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Any European HNers want to get a (free) drink? | double: Please don't turn this into reddit, I come here to get away from all those "ASK"s. Go back to Reddit Prog, please. |
Hiring Decisions | kingkawn: B will support you or you will support A. Choose what you prefer. |
Hiring Decisions | far33d: Only hire A if he completely loves what you are building. If he thinks he is "above" your real problems he'll be brilliantly, independently kicking ass at something that you didn't ask him to do and isn't helping you succeed at all. Worst case, they'll actually make it worse, since he might build complicated sy... |
Hiring Decisions | byrneseyeview: Hire A, with lots of options and long-term vesting. Successful companies are full of smart weirdos. |
Reccomend an interesting and fun book to learn electronics. | camperman: Electronics for Dummies is surprisingly good and has lots of hands-on stuff. It also has a great section on microcontrollers. |
Hiring Decisions | rgrieselhuber: It kind of depends on the stage. If it's you and A and you're creating the first version of something awesome, he can be good to have. If you're at a later stage of product maturity and you can use less-skilled people in simple ways to create something complex a la emergence, then this might be a good ca... |
Hiring Decisions | bhousel: I wonder if there are really ways to know this much about the candidates before you hire them. Aside from knowing or working with them personally. |
Hiring Decisions | azanar: I would pass on them both. As desperate as you may be, you need to not give into it. If you hire either of these people, I suspect you will end up with a few weeks of comfort before desperation sets in again, and now with an employee you don't want. This is a harder position than you are in now.So a little reas... |
Hiring Decisions | ckopec: If you have the time to wait and find the right person I wouldn't hire either. Part of working as a team is that each is able to contribute and improve the others. From your brief descriptions B is too unskilled and will slow down the others on the team and A may get his work completed but Isn't improving the... |
Hiring Decisions | sofal: The big question is: does B have a thirst for learning and improving himself? I have seen a lot of type B people in a big corporate environment. They make good corporate team players and good friends. They put their head down and do whatever they're commanded to do, but they don't try to stretch themselves. They... |
Hiring Decisions | jerryji: You didn't mention if A documents.If A does excellent documentation, give him your toughest nut to crack as the whole team can learn and progress from his contribution even after he is gone.Otherwise, go for B.The worst can happen is to hire A, and when he leaves, B has to maintain A's code with no documentati... |
Please review my webapp - AwesomeVocab.com | iterationx: I think you need a difficulty rating, the words were too easy for me so I got bored, i might play on a harder mode. |
Hiring Decisions | jlees: I think it depends on your current situation. If you just need to get some code written, hire B, assuming you can cope with getting B up to scratch to write said code. If you're earlier stage -- you need to brainstorm, to have those tangents, that little spark of something-else -- hire A. Give her 20% of her tim... |
Hiring Decisions | tom_b: Perhaps you should start by altering your definitions - to be a great programmer or hacker requires the ability to work with others and explain yourself coherently. So candidate A is not really a great programmer.I think you have to keep looking for candidates or assess why you haven't had better candidates app... |
Any European HNers want to get a (free) drink? | adnam: I'm in Barcelona: email is in profile! |
Hiring Decisions | gcb: it seems you are already working with both. so it's not a hiring decision.Keep A and learn how to motivate him. it's more effective then keeping B and making him smarter. |
Hiring Decisions | thenduks: Based on the assumption that you really need to hire now and can't wait (which I find unlikely, I believe it's always better to have no one than 'anyone'), candidate B. At least they can be a solid member of the team, if not a superstar. Candidate A is just trouble waiting to happen. |
Hiring Decisions | sunir: Candidate A is unhireable. Programming is more about communicating with people than machines, and I say this even as a former embedded systems programmer. I've worked with A's before and they are A-holes.Candidate B is very hireable, but only in the context of an established team with functioning leadership--bot... |
Hiring Decisions | jerf: Well, I made sure to scroll through, but this hasn't been said much yet: You have not provided enough information to answer the question.Every programmer has different skillsets. It is important to match programmer skillsets to their jobs. (Anything that you might object to about that statement, I would consider ... |
Hiring Decisions | elblanco: B. Better long-term prospects. Unless it's a consultant, no employee should be viewed as short-term. |
Hiring Decisions | alex_c: One meta-observation: given the emphasis in Valley (and YC) startups on "rockstar hackers", I am surprised that most replies so far tend to favor candidate B.Maybe it's because the PST workday is just starting and the advice so far is more east-coast :p |
Hiring Decisions | startupdude: Why do think A will quit? You dint keep him happy? Its a tendency of great hackers to quit if they throw crap at them. Remember programmers never quit when they are happy. |
Check out my little app | jmonegro: I built this in about two hours. The phone number is provided by dropio, but I plan to switch to twilio in the near future. I built it out of boredom, so constructive criticism, even if harsh, is welcomw :) |
Check out my little app | joshuarr: It's nice. It's not initially clear exactly what it is or how to use it, but I think that would be rather simple to fix. Keep it simple when you start working on the visual front. |
Check out my little app | ashishk: it's cool (love the name), but I would just use drop.io for conference calls, since I use it for other stuff.what i would LOVE though, is a free, simple, web-based screensharing tool.i've used skype but it requires, obviously, installing their software. drop.io comes close, but only allows me to share content ... |
Check out my little app | javery: My first hesitation was... will this work? I would explain what service it is using, or something to inspire some more confidence. Nice idea though and good name. |
Check out my little app | param: 1. have the conference number generated be of lesser digits unless you are expecting and ready to support 10^9 simultaneous conferences. Having something like 4 digits should suffice.2. Not sure how serious you are about this app, but the next features I would want would be to allow users to register and permane... |
Checkout my CS open learning website | leftnode: http://www.adaptivelearningonline.net -- clickable link.I would really work on the design. It looks very immature and I would immediately dismiss it as a fake site or wouldn't invest much time in it. It just looks like a bunch of exported Word documents.Also, use UL's and LI's for the list of topics rather th... |
Check out my little app | awolf: The learn more link doesn't do anything in MobileSafari.Nice simple and clear introduction.Your target market are business execs that are currently paying a lot more than free for thus service. Convincing them that your app is stable and credibile is your challenge. |
Check out my little app | terrellm: It's an interesting idea and it seems a lot quicker to setup a call than going through FreeConference.com. However, I'm a little more methodical and the site doesn't explain how the process works.A few questions come to mind:
- Who are you and why are you giving away free conference calls?
- Will participant... |
Check out my little app | nobody_nowhere: Like it. When I use this service, what am I agreeing to as far as privacy? How do I know whether or not my call is recorded? How comfortable should I feel about discussing confidential information? |
My Bio on Ex-Employer's Website | run4yourlives: The bridges you will burn by broaching this concern are far more than any good feeling you will gain in yourself. Therefore, keep silent.The bio will probably be down within a few months, but your name on the directory might stay unless your replacement is very active with your clients. They're servicing... |
Check out my little app | coglethorpe: How will you make money from this? |
Check out my little app | tptacek: This is really impressive. I'd love to be using it. The trivial interface for setting up a call is absolutely something I'd value over Freeconference.The security of this scheme worries me, though. Here's several requests for the same key:Location: /chinashopLocation: /chinashop9556Location: /chinashop3025Loca... |
Checkout my CS open learning website | lpolovets: Nice idea.A few features that might be neat:
- let people rate courses
- have groupings of courses (the newbie section, the system/compiler/database section, the OOP section, the algorithm section, etc)
- tag courses with their programming languages/topics/levels, etc
- search by keyword (could be offset by ... |
Check out my little app | rythie: I'd note that there is already a company called huddle http://www.huddle.net/
and given they are fairly well known and do online collaboration, I'd suggest getting a different name. |
Check out my little app | nir: This is beautiful. Simple, immediate and actually useful to real people. Great stuff. I hope you don't add any features that will compromise its simplicity. |
Check out my little app | Aegean: Here's my 2 cents:Pluses:+++ It is very nice and simple. I never subscribed to any teleconferencing solutions simply because I think it may get complicated and it probably requires subscription.Minuses:- The phone number & pin shows up intermingled in Firefox.-- I need a global teleconferencing solution, and I ... |
Hiring Decisions | tjic: A has his problems, and I'm not sure that I'd hire him...but here's something to think about:If you hire A, the next person that you interview will see A and think "there are geniuses here".If you hire B, the next person that you interview will see B and think "there are mediocre players here".Of course, there's ... |
My Bio on Ex-Employer's Website | javery: I would at least give them a couple months, it takes most companies that long (or longer) to update their site. I don't think it would be burning bridges if you email them in a couple months if it's still up. You could always say someone contacted you requesting help since the information was still up, that the... |
Check out my little app | jsm386: Great idea. Quick thing. The app says 'The number is based in New York City, for the time being (sorry!).' but the number that displayed for me was 218-486-3891, which is Duluth, Minnesota according to Google. Should that output read 212? |
My Bio on Ex-Employer's Website | powdercake: I guess one issue here is that I don't see how removing my name from their website prevents them from continuing to service their clients or direct their queries to the correct person. |
Check out my little app | poli: Is it possible to make the drop.io workspace private?
I created a Huddle named testuddle and I can access http://drop.io/testuddle with no restrictions. |
ideas for little projects you have? | yummyfajitas: A Nigerian scammer auto-replier.Yes I am very interested in the ONE MILLION DOLLARS ($1,000,000) you have stored in your NIGERIAN BANK ACCOUNT. To where should I wire the money?I've got a toy version built on an early version of Lamson, but it doesn't keep scammers interested beyond 2-3 emails. |
ideas for little projects you have? | icey: Do you want to write a library? A service? Web? Client-server? What tools do you want to use? |
ideas for little projects you have? | mrfish: Ok, Take any link and display the corresponding link in the web site's mobile enabled equivalent. Sort of like Bit.ly but with a mobile browser ability. Obviously this won't work for every site but a lot of major news sites have mobile versions. Take www.crackberry.com for example. They have a pc version an... |
ideas for little projects you have? | manish: I was searching for some sort of tool to write flow charts online, that is something I did not find easily, flowchart.com has it, but requires inviation. I would like to see something like etherpad for flow charts. |
Any European HNers want to get a (free) drink? | cwg: Eindhoven here. Anyone interested in meeting around southern Netherlands, drop me a note! (email is in profile). |
What do you use for contact|lead management / mini-CRM these days? | tonystubblebine: I do most of the sales for my company and use Highrise. The major thing I like about it is simplicity and having an email dropbox that I can BCC. |
ideas for little projects you have? | plaggypig: I'd like to see more libraries in more languages for .tel domains (reading and writing DNS records, i.e. NAPTR/TXT/LOC), and more mobile apps too. It's an open platform, see: http://dev.telnic.org/I should also declare my interest:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/feb/12/internet-mo... |
ideas for little projects you have? | qd: I would love a javascript data viz lib built on top of processing.js, may be a large project, but you could probably get a thing displays one type of chart in a single hack sesh. |
Check out my little app | raquo: I'm not exactly the target audience of this, but I discovered this fact only having created a number. A little more description on the home page will definitely help. |
ideas for little projects you have? | callmeed: Implement a web-based app which performs copy-move/clone-stamp detection in images. Similar to the experiment here:
http://coding-experiments.blogspot.com/2009/03/detecting-cop...So, the web-based version (kept simple) would allow a visitor to:
1. upload an image (& enter their email)
2. process the image in ... |
ideas for little projects you have? | Flemlord: Create a Hacker News clone for politics. |
Check out my little app | javery: Looks interesting but I am too paranoid to give apps access to twitter now unless they tell me up-front what they are going to do. (make me follow them? update my status? etc) |
Review My WebApp, Threadify.com | onewland: I like this idea. A couple suggestions:Improve the algorithm for determining which @replies are a "conversation". I had one group of 21 messages that were really several conversations that took place over several weeks. I bet a simple clustering algorithm based on post date could get 99% of these cases.Don't ... |
Checkout my CS open learning website | mbowcock: Agree that the design could use some work but the idea is great. I like the links to books, maybe add links to other online resources. I also like the idea of discussion. It would be nice if 'study groups' could be formed around the various subjects.FYI - There's a similar site here - http://academicearth.... |
ideas for little projects you have? | chaosmachine: Write a program to convert torrent files into midi files. They should be normal midi files that will play music, but can be run through midi2torrent to get your original torrent back.The idea being that you now have unique pieces of music you can host anywhere, rather than scary torrent files.PS: If anyon... |
Hiring Decisions | gte910h: I wouldn't hire either of those.If your A isn't able to hold intense discussions and sometimes lose, he's useless.And B is useless in a startup as well. He's at the earliest employee 11 or 15. |
ideas for little projects you have? | keefe: Why don't you make a small contribution to a larger project, perhaps a widget for the ubuntu UI or a plugin for pidgin or gimp? |
Check out my little app | Sidnicious: The first time I called (218-486-3891), I immediately heard someone speaking (in a foreign language, not sure which). It went on for a minute or so, then I hung up. I called again and got the expected prompt... something's a little off here.In other news, why not give this place a test? If you're reading th... |
ideas for little projects you have? | qw: How about a simple program that monitors an RSS feed, and sends each new entry to a person as a mail. |
job postings for non-YC funded startups? | icey: It's better to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission... right? |
would you like to participate in my experiment? | icey: I'd be more interested if there was a (non-HN) link I could add to my tweet to explain what the heck I was tweeting about. |
ideas for little projects you have? | orvado: I noticed a nifty site that converts words into a phone number and vice versa. Just get your hands on a dictionary file and look at a phone keypad - shouldn't be too hard after that! |
ideas for little projects you have? | there: go meta and build a site where people can submit ideas for projects and vote them up/down and discuss them. i'm sure an audience less technical than this site's would have some decent ideas for things they need but don't know how to build.could probably just be done with a subreddit though. |
job postings for non-YC funded startups? | wheels: Jobs pop up here from time to time. The closest thing to a rule seems to be that they fall into the Hacker News ethos. If it reads like it's from a HR-droid it's likely to get killed. If it uses the word ninja, it's likely to be killed and your pets are likely to turn up with broken limbs. If it's geared to... |
ideas for little projects you have? | apgwoz: I started building a script to go through source code and find all the things I tag "TOFIX" or "TODO." For example: $ python tofix.py tofix.py
line 3: ...
line 16: this needs some attention as we shouldn't be
using 'pass' notice this is indented slightly more than
the TOFIX line above and should... |
ideas for little projects you have? | johnrob: How about a way to get an email alert whenever someone replies to one of your comments on hacker news? |
Check out my little app | arijo: Is there a way to be notified of an incoming call? |
ideas for little projects you have? | EliAndrewC: MadnessOrSparta.comThis would be a silly time-wasting site like KittenWar but with much less cuteness and slightly more pointlessness. People can upload pictures and visitors are presented with one picture at a time. For every picture, visitors vote on whether the image is closer to "Madness" or "Sparta". |
Hiring Decisions | herval: "hire for the personal values, train for skills". Skills are easy to acquire - changing someone's attitude is not... |
ideas for little projects you have? | techiferous: I love the little projects that I work on; sometimes I learn more from them than my day job (because I feel freer to experiment).Here are a couple of my "toys". Maybe they will inspire some ideas for you:http://www.alphabetclock.comhttp://2rgb.comMy 2rgb project is open sourced here: http://github.com/tec... |
ideas for little projects you have? | joeld42: Hey, this isn't my idea but I wish someone would do it. Only useful to programmers or web developers, but hey..A little tray-app (or something) that works like this:
- You select text representing a color in a text editor (i.e. something like #ff00ff, (1.0,0.0,1.0), (255,0,255) etc..
- You hit the tray app or ... |
would you like to participate in my experiment? | jacquesm: interesting, I haven't used twitter in months, but this is reason enough to log in :)Message sent, curious how many hops it will take to get back to you (if at all). |
job postings for non-YC funded startups? | run4yourlives: All the jobs listed here are at startups that were at some point funded by Y Combinator. Some are now established companies. Others may be only a few weeks old.That's at the top of the jobs page. You should really email pg prior to doing this. |
Check out my little app | perezd: Add an API. That would be sweet! Then this could be integrated with any sort of collaboration web app! |
Please review my webapp - AwesomeVocab.com | whiskyagogo: I've found your app addictive and useful (I'm prepping for the GRE), but it's a bit buggy in FF 3 on OSX and on my iphone.1) animation on the word/choices occasionally flashes repeatedly, usually around 5 times in a row, but sometimes requires a page refresh to get it to stop2) I've found that after a poin... |
Have you tried cold calling prospects before building a product? | pedalpete: I've never sold anything without a product at all, but find that once you have a product to show, you can get a lot more info on how customers or potential customers would use the product and what they would like to see.Occasionally, you get something a request which is completely off base for what your busi... |
Have you tried cold calling prospects before building a product? | cwan: Not sure there's a right number but you do have to make sure that you contact the right people (ie those who have the power and interest in buying). If the need is sufficiently great, you may only need a sample size of one to start - especially if they're willing to bankroll the development. I've had a few fort... |
ideas for little projects you have? | jyf1987: well, i have many ideas to be implement
for this reason i learn programming myself |
Hiring Decisions | MaysonL: It depends on what jobs you are looking to fill.If you have problems that need brilliant solutions, A sounds like (s)he might be a fit.If your problems are more mundane, and need lots of communication between team members, B could be better.A would probably fit better into a research establishment (think Bell ... |
How to find investors? | javery: If you just want to make a decent wage, pay your bills, and not get rich then you aren't going to be very attractive to investors. Investors want to make money and lots of it. You might be able to find some Angels who might be interested, but even most Angels would want to be part of something bigger than just ... |
Have you tried cold calling prospects before building a product? | javery: I tried cold calling when I was 17 and starting a web design business, I swore never to do it again.I think there are probably much better ways to find your potential customers. Find our where they go (in real life or online) and go be a sponge. Listen to their problems, add value where you can, and then when t... |
Any way to access gmail IMAP through openid/oauth? | wmf: In general, OpenID/OAuth don't do well with non-browser clients and don't do non-HTTP protocols at all. |
How to find investors? | apotheon: First, you need to be able to make any correspondence seem like it was written by someone who is conversant with the grammatical conventions of the language. For instance, this is a grammatically correct question: How do I find investors?
This is not: How to find investors?
Proofreading is handy too,... |
Have you tried cold calling prospects before building a product? | nedwin: I'm doing this right now. We do have a product to display but it's not the minimum viable product yet - we hope to release that in about a month.My approach has been to explain what we've got at the moment, what we're building and what we're capable of. The conversation is less about making a sale and more abou... |
Any way to access gmail IMAP through openid/oauth? | fjabre: Yep.. I think I've verified it is currently impossible to access IMAP without asking for user credentials.It would be nice to though. I can see all kinds of use cases for web apps integrating with gmail and other email providers in this way - without having to ask the user for their login/password. |
Hiring Decisions | known: A for programming the system
B for maintaining the system |
Will mobile support for logins be coming soon? | mahmud: Ummm, I use Opera on my Sony Ericsson W995; works like a charm. |
Will mobile support for logins be coming soon? | thwarted: I've had this problem too. I'd rather it not present the ability to login rather than make it look like it's going to work and then not. I assume it's a bug. |
Hiring Decisions | pg: Incidentally, if you're funding rather than hiring, you generally want A. That's one reason I'd rather be an investor than a boss. |
Please review my webapp - AwesomeVocab.com | akrogh: I really love your app. Simple, effective and very well executed.
Is there any chance of getting a pronunciation button? I had a few words that I knew but wasn't sure on exactly how to say them. I ended up looking them up elsewhere but it would be nice if it was included in your app. |
Finding Developer/Engineer Co-Founder? | jmtame: try www.hndir.com if you're an undergrad at a united states school.. i haven't built out the support for non-edu e-mails, as i built the entire thing and user registration around the assumption that you had an .edu address and i'm tied up with my start up work. but yeah, high quality coders interested in start... |
Have you tried cold calling prospects before building a product? | andyjdavis: I haven't done cold calling before building a product but it sounds like a good idea. It's never too early to get some feedback and to make prospects aware that you exist. Having them involved from day one could help you end up with a better product and an initial group of customers who feel a real sense of... |
Finding Developer/Engineer Co-Founder? | stanleydrew: I'd potentially be interested. Kind of between projects right now. Send me an email at andrewmbenton -at- gmail. |
Check out my little app | Concours: I love the interface, very simple and no fancy features. It's awesomly simple and selfexplaining. |
Have you tried cold calling prospects before building a product? | danl: When my business partner and I were looking for idea of what to build we came up with the idea of building an online candidate tracking app for recruitment firms. It was going to be aimed at small 1 - 5 person agencies and would have a cut down feature set compared to the big, and expensive, desktop packages avai... |
Check out my little app | revorad: This is great, well done. I have one minor suggestion: make it a one page app. Don't make the user go to another page when they click create. Use ajax to show the results just below. |
Finding Developer/Engineer Co-Founder? | ScottWhigham: searchyc.com - there have been at least 1,0294,498 posts asking this question before. Maybe go back to the folks who posted and ask them if they are still looking or have more specific advice?http://searchyc.com/cofounder is likely a good place to start.Good luck! |
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