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Review My App - TwitBet | andyjdavis: I picked all the teams then logged into twitter using the sign into twitter button. The submit your bracket button never disabled. What am I missing? |
How do down votes work? | dwwoelfel: I think that your avg also has to be positive. Mine was negative, but my karma was at 205 and I wasn't able to downvote. |
How would you invest $50,000? | DilipJ: I would advise against anything like angel investing. You're not in a position where liquidity concerns wouldn't pop up, so having access to your money (should you need it) is important. Angel investing means tying down your cash for years...I personally suggest you follow Nassim Taleb's advice (he of Black Swan fame), which you seem to be doing by keeping the majority in conservative,safe investments and looking to score big with the remaining. If you're looking for home-runs, I suggest options trading. There's a lot of volatility in the market, and if you time things right you should be able to generate a handsome return.Good luck! |
Cheap color copies for flyers? | patio11: Ask Kinko's how many flyers you need to print to qualify for bulk pricing. |
How to deal with unwanted coworker requests? | meunierc: Keep in mind, you might very well be facing somebody who feels the need to prove himself. If this is the case, then the issue is marginally technical; his need to be right is his prime motivation.Your first response was perfect IMO.In situations like this you need to manage a person, not software nor a project. If he's in a sibling reporting branch, you may want to discuss the situation with your lead. He may decide to go ahead with the modification in the interest of good relations. If he does, you must understand this is not a judgment from your lead on the quality of your work. |
Best resource for collaboratively analyzing startup ideas? | newobj: I agree that this'd be great to have. I'm not sure if people would take kindly to every HN article turning into "Review my Startup" (or, maybe they would?) I'm not aware of such a forum though yet. |
How do down votes work? | restruct: After I got downvoting power, I found that the downvotes I checked had no effect. Was it because I downvoted too many in a row? |
Cheap color copies for flyers? | petercooper: Getting Kinkos to run 1000s of color copies is like getting Pizza Hut to cater for a wedding. They can do it, but their limited capacity and selection can make it expensive and limited in scope.Instead, find a regular printing company. They won't always be as easy to deal with as Kinkos (they might demand you supply press ready PDFs or the like) but they can quote you for pretty much any reasonable quantity going (any decent printer would be fine up to several thousand flyers with a few days turnaround) and give you a far better price (especially as the printing industry isn't doing so well right now).For example, one of my clients here in the UK is a printer. They charge $267 for 1000 A4 (roughly letter size) color flyers. So 27 cents/copy but by my understanding printers in the US are way cheaper than here. If you wanted only A5 (or whatever the US equivalent is) size, cheaper too. |
Review My App - TwitBet | weichi: 1. Where will you get the $5k? Your own pocket? Are you charging people $1? But it says free ...2. Are sure you aren't going to get into legal trouble? IANAL, and I know nothing at all about the relevant laws, but still ...3. Contest Rules and Terms don't mention the required tweet anywhere. |
Review My App - TwitBet | JimEngland: Cool idea, except the tweet sent out only includes a link to http://twitbet.com/. Instead, you should link to my personal bracket that I just filled out, so that my friends can see how badly I am at picking winners in college basketball. |
Cheap color copies for flyers? | kochbeck: Search your area for a press company that does gang run printing. Might not be a good choice depending on your media size and layout, but it's often the cheapest thing going. In SF, I know a number of folks who use these guys: http://www.clubcardprinting.com/ |
How would you invest $50,000? | nessence: Don't ever buy a variable annuity.1. Some forms of oil and real estate investments, in some states, can be a significant tax deduction. Otherwise consider saving this money for future tax benefits or new opportunities.2. Get involved in the community where you want to work with angels. It looks like you've already started. People make angels, not a brand.Go to YC demo days http://ycombinator.com/dday.htmlIf the $50k is more than 1% of your liquid assets you should consider short-term investments until you're in a position where angel opportunities find you. |
How would you invest $50,000? | alphabetaprune: Thanks for the responses. I appreciate the feedback. The discussion here gave me a few ideas.Perhaps if anyone is interested, I'll do a blog post within the next few months explaining what opportunities I chose to pursue and why. |
How to deal with unwanted coworker requests? | amazonfx: I must say I sympathize. We have a pretty stringent code review system where I work and people are always coming up with nitpicky type of things.Whenever I get technical comments from people that seems to me like they put alot of thought into, I always approach them for a quick chat, ask some questions even if you don't have any. It's a great way to build relationships, especially if you're new. And you tend to find that in the end it's not really important that you guys agree, but that you guys understood each other's technical perspective. This is an opportunity for you to network with this particular engineer, you should take advantage of it. |
What do you use to wish people a happy birthday? | jasonlbaptiste: i use facebook.poll people on amazon mturk. shouldnt cost much either. |
What do you use to wish people a happy birthday? | thegoleffect: Gramify.com does personalized audio greetings by phone or email in cool voices. MIT startup. |
Best resource for collaboratively analyzing startup ideas? | dacort: This isn't a generic solution, but we (my co-founder and I) actually put something together specifically for us. http://untitledstartup.com/backstage/ - right now it suffers from an abundance of Twitter ideas, primarily because I'm fairly active in that space and ideas in the system beget similar ideas.The possibility exists for it to be abstracted. |
How would you invest $50,000? | lsc: Invest in something you know. For me, that meant becoming an ISP, buying servers, virtualizing them and renting 'em out.Knowing what you invest in is a huge advantage, one that you will certainly need if you only have $50K to invest. |
How would you invest $50,000? | known: Invest in India via http://money.rediff.com/mutual-funds/high-risk |
Experience earning side income with elance, oDesk, RentACoder, etc? | proexploit: Sure if that's your goal. I use oDesk. You probably make a little less than elance or guru, but it's a piece of cake to beat out any of the outsourced providers who can't communicate in English for a job (nothing wrong with people speaking their native tongue, it's just very easy to stand out as someone with great English).I make roughly $250-$300 a week in my spare time on there (roughly 10 hours?). |
What do you use to wish people a happy birthday? | proexploit: The only people I have time to wish a happy birthday to, I care enough to call or say it in person. |
Does College Choice Matter (And What Choice Would Be Best) | msencenb: I am a current sophomore at Stanford University so my comment is going to be biased :pSo far I love the Stanford atmosphere (I am a CS student). Is it competitive? Yes, but I have found that CS isn't as competitive as pre-med. I only have ok grades (3.0 GPA at the moment) but the classes themselves I am learning a lot in, so grades aren't too much of a concern to me.As far as jobs, Stanford engineering does a very good job putting together career fairs. We have 2-3 a year, plus a start-up fair, and a nonprofit fair. I have accepted an internship for the summer so I think internship placement is fairly good.Also Stanford has a very good financial aid program, how much are your parents making?If you have any more questions about Stanford I will do my best to answer! |
Experience earning side income with elance, oDesk, RentACoder, etc? | zandorg: I've used Elance twice as a buyer of services (not a provider). What it did was get me past mental barriers preventing me sitting down and learning. The expert I'd ask would clear the cobwebs and then I could do the rest. I also pay them as if my time were valuable and they're saving it... |
Experience earning side income with elance, oDesk, RentACoder, etc? | fnid2: I used elance years ago. Bid on 10 projects, of those only one of them was awarded and we got it. I felt it was a lot of work to find projects. Seemed many people just posted projects to get bids, but didn't follow through after that. I didn't bid on any weekend projects. Most were quite detailed and would easily take an average coder 1 or 2 weeks of work and the off shore firms were bidding $1,000 or so for that much work, so it's not easy. Plus, you have to pay to bid on projects and when 90% of them aren't even awarded, costs start to add up.I also posted a few projects at elance and got some real bids from locals, but the off shore firms almost always sent in form letter type bids. They weren't appealing at all.If you are going to do it, I suggest finding something you do want done and are willing to pay $100-300 for. Post it and see who your competition is going to be and how much work you'll have to do.If you are good with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, I have work I'll pay you $100-300 to do. Do you have a portfolio? It may be good to post it just so we get an idea of where you fit skill wise. Maybe you could peruse craiglist once in a while. I've posted links to sites there and off shore people email me and are like, "Hey, I could redesign your website!" So I said ok and they did a good job.No experience using the other sites. I did look at a couple sites like that back then, but the projects weren't a good fit and the values were too low to justify the customer acquisition costs in terms of time. If it takes 5 hours to find a project and it's only paying $300, $60/hr is the most you'll make if it takes you zero hours to complete the task. If it takes ten, you're down to $20/hr. It'll be hard to keep that ball rolling unless you work your way up to bigger and more valuable projects. |
Best resource for collaboratively analyzing startup ideas? | apsurd: Edit: Let's just call it investing in customer development rather than idea development.Ask your target market. I used to brush this same advice off each of the millionth times I read it, but do this at your own peril.Nobody is going to give you better advice than your customers, especially if they speak with their money.Is the market viable? Ask the market.
Will customers pay for this service. Ask the damned customers!As someone who has shy'd away from asking people in real life, I must say it's quite a revelation. |
Experience earning side income with elance, oDesk, RentACoder, etc? | gexla: Sure, but it depends on what you are applying for. The more niche, the less competition and higher pay. Some people just aren't willing to pay much for anything, so avoid them.The best way to land jobs is to be the best person for the job. Some buyers are able to cut through the fluff and identify the quality. These buyers aren't nearly as concerned about price.The way to be the best man for the job is to have a strong profile in the area you are bidding for. For example, if you are bidding for Drupal jobs, then be a contributor and /or have some useful add-ons under your belt. Express confidence that you are the right person in your proposal and back that up with your credentials.Speaking of building add-ons, while using this method to build up your profile, consider selling something if it gets a lot of interest. You might make as much from selling add-ons as your target for extra monthly income.In certain jobs you may even outline how you would do the job and what tools you would use. This works great for smaller jobs because it educates buyer on what you will be doing before you even get started. This really sets yourself apart from the generic proposals.There are certain jobs which might look decent but you can clearly see the buyer is going for cheap in an area that lower cost providers should be able to easily handle. If you get this vibe and your rate needs to be higher then move on. Usually these types have a low hourly rate posted.Look for jobs with a fixed cost. You can often beat your target hourly rate if you find something you can do fast.Done right, all that competition won't matter much. |
Experience earning side income with elance, oDesk, RentACoder, etc? | rwhitman: I've used a few of these sites as a Buyer, and I have to say I actually really like oDesk. Yes, there's plenty of questionable offshore code factories on there, but occasionally I find some really talented, professional folks, and they rise to the top (and get booked) really quick.If you take as many tests as you can and completely fill out your profile, it makes a world of difference in selling yourself. I'd also suggest pricing yourself a bit higher if you think you're good. I imagine you shouldn't have any problems making $300+/mo off it |
Best resource for collaboratively analyzing startup ideas? | mattblalock: About a year ago I twittered about building something like this and tons of people freaked. They couldn't believe I would consider sharing my ideas with them and more importantly would expect people to share their ideas.I was simply knocked over and gave up.I'd be very much down for working on a project that developed a platform for discussing markets and startup ideas. I don't think its really ideas that make money so much as execution - but ideas are fun! |
What do you use to wish people a happy birthday? | mattblalock: I'll text, call, facebook or send them an old fashioned card. |
Does College Choice Matter (And What Choice Would Be Best) | gexla: I had a little college but never graduated. Everything I do as a developer has been self taught. I would do the school thing to get the grades but spend as much time as possible outside of school.Work on projects which will get people to take notice of what you are doing. Participate in open source projects. Perhaps start a business you can do on the side.One of the things I found most interesting about my school were the projects that the schools researchers were working on which they could spin off as businesses. These researchers were willing to take students as interns and even eventual hires.Many (most?) of this work is an interesting mix of tech and medical / natural / whatever sciences which went beyond my imagination. You might look for these sorts of opportunities at your prospective schools and start networking early. Offer to do grunt work (somebody has to do it) as a volunteer and work your way up from there. |
HN Email Subscription? | apsurd: In my mind, HN is intentionally built to be minimally social. It is also what makes this site consistently have higher quality content. This may be of some debate but I feel HN is slanted toward doers. HN is almost featureless but one of those features is "noprocrast" - a function that actually promotes NOT coming to the website. If pg wanted to slant toward information consumers he'd add rss and retweeting and auto post-to-my-thousand-social-media-services features. So it is in this way that any type of social media extravaganza would actually be counterproductive.HN is wonderful the way it is imo and the fact that it actually takes effort to find things or get into to touch with other members is the reason why it is wonderful. Take your example. If you felt the need to add your opinion the the conversation or felt that a comment was so incredibly beneficial, take some effort to reach out to that individual via an email or his company blog, etc. |
Experience earning side income with elance, oDesk, RentACoder, etc? | wenbert: I have been doing side jobs since college - around 2003/2004 until now. All of my clients are not from Elance/Rent-a-coder/etc. Most of them however sent me an email from a "local" community site of web developers.I always tell me clients that I have a 8/9-hour day job. I update the client every few days through email. Sometimes I work at night and sometimes I don't. When I work at night, I spend around 4 hours maximum -- average is 2 hours. On the weekends, 6 hours. I was still able to go out with friends and have fun. Mostly TV time and video games were cut-off - except for a brief 2 month re-play of Diablo II :PI do mainly web development / web design.Right now, I am trying out a new career that doesn't involve the internet. But still though, on my free time I work on pet projects I have listed down a few years back. |
Experience earning side income with elance, oDesk, RentACoder, etc? | scorpioxy: It certainly does. But I'd recommend you finding a niche and not go after "php developer needed" type of bids because then you'd be competing on price.For 2 years, I used it as one source of income for my freelancing business. But like I said, I didn't compete on price and only bid for the interesting projects and serious clients. |
What do you use to wish people a happy birthday? | Roridge: A card |
What domain knowledge should I learn? | lsc: Look around for mentors. If you can get a good mentor, you will be significantly better than you would be otherwise. It's impossible to say what will be 'hot' five years from now, so you might as well go for what you can become good at.(I'm assuming you are talking about deep knowledge that takes a while to obtain... if you mean a month or two of studying, ignore me.) |
What domain knowledge should I learn? | Mc_Big_G: If I were starting over right now, I would definitely get in on the bioengineering/genetics stuff. The barriers to entry are now very low compared to the last 20 years and they keep getting lower every day.Imagine if you could hack a new cure or bacteria that changes the world. This field will make the information revolution look like a little girl's tea party. |
Experience earning side income with elance, oDesk, RentACoder, etc? | gnosis: Previously:http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1028327 |
Experience earning side income with elance, oDesk, RentACoder, etc? | mootothemax: I've been moderately successful on RentACoder but at times it's been a bit of a slog. I started in November last year, and have been earning more and more with every month.Everybody says this and it's true: to get started you have to make a couple of bids at sweatshop rates in order to build reputation. I found explaining this reason as part of my initial bids to be a successful strategy. Your first week (or longer!) you'll earn a lot of nothing. Once you've gone through this probation period, though, you'll start earning decently.From what I can tell, there are plenty of users who reply to a bid with "yes, I can do this, I have done lots of projects like this, CHOOSE ME!" So, instead, read each request fully, and ask lots of questions. I've found that asking questions first and only entering a bid amount after receiving answers to my initial questions to also be a winning method.Despite plenty of articles to the contrary, it is more than possible to earn a decent living through sites like this. By decent living I mean $5-$6k/month, your mileage may vary. To do so, you have to have the balls to bid high - with justifications - and accept that you're not going to win very many bids, but that the ones you do win will more than make up for it.Finally - and I've again read plenty of articles that contradict this - if you're competent and do a decent job, you will get repeat work. This has happened to me several times, and for the last few months I've been turning work away. |
What domain knowledge should I learn? | michael_dorfman: PS: Please, no cliche like "learn whatever you are passionate about" - I've heard it all before. What I'm looking for right now is to step out of my comfort zone (SE).Sorry, but that's about the only responsible answer to a question this broad. It's a bit like asking "What book should I read?"If you can narrow the question down a bit, you'll get a much more appropriate answer.Gaining "domain knowledge" is key. However, the range of possible domains is next to infinite.Your success is not going to be dependent upon the quality of the domain, but on the quality of your ability to learn the domain.So, pick a subject that you are able to learn. Is there some domain where you have a natural advantage of some kind? |
Experience earning side income with elance, oDesk, RentACoder, etc? | linuszen: If you're looking for a "stable" buyer and you aren't located in western part of the world i might be your man
get in touch
paolo-at-paolomaffei-dot-it |
What domain knowledge should I learn? | mahmud: Expertise that's in demand now wont necessarily be as hot by the time your learn their ins and outs.Just a hunch: enterprise software design. Someone has got to navigate all those XML specs.Also, it's always a good idea to learn whatever programmers hate. |
Review My App - TwitBet | Mc_Big_G: Quick note: On the last page there is a typo:If you do not complete the first page of the survey survey... |
Experience earning side income with elance, oDesk, RentACoder, etc? | rmanocha: I keep hearing people to build a niche skill. I'm a Python/Django/AppEngine developer - is this "niche" enough?? :) |
Where to run away to crank out my web app? | adora: Assuming you have no car and are stuck wherever you go, why not just move to the South Bay, e.g. Mountain View.It meets all your requirements, plus there's no scenery to stare at to even get the slightest bit distracted. AND, there's entrepreneurial activity going on 24/7 to keep you motivated.As a side note, I had a couple friends go to Thailand with exactly this in mind, and honestly they didn't come back with much. Beaches can be distracting... |
Experience earning side income with elance, oDesk, RentACoder, etc? | jasonkester: I got a lot of work off Guru when I was first ramping up the consulting work. I have only one piece of advice:Differentiate on Quality, Never on PriceI would write proposals by hand, in literate English, after reading and considering the project description. That alone would differentiate me from 90% of applicants. I'd then include a ballpark estimate along with my hourly rate.The response I got back was pretty much always a variation of "Wow, you really understand our needs a lot better than anybody else who's responded. Unfortunately, your bid is 3 times that of the next highest bidder. Any chance you could come down a bit on price?"My response to that would be some variation of "No.", and their response to that would generally be "OK, let's give it a shot."Here's what's happening in that situation. I wanted the project owner to end up with two piles of bids on his desk. Pile A would have 150 English-as-a-second-language generic bids that didn't address the project at all and quoted $7-$14/hr rates. Pile B would have exactly one bid from a guy who obviously knew what he was doing and would definitely deliver, yet was quoting a much higher price.At that point, the project owner has two choices: Sift through all the garbage in Pile A in hopes of randomly finding somebody good. Or spend a realistic amount of money with the guy from Pile B.I got plenty of work this way, and as an added bonus it did a good job of filtering out the unrealistic "I need an eBay clone for $400" types. |
techniques for basic graphics design (for programmers)? | 1331: Practice is essential in becoming proficient in design. A technique that I particularly recommend for beginners is recreating designs that you like, from scratch. Start with something easy and work up!The majority of my design "training" was done in a professional environment, using Illustrator and Photoshop. Such software has hierarchical layers/groups as well as support for keyboard input, which address your questions about performing tasks such as drawing circles and modifying designs.Photoshop (raster-oriented graphics) is quite mature and impressive; there is unfortunately no OSS that can even approach its creative power, IMHO. Illustrator (vector-oriented graphics, which seems to be your interest) is nowhere near as solid as Photoshop... The best OSS alternative (for screen design, that I know of) is Xara Xtreme, which outdoes Illustrator in a number of ways. Unfortunately, core features such as layers/groups and keyboard input are not done well in Xara, and it is a long way away from being able to do print. Inkscape trails pretty far behind.If you would like to take a scripting approach, how about trying JavaScript in a modern browser? In case it is better suited for your needs, you may also want to check out Asymptote and/or METAPOST.A bit more advice: Technically-minded people can usually learn software applications by just playing around with it, but I highly recommend reading good books on the subject to really learn the software. The many design tutorials online can also be quite useful.http://www.xara.com
http://www.xaraxtreme.org/
http://asymptote.sourceforge.net/ |
Mandatory use of 3rd Party IDs (Facebook Connect, etc)? | ScottWhigham: I think that I would be extremely hesitant to sign up; there would have to be a major value proposition for me to give that info up to them. |
Experience earning side income with elance, oDesk, RentACoder, etc? | jyu: Here's some advice from a top earner fom RentACoder: http://www.reddit.com/r/iama/comments/a2485 |
Experience earning side income with elance, oDesk, RentACoder, etc? | mark_ellul: I have earned a decent income for my company using odesk.com Basically, you just need to make sure your profile is up to date, and prove that even though are more expensive, than $10 an hour coders, you are worth it. |
Where to run away to crank out my web app? | imp: Come to Cleveland! It's cheap, and no beaches or sun will guarantee that you'll be indoors coding all day :) |
Are you a single founder ? | cvinson: 1: Since 20042: No, didn't apply.(Sidenote: we're #29 in "Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund" http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html)3: No, bootstrapped.4: http://www.sitezoogle.com |
What domain knowledge should I learn? | imp: Baby boomers are starting to retire. That's a large demographic that isn't good with computers. Maybe find an industry that caters to them where technology can help. It doesn't sound like fun to me, but where there's muck there's brass.Also, you may not have to be "passionate" about the domain, but you've got to at least tolerate it since you'll need to spend a lot of time doing it. |
how do you backup your servers? | brk: Generally rsync to a mirror-image hardware box in the same location. Everything is backed up so any fault/failure on the primary machine can be recovered (in theory) via the hot-standby machine.Critical user data, databases, etc. are dump'd/tar'd/gzip'd to a remote location once a day, generally held as long as space permits. |
how do you backup your servers? | bryanh: We do tar'ed directories/databases onto S3 and this script: http://simonwillison.net/static/2008/backup_to_s3.py.txtRight now its only done weekly, as we're not experiencing high growth. We also store downloads, so the tars can get very big, but it works well. |
Tips for Building Customer Survey Forms? | coryl: Quantifiable data is the best, so where applicable, make your answer choices a scale of 1 to 5 (ie. Very bad to Very good, unlikely to likely, never vs all the time) |
how do you backup your servers? | lrm242: tarsnap + bash script! http://www.tarsnap.com/Tar-like interface, data deduplication, awesome support, fair pricing. What more could you ask for? |
how do you backup your servers? | jbyers: No whole-system backups. Offsite (across the country) replicated MySQL database with daily full snapshots and periodic encrypted dumps to S3. Real-time encrypted mogilefs backups to S3 on a per-file basis. S3 MFA + versioning is a huge win in both cases. rsync for a small number of exceptions: IMAP data, development trees, etc. When a server fails, just re-image it, bootstrap with puppet, start it back up. |
how do you backup your servers? | hga: I divide my backups into three types: Bare metal.
Frequently changing data.
Occasionally changing data.
Everything is weighted by how automated I can make it (e.g. everything but some day to day monitoring), what worse case recoveries are possible (no one cares about backups, only recovery) and time to recovery (my personal use, so a few hours are OK). And the threat level, e.g. a fire in one room (sprinklers) and the possibility a tornado would take out the local hardware but leave me alive (I live adjacent to tornado alley and have lived through a couple).So I have a bare metal backup of a compressed image of my system drive (made with dd using a live-CD) which is updated every time I mess with LVM and nightly snapshots of my root partition (LVM snapshop of partition with dd).From that toe-hold I can rebuild my system from any worse case short of hardware destruction, I use nightly backups with BackupPC for normal system recovery, augmented with what's below for frequently changed data.Frequently changing data, like email and code I'm working on, is rdiff-backup snapshotted every hour. If I was maintaining customer data I'd do a continuous process.The same data is rsyncsrypto-ed and most of that is rynced to rsync.net.Occasionally changing data is rsynced every night.I try to avoid common mode failures, e.g. no one piece of software, one system or one disk will cause total data loss.Ask if you want particular details; for a long treatment of this, read Backup & Recovery, "Inexpensive Backup Solutions for Open Systems" by W. Curtis Preston (http://www.amazon.com/Backup-Recovery-Inexpensive-Solutions-...). It's getting to be a bit old, but a lot of it still holds and the principles will be true for a long time.(Note, while the above particularly paranoid approach is for my personal systems, it's based on harsh experience going back to 1977 (sic), including plenty of small scale "enterprise" systems where total data loss was unacceptable and a couple of 24x7 Internet startups.) |
how do you backup your servers? | DanBlake: r1soft |
how do you backup your servers? | ErrantX: Considering the work we do (corporate and criminal computer forensics) backup strategies are about our second most important thing :D So naturally it gets neglected...Gold Images: of the various OS configurations and requisite software so you can redeploy a server fairly quicklyDiff Backups taken nightly of our various data stores / databasesWeekly backups of main server data (MySQL, MSSQL, Hadoop clusters etc)In terms of software we use a couple of commercial solutions plus Bacula (which isn't really that great unless your using tapes...).Inspired by Tarsnap (the encryption and so forth) Im in the process of speccing up an idea to write out own in house version (I'd love to use Tarsnap directly but not a chance unfortunately) to replace our mish mash of software. |
Please review our startup | spokey: I don't think I understand Jukaroo. (I'm not familiar with whrrl or eat.ly, so maybe that hurts.)Is this like imgur or twitpic except by posting an image I'm saying I recommend the thing in the image?I see it in your list at the bottom, but browsing the site I don't see how "tell everyone why you recommend it" enters into the equation. (Edit: Actually, I see now, in the heading under the picture. Might be nice to browse by those categories--ie. show me things that are recommended for "Fun" or whatever.) |
Please review our startup | needadvice: The concept has some value to it -- although I would suggest focusing on a niche first. Then, evolving from there. |
how do you backup your servers? | Mc_Big_G: Cron + S3 + s3cmd + small custom script for DB dumpsCron + snapshots + small custom script for EBS on EC2.Basically, I store all non code files on EBS and redundantly backup to S3, which amounts to living or dying by Amazon's hand.Recovery consists of firing up a new EC2 instance, attaching a snaphot and running a deploy script, which is handled automatically by a different EC2 instance, assuming I haven't lost all instances. Manual recovery in that case would be time consuming, but doable.Snapshots are nearly instantaneous and uploads to S3 from an EC2 instance are about as fast as you can get.Most annoying thing? Testing recovery. |
What domain knowledge should I learn? | pclark: product marketing! |
how do you backup your servers? | redman: We use MogileFS for redundancy (bandwidth costs from our host are still less than Amazon). However, we use cron/S3 for BACKUPS. Every time a file is added we back up to Amazon. |
how do you backup your servers? | scottw: I backup entire disks using a towers of hanoi algorithm with (wait for it...) good old dump(8) to a second local hard drive. This method keeps 7 full days of backups (using an incremental diff, so it's fairly space efficient). I've used this method for almost 15 years and have used it dozens of times to recover missing things. dump has never failed me!On my other servers I use rsync just to keep a current mirror around. I always ask myself, "How hard would this be to recover if I lost it?" and "Will I need to go back in time for some things?" Depending on the answer to those questions I make my backup strategy for the server in question.Yesterday's Daring Fireball post on the same topic said it best: "Every hard drive in the world will eventually fail. Assume that yours are all on the cusp of failure at all times. It’s good to be spooked about how long your hard drives will last." |
how do you backup your servers? | dunhamda: We've been using Bacula: weekly fulls and daily incrementals to disk, and weekly fulls to tape for offsite storage. As our data size grows, tapes are going to run out of steam. I've recently began experimenting with http://www.nongnu.org/duplicity to do encrypted backups to S3. So far it has been working great. |
how do you backup your servers? | sogrady: We use ZRM to automate the backup and versioning of our MySQL databases.Then we use cron and s3sync to mirror the relevant portions of the filesystem to S3.For those interested, the process is documented here:http://monk.ly/bFBd7w |
how do you backup your servers? | buro9: Cron + rsync.net and their geo-replicated package. |
how do you backup your servers? | brandon272: Daily rsync to BQBackup, with once weekly offline backup. |
how do you backup your servers? | BlueZeniX: ZFS auto snapshots, backup-server running incremental ssh "zfs send" |zfs recv. |
how do you backup your servers? | petervandijck: The data lives separate from the code: the code is backed up in Subversion, the data lives in AmazonS3 (no other backup) for images, and a database in an Amazon snapshot with daily backups automated. |
how do you backup your servers? | njl: I have scripts (I use fabric, keep meaning to explore chef) that bring a fresh OS install up to a production server automatically, doing all installation and configuration. This is all in a DVCS system, so I have a local copy of my repository as well as a hosted copy of my repository on bitbucket/github. That takes care of code and configuration.I have a cron job that dumps the databases into a directory with a time-stamped name. The last few regular nightly back-ups are kept, then weekly for a couple of weeks, then monthly for about a year. The parent directory is then backed up to S3 using duplicity. I've done other, cleverer things in the past with rotating through buckets based on the month, keeping every backup, doing them twice a day, that sort of thing.I test recovery by spinning up another server, running the scripts to bring it up to production status, and running the script that uses duplicity to pull the data dump directory back out of S3, and then restores the database from the dump.At $0.15 a gig to store data, and about $0.10 a gig to transfer it in, the cost of S3 is pretty much just noise. I've got on-disk dumps of my database if the database is corrupted on my machine, and I've got back-ups of those dumps if I need them.Duplicity is pretty fantastic -- definitely check it out. |
how do you backup your servers? | avar: I'm just a mortal developer so I don't have to admin anything serious, but here's how I do backups of my personal files & server. Mainly using Git:Any code / changes to Debian's default /etc setup go into Git and are at least on both the relevant machine (laptop or server) and GitHub. See http://github.com/avar and http://github.com/avar/linode-etc for the /etc on the server. I keep some personal data (like finance notes) in GPG encrypted files in private Git repositories.E-Mail is backed up my Google's GMail (presumably) and data like my small collection of music is something I can always get back from the Internet.If the filesystem on my laptop, server or GitHub is destroyed right now I can get everything working again relatively quickly just by installing Ubuntu or Debian from scratch and copying my home directory, /etc and code from Git on one of the remaining machines.I've made a script that automatically backs up my Git repositories daily (http://github.com/avar/github-backup), the resulting backup is around 180MB. Losing some of my other data would be an annoyance but this is all I /really/ care about.Follow somebody else's advice if you need "real" backups, but for my simple needs this suffices. |
Awesome Mailing Lists? | ax0n: Look into the public-facing (non-membership) mailing lists used by some of the hackerspaces. They all have their own passions and politics, so the ones I like won't likely be the ones you like. CCCKC has an information-security specific list that's just starting to get good. The main list may be too eclectic for most. |
How many of you founders are girls ? | jacquesm: I made a loosely related poll a while ago:http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=749617 |
how do you backup your servers? | fnid2: I backup code to flash once a day in case of hardware failure. Once a week I swap flash drives into a safety deposit box. I also backup any local databases to flash once a day. Use a scheduled task and a .cmd for that, which automatically stops SQL Server, 7z compresses and encrypts the database files and source code repository, then move them to a usb flash drive, then restarts SQL Server.I never upload code to the internet, but I have copies of the repository in multiple locations separated by at least 3000 miles.Nightly I backup internet databases to a cloud storage provider. Nondatabase files are stored simultaneously on local storage and cloud storage. The local storage is mirrored to local snapshots hourly and nightly in case a roll back is needed. |
Awesome Mailing Lists? | runevault: If you like the PLT list, I've been a huge fan of the clojure google group. Little to no spam gets through thanks to moderation, and the people are friendly and helpful while talking about all the different topics related to clojure and using it on interesting problems. |
Is there an app to view savings account bank statements? | djb_hackernews: would mint.com fit? |
how do you backup your servers? | gibsonf1: EC2 AMI image -> S3 at milestones, mysql dbase backup to S3 every few minutes, all files stored directly on S3, so only cached on server. |
how do you backup your servers? | there: an openbsd vm in a... secret location... runs rsnapshot (rsync over ssh) to all of my servers every few hours and keeps separate hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly "full" backups. they are stored on a usb hard drive encrypted with openbsd's softraid.when the server boots up, i have to enter in the softraid passphrase, it mounts the drive, then i launch screen and start up the script that spawns the rsnapshot processes at the appropriate times. when starting it, i enter in the common ssh key passphrase (which is restricted on all the servers to only allow logging in from that network) and common mysql backup user password. these are stored in memory and then the script runs rsnapshot every few hours.once a day, the script does a full mysql dump of all databases on all servers using a ruby script with net::ssh to tunnel mysql access over ssh. it does this to keep "proper" mysql backups in case the rsync'd binary mysql files are transferred in an odd state, and keep daily backups of everything. it also lets me quickly get at data with standard text tools instead of having to restore the raw mysql files somewhere temporarily, start up mysqld, and extract it.so once the server is booted, it's completely automated. i've been doing backups this way for a couple years and have recovered files and databases from them a number of times. no complaints. |
How many of you founders are girls ? | DanielBMarkham: Love the landing page. |
How many of you founders are girls ? | jgrahamc: Good luck!What does 'masala' mean in the context of an application? |
How to Deal with Startup Stress? | awt: Exercise. I force myself to take a half-hour walk with a lot of climbing 3 days a week. It gets your mind off your problems, which is key. |
How many of you founders are girls ? | zackham: clickable link http://www.meraiphone.com |
Tips for Building Customer Survey Forms? | alanthonyc: Thank you.I was afraid my question was going to disappear.The Likert scale sounds like a good place to start studying. |
Awesome Mailing Lists? | abalashov: NANOG. |
Great examples of web app Video tours | barry-cotter: Anki, an online spaced repitition flashcard based learning app
http://ichi2.net/anki/screencast1.html |
How many of you founders are girls ? | jeromec: The founder of Oneforty Laura Fitton was an individual female founder. I particularly enjoyed that interview on Mixergy. http://mixergy.com/oneforty-laura-fitton/ |
How many of you founders are girls ? | iamwil: Congrats on quitting your job! |
how do you backup your servers? | mark_l_watson: I do a lot of simple things. Servers: use cron, zip, and s3cmd tools to backup to S3; on EC2, use snapshots. Development laptops: use git repos hosted on a rented VPS and I have a cron script to ZIP these repos and back them up to S3. |
How to Deal with Startup Stress? | jarsj: <steve-jobs>
May be its time to change some things. You being constantly stressed out, while doing what you love, is a good enough signal. Listen to your heart.
</steve-jobs> |
How to Deal with Startup Stress? | soyelmango: Here's an edited version of an as yet unpublished blog post I've written...* Get up, stretch - a bit of stretching from head to toe. It’s amazing what a few minutes of stretching does for waking you up.* Shower, breakfast - this sounds obvious, but it was all too easy for me to get down to work, and skip the freshen up and food!* Take a short walk - a quick 20 minute walk clears my head. I use this time to think of anything else. Even thinking about work is fine, because it’s away from a keyboard and screen!* Stop for lunch by 1:30 at the latest - or whatever time suits you, but the idea is not to get too far from breakfast and too close to dinner.* Get up, walk around the block. Again, this is like the morning walk - something to let the brain step back.* Once or twice a week, step out completely, just do any strenuous physical activity for a few hours, where you have to concentrate your mind and body, making it impossible to think of anything else. This to me is the best break, better than a holiday. It’s a bit like hitting the 'reboot' button!* And finally, before going to bed, I read. It doesn’t matter what the book - it can be work related or not - the important thing is to let my brain wind down away from the screen, and especially away from the internet.Let us know how you get on with the tips that I and other HNers post. |
How to Deal with Startup Stress? | coryl: Get a physical hobby. Running, bicycling, weight lifting, martial arts. Make room for an hour a day for it. |
How many of you founders are girls ? | Towle_: Maybe it's just me, but I'd be more concerned with kicking ass than how many other girls there are doing what you do. |
Review my project: Using unicode to break Twitter's 140 char limit | chaosmachine: Link: http://tweetcompressor.com/ |
how do you backup your servers? | cullenking: I don't bother backing up the full system, just the user generated data. I am storing lots of data as flatfiles rather than shoving them into the database, so rsync helps there.I like having a complete copy of all user-data on my home machine for development purposes as well as backup. So, I rsync all user generated content (they are 99% flatfiles so this is easy), as well as a daily mysql dump. My other founder and I both perform this daily, so at any point we are only exposed with a 1 day risk (seems acceptable at this point). This also gives us two separate off-site backups, which is nice. |
How many of you founders are girls ? | romland: Call me silly, but self-proclaimed hotness (your sig*) might work very well in WoW, but I imagine less so here.If I were you I'd change it.(sig: Hot + Geek = me) |
Review my project: Using unicode to break Twitter's 140 char limit | nfnaaron: Very clever．Nicely done. |
How to Deal with Startup Stress? | jacquesm: You're well out of the 'easy' part of it, most people associate the first year of a start-up with stress, but that's because they never get to the part where you're successful.One major source of stress is family stuff, I don't know anything about your family situation, but keep your spouse, if you have one, in the loop so they can anticipate when you need them.It also helps to really learn how to delegate, and do it well.Physical exercise has been mentioned a couple of times already, let me add my vote to that bit, it really matters that you are healthy in both mind and body.Make sure you don't take your work home with you, work hard but don't kill yourself doing it and keep in mind that there is more to life than work.best of luck! Looks like you are well on your way. |
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