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Why does nobody want to talk about Zeitgeist? | nostrademons: I haven't seen Zeitgeist, but from your description and the comments on the original submission, I assume it's one of those conspiracy-theory films about the power elite and economic exploitation?I think you might be surprised by how much of the middle class is aware that they're being fucked over by elites. Most of the folks my parents have had over for dinner just nod and agree when my dad goes off on his conspiracy theories. Where I went to college, many of the sociology courses had us reading about and discussing the power elite. For my part, I'll freely admit that I think it's likely there are conspiracies by people in power against people not in power, I just don't think the ones we hear about are the real ones. (Think about it: if these people were as powerful and clever as most conspiracy theories make them out to be, why would they let you know about it?)Then the question always is: what do we do about it?In one of your previous posts, you said: "And our professor said that in AA meetings, the first step is recognizing there is a problem. The second step is getting angry. And the third is taking action or doing something about it." As a kid, I used to believe that complaining served a very real purpose, because it drew attention to the problem. Didn't make me very popular. I gave up that belief when I realized that nearly every competent person (including many of my peers) already knew, they just understood that they were not in a position to do anything about it, and thinking about it just made them miserable.The big difference between AA and the world around us is that AA is all about your personal behavior, yet the world around you is other people's personal behavior. Some wise person on the Internet once said, "Control yourself, because you can't control others." Asking "Why don't you do something about it?" is the wrong question. Asking "Why don't I do something about it?" is the right question, but finding an answer can be somewhat difficult.Raganwald once wrote a great blog entry about "dangerous ideas". I'm looking for them - one of the reasons I gave up on my last startup (other than I didn't think it'd work) was that even if it succeeded, it just made sheeple more sheeplike. But dangerous ideas usually aren't obvious. If you find one, run with it - maybe you'll be the one to change the world. |
What are your thoughts on "unofficial" programming languages in companies? | davidw: > But after reading "Developing Erlang at Yahoo!" and how the new Delicious is written in ErlangDidn't you read the bit about it not being written in Erlang ?http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=323116One route would be simply to go work somewhere where you can learn new languages, rather than try and get around obstacles at BigCorp. |
What are your thoughts on "unofficial" programming languages in companies? | iigs: Fighting that front and center will make you that hoarding programmer that doesn't cooperate or share, writes horribly obfuscated code and tries to ensure job security by not just doing things the "right" way. You'll be perceived that way whether or not you're the Mother Teresa of code, so don't do that.An arguably better approach to this problem is to find places where the MS stack is lacking (source control, automated builds, deployment are some things that come to mind from my circa-2003 knowledge of the MS stack) and write scripts that improve your company's development processes.If you do this successfully you might see things change from "we only use $tech products" to "our customer facing, support-requiring products are all written in $tech". From here you have a valid footing upon which to demonstrate the quality, productivity and supportability (be sure you can support these commensurate with the company's need!) of other solutions.Now that you have a footing upon which to build, you can architect solutions that push the strategic part of the products away from the customer facing veneer and toward an asynchronous, nearline component where potential failures won't be seen by the customers directly.You may not be able to get that far, depending on what your products do, but maybe you can take the first step or two, and at least scripting in nicer languages can certainly make the rest of your job a lot easier and more pleasant. |
ASK HN: What do you think of mind.some.head ? (social network connecting minds and ideas) | alaskamiller: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=headEdit: okay, this is just a ning setup. |
ASK HN: What do you think of mind.some.head ? (social network connecting minds and ideas) | run4yourlives: Um, what is it? |
Demotivated Founder With Lost Passion Seeking Advice | carlio: Bail. You're not happy, and you're putting in more effort than you should / want to. If you carry on it'll make you more and more bitter and that won't help the business. If you have another opportunity, go for it - the novelty will rejuvinate you I'll bet. |
Demotivated Founder With Lost Passion Seeking Advice | noodle: i'd say, no matter what you do, wait until you launch and pull in some customers. if your cofounder isn't tech savvy, i would hope that he's the business/marketer type person who's going to be doing the selling of the product. hopefully he'll be the one donating huge time chunks post-launch in order to make it sell, while you don't have much to do.whichever you decide to do, stay or go, i'd bring it up with your cofounder. bringing up issues instead of letting them fester can help, if they're things that can get resolved.if the differences are irreconcilable and you're unhappy, jump ship when the fall is comfortable enough for you. |
Demotivated Founder With Lost Passion Seeking Advice | bestes: It sounds like you are ready to launch. I can't imagine walking away after your site is ready and before it even launches!a) See it through the launch. Send your post to your co-founder. Try an forget about "effort" and "sacrifice". Is he adding value at all? Is he going to once you launch (i.e. sales or something?).b) This sounds to me like a theory/reality problem. I love thinking up ideas and plans. I hate when they get all messy when I try and bring them into the real world. It sounds like you might be interested in the "new development" work and have tired of your less-than-perfect implementation. Once you launch, is there a chance you'll get more funding, another customer to help with funding or anything?Also, you might try and separate your feelings about the work and the actual changes of the business. Just because you hate it now doesn't mean it won't be successful (not that I'm advising you to do something you hate...). |
Demotivated Founder With Lost Passion Seeking Advice | maxklein: Don't bail when the going gets tough. Launch and give it everything you got for the next 3-6 months. If NOTHING comes back, give up. If it starts trickling in and you see potential, continue pushing. Otherwise, give up. |
Demotivated Founder With Lost Passion Seeking Advice | alexandros: You are prepared to bail. This is an excellent bargaining position. Put your problems plainly to your cofounder, including your intention to bail if things dont improve on his side. If you dont see the reaction you want, do what you were prepared to do and know that you tried as much as you could. |
Have you ever been a one man Geek Squad? (Of course you have) | run4yourlives: My own two cents:I wouldn't do this because your customers are cheap idiots who don't realize they're cheap idiots.I personally don't think the small amount of money you make is worth the headaches you will face. I think you'll have better luck targeting small businesses as "outsourced IT" help than targeting home users.Good luck to you though, regardless. |
Demotivated Founder With Lost Passion Seeking Advice | amrithk: If you can, try taking some time off. Travel somewhere. Do not think about your work for a week or two. That gives you really good perspective. |
Have you ever been a one man Geek Squad? (Of course you have) | noodle: i've actually considered doing this.something to consider is nerds on site, which is basically an international group of contract workers doing what you're doing, but they provide a network of support for the process.something worth considering is providing the service of at least attempting to diagnose problems via VNC, instead of making house calls like geek squad does. provides the one-on-one support by inspecting the computer, but doesn't incur the cost of making a house call. it'll probably be easy to spin it as beneficial, since one wouldn't have to cough up a house call bill for a minor issue. |
Have you ever been a one man Geek Squad? (Of course you have) | SwellJoe: This is not a startup...it's a small business. Nothing wrong with that, of course. A small business is awesome, and generally better for your finances and emotional well-being than working for someone else. But, it doesn't have the same end result as a startup, and the way you build one successfully is very different.I've done contract work for a few small businesses over the years, similar to the business you describe (though I charged more than Geek Squad, and provided somewhat higher end services...like Linux and UNIX administration, network infrastructure buildouts, etc.). The yellow pages got me two jobs in the two years that I ran an ad (and a helluva lot of crazy people who wanted me to tell them how the government kept finding out what they were doing on their computer, or tell them how to find out what their spouse or child was doing on the computer, and for free). So, that's a non-starter. Advertising on Google AdWords, with very specific targeting might be the ticket. It's how I found the dog walking and sitting service I use, and probably other services.Check Craigslist for people looking for some work in your areas of expertise. It'll be bigger projects, of course, but it'll help with word of mouth. If you do a good job, it only takes a few customers to kickstart a good career as a contractor. If you always plan to increase your rate and the complexity of services you offer, you can definitely get to $100-$150k/year in a few years, at which point, you can either start hiring other techs and build your own Geek Squad (maybe even turning it into a startup!), or just keep working, and tucking away 20% each year. I know several folks who retired in their early fifties on this plan, and with a couple million in the bank (I inherited a few of their clients).Personally, I found the work...ummm...frustrating, and draining, and far more stressful than I was comfortable with. I was really good at it, and I kept cranking up my rate until I was making $150/hour, and clients were happy to pay it. But, it just wasn't my bag. You won't know until you try, though. |
Demotivated Founder With Lost Passion Seeking Advice | donniefitz2: You're almost there. Why stop now? It's not all that bad and you've come so far. It's like giving up on a marathon when the finish line is just coming into vision. Suck it up. Put your head down and focus on finishing. |
Demotivated Founder With Lost Passion Seeking Advice | symptic: You've put in the time, and you haven't seen the rewards yet, so you're naturally discouraged. Tim Ferris covers it well on his blog (link below). Mostly everyone goes through phases where they are unmotivated or feel like they can't win at what they are doing. It's part of life. The important thing is not to give up on it before it has a chance to even take off. You'll hate to be asking "what if" later on if you decide to move on.http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2008/10/03/harnessing-e... |
Can I survive the rest of my life only knowing Java? | ram1024: Learn how to utilize your java skills in making Android Apps!just a thought... :D |
Demotivated Founder With Lost Passion Seeking Advice | jwilliams: (b) Bring in a 3rd Party.Importantly - Someone you both agree on - Not because they agree with you individually, but because you both recognise they can add value. Someone complimentary to your skills - maybe totally different skills - maybe a customer, or someone who's been in the business for years and can give advice.They don't need to take a third of the company, or even be full time - they just need to be another invested person. A hands-on angel investor might suit this bill.Having a third party with a different perspective will help you smooth over disagreements and deadlocks. As always - absolutely critical who you choose to go into business with, so not a decision to take lightly. |
Have you ever been a one man Geek Squad? (Of course you have) | scumola: I used to love a small business in my local town that used to do this. He sold cheap, korean PC hardware and charged by the hour to fix problems for people. He had a real store front and was in business for at least 5 years before Best Buy moved into town and took his business away. I think that small companies like this are a dying breed and sorely missed. I like Best Buy but only because they seem to be the only game in town. If you do a good job with your little mom-n-pops place, then work will travel around and you'll probably do ok, but the main thing that you need to worry about is losing business to the big-box retailers who do service as a second business.Perhaps advertise using huge signs on the front of your storefront telling people that you're a better Geek Squad than Best Buy or something would help you out.Small car repair places still exist and do well against the dealerships in the automotive industry, but they do it via undercutting the service price and doing a good job and advertising using local media and word of mouth.If you feel like you will get enough clients to support your business, then more power to ya! |
Can I survive the rest of my life only knowing Java? | pmorici: "Where should I go to learn them? Are conventions worth the travel/admission cost?"The Internet and no.edit: If your employer is willing to pay for you to travel to some great location to attend a conference I wouldn't turn it down. Not a wise use of your personal funds though. |
Can I survive the rest of my life only knowing Java? | dusklight: Well there are still people making a living writing FORTRAN.Can you survive? Yeah probably. Will you be happy? Are you happy now?Conventions can be cool for social purposes, but if you want to learn something new that is substantial, that's not going to happen in a week. There is only one way to learn code, and that is to write code. No shortcuts :( |
Can I survive the rest of my life only knowing Java? | noodle: you'll always be able to survive on one language. especially such a huge language that will leave a giant legacy footprint if another language becomes more popular. the question is, will you, personally and financially, prosper. you want to do more than survive.it won't be easy, but its possible. check out grails and seam to push yourself into the rails-like environment running on java. i really like grails.or, you can just do like others and learn rails or python. |
Is there a state-by-state guide to IP assignment issues that affect startups? | noodle: talk to the corporate lawyer for the company that the one person with the tight contract works. or, at least, request to do so.at my company, we had a terrible contract, and the employees brought it up and got it changed. bring it up, see if you can get an exemption clause drafted and signed. |
Demotivated Founder With Lost Passion Seeking Advice | webwright: How much do your users/customers love what you have? If there is a glimmer of user joy, that's not worth tossing aside lightly... It's rarer than you think, and having something that customers like enough to pay for is a GREAT thing to have in this market.In, short... Are you onto something? If not, certainly bail.If you are, you've got big challenges with your partner. I'd try to find a new one if you can't make him an asset (a good way to separate is to give both partners legal rights to the code and flip a coin for the brand).This is SUCH a huge problem- you aren't alone. More startups fail due to lack of interest/motivation than anything else, IMO. User happiness is a HUGE motivator and lack of it is a huge de-motivator... So launching would be a good step if you're looking for motivation or a final nail in the coffin.Read "The Dip: When to Quit and When to Stick" by Seth Godin. |
Have you ever been a one man Geek Squad? (Of course you have) | jharrison: It sounds like you haven't ever actually done what you propose to do. I think you'd be better off getting a job with one of the outfits you intend to mimic, first.Like SwellJoe, I've also been contracting for a number of years.Early on I went to the homes of computer users and fixed their problems. Let me just say, those were some of the worst experiences of my tech career. Don't get me wrong, if going into a stranger's home, often into their bedroom or other intimate space, and mingling with their pets, breathing their smoke or other noxious odor is your idea of a great way to make a buck (I use that term loosely), then this is EXACTLY what you should be doing. I personally can't stand it and will never do it again. I often get employees of my clients asking me if I make housecalls. The answer is always no.If you ever intend to make money supporting businesses then you should be employed with a company that does that in order to learn the ropes and truly identify the needs of that market. It sounds like all you have right now is your anecdotal opinion of what Geek Squad is, or does. If you think you're going to make any useful amount of money visiting individual homes, you're likely in for a rude awakening.The way I did it was to consume all things tech while I had another job and occasionally help friends, family, and referrals with their computer problems. That never did anything but give me occasional lunch money. I then took a couple of MCSE courses because I got them cheap. With those courses and some confidence that I knew wtf I was talking about, I got a job with a company that had a larger company as its client. I worked for that company for a year fixing 5-10 computers a day (I was one of several supporting 800 users). I left that job straight to contracting because I actually knew something then. I had actual experience in the corporate support world.I was an employed contractor for 3 years after which I went completely solo. That was 7 years ago. Today I (me, solo) support about 80 computers across 4 clients and I do web development as it comes, by referral. My rate is $95/hr. and I've been told I could/should raise it many times.Hope this helps. |
Have you ever been a one man Geek Squad? (Of course you have) | DanielBMarkham: Quick Version:1) Charge at least 45/hour. Yes you can charge less, but no it doesn't scale. I might even go higher. You have to make enough so you can pay all the fun taxes and insurance premiums you need -- even if you decide to skip out of them for a while.2) Have a minimum hour block. Back in the dark ages, I used to have a 3 hour minimum. So if you had a problem and were willing to pay for 3 hours, I would come (to your business) and fix your computer. Now that I'm in management consulting I charge by the day. If you don't block out your time, your clients will make your life hell.3) Knock on some doors. Best way to make sales. Go downtown and start knocking on doors. Ten bucks says within the first 20 doors you make a sale. Repeat and rinse.4) Never work for free. That means NEVER. Even for your mom. Word will get out and you'll end up too busy to work your business.5) Be ready to refund people's money. I used to have one rule: if you're unhappy in any way, you get your money back. Sure -- I got jerks. But I never dealt with them twice.6) Enjoy the performance. On-site consulting is like one of those plays where the audience gets to participate. Know your stuff and be good at performance art. Remember to the end-user, they have no idea of what anything is worth. Their stuff is broken and you can fix it. So when you do, do a good job. Do extra work. Ham it up a bit. Tell some jokes. Have fun. People will remember you in a happy way, even if their wallet still stings. <-- That's exactly the way you want to be remembered. |
Demotivated Founder With Lost Passion Seeking Advice | villanovalaw: Smile. Breathe. Think.Life's Good. Enjoy it.oh.... LAUNCH THE PRODUCT AS IT IS!!!!-P |
Can I survive the rest of my life only knowing Java? | arockwell: You can make a living writing j2ee apps for the rest of your life, but I'm not sure you'd want to... Here's a couple of things that have recently helped me broaden my programming horizons:Learning lisp from http://gigamonkeys.com/book/. I still completely suck at lisp, but my eyes are opened to what you can do with functional programming and metaprogramming.Picking up Ruby and learning RoR. Any dynamic language would be helpful to know... take a look at both python and ruby and learn more about whichever you like better.I've also gotten heavily into javascript recently because of jquery. I'm pleased with how flexible the framework.None of these things are something you can go pick up in a one week training course. They're something you have to practice day after day to get better at. The most helpful thing you can do is to get a side project with some new language/framework and get cracking. Best way to learn imo. |
Demotivated Founder With Lost Passion Seeking Advice | siong1987: Launch... Get feedbacks... Iterate... Launch again... This is a never ending process for a startup with VC-backed.But, if your company is not VC-backed, then, you have to use this method:Lauch... Get feedbacks... Iterate.. Bootstrap... Launch again... Get more feedbacks... Iterate more... Bootstrap more... Another never ending process until you are successful... Think of NeXT and Pixar.. |
what's going on with HN? | nazgulnarsil: us hackers wouldn't get paid much if computers always behaved themselves. |
Demotivated Founder With Lost Passion Seeking Advice | adilsaleem: Try to involve someone with authority. Some angel investor, another co-founder, mentor, advisor...anyone who can hold (both of) you accountable for your efforts and actions (or lack of it).You should talk to your co-founder about your concerns. You ll need all your efforts after the launch for product improvement. |
what's going on with HN? | alaskamiller: You should ask for you money back. |
what's going on with HN? | amvp: Welcome back. I missed you. |
Can I survive the rest of my life only knowing Java? | geuis: You need to learn something else. Java in particular is horrible about getting otherwise competent developers stuck in one kind of mindset about how to do software development. There may be some good practices that you've picked up but you are also being limited by lack of exposure to other ways of developing. |
what's going on with HN? | pg: The server got wedged: it couldn't write to the log file because there were too many files open. Still not sure why there were so many files open. I've never seen that error before. But the program that notices when the server is wedged and kills it didn't catch it in this case, because instead of not responding it would respond but with an empty page. |
what's going on with HN? | delackner: In other news, productivity across the globe spiked today... |
Demotivated Founder With Lost Passion Seeking Advice | abijlani: Ask yourself a very simple question. If you were currently making sufficient income from your product and were on your way to growing the company would you still harbor the same feelings towards your cofounder? |
Demotivated Founder With Lost Passion Seeking Advice | trevelyan: >> Bad part is, we don't have any money
>>left for new development. I've handled
>>a good portion of the tech issues, except
>>for the core programming of the app:
>>interface design, database design, sys admin
>> config, some bug fixing,etc. Think of it
>> more as a CTO role, than a lead dev role.
>> At the end of the day it's still 2 of us,
>> that's a troubling sign. I'm a pretty
>> motivating person, and the fact no one else
>> has really shown interest in helping out or
>> getting involved is scary.Well... it would be unusual for other people to show interest until you're making money or demonstrating how it can be done. Even if you have a great product changing people's patterns of behavior is very difficult.The upside of this is that once you ARE making money, you'll find it becomes a lot easier.If you don't think your partner is pulling their weight, the first question you should ask is whether you're being realistic/fair in your expectations of them, or whether you are looking for someone to blame for some perceived failure. Your post suggests that your partner is - in fact - doing most of the core development work. In either case, bestes is dead right - you need to clear your expectations with your co-founder.If you need money get a part-time job or let one of you focus on trying to get funding while the other continues development work. Marketing is going to take a lot of effort, and if you're complaining about not having money for development it makes me wonder how you're planning on getting the word out to prospective customers. |
Demotivated Founder With Lost Passion Seeking Advice | known: If you constantly talk to your users you will bootstrap. |
Demotivated Founder With Lost Passion Seeking Advice | saint: move out and do not do that again. this is not beer drinking. if you are making sacrifices, why do you think other needs to do it also?
you have to overcome this (personal) issue.
the co-founder is not there for no reason - talk to him about your feelings and see if you see reality in the same way. |
Demotivated Founder With Lost Passion Seeking Advice | santacruz: reboot |
Demotivated Founder With Lost Passion Seeking Advice | adityakothadiya: Don't bailout. There are always lows and highs in this journey. This is a "low" phase. Try to get over of it. Even if you are thinking about a new idea, there will be a phase with that idea where you will feel "low". It's very frustrating to see afterwards that you left the journey half-way. Let your users/customers decide if this is failure or not. Then it'll be obvious if you should quit or continue. I did this mistake before. I'm going through this situation again, but this time I learned the lesson from past experience. So I'm not quitting when I'm at low phase. I'm pushing my best, and I hope a high phase is ahead. All the best! |
Demotivated Founder With Lost Passion Seeking Advice | sonink: Two things:1. Just launch. You are about to quit anyways - so why not just launch, it obviously couldnt be worse.2. Co-founder - I think two highly motivated founders is definitely ideal - but whatever little I have seen I think more often that not one founder is a lot more motivated than the other. This also seems (but again im not sure) to be the case with Apple(jobs vs woznaik) as well as microsoft (gates vs allen). Additionally, I think this arrangement might have some advantages (vis-a-vis leadership issues) also. |
what's going on with HN? | brandnewlow: Had the same exact problem about 10 days ago, as well. |
Demotivated Founder With Lost Passion Seeking Advice | gojomo: Maybe you need to hook up with this other founder disillusioned with his cofounder: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=325923 |
My host has me over a barrel. I've placed myself in a pickle. How to handle? | davidw: 1) You need to understand this stuff yourself. You need to learn about Apache and Drupal and the other technical bits - maybe not to the point of becoming an expert, but enough to work with them a bit.2) Go elsewhere. Slicehost (or linode) has better VPS deals, and Layered Tech used to have some pretty good deals on 'real' servers. |
My host has me over a barrel. I've placed myself in a pickle. How to handle? | speek: linode.com asap |
My host has me over a barrel. I've placed myself in a pickle. How to handle? | FiReaNG3L: 384 MB of RAM is really low for a site (apache + db i assume). I host my Drupal site ( http://esciencenews.com ) at ServInt on a 90$/month package with 784 MB of RAM. Dont know how I would do it with 384, looks impossible to me. Higher traffic daily than your spike. |
My host has me over a barrel. I've placed myself in a pickle. How to handle? | alex_c: Their plans seem a bit expensive. Depending on how much bandwidth you use, slicehost.com might be a better option - you get 1GB of RAM for the same price. |
My host has me over a barrel. I've placed myself in a pickle. How to handle? | patrickg-zill: Well the first you can do, is to configure apache to restart an httpd process after serving some number of clients. Under Apache 2.x this is called MaxRequestsPerChild and the default is 10000 requests. Since you are not bumping into CPU problems, try reducing this number to say 500 requests. After a child process has served 500 requests it will exit, and another process will be started. |
My host has me over a barrel. I've placed myself in a pickle. How to handle? | lethain: If you're willing to handle the stuff yourself, and it isn't that bad, SliceHost is a charm. I've hosted my django based blog (600-1000 uniques per day, ~6000 some peak days) on a 512 megabyte vps (Apache2 with mod_python, nginx for static files and proxying other requests to the Apache2, memcached instances with maybe 32 megs (not a lot of content to cache), and postgres) for the past 8 or 9 months and it's been great. On a 256 meg vps it used to crash, but 512 has been golden with my traffic levels.Oh, and its $38/month for 516 meg slice. Can't say enough kind words about 'em (if you're willing to fire up SSH yourself:). |
My host has me over a barrel. I've placed myself in a pickle. How to handle? | matthewking: How about EC2? 1.7GB on their lowest virtual server - Works out at about $72~ per month I think? |
My host has me over a barrel. I've placed myself in a pickle. How to handle? | noodle: tweak your apache configuration to see if that will fix your swapping problems. there are tons of articles on what you need to do to do this available online. sounds like you're just spawning a lot of children that are sticking around to fill up memory and swap space.i had similar problems with a default config of apache on a 256 slice. if you tweak things correctly, you'll be fine. |
My host has me over a barrel. I've placed myself in a pickle. How to handle? | midnightmonster: You're paying quite a lot for a very weak VPS--compare at slicehost or linode. So your first step might should be to spend less for a more powerful server at one of the other VPS providers. OTOH, I'm not sure linode or slicehost even offer the kind of support package that you have paid for with midphase--you'd be on your own. OTOOH, if I read your post right you're paying midphase $130/month currently. You can get a whole lot of server for a lot less than that.For some combination of Drupal's general heavy-weightness, lack of caching, slow server, your front page performance is sporadic and mostly very poor. I get times mostly in the 0.6 - 1.4 sec range just for loading the HTML, and that's with about 0.15 sec as the baseline for just loading a similar-sized static image from the site. I'm not a Drupal expert even a little, but if you could fully cache the front page (so that apache serves a static file directly) and update it, e.g., once every 10 min, you'd be flying, comparatively.But about what's going on, I'd lay money it's all of the above: you have a low-resource server, drupal isn't fast/light by default and you haven't made it any better, you're not using any caching where it would really help. You should work on fixing all of those. |
My host has me over a barrel. I've placed myself in a pickle. How to handle? | brandnewlow: Ok. I'm going to call the folks at ServInt and Linode and talk to them. I am concerned about migrating from one host to another as I've never done that before but I can figure it out.I'm also going to look more into improving my site's performance. I have enabled Drupal's page caching, but I guess it's not doing much to help. I'll pursue that further. |
My host has me over a barrel. I've placed myself in a pickle. How to handle? | durana: I'd ask them to clarify what they mean by a crash. Is it a system crash or is it Apache going out to lunch or is it something else? A "crash" can mean so many different things because it is somewhat vague. I've seen plenty of cases where if you press someone for a root cause of a "crash", they can't give it to you because they don't really know what went wrong. You've got to understand the problem before you can solve it or be sure what they are recommending makes sense. If you want some more input, feel free to e-mail me. |
My host has me over a barrel. I've placed myself in a pickle. How to handle? | blender: Couple quick things for Drupal:Do you have Optimize CSS files (CSS file aggregation) enabled?Do you have Caching mode (Normal) enabled?Cheers |
My host has me over a barrel. I've placed myself in a pickle. How to handle? | theantidote: I agree with most of the above. Move to a more cost effective host, optimize your Apache server, and use page caching in Drupal. I think it's as simple as a checkbox in the settings somewhere, but it's been a few months since I've worked with Drupal.http://drupal.org/getting-started/6/admin/settings
The manual says caching is under the Performance section and it's disabled by default. |
My host has me over a barrel. I've placed myself in a pickle. How to handle? | jbyers: From what you've said, I doubt host swapping is a good idea - yet. First you need to get a good understanding of what's causing the system to run out of memory. One way to do this is to watch vmstat and top when the system is failing, or to install one of many system monitoring packages.From what you've stated, I'll take a stab at what's going on. Apache processes are big, from a memory usage standpoint. A single Apache + mod_php could use 25 MB or more. If you have a dozen or more requests that hit at once -- or processes that are feeding slow clients -- blam, you've run out of memory.One solution is to switch to lighttpd, nginx, or another webserver with a smaller footprint. Here a single process (or small set) serves a pool of PHP processes. But that's a bunch of work for a guess at what's going wrong.Instead, try running nginx as a proxy in front of Apache, and let it spoonfeed slow clients. It's likely you will not need to change Drupal at all, and make only minor changes to Apache to do this. A good description is here: http://blog.kovyrin.net/2006/05/18/nginx-as-reverse-proxy/ |
My host has me over a barrel. I've placed myself in a pickle. How to handle? | pistoriusp: Move your static files to a different subdomain / host or vhost. (AWS?)Turn Keep-Alive Off. (If you're site doesn't have tightly packed multiple requests). The default is 15 seconds, I saw a 50% speed increase when I disabled this.
Set MaxRequestsPerChild to 500, in case your code is leaking. |
My host has me over a barrel. I've placed myself in a pickle. How to handle? | rcoder: First, you should know that many types of caching will increase your memory usage, not decrease it. The whole point of a cache is to use fast storage (RAM) to keep a local copy of data that would be slower to retrieve from its persistent source (filesystem or DB).Second, 384 MB just isn't much memory for a medium-traffic Drupal site. I would recommend at least a gig of memory, and perhaps more if you use plugins heavily. Drupal is neither particularly lean nor blazingly fast, so you're going to need a lot of Apache listeners working to handle that load, with each process probably consuming 30-50 MB of RAM.Third, you're right to think that you need someone on-call who knows Apache, Drupal, and database tuning and configuration inside and out. A $60/mo. support package isn't going to do it, though. If you think about it, that's really only paying for an hour or two of tech time each month, so expecting to get 24/7 interactive performance tuning and optimization for free along with your support contract is pretty unreasonable. Put a performance guru on retainer, and establish an SLA with them if necessary to maintain your site uptime.Finally, opening >30 tickets in less than a week is not the best way to get quality support. It's like the stereotypical impatient kid on a road trip, asking "are we there yet?" over and over again.My suggestion would be for your to find an experienced LAMP admin who is willing to manage your hosting for you, and pay them a reasonable fee for doing so. |
My host has me over a barrel. I've placed myself in a pickle. How to handle? | adatta02: check out http://novanix.com/I realize the website looks shady as all hell. But we use them for EVERYTHING and we've never had a problem. Their support is also top notch. Usually answers+fixes <30 mins. |
My host has me over a barrel. I've placed myself in a pickle. How to handle? | DanielBMarkham: I had the same problem four years ago. It killed my startup. The volume numbers weren't there for a dedicated box and the VM-type hosting was continuously (and randomly) rebooting. |
My host has me over a barrel. I've placed myself in a pickle. How to handle? | staunch: For another $10-$20 you could have a physical dedicated server with 1GB memory on ServerBeach. I highly recommend them. You can get $100 off if you use my referral code 7XYHDMBU8A but even if you don't use my code I still recommend it!http://www.serverbeach.com/catalog/cust_ref_landing_new.php?... |
My host has me over a barrel. I've placed myself in a pickle. How to handle? | rms: Before slicehost I was on Mediatemple's gridserver... the latency was terrible and there was more downtime than I would have liked, but it was ok. I suspect their service has improved somewhat in the interim and they provide more bandwidth than any other shared, managed hosting provider for the price. If you really don't want to manage your own server, they are probably worth looking into. |
My host has me over a barrel. I've placed myself in a pickle. How to handle? | niels_olson: I know HN discourages superfluousness, but I'd just like share my moment of zen as I contemplate how this is exactly the kind of post that keeps me coming to HN. |
Can I survive the rest of my life only knowing Java? | lacker: Ruby and particularly Ruby on Rails seem to be particularly exciting for people who have just escaped the world of Java. Plus, web apps are the sort of thing where you can make a simple one and entertain yourself quickly. Just find a neat one day project and dive in.The best way to learn is just to promise a couple close friends that you are going to make a particular thing in the next day or two, and then you will be forced to actually do it. You can get any information you need from the internet. |
My host has me over a barrel. I've placed myself in a pickle. How to handle? | lsc: you have 2 options.1. buy a much more powerful server/VPS.for seventy some odd dollars a month you can just leave your amazon ec2 image up all the time, and that's something like 1.7Gb ram. if you are willing to use a small provider (like me) you can do even better- I'll give you 2GB ram for $64/month. Having more ram makes a lot of problems just go away. (using a Xen based host also means that you can use swap, which means that your out of memory events would be slowdowns rather than crashes.)2. get a skilled SysAdmin (possibly you) to optimize your system from a systems standpoint.ultimately, you want both. But often just buying a better server is the cheapest option.But yeah. no matter how much you like your host, I recommend that you always have a hot copy of your website/application at another server, ready to switch the dns over at the first sign of trouble. you should test this periodically. |
Any users of SimpleCDN? | kospeslgurness: jbyers... i just switched to simplecdn from cachefly because simplecdn does https and allows you to do gzip and cache-control. I second mediaman453, dont know what article is talking about, great expereincecc soo far great service emails you back at all hours of the night is crazy |
My host has me over a barrel. I've placed myself in a pickle. How to handle? | bstadil: Host if on Amazon Web services. Will cost you $72 / month and you can scale up from there at peak times if you need.
You get 1.7GB of memory and roughtly a 2.5GHz processor.
If you need help setting this up use Scalr.net or we (cloudincode.com can help you for free)
Drop a line if you are interested bjorn At Stadil.com |
Does Buzzup.com have a chance to compete against Yahoo Buzz up | qhoxie: I don't personally see anything unique about how the site operates. It seems to be more or less a clone. In its current state, my answer would be 'no.'Please correct me if I am wrong on this. |
Does Buzzup.com have a chance to compete against Yahoo Buzz up | johntech: Maybe or maybe not. Yahoo buzz has the scale but it lacks many social network features such as: comments, friends, etc.. The article below proves my point:http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/has_yahoo_buzz_lived_up...However, buzzup.com is just a another clone of digg. It all depends on how good users feel when they visit those sites. Many tech users are abandoning digg.com because it now covers a broad range of topic and some users can even have low quality articles on the front page by gaming the system. |
A/B Testing in Ruby on Rails? | furiouslol: There's a free A/B testing app offered by Googlehttp://www.google.com/websiteoptimizer/ |
Does Buzzup.com have a chance to compete against Yahoo Buzz up | alaskamiller: 1. i'm confused about the branding
2. did yahoo register buzz? is this why you're changing the brand?
3. the color doesn't have enough contrast. i'm squinting on my monitor to read the text.
4. what's the distinction. your little paragraph is horribly written and didn't explain it. |
Door-to-Door Selling Stock to Fund your Company? | ScottWhigham: they had a large funder which they rejected because the guy was just too hands-offHuh? Doesn't seem logical to me. Too hands-on, maybe, but turning down money b/c some investor trusts the people he invests in just doesn't make any sense.As for your query, of course there are huge, huge legal worries here. As a friend once told me, "The IRS is a kitten compared to the SEC. Don't #### with the SEC." Not to mention that no future investor will want anything to do with said company. |
iPhone app for reading YC Hacker News? | auston: there used to be one at http://buxfer.com/yc/ |
Door-to-Door Selling Stock to Fund your Company? | aasarava: It's not necessarily illegal to sell shares in a private company, but you're right that the manner in which you do it is highly regulated. See "Rule 502", in particular clause C.
http://www.law.uc.edu/CCL/33ActRls/rule502.htmlThis summary addresses your question directly (albeit in a footnote):
http://www.icemiller.com/enewsletter/Bulletins/PEN/5Gen_Soli..."Issuers are not permitted to solicit ... investors where it is not known whether or not they are accredited -- even if only accredited investors are actually allowed to invest."Seems that going "door to door" would violate that rule. |
Does anyone WANT to build client software anymore? | davidw: I have a number of years experience working with Tcl, and also a bit of Tk, which fits the bill nicely for that kind of thing.However... yeah, doing client apps is not "where it's at" compared to web apps. I never thought I would say that. Web apps were, once upon a time, sort of ugly and boring compared to all the cool stuff you could do with 'real' apps. But with things like Rails, and the ability to easily deploy new versions, the world has changed, and web apps are "where it's at", in a lot of ways.If you're interested in using Tcl and Tk, I could send out a few feelers to that community. Lots of them aren't really in the YC 'demographic' (older, families, etc...), but some of them are pretty sharp coders. |
Does anyone WANT to build client software anymore? | oldgregg: I think YC tends to attract people who want to innovate... but who associates desktop software with innovation anymore? That's so 1983. Younger guys have never "wasted" the time to develop the requisite skill-set and older guys haven't bothered to keep up their chops.Besides, anybody who actually goes to MSDN conferences and hacks the windows API is probably on the corporate dole and would never be so dumb as to try starving/start-up.On the upside, if everyone around here was still obsessing over client software, somebody might have beat RescueTime to the punch! :) |
Does anyone WANT to build client software anymore? | scumola: I still write C code and GUIs for stuff, but doing it in PHP,SQL,Perl is just so much quicker and easier for things that my C programming is not as frequent as it used to be and my C skills are getting stale. I'm not in need of a client-side app as much anymore nowadays, the browsers are so capable that it's not as necessary to do heavy client-side apps much. I'm not discrediting client-side apps, it's just that the demand isn't as high anymore. |
Does anyone WANT to build client software anymore? | jncraton: I personally don't mind writing client software. I'm still in school, and I honestly don't have a huge amount of experience, but efficiency is really appealing to me. Web programming is fun when using Django or Rails. The code is beautiful, and it provides a great way to innovate. However, when I sit back and think about all the extra nonsense that is going on under the hood of a web app I start to get slightly frustrated. I'm not saying that I can fix this or even that it isn't the best way for the web to be built. It's just that there is something cool to me about building a brilliantly efficient client side app. I'm not going to say that I enjoy optimizing assembly, but there is definitely something satisfying to me about creating a really efficient and secure application.I'm not planning on making a career out of client software, but I do enjoy it at times. I strongly prefer writing web apps, but I also hack away at OpenGL and C++ occasionally in my spare time. |
Does anyone WANT to build client software anymore? | bayareaguy: The idea often appeals to me but I quickly get turned off by the practical realities involved, particularly when getting the app to both look reasonable and work on several platforms.That said, I've been thinking about XUL/Firefox addons for some simple configuration things. |
Does anyone WANT to build client software anymore? | jgrahamc: I think you're suffering from a virtuous circle or Catch-22 depending on your viewpoint. This site (and others) have made out that everything is going to be a web app, so lots of people want to work on web apps and then if all the smart are working on web apps then web apps look like the place to be. |
Does anyone WANT to build client software anymore? | noodle: i've done both (although my client-based experience is now a little old-ish). i've worked on client-based stuff (c++ mostly) and done your standard web app dev work (rails, php, java, etc.).the turning point for me, where i decided that i wanted to focus more on web dev type things, was in a UI and software engineering class i took in college. we had to build a c/c++ program to process and display some data graphically, with a nice gui interface.learning about, creating, and working with a modest GUI was painful and time consuming, to say the least. everyone struggled, and what took my group (4ish people) weeks in c/c++ and MFC would've taken me hours with html/javascript. the productivity difference and learning curve totally turned me off of client-based app work.having said all of that, i acknowledge that i didn't do work in .net or in a java framework, and i know that the situation is currently much better than it used to be. i'm not claiming that one is better than the other, just explaining why i turned my focus away from client-based apps. i'd love to return to them, just haven't had the need or time to do so.also, full disclosure, i dropped rescuetime an email about employment a while ago :) |
Does anyone WANT to build client software anymore? | AlexTheFounder: webwright, haven't seen your job ad, but I guess its not that challenging for a real "client" hacker to become attracted. Personally, I wouldn't bother applying because I see no future for myself as a "desktop" fanatic at your company - don't take it seriously, I do and love web apps too! |
Does anyone WANT to build client software anymore? | comatose_kid: I'd like it as long as it was Mac.To elaborate, the pool of people willing to pay for Linux client software isn't large enough. The pool of people willing to pay for Windows software is large enough, but I don't enjoy writing C#/.NET or MFC. And as importantly, it is hard to stick out as an indie in that environment.So, the time invested to learn these technologies isn't worthwhile.On the mac, you have a user base which is used to paying for software, and it is growing. And although no environment is perfect, I do enjoy writing Objective C and Cocoa. |
Does anyone WANT to build client software anymore? | pmjordan: I got into programming via the games route, and until pretty recently, that meant to-the-metal C, C++ and the libraries close to the system. (and when I started to teach myself to program, I hadn't heard of the internet) I've always tried to stay on top with other tech as well though, including the web, and now that I've given up game programming, my consulting work is about 50% client-side (C/Win32, C/UNIX, C++/MFC, .NET, Java - you name it) and 50% web-based. I enjoy both.I guess the web is what's hot right now (and that's hardly going to change so quickly) so it's what attracts the freshest talent. I don't think there's anything fundamental about web technology that will attract "YC style hackers". I also don't think the desktop is dead just yet.I suppose it's therefore no surprise that my own pet project is a kind of web/client hybrid that you'll be able to use either via a browser or run locally. (although some of the more complex graphical UI is pretty tricky to do in a browser, so we'll have to see what happens)I'm probably in the wrong country to help you out directly, but I suspect there are plenty of people out there that fit your requirements. I don't hang out there, but you could check the Joel on Software boards/jobs, I understand that's frequented by Windows folk.EDIT: this post seems to make me sound old. I'm 24, so typical YCer age, as far as I can tell. |
Does anyone WANT to build client software anymore? | tlrobinson: Compiled, non cross platform, download-only, "client software"... no.Cross platform, deployable on the web or any OS desktop, or mobile phones (with new generation browsers)... yes.But we had to write an entire framework first ;) |
Does anyone WANT to build client software anymore? | kapitti: I wrote one for AT&T that got deployed to ~1M PCs and lost my luster for client apps when Microsoft released Vista & XP SP2, both of which resulted in months of patch work just to get things working again before we could focus on newness again.I'm sure some day I'll love Client Apps again, maybe when Microsoft isn't killing the little guy. |
Does anyone WANT to build client software anymore? | rcoder: The problem with finding really great hackers who want to do client-side coding is that a huge percentage of the work required to implement such apps is boring crap: compatibility testing, look-and-feel review, installer authoring, and collection of client configurations from issue reports. You can implement more features in less time when you deliver thin-client solutions.Also, the knowledge required to deploy apps to each of your target platforms are fairly different, and tend to be developed to the exclusion of each other. A great Mac OS software engineer is unlikely to know Windows inside and out, and a Windows guru isn't likely to know or care much about Linux. Linux folks are, well, an altogether different bunch. |
Does anyone WANT to build client software anymore? | jamesbritt: My company, Happy Camper Studios, builds cross-platform client apps using JRuby, Swing, and Monkeybars. We like it. :) |
What's a good startup PBX system? | yan: Did you look into Asterix? |
What's a good startup PBX system? | qhoxie: I recommend rolling your own. Grab FreeSwitch and you can get things going for pretty cheap. |
Does anyone WANT to build client software anymore? | kingkongrevenge: If you want to write to MFC, which I'm sure would make the most sense, then that's probably your problem. |
Does anyone WANT to build client software anymore? | umjames: Are you looking for one person to do the Mac, PC, and Linux desktop clients? That would explain why you haven't found anyone yet. People tend to become good at developing for only one of those platforms.I can (and do) both web and Mac programming, but don't live near Seattle. Of the 2, I prefer Mac programming.I can't speak for Windows or Linux client development, but most of the Mac developers I know are running (or want to start running) their own indie Mac software shops. So you might want to find some quality Mac software contractors (I know a few). |
Does anyone WANT to build client software anymore? | jcromartie: I currently work on a project that has some similar technical goals to RescueTime. The OS-level work is what sucks. I don't mind working on GUIs, especially when it means applying the polish that really makes an app shine for users. That sort of stuff I can get into...As a matter of fact, I fixed the Status Item icons for RescueTime (to match the standard icon style) just the other day because the ones that came with it bugged me!Here you go!http://djork.net/rescue/RescueTimeMenu_off.pnghttp://djork.net/rescue/RescueTimeMenu_on.png |
Does anyone WANT to build client software anymore? | maxklein: Personally, I love client stuff way more than web stuff. Web stuff is just so limited in what can be done, and client stuff totally gives you freedom...But that's not the truth. I've been doing desktop stuff for years so it comes naturally to me, whereas web stuff is new. The people you are meeting here grew up with web stuff, not with desktop stuff. |
Does anyone WANT to build client software anymore? | rodmaz: I think client software is seeing a revival with mobile platforms like the iPhone OSX and Android. Right now the best experience in those devices is delivered by native client apps. Script languages like Flash and a browser with a larger screen enables rich web applications and thus reduces the need to write a native app for platforms like Windows. |
Determining Site Valuation (Bankaholic = $15M?) | mstefff: Actually, I think I might have been completely wrong about the 8K uniques monthly - think it was daily. Still though - doesn't seem that high. |
Does anyone WANT to build client software anymore? | 131072: I'd rather code web-apps than Win-API apps. I'd rather code OSX apps than web apps. But mostly, I'd rather live in a tent than become a multi platform installer/GUI porting expert. There are enough more interesting (or less painful) jobs around for the people who are good enough to do a good job of that. But you might be able to pick up a former banking coder now, and those guys are mostly pre-demoralized :) |
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