skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: When to quit and when to stick
Hello HN,

A bit of background: I'm the co-founder of a small startup/development shop (2 guys). We've been going since 2007 and have had a "meh" response to some of our SaaS offerings, while a couple have been partially successful but would in no way support the company on their own.

The problem: my co-founder is leaving, and continuing the company doing the generally uninspiring paid work which has become the norm does not appeal. Paid work was intended to provide capital for building products of our own - not as an end in itself. And, over the last couple of years, enthusiasm wained for building new services, mundanity crept in, and the company increasingly relied on client work until no aspiration for our own work remained. We're loved by the clients we work for and it's been worth it financially, but I don't find the majority of work inspiring, challenging or worthwhile (sounds bad but I'd love to work on stuff provided real value).

So, by the end of the year, I'm going to be left in control of the company with no clear idea what the next step should/could be.

Has anyone turned their directionless company around when a founder has left? Did you close the company and make a new start? It would be massively helpful to get outsiders' views.

The alternative is get a job which would require moving somewhere with more opportunity and selling the house (done the work-on-my-own thing for too long now and I need to work with real people again!), since where I'm based has zero tech sector/community.

If it comes down to "Suck it up and get a job!" that's fine, and it's quite probably an inane question, but I've been thinking about this for a couple of weeks but I'm too "in" the situation to think clearly.

All thoughts and opinions welcome!
FWIW the same sort of bug could have occurred in the "auto-update" features of any browser. The problem was the client's failure to handle an unexpected response from the server.
Oh! The software I work on, on HN!

We're porting our modules (infamous plug: I work for ThinkOpen Solutions) and v7 is definitively a big improvement in terms of the interface, including usability.

The core seems to be more stable, both in terms of regular use as well as API, and the functionality seems better integrated. The new messaging system is definitively nice.

The release notes for 7.0 are worth a read if you're interested: http://v6.openerp.com/node/1272
Let's dispel the myth that the App Store is not a profit center, that Apple are reluctantly taking a cut from developers in order to cover costs.

If the App Store is a cost center than it should be treated like other cost centers. Would it make sense if Human Resources started charging job applicants a fee of 30% to handle resumes, interviews and contracts?

If the App Store is treated as a business unit in its own right, then the profit'n'loss should take into account hardware sales (the App Store is touted as a selling point), perhaps by internal billing of other departments.

Sure, developers benefit from the App Store, but they also benefit from other departments like Marketing and R&D, who grow the potential market for apps. Should developers help cover their costs too?

The truth is Apple are taking a cut of 30% simply because they can.
Reddit is protected by the DMCA safe harbor rules. Reddit is bigger than MegaUpload. By your logic, the state should long ago have destroyed Reddit.

The reason they haven't is that you're wrong. The DMCA doesn't stop working when you get big. It stops working when you take steps to ensure that infringing content is featured on your site.

For a bulletin board full of nerds, we sure are happy to insult each other's intelligence about what MegaUpload was. What kind of an idiot do you have to be to not understand what made MegaUpload popular? Are you really willing to write a comment in public under your real name saying that MegaUpload was a good piece of software? That sentiment doesn't make you feel embarrassed as an engineer? It was a crappy piracy site; it was popular solely because it was an effective way to upload and download pirated movies and TV shows. If it had been a Dropbox competitor, we'd all be making fun of it, instead of pretending like its founders are technology martyrs.
Than there was no harm, because a lost sale is the only harm there could be.

(Or more accurately, the value of the patent as a % of the cost of an item sold)
If something is affordable and saves you money one way or another, it will sell even to early stage startups. Think Basecamp.
The choice is that you have to sign in and enable Chrome Sync, it is not on by default: https://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&an...
Going to design your app? Wait Check popular design trends of 2012
I am a Stanford, but not in the MBA program. My understanding is that many students do pay full tuition. Graduating with an MBA from the GSB guarantees that you will find a high paying job that makes it well worth it. To put it one way, my one friend asked an MBA student friend
"how does everyone in the GSB afford such nice cars while paying MBA tuition?"
"When you are already paying 200 grand, whats an extra 50 thousand?"
I think its very revealing of the mindset.
Another interesting stat : 40% of incoming MBA students say they want to found a startup. Ultimately only 2% do. The reason for the differential not being for failure to do so, but for being unwilling to turn down lucrative job offers.
There's a Windows Phone 8 implementation of PhoneGap: https://github.com/apache/incubator-cordova-wp8
In most of these discussions there's a question about the fairness of Apple's 30% cut. Are they charging too much?

Most might just look at the cost of a credit card transaction (~3%) and think that 30% is just crazy. That, of course, is the wrong way to look at it. The act of selling a product costs far more than the credit card processing fees. This is particularly true for physical products that you have to store and ship.

The best comparison I can make is to take a look at having Amazon sell your product. Here are the fees:

http://www.amazonservices.com/selling/pricing.htm

In very rough strokes, fees range from about 5% to 50% of the transaction total, depending on the cost and nature of the items sold.

Clearly Apple could charge a lot less for higher valued items. Right? The flat 30% cut starts to become excessive at some point. If I understand Amazon's pricing for selling your software product the two services compare as follows (assuming no shipping, only downloads):

price Apple Amazon % of Amazon take
1.00 0.30 2.49 249%
5.00 1.50 3.09 62%
10.00 3.00 3.84 38%
15.00 4.50 4.59 31%
20.00 6.00 5.34 27%
25.00 7.50 6.09 24%
30.00 9.00 6.84 23%
35.00 10.50 7.59 22%
40.00 12.00 8.34 21%
45.00 13.50 9.09 20%
50.00 15.00 9.84 20%
75.00 22.50 13.59 18%
100.00 30.00 17.34 17%

In this possibly contrived comparison it'd cost about the same to sell your product through Amazon up to about $15 to $20. After that Amazon charges you less. For low price items Apple is ridiculously cheap.

Can you do better if you handle your own transactions, fulfillment, hosting, customer service, fraud/loss prevention, etc. Possibly. It certainly doesn't get down to the raw ~3% you pay for CC transactions. My guess is that a highly optimized operation might be able to achieve 5% to 25% depending on the nature of the product and sale price. Clearly selling items below about $10 requires a highly optimized operation with huge volume or your are going to loose your shirt --and more-- no matter how you approach it (keep that in mind when selling something for a buck on eBay).
Startups for startups is a real need and even pg encourages startup for startups here (item #30) http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html

Now, as far as the quality of startups for startups is concerned, you can always argue whether they are good or bad etc. So you saying that you are sick of sick of startups for startups is probably no different than someone saying "I am just sick of all these Show HN posts" because essentially both are trying to achieve the same thing: get their startups shared with HN community (regardless of quality, purpose, type etc.)
don't not do it because of me. Just make sure it is compelling and interesting or creates real value. To hell with this post if you are doing something at least slightly different.

All I'm saying as a HN reader is I am seeing the same type of post - a startup for startups that is not doing anything new or compelling.
Or you could just ignore that and use the link you end up with directly, https://demo2.openerp.com/#action=114.
Moving away from being a Nerd
Now on the front page on The Verge

http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/11/3754042/google60-google-n...
I've been happy with Rackspace Cloud - their support is fantastic even for non-managed accounts.

http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/public/servers/pricing/

They start at ~$16/mo, and only charge for outgoing bandwidth, but 200gb/mo can get a little pricey.

Could you give a better idea of what you're looking for in terms of resources/price/support?
The screenshots are horribly small with no way to resize, so I can't tell what is better than Gmail.

If it had 2 factor auth and a way to trust a particular machine or application (which I think it does?), SMTP and IMAP were free (are they? used to have to pay), there were no ads (even though GMail's aren't terrible), and it guaranteed it would not delete my account or email if unused for years, if it guaranteed a better uptime than GMail (which is already good enough), had contact dupe fixer as good as or better than GMail, had plugin for Thunderbird, etc. to keep contacts in sync so didn't have to use a 3rd party free plugin that breaks at times, and I could see that it was easier to use than GMail, and they guaranteed great security (better than GMail) and that they didn't ever look at the content of my mail or my contacts, that they would never sell me out to anyone, that they were as conspiracy-conscious as I was and apolitical, and if it allowed clutter-free integration with Facebook, etc. to mine them for email addresses when I connected to someone, and if they hated spam and would help me organize my life with easy calendar integration to every major smartphone and other devices, share calendar only with family or have other calendars to share with diff groups, get things done without integrating a tasklist, and ignore the stupid stuff, and guarantee email for life, then I might use it.
In addition to everybody else's replies, remember, cell phones are computers. Chant it to yourself: Cell phones are computers. Cell phones are computers. There is nothing that a notebook will need that a cell phone won't need just a year or three later. Cell phones can chew through any amount of power you give them, with augmented reality, being used as laptops with optional shells, the sky is the limit. Do not limit your mental model of cell phones to "glorified phone", the end game is "computer with cell network interface."
And if they can't come to the HN crowd to have their ideas vetted, where would padseeker have them go instead?
There are businesses whose sole offering is a service to audit your shipping invoices to ensure that you are not being overcharged. One, started in Memphis in the late 90s to specifically audit FedEx deliveries, is now a division of IronData:

http://transportation.irondata.com
I believe just pointing out costs is a false measure. What is the expected wage/cost ratio, and how does THIS measure compare?
That's not exactly true, learning to corner properly on a motorcycle is probably the toughest skill to master. That being said, if you ride conservatively you can do just fine with only a little practice.

But yea, the most dangerous part of riding a bike, once you have even just a few months experience, is the other cars on the road (most of whom don't see you).
We're actually looking into OpenERP for potential implementation at my company (around 2500 employees). I've been doing a good bit of research. My findings so far:

The good:
* Done in python. Easy to read.
* Easy to extend or modify (done via python modules)
* Supposedly can be extended/configured to a certain extent without code (field additions, etc)
* Has a long list of modules available, and core modules which support my needed (accounting, finance, warehouse/supply chain, HR/Payroll)
* Requires PostgreSQL...my database of choice.
* Seems pretty stable...I haven't hit many bugs yet.
* Fully open source under the AGPL...you get the entire product, unlike others such as OpenBravo and XTuple where you have to pay to get certain features. The flip side of this is that because it's AGPL, you have to release the source any modifications or modules you make unless you pay OpenERP for a subscription (and consequently, a different license)

The bad:
* The documentation is badly out of date. There are two versions...web-based and PDF. The web-based ones are more updated, but still out of date. Trying to learn as complex a system as an ERP with broken documentation is a very frustrating exercise. This is probably to biggest headache for me and it has significantly slowed our evaluation. It'd be at least a little better if I could pay for improved docs, but this is all they have...even paying customers are provided out-dated documentation.
* Not many success stories in the US. I get the impression that it's more popular in Europe (OpenERP is out of Belgium).
* Company is a bit unresponsive. I've contacted them and had very little successful communication with them, even though they have a US rep. If you read online, others seem to have had similar problems.

We're still going to make a go of it, because our current system is legacy and leaves a lot to be desired. However, I think they could have a lot more success by hiring tech writers and making sure the documentation stays up to date.
Challenging Programming Exercises Published Weekly
How badly does your app have to be coded that it can't handles six requests per second? Are they not caching anything?
What makes you think it's illegal to rent out rooms in Santa Barbara, CA?
<quote>Davis escalated salaries and benefits for 164,000 state workers, including a 34 percent raise for prison guards, the first of a series of steps in which he and successors saddled California with a legacy of dysfunction</quote>

There's no question that it often feels that "leadership" is lacking from our political leaders. But much of the blame for this situation must be laid at the feet of the voters, who consistently wanted harsher and harsher penalties for criminals without regard to the cost. The prison guards would be much less politically powerful if there were fewer of them, and there would be less need for prison guards if not for idiocies like "three strikes" and mandatory minimum sentencing for nonviolent drug crimes.
Eliminate These Distractions And Your Productivity Will Become Unstoppable
If you consider the time spent harvesting your imaginary farm productive then I suggest you stop reading now. Everyone knows that life is full of distractions. How you handle distractions has a direct impact on your personal well-being, productivity, financial success, and the relationships you develop. My goal is to encourage everyone to take a closer look at how you spend your time. WARNING: Be prepared for a harsh reality check!
I could have told you that without testing. There leaders are running on anti-science platforms and getting lots of press and support for doing so. (Creationism, global warming deniers, forced conception denial.) What about our culture promotes science and math?

Yes, there are pockets that deviate from the mean (like HN for instance) but as a society, the US is pretty anti-intellectual. For me, that's the scariest thing about this country (that I love).
Get the new LinkedIn Layout.
Just goto http://www.linkedin.com/profile/sample and click view profile and it will switch.
Git Go v0.0.1
I had multiple issues with the WP7 emulator, but the WP8 emulator has been great so far.

I'm running Windows in a VM on OS X 10.8 so I wonder what you could be doing to make the WP8 emulator suck.
I have no misconceptions.

Signed apps are great for the user; the question is who is the CA and how do you get a certificate? The security options are App Store, signed, or everything; I and many others suspect they will change the default to App Store only in the future.

I also do not approve of almost everything else added in Lion. It's like they are pushing hard to attract people that don't know how to use computers, but at the expense of those that do.

For the record, I didn't like how you wrote in a manner that was condescending and overly familiar, either.
Sync is strictly opt-in. I know because I've never opted-in.

(It was because I'm worried about just how much information Google is collecting on me, so while I can feel smart for not having a crashing Chrome yesterday, really I was just lucky. There but for the grace of God.)
Cost break up for 2 years: Tuition 115K; Rent & personal: 50K; Books & stuff 8K; Study trip 4k; Health 8k.
You Can't Regulate The Internet
It's not 6 requests per second, it's six visitors per second. The issue they faced was that they had very few server resources (a 2 core VM from their university) and the site serves a large amount of graphics in the form of map tiles. In the first 24 hours they server about 2.7TB of data (or a continuous 250Mbps).
Are you looking to hire anyone to assist with the implementation? I work in the manufacturing / logistics / WH arena and am very keen on ERP work
Record setting MBA programs are not shocking to me as income inequality continues to grow.
What I don't understand is how you protect yourself as it doesn't seem feasible to wallow through preexisting patents hoping to not find a patent that may not exist. It appears as though these companies wait until you're most vulnerable (have successfully implemented something patented) before suing. I understand that you're saying some companies have legitimate claim to base their entire business around lawsuits for patents; but their profitability relies on a business model that seems to promote laying in wait under a bridge until the victim is most vulnerable... Like a troll.
It does, just not by default. I went to options and at the bottom, there is a checkbox to force https.
> Gender-variant behaviour should be tolerated instead of being discouraged.

I never contended that. I said the same thing when I said elsewhere that all attempts to eradicate differences are not only misguided, they are dangerous. People are different and should be allowed to be different. We should embrace the differences.
Search Marketer's Guide to FBX, Part 2
The bright side is that in my opinion it's improved, the status of science and math. Again just the status, the education system pre college is still a mess.

I am going to go out on a limb and say controversially, that it's because education falls under state rights. You just have too many different philosophy of education across all the states. For something so important it should be at a national level.
Just spent 15min playing it with a colleague, it's still a fun game 50 years later.
When you look at the list of "things you need to do" that Hull.io takes care of, almost all of them are things that a modern CMS needs to do as well. The major exception being the social graph, which is a pretty trivial thing to add, and often these days it makes sense to just hang off of OpenGraph.
Surprises When Designing An iPhone App
> Which leads me to a more specific question: What kind of event would cause a major "correction" that would drive the gold price down (either over time, but a significant downward trend, or suddenly, like a bubble popping)? I can't really think of one. Can you?

Hmm... Let's think:

Strengthening of the global economy.

Political crisis in China that prompted players with lots of money to flee.

Government action in the US, India or China banning or restricting gold ownership or import.

Accounting scandal affecting a major gold ETF.

Discovery of a new, large deposit of ore.

Changes in tax treatment.

Changes in margin requirements for investors.

There are people who are investing in gold today because the US debt situation is horrific and the economy is in a bad place -- they are rational investors. There are other people who have been predicting the fall of the monetary system since 1980, and are recommending that you orient your life toward the stockpiling of gold, and cash out your 401k for a 100% "gold IRA". Those folks are gold bugs.
There are entire states that deviate from the mean.

The reality is that there's a large percentage of the US that is quite dumb, and it drags states with good education systems down.
Lovely narrative, but there is nothing about the music! No examples, no mention of the direction the record will take.

I suggest they fix this because it's just a call to charity without it.
The Dream Team: Hipster, Hacker, and Hustler
Judicata: The Path of the Law
Yes it is legal and the Government provide a tax incentive to do it - https://www.gov.uk/rent-room-in-your-home/the-rent-a-room-sc...
It's how enterprise customers know you are Serious Business (TM).
I've personally saved more than 1/3rd of my _pretax_ income over the past 14 years. Does that count?

People don't talk in public about their finances very much, so I don't know about other people. Especially because when people realize you have healthy savings they start asking for 'loans'. Perhaps that is another benefit of owning an expensive house: it's a way to stash away value that less thrifty friends and family won't mistake for free money that you can give them.

The long term housing values are net positive, yes, but not relative e.g. to the broad stock market.

The fact that housing can be a "great passive way for people to save for retirement." is largely because they already need housing, which was part of the article.

I wasn't stating that the prior poster's figures were correct... just pointing out that the 1.5m figure isn't that impressive and that achieving that depended on historically atypical appreciation, and that it could have gone the other way.
"will generate more buzz"

Is that not an adequate reason for this? Humans need to see human faces, not just abstract arguments. This isn't going to win the fight overnight, but it's more than just helping a guy and probably one of the more effective ways of fighting the fight for public opinion that you could come up with.
Or how about "Psy Makes ONLY $8.1 Million..."

Is this a lot of money for the most viewed video in the history of the Internet and the most popular song worldwide?
The parent's complaint is valid. You may have given a talk with more detail but the slides are what you submitted.

Honestly, I'm a little tired of these marketing posts that have no new information and only serve to market the author's product.

How are they getting upvoted?
Digital Publishing Netherworld No More
Add to the conversation - what's the issue for US companies using OpenERP?
> People seem to want 'the real thing'.

Correction; women seem to want 'the real thing', but diamonds aren't themselves valuable, they are a status symbol. Girls don't want to show their friends a "fake" diamond and unfortunately due to marketing, they consider man-made fake even though it's real.
It would be interesting to see the difference in, say, the 20th percentile between countries (those who care, in other words).

Most people are not interested in math, and frankly have little use for it.
Consider contacting one of the partners; many of us provide support and training as well as custom development of modules.
The median total compensation for a freshly minted MBA from Stanford this year was $185,000

That's great if tax laws allowed eduction deduction. A bit like stock losses can be offset annually.