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What do you think of our site? | paraschopra: Name is hard to pronounce |
What Linux distro for a Rails app that needs to scale? | adatta02: More than the actual distro I'd say look into what kernel you are loading on there. Make sure you're running a nice tight kernel with any extra fluff turned off (or loading as modules).I can't find the papers off hand but there has been some research into how kernel level cache tweaks will dramatically effect how web servers and DB servers will perform. |
What Linux distro for a Rails app that needs to scale? | hs: what's wrong with openbsd? is your webapp currently running on it?i'm curious because i use openbsd+lighttpd (soon will be nginx) in my colo (because no slice/vps offers openbsd afaik) |
What Linux distro for a Rails app that needs to scale? | wiemersl: good q. if you can, use the same thing on the server as you use on your desktop. i use 32 bit ubuntu (8.04). if it performs fine on your 2GB RAM thinkpad, it will probably do fine on an ec2 box, no? if the config works on my desktop, it will work on the server, etc. tremendous advantage in terms of sysadmin requirements in my book. your mileage may vary depending on how much you like os x :>) |
How to share equity and talk to a potential partner ? | pegobry: I think there are no hard and fast rules about equity sharing. What matters is not so much what each has done as what each will do.So the question is not so much what each side has done but the role you see your new partner taking in the future. If you two see each other as partners in the venture, the split should probably be something like 60-40.If you see him as someone who will do a bit of front-end dev and then move on to other things, you should give him less.Although of course, it's always a negotiation and is based very much on intangibles: how much you guys like each other, see yourselves working together in the future, how talented you think he is, i.e. if you think he's a star you should give him a big share of the pie to entice him and keep him involved in the project.In general though, the guy who started the company (i.e. you) should get a majority of the equity and the people who come later should get equity/options based pretty much on an asymptotic curve with equity on the y axis and time joined on the x axis.This might be a bit complicated for a side project but you should think about founder options to avoid the "YouTube syndrome" of one founder bailing early and still getting a big payday if it comes to that, and give your partner an incentive to stay involved over the lifespan of the project.So basically, if you think of him as a full-fledged partner, it should be something like 60-40, and if you see him as less than that it should be something less, and you should think about founder options. |
What Linux distro for a Rails app that needs to scale? | GeneralMaximus: Time is probably your most important resource here. Shaving a few nanoseconds off a query because you compiled your kernel with one different option won't do you much good, whereas an easy to administer OS with readily available binaries will save you a lot of time and headache.I'd say 64-bit Debian. I have already mentioned my qualms with Ubuntu elsewhere on HN (I don't like upgrading every 6 months, and I don't want to be stuck with old software in case I decide to skip an upgrade). |
CSS gradient hacks - are they worth it? | ZeroGravitas: No. This is a neat hack but is so narrowly applicable it's not worth bothering about for most folks.You ask designers for input but I think it's an engineering choice to use simple and straightforward technologies you (and colleagues) fully understand rather than meddling with neat hacks, particularly if you're deploying out to the user browsers, which is a quagmire even if you're not getting too fancy.Of course if you're in an environment where images are impossible/banned for whatever reason (and you can't use proper CSS gradients) then this technique could make you look like a magician, but I can't think of such a situation off-hand. |
Startup PR - How could they get so many coverages? | medianama: In my personal experience, if you want press to write about you/your startup, you'll have to give them interesting stories that their readers like to read.They don't have too much attention span. They don't care about how hard/easy it is do, or even if it is true or not. They just care about interesting stories...For one of my stories I told them that we did some survey and just made up the findings. They loved it and published it next day without looking at my data or even asking me methodology of survey/research |
Startup PR - How could they get so many coverages? | rythie: I'm not a expert, but, I'll would suggest a few things:printgreener.com has a lot of information describing what they do and why. They play on green card a lot which is bound to generate interest from mainstream media where as you hardly tell the user why they would want to do this.Also a free account allows you to view one page/30 seconds and the only version that fixes this costs $299/month where as printgreener.com costs $29 which is a one off - I don't understand the massive difference in price. Who is the target market that would actually pay $299/month for this. You need to explain this better or drop the price. To me this is the type of thing that could tend towards $0 with open source and/or a firefox plugin.Some of their coverage goes back to 2006, so they have a first mover advantage over you. |
Startup PR - How could they get so many coverages? | markessien: Human Interest. Look at what you put out from the perspective: Would this be part of the human interest category in a newspaper? If not, then you're unlikely to get covered unless you know someone.Furthermore, who are you? You have to be someone newspaperable, for example:"The guy who made a robot that sang songs""A 16 year old boy""A guy who traded a paperclip up"There are so many standard developers, you need to make a press friendly definition of yourself. Then email interns who are always looking for a story. Locate them on linkedin. |
Startup PR - How could they get so many coverages? | mixmax: There are a few things:- You have to tell the press a story, and it has to be interesting. The best stories are about people, the worst about technologies. For startups the story of how you have struggled through countless insourmountable obstacles and are now making big money is perfect. It is personal, it fits the cliche, and it gives readers something to look up to. Don't focus on your technology (unless you are trying to get an article in a trademag or something similar) normal people just don't care. If you need to talk about technology try to find a story where people are using your product to gain some advantage. Involve emotions if possible, it makes the story better. How Tim re-found his long-lost kindergarten girlfriend in old age and the two of them now happily living together because of Google is a much better story than how good Google's serach algorithm is.- Personal connetctions and relationships. This is what PR people do. Journalists are different, have different taste, and find different things interesting. A story that may seem uninteresting to one might be picked up by another. If you don't know anyone try to read through the newssources where you'd like to be covered and see which journalist writes about stuff that is close to what you do. Then contact him. By phone. Talk to him and ask him what he thinks and whether he would like to do an interview with you. Journalists are nice people, and they make their living talking to people, so don't be afraid of it.- Give them an easy story. Combining one and two above to make an easy story that can more or less be copy-pasted to give a full article. Journalists are lazy. Don't forget to include photos. (Again, it's people that are interesting. If you include product shoots make sure there are some with a proud owner showing off the product)- Don't ever lie. Journalists have an excelent nose for liars, and when (not if) they catch you they'll never talk to you again. |
Startup PR - How could they get so many coverages? | geoffw8: Its not what you know, its who you know. Always. |
What do you think of our site? | asmosoinio: Where are the dates for the posts on your blog?http://txtms.blogspot.com/ |
Startup PR - How could they get so many coverages? | tdonia: Your approach, Purifyr, seems as though it should be a more consumer friendly alternative to printgreener. From a story perspective though it's not being presented as a consumer-oriented product which limits the market a prospective reporter/blogger sees when they think of writing a story. i suggest you start with this:
"Free account could submit requests no shorter than 30 seconds. If you'd like to send requests more frequently, please check out our commercial offering."if you're intent on not using a passive payment model (advertising) to subsidize consumer traffic, this page is destined to be your main conversion choke point. this page needs to sell your product. there should be a big, friendly button that lets the consumer (not developer) immediately make that purchase. alternately, show an interstitial ad and count down the 30sec before letting them see the content.more fundamentally, you need to decide who your market is and optimize for them. are you really set on targeting webmasters and if so, how many content producers out there can afford 300/month while accepting a maximum of 10k views/day. seems like your major competition there is any freelancer who can hack out a "print view" wordpress template or even a simple print-view css file for less money. seems like a consumer model might make more sense, but then i would think about this almost more like an rss reader - if you're targeting consumers, you should consider ways to make it as easy as possible for people to maximize the content they see through your lens. the bookmarklet is a step in the right direction but isn't something most web users are used to.once you have your market more clearly defined, alert the media that's producing content to entertain said market. they always need a story but they have discriminating tastes. |
What do you use when searching for houses or apartments online? | tzetzefly: I like redfin.com, estately.com, and realtor.com. Then use dwellicious.com to bookmark and track listings from different sites in one place. |
Startup PR - How could they get so many coverages? | vivekamn: Timing is another thing. When we tried to get press for a site targeted at moms, we had a lot of luck approaching news papers, tv shows and blogs around, surprise!, women's day and mother's day. |
Review my startup - TwitterGrep.com : NY Times of Twitter | pclark: lots of ads. |
What do you use when searching for houses or apartments online? | NoBSWebDesign: If you're looking for student rental housing by any chance, that's what our startup is for... http://www.ratemystudentrental.comFor non-student housing, I use http://www.mapskrieg.com |
Startup PR - How could they get so many coverages? | aliasaria: I wrote to their PR person to see if they can offer us any advice -- I will post any response I get... |
What do you think of our site? | hwijaya: I try to click around and read few times, but, it's very hard for me to get the idea on "why i should use it".
Maybe this high-concept pitch needs some reword. "Share your info with a single text message!". IMO, it's everything, and, it's nothing at the same time.It probably works much better if i can have some context. As patio11 suggested above, "Business cards, minus the paper". Nah, that i got it on why i need to use the app. |
Review my startup - TwitterGrep.com : NY Times of Twitter | notmyname: It would be nice to click on the links in the individual tweets. |
Active Common Lisp communities? | stefano: Have a look at http://lispforum.com There are also many open source projects you could help (with code and/or documentation) here: http://common-lisp.net/projects.shtml |
Review my startup - TwitterGrep.com : NY Times of Twitter | ObieJazz: I like how the pics page lets you see larger amount of data (pictures) at once than is possible just using Twitter, although you might want to check out the layout on that page in Chrome -- some of the text gets covered by ads.Other than that, I'm not sure what the site offers me. Are the News / Tech / Gossip pages simply custom lists of people that are followed? Why do I want to use your lists instead of using my Twitter account, which I've already customized to include the people I'm most interested in following?If your target audience is people don't twitter but might be into it, they're either going to end up moving on to actually using Twitter, or decide it's not for them. In either case, they won't keep coming back to your site. |
Is .org ok for a startup? | bgnm2000: try dotomator.com - my best friend when finding names |
Startup PR - How could they get so many coverages? | aquaphile: Public relations (p/r). A good p/r person or team can work wonders: provided that you have something useful or interesting. |
What do you use when searching for houses or apartments online? | shubhamharnal: Ubiquity + Craigslist
Check the video at: http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/08/introducing-ubiquity/ |
Review my startup - TwitterGrep.com : NY Times of Twitter | adityakothadiya: http://TwitterGrep.com |
What reading material would you provide to a visiting alien being? | varun: A RSS feed reader, pre-filled with top 1000 feeds covering various topics, from news to technology to gossip! I'd get the alien to spend the first half of his time reading these feeds, and the latter half I'd show him Google.com and ask him to find out what he doesn't even know he could have found out about! A trip to the urban jungle (Manhattan) and a trip to a natural area, and the being would be all set! :) |
What reading material would you provide to a visiting alien being? | brk: The Bible (any version. Or Qu'ran, or similar epic religious tome).The 3rd party viewpoint would be very interesting. |
What reading material would you provide to a visiting alien being? | anthonyrubin: I would start with world history -- first a book that covers the last few millennia, then specific books on significant events. Next would be a few of Karen Armstrong's books on religion; books such as the New Testament might prove difficult to understand without proper background.The Princeton Companion to Mathematics would probably be a good starting point for math. I'm not aware of any great texts that provide the same level of broad introduction to science. |
What reading material would you provide to a visiting alien being? | icey: Wikipedia. |
Worst working conditions you have written code in? | hellweaver666: My current job - I sit next to the marketing manager who spends his day either talking loudly on the phone in German or asking me stupid marketing questions that have no relevance to my job because he can't be bothered to walk across the office and ask the right person.In addition, behind me is the CEO's office. The wall is glass and everytime I open my web browser to do some research he comes and asks what I'm doing - as far as he's concerned I should be doing nothing but writing code.Also, to my left is a door to the office balcony where the smokers do their thing, so every five minutes during winter I get an icey blast and the stench of tobbaco when they open the door to go out and again when they come back in.Finally, directly above my desk is an AC chiller unit that blows cold air down my back from spring to autumn making my hands so cold I can barely type. |
What reading material would you provide to a visiting alien being? | pavelludiq: How about philosophy. It would be hard for them to get the other stuff(excluding math and science). I don't know if they could get our philosophy either, since the way we think and see the world is very tightly coupled with our psychology, but we can assume that if they got our language(lets call it blubish) they either understand humans to some degree, or are themselves similar to us(or similar enough to understand us). |
What reading material would you provide to a visiting alien being? | tjic: Is anyone else gritting their teeth and cringing, waiting for someone to say "Atlas Shrugged" ?:-) |
What reading material would you provide to a visiting alien being? | tjic: The Oxford English Dictionary.It defines every English word they're going to ever come across outside of technical literature, it's got tons of historical examples, shows the connections between English and other languages, and more.If we extrapolate the speed with which Google is learning to harvest latent information out of data dumps out just 20 or 30 years, I wouldn't be surprised if aliens smart enough to get here could pull a huge amount of culture and history out of the OED. |
What reading material would you provide to a visiting alien being? | clord: I'd probably start with ABCs and those "See Spot Run" books. Oh, and anything by the good Doctor (Seuss, that is.)After several years (if they are clever and good with languages), perhaps they'd be ready to work on Nancy Drew and Harry Potter.Why assume they can read? This way they can get the context. |
What reading material would you provide to a visiting alien being? | Allocator2008: The only book anyone, human or alien, really needs to read is -"On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection"by Charles Darwin, 1859."The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins, 1974 is a good appendum there as well but once mastering "Origin" one really has the basics one needs. |
What reading material would you provide to a visiting alien being? | vorador: The hitchiker's guide to galaxy. |
What reading material would you provide to a visiting alien being? | silentbicycle: Codex Seraphinianus. |
What reading material would you provide to a visiting alien being? | melito: "The Little Engine That Could" and "Everybody Poops" |
What reading material would you provide to a visiting alien being? | nickfox: The Enquirer, because... inquiring minds want to know. |
What reading material would you provide to a visiting alien being? | TrevorJ: The first 5 pages of digg perhaps? I mean, they will find out about it eventually, might as well warn them up front right?But seriously, I think an encyclopedia would be a good bet but the very first message we send should probably be one the reiterates peaceful intentions. With our history of warfare anything such as a dictionary or Encyclopedia given without context could be seen as a threat of further violence. |
How to promote the truth? | known: "If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you." --Oscar Wilde |
CSS gradient hacks - are they worth it? | symbiotic: This website: http://dostuffright.com/ does something similar with the drop shadow. Kinda neat. |
How should I secure my ebooks? | kqr2: How about using Mobipocket Creator Publisher Edition to encrypt your ebooks? End users can then use the free mobipocket reader software.http://www.mobipocket.com/dev/article.asp?BaseFolder=prcgen&...BTW, this is pretty much the same format / drm the the Amazon Kindle uses. |
What reading material would you provide to a visiting alien being? | christofd: - The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History, 1973 (Douglas North, Robert Thomas): Nobel Economic Historian North explains how institutions and property rights determine how human beings got along with each other through history; this is important, so they don't think we're mass murderers by design- some school biology book on natural selection, evolution- The Princeton Companion to Mathematics- Goedel, Escher, Bach: introduction to the "weirdness" of the human brain- the little prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry): human beings and their quirks- Several editions of Popular Mechanics |
What reading material would you provide to a visiting alien being? | bmelton: "Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book" |
How should I secure my ebooks? | m03p: Imo it's just not worth it, if somebody can read it he can make a copy of it and redistribute it "illegally". Only thing you'll accomplish is pissing of the ones who retrieve it legally and the "harder" (harder for the average Joe) you make it the more annoying it'll be.Only reliable "secure" way of publishing an ebook is not publishing it as an ebook at all. |
What do founders do for health insurance? | icey: I don't know what part of the country you're in, but you should contact a broker. They can give you a bunch of options and tell you what all of the options mean.Personally, I'd prefer an independent broker than someone who worked for a big firm like State Farm or the like.As an additional note, you don't pay anything extra for using a broker; the carrier pays them additional money directly. All the carriers will have similar override agreements with a broker, so you don't have to worry about the broker being shady. They only get paid for as long as you have the policy, so it is in their interest to match you with a policy that you will actually keep.If you're concerned about costs, ask about an HSA. Make sure you understand what an HSA actually is before you decide to go with one, though.[Edit: I forgot to mention that I'm in the the brokerage portion of the health insurance industry; before I worked here though I used a broker and he saved me about 500 bucks a year.] |
What do founders do for health insurance? | green: You always can find something cheaper than that! You may want something more expensive for the kids, but for healthy adults you can pretty easy get away with like $300-350 for both -- use sites like ehealthinsurance and others -- they can do comparison for you. Of course, if you have some medical conditions/etc. - that can be an issue, as then the cost of insurance will be sky high.After all, yes, health insurance IS expensive, but you can find the cheaper options. But well, the same way you can think about your rent, groceries, etc. You have to have them, and you have to pay for that. |
What do founders do for health insurance? | run4yourlives: I'm in the employee benefits field up here in Canada. While we're different, I support small businesses and they have the same concerns regarding costs as you would, albeit at a much smaller scale.Take this knowledge with a grain of salt, given the systems, but one way you could control costs is by looking into a Healthcare Spending Account (HSA) - I believe the US equivalent would be a Health Reimbursement Account (HRA).This allows you to set a max contribution limit, but it automatically caps your claims to the money in the account. If you paired that with high deductible catastrophic insurance, you may come out ahead. Wiki has a good set of info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Reimbursement_Arrangemen...Other than that, I think you are SOL in terms of paying the big bucks. Health Coverage is one area where the US is simply lacking in my opinion, compared to the rest of the world.Good luck to you. You should definitely contact a local broker or two and have them walk you through the different options. There is a lot of stuff out there that is simply too crazy to understand and is best handled by a pro. |
Please, review my startup Strawlink (online job screening process) | icey: It looks very nice, and I could see it being useful.However, on the front page, I found myself really wanting to click on the words that you have randomly made bold in the text. I don't know why, and it may just be me.I specifically tried clicking on the word "screening", hoping to get your definition of the word. Screening can mean a lot of things to me. Our screening process contains technical interviewing as well as verifying information that the applicant has on their resume.I also think you should make your "Product Tour" link far more prominent; or change it so that the main image is clickable and takes you to the tour. |
What reading material would you provide to a visiting alien being? | BigZaphod: I'd probably want to gauge the aliens' true intent first. If it seems to be good, then I'd carefully select their media exposure so that they'd feel guilty for not taking me and my family with them to their advanced corner of the galaxy when they decide our planet isn't worth the effort.... :) |
What do founders do for health insurance? | thinkcomp: There is no good solution. The American health care system is unfortunately presently designed to work against entrepreneurs and small business owners. In most states including California, you must have at least two full-time employees to qualify for group health benefits.http://www.aarongreenspan.com/essays/index.html?id=11 |
What do founders do for health insurance? | PStamatiou: Before I graduated college I got a year of health insurance under a student plan that keeps working after I graduated. I graduated in December and it runs out in ~August. So I'll be in the same boat soon enough.. |
What do founders do for health insurance? | jws: When I sold my company I had to break my family apart for health insurance. My children are in the state subsidized high risk pool and I was able to find one company that would take my wife and myself without the children. |
Please, review my startup Strawlink (online job screening process) | Raphael: Charge more so you don't have to make it up on volume. |
What do founders do for health insurance? | vaksel: Cross my fingers and hope I don't get sick. I do try to stay in shape(workout every day 1-1.5 hours) and eat healthy. But I just can't justify paying for health insurance at this point. |
What do founders do for health insurance? | mechanical_fish: Living in Massachusetts, where you can buy group health insurance through the state, really helps. |
What do founders do for health insurance? | redrobot5050: I can't help with the family situation, but have you considered "catastrophic" insurance through a professional group like the IEEE or ACM?They have plans as low as $90/quarter that have a $5k deductible. Not good if you come down with frequent colds, coughs, flu, etc. It is good if you're in a car accident and fracture your leg in 2-3 places. Or slip on ice and hit your head, etc. |
How should I secure my ebooks? | zackattack: I've thought of this before and here is what I came up with. Each ebook purchased should be unique. This does not have to be a manual process. You should take the transaction ID of the ebook purchase, use it to generate a steganographic image, and patch that somewhere into your PDF file. A good way to do this might be to use Least Significant Bit encryption. Directly quoted from Wikipedia:>>>For example: a 24-bit bitmap will have 8 bits representing each of the three color values (red, green, and blue) at each pixel. If we consider just the blue there will be 28 different values of blue. The difference between 11111111 and 11111110 in the value for blue intensity is likely to be undetectable by the human eye. Therefore, the least significant bit can be used (more or less undetectably) for something else other than color information. If we do it with the green and the red as well we can get one letter of ASCII text for every three pixelsNow, there are two main problems here, as I see:1. The text can still be scraped from the ebook and redistributed as a .doc file. For this reason, you may also want to include some text steganography (e.g., draw some ASCII art with varying characters; change the order of people you thank on the "dedication" page).2. The pirate-distributor could insert pixel noise randomly all over the file. Then, your trans-id information encrypted in the LSB-image would be lost. In my opinion, however, this is unlikely, because the security I've described is not (at least typically) used in practice (with eBooks, as far as I know).These aren't preventative measures [1]. But if something does end up circulating on the net, you have a unique ID and can then probably sue their parents. Be sure to explicitly forbid them from circulating the PDF/consent to being sued if they do/what have you, in the terms of service.[1] Unless you explain that each ebook is uniquely secured, which may prove something of a deterrent; unfortunately, one measure of security is to not let people know that the property is secured in the first place. This may make the steganography more vulnerable to attack. |
What do founders do for health insurance? | tptacek: Been there.$1,500/mo is a typical quote for "normal"-deductable health insurance. If you're a young family, that's not what you want; you want high-deductable health insurance, which has a low monthly payment but effectively means you're paying for all your doctors visits and medications out of pocket.The real goal of insurance is to keep you from going bankrupt over appendectomies and broken bones. You can afford to pay your pediatrician yourself.If you have a qualifying high-deductable plan, you can also create an HSA account and fund it to pay for routine health expenses; those costs are then tax-advantaged.I agree with the other posters that recommend brokers. Especially for a family, you can wind up in a rats nest of preexisting coverage denials if anyone has ever been to the hospital before. I got the sense that insurers simply don't like covering women who might have children. Brokers will not resolve this problem for you, but they'll make most of the paperwork go away.Couple more thoughts.First, there may be an engineering union style group you can join to get health insurance from. Jeremy, one of my NYC partners, had a group like this he got coverage through. So look around for things like that.Second, beware of temporary/month-to-month insurance, which reputable insurers offer very cheaply. It doesn't take a lot of thought to see why this is a bad deal: they're under no obligation to pick you up once the term ends. If you get sick April 29th and your plan runs out April 30th, you're completely fucked.Matasano got group coverage (through United, and I'm not a fan) a couple years ago. It made hiring much easier; health insurance was often the first question candidates asked, before base comp. Be aware that group coverage isn't a magic bullet either. What it does is make preexisting condition issues go away. But it isn't cheaper than what you can get on your own. |
What do founders do for health insurance? | mdakin: Wow, it's much cheaper if you're a single male (no maternity benefits included) in Calif. at least (and Wyoming and Mass. from experience). I have a Blue Cross PPO right now for $85/month. They are upping the rate to $140. I will be leaving on principle.I plan on getting a high-deductible/HSA plan. If the deductible is $X I will put $X into an HSA. Thus any care I might need over the next year will "feel" free. If I'm lucky and my current health trend continues I will not need to take any money out of the HSA. And it will simply be a tax benefit. In future years I'd replenish the HSA up to or over the deductible level of whatever my present plan is.I would look at the high-deductible/HSA options. Assuming you have the cash around to buy the policy and stock the HSA with cash you'll not have to worry about health bills until next year. Psychologically, this could be comforting. Whether it makes sense probably depends on how much you and your family actually use insurance. And the specific costs of the plans available to you. |
What do founders do for health insurance? | eventhough: I use Tonik. It may not be right for a family of four but for a young single guy it works well enough.https://www.tonikhealth.com/ |
What reading material would you provide to a visiting alien being? | blender: I had a Prof once that said there were two ways to become a Psychiatrist.1. Go to medical school2. Read The Bible, Shakespeare and DostoyevskyI'd tell them to read The Bible, Shakespeare and DostoyevskyCheers |
What do founders do for health insurance? | philwelch: For some reason the health insurance industry has settled on a model of "pay your health insurance company scads of money and pay relatively little for the rationed routine care you get". Since health insurance is a heavily regulated market, I doubt this is the most market-efficient solution. Maybe if you shop around for routine care and offer to pay with cash (or HSA) it won't end up costing as much, and I've seen informal studies done by friends that show, for instance, that certain prescription drugs cost hundreds of dollars less at different pharmacies (once you can coax the pharmacies to actually tell you the price, since they're so used to working within the insurance cartels).It all depends on your health, too. If you have sleep apnea and want to get it treated, that's hundreds of thousands of dollars if you don't have insurance. Probably better to get a full time job for a few years until your apnea is treated. If you have hypothyroidism, you can take remarkably inexpensive prescription drugs and get an annual checkup for cash cheaper than you can get insurance to cover the thing.My working hypothesis is that high-deductible catastrophic insurance is the best solution for broke, comparatively healthy adults. In this model, you're using health insurance as insurance qua insurance, to make sure you don't go bankrupt if a medical emergency costing more than $10,000 happens to you. (This of course requires you to be able to raise $10,000 if something DOES happen to you.) This does nothing for drugs or routine care, and needless to say there is no dental plan. I pay $40 a month for this. I don't get anything out of my $40 a month, but on the same token, insurance qua insurance is something you pay for but you hope you never have to use. An HSA is not a bad feature if you're going with this model.Depending upon state law, you can leave out things like maternity coverage, or get further discounts if you're in good health. A good female friend of mine doesn't have maternity coverage but she is very aggressive about birth control and has no qualms about abortion, though, so I would carefully consider whether this also applies to you or your spouse. I would also hasten to add that if there's a possibility of having more children, the expense of health insurance is not your biggest problem here.In fact, I don't know how well this model works if you have kids. Or how founding a startup works if you have kids, for that matter. |
What do founders do for health insurance? | mrkurt: The best solution was (for me anyway) to treat insurance as insurance instead of a health care plan, and take advantage of all the tax breaks I could for doing so. I put my family on a $10k deductible plan, primarily to cover catastrophes. This gave me two things: negotiated rates for health services (typically a 40-60% discount) and eligibility for an HSA. The plan ran us $190/mo.Now, $10k is kind of a scary number for something like that, but I felt comfortable with it given that we'd never have to write a $10k check. At the very worst we'd rack up a $10k debt to a hospital or something, which (given the current state of healthcare) we could reasonably expect to pay off over like 15 - 20years. It seemed reasonable to me, for what we needed.The HSA is helpful because it's effectively another IRA you can use for pretty much any medical expense. So for normal health care, we ended up paying about 40% of the "list" costs for things, and pre-tax.Doing this requires that you be a little aggressive about getting good deals on care, though. My daughter broke her arm about three months in to this, so we took her to a minor emergency clinic. I told them what was up and they "coded" the visit at a much lower rate than it would have been. The next day, we actually called around to find out what people were going to charge us for a real cast to replace the splint the clinic put on. It worked out to be about $600 total, including the minor emergency clinic visit.So in summary: get coverage for catastrophic health events with a "cheap" plan, abuse the negotiated rates that plan gets you, get an HSA, and be an intelligent consumer of health care. Oh, and minor emergency clinics are your friend. |
What do founders do for health insurance? | dustineichler: To follow up on this thread, what health insurance do contracts get? I'm looking for something for myself. Thanks. |
What reading material would you provide to a visiting alien being? | rksprst: The War of the Worlds, so that they know that they can't mess with humans. |
Please, review my startup Strawlink (online job screening process) | mmelin: From the product tour, this looks like a well-executed product which definitely can bring value to recruiters. Two things stand out to me:
1) charge more per contact or consider a different model, the value you are providing is definitely above $1 per qualified contact
2) please look into getting a copywriter to rewrite your website copy - currently the text gives a distinctive non-native feel |
What do founders do for health insurance? | smokey_the_bear: We got a Kaiser HSA. If you live near a Kaiser hospital they're a pretty good deal. I don't have any kids, but they seem like they're much more family friendly than some of the other low cost HSAs. They cover full maternity, and cover a few well checkups a year for kids, and one for adults without hitting your deductible. |
What do founders do for health insurance? | josh_nyc: In New York State, try the Freelancers Union. http://www.freelancersunion.org/insurance/index.htmlI used this a few years ago while working for a startup and I got a full plan (comparable to the average full-time job's plan) for half price (at that time, around $250 a month).Worth a look. They are always expanding and trying to provide more and more benefits for the W2-challenged. |
What do founders do for health insurance? | biohacker42: This is one of the few big pluses Europe has over America for startups. Unfortunately it's not nearly enough. |
How should I secure my ebooks? | apage43: If you use -any- sort of DRM, it will be extremely restrictive to the end user. Personally, I think really what is needed is for it to be convenient for the end user. This is what keeps me buying music from Amazon MP3. I don't even need any software other than a browser if I'm buying a single song. There's nothing to stop me from sharing my files with a few friends but Amazon MP3 probably makes up for whatever sales that would be lost this way because I like the service so much I recommend it to people all the time. Just give the user a raw, non-drm PDF file. If you really need to do -something-, dynamically insert a unique user ID on the last page of the book, just on the page, no steganography, write "Purchased by user #12345." PDF is pretty much a read-only format, so this wouldn't be easy to remove.This probably won't keep people from casually sharing the book with their friends but will probably effectively put them off of sharing it publicly on the internet or p2p. |
What do founders do for health insurance? | SoftwareGuy: When I started my own company I bought health insurance. If you can't afford it, you can't afford to start your own company. No different really from other expenses like equipment and such. |
What do founders do for health insurance? | tirrellp: When I paid for private health insurance, My premiums were around $450/month for a family of 3. This was (if I recall correctly) and 80/20 plan with a $1000 deductible. I then dumped $1000 into my HSA and I was set. |
Please, review my startup Strawlink (online job screening process) | green: Thanks for this valuable feedback! Want also to mention that if any of you will be hiring, or will need some help with screening -- use us! Register now (http://www.strawlink.com/referrer/hackernews) and you'll get your accounts credited right away. We will be turning off the new registration credits soon, but I want to say that if any of you will need Strawlink and will not have money to spend -- let me know -- alex@strawlink.com
I will do my best to help. As I mentioned before - Strawlink's goal is to help facilitate the screening process, and if we will learn how to do it better -- all of us will benefit. Everybody who create new jobs opportunities, and everybody who is looking for a job.Thanks! |
What do founders do for health insurance? | marc092: It is worth finding out what your state's family services covers, especially if you are low income (about $45k/year). Depending on your income your kids and even you might qualify for medicaid. There are also dozens of other programs around. I live in Ohio and there are programs for pregnant women, disabled, blind and aged. There are programs for emergency care for aliens and the hospitals usually will give discounts for low income. If that is not enough there are lots of cheaper and even free clinics for health and dental care, around here they generally work on a sliding-scale based on your income. |
What do founders do for health insurance? | wastedbrains: We both were health young guys with no families that needed to be covered and just ended up getting Tonik health insurance.During hiring we mentioned that we would cover up to X amount of personal health insurance. Since our hire had a family though we are now looking at getting a group plan even though the company only has 3 people, the man reason was getting family plans is much harder to get cheap personal plans while the group plans have better benefits for families. |
What do founders do for health insurance? | mixmax: Move to a country that takes public healthcare seriously.I'm only half joking after reading the other comments here. The US. system is seriously broken. |
What do founders do for health insurance? | gills: My wife is an engineer at a large corporation, I'm covered as a spouse....but that won't cut it if/when I get to the point of needing to hire other people. |
What reading material would you provide to a visiting alien being? | jerryji: My name card. |
Feedback on Skritter, Learning Chinese with Spaced Repetition on App Engine | gsaines: We founded Skritter just about 9 months ago. We got two grants to fund development and as the front page attests, we're just three right out of undergrad living in an apartment and developing full time.When we were first getting started, App Engine was just becoming available, and we thought that would be a great platform mainly because of its scalable architecture and Python backend, which both Nick and Scott liked. We incorporated the Spaced Repetition after we read about Supermemo in Wired Magazine shortly after launching.The idea is to charge users small monthly subscriptions with big discounts for semester-signups. Since a lot of our current users are young and in school it's really important that we keep the price affordable. We've also attended 2 trade conferences in language learning software, and will be going to one more in about a month at which we'll be trying to sell Skritter as a site license to institutions.If you'd like to check it out in more detail, we've set up a demo account for everyone on HN:UN: hackernews
pass: hackernewsThanks a lot for your time. |
What reading material would you provide to a visiting alien being? | slavox: Probably A history of computing and technology from flight upwards.
Then give them a low down on wars and show them how ruthless we are..
Then before they go to bed i'd read them the bible as a short fictional story. |
Feedback on Skritter, Learning Chinese with Spaced Repetition on App Engine | jpwagner: so easy to try it now: i love it! |
Feedback on Skritter, Learning Chinese with Spaced Repetition on App Engine | bdr: Bad: the logo, the blue "next" arrow", the buttons on the front page, overall UI is busy and confusing.Good: Everything that happens inside that beautiful white square. Stroke recognition, hinting, etc. The demo video is also good. |
What do founders do for health insurance? | utefan001: I have a two year old that has 2 heart abnormalities. We thought she would need heart surgery, but the cardiologists don't feel this is necessary. The "leaks" in her heart are getting smaller each month. She looks like any healthy 2 year old. I have family members that are health insurance experts and they tell me I basically have to be a part of a group policy. The last 2 companies I have worked for have had minor increases to their 100+ employee group policy. The health company cited my daughter as one of the reasons for the increase. Luckily my coworkers don't know this. |
Feedback on Skritter, Learning Chinese with Spaced Repetition on App Engine | gyeh: Very nice job! One potential customer/institution to cater to: western-based Chinese schools:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_schools,
http://www.ncacls.org/ncacls_frm_intro.htmThese community based organizations often rely on eastern teaching methods (often rote) to instruct large numbers of young children. Your app would definitely introduce a different mindset (and fun!), when learning Chinese.Btw, will you guys support different dialects (ie. cantonese)? |
Feedback on Skritter, Learning Chinese with Spaced Repetition on App Engine | jbrun: That is amazing, I spent a year in China and the characters were so hard. I would have to try this over a long time to see if it is better than hand drawings, but it seems pretty good.How do you deal with radicals and learning related characters? |
Feedback on Skritter, Learning Chinese with Spaced Repetition on App Engine | rms: The relevant Wired article: http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_woznia... |
Resources for image pattern recognition algorithms | dryicerx: I am quite interested to learn more about object recognition as well, unfortunately I don't have any direct answers to your question.May I suggest your search for "Content Based Image Retrieval" for research papers in that field. |
Resources for image pattern recognition algorithms | aswanson: I could consult our very own pixcavator:
http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pixcavatorhttp://inperc.com/wiki/index.php?title=User%27s_introduction |
Feedback on Skritter, Learning Chinese with Spaced Repetition on App Engine | pradocchia: The stroke recognition is both really cool and somewhat disorienting. Really cool because it works, and somewhat disorienting because if you're off a bit, it repositions the stroke.In a fluent writer, each stroke follow from muscle memory, relative to the size and position of the previous stroke. Repositioning breaks the rhythm.I don't know, the positive reinforcement might work very well for a beginner. I would be more worried about the intermediate student and above. |
Feedback on Skritter, Learning Chinese with Spaced Repetition on App Engine | Tacomanator: I'm glad you're planning on expanding the site to include Japanese, I'm very very excited about this. I was not able to login using the demo account given, did you already expire it? |
Feedback on Skritter, Learning Chinese with Spaced Repetition on App Engine | rgrieselhuber: Very nice. If you could incorporate a Japanese version, it would be great. |
Resources for image pattern recognition algorithms | mahmud: You are right you're wasting time. Image processing is not the sort of a thing you can pick up on your own "to get work done"; it's extremely demanding and actually fun. Just hire someone.If you're prone to falling into "hack mode", learning this stuff will not help you one bit. The problems are far too interesting and encompass wide areas of research that are guaranteed to please everybody; low level bit manipulation, file formats, numerical methods, signal processing stuff with filters and sampling, wavelets, edge detection, rank, laplacians, convolution, dithering, ray tracing, morphology, neural networks and other genetic learning algorithms, heaps of inner-loop and vector optimization, scene detection stuff that make use of ray tracing plus interesting data structures like octrees, statistics, information theory .. in a nutshell, it's something to give up work, wife and kids for.Don't ever let curiosity drag you into that tar pit, hire someone. |
Feedback on Skritter, Learning Chinese with Spaced Repetition on App Engine | smoody: Nicely done! Google should use it as a showcase app -- It's definitely the most 'grown-up' App-Engine-based site I've seen.As an aside, how did you accomplish those great perspective transformations in your front-page screencast? |
Feedback on Skritter, Learning Chinese with Spaced Repetition on App Engine | jwt: Wow, very impressive stuff. A job well executed and done. Keep it up! |
Feedback on Skritter, Learning Chinese with Spaced Repetition on App Engine | swombat: Looks absolutely awesome. I gave up on chinese a month ago (my chinese girlfriend just broke up with me and I've decided to learn spanish instead), but the tool looks immensely useful, and I was looking for a tool like this previously (and didn't find all that much). Learning to write the characters is integral to learning to read them (stroke order is very important).The video is excellent... I just sat there and stared at it. Only criticism is, being able to draw the characters on-screen does not automatically translate to being able to write them by hand. Do you have a way to translate the on-screen writing skill to manual writing skill? If not, I would suggest this simple method: provide a way for the user to select characters that he/she has already learned on-screen and print out a practice sheet (A4 or Letter sized, probably as a PDF), filled with measured squares (with the guidelines), with the first square containing the character, the next 10 containing a pale grey version of the character, and all the other squares blank.In my experience I needed to fill most of an A4 page before being able to write the character freehand without guidelines - perhaps even more than that. If you have this feature, then next time I'm learning chinese (!) I'll gladly pay an "affordable monthly subscription" (like, about $5-10) to use your tool, probably for about a year (I'd probably buy a year in advance).Oh, as someone pointed out, you'll lose all the students with that subscription... perhaps worth offering a student subscription for a little less (or even contacting universities to subsidise their student memberships?).Good luck! |
Resources for image pattern recognition algorithms | bravura: I am not a vision specialist, but I work around a lot of them.Look into the OpenCV image processing library. I haven't used it, but it seems to implement a lot of basic functionality to get you off the ground.If you can't find anything good from the last ten years, then look at Yann LeCun's recent papers. (Google wanted him to be head of research, but he preferred academia.) In particular, investigate his convolutional networks.The work of Rob Fergus is more applied, and should lead to good recent pointers.Look for works experimenting with the NORB dataset. |
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