skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Keep in mind that by doing so you would still be supporting a consumer-hostile ecosystem.

I find Kindle to be a massive upgrade over tangible books for me - I travel, so physical books get gifted away after finishing them, while I get to keep my Kindle books. And they're cheaper.

As a consumer, it's been a huge win for me. Could it be even better than now? Yeah sure probably, but I love paying less for books, getting them instantly, and being able to keep them instead of gifting them on for weight/space reasons.
1. You can outsource the prototype but if you're going to get funding, you should hire in-house moving forward aka local.

1a. Ask people you know for referrals of coders they trust. Hit up local networking events. Try to find people through yourself and others you know and trust before branching out to regular hiring ways.

2. Get a corporate attorney to help set up your company and the appropriate paperwork so whoever you hire, sign the right paperwork needed. This is important.

3. Build the prototype, and haul ass. Consider talking to an IP attorney but in all seriousness, $250k isn't much. If it's going to cost you a significant amount of money, perhaps hold off on the IP registration. Don't take my word on this though, consult a few different IP attornies for better advice on that.
Stock trading apps' data services are decidedly not consumer SaaS for the mass market. They're business/prosumer, a world that already has success in getting small numbers of profitable subscribers.

The winners are apps that weren't even possible before - $1/month subscriptions for normal people.
Thanks for that link. I hadn't seen that.
I see this kind of mail/post all the time. Some business guy thinks all that's necessary for a successful web-startup is a good idea. He then can find a lowly developer who takes care of those pesky details while he ponders whether the header should be more blueish or not... I don't mean to be rude, but these ideas are usually crap and without a technical (co)founder, it's not gonna happen.

Also: Ideas are worthless. Execution is everything.

http://www.dilbert.com/blog/entry/the_value_of_ideas/
Yeah but the economy is a lot bigger now too. It is an indisputable fact that the U.S. IPO market smaller in both size and frequency.

It isn't the only cause, but Sarbox has hammered public companies with huge regulatory costs for absolutely no benefit-- indeed, there is some evidence that corporate malfeasance is easier today because the rules are so complex, the true risks are easier to bury. SarBox certainly didn't stop the corruption in public mortgage finance and investment banks. You could argue that the law was tougher pre-SarBox-- at least Enron and WorldCom crooks went to jail.
You are mixing two things up. Selling apps and selling goods with in-app purchases. Apple restricts the app market because it adds value to their platform (for everyone).

As for in-app purchases [what this whole discussion is about] you can sell your product (books in the example above) on your website, but you also have to make it available for in-app purchase. Also the price must be the same or cheaper in-app. These are the exact terms Amazon has. You can sell your product on your website and through Amazon, but the price has to be the same or cheaper on Amazon.
The biggest hurdle you have in front of you is finding someone to build it. Reach out to your network and see if anyone knows good people working in the technologies you need. Attend local meetups that revolve around these technologies. Visit coworking spaces an ask around. Hacker News may also be a good resource for that. Also, I'd be happy to recommend some folks to you (my email's in my profile).
A Modern Browser
David Brin wrote an interesting piece on this a few years back. I think Salon picked it up then, too. http://dir.salon.com/ent/feature/2002/12/17/tolkien_brin/ind...
That kind of 'monopoly' isn't what people mean by 'monopoly'.

They're thinking of things like telcos who have (or had, in some cases) government-granted monopolies that prohibit potential competitors from even trying to compete, or they're thinking of cases like Microsoft back in the day when they used their leverage from a dominant position in one market to attempt to force out competitors in a different (but related) market. (By shipping IE for free at a loss to ensure that Netscape couldn't profit from selling a browser, for example.)

That's why people deliberately incorrectly use the term when referring to Apple. They're trying to evoke that feeling of a big corporation with an unfair advantage.

But that only works if Android doesn't exist, and BlackBerry doesn't exist, and Windows Phone/Mobile doesn't exist, and Symbian doesn't exist (which will be true soon, I guess!), and WebOS doesn't exist, and something prevents competitors from even trying to have their own mobile platform.
Where are you at? Maybe we have similar ideas? I have written a few lines of code in my day.
I'd be happer with something a lot simpler: disabling the home button.

My 3 year-old loves watching videos and playing simple games on my iPhone. But she can't grasp the idea of not pressing this really cool button at the bottom of the screen. So 30 seconds into the video I get an "aah! bring it back!". Over and over and over.

The only solution I have to date is to wrap a piece of cardboard with a rubberband and strap it over the home button. That works a bit longer, but it's still not perfect.
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Since I do not know your skill level, location, and other variables its hard to say exactly. Thats why I suggested comparing to what you could earn if you were to take a full-time job in your area, at your experience level.

Also you said you have worked on fixed price projects before. If you know the scope of the work, and you can estimate what it will take you to get it done, you could charge 1.5x what you think it would take for you to do it fixed price then brake that down into an hourly rate. The extra .5 for changes, and miscalculations on both yours and clients side.
oh, I thought by the title maybe Tim Ferris was suckering me in for more baloney.
It should be monitored, because I don't like children getting addicted to video games.

Exactly. Instead of a blanket "keep your kids away from electronics", why not add parental controls where kids have access to educational apps but not videogames?
Fun little problem. I think I'm on the right track towards the solution, though I'm not positive. So as not to spoil it for others wanting to work on it, I've put my thoughts and progress here:

https://gist.github.com/828496
Any lawyer worth his IP-transfer-contracting-salt is outpricing my budget on this sale.
Techmento - a new tech blog
Hell, feedback is constantly helping me shape my project, usually (I hope) for the better.

It is not who builds the best product, it is who markets it the best, who gets the publicity, who convinces the world that their version of the thing is the best.

You could build the best product on Earth but if only a handful of people know about it while a few million know about the second-best product, it isn't hard to guess which one wins.
$85-$150/hr

$50 if you're desperate but don't let anyone else know
Any good alternatives? I am nterested in cloud storage for backup.
I agreed up until you said ideas are worthless. My stance is similar to this post which showed up here earlier this year: http://blog.assetmap.com/2011/01/social-web/lets-end-the-ide...
I call BS on rabbit pushing 100K messages per core and I really like rabbit. But it is no where near 100k messages/sec per core.

AMQP does have extra capabilities and is a good messaging system and has advanced routing features, but you need to learn what exchanges, queues and bindings are and how they relate before it is useful.

I've used rabbit in production on multiple systems and it is still running on some of those. But I have switched to redis for most of my messaging needs because of the built in data structures and persistence. It makes it a much more versatile server and it is much easier to admin and much more stable. Rabbit is too easy to push over when you run it out of memory.

But I had to chime in and refute your 100k messages per core on rabbit. 20k maybe with the java client, more like 5-7k with a ruby or python client.

I can still get 80k/sec with a ruby client on redis.

The two servers are very different, redis is a swiss army knife of data structures over the network, that is why it is so useful. AMQP and rabbit are targeted more at enterprise messaging and integration where raw speed doesn't matter as much as complex hierarchies of brokers and middleware.
Bluetooth bracelets are available and pretty cheap. Haven't tried them, but: http://www.dealextreme.com/c/bluetooth-headsets-508?search=b...
Judging from what they call that, they'll probably call it the Windows Media Device 7 Windows Windows Media Device Windows 7 Windows Device Device 7.
Wait... rural Missouri? I'm originally from Joplin (SW Mo). Glad to see you made the jump.
the idea is to validate all input only once, when it's transformed from raw user-input data into structs/objects/etc used by your program. after that, assume it's valid.
A better analogy would be Lenovo, Dell, HP requiring all software installed on their laptop or desktop machines to be purchased through them and skimming 30%.
LAMP with PHP. Not the best and everyone will have their opinions but it's what I'm most familiar with and what will get the job done the fastest. Everything else is secondary.
Well, to be fair, the author only has one paragraph about Apple and the Internet, and you could get multiple readings from it :) When I read control and centralization, I don't just think of iTunes, but I do think of Apple's dogged insistence that everything you do is essentially tied to one machine. Your iPhone, and (as I think Tim Bray described it "monsterously") your iPad, need to be sync'd to a computer when they start up, for no compelling reason. My Android phone lets me type in my Google ID and off I go.

Honestly, I think Apple's attitude towards the Internet is not because they don't like it. I think they just don't know what to do with it, certainly aren't willing to partner with companies that do, and they're letting their market get chipped away little by little. I've felt like Apple have been resting on their laurels for years, software-wise. Jonathan Ive is producing great hardware, but year on year competitors are catching up or surpassing Mac OS X and iOS, and Apple doesn't seem to notice/care.
In that case, maybe try one of the online startup docs repositories. Maybe you can find something in one them that would work.
They already force people who wrote for their platform to use their API's for everything, and charge 30%, and on top of that $99 a year. I don't see anything new. They provide the payment infrastructure and the back-end.
thanks for the suggestions :)
The author claims that Google doesn't "get" social because social relies on messiness and Google's forte is providing order. However, Facebook, an organization who does seem to understand social exceedingly well, is known for its emphasis on organization. We see stories about the higher-ups in Facebook, such as Zuckerberg, and their heavy hitters whom have gone on to other projects (colloquially known as the "Facebook Mafia") all sharing this desire to organize messy, chaotic information across numerous domains.

If Facebook succeeds in social, at least in part because of its attention to order and organization, why is this fatal for Google?
Try Foobar2000! It is open-source, actively developed, has tons of features and plugins but still lightweight, plays numerous formats and the best, works out-of-the box.

http://www.foobar2000.org/

I also changed from Winamp, when it became adware.
But so much of the beauty of the Internet is its portable ubiquity; I can write a website once and it's available in much the same format to Windows, MacOS, Unix, iOS, Android.... you name it. Whereas in the mobile world we're seeing _millions_ spent on creating what are essentially platform-specific mobile data clients in parallel versions. They're barely even superior to what's possible with HTML now. This is madness.
Yeah, startups in stealth mode suck. Just look at Asana.

/s
I am sure you can highlight and synchronize on the kindle. After all, Amazon even publishes a top 10 list of most highlighted passages. (I haven't tried highlighting myself yet).
It makes sense if they're paying royalties on the content on a per-copy or retail-sale-percentage basis.
did anyone else think "red-green-refactor-wristband" when they saw this? Or at least something to hook into a CI or uptime service?
I'm from the rural areas of St. Louis. Yep, made the jump, hanging there, and loving it!
> Dealing with this type of thing really sucks for women

I think you mean, "[d]ealing with this type of thing really sucks for partners". But correct me if I'm wrong.
The ideas I have for products right now are things I would use. Unscatter.com will be a unified search and social client portal. Fanatastic.com will be a sports community site encouraging users to share and discuss latest sports news. I have an idea for a service, rather than product review site I am kicking around with a friend. Lastly I want to make a site people can make books filled with their personal wisdom to share with their kids.

The worst thing that could happen is someone steal those ideas and execute them so well that I use it instead of building my own. I don't think entrepeneurism is about chasing the dollar, it's about building something worthwhile. That's why I dumped stealth mode a long time ago.
I believe the last time I saw this retort on HN, someone pointed to some "how to develop for the kindle" information that Apple is free to use if they choose. Until they do so and Amazon rejects their work, the retort does not hold up.
Thanks, glad the story was helpful :)
No IP attorney. It's money wasted. If you're really doing something protectable, you can file a provisional patent up to a year after first public demo, and that gives you another year to file a real patent. You'll lose some international protection, but it's quite hard to stay internationally protected anyway. I am not a lawyer, please don't trust me.

If neither you nor the person who wants to join the company are developers, then I would pause until you've found one. 250k is not a lot of money to build anything non-trivial, and you'll burn through it unbelievably fast if there's not a founding member who is highly technical and can evaluate how good other technical employees are going to be. If you're paying salaries and other expenses, 250k keeps a team of 5 going for like 6 months. It usually takes 3 months to raise a follow-on round, which gives a team of 5 three months to build something exciting enough to raise follow-on investment. If it's you and one or two technical co-founders, you can run an awful lot longer. If you're just paying spartan living expenses, you can get it as low as 5k per person per month (in the valley).

If you take the money, chances are you'll fail. Are these experienced investors who can afford the loss? Are you okay with losing that money? If they can deal with it and you can deal with it, then I suggest you take it and stay very thrifty for a while while you figure out what's what. Get them to invest in you and the space, not in this particular product idea (since it will likely change and you want their support if that happens).

Personally, I'd take it. Money's great and you can get a lot done in a few months. But only if you're willing to commit. I spent 3 or 4 years working in a space I didn't care that much about because once you have a employees and investors, it's really hard to let go.

As for steps:
1) Figure out what you want
2) Find a badass developer cofounder
3) Take the money
4) Developer starts building product while you start securing first customers/users/partners, adjusting the product as you go based on your learning from talking to people
Note that all public libraries, sensitive to the personal privacy issues that borrowing records represent, only retain such records for the minimum time required. In most libraries once you've returned a book the library retains NO record of the borrowing and thus there is nothing to subpoena.

Compare and contrast with Google's "we'll keep records of all of your searches forever" policy.
Knuth video lectures
http://scpd.stanford.edu/knuth/index.jsp
You should definitely start building as soon as possible. The longer you wait the more time others are out there thinking of and/or building a competing product. Every week there is a post on HN about someone who thought of something and while they were thinking or building someone else launched. Getting to market first might be the guarantee success, it sure as hell helps.

Also, talk to a lawyer. If you are taking $250k from friends you need to have contracts/agreements in place. Don't take money on a handshake. One or both of you will get burned at some point.

I don't know if these friends are seasoned investors or just people with money but if they aren't familiar with the startup world make sure they know what they are getting into. They could lose all their money by the end of the week and they need to be prepared for that (make sure your agreements are in place before you start spending in case this happens).

With $250, I'd say you got about 4-6 months (assuming 4-6 engineers) of runway. That means you need to have a good prototype in 2-3 months and be ready to start pitching real investors. So I go back to my first point, start building.
If they can add value then they would be able to do that.
What the fuck? You have all these people ready to throw money at you but you have no idea how to execute? How does that happen.
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In this case, Microsoft is staying classy. Mozilla, just barking to be the loudest dog on the playground. Sad...
Coders of Fortune

Seriously, I think that the more you bring together people, from organizing a monthly get-together to a full-blown BarCamp, the more impact you have.

Blogging and contributing to open source is one way to get your name known but nothing beats organizing a large or small regular event that is big enough to require more than one person to organize.

There are three powerful C's:

1) Continuity - How likely is it you will see someone again. A random bar ranks low while a monthly tech meetup rates higher

2) Conversation friendly - Is it a nightclub or a post-meeting drink at a local watering hole

3) Context - How connected are you to the other people at the event. Random sports bar low, tech meetup higher, conference in Iceland on the mating habits of Emperor penguins very very high

My point in rambling on here is if you choose your collaborations and meetings according to the 3 C's (better if you help organize an event that tries to score high on all of them) - the better connected and more "luck" you will encounter - and better prepared to leap from nine to five MTWTF to 9 to 9 SMTWTFS - but responsible for yourself, freelance or consulting or partner
In London, talented students from good unis are getting 300-500 pounds ($500-750) per day for iOS work.
Where and What Is U.S. Trading Internationally?
Using Twilio with Node.js
But why should content sellers need to have such a middle man at all with the current technology? If there were a subscription-based-content reader installed on my laptop, I could just pay the content provider with a credit card and Dell would not be getting a cut.
> ultra conservative revenue projections

HA HA HA based on what? It's an idea.
I follow you except for the note about CPI underestimating inflation. There's actually a lot of debate about this (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Consumer_Price_In... for an informal look), and I personally think it overestimates it.
I think this is just some rebranding going on. The Pass is awesome and I'm sure will live on.
In my opinion, facebook can see order where others would see chaos. Order does not mean hierarchical yet too often those are the buckets information is placed in. Facebook identifies hubs and organize things around those hubs. Flexible yet rigid organizational structures are the future.
Show HN: ZFS+Rsync = Time Machine in the cloud
Whoa, you jumped to some extremes, and I would be hard-pressed to agree they are analogous. You reshaped your situation to suggest that you did indeed have no way to plan better, that somebody's action was directly responsible; logically, my opinions cannot possibly apply, and I think the conclusion you drew by misapplying my opinions was a stretch. In my response, I brought up traffic lights and other such things; in yours, you are now on some narrow path with a choke point.

Allow me to depart from the time management answer (it was a convenient way to reveal that both parties were at fault in one way or another), since it does not apply at all in the new scenario, and let's meet up with my core point in this whole thread.

As I understand your hypothetical situation, a single person stopped at a choke point, and because of them keeping you from moving forward, you missed an important rendezvous. Missing this means you take financial loss. You are going to experience a flash of anger for your loss. You have a target for your anger, the person who blocked you.

My core point is this: You are angry because the situation is out of your control, did not match your plan. The world did not operate according to your desires; someone else barged in and interrupted it, stopping you from moving forward. I propose that the amount of anger you experience is proportionate to how wrapped up with yourself that you are.

Here is the litmus test. What if you find out soon after that it was because that person had a stroke right there at the choke point? If you are like most normal people in this situation, you will suddenly experience a mix of emotions: lightened anger (it is still there, since things did not go your way), a sense of shame (oh, they had a really good reason, and you were really targeting them), a touch of concern, and a bit of relief that something in the world makes some sense.

In the absence of this information, having nothing but your own viewpoint to go on, you would have remained angry, even angrier as time passed. With somebody else's viewpoint, suddenly it seems unjustified to an extent. Amazing how seeing through another's eyes changes the emotion.
You are on the right track. Badges was not your thing. Coding great apps is. So glad you are back on track, not giving up. Maybe this time around build a badge app - in other words, find a need and build great software to address it. And ask to be paid :)
Protesters Use Google Moderator to Brainstorm Egypt's Future
You can pass functions around in your JSON.
Kids are smarter than that. They know the dumbed down wrapped-in-rubber VTech camera doesn't take pictures or work like your camera. They know that Fisher-Price fake iPhone doesn't play Angry Birds.

They see adults playing with the better devices all day long and they want to do the same. How can you blame them?
but I have to admit that the linux users are the most tight-fisted demographic I've ever seen.

This seems to suggest the exact opposite of what you just said:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/28471/Humble_Indie_Bundle...
Not to mention the lawyer-decades they would spend fending off a bunch of Sherman Act litigation.
>Apple restricts the app market because it adds value to their platform (for everyone).

Provably false. I'm part of the group 'everyone' and am stating that having one market does not add value for me. I believe there are quite a few of my type hanging about.
I think HN is being trolled.

There is the possibility that this is a real post, given how insane and bubbleicious the whole mobile/social space has gotten, but I highly doubt it.

The account is 3 days old.