rmobin

Agreed! People think it's so easy to determine what's true or not at scale. Do I want Facebook employees or (algorithms written by them) making that call? No way.

PG holds Sam in very high regard:

"Honestly, Sam is, along with Steve Jobs, the founder I refer to most when I'm advising startups. On questions of design, I ask "What would Steve do?" but on questions of strategy or ambition I ask "What would Sama do?"

What I learned from meeting Sama is that the doctrine of the elect applies to startups. It applies way less than most people think: startup investing does not consist of trying to pick winners the way you might in a horse race. But there are a few people with such force of will that they're going to get whatever they want."

http://paulgraham.com/5founders.html

With regards to fat shaming and "gluttonous sloths", Stephan did say: "I do not consider it a "moral failure" to eat unhealthy food that is under your nose, socially accepted and in some cases even considered healthy. I think one of the main problems is simply a lack of accurate information."

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/05/food-reward-do...

I never thought of food reward as typical fat shaming, but I suppose some of the "food reward friday" posts come across that way.

I'm reading through some posts and comments by "itsthewoo", and I'm trying to make sense of her experience. Thanks for pointing her out - food reward has worked really well for me and seems to explain a lot of data out there, but I suppose testing it with a large sample of humans (as opposed to rats) would help us see how universal its suggested interventions are.

Anyone who reads Taubes should also consider Stephan Guyenet's critique of his arguments:

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/08/carbohydrate-h...

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/11/brief-response...

I used to believe in the refined-carb/insulin hypothesis of Taubes, and I even lost weight on it, but I've ditched that model in favor of Stephan's more complete food reward hypothesis - the idea that more rewarding and palatable foods lead to increased calories ingested in certain individuals and hence lead to fat gain.

One approach to weight loss then is to lower the reward value of the diet. One way to do that is low carb, another way is low fat, another way is vegetarian, another way to use gentler cooking methods and less seasoning, the list goes on. But many successful diets that people have used are very well explained by food reward.

edit> I also believe calorie counting and intermittent fasting are very powerful tools used in conjunction with a reduced reward diet. Eating less calories with minimal hunger and losing fat is the holy grail, and these tools are helping me do that in a very effective way.

Hi there, I'm an engineer at DeepDyve. I'm wondering how long your rental was for - was it a 30 day rental? And was 30 days too short to cite the article later? I'll talk to some people here, but we may be able to extend that period pretty easily.

Cool, I'll take a look at Peter's posts - I like him in general. Btw, Stephan did respond to Taubes' 6-part series:

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/11/brief-response...

Low-carb diets work for plenty of people (including me), but this is a must-read refutation of Taubes' carbohydrate hypothesis:

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/08/carbohydrate-h...

I don't think he implied that. And I agree with his sentiment - for those of us who haven't made up our minds on Groupon, it's nice to see a view from the other side.

It's a big difference to risk starting a company vs climbing Mt Everest. That's actually a big mental block people have - they are afraid of risk, but starting a company or asking a cute girl out and failing is more of an ego hit than a threat to your existence.

Seems like you missed the "/sarcasm" comment, unless I'm being leveled?

There is an argument to be made that modern fruits have been bred to be sweeter, which is worth examining. Also, it is well known in the "paleo" community that fruit should be avoided when trying to get lean (~10-11% body fat for men) - and this is related to fructose and/or its affect on blood sugar. Last point is a type 1 diabetic, now doctor, eats no fruit and this was a very important step for him to maintain healthy blood sugars and get healthy - Dr. Richard Bernstein (he runs a diabetes clinic in NY). I believe that modern fruit eaten is large quantities isn't so benign.

Paul, do you see any role software could play in trying to resolve the dietary advice problem? There are lots of communities out there of diabetics and obese people improving their health through diet - in particular a low carb, medium protein, high fat diet. That's not proof on its own, but it's more compelling than looking at what people who have always been healthy eat (because it could just be good genes). Science and experiments still need to be a part of the solution, but it disturbs me how much bad science is out there.

Look for dextrose or corn sugar. Here's one link: http://www.nowfoods.com/Products/ProductsbyCategory/M004079..... Personally, I just do my best to avoid anything that tastes sweet.

One of the important benefits of YC is that meeting every week with a group of like-minded founders forces you do some kind of work on your startup. Even if you are demoralized, you would feel pretty stupid if you didn't have anything new to show after a week.

Keep in mind that YC didn't exist when Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple were started. It's quite possible that the next wave of those companies will be part of YC or are already part of YC.

I haven't been able to find the answer to this: why are Ev and Biz AWOL? What are they doing now?

hey guys, this is a short post in a series about a great book on diabetes care: http://www.amazon.com/Dr-Bernsteins-Diabetes-Solution-Achiev..., the author's ideas haven't penetrated as far as they need to, and I'm trying to fix that

It's so hard to think like this. I've read and watched this speech many times over the years, and I always thought it was awesome - but it never changed my behavior. I'm working on that more recently because I realize the power of understanding how many things "fall away in the face of death".

my profile: http://commonthree.com/razamobin

I forgot to mention one thing - some of the pictures were a little small, and so a potentially pretty girl was ignored by me because I wasn't sure. Not sure if there's a way to fix that, you might have to get creative with fetching alternate pictures for people.

Thanks, that is definitely less awkward. I just shipped your suggestion to the site.

I didn't see your first post, but I like this one. Your title was interesting, so I clicked through to the website. Once there I saw at least one pretty girl, so it was easy to get started and go through all the pages. You suckered me in!

I work at a company called DeepDyve; we work with publishers to provide alternative (cheaper) access models to their content. We have an online-only viewer and let you view articles for a limited amount of time (we call it a rental). If you are interested, please give it a shot and let me know how sufficient of an alternative it is. We currently allow 1 free rental (which will work for our ACM content), but we'll be adding free trials for our subscription plans instead very soon. http://www.deepdyve.com http://www.deepdyve.com/browse/publishers/association-for-co...

run an ultramarathon? maybe don't: http://www.paleonu.com/panu-weblog/2010/3/21/still-not-born-...

read Good Calories, Bad Calories for a well researched book on why this is (http://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-Bad-Controversial-Scienc...)

I was Siqi's cofounder both times we applied.

Siqi is correct; we didn't believe he was being unethical. The 3 of us agonized over the situation for quite a while, and understood his decision to leave, especially given that the side project wasn't completely his to share. It was a really tough spot for all of us, and I know he didnt make the decision lightly.

I recently got interested in flash games development for fun, and found this book to be pretty helpful: Foundation Game Design with Flash (http://www.friendsofed.com/book.html?isbn=1430218215). It doesn't assume any previous programming or flash experience, plus you get to make games!

looks like the order changed, here's a pic of the actual schedule that someone posted: http://img261.imageshack.us/img261/756/scheduleyo.jpg