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How can I start my own bank? (Let's redesign banks) | DanielStraight: I'm not saying banks are perfect, but it seems like 90% of your complaint is about overdrafts. If you don't want to worry about overdrafts, check your balance in the morning, write down the amount, and don't spend more than that. Or pay for everything in cash from an ATM and use the ATM to double-check the balance first.As for the $26 overdraft charge, do you know how much it costs the bank? Do you know that it makes a difference if it's only a $1 overdraft? If you don't know the industry, how can you propose to change it? Sure, it might be nice for me to say I think all banks should give 10% interest on accounts, but they can't. Maybe there's nothing they can do about the overdraft fee. |
How can I start my own bank? (Let's redesign banks) | imajes: This is cute. I like the tenacity of what you're doing here.Thing is, it's entirely impossible. To start a bank you need capital to leverage your deposits. That's anything from 10-30%, so to have a liability of $1000 you'll need $300 in capital reserves just to keep within the rules. Then there's the insurance you'll need to buy on the risk you take, and the other ways you'll need to turn profit - otherwise, why will i invest in you (with retail deposits?)As jacques said, credit unions are a simpler step- but even simpler are lending groups where everyone pitches in money and then everyone takes a turn in being able to borrow from the pool. I can't quite recall the name of these structures, but they are on wikipedia- NPR's Planet Money podcast covered them a few months ago. (which, if you are in any way interested in this stuff, you should listen to back-to-front).But i don't think it's the banking that's the problem.If you have a bunch of money - liquidity - then it's easy to move it around to ensure you're covered. Then you don't get hit by charges. In fact, most systems (wells fargo included) do this by default now, and you don't even have to care. You can realize then that cashflow is the lifeblood of small biz, and if you have it, everything is great. If you don't, you're screwed.The bottom line might seem to be that it's hard to be financially stable when you're starting out/contracting/consulting/low paycheck, whatever. There are two ways of dealing with this: making a strict budget and keeping to it (boring) or deferring your care till you make enough money to just buy that debt off - in which you risk bankruptcy and other nasty things. |
How can I start my own bank? (Let's redesign banks) | sunkencity: First: make your own currency. |
how hard is it to maintain your own clone of HN ? | iamelgringo: If you're interested, I'd be willing to give you a clone of the http://Newsley.com codebase. It's a bit bare bones right now, and since I'm the sole developer, I haven't worked on the documentation much. But, it's Python/Django, which might be a little more familiar to you if you're a Ruby/Rails guy. I've thought about open sourcing the code, but some parts are a little ugly right now, so I haven't done it. But if you're interested, ping me and we can talk.Another thought is Slinkset: http://slinkset.com/ It looks like they still have some active sites, and it looks like they've added features since I last looked a few months back. Anyone know if they're still up? |
What do you use for bookkeeping? | rs: Using Sage for everything now (I've got the Instant Accounts Plus).Not the prettiest, or easiest to use, but once you get used to it and over the learning curve, its actually plenty useful and powerful.In a nutshell, the user thinks in terms of invoices, customers, suppliers, payments, etc.. and Sage takes care of the rest and produces a full set of accounts.You'd want to get some accountant to help out initially (I did), as some of the concepts in the accounting world can be a little unintuitive and then you end up with unbalanced accounts. |
How can I start my own bank? (Let's redesign banks) | mhb: I think for about 1/10,000,000 the effort of starting a bank you could locate a more user-friendly, local coop. |
Possible fix for the 'lost' submissions? | icey: Reddit handles this one pretty well by displaying a random new story in a box at the top of the page. That way lots of new stuff gets some exposure. |
How can I start my own bank? (Let's redesign banks) | zoba: I feel like there is a lot my bank could be doing but isn't. Most of it relates to technology.First, I think a decent web interface for my money would be nice. The bank wont let me have 20 checking accounts, but it would be nice if I could have the appearance of that many accounts in a web interface. One account for bills, one account for the new computer I want to buy, one account for food, one account for random transactions (i.e. where my debit card pulls from). Then, when my direct deposit paycheck comes in, I want to be able to have it automatically be split up into these bins. I do all of this mentally any way, but if I could see it on screen then it would make things much easier.I also want there to be text message alerts for things, especially overdraft. I got $720 in over draft fees for spending something like $150 last fall, this is absurd! If they had sent me a text message or email, or anything I wouldn't have had to skimp on Christmas presents. Of course many will say "this is how they make their money: fees." I would reply, "this is capitalism: have a better service and make your competitors bend to your will, or let them go bankrupt."I have come up with other ideas on what a bank could do, and would like to be updated if anything happens with this. |
How can I start my own bank? (Let's redesign banks) | pengelbrecht: Check out Matt Mullenweg's take on it http://ma.tt/2009/08/starting-a-bank/ |
How can I start my own bank? (Let's redesign banks) | cabalamat: I listened to a radio programme a few months ago which concluded that to set up a bank in the UK would cost £100,000,000 to comply with regulatory requirements. |
How can I start my own bank? (Let's redesign banks) | WesleyJohnson: Banks are indeed incredibly frustrating. I recently posted a rant on Chase bank which I'll link below. They really do make it unbelievably difficult for you to monitor your balance properly, which is why I don't rely on the bank to tell me how much money I have - I keep track of it externally and the bank is more or less a verification. If there is ever a conflict, I go with what my tracking indicates as it's almost always the lesser amount.A relative works in the banking industry as a branch manager and they literally have goals on how much they're supposed to collect via fee's, especially overdrafts. These goals alone can make or break quarterly bonuses and yes, they do indeed make a LOT of money from them.I realize that overdrafting is in almost all cases the customers fault, but in my mind a bank should be loyal to its customers in the same way a customer is loyal to the bank. If I've been with a bank for 10 years and I overdraft 30 cents, cover it for me or at least reverse the fee without question if I call and ask about it. Often times, the banks are also meeting quota's on how many reverals they're allowed to give per day, month, quarter and per account. Call them at the wrong time and your plight won't matter, they'll just deny you. It really seems like customer service is no longer a top priority in most banks, perhaps not even in the top 5.Unfortunately, as much as I'd love to see progress and change made in this area, I simply don't see myself ever giving my money to a bank or credit union that isn't well established unless I have some expendable income that I could test the waters with.http://wesleyjohnson.posterous.com/chase-bank-sucks |
Why doesn't nasa.gov get its url to work? | zacharydanger: This is part of a really old host-naming convention from when a domain name's usage wasn't 99.999% web. So people would relegate their world wide web servers out to www.<theirdomain>. |
How can I start my own bank? (Let's redesign banks) | noonespecial: Since it seems that most of your complaint is centered around orverdrafts, perhaps it would be more beneficial for you to start a service that helps people avoid them? |
How can I start my own bank? (Let's redesign banks) | lutorm: The fact that the word "check" is still used regularly in US banking seems to indicate that it's not a business that is amenable to a tech startup... I mean, come on: "If I need a check somewhere real fast, they can do that too and overnight it for a $20 fee." It's not ING's fault, of course. I don't think anyone in Sweden has written a check in the past 30 years. Whenever I talk to my family about this they just snicker. |
How can I start my own bank? (Let's redesign banks) | steveplace: It's the 3/6/3 model, and it works beautifully.Savings accounts at a 3% rate.Mortgages at a 6% rate.On the golf course by 3PM. |
How can I start my own bank? (Let's redesign banks) | raphar: I work for a bank (not from USA though) and what I see as the toughest barrier in initiating a Bank is the massive amount of banking regulation that every institution must comply (not negotiable). Also the impact of new regulations on the systems running the business are usually non trivial.
Missing any of these, means that you cant operate (or you can't do certain operations, generally critical).As I said, the effort put in keeping with all this is very big. Usually the split is 50/50 with regulation vs new features (my view is as a software developer). The bank being global only makes things worse, as only adds more regulations from different places to equation.Well that was the boring part. I think theres a place for new financial services but perhaps the way to get started is providing those new services and avoiding being a bank. As the institution adds more services and grows, it can begin to take into account the regulation little by little.
That was my simplistic view ;) |
How can I start my own bank? (Let's redesign banks) | ams6110: I am stunned to see this on the front page. It boils down to a bunch of crybaby whining by people who can't balance their checkbooks. Banks by and large give you more tools than ever to keep track of your transactions, and it's all free. Good grief. |
How can I start my own bank? (Let's redesign banks) | kdaigle: Or simply join a Credit Union which has a much different approach than banks. Focuses on returning profits as services to the consumer via lower rates, more features, etc.And, like others have said, if a big concern of yours are the overdraft fees call your bank and tell them you no longer want overdraft protection. |
How can I start my own bank? (Let's redesign banks) | jokull: Banks in Iceland (yeah laugh away) are quite high tech. You get a text message when your card is used online, you can create accounts and move your funds around online. Transfers between accounts within Iceland are all instant (huge DB2 database run on an interbank computer). |
"So... What happened to the last guy?" | DanielStraight: What if you told them, "If I get this position, I'll be expecting a budget between x and y. Does this seem about right?" |
"So... What happened to the last guy?" | davidw: I'd definitely ask him, as well as ask to have a look around the facilities/code/whatever. It's not like a non-profit has a bunch of really high-value IP, I would think. |
"So... What happened to the last guy?" | jacquesm: I'd absolutely try to contact my predecessor. Just in case you step in to a catfight or a nasty can of worms, it can only be to your advantage.Take what you hear with a grain of salt. Trust but verify I think was the motto. |
How can I start my own bank? (Let's redesign banks) | shykes: Right or wrong, the general public hates large banks. If you can find a niche where you can compete with them on customer service and margins, while avoiding major legal barriers, I would say the timing feels right.Also, a lot of the innovation in that field is limited to the US. I don't know of anything comparable to Mint.com in Europe, for example. |
What do you use for bookkeeping? | wglb: Quickbooks Pro. If i started now, I would probably use Gnucash. I would certainly not put my financial books in the cloud. |
"So... What happened to the last guy?" | tom_b: This is not directly related to your question, but as someone who stepped from the corporate world to the non-profit world (medical research center affiliated with university hospital), I can say the pay is lower but the freedom is greater.I'm more in charge of projects, trusted to make technical decisions and set direction, and seem to get more respect as a practitioner here. Since I was a tech lead on a project in the big corp world, I can contrast the two similar experiences. I'm just more autonomous here.Downsides include a lack of user trust (previous software devs here tended to be a little tougher for people to deal with and were more prone to saying 'no' to requests). University researcher mindset is historically aimed at having software dev done directly by a research team member rather than trusting a centralized IT team.Good communication is more critical here. Learning how to express ideas in multiple ways is much more important - I have to be able to both talk over an idea and present a visual display as well. It is also assumed that you will understand a researcher's problem domain rather quickly, which is stressful, but fun. You have to plan for a huge range of IT skills, from the person who can kind of use a browser to the self-taught SQL expert who I probably should just add to my team directly. |
how hard is it to maintain your own clone of HN ? | adrianwaj: I wrote up a detailed spec for an enhanced version of news.arc, I literally saved the HN item, home and user pages and made changes, which I elaborated upon in the rest of the document.I'd be interested to share it in some sort of collaboration. |
"So... What happened to the last guy?" | JunkDNA: Talk to him, recognizing that you may be getting a very jaded opinion. Also, I think it's a perfectly relevant question for you to ask for a ballpark dollar amount of your budget and what they expect you to accomplish. I've intentionally stayed away from positions where it looked like I was going to be a "team" of one doing work that really needs 5 or 6 people to be done right. I think this is a similar situation. |
"So... What happened to the last guy?" | lhuang: Absolutely. At the very least this guy will help you read between the lines and act as a good gut-check to your interview experience.I would reiterate what Tom_B said about greater responsibility but I think it should be noted the kind of non-profit he worked at. Depending on organization, its mission, and people non-profits can be no better than the corporate machine.Talking to the former director would lend some valuable insight into the culture and what its "really" like on the day-to-day. |
"So... What happened to the last guy?" | SamAtt: I'd honestly ask yourself whether you're willing to walk away from an offer if what the guy says is bad. If you are than talk with the guy. If not than I wouldn't.Because he's going to be bitter. So you're going to learn a lot of bad stuff about the place you're starting at. That's a disadvantage in itself (because you might develop his prejudices and run his old enemies the wrong way).So if you aren't prepared to walk away than you're just torturing yourself with the information and making yourself less effective at a time when you need to be at your best (a.k.a. the beginning of your new job) |
"So... What happened to the last guy?" | flybrand: Yes, you should absolutely contact the predecessor. It is good corporate diligence and failing to do so would be a bad decision on your part.Have a script put together of what you are going to ask;
- Start with an overview.
- Allow them to back away if they feel uncomfortable about a question.
- Get a feel for what really went on.
- I agree with Jacquesm - take it with a grain of salt.15 minutes on the phone with the individual will put you six months ahead if you take the position, or provide insight as to why you should pass. |
"So... What happened to the last guy?" | gyardley: To me, not getting a forthright answer (even after 'further prying') is a big red flag on its own.At this point, I would wait until you received the offer, and then say something like "Look, unless there's a legal reason why you can't give me a full explanation of what happened, I'm going to need to know the whole story here. We're going to all be working very closely together and I need to understand how the company makes key decisions like budgeting before I make a decision to join you." If you still don't get a clear explanation, I'd think very carefully about taking the job - there's landmines under the surface you know nothing about. |
"So... What happened to the last guy?" | crocowhile: Always try to get in touch with the other person. You are already listening to a biased voice (the emplyoer), listening to the other one is the least you can do for your career. |
"So... What happened to the last guy?" | psranga: My two cents: companies check references on their prospective employees. The ethical ones ask you for a list and claim to contact only them; the unethical ones will contact anybody they please.Your contacting the ex-employee is you checking up on the employer's references. To keep it completely above board, you should ask the org. for a list of references to check up the job. And if they don't list the previous guy, ideally, you shouldn't contact him. But be prepared for no offer irrespective of what they answer. :)W/o more info, I can pretty much assume that the previous director was the one who had unrealistic expectations (i.e., wanted to spend too much). :) |
How can I start my own bank? (Let's redesign banks) | thaumaturgy: YES. I agree wholeheartedly with you. This is something that I've wanted to do for years -- but unfortunately has been way too far out of the reach of my resources. For now.Most of the comments here seem to miss the point: banks act as liaisons between people and money, and most banks -- even local ones -- aren't doing a good enough job at that, so there is a notable opportunity here.For example, lending practices: there are many individuals with poor credit or financial liquidity issues that would still be reliable loan customers if the relationship was handled carefully.And, other people here are missing the point about fees: these are not small sums of money which primarily target the poor. They are a poor tax. At what point did that become socially acceptable?Then there's the problem of interest-bearing accounts. Financially savvy individuals don't bother investing in banks, because the yields are too low -- which in turn affects the bank's ability to lend.So, yes. I'd love to see this. |
"So... What happened to the last guy?" | hurt: Assuming that your predecessor acted in a professional manner, then I would probably contact the individual after I'd had a chance to take a look at how everything had been laid out.Non-profits may not have a lot of money for technology, and the recent economic disruptions have really hit them hard due to the drop in funds they get from corporate/other giving.I would expect to run into a lot of older equipment all duct-taped together in a non-logical fashion. This isn't something that you should blame the predecessor for, sometimes we have to make non-optimal choices given the constraints we work under.As an aside about working in the non-profit sector, I've been employed as the only IT person for a smaller nonprofit (~30 users or so) for almost 4 years. You may have heard the phrase "the smaller the stakes the more fierce the fight" from academia, it also holds true in the non-profit world. (and I suspect in any human organization, but my experience has been mostly in the academic/non-profit sector thus far.) Expect to run into budget issues, and nasty personalities.Fortunately, on the budget front organizations exist for IT software/hardware giving that can really help out.One that I've used: TechSoup.orgMany major software vendors offer discounts for non-profits if you look around.Plus you can always use linux/freebsd/openbsd/etc on commodity hardware to help keep costs down. At the cost of time depending on your skill set.I expect you may have already heard a lot or all of the above, so feel free to ignore it!Oh, and if you get the job, Congratulations! |
"So... What happened to the last guy?" | brk: Of course you should contact him, and/or anyone else you can reach that has relevant information for you.I wouldn't ask him for inside dirt on the HR admin's tryst in the conference room, but questions about the job, the organization, and the people are charge are certainly fair game. Unless they are trying to hide something or lie to you, and in that case, it is still the right thing to do for you to investigate.People seem to have this belief that potential employer or employee should only contact a small subset of officially sanctioned information channels. A prospective employer shouldn't do something like call your current boss with reference questions without your opinion, and similarly you shouldn't seek information from sources that might put the employer at risk.Take whatever knowledge you gain from contacting him and weigh that against what they have told you. Go back to them and be upfront, tell them the former employee told you X,Y,Z and that you'd like to get their response. A good organization will respect your thoroughness. A bad org will panic and be defensive, and that should be considered as well. |
How can I start my own bank? (Let's redesign banks) | mcherm: Hi! I'm a developer for ING Direct, and I'm pleased that you speak so highly of your experience here. I wonder if I can help out some with the concerns you still have. You mention not having branches -- which is true, but we DO run the occasional internet cafe complete with trained ING barista/bankers (no... I'm really serious!). You say you live in Hawaii, so consider stopping by 1958 Kalakaua Ave, Honolulu HI and saying "Hi".You also talk about the trouble of mailing a check 5000 miles (it's closer to 4000, but who's counting?). I'm sympathetic: what kind of system would you prefer? For instance, do you think you should be able to scan the check at your PC and enter it that way? Would you rather have a payments system so that you don't need to use checks at all? Nothing will happen magically tomorrow, but I'd be very interested to hear what HN readers think, and I'd keep it in mind as we work to improve our systems!Starting a bank is HARD... I wish you luck in your endeavor, but it MAY be easier to find a "good" bank (different people may have different ideas about what that means) and support them. You are certainly welcome to pass on your good ideas to someone like me. |
How can I start my own bank? (Let's redesign banks) | j_baker: Erm... don't take this the wrong way, but this is one of those things where if you have to ask, you probably shouldn't do it. You'd probably be much better off finding a cofounder who has experience in banking. There are a lot of regulations that banks have to comply with, and every time you miss one of them (which is almost unavoidable), it's a potential lawsuit.Still, I hope you're successful. I'd love to see better banks. |
"So... What happened to the last guy?" | itgoon: Well, I'm going to be the dissenting voice.I agree that they should give you better guidance as to your budget before you accept the position.As for contacting your predecessor, I wouldn't bother. You're not going to get an honest answer out of anybody; everything said about the other will be heavily influenced by the "breakup".I'll summarize what happened: your predecessor picked a fight, and lost. Leave it at that. The specifics may not be the least bit relevant, won't change what you're going to have to do, and will likely taint your views of your coworkers.Go in with a clean slate, and make the job your own. Maybe you'll need to pick the same fight. Maybe not. Why worry about it, when you're sure to have plenty of immediate problems.And again, I would expect better budget guidance before accepting, regardless. |
How can I start my own bank? (Let's redesign banks) | jhouse: Michael, open an account with someone nicer. Direct banks usually have to try harder because they don't have local branches and need to incent you somehow. ING Direct is good, but Charles Schwab (http://www.schwabbank.com/checking.do) might be better; they even refund your ATM fees. I'd keep an account at a local bank for convenience, sending everything by mail to your direct bank sucks. I wouldn't use the local account for anything else though to avoid getting nickel and dimed. Most banks allow you to set up electronic transfers between your accounts and these transfers are usually free. BOH allows this, just make sure that they won't ding you for that. This way you will have a convenient way for making deposits and a more sophisticated and friendly account for everything else. Your most pressing problem is cash though. You really need to build up a savings cushion to avoid the likelihood of overdrafts and even worse - falling into debt. I know that it's easier said than done, but do set spending budgets. Mint.com or even a simple Google doc spreadsheet are great ways of tracking your spending habits. |
"So... What happened to the last guy?" | 9oliYQjP: I have a client that's a non-profit. They've got the best IT infrastructure I've ever seen. Non-profit does not always imply limited budgets. That said, is the organization in question a charity? If it's a charity, then keep in mind that most try to only spend a maximum of 25 cents of every donated dollar on "administrative overhead" (http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm/bay/content.view/c...). You can do some back-of-the-napkin calculations. If the budget's $1M, they're spending $250K on administrative overhead. If there are 4 salaries, that leaves you with $50K (based on $50K salary for each employee) for non-salary expenses. You'll get a fraction of that for your IT budget.I'd do this speculative estimate in addition to contacting the former guy. It might provide some context. |
"So... What happened to the last guy?" | holdenc: You'll need to find out what your budget is sooner or later. And you might find that "an interesting challenge" means building everything from used desktop computers. As long as that's inline with your expectations, you should be fine. |
"So... What happened to the last guy?" | romland: Regarding whether you should contact the former IT director: to put it in two words:Of course.You will spend eight hours every day at that place, you want to gather as much information as you can. Naturally you have to filter/sort/disregard, but that is the next step. |
How best to communicate iPhone to Blackberry | aheilbut: email? |
Review my startup, WebServius | yan: Clickable: http://www.webservius.com |
"So... What happened to the last guy?" | synnik: I don't see the need to talk to him.For one thing, it sounds like your satisfaction there will boil down to your personal agenda. If you are trying to build a world-class IT shop, you'll struggle. If you are trying to help the non-profit do their work, which will clearly entail sacrifices in IT, you'll be fine.Also, if further prying did not give more info, then they expect you to make decisions based on what they told you. If you need more info, you may have differences in communication styles that will lead to problems down the road. |
"So... What happened to the last guy?" | billswift: You should definitely contact him, unless you would be willing to quit almost right away if they start jerking you around somehow; which I don't think would be a good idea.Several commenters have said you should take what he says with a grain of salt; You should take anything anybody says with a grain of salt, even if you think they are being completely aboveboard, you could be wrong, and you don't know what kinds of incentives and conflicts may be influencing them. And you should be alert for honest misunderstandings as well. |
Why doesn't nasa.gov get its url to work? | zosi: By saying that it's not working, you assume that a raw domain.com is "broken" if it doesn't resolve to an address which is presumably the same as www.domain.com, which is pretty much baseless. There's no technical reason for a bare domain to resolve to anything, it's just a popular convention to make it redirect to www.domain.com because most people who type that into a browser expect your web site to come up.Why not just add a CNAME for convenience? Who knows. They may have an internal technical reason, or it may just be a case of "don't do something unnecessary just because it's easy". For what it's worth, government agencies have a pretty good variety - army.mil and navy.mil both have the same behavior as nasa.gov, whitehouse.gov and justice.gov both have redirects to the "canonical" www url and house.gov and senate.gov both serve the same content as their www versions without a redirect either way.Regardless of their particular reason, I see no cause to assume that it's due to laziness, funding level or how "high-tech" they are. It's just a convention that they don't use, but you expect. |
Review my startup, WebServius | sync: The site looks nice. Logo, however, could use some work.I also wonder about speed. Having the developer connect to you guys, which in turn connects to us, just seems like it would be super slow. And API's are generally all about speeeed. |
Review my startup, WebServius | jfarmer: http://mashery.com ? |
Review my startup, WebServius | vyrotek: The site looks nice, the idea sounds great. At first I thought this would be a great service to integrate into our service but there are a few blockers.If we charge our customers for other things besides the API access then this will require our customers to manage their account and payments on our site as well as yours. Unless you have an API to manage your API manager?Response time is also another concern as sync already mentioned. |
feedback wanted on my open-source project: envbuilder | j_baker: FYI, this is an early-stage Python build system that's sort of buildout-like, but more transparent and less "enterprisey".Bear in mind that this is the "minimum viable product". I'm looking for feedback in terms of what's a pain about it and what features would be cool to add to it. |
Please review our Startup: Twitalbums.com | fabiandesimone: A little about the app:What does it do?Twitalbums lets you share files on Twitter by creating "albums" which are Social Venues for the crowdsorcing of media, by invitation only. Albums provide a simple and powerful way to have control of what you share online.How is it different?Different from Twitpic o Yfrog, Twitalbums is "intimate", not public. Only the people you invite to your album will see what's inside that particular album.Twitter?We use Twitter as an identification and notification platform. Comments, invitations, etc, get published on your Twitter profile so the people interested can be notified of our activity within Twitalbums.comWe have a business model:When you log in for the first time we give you 50 "seeds"Seeds are Twitalbums credit system. Each seed allows you to upload one file to an album. Once you run out of seeds you can buy more. You can find the seeds option within the file up-loader inside any album.Thanks for your time and I hope you guys check it out and give it a spin. |
Best Ad Netowrks? | nickFaraday: Found this link for anyone interested. It gives a pretty good summary of some of the networks:http://howtosplitanatom.com/news/21-great-advertising-networ... |
Review my site, ModsLog.com | hkuo: http://www.modslog.com |
Are there any fast-paced cs education programs? | hga: There's pace and then there's content covered. Let me tell you, MIT's EECS undergraduate curriculum is fast paced and hard, and I assume they cover more ground than the ArsDigita University did (even subtracting the general requirements that don't overlap with an EECS degree).I think 10 months is just too little time to absorb enough (and some "downtime" in e.g. a humanities course per term can be a blessing). MIT very strongly believes they need more than 4 years and established a 5 year MEng program that many if not most graduates take advantage of.Perhaps a more narrow goal? (And I'll note that MIT is teaching everyone in the department some EE with the CS (and visa versa); less so with the new curriculum, although today the vast majority of EECS undergraduates go for the combined EECS major instead of the ones that focus on EE or CS.) |
Please review our Startup: Twitalbums.com | johnrob: I read the name as "twital-bums" |
Review my site, ModsLog.com | idoh: Some suggestions:- get your friends to add their cars to the site, and make sure they use your code on the forums they frequent (I'm assuming that you link back to modslog)- make the value prop clearer: add a car, share the details online. It doesn't jump out right away on the front page- show how the auto-generation works, even if it isn't your car. I wanted to see how this worked, but I couldn't on the only car in the system- somehow surface the name of the owner of the vehicle, and make a garage-centric view of cars. You want narcissistic users to be able to make garages and show it off to other people.- fill out your sample car more - e.g. why is statistics, events, and m&r not filled out for your sample car? |
Please review our Startup: Twitalbums.com | dschobel: I like the idea but why did you choose a public channel to share links to a private resource rather than something like direct messages? |
Please review our Startup: Twitalbums.com | fabiandesimone: Here is the review they did for us on ReadWriteWeb:http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/twitalbums_private_coll... |
Payment systems? | ig1: Let me know if you figure out a good solution for this. The only thing I could find to do this was PayPal. I've had lots of ideas for marketplace type of sites, but the stopper was figuring out a way to let sellers accept payment. Often individual sellers aren't making enough to cover the hassle/cost of getting merchant accounts set-up so going the IPSP route seems unviable.Google Checkouts is also a possibility but lacks a strong api. |
Are there any fast-paced cs education programs? | Xichekolas: I'm not sure how you could squeeze the education I got into 10 months, but I think, properly motivated and with good books, you could self-study an equivalent to a solid BS in 18-24 months.Topics that come to mind (that my CS bachelors had):Boolean algebra and gate level stuff (one semester)Calculus and Linear Algebra (this totaled 4 semesters)Discrete Math (had one semester on this)Fairly deep knowledge of at least one traditional language and at least one functional language (as part of other classes)Basic computing theory (DFA/NFA/Regex/Push-down Automata/Grammars/Turing Machines)Data structures (the more the merrier)Algorithms and algorithm analysis (had three semesters on this)AI (lots of interesting stuff is happening here, and AI is totally not what you think it is)Architecture and Assembly (had two semesters in this area)Operating Systems and Assembly (two semesters)Compilers and other practice at large engineering tasks with programming languagesIf you search over at searchyc.com, you'll find the topic of good CS books has come up here over and over. You'll find lots of good reads in those threads. |
A human nature thought experiment. | yannis: If they are all hackers they will simulate the situation using a genetic algorithm based on ant colonies and sail away:)If they are lawyers they will debate the issue until one dies and they will never sail.If they have a background in marketing they will probably try and convince the fatter not to eat anything until they come up with a strategy... |
Is there any web apps that finds your site's security flaws | yan: No web app, but a lot of individuals who'd love to offer this as a service. For general guidelines on writing secure web code, refer to http://www.owasp.org |
find a rockstar-level HTML5/JS expert for few hours? | ig1: You email Mark Pilgrim and Ian Hickson and ask them if they'd provide a couple of hours of phone consulting in exchange for xyz. |
Please review our Startup: Twitalbums.com | roachsocal: I read the name as Twidal Bums. |
"So... What happened to the last guy?" | CyberFonic: By all means possible talk to the "last guy". Then take what he says with a grain of salt. Both the employer and employee will have very different perspectives about the split. You are the sole judge as to whether it's a warning sign.Personally, I think that the danger sign are the words "Non-Profit" which in turn means "No Money" which is what you pretty much learnt in the interview. In my experience, unless you can routinely "Turn water into wine" you are going to struggle getting funding for anything and don't expect to get paid on time either. Cashflow or rather its absence makes for "challenges".Putting aside all the technical and financial considerations, do you passionately believe in the goals and mission statement of this organization? Only if your passion is total would I recommend taking the job, anything less and you'll be looking for an exit strategy within the year if not sooner. |
A human nature thought experiment. | mooism2: Really, it depends on the people.I am reminded of the two miners who were trapped underground in China a few years ago. Finally one gave in to his hunger pangs, killed and ate the other. He was then rescued, less than 24 hours after they had become trapped.Granted, the news reports I heard did not mention the ethnicity of either of the miners. But I don't think many people would have predicted that outcome in a thought experiment. |
Is there any web apps that finds your site's security flaws | Travis: The web apps I've seen that do this all look pretty scammy. I wouldn't want them poking around my site. Then again, it is a public site, so...Anyhow, since there are several major attack vectors, there are also several different types of scanners. I recommend you read the book "breaking web software" to get a better understanding of the types of attacks.As far as tools, if you have a PHP install I recommend https://chorizo-scanner.com/No recommendation, but http://www.acunetix.com/cross-site-scripting/scanner.htm looks like they can help.IBM has a good article/series on web app vulnerabilities at http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-appsecurity...And finally, wapiti is a vulnerability checker written in python that will do scans of web apps. COmmand line, not web, but pretty good - http://wapiti.sourceforge.net/ |
Please review our Startup: Twitalbums.com | vaksel: in your about us page the 4 of us is actually five people: The 4 of us
This is our team: our main developers Ramon and Hernan,
our designer Lorenzo and our founders: Mauricio and Fabián |
Is there any web apps that finds your site's security flaws | cperciva: I'm sure there are web apps which will find security flaws; but you shouldn't trust their results. Finding security flaws is equivalent to determining whether a Turing machine will halt -- i.e., there is no algorithm which can guarantee to give you the right answer. |
Please review our Startup: Twitalbums.com | scotje: Only was able to see the maintenance page so watching the tour video was about all I could do.I would suggest simplifying the tour video a bit so it's more "what is" and less "how to." Not that howto videos are bad to have, but I got pretty bored by 30 seconds in when all I really wanted was to learn what the service offered.Along with that, consider a voiceover on the video. I think you could pick up the pace a little that way instead of waiting for people to read everything. |
Please review our Startup: Twitalbums.com | jayliew: Basically the value proposition is providing more granular privacy controls for Twitter; you can decide who can see a piece of content or not.I think it's a good idea, although I probably won't use it since I don't have enough followers on Twitter in each group that I can nicely classify as: "family", "co-workers", "hockey club", but that may change over time as more people adopt Twitter and I am able to label all these people.Right now, when I want to share something, Facebook is still my primary since most of the people I know and keep in touch with is on Facebook. For me, Twitter is for some people I know, but mostly a discovery tool to find new people I previously did not know. That said, if I have private content, I am unlikely to post it on Twitter. Because if I did want to share it to people I know, they're all on Facebook and there's privacy controls there.(Just sharing my use case)Entrepreneur to entrepreneur, I am just concerned that Twitter will decide after you have gained traction that "hey, people _do_ want more privacy controls, and they build in privacy controls and give it away free for everybody" aka what Amazon Web Services did; knee-capping startups that innovated around the edges and giving away their value proposition for free.Any sane founder will keep such a threat in mind, however much of a stretch it may seem.It'd be nice if you have a way to hedge against this risk, imho.- or -you could be lucky and get acquired, like how Twitter bought the Mixer Labs for the value their created for Twitter users. |
Please review our Startup: Twitalbums.com | joshsharp: Could only see the video.The scrolling text effect wears thin very quickly, please don't use it. Also you've written "lets" instead of "let's" in there.Also by the end of the video I still wasn't sure what could go in an album. Photos? You never actually made that clear. |
Please review our Startup: Twitalbums.com | gridspy: What can you do that is of value that Flickr cannot?It seems that you are trying to compete with a lot of well established, free technology, such as wikis, stuff from 37Signals and flickr.I don't see a competitive advantage in here.Also, your video assumes from the get-go that people know what your service does - all you seem to talk about is restricting access. With all the scrolling text there is only a very small window of time when you are putting a concept forward.I'd much rather a static splash page approach to conveying this information, perhaps with some of your video of the app being used from the existing clip. By splash screen I mean http://gridspy.co.nz or http://backpackit.com/?source=37signals+home |
Invite manager? | riffer: It's a good idea. The compelling part is that you could add additional complementary services over time, as you figure out what makes sense. Biggest drawback is that startups probably make demanding customers for a product that is fundamentally software plus configuration. |
Invite manager? | alabut: http://www.performable.com/ |
Possible fix for the 'lost' submissions? | MaysonL: Maybe a karma threshold for letting people resubmit stuff? (that is no longer accessible other than via ?id=x)I was going to suggest decaying old stuff faster, but looking through the 210 current items available through clicking "More" from the /news page, only 3 are listed as 2 days old (none 3 days). |
Invite manager? | DanielBMarkham: Niche product with customers who are broke?Hmmmm. |
Invite manager? | dustyreagan: Have you looked at http://prefinery.com? |
Do all techies have a huge list of pet projects? | aaronblohowiak: No.Some of us have interesting resumes. |
Do all techies have a huge list of pet projects? | sophacles: A lot do. A quick look at my "projects" folder shows 12 different projects. My snippets and quickies and tests folders have hundreds of files. Various accounts at github, googlecode, etc contain more projects publicly available. The src folders of various machines contain projects for work, or OSS projects with code I've modified for experimenting. This is the result of many years of coding, prolly the last 15 or so. It should be noted that almost all of them are in some state of abandonment. All of them are incomplete. Most don't even work to their intended purpose, they just exist as attempts to understand various concepts.I do not consider myself atypical in this. Most coders I know, at least those who are passionate about their work, are similar. No matter where you stand on the "hackers and painters" thing, it should be acknowledged that in this respect both are similar. Most painters have hundreds of test canvasses lying around, with stuff that will never be seen by the world -- it is how they hone thier skills.I think "nerd-dom" in general has lots of people like this. The arduino crowd all have lots of toys. The steampunk kids are the same. Looking over to the nerdier bits of shop class is not much different -- seems like everyone makes a paintball tank these days (and to get to that level usually is by route of a shop full of failed experiments, potato cannons, a home-made scooter, and so on) |
Do all techies have a huge list of pet projects? | ax0n: Too many to list here. I should probably start a project to enumerate my projects. |
Do all techies have a huge list of pet projects? | jasonwilk: Personally, I keep a running list of ideas (I have about 50), but I try to stay focused on one project only, or two depending on how many cofounders and my level of involvement with each. Trying to actually push to market and think you will hav success by managing 100 working concepts is just crazy. Don't do it. |
Do all techies have a huge list of pet projects? | dlsspy: I've got quite a few: http://github.com/dustin (I've also got unpublished projects and projects not published on github).I've met people who don't have such things and are still competent, but not terribly commonly. |
Do all techies have a huge list of pet projects? | alanthonyc: My running list is at twenty-nine, of the ones I thought were good enough to write down. I'm working on one at the moment and really want to get working on two or three more. The rest are just "might be nice" to work on someday. |
Do all techies have a huge list of pet projects? | johnrob: I've used csvjdbc quite a bit over the years - thanks! |
Do all techies have a huge list of pet projects? | kingkilr: I'd say so. http://github.com/alex of those at least 7 are ones I've worked on lately, plus some others that aren't on there. <3 open source. |
Do all techies have a huge list of pet projects? | mahmud: I have close to 40 pet projects and businesses that I oscillate between throughout the year. Most of it is on my TODO for learning purposes, others as a gift to friends, but a good chunk of them as support projects that I use in my other projects. I do A LOT of niche software: Arabic applications written in Common Lisp. I am pretty much my own tool vendor :-/ |
How many days in advance to contact bloggers before launch? | Alex3917: I'd recommend launching, then buying some Google AdWords traffic so that you can A/B test your site and optimize until it converts decently. Then start emailing bloggers after that. Just send them a 3-sentence personalized note with a link, nothing fancy. |
Do all techies have a huge list of pet projects? | trjordan: No.I understand the mentality that draws people to try new things, experiment with new technologies, and learn different ways of doing things they've previously struggled with. Personally, I don't have any side projects anymore. All of my effort goes into my job, simply because the challenges that I face at work are more complex, more demanding, and more interesting than anything I can reasonably hope to accomplish at home. If a problem is truly hard, I don't think I can solve it in 2 hrs/week, and if it is interesting enough that I think it is valuable to solve, I will try to find a way to integrate it into my work.My tone here is probably harsher than it needs to be, but it's in reaction to the tone of the title and the self-congratulatory responses I expected to find ("at least those who are passionate ... are similar"). A certain type of techie has a huge list of pet projects, but there are people at the other end of the spectrum. Call them researchers, as opposed to builders, and they want to solve abstract problems with no immediate use or UI. Their interesting problems, like data mining, hardware scaling, and distributing programming, are a lot harder to do on the side than creating a Rails/Google Earth/Yelp mashup, but not necessarily because of the absolute difficulty of the problem. The former problems only exist when you have a lot of resources already invested in a project, and trying to investigate them on the weekends is much less rewarding than learning Haskell. Ultimately, I find that these at-scale problems are the ones I'm interested in, so I don't come home and code in my free time. I just stay at work for 12 hours a day.It's certainly an artifact of being engaged in your job, but I think that should make it even more clear that all techies do not have a huge list of pet projects. Having one is certainly not a necessary condition of talent or passion. |
Do all techies have a huge list of pet projects? | cabalamat: phil:~$ ls ~/proj -F|grep "/"|wc -l
100
Not all are programming projects, mind. |
Do all techies have a huge list of pet projects? | rms: Most of mine involve raising money for resarch |
How can I remove my submissions? | cwan: If your submission/comment is older than 2 hours old, your ability to delete it expires. I'm also pretty sure you can't delete your account so that your comments that you don't delete within 2 hours or that admins don't delete remain on the record. |
Ask HN:Does Higher Resolution screen helps in programming? | niyazpk: Of course more resolution is always better. Most of the good developers I know use a 2 monitor setup. There are guys who use 3 monitors too. The more screen real estate you have, the better.See: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001076.html |
Ask HN:Does Higher Resolution screen helps in programming? | PureForm: I use 2 monitors, one at 2560 x 1600, and one at 1680 x 1050 ... made things WAAY more efficient than my previous 1680 x 1050-only setup.I also despise laptops for development, so that wouldn't be right for me. |
Ask HN:Does Higher Resolution screen helps in programming? | theone: I am stuck with the size of laptop... Can't afford multiple screen. |
Ask HN:Does Higher Resolution screen helps in programming? | jacquesm: More screen = better, but it can also become a distraction.I don't want to get in to a pissing match about 'whose screen is larger' so I'm not going to spec my monitors but I've found that it works wonders if you stick two smaller screens rotated next to your main central screen.I have things set up so the central one is for coding, the left one is browser, calculator & IM, the right one is email.When using linux it can be quite tricky getting this to work properly, especially if one or more of your screens are driven by an accelerated card. In the end I opted to drive all screens using the same nvidia driver, I found a cheap X1 board with a DVI connector for the third screen.If I have to work on a laptop I feel like I'm looking at my work through a keyhole, and I find it hard to believe that I once earned a living using just a 12" screen.You can hook up a third screen to a laptop using one of those usb display adapters ;) |
How can I start my own bank? (Let's redesign banks) | Raphael: See, I've been thinking that money is fundamentally broken. We don't need a better bank; we need to abolish banks. (If they do serve some purpose, then they can remain as a service for the wealthy.)Paper money works in its simplicity. You always know how much you have, because you can hold it and count it. There's no way to overdraft, or have it charged without your consent. The main downside is having to be physically present to transfer it to another person. Making change is also a minor annoyance.So, digital money should be designed to be very similar to cash. First, it should be legally within your possession at all times, even if it is just a number stored in a government database. You should never have to hand control over to a bank if you do not wish. Because losing control means they can fuck with your balance and delay transactions. Perhaps it could be thought of as micro treasury bonds (not sure). Second, there are no transaction fees. It does not make sense to hamper commerce; and any infrastructure costs for money servers and bandwidth are a complimentary service of the U.S. Mint. Third: transactions are completely controlled by the sole account owner. Nothing gets in or out without the owner's permission. There is a combined transaction history and queue, extending arbitrarily far into the past and future. You may authorize a transaction or deny one without penalty at any time. If insufficient funds are available, the transaction is either delayed or canceled. You may also authorize a recurring transaction, but these will appear in the same queue in case the need arises to cancel. The beauty of the infinite queue is there are no surprises.Now, I'd argue that Congress or the Treasury should get cracking on this immediately, but I doubt that's going to happen. So if you start a bank, please try to hold the principles of paper money in mind. Institute firm policies of ownership and self control with zero fees. You can practice with a virtual currency (maybe for a game) and just try to get the security and interface down. Good luck! |
Invite manager? | Mz: I would be concerned that doing something full time that you describe as "a pain in the ass" might get to be something you dread. |
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