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A User's First Post? | ryanwaggoner: Yes, posting and commenting here is intimidating at first. The combination of very smart people + strong opinions + all the web rockstars who hang out here gives one pause when commenting. I first wandered over to HN about six months ago from Reddit (and Digg, sad to say). For the first few weeks, the ... |
What other HN-like sites do you read? | TweedHeads: Slashdot was a really good place to hang out but never got with the times and got left behind.Digg was a good source of news a couple of years ago, then went downhill.Reddit was tech savvy too when it started, now downward spiral.Techcrunch for a brief moment, but Arrington blew it.HN is my only news aggreg... |
A User's First Post? | kyro: Why is posting here intimidating? There's this perception of this community being full of super serious users who are always in a ready position to pounce and criticize others. There are a handful who are like that, but for the most part, if you post anything that carries even the smallest ounce of intelligence, ... |
What other HN-like sites do you read? | resdirector: Metafilter and AskMetafilter. They have a once-only $5 fee and a one-week waiting period before you can make your first post. This filters out the Digg / Yahoo! Answers crowd. They also have a culture of trusting users not to make "yo-mama" comments...which succeeds in keeping discussions cordial and in... |
How many "tell me when it launches" email addresses did you have? | mahmud: We have a "Tell me when this feature is ready" button. So far 50 emails in the last month, but people always had something usable from the moment I bought the domain and set its A record to my home DynDNS IP. |
How hard do you work? | drusenko: we used to spend 16 hours a day working on weebly, mon-fri and sunday, but we'd always take friday night and saturday off. we were fairly productive, so i'd say at least 50% of that time was actual, productive work.over time, and with a move into our own office (and out of the apartment), we've shifted to wha... |
How hard do you work? | ctingom: I've tracked my time for over 2 years solid.The first year (2007) I was 46% billable efficiency (web design).The second year (2008) I was 49% billable efficiency (doing web design).I also do sales / marketing / customer service / and building my own web app so this is purely consulting stuff with clients and I... |
Please review my startup | inconvenient: Overall, it seems to work pretty well. Under "prettyURL", the "Tiny URL" is often longer than the "Meaning URL". Use a shorter hash key. Also, you might want to have some basic content that loads instantly along with the "loading" graphic (e.g. Logo, basic description).What user base are you going for, an... |
A User's First Post? | rjurney: Don't try and play genius, just add what you have to say when you know something worth sharing. Takes the pressure off, and works better anyway. |
Please review my startup | diN0bot: cool. i signed up and made a private space. it feels like you're giving a lot of value to users, though i don't have anything concrete to say about that....i'm always vaguely looking for private wiki space for small collaborators.biggest question: will you still be around in 6 months? i've had not so good expe... |
How hard do you work? | Zarathu: Given that I work from home, it depends on whether or not I've taken Adderall that day.It ranges from 2 to 16 hours. |
How hard do you work? | Oxryly: Too hard. |
What other HN-like sites do you read? | mindhacker: Stack OverflowProggit |
Please review my startup | mynameishere: Seems nice. I guess my question is: How is it distinguished from other make-your-own wiki solutions? |
How hard do you work? | edw519: 8 am to 4 pm 5 days/week - client sites (10% efficient)7 pm to 11 pm 5 days/week, 8 hours Saturday, 12 hours Sunday - my startup (70 - 90% efficient)Friday nights and one weekend per month off (100% efficient) |
Please review my startup | cellis: What am i supposed to do?Imagine i am a very ADD person and I don't know what to click. You need a big DOWNLOAD or SIGN UP button, otherwise you are squandering your 5 seconds that i've allowed you. |
How hard do you work? | huhtenberg: 11-12 hours per day and another 10-12 hours per weekend -> a bit over 70 hours per week for two years. Then sold the company and it went downhill from there. I posted longer version of this in an older thread - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=330672Now it's more like 3 hours a day, 4 days a week working... |
What other HN-like sites do you read? | edw519: None. Once you start posting here, you feel compelled to follow the discussion threads. Doesn't leave much time for anything else. |
How hard do you work? | raffi: It depends. When I'm in the zone I work myself into the ground. When I'm out of the zone I'm very unproductive. I found a secret that helps me get into the zone though. Its a secret, for $9.95 you can order my e-book or just read the rest of this comment.I'm not a planner personality at all and I find planni... |
How hard do you work? | agotterer: I work 10am - 6:30pm everyday at my day job. Usually come home, eat dinner and work on my startup from 8pm - 12pm. At the office though, I probably spend 30 min a day between person email, tech news and stocks. Maybe another 20 min chit chatting with people. I like to think I'm pretty productive though! |
Please review my startup | TheAmazingIdiot: I've got a habit on middle-clicking when I want to open X content in a different tab when I know there's more content on the main page (like HN).Now, when I see those "GeniusWiki Documentation Center" and those other boxes with content, the links aren't links. They're javascripts that force me to go aw... |
Please review my startup | uninverted: Loading screens are usually irritating; in general do what you can to minimize them. |
How hard do you work? | dmillar: 8am-6pm at my "real" job, and 3-4 hours a night on my startup. I can usually get in 8 hours on a Saturday or Sunday. It's going much slower than I want, but I feel like I am maxed out when also considering my other obligations. |
How to build your own cruise control? | warwick: Please don't risk your life stupidly.In any case, cruise control involves things like accelerating when you're going up hills to maintain an stable speed, not just keeping the gas pedal in the same place. |
What other HN-like sites do you read? | Evgeny: Joel on Software forums
http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/?joel
http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/?biz |
How hard do you work? | patio11: I am physically present at the day job for between 10 and 12 hours typically (more some days, less others) and sustain peak productivity for about 2 to 4 hours most days.My side business averages about 5 hours a week according to RescueTime -- more when I'm able to block off time on a Saturday to get some heav... |
How hard do you work? | DanielStraight: I'm a programmer for an engineering company (the only one at the company). I do internal apps to help make their jobs easier.I have 9 scheduled hours a day (1 hour lunch). I'm usually at my desk early and during part of lunch, but I don't work during these times (unless something REALLY needs done). The... |
What other HN-like sites do you read? | chanux: Well HN (or is it IN ;) ) seems to be the wall hole for me. I noticed some quality issues lately but since yesterday I felt HN again :) . No it's not the name change, I felt this even before that. Now I don't have to worry about asking another "Erlang week". |
Please review my startup | josefresco: From a web design perspective you need more space below your site logo (above the content). That is all. |
How can we get better internet? | lann: That distance is nothing for a point-to-point wifi link. Buy (or build) yourself a cheap directional antenna for both ends and you should get a solid link with line of sight. |
How hard do you work? | kirubakaran: I often found myself doing random stuff and then wondering "what the hell did I do?" at the end of the day. So I wrote a simple tool Smacklet http://smacklet.com/ and it has helped me immensely. All you do is: type in few words about what you are doing and plan to do now. Doing this simple exercise, I foun... |
How hard do you work? | rjurney: I've never seen my workplace, but I work about 65 hours a week, just over 40 of which I consider billable. Ratcheting up to 70-75.This is not a sustainable rate, especially without equity. |
How can we get better internet? | wmf: Sounds like a pretty bad situation. Look at http://www.ubnt.com/ if you want dirt-cheap long-range wifi. |
How should business guys go about finding great hackers for a startup? | mahmud: You just took the first step. The second step is to figure out what you want to do. If you don't have ideas of your own, ask them to come forward with their own. Use hackers to find other hackers; too many times I found a guy or a gal with a good business brain between their ears, but things fell apart because ... |
Please review my startup | jlm382: it'd be nice if screenshots were on the front of the page -- otherwise, it looks like another weekend project that never got finished.increase the size of your TRY NOW button 5X, and you'll notice a higher conversion rate. |
How hard do you work? | safetytrick: I'm in class from 8 am until 4 with a two hour lunch, I spend the two hours working on freelance projects or my tiny little startup (its already paid itself off!). From 4:30 to 8ish I work at a web development shop. Every day I program in C++, C#, Java, and PHP (with SQL, javascript, 3 different JS librari... |
How should business guys go about finding great hackers for a startup? | netsp: Are you asking where to find them or how to recognise them? |
How should business guys go about finding great hackers for a startup? | chris11: Great question. I'm sure you will get some good answers. There will also be a lot of good stuff that is not on the front page.Searchyc:http://searchyc.com/find+hackers |
A User's First Post? | kirubakaran: Just post "correlation != causation" in some thread and get it over with :-) |
How to build your own cruise control? | sr3d: upgrade your car to one that has CC. You can then enable email notifications when there's a bug in the engine, or or the brake fails the unit test suite (hopefully it's not too late then) |
Cost of 1 Person LLC | jeffunger: If you live in California, a LLC might not be the right choice, as California charges a "gross receipts fee" on LLC revenue (even if you form in Delaware, you are stuck with California's fee structure because you live and operate in California). A corporation might work better for you. I have written about... |
How should business guys go about finding great hackers for a startup? | vaksel: Finding a techie cofounder off the street at the idea stage is next to impossible. Because if someone really has the entrepreneurial spirit they are already doing their own startup.You gotta hire. Then at the end of the project, if the guy works out, you can offer him cofounder role. As a "business guy" get rea... |
How should business guys go about finding great hackers for a startup? | DenisM: Check out the Seattle scene for a large group of people in this area: http://www.seattletechstartups.com/Also, I suggest job ads in places like seattle20.com and Joel's job board.Do you already have an idea what you are going to do? It would help to get the general technical area on the table - hackers have the... |
How should business guys go about finding great hackers for a startup? | rnugent: First of all forget the "humble" requirment. Anyone that is senior and has crew knows what his value is and is not going to be impressed with a suit.Second, if you have a M$FT based idea then you're in the right place. If not you need to look at California. That's where the rest of the talent is.Lastly, avoid... |
How should business guys go about finding great hackers for a startup? | matthewer: I am getting tired of seeing this question every week. There needs to be some sort of Hacker News FAQ. |
How hard do you work? | vorador: As a sidenote, it's amusing to see that working hard == spending much time at work. |
How should business guys go about finding great hackers for a startup? | oakmac: You could start by providing your email address so people can contact you. |
How should business guys go about finding great hackers for a startup? | octane: > I am a business guy. I have worked at large companies and managed big businesses. I have started tech and non-tech companies as a founder and an early employee. I have raised money. I have written specs. I have sold stuff to big companies and consumers.I have cut deals with big companies and big brands. Some ... |
How hard do you work? | lleger: I work far too much and far too hard, yet not quite enough or quite hard enough.Yeah, it's a paradox, but anyone else building a company, working a regular job, and going to school will understand. |
Please review my startup | sutro: The first link I clicked revealed an animated gif depicting a woman breaking a water balloon over her very well-endowed chest in slow motion.At the risk of being redundant, I would say that your startup shows a great deal of promise. |
Please review my startup | hwijaya: Few things on my mind as i look at it. You need:1. Tagline - Make people understand what you're doing within 1 - 2 seconds. Most people don't read at all.2. Better call to action - I generally prefer to have one priority over another. Making it blue and red communicate the same priority, and remember Barry's p... |
How should business guys go about finding great hackers for a startup? | grandalf: Are you funded? If you are, ask your angel/VC to get some recommendations for top people who can deliver in a startup environment.What are you paying? Some people will work for options, others won't. Some people will work a 9 to 6 job but will refuse to do the high pressure always on call thing.How much c... |
How should business guys go about finding great hackers for a startup? | tlrobinson: Whatever you do, don't say (or give the impression that) you have an amazing idea and "all" you need is a developer. |
How should business guys go about finding great hackers for a startup? | joe_the_user: It seems to me that someone with your resume would know how to proceed better than anyone else I could imagine.I just realized that being a hacker hasn't necessarily made me an expert on hacker psychology since I haven't had to, uh, hire any.So ... well there's a point somewhere |
What other HN-like sites do you read? | hwijaya: Techmeme. Strange, can't see anyone read it here? |
How hard do you work? | swombat: As I previously posted on my blog (http://danieltenner.com/posts/0002-counting-hours-doesnt-mak...), counting hours doesn't mean much in terms of how hard you work. A much better question is how much of your energy you spend on your work vs. other things.I spend most of my waking energy on my start-up. I used ... |
How should business guys go about finding great hackers for a startup? | mstef: start earning their respect, become one of them. |
Please trash my business plan (non-tech) | spitfire: Are you sure you want us to do this?We are in the start of the greater depression, the yuppies
you want to sell to no longer have money. Wine, travel, Lifestyle/keeping up with the jones' is now considered tacky.Business plan trashed. Sorry. |
Please trash my business plan (non-tech) | suhail: People like Dave McClure and VentureHacks have always said keep your business plan short: 1 page. |
How should business guys go about finding great hackers for a startup? | sown: I'm curious as to what you have. How should I get a hold of you? |
Please trash my business plan (non-tech) | sharpn: Not a critisism, but a question: why are you paying a return on investment funds from before they are drawn? I'm curious - was that based on a precedent? |
Please trash my business plan (non-tech) | gojomo: SF resident, haven't heard of the show or the host. Website at entertainingpeople.com looks like incomplete brochureware (several empty/under-construction pages).Payback formula of 1% (or is it 1.5%) of revenues and 10% interest seems complicated... not-quite-equity and not-quite-debt... offers capped upside bu... |
Please trash my business plan (non-tech) | mingyeow: summarize to one page and repost! I promise to give feedback then: mingyeow@gmail |
Why no discussion for the 'weebly is hiring' post? | cperciva: Job posts by YC companies get special treatment -- they appear under http://news.ycombinator.com/jobs, and they don't have any discussion attached. |
How hard do you work? | csbartus: i'm a freelancer, working around 8-10 hrs a day with small pauses.however i'm taking at least 30% of the year off, cannot be productive 11 months in a row.lately i've found out that working sharply less hrs/day and taking less vacation produces more quality and longer lasting knowledge in my head.but my bigge... |
How many "tell me when it launches" email addresses did you have? | albahk: I've had the signup page up for almost a week now and I have 3, so don't feel too bad about your 450. |
2 karma minimum to lock out spam bots | DarkShikari: I saw an interesting method used by spambots on the Doom9 forum: they would take old threads and repost them (with a link to their ad in their signature or such).Some variant of this method might work to circumvent such a policy; find a similar thread, pick a comment from it, and post it, perhaps? It migh... |
2 karma minimum to lock out spam bots | ashleyw: Good idea; though I'd argue 2 is too low, if these aren't "bots" but real humans, it wouldn't be hard for them to adapt by commenting and then upvoting each other.10+ would be nicer, anyone truly interested in HN would understand why! :) |
2 karma minimum to lock out spam bots | ComputerGuru: That would encourage them to try to generate spam comments in the slim hope that they'd get upvoted.... which would lead to a much worse spam situation.For instance, they'd employ Markov Chains to re-hash comments in a post, or from older posts, or from the text of the article.One thing I've learned: spam... |
Version Control System w/ Centralized Diffs | m03p: iirc you can configure where git stores it .git directory |
How hard do you work? | ggruschow: I don't work hard anymore. I try to eliminate the need for it. If that fails and it's more than just assembling or moving a desk, I try to pay someone else nice to do it. I'm happy that our society somehow considers typing to be more important work than roofing.I'm in my office around 45 hours a week.. somew... |
Version Control System w/ Centralized Diffs | senko: With git, you can use combination of GIT_WORK_TREE and GIT_DIR environment variables (or the equivalent params to git command) to specify where the work tree and the .git dir reside.Downside of this is that you have to set up env separately for each project (if you have multiple projects), basically wrapping git... |
2 karma minimum to lock out spam bots | trickjarrett: I suggest we just add a recaptcha for people posting links below a certain karma threshold. |
2 karma minimum to lock out spam bots | slater: How about we keep with the intellectual stuff around here, and make 'em answer math captchas. Using latin numerals.eg, what's LV + IV? Answer has to be given in latin numerals, too. |
How many "tell me when it launches" email addresses did you have? | Coomer: I had about 200 in two weeks that I generated from a related site. |
How hard do you work? | stewiecat: Not very. My paid job is typical enterprisey CRUD apps in java. Most of the work comes from fixing others mistakes and battling with poor decisions around what tools we use (ClearCase?!?!, a good 1+ hours/day wasted there). I'm more productive at home on my side projects but by the time I finally hit the ... |
How should business guys go about finding great hackers for a startup? | noss: Make available what problems one would work with as "your" hacker. If your problems require hackers, then hackers will apply (and the other way around). |
Version Control System w/ Centralized Diffs | illumen: bzr can do that.It's used by people to track /etc/ and all sorts of stuff.Have your files in:
/somewhere/.bzr
/somewhere/yourfolders/So there is only one .bzr directory at the top. |
Version Control System w/ Centralized Diffs | bdfh42: Eric Sink is writing an excellent series of articles on source control at http://www.ericsink.com/scm/source_control.html |
How should business guys go about finding great hackers for a startup? | sokoloff: Great hackers for the most part are not what you'd describe as humble. They're not arrogant pricks (necessarily), but they're appropriately proud of their skills. If you do find one that you'd describe as humble, it's vastly more likely that they're shy or just not that interested in bothering to open up to y... |
Title Reversion Bug? | mbrubeck: If someone has already submitted the same article, your submission automatically becomes an upvote on the existing page. |
Title Reversion Bug? | bdfh42: In any case the HN "convention" is that you do not editorialise when posting a link - you should (whenever possible) use the title from the item you are linking to. |
When to use MySQL vs PgSQL? | artificer: Since one can easily find comparisons, benchmarks, gotchas etc ( you can always start here: http://www.wikivs.com/wiki/MySQL_vs_PostgreSQL ) the one thing that made me decide in favor of PostgreSQL is this (quoting a blogger):MySQL is an open-source PRODUCT (and can be bought as such).
Postgres is an open-so... |
When to use MySQL vs PgSQL? | cperciva: If you asked me a year ago, I would have said "use whichever you're most familiar with". Right now, given the unclear situation with MySQL development (will the real MySQL please stand up?) I'd say to go with postgresql. |
Review a simple URL un-shortening service. | clear: This is simple service that let you un-shorten URLs created using any of the URL shortening services.I thought it might be useful to create a single place to un-shorten URLs. I know some of you are tired of hearing about another URL service, but it works with all of the shortening websites such as TinyURL, bit.l... |
How hard do you work? | thismat: I currently work a daily 8-5 job doing .NET and some (at 27 years old, you can laugh at this) COBOL.on the side I freelance web work and am considering trying freelance full time. While I would end up working longer hours, I actually enjoy the freelance and I wouldn't be stuffed in a cube daily and forced to u... |
Why no sense of humor? | rodrigo: Well, it mostly is; But the humor that gets upvoted its VERY funny, so, im ok with that high threshold.
I keep coming here because of the signal/noise ratio wich has not changed that much in my more than 562 days here, wich in internet time its a lot of time.
So, this is a truly valuable place. |
Review a simple URL un-shortening service. | Tichy: I like the way of the tinyURL API better - you simply get the new URL in the body of the response. Otherwise, I am not sure it is easier to parse the XML response from unshort.me than to simply resolve the redirections directly. |
Review a simple URL un-shortening service. | axod: I'm at a loss to understand why someone needs an API to unshorten a url. Can they not just unshorten it themselves?What's next? A webservice API for doing DNS lookups? |
Review a simple URL un-shortening service. | barredo: It aint better to check the http header? It's fastest than a full api request (even for a light one like this) |
When to use MySQL vs PgSQL? | mdasen: Use a good abstraction library and start coding. Seriously.PostgreSQL tends to be what is favored by people here. I used to use it for everything until I tried to set up a replicated cluster with it. PostgreSQL's replication is severely lacking. Slony-I, the most mature of the bunch, is very difficult to se... |
When to use MySQL vs PgSQL? | bryanalves: My opinion/sense is that Postgres is better in every way, except replication. Which ironically makes it far worse than mysql since you can't easily use it for huge datasets. |
When to use MySQL vs PgSQL? | sanswork: I use MySql for all my projects these days. In the past I've used both Sybase(when working at one of the big investment banks) and Informix(when working at one of the worlds leading customer tracking systems) and postgres for a number of small person projects.My current project is a logging/reporting system ... |
When to use MySQL vs PgSQL? | modoc: Another vote for Postgres. MyISAM is a joke for serious use, and InnoDB isn't better/faster than postgres in my experience.Postgres has felt much more mature and more focused on delivering things you'd expect in a real database (FKs, etc..) for a longer time. |
When to use MySQL vs PgSQL? | amalcon: There used to be a tremendous gap between these two databases. MySQL had an incredible dearth of features (subselects, triggers, TRANSACTIONS, and others were missing). PostgreSQL had the features, but it was relatively unpopular, so the language bindings were generally immature and not well documented. The... |
How Do Techmeme and Google News Cluster Stories? | kylemathews: Techmeme's algorithm seems to rely on a combination of clustering similar articles and an analysis of the interlinking of various articles. So if you a textual analysis of two articles and discover that both use very similar words -- e.g. both discuss possible merger talks between yahoo and microsoft, they... |
When to use MySQL vs PgSQL? | apinstein: I've been using postgres in production situations since 1998, at 4-5 different companies. I've never had a problem with it.OTOH, the many times I've tried to use mysql I've run into gotchas even in development that were unexpected and obnoxious. Also, I don't really like the dual gpl/commercial license thing... |
When to use MySQL vs PgSQL? | silentbicycle: While this is somewhat more subjective, documentation and tutorials I've read for PostgreSQL consistently seem better informed about relational databases than MySQL's. I keep seeing cases where somebody is having performance issues with MySQL, and it turns out they neglected to do something basic like in... |
When to use MySQL vs PgSQL? | Zarathu: These days, it doesn't quite matter. Especially if you're using something like Rails, which can switch between the two very easily. Just modify your config if you later feel you want out. |
When to use MySQL vs PgSQL? | astrodust: MySQL has the advantage of being better supported by the developer community, but otherwise of being a technically inferior product to PgSQL.If anything, the trouble with PgSQL is it's too feature rich to be easily understood by the typical developer. It's more DBA-grade than MySQL.If you're building a real ... |
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