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What is the best FTP client for OS X? | allenbrunson: I also used Cyberduck for a long time. It seems kind of ... suboptimal, though. Like that other commenter, I recently sprung for a license for Transmit. It works pretty well. |
How should I set up an online script review service? | ScottWhigham: I can't help except to maybe suggest you change the title. I clicked the link thinking you had a javascript, etc code review idea :) I suspect others did as well. |
Co-working space in Delhi, India | medianama: Delhi or even Noida/Gurgaon... |
Co-working space in Delhi, India | dnsworks: You would do well by asking Jon over at Slideshare.com. Their dev offices are in Delhi. |
How do you store patient information? (HIPAA Compliance) | vital101: As a sub-topic, if I were to catch some form data, write it to a file, compress and encrypt the file (password/key protected) and then email it to a health provider, is that viable alternative to actually storing information?Of course, the temporary files would be deleted immediately. |
How do you store patient information? (HIPAA Compliance) | olefoo: See the comments about Schneier's new book http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1113641Given that you are using a tool stack that, well, has historically had a large number of security issues and that is difficult to get clarity on be cautious.It is possible to build capable and relatively secure systems using php but it takes a correspondingly greater effort to do so. You will want to pay special attention to the global php settings (if you turn on register_globals even in development you deserve to get sued for malpractice) and you will want to understand the different layers of encryption that support your application. You also need to engineer your applications workflow with an eye towards separating out different kinds of access. A patient filling out a form should not be able to access any other patient records. A doctor or clinical assistant should be able to view only those records their role requires; any patient record access should be recorded in an audit log that is not accessible to any user directly.Also, drop mysql for postgres; php support for postgres is very good and postgres supports in database public key encryption which you will want. |
How do you store patient information? (HIPAA Compliance) | tom_b: HTTPS. Firewall that prevents outside network access to servers with HIPPA data. Encryption of data in the db (eg, don't store plaintext social security numbers in a table). All backups are encrypted. Files with PII (patient identifying information) are encrypted. Data access strictly limited to small set of people.Now that I've blown a bunch of stuff at you, I'll say that my experience is that most of HIPPA (and IRB study stuff, even stricter) is about defining and implementing a coherent policy to minimize risk. It is a colossal pain - where I work, we do medical research and integrate with actual clinical data collected from the hospital. It's not uncommon to find clinical staff keeping excel or word docs full of patient data on non-secured systems. Minimize the places where you get data from people so that you don't have to be accountable for those things - in other words, try not to have people emailing you excel sheets in the clear. We're putting https web apps in front of people to load data that way (parsing files on the fly) and not storing the files at all - during the parsing, we'll put the data into our backend and encrypt that data in our Oracle db. We're wrangling with key management right now - we want to load data automatically, but to not store keys in the db or on the OS in a way that would be easily accessed if the db server was literally loaded onto a truck and taken away.I'm not a MySQL experienced person, but I'm sure it probably has something similar. You're right to be cautious - I've seen estimates that notifying people when data is leaked and handling the cleanup (providing credit monitoring, etc) is huge, $3K to $5K per client. |
How do you store patient information? (HIPAA Compliance) | patrickgzill: You might want to look into data blinding, stronger/stricter permissions, and even audit tables (if data changes, insert a duplicate of the row into a separate audit table).However as long as you have it internally set up (not on the Internet) and make encrypted backups (so stolen backups are worthless) your risk will be much less. |
C++ as productive as Lisp (from Norvig interview) ? | lhorie: You can't talk about productivity if you don't define what the goals are. One can be more productive with even HTML than with C++ if the goal is to produce a simple website. |
Psychology research on value perception of different pricing models? | realitygrill: Predictably Irrational is the fun intro, but a better overview of the subject is Poundstone's Priceless - The Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take Advantage of It). It's a newer book and doesn't focus so much on Ariely. I just took a behavioral economics class last semester and kind of feel like Priceless is giving me a better feel for the field than my actual class did.I'm actually very interested in this problem space and will be thinking about it in my spare time, so email me if you want to discuss it. |
How do you store patient information? (HIPAA Compliance) | somecanuck: I am a programmer/analyst in a hospital. I administer several systems and have my hands in most of the databases. Outside of work, I consult and write healthcare software.You store it the same as you would any sensitive information -- behind a locked door with a ridiculous amount of audit data. It's more about identifying improper access (nurse A looking at patient B when she's not in his "circle of care") than it is about preventing it, for legitimate users of course.You do not need to encrypt the contents of the database or any such extreme measures.Something else to remember is that there is no bulletproof "HIPAA-Compliant" stamp. It's more a set of guidelines and best practices that you're trying to follow. Most vendors do not provide a row-by-row audit table for every single action, for example, but they should. |
Where did your startup come from? | patio11: Long version: http://www.kalzumeus.com/start-here-if-youre-new/Short version: Somebody asked me how to create bingo cards for class. I said "I'm sure there is a program that will do that for you if you Google for it." She said: "I Googled, nothing works." That was my first indication there might be a market for this. My second, which convinced me, was that when I made something to tide her over (hacked together in 4 hours and possibly the worst software in my life I ever inflicted on other people), I got fifteen thank you letters and fifteen "I really want to use this but I can't because it is broken!" letters from a mailing list with 60 people on it. That was my first, very unplanned, exposure to the Minimum Viable Product.I estimated the world market for my product at 2,000 teachers and thought, with a bit of work, I might eventually sell as much as $200 a month. Turns out I suck at math.I don't know what you consider interesting about the early days of the startup. Let's see. At the time I was starting I was on a severe frugality kick and had a rigid budget every month, the better for retiring my student loans early. My budget had $60 a month allocated for video games. So I skipped the game and gave the business a $60 lease on life: it had to pay its own way after that. It has. |
I've got an idea, but what do I do now? [UK] | jms: I'm based in Manchester, and can code etc. If you'd like to meet up to discuss things I'd be happy to catch up for a hot chocolate or beer sometime. Email me.Logically you've got 3 choices.* Learn to code.* Pay someone to code.* Partner with someone who can code.Which you do depends on which you're happiest trading for what you want - time, money, or equity.There are some networking events in Manchester that may be useful to you - geekup may be of interest.Are any grants available to pay for the initial coding? I know that there are programmes such as 'Creative Credits' that connects you with universities etc, so this may be a route to go down. |
Discovering new music? | ohm: Morning show with John Richards on Seattle station KEXP
Probably the best radio station I found so far
http://kexp.org/
They stream it in NY on 91.5 from 9am to 12pmMetacritichttp://www.metacritic.com/music/Write down high rated cd's then listen
to samples of songs on Amazon to see if you like it. |
Is there a list of dead YC startups? | pg: A couple months ago someone posted a fairly complete list of every startup we've funded, including his guess at their current status. IIRC it was wrong in some details but not far off as an overall picture. |
Is there a list of dead YC startups? | teuobk: This appears to be a reasonably complete list (refer to the YC sheet):http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AkkhSN3vaY4jdF90b1l1...According to that list, 14 are dead.That might be an underestimate, as BusinessWeek's Top Angels in Tech list puts the number of dead YC startups at about 21. |
How many consumers should I interview for market research of a product? | pedalpete: I can't say I have ever done this for a physical product, so not sure how it differs, but why go in with a solid number? Why not use the feedback you are getting to adjust the product until you feel you've got it right.One really good thing to do is what (I think) Panasonic did in the 90's with a focus group on what color they should make their portable CD players.
They brought in red, blue, yellow, green and black, and asked the group what colors they would buy, what each color represented to them, etc. Then, as the group was leaving, they were told they could take one of the portable disc players with them.
Apparently, the focus group had voted overwhelmingly that the players should be red and blue (or something like that), but when the researchers counted the players at the end, most had taken black or yellow.If you can figure out how to get 'true' feedback, rather than getting your questions answered, then you'll be way ahead of the game. |
Where did your startup come from? | pedalpete: When Pandora blocked access to Canadians, I built a streaming music service ala seeqpod, which did auto playlisting like pandora.The music analysis stuff was really time consuming and expensive and of course wasn't nearly as good as Pandora, so I canned it, but had this left over code that crawled the web looking for music.I did a few quick changes to the code so that it grabbed concerts instead of music, and voila, http://HearWhere.com |
I created a landing page to find potential customers. Any tips? | jdrock: coderdude - I work at 80legs (http://www.80legs.com). Just messaged you via your contact form. We should talk about a potential partnership. It would make more sense to cooperate than to compete, as we are in the same market. |
How do you store patient information? (HIPAA Compliance) | subud: You might want to look at some open source software like Open Clinica:http://www.openclinica.org/page.php?pid=97 |
New 80legs website design & feedback | HannibalLecter: You are missing a robust feature description page right on the front. I suggest putting something under "Why 80legs?" that says FEATURE LIST. For example, if I wanted to find any of the companies in a particular state, and get a comprehensive report -- your service could do that, yes? |
New 80legs website design & feedback | pedalpete: Very nice and professional.
The one thing that strikes me is the color of the 'get started' button.
That copperish-gold I find pretty horrible.
Isn't green the international color of 'get started'?
I suppose copperish is better than using red, but I'd rethink that color scheme. Same with the grey button, as I discovered that a surprising number of non-techy people think grey means inactive.Overall, really clean and well laid out. |
New 80legs website design & feedback | DanielStraight: I don't like the tour at all. At first I thought it was just a single page of information until I saw the little "click here"-style link at the bottom. I think something like the navigation here ( http://www.slate.com/id/2245644/ ) would be much better.I also notice that on the home page, while you say a great deal about what 80 legs can do, you don't say a single thing about what it fundamentally is. This always bothers me. Makes me think of the typical terrible business site that never says more than "We offer solutions for your business needs," which means nothing to anybody. "Crawl and process web content with over 50000 computers" could be selling anything. It could be selling a book about how to set up a web crawler. It could be selling a datacenter. There's nothing to tell me that this is a service which lets me submit jobs which will be run on your machines and from which I can get various forms of output.I'm also bothered by the meaningless numbers on the plan comparison page. What is 1x speed and 5x speed and 10x speed? As far as I can tell as the reader, these mean nothing at all and are just random numbers someone made up to get me to buy a bigger plan. |
How should I set up an online script review service? | Artifex: If anyone is interested, I found a service that fits my needs at Wufoo.com. Gravity Forms for Wordpress almost won out (and probably will eventually, once they get their paypal solution up and running). |
Is there a comprehensive list of start-up incubators? | aditya: There's this:http://kaljundi.com/2010/02/19/upcoming-startup-incubator-de... |
FireFox extension donation | cfinke: When the contributions program started, I enabled contributions for a number of my add-ons, with the suggested donation set at $1. Over the next two months, I averaged $1 in donations for every 5,000 downloads.After Add-on Con, I raised my suggested donation amount to $5, and since then, I've averaged about $4 for every 5,000 downloads.Note: Relevant add-ons include TwitterBar, Feed Sidebar, and FireFound, which was a grand prize winner of Extend Firefox 3.5. |
Is there a comprehensive list of start-up incubators? | nlwhittemore: There is a guy who built a spreadsheet as part of some research as well here: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AkkhSN3vaY4jdF90b1l... |
Reliable International SMS gateway with API (other than Clickatell)? | melmare: Try www.Message-Media.com |
Review my Mac App - WindowFlow | blownd: A direct link: http://windowflow.com |
Review my Mac App - WindowFlow | zefhous: This is pretty cool, I've been working on a similar MacRuby app that I use myself. I used to use some AppleScripts for moving windows to a specific position.The tiling is great, but I would also like to be able to instantly move a single window to a desired position instead of only being able to tile... I'm sure this could be done with a similar interface that tiling has, only available with one selection though. I also really like the dual monitor support.One thing I think would help would be able to show the keyboard shortcut panel when WindowFlow is activated but hide it when it's gone. Right now it seems that you can either have it showing all the time or not at all, so you have to manually toggle it on and off when WindowFlow is active to see your options.Also, I believe that "option" should be used instead of "alt" on Macs. I know the key says alt as well, but option is more prominent and it's the standard in the Apple world.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Option_keyHope this helps, I'll use it for a while and see if I can get used to it. The selection interface does seem a bit awkward at first for me.I was thinking you could do something with selection of the first 9 applications with number keys, similar to how TextMate does it, but that conflicts with the shortcuts for tiling. It's an idea anyway, I don't know if you could figure out a way to make that kind of thing work... |
How to automatically mirror your own sites? | rm-rf: On Windows & Linux?Doubletake. (Or an OEM version - HP OpenView Storage Mirroring).We keep 25 million files in sync between two sites across a WAN.DNS?Load balancers do that automatically. They have features like GSLB that test each site and dish out 'A' records for the one that's up. |
Your thoughts on Lisp, and how stable is Arc? | brehaut: Have you checked out Clojure, the current Lisp de Jour? It brings with it bags of advanced from all over the place and a healthy dollop of pragmatism.The language is very young (2 years) but has a very active community. |
Looking For Good Systems Integration Blogs | panbhatt: Hey, look for Enterprise Design Patterns book, in J2EE, hope it will provide some insight details.. in addition go for ESB Concepts ( OpenESB or Mule) or see Spring Integration. |
Help me pick name for a photo sharing app. | coryl: PicLyf is awful.
Picwy is ok.
PicPing is ok, but kinda nerdy/techy. Any other names to choose from? |
Help me pick name for a photo sharing app. | redstar504: piccle |
Can/do US startups hire non-American citizens? | vantran: You don't have to get an H1B visa right out of university to start working. You can use your OPT (Optional Practical Training). That will allow you to stay and work in the US for 12 months in your field of study, and it's possible to apply for a STEM extension (17 months). |
Can/do US startups hire non-American citizens? | ahk: You're basically SOL. Work visas nearly always only go to well established companies or body shops (who've learnt how to game the system). Plus, in this recession, it would be hard to prove there is a lack of Americans willing or able to do your job.Even the startup visa being debated now, is only meant for "founders" and not for folks who just want to work in a startup.If you really want to stay in the US without worrying about being kicked out of the country the moment you lose a job, you need to do the time to get a GC (either do a PhD and get the GC faster or get in the queue with the normal folks and wait 10-15 years) |
Can/do US startups hire non-American citizens? | gamble: Even if a startup was willing to sponsor you, having your immigration status contingent on the continued existence of a company that could go bankrupt with little notice doesn't seem like a good idea. |
Would you pay for it- Business Book Summaries? | aarlo: My guess is that it's hard to charge just for info, especially if you're not well known...I wouldn't pay. |
Can/do US startups hire non-American citizens? | jrockway: To work at a tech startup, why do you need to be physically located in the US? There is no particular complication for a startup to pay you as a contractor working from a foreign country, except that you are responsible for paying your government the taxes they want. |
Would you pay for it- Business Book Summaries? | paraschopra: Get Abstract already does that http://www.getabstract.com/ |
Would you pay for it- Business Book Summaries? | JacobAldridge: For me, there's not enough value here to put my hand in my pocket. If I want a review of a specific book, I can search and find them, and to discover books I have blogs, friends and sites like HN where many are reviewed, discussed, or recommended.Having said that, if you've already done the ground work, is it possible to pull together a website with free content and grab some affiliate fees? Not as much potential, but a super minimum viable revenue source? |
Would you pay for it- Business Book Summaries? | john_lewin: I've paid for {getabstract} before, and use it somewhat frequently now that my company pays for it. Its long been my view that a good business book is about 5-10 pages of solid insight with another 10 of market research validating it -- and another 300 pages of B.S.But for $10/month a summary wont work -- you need to get the meat of the idea and present it as convincingly as the book. That kind of quality @ a rate of 5 books a week? I'd be sceptical of someone saying they could do that at a rate of 1 book a month unless they were full time at it. |
How to deal with the C10K problem with a simple script? | cperciva: This isn't the C10k problem. The C10k problem is "how do you handle 10k mostly idle connections" -- the situation where per-concurrent-connection costs matter (e.g., you really don't want to have 10k processes, each handling a single connection).Your problem is simply "how do I handle huge amounts of traffic". The first half of the answer, as you guessed, is to use EC2; the second half is to throw traffic at it and make sure that you get the response (whether it's in being able to handle the necessary number of requests or scaling automatically) that you want.The middle half is to make your code as efficient as possible; I would not recommend storing directly to SimpleDB. Just log form submissions locally and then process them as a batch. |
Would you pay for it- Business Book Summaries? | kareemm: Coles / Clif notes built large businesses off of this idea, so I suspect the answer is yes.my buddy runs PhilosophersNotes.com. no idea what his traction is like but i suspect he's doing pretty well. |
Would you pay for it- Business Book Summaries? | davidw: I'm trying another take on this idea: http://www.squeezedbooks.comThe idea being that, instead of having a walled garden, to open everything up and try and create a community around it, that is interested in discussing the ideas presented. Reading something passively is fine, but when you talk about it, it often brings you to another level of understanding.I would be very open to formally sharing a large chunk of this project with the right person to help get it off the ground; let's talk. |
Can/do US startups hire non-American citizens? | Dlev_: I'm a grad student currently working for a startup in the bay area and let me say you need to be QUITE lucky to get sponsored. Most startups don't have the time or experience to drive the h1b process and, on the other hand, somebody mentioned it is a pain to have your work stability depending on a young firm that cab easily and quickly go underwater. If the company tanks, you need to get responsored immediately or leave.
I love what I'm doing, but it IS quite stressing...particularly if you have a loan to repay. |
How to deal with the C10K problem with a simple script? | patio11: You're overthinking this.The client doesn't mean that 10k people are going to hit the site at the same microsecond. The client means that there will be 10,000 eventgoers accessing the site within a particular period. Many of the clients in this industry, being cough fundamentally non-technical people, believe that the period of reference is "one day".As you've probably noticed, a $20 a month VPS plus Apache can easily chew through 10k visitors in a day (I wouldn't use Apache personally, but if I were competent at configuring it, yeah, no problem whatsoever). Adjust upwards if your client anticipates a particular instantaneous deluge (think "Steve Jobs stands up at the keynote and says 'My robot minions, all of you need to hit this URL right now!').P.S. Your client is wildly overestimating the audience that will actually come to the site. Don't tell him I said that. |
Please review my site http://tweetingmachine.com | Roridge: There is always room for more, HN has taught me that.Nice work for a weekend product. How does your system handle spam? e.g. if I schedule a tweet every 1 second to 20 accounts that may get your oAuth or ip blacklisted from Twitter.I could only see what the Pro cost is very small at the bottom of the screen. You should make your pricing structure more obvious, and I would like to select which version im signing up for before I sign up for it. |
Please review my site http://tweetingmachine.com | revorad: Since the marketplace is crowded with free tools, why don't you just sell a pro version? It will differentiate you and make you focus on making something worth paying for. Please don't hide that cost at the bottom of the page. Put it on top, make a video to tell me why I really really need to buy this beautiful thing. |
Please review my site http://tweetingmachine.com | coryl: The good thing about models like this is they're easy to scale, and they're relatively low maintenance.You could get rid of free accounts, and only offer Pro accounts with a 2 week free trial (pending payment w/ cancellation at end of term). |
Please review my site http://tweetingmachine.com | c1sc0: You're falling in the same trap all other tweet scheduling services are falling into: I have to explicitly state when I want each tweet to be sent. Here's my dream tweet app (running from the command line):username:~ machine$ schedule_tweets textfile_with_tweets_one_per_line XX is the time interval at which I want the tweets to run.Basically what I want is a service where I can add tweets to a queue, set it to 'post one tweet per hour' and let it run ... |
Conversion rates for free trials for Freemium | cullenking: On our site, we have only free accounts and are working on producing paid accounts. Signing up for an account requires no information aside from email and password, plus name for displaying onsite.Right now our conversion rate is hovering around 6%, with obvious shortcomings that we are working on ironing out. I believe hitting 10% is practical with some serious tweaking and a/b testing, and that is my current goal.I don't have any actual experience with asking for a credit card upfront, however I have a serious personal revulsion to handing my card to a company without them earning my trust. If I can't see their offering with a free trial, I will not hand them my card. Many people I have talked to have the same revulsion, unless the product comes with strong recommendations from friends or other family. I think the problemis getting your product to enough people to generate those strong recommendations needed to tip wary people over the edge.Personally, I feel that in an internet world where it can extremely difficult to gain traction, throwing up another barrier is a bad idea. However, I am interested in the numbers as well, because I could be completely off base with this opinion! |
Would you pay for it- Business Book Summaries? | shedd: Soundview (http://www.summary.com/) has been doing this for quite a while. Their summaries are decent and make them available in a number of formats.They do a lot of mainstream business books - there may be an opportunity in offering this product for niche markets or special focus areas. |
Submitted startup looking for feedback | klimchitsky: Hey guys. We've just submitted (as some of you here) the last edition of our YC application form. On quarket.com you'll find a demo video describing our project. Any opinions, advice, questions are welcome.By the way, PG is allegedly reading all posts here, so hopefully he'll have a look too. |
Abandoned ideas, domains, projects? | bgnm2000: I own menumunchies.com - at one time it was making $, had good traffic. People still use it, but I have no time to run it. At this point in time, I'll consider it a piece from my portfolio.I also have a bunch of domains for side projects - those I usually hold on to, just in case I have time. Granted, there's always sedo.com as a good placeholder. |
Abandoned ideas, domains, projects? | abyssknight: Personally, I'm sitting on: * MeetTheDress.com
* tweetfrag/fragtweet.com
* hackmyjob.com
If anyone wants to pick one of those projects up and run with it, I'd be happy to part with them.That last domain has put me through at least 3 or 4 ideas, and nothing has really jumped out at me. That's probably the only one I'd hate to lose, but at this point I'm not sure what I'd do with it. |
Submitted startup looking for feedback | morisy: If the service actually is able to integrate with all the shopping abilities the demo shows off, it's a very nice concept.Two things I'd suggest for the iPad version:
* Make it very clear when I'm purchasing something. On set top boxes, there's usually a special red button that says buy, for example. Maybe have a standardized interface so that I feel comfortable I won't accidentally purchase 12 tickets to Miley Cyrus 3D, and later hassle you or your partners for a refund.* Dump the windows! I understand you want to keep people oriented to the map/search interface, but having widgets on widgets looked odd on the iPad, and will probably look even more cluttered on the phone versions.Overall, great looking app. |
MixcloudAds, if we white-label it would you use it? | natts: Yes, possibly, depending what advertisers you attract and how much control they and I (the publisher) get about what ads get shown where, and what kind of inventory it can serve. |
MixcloudAds, if we white-label it would you use it? | jfarmer: http://isocket.comThey've powered TechCrunch's ads since last May.http://www.crunchbase.com/company/isocket |
Submitted startup looking for feedback | skennedy: The product is definitely needed. Yes, "there's an app for that", but there are too many apps in my iPhone right now.However, I just cannot get over how you will be able to convince all these companies to integrate. For instance, you show the ability to view restaurant menus, is that a manual process for the restaurant owner? Menu's often change on seasonal or daily basis. It needs to be easy for a Mom & Pop shop.As you are building out, do not forget to add functionality for customizing the menu selections made by the customer. Like a comment "no onions on salad", add/remove toppings to a pizza, option for a restaurant to call back to confirm order, etc. |
MixcloudAds, if we white-label it would you use it? | lambdom: Presently, on the webpage of mixcloud, there's an ad that repeat itself horizontally (Like a tile). That's the new kind of bug you can have if people automatically upload a wrong sized image ;) But I like the idea and I'm sure you can fix that bug quite easily. |
Ask HN:Product Focus Help | Roridge: If it is only for use on Facebook, I would go for option 4, then expand to option 2 (if it's quicker).If you plan to expand beyond Facebook, I would be tempted to start with option 1 and expand to 3. |
Would you pay for it- Business Book Summaries? | rbc444: Why reinvent the wheel? You can get 3 summaries a month from Soundview for $8.25 per month. http://www.summary.com/subscriptions/_/Online-Subscription/?... |
Work alone or in a team? | Roridge: I enjoying working with others. The issue I face is many people might "like" an idea, but so few are willing to commit to it. So I am currently working on my own just out of shear tenacity.I'm almost of the opinion to work on a startup with someone you have to come up with an idea with thatperson/those people. |
Work alone or in a team? | Scott_MacGregor: Our startup would not be as fleshed out if we only had one person. In addition to having two minds and four hands working at the same time. We actually have synergy going when it comes to fine tuning our vision and then putting it into operation.We eat dinner together every night and most of the time, the focus of conversation revolves around where we are now and what needs to be done to get where we are going. It really serves to keep the fire lit on our efforts. It’s like having a half-time pep talk in a football locker room every night. If you sat in on one of these dinners with us you would come away confident and energized, ready to put your all into it without reservation. Synergy is an amazing asset.I think that there is so much to do on a startup that having the right person to work with makes it more valuable, especial if you have synergy between the founders. |
Collection of UI Examples? | factoryjoe: Also try chromeexperiments.com.And, I have a collection of UI links at the bottom of this page:http://wiki.factoryjoe.com/Screenshotting |
Is emotional intelligence just the latest buzzword? | janetblair0000: Emotional intelligence is the real deal in my humble opinion. I've gotten a lot from working on mine because it's such a part of everything we do (emotions influence the choices we make, how we react to people, etc. etc.) |
How do you store patient information? (HIPAA Compliance) | contagionhealth: HIPAA compliance is no joke.Take a look at documentation provided by the Joint Commission (JCAHO) which certifies hospitals and CCHIT for generalized standards (no one ring to bind them all in terms of compliance for software), also HIPAA.org.You may want to review the CMS HIPAA checklist (http://www.cms.gov/hipaa/).As a best practice, I've seen basic "PHI" or personal health information (identifying info like name, Bday, sex, SSN) encrypted, but this is not 'required.' Some programmers/sites go further and encrypt everything, as stated by others below.Careful with the email transmission; various legal concerns (and some regulatory standard interpretations) mean most 'sites' keep this info on LANs or HISs or perhaps on web hosted sites.Take a look at Kaiser's KPConnect PHR portal, which is powered by Epic, as an example. You can dig up plenty of stuff about that system on Google.Generic presentation of concerns, but worth a quick skimming: http://npag.org/NPAG_images/NPAG%20Health%20IT%20Prez-Kenned...For nifty open source stuff, check out popHealth (by Mitre), OMHE (for mobile) and hData (XML).http://code.google.com/p/omhe/http://www.projecthdata.org/http://projectpophealth.org/ |
Work alone or in a team? | kellishaver: I freelanced for years, doing projects for small business, where I would often go in and work and be the only developer working on the project-often working remotely, from my home.The best thing I ever did was find another like-minded person to work with (well, actually, he found me, but I stuck around). It was quite an adjustment at first, since I wasn't used to working so closely with another developer, but it's made the good parts tons more fun, having someone to share them with, and has made the unpleasant bits all the more barable as well.It has also greatly increased my productivity and the quality of work I'm producing. I've learned, from his perspective, to think in ways I never would have before.I wouldn't want to work with just anyone, I don't think, but I do believe I have been fortunate enough to find the perfect co-worker. |
Ask HN:Product Focus Help | mschaecher: I think number 2 could be huge, especially with Facebook rolling out it new credits/payment platform. Political campaigns and non-profits would love it for fundraisers. I ran a Congressional campaign and something like this would have been great.I also now a bunch of people in the music/event promotion business locally that would be the perfect fit for this kind of app.Some of the issues I think of at first glance for this kind of app regard around the physical ticket.The process of selling the ticket digitally is simple enough but, getting actual physical tickets that work at the door is another task; especially if you take into consideration fraud prevention and some sort of pos mechanism(QR Codes by phone??) to verify the ticket in the case of larger events.I'm surprised no one in the online tickets space is making a move to integrate the Facebook platform into their current ticketing offerings. Or are they?I've got experience with events through politics, music, and some work on a web app for handling event registration for car shows on a car enthusiast social network. Feel free to touch base with me at schaecher.michael at gm if you want to bounce anything off me or whatever |
College without college (idea) | swolchok: I'm surprised you aren't aware of OpenCourseWare (http://ocw.mit.edu/). It's been around for several years now, and its existence could cause one to read your post as sardonic or tongue in cheek. |
College without college (idea) | python123: I pay thousands of dollars for tuition, and you don't. I earned my right to attend my school, and you didn't. I deserve access to my course material, and you don't. I would be so pissed if I went to MIT, and they just started giving things away like that. |
Tags at Hacker News | stingraycharles: (Disclaimer: I'm that friend)I'm pretty conservative about this, since it's hard to completely oversee the influence it has on a community (Slashdot's tag system comes to mind). While the need of categories/tags is already illustrated with the "Ask HN:" in this title, it does raise a few concerns:- it puts an extra burden on the submitter, do we really want that ?- is there enough content on HN to justify a category system at all ?- what if someone submits content in the wrong category, how should we deal with that? should the mods deal with this, thus adding an extra burden on the mods too?- what if an article belongs to multiple categories?All in all, doesn't it create more problems than it actually solves? |
Tags at Hacker News | cromulent: It may well be a viable solution, but I am not convinced that the problem of "the ability to see at glance what a link is about" exists for everyone. Not for me, anyway.In terms of "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity", the variety that I find by clicking through a high-rated item with an obscure or mystifying headline is welcome.A tagging system may help me to pre-filter, but by applying my own filters instead of trusting the HN community filter, I would no doubt lose the surprises and intellectual gratification. Some of my favourite items have come through not knowing what the link is about, but clicking anyway. |
Tags at Hacker News | RiderOfGiraffes: There is an external implementation of tags, although most likely it hasn't taken off because no one uses it, and no one uses it because it hasn't taken off.http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1069726PG is talking about having multiple flags for items, but that's about appropriateness, not about the semantics of the content:http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1006589The problem is always getting the elvel of complexity right. Allowing free-form tags makes it impossible to search for what you want, and makes it hard to decide what tags to make up and apply. Having a limited collection makes it impossible for some submissions to decide what tags to apply.It's hard, but not impossible. It would also prevent me from seeing some of the things I've really appreciated. I would tend to skim over things that don't appear relevant, and sometimes those are the very things that have engaged my interest and expanded my horizons.It's like with these dating agencies, or friend suggesting algorithms. I don't want to meet people with whom I share an interset - I want to meet people who are interesting.Solve that, execute well, and you'll make a fortune. |
Tags at Hacker News | ThomPete: To me the viable solution is to sometimes look at the comments to establish whether I should read it.Sometimes I know it's of interest so I go to where the link takes me, but I just found that often I get a much better summary by someone here at HN than from the url in question. |
Please help, I messed up badly - will the IRS go after me? | pmjordan: I think you need to talk to an accountant. If you're making $111k a year that should hopefully not be a problem. |
Tags at Hacker News | mooism2: As the problem is that original submitters can't always be bothered providing a descriptive title, why would they be any more likely to bother providing a suitable tag? |
Tags at Hacker News | adulau: One possible way "to see at glance what a link is about" is to make an automatic term extraction of the link. A small box could be included (I know this could overload a bit the current nice and minimalistic interface) showing the inverse frequency of the most popular terms in the retrieved link using a kind of TF-IDF weight algorithm.I suppose a "stop words" list would be required along with a stemming algorithm to limit the tokens/"words" with less semantic meaning. In this case, the work can be done while the submitter is adding the link and the software proposes the extracted list automatically. The submitter can alter the list proposed to improve the meaning of terms extracted. |
Tags at Hacker News | whyleyc: Most of the comments so far have focused on the fact that tagging may benefit readers before clicking through on a post.I actually think the benefits of tagging would biggest after submission. Namely:- If you could view articles by tag it would help new users coming to HN view what might have been said before about a given topic- It would make mashups like this a heck of a lot easier: http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive- It would make searching for relevant historical discussions easier. There is so much good content on HN that is effectively lostSome suggestions for an implementation:- Make the tags freeform, ala Delicious, so as not to box things in to strict categories- Bake it into the main site itself - http://hntags.com doesn't work because that's not where we hang out.- Have the ability to view all articles with a given tag- To relieve the burden on the official mods give users above a certain karma level the ability to apply or alter tags on submissions |
Please help, I messed up badly - will the IRS go after me? | RiderOfGiraffes: If you were dealing with HMRC (UK) rather than IRS (USA) then no matter where you are based I would strongly recommend that you contact them directly and ask them for their advice. As a director of two companies I have found that they are helpful beyond expectations. The people I deal with are there to ensure that everything is legal and above board, they are not there to make you pay as much as possible. More than once I've had HMRC make suggestions that would reduce what I pay, and their advice is free.Sadly, youa re dealing with the IRS, and I have no idea if they are the same. The impression one gets from outside the USA is that you must pay professionals for their advice and assistance in dealing with Government agencies, rather than dealing with the agencies themselves.IANAL, and in particular I have no direct experience f taxation issues in the USA, but my advice would be to find an accountant in the USA who is willing to discuss this will you via email. Your friend should be able to find one, and I suggest he might be legally required to do so. In return, you should sort out some way for him to get compensation, because most likely it is he taking the risks on your behalf. |
Tags at Hacker News | sunkencity: It would be possible to get a classification of the link through opencalais pretty easily (don't know about the legalities about how that service can be used though). I suppose it's mostly useful to be able to browse hacker news by category.Example: the post "'Chang' from Google accidentally publishes TechCrunch post on Blogger Buzz"Topic:"Technology Internet"Social Tags:Technology Internet, Yahoo!, Computing, World Wide Web, Yahoo! Mail, LinkedIn Open Networker, AOL, Facebook, Carol Bartz, CommunicationEntities:
Company
Facebook Inc [36%]
Time Warner Inc. [30%]
Twitter Inc [10%]
Yahoo! Inc. [79%]
Country
United States [26%]
Industry Term
advertising industry conference [32%]
analytics tools [19%]
display advertising tools [31%]
finance chat rooms [12%]
online marketing [6%]
Person
Carol Bartz [80%]
Comscore [26%]
Position
CEO [32%]
Published Medium
Advertising Age [29%] |
Tags at Hacker News | arnorhs: I don't really care so much about the category of the post, as in programming/startups/CSS/Apple. I'm more interested in knowing what kind of post it is, as in pdf/magazine article/blog article/video etc. |
Please help, I messed up badly - will the IRS go after me? | ErrantX: The problem I forsee you having - even if you do work out the companies taxable income to $0 - is that it looks a lot like a Dumnmy corporation [1] where the cash is going out of the US. Im not sure if that would interest the IRS or not but I cant help but feel that it would :)1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dummy_corporation |
Please help, I messed up badly - will the IRS go after me? | avinashv: You've essentially set up a dummy corporation to shuttle money outside the United States to avoid paying US tax. Not only that, but I read in the comments that the friend who you've set up as a director is also not in the States?You should contact a United States accountant and tax lawyer immediately and talk to them. I'd avoid email, and instead stick to using the telephone. You're not entirely up shit creek--many countries have taxation treaties with the United States that lessen the burden to those who have to pay double tax, though I doubt it applies in your situation.I should also mention that your friend is, from what I can see, liable for you.I am not a lawyer. Please, seek professional advice! |
Please help, I messed up badly - will the IRS go after me? | owinebarger: I don't know about the IRS, but if you were counting on the benefits of liability limitation, you shouldn't. Based on your description it would seem straightforward to "pierce the corporate veil". |
Please help, I messed up badly - will the IRS go after me? | patrickgzill: The income for the company is $0 because of the expenses, which are payments to overseas suppliers (you). You should pay a small amount to the CEO perhaps.Do not classify them as royalties, since they have required with-holding rules and are a mess to deal with. Far better to classify them as software purchases.It will matter which country you are in, look up the tax treaty between the US and your country, if they have one.IANAL, YMMV, etc. |
Please help, I messed up badly - will the IRS go after me? | tptacek: The IRS is less likely to "come after you" as they are to send you a bill. |
Please help, I messed up badly - will the IRS go after me? | secret: I'm in Miami where almost every accountant/lawyer has to be familiar with international rules/laws. I can recommend some professionals if you decide to go that route. |
Please help, I messed up badly - will the IRS go after me? | DougWebb: I'm not too familiar with C corporations, but years ago I did consulting work as an S corporation, and one of the rules was that if the corporation doesn't show a profit in 3 of the past 5 years the S corporation status is revoked and the activity is treated as a hobby instead. That means expenses can't be deducted from earnings. There might be a similar rule for C corporations, where you can have non-profitable years without losing the C corporation status but if that goes on for too long your expense deduction might become limited.One thing I do know about C corporations was that it's not enough to just establish one; you also have to run it like a real corporation. A single non-paid CEO is not sufficient; you need a board of directors with regular meetings and proper paperwork evidence of the meetings and business operations. If you haven't got that and the IRS does come investigating, they're much more likely to disallow the C corporation status and treat you as an individual instead. Then it comes down to the tax law treaties between the US and your country to determine whether or not your US-derived income is taxable to the US. In most cases, you have to pay taxes to whichever jurisdiction wants more money, and you get a credit in the other jurisdiction for the amount they would have taxed you on the same income. |
Please help, I messed up badly - will the IRS go after me? | patio11: OK, first thing: calm down.Second thing: Taxation in the United States, as in many other countries, is based on a variant of the honor system. The IRS accepts over 98% of all returns as written. If you are one of those 98%, that is pretty much the end of the analysis.If not, the IRS is going to probably send you a letter asking you to justify what you have put on your return. Here is where your competent legal advisor comes in, but the answer is likely to be "The American corporation exists to pass payments to me in Nation X, where I am a resident. I pay taxes in X. My understanding is that, owing to X's tax treaty with the US on the subject of royalties, I am not subject to American income tax on the payments at issue."Then one of two things happens: either a) the IRS says "Oh, OK." or b) the IRS spends a lot of time and money having their experts think it over and then says "No, actually, we rather think you are." At that point you have a bunch of life-not-nearly-over options: you can just pay the money (you will be charged interest and may be assessed a penalty if they believe you were not acting in good faith), you can work out a payment arrangement with them, you can litigate the outcome, etc etc.Third thing: Go get competent legal advice. Sadly, it likely won't be cheap for international legal issues. However, it also isn't cheap for the IRS to worry about this, and at $111,200 you're probably beneath their radar most of the time. (Always remember there are millions upon millions of corporations much bigger than you moving trillions of dollars through America's borders. Many of them will screw up on their taxes this year in some way -- there are often multiple competing interpretations of the relevant laws. Keep copious records, file honestly, and don't worry about it until they tell you you have a reason to worry about it.) |
Please help, I messed up badly - will the IRS go after me? | sireat: I think the key here is the exact amounts matching going in and out, that does look suspicious.You need to structure it like a real business(which it is). |
Please help, I messed up badly - will the IRS go after me? | lfact443: I PERSONALLY THINK YOUR JUST THINKING ABOUT DOING THIS TYPE OF BUSINESS,SO THESE COMMENTS ARE ACTUALLY TEACHING YOU HOW! |
Please review my new website | mbuchanan: Great looking site.. And that's a really good idea to contain it to a single sentence. |
Please review my new website | w3matter: Great looking.One tip... Leave the review form visible. After someone reviews the movie, save the review in a session, and redirect them to the signup (or login) page. After signup or login, save the review and redirect them back to the movie page... or even better...
Redirect them back to a "thanks for reviewing page", where you can show them a list of movies that they could review.This will exponentially increase the number of reviews that you will get, instead of forcing people to signup/login first. |
Please review my new website | swombat: Very slick. I only ever read one sentence (from Rotten Tomatoes) anyway, so this fits my usage pattern for reviews.Are you planning to harvest tweets and other social media to help beef up your review base?I've bookmarked your site for next time I look up film reviews. |
Please review my new website | Roridge: it's a bit like http://blippr.com but no reason there can't be two (or three) similar.I like the layout, and colours, looks easier to find media than Blippr. Good luck. |
Please review my new website | vinhboy: Sorting of reviews maybe? and you should make more stuff clickable -- like your logo for starters. |
Please review my new website | bendtheblock: Great idea, this is typically how people review films and albums to their friends - a short sentence. It will be interesting to see how it develops with more content.The short sentence format sounds compatible with some sort of Twitter interaction. Have you considered allowing users to tweet their review and use a hash tag to reference your site and the film in question? Or have it the other way round - they can sign in with their Twitter account (or use OAuth) and their review gets tweeted. Those are just quick ideas - there must be something that can be done in this space. |
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