#YCombinator

[photomatt]

Really cool to see WordPress on Hacker News today. 🤠

[atomxmedia]

YC-backed AI Startup Pivot Robots Raises Funding from NuVentures

NuVentures, an early-stage investor, has successfully provided capital to Pivot Robots, an AI-driven automation firm. The funding support demonstrates NuVentures’ continued dedication to funding AI-first businesses. Pivot Robots’ position in the market was further strengthened by the participation of Y Combinator and a US-based fund in this most recent fundraising round.

Founders and Background

Siddharth Girdhar and Vignesh Rajmohan, both graduates of Carnegie Mellon University, founded Pivot Robots last year. The two founders have extensive backgrounds working for well-known internet businesses like as Meta, Google, and Uber, which gives them a wealth of experience. Pivot Robots’ inventive solutions for the industrial industry have been greatly influenced by their profound knowledge of robotics and artificial intelligence.

Technology and Innovation

Pivot Robots automates industrial robots with advanced AI vision control software, focusing on the dangerous and labor-intensive activities that are common in the manufacturing sector. With the US industrial industry struggling with a labour crisis, their first solution addresses a critical need by automating the grinding of metal parts.

“Pivot Robots is developing software to assist manufacturers in automating some of their most labor-intensive and dangerous tasks, starting with the castings industry,” said co-founder Siddharth Girdhar. We are excited to work with NuVentures as a partner since they provide us with crucial assistance in finding talent and acquiring customers in the US and India, two important manufacturing hubs.

Stay tuned with Atom News for more updates on innovative startups, AI advancements, and industry-changing technologies.

[chrissylynnstudio]

ecomm images for custom tailor company #MTailor.

[peterbordes]

Kapital (YC W22), the data-driven neobank for SMBs and entrepreneurs in Latam, launched a corporate digital dollar card secured by blockchain technology to provide protection against the devaluation of the Colombian peso. The card allows businesses to perform international transfers, access exclusive Mastercard World Elite benefits, and manage their accounts and payments through the Kapital platform.

[biglisbonnews]

Nigeria has launched a $672 million fund for startups after the collapse of three US banks Nigeria has launched a $672 million fund to support its tech startups amid the upheaval caused by the recent collapse of three key US banks.Read more... https://qz.com/nigerias-launches-672-million-fund-for-startups-1850231603

[comidaforfamilias]

What is Y Combinator? Go to www.comidaforfamilias.blog/blog to find out. Link can also be found in our bio. . . . #ycombinator #lambdacalculus #functionalprogramming #javascript #comidaforfamilias #math #computerscience #cs #csdegree #csblog #learncode #learnmath https://www.instagram.com/p/Cl4IhTGvNVR/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[collapsedsquid]

Using generative AI to create motivational slogans we can broadcast from loudspeakers 24/7 in California encampments.

[essential-randomness]

I'm at the bsky hackathon at the SF YCombinator offices studying their paper, and a) I'm getting a bunch of ideas to prototype b) I have a might need to make my Yaoi Combinator joke to someone

[aorish]

i mean the idea that Graeber's books were "later revealed to be fraudulent" is somewhat of a redditbrained take, but only because of the "later" as if this was something that needed a formal debunking and not something that could be determined by reading it.

anyone who is drawing broad historical conclusions from the sumerians and the egyptians can be assumed to be so full of fecal matter that it is secreted from their eyeballs whenever their book recieves any criticism. graeber's widow thinks the cia had him killed for his dangerous and subversive ideas because that's the sort of person he was romantically drawn to but id like to submit the alternative hypothesis that the brain does poorly with an environment that is rife with so much e coli

the actual reason he's getting this posthumous exhumation of his ideas though is that somebody uploaded all of his books to the anarchist library the day he died, which resulted in people reading them. this, as in many cases where the mysteries are profaned to the uninitiated, complicates his legacy

Today is a good day to remember that David Graeber was a complete hack, and his books were bullshit on both a conceptual and moment-to-moment level, with easily-debunked false claims on almost every page.

If you read "Debt: The First 5,000 Years" and/or "Bullshit Jobs", you should put them in a category with "Super Size Me" as 'works that made a big splash upon release but were later revealed to have been almost totally fraudulent'.

[azspot]

So, let's review. In the last week, OpenAI has repeatedly lied about a voice product, dissolved its AI safety team, and had two major players in the company resign — one of whom tried to oust Sam Altman late last year, and the other who clearly despises the direction of the company. And unlike Sam Altman, both Sutskever and Leike are actual computer scientists that build things versus specious hype men who people have been trying to fire for a decade. Seriously, staff went to the board to get him fired from his first company twice, Paul Graham personally flew into San Francisco to fire him from yCombinator, and he was so dramatically fired from OpenAI that he had to run crying to venture capitalist Reid Hoffman and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to make him CEO again and install the Avengers of Capitalism as the new board.

Sam Altman Is Full Of Shit

[biglisbonnews]

Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse is hitting financial hubs around the globe The UK Treasury announced today (March 13) that HSBC bought the UK arm of SVB for just £1 ($1.21) as financial hubs around the world seek to buffer the fallout from the lender’s multibillion-dollar collapse.Read more... https://qz.com/silicon-valley-bank-collapse-affected-countries-svb-1850219546

[houseofbrat]

I see the critiques of Kamala Harris' closeness with the billionaires is already becoming an issue.

Elizabeth Warren:

This appearance was followed by reporting that there’s a Silicon Valley fundraising tour for Harris being planned by none other than… Reid Hoffman. Ok, so it’s pretty stunning for an oligarch like Hoffman, with a net worth of a couple billion dollars, to publicly make such a demand. So why is he doing it? One reason is that there’s a lot of money involved. As the Lever reported, Hoffman is on the board of Microsoft, which is right now being sued and investigated by the FTC. It’s a pretty good gig, if you get to fire the law enforcer investigating your misdeeds. Still, there’s another reason. Hoffman is a sophisticated operator who wants to be a kingmaker in politics. The money is real enough, but he’s likely leaking the fundraising tour as a means of forcing Harris to be seen to do his bidding. Hoffman wants Harris to get rid of Biden policies which protect workers through trade and antitrust so that big business can do what they want. And he’s going to supply the financing for Harris’ campaign if she does what she’s told. [...] An anonymous secondhand conversation with a donor isn’t great evidence for Harris’ policy instincts. But one possibility is that the Harris campaign set up these reporters with sources, and is trying to imply that she’s open to the demands of executives so that she can collect more campaign money from billionaires and dealmakers. There are other possibilities as well. So far, Hoffman’s demand has been met with disinterest from the political press and a muted response from labor and progressive groups, who have mostly endorsed Harris and are enthusiastically celebrating her candidacy. There are a few exceptions. Senator Bernie Sanders chimed in angrily about Hoffman’s demand, and Senator Elizabeth Warren offered an endorsement of Khan. A pharmacist group also weighed in, and there will likely be more statements as the news filters through a very confused media environment, as Khan has a lot of fans (including in tech, she’s speaking at YCombinator today to a packed room).

So...are we going to get a Vhagar moment from Bernie soon?

[collapsedsquid]

Before co-founding Gladstone with Beall, the Harris brothers ran an AI company that went through YCombinator, the famed Silicon Valley incubator, at the time when OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was at the helm. The pair brandish these credentials as evidence they have the industry’s interests at heart, even as their recommendations, if implemented, would upend it. “Move fast and break things, we love that philosophy, we grew up with that philosophy,” Jeremie tells TIME. But the credo, he says, ceases to apply when the potential downside of your actions is so massive. “Our default trajectory right now,” he says, “seems very much on course to create systems that are powerful enough that they either can be weaponized catastrophically, or fail to be controlled.” He adds: “One of the worst-case scenarios is you get a catastrophic event that completely shuts down AI research for everybody, and we don't get to reap the incredible benefits of this technology.”

OK what Trashfuture bullshit is this company by the the AI risk consultancy people going to be..

Really???? That is your "AI company???"

[hiddendip]

had an interesting dream last night.. where i basically shipped myself in a modified shipping container. also something about forklifts?

now i'm thinking, could you do it? like, take a 40ft container and make a sort of "tiny house" thing inside of it, then get it shipped overseas with you in it?

i'm 99% sure there's some legal stuff stopping you from doing it, and no shipping company would want to take on the liability, but like.. is it abstractly possible?

next ycombinator batch someone is going to get funding for a modular "pod" cruise ship and it's going to be my fault

[macwantspeace]

[image from Big Mac Tourism Bureau]

The comedian Emo Philips has a well-known joke about religion that may explain some of the decline in membership...

"Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?"

He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?"

He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too!"

Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over."

[story found on ycombinator/hacker news] btw - Emo Philips had a breathless style with random high stressed voice and twitchy gestures like a nervous kid trying to tell a very important story.

[xylophonetangerine]

Recently reread some ycombinator threads about GDPR before it was implemented to revel in techbro tears before I go to jail after chat control reveals that I don't pray to Angela Merkel five times a day.