Here's a bit of advice: be a startup junkie and not just a YC applicant.

Startup junkies sill always follow startups: participating, sharing ideas, forming teams and making things happen. Being a startup junkie isn't something that is limited to any one funding cycle or organization. If you're a real junkie, YC is just a place to hang out while you're working on your own plans, which may have nothing to do with YC in the end. YC is just a tool which may or may not be available to you. If nothing else, you can monitor the board and listen while all kinds of cool stuff happens -- there's gold in being part of those conversations.

Or as the old saying goes, "I've been kicked out of better places than this one"

Second Earth is not a startup hub. The aliens should move to Silicon Valley.

Please, please, please...

Don't let the signal-to-noise ratio of Hacker News fall into the tragedy of the commons that befell the reddit front page. As a hacker news reader, I'm interested in cool technology and startup information.

And yet that's exactly the business we're in. I just stopped in to check Hacker News before getting on with reading applications, which consists of trying to predict who will change the world, and the top story is that one can't.

I agree with this essay, but I don't think the title is quite right. All the people who've changed the world have been energetic and determined. So you can to some extent predict by recognizing those qualities. You can predict the people, just not what the ideas will turn out to be. The title should have been "You can't predict how the world will change."

Are you letting people know as you review the applications, or will everyone find out on the 18th (or another day)?

We tell everyone on the same day (whatever day we said).

Another thing I'd ask people not to do is write to us asking for the details of why they weren't invited. We explain in the YC FAQ that we won't, but every cycle people deluge us with emails anyway.

It's not because we're being secretive that we don't answer these emails. The reason is that there generally are no details to give. Usually when we don't invite a group for interviews, it's not because there was some glaring flaw in the application, but simply because nothing in it jumped out at us.

If you have not received a response from us by midnight on Thursday, please check your spam filter before contacting us. (We've had issues with yahoo mail accounts in the past, for example.)

You will soon be able to store the Library of Congress in a pocket-sized device. And yet you're holding out for something "truly historic"?

Wake up and smell the history! :)