I'd be interested to hear what percentage of active HN commenters have also applied to YC. I'm not an active commenter on HN (or any other site) but if I was to be more than a lurker I wouldn't want my reputation for snarky comments to impact future opportunities with YC or any other startup group. HN/YC has the potential to back into a professional hacker reputation system in a similar way that Facebook has done socially. e.g. block commenters who haven't submitted a YC app... of course if the % of HN commenters to YC applicants is low this idea is dead on arrival.