skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Why is it hard to work with big public companies?
NASA will man destruct switch—just in case
It actually took me a while to figure out that red meant unavailable and blue meant available. And even after, that they have the same size and brightness made me miss IDS's clarity. But otherwise, I agree.
Maslow wrote that those people who were most successful at life, who were self actualizing, had succeeded at overcoming either-or thinking and had reconciled seemingly contradictory qualities.
Pixel Perfect: Pascal Dangin’s virtual reality
The consensus from the last thread about the best place to get prints was http://www.overnightprints.com/. They do rounded corners on business cards which is deliciously web 2.0. Make sure to google for a coupon code.
What is Cloud Computing?
Hmm... None of these, with the possible exception of no privacy (as in, the defaults provide no privacy), sound like they would stop you from putting it out there to see how it does and then improving as you go (outsourced, etc).

I have fallen into the trap of "more development" will solve this before. If you're selling a fire hose to someone on fire, they won't be too concerned with its color. Are you not releasing because there is no fire? Is that possibly why the developer did not see dollar signs and left? I ask you this not to be glib, but because I was on the other side of a similar, but much more amicable situation.
Another vote on this one. Gutmeet makes me think of animal (me[e/a]t) guts
Ask YC : Do startups hire graduating students on F1 visas ?
Hi,

I'm an CompSciEng grad student (Masters) about to graduate and am considering applying to startups and smaller companies instead of the usual big stalwarts.

Question is : do such smaller companies hire international students (on F1 visas) ? What is the general trend and also, how does one find such companies ?

Thanks
Arn
I had the same problem -- wasn't sure what blue or red meant, so I had to run some obvious tests.
No offense taken, you make a fair point.

However, the reason everything has been about productivity is because that is the nature of computers, to automate tasks that would be tedious otherwise. This fact hasn't changed, but it seems like no one's addressing the simpler needs before tackling some crazy "It's like facebook, but with movies" startup.

For my address book example, there are always practical matters to consider. Privacy makes the 'social address book' a very tricky proposition. However, the 'address book with a nice interface' just hasn't really been nailed down (to my satisfaction, anyway). It would be hard to argue that such a thing isn't useful or desirable.

Just so there's no pussyfooting here, I'll clarify what my software does, so you can decide whether or not a social aspect is really necessary. It's a web tool that clones the functionality of 'Delicious Library'. It's basically personal inventory software for your media (games, books, movies, etc) and keeping track of who you loan your stuff to. While the capability to browse the libraries of your friends is a given, generalizing that to things like, 'see who else reads the same books' or 'form communities around specific authors' seems a bit of a stretch. Not that they're bad ideas (I wish I had the time to make them happen), but they're really a separate application.
It's sorta an unfortunate fact of life that you can't have it all. You have to make some tradeoffs. (And I don't understand all the people saying "You can have both." I've tried, and I couldn't - at least not while doing anything innovative. You can have both if you're doing niche projects to serve a particular community, but I'd imagine many of the folks here are more change-the-world-or-die-trying types.)

Anyway, I think that in the long run it's about the people. But I faced pretty much the same choice as you as a college senior. I thought about it a lot and decided that when I was old and gray, I wouldn't be happy unless I'd at least tried and saw what I could do if I concentrated fully on hacking. If it didn't amount to anything, then fine, at least I gave it an honest go and had a sense of my own limits. But I'd much rather do that then always wonder what I could've done, maybe.

So I figure I'll keep this up until I'm 30. If I succeed, great. If I don't, I can have a normal, fulfilled life, surrounded by interesting people, and I'll have full knowledge of what I'm passing up. The twenties are kinda a professional wasteland anyway, when nobody really knows who they are or what they want to do with their life.
There's a bipolar rhythm of life and work that's easy to fall into, but it sounds like you need a break. There are very worthwhile projects that might take only 10 - 20 hours a week that, if you live simply, will be more than enough to get by. You can learn a lot from introspection in the remaining leisure time. Make sure you've got your necessities taken care of: shelter, learn to cook, get exercise, sunlight, make sure to hang out with friends or at least someone twice a week.

Sure enough you'll have the motivation to work on something again, maybe big, maybe small. People aren't built for leisure, but enjoyable work.
OK, so here's a problem. Even if you do get someone from this site to help you, Ms. Django owns 35% of your company regardless. Best case scenario, someone helps you, the product takes off, you have a big exit... you still have to pay her 35%. That's a big problem. The only way that you're going to get rid of her is to close the company and start over.

And, she's wasted 14 months of your time with precious little to show for it. As far as I'm concerned if you work on a Django project for 14 months and have little to show for it, your developer is incompetent.

Start over. Chalk it up to a lesson learned. Pick up a couple of books and start learning how to code yourself. That way, you'll know if your next co-founder is producing crap or not. And, you just may be able to code something up yourself.

Pick up a prn job just to cover the bills. I'm a nurse, I moved to Silicon Valley, and you can get a prn job out here that pays $75 an hour pretty easy. We have people the commute from Dallas and Oregon to work here. Fly in, work 6 days straight, make 5K and then fly back. Consider it. You'll also make contacts in Silicon Valley which is very valuable.
I thought the idea was that anything that would have seemed appropriate on the old Reddit would be appropriate here. By that measure I think this article passes.

I wonder if this forum is misnamed. Maybe it should be called "Maker News". Stuff that makers are interested in.
It's also interesting considering their core business (which they're very good at) is being an online store. They just happen to also be good at selling their infrastructure to others. (Note that Google, MS, Myspace, etc. don't do this.)

Anyway, +1 for Amazon.
I am not really into YC all that much and bottom line have to say just do what makes you happy and what you are possionate about and enjoy and don't worry about others.

In time you will find your own path and there is more to life than many introverted scenes we often find ourselves in. Expose yourself to a broad range of things and hopefully this will lead to balance and perspective in life. Involve yourself in just one area too much and although it can lead to great things often it is at the social cost and danger of becoming too introverted. Just my $0.02. :)
http://ycombinator.com/hackernews.html

>The focus of Hacker News is going to be anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes a lot more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

>It may be easier to say what that doesn't include. It doesn't include most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. It doesn't include videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. Basically, if they'd cover it on TV news, it's off-topic.
"What matters is people. Which kinda sucks when you think about it."-- Hugh MacLeod
dont try to hide your inner geek. be happy in who you are.
Anything from the New Yorker is not a lowest common denominator article.
As Don Knuth put it, "Life is binary search."
The Genius: Mike Burrows' self-effacing journey through Silicon Valley
Was there was vesting of some type?
Your question does not compute. I literally get a compiler error when I try to parse it.

Look everyone wants to be loved. There is nothing wrong with that and it is perfectly natural. But you gotta love yourself first, or the rest of the stuff is going to feel empty.

So what I am saying is -- are you doing what you are doing because YOU love it, or because you think you can get other people to love you by doing it? Did you go to concerts and parties because you liked the music and the beer, or did you go because you wanted people to think you are cool for going? Do you want to start coding again because you love the joy of creation, because you love discovering the elegance in ideas, or are you doing it because you weren't able to be accepted by "mainstream" society and you are now trying to get approval again from a different group?
Hey, thanks for your comment. I could understand where you are coming from - it's reassuring to have someone tell me that "the twenties are kinda a professional wasteland anyway," when I am on the cusp of graduating.

Can I quote you at my hedge fund interview this week? ;-)
Very cool site; the type of thing that I do all the time and never considered could be automated.

The design of the site could be improved by making it less wide. Not all users run their apps fullscreen.
Yes, I have got the "bipolar" part, no so much the "rhythm" part though.

But seriously, I see what you are saying. I have always been a all-or-nothing kind of person, but maybe I should actually try this work-life balance thing that I have been hearing about.
Hmm, it's good to hear the two cents from the founder of the Feel Good Initiatives. I am a big fan of your project.

I am also staying in Boston (near Beacon Hill) for the summer, and slightly off topic but not really, what are the cool stuff that hackers could do in Boston?
compare the analytics you can acquire for competitors e.g. using alexa etc. and take a median.
2006, right after the VCs started backing again.
I disagree. If you're going to mixers for startups, which for us is how we're hoping to stir up customers, it's good to be able to give them something to hang onto. It's a lot less clumsy than having to reach for a pen and paper. Why do I say this? Because I tried pen and paper at the last one that I went to. Yesterday I ordered business cards.

That said, I don't think it's important that they're impressive early on. If we're going to impress people it's going to be with what we say, not with our cards. The card has one function: so that they still have our contact info when they get back to their office. I got the cheapest ones I could find (50 for €12) and spent all of about half an hour sorting that out.
You probably just need a girlfriend (or a boyfriend). Getting laid on a regular basis makes all your imaginary existential issues disappear. Unless you're a character in a french movie...
Well put; I enjoyed your rhetorical question and will ponder on them in my free time.
"... Cool story, would have been more interesting if he had refused to continue even without figuring out the ruse ..."

How?

Is it "cool" because you figured out the original poster is smart enough to realise the "Milgram experiment" is a higher order of intelligence test that divides those who will really question assumptions and acts on them? (a desirable hacker quality) Or "coool" because you just realised it's the same psychology used by every Tin-pot dictator, boss, person in charge to make others do their bidding?
Hey, I've developed a few django apps and am always looking for new projects.

two of my more recent projects were http://www.serious-internet.biz and http://www.soshal.com.

if you want to talk, you can reach me at mantwon ----at---- soshal.com
Heh, sure, though I'm not sure you'd want to say that the twenties are a professional wasteland at a hedge fund interview, even if everybody there knows it's true. ;-)

(BTW, most of my hedge fund friends are quite happy with their lives. They work fairly normal 9-5 hours, take awesome vacations, and make insane amounts of money.)
Thank you menloparkbum for pointing out the true core of my problem.
Yeah, that's the most interesting disconnect I've seen working in enterprise software. Your customers have never heard of Twitter, but they might still use a fax machine on a regular basis.

Our market is nonprofits and state and local governments, and the other surprising factor has been the sheer length of the sales cycle. Sales that come in at less than a year are the quick ones.
My friend Chris started a company that does business cards:
http://trifectaagencies.com/

He doesn't like to put prices on his site, but if you email him, you should find he's got good prices for whatever amount of design you need.
To clarify, the e-mail address you put in the field specifically for it isn't visible to anyone. You should type it in the "About" section.
simple but cool ;)
"... Sitepoint, is a burial ground most things sold on there consist of snake oil or clones. It doesn't even deserve the name of 'exit'. More of a liquidity place to re-coop bad investments.. ..."

I don't think so.

Sure the content, technology and articles might be lower end commodities: tutorials, design, php with a focus on sites. I know Mark ~ http://www.sitepoint.com/about/ we worked in another startup in Melbourne pre-2000. What Mark co-built is a business selling "information" that people want and are willing to pay for. While this business is growing, selling boring old web focused tech resources, technical book sales are falling. Make things people want, right?

What do you make that people want?
Of course we care!

(The beers make us care even more.)

Hope someday we get that chance.
> If we're going to impress people it's going to be with what we say, not with our cards.

Good design is important, especially for a website. If your business card is ugly, what is your site going to look like?

But exotic materials or obviously expensive printing techniques don't signal frugal, which ought to be an important quality in a startup founder.
It would definitely be on Sunday - I'm going to a friend's graduation at Worcester Polytechnic Institute that Saturday.
One word....balance.

I struggle with the exact same thing, day in and day out. I have an 8 hour job, which after I'm done with, go and work like a mad man on my startup, coding away, brainstorming. I don't call people if I don't have to because, deep down I have this almost insatiable itch to start a company and be my own boss, work my own hours, be excited about what I do everyday, have more open doors... The list is almost endless and the fact that I could one day have all those things drives me to work even harder.

Alas, attention always needs to be given to family, friends and YOURSELF. Otherwise you'll break down. You'll go crazy. You'll screw-up your relationships and damage your health. Simply put, in the end, you are just gonna be plain unhappy.
Thanks, cowmoo, for your story. It could have been mine.

I too went to an "artsy liberal arts college". I majored in English for about 3 weeks. Then it was math forever. I was also fortunate enough to join a social fraternity and had the time of my life (not just the parties, but all of it including managing a small "business").

Upon graduation, I had 2 choices: continue on to pursue my PhD in math or get my MBA and go into IT. As much as I loved math, it was an easy choice because I had already discovered the answer to your question by then. It's both, but mainly the people. A career in IT has given me ample doses of both and I've never looked back. I was always afraid that if I had continued in math I may have become a recluse again.

I love hacking into the wee hours of the night. It's so cool making something out of nothing that only another hacker soul could understand. Sounds like you do.

But just as much, I enjoy sharing my code and seeing people use it. Sometimes when I write something particularly cool, I find myself thinking something like, "I bet Jane will love this!"

Here's another question in response to your original question:

If your write the coolest app in the forest and no one ever uses it, does it make a sound?
I mostly use the Java unit test format, but I also use the selenium IDE to automate a lot of repetitive setup/config stuff. And I've started using the Lisp API (http://selenium.openqa.org/) for hand written tests.
Those are applications, not platforms. Platforms are intended to make it easy for independant developers to build value-added applications. For example: MySQL, MS Office, Common Lisp, Amazon EC2, etc.
83k in tulsa is like making 130k in boston
http://www.bestplaces.net/col/?salary=83000&city1=46140&...

That salary is crazy for someone that early, before revenue or major vc capital. By drawing that huge salary, she is avoiding all the risk and therefore deserved less equity. I think the 6% you gave her was generous.
hang out at mit! (or one of the other various locales where there are scientists a plenty)
(this is going to be my second summer of doing comp sci research in boston and hanging out at mit)
I really need something like this, and I think they've nailed the UX... but it appears to use GoDaddy to do the whois. I don't have any personal experience but a quick google search will back me up when I assert they are notorious for not being trustworthy with your whois queries. A site like this that I felt like I could trust would be a daily destination for me.
Agreed Javascript in itself is a whole different beast together. I would have considered encouraging Drinko to learn jQuery first but then if you don't know how to hack to begin with then that advice doesn't really count.
i don't talk about it because it has nothing to do with this topic. thats more in the vein of how to build good software, niche analysis, and monetization.
Agreed 12 months for a demoable web app is bad IMHO, unless you're writing avionics software(even that is a stretch) web apps aren't exactly rocket science to begin with. So you can chalk it up to developer inexperience OR she was doing work on the side. Which would probably explain why it took her 12 months to begin with.
mixmax, I'd give you 10 upvotes if I could.

For anyone not all that familiar with "B2B", reread mixmax's post again. Every word. It's going onto my bulletin board.

The demand so outstrips the supply, that anyone writing good software has tremendous opportunities here. Thanks, mixmax, for reminding us of what is so easily forgotten these days.
Does LiveUniverse have unlimited funds? They buy/own so many sites it's not funny.
I heard the U.S. govt recently extended OPT for 2.5 years. You should be able to work in a startup for at least that long. If you have contributed a lot to the startup's growth, hopefully they won't mind sponsoring you for a H1-B visa after that period.
Ask YC: What's the best advice you ever got?
After reading a recent post here with "best advice" from 13 prominent business people, I was underwhelmed. Now I know why. I'd rather hear from you guys than from them.
Always do the right thing.
Hahaha to be honest when I heard Django + girl the first thought that came to my mind was Culver.
Lessons From Entrepreneurs: Mark Schumann
jQuery is the singularity.
If the prospect of being a billionaire in my twenties passed me by the way it [allegedly] passed Aaron by, it'd be my favorite subject too.
The best advice I ever got was from a board member of a startup I was involved in some years ago. He was a member of the European parlaiment, had started two multi million dollar companies, and generally a guy that you would want to listen to. His advice came at a very early stage of our startup and was very simple: Make a prototype that looks great, nobody will care how the hell it works but it has to look good.
Choose your battles.
A wholly contrarian approach: take everything you have now and open source it. Consider the test case of MySQL. Odds are, if the underlying technology or even the approach is interesting, you will certainly find technical help. While this has certain and definite risks, there may be huge benefits, especially for a non-technical individual in your position. From the comments in this thread alone you are likely to get immediate help.

What is the sustainable strategic advantage of your application? Why does keeping the code closed further that?

Just something to consider...
Don't put metal in a microwave.
PostgreSQL vs MySQL (and to lesser extent also compared with MSSQL and Oracle)
I know this is subjective to how/where you use it but am wondering what people who have used PosgreSQL think about it.

I see that the newer version match MySQL in speed while retaining better data integrity (and in many cases PGSQL is actually faster in both default install & after optimisations).

I want to build some web apps (ideally in Ruby On Rails and some in Django) and want something that scales better and is more robust.

Thoughts, comments, experiences and insights appreciated.

Basic overview @ http://is.gd/d5l gives some good intial pointers but needs more real world experiences to be added.

Thanks.
Well that just inspired me to finally register on this site after just lurking for six months.

I went to San Francisco State and got my degree in film. Now I'm coding AS3 and RoR and doing UI design at a web startup. I discovered at some point after I graduated that a hobby is not the same as a passion - I like movies, but I love making cool things. I didn't have enough passion for movies to actually stick with the process of making one... nor did I love movies enough to be willing to work for other people doing insignificant tasks for free (or pizza) for three years to build a reputation... So I started going to events, meeting people, and reading everything I could about business, communication, technology, innovation, etc.

Right now, I have a great job building cool things. I come in whenever I want, I work roughly as many hours as I think I should, and then I leave. Some weeknights I go out, either with friends or my girlfriend, and weekends I try to stay away from all forms of work as much as possible. This balance works out pretty well - I feel like I'm accomplishing a lot and working towards a big goal at work, and yet I feel like I still have a social live and am, you know, "living". On Monday mornings I do not dread going into work. I feel refreshed and ready to tackle new problems.

So... your rant does sound like a Catcher in the Rye variation. It also sounds like stuff I used to write - usually completely privately, occasionally to friends - about my own life.

It's never about "code". And it's not about "people". It's about balancing the pursuit of your ambitions and the pursuit of gaining life experience. For some people, whose ambitions involve climbing mountains and/or starting a family, those two things are one in the same. For most of us, they're not. So you have to separate yourself from work so you can keep in touch with life.

And then, if your job does not fit with your ambitions, do it well enough not to get fired :)

If you're driven enough to apply to YC, and you were good enough to qualify for an interview, you've got something going. Don't give up on your ambitions just because you think other people are having more fun than you.
You have as much credibility as you give yourself.
When I went to startup school in 2005, I made business cards containing my contact details in a Lisp plist and printed them using one of those cheap perforated sheets. They went over quite well.
"Find what race you belong in, drive yourself ruthlessly to win that race. If you win, great. If you lose, go read some comics and do some beers as there's no use winning if you can't smile all the way to the finish line."

It's from a coach from long ago, but it has served me well many times outside of running.