skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: How to find a Co-founder for your startup?
Hi,

I recently joined HN. This is my first post. Sorry if I haven't followed any HN etiqoettes. I have a question for your guys.

Let's say you have a great idea and you are novice to startup world(like me). And you need very good hacker(has startup experience) who can partner and make this idea into a reality and mutually share the benefits. Now my question is how do you find a trustworthy hacker.Do you guys have any approach?

How to tackle this hypothetical situation.
1. You announce that you are looking for a cofounder. Many show interest. You contact some one and share your Idea. After that he doesn't show interest and walks out. He implements the idea by himself (or through his friend) with out your knowledge. You will be in deep trouble.

One approach I am thinking is announcing on HN ("Looking for cofounder"). Then Hackers who are available and would like to venture will get back. As I need proven hackers, I will ask for their earlier creations, their email IDs, photo. Once I am interested, I will ask them to commit on HN with their actual IDs or their creations(which would be proof that they are joining me). Then I will share my idea with them. If they are interested, I will close the post on HN that I am partnering with this person. Else,will look for some other by posting "not partnering with previous person, looking for other".

Please share your thoughts.
Fabulous was recommended by another poster. My favorite registrar but they require you to either pay a lot ($30 retail) or own a lot of domains to get an account. They cater to portfolio holders.

If you don't fit, checkout NameCheap.com.
If there is an easy way to measure employee performance then the answer is no, random promotions are not possible. If employee X made 10 widgets in a year and employee Y made 20 widgets then X might have grounds to sue the company if Y was promoted instead.

However, it is rarely the case that things are so easy to measure. So-called "soft skills" such as communication and the ability (or willingness) to manage staff will often give organisations the additional leeway to promote a person who probably isn't actually very good at what they do. Sometimes (often?) this decision will be made because political alliances have been made. Other times it may be to fill a racial or sexual quota.

These additional factors probably introduce a good deal of randomness into the mix when measured over time and averaged over all appointments.
So there are no monthly fees after migrating from the old TextDrive servers?

It sounds like the offers to migrate have either not been sent to all or the messaging has been inconsistent as to costs/ease with which this can be performed.
Depends really.

Going pre-med, college is a massive waste of time. The organic chemistry and physics is something you will never use as a doctor, nurse, pharmacist, etc.

For business, it can be pretty good depending on where you land up. I was fortunate to go to a school that offered one hell of a BBA program and a majority of what I learned was applicable to investment banking, consulting, and other corporate jobs. But for entrepreneurship? Eh...I dunno yet.

Oh and it's a lot easier to become a pretty good programmer by taking classes than learning on your own. Feedback from good professors and peers about code optimization is priceless.

All in all, if I had to do everything over again, I would either apply to the best BBA or computer science program, or pick the cheapest university option available to me.

Of course I assume that one already knows what he or she wants do right out of college, which is rarely the case.

So, actually college is really a place for exploration. It sucked having to go through trial and error to find my niche, but when I finally did it was liberating. I stand by my earlier position, though, if high schools went through more effort to bring the exploratory experience to its students.
I shared an office in one situation, worked in an open space in another, and had a private office in a third. Private office was by far the best situation. Being able to grab complete silence when necessary was amazing. Private offices end up being the best about 90% of the time. When you do need to collaborate, conference rooms are available and using laptops isn't hard. Most offices can also support about 2-3 other co-developers with ease.

If I had a choice I would choose a private office every time.
Dont have immediate access to the paper. I agree it is a hurdle to overcome, but I don't really know how many startups ultimately don't get started or fail because of it especially if you look at the number of startups and entrepreneurs consistently popping up in the US compared to some countries where the government provides universal healthcare.
It's not really a status symbol. PMs tend to be more mobile, presenting in meetings and such, and need laptops. Devs and testers get much better desktops.
Lessons Skateboarding Taught Me About Business OR "Scared sh**less? Go for it"
"That's plain screwed up. If you developed no communication, writing, or quantitative reasoning skills in college, then your college education was a waste of time. But it's because you made an (apparently) crappy decision to go to that college, not college in general."

You might be right -- I don't think I took advantage of all the opportunities going to Yale afforded. I don't think the decision was crappy though, considering I made amazing friends who I later founded my company with, and I had a great time in general. In fact, I think it was one of the best decisions of my life!
Watch Ajay Tweeting at Tweet Idol
Do you know Ajay Devgan is on Twitter? Closely watch his Tweets on Tweet Idol. Several other celebs are also on Tweet Idol.
you need the fastest dev box to compile as fast as possible and run unit tests and bvt tests quickly. It's a true pain having to wait 20 or 30 minutes for something to compile and test just to keep working.

Performance tests are done separately on machines on a lab and there's lot of them, with components on and off,different configurations etc. In some cases you can simulate slowness like latency or less bandwidth ,as in a client with a 14.4k modem connection, with things like wansim. That allows to automate as much as possible.
"The author seems to celebrate a private office. Care to share your opinion? I'm curious..."

From experience, my most preferred to least preferred office options are

(1) Work from home (2) private soundproof office with a door (3) shared sound proof office (2 or 3 people in a medium/large room) with a door(4) open work spaces with a maximum of 5-8 people (5) standard cube (6) crowded and noisy "open work spaces" where you can't hear yourself think / get interrupted all the time, especially the "agile" version with enforced pairing and the "buzz of conversation" and so on.

The best options give you silence. The least inundate you in noise.
Laptops are, for the most part, neither necessary nor useful. Most developing/testing work is done in a single place, so I never really had a problem.
You have just added a new reason to my list of reasons never to put `rm -rf *` into my command-line history again.
It worked this way long before angellist. You need some combination of amazing team, traction, or social proof. AngelList features a huge bunch of angels which is a HUGE benefit to the startup. Finding angels is hard. But just because they are all in one "room" doesn't mean that you don't have to impress them in the same way that startups have always needed to impress.

The good news is that once you DO get get something eye-popping (an amazing prototype, a great advisor, a brilliant growth curve), AngelList can be like gasoline on a match-- you close faster and with better terms (at least that's what I've heard from multiple sources).
This is how it works for me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y88rvZe_eRs
> we have a /slightly/ better ratio than 1 test per 100 SLOC, etc.

Has TDD really resulted in this becoming a status symbol? :P
"It's not really a status symbol."

A status symbol is, by definition, something only or mostly upper echelons of a hierarchy can get, with fig leaf justifications about why the folks on the lower rungs are "not worthy" of them. The surest way to make anything (a private office, a parking space, a laptop) a status symbol is to mandate that only people above a certain level in the hierarchy can get one.(Note that I am responding to a comment that states that laptops are only for managers and devs have to get "loaners". Other people at MS seem to disagree that this is the case)

"Devs and testers get much better desktops."

Good desktops aren't an excuse for not having good laptops.

The association of laptops with presentations and meetings conveys a lot about MS's approach to development. No wonder the place is infested with multiple layers of redundant management. I wonder how MS Research fares? Do Peyton Jones and co go laptopless too?
Why I’m switching from being a bootstrapper to a funded startup
Shape Sensation from Triumph & Felder Felder at London Fashion Week
Triumph is also the first ever lingerie brand to hold a catwalk show at this prestigious event in the fashion calendar and was definitely one of my highlights of London Fashion Week. The brand has been combining innovative fabric technology with contemporary fashion styling for years to create new levels of everyday shapewear sophistication that women adore!
I agree with the author, college didn't teach me anything that I needed later on in life, I did meet some absolutely fantastic professors and peers who pushed me, who challenged me to do more and become better at what I was doing. That I think is an important part that is overlooked. Sure you can go straight to working out of high school, but generally the atmosphere is not the same.

In college you can screw up, big time, and all it will cost you is time, in the real world it can mean your job, and lively hood. Academia provides a comfort zone in which you can experiment.

Had it not been for a few select professors and my peers I would have never experimented with electronics and made it a hobby of mine, I would have never loved programming and network security as much as I do now. Those experiences cannot be overstated. Overall I think the time I spent in college was spent well, but I can honestly say that the time spent in classes was a waste.
this was posted 4 days back..
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2256774
Patience, young padawan.

Read everything you can and you'll figure it out over time.
They had 99.99% uptime last year:
http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/01/destination-dia...

I'm on the paid Google apps and my account is intact (I'm not sure if any apps accounts were among those disrupted) but as far as I can tell if you're looking for a reliable web based email service Gmail is your best bet, you could periodically download emails if you want to feel safer.
I think you can only get those if you go to MIT or CMU. The vast majority of CS programs and lecturers aren't that good, and certainly worse than what you could teach yourself on your own.
I'm right there with you. The informal collaboration possible in an open space is so much more productive for me.
I was also thinking of implementing the queue using
Being that I am just on the other side of your situation:

1. Your concern is not finding a very good hacker who will implement your idea. Your concern is getting your idea nailed down and showing hackers that YOU drive value. (Hackers have great ideas too, can build it, and don't have to share, so why is yours better?)
--I solved this problem by getting a major corp. and name-brand school interested.

2. Great quote: "People rarely have time for their own great ideas, they sure don't care about yours"
--Aka don't worry about them stealing your idea, 99% is execution and getting them to sign something == you signing your own death warrant.

Hope that helps.
I agree with this. I have had many sites deindexed due to being thin affiliate sites using the same affiliate feeds that tons of other sites use. They still get crawled. Also, I have had sites go through a huge drop off in bot activity and still keep whatever rankings those sites had. Bot activity is cyclical. I don't think you can make a direct correlation between bot activity and ranking.
The number of hours of work-from-home that Google gets out of those laptops more than justifies their cost. Hell, I'm posting this from my work laptop, taking a break from writing out a whole bunch of use cases and product design decisions.
There are already artificial limits in place with physical books. They are much more expensive if libraries buy them. You can't just make your private books available on a library basis, you'd be breaking several IP edicts (having to purchase the 'library versions')..
This article sits well with me, as I've hashed this out a lot in my own head in the past year. I would be a freshman this year had I decided to attend a college. However, I didn't want to get burdened down with any unnecessary loans, and as previously stated by others, the industry is quite navigable without a degree.
Instead I've moved myself from Boise Idaho to NYC, and I'm loving it, meeting other people in the industry I wouldn't otherwise be meeting, and learning new things constantly.

I think one main point that the article leaves out is that if you decide not to attend college, or decide to drop out, you'll really need some self discipline. I spent a ton of time in high school sitting in my room being an autodidact. Learning how things work, and then learning to apply techniques and such. Then trying to find any scraps of work I could so as to build a portfolio/resume. Had I been doing what the rest of my peers were doing I certainly wouldn't have been in a place to not attend college.

Hopefully that doesn't come off as pretentious. I just think the whole aspect of having a skill v.s. not having a skill, or a passion for that matter, are left out of many of these "is college worth it right now" articles. Assuming the goal is to acquire a skill in college, and not to make friends/go through that rite of passage.
Speaking of rites of passage, anyone else going to Burning Man this year? It's going to be my first, and I'm oh so excited.
http://hackety-hack.com/

http://learnpythonthehardway.org/

http://projecteuler.net/

http://www.aaronboodman.com/2010/10/wherein-i-help-you-get-g...
Working At Microsoft–20% Time and Prototypes
The Kings Speech' Dominates Academy Awards 2011 - Full Winners List 
The royal drama, about stuttering British monarch George VI, led the competition with 12 nominations going into this year's Oscars, and edged out the likes of Black Swan, The Fighter, Inception and The Social Network to claim the most coveted title of the night.
Health insurance premiums are tax deductible.
I haven't done so, but have done a fair bit of investigation. The most technically correct answer I can give is that it depends on where you're going and how you leave things in the US.

First, where you're going. You obviously want to go somewhere with better healthcare than the U.S., which isn't all that difficult to find. The ? becomes what your obligations will be as a somewhat permanent resident and how you can maintain that status legally. That's really going to be location dependent, but you should look and look hard before you leap, because the consequences could be unpleasant if you screw up. I believe there are agencies that cater to potential expats like yourself, and if you're really serious about this you should talk to one of them to make sure you don't step on any landmines in the process.

As for the second ?, The US assumes that you continue to owe US taxes as long as you maintain your citizenship, and they make it difficult to give that up. I don't know exact figures, but you are exempt up to something like $78000 of income and are allowed to write any foreign taxes you pay on that off, but as long as you are a US citizen you're on the hook. If you move to Singapore and strike it rich, unless you pay the IRS you could have extradition hearings in your future. I'm pretty sure the deficient US health care system would be pretty low on your list of worries in that case. Again, this is the sort of thing a professional could tell you more about, but this is definitely out there. I don't want to advocate giving up your citizenship lightly, but know that the US is unique in this sort of taxation and making a fortune abroad without paying US taxes would almost certainly be viewed as some sort of tax evasion if you didn't proceed very carefully.
Sharp signature styles, which has earned Felder Felder its celebrity cult following, were shown in shades of back, grey, nude and pink whilst big bouncy hair and beautiful jewellery and shoes accompanied the lingerie.That All very nice
5-year Microsoftie here (mostly PM, some dev)

Sorry - I don't think that's true. When I was a dev I had a laptop. It is highly dependent on the team you work for. I know a lot of devs who have laptops. In fact, most things hardware related are highly related to the team you work for. Since MSFT works on such a variety of things, hardware needs tends to vary dramatically
That sucks for you. I've been working at Microsoft for about 4 years. First 2 years as a tester, and the latter 2 years as a dev (still a dev). When I was a tester, I coded 4 days a week with 1 day a week for other investigations (live site issues, meetings, etc.) As a dev, the ratio haven't changed. I still code at least 4 days a week (80% of the time) with 1 day a week for meetings, investigations, documentations, etc. We have a separate operations team that carries pagers. They will do their investigation before I get called. For past 6 months, I got called once. Just in case you are wondering, I work under the Windows Live org.
Ask HN: Converting traffic into revenue on a NSFW site?
We just launched a slightly raunchy content site (just text, no photos - www.dearxdiary.com ) that is getting some traffic from NSFW and Sex subreddits. We slapped AdSense on it. The CTR is awful, and additionally, the ads are either "public service", or mostly irrelevant. We don't want to display porn ads - we want to make it so that people bored at work can browse it. We are looking into some other ad networks, which seem to have longer turn-around times and manual approval processes, so we are racking our brains in the meantime.

What other ad networks have you guys had success with?

What other information should I provide here so that you guys have a better picture of what's going on?

Any other ideas on how this thing can make money?
I once registered a domain for ecigs - didn't do anything with it and I let it expire. As of now, it's still available. It might do better for long-tail searches. howdoecigswork.com -- a question that almost anyone interested will wonder about.
>> Great, but how about week-long hackathons where people can code on whatever they want?
Showing the three-level branch hierarchy of your repository doesn't seem to tell me a great story about what it's like to be a dev at MS. Not because there's anything wrong with the branch structure; if you work at a place where coders are given a lot of liberty and freedom, there should be more interesting things to talk about.

I guess those can be counted as special cases and not pertaining to day-to-day working. The main point to gain from the post it seems is that its not a pain to work in such a complex environment. This is not some web or phone app, its a huge undertaking and how it works in a precise routine.
Ask HN: EBook Marketing
What do you think would be the best way to go about marketing an eBook for sale on Amazon?
You're right that employer-based health insurance is idiotic and economically destructive (conservative and libertarian analysts have been saying so for decades), but your blatant partisanship is not helpful. In 2008 John McCain's platform included a migration away from employer coverage by treating benefits as taxable income, while simultaneously granting a refundable tax credit for the purchase of individual insurance. Obama and the Democrats instantly demagogued that as "taking away your existing coverage" and defended the employer-based system.
Isn't that how people who have been programming a fair amount of time do it?
Or do they buy new books every time they're interested in a language?
Also, employers expense health insurance premiums and pay no payroll taxes on the contribution as they would on normal wages.
Not if you have an employer. The deduction is for self employed people.
for the 0.000001% of time that gmail is down? your homebrew mail setup can beat that?
Okay, I know hating on Republicans is fun, but is that really necessary? Why sow the seeds of discord?
I'm not understanding this comment. Which part of this post made you think that your decision was great? The fact that you started a software firm? the fact that no one has an office at your firm?
And The Award For The Most Dead Entertainment Medium Goes To… The Web
$92,900 in 2011
http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/international/article/0,...
Yes, but government ran healthcare is not the answer...
From my knowledge no one really says that a technical degree leads to better reading/writing/reasoning skills. Then again not very many say what a technical degree really teaches you either. Funny system.

Pure liberal arts programs are interesting structures on their own. Can you name a high school student who thinks, "you know, I want to improve my reading, writing, and reasoning skills and for this reason I will spend 4 years in a Liberal Arts program taking a mostly random stream and number of unrelated courses."
I setup a script on my Ubuntu box to backup my gmail account daily with mbsync. See http://www.chrisstreeter.com/archive/2009/04/305/gmail-imap-... It uses IMAP and stores the downloaded mail in mbox format that you can view with mutt or pine. Every so often I archive the entire backup and backup that archive so I have a snapshot of the mail.
Ideally, I'd like both: an open space to collaborate in, and a quiet place tucked away from interruptions and distractions to code in.
"Disgusted" at WordPress Plugin Authors
> I'm terrified of working with you guys but am starting to feel like maybe I should get over that and lend a hand.

You shouldn't be terrified.

My advice: start with a small open source team (not small project) on a project you like. Maybe do not start with your real name (it will be easy to change aftewards). Come on one IRC channel of a project ( like #videolan on freenode) and propose your services. See how people react.
If you like them, go on, if you don't, move along.
Here's a compendium of tips for avoiding mistakes like these, largely culled from other comments here, but some from the article.

1. Never `rm `, especially `-rf`. If you must, `rm -rf ../tmp/` or similar. You do not want this command to be in your history. Especially in the form `rm -rf * & cd; trn`.

2. Set up backups early on. Use `git` or similar for as much as possible.

3. `noclobber` (or not setting CLOBBER in zsh) may help. I found `noclobber` irritating because it also refused to append to nonexistent files.

4. Take three deep breaths after typing and before executing a `shutdown` or `rm -r` command, or typing a password at a password prompt. (Did you just give your intranet server password to whoever has backdoored your weekend-project VPS?)

5. Keep backups in a format that you can readily verify is usable. `rsync` with `--link-dest` is handy for this, as is `git`.

6. When referring to a directory that you believe exists, don't say `foo/bar/baz`. Say `foo/bar/baz/.` so that whatever command doesn't try to create the directory `baz` if it doesn't exist yet.

7. Color-coded prompts or terminal windows by server.

8. Tab-complete to ensure that things exist.

9. Use `sudo` instead of root shells.

10. Keep your config files in source control. RCS is okay, but Git is better.