instruction stringlengths 4 105 | output stringlengths 8 56.7k |
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Can an LLC contractor receive stock options from a startup? | pmikal: An LLC is normally not prohibited from having stock options. It is an entity just like you the person.However, most likely the company giving you the job will not be able to hire you through your LLC for a period more than a year. This is usually the time period the IRS would rule that you are an employee of th... |
wrist pain | Mz: I injured a great many tendons and ligaments in my dominant hand/arm/upper quadrant of my torso (right upper extremity) while taking tennis in college at age 19. I had crippling pain on and off for many years. I got quite good at mousing left-handed and did that any time my right hand was just not functional. Wi... |
wrist pain | hellotoby: I have had a bone graft on my right wrist from an injury when I was younger and find using a mouse for long periods of time quite awkward.The best solution I have found is to use a Wacom tablet instead of a mouse. Using a writing implement is far better for my wrist than anything else I have tried (wrist res... |
I don't see reply links on some comments... is this a bug? | Mz: I've noticed the same issue. I hope someone has an answer (explanation). |
I don't see reply links on some comments... is this a bug? | mbrubeck: The deeper a comment is nested, the longer the delay before the "reply" link appears. This is basically to throttle flamewars or other thread-hijacking discussions. |
So I quit my job to focus on my startup... | snitko: I've recently finished listening to "Influencer": http://www.audible.com/adbl/site/products/ProductDetail.jsp?...From my review: "I expected this book to be less scientific and less valuable than it turned out to be. Not one of those stupid motivational books, but rather a good theory source with real-life case... |
Twitter Lists to Follow? | lsemel: Check out http://listorious.com (a site I made) for a directory of Twitter lists. |
Twitter Lists to Follow? | known: http://tweepml.org/Scoble-s-User-List/ |
Is a computer science or computer engineering degree worth it? | _pius: The only problem is that I'm indecisive as to whether a degree in computer science or computer engineering is worth it; is there a reliable job market for it that I can fall back on in hard times?In my experience, definitely. I've never had a hard time finding work as someone with a computer science degree.Also... |
Is a computer science or computer engineering degree worth it? | makecheck: At least a BSc. is a very good idea (I have computer engineering), but I would definitely back it up with experience, too. For example, try to make some open-source thing in your spare time, or write a web site, or tinker with electronics in your garage, while you go to school. Definitely do internships, e... |
Is a computer science or computer engineering degree worth it? | wisty: Biology? That's fantastic. I'm not sure if it's as secure as CS / CE, but it's a lovely degree. Look into Bioinformatics - where all the cool research is being done. It requires programming (especially numerical algorithms and visualization), math (especially statistics), and biology. That's a nice mix for someb... |
Is a computer science or computer engineering degree worth it? | CyberFonic: Whilst you can learn programming from a book, you can't learn software engineering from a book. The difference is like being able to build a dog kennel in the backyard or a forty story skyscraper. It takes serious knowledge and experience to build the skyscraper. If you get the kennel wrong, the dog will... |
Is a computer science or computer engineering degree worth it? | omouse: Get a computer science degree. There should be almost no difference between the two aside from maybe more hardware things on the engineering side.Just remember that computer scientists used to build their own machines, compilers, etc. They were flexible in terms of what they worked on and you can be too. You ju... |
Is a computer science or computer engineering degree worth it? | rolf_nelson: If you care about salary in addition to job security, the chart on p. 16 of this OOQ makes a good case that a computer science degree is a defensibly practical choice:http://www.bls.gov/opub/ooq/2008/summer/art02.pdf |
Support ticketing system | bayareaguy: The biggest missing feature is good email integrationI would suggest looking at RT: Request Tracker. It has excellent support for creating and managing tickets with email. |
Are you using SSDs already ? | simanyay: Switched recently to the Intel X25-M. Experience is very, very positive. My computer now boots in less than 15 seconds and Apple Mail opens in less than a second.The price was pretty high when I bought it (it went down since then) but it is worth every penny. |
How do you use Twitter? | davidw: 1) Seeing what people are saying about my stuff or stuff I care about.2) Promoting my stuff. |
How do you use Twitter? | catch404: Don't use it anymore, but used it for a while to follow some people im interested in as well as a quick jott padd for remembering links or looking back on. For the later I found the sites that pdf your history very useful. |
Is a computer science or computer engineering degree worth it? | bavcyc: Any major with lots of math will have a better payoff than one without math. As an engineer I can do what a computer scientist does but a computer scientist can not perform all engineering functions (specifically the case of work requiring professional registration).With that said, what do you like to do? Fin... |
How do you use Twitter? | chanux: It brings stuff from people I like to hear from.Anyway "Twitter is what you make out of it". |
How do you use Twitter? | chaosprophet: Initially, I didn't have any use case for Twitter. But since people seemed to be talking about it, I forced myself to stick to it for about a month. At the end of that month i still hadn't grown to like it so I ditched it. I didn't delete the account though.Right now, I use Twitter as a means of logging i... |
How do you use Twitter? | joezydeco: I'm using Twitter as a link recorder. I modified a Python-based bot to scrape links off an IRC channel and publish them on a private twitter feed that only my friends from that channel can see. |
Technical founder startup share | brk: This has been asked and answered frequently on HN.Some summaries:1) There is no standard answer. 1% might be perfectly appropriate in this scenario, and 80% might be perfectly appropriate. You should probably be looking more at ratios of His Stock:Your Stock vs. finite percentage numbers (which are basically dat... |
Allow voting for posts as suggested founder reading? | rriepe: The way I see it, HN doesn't need any sort of canon. I think it would only hurt new ideas.We shouldn't be shoveling the latest by PG or 37 Signals (not that all their stuff isn't wonderful). We should be looking for the next great topic, business philosophy or piece of advice. |
Winter Mini-Internships? | newy: For this to work out well the company should have a set project that's realistic in terms of the skills of the intern and the length of the internship.Happy to chat more and see if there's a fit - euwyn@optask.com |
Technical founder startup share | newy: 3% pre-funding or fully-diluted? 3% before a seed or angel round is minuscule. |
Technical founder startup share | rcmorin: lucifer - I'd turn the tables on this deal. What is the value proposition of the non-technical co-founder? What is he bringing to the table? Money, ideas, customers, investors, partnerships, IP, co-founders? He generated the idea: yipee. Biz guys and idea generators are over-rated. There is no marketplace for ... |
Should co-founders share equity 50/50? | eru: Perhaps you should define areas of expertise, where one of the founders has the final say. And add a shotgun clause, in case you really get stuck. |
Are you using SSDs already ? | johng: Just put an X25M G2 into my 17" Macbook Pro. Boots and program loads are super snappy. Don't do anything too serious with the machine, no gaming so other then that it just seems snappy. |
Should co-founders share equity 50/50? | dannyr: My suggestion: Start with say 5% each with 90% unallocated. The more your work on the startup, the more you gain shares. |
Are you using SSDs already ? | kamme: I've been thinking about buying a X25-M, but prices are a bit too high for me at the moment. I'd better go to the US for a day and buy all the gadgets/computer equipment I want and go back, it will be cheaper then buying everything here in europe (plus it's good for the US economy!) |
Should co-founders share equity 50/50? | rcmorin: There is never an "easy" way to do this. But in the early stages of your venture, there should be very few battle making decisions. Lead by persuasion and team-building. You're only 2 people and don't need a general calling the shots just yet. In the later stages, your role as CEO should emerge from your abili... |
How important is "rocket science" to startups | icey: First of all, you have to consider who was being quoted (rtm).Secondly, the statement points to how you protect your IP. If it's something that's easy to make the first time, then it's even easier to duplicate. How do you protect your idea without any kind of "secret sauce"? |
Is a computer science or computer engineering degree worth it? | iterationx: I can't think of a degree that's more resilient to hard economic times than a programming degree. That being said you should look at the job boards now and decide what kind of work you want. For example a lot of .NET jobs want 2 years ASP.net. So if that's your cup of tea then get started programming ASP... |
Review my app: tweetrad.io | petrolix: This is great! It should be on my iphone, so I can listen to it on my way to work! |
How important is "rocket science" to startups | rcmorin: I'd go further. Patents are nice to haves for VCs and investors and look pretty on glossy business plans (look at our shiny algorithms and wireframes!). Don't bet the success of your company on your patent portfolio. The fact is, no startups out there succeed in the long run because of their proprietary techno... |
Are you using SSDs already ? | spiffage: I've been using a Macbook with a SSD for about a year (mainly for coding in Eclipse), and it's noticeably snappier than my desktop machine with a magnetic drive.
It was definitely worth the cost for the productivity boost. |
How important is "rocket science" to startups | marze: Probably shorthand for "what's your real competitive advantage here". |
Are there any alternative query languages? | chubbard: There's Object Graph Navigation Language (OGNL), and OMG Object Query Language used by most OODB manufacturers. And Db4o uses SODA query language.Then MongoDB has a form of query language with JSON syntax.http://www.opensymphony.com/ognl/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_Query_Languagehttp://www.db4o.comht... |
Are there any alternative query languages? | wmf: Look at XPath and XQuery. |
Technical founder startup share | choward93: Coming from the non-technical perspective, I see little value that a non-techie can offer to a company for <=97% of the shares. Someone making you this kind of proposal surely does not understand how a web startup works because the value is in the development team and their resulting product.In every endeavo... |
Are you using SSDs already ? | jasonwatkinspdx: I've been using a SSD in a 2nd gen macbook pro for a couple weeks now. Huge improvement in system responsiveness.Basically: it makes beach-balls go away.If you look at the projections you'll see disk maintains a slight edge in capacity cost. Spinning disks will still be around for very cold data, much ... |
How important is "rocket science" to startups | lloydarmbrust: I think a startup's competitive edge is often not the product or space that they are in but the people on their team. For example, my company is in a pretty competitive space with lots of big corporations as our competitors--but we don't worry because the one thing that News Corporation or Rupert Murdoc... |
Are you using SSDs already ? | goodkarma: I've been wanting a SSD for weeks now. I think hard drive speed is why Windows XP is running so slow for me (via VMWare on my Mac).Downside is I've got a 320 Gb hard drive so need something somewhat comparable. Bigger SSDs are still not cheap! Saw the 250 Gb ones on Amazon for about $600. Almost bought it ... |
Windows WYSIWYG editor? | mbrubeck: AbiWord is a good simple word processor with decent HTML output: http://www.abisource.com/It's been a long time since I used it, but I always liked Nvu. However, it does have bells and whistles like built-in FTP. Now apparently forked/renamed to Kompozer: http://www.kompozer.net/ |
Are there any alternative query languages? | eugenejen: K programming language for kdb from kx systems.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_%28programming_language%29 |
Allow PhDs to apply for expert status in various subreddits? | icey: I believe you've mistaken HN for this:http://www.reddit.com/feedback/ |
How important is "rocket science" to startups | JoeAltmaier: A better mousetrap is all you need. Implement well - not all that easy to duplicate or there wouldn't be so much annoying software out there. |
Are there any alternative query languages? | anonjon: I am surprised this isn't mentioned yet, but Prolog makes a very acceptable query language. Although I think in that version it is called 'Datalog'.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DatalogIt is obviously much different than SQL.
There are actually quite a few implementations of it if you look at that wikipedia pag... |
Windows WYSIWYG editor? | RiderOfGiraffes: I'd love to help you out ... which way did you come in?Sorry - the line was too good to pass up. On a more serious note, I'd be interested in a similar recommendation for Linux. I wonder if we can get a list of HTML editors ranked by increasing power/features.Where to start? I know of none, so can't... |
Website awards, any recommendations? | warwick: Andy Brice wrote a great article about 'The software awards scam' for shareware. Does anyone know if website awards follow a similar pattern, or are they more legitimate?http://successfulsoftware.net/2007/08/16/the-software-awards... |
Billing? | indranil: Have you tried buysellad.com?If you're looking for subscription based billing software, look at chargify.com and spreedly.com |
Resources for CPC/ conversion rate statistics? | ScottWhigham: I use http://www.webmasterworld.com/ and just look through things. It isn't scientific but I can usually figure out basics. |
Are there any alternative query languages? | ScottWhigham: LINQ is a query language for .NET |
Windows WYSIWYG editor? | ScottWhigham: So many of us use FreeTextBox |
Resources for CPC/ conversion rate statistics? | paraschopra: There are lots of tools - just search 'Adwords split testing' on Google |
Manager making me jump through hoops, is it worth it? | smg: move |
Manager making me jump through hoops, is it worth it? | btilly: I would recommend reading http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-o... and then evaluating your goals and the people you are dealing with very carefully. |
your favourite server side JavaScript web framework? | mvalente: Check out http://commonjs.org/-- MV |
what disputes can arise between co-founders? | wheels: That's kind of like asking, "What disputes can arise in a long-distance relationship?" It's naturally a pretty open question.In general, I don't think doing the whole remote-founders thing is a good idea for the same reason that it's probably not a good idea in a long term relationship. There are just too man... |
what disputes can arise between co-founders? | jacquesm: The most common one is about whether or not the other parties are pulling their weight (because you can't see when / if they are working), and decisions regarding the direction to take. |
what do you think of our startup's preview video? | replicatorblog: Very nice, but I would change 3 things:1. Get it down to 30s. There is a lot of fluff that could be tightened up. 25s too long as is, cut the length of the confetti explosion, the long shot on the cat, etc..2. Show off more of the interactivity. If I'm going to pay $2 for a virtual good outside of a gam... |
How do you explain closures? | shadytrees: An interesting demonstration of why closures are useful is to start from a hypothetical language that supports closures but not objects and then implement a (simple!) object/class system. For me, it was extremely clarifying to have something in my mind click and go "Oh, OOP doesn't need to be a language fea... |
How do you explain closures? | chrismear: I've found that the concept of anonymous functions is the biggest hurdle to get over -- closures seem to follow as a natural extension of that.I explained this to someone recently in the context of event handlers in ActionScript/JavaScript, starting with the idea that when you do: something.onclick = functi... |
How do you explain closures? | BigZaphod: I usually go with a simple counter-generator as a first example: function counterMaker(next) {
var value = next;
return function() { value++; return value }
}
var myCounter = counterMaker(42);
alert(myCounter());
alert(myCounter());
alert(myCounter());
I'm not sure it is necessary to exp... |
Manager making me jump through hoops, is it worth it? | pasbesoin: The following can be summed up as: Move up, or move out. But keep the current market in mind and have a firm landing established before taking the leap.This is based upon years of personal observation. On the other hand, I'm not the most successful person in this environment. I've done very good things, ... |
How do you explain closures? | btilly: I have been in this position, and what I've found is that formal definitions don't make sense. You have to encounter an example that makes you sit up and realize that something is going on that you don't know.Two examples where I tried to induce that kind of brain lock in Perl programmers are http://www.perlmo... |
How do you explain closures? | gruseom: Closures are functions with state.Your claim that Joe is a talented programmer isn't very persuasive. Edit: maybe I should say why. I have known many programmers of the 9-5 type who do a passable job, but are not interested in learning anything. It is as if they had a limited supply of energy for learning and ... |
How do you explain closures? | pdrummond: http://www.iode.co.uk/blog/pdrummond/i_finally_understand_cl... |
How do you explain closures? | Tichy: A method remembers its context? I am not sure how to not understand it. Understanding all the implications might be another problem. |
How did you market your app when there were already a lot like yours? | vaksel: Step #1: Charge money($4.99-$9.99 a month)Step #2: Get covered in blogs and get 100,000 visitors.Step #3: Get 1% signups(1000 paying customers), get paid your subscription fees. Bam you are making $5K-$10K/yrIt's basically the "there are a billion people in china, if 1% buys our product...we'll be rich!" |
How do you explain closures? | rabidsnail: Closures are essentially a way to create private variables.For example, in Javascript: var fn = null;
(function(){
var temporary = 789;
alert(temporary);
var secret_private = 5;
fn = function(){
alert(secret_private);
};
... |
How do you explain closures? | rleisti: You could try an example showing what a closure does 'under the hood' by showing an equivalent non-closure example, like:With Closure: foreach (var obj in objects) {
AddButton("Delete " + obj.ToString(), () => obj.Delete());
}
Without closure: class DeleteHandler {
public DeleteHandler(TYPE obj) {... |
How did you market your app when there were already a lot like yours? | edw519: "Differentiate or Die"Google this phrase or buy the book:http://www.amazon.com/Differentiate-Die-Survival-Killer-Comp...My favorite passage:"The best way to really enter minds that hate complexity and confusion is to oversimplify your message. The lesson here is not to try to tell your entire story. Just focus ... |
How do you explain closures? | barrkel: I implemented anonymous methods in Delphi, and I faced a similar kind of problem trying to sell them, as it were, to the Delphi community.What they are: functions with state.Why they're useful: callbacks where a whole separate method or class would be overkill.Motivating examples:* Delegating work to a backgro... |
How do you explain closures? | projectileboy: A closure enables you to keep local state in a functional language. Think of it as an object (a really abused word, I know, but it conveys the idea).So what are the mechanics? Follow me (I'll use Arc):Lesson 1) A function can return a function: arc> (def adder-factory () [+ 1 _])
#<procedure: adder-fa... |
How do you explain closures? | jerf: I wrote this to answer that question: http://www.jerf.org/iri/post/2542In particular, I focus on showing an example that is noticeably more complicated without closures, but also a real case that could conceivably come up. |
How do you explain closures? | bgray: Simple Clojure example: user=> (defn add-n [n] #(+ n %))
#'user/add-n
user=> (def add-2 (add-n 2))
#'user/add-2
user=> (add-2 5)
7 |
How do you explain closures? | mtomczak: They are functions you can make up on the spot. That's usually the extent of my explanation.Surprisingly, most of the people I talk to assume that the "fancy" parts of closures (such as variable value capture and upvalues) are the way such a construct should work and require no further explanation to use them... |
what disputes can arise between co-founders? | JangoSteve: I would say they always come in two varieties: a) disagreements on some future action, methodology, goals, etc., and b) disagreements on past action (e.g. is the other person pulling their weight, being effective, etc). And of course, the latter usually leads to the former, because once you're convinced the... |
How did you market your app when there were already a lot like yours? | jnovek: Well, we're a SaaS company that sells business-to-business so things are probably different. One paying customer for us is probably like 10 or 100 for you.We entered what you might call a "saturated" market about 10 months ago. What we did was:1) We made our product much, much better than the competition, who... |
How do you explain closures? | Ixiaus: A lexical closure is similar in many ways to the class of an object-oriented language. In fact, lexical closures can be used to create an object system.A class in PHP, for example, can have any number of class variables and for this demonstration consider these variables to be "private" (not accessible outside ... |
How do you explain closures? | ericbb: Closures are different from objects in only a couple of ways:
(1) the creation protocol is extremely concise (lambda)
(2) the access interface is the function callSay that closures lower the syntactic overhead of accessing
the same flexibility he normally turns to objects for.So if he uses closures he will effe... |
How did you market your app when there were already a lot like yours? | jd: Diederik from Stunf here.Back when we started on Thymer we considered the market. In fact, we asked ourselves: "do we want to enter a saturated market?". But then we realized that we just assumed the market was saturated, but we think the evidence points to the contrary.True, there are a lot of competitors. But sur... |
Is it just me, or are HN comments becoming more and more negative? | mrshoe: Oh shut your dirty trap, you whiny moron.</sarcasm>I still find HN to be a friendly, positive environment. Let's keep it that way!Edit: Wow. Either starting your comment with a joke is somehow no longer OK, or nobody else agrees with me that HN is still friendly and positive. I've been reading HN everyday for a... |
How do you explain closures? | dasil003: I wrote an article about the closure aspect of Ruby blocks that was intended for beginners:http://darwinweb.net/articles/41-ruby_blocks_as_closuresIt really focuses on just one aspect of closures that Ruby's syntax makes especially convenient, which is that they enable you to write generic functions that don'... |
Is it just me, or are HN comments becoming more and more negative? | crystalis: It had to happen- there's relatively fewer pg, patio11, raganwald, wheels, tptacek, swombat, etc., and more of this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=903880 |
Anyone ever use OpenPR for press releases? | chuck_taylor: I've worked in the news business for 30 years and I've never even heard of OpenPR, for what that's worth. |
Is it just me, or are HN comments becoming more and more negative? | nkohari: I agree entirely. I rarely do more than skim the comments anymore, because too often it just turns into a contest for one-upsmanship and ego stroking. There are people on here that will take any opportunity to argue about any topic. |
Is it just me, or are HN comments becoming more and more negative? | tsestrich: Eh, I get the sense that sometimes people will just grab any news story that hasn't been posted yet and post it hoping to get voted up points. I haven't been around all that long, but it seems like the signal to noise ratio is getting a lot higher even during the short time span that I've been on here.Not on... |
Is it just me, or are HN comments becoming more and more negative? | spudlyo: I've noticed it as well. I'm not sure if this is due to an increased amount of criticism or if the quality of the articles posted has gone down, warranting more criticism. |
Is it just me, or are HN comments becoming more and more negative? | ErrantX: I think part of it is the extra traffic too: 10 comments pointing out the same criticism within a few minutes of each other. And you can see the rush in posting it.Personally I have a few names I like to read commentary from and so keep an eye out for - then skim the rest. |
Is it just me, or are HN comments becoming more and more negative? | edw519: Quality of HN Comments Over Time
| . .
| . .
q| . . . .
u| . . . . . .
a| . . . . .
l| . . . . .
i| . . ... |
Is it just me, or are HN comments becoming more and more negative? | drhowarddrfine: It's just you....twit. |
Is it just me, or are HN comments becoming more and more negative? | amichail: Could this have something to do with startup failures?Multiple failures might put people in a bad mood. |
How do you explain closures? | mping: Imagine you need a task to be done. Normally, you go and do it yourself. With a closure, you write the instructions and just hand it off to someone :) |
Is it just me, or are HN comments becoming more and more negative? | richardw: While quality may have been varying, it's still fantastic compared to the mire that exists outside. We're lucky. |
Is it just me, or are HN comments becoming more and more negative? | jeromec: I think there are certainly times when things may go a bit far, but that's to be expected with such a volume of people - largely independent thinkers. A few might even be overtly negative or bellicose. I try to call it like I see it whether endorsing or critical, with no regard for being ingratiating for much ... |
Is it just me, or are HN comments becoming more and more negative? | DanielBMarkham: There are a lot of complicated and interesting things going on here. I just wish I had more time and data to dig into them.One thing I have noticed is a consistent desire for the community to "meta discuss" how the board is doing -- much to the annoyance of others. (yes, this is a comment about meta com... |
How did you market your app when there were already a lot like yours? | lunaru: We operate in a market that has a few 800 pound gorillas with a bunch of 100 pound monkeys thrown in. I don't feel daunted for a second by the fact that the market is crowded - it just proves that there are customers out there looking for this particular kind of pain-killer.The best-best is to have a unique wor... |
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