "nobody has cleaned this piece of paper off [yet]" or "will be cleaned of soon". But it is the central piece of the exhibit, very intentionally. Probably written by TBL himself and illustrating a feature of the new invention: "The internet is always on"

And I heard of this before, that TBL developed the WWW on a (NEXT-)workstation, which also was the first www-server with a sticker on it that said "This machine is a server. DO NOT POWER DOWN!" (https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:This_Machine_is_a_...)

Can you just use one dish and then connect everyone to this one dish? Costs 100$ a month divided by all inhabitants. It makes sense to setup one dish and connect a couple of people to it. It does not make sense to setup one dish next to another.

Remote areas = Mostly people, that can't actually afford it.

Does Starlink support this or is it against their interest?

Today's analogy is bitcoin... Will all Bitcoin just be lost one day, because all keys get lost?

I am aware that "there are solutions", but are they (really) enough? Isn't "breaking in" required at some point?

Another endgame for Bitcoin is that all Bitcoin are stolen through the one tool which helps with ("unbreakable") encryption: Hacking / social engineering.

Besides that we hab substantial discussions about why PGP isn't really cutting it for use with email (to cumbersome, at one point you lose your private key, recipient struggles to decrypt, etc.).

You don't own your bitcoin then (if you are not the only one who has the key) - Elon Musk pointed that out. The custodian owns your Bitcoin (and can run away with them or also lose the key).

No shit, but the successful custodians are the ones who have insurance on deposits and enough reputation that people are not afraid of them exit scamming. You don’t physically hold your stocks and cash either.

"No shit" - It's a bit over the top to denounce me here as "Mr. Obvious", but funny, so this shall be forgiven to you. Musk is hot and at the forefront and he said it the other day. There is a lot of running away with bitcoins still/currently (Mt. Gox) and they are not insured. Probably the endgame of Bitcoin: All Bitcoin get lost or stolen, but were reimbursed/payed out via an insurance :-D - The full value of all Bitcoin payed by the insurance.

Everything is hackable. Connect a computer to the internet and you basically have lost.

We know that today, encryption isn't the final solution when there are hackers and social engineering.